Chapter 15
Fifteen
Corabeth
Corabeth had a few good days—the day in the garden when she laughed and the one in town when she saw strangers with no hate in their eyes. When Rooke spent the day telling her about vines that changed shape and animals that mimicked their surroundings. But then the heaviness returned.
In her dreams, she was groped by strange hands while a cacophony of laughter rose around her.
She wanted to scream, but her mouth was filled with ashes, her eyes watering from the smoke.
In the thick white fog, she could not see who touched her or who laughed.
The only thing she saw was the frozen body of her mother in the pillory, her last breaths crystallized in the dark hair hanging in front of her face.
It was then that Corabeth realized that her mother was the one laughing.
She laughed so much, her frozen lips cracked, blood dripping down her chin.
She was awake. She knew she was awake because her eyes were open and they were wet with tears, and a line of sharp light came from the crack between the heavy curtains. She could trace it if she had the will to lift her hand. But she didn’t.
She knew she should move. The thought entered her mind like a whisper that quickly got muffled by a heavy blanket of numbness. She should sit up, swing her legs over the edge of the bed. Stand. Walk. But she did none of it. The weight of her own body pressed her into the mattress.
The light in the room shifted—brightened, dimmed, brightened again. Perhaps a whole day passed, perhaps two.
Corabeth knew somewhere downstairs, there was a dinner waiting for her. There was a burning fire and a library, and a man with a book, but the thought did not make her rise.
She slept and slept some more. Occasionally, she heard footsteps in the hall. She almost called out, asked to be lifted out from underneath this endless burden. Instead, she closed her eyes and slept again.
When she next opened her eyes, there was a blaze in the fireplace, and she felt her bed dip under someone’s weight. Corabeth rolled onto her back to see Rooke sitting on the edge. He was hunched over as if he had his own burdens to carry. Corabeth wondered whose heaviness was greater.
“Are we back to this then?” he asked gently. There were no accusations in his tone.
Corabeth’s throat closed up. She didn’t want to be this way. She was prone to spells of melancholy, especially after her mother’s death, but she always managed to force herself into action out of sheer survival. But after that night…
“The ravens are asking about you. They worry,” Rooke said. It only made her feel worse.
“How can I help?” he asked, his black eyes flashing in the firelight as he looked over his shoulder at Corabeth.
“Don’t worry about me,” Corabeth said, resenting that she had become a burden.
“You helped me,” Rooke said, “So tell me. How can I help?”
With a sigh, Corabeth sat up a little, leaning back against her pillows. There was already a familiar ache behind her eyes, likely from all the excess sleeping. Or lack of food. Or dehydration. Desperately, she searched for something that had brought her joy.
“Will you read to me?” she asked.
Rooke nodded, left the room, and returned with a book mere moments later. As he angled himself towards the firelight, the flames illuminated its yellow cover. Corabeth realized it was one she had bought from town.
“And if the protagonist doesn’t get their revenge in this one, I’ll make up a new ending for you,” Rooke said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Corabeth couldn’t help but return the smile, although hers was weary and felt strange.
She wondered if the muscles she used to smile could atrophy.
Sheets drawn up high, she settled in to listen.
Rooke read well into the early hours of the night, nothing but the crackling of the fire keeping them company.
Occasionally, he threw in a new log, sending sparks flying up into the chimney.
And the next day, it was marginally easier for Corabeth to open her eyes.
A slight but urgent tapping on her window was what woke her at first.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
This time, Corabeth did sit up. She swung her legs over the bed. She stood. Walked to the balcony door that was covered by heavy curtains and threw them back. The white of the world outside nearly blinded her, shooting a sharp pain through her head.
A raven jumped back in surprise, leaving tracks in the fresh snow. Apparently, the bird’s worry had grown strong enough, prompting it to come check on Corabeth. Sadly, she had no way to know if it was the same bird from the garden. They all looked the same to her.
Corabeth opened the balcony door just a crack, afraid to let out the warmth.
“I’m alright,” she said gently and offered the raven a small smile.
The bird looked up at her with its black, beady eyes and tilted its head, regarding her for a moment. Then, it hopped closer, lowered its head, and dropped something at Corabeth’s feet. In a flutter of wings, it was gone, like an adolescent admirer dropping off a gift for his sweetheart.
Corabeth picked up the object and closed the door again. She turned it in her fingers several times before she realized it was a silver domed button. An insignificant little thing to some, but it brought a smile to Corabeth’s face.
She was still fidgeting with the button when she went to the library after dinner. Rooke was in his usual armchair with a book. This man was nothing if not consistent.
He looked somewhat surprised to see Corabeth, but his features quickly settled into something else. Relief? Content?
Corabeth’s eyes traveled down to his chest, where a row of silver buttons held closed his black waistcoat. In the middle, one button was missing.
She stifled a smile as she offered the button to Rooke. “I believe this belongs to you.”
Rooke seemed moderately baffled as he looked from the button to his own chest.
“And how did you come to possess my button?” he asked, not taking the offering.
“A raven paid me a visit today,” Corabeth said and slid her thumb over the smooth silver.
Rooke let out a laugh that sounded somewhat rough, as if he was using muscles that were long dormant, but felt genuine nonetheless.
“Then it is your present. I will not have you part with it,” he said, amusement coating his words.
Corabeth kept it as instructed, placing it on her nightstand as she went to bed and putting it in her pocket when she went out on walks or to spend time in the library.
She fingered it in her pocket the next time she went into town and bought a sheep from the same farmer, leading it into the forest to its slaughter.
This time, when the animal started screaming in pure terror, she wasn’t surprised.
She simply held on to Rooke’s cloak as he returned them to the mansion through the mist.
The third time, the farmer sold her a goat, although he glanced at her strangely from the corner of his eye. When she thought back on it, most of town had given her odd looks here and there.
When Corabeth returned for the fourth time, the market stalls she usually frequented were shut. The sellers spotted her walking down the road, closed their stalls, and disappeared from sight.
Dread reared its ugly head inside Corabeth. So it took only three visits for them to resent me, she thought bitterly as she slowed her steps and looked at the empty stalls.
No matter, she would make do. She was there for Rooke anyway. Snow crunched under her feet as Corabeth made her way to the farmer. The elderly man only opened the door when her knocking had turned into pounding.
“Hello. I am here to buy…” she said, but the farmer blew a puff of pipe smoke into her face and shook his head.
“I will not sell to you,” he said and tried to close the door. He would have succeeded if Corabeth had not managed to stick her foot out.
“Please,” she begged, but the farmer just shook his head.
“At least tell me why?” she asked, feeling the pressure of the door on her foot. She would not be able to hold the door open for long.
The farmer hesitated for a long moment before speaking.
“Folks say you do terrible things to the animals. They hear them screaming in the forest. They say you are a witch in league with the terrible Beast that lives in the woods. I do not care for such things, but I will not sell my animals for torture.”
This time, when the farmer attempted to shut the door, Corabeth pulled back her foot and let it close. She stared at the patterns of the wooden door before her as she worked over in her mind what she had heard.
Corabeth knew firsthand how impossible it was to change the minds of people. In the eyes of the townspeople, she was now ruined. And were they so terribly wrong? She was tied to the Beast. She was bringing the animals to slaughter.
Defeated, Corabeth walked through the quiet town again, hearing it come to life once more in her wake. As if she was the one that sucked the life out of it.
She walked into the misty forest, following her own footsteps until she spotted Rooke waiting for her.
“Let’s go,” Corabeth said, placing her hand on Rooke’s arm to let him guide her through the milky fog. Rooke tensed as if he had been struck, but Corabeth was too lost in her own thoughts to notice Rooke’s shock at the unexpected contact. He steadied himself and began walking.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They are scared and will not do business with me,” Corabeth explained and squinted through the mist. The outline of the mansion was becoming visible. “The animals screamed too much.”
Rooke nodded as if this wasn’t a surprise to him. “I cannot help it. The animals are terrified of me,” he said. Despite the news, he didn’t seem worried, although it had already been a week since his last feeding.
“What will you do?” Corabeth asked, worry marring her face as he looked up at Rooke.
All at once, she realized how accustomed she had become to Rooke’s unusual features.
At first, he had seemed so alien, monstrous even.
Now, he was… just Rooke. His inky eyes no longer unnerved her.
The lines of his face seemed less severe.
“Worry not,” Rooke said, patting her hand that was still resting on his arm. Despite the softly falling snow, his touch was warm. “I’ll manage. An animal is bound to come through these woods sooner or later.”
It didn’t remain unnoticed to Corabeth how Rooke had turned onto the garden path that spiraled towards the middle instead of cutting straight to the mansion. How his touch lingered just a moment too long. How her own heart fluttered at this.
“Is there no way to break your curse?” Corabeth asked with a frown. She was seemingly far more worried about the situation than Rooke himself.
“Sure, there is,” Rooke said, “Two things can be said about curses—they are meant to be broken, and they are meant to backfire on the originator of the curse.”
“Okay, so, do you know what needs to be done?” Corabeth continued the questioning, determined to get to the bottom of this.
Rooke nodded, looking into the sky. Snowflakes fell on his loose, black hair. “On the day the curse was placed upon me, I heard the words clear as day. Over the centuries, I have forgotten my father’s features, the touch of my mother, but never those words.”
Corabeth looked up at him in fascination, as if a child hearing their first fairytale. “What were they?”
"In forest so dark lingers endless mist,
Time and death you’ll surely resist.
The hunger of a hundred plagues your soul,
Blood you will crave, its taste most foul.
Every thirty-three years, the village you’ll tread,
Among the living, still undead.
While his bloodline survives, so will your curse,
Ravens will watch, shadows will lurk," he recited.
A sudden wind picked up, swirling the loose snow and sending it like needles into their skin.
“Why thirty-three years?” Corabeth asked, brows furrowed, shielding herself against the snow pelting her.
“They say it takes a year to get over someone’s death,” Rooke said, his tone somewhat somber. “A year for every soul my father allowed to die of hunger.”
Corabeth turned the words of the curse over and over in her mind like they were a riddle waiting to be solved.
“How do you know all this?” she asked. Rooke’s knowledge of the curse seemed to go deep, as if he had examined it from all angles. Even those he shouldn’t have been privy to.
“I heard it from the witch herself,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a somewhat wistful smile. “Many years passed before she came to see her handiwork. We went on a nice walk and she told me everything.”
Corabeth’s brows shot up as she considered his light tone. There was no animosity, no anger when Rooke spoke of the witch. “You let her live?”
“I did,” he said. “She was already dying. I could smell the sickness in her blood. Besides, she was nothing but a tool.”
Corabeth shuddered at it all, the rhymes of the curse still echoing in her mind. “While his bloodline survives…” she murmured. “Do you know whose bloodline the curse is talking about?”
The wind died down again, but Rooke had already steered them towards the house.
“The Fabels,” Rooke said. Corabeth nearly stumbled as though the words had fallen at her feet and tripped her.
“Are you alright?” Rooke asked, side-eyeing Corabeth as he took her cloak and shook the snow off it, letting it fall to the floor in the entranceway.
“Yes,” Corabeth did her best to assure him. The truth was, hearing their name from Rooke had stunned her so badly, her thoughts were in a wild spiral. Over the past weeks, she had managed to pack the unpleasantness of her past away. Now, it threatened to spill over once more.
Rooke’s expression remained troubled until it cleared suddenly. “Of course,” he said, “You must know them.”
“I know them as my tormentors,” was all Corabeth said before she excused herself, seeking the solitude of her room.
She left behind Rooke and the possibility of his prying questions, though he had never been intrusive.
If he had asked, perhaps she would have been forced to face the fact that imagining all of the Fabels dead wasn’t as horrifying to her as it should have been.
Perhaps she would have had to admit that she had already imagined it.
It was like holding two puzzle pieces, their jagged edges aligning in an unsettling manner. She knew that once she fit them together, the picture they revealed would be too gruesome to bear. Yet the true terror lay in the possibility that she might like it too much.