8. Chapter 8
“I didn’t know you could handle blades that well,” Serich said as we stripped off our soiled clothing back-to-back by a dismal little stream we’d found snaking through the wood.
Even coursing water in this place was silent, the surface calm as death.
An ancient tree with monstrous, muscular roots stood beside it, more of those disgusting pulsing mushrooms growing like tumors from the bark.
I don’t like this one, It said.
I heard. My answer was flavored with more than a little exasperation as I flung my shirt to the earth. It had complained about Serich relentlessly as we’d staggered from the slaughter. You don’t like him because he wears a collar.
He’s much too surprised to learn a woman is just as capable of wielding a blade, It said, as if surely I should understand its distaste if I had any sense at all.
You can’t possibly hold that against him.
I ripped off the weapon belt at my waist which held up the pair of pants I’d had to borrow from Serich’s dead father.
It’s not so much a thing in Monde’s End.
The boys in Monde’s End were taught rudimentary self-defense, in the unlikely event the creatures of the wood ever broke free. The girls were taught to hide.
Where I come from all women can handle a weapon, It said as I unearthed a mound of fresh clothing from my satchel. They often have more that needs defending.
Bully for Hell. I tugged a tired old shirt over my head. Gray and utterly shapeless, but at least free of reeking roses.
“I meant no offense,” Serich said uncertainly when the silence had stretched on too long.
“And you’ve given none. It grew bored, eventually.
” I balanced awkwardly as I hopped into a fresh pair of pants.
“It taught me things. It must prefer knives because that’s the only weapon I’m really comfortable with.
And when throwing them at targets grew too easy it made me take aim with my eyes closed.
Blotted out my sight because It thought I was cheating. I can hit the bullseye blind now.”
I didn’t think you were cheating, you were cheating.
“Are you decent?” Serich asked, rustling around behind me.
It gave a disgusted little groan that I ignored, fumbling with my belt. “Just about.”
Serich turned to face me, working his arms into a gray shirt, dark muscle bunching at his shoulders as he pulled it over his head. He knelt by the stream, where I joined him.
“My father taught me what he could.” He cupped his hands beneath the water and let them fill. “More than what they taught the rest of the boys back at home.”
I blinked through the water sluicing through my lashes and streaming down my face. “And yet you chose to wield the collar.”
“There’s more than one way to fight the wicked,” he said as he rinsed the blood from his hands, wearing the sort of smile that would send the girls in Monde’s End swooning.
At the back of my mind, It ruffled leathery wings, sighing long and loud. I wanted to smile, but I hid my face in a rag instead, patting myself dry.
Is this what you find attractive? It said, as though vaguely disappointed in me. This sanctimonious clot?
He’s sweet. I paused, considering. He’s objectively good looking. I’m not saying I’d like to marry him. He was attractive, that was all. I’d be blind not to notice.
Maybe he’ll read to you from the Good Book later. Really get you wet.
I felt a screamingly scarlet flush stain every white inch of my skin. If you had a face, I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, I would slap it.
Its only answer was a laugh.
A snatch of birdsong rode overhead on a wisp of white fog.
The sound was cold, funereal, and sent a few fingers of my own mortality drifting up my spine.
If the birds were waking, dusk would find us quickly.
I glanced around the wood. Stirring animals would be on their way to their water source soon enough.
I cast another nervous glance up at the boiled gray sky. “We shouldn’t linger much longer.”
“We should rinse these first.” Serich flicked a hand at the lumps of soiled clothing.
I wouldn’t, It said. Keep the blood. They say it has healing properties. You might need it at some point if you insist on seeing this through.
For all Its rude comments, I was glad of its return. With Its guidance we moved swiftly, though it led us in circles for a while.
I haven’t gone looking for it since I was a child, It said irritably when it sensed a question rising. For all I know it’s caved in and you’ll have to build a nest up in a tree.
That It had ever been a child was difficult to reconcile.
I’d always sort of figured it had burst into life fully-grown, irascible and impertinent.
But It knew of a small cave that would be our best chance of shelter for the night.
I didn’t give voice to my growing fear of the steadily darkening air, the chirps of awakening birds, but I had never been able to hide much of anything from It.
Not much further, now. Its voice may have been frighteningly inhuman but I felt a comforting sort of chill in my blood all the same.
The terrain grew wilder, knotted with vines that snarled over our boots and rattled like bones when we shook them off.
We trudged through mud, brush, nettles, and thorns over a shaggy rug of dead leaves.
Shadows, contorted and flickering, chased after us.
Branches snapped, brambles clawed as we shrugged through the overgrowth.
White lichen colonized this little-trod section of the wood, and tree bark pressed in around us from all sides, silvery and sloughed off, like shedding snakeskin.
And there it was when the entangled wood spat us out into a tiny clearing, a dark hole hewn into black rock, the opening draped in a veil of greenery. Judging the depth proved impossible. Whether it was currently occupied was another matter entirely.
Serich must have been thinking the same. “Will it be empty?” He slung his satchel to the ground, squinting down the cave’s black throat.
I felt It shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll have to check.
“I’ll do it.” Serich took his falchion in hand after I related the news. “Stay here.”
You’re better with a blade than he is, It said as I watched Serich disappear inside. Yet he’s so quick to dismiss you.
I’m not that great in close quarters. I can throw them all day but I’ve not had much practice fighting intimately.
Is it petty of me to hope he’s wandered into a nest of murderous rabbits?
Yes.
I resign myself to pettiness.
I loosened a blade from my belt in case I had to run in there after Serich, but his assessment was a quick one. “It’s very, very small,” he said, ducking out from the hole. “We’ll be cramped.”
“I’d rather be sore and uncomfortable in the morning than dead.”
Serich started off back the way we’d come, calling over his shoulder, “I’d feel better with a bit more cover at the opening. I’ll grab some of those boulders from around the corner.”
I gazed around at the clearing, revolving on the spot. The ground beneath my feet was a soggy mulch of dead leaves and twigs, the rock our cave was hewn from glimmering wetly even as the light died. You came here a lot as a child?
Sometimes. To hide from one of my brothers.
He was cruel to you?
He’s a demon. A bit of cruelty isn’t really abnormal.
I’m sorry, I said, after an arrhythmic pause. But It dismissed my sympathies with a brusque little noise, as if I’d said something so moronic It was embarrassed for me.
A conspicuous patch of red caught in my peripheral vision, and I turned to find a rose bush, a shock of scarlet against the dark face of the wood, inexplicably growing despite the utter lack of sun in this place. The petals weren’t fanned in full flower but barely budding, drenched with dew.
How can they grow to look so healthy? I asked. Or even grow at all? Most plants need sun, and it never shines here.
They’re not the roses that you know, It said, bored, as if it were buffing its talons against its chest. They’re called bloodroses.
For the color?
They only grow where faerie blood’s been spilled. The part of the wood where that coven almost ate you will be buried in bloodroses soon enough. Some say they tell your future.
I felt my brow crease, a chill roaring through my veins. How?
You prick your finger on a thorn. The rose changes. Something like that. I’ve never been interested in prophecy, myself.
I heard Serich’s labored breathing puffing from around the corner, but I took a step toward the bush.
It clucked sharply in my head. I wouldn’t. Everyone wants to know their fate until they actually hear it. Sometimes darkness is better than the light.
“What’s the matter?” Serich stopped just behind me. A loud thud told me he’d managed to haul back a boulder.
I nodded at the bush. “It says the roses can tell your future.” Would he scorn them, I wondered, since fate and prophecies had no place in the church?
Serich joined me at my side, devoid of scorn, just a thoughtful frown upon his face. The roses seemed common enough, despite where they grew. It was hard to believe they were capable of anything. “How can that be?”
“A prick of the finger. The rose changes.”
He sent me a sly sideways glance, looking more like a slick devil than a priest. “And you’re tempted?”
“Aren’t you, a little?”
“Maybe a bit,” he said, with a glimmer of a smile. “Though you’d think whatever answer it gives you is open to much interpretation if it can’t use words.”
He knelt to examine the roses, their fat velvety buds. Petals red as a freshly opened artery, silken edges the deep burgundy of wine. And then Serich looked up at me and smiled, pricking the edge of his thumb against a thorn.
I bit back my surprise at his boldness and sank to the earth beside him.
We waited for a few heartbeats, hardly daring to breathe, but it seemed as though nothing would happen.
And then it began to change, rising taller and taller, lush furry petals ripening in full flower.
The stem grew thick and strong and twisted, ridged with fiendishly spiny thorns.
More buds sprang from the side of it, branching off into separate flowers which shared a common root.
And then those roses grew roses, more and more and more, a network of stems and thorns and petals, and when the one Serich had pricked his finger against began to shrivel up and blacken, another bloom took its place.
His lips parted as he watched the next oldest roses cycle through the process and eventually wither, though new buds kept bursting into life. “What does it mean?”
Not so devout, then, It said with amused and crushing disdain. His seed will certainly take root.
“Maybe that you’ll have children?” I tried to say it as though it were a good thing.
Serich looked like he’d been blindsided by a punch. “I’m taking vows when Father Hull returns, Des. I can’t imagine I would break them so easily.”
“Why would it be such a bad thing if you did?” I asked gently. “Would that change what you believe? Of course not.”
He was still frowning at the bush as if it were telling him lies. “It’s meant to be a sign of our dedication.”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t still be dedicated if you had a family.”
He climbed to his feet, and the bloodrose seemed to decide that he had looked his fill. Collapsing, it crumbled into dust.
Serich tipped his head back to the agitated sky, which was curdling into a slightly deeper shade of gray. “We need to get inside. Did you want to take a turn?”
My pulse quickened. I felt my heartbeat in my throat as I stared at the bloodroses. They stared back, beckoning. Did I want to know? I did and I did not. I was far too scared to learn the truth yet too afraid of being left in the dark.
I held out a hand, debating. Yes, no? Stay, go? Quickly now. Night was spilling over the wood, the beginnings of the fogs seeping up from the pores of the earth.
I pressed my thumb against a particularly wicked-looking thorn before I lost my nerve.
The rose drank in my blood, considering.
And then as one, all the petals fell off.