Unlovely- A Tale of Madness

by Risa Fey

  The cottage was in a state of disarray, having been neglected since Thaed began his courtship. The voices had not returned ever since he had commanded Them to leave, but she could feel Them waiting on the fringes for an opportunity to pounce.

  Finally, her chipping and carving resulted in something. A tiny hole appeared, leading on to the other side of the wall. Cora gasped and pressed an eager eye to the aperture. After a few tense moments, her shoulders deflated and she dropped the knife to the ground beside her.

  “What do you see?” Thaed asked.

  Picking at her ragged fingernails, Cora rammed the crown of her head against the wall in front of her. “Only the portal to a fairy kingdom.”

  Thaed could just make out the patchwork of the sofa in the living room on the other side of the hand-carved aperture. He said nothing to disprove her hallucination. “Amazing that it’s been there this whole time.”

  Cora threw her arms down in frustration, knuckles striking the carpet. “Maybe for a little girl who still believes in fairy lands—but it’s not where I want to go.”

  “And where do you want to go?” Thaed’s tone lilted up with intrigue.

  “To your dimension, obviously.” She turned around and sat with her bird-like legs swept out beside her. “I want to be with you.”

  “You’re never going to be. Not by trying impractical things like that, anyway.”

  Cora pondered that for a while, but, to Thaed’s surprise, she didn’t ask any more about it. Instead, Cora remained sitting on the floor, gazing at him for another hour or so longer. When darkness fell, she retreated to her bed and summoned him into her dreams right away.

  CHAPTER 12

  A LARGE MIRROR stood against her bed, supported from the back by a stack of boxes. Cora watched it throughout the following night, gazing at Thaed’s profile while he lay with his arms folded underneath his head and talked and talked. Somehow she managed to keep pace with the conversation, although she seemed unable to comprehend the words they were exchanging. Their conversation seemed to go on and on with a muffled fluency she could not decipher, and they laughed together, and she blushed and giggled, and he cast her sidelong looks that made her feel increasingly self-conscious.

  When Thaed finally fell asleep, she clung to a pillow, pretending it was him. She debated allowing herself to fall asleep and call him into another dream. They had made love plenty of times already, but he never lost the ability to make her forget that she was ugly.

  Cora didn’t think she would ever get enough of that reprieve; maybe she enjoyed it more than she did the actual sex. But she loved just watching him as well, especially when he was unaware of her staring.

  Her eyes glazed over as she relived the feeling of his mouth drifting all over her face and down her body… But then his voice startled her out of the abstraction.

  “As much as I enjoy our playing together, you don’t have to call me over.” He smiled. “There are other ways we can be together that don’t involve dreamwalking.”

  Bemused, she fluttered her eyelashes. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Resting. Not sleeping.” He yawned. “I was listening to your breath, and listening to the wind.” He grinned. There were tiny creases around his eyes she hadn’t noticed being there before. She only belatedly realized how mature he looked for all his youthfulness, and she imagined she must look like a shapeless child next to him.

  Thaed yawned again and stretched an arm behind his head, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with his other fist. “Meeting in your dreams isn’t the only way for us to be together,” he iterated. “There are other ways…”

  His words were meant to prompt her curiosity, but Cora didn’t ask for any elaboration. She pressed her hands and nose against the glass, and he propped himself up onto his side. With the point of a finger, he painted a dazzle of stray light across the air, and it combusted into a drove of ruby fireflies.

  Their abdominal glows gave off a reddish light that stained Thaed’s white skin to a bloody color. He could not help but smile at the amazement coming over her. The quiet humming of wings filled the room, the beetles winking like an array of gemlike will-o’-the-wisps.

  “For a magician, you sure can do amazing things,” Cora whispered faintly. “That’s better than pulling a rabbit out of a hat.”

  “They don’t teach you magic where you come from?”

  She shook her head. “Why would they? Magic isn’t real—although some people like to pretend.”

  “‘Isn’t real’.” He snorted with a disapproving grunt. “That’s like saying love isn’t real.”

  In the next moment, their eyes locked.

  Cora felt her pulse thrumming wildly in her throat, and her heart felt like it was being squeezed and cut off from circulation.

  She wanted to kiss him. But the fireflies between them made the shadows on his face shift and warp, creating illusions of monstrosities that couldn’t possibly be real. There was almost something demonic about his beauty, the way deformations seemed to take shape and then crumble away the closer that she looked.

  The fireflies’ translucent wings refracted a whole spectrum of lights over his skin. The remnants of his so-called magic glittered like a cloud of dust between them, creating a lucent haze that made her feel drowsy.

  Cora snuggled against the mirror as close as she could.

  Thaed did the same.

  Their hands came together over the surface in synchronized fashion.

  One of the paper-winged fireflies ripped through the glass like a stone dropping into water. Its ruby glow turned Cora’s already red face to a deeper scarlet.

  Thaed put his forehead to the glass, and she did the same. His lips caressed the glass, and, again, Cora did the same. She could feel his breath—or was that her own?—but the mouth she kissed was flat and cold and one-dimensional.

  She drew back and opened her eyes. His irises looked like coruscating jewels, the blue halos overlaid by the red stain coming from the fireflies.

  Another one of the fireflies jiggered in a confusion, hurtling towards the barrier in a tailspin. It plopped straight through the glass, emerging onto her side where it spiraled up into the rafters. Its wings were ragged, eaten up by smoke, and the vibrant glow of its body was consumed by a mysterious fire that ignited out of nowhere.

  The insect disintegrated almost instantly. Smoke drifted into the inglenook as Cora sluggishly became aware of the fact that the barrier had been breached.

  She asked, “Why haven’t you come through the mirror?”

  Thaed shot her a sharp look.

  “If there’s a way for us to be together, like you say,” Cora went on, feeling like she was starting to get what he had meant by ‘other ways’, “then why haven’t we done it?”

  “What do you think my intentions have been this whole time? I wouldn’t be going after you if I didn’t think there was a way.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, Cora shrugged her shoulders. “I guess I’ve been expecting things to just continue on the way they’ve been. That is, so long as you didn’t end up revealing it was all a joke between you and your jerk-off friends.”

  “I don’t have any friends that would think breaking a pretty girl’s heart would be funny.” His tone was mildly offended.

  “I guess I also thought maybe you were just trying to make me feel better about myself, out of pity.”

  “Or it could be that I’m in love.”

  She had been expecting him to say that. “But you’re so handsome,” she argued feebly.

  “I’m aware of how I look, Cora. And I’m also aware that I want to be with you for the rest of your life, and even in death.”

  “Aren’t there any pretty girls where you come from?”

  Thaed shrugged. But that got the unspoken point across. There were definitely plenty of pretty girls.

  “It’s hard to imagine you’d choose an ogress like me, over someone better.”

  “The fairest maidens come from the farthest kin
gdoms.” He flashed her a charming smile. “And I’m afraid the heart can’t be dissuaded from what it wants.”

  Cora picked at her nails nervously. “I…I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

  “You’d probably think I’m lying, then, if I told you I’m afraid of the same thing. You don’t sound too keen on things becoming official between us.”

  She kept her eyes down. “I would have to be stupid to not want that.”

  “Likewise.” His smile then was impossibly endearing.

  Cora wiped at the tears bubbling out from the corners of her eyes. She sniffed, her nose reddening with a new kind of ecstatic embarrassment.

  The first firefly that had infiltrated her room looped slowly into an unseen cobweb. It strained its wings, wriggling its abdominal segments in the effort to break free of the sticky threads. But the more it struggled the more tangled its appendages became, and the more alert the spider was to the realization that it had caught something.

  The insect’s light dimmed into shrinking pulsations, and the spider stirred curiously at the quivering of its web.

  The spider crept furtively from thread to thread, then stopped and waited on the fringes of the insect’s glow. It examined its prey with flexing mandibles. And then it pounced, wrestling the plump beetle into docility. With dexterous arms, the spider wrestled and kneaded the firefly into swathes of sticky thread, and it wove an impermeable cocoon that flattened its wings and crushed its limbs.

  The spider wasn’t hungry yet, but it gloated over the free meal nonetheless. It would save the hearty blood for another day.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE ANIMALS THAT Cora saw outside the window looked like they’d been painted by a surrealist. They were strange and grotesque-looking, with limbs and tails that were too long, and maculated fur that was stained with blood and dirt. Their skeletons were oddly shaped, elongated so that even the foxes, rabbits, and roebucks resembled lissome ermines.

  Ivory ribs poked out through the flanks of some of the animals, but they didn’t look to be disabled or in pain. Deer sleuthed through the woods on hooves of translucent diamond, and the patterns of their fur were variegated, kaleidoscopic in their vibrant hues and contrast. Birds swooped through the branches with unnaturally long wingspans and tail feathers of rippling streamers. The rabbits’ teeth were overlong, eyes filmed over and milky like pearls from an oyster.

  Stray hounds roamed through the woods, eyes reflecting red, their hackles raised perpetually on end. They pawed at the outer walls of Cora’s home, as if what they sought was stowed somewhere inside, but Cora never let them in.

  The dogs dug at the foundations of her cottage and sometimes waited in the thickets for the door to open. They frightened her, their hungry heaving and bloodstained teeth deterring her from even looking outside when they were near.

  Thaed assured her that the hounds didn’t stalk the woods after midnight, and so she relaxed whenever the hour struck twelve o’clock. Apparently, they were off chasing other quarry with their master, and so she didn’t have to fear being outside at that hour.

  “Who’s their master?” Cora asked.

  But Thaed refused to divulge that information. The leader of the pack was a private man, and Thaed would not contribute to any whisperings behind his back.

  That seemed reasonable to Cora, who disliked gossip herself. But she thought it was odd for Thaed to imply she might gossip with someone. She also thought it was odd that he would be disinclined to allow her to report the band of vicious dogs. After all, they had already destroyed some of her property and might one day kill her.

  But beyond her momentary doubts, Cora didn’t worry anymore about it.

  One evening, she sat in her nightgown up in a tree, braiding the yarn-made hair of a doll she had found lying around the cottage. Her back was propped against the tree trunk. Two black hounds circled the underbrush below, throats rumbling wetly with predatory menace.

  She didn’t have so much as a pocket mirror on her, but she knew Thaed was somewhere with her, probably sitting on a neighboring bough.

  Thaed was always with her, filling the atmosphere with his presence, brushing her hand at a sly moment, murmuring hypnotically at her ear when she least expected it. It was like being in love with a ghost, and it hardly upset her anymore if he wasn’t immediately within view, since she knew that he was always there.

  The moon was gibbous and a ruddy brown color that tinged her skin to rust. The clouds grew thick, blurring the silver stars out of existence. Birdsong accompanied the sigh of the rustling leaves, skipping notes and missing its rhythm. The two dogs below Cora salivated as they stalked through the moldered leaves around the bole, waiting for her to fall into their jowls. But when they heard the keening whistle of their master, they abandoned their victim and pelted off to join their pack on a midnight hunt. The sound of thundering paws receded into the woods.

  “You never did ask me what the other way is,” Thaed said after a pause.

  Cora tied a little rubber band at the end of a new braid. “What do you mean?” She had already forgotten the conversation from the day before.

  “When I mentioned we could be together without dreamwalking.”

  Cora laid the doll down in her lap. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “I did. You ignored every time I brought it up.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed.

  Thaed’s silence seemed to indicate satisfaction at her remorse.

  “So… what’s ‘the other way’?” Cora asked. Even though she trusted him more now than ever before, she was still on her guard, her defenses up.

  “Once I tell you, you might lose faith in me,” he said.

  “Why would I lose faith?” It was her way of telling him to just explain already.

  A tense interval of silence.

  “To be perfectly honest,” he said, “it’ll be difficult for someone like you—someone from your mundane world—to understand.”

  She didn’t like being treated as if she was stupid. Nettled, Cora formed her small hands into fists. She squeezed the doll in a wobbling hand, and her bulging veins showed blue through the white-rust of her knuckles.

  “Why wouldn’t I understand?”

  “Because you aren’t used to magic,” he explained, “and the whole thing is going to sound counterintuitive.” He was speaking quickly now, sotto voce, having picked up on her feeling offended. “You might question my motives when I tell you the truth.”

  Cora was practically leaning off the bough toward where his voice was coming from.

  “Do you see?” he went on, rather uneasily. “You’re already suspicious of me…”

  “I’m not suspicious—if you would just tell me already.” But before he could answer, a loud knocking interrupted their exchange.

  Cora’s head jerked around toward the front door.

  —The front door…?

  Disoriented, Cora’s blood went cold as ice. Everything seemed to spin before her eyes—baubles of light and dim globes of shadow. Only a split moment ago, she had just been sitting up a tree. Now, she was on the sofa’s arm in her living room, a heap of dolls strewn all over the floor.

  The knocking came again, this time more adamant.

  Climbing off the sofa, Cora paused from another spell of nauseating vertigo. She should have been falling from a tree right now. Her brain had not yet fully comprehended she was on the ground and in her home; it was still reeling with confusion.

  Cora opened the door and found herself face to face with Mr. Philips. His shaggy hair jutted out in all directions, and his skin was sallow as if from disease. His garb—overalls and a flannel shirt—was muddy and shredded in places, and his pouched eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Mr. Philips.” She blinked in bland surprise. “I thought you were…” Dead, she wanted to say, but caught herself. Instead: “What are you doing here?”

  Sweat trickled down his wrinkled brow, mingling with a stream of blood coming f
rom an unseen wound upon his head. He almost looked dead, but obviously wasn’t.

  “After you left,” his voice was arid and crackled with the strained effort of speech, “I tried to find your house, just to see if you were alright. I figured it was some kind of panic attack that you were suffering from, but…” His breathing was labored, as if there wasn’t enough clearance to let the oxygen into his lungs. “…my car broke down on Rendling Road. And even though I figured I could walk the rest of the way, I still got lost.”

  Got lost on a straight road? she thought.

  Cora wanted to shut the door in his face, but knew she couldn’t. If anything was wrong with Mr. Philips, or if something happened to him, she didn’t want to be the first one to be suspected or blamed for it.

  The old man’s eyebrows climbed slowly up. He gaped around the outer darkness in a state of calm bewilderment.

  “I feel like I’ve been walking around in circles for a century.” He wheezed. “But eventually I found your house… Didn’t know that it was yours, actually. All I wanted was some help. But I am glad it turned out to be yours, after all.” He grinned, eyes unsteady but still bright behind the spectacles. His parched lips seemed to purse and pucker thoughtfully, but then they drew back from ear to ear into a sort of deranged grin.

  Cora recoiled at the horrible sight of it, but she still held the door open with her fingers.

  Something’s loose in his mind, she thought skittishly. A wobbly screw. Better not let him catch me unawares. Better not let him know that I know something is wrong.

  Cora adopted a heartfelt expression of concern. “But, Mr. Philips, it’s been days since the incident.”

  The old shopkeeper coughed dryly. His unfocused eyes veered from her and landed on one of the mirrors behind her shoulder. Mr. Philips froze, staring into the glossy depths with an evolving expression of one who was looking into the pit of Hell itself. The look of terror on his face shrank gradually into a scowl, before warping into a stupor of bemusement. His eyes widened, and he was so gaunt and pinched-faced that he looked just like a desiccated skeleton: all eyeballs, with only a tarp of fragile flesh stretched over his brittle bones.