Tales of Arilland (8 page)

He was the prince.

And he was getting married in a week.

Edward fell ill the next day. He did not come to let her out of her cell. The first two days of isolation weren’t bad. The third day, the snitch’s body began to smell. The fourth day, she tried to feed off it again and gagged. There had not been much in him to begin with, and whatever was left in him now was gelled and rancid. The fifth day, she began to shake. She pounded on the door and the walls and the window until the skin of her fists shed. The sixth day, she began to scream. It came out of her as a long, keening wail. It echoed her hunger, her desperation, her emptiness. Her voice gave out as the sun rose on the seventh day, his wedding day.

She spent the hours curled up against the door, hoping to hear something. Any sign of movement at all would have been welcome. She played with the ends of her faded hair, teasing them in and out between her toes. The shadows moved, lengthened, and eventually, the sun’s light died. Her hopes went right along with it. She placed her palm flat on the door beside her head.

It was warm.

She closed her eyes and could feel the energy radiating from the other side. She could hear small, shallow breaths. She could taste sugar on the air.

Molly.

She knocked two times on the door.

“Rose?” the tiny voice called hesitantly.

She knocked two times again.

“Daddy’s sick and he had to go away.” Skirts rustled against the floorboards. “I’m lonely. Are you lonely?”

Two knocks.

“Do you want to play with my dolly?”

She spread her fingers against the door. “Yeth,” she croaked.

The warmth faded, and there were sounds of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. One, two, three, for, five, six, seven keys were all slowly turned in their locks. The chair was pushed aside, and the door opened.

Molly flew into her arms, the momentum pushing her back onto the bed in her weakened state. She cradled the frightened child in her arms, felt the porcelain head of her dolly poking into her side. She soaked up the child’s energy, willing it into her empty body. She bent her head and smelled the sweetness of her. She nuzzled her nose in the softness of her, like burrowing into the petals of a newly-opened flower.

She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t, but he had caused her so much pain, and she had nothing left to lose.

Molly screamed and fought, but every bit of her gave the Siren the strength to hold her down, to fill the abyss inside her with this soul of pure innocence. It was so beautiful. The sensations did not wait until she was finished. They exploded into her mind every second. There was fear, yes, sweet fear, but then came sadness and betrayal. There was happiness and laugher, anger and tears, but most importantly, she finally realized the
whys
. She knew why a person felt joy and why they felt pain. She learned the elation of seeing something for the very first time, and the despair in losing it.

Loss. She knew now what she had been dealing out all this time. There was no way she could have ever known the impact of death without knowing what it was like to live a life. The weight of all the souls she had consumed pressed heavily upon her. She learned consequences. She realized that the things she did affected people other than the person she was killing. She understood that all the pain she had felt before was nothing to the pain these people would feel for the rest of their lives. She felt regret, and love.

Love.

It spread through her. Unconditional love tickled her down to the red tips of her fingers and toes. Love was trust. Love was faith. Love was believing in the impossible. The rainbow of Molly’s soul filled her with love until the last drop. She held Molly’s limp body in her arms…and she laughed.

She laughed and laughed, her voice echoing through the dark, vacant house. She laughed until she cried, tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks. She cried for Molly, for all of them. She cried for all the things she had done. She cried for herself, for everything she had lost, for nothing.

Or was it nothing?

She had to hurry. She had to leave this place and never come back. She gently laid Molly’s body out on the bed and curled her arm around her dolly. She smoothed back the dark curls and kissed her forehead. She covered herself in the black cloak and fled into the night.

She was glad again to be in the air and running over the earth, despite what little support they gave her. She followed her heart and the dim memories of the snitch up to the castle gates.

She strode up to the guards there and threw her hood back. Those that knew of her let her pass. Those that didn’t know of her learned.

The myriad halls and stairs and rooms made the castle a giant labyrinth, but she knew where she was going. Up and up and up…to the balcony suites of the Prince’s bedchamber. She did not stop until she was at the foot of his bed, staring down at his sleeping body. She wanted to shake him awake, wanted to explain everything to him, wanted to scream her love for him to the rafters.

But she couldn’t.

If he awoke now, he would know what she had become. He would see the evil inside of her, the mark of it in her hair and on her skin. She had saved his life, true, but how many others had she taken on her path back to him? With love came regret. She knew what she had to do. She knew that the only thing she had to offer him now was her absence. If she could just touch him one more time...she reached out a hand to him and stopped herself.

No.

It would not stop at a touch, she knew that from what had happened with Molly. She could never be with him, truly be with him, because eventually she would consume him. His soul was not bright enough for her to survive alone outside it, nor was it strong enough to sustain him once she had consumed it. If she stayed beside him, it would mean his death.

She was a monster.

She forced her hand back to herself and placed it over her heart. She hoped that it spoke enough in the silence for him to hear it, to feel how much she loved him. If it had been water and not air between them, she knew he would have felt it.

He stirred and opened his eyes.

She gave herself one moment, one tiny, blessed moment of looking into his eyes before she turned and ran.

She tripped down the stairs and cut her feet on the stones. The cloak caught on something and she unfastened it. She was sure that soon they would come for her. They would hunt her like the beast she was. She tasted the tears that streamed down her face and knew there was only one refuge.

The cold beach sand kissed her feet like a prayer. The salty spray mixed with her tears, chasing them away. The first tiny wave reached up and licked her toes. Waves rumbled in a cadence she had almost forgotten how to translate.

Come
, they pulled.

Home
, they crashed.

She took small steps forward. The sand slipped out from beneath her if she stayed too long. The force of the waves pushed her backwards in opposition to the call she felt.

Come
, they pulled.

She stumbled, and the tide ripped her sideways along the beach. Gasping, she managed to regain her footing and continue walking out to sea. The current grabbed at her clothes, and she tore them off. The tips of her hair mingled with the foam. Flotsam swirled around her waist.

Home
, they crashed.

She walked until the undertow took her and dragged her out to sea.

I
lost
her sometime before that, back when the moon shone off her white skin and blood red hair. But I didn’t have to live inside her anymore to know where she was headed.

She would grab the first sharp object she found – maybe a crab’s claw or a clam’s shell – and rip gills into herself so that the water could flow through her again. The first one might have been straight, but the rest would be ragged and flawed. She would make her way to the Deep, her body drawn to the neverending call of the soul of the world. She would make a home there among the bloodworms and the warm vents and the other predators.

She would take her love and regret with her. She would heal in the balm of the ocean, away from the complexities of mortal life. She would tell herself that if the day came, if the words were spoken and the magic came to her, she would turn them away. She would not let evil back into the world. The suffering would end with her. She would stew in the self-affliction until it became a dim memory, tucked away in the recesses of her mind like sight and sound, air and fire. Time would fade her lover’s face, his name into nothing, and then time itself would melt into darkness. She would ebb and flow and never die.

And when that day did come, ages and ages from now, she would choose the light. She would choose the escape. She would let the evil out one last time just to feel it all again, to live.

As I had.

Strong arms wrapped around me, brushing my satin bedclothes against the small jagged scars on either side of my chest. I leaned back against him, feeling his heartbeat through his chest.

“I just had the strangest dream,” he said. I felt his deep voice rumble through the skin of my back. “You came to me while I lay in bed, only your hair was red and your skin was different. You stared at me like you wanted to say something, and then you ran. You looked so…sad.”

He turned me around to face him. “The day you saved me was the happiest day of my life. And this day should be the happiest day of yours. Don’t be sad.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Good.” He kissed me then, long and slow and deep. He hugged me tightly before pulling away. “Come back to bed?”

“Yeth,” I whispered, the words still foreign to my tongue. He kissed me once more and left me. I looked out over the moonlit water once more and said my goodbyes before following him, my prince, my soulmate, my love.

Love.

It was the reason I lived.

E
very mermaid’s
mother warned against the dangers of rescuing humans. Obviously had Nerissa’s mother ever attempted such a thing, she would have mentioned the smell. Men stank of sun, fire, earth and something that made Nerissa’s scales crawl. They were heavy, too, not made for swimming, for all that they splashed around madly in the surf like they were. And all that strange raspy breathing!

Thankfully, seawater seemed to stop their bleeding quickly.

Nerissa stared at the fiery wreckage of his ship still aflame on the horizon. The man in her arms was the spitting image of the one from her dreams…minus the webbing between his fingers and the fins…and the inner eyelid. Waking, he stared up at her with eyes as blue as the sky.

“I love you,” he said with foul breath. He clutched at her black tresses, limp now in the dry air.

Nerissa could not return to the waves fast enough. From now on, she would listen to her mother. She would never speak of this event. And should she ever again be tempted back to these jagged rocks….well…there were always more humans on the sea.

H
e had
no idea that I loved him. He barely acknowledged that I existed, a maid twice over, little more than a shadow in empty hallways. Trapped in unhappy marriage and prisoner in his own castle, he did not conceive that anyone loving him was even possible. The baron was a man of war, not of love.

He was also an ass, but like Maman said, so many men are.

He’d borne arms with Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans, had witnessed firsthand the divine power she had wielded.
Sorceress
, they’d called her. Maman had shared a similar fate, for far less a magical offense.

The baron was so much more deserving of that power. If there existed a man with more confidence, more passion about things beyond the realms of heaven and earth, I never knew of him. Prelati was a pompous, hand waving fool in comparison.

After testing the limits of his seemingly boundless wealth and ultimately finding it, the baron surrounded himself with books and candles and crucifixes in his barren estate, refusing to believe that divine voices could only be heard by the ears of unspoiled females. Yes, it was Prelati who suggested that he was imploring the wrong deity, but it was I who sent him the first child.

“Perhaps those among the fallen might better relate to the sons of Adam.”

Prelati’s silver-tongued accent echoed through the chimney from which I swept the ashes. The charlatan must have been standing directly in front of the fireplace in the baron’s study for his words to have landed so crisply in my unspoiled ears.

I heard the baron’s response, rumbled deep from his strong chest, but I did not catch the words. His tone asked a question.

“I will consult my books,” replied Prelati, just as he always did. Hidden as I was, I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. Prelati made a far better librarian than an alchemist, or a sorcerer, or a demon-speaker, or whatever color the robes he was wearing today suggested.

Too curious to be privy to half the conversation, I tripped over the ash pail and tore through the cloud of dust out the door and down the hall, hoping to better eavesdrop at the seam between the sitting room doors.

The doors were open.

“I don’t care which one, Prelati. Choose whomever—or whatever—you want. I just want some sort of answer, angel or demon or otherwise. There is a way to escape this place, and I will find it. Henriette! You read my mind. Stoke the fire, girl, there’s a bit of a chill.”

The room was dark; Prelati’s idiot form blocked what little light escaped from the dying fire, casting giant shadows of him against the walls hung with thick velvet tapestries to keep out the stones’ cold. The air was bitter with the unnatural balsamic tang of Prelati’s infernal frankincense.

Prelati scowled at me beneath his great beard and mustaches, so black and thick that he might topple over at any moment with the weight of them. I scowled right back. I didn’t care what Prelati thought of me, and he knew it. I worried more that the baron might see an ash smudge upon my cheek, though I was of less note to him than a pebble in his shoe. He ordered me about in the same breath he spoke of summoning demons. I was neither a benefit nor a threat to him and his situation, and he was a skunk for thinking it.

Lord Polecat.

I quickly knelt on the marble hearth, so that only the fire witnessed my grin. I dutifully shoveled the white and gray ashes into the almost full metal bin—the baron often spent long hours in this study, and I was not usually permitted to attend to the fire while his lordship was present. I’d make sure to carry this one away with me when I departed and replace it with the now-empty bin I’d knocked over in the adjacent room. I considered hiding it from cook for a few days before she set me to making the lye soap again.

“We will need candles, my lord, and soft chalk,” said Prelati. “If you will excuse me, I will prepare a few new scents that might persuade more unlikely visitors.”

I stifled another grin. They’d have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to summon anything more unlikeable than Prelati. My father might have met that criteria, so it’s just as well I’m a bastard child. Perhaps I could persuade the baron that my sire had been a demon; he’d have no choice but to notice me then!

I moved quickly across the room with the quiet grace all servants practiced, allowing not so much as a clank from the exceptionally heavy ash bin. Prelati rattled on about his needs and preparations. I dropped a small curtsey to no one and turned.

“Henriette, please send for Poitou; I need the carpets in this study removed.”

My breath caught, my chest ached, and my heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice and the thrill of being addressed, if not seen.

“Yes, sir,” I said politely. I curtseyed again and jauntily swung the metal down the cold, dank hall.

I already had plans to make a far more lasting impression.

Unnoticed in plain sight, I monitored their progress for weeks. Every time I crossed the room I skipped and hopped over more and more shapes drawn across the marble. What the baron lacked in funds, it appeared he did not make up for in artistic ability. The air, thick with Prelati’s incense experimentation, went from spicy to sweet to cloying; I wondered if he’d begun urinating in the thurible as a last resort.

I continued to empty the ashes from the fireplace while the room was unoccupied, an ever-dwindling window of time in the wee hours of the morning while the men pursued their supernatural prey. Spell after spell failed. I collected my ashes and waited. The morning finally came when the study door was locked, barring me from entrance. Beyond I heard the baron’s frustrated, sleep-deprived tones berating Prelati for their constant failure.

It was time.

I excused myself from the palace with a message to Cook that I was to run an errand for the baron. I did not speak untruth—the errand
was
for him, every thought in my head was for him. I covered my hair with a scarf, took a woven basket—so much lighter than ash pails—and walked briskly down the hill into town. The smile never left my face and there was no chill for me that day. The angels had heard my prayers. Patience would deliver me my true love’s heart.

I did not have an appointment, but I did not expect to see the furrier himself. “I am sorry,
mademoiselle
,” said the furrier’s very new and very young apprentice. “But if it is for the baron, perhaps the master will not mind if I go to him.”

Brave child; he looked frightened to death at the prospect of disturbing his master at work. I tried to put him at ease. “What is your name,
cherie
?”

“Jeudon,
mademoiselle
.”

“Jeudon,” I smiled. “It is my own fault for arriving unannounced! I do not think we need to bother your master with this. In fact, I think you might be the perfect person for this job.”
Angels, hear my prayers.

It worked. Jeudon’s shoulders relaxed. “Anything at all,
mademoiselle
. For the baron.”

“For the baron. Of course! Thank you, Jeudon. But first, I will need to see a sample of your work. I trust your master has started your training on smaller animals,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“
Oui, mademoiselle
. Squirrels and rabbits and the like.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve experimented with skunk? Polecat?”

Jeudon’s silence at my request answered the question, but I waited him out with a grin.

“
Mademoiselle
, I would never... For the baron...”

“I insist, dear Jeudon! Take me at my word; the baron will be ever-so-impressed that you have such a unique specimen on hand.” I reached into my apron pocket, removing seven small pennies—my meager life savings—and I sent up another prayer to those mysterious angels. “Please deliver the fur yourself. This is for your trouble.”

“Me, mademoiselle?”

“Yes, please, Jeudon. The baron will want to both pay you and thank you in person. I suggest you make haste!”

The boy did not think twice before rushing into the workroom and scampering out the door with no less than three small pelts in his hand. He left no word for his master, written or otherwise. Just as well. It might be days before anyone discovered he was missing.

Assuming, of course, that the baron understood my gift to him, but I trusted my beloved implicitly.

I spent the next few days making ash soap in the stench-ridden bowels of the castle. It didn’t go unnoticed that every room in the castle but the study had lain unused for a month’s time. Cook had taken me to task for idling in hallways and banished me thence. The rough, oversized gloves scratched at my knuckles, raw from the cruel ministrations of her wooden spoon, but as not wearing gloves would have been a worse punishment, I bore the pain. I slowly lowered an egg into the still-warm pot of lye, fresh from the fire.

“The baron’s called for you.”

Cook’s announcement from the doorway startled me, and I unceremoniously dropped the egg into the pot, splashing droplets upon my gloves. The egg sank below the surface. I yanked my hand back, pulled the glove off, and fished the egg out with my long-handled spoon. The egg should have bobbed back to the top—this pot would need a bit more time on the fire. But not right now.

I nodded, curtseyed, and slipped beneath Cook’s hefty bosom that barred the doorway. I forced my feet to slow, but my heart was flying. I wonder if he’d said my name again, out loud, with those perfect lips, or if he’d just sent a message through Poitou for “the girl who cleans the fireplace.” No matter. The baron needed me, far more than he realized.

A full bin of ashes met me outside the study door, so I fetched the empty bin from an adjacent room before knocking on the door.

“Enter.”

Oh, if only you would let me.
But I dared not meet his eyes. Did he suspect I’d sent the boy? “I’m here for the ashes, my lord.” I bent my knees, crossed the room to the fireplace, and stopped dead at a sight I’d never thought I’d see: Prelati on his hands and knees with a scrub brush and bucket.

My hand was too late to hide the smile that betrayed me. Palm firmly clamped over mouth, I skirted around the magician and threw myself down at the hearth. The fire was naught but embers now, but it had burned hot and high and left the ash white. It was also slightly greasy and smelled faintly of brimstone.

Dear, dear Jeudon
, I thought, as I shoveled him into my bin. The lard in the mix would undoubtedly make a finer soap. I was too busy wondering how to sneak a batch aside for myself to notice that the room behind me had gone silent. No whispers, no movement, nothing...which could only mean that I was suddenly the center of their attention. I stood tall and dusted my clothes off the best I could before turning to face the two men, both standing now.

The baron was looking at me.

Prelati’s gaze slipped to the spot where he’d been scrubbing, and my eyes followed. No doubt they had finally discovered the lengths to which their artistic talent did not go, and chosen to erase the chalk and charcoal and start afresh. True, the lines had been erased, but beneath remained a large, pale pink stain on the perfect white marble.

There was only one thing that stain could be: blood. What would they do with me now that I’d seen it? The baron stared with those intensely hard eyes, sizing me up. I raised my chin and stared right back.

“Do you ever wash floors?” he asked.

“I make the soap,” I boasted.

“Have this floor clean by sundown, and we will never speak of this again.”

“Yes, my lord.” I bent my knees again, collected both ash bins, and went belowstairs to retrieve the soap I’d been stockpiling for this very occasion. I’d considered pocketing some in my apron in preparation for this summons, but I didn’t want to play my hand too soon.

Charming, how completely predictable the baron was. But like Maman said, so many men are.

I returned with soap, gloves, and a pot to warm water over the fresh fire I’d built up. I crumbled the lye into powder and set hard to the brush, careful not to get anything on my skin or clothes. It was no easy task, and not quickly done, but before sunset I’d removed every trace of blood from that stone. I stopped on the way back to my rooms only long enough to ask a scrawny young thing to replenish the wood in the baron’s study. I didn’t bother asking his name.

It was several more days before I was shoveling his ashes out of the fireplace and scrubbing the study floor again. I worked privately and efficiently. As promised, the baron said nothing of the matter.

The third time the baron sent for me, I brazenly spoke without being addressed. “I will clean this floor for you, but I want something.”

“We let you keep your life,” prattled Prelati. “What more could you possibly desire?”

“In order to properly remove a stain, it’s best to catch it right away.” My eyes never left the baron’s. He knew what I meant.

Or did he? His eyes left mine long enough to gauge Prelati’s reaction to my comment.

“Your services are no longer required, girl.” Prelati put a hand on the small of my back to lead me to the door and I slapped it away.

I turned to the baron and bowed deeply, in the manner of a
chevalier
and not a scullery maid. My heart beat like a battle drum. “As you wish, Lord Polecat. You may fetch your own errand boys from now on.”

I straightened, expecting to see a sly grin upon his countenance with the realization that it was I who’d sent the fitch. What met me instead was a drawn mouth and furrowed brow. I admit I was a little disappointed that such an admirable man like the baron could be so stupid. But like Maman said, so many men are.

Heart in my feet now, I moved to walk away. The bin felt twice as heavy, its scorched refuse now burdened with the leaden weight of my shattered dreams.

“I will do anything.”

The baron’s voice was low enough to almost be unheard above the crackling of the fresh blaze in the hearth. “I will stop at nothing to regain my fortune, my power, and be free from this place. I will defile heaven and pull demons out of Hell to do my bidding. If you get in my way, I will kill you.”