Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
She came to a fork where the tunnel ended, going left and right, but not forward. She turned left, unsure what else to do. Rooms appeared on either side of her. Some empty, some with boxes and crates, or with workbenches covered in scientific equipment.
She came to another dead end. This one, however, opened into a large chamber.
Bones and elderwood roots arched above her like a grim cathedral.
An elderwood tree stood at the center, surviving, somehow, without light.
To her left, a pair of bloodstained operating tables sat near the wall, leather restraints unbuckled.
A few worktables were neatly lined up behind them.
She stepped inside, careful not to make a sound. To her right, built into the ground near the door, was something resembling a garden pool. Flowers floated on the surface of the water, the only spot of color among the bones.
A woman floated in the pool as if she were asleep.
She had brown skin that seemed greenish in the strange light, and waist-length black hair that floated like seaweed around her body.
She was naked, and the skin of her torso had been cut away, revealing the organs there: two lungs that sprouted water lilies, a heart speckled with hyacinths, a womb woven with lotus flowers.
Roots grew from her skin, connecting her to the sides of the pool and holding her there.
Elswyth moved to inspect her more closely. The woman had an almost hypnotic beauty to her, like a painting of drowned Ophelia. Was this where the murdered prostitutes’ organs had gone? But why? Who—
A sound came from behind her. She jumped, running for cover by the elderwood tree, pressing her back to it. Around the corner of the tree, she watched the entrance to the main chamber, waiting.
No one came. She exhaled, fists unclenching.
Then a hand clamped over her shoulder.
She drew her blade, ready to scream, when from the trunk of the tree itself, she saw a face.
She hadn’t seen it at first. The pale white skin was almost indistinguishable from the elderwood bark.
In fact, half of the face itself was covered in wood, unmoving.
But she recognized her fair features and violet eyes right away.
Asphodel grew with what remained of her silvery hair, surrounding a sickly, half-dead face.
Persephone stared down at her from within the tree.
Elswyth stumbled backward, falling to the floor.
She saw the whole of her sister then, her naked body, fused with the trunk of the elderwood tree.
Her left hand reached out to Elswyth, the tips of her fingers warping into branches.
The other arm was totally lost in the wood, nothing more than a burl on the smooth trunk.
Her right breast was exposed, and her right thigh, but her feet were stuck in the tree.
Elswyth could see where they turned from flesh into wood, her toes becoming roots.
She looked like an incomplete carving, like a sculptor had started a statue of a girl and left it unfinished.
Her face was the worst part. Her right eye had been replaced by one of the eyelike knots that formed on the trunks of elderwood trees, a small black spot like the thousands that covered the trunk.
Wood had grown over her mouth, leaving her mute.
And from her one human eye, a tear fell, shimmering like sap.
“Persephone?” Elswyth whispered. “What happened to you?”
Persephone tried to speak but it came out as a moan, a stifled sound of agony.
Elswyth began to panic. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the tree. She needed to free her. But how?
She placed a palm on Persephone’s chest and tried to extend her floromantic sense into her sister’s body.
It bounced back, shooting into her with a shock.
She tried again, forcing her vitae into the wood…
and then she saw the impossible. Persephone wasn’t merely trapped in the tree.
She was the tree. Her organs fused with the trunk to form terrible hybrids.
Her arteries branched outward and wove together with the veins in the wood.
Persephone wasn’t stuck. She was transformed.
“Hold on… hold on…” she said. Persephone’s arm bent, making a creaking sound. Persephone placed her hand on Elswyth’s. Her sister tried to shake her head.
“No, I can save you. I can fix this,” Elswyth said. Tears swelled in her eyes, choking her voice. She pushed vitae into the tree again, as hard as she possibly could, but it was like trying to send vitae into stone. The flesh of her palms singed and smoked, leaving burn marks in the wood.
“Please,” Elswyth said. She searched the tree with her fingers, trying to pull the bark away and dig her sister out. Persephone put a hand on her face, staring at Elswyth with tears in her eyes.
“No. No, I won’t leave you,” Elswyth said. “Please, Persephone you have to try. You have to—”
Something washed over Elswyth, coming through Persephone’s hand. She felt the branches on Persephone’s fingers extend over her face, growing rootlets that fused with Elswyth’s scalp.
“What are you—”
Voices began to sound in her mind, distant whispers.
She could feel the vitae running through Persephone and into her, through the roots on her face, into her mind.
She looked into her sister’s eyes, and her vision flashed.
Elswyth’s eyes rolled back into her head, and the room around them vanished.
She fell into her sister. She felt herself move from her own mind and through Persephone’s outstretched hand, falling, falling into a web of memories, pinpricks of light, interconnected with threads of vitae.
She pulled apart, and when she came back together again, she was standing in an unfamiliar garden.
The Royal Palace loomed over her, its thousand windows shining with gaslight. Inside, a ball progressed, music floating out into an autumn night. Before her, a massive hedge maze stood waiting, the wind rustling the endless leaves.
Persephone waited beneath a willow tree. She wore a pink gown and lace shawl, and asphodel dotted her hair. A bouquet trembled in her hands, and she shivered from the cold. She checked a small timepiece in her reticule, looking over her shoulder.
A man reached out of the shadows and grabbed her.
She jumped, turning, and then smiled.
Prince Oliver materialized from the darkness and grinned. His hair was long and unkempt, but his eyes were bright.
Persephone collapsed against him, and they kissed, passionately, his hands slipping around her waist.
When they pulled apart, Persephone was grinning, too. “You taste like absinthe,” she said.
“You taste like Persephone,” Prince Oliver replied.
“Do you like it?”
“I do,” he said.
“You’re drunk,” she said, laughing.
“I am. And you should be, too,” he said. He produced a bottle of wine from behind his back and handed it to her. She took it, almost nervously, and drank. Some of it spilled down her chin. He watched her the whole time.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but he grabbed it and then kissed the wine from her lips. She shuddered. His lips moved down her chin, then her jaw, and then her neck.
“Here?” Persephone said, breathless. “But the ball…”
“You’re right,” he said. “Not here.”
He dropped her hands and began walking away.
“Where are you going?”
Prince Oliver lingered at the entrance to the hedge maze.
“If you want me, you’ll have to catch me,” he said. Then he disappeared into the labyrinth of leaves.
Persephone laughed, lifting the hem of her gown and chasing him. “Oliver! Wait!”
Elswyth followed, trailing behind Persephone, seeing through her eyes. Oliver laughed ahead of them, vanishing around one corner and then another. Finally, Persephone came into a clearing.
A small floral arch stood at the center of it. Prince Oliver stood beneath it, waiting, his hands behind his back. All along the grass leading up to the archway, rose petals lay scattered, and candles lit the path.
A priest stood with him, alongside two figures: her friend Venus Forscythe and Captain Coriander Burr, Oliver’s low-born friend from the navy. Venus and Captain Burr stopped whispering as soon as they saw her.
Persephone stepped warily into the clearing. “Oliver… what is this?”
He extended a hand. “It’s our wedding night.”
Persephone stared. “But… but you said…”
“My grandmother does not control me,” Oliver said. He moved to Persephone and took her by the hands. “I do not care who she wants me to marry. I want you, Persephone.”
Persephone looked to the priest, then to Oliver, then to Venus and Captain Burr. “But… she would never let us…”
“She cannot stop us. I will marry you here and now. We have a priest. We have two witnesses. We will be wed before the Gates of Eden and all the laws of England. And when we sign the papers, I will file them with the courts, and then there is nothing she can do.”
Oliver looked down at her, eyes bleary but bright. He got down on one knee. “Persephone Elderwood, will you be my wife?”
Persephone’s eyes began to water. “What am I supposed to say?”
He kissed her hands. “Say yes.”
She smiled wide, and tears began to fall. Oliver took her by the hand to the altar. Venus handed her a bouquet and touched her arm like a friend. Oliver clapped Captain Burr on the back and thanked him. Then Persephone met Oliver beneath the arch of flowers, and the priest began to speak.
Elswyth gasped. The world flooded back to her. The vision of the hedge maze vanished, and she was back in the catacombs again, looking at her sister’s warped face.
“You… you loved him. And he loved you,” Elswyth said.
Persephone looked at Elswyth with her lone eye. She tried to nod, and the wood around her head creaked. Then her face began to tremble and a thin opening appeared in the wood where her mouth should be. Blood stained the edges of it, dripping down her chin.