Ashes to Ashes

by A Lonergan

  "I have to say," Priscella started. "I am impressed. You have done far more than your mother ever did."

  I ignored the comment and continued to sweep even though the area was clean. The entire house had been cleaned as best as I could get it and the animals helped keep it that way while we slept. If Brunhilda had any idea what I was up to, she never said a word.

  "I can't wait to take a hot bath." She turned to me and looked me over. "You are certainly getting fat, which is peculiar."

  "It's probably her body entering into starvation mode. Like a panic." Brunhilda piped up. I was thankful for it, but I couldn't stand to be under her sister's awful glare for much longer.

  Priscella's eyes roamed over her sister. "You don't look too bad. That must mean the food mother sent is doing you some good."

  I watched a bead of sweat roll down her temple. She shrugged. "Most of it was no good by the time I got back home."

  Priscella nodded like she understood before she retreated to her bedroom. After a pause and us both taking a deep breath, an ear-piercing scream rent the air. Brunhilda rushed to the sound while I took my time to get there. She threw a cautionary glance over her shoulder. I straightened my spine as she pushed the door open. "What's the matter?"

  Priscella's brow furrowed and her face filled with color before she launched herself at me. "Where did you put them?"

  It was my turn to frown. "What are you talking about?"

  Her hand flew through the air and connected with my cheek. The blow didn't bring me to my knees this time. It did hurt but there was no chance I was going to give her the satisfaction of watching me go down. Not again. I was stronger now. Brunhilda winced behind her.

  "Where are they?" Priscella shouted in my face.

  "I don't know what you're talking about." I kept my voice even but I wanted to yell back.

  "You think just because they were yours that you could take them back? When you left the castle you lost everything. You have absolutely no rights. And if it wasn't for my mother keeping you alive, I would have killed you myself." Priscella sneered. There was a part of me that was bitter. Bitter she had touched my things. Bitter she had been in my room. Angry that she had trespassed. But at the same time, there was nothing. I was numb to it. What more could they possibly do to me? Taking my past things were the least of my worries, but that didn't kill the curiosity at what she had taken from my chambers. I thought about my handmaidens and hoped they were doing better than I was.

  "Those dresses would have never fit us." Brunhilda said the wrong thing. Her sister whirled on her and wrapped her fingers around her slender neck. "Mother loves to dote on me with her magic. What are a few inches? But that question leads me to believe I had it all wrong?"

  Brunhilda swallowed. "I had no choice. They attacked my carriage. I didn't know what to do."

  "You should have let them kill you." I waited for the laugh, but it never came. Priscella wasn't joking. "I am betrothed after all. I deserve the best and those gowns were some of the finest."

  "The royal dressmaker would probably enjoy making new gowns." I offered.

  Priscella rolled her eyes. "He killed himself."

  That was a knife to my gut. I said nothing and tried to become one with the wall. I wished it would swallow me whole. It was too much. Everything around me was crumbling away. There had been a small sliver of hope. A small sliver that I would get to go home and everything would go back to normal. Oh how wrong I had been. Oh how wrong I had been, how naive.

  Priscella didn't back down from her sister and I didn't know what to do. I swallowed and tried to find some kind of courage even though the woman seemed to siphon it away from me with a look. "If you should be mad at anyone, it should be the men that attacked her. Why aren't you going after them? They probably still have the dresses."

  She laughed as she pressed her palm into Brunhilda's throat. "Hildie was always babied. I am tired of having to pick up your slack."

  Brunhilda didn't fight, she just let her kill her slowly. The life started to leave her eyes and I couldn't stand there. I launched myself at Priscella and her sister crumpled from her arms. It was all I needed to save her life, but when Priscella turned on me I wondered how stupid I had been. There could have been something else, right?

  I shook my head. Probably not. The hulking woman came after me with her fists flying. I managed to dodge them but the next swing she had a knife. I barely noticed the jewels on it as she embedded the blade into my side. I could hardly feel the pain as I fought with everything I had. I clawed at her face as she tried to pull her knife free from my skin. I wouldn't let her do it. I kicked her chest and she flew off of me. Pain exploded in my side but I kept going. I was a fighter and I wasn't going to die here. I picked up the broom that I had dropped and swung it at her head just as she was standing up. The wooden handle caught her temple and she crumbled to the floor. My breathing was labored and I didn't know how much time I had left but I had to get out. If they woke up, they would ensure I would die.

  Probably not Brunhilda but I couldn't risk her loyalties. She had warned me too many times for me to not take them seriously. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the hatchet by the hearth. It was getting harder and harder to move and I knew my time on this earth was limited. I winced as I lifted the tool over my head and swung at the wall I hoped would lead me back to the real world.

  I wheezed as I continued to hack through the wall. At first, the wood wouldn't budge and then after a few hits, it finally started to give. I breathed a sigh of relief, but just barely. My vision was starting to swim and one of the sisters was groaning at my feet. It seemed like I went through four feet of wall before I finally saw sunlight. A laugh bubbled up in my throat. Almost there. I swung again but something behind me caught the hatchet and caused me to jerk forward. Priscella was standing there with her hands wrapped around the edge of the blade. Blood was dumping around her feet but she continued to stare at me like a madwoman.

  "I will not let you leave," she said as she swayed on her feet.

  I launched myself at her and she fell to the floor again. I didn't see where the hatchet went and I didn't care. I would pry the wooden boards from this building if I had to. I kicked my way through the remaining wooden pieces in the thick wall just as Priscella latched onto my ankle.

  Down I went. I screamed as I felt my leg snap. There was no way my leg had broken from nothing, but I couldn't make sense of it at the moment. I had to keep going. With my broken leg and knife still in my side, I kicked the woman off of me and pushed through the tiny hole in the wall. I managed to drag myself a few feet outside of the house before I collapsed.

  Priscella must have been too large to fit through the hole because I heard her yell after me as I tried to drag myself to the woods. "I didn't use my last shred of magic to break your leg just for you to get away!"

  That explained it.

  Twenty-Four

  Alister

  I had gone back to the tree to cover my tracks. At least that was what I told myself. There were no tracks, which I knew before I embarked on this dumb errand. What had me staying by that tree was a completely different story. I heard the wood splitting long before I heard the yelling. A woman burst through the wall like nothing I had ever seen before. Her leg was bent at an odd angle and blood was steadily streaming from a wound on her chest. I sprung to action just as she was dragging herself across the yard. Adrenaline was flooding my body, a branch whacked me in the face but I didn't feel the wound.

  Whatever this woman had been through hadn't been good. She had inches of dirt caked on her skin and her brown hair was matted to her scalp. The stench radiating off of her was enough to kill a man. I was thankful I had brought my mask along. I made sure no one else was coming from the house before I slipped from the trees. I knew I didn't have much time to act and couldn't afford to bring her back to the treehouse like this. She would surely die before we got there.

  As much as I didn't want to remove the decorative knife s
ticking out from her side, I knew I had to. I couldn't travel with it protruding from her body like it was. It could possibly kill her, especially with me traveling through the trees. There was no way around it. I applied pressure to her chest and yanked the blade free. Her body convulsed under my hands but she didn't awaken. I covered the wound and ripped my hood free. I always kept Misuru in my hood. It was a rare moss that grew in the mountains thousands of miles from here. It was found in the deepest, darkest, dampest caves. If taken from the caves too early, it would kill a man with its fumes. If taken too late it would disintegrate anything it touched. I had only been able to get my hands on it because of my mother. A small pang of sadness lit through me at the thought of her. I shook it off and pressed the purple moss into her wound. The herb stunk almost as much as she did. She stirred slightly at the discomfort but remained unconscious. I then managed to get a bandage over the wound and tried my best to set her broken leg with a splint made out of twigs.

  I tried to remain as quiet and quick as possible, even though no one had followed the girl from the shack. I scooped her from the forest floor and tried my best to hold her gently as I climbed the trees. My body screamed in protest but this was what all my training was for. I had done all of this to save lives and that was exactly what I was going to do.

  When I finally got back to the treehouse it felt like hours had passed. My body ached and I was afraid of how the young girl was fairing. John was waiting for me, he took a long drag on his cigar before he looked up. When he did his eyes grew as big as saucers and he tossed the smoke to the dirt. He stomped on it before he took a weary step toward us.

  "What happened? You haven't been gone long..." he trailed off and looked over my shoulder. "You weren't followed were you?"

  I didn't say anything and I didn't make a move to remove my mask from the bottom half of my face. He could see it in my eyes that I didn't appreciate the last question. I had taught most of the men upstairs everything that they knew. I didn't want to sound cocky, but I had been up to this longer than they had. Most of them were farmers. Most of them except John. John who had been one of the royal guards.

  "Don't look at me like that, we need to get the girl up there before someone happens upon us. The bunker is hidden enough, we aren't. If she's important, they will come looking for her." John knocked on the tree twice and a small platform descended from the treehouse. It was a small bed, big enough to hold one person. We had thought the contraption up when Flick had returned one night torn to shreds. We realized there was no way we could get him up the tree with just hidden footholds in the bark. So that night the lift was born.

  I laid the girl on the lift and strapped her down. Her brown hair hung over the side and there was a feeling deep inside my chest. One I hadn't experienced before. I couldn't quite pinpoint it, but the desire made me want to brush her hair from the side. It gave me a protective feeling. I was obviously being delusional, though she did look familiar. But as familiar as she looked, it didn't matter. John knocked on the trunk twice and the platform started to rise. I followed her up on the side of the tree and managed to get to the porch before her body was heaved over the side and unstrapped.

  Flick gave me a nervous look. "Who is she?"

  I licked my lips. "I don't know."

  "You brought a woman back here without our permission? Without our counsel?" Leave it to Rafe to get offended that I was helping someone.

  I rolled my eyes and pulled the girl from the cot. I didn't know what I was going to do with her and as much as I trusted the men around me, I knew there were a few that wouldn't want her here. That wasn't her fault and I needed to make this as easy and pain-free as possible.

  The treehouse wasn't large, but it wasn't too small either. There was more than enough room for all of us now that Tuck was gone. I swallowed back the pain of his betrayal and trudged down the hallway to my bedroom. There were six small bedrooms and an even smaller kitchen. The bedrooms had four bunks each, except mine. I had been the one to build this place, I liked my rest and privacy. With there being four bunks to each room, there was more than enough space for all of the men, especially if they got into disagreements. They could always find another place to sleep. When I had started on this project, I didn't know how many people I would need. I didn't know what I was getting myself into and I hoped that I would have enough space for them all. The trunk of the tree was hallowed out and served even more room. When I thought back on it, I didn't know how I did it. It was all a blur and I didn't like talking about it or really thinking about it either. It scared me to think of it. How had I been capable enough to hollow out the inside of a tree trunk and then make it all functional? How had I been able to build all of this and make it happen in such a short amount of time? If we had been closer to the Meridian Forest I would have suspected magic.

  I kicked my door open and laid the stinking girl on top of my thick blankets. I flicked on the oil lamp beside the bed and leaned against the wall. The Misuru had stopped the bleeding, which was a blessing but I couldn't leave the moss in there forever.

  "Let me have a look at her." Little John said from the doorway. His thick eyebrows were pulled together in thought and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. "You know I worked with your mother and I picked up a few things. I will be gentle with her. Why don't you go take off that damned suit and take a wash?"

  I shook my head. "I don't think it's a good idea for her to see our faces."

  Little John laughed. It came from deep in his chest and rumbled around the room. "Then you will have to lock her in here."

  I shrugged. "So be it."

  "Alister, you can't be serious." He pushed his hands through his salt and pepper hair. His dark skin glistened in the firelight.

  "I am dead serious. I can't risk our men being outed. I have to protect all of you, just as much as I have to protect her. Turning the lock around will keep her safe and the men in the clear."

  John frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  I raised my eyebrows and chuckled. "These men have been stuck with other men for quite some time. You don't think they will get ideas? Under all the grit and grime, I'm sure she's a stunner."

  "You keep your mask. I will keep mine off. The men can easily have a good romp in the Tavern. There are plenty of willing women there." John lifted her shirt up and I turned away. I didn't have a doctor's eye and it wasn't my place to see to her healing.

  "There haven't been many there as of late." I grumbled.

  "You finally took my advice?" he asked as he rummaged through my side table.

  "No." I cleared my throat. "The medical kit is in the bottom drawer."

  John made an agitated noise in the back of his throat. "You should really find a female companion soon. You're beginning to get on my nerves."

  On that note, it was my cue to leave. I could shower down in the tree trunk's base and at least freshen up my suit before I had to face the girl again.

  Twenty-Five

  Death had been within my grasp. I could have taken hold and left the miserable place I had gotten myself caught up in. But a little beam of light pulled me from the dark embrace wrapped around me. I shot up and pain engulfed my body. Everything hurt. My chest pulled and my leg felt like it was on fire.

  "Told you it would work." A little squeak of a voice spoke up from one side of the room. I blinked my eyes in his direction. He was a little thing with a mop of curly red hair. Freckles dotted his nose and cheeks. He held up a magnifying glass and a light contraption I had never seen before. A gloved hand swatted the devices away. His freckled cheeks stained pink. I turned my eyes away from him and found myself looking at various costumes. I rolled my tongue around my mouth, testing it out to speak. It felt like years since I had spoken. Like I had swallowed wood dust.

  "Where am I and what are all of you wearing?" My voice sounded strange, thick almost. I tried to wet my tongue but it did no use. One of the men, or what I assumed to be a man, held out a flask. I eyed it nervousl
y.

  "It's only water."

  I went to take it from his grasp when a man in a green hood snatched it from the both of us and growled, "Everyone get out."

  My eyebrows shot to my hairline and I tried to keep my smart-ass retorts to myself. "You're the leader here."

  "Yes," he said from behind a mask. It covered the bottom half of his face. The top half was barely visible from under his hood, but his eyes reminded me of another time. A faraway time that I didn't want to think of.

  "I thought I died." I said as he placed his hand behind my head and helped me sit up before he placed the flask to my lips.

  "You almost did. Somehow I heard your screams from the woods." The cold water met my lips and I tried to gulp it down. He pulled the metal from me. "You will get sick. Slow."

  I nodded my head and listened to him. He helped me lay back down and I stared up at the wooden ceiling. I didn't feel threatened, but I hadn't felt that way at Tremaine's in the beginning. Had I managed to escape one horror to find another?

  Everything seemed so clean, especially compared to me. I was wearing clothes that didn't belong to me. They were entirely too big and I was still too dirty to be in such a clean place. I could see the grim on my arms and smell the putrid odor coming from my body.

  "When will I be able to bathe?" I asked feeling uncomfortable with the entire situation. They couldn't possibly want to smell me either.

  "Hopefully soon." The skin around his eyes crinkled and I didn't know if he was laughing or scowling at the stench. Either way, I was hopeful that this place would be better than the last place I had been. "But your leg is broken and your stitching on your chest can't get wet. And right now, I don't trust any man to try to help you into a bath, no matter how badly you stink."

  I swallowed nervously. I was in a home with only men. I had never been afraid of men before but now was different. I was completely at their mercy.