The Wicked Day (19 page)

Yes, I do. It’s just that the hawk won’t let me.

And you don’t like shiny, pretty things!

Snowflakes whirled around them as the wind blew back and forth, grumbling in irritation. The ward in the wall coiled in on itself, waking up more than it had before, sensing and listening and focusing. The faint whine became a buzz and the buzz grew until it was as loud as the hiss of an angry snake.

Wind! Please. You’re waking the ward. Quickly, before it’s too late.

If I must. But promise you shall come flying.

I promise.

Soon?

Yes!

Simple. Go through the wall.

Through?

Go through the wall.

Jute pushed his hand against the wall, wondering and disbelieving. The wall felt like a wall. Hard stone. Not the sort of thing one went through. But then, all of a sudden, the wall softened under his touch. There was no other word for it. One second hard stone, the next second a sort of wavery feel. Like water. It was like wading through water. A strange, heavy, thick sort of water. He could not see. The stone—was it stone anymore?—was all around him. A murmur filled his ears, not unlike that which happened when he put his hands over his ears to try and simulate the sound of the sea. Jute reached back behind him, out into the cold air, and felt Declan’s hand grab onto his. He pulled him in and felt the stone ripple outward in response. He could no longer feel Declan’s hand and was not sure if he had let go or if they still maintained contact. All he could feel was the pressure of the stone around him, moving him, swimming him slowly forward. The murmur altered somewhat, clarifying and focusing into separate sounds.

Voices. Voices all around him, muttering and grumbling and whispering and moaning. There were so many of them that it seemed impossible to discern what they were saying. They were like countless different streams of water splashing down into the one same sea so that words were jumbling together into confusion. But then the voices clarified further and sharpened into distinction.

Why didn’t he kill me?

Never knew nothing but hunting. Deer and them little mountain sheep. Sold the meat down in the lowlands. Nothing but hunting. That’s all.

Should’ve stayed home that day. It was wet out. Slashing down rain. Muddy road. Ford was most likely washed out. Never saw him afore it was too late. Should’ve stayed home.

Sunlight. I miss the sunlight.

He should’ve killed me. I wish he had killed me. I’d rather be dead.

What was her name? The girl with long black hair and green eyes. The woodcutter’s daughter.

Stitching. Stitching and sewing. Got paid in goat’s milk. Made my own cheese from that milk. Strained my eyes working nights by candlelight. Tiny stitches. Best in the village and worth my pay, I was. Got paid in goat’s milk.

That fellow had teeth like knives. Ogre blood, I reckon. Knew it the moment he walked into my tavern. If I had locked up early, things might’ve been different. Things might’ve turned out different. Wonder if Bess still keepin’ the old place open? She were a good girl, were Bess. Had a wrist as strong as an oak branch.

Deer meat sold best in the fall. They cured their winter’s lot then. Smoke and salt and hung high in the rafters.

The woodcutter’s daughter.

I can’t remember her face.

The voices meandered around him, each lost in its own misery and remembrance. At first, they did not seem aware of Jute and Declan in their midst, but slowly and surely the voices trailed off into silence. In their place, there grew a feeling of puzzlement so strong that it was almost a color, a taste, a sensation of some sort that could surely be experienced just as heat was felt from the flame or pain from the edge of the knife.

Jute swam through the stone, still blind, but pushing his arms forward and questing for the end of the wall. Surely they had come far enough. No wall could this be thick. But there was only darkness and the soft, heavy push on all sides.

Who are you?

It was one of the voices. He could not remember which. Perhaps the innkeeper or the hunter.

Who are you?

Another voice. A woman’s this time.

You’re alive.

Alive.

He’s alive.

And we are not. Neither dead nor alive. Something in between. Caught here.

How can I leave this place?
said Jute.
Help me, please.

Help him, he says. Whoever helped us? We’re caught here forever. Not a chance of decent burial and some rest.

Please
, said Jute. The stone seemed endless about him. And surely there was a hint of thickening in the feel of it. It was getting more difficult to move.

Please. He says please. At least he’s got some manners.

That’s something.

No, it ain’t. Won’t buy you ale.

We have to rescue a girl trapped inside the tower
, said Jute, his voice desperate.
We’re her only hope. You must help us. Surely if you’re trapped you wouldn’t wish that on someone else. She’s young.

Don’t mind if everyone were trapped in here along with us
, said a voice. A woman’s voice, spiteful and bitter and as sharp as curdled milk.
Reckon if we have to suffer, other folks can, too.

No
, said another voice.
Think on this, now.
Helping someone. Now that’s a memory we could all use. A new memory. Something fresh to remember.

Ahh.
It was the hunter, his voice full of mountains and the sun on rocks and pine trees.
A good idea, but I’ve one better.
Make him pay with a memory. A good, rich one for his release.

Aye. A good idea. A new memory for us all.

More voices chimed in, falling over each other into a confusion of excited noise. A memory. A new memory to leaven the dark, dreary, and unending tedium of their imprisonment.

A memory. Give us a memory, boy. One of yours. Something with sunlight and summer, for it’s dark and cold in here an’ most of us, we’ve forgotten the light.

A picture blossomed in Jute’s mind. An old memory from the summertime. He spoke without realizing it, and the unseen audience expectant in the darkness around him listened with avid attention.

Listen,
said Jute.
I’ll tell you about a day.

Afternoon sun on the roof, on the slate tiles blinding hot and white, with shadows deep along the eastern wall. The sharp, sweet scent of apples in the air. Lena asleep on the second-story balcony of the old house. Skinny legs and arms burned brown by the sun. Sprawled in a tangle on a dusty rug. Flies crawling about an apple core. Jute and the twins, Moro and Mana, sitting on the edge of the balcony, legs dangling through the wooden railings, crunching apples. Stolen apples. Juice on their hands and chins. Pitching cores down at a dirty white goat in the yard below. The goat, busily happily contentedly munching on apple cores, but still rolling an occasional yellow eye up at the children as if to say it would remember them and deal harshly if they ever came within reach of its horns. Sudden, soft noise inside the house. The owner returned home long before he should have. He should’ve still been drinking at the inn. He always did. Stayed late. Startled alarmed glances from the twins. Jute nudging Lena into yawning wakefulness. The balcony door flung open and the astonished, angry face of the owner, mouth agape, shouting something, some blur of words Jute hadn’t even bothered to hear. The children evading his outstretched hands with practiced ease, giggling and shrieking, hearts thumping, jumping up onto the roof overhang, and scrambling away across the hot tiles. A few tiles kicked free and sliding down with a skittering, scraping sound to shatter in powdery red shards around the man on the balcony. Him shaking his fist at them in rage. The goat still crunching apple cores, not caring. A handful of coins, as gold as fresh butter, heavy in Jute’s pocket, scooped from a chest inside the house. The sun drifting down toward the shining surface of the sea as they scampered off across the rooftops. Sunlight, sky, water, and life.

Ahh. A good memory.

I like the goat.

Thank you, boy. Our own memories are tired.

Thank you.

And now?
said Jute. His throat was tightening. He struggled to breathe. He could feel the stone around him hardening more.
Your end of the bargain. How do we get out of the wall? How do we get inside the tower?

Let’s keep him. Him and the silent one behind him. They must be full of memories.

No. We made a bargain. And that’s a second new memory for us as well. We keep our end. Listen, boy. It’s easy enough. Just step forward. We won’t keep you any longer.

Jute stepped forward. His legs could only move slowly now. The darkness and stone pressed in around him as if to say, no, we won’t let you go.

Ever.

But then the voices were behind him, fading into the distance, and he found himself standing in a bare, gloomy room bounded by stonewalls. He stumbled due to the sudden absence of stone pressing around him. His legs trembled and he almost could not stand. There was a whispering sort of noise and then Declan stood next to him. Behind them, in the wall, Jute thought he heard a sigh.

“I don’t want to go through that again,” said Declan, his face pale. “Couldn’t hardly breathe toward the end there.”

“No.”

“Just wake me up when it’s over,” said the ghost from inside Jute’s knapsack, its voice shaking and growing louder with every word until surely it was about to break into a shriek. “Just wake me up when—”

“Hush.”

“We must go higher up,” said Declan. “I can feel it.”

Stairs led up from the middle of the room to the ceiling above, curving around a stone pillar. There were no windows in the room, nor were there torches, yet it was lit with a dim light that came from either the stairwell opening in the floor, as there were also stairs leading down to the floor beneath, or from the stairwell opening in the ceiling. Both Jute and Declan did not move for a moment, as if both were reluctant to find what waited higher up the tower. Declan roused himself with a shudder.

“Right. No use standing about. Up the stairs.”

“I’d much rather be anywhere but here. That smell. It’s horrible.”

“Something dead, I suppose. Rats caught in the drains.”

“I don’t think so. It’s magic, I think. It reminds me of a smell from the university ruins. An old spell.”

“I’d rather not bother with any more spells for the moment.”

The stairs wound around and around, and they walked higher and higher, treading in silence, ears pricked for any sounds. But the tower was quiet around them. The stairs continued their spiral up through room after room. The rooms were identical. Each a bare, gloomy space stretching out into the shadows. Each dimly lit with a poor, unpleasant sort of light that did not come from window or torch. There were no furnishings. No rugs or chests or wardrobes. No tables or chairs or tapestries to hide the stone. No rusty old spears and axes hanging on the walls. Nothing at all. Just stone and dust and the cold silence. Just empty rooms.

“Almost as if nobody lives here,” said Jute.

“Lives,” said Declan grimly. “Maybe there are things that dwell in a place but don’t necessarily live. A strange man, this duke of Mizra, if this is his castle. I don’t want to meet him. I suppose his hospitality wouldn’t be to our liking. But if we do meet him then it’ll be with my sword in my hand.”

And then they found her. It happened matter-of-factly, as these things do. They trudged up another flight of stairs and there she was. The air, as cold as it already was, grew even colder. The stairs took another turn around and they found themselves out in the open air. They had reached the top of the tower. It was a flat, wide-open space of black stone, hard and slick with ice and blown clear of snow by the wind. The night stretched around them and the sky seemed uncomfortably close, full of darkness and only relieved in spots by the frozen glitter of stars. The city was so far below that it seemed to be a mirror image of the night sky, with the scattered lights in windows shining like distant stars.

Near the edge of the roof was a girl. She hung motionless in the air, several feet above the roof. Her hands were at her sides and her head slumped on her breast. A strange, blue-tinged fire crept about her body in sluggish coils, the tongues of flame flickering like the leaves of a tree in a breeze. Declan ran to her, stumbling on the ice. Jute followed. Her head lifted and she looked at them.

“No,” she said, her voice quiet. “Don’t touch me, or you’ll die. These flames are my prison. They do not harm me, but their touch would be your death.”

Declan recoiled, for he had been about to take her hand.

“Giverny. Don’t you remember me?”

She gazed at him, expressionless at first. There was a silence in her stare that stilled him, a silence that seemed to pool around them, despite the wind howling about the tower heights. And then something struggled to come to life in her eyes.

“Giverny,” she said slowly. “I remember that name. I think it was mine, once. Long ago. I can't remember.”