The Poison Diaries: Nightshade Read Online Free Page B

you after all.”
    I shift my position, trying to find a dry spot. After a night of wild storms, everything is wet: the ground, the trees, the rocks. Mushrooms sprout in every crevice. Some of them, too, are killers, but they know better than to boast about it.
    â€œIt is not the forest that irks me. It is your pride in your own wickedness. You gain nothing from killing. You take no nourishment from your prey, as the hawks and foxes do. Yet you do it with enjoyment.”
    â€œWe act as it is in our nature to act. Just as you do, Human Who Hears.”
    This is what they call me in the forest. The fleshbody. The Human Who Hears. Even here I am made to feel like a freak.
    â€œAfter all, you too, have killed,” the dropwort adds.“And there was no nourishment involved. Was there?”
    I do not answer. For yes, I have killed. Shamefully I have taken innocent life. And I would kill again, right now, if I had the means.
    My victims would be two in number: Thomas Luxton, father of my beloved Jessamine. And Oleander, the Prince of Poisons.
    It is for Jessamine’s sake alone that I stay away.
    Of its own will, my hand strays to the book of evil I carry with me day and night. Thomas Luxton’s book of poisons. It is wrapped safe and dry in a square of oilcloth I stole from a farm wife’s washing line.
    Every day I swear I will burn it. It is like that wicked garden of his: something unnatural that should never have been created. But I cannot bring myself to do it. It is the one link I have to the past – to all that was stolen from me. To happiness. To Jessamine.
    â€œAnswer, fleshbody. Do not ignore, like an ordinary half-sensed human. We know you can hear us.”
    â€œYes, I can.” I rake pebbles into my hand with myfingers and toss them one by one against a large out-cropping of rock. They bounce off the stone, narrowly missing my delicate, deadly accuser. “Alone among my kind, I can hear you. But that does not mean I am interested in what you have to say.”
    The notched leaves flare in outrage. I feel pleasure at their hurt. This is the sort of creature I have become. Bitter. Angry. With too little respect for others, and far too much pity for myself.
    I rise to leave. It makes the plants angry that I can do that. Walk away.
    â€œListen to the fleshbody,” the dropwort retorts. “A mere seventeen turns of the seasons on this ancient earth of ours, and yet he dismisses us. What is your answer, coward? Have you killed, or have you not killed?”
    Through a canopy of alder leaves I glance up at the sky. It is grey, and thick with clouds. I half expect to see a shadow in the shape of wings, blotting out what little light is left. A gash of nothingness inked across the heavens.
    â€œYes. I have,” I snarl. “We are killers both. Do not make me prove it.”
    With the poison diary under my arm, I turn and run.
    â€œWhat do you hope to find in the forest, fleshbody? She is not here, you know!”
    I plug my ears and run faster, deeper into the woods.
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    Jessamine once told me that humans go for walks in the forest to be alone and “collect their thoughts.” At the time I did not understand what she meant. Why would human thoughts be scattered among the trees?
    For me, being in the forest is like going to market day at Alnwick, but instead of people’s elbows jostling me, it is the low branches whipping across my face, leaves sticking to my hair, roots rising up to trip me.
    There is no place to hide from the trees. They know everything I do – every grouse I kill to eat, every sip I take from the stream, every shelter I build for myself of leaves and moss. I cannot move behind alaurel to make water but they are there.
    Most often they speak according to their kind – the deep rumble of oak, the whisper of the birch, or the singsong chant of the alder. The evergreen stands of pine have voices sharp as needles.
    But the forest can speak