by Karen Nilsen
"I don't care about that," I interrupted, my patience exhausted. "I apologize for the indelicacy of the situation, but unfortunately your father can no longer act as Safire's guardian, so the responsibility falls to you."
She began to weep again, and I cursed myself. I had to remember she was a young lady and a virgin, her most difficult decision likely what frock she put on in the morning. Of course, since I was shut up with her, she had to be a loud crier. Her sniffles, sobs, and wails reverberated off the ceiling, while I clenched my jaw until it felt like I'd cracked a tooth. These Long Marsh people would be the ruin of us, with their crying and apoplexies and inexplicable fits and witchery and utter stubbornness. "My lady," I finally said through my teeth. "My lady, please . . ."
She looked up, her eyes so puffy it appeared she was squinting. "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I just can't . . ."
"That's quite all right, but I do need you to turn your attention to the matter at hand. Now, your sister should marry. As soon and as quietly as possible."
Dagmar straightened, clutching the arms of her chair. "But she's in no state to marry."
"She's in no state to remain unmarried," I retorted. "She could be with child for all we know."
Dagmar sniffled again, and I braced myself for another deluge. Somehow, though, she managed to dam it this time. "But what man will have her like this? She can't even speak the proper vows . . . forgive me, sir, but it would be cruel, both to her and the man she marries. She's not in her right mind."
"All the more reason she needs a legally bound protector. I'm not saying it has to be a true marriage, at least not for the present. But it should be legal, in the happenstance that there is a child."
"But what man will have her?" she repeated.
"Leave me to handle that."
"He must be kind, patient . . ."
"Just leave it to me. All I ask is for your acquiescence and discretion."
“I’ll only agree if I remain her primary guardian, and she stays with me until she‘s herself again. I do fear she‘s,” she faltered, “she’s with child. The stigma of that would ruin her life far more than a marriage in name only.”
“You’re a sensible girl, and your terms are acceptable. Do you agree then?”
After a minute or two, she nodded, daintily blowing her nose into the handkerchief. I took a deep breath, my first deep breath in four days. The Long Marsh harbor and Dagmar’s dowry were ours, and Merius and his inheritance were safe from scheming witches. Finally, this absurdity would be at an end.
Chapter Sixteen--Safire
It was warm here. I floated through the fluid darkness, brushing against vague shapes. Every once in a while, a shaft of light pierced the waters from far above, blinding me. When I blinked, the light retreated. I often tried to follow it, the tiny star racing away far above, becoming so small that it seemed at times to be imaginary. As I kicked upwards toward the star, the water grew colder and colder until I could not feel my body anymore and I was forced to stop struggling and float back down to the warmth and the darkness.
When I slept at the bottom of the lake, I had strange dreams. In these dreams, I was in a bed chamber with whitewashed stone walls, richly carved oaken furniture, and a window through which I could see a walled orchard and wooded hills rolling away in the distance. When the window was open, I could hear the roar of the sea far off. Sometimes I was alone in this dream, but often there was a brown-haired girl with a round pleasant face and rosy cheeks. She helped me wash at the porcelain basin and ewer. One time she handed me a scrap of paper and a pen; I drew a pretty canary in a cage for her since she sang with the birds chirping outside the window. She spoke to me often, telling me of her widowed mother and her brothers and sisters, who all lived in a tiny thatched cottage beyond the hills and raised gray geese for market. I never spoke in these dreams, but my lack of response never seemed to bother the brown girl, as I came to think of her. Colors swirled around her like autumn leaves caught in an updraft, golds and oranges and reds and browns, solid, comforting hues that left the smell of cinnamon in the air.
Other people came in the chamber sometimes. A thin, sharp-featured blonde with nervous hands who called me sister and cried when I didn't answer. I embraced her and drew her pictures because I felt sorry for her. Poor thing. An aged apothecary appeared one day in a battered black hat and tattered cloak, his wooden chest rattling with many bottles and packets of herbs. He examined me carefully, his eyes resting on my face so long that I finally looked away. If it hadn't been a dream, I would have told him he shouldn't stare at people like that, as if they were no more comprehending of his presence than a sick animal. He was kindly enough though, and I drank the concoction he gave me. Dream medicines couldn't hurt, after all.
In the dream after the apothecary, two other men came. The taller one I had seen before, and I shrank against the window at the feel of his gray chill, wondering if this was to be a nightmare. The other was young, with limp brown hair and an uncertain step. He seemed to need the elder to tell him what to do. After they consulted for several minutes, the younger moved toward me and picked up my hand. I let him, watching his eyes. They were wide and blue-gray and fearful as he lifted a cool band to my finger. There was already another, far lovelier ring on that finger, a swirl of gold and pearls with one green stone set in the middle. When he tried to take this ring off in order to make a space for his band, I snatched my hand away. He turned to the tall, gray man.
"What should I do, sir?" he asked.
"How do you think it's done? Put the ring on her finger."
"But she won't let me. There's another ring already there--she won't let me take it off."
The gray man stepped nearer, and the younger moved quickly aside, as if he was afraid to be too close to him. Before I could draw away, the gray man grabbed my hand in his, his grip surprisingly warm. When I tried to escape, his fingers tightened, and I gasped.
"Be still now, wench," he warned gruffly. I glared at him, but he pretended not to notice. A flicker of something--sadness, though I couldn't imagine this man being sad for another--passed across his face as he examined the ring on my finger. "Merius, you damned fool," he muttered. He dropped my hand without touching the ring.
"What was that, sir?"
"Nothing." Sparing me one last glance, the gray man turned away.
"But what should I do with this ring?" The younger man held out the band.
"Put it on her other hand."
"But, but, sir, it's supposed to go on that finger. Tradition . . ."
The gray man chuckled, a mirthless sound. "You sound like a woman. That's an old wives' saying, what finger the ring goes on. It'll do the same job on another finger, Whitten."
I clenched the fingers of my left hand together tightly and hid it and the gold and pearl ring in the folds of my skirt, just in case they decided to take it after all. It meant everything to me, though I couldn't remember why. It was like a flower from a long ago summer picnic pressed between the pages of a book and not found again until winter when all had been forgotten. My inexplicable joy when I touched the ring was almost as faded and fragile as that long dead flower, but it was the only memory I had, and I clung to it. In the confusing swirl of days and nights that followed, I touched the ring whenever I felt unsteady. It was the most solid thing here in my dreams.
Long after, perhaps weeks, I floated back to the dark and warmth and awakened. I touched the ring again, feeling the ridges and smooth curves of the pearls and the sharp edges of the peridot. Peridot--who had told me about the peridot? I hadn't known it was a peridot in the dream, so someone must have told me. But there was no one else here. And if the ring had been in my dream, how could it be here too? The ring was real . . .
The sudden flash was terrible and wonderful in its swiftness. A high, stony place, the blue sky all around, and my love standing before me, nervous and awkward, his hands stuffed in his pockets as I turned the ring between my fingers. "That's a peridot," he said in a voic
e like pipe smoke, smooth and dark and low. "They're hard to find here, more common in Sarneth or Marenna." He shuffled a little, glanced down at his boots before he looked up again, his gaze locking with mine. "When I first met you, I thought your eyes were the exact green of peridots."
"Merius," I whispered. "Merius." I tried to breathe so I could say his name again and again and again until I saw him, but then I remembered I wasn't breathing. I couldn't breathe here. I was under water.
I began to choke, for the first time noticing that I was drowning, had been drowning for God knew how long. Kicking, flailing my arms, I pulled myself up, fighting for the surface. The water grew frigid as I rose, soon burning my skin with the cold fire of ice. She was here.
I froze and instantly began to sink back to the depths. For a moment, I let myself go. It would be so easy to retreat to the dark warmth and forget, not fight her anymore. But that would mean forgetting Merius again and likely never remembering him.
I struggled against the weight of the water over me; my muscles burned with the cold. The water was almost ice up here, cold enough to make my heart stop if I quit moving.
She was above me, pushing me back down. I punched her, shoved her away as I fought for air. We were so close to the surface that the water was clear, and I could see her hair waving in long golden snakes, her pale, beautiful face contorted in an open-mouthed fury. Her long fingers closed around my neck. I clutched my hands together in a double fist and drove them between her arms, forcing her to release me. She scratched my leg in an attempt to grab me as I escaped her. Only a fathom more . . .
I hit the surface, my knuckles cracking and bleeding against it. Solid ice. In shock, I wasted a precious moment drifting, the air in my lungs so stale it seared. I longed to exhale; the burning was so intense I could think of nothing else. I began to pummel the ice, the thought of the fresh air just inches away consuming me. That was how she found me again. She laughed, grabbed my foot, began to pull me towards her, her grip even colder than the frigid water around us. I did a somersault, kicking at her in my madness to escape. She terrified me even more than drowning. My foot hit the ice, and it cracked. I kicked it again, and it broke. I whirled around, digging at her face with my heel. She screamed and let go of my foot as I broke the surface, my ribs expanding as I took that first painful breath, a rebirth.
I opened my eyes, coughing. A painted wooden ceiling loomed above, three circles of light chasing each other over and around the broad beams. Candle flames dancing in a draft--that was what made the circles of light. There was a feather tick under me, a silken squared quilt over me. I stretched and yawned. The ceiling was quite pretty; a deep red with golden flowers and green vines painted around the crevices of the beams. We had only one painted ceiling at home, and it was an ugly thing; it was supposed to look like marble, but whoever had done it had stopped halfway through, leaving it a hideous chalky blue. I had always wanted one painted as the night sky, with a midnight blue background and a crescent moon and a scattering of silver stars. Perhaps when Merius and I had our own house, I could paint the ceilings.
Where was he? I turned my head. The pillow beside mine was flattened in the middle, like someone had been there not too long ago. Maybe he had gone for food. I had the vague feeling I'd been dreaming about him, some nightmare with a snake-haired woman and drowning, but I couldn't seem to remember anything before that. Where were we, anyway? An inn, perhaps? Gilgana? He had said he would be docking in Gilgana when he returned, so maybe I had met him here. But why couldn't I remember? I giggled nervously--it was one of those things we would be laughing about in a few minutes when he came back to the chamber, how I'd woken so disoriented that I couldn't recall where we were.
I pulled myself up, paused as a slight wave of dizziness hit me, then swung my feet off the bed and on to the floor. There was a washstand in the corner, and I went over to it, wincing at the cold boards under my heels. Maybe if I splashed some water on my face, I would feel myself. It was that damned nightmare--it had been so awful that I couldn't remember anything before it. More and more images flashed through my mind as I filled the basin from the pitcher. That evil woman, with her blond snake hair and her grasping hands, the icy water burning my lungs, the mad struggle to reach the surface before she drowned me--it had been so real. I set down the pitcher and put my palms to my face, my knees suddenly weak. She would have killed me. She wanted to kill me.
"Merius," I whimpered. "Merius . . ." I sank against the wall, telling myself over and over again that it was just a nightmare, that Merius would be back soon, that everything would be fine.
I lowered my hands, wiping away tears and feeling a fool. Crying over a nightmare like a child--what was wrong with me? I clasped my arms around my knees and shivered a little from the cold floor, wishing Merius would return soon. At least he would know where we were. What grown woman became so flustered by a nightmare that she forgot where she was?
I shook my head and rubbed my hands together to warm them. The rings on my fingers clacked against each other. Rings? I held out my hands. There was Merius's ring on my left third finger, where it was supposed to be. But on my right hand there were two golden rings I had never seen before. One was a twisted band, a traditional betrothal ring. The other was a seal ring, a large flourished L with vines twined around it. The Landers insignia. I slid it off my finger and examined it more closely. It was a perfect fit like it had been made specially for my finger, so it couldn't be Merius's ring. Besides, he had given his seal ring to his father before he left for Marenna. He had told me that the last time he had come to me with a headache, that he had just spoken to his father about the campaign and had given up his ring. I had kissed him then and we had fallen back on the bed and talked about how we would make our own House together, how the seal ring would have a pear on it since that was what we had survived on the last week, stealing pears from the kitchens between our trysts. Then Merius had laughed and grabbed me and said that his headache was gone just from talking to me and that he wanted to get started making the House right that moment.
I smiled and then sighed, even more impatient for his return. I glanced around the chamber, rubbing my bare arms. Surely he would be back in a minute or two. He wouldn't have left for long without telling me where he was going. Of course, I couldn't remember anything before waking up here, so maybe he had told me where he was going and I just had no memory of it. Gulping over the lump in my throat, I clutched my knees to my chest. This might not be Gilgana at all. This could be anywhere, for all I knew. I closed my eyes and hid my face against my knees, shivering. My mind desperately pawed over the contents of my memory. Bidding Merius farewell in the court stables, sobbing in the coach on the way home, yelling at Father as he burned Merius's first letter, Strawberry nosing my palm for more sugar lumps, Boltan teasing me, Landers Hall at night, Mordric . . .
I paused at the thought of Mordric, mulled over our conversation. He had threatened me with Father's debts and Dagmar's betrothal, I remembered that much. The chamber had been cold, I had made some remark about a window being open, and then . . . then she had come. I had sensed spirits many times--there had been several at court, in fact, one of them a little girl who had died of a fever in my chamber forty years ago and had awakened me once with her cries for water. That one had disturbed me more than the others because she had been so young and pitiful. Mostly, though, I could ignore them--Mother had told me long ago that they wouldn't hurt me and that I couldn't help them, that they were just moving portraits of those who had died that only she and I could see. They became part of the scenery after that, no more remarkable than the paneling or the drapes of the chambers they haunted. Until that night in Mordric's study.
The attack had started with her laughter, stabbing like an icicle in my ear. There had been a sudden, splitting pain in my head, cold, sharp-nailed fingers at my neck, and oddly enough, the smell of roses everywhere. I choked even now, remembering that smell. It had been so sweet and pervasive that I had
almost vomited--there had been no air left to breathe, just the roses. That she had wanted to hurt me and could hurt me had been clear, and I had realized then that there were things Mother either hadn't known or hadn't told me about our hidden talents, a fact that terrified me as much as the malevolent thing attacking my mind. She had dug her claws into my brain, whispering that I had pretty hair, so pretty that she would like to rip it out.
The tears came unbidden, streaming down my cheeks as I remembered. She had said other things, terrible things, about how I was a lowborn witch whore who wasn't fit to have Merius walk on my grave and that I was a halfwit if I thought Mordric or she would ever let their only son marry a wicked chit who should have burned at the stake years ago. All the while her icy fingers kneaded my brain like bread dough, the cold tingling through my entire body, a frostbite that seared all the way inward to my heart.
That was my last clear memory, hearing her laughter and cringing from the chill. After that, there were a few jumbled images and feelings--Father carrying me like I was a child again, the familiar terror that he was on the edge of apoplexy, a brown-haired, brown-eyed servant girl I had never seen before, drawing a canary in a cage on a scrap of paper, and the nightmare that had awakened me in this strange place. I looked around again, trying to place something, anything in my memory, but the only thing familiar about this chamber was my trunk at the foot of the bed. My hand on my collarbone, I took several deep, shuddering breaths in an attempt to calm myself. Wherever I was, a panic was not going to solve anything. After all, Merius might return at any minute--he could help me figure out what was wrong. Keeping this hopeful thought firmly in mind, I reached behind me and grasped the edge of the washstand as I stood.
As if in answer, footfalls echoed outside the door, and a key rattled in the lock. I shut my eyes for the briefest moment and muttered a prayer of thanks as the door opened. But the man who entered the chamber was not Merius.
