The Hangman's Daughter

by J Lily Corbie

  My greatest guardian strutted to and fro before me, pausing at each turn to cast his dark eye on me. The other two were each by my elbows, nipping affectionately at my hair. I didn't dare question them by then, but worries still found their way into my chilled mind. What if they were tired of carrion and had taken a mind to hunt and were then waiting for me to perish in the cold? I wondered; would I be left there, not so very far from the village, until the birds had stripped away my flesh? Would I be forgotten until I was discovered in some distant future as bleached bones beneath the changing sky? I couldn't imagine myself piled atop the other corpses in the graveyard, to be thinly covered over and left to stink into the air of the churchyard. I couldn't imagine my father casting me into his fire, either. I knew he wouldn't leave me mingled in the soft ash with my Henry and all the other victims of his gallows.

  The raven to my left interrupted my thoughts by flying up to land on my shoulder. I didn't look up until he nipped at my ear. He took off as soon as I lifted my head, guiding my gaze to a woman spinning in the moonlight. The quiet of the winter's night seemed itself to be her music, and the flutter of my heart to be her drumbeat. She wasn't looking at me at all, nor even at the black bird circling her round as she danced with a sort of abandon utterly condemned in the town.

  I had never clearly seen the stranger lurking on the edge of the woods. I couldn't explain my conviction, but I knew the cloaked and hooded figure watching me from afar and the dancer were one and the same.

  The bird to my right fluttered his wings, then settled on my shoulder. He pulled at my hair, and I barely felt it when he pulled out the strand as he flew away to join his brother. As he circled her, I saw her hand close. She held the strand of my hair as she danced, and I was powerless to do aught but watch.

  Her skin glowed in the star's light like moonstone, and her hair was like thick, dark heart blood. She moved with such a grace that it made my heart ache, and I forgot my sorrows there, watching her move with such priceless ease. She wore a cloak of the same pale shade as her skin, and a dress as unforgivingly white as the untouched snow.

  My final guardian cocked his head at me, then flew up to land on my knees. I thought he, too, would desert me, but he stayed there, alternately watching the mysterious woman or me. We were so engrossed in watching her that it seemed neither of us realized how close she'd drawn until she held her hand down to me.

  I started and stared up at her. Her eyes were brighter than the moon sitting at her shoulder. My father had been proud of his eyes and mine, in their icy blue, and I thought he might covet this woman for her gaze. I couldn't see any of the rest of her: I just felt my soul being willingly engulfed by a shade of silver the same as the stars, so deep it was the coldest of blues.

  My guardian turned on my knee, brushing my cheek with his beak. The touch broke the spell and I blinked. He leapt from my knee, not spreading his wings until he was cleared from us, and I found I had the power to lift my hand and set it in hers.

  I expected her to be hard and cold, but the fingers curling around my hand were soft as silk and warm as if she had been standing before a fire. She drew me back to my feet and wordlessly smiled. I stood mute and let her catch my other hand.

  I had danced before: wild, impromptu dances with my father that rocked the house in its foundations and sent my mother to hide in another room. I had laughed and spun as a child among the spilled bones and swirling ash in the cemetery. Still, I did not know how my feet found the shapes and followed her steps. She kept her hands on mine, guiding me as gently as the ravens had. I danced with her until my laugh echoed up to the stars, and hers followed mine, as rich and heated as her skin. I danced and spun until my hands slipped from her grasp and I collapsed on the dead grass and snow, unable to move my senseless, frozen limbs.

  A frown touched her lips, and she bent over me. Her fingers all ended in very long, curved nails, and when she stroked my cheek, it felt as though the very tips of them laid me open to the bone. I tried to turn away, but stopped at her voice.

  "No. You will rise."

  I was helpless to do anything but follow her command. Fear, pain, sorrow...those were all new in my life, and I had been struck by all of them for the first time that day. The renewed burst of fear left me dizzy and sick, but my great guardian landed on her shoulder and peered down at me.

  If he trusted her, then so would I. I was utterly out of strength, and when I gathered myself to my feet again, it was without grace. Her hands caught my shoulders before I could slump back to the ground. Her expression was all tender concern as her knuckles brushed over my bruised cheek. She looked as though she was seeing me for the first time. Her lips moved without making a sound and her cloak opened.

  I had marveled at how the color so perfectly matched her skin. I realized then it wasn't the same color through some lucky trick of dyes. I only had a moment to think the wind was blowing very strangely before the shape of her cloak and the way it moved finally resolved before my eyes into leathern wings. I felt beyond surprise, and only passively leaned against her when she drew me to her and closed her wings around me. Heat encircled me, and her hands worked at my arms, forcing life and warmth through all my body until I felt my eyes drooping.

  "Not yet," she whispered. Her arm wrapped around my waist to support me, and felt strangely more flexible than an arm only crooked at the elbow could. Her other hand teased through my hair, breaking away ice crystals that hit my shoulders and melted on her wings. As she started to walk, her fingers found the back of my neck, and she petted me softly. Her nails still felt like they were cutting me open with every touch, and I constantly expected to feel blood trickling down my back. I followed, ready to do anything she wanted so long as she kept holding me.

  My raven guardians followed us, and I thought I spied the pale-bodied owls watching us from the trees. She picked her way across the meadow, and when I stumbled, her hand caught mine. I could still feel her arm around me, and her hand buried in my hair and stroking the back of my neck. I was too cold and too weary to question why she seemed to have an extra arm and so only lifted my feet in turn to follow her gentle pressure on my arm or back.

  As a child, I had never been free to explore, and I had never played with the children from the town. All the townsfolk kept a safe distance from me. So when the ground opened at the edge of the trees, I did not know if it was a cave known in the town, or one of the curiosities of the land considered forbidden or cursed. I couldn't have cared: heated air swept out into the wintry air in coils of steam. I was grateful when she opened her wings and led me into the welcoming dark. When I proved I could support myself, the arm about my waist slid away.

  Within only a few steps, we met with dangling beads, behind which pale blue light glimmered. She drew the beads aside and gently pressed the small of my back to guide me through. Torches in sconces on the walls woke when she stepped through, and my three guardians swept into the chamber, finding perches as though they lived there. The air was perfumed with summer flowers--jasmine and honeysuckle and sweet wisteria--and just a tang of sulfur, like the wind when it blew past the blacksmith's and to my window.

  "Isabella." Her voice felt like the velvet I imagined hanging behind the stars, and it did things with my name that made me grow weak. I was somehow no less surprised she knew my name without asking than I had been by her wings.

  "I...you--" I began.

  "Astrael," she supplied.

  I only nodded, not protesting when she caught my shawl and pulled it from my shoulders. I remained passive even when she picked at the shoulders of my nightgown, and lifted my arms when she drew it over my head. I found myself standing bare in her strange room, but lacked the spirit to do more than stand where she left me until I heard rustling and roused myself enough to turn around. Her white gown was pooled around her feet, and I could only stare. I had seen myself bare in my little mirror, but I'd never seen another person unclothed. My gaze swept over her flawless skin, and her soft, rounded curves.
Her breasts and hips were heavy, tapering to her waist. Her hair was a brighter, fresh blood red than I had thought while she was dancing. Her skin had a warmth to it I hadn't seen under the moonlight, and she had sweet pink nipples that hardened in the perfumed air.

  She smiled, and I saw that her teeth were strangely long and sharp. My gaze traveled up, and I found horns hiding in her curled hair. They were short and curved and wickedly pointed. My knees already felt weak when I saw something move behind her. She had a long tail that she'd kept hidden underneath her dress, and when my senses tried to leave me, it moved around her as though it had a mind of its own and wrapped about my waist. Immediately, I recognized the feel of it.

  "Isabella." I looked up at her, and she stepped close enough to kiss me gently. "Come."

  Her tail remained around my waist as she led me to the back of her chamber, where water bubbled up from the ground. I could feel the heat radiating from it and sighed. She stepped into it, pulling me with her. As soon as the water closed around my ankles, the numbness left my feet. For only a heartbeat after, they pained me.

  I looked down to discover my bruised and torn feet were pale and whole again. She led me deeper into the water, and her tail tightened about me, so I sat when she did. The water then came to our shoulders, and I closed my eyes and slumped into her arms. Her tail loosened from around my waist, but her arms slid under mine so she could pull me close.

  "Breathe deep," she whispered to me. I closed my eyes and filled my lungs until they strained in my chest, crowding away my heart. She turned me in the water, and her tail supported my shoulders while she cradled my head and lowered me until it closed over me. It felt like a blanket covering me, and the heat filled the sore and swollen bruises on my face. The pain faded away, and I opened my mouth, allowing it to rush in and find the cuts in my lips and inside my cheeks. Her tail increased the pressure against my shoulders, pushing me up until I broke the surface again. When I was upright by her again, I turned my head and spit out the water, and with it, the remains of my father.

  Astrael smiled at me. Her teeth were whiter than pearls, and more pointed than I remembered. I shivered and held very still as her finger traced over my healed lips. Her tail wrapped around my waist again, then slid between my legs. Its very tip moved as deftly as a finger, coaxing me open. I gasped, and she silenced me with a kiss.

  The water followed her tail and rushed between my legs. I warmed there again, and my tender, swollen parts were at last eased. Ten thousand tiny hurts had leeched away into the sulfurous water; ones I had forgotten and only remembered again in the brief ache they gave before disappearing altogether.

  With the pain went all the strength in my body. My savior's tail withdrew, and I would have let myself slide beneath the water and happily drowned had her arm not moved across my back and held me safely above the surface. My guardian ravens were still watching us from their perches about the room, and I felt certain nothing terrible could happen to me under their watchful gazes. I felt safe enough to close my eyes when Astrael's other arm caught beneath my knees, and she lifted me from the water as though I was no more than a child.

  We were only in a cave, and I knew, in a way, that I should have been cold. The bitter wind should have been able to find its way into our little haven and steal away the borrowed heat of the water. I still felt warm and lazy as she lowered me onto her bed. I sank into it, then felt something hard beneath me, as though it was only blankets piled over rock.

  "Who are you?" she asked me.

  "I'm the hangman's daughter," I said, opening my eyes to gaze up at her again.

  I thought I saw anger flash in her pale eyes, and for just a moment thought I had been mistaken by the color. The tinge of pink I thought I saw disappeared, returning to the impossible silver and blue I knew. "Is that all?" she asked me, trailing her fingers down my cheek.

  I had known nothing else in my life. I had never imagined anything other for myself before that night, and even then I couldn't see any possibilities through the shadows of uncertainty cloaking them. "What else can there be?" I asked.

  Part of me had expected more anger. Instead her smile was sad, and her sharp nail continued down my throat and to my chest. I felt the tip catch on my breast and slice slowly into me. I had worried before that she was cutting me, but the pain made me realize how mistaken I had been. The languor from the water still weighed my limbs, and even the pain wasn't enough to make me stir. I couldn't even feel surprised when she lowered her head to my breast.

  It felt as though she drained all the heat from my body, leaving me stiff and cold when she lifted her head again. There was a flush to her cheeks and a new light in her eyes as she stretched out beside me. The light from the torches seemed to form halos around everything as though the world was losing its focus. She stroked my hair and kissed my eyes, and asked me softly, "Do you want to live, Isabella?" I tried to speak, but could only croak. I closed my eyes and gathered all my strength. I was able to draw a shallow breath and opened my eyes to nod just once. A smile caught the corners of her pink mouth, and she set her head on my damp hair where it spread out beside me. "Do you even know you've never lived at all while you played on the edges of death?"

  I could only blink in response. All the trappings and all the leavings of death had indeed been my playthings, but I had never imagined myself setting a toe over the delicate line between here and there. Astrael's wing stretched over to cover me. It seemed to radiate back the heat she had taken from me. "The gift I will give you, it doesn't come without a price," she said softly. "I will give you the blood of the Sun and the Moon, thicker and richer than runs through your kind's veins." I managed to turn my eyes to look at her, with her horns and wings and tail and pointed teeth. She smiled broadly, displaying those teeth to their best. "No, you will not be as me. I was born from the loins of the fallen children of the Sun and Moon, who became the Stars. But as the Sun still gave His light to all the Stars, so shall I fill you with the light I inherited." She stroked the hollow of my throat with the very tips of her fingers, and I could feel my heart's weak, fluttering beat against the pressure. "I have watched you many years, seen you grow from girl to woman under the gallows. I have watched until I knew you could accept and thrive with my gift. The costs are few. The price is to never tread under the light of the Sun, but rather under the weaker, less watchful light of all His children."

  I thought of my long days spent on the gallows, feeling sunlight warm on my hair and face before I retreated under the awning to save my pale skin from baking and blistering. I thought of sitting by my window with the day filling my room, and I swallowed thickly.

  "In return," she continued, her voice still light and soft, "you will keep your strength and youth and beauty. You will be a new creature, above your kind now as they are above cattle. Though you may eat and drink as they, you will draw your sustenance from their deaths."

  I blinked fast, and tried to shake my head. She saw, and her eyes flickered with amusement. "My hangman's daughter, who has spent her life in watching others shed theirs, has a dilemma now with the taking of life." She lowered her head to kiss my cheek. "You have already seen so many of your own kind like cattle lined up before the slaughterhouse door. You have rejoiced in cruelty and death." Her arm found its way around my waist, and she drew my limp body against hers. "I think you will quickly find supping on the power of their deaths will give them all the more meaning in their final moments, and the feast to be all the more pleasurable than merely watching them die."

  She turned my head for me and tenderly stroked my hair. "I am wasting my breath," she said. "Why spend time describing the pleasures of sex to a virgin, when you can far more easily teach her?"

  Up so close, her skin wasn't as perfect as I had thought. It was traced over with blue and pink veins and had more color than I had fancied. Her nipples weren't pink-tinged, but rosy. I watched as she cupped her own breast, rolling her nipple between two fingers as though she knew where I was looking. Sh
e found and traced one blue vein with a nail. Her skin parted, and her hand moved from my vision to press against the back of my head. I tried to pull away, or to at least make a protesting sound, but I was too weak, and my lungs felt as though they couldn't fill. My lips met her hot skin and the well of her blood. Even with my mouth pressed closed, the flavor still found its way to my tongue.

  The taste of blood had not changed. It had always intrigued me before, but I had never found it appetizing. What had changed was me. The taste of my own blood earlier in the day was like milk and hers like cream. It was like those first salty drops of broth after I had been too ill for days to drink more than a trickle of water. My stomach clenched with desperation, and I opened my mouth to drink.

  I have no memory of how long I drank from Astrael, or what she did to me. I woke on the bed in a tangle of limbs, folded in my savior's wings with her tail coiled about one of my legs. A great deal of time must have passed, for my long hair was all dry, as was our bedding. It could have been one day or a dozen since I had glutted myself on Astrael's blood, and I wouldn't have known. She slept with a sweet smile on her lips and her fingers curling and uncurling in my hair.

  As I gazed at her, her eyes opened and her smile grew. She leaned forward to press her lips against mine and opened her wings.

  "Just in time. You must return to your father."

  "Go back?" I asked, drawing away from her. Fear wound through my stomach. I had never known him to be angry with me before Henry, but if I had been missing a night and a day, he had to be furious.

  Astrael nodded, stretching luxuriously before rising from the bed and gathering my soiled nightgown and shawl. I stayed, waiting for her to reveal her jest. "Tonight," she told me, "you must decide who you are."

  I knew who I was, and I felt the beginnings of anger unfurling in my breast. Astrael would have none of it, and she drew me from the bed to pull my nightgown over my head. My guardian ravens were missing, and as I accepted my shawl, I found fear to be winning an unbalanced battle with my anger. She gave me no words of comfort or encouragement as she dressed, concealing her wings beneath a thick cloak.