Chapter 12
XII.
Once Upon a Time, There Was a Man
I dreamed I was lost again. Separated from him and so it had all returned to ruins.
The roses that led me to him, now a trail of blood, spilling between my fingers and dripping onto the stones.
No creature came to lick at the blood trail, and this, more than anything, made me uneasy.
Where were the spirits? The monsters? The things I had always seen and longed to be free from?
Shouldn’t they be here, in Death’s domain?
It was just a dream, I told myself. If I had the key, I could cross back over.
I only needed to find the key. I clutched at my dress, but it was the shift I’d been buried in—the one I had burned—and there was no key.
I was so foolish not to have held it tighter.
How had I lost it? I ran through the hallway, looking for where I might have dropped it.
But all the halls were the same. Had I noticed that before?
Whispers crowded in the thickening air behind me.
But there was no one. Only shadows. They shifted—the faint outline of purple, bruised bodies.
They were different—corpses not souls, but maybe this is how they looked in his realm.
They wanted me to join them. They were hunger and nightfall, a curtain falling between this world and the next. I would not get trapped here.
If I focused, I could feel the hard edges of iron, but when I looked in my hand, it was only blood, thickened and sticky.
It stretched as I pulled my fingers apart.
Scarlet threads, sewed through my fingertips like a doll.
I wiped it away, but it was still there, drawing me tighter and tighter together, cutting into my throat, into my ankles.
Somewhere far away the wolves howled from the forest.
I ran and I ran. I was trapped and night fell.
When I woke, the light was gray. I blinked at the heavy wooden beams girding the ceiling, my heart still pounding from fear.
Above me, the ceiling rippled. At first, I thought it was a trick of my sight, blurry from sleep, and I blinked rapidly.
But the beams, once fixed, were now liquid.
The carvings unspooled. I couldn’t move.
Something was holding me down. Watching.
The ceiling warped into a pair of leering eyes. The darkness laughed.
I bolted upright.
It was a dream. Only dreams. My chest heaved, drenched in sweat, heart pounding under my skull with so much intensity it nearly made me sick. Was I truly awake this time?
The room was a normal kind of quiet, bathed in the flat light of midday.
The ceiling beams and trim did not look back at me.
Shadows collected only in the deepest blue corners, and I stared at them, frozen until I was sure they did not move.
Finally, I felt assured my nightmares were only nightmares and pushed back the blankets.
As he’d promised, food was laid out on the little table. I sat gingerly, taking my time to eat and drink, listening to the silence as I chewed.
When he didn’t appear in a storm of shadows, I felt confident he had truly left.
I put down my food and untied my shift at the neck, sliding one bare arm and breast out into the sun and craning my sore neck at the injury.
It wasn’t hard to spot, even in such a difficult place to fully see.
The angry black-and-purple bruise spread over my rib cage, and bright red abrasions dotted the surface with a mottle of colors.
How was I going to do any tests while in such a state?
I knew from experience with Maxime that this injury would take weeks to heal on its own.
Until then, I’d have a hard time moving or even breathing without pain.
I groaned and the sound seemed overly loud—too human, too base.
Pulling the shift back over my shoulder, I tied the neck.
My head pulsed in unrelenting protest. What was I supposed to do?
The memory of Valerie’s weathered hands smoothing a poultice on my leg drifted in my head as if in answer.
And then, slowly, a hazy memory returned to me.
I’d fallen out of a tree picking apples to throw at some village boys who’d pulled Rochelle’s hair.
Valerie had found me screaming in the grass.
After she’d reset the shoulder joint, she treated the heavy bruise with a poultice.
It had smelled green and sharp. For a moment, the memory seemed so close it was as if I could smell it again.
But just as quickly, it turned to fat, hot and crispy, and I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and pushed away the food.
I knew what herbs I needed and where to find them, but that meant going back into the forest. Out my window it looked like a dark sea, and I imagined swimming with creatures eager to swallow me whole.
I thought about trying to reach for them, like I did eggs in the yard, but then scoffed at myself.
Eggs were already there, waiting. The herbs I needed must be sought.
There was no other way: I’d have to leave the safety of my room.
I picked up the clothes from the chair—another wool tunic, a pair of thick wool stockings, and …
a cloak. I dropped it quickly. A strange prickling feeling rose along my spine.
Was he watching? Could he read my thoughts before I did? I waited, as if he would jump out from behind the door and catch me. The fire crackled in the soft silence.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was not his prisoner.
Tentatively, I reached for the cloak again. It was spun of a deep blue wool and, like his clothes, untrimmed but well-made and warm. I tied the cloak over my shoulders, then lifted my pillow and eyed the ring of keys.
It had only been a nightmare, but the thought of opening my hand and seeing only blood filled me with as much dread as if it had been real.
I was being irrational—who would steal them?
But as much as things appeared of their own volition in my rooms, I worried things might also disappear.
On the other hand, if I took them, they might fall out of my pocket in the forest, and that might be even worse.
But Lord Death had given them to me with trust I did not have in myself. I was determined to prove him right.
I put them in a table drawer. Then on top of the fireplace mantel. Finally, I moved them under the mattress and left.
If my head hurt any less, I would have marveled again at all the finery of the transformed chateau.
The foyer I’d crossed chasing the hellcat was now restored to its full glory, with no sign of the strange creature.
The tiles were smooth and unbroken marble.
Orbs of flowing glass sat over the torches, making the light glimmer on the stone like sunlight on water.
The doors opened before I touched them, swinging as if they were hung on air.
Was this how it felt to live in a world where you were not a cursed creature?
Everything beautiful and soft, opening before you?
Outside, the winter sun seared itself behind my eyes, but it was the sight of the courtyard that made me abruptly stop.
The doors shut behind me with a profound click.
He’d been right.
The madman who’d bit off his own tongue had been here. Where I stood. He’d been right.
Death’s chateau was soot black, even to the spires on its tower, gables on its roof, and courtyard of thorned trees.
The earth looked razed to the edge of the courtyard wall.
Beyond, the forest crowded thick and dark, as if eager to reach over the walls but stopped by some unseen hand.
One year at the convent, we had a blight, and the nuns had to burn the fields and salt the earth to cure it, leaving it like a barren scar.
That is what the courtyard and the trees reminded me of.
A scar. Salt. The estate, narrow and tall, sat driven into the mountains along the river as if it were a burnt tree that refused to die.
Nausea washed over me and I leaned forward to catch my breath.
I couldn’t let myself think about the valley or the man who had lost his mind, couldn’t let myself even try to make sense of it. Instead, I pushed it all aside.
I had to find the herbs I needed and get back before night—before Death returned. Pulling up my hood to block the sun, I forced myself through the blackened skeleton trees of the courtyard and out the arched gate into the forbidding woods.
As soon as I slipped behind the thick wall of spruce, the sun dimmed enough to stop pounding at my skull.
But as the forest’s shadow closed behind me, an awareness crept prickling across my skin and scalp.
I was being watched. It didn’t feel the same as the house or Lord Death—it felt like the trees were observing me.
I remembered the tricks of the wood, wiping away my path.
I did not want to become lost. Pulling off my veil, I tore a strip and tied it around a branch.
It fluttered pale blue, then stilled, as if the forest had scented me like an animal.
Deep down I knew Death would chide me, but I was not his prisoner.
I could come and go as I pleased. Until nightfall.
The forest seemed wary, but willing to let me pass.
I marked my path, tearing small pieces off the veil to make it last. It wasn’t far before the river emerged from between the bare trees, flowing fast around the chunks of remaining ice.
I placed one more strip of veil under a rock to mark the spot, then turned my steps upriver.
It wasn’t long before I spotted a willow, large and sturdy, bare branches draped gracefully over a pool still covered in ice.