She climbed the stairs, pushing snow from all the windows, and came back down to spin around slowly. She watched beams of light pour inside to ignite pink tones in the dull brown walls, and she remembered the hearts she had in her satchel. She went up the stairs across and to the left of the passage, opening her satchel and placed one of the hearts on the top shelf. The organ's pulsating beat sounded against the hard surface and ricocheted off the opposing wall, doubling the rhythm with its echo. She reached into her bag and pulled out another and set it on the shelf below. Then she went to the opposite stairs at the right of the passage and emptied her stash to the shelves directly across the other two hearts. Back on the ground, she stood in the center of the tower and closed her eyes. She smiled listening to the rhythms of dissonant pulsing. This cave was the perfect cache and now it was hers. She came back whenever she had hearts to hide.
She could hear her lair beating from far away, riding through the forest in the violence of its final bloom before winter came and stripped the trees bare. She had a good hunting season and hadn’t been here in a long while. Her satchel was heavy, slung over both shoulders. She dismounted and went through the passage to the cacophony of sound.
The den was filled with hearts beating along the shelves curving to its peak, but there was no harmony. They pulsed in different rhythms, with varying tones and speeds. Some rocked steady in a low hum, others had a rapid beat and a high pitch, while others skipped and changed pace and tone until skipping again, their beats doubled in echo. The inner chamber was a symphony of dissonance, a massive yowl vibrating through the tower.
Several lay silent. She took the hearts that were far from the freshly dug graves of their deceased and dropped them in her satchel. Then she replaced the dead with the living. She stepped down to the center and closed her eyes, letting the riot of noise pulse through her. She turned in circles, her ear attuned to the individual pulses and remembered the men from which they came. She saw again the disdain in their eyes, the sneer of their lips, and the arrogant tilt of their chins. She could never resist the superior ones who believed they were invincible. All of them held their hubris dear until the last moment. They were humbled when their hearts beat in her hand, panic in their eyes just before their light went out.
She savored the roar. The violent pulsing filled her up with its chaos, but the relief was short before her hunger was provoked. Once the hollow inside her breast started to throb, the pressure increased until she could bear the pain no longer.
She scanned her collection, waiting for one to grab her attention. Her gaze kept returning to one of the seducers. Her memory of the Rogue was as clear in her mind as the night she rode away with him, leaving the Marquis and his daughter behind. She was surprised he was calling for her now so many years later. He must be ready to die.
She took her time eating. Her empty space soothed with each bite and grew quieter with each step she took down the corridor to the world outside, the hearts screaming when she left.
About the Author
Montgomery Mahaffey is a fantasy writer who has told her stories all over the country. Alaskan winters shaped Mahaffey as a writer, and her work is built off of the myriad of personal and collective experiences formed underneath that mystical landscape. Born in the south to a family of storytellers, Mahaffey has developed her own voice that is suffused with the temperament of the wanderer instinct. Set in a world where magic is at once subtle and pervasive, her novels bring to life symbols and stories of the old fairy tales told with wry humor and passion. In 2005 she was granted the Individual Artist Project Award from the Rasmuson Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska. Ella Bandita and the Wanderer is her first novel.
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