Seventh Bride (22 page)

Rhea retreated to the beach. Bits of opaque green ice calved off the end of the glacier, pattering into the water. The white pool frothed.

The large crack—the one she’d been watching—split open. The interior was not dark but lit with a crazy quilt of reflections, as light struck the faceted ice and bounced.

Curled up inside, her knees drawn to her chest, lay the clock-wife.
 

If Rhea had thought about it at all, she would have expected the clock-wife to be pale the way that Sylvie was pale, a creature of the northern ice and pale northern sun.

But she was not. Her skin was dark blue-grey, the color of flint, a color found on no human being that Rhea had ever met. When she opened her eyes, they were the shocking green color of glacial ice.
 

The clock-wife lifted her head and looked directly at Rhea.

Rhea said “Hello?”

“You have knocked,” said the clock-wife. Her voice was deep and resonant, like the clock’s chimes. “It was you.”
 

“I did,” said Rhea. She could not tell if the clock-wife was angry or pleased or if she felt anything at all. Her face was finely carved and expressionless.
 

The flint-skinned woman unfolded herself from the ice and stood up. She left a neat hole behind her in the ice, like the hollow left by a peach pit.
 

She towered over Rhea. Rhea took a step back.
Was she that tall before? Did she just curl up very tight in there, or is she growing?
 

The clock-wife caught her arm.
 

Rhea had expected that the other woman’s touch would be cold, like the ice, but it was burning hot. Her grey fingers lay across Rhea’s wrist, and Rhea’s brown skin looked as blazing red as the wedding dress by contrast.
 

“This is still the clock,” said the clock-wife. “I was in the ice, and then I was called out. Then I was in the clock. I went back to the ice, and I waited to be called out. But you have called me out and
this is the still the clock.”
 

Her grip tightened as she spoke, until Rhea gasped. She could feel the bones in her wrist creaking.

“I’m trying to get you out of the clock,” she said. “I’m in the clock with you. My friend is going to get us both out if she can. Please, you’re hurting me!”
 

The clock-wife’s impassive green eyes bored into her, and then the cruel grip released.
 

“This is not how it was,” said the clock-wife. “You are not who it was before. That was another one, and I now do not love him. This is a new happening, not the one before?”

“Yes?” said Rhea, cradling her arm.
 

The clock-wife nodded. “Very well.”

She stepped away, scanning across the beach. Rhea swallowed a few times.
 

Now what do I do? I thought if I found her, I could tell her what I needed, but she seems even more confused than Sylvie in some ways…

The clock-wife bent down and picked up a stone. She turned it over in her hands, as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

“I need your help,” said Rhea.
 

“Now?” said the clock-wife.

“Err…yes? Or soon, anyway.” Rhea licked her lips, trying to decide how to continue. “I’m supposed to marry Lord Crevan—”

“Him!” said the clock-wife, and the stone was crushed to powder in her hands and sifted down between her fingers. “He called me from the ice. I was grateful then, but the one who is
I
now is not grateful. I would go and tell the one who called herself I then, but there is no changing the past except by reliving it.”

Rhea had to stop and work that one out in her head. “Err. Yes. Well, he’s out there now. Outside the clock.”

“Yessss….” The clock-wife made a stroking hiss of the word. “Yes, he is. I can smell him in the air around the clock. I have tried to pull the world away from him, but the clock prevents me. There is only one gap, and no matter how often I relive it, I cannot get to him.”
 

Is she…is she talking about making the floor fall?
 

One gap…Does she think she’s only done it once? Has she just been re-living it over and over, trying to get to him?
 

Maria said time was strange in the clock, but this is making my head ache!

“I want to help you get to him,” said Rhea cautiously. “If I can.”

“To do that, I now must leave the clock.” She dusted sand from her hands. “And I now am in the clock. Perhaps I should go back in the ice and wait again…”

“No!” said Rhea. “That won’t help. My friend can get you out of the clock—I think—but you have to come out and face Crevan if you do—”

“Crevan?” said Sylvie, looking up. She had been watching the tide. “Is he here?”

“I will unmake him,” said the clock-wife simply. “I will pull the marrow from his bones and pour lead into the spaces left behind. I will make his dying into a place and visit it every day until the end of eternity. But he is not here.”
 

“I don’t think he’s that bad,” said Sylvie doubtfully. “My parents liked him.”
 

“He has taken my death,” said the clock-wife grimly. “My death, which walked with me from the moment I was born. He wed me and took my death as a wedding gift unasked. I do not forgive. I then was foolish with gratitude for leaving the ice. I now do not make this mistake again.”

Sylvie’s eyes were round at this. She looked at Rhea. “Did you understand that?”

“I understood enough,” said Rhea. She squared her shoulders. “If you come out of the clock and help me, we’ll—we’ll try and get your death back.”

“I now do not ask this,” said the clock-wife, folding her arms over her breast. “My death is gone. It became someone else’s death. I now am no monster, to take it back from one who it loved. A poor gift that would be, for an old friend.”

Rhea took a deep breath. “Then will you help me anyway?”

“You ask?” said the clock-wife.

Rhea nodded. “Please. He’s going to marry me, and do something terrible to me. I need your help to stop him.”

The clock-wife rubbed her hands through her hair. It was very short, Rhea noticed, and moved strangely under her fingers, like a cat’s pelt.
 

“He would not take your death,” murmured the clock-wife. “Your past is short. The one who was you has barely stepped aside from the one who is you. That is what he would take, that shortness. You understand?”

Rhea shook her head hopelessly. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

The clock-wife folded her hands together, fingertips touching her lips. Her expression was one of fierce concentration.
 

She’s trying…I think she’s really trying. I think it’s hard for her. Maybe she’s not confused like Sylvie, maybe it’s just really hard for her to talk to people who can’t relive time. I
now,
I
then
…those must mean more to her than they do to me.
 

“Time,” said the clock-wife. “Not the place. The happening of it. That is it. Yours. He will take the days of your life to come so he lives them instead and you will have nothing to relive. He has drunk too much of his time, and needs to pour more days into his cup. You understand?”

Rhea nodded.
 

Youth. That’s what she’s talking about. He’s going to take my youth to make himself younger, like Maria said. That’s why he wanted to marry me so young.

Well. Well.
It was what she had been gnawing over for a week. Hearing the clock-wife confirm it should not have felt so much like a blow to the chest.
I suppose…I suppose it could be worse, right?
She stifled a hysterical laugh. It was better than what he had done to the golem-wife. Even if Crevan drank down all her years and left her nothing but bones and dust, it was still better than that.
 

The clock-wife shook her head slowly. “Help,” she said. “My help. I now could. I then would have. I now am not I then. So close to a reliving, this place. To come out of the ice to a wedding.” She narrowed her glass-green eyes. “How do I now know that you do not mean betrayal?”
 

“You just said he was going to take my youth,” said Rhea. “Isn’t that proof that I’m not on his side?”

“You might be a fool,” said the clock-wife. “There are many and will be many more who serve those who will be harming them.”
 

“I hope I’m not a fool,” said Rhea, raking her fingers through her hair. She laughed.
Except for the bit where you let Maria put you in the clock, without mentioning that she’d done it before.
“Or if it’s too late for that, I hope I’m not that kind of fool.”
 

The clock-wife said nothing.

“Here,” said Rhea, thrusting out her hand. The engagement ring was as cold a grey as the clock-wife’s skin. “There’s the ring. He means to marry me.”

The clock-wife took Rhea’s hand. She was careful this time, holding it very delicately, and yet Rhea could feel the inhuman heat of that grip.
 

“Yesssss….”
 

She held out her own hand to Rhea. It took a moment to find grey metal on grey skin, but there it was.
 

“You, too,” said Rhea.

“I, too. I now, I then. Yessss.”

Rhea rubbed her hands together, feeling her fingertips skid over the ring.
 

“Give me a death,” said the clock-wife. “Your days for an end to mine. That is what I now ask. That is the price for help.”

A death? Does she want me to kill her? Or—no, if she’s taking my death, does that mean I’ll die? Or that I won’t
ever
die?

I should probably be really worried about immortality and maybe my soul or something, but I don’t have time for this!
 

“All right,” said Rhea. “After Crevan’s…dealt with. You can have mine, if another one doesn’t come along.”

“What do you now swear by?” asked the clock-wife, cocking her head. It was a bird-like movement, deeply alien.
 

“By the Lady of Stones,” said Rhea.
 

“It is well. It will be well. I now swear by the past uneaten and the Mother Unending. Is it well?”

“It is well.”

“Then let us now go.”

The clock-wife looked at her expectantly. Rhea rubbed her sweaty palms on the sides of her dress. “Ah. Yes. Do you know how to get out?”

“If I then knew how to get out, I now would not be here.”

“Um. Just a minute…”

Rhea hurried down the beach to Sylvie, who was gazing over the water with a faint smile on her lips. “Sylvie—”

The pale woman turned. “Oh. Hello. Do I know you?”

I am not going to scream. I’m not. I’ve gotten the clock-wife to agree to help me, I just need to get out. Screaming is not going to get me out.
 

“No,” said Rhea. “You’ve never met me. Maria told me to find you.”
 

“Oh! How is Maria? Did she put you in—”

“The clock, yes. Listen very carefully, Sylvie, I need your help.”

Sylvie leaned forward. “Of course. What can I do?”
 

It’s a good thing you’re basically so nice. This would be really hard if it was Ingeth in here…

“When you left the clock before,” said Rhea. “The part of you that left. Where did it go?”

“Oh,” said Sylvie. “Out through the clock again. I can show you, but it’s closed. Been closed for…oh, a little while, I think. I’m not sure how long it’s been.”

“Can you take me there?”

“Sure,” said Sylvie, and began to pick her way along the curve of the beach, away from the bulk of the glacier.
 

Rhea hurried after her. The clock-wife followed, taking one stride for every three of Rhea’s.
 

 
“My village is this way,” said Sylvie. “Well, it’s sort of my village. There’s nobody there. It’s sad. I don’t go there often, I don’t think—although I was just there, wasn’t I?” She shook herself. “Anyway, there’s a clock in my house. There wasn’t in the real house, so I don’t think it’s quite a real clock, do you?”

“That seems likely,” said Rhea.
 

“I thought so.”

It did not take very long to reach the village. Rhea wasn’t sure if Sylvie had actually lived in the shadow of the glacier, or if time was just moving strangely because they were inside the clock.
 

The real Sylvie talked about things melting out of the glacier in summer and coming up at night, so I suppose they could have been close…

As they left the beach behind and struck inland, the stones gave way to earth. Rhea sighed with relief. Her aching feet did better on the even ground than they had on the shifting beach.

The clock-wife appeared to be barefoot. Perhaps when you were not human and not entirely tethered in time, little things like rocks didn’t bother you.

Grass covered the earth, spangled with tiny flowers. There were even a few low bushes and some sort of heather. And then, quite suddenly, they were standing in the middle of the village.
 

It was an odd little place. They were among the houses before Rhea even realized that the shapes were man-made. The houses were made of some low, shaggy material—sod maybe? Was it sod that made the houses look hairy? The roofs were covered in grass. The doors were made of wood and the few windows were tightly shuttered.
 

“In here,” said Sylvie, going to one of the houses and pulling open the door. “Watch your step.”

Rhea followed her, stepping down and down again. To her surprise, the house was actually quite large, with a surprisingly high ceiling—it was merely recessed deeply into the earth. Even the clock-wife, coming down the steps, did not need to duck her head.
 

“Here,” said Sylvie, sounding exasperated. “Foolish thing. And anyway, it doesn’t work.”

Rhea’s eyebrows climbed.

The clock was identical to the one in Crevan’s manor. It stood in the middle of the floor, where it would present the maximum amount of inconvenience to anyone trying to live in the house. Rhea couldn’t imagine any human putting it there. For one thing, the back corner was actually
in
the fireplace.