The Mother of the Tree of Life by Aleister Hanek (best romance ebooks txt) 📖

and jagged pebbles as he ran, but as he ran down the hill his feet began sinking into the soil and not kicking it up. It became tougher with moisture until he was near the bottom and he was practically wading in the sweet liquid shit, Ning was sinking slowly at the bottom of the hill.
As soon as the plague was over, seconds from then, the spirit showed himself in his humanoid form for the first time.
Malk was already carrying Ning on his back headed for town for a Lemph, both of them dripping brown and red. The black and purple fog was clearing, curiously straying from them as they moved, not entering their bodies.
“Stop.” He said, speaking to them for the first time.
Malk did stop, and Ning did not scream for him to keep moving for she heard the voice too, and felt its ambiguous trustworthiness. Her life was pouring out of her now, soaking up Malk’s clothes from rib to foot.
Melkam manifested solidifying from the fog. For a moment the three only looked at each other, the only sounds were the fog clearing and Ning’s groin dripping shit and blood.
“I apologize,” the spirit began “I was expecting you to sleep in this morning Ning. You weren’t supposed to be caught up in this desolation.”
The couple replied not, and the breathing of both slackened for different reasons.
“I have a proposition.”
The fog had cleared by then revealing a landscape of mulch as bright brown as the desert. A tendril of fog came from the direction of the town from behind Melkam. Slithering and coiled, it was holding something.
The tendril swerved in front of Melkam then vanished and a long Lemph was dropped in front of the couple. It writhed and slapped itself in the liquid ground like a fish trying to swim on land -Lemph’s normal habitat is tall grass where they slither through the thick blades as though the fields were water. Its maw opened smelling Ning’s wound, yearning to latch onto her.
Malk kneeled in front of the little green lifesaver and sat Ning down in front of the Lemph. His knees and her butt sank into the Mulch deep as though they had lain in pond scum. The Lemph tried slithering towards Ning’s ever growing puddle of blood for sustenance, survival. Ning snatched the Lemph so hard Malk thought she was trying to strangle it, and she forced its maw into her wound as forcefully as ever she had pulled his mouth to her loins. Its teeth blossomed around her gaping wound and sealed it with a permanent kiss.
The Lemph straightened out first, then it bulged here and there and flexed of its own accord until its accord became Ning’s. Before long the Lemph had formed itself into a perfect-shape replica of her leg. She felt relief of her wound as soon as the nerves finished linking so she could wiggle her new toes, but she didn’t feel relief for her blood loss. She leans, her back to Malk, her eyes slits but her ears wide open.
“I will give you paradise, and in exchange you will protect the mother of the one hundredth plague.”
Sinking in shit so ripe it can be smelled for miles around, Ning’s blood drying up on their bodies, and their miniscule harvest for the season ruined in an instant, Malk and Ning hesitated.
“One hundred will be the greatest one of them all, but if we help this one then the nightmare of the millennium can be over before the one thousandth year is reached. These plagues have been desolation because that has been what the mother’s spirits feed them. We all know the slim girls in this world are mistreated from the start. That is why the world is repaid with such living hatred.”
Malk and Ning have sunk waist deep now, still not wanting for him to pull them out and save their lives from this land of shit.
“The next one will be the worst unless if we help her. If we do then she’ll save us all.” Melkam reaches his arm out to Malk whose arm is tight around Ning’s waist. He seems to be closer to them all of a sudden. Malk looks the spirit in the eyes and sinks.
Then Ning grabs Melkam’s arm with both hands.
With strength as powerful as the smell in this wasteland, Melkam lifts them both out by Ning’s grip and holds them just above the puddle they nearly drowned in. Then he throws up his other hand: the odor blows itself away.
And in its place they are given paradise.
The land literally explodes with greenness and exotic colors. The grass blades are as thick as fingernails, and all the trees shake so vigorously in their birth that many leaves float to the ground fresh with life. Fruit hangs from every tree, berries from every bush enormous and riper than at the height of the season. At the top of the hill, the soil is lumpy with root vegetables equally ripe that will burst if they step on them.
Melkam sets them down and the grass is so strong that it supports their weight without breaking or laying flat to the ground. Malk sets Ning down but he still holds her and she leans against him for support. She needs to rest she needs to rest.
“Nobody can get in or out, you will be safe here and so will she when she arrives. I will not ever permit anyone else in here unless if you choose to leave after you have repaid me.”
In that moment, they didn’t know if they would want to stay –they were skeptical that he’d let them stay in fact- but when she would arrive they would never be able to leave. When they ran away together it was on account of Malk’s bravery and helping Melkam was Ning’s decision. To leave this place would dishonor their marriage as much as going back to the people who’d used them when they were young.
“Her name will be Mercadia, The Mother of the Tree of Life.”
Melkam vanished then, but they would always feel his presence in this place.

“Malk,” Melkam says, speaking from the wildlife he created for them “she is coming.” They do not feel interrupted hearing his voice. They feel that Melkam is a part of them, because he is this place, and they feel that they are a part of this place. But they are disappointed that they must stop.
Decadence gets away with you.
Malk sets Ning down who this day is vibrant. She shows her excitement, she feels like they’re being visited by the niece they could never meet.
“Where?” She asks to the sky, knowing he can hear her wherever she speaks.
“She is coming from the very path you followed to get here. She is from your old neighboring kingdom, Ning.”
Suddenly Ning feels she really is meeting the niece she could never meet.

5

Mercadia had hoped that rest would heal her but with each passing second she became stiffer like drying cement. She did not feel replenished in the least; she would have been much better off if she had just kept moving and not listened to Melkam at all. She felt as if her muscle tendons were snapping inside her like so many brittle rubber brands as she stood up. She was sure that she would come apart on the inside and collapse again like a snapped fish, and her baby would have to simply crawl out of her like a rotten heart sliding out of a split rib cage.
But she did stand up, and she did make it out of the cave without falling over. Beyond the cave mouth the way was a beaten path of the dissolved stone. It was an upward diagonal slope that looked endless at first through her squinting eyes. She might have seen the end of the path, but every inch of her skin is swollen and she cannot open her eyes all the way. Her body temperature has reduced so the constant cold here is no longer welcome; she is riddled with goose bumps from it though it is doing nothing to shrink her swelling.
The swelling inside her stomach has gotten bigger.
It takes forever for her to see the spot of light at the end of the path and at first she thinks it’s just Melkam using magic to torment her. She secretly believes the truth, that he would never do that to her, but she needs a face to blame. She needs his face to blame. As soon as she knows it is true light, her heart lifts up inside her. If she could start running then she would.
Mercadia takes the last step too eager for escape and her toes curl around the lip of the exit and she falls forward through enormous leaves that slap her like rows of paddles during the fall. In the instant before she lands she imagines hitting the ground belly first and the baby splitting her vagina open to the belly button on impact.
Then she lands into somebody’s arm.
She can tell that he has only one arm at once, not because he catches her one armed but she feels the impact reverberate through his large body, and that reverberation stops at the left shoulder. She trusts this man the instant he catches her.
Malk expertly maneuvers Mercadia’s body so that she lie’s in the crook of his arm and he cradles her without palming her butt. She looks like she is sleeping, but the couple can tell that this little soul’s torment is too stimulated to let her sleep. She pretends to sleep though, rests her head on Malk’s chest like the stiffest of pillows.
Before she knows it she is lying in a tub of warm water and her muscles are comforted. At first even being relaxed is painful, but soon the heat and buoyancy unravel the tightness in her limbs. She feels like seaweed flapping freely in the ocean. She has not yet opened her eyes but she thinks the man is gone, because she feels feminine hands picking apart the ragged seams of her dress and peeling it off. Bathing naked feels very liberating, she’d like to just have the baby right now. She trusts this woman completely already; she imagines that she has been undressed by Murcilla.
These delightful hands pick all of the crud and filth from her every crevice and flat dimensions without being the tiniest bit invasive. These hands know her woman’s torment, and not a single touch scratches her nerves.
Mercadia has no idea how long she stays in the bathtub but it feels like an eternity and she wishes it could be. Even if she had not suffered as she has in these hours past, then plopped in this tub she would still never wish to leave. She will not open her eyes until she has been dried off.
She is not lifted out of this water until her soreness is healed and all the swelling but that inside her goes down. She is lifted out by those hands and she is much stronger than Mercadia would expect from any woman –when she learns that Ning is a farmer she will understand. She is dried off swiftly, then dressed in a sheet and laid in bed.
Mercadia basks in comfort so gentle it seems not to touch her. She stays in bed for untold hours –perhaps days— but she never sleeps. Not for a second.

6

Mercadia opens her eyes to a cool wind just like a chilled blanket brushed over her skin.
She was taken out of the bed eventually –apparently her hosts wanted her up and moving around—and she was lain on grass so