The Sparrow King #6
Damiana knew well from her father what might come next, and though fury like she’d never known welled within her, she held her tongue.
Ansel’s behavior left her one conclusion—she must leave before things got worse.
The last of the healing herbs her mother had taught her to use would be ready for harvest at the next turn of the year.
That is when she would go. She had a week to find the courage to press outward, to move beyond the garden gate.
Each day she walked closer to it when Ansel left for the village—to spend their money, to cavort with his cronies—she knew not what he did and it hardly mattered.
She pressed onward, knowing her very life depended on her ability to face this irrational terror.
It felt as though the gate repelled her, but she became accustomed to the feeling.
After three days, she began to revel in the pain of facing her fear.
Whatever this poison was within her, she would alchemize it, make it into something she could use.
The spark that had been lit within her when she met Sparrow, and went out when they no longer wanted her, came back.
It flickered into a tiny flame, but it was all Damiana needed.
When the time came, she would walk through the gate.
Another week spun out before her, the Equinox drawing near.
Damiana made peace with the idea that Sparrow could never have been her place to run.
They were too different, she supposed, though all the evidence in her mind spoke of how perfectly they fit together.
She ignored those thoughts, and tried to focus on the strength she’d gained in their arms. In their company, Damiana had not only found pleasure, but love.
And to her great joy and dismay, the love she’d found was not Sparrow’s, but her own.
With this realization, she began to scheme.
Deep within the forest, there was an abandoned hut, a haunted place that sat on chicken legs.
Though she longed for the stone house by the bubbling brook, the spider-silk hammock, and her starry-eyed lover, Damiana made ready to leave.
She hid supplies in the goose-coop, and began the work of harvesting her garden, carefully marking in her mind which plants to take, and how long she had to harvest them.
On the morning of the Equinox, Damiana was ready to harvest her mandrake root, and the last of her herbs.
Deep winter would have boded better for the mandrake’s future, but she could wait no longer.
Once gone, Damiana planned never to return, so she went to the garden.
Damiana’s fingers trailed over the foxglove she hadn’t had the heart to pull out, as she had collected seeds.
Her plot of mandrake looked to have been disturbed.
It was the closest to the fence that surrounded the cottage, and so she had not been near it in some time.
Damiana nearly growled to see the ground so disturbed.
Mandrake had been sacred to her mother, and though she had not made use of its properties in some time, it was sacred to her as well.
Once away from Ansel, Damiana had thought to become the forest hag that was said to lurk behind the haunted hut’s doors.
The idea had become quite dear to her, and to see one of her most precious roots molested filled her with a rage she had never let become manifest in the past.
But now it rose within her, that tiny flame inside flaring to a righteous blaze.
Damiana screamed at the carelessly tossed earth.
Her mandrake was gone. Her art was gone.
Ansel had done this. She fell to her knees and began to dig.
Perhaps there was some part of the plant left.
It was a resilient little root, and if she could find even a bit of it, she might be able to coax it back to life once she reached the hut.
Her fingers dug into the ground but instead of finding her beloved root, struck metal.
She yanked it out to find an iron stake deep in the ground, right at the perimeter of her garden.
The metal was cold enough to burn her fingers.
Damiana dropped the stake, gasping as she clutched her wounded hand to her breast. She looked closely at it, but there was nothing unusual about the stake, other than the fact that it did not belong buried in her garden.
That, and the revulsion she felt just looking at it. That too was strange.
Using her apron, she picked the horrid thing up and tossed it toward the empty goose-house.
And then she went for a shovel. Once she had the one from the garden shed, she began to dig, finding iron stake after iron stake, all around the edge of the property.
All in all, there were twenty-eight and she tossed them behind the goose coop, where she could no longer feel the effects of their presence.
As soon as the last one hit the ground, she heard the familiar scamper of little paws. Galin.
She turned and crouched, squeezing her eyes closed as she reached out her arms, hardly daring to hope.
The polecat scrambled into her waiting embrace, nuzzling her face.
We were so worried, the little creature said.
He put the stakes into the ground and we couldn’t reach you and you didn’t venture out. Why didn’t you come to us?
Damiana opened her eyes to stare at the pile of iron in the distance and like a bolt of lightning striking true, she knew.
The stakes were meant to keep her in, as much as they were to keep Sparrow and Galin out.
Ansel knew that she had found solace elsewhere.
He knew about Sparrow. Her stomach turned, wondering if her brother had watched the two of them together in the forest. She pushed Galin from her arms as the contents of her meager breakfast rose into her throat. She vomited again and again.
Get it all out, Galin urged her. He has been poisoning you with his hatred.
“And iron,” she spat, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Though she did not know how Ansel’s foul betrayal had worked, she understood all too well what he had done. “He trapped me,” she whispered, heart full of rage.
Come away with me now, begged the polecat. I’ll take you to Sparrow. They’ll fix this. They’ll make him pay.
“No, little one,” Damiana said, soothing her friend. “I will fix this myself. Ask Sparrow to meet me tonight at the festival. If they’ll meet me by the fires, I’ll come away with you both.”
I’ll deliver the message, the polecat said with another quick nuzzle and then she was off.
Damiana walked to the forest where she’d tossed the stakes and gathered them into her apron, then stuffed them into the hollow under the goose house.
She covered the places where she’d dug the stakes carefully, creating a large pile of weeds in the wheelbarrow, evidence of a long day of gardening and nothing else. And then she waited for her brother.
He returned before sundown to wash and change clothes.
Of course, he planned to attend the Equinox celebration in the village.
Damiana wondered again if he had found a wife.
Surely he must have, to be spending so much time in the village.
If he was not courting, or working, what else could he possibly be up to?
The answers to that question were not ones she wished to meditate upon.
Instead, she paid close attention as he moved about the cottage, dressing in his finest clothes.
They were made from expensive cloth, by the tailor in town, not by her hands.
Clothes he had purchased with money made from her art.
She felt sure then that he must at least be attempting to impress a potential wife.
“Might I come to the festival with you, brother?” Damiana asked when he was finished dressing.
“What would be the point? It isn’t as if you have someone to watch the fires with.” His words were pregnant with lies. He knew quite well she had someone to not only watch the fires with, but to couple with next to them.
“Neither have you,” she said, her words a blade that she hoped cut deep.
But also, she hoped he might reveal something of what he’d been doing. Despite the fact that she was desperate to be out of his clutches forever, he was still her brother. Some part of her still wanted to know him.
“How would you know?” he replied, eyes beady and mean.
Damiana saw him for what he was, how small he’d become.
Not in stature, for he was the same height he’d always been, but in every other way that counted.
The last sparks of curiosity she had about the boy she’d grown up with faded.
He was no longer any version of himself that she might care for, if he ever had been.
After their mother’s death, their father had made certain that they would never be close.
He’d taught him the ways of a village man too well for that.
“I suppose I wouldn’t,” she said as she retreated to her chair by the hearth for the last time. “I will stay here.”
“Have something ready for me to eat when I come home,” he commanded as he pulled on a pair of new gloves.
They were made from the finest leather, embroidered with the same vibrant thread Damiana had seen on the richest men of the village.
There was no way Ansel could have afforded them on the pittance she’d imagined her art selling for.
Her forehead wrinkled, her guts roiling with disgust. Had she been making him wealthy, and not even known it?
He glanced at her, his lip curling into a mirror of her revulsion. At the very least, in this they were the same. “I’m glad to see you finally weeded today. The garden had started to look a mess. Honestly, Damiana, I don’t know what you do with your time.”
Her anger crawled through her like a hulking beast made of flame, stalking, crouching, waiting to spring. Not now, though. Later. “I don’t know either,” she murmured as she watched him leave.