A Creature of Moonlight (19 page)

I blink into the morning sky, breathing the scent of fresh spring grass and pine. I've been telling Emmy she should get out to the garden soon. Maybe I can go along and help her, make sure she plants things the right way. Maybe there I can find a place away from the nobles' glares, away from Edgar's worried looks, while I figure out what I am to do with the thing around my wrist. Maybe there—
pine
. I'm smelling
pine
.

It takes a second or two for the sun spots to give way, for my eyes to look that far, beyond the castle lawns, beyond the river, over several hills, but still in sight, still not a ten-minute ride from the king's front door.

Dark green in the early sunshine, as tall and proud as soldiers, and reaching north in a jagged carpet all the way to the mountains. No wonder the lady's voice is so strong. The woods are here.

There's a knock on my bedroom door, but I can't move, I can't think to answer it. There's a song in my head of flying above the clouds, and there's an itching in my feet to go, to jump from the window and run until the shadows eat me up. But the knocking is getting louder, and now I can't keep from hearing the shouting, too, the deep anger in the soldier's voice: “Open up! In the name of the king, open this door! You're under arrest for treason!”

T
HIS IS THE KING
trying once more to kill me.

This is the king seeing his sister come home with a baby from who knows where, threatening his kingdom, tearing out his trust for her and his compassion all in one fell swoop. This is the king doing what he's always done—protecting his lands by throwing his own blood on sharp steel, by hardening his will, his purpose, until he is nothing more than a tool for cutting down those in his way.

I am thinking this as the guards break down my door, as I stand there unmoving by the window and they grab my arms, pull me away as though I'm like to scream and struggle and spit at them, when I'm barely moving my feet to keep from dragging along the floor.

I am trying to remember the anger I hoarded for so many years, the bitterness I planted along with each flower bulb. The vengeance is tucked in against my sleeve still. It is crying out to me, high, desperate. It wants me to set it free. It's telling me that this is the time, now, here, at once. But I've nothing left anymore, no hatred, no resentment. It's all gone.

Could be Edgar's story yesterday sapped it out of me—the certainty that I am right, the will to tear my uncle's eyes clear from his head.

Could be last night's memory took it from me, that something shifted inside when I remembered how easy it was to go that first time to the woods, and now I can't keep from wondering what I have to do with their advance.

Could be, too, that the smell of pine and the memory of those piercing eyes drove any vengeful thoughts clear out of me. That sight of the woods and the heady smell of wildness pulsed all through me, like a fire, like a dip in freezing river water, and could be when I came out, I was someone else, someone entirely new.

Because as they drag me uncomplaining from my room and down the tower steps, as we hurry along the corridors and the lords and the ladies come out to stand and watch, none of them saying a word and all of them looking straight into my eyes as if I'm already no longer there, as if I'm something they've dreamed up in the early morning—as we slip across the main hall and there are faces, the eyes of the servants watching from half-closed doors, and there are Emmy and Sylvie, and they are holding each other, pale and crying, but they don't call out to me, they don't come and take my hand—as we rush through the open castle doors and into a warm (warm!) spring breeze that lingers promisingly along our cheekbones and pours itself like honey into our lungs—as we make our way out the castle gate and through the city streets, and here, too, the city folk are at their doors, so someone must have spread this news so fast it seems impossible, and then we're at the steps to the city's prison, and a bailiff is opening those doors for us, and I think briefly of all the doors we've seen on our way, the doors of the lords and the ladies and the servants and the castle and the city folk, and this door to this prison—and then, as we're stepping real careful down cold stone steps and stopping before another, final door, with iron bars and a great cold padlock, I'm thinking about how all those doors are the freedom I will never feel again—

And as I step alone into this cell and I hear that sharp, sweet clang of the door and the clunking of the padlock and the stomps of the soldiers moving off up the stairs, I'm not protesting. I'm not thinking of ways to chop the king into little bits. I'm not seething in my anger or wallowing in my despair.

I'm scarce upset at all.

I sit myself down on the thin, hard bed and look up into the thin, hard light streaking through the window at the top of the cell, and I listen to the lady's song until the day is a pile of dense, uncountable minutes. I pee in the bucket when I need to, and I eat when they give me food, and when the light softens and disintegrates, I slip underneath the covers and fall instantly asleep.

 

I am dreaming I am winged.

The sun sweeps across my back, and I lift my beak to drink it in, dazzle in it.

I can go anywhere. I can do anything. The quickest fleeing prey and the strongest leaping predator must stop short and tremble when I scream.

And how I scream!

It gathers in my every feather, in the tips of my talons and the edges of my wings. It smolders in my lungs until I roll it along my throat and out over my tongue. It's in the heavy downbeats of my wings. It's in the air that whistles past my ears, and far below, it's in the mountaintop that blurs and shifts as I shoot forward and sharply twist, chasing bursts of wind.

The world is my scream.

 

It's a disappearing thing, isn't it? It's the letting go of everything you've ever been and turning into something that doesn't care about the future or the past, but only this one moment, only this one flight and swoop and cry.

Something that doesn't care about the people she doesn't have or the people she's driven away. Something that doesn't wonder if they are right about her ruining everything.

Because if you want it this much, if it calls to you this strongly, maybe you aren't even half human. Because if they killed your mother because of you, and your Gramps lost everything because of you and died alone because of you, maybe it's time you stopped thinking about what you think they owe you.

Maybe it's time you start thinking about disappearing in truth.

I
COUNT THE DAYS
this way.

 

The first day, I scramble up the rocky back wall, gripping tight with my fingers and my bare toes, leaping to grab the bars of the window. I pull. I yell. I shake them, but they don't even rattle. I stare out at the brown dirt street until my arms grow numb and I can't hold on any longer.

 

The second day, I keep a knife from the food they give me, and I dig away at the corner of my cell behind the bed, where the ground is soft and fine.

 

The third day, I keep on digging.

 

And the fourth.

 

And the fifth.

 

And the sixth.

 

On the seventh day the knife snaps, and the hole I've made is only big enough to fit my head and shoulders.

 

On the eighth day I throw a fit, a crazed, shrieking fit that brings the guards running to make sure I'm not dying or some such. They call for a doctor, and when he says the light isn't bright enough in my cell, they take me out into the hall and up the stairs and through the prison's main room, and I'm blinking in the sun when they open the door.

The guards have me by both arms, held tight, and I'm shouting nonsense still, pulling this way and that.

When we're full in the street and the doctor is leading us up the road toward his house, I go limp, and the guards stop in their surprise, and before they've a chance to tighten their holds again, I've torn away from them and am running back down the street toward the city gates.

I run maybe a hundred steps before they have me again, and I'm back in my cell two minutes later.

 

The ninth day, I sit and look at my hands and eat no food until my head is filled with dizzy black spots and my throat is closed and dry.

 

The tenth day, the queen comes to visit me, and she gives me the key.

S
HE COMES
to tell me that the king is saying he'll kill me this very week.

“I've held him back as long as I can, Marni,” she says. “But he's saying he can't afford to wait any longer. It's almost spring, and the farmers need to be planting.” She's come all unannounced, scooting through the door the guard held open for her, waiting until he closed it again before she threw back the dull gray cloak from her head. I reckon there aren't many who know she's come to visit me. I reckon the king himself doesn't know.

I've felt the weather changing, even in my stone cell. The air is defrosting; the light from the window is growing warmer, softer day by day. Only tonight there's a bite again in the drafts that circle always through the prison. Tonight the stones are freezing to the touch.

“What are the lords and the ladies saying about it?” I say it low. I almost don't want to know, but I can't help but ask. I think of Susanna and Hettie, how they'd grasp my hand, giggling with me over some nonsense. I think of the lords who courted me before Lord Edgar, how they listened to what I said as if they cared, pulled back my chairs, asked after my health.

I don't think of Edgar or of Sylvie or of Emmy. I wouldn't think of the queen except here she is, her perfect hair tousled by the cloak, dark circles under her eyes.

“They don't say much,” she says. “They're scared, Marni. The woods . . .” She loses the sentence. I see her look down at her hands where she's holding them, properly folded as always, in her lap. I see her shift them, grip them the tighter.

“I thought it was only a fairy tale. I thought the whole country had lost its mind.”

We're sitting side by side on my mattress. She's brought me a new blanket, and I've wrapped it round myself. It's keeping out some of the evening's chill.

“How close are they now?” I ask.

“Every day,” she says. “Every day they are ten rows closer. We fall asleep each night hoping the city will still be ours in the morning. We think—we wonder whether the king will get around to killing you before they arrive.”

Hearing it out loud, so simple, my mind goes blank in panic.

She notices something about the way I look, or maybe I make a sound without realizing it, because she reaches over and takes my hand. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't mean to say it like that.”

I shake my head. “Seems I've been waiting for it my whole life. Seems I should be ready for it by now. Only—I thought my Gramps would be here as well. Not that I wish he was, not to go to the axe with me, but being alone, you see. Being alone at the very end.”
Like he was
, I think, and then I can't say any more.

“I'll be there,” she says, “though I suspect that's not a great comfort.”

We sit in silence for a bit. There are a thousand things I could tell the queen, a thousand words of thanks and a thousand accusations. I could tell her of the vengeance, the one I scarce feel anymore, though it's still clasped tight to my wrist. I could tell her of the lady's voice, and those sparkling eyes that so fill my head these days I can hardly care about being locked up or worry about my death. I'm only longing to get back to the woods.

“There are
things
in the gardens now, and all along the river,” the queen says abruptly, in a different tone of voice. “Little men who disappear when you look at them straight on. Wisps of smoke where there is no fire. And voices, singing songs or chanting rhymes, with words not one of us understands, but they make our skin crawl. Things that aren't supposed to exist, you know?”

I've turned to stare at her.

She shrugs. “You'll think I'm making it up, but it's true. It feels less and less like the world is ours. I'm starting to think I dreamed up things like fields and meadows. I'm starting to think the woods have already taken over.”

“Aunt,” I say, “there are things
in the castle gardens?
”

“Yes, and near the river. And no one dares go into the flower garden now, not with that monstrous plant—why, you might know what it is. It's all vines and little blue flowers, carpeting the ground. It's spread from one end of the garden to the other. There's no room left for other plants.”

“That's the dragon flower,” I say. “Nobody plants it. It just grows.”

“Yes.” She nods. “I daresay nobody
would
plant it, when it takes over everything so.”

“It never has before.”

“I suppose it's never tangled up a gardener so much that she broke her leg and had to be hacked free with axes, either.”

“No,” I say.

“She said she was following the pretty blue lights, that they were leading her from one step to the next.” She shakes her head. “Poor thing.”

I don't ask the gardener's name, but I reckon I don't need to. It was only a few weeks ago that I was telling Emmy she should get out to the flowers soon, and with me locked away, she'll be feeling it's her duty to take care of the garden.

“Tell her to leave it alone,” I say.

“The gardener?”

“If you can get a word with her, tell her it's all right, that she can let it be. Tell her I said so.”

“I will,” the queen says. Moonlight has begun to seep into the cell. It falls across our knees and turns the queen's rough cloak into silk. She raises a silver-edged eyebrow at me. “Is there anyone else you'd like me to take a message to?”