The choir is singing Ave Maria. Laurel Starling's heartbeat pulses in her ears, blocking every soft word offered to her to soothe. Words will not help her. They will not file the sharp edges of her shape into lovable curves. Words do not have such power, not the words of people weaker than her. Words from her mother's mouth held a different sort of power. They were knives, gutting Laurel like a fish. But she welcomed them because they were the only words offered to her. Those words kept her alive. Those wretched hands and that wretched mouth and that wretched heart kept Laurel alive for eight years.

Eight long years Laurel Starling lived as a shackle to Belladonna Starling, and today Belladonna Starling was finally free. Laurel hopes her mother finds a clear sky to fly in. She was not a delicate creature, she never had been. She was wild and savage, but above all selfish. In a forest, hunters live the longest. So many long years, Laurel had sat at her mother's feet trying to catch a glimpse of a thought on her face about her daughter, but Bella was a piano that only played one note.

I will not let you be my golden cage, Bella would snarl at her in spite. I will not let you hold me down.

And all Laurel could think, could say, was Mamma. As long as she had known the word, she kept repeating it like a prayer. Like a plea. Please listen to me. Please love me. Please don't leave me here. Mamma meant please. Please. Please.

But today, here, saying Mamma meant goodbye. The dirt closed around Bella, swallowing her in. The ground is hungry for the blood of birds. It always hungers for the blood of innocent creatures. The sea could've swallowed her when Bella had driven her car off the bridge. But the ground fought to bring it to itself. She would be buried and her flesh would be eaten by the dirt and on her grave, pretty pink flowers will bloom. This is what happens, because the earth is terrible, dark and cruel. And rabbits die all the time.

Laurel's father brushes her hand and urges her fingers to unfurl from fists at her side. They are always clenched into fists, hidden behind her back. She is always wanting something and ashamed at having been witnessed at such an act. An embrace, a kiss - love, to be perfectly honest. But her mother said that for her, love would be terminal. And one of them always dies. Laurel feels the guilt rise up her throat and before she can stop herself, she is weaving through a crowd of black-cloaked bodies and kneeling by a tree, throwing up the contents of her stomach. She feels a hand on her back. It's soothing but it runs along her spine as if counting the protruding bones. If she were to look in a mirror, she would probably be able to see all of them and count them with ease. But the touch is calming, and loving and Laurel shudders. Her hair is gathered up and her father whispers words of assurance, but the guilt refuses to let go of it's clutch over Laurel's heart.

Did she tell her mother she loved her because of what she said? One always dies. Did her mother die that sunny afternoon because Laurel told her for the second time ever that she loved her? Did she do so on purpose? For certain creatures, filial cannibalism is perfectly natural. And isn't Laurel also a creature? She certainly isn't human, her mother taught her at least this much. No, Laurel is something alien and she needs to protect herself because no one else will. There are knives in her mind closing around her thoughts like a million pin-pricks. Stabs of grief, of guilt. Laurel will not fall to this carnivorous life. She has learned from her mother.

Laurel wipes her mouth and stands. Takes a ruby red rose, with bleeding sanguine petals and tosses it in the open grave. Her face remains stone and her lips form words that can only carry the wings of little garden birds. Because that is what Laurel is. She buries her wings in the grave of her mother and bleeds down her shoulder. She will not fly, not until she is free. And she will never be free. Can any of us be free from our mothers? She will perpetually be her mother's image, constantly teetering on the edge of madness and cruelty, and then one day she will meet a terrible accident that will end all her efforts to make it past the cliff. Two birds, one stone. 

The grave is waiting for Laurel Starling. It hungers for one more bird and it will not sleep until it eats her and buries her in its embrace. Just like Laurel keeps her mother buried in her heart. Who here is not buried in someone's heart? Isn't that what love is? 

Our father, who art in Heaven, we have gathered here today, the preacher says and Laurel frowns. It is easy to make a child love you. Belladonna Starling had it all figured out. If you want a child's love you should just go and hide for three to four hours. The child will get down on his knees and pray for your return. He will turn you into a god. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

ADDITIONAL CAST

Annabel Scholey . . . . BELLADONNA STARLING