Stain

by A. G. Howard

Alone in a gloom so complete it mattered little whether her eyes remained opened or closed, Griselda sat upon the cot and drew her feet up, winding her arms about her legs. She burrowed her nose in the fabric at her knees to ward off the scent of urine absorbed by the rock walls. Panic swelled hot within her chest upon each inhalation.

  One who cannot love themselves, cannot be loved.

  The voice—from a lifetime ago—hissed within Griselda’s ears as if the monster sat beside her. Griselda swallowed a yelp, stiffening at the thought. She intimately knew the danger that lurked in dark places. Shadows, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, salamanders . . . things that belonged to dankness and night, and were silent while being filthy, clammy, skittering and scuttling . . . made her skin crawl. If those same abominable creatures were to obey her niece’s songs like faithful pets, her reign over the wretched child was ended. Perhaps her past had come to call . . . perhaps she hadn’t escaped after all.

  A bubble of helplessness and hate rose from her chest and burst to an animalistic wail in her throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth upon the echo.

  The harrower witch had triggered these memories, and alone and anxious, Griselda couldn’t stop from falling into that time long ago when she first acquainted creatures of darkness.

  Griselda was christened Glistenda upon her birth. A tribute to Eldoria’s glittering hills and glistening valleys each day in that moment when the flash of dusk left in its wake a wave of dew, and the sun reclaimed its radiance.

  As she grew, everyone in the kingdom agreed that Glistenda was the most dazzling princess ever to grace the castle halls with her flaxen hair as yellow as sunshine and a flawless ivory complexion, both inherited from her royal mother. Her loveliness was so absolute, she could bruise simply by laying upon a feather mattress—the barbs and shafts being too prickly to withstand.

  Glistenda’s kingly father doted on his delicate princess, so long as she was blushing, docile, and soft-spoken. Her queenly mother taught her that to be seen, not heard, was a lady’s most honorable calling. But during her sixteenth year, the emptiness of vanity as an aspiration hit Glistenda full force, after she witnessed the king falling from his steed during a jousting event. After, all he could do was lie abed, be propped on his throne, or be carried in a litter about the vicinage. Kiran was always at his side—there to learn the ways of a kingdom fallen upon his youthful shoulders earlier than anyone anticipated.

  Glistenda was rarely allowed to visit the king. Kiran’s time with him was too important, too pressing. Everyone said Kiran was the spitting image of his father’s own russet hardiness—also possessing his wisdom, patient temperament, and military acumen.

  Glistenda was to be available for family appearances, but would never have a say in politics, legislative counsel, or the kingdom’s economics. Her royal parents, along with every adult in the castle, became too busy preening her younger brother to think about her. Had she been born a son, she would’ve been the heir, and every heart and mind hers to consume and command.

  Instead, she had no voice; no say in anything. She was left to her own devices—reduced to glean attention through games played with the young men of the court. She used her wiles to get the obedience and devotion she craved.

  The only exception was the one boy she desired above all others: Tristan Nicolet—beautiful ebony skin wrapped around a stalwart frame. Her brother’s best friend, and son of their father’s most trusted knight, Tristan often stood between her and her suiters. He stepped into the shoes of a brother who was too busy becoming king to defend his sister’s honor. Yet no matter how she tried to tempt Tristan into her skirts, he denied her. The very code of honor that made her love him became the thorn in her side.

  Determined to tarnish his shining resolve, she concocted the perfect plan.

  She chose a morning Tristan was assigned to relieve his father’s post at the tallest lookout tower. She left a note there for him, equal parts drama and poetry, wrapped in a scented scarf. She swore he was the only boy she loved, and if he wouldn’t douse the fire in her heart, she would quench it with madness and shade in the Ashen Ravine.

  Wearing a page boy’s uniform over her clothes, she borrowed a pony from the royal stables and eluded the guards at the main gate. She and her mount trotted onto the trail that twisted about the Crystal Lake and ended at the ravine. From his tower, Tristan would be her singular witness. Halfway there, she discarded the page boy’s clothes, revealing a diaphanous pink chemise with matching slippers. Placing a circlet of braided white yarrow atop her blond hair, she continued until the ravine’s entrance appeared.

  She slid from the saddle, surprised when the dark maw of the haunted forest opened to her, having heard rumors of how difficult it was to get within. A chill breeze raked her skin like phantom fingernails, carrying whispered warnings—breathy, hissing inhuman things—and a rotten stench, somewhere between decomposed vegetation and rancid meat.

  She almost turned away, but then Tristan called her from behind. She glanced over her shoulder as he rounded the lake on his blood-bay colt. Smugness replaced fear. His lesson would be best learned should she actually step within the looming darkness. Make him face the rumored dangers. Make him earn her affections the way she’d had to earn his.

  She left her pony and had no sooner taken one step toward the ravine when a barbed, black vine snapped at her ankle and flopped her to her rump. The thorns dug into her tender flesh, staining her chemise’s hem with blood. Scenting the danger, her pony reared and galloped away. Glistenda struggled to breathe as the resulting cloud of dust descended.

  She sobbed in unison with Tristan’s panicked shout when two more vines struck out, snatching her wrists. Her body went numb as the thorns pumped venom into her veins, rendering her unable to move or scream. The snaky plants dragged her into the ravine.

  Her gaze slanted back as the briars formed a curtain over the opening. All that could be seen of the warm sun was a jellylike substance glazing the tree trunks. The light overhead grew hazy, leaving her in a dim, grayish world. The pounding of hooves and Tristan’s voice were muffled as he arrived. A loud metallic hammering proved his determination to break through the barrier with his sword. Glistenda wrestled a momentary regret for coming up with such a petty farce.

  Her body rolled off the steep, winding path, an unresponsive deadweight as something new dragged her through a shifting carpet of ash. Bits of her hair clung to twigs and tree roots, tangling and ripping from her scalp. Farther and farther grew Tristan’s urgent shouts, until she no longer heard him at all.

  Glistenda came to a stop in a dark clearing with an impenetrable canopy of leaves overhead. Smoky, black silhouettes slipped in and out of the tree trunks, shifting from humanlike to shapeless blobs. The one constant was their glowing, white eyes. A sob of terror clogged her throat.

  “So, a soft, unbroken child has graced us with a visit.” A silhouette glided forward, shapelessness resolving to a woman’s torso. This one shifted from the color of midnight to a cloudy white as she leaned across Glistenda’s paralyzed form. Onyx bones protruded from her face in the form of a beak and horns. “I am Mistress Umbra, mother of the Shroud Collective. We are your ancestors. Those who lost their minds to the promise of darkness and rest centuries ago. You have two choices: become one of us and strengthen our cerebral framework, or offer your flesh for us to consume. Should you not choose, we choose for you.” A multitude of phantasmal hands raked across Glistenda’s frayed and sullied gown, taking the shape of jagged branches and twigs that ripped the gauzy fabric down the center from neck to waist.

  Exposed, Glistenda watched her pulse kick so hard in her chest she thought it would shatter through her sternum. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t even whimper. Growing impatient, Mistress Umbra clasped her victim’s wrist. The pressure made bruises on Glistenda’s delicate skin that spread alongside her veins in jagged strands.

  The inky lines resembled spiders and scorpions that scuttled beneath her flesh on their way to he
r chest. She ached to writhe, to escape the creeping plague, but couldn’t move.

  She was becoming vaporous, her mind slipping in and out of consciousness.

  “Enough.” A voice of masculine silk broke through her torment. “You’ve had your jollies. I want her now.” A man appeared out of nowhere, his form lithe and ethereal, yet more substantial than the smoky shrouds around her.

  “For her beauty?” Mistress Umbra asked. “You’re so predictable.”

  His countenance glowed bright beneath a wild blood-red mane and pointed ears. “There’s much more to this one. There is great potential for wickedness within that pretty frame.”

  “Ah, yesss,” she hissed his direction. “It’s all about entertainment for your kind. Want to see what chaos the girl can wreak?”

  A feral smile graced his mouth, showcasing sharp white teeth. “Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to lust, laugh, and lie.”

  “Always so clever.” The multi-handed grasp on Glistenda’s wrists and arms grew tighter and the spidery infestation beneath her skin hummed within her rib cage, feeding off her erratic heartbeats. Mistress Umbra chortled, as if she shared the sensation and it tickled her. “You’re too late. We captured this gem on our own. She tastes of royalty, and we are keeping her.”

  The formless silhouettes peering out from behind the trees multiplied, eyes alight and piercing. Glistenda’s windpipe tightened with a wail that couldn’t break free.

  The man opened two giant red feathery wings, stretching them until he loomed tall and threatening over Mistress Umbra’s ghoulish subjects. “Do you forget our bargain? I can request mercy for anyone, in return for all the sinful souls I lure into these depths. For all the times my tempting whispers feed your ravenous appetites. Refuse me, and we no longer have a covenant between us.”

  “But this one is tender-skinned, and so young . . .” the mother shroud half-whimpered, half-snarled. “She can make us remember what it’s like to be flesh, before infirmity or death.”

  “Take only part of her then. Take her conscience. Her capacity for remorse is a small fraction . . . she rarely listens to it. Cage it; gorge yourselves on the sins she commits, so you might indulge in feeling human again. But let the girl go. As you said, she’s a princess, but with grand and vile ambitions. That is a rare thing. I’d like to see how it plays out.”

  Mistress Umbra’s beakish mouth drooped. “You know it isn’t so easy as that. A choice must be made on her part. Between flesh and death.”

  “And you know that she can choose a third option,” the celestial man said. “To forfeit an integral part of her soul, in place of her flesh.”

  “Ugh. Very well!” Mistress Umbra glared at Glistenda, her eyes beady and prying. “Would you offer it to me, child? Your conscience for your freedom? Should you agree, you will never know true love. One can’t love themselves without a conscience by which to measure their own worth. And one who cannot love themselves, cannot be loved.”

  Glistenda couldn’t answer, but she felt Mistress Umbra’s gaze drilling into her chest, prying the truth out of her very heart: Yes. I’ll give up anything to live. Love has made my insides as weak as my outsides, something I never want to be again.

  “Very well. Let it be so.” The mother shroud rushed her twiggy hands across her once more.

  Glistenda’s skin returned to corporeal. She gulped a relieved breath. The darkness beneath her flesh rushed from her fingertips like spilled ink. Her arms and legs twitched with feeling. She tensed against a ripping sensation as a flock of emerald shadows burst free from her chest. They screeched and transformed into teal-feathered starlings.

  She sat up, at last able to move.

  “Know this, little princesss,” Mistress Umbra hissed. “We saw your fate unwinding within your veins. You will become powerful and see your grandest hope to fruition. Your role will be essential in returning the heavens to their glorious splendor. But no accomplishment will countervail the love you betrayed.” The creature’s jagged fingers held out a strand of Glistenda’s hair, and it became as black as the shroud’s themselves, tinting all the other strands to match. “We have marked you as ours, for you will come again seeking company with us in this forest, seeking a place where you can hide your sins that twist and twine like the branches of a tree. And we will show you the same mercy you practiced throughout your life. No more . . . no lesss.”

  Seeing the change in her hair, Glistenda worried what her insides must look like. She almost called the birds back—to reclaim that part of her she’d given away. But she didn’t want to appear weak.

  She waited too long and the formless shrouds—hidden behind the trees—swooped in to capture the starlings in cages of spindly, vaporous hands and fingers. They sank into the ground, becoming one with the ash.

  Glistenda took a last look at the man, the unearthly being, who’d saved her, then lost consciousness.

  When she awoke in her bedchamber, she thought she’d dreamed it all, if not for her ebony hair, lashes, and eyebrows. Even her family couldn’t refute those changes. A week later when she was strong enough to go out into the palace garden alone, she saw the winged man again, waiting in a copse of honeysuckle. This time he became flesh, extending his hand to help her sit beside him. A breeze blew his hair around, uncovering the tip of an ear. It was furred and pointed like a fox’s.

  She learned he was a sylph named Elusion. He had carried her body to the ravine’s opening and convinced the briars to open from the inside then hid so Tristan could find her.

  She told him that Tristan was the boy she had been trying to win.

  “You did all of this to capture someone’s heart?” her sylphin companion asked, his orange eyes lit to wildfires as he handed her a flower. “Was it worth it?”

  Sniffing the honeysuckle petals, Glistenda shook her head. For although Tristan had wrapped her limp, bruised body in his cape and carried her to the castle on his horse, although he stood vigil with her family as the physician and royal mages cleansed her blood with leeches, then roused her with a magic elixir—he still couldn’t offer his love. To him, she was nothing but a prize to be protected and placed upon a shelf.

  “I will cut him down one day,” Glistenda vowed, shocked and pleased to feel no remorse for the violent thought. “Does he expect me to be nothing but a silent, customary princess forever?”

  Elusion smiled—a turn of lips so tempting and beautiful it took her breath. “You are more than customary, and far too remarkable to waste time seeking affections from a man-child.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Glistenda answered, twirling a strand of dark hair around her finger. “I can no longer be loved.” She felt a twinge when admitting this, but it was tempered with freedom. Confidence that she would never have to suffer heartbreak or be weak again.

  “You didn’t crave love to begin with,” Elusion answered. “It was power you sought. And as a woman, yours is already immeasurable.” He leaned in and cupped her temples to kiss her. His warm, soft mouth tasted of wind, rain, and sunlight, elements that had structured the world since the beginning of time. “Hearts are cursory things. The flame of love fades with age.” He whispered this against her neck, nuzzling her. “If you want lasting fire—an ascendancy you can pass down to your offspring—aim for the jugular.” He nipped at her throat, a pinch of sharp teeth that titillated. It would leave a bruise. “Choose your men wisely. Wealthy, with marked positions in parliament. Those who will give you leverage in politics and law. Be subtle and decisive. Convince them you’re the piece of meat they wish to gorge themselves upon. Then be the gristle that chokes them instead.”

  She followed Elusion’s advice to the letter, changing her name to reflect her insides as opposed to her outsides. She dyed several strands of her black hair to bloodred, in honor of her sylph coconspirator. At first her royal parents refused to acknowledge her new identity, but she would only answer to Griselda. Soon they could do nothing but accommodate, attributing her bizarre behavior as a means
to cope with whatever horrors she’d encountered in those deep wilds—an experience they had caused with their own negligence. Their penance and guilt were absolute, and they watched helplessly as her heart became as grisly, hostile, and briar-filled as the Ashen Ravine itself, and her mind as cunning as a fox.

  Or a sylph . . .

  She invited Elusion to her bedchamber where he spent every cessation course for two years, sating his lusts and hers. It was he who led her into the dungeons where he’d found a hidden doorway. Upon sharing the secret to opening it, he coaxed her into a tunnel harboring a small dirt room.

  “Some grand enchantress once occupied this place,” Elusion told her, motioning to shelves filled with strange and mystical ingredients. He picked up a book entitled Plebeian’s Grimoire. “There are recipes for potions, spell-chants and poisons which combine mystical and natural ingredients that can be used even if one has no inborn magical abilities.”

  Griselda took the book from his hands, her dark mind concocting all the advantages such a tool could give her.

  “I knew you’d be pleased.” He smiled. “I have one request. Don’t use these things unless I’m here to aid you. There will be hidden curses on the pages, and I wouldn’t wish to see you entrap yourself.”

  Griselda didn’t like being told she needed anyone. She used a love potion to capture the Chief Justice of Common Pleas—fifteen years her senior—to increase her standing in the court and secure heirs for the throne, for her brother and his young bride appeared unable to produce one of their own. Elusion left her to her married life until the day her husband died, just after the birth of their youngest daughter.

  When Elusion returned, having missed Griselda’s bed, she boasted of how she’d used the grimoire without his help.

  Those were her golden days. The kingdom fawned over her princesses—only the youngest suffered her easily bruising affliction, and all three were aptly named to be fearsome and formidable, not precious and predictable. Her brother relied upon her, seeking counsel for governing domestic and private affairs.