Chapter 12 Feather #2
The mail deliverer, Julian, had always given me a bad feeling, like invisible clouds covered the sun when he was near. He’d tried to drag me into the wellhouse the last time he’d come without Ashtad, and I’d only gotten away when Sister Filomena had called for me to help scrub the kitchen.
Dina had warned me not to go near any man without someone else close.
But Ashtad was really a boy; he’d probably only been shaving for a year.
And he gave me a warm, happy feeling. He made me want to smile for no reason at all.
I ran up to him now, reaching into the pocket of my apron for a bag of rose petals.
He’d told me he loved their perfume, so I’d collected and dried these to give to him the next time I saw him, so he could smell them as he traveled.
But he didn’t thank me, just stuffed the bag into his belt pouch. “What’s wrong, Ashtad?” I asked, worried for him.
“Your sister is in the stables,” he grumbled. “With Master Julian.”
She had gone into the stables with that man? A sick feeling twisted in my gut. “Can’t you call her out?”
“Nothing I did would convince her not to go.” His lips pressed together. “And I tried.”
I noticed as I drew closer that he had blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and one eye was beginning to swell shut. “She did that to you?”
He shook his head. “He did when I tried to stop her. But she went anyway.”
“She went into the stables with a man who she saw hit you?” I wanted to hit him myself. “She doesn’t want to be in there!”
“She said she did,” Ashtad muttered. “She has free will. I can’t stop her.”
“Well, I’m going to,” I retorted. I ducked around him and ran to the back of the stable. There was a small door there for the barn cats, and at eight I was still small enough to squeeze through it.
I heard them before I saw them. They were in the tack room, just off the main stable room.
The door was shut, but their voices carried.
“Please don’t.” My sister’s voice was timid and shaky.
She never sounded like that; even when the Sisters punished her for talking back, she had never let her voice sound so… small.
“Right then, I guess it’ll be your little sister after all.”
My heart pounded. On the wall by the door was a metal pick, the kind we used to clean out the horses’ hooves. Moving slowly, my feet muffled by the packed dirt and straw, I lifted it off its hook and stuck it into my belt.
Suddenly, the tack room door swung open, and Dina yelled out, “No, you promised. If I came, you’d leave her alone. I’ll let you—” At the same moment, the soldier’s eyes fell on me, frozen in the hallway.
“Looks like it’ll be both,” he said with a sneer. Before I could spring away, he had me by my hair, hauling me into the tack room. He threw me onto the ground and pulled the door shut, but it swung open again.
It didn’t seem to matter. He started unbuckling his belt, and I saw why Dina hadn’t run. He’d tied her wrists tightly with rough hemp rope. Her face was swollen from crying, her dress torn open. He had cut her, and she was bleeding from so many places.
The man growled out a “Don’t move,” and turned back to Dina. Her eyes met mine, begging me to run. To leave her to her fate.
I would never. My legs shaking, I stood behind the man as he held a knife at her throat and ordered her to lift her skirts. The blade dug into her skin, and she sobbed, but tried to obey.
Anger welled in me like I had never felt before. Anger and power. I was filled with the sudden understanding that I had the power to change what was going to happen here. To save her, save us both. I reached for the pick at my waist. He would never see it coming.
Ashtad’s voice at the doorway stopped me. “Tili, don’t!” he yelled.
I sighed with relief, grateful he had decided to help. Julian looked back over his shoulder and grunted to the boy, “Hold onto her and I’ll give ya a turn.”
Ashtad stepped forward. “Don’t,” he told me softly. “I won’t hurt you, but don’t kill that man.”
“Save her,” I hissed back. “Save Dina! She didn’t choose to be here. He’s hurting her!”
The boy’s eyes grew wild. “But I heard her say—she told me…”
“Ugh!” I whirled away from him and turned back to Julian. Dina was crying, while he fumbled with her skirts. The blood from her neck flowed freely now, and I knew if I didn’t act soon, she would die.
“I don’t know the right thing to do,” Ashtad mumbled.
“I do,” I snarled. “The right thing is almost always the scary thing.” I lifted the pick, knowing I would only have one chance at this. I was about to bring it down on the man’s neck when it was snatched out of my hands, my arm wrenched away, and Ashtad was pulling me out of the room.
“You have to get away!” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “This is your chance, Tili! I can’t save her, but I can save you!”
“You’re just going to let him hurt her?” I asked disbelievingly, my lips numb.
“I don’t know what to do,” he muttered. “I can’t… kill him.”
“I can.” I pushed him away. “I’d do anything for the ones I love.” He fell, and I ran back into the tack room, slamming the door shut and bolting it.
The room was strangely dark, but I could see well enough for what I had to do. I lifted the pick again and angled it at the base of the man’s neck. It went in like a hot knife in butter. It was far easier than it should have been.
I didn’t notice until too late the shadows all around him, around me. It wasn’t until the man lay dead at my feet, my sister dead beside him, that I realized I’d done something terrible.
Ashtad was pounding at the door. My heart pounded even louder as the shadows coalesced into a terrifyingly large form that reached for me. And spoke. “What have you done, beautiful one?” The shadow’s hands were cold on my hot flesh.
“I t-tried to save her.”
A hissing in my ear, almost inaudible, sent prickles of pain up my back. “And yet you did not. She was already gone when you killed the man. You know what that means?”
I did. The Sisters had taught us all about Hell. “I don’t care. It would have been a worse Hell to live, knowing I’d been a coward. That I hadn’t tried.”
The hands seared like burning coals, and I tried not to cry out, but tears fell down my face.
I felt a pinch as the flames raced across my neck and chest, then heard a strange gasp.
“It’s not possible. It can’t be.” A burning brand ignited on my chest where my birthmark lay.
“How did you get so lost?” I didn’t answer; I was in too much pain.
Then he sighed. “Such a brave little sacrifice you are.”
I thought of Dina, who had been truly brave in trying to protect me. That was bravery. What I had done was nothing compared to her selflessness.
For some reason, the burning stopped. The hands became warm, soothing. “Little Sacrifice, do you want to live? To protect others like your sister?”
I agreed, and found myself sitting on a warm lap, those hands around my neck, from time to time pressing just beneath my collarbone.
He taught me to take the burden from the murder I had committed inside myself.
But then I also had to take the man’s sins as well.
Every one he’d ever committed, and he’d done so many horrific things.
It was indescribably painful, like having my skin stripped away over and over, and boiling pitch poured over the wounds.
Finally, when I was done, I fell asleep. And woke up in another body, years away.
The song ended at the same time my memory did.
“That was beautiful, Rumple.”
“Thank you, Little Sacrifice.”
I mentally rolled my eyes. He hadn’t called me that for a hundred years. “You won’t tell me your name?” Silent amusement. “All right. I still get three guesses. Is it… Eduardo?”
“You already guessed that one. In 1862. Still no.”
“Zeus?”
“Don’t insult me.”
This time, I rolled my eyes for real. “Vladimirov?”
“We’ve talked about this. I’m not a vampire.”
“I could make you into a sparkly one if you’d show up here. I have plenty of glitter.”
He hesitated, then choked out, “You brought glitter into Sanctuary? Oh, Gavriel deserves that.”
“He’s on a mission. He doesn’t know yet,” I said with a grin. Suddenly, I realized what he’d revealed. “You know Gavriel? How do you know him?” I felt rather than heard him moving away. “Rumple? Rumpelstiltskin Johnson the Third, you get back here!”
He didn’t come back, though when a cold wind blew a bunch of glitter from the floor and into my hair right before Sunny knocked, I could have sworn there was laughter in the room.