Bitterbloom

Chapter 12

twelve

When I was little, my mother spoke of ravens taunting the skies with their crooked cries. But my mother is dead, and wherever it is I have come to find her lies silent. My boots crack against roots and leaves, and I blink twice before the world around me clears.

Trees stand dusted with crimson leaves, their trunks like polished iron. The sky too—if it can even be called that—drips like blood down black canvas. A white moon beats high above, its surface pocked with hollows.

I shiver, panic tightening my limbs, and pull myself up to my feet. When I turn around, I search the wood for signs of Father, but there is nothing.

I am alone.

“Adelaide.”

For a moment, I completely forgot Ransom even existed. All I can remember is Bram, and I search the skies for whatever it was he hid from. The things that made him duck beneath my bed and tremble in the corner. But I see nothing. Nothing but crimson and black dripping against the branches.

“Thorn.” Ransom’s voice is at my back again, and I pivot.

He is framed in blood red, sweat slicking his brow in the sickly moonlight. His green eyes are not on me, not exactly. I look down to my hand and at the bell. It is humming in my palm.

“What’s it doing?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you? You knew where to find the bloody doorway.”

Ransom hesitates, like he’s afraid of giving up too much information. He shovels a hand through his hair. “My father—Look, I only learned bits and pieces before he died.”

Right, of course. I want to slap him. Of course, he knows how to get us into this mess but not through it. Fine. I’ll just figure it out myself.

I lift the bell, watching the metal vibrate in the cold air. The air that smells like… My stomach twists, and I shove the bell into my pocket amongst its wrappings. The air is scented of sulfur and iron. Like red-capped mushrooms freshly sprouting along the bank of the River Thine.

I know that smell. My eyes search the trees. Ransom scrambles in the leaves.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

The word buzzes in the back of my throat like a yellowjacket poised to sting. “Souls.”

Ransom’s hand snicks into mine, the creases of his skin damp and warm. He slips behind me, a wisp of smoke at my back. Fear ties knots in my belly while I wait for the dead thing to show its face.

“How do you know?” Ransom’s breath is hot on my neck.

There are monsters in the wood. Souls. But I do not have time to speak the words aloud, to wrestle with how my mother knew.

Something snaps and I spin, dragging Ransom behind me.

There are two of them—the souls—bobbing at the trunks of trees.

The smoke morphs and takes form. I close my eyes, unable to see another dead face.

Another mouth opening to ask me to bring them home.

I have already sold my soul to Erybrus without knowing the price.

My heart should be flipping in my chest, but it isn’t. If anything, it calms.

I straighten, open my eyes.

“Adelaide—”

“Be quiet.” My words are quick, eyes faster.

The souls edge closer, wisping trails of smoke across the rot of the forest floor.

The miasma of eggs and blood turns to something sharper.

Something familiar. The twist of lemon rind, the upturn of dank soil.

I take in a great breath of the stuff. And then the ghosts come so close the scent rolls off them in waves.

I choke, one thought bleeding from my mind.

Is one of them Mother? I reach out a hand, but Ransom moves to stop me.

“Are you stupid?” he hisses between his teeth. “You don’t know what those things are. They could kill you.”

Anger blooms in my chest, my fist thrashing out and tightening around his collar. “If you ever call me stupid again, Ransom Black, I’ll kill you.”

I don’t know where the boldness comes from, but it tastes like wine between my lips, and so I drink. My grip stays firm on him when I turn back to the forms of smoke.

“Are you the ones who came to me from the trees?”

I do not have to wait for an answer. They coalesce, then begin to take shape. Faces forming from mist, hair drifting around their cheeks as though I’m seeing them through water. Faces I know.

“Bloody hell.” It is Ransom’s voice behind me.

I turn, watch the color drain from his cheeks. “You can see them?”

“What are those things, Adelaide?”

I ignore him and focus back on the visage before me.

Lilith Corley and another girl from the village, Ethel Lawler, who died well before my mother. One of the first dead girls of Rixton.

Ransom’s hand slicks hot with sweat, tries to drag me away, but I pull from his grip.

The ghosts draw near.

“Lilith? Ethel?” It comes out as a plea, a desire to have it all make sense. But the words land like stones. The time passing slow while they edge closer. Each second a pebble tossed into a pond, letting one ripple fade away before another can begin.

There is something wrong with them. Pieces missing.

The viscera in my chest tightens.

Ethel is harder to remember, was almost as old as I am now when she died.

But Lilith…The air swims with bitterness.

Her rouged cheeks are gone, cut away, one eye sloughing into nothing but emptiness.

I open my mouth to scream, but there is no sound.

She nears, and the scent settles in the folds of my stomach.

I gag. Ransom’s hand is damp at my waist.

Find our bones, Lilith whispers. Find our bones and put us back.

I drop to my knees, shrinking against Ransom’s chest. Every breath a sob. If this is just another deal, another thing with an unnamed price, I have already lost.

“I cannot take you all with me,” I whisper, shoulders slack.

Ethel holds out a hand. It is cold against my cheek. So very cold. She, too, is missing pieces. Darkness dusts from her right temple to jaw, a half-face lingering in the crimson light.

Find our bones, Adelaide. Her voice rattles in my head, distant as a spring breeze. Find our bones.

It must be a trick. The wrongness of my heart seeping to invade my mind. I blink through helpless tears, and then they are gone. Nothing but trees and the crimson sky. Ransom’s arms wrap around me. My skin tightens at the touch.

No, no. I will not let him—but he only holds me closer. No one has held me like this in so very long, and my tears leave dark stains on his coat.

They are gone, the souls. The girls with missing faces. Girls I once knew. The smell still permeates the air when I unwrap from Ransom’s embrace. The cloying stench of citrus peel makes my stomach turn, and when I peer down to the earth beside me, I see why. My knees buckle, vision swirling black.

There are bones. So many bones leaking up from the dirt, covered in the twisting vines of bitterbloom.

I only wake when Ransom’s arm slips around my waist. My body courses with heat, and I hurry to my feet, brushing the dirt and twigs from my skirt.

For a moment, I forget where I am. The trees stretch too tall, their trunks glinting like knife points in the vermilion light.

Breath leaves me in great gasps, and I blink, trying desperately to make sense of my surroundings.

In a rush, it all comes back. Blurred colors, strangled voices, and the ringing of the bell.

We are in the rowan wood.

“You passed out.” Ransom is in fine form, blond hair mussed, dirt smeared on his cheeks. He smiles faintly, blinking the sleep from his eyes in the dull, red light.

My heart flutters. “Did I hurt you?”

“Why would you have hurt me?”

“I…It doesn’t matter.” I loose a breath, thankful I didn’t murder the only other living soul here. I hurry a hand to the pocket of my skirt and sigh in relief when the brass brushes cool against my fingertips.

Ransom props himself up on the earth.

“I have no intention of stealing the bell, Thorn.”

Part of me feels this is a lie, the ghost of his fingers still trailing my waist, but I push the thought away. Below me, the ground is covered in leaves. No more bones, no more bitterbloom. The light is red as rotting meat when I plunge deeper between the leering trees.

Ransom is quick to his feet.

“Are you going to tell me what exactly is going on?” He paces after me. “What are you doing anyway?”

“Whatever I have to do,” I snap.

Find our bones. Why would they ask this of me? My stomach roils with terror, with all the unknown. It doesn’t matter. None of this is what I signed up for. None of it is going according to plan. But I’m here, and the dead are asking me to find their bones. I’m going to see it through.

Beneath my feet, the ground is velvet smooth with crushed leaves.

I forge a path between the trees, the air around us reeking of sulfur and lemons.

There is no birdsong, no wind causing the branches to creak and sway.

All around us, the wood is still. As if it is waiting, watching, biding its time until it can open its gaping maw and swallow us whole.

My body aches to run. A restless energy spreads throughout my limbs, and we make our way deeper between the silver trunks.

A branch snaps, and my hair stands on end.

I hold my breath, crouching behind the nearest tree.

The air goes rank. Spilled guts, old blood, and nausea hollows out an ache in my stomach. I search the forest, looking for any hint of another presence, more waiting, watching dead things. But there is nothing, not even the slightest hint of a breeze or stirring.

And then movement.

But not from the woods, from my pocket.

I curl my hand around the cloth enveloping the bell, stilling it. Ransom’s eyes catch my movement.

“What’s it doing?”

I withdraw my hand and push deeper between the trees. “I don’t know, but I’m not going to worry about it now.”

A chill dampens the air, not so much a breeze, but a lack of everything. Like all the hollow spaces of the wood have expanded. Drawn closer. I stop in my tracks and turn my chin to the moon glowing down at us from between branches. How can time be told without a ray of sun?

This rowan wood is not my version. It is a land at war with itself. Between Ithrandril and Erybrus. Light and darkness.

My body chills.

“Do you think we’ll find them here, our mothers?” I search the sea of silver-barked trees.

Ransom scuffs the ground with the toe of his boot. “I don’t want to think about where they are if they’re not here, Thorn.” His face is soft, a sort of darkness harboring in the corners of his eyes.

I grit my teeth. If our mothers aren’t in the wood, does that mean they have already made their choice between our brother-gods? I push the thought away and take Ransom’s hand in mine.

“We will find them.”

He smiles a cracked line, shadows playing in blotches on his face. “I believe you.”

His words renew me, and I press forward, undergrowth shushing against my boots.

“If you were the brother-gods, where would you keep souls?”

I think of Lilith, of Ethel. We know where their bones are, don’t we? Beneath the soil of the churchyard. Buried below headstones scratched with their names.

Ransom looks at me as though I have maggots crawling from my ears. “Do you think Erybrus is here, then?”

I shake my head. “In the Rending, Ithrandril separated himself from Erybrus, cast him into a place where Ithrandril could not reach. You called this place an in-between, but it’s a purgatory.

” I bring to mind the shape of Bram’s lips when he spoke the word.

“It’s a holding place, I think. The souls trapped here have neither claimed Ithrandril or Erybrus.

They still have deals to make, a peace to find before they can make their decision.

” A shiver tenses my spine. “Though, I feel Erybrus here has a greater presence than any other god.”

Ransom follows my hand, his eyes widening. “This is a hungry place.”

Back home, the world is creeping slowly toward winter. But here, on the other side of living, there seems to be little sense to the earth. Heat smashes against chill, trees caught in stagnant autumn, a moon ever-hanging in the sky. And now, smoke. As though fire is burning along the horizon.

“Should we follow it?” I ask.

Ransom straightens his collar, runs fingers through his hair. “My concern, Adelaide, darling… What is causing it?”

What does it matter? We are here to slip three souls back from beneath Erybrus’s nose. Ithrandril’s too, if we are right.

Ransom’s thinking the same thing I am, but he’s not looking, not really. I see it in his eyes, a kind of glazed look. No focus. But to me, the trees are alive. They shimmer in hues of black, red, and ashen gray. Through their limbs, the sky is crimson, the moon a diamond lost to blood.

But beyond all of these, there is something else. Something that seems to hover just above the surface of my skin. I hold out an arm, inspecting the thin hairs prickling along its length. A shiver licks up my back but does not cause pain. Does not sink roots into the base of my skull.

It feels like…peace.

The bell vibrates in my pocket again. And it frightens me. I push it from my mind and sniff the air.

Something like wet mud wafts through the trees.

“We need to go that way,” I say. “Find the river.”

Ransom hunches his shoulders. “What makes you say that?”

“Because the air smells less like rotten eggs that way and more like rotten reeds.”

Ransom scrunches his nose. “Not sure that’s any better.”

“Well, it can’t be any worse.”

He nods and slips his hands into his coat. I do the same, fingers wrapping around the humming bell. Whatever is making it do this, I hope it stops.

I look behind us again, searching the woods for Father, for anyone who might have followed us in. But there’s nothing, only tall silver-black trees, shadows darting between them.

“We still have a deal, don’t we?” Ransom asks. “Your mother and mine?”

“Of course we do,” I snap, turning back.

But while I look at all that surrounds us, I know there is more to this deal than Ransom knows.

Two families to piece back together, bones to unearth, and a man we all thought died so very long ago, here.

Halfway to life. My stomach sours at the thought of Bram.

Bram, who I haven’t even mentioned to Ransom.

I fist the bell and step back on the path, listening for sounds of a river, but all I hear is the creaking of the trees.

There may be no living ravens in these woods, but while we make our way down the path, I feel eyes on my back and wonder what ravens look like when they’re dead.