Chapter 7
Seven
On the way up the inn’s creaking stairs, Friend weaves between your legs.
In the bedroom, she whines and nudges you.
“What’s up, kid?” you ask, and she paws at your chest, unable to tell you her troubles, her burdens.
As you undress for bed, she circles your ankles; before you can settle down onto the hard lump of a mattress (blessed horrible thing, you’ll fall asleep fast), she boofs, uselessly, for you can’t understand.
All you can do is keep her close. Listen to her.
You check the locks on the windows, the lock on the door.
She doesn’t seem to want to leave; if there were danger here, she’d yank you right out the door.
She’s done as much before. Whatever unsettles her, you just have to love her through it.
Scratch her ears. Whisper to her. Reassure her she’s okay, she’s safe. Promise her you’re not going anywhere.
(How could you guess that it’s she who’s leaving?)
* * *
In the middle of the night, Friend’s whining wakes you. You reach for her and embrace empty air.
Sitting up, you see them by the door: Friend, and… a rooster. A rooster.
What?
You roll out of bed. The moment you stand, Friend blocks you from moving across the room.
“I’ve got to get rid of the rooster,” you say, and she growls.
Has she ever growled at you? Brows furrowed, you watch her walk back to the rooster, to the unlocked door (but you locked it, so how—?), and sit beside that stupid bird.
Then she tilts back her head and howls.
“No,” you say. “No, you can’t possibly want…”
The rooster screeches its alarm, and Friend howls along, like a wolf upon its first introduction to the moon. In all the years you’ve known her, she’s never howled with such vigor and insistence. And now, suddenly, she finds her reason is a rooster, a cat, and a donkey.
You march across the floorboards. That stupid fucking rooster convinced Friend to leave you, so you snap its neck.
no. wait. i don’t want the story to end this way.
let me try again.
You march across the floorboards. That stupid fucking rooster convinced Friend to leave you, so you toss it out of the room and bar the door.
Friend barks, and scratches at the wood—all night long, she barks and scratches, barks and scratches, but you don’t let her out.
“That life’s not for you, Friend,” you tell her.
“You’re mine. We’re family. It’s us, ‘til the end.”
Come morning, Friend throws herself against the window sill.
Through the glass, you watch the rooster, the cat, and the donkey walk away from the inn together.
Each of the animals pauses to look up at Friend—and then, as they disappear down the dirt street, the zest for life disappears from Friend’s eyes.
She descends from the window sill, curls up in a corner on the floor, and makes no sound.
Doesn’t move at all. Doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t care about the bones you offer.
You think of the tower, and the maiden at its top, trapped.
i don’t want the story to end this way, either.
let me try again.
You march across the floorboards. Your hands ache with a desire for violence—a desire you are trying to train out of yourself, a desire you cannot allow to define you.
You look away from the rooster. The rooster doesn’t matter anymore.
“Is this really what you want?” you ask. Friend’s jowls jiggle as she nods her head. You have no idea how you’ll manage the noise. You started drinking a potion to avoid tasting your food—maybe another apothecary can keep you from hearing Friend’s “music.”
“All right,” you concede. “Then we’ll go.”
She barks sharply.
“What’s wrong? I said we’ll go.”
For the second time, she growls at you. And then she makes a choice of her own, a choice you could not fathom she even had the capacity to make. For the first time ever, she speaks.
“Your story is here,” she says. Her voice is as gravelly as her growl—not unkind, but not human at all, and creaking under the weight of its age. “Mine is elsewhere.”
“No,” you say. “No. I don’t have a story here. There’s nothing here that needs me.”
“Someone made a wish,” she says, “and you’re its answer.”
“Stop,” you say. “I’m not worth a wish.”
“I’ve smelled that wish on you for years, but it’s stronger now. It’s time, pup.”
Friend licks your hands. You fall to your knees to rub all over her body, scratching behind her ears, along the thickness of her ribs.
How thin she was when she first found you—how much stronger she is now.
When she saved you all those years ago, you didn’t know there would be a cost. You didn’t know she would ask to be saved, too, or that saving her would require such a steep sacrifice.
“The world will call me Palestrina Scarlet,” she says. “But I hope, even when I am gone, you will still call me friend.”
Damn it. You swallow over the lump of emotion in your throat. “Always.”
“Wherever I go, whenever I sing,” she says, “know it’s because you loved me.”