Echoes of a Wild Girl's Drum

Some girls don't stay dead. I was seven when they tied me to the stake.They wanted me to burn, burn, burn like Nángi. I threw blackjack petals in her ashes, but not even the strongest herbs can make dead mothers come back. Nobody threw blackjack petals for me, but when my turn came, a boy broke rhythm for me instead - the village drummer, the Commander's ward - and he was scarred for it.So I ran. Into the forest, into the dark. I learned to sleep where nothing could find me and eat what the forest gave and trust tree kangaroos and cuscuses before people. I forgot almost everything - except the boy who cut me loose from the stake. Except the tree where we carved a spiral with hair and blood and a poem nobody knows. Except the night we climbed so high the whole sky cracked open and I told him there were a million hundred stars. Except our beat - tap boom tap, tap boom boom tap - that belongs to no one else in the world. He was the only thing I kept.Women burn in this village. They burn for sick children. For failed crops. For the herbs they keep. Some are tired. Some are angry. Some pass secrets. But I didn't decide to come back. Something small needed me to.And now they know: the witch's daughter didn't die twelve summers ago.I know the sound the drum makes before whispers spread like fire.The air already smells like smoke.Only now the boy who once broke the rhythm is a man.And I am no longer seven years old.