Chapter 16 #2
The rue and lovage, I knew I could find. But the vervain, I did not. I did not have it in me to go back outside into the abyss of stars and swirling gods, nor did I have it in me to forage. But I did not know what else to say except a weary “Where would I find those?”
“The forest will have both.”
Perchta tore a crust of bread into tiny pieces and tossed them into the pot, as if feeding a small sparrow she had trapped at its iron bottom.
I was lost in my head, sick from so much shifting of the world.
It seemed everything fell and rose again in an explosion, and I watched it ripple out and surge through my body, gold and pink and flaming stardust.
And then I woke, having fallen asleep where I sat curled over the fire.
The soft crackle of flames was the only sound.
And outside the window night had fallen, a bright moon peeking out between the trees.
My head cleared of dreams and illusions, and I felt, somehow, a little more myself.
“I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Such strange dreams.”
“Would that we never dream such things again,” Perchta said, removing some small thing from her furs and pouring it into the pot. “Here, this will help.” She held out a small stone cup of steaming stew.
I took the rough stone, and its warmth melted into my hands, golden and luscious all the way to my bones, pushing against something brittle and fiercely cold that had settled there without me noticing. I wondered again if I might be dying.
“You will be unless you drink it,” Perchta ordered. “And do not be fooled, you can die in his home.”
The stew tasted like rabbit and rosemary and some earthy, fragrant herb I could not name. “Thank you, Perchta,” I said.
“Listen to me. You should return to the village,” she said. “Leave his home and forget your memories of that place.”
I shook my head. “I am dead in the village.”
“You will be dead in his house. You will be dead out here.”
I spoke into the bowl, tipping it again to savor the last bit of the cooling stew. “Death does not scare me.”
The old woman made a soft snort. “Once again, you’re a wounded doe leaving a blood trail everywhere you go in this forest. Before you come again, you must learn not to bleed, for the gods will drain you.”
“How do I stop it?”
“You’ve done no magic. That does not mean magic wasn’t taken from you. A body can be a vessel, not just to fill, but to drain.” She gave me a wry look, as if to chide me for my maidenly naivety.
I sighed. “So, vervain?”
“Steep and spell it long.” Perchta nodded. “I’ll give you seeds to plant.”
The stew had given me strength and life, and I felt like I’d found my way back to my body.
I glanced out of the tiny window at the silver moon sinking into its darkness, and I did not want to leave.
“I’ve been out too long. It’s dark.” The idea of having to go through that forest for anything filled me with dread, but I could not disappoint Death again.
The House of Blue Sleep waited for me. I was supposed to be in my room already.
“Are you afraid, my child?” Perchta asked.
“The forest,” I said. “It’s watching.”
“It is watching,” she agreed. “It can be a friend or an enemy, that is true.”
“How do I make it a friend?”
She tilted her head. “Or how do you become one?” She called the hellcat. It appeared at her side instantly. “Schneid will show you.” She scratched behind his ear. “Follow him.”
“I don’t think he likes me,” I said, eyeing the beast. He pointedly ignored me, rubbing the small, curved horns on Perchta’s hip.
“Oh, give yourself a chance,” she said with a smile. “You just need to get to know him.”
Perchta stroked along Schneid’s neck, her fingers gnarled and worn in the gray light.
They reminded me of Valerie’s, and I looked at my own white hands and fingers, unmarked and unworn.
I hoped, one day, I might also have capable hands.
“He said I feel like this because I’m not strong,” I admitted to her.
Thankfully, she did not ask questions about him.
“It feels like this because you are not mindful of your borders,” Perchta said tartly.
But then she sighed. “He is not entirely wrong, and that is often the most dangerous part about men like him. Take the seeds and grow the vervain. I’ll show you how to use it.
Remember the poultice. You need to find a way to end the working so that it does not drain you. ”
“But what if I didn’t start the working?”
“What indeed?” she asked.
“What did I walk through to get here? That other world?”
“That is the place between and beneath and above and below. The place in all places and beyond all places. It is where pure magic and instinct and life and death live.”
“Death lives there?”
“Death is that place. Not a man.”
She told me, even then. But I did not understand. Or I didn’t want to. I pulled my cloak hood up against the night and followed Schneid through the abyss.
The old woman spoke true—Schneid led me like a lamp, into the dark forest and its unnerving silence, all the way to the courtyard of the chateau. There he stopped, his back arched, clearly intent on going no farther. I didn’t want to leave him in the woods, but then, he was no tabby.
I turned to the black stones. Its faint outline stood in the night, so dark it reminded me of the coffin where even the spirits were swallowed.
Death was waiting for me inside. Death my teacher, my ruler.
I pictured his eyes, as dark as the world between worlds.
He was the oarsman rowing souls across that terrifying expanse of darkness, across the rivers that cut through that midnight plain to find their place in the surging stars.
I had seen a bit of his soul in the place that was both life and death and had begun to think of myself in that world, far beyond the fear that had ruled me all my life.
It was because of those things both, for better or worse, that I was falling in love with him, and though I did not know it yet, falling in love with myself.
“Go back to your mistress,” I told the hellcat. “I’ll be fine.”
He yowled and loped off into the forest.
I wrapped my cloak across my chest, trying to bring back that small invisibility I’d used in the forest. Holding my breath, I let myself into the chateau.
For some strange reason, I’d almost expected it to have disappeared while I was in the forest. Once I walked through that abyss, Death’s home in the mountains felt unreal, the kind of place I’d never find my way back to—at least not as it was.
But here it stood, and everything was the same.
The same silence and smell of freshly fallen snow.
The same gleaming stone and brightly lit torches, waiting for no one.
Lifting my skirts, I tiptoed across the polished floors and darted up the steps as quietly as I could.
It had been years since I left the nuns, but I hadn’t lost the muscle memory of sneaking past their watchful gazes.
I should have paid more attention to the light when I was with Perchta. Now, I braced to turn a corner and find myself once again face-to-face with Death, a few half-conjured excuses already forming on the tip of my tongue.
Triumph swept over me as I recognized the Garden tapestry next to my door.
I had made it. But as I picked up my skirts and rushed forward, a low crackling noise broke the stillness, and a whoosh of pressure strong enough to pop my ears hit me as a wall of fire appeared across the hall, blocking me from my door.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream.
This must be an illusion, a trick of the house.
I would not scream and have Death saving me again.
I turned to escape the way I’d come—and another wall of fire appeared behind me.
I was trapped.
The heat on both sides rolled over me, blistering my face and hands and softening the silver threads in my dress.
Don’t be fooled, you can die in his house, I heard the old woman’s voice echo in my thoughts.
Throwing my cloak over my face, I tried to think of what to do.
But there was nothing. I was too naive, too unlearned.
I could not think of any magic to help in a crisis.
I was going to die like Valerie. The way I had seen in my nightmares.
I fell back against the tapestry-covered wall, gasping for air.
I tried to scream, finally, but that, too, was swallowed by the dull roar of the fire.
The tapestry curled around me. It had only been seconds, and the firewalls met.
My cloak burnt away. My clothes. It all became fire.
This was hell. The eternal burning, the fire that did not end.
Valerie had been condemned to hell by her neighbors, not by God, and now I was there too.
My eyes dried and popped like heated sand had been poured over them, but still the vision did not end.
The agony of being burnt and never relieved by Death.
Oh, Death, where was thy sting? Grave where was thy victory? My skin blistered and flaked off like wet ash in the fire. The fire ate until the sinew and muscle on my arms was exposed in raw torment.
Out of that raging inferno, she appeared.
She moved behind the flames—her white dress billowing with the heat, fingers blackened, black hair long and twisting in the roar of the furnace.
I tried to call for help. I tried to reach my arm toward her, beseeching—but my body was stuck, melted and charred and unable to move.
She stood through the fire, watching it with a grim, stern face.
I thought, in a far-off kind of way, that she looked like me.
No, she was me.
I was dead and there was no peace in it. I had become a ghost. A profound unending pain opened inside me—worse than even the pain in my body. The fire twisted around my bones, and my ghost disappeared.
I was alone in my suffering.
I was alone.
The fire winked out.
I collapsed on the carpeted floor in the empty hall. My body was whole, my skin smooth. No sign of fire or smoke or the ghost in the flames. I crawled the rest of the way to my room, shutting myself firmly inside.