Chapter 8
EIGHT
You reek of despair, little witch.
“Spring will come soon,” said Lorell with a shiver when he came in the wee hours to bring another stack of quilted blankets.
The wind scratched like a furious beast on the walls. Its screech had roused us from sleep too soon, and the bitter draft whistling through the house kept us awake. I turned the pillow thrice to no avail.
Soon, it began to snow.
Within the first morning, the snowdrift before the window swallowed the view, but not before I’d stolen a glimpse of Almira’s garden, withered and grey.
The sight granted me no relief—though I no longer feared that the monster within me might stir awake, I was sharply reminded of Almira’s feebleness when I’d last seen her.
Around noon Lorell wandered into the chamber to stare blindly at the window. “The boy will be well-occupied today,” he grumbled. “He is gone more than he is here. I find myself without much to do.”
“What would Adrik do if he were here?”
Lorell said wistfully, “He would read to me.”
That was how we came to sit together while the storm howled and the snow climbed higher.
I read from the book of folktales that day; stories about spirits who came at noon to behead those working in the fields, of fiends who climbed out of hearths to steal children, of the evil dead who traded in secrets.
I tried, as well as I could, to conceal the tremor of my voice while I read that particular tale. I rushed to its end, feigning a yawn. The skies were darkening, but it was not the promise of sleep that made me keen to be rid of Lorell.
“It is late,” he said stiffly and shuffled to the door. “Rest well, girl. I appreciate the time.”
“It was no trouble.”
I waited until his telltale tapping had faded before I gritted my teeth and wobbled on weak, aching legs to the hearth.
I bit into the sleeve of my nightdress to stifle my moans, anguish twisting deep in my thigh.
From the mantle, I snatched a stick of half-burned incense and relit it over the candle.
The flame in the hearth crackled merrily.
From the armoire came a pleased hum. I’d left a bite on the plate that eve just to please the spirit.
The evil dead traded in secrets, and I was in desperate need of one.
I climbed onto the bed, bracing myself feebly against the wall. The snow bathed the chamber with sickly light. A draft stirred the laced sheet on the mirror. To keep the evil dead from slipping back into this world—
I did not allow myself to hesitate lest I falter with fear. A madness had taken me, but I was desperate and I could not afford to let this chance slip past.
I lifted the sheet.
The hearth hissed and darkened as if doused with a bucket of water. The hum in the armoire died.
The mirror was silver and cool with the glint of frost. I frowned at my reflection.
I was no friend of mirrors, for they showed me clearly what I did not wish to see.
A face drawn with shadows and grief. I’d become withered with shame and fear and loneliness.
Like a flower plucked from the dirt, discarded and forgotten—without water and roots, and all the bright things it needed to live.
There lurked a vileness within me, and I possessed no handsome features nor rich clothes to conceal it.
My curls stirred as if moved by a breeze, though the air stood eerily still.
The reflection swirled like a pond of liquid silver, melting and pooling at the lower edge of the frame.
Ice crept over the glass, crackling as it spread over walls to the window.
I retreated with a shiver to the stone-cold hearth.
A hollowness sucked the air from the chamber—the same sort of emptiness that had settled over our cabin in the wake of my mother’s death.
From the mirror came a sweet murmur. The puddle of silver trickled like honey from the frame and slithered down the wall.
It slid over the floors with a soft laugh that echoed crisply—as if we were not in a tight chamber, but in a marble hall.
The stench of death bit sharply at my nose.
I raised the incense it with trembling hands over my heart like a warrior holding a shield.
The silver spirit hissed.
Ah, it hummed. Another one who remembers the old ways. Another one who dares to call me forth. You reek of despair, little witch.
I stifled a scream, shrinking back until I stood against the cold hearth. “I have come to trade for a secret,” I whispered into the stiff quiet.
Of course you have, little witch. So brave of you. So foolish. So dull. I grow tired of secrets. I crave flesh. The spirit cackled, amused by my flinch of terror. It had drawn near as it spoke. Not your flesh.
“Tell me your price,” I breathed.
It slithered closer, sizzling in anger as it brushed against my bare feet. As if I had burned it. I clutched the incense tighter.
Tell me first what you desire.
“A secret Adrik would protect with his life.”
The spirit chuckled. I know just the one.
“Then tell me your price.”
It is but a small one. I feel generous tonight. Just a few knick-knacks to ease the misery of living alone in that mirror. You’d know all about that, no? Have pity on me, little witch. Lighten my loneliness.
“Tell me.”
The feather of a rooster. A shard of moonstone. A single belladonna flower. A vial of water from the mountain spring.
“That is no small price. I am trapped in this chamber, much like you.”
The spirit stirred with anger, sprawling into a lake of silver. The window pane creaked with cold.
This is my price, little witch. Nothing more and nothing less.
A frigid finger slid over my neck. It was death’s impatient touch. It had come to retake what was his, and it would take me along if I lingered much longer.
“The feather of a rooster, a moonstone shard, one belladonna flower, a vial of water from the mountain spring. All in return for a secret Adrik would protect with his life. You will tell me that secret as soon as you've received your price.”
You offend me, little witch. I am no wicked faerie. I do not deal in trickery.
I paid no heed to its hollow cackle. “Do you agree?”
I agree, I agree, it hummed as it retreated. I agree, I agree.
Its hollow voice echoed in my bones long after it had slithered back into the mirror.
I agree, I agree.
I secured the laced sheet tightly and I checked it thrice before I coaxed a small fire from the hearth.
The flame burned feebly that night, as if it spurned me for my recklessness.
The frost on the window lingered, and so did the cold of death in my bones.
I agonized for hours over the task of acquiring the items. The belladonna flower I’d pluck when Almira next came to revive the garden, but the vial of spring water and the moonstone shard quite puzzled me.
The feather of a rooster seemed a trifle in comparison.
I spent the dark hours bent in faint candlelight over the drawing of the fox to distract myself.
I fainted from exhaustion.
I was still reeling from the terrors of the night when Adrik came to our aid in the late morning, armed with a shovel. I was glad to see him, but Lorell only grumbled when Adrik handed him a fresh loaf of bread, and he retreated for the rest of the day to brood in the workshop.
When he brought tea, Adrik’s gaze snapped to my notebook as if the traitorous thing had called to him—I’d left it carelessly open to dry. In my panic, I grabbed the book so hastily, I almost spilled tea over its front. We blinked at each other, stunned.
“You are an artist.”
I began fearfully to shake my head, covering the page with my hands. Adrik only smiled before he kindled the fire and I sat tensely in anticipation of questions that never came.
“I taught myself,” I said defensively.
“Right,” he said with a glance over his shoulder, lips quivering.
“I am not very good.”
“Mhm.”
“I grew bored in the night and had no books left to read. I forgot to ask Lorell for new ones, not that he’d give me anything better than old journals—” The sparkle in Adrik’s gaze turned into outright amusement, a development that boded ill for me. “What?” I asked, cheeks aflame.
He laughed quietly as he leaned in that irksome manner against the armoire. “Do you have a particular interest in foxes?”
“They seem to have a particular interest in me.”
“Perhaps both can be true.”
His mischief made me nervous. I felt strangely as if he had caught me doing something improper. “I draw other things.”
“I shall believe it when I see it, Evana.” His smile, impossibly, widened. "Until then, I must assume that you possess a whole book of detailed drawings of this one fox, and I shall tease you endlessly for it.”
“There,” I snapped, flipping the notebook to a page of sketches of the robin who had lived with me in my shelter last spring.
Adrik sobered as he studied the page. “If the tomes Lorell makes me read had drawings half as pretty, I'd have a much better time.”
It was such a genuine compliment, I could scarcely find fault with it. I was glad when the scratch of claws on the floor saved me from having to answer. Bahra had come to bemoan her tragic fate of being the most well-loved cat in town.
“Not a quiet moment I’ve had since dawn,” she purred as she stretched out on a velvet cushion and allowed Adrik to feed her smoked fish.
“Emond asked me for a paw in catching a fat rat, and Kalina needed her stores cleared of old cheese. I sat with Agnesa the rest of the morning. Nothing soothes her more than brushing my fur, and she was in such an uproar this morning from the cold.”
An idea struck me after Bahra had fretfully driven Adrik out into the snow with tidings of Emond, who needed his kitten rescued from a tree.