Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
“Don’t… hurt him… please,” Persephone said. Her voice was little more than a whisper and her wooden lips barely moved. Persephone’s eye bored into Elswyth, and something desperate shone there.
“Take… him…”
“The prince?” Elswyth said. “Take him where?”
Persephone closed her eye as though concentrating.
The wood of the tree groaned and a seam cracked open on Persephone’s left side.
The bark there peeled away, curling like paper, exposing Persephone’s left arm, half-fused to the wood.
Bloody sap dripped from it, falling in sticky sheaths to the floor.
She held something in the crook of her arm. Something pale and fleshy, pressed to her left breast.
“Take… him… please…”
And then Elswyth saw it: A face. Four limbs. A tiny belly.
Persephone offered her the baby.
The infant slept peacefully in the crook of his mother’s arm. He was covered in the same bloody sap but otherwise looked normal. He had no branches or growths like his mother, only soft skin. He was sickly, perhaps, and small, but he was alive. Somehow, miraculously, alive.
“You… must… go…” Persephone said. The baby began to squirm, threatening to wake and scream, longing for the dark quiet of its mother’s arms. The secret cradle of her wooden heart.
Elswyth took the baby from Persephone, holding it uncertainly. Persephone concentrated again and her trunk groaned shut. Then, somehow, she smiled.
“Take… care… of… him,” Persephone rasped.
Panicked tears fell from Elswyth’s eyes. “I will, Persephone. I promise, I will.”
Persephone smiled one last time, and then her face went slack.
“Persephone?” Elswyth asked.
Her sister said nothing. Her living eye slowly dulled to gray.
Tears choked Elswyth’s voice. “Persephone? Persephone, please—”
A sound echoed in the hall outside. Elswyth heard footsteps, fast approaching. She ran to the other side of the room, where a small archway led back into the tunnels. She pressed her back to the wall of bones, clutching the baby to her chest, and then peered around the corner.
Silas Blackthorn entered the main chamber. He raised his lantern, searching. A moment passed, and he lowered it again. He did not seem to be searching for her. Instead, he moved to the pool on the far wall where the drowned woman slept, surrounded by flowers.
He set his lantern on the edge, looking down into the water. He stayed like that for a while, only staring. Then he reached down and stroked the woman’s forehead, tucking a lock of hair away from her face.
Silas’s head jerked up—a slithering sound came from somewhere in the caverns, up above the dome. Elswyth followed his gaze to the highest point in the chamber.
Green vines poured from an opening in the dome, worming their way into the room. They plunged into the stone, searching for purchase, shaking the bones loose. Skulls shattered to the floor as a man-shaped thing lowered itself from the opening.
The Reaper appeared, hovering above the room, suspended in the air by his vines. A final stalk followed him, wrapped around a second human figure—Mrs. Rose, in her pink gown, unconscious.
The Reaper alighted on the floor, retracting the long vines back into his head until they were only a few feet long and it looked as though a strange tree sprouted from the collar of his fine gray suit.
He deposited Mrs. Rose onto the bloody operating table.
Her skin was gray and clammy, but her chest still rose and fell.
The Reaper stood before Silas, wearing the same black cloak that obscured his body. The amberheart hung around his neck, over the gunshot wounds from Percival. Then the Reaper spoke. Its voice was inhuman, like the hissing of thousands of leaves, scraping over one another.
“Restrain her,” the creature said. Silas scowled, moving over to Mrs. Rose. He took the leather straps on the operating table and began fastening them around her limbs.
“You said we were finished,” Silas said.
“We were. But you let Miss Elderwood get too close to the truth. I needed to intervene.”
“I told you that she was off-limits. That you were not to touch her.”
“And I did not,” the Reaper said. The tendrils of his face scraped over one another, an ever-moving web, like some sea creature swaying in an unseen tide.
“You kidnapped her tutor,” Silas said.
The Reaper shrugged. “I need more specimens. Besides, Elswyth needed to be discouraged. I sent the mandrake to discourage her further, and it seemed I succeeded. Lord Devereux is dead.”
Silas paled. His mouth opened, trembling, and closed again. “He was your friend.”
“Sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of greatness.”
Then Silas set his jaw and faced the Reaper once more. “Give me the stone. You’ve held on to it for too long. You know what it does to your mind.”
“No, Silas. No, this time, I don’t think I will. Sharing the stone has only served to limit my work.”
“Then at least let Mrs. Rose go. How many women have you taken now? Are they not enough?”
“If you ever want to see her live again, then no. They are not enough,” the Reaper said.
Silas hesitated, closing his eyes. “You promised me that you would only take criminals.”
“And the law says these women are criminals. Really, Silas, aren’t we beyond that now? Your hands are as bloody as mine.”
“And Mrs. Rose? Persephone?”
“You know why I took Miss Elderwood. And just look at the success I’ve had with her.”
“Success?” Silas said, laughing bitterly. “All you’ve done is mutilate the poor girl. What does turning a woman into a tree have to do with bringing Aranyani back?”
Aranyani, Elswyth thought. The woman in the pool. His dead wife. Is that what this has all been for? To bring her back?
“You do not understand the complexity of what I’m trying to accomplish.”
“Apparently neither do you,” Silas snarled, “or she’d be well by now!”
The Reaper was silent for a moment. When he spoke, there was an edge to his voice. “I would remind you who is in charge here, Silas. Without me, your wife would be nothing but a corpse.”
Silas stopped. Elswyth saw the muscles in his jaw clenching. “Yes, Doctor.”
The vines on the Reaper’s head grew smaller and smaller.
His body—once tall and broad-shouldered—shrank beneath his suit, becoming short and portly.
Finally, the last tendrils retracted until they vanished into skin.
What replaced them was a human face. A familiar face with doughy cheeks and bright blue eyes rimmed by spectacles.
Dr. Gall smiled. “And as for Elswyth, I think I will be the one who decides what to do with her. She is, after all, my wife.”