Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 5)

Ky fell back, flinching, as he stomped his foot -- revealing her true cowardice. It had to have hurt, with the state of the rot.

"I'm sorry you have to live with that," she said timidly. Was she really empathizing with the Marrow Man? What the actual hell was this night turning into? She needed to piss him off. To provoke him into killing her -- not make herself likable. Not that anyone could like the bitch she was beneath all her masking. "Perhaps killing me will be a distraction?"

(Ky, politely: would you like to kill me? I do hope it will make you feel better)

(Marrow Man, having missed out on trauma dumping for something like six hundred years: Super hungry for manflesh but hungrier for socialization; will take it into consideration!)

The Marrow Man gave her a long, hard stare without blinking for a moment. Then he propped his hoof up again and smacked his bloody lips. "I have whole bear," he told her. "Will last me two days, as long as took to chase her. Girl smell good but girl smell scared. Meat will stink with fear before I bite down; no good. You fix my foots, we talk, I make fire maybe, you live until I bored."

She really couldn't do anything right, could she? She couldn't even convince the Marrow Man himself to kill her. Wasn't that kind of what he did? Surely all the children he carried off from the stories had to have also been afraid when he took them. Had he suddenly grown a conscience about it? Or was he just being stubborn and refusing to kill her since she actually wanted it?

"Two days is too long," she huffed, frustrated by that answer. "They'll find me before then -- we're not far enough away. And I want it to be tonight. To be now."

"Maybe you not stay for two days. But you scared for too long, no good for meat anymore," he insisted. "Fix foots, talk, and then go if want to die that much. Cold is everywhere."

This was getting ridiculous. What was she saying — this had already been ridiculous.

“I’ll help your foot,” she said, deciding to try a bargain. “Then you help me. It’s only fair. You don’t have to eat me after.”

"I don't kill to kill," the Marrow Man said testily, giving her a jaundiced look. "You think I kill child, kill old man, because it fun? I kill little girl helping my foots because she ask? I kill because I hungry, and only because I hungry. And I always, always hungry."

She sighed, looking at him without the first idea of how to answer that. “Are you saying I’m not good enough to even be a snack?”

"I have bear." He patted the carcass. "You morsel at best, and scared morsel. And you help me, besides. You first people I talk to in more than hundred, hundred year. Why I kill you?"

Ky sighed again, resigning herself to the fact that it wasn't going to work. She'd fooled him just like she fooled everyone, into thinking she was nice when she was really just manipulating him. At least, trying to manipulate him.

"Because I'm asking?" she suggested lamely. "I mean... I'm sure you must be lonely, then," she added, conscience pricking once again that she was being so selfish when he clearly had his own unmet needs. "And I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sad, too. You could easily help me."

"Why you sad?" the Marrow Man prompted. "You mortal, you grow and you change. You know life have end so you know to live best life you can."

"There's no life left to be had," she said, brushing the snow off her hands from where she'd fallen back onto them. "People are coming from me, and they're going to keep coming until they get me, and my family is in danger until then. There's no point in that."

The Marrow Man had torn off another hunk of flesh as she spoke and he was munching on it now. "They still come if you die," he pointed out. "There no cloud shapes say, 'Ky Ruiarc Die, Go Home!' They still come find family, maybe torture until family die. Maybe family hide you, maybe they lying. Even if they telling truth, how to be sure?"

Ky gaped at him, horrified at that thought that hadn't crossed her mind even once. "No... No. This fixes it. It has to."

"Not in my thoughts. You make more problem, because they die slow if they lie. They die fast if they protect you head on." The Marrow Man swallowed and turned, reaching behind the bear into its abdominal cavity to pull out the liver. "Killing you fix nothing except you suffering."

Spoiler

She opened her mouth to argue, then realized there wasn't really anything she could say to counter his point. Now that he'd made it, there was no getting it out of her head. And the thought was even more distressing than the ones she'd been wrestling with for a week and a half now, and made even more anxiety radiate from her.

"I..." she sighed, defeated. "There's got to be some way to protect them?"