Bluebeard seemed to grit his teeth and then he dropped the key back into his shirt and took a step forward, pulling the elk to follow him through the door. I opened my mouth to protest but then shut it with a click as he disappeared into the rippling view of – whatever it was he’d stepped into. It wasn’t sensible to fear something just because it was foreign and hard to see, and yet I felt shivers of dread as the elk stepped forward.
“Whatever pain you’re feeling, Lady Arrow, will be nothing compared to the madness of stepping through that door,” Grosbeak said, cackling to himself as if he wasn’t stepping through with me.
I clutched the saddle horn as my face hit the bubbling surface and I gasped.
Someone was screaming so loudly that I couldn’t process any other sense. Screaming, and screaming and screaming.
I looked to the side and saw Bluebeard smiling at me. He was speaking, but I couldn’t hear him through all the screaming. And then his head fell off, rolling to the ground.
What happened next wasn’t precisely a series of events or visions. When they passed, I couldn’t have described any of them later, but I had the sensation that I had experienced a hundred tiny horrors. My hands shook as if they could remember something my mind did not, and my heart was heavy and laced with a sadness deeper than I’d felt before.
I jumped at the sound of the elk’s feet on the gravel below and my wide eyes came up to see Bluebeard – with his head on again – trying to speak to me.
After a moment, I realized that the person screaming so hoarsely was me.
I stopped abruptly, but I couldn’t entirely calm myself. Instead, I was making tiny little keening sounds one after another. Bluebeard seized my face between his hands.
“Izolda,” he said sharply. And then, again. “Izolda!”
I managed to stop the hysterical sobs so that they were only very heavy breathing.
“There, see? I told you it wasn’t so bad. You’re still mostly sane.”
He laughed in a way that made me wonder if he was.
Then, he let go of my face and I realized I had tears running down my cheeks. They stung in the cold. On either side of me, Sparrow and Vireo were hunched in the shadows, eyes staring into nowhere, their expressions dull and aching.
“It’s almost dawn,” Bluebeard said, not even waiting for them to snap out of their mirrored shock. “We need to move.”
Chapter Sixteen
Our elk were standing on a wide, flat blue stone, snow drifting over it like a bridal veil. The moment that Bluebeard’s elk stepped beyond it, the stone disappeared and a crash like cymbals made me startle despite the pain of my back.
Angelic and harsh all at once, a choir began to sing, their voices first soft and then growing louder and louder, containing within them the anticipation of spring which slowly rose into the blast of dawn light scouring the earth and from there into a roar as though a tempest were rolling across the horizon. While I saw no owners of these voices at all, their song overwhelmed me. I caught very few of the actual words, except for the occasional “glory,” “power,” or “prince.” But I didn’t need to hear the words. The very tone spoke of magnificence, of fealty, of worship.
The chorus combined with my pain to leave me in a trance-like state of feverish dizziness.
As the elk stepped farther, nearly dancing in his precise steps, red and white petals fell out of the star-bright sky, filling the crisp air as if to celebrate the entry of a conquering prince into a great city. They fell around, in front and before us, creating a carpet of petals for the elk to walk on.
I blinked hard, sure I was hallucinating through the searing agony I fought in my daze. But when one of the petals landed in my lap, I picked it up and stared at it through glassy eyes. It was velvet soft and fragrant between my fingers.
We emerged into a thickly wooded area wreathed in white snow. The world became bright in a strange, too-white way that was nothing like sunrise or noon.
Before us, something like a white marble altar stood and at its center, a single all-white flame burned. Within the flame, a brilliant white arrow was stuck into a jagged stone.
To my shock, my husband leapt from the back of his elk and ascended the steps of the altar in a way that seemed both reluctant and reverent all at once. He bowed low, making obeisance with a gesture and the flame seemed to flicker in greeting. All at once, the singing stopped.
“And so Wittenhame greets her princes,” Vireo said wryly.
My shock must have shown on my face. “What is that?”
He snickered. “The Wittenbrand. The white flame? Did you not know of it before? Teeth of the gods, but mortals are a stupid breed.”
There was an irritated tick like someone had tsked out of the side of their mouth and then Bluebeard was there beside me.
“Watch your tongue, Vireo, or I’ll feed it to Grosbeak.”
“I shall eat it with relish!” Grossbeak said from behind us and I shuddered and then froze. Even that tiny movement brought tears of suffering to my eyes.
Bluebeard mounted behind me and Vireo’s voice was a little more respectful when he said, “Welcome home, Prince of the Wittenbrand.”
Bluebeard grunted. We were moving again before he began to whisper to me.
“Let me tell you a story, wife of mine.”
And I found that the words of his story seemed to ease the pain of my wounds, so I listened intently.
“The Wittenbrand are called so for the great White Flame of the Wittenhame. No one can tell how the Flame came to be or why it shows favor to some and not others, but all here respect the flame or see ill luck follow. And it is whispered from nurses to their charges and from the lips of mothers to daughters, and the words of fathers to sons, that one day, blood will be spilled on the Wittenbrand. The brand will turn gold and on that day a great hero will arise and he will pluck that arrow from the stone and he will be marked with white and chosen by the Wittenbrand to lead the people to an age of glory.”
I wanted to know if that meant people went around slicing their fingers and touching the flame to see what happened. It sounded like the kind of fool thing people would do.
Bluebeard sounded chagrined when he said, “Of course, I’ve been with the lads to test if anyone’s blood could change the flame or pluck out the arrow. They make a bit of a game of it from time to time – particularly now at Eventide.”
Of course.
“And it is said that when the Wittenmarked one comes, he will bring us milk and honey to eat, and all will dance for ten years in joy at his coming.”
“Tell her another one,” Grosbeak said from the back of the elk. “One that’s not old and dry from the telling. Played-out stories are no way to win a lass.”
“Perhaps if you’d stuck to stories, you’d still have your head,” I growled.
Bluebeard laughed, a lovely, tinkling laugh, and then he whispered to me, “And the Wittenmarked will marry the finest woman of the Wittenhame, for she will have been revealed to be true of heart and pure of spirit. And all the land will see peace once more.”
As he finished his tale, we left the thick woods, the elk still walking on fallen petals and through heaps of soft snow. We took a turn in the path and I gasped at what was laid out before us.
The forest had not melted away from around us, rather, it had gotten larger so that we were as mushrooms on the forest floor. Around me, between the massive boles of the trees, were the oddest houses. They were small and crooked as if made and then left to dilapidate. They grew moss and fungus all over them, and each was moving. One was strapped with a great band to the back of a toad. Another seemed to walk on four legs of a pair of storks. Yet another, rumbled happily on the back of a painted turtle larger than a palace.
Bluebeard whistled and a house fluttered over to us, half flying and half hopping across the ground. It had grey, tufted bird’s feet and a pair of wings on either side that looked like ruffed grouse wings. It was a tall, twisting affair, thatched on the roof and co
vered all over with thick chartreuse moss and clinging lichen.
“Here we are,” he said, and leapt from the elk, snatching Grosbeak’s head from the back of the saddle and tying it to his belt by the hair. Then, he gently lifted me from the saddle.
I moaned at the movement. My back was pure agony. My vision swam with the pain as he eased me from the saddle. For a bare moment, I could hear nothing, and I missed the orders Bluebeard was giving his men. I had the sensation of movement as my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my jaw clenched even tighter, and then he was carrying me up steps. I opened my eyes in time to see him opening a round blue door painted with constellations and then he carried me inside.
“None can cross the threshold of a Wittenbrand house without invitation or magic,” he whispered in my ear and despite the agony I was feeling, there was also a little thrill at his words. “In my home, you are always welcome, wife.”
He was surprisingly tender in how he welcomed me – or perhaps my senses were merely dulled by pain.
He set me on my feet, and I stumbled to one side, catching myself on a tree – an actual real tree – from which coats and hats were hanging. The inside of the house was much larger than the outside. At any other time, that would have bothered my sense of order. Right now, it was just one more thing I observed and then ignored. Pain has a powerful way of concentrating the mind so that all else seems but a needless detail.
This room was so full of things – shelves stacked so full of books that they were jammed in every which way and crammed into every gap. A series of stuffed birds lined up on the top shelf and arranged in order from largest to smallest. A stuffed wolf beside the bookshelf that I was certain was looking straight at me. Beside him, a window as tall as me was thrown open, but the view from outside it was not at all the view from where we had just left. It showed mountains drifted with snow and bright stars above, swirling with color. The curtains to either side were deepest blue, dappled with silver. And after a moment I realized the silver in them was actually little lights winking and twinkling at me. I’d only examined half of one wall when Bluebeard set Grosbeak’s head down on the bookshelf and began to throw off his bloody clothing.
“And now you choose,” he said, tossing his sword into an urn as tall as my waist and carved with mostly-naked men grappling with dragons. I would have found them shocking any other time. Right now, they were merely another useless detail. “I can stitch your back with silver thread, and it will heal quickly and soundly, but it will pain you. Or, we can spend a day of yours and I can heal you instantly.”
The jacket was next. He tossed it to the floor as if it were nothing. And then his white shirt – stained with blood. Should I be worried that he was undressing before me? I couldn’t remember. There was only the pain and the time before the pain.
He whipped off his white shirt, gathered it with the jacket, and walked past me to where an open hearth contained a merrily dancing orange fire.
He threw the clothing in the fire, tugged off his boots, and threw them in, too. They went up in bright red bursts and coiling black smoke and then a puff of smoke filled the room. The fire made a sound like a belch and said, “Thank you.”
I must be losing a lot of blood. I was imagining things. Like how utterly beautiful my new husband was without his shirt. He wasn’t a large man, but he was all corded muscles and white silvery scars from the waistline of his leather pants to his closely trimmed black hair.
“I bet you’ll choose a day,’” he said, stripping off his stockings and sending them into the greedy flames. I could have sworn a flame that looked very much like a tongue licked them up. “But before you do, think hard, my wife.”
I was starting to like it when he called me that. No, that couldn’t be right.
He turned his silvery eyes to me, and they glinted brightly, reflecting the dancing flames. “A day is a precious thing. Who can say how many you have been allotted? It is easy to spend them like water for trinkets, only to realize too late that you’ve used up all your precious days on nothing at all.”
He plucked a twisted red bottle from the tangle of a human skull and a shed snakeskin wrapped in a string of pearls above the fireplace. Unstoppering it, he poured a single drop onto his fingers and then promptly began to smack his day-old blue beard with his hand. The scent of cloves and cedar filled the room in the most appetizing way. Having done that, he ran his hand through his very short hair like a bird preening its feathers, and then replaced the bottle.
I was still staring at him with wide eyes when a raven flapped down and landed on his shoulder. I gasped and looked up. And up. And up. I could not see the ceiling of this house. What I could see was a chandelier made of deer antlers and strung with black pearls and dripping yellow candles. And ... was that an orange cat sitting in the chandelier, hissing at me?
Bluebeard smacked the raven away, irritably.
“Not now,” he chided. “Report later.”
“I’d take the day,” said Grosbeak from his spot on the shelf. He sounded oddly content, as if he was resting now that he had been set on a shelf. “Pain is never worth the price. What is one day for the loss of it?”
“You tell us,” Bluebeard said easily. “You are out of days, so you would know best.”
“I’m not out of days, I am simply short one body,” Grosbeak sniffed. “Don’t you want to ask me ‘Who sent you?’ or ‘Why did you try to kill my new wife?’”
“I never ask questions I already know the answer to,” Bluebeard said, smacking the lintel over the fire with the palm of his hand. A hidden compartment sprang out. I didn’t think my eyes could grow bigger, but apparently, they could. He drew out a spool of thread, that was indeed silver, and a needle that looked to be made of the same material. “Make your choice, wife.”
I bit my lip. Even if this thread really did heal me quickly, I would still be in pain the whole time. And what would that be? Weeks? Days? Or I could give a single day and it would all be over.
My head throbbed with the agony of my shredded back and sweat slicked my forehead. But Bluebeard was right. I did not know how many days I had left. What if I offered just one and then I missed something important?
I pointed to the thread and the half-smile he offered me was triumphant.
“Up on the desk,” he said, gesturing to a desk the size of two beds stuck together. It was heaped with parchment and quills, ink bottles and books. Books open. Books shut. Books on top of parchment, and under parchment, and in stacks, and in what might have been stacks before they fell into whatever they were now.
I stared at the mayhem. There was no way to get up on that mess even if I wanted to. The raven fluttered down and landed on the edge, tilting its head at me.
Bluebeard looked from my wide eyes to the desk and back, and then he stepped forward, and very gently removed his cloak from my shoulders and threw it into the fire.
“Thank you,” said the fire.
“This will hurt,” Bluebeard said, and he almost sounded sorry for that. But then he lifted me up so suddenly that I couldn’t even catch a breath, flipped me in his arms so I was face-down, and leapt.
The leap was impossible. A man his size could not leap into the air from a standing start with a full-grown woman in his arms and land on a desk higher than my waist.
But here we were.
He laid me down on the heaps of papers, and then with a rip that made my cheeks suddenly hot as a sizzling day in summer, he smoothly separated the back of my lacy nightdress all the way down to my waist – and I could only hope no farther.
From the shelves, Grosbeak whistled, and my face grew even hotter.
“Only three claws tore your back,” Bluebeard said, ignoring Grosbeak and sitting beside me on the desk cross-legged as his gentle hands worked their way down the slashes on my back. “One is barely two inches long, but the others are longer and deeper.”
He breathed across my torn skin and his breath felt cold like the first snows of winter. I shivered.
“Easy now, wife. Easy.” He ran a hand over my head and hair as if calming a snorting stallion and then he reached for the needle and thread. “They’re horrible wounds, but we’ll soon have you stitched. I have marks like this myself.”
I remembered those scars, decorating his whole body like netting.
I felt the bite of his needle when it entered my skin, and I clenched my jaw against it, feeling a fresh wave of nausea kick through me and sweat slicking my fists and face in a wave. Had he stitched many people before? I wished I could ask him and hoped he would say yes – because it would mean he knew what he was doing – but also no – because then this would be a rare thing around him instead of a regular occurrence.
The room swam. I tried to look at the papers right under me to keep my mind from dwelling on what he was doing to my back. They were poetry, I thought. One was some ode to snow on tree branches and another one described the wonder of frost on window panes. I had expected something more along the lines of bribe letters or threats. The poetry surprised me.
I lifted my head just a little and saw a door behind the desk that seemed to lead into a dark corridor.
“I wonder how many rooms are in this house,” I said a little faintly.
“Best not to ask,” said Grosbeak from the shelf. “In a Wittenbrand house, that might change with his mood. It could be large as a palace today and then just this room tomorrow.”
I was starting to think I was in a world where I didn’t know the rules. And that worried me.
“This is not a very sensible place.” I felt like I was pushing through a heavy quilt just to speak the words. “Where does the food come from?”
“Dreams and dreamers,” Grosbeak replied glibly.
“Not farms and farmers?”
“Now, what would we want with farms?” Grosbeak asked. “The people on farms are dull. They do not dream of flying like a bird or being gutted by a unicorn. Their thoughts are entirely of crop rotation and putting up carrots for winter.”
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 11
