by A. G. Howard
The three shopkeepers—descending in single file behind Stain along the grainy serpentine stairway—didn’t share her and Luce’s trepidations. They tittered on about their hopes to make their way into the upper levels of the castle to catch a glimpse of history.
“Always hoped to gander a peep at the fabled princess,” Winkle said, his voice so high and shrill it made the squeaks within his box grow louder in competition.
Edith whistled through her gums. “Dregth, tell uth again of your couthin. How he’th heared the printheth thinging.”
Stain tried not to listen, didn’t want to relive a goblin’s claim of being entranced by the beauty of the princess’s nightingale songs, and the otherworldly glow of her hair and flawless skin. It made her stomach clench to imagine the sun-prince at last acquainting the moon-kissed princess of his destiny with a Pegasus prancing inside his head.
The tail end of Dregs’s soliloquy recaptured her attention: “—see them both today, even if hidden in alcoves or under furniture is our only way. Can’t miss this exciting time of history and boon, when at last the sun will welcome the moon.”
Stain fisted her hands under her cape. She could’ve been content to continue her humble, sequestered masquerade in the forest had Scorch still been at her side . . . had she not, this very day, greeted the sun without him there to share it. She missed his austerity, and how he always put things in perspective. He would’ve convinced her she didn’t need silly, petty indulgences such as a home beneath endless, bright skies, or the enchanted gifts within the saddlebag across her shoulder, or a prince’s touch lighting up every nerve with a fascination so acute yet foreign it made her want to learn more about him. That was most ironic of all, considering said prince now held Scorch trapped in a coppery citadel of human flesh, sinew, and bone that she had no hope of invading.
If she hadn’t lost Scorch’s grumbling voice and comforting presence to Vesper, she wouldn’t have unlocked the restlessness she’d always kept hidden away.
Or was it Vesper himself who had unlocked it? Watching the prince from behind a tree; glimpsing his poet’s heart as he spoke to his sister of wanting a love built on friendship; observing his struggle to be a fair ruler against everything the prophecy or others dictated he do; and admiring his courageous battle against a curse that seemed to somehow be spreading beyond his scarred, broken flesh and into his people.
His earlier wails rang within her memory, and shame vibrated her bones. She’d been a coward to run, to not return when he called for her. True, she owed her utmost devotion to Crony, who had saved her all those years ago. But her inability to face seeing him again had played as big a role as loyalty. She could conquer any physical discomfort the world could dish out, but the pain of heartache made her shrink away like water droplets sprinkled along the edge of a raging fire.
Luce took the final step onto the dirt floor that opened into the tunnel. He drew Stain to him and shushed the chatty shopkeepers by waving his torch in their faces. Edith’s sunken lips pinched to a small knot, Winkle snuggled deeper beneath his rabbit-ear hood, and Dregs slapped a hand across his mouth, causing the icicle growth at the tip of his nose to quiver like a violin string.
“Do you hear that?” Luce directed the question to Stain.
She strained her ears. Though she didn’t share his keen canine senses, the muffled moans were unmistakable. She answered: It sounds like someone crying in the distance. Crony?
“I hope not, for that soul is in grave despair.” He looked Stain over. “Take off the cape and tuck it in your bag. Your legs need to be free, to run or fight.”
She nodded. The cape sloughed off reluctantly. She rolled it up with reverence, hesitant to part with it as well; she’d forever remember the gift it had given her today—a sunlit stroll across a meadow that filled the hollow places in her heart, if only for a while. After tucking it gently into the bag, she glanced up at Luce.
Pressing a finger to his mouth, he jerked his chin, indicating they follow. Together, they crept toward the weeping wails.
It took five turns to find the source, a jaunt that seemed forever as with each step the sound grew louder. At last, they arrived at a door set into the dirt wall. Luce deposited his torch inside a hole level with his eyes. He tried the latch quietly, and leaned an ear against the wood. His nostrils flared once, then he stepped back and dragged Stain with him, out of earshot.
“Crony is within,” he whispered, barely discernable over the occupant’s weeping. “Her scent is strong, but there’s another I don’t recognize. And I hear chains.”
Can you pick the lock? Stain gesticulated. When Luce’s only answer came as a frustrated hand raking through his hair, she looked over her shoulder for Winkle—their famed thief. The trio of shopkeepers peered around the bend from some distance behind. Stain scowled at Luce. Some brave army you recruited.
He cocked his head upon reading her words. “I never listed bravery as a requirement. They each have their own agendas that will motivate them when the time’s right. But this isn’t that moment. We have to make our move quietly. Breaking or picking the lock would alert the guard. We must find another way to open the door, from the inside. Any ideas?”
The guttural sobs grew louder behind the barricade. Stain’s shoulders sunk. She signed: Do you have a pebble I can eat to turn me into steam? She was being facetious, though a part of her hoped he did.
“That’s what we need . . . something that can siphon under the door’s seam into the room and let us in. I’m fresh out of magic. What about you?” One of his red eyebrows quirked. The torch flickered across his face and stirred shadows in her peripheral along the threshold.
Shadows. Stain remembered the moon-bog, her shadows from market trying to protect her . . . how they bowed around Vesper, obeisant to him. The mother shroud’s curious musings, wondering why a child such as herself had merited the fealty of Nerezeth’s night creatures.
Fealty meant devotion.
Maybe they were devoted to anyone from the night realm. If so, wouldn’t they obey a command from her, if she was truly from Nerezeth?
She lifted a finger, stirring the darkness in the crevices and corners of the door, teasing it. Will you help us get inside? She held the question in her mind, for surely creatures of transcendence and obscurity could hear unspoken words.
The shadows elongated, wrapping around each of her fingers. She pulled them out, coaxing them like she’d seen the candy maker stretch taffy at Blood and Crème Confections. Soon she’d managed to amass a swarm that oozed from her hands all the way to the floor like fingernails made of tar. She moved her arms, and they moved with her, stirring the dirt at her feet into dusty clouds.
Edith gasped from around the corner, and both Dregs and Winkle mumbled in awe.
As for Stain, she gawked, astonished. The prince’s saddlebag shook at her shoulder. Responding to the movement, Luce opened the flap. The midnight shadows filtered out and joined the others now swirling away from Stain’s fingertips to fill the tight passage and play games with the firelight.
“Masterful,” Luce whispered as shadows whirled around him and gusted through his clothes. Sharp white points appeared at the edges of his smile, glistening in the reflection of the torch.
Before Stain could respond, the shadows seeped through the keyhole like black smoke; with neither a click or a clack, the door swung open. The unmistakable scent of panacea roses leaked out. Stain shrank back, reminded of the death bouquet that once shared her coffin. If the shrouds were honest about her Eldorian page boy clothes, her sojourn to death had originated here, and her enemy could be anywhere in this castle, waiting to finish what they started.
She gripped Luce’s elbow at the horrific thought.
He stretched out his arm to insist he go in first.
The bag hanging from his shoulders blocked her view until he stepped in far enough to open a line of sight.
A torch on the room’s wall illuminated the scene: A knight convulsed on the groun
d in full sprawl, a sword gripped in his hand. Crony, seated beside him with white lightning sizzling between her horn tips, held him within a nightmare thrall.
Stain almost clapped in relief.
“Took ye long enough,” Crony spat, her swampy gaze shifting to Luce.
“I had to find this one.” Luce gestured to Stain with his chin, revealing his profile. “And to gather up your boxes from the chest. As to that, the note you left was no easy read. Chicken scrawlings would’ve been more legible.”
“Aye, ye would know, bein’ an expert on poultry. Foxes spend as much time in henhouses as soldiers do brothels, from what I hear.”
Luce barked a laugh, and Crony grinned, but something deeper passed between them . . . an unspoken exchange, somber and meaningful. It was the same look Stain had watched cross Luce’s face as he’d read Crony’s note back home before shoving two small boxes and an assortment of weaponry within his bag. Stain had been curious about what the note and boxes contained, but Luce refused to tell her.
“Is this one of them?” Luce broke the tension, pointing to the wailing man whose eyes rolled back and forth beneath closed lids.
Crony scoffed. “Aye. This be Sir Erwan. One of the regent’s most trusted knights.”
Luce snarled. He appeared ready to rip the man apart. He’d obviously been about to take a sword to Crony. But why? She was immortal. What good would it have done? It would’ve made more sense had Crony been in magical bonds, set by the mages.
“You couldn’t have planned this better yourself,” Luce spoke again.
“Yet me hands touched none of it, which be best of all.”
Tiring of their cryptic conversation, Stain nudged Luce aside and dropped her saddlebag on the way in. She met Crony’s gaze, saw it brighten with affection, and answered with a tremulous smile. I’m so relieved you’re all right.
“Thank ye for comin’ for me.”
Stain wanted to hug her and mend everything between them like she had with Luce in the forest. But first, they needed to get out safely. There’s little time, she signed, then turned to Luce. Your secret tunnel is not so secret. If one knight knows the way, more will be coming. We must leave.
Her guardians exchanged glances and then looked back at her, as if awaiting her next move. Crony’s chains jangled, and Stain understood. They had no key. She motioned the shadows toward the shackles.
The witch calmly watched the pitch-black tendrils siphon in and out of the keyholes, snapping the chains free. She covered her wrists with her cloak’s sleeves and her ankles with her hem before her muddy gaze strayed to Stain. “Ye have somethin’ to tell me, wee one?”
The question fell easily from that serpentine tongue, not out of curiosity or shock for the miracle Stain had just performed, but prideful, like a compliment.
The shadows are my friends. My . . . attendants. Having answered Crony’s query, Stain’s hands dropped to her sides.
Attendants. Crony had once said that Stain would one day know shadows and understand how they offered freedom where shade offered only respite. Had she been speaking of this moment? Of today?
Stain bounced a questioning glance to both her guardians.
Crony looked up at Luce who raised his eyebrows.
The shopkeepers peered around the door frame.
“Ye three,” Crony said from her seat on the ground, “stay in the passage and close the door. It is for ye to keep guard.” She pointed to Edith’s basket and the squeaking box under Winkle’s arm. “We’ve somethin’ more important to attend than yer petty pranks. Don’t leave till I say, or I put a nightmare ward on each o’ yer houses and leave ye homeless forevermore. Be we clear?”
All three looked at the frenetic currents between her horns then down at the sobbing, catatonic knight, and nodded. Dregs’s was the last face they saw as the door clicked shut.
“Lock it,” Crony directed Luce.
He did as she asked, dropped the bag from his shoulders next to Lyra’s saddlebag, then returned to help Crony stand.
What are you two doing? Why aren’t we leaving? Stain shaped her questions while taking a tally of the room. Ratty old dresses covered unseen items along the dirt walls. Shelves hung in place, as if growing out of the dirt like roots. Dusty jars filled with items, magical, herbal, and revolting, lined the wooden slats. But it was the mirror that enchanted her . . . luring her closer. Long and oval, it showcased her entire form. And though broken, it held her reflection more fastidiously than any mirror she’d ever seen.
She couldn’t look away from the girl with dark fuzz covering her scalp; her wide eyes, glinting between lilac and amber in the shifting flames; her long, white lashes casting a lacework of shapes across her gray-tinted, scarred cheeks.
The mirror held something beneath its lacerated surface, a part of her she hadn’t known existed.
“Shadow attendants, aye?” Crony asked in the background over the knight’s moans, though Stain was too distracted to answer.
“Don’t worry,” Luce responded in Stain’s place. “She came to that realization on her own. And she brought her crickets.” Luce led Crony to the wall.
The witch’s bones popped as she leaned against a shelf. “So, all we be missin’ are moths.”
Stain furrowed her brow. Crickets and moths and shadows. She rolled the words around in her mind, wondering what was so important about each one. Why they gave her a sense of security, of acceptance. The more she thought upon them, the dustier the room grew, as if a haze rose from the walls. Stain blinked in disbelief as that haze became a rush of brown moths flapping in the small space, dancing with the shadows in the torchlight. It was if they’d been hiding there, blending with the dirt for ages . . . waiting for her to call upon them.
Joining the moths, her crickets dug their way out of the half-opened saddlebag and hopped around the room.
Stain released a soundless moan as Luce and Crony looked on with quiet calm—inscrutable. The white lightning that bridged the witch’s horns snuffed out, and the knight stopped weeping.
“Wake up, pig. There’s something I’d like you to see.” Luce kicked the man, eliciting an oomph. Scooping up the sword, Luce handed it off to Crony then jerked the man to his feet. The crickets scrambled into the corners and into the hems of old gowns, followed by the shadows and moths.
The knight swayed as Luce turned him to face Stain. The man stared at her eyes then rubbed his own, blinking hard.
“No,” he murmured. “Those lashes. It’s not possible . . .” His complexion drained to a greenish hue. He spun toward Crony. “Return me to the nightmare! Please! Please, anything but this!”
Unnerved by his reaction, Stain backed closer to the broken mirror.
Luce forced Erwan around again. “Afraid not, rotter. This is your nightmare now.” After locking the shackles around the knight’s ankles so he had to face Stain, Luce stepped into the corner next to Crony.
All the shadows rose and thickened until Stain could no longer see her guardians, providing a darkness so deep the torchlight circled only her and the knight. It was if they stood on a stage—as if they were performers in some grand, disturbing drama. The crickets began to chirrup softly, an eerie musical accompaniment.
After attempting to escape his shackles, the knight fell on his knees at her feet and pressed his face into the dirt floor. “I won’t look. You can’t make me. You’re not here . . . you’re not real. It’s impossible! I watched you die . . . watched the cadaver brambles mangle you. I shut the coffin on your corpse myself; we carried you away—” He gagged.
Stain’s legs weakened, her body numbing. It was you? Her hands hung at her sides, unable to form the question. Yet her accusation echoed—carried on the flutter of moth wings hidden around the room: You, you, you.
The knight cried out and slapped his hands over his ears, burying his face between his arms.
Stain’s barren throat prickled. Kicking a plume of dirt at his head, she forced him to lift his nose for a breath.
<
br /> She stared down on him as the moth’s wings continued their mantra: You, you, you.
“A witch’s trick,” he mumbled on a groan. “You aren’t her. She had no voice. And your hair’s all wrong. Too dark. It was silver when I shaved it. One doesn’t forget hair like that. One doesn’t forget . . .”
Stain gripped her scalp to ward off a chilling sense of violation.
The knight grabbed the corner of a gown—one that hid a rectangular shape. “You’re a ghost. Gone. Dead. Nothing more than paint and mildew.” The drape slipped away, revealing a portrait underneath, veiled in white dust.
Hand trembling, Stain cleared the powdery haze. There, staring back at her, was the girl she’d seen each time she looked in Crony’s enchanted mirror . . . the one with long silver hair, lilac eyes, glowing pale skin, and no scars. Except this girl had shorter eyelashes, and she wore a crown while standing beside a kingly father.
This girl was a princess, something Stain could never be.
The crickets chirped louder, shuffling out from under the sheets, each of them coated in white dust. They hopped onto Stain’s pant legs and clambered up. Their movements comforted her, even as their bristly legs and feet crept along her neck and shoulders in waves, forming a cover all the way to her scalp, stopping at her temples and brow. Next, the moths slipped free from their hiding places and fluttered about her head.
Watching in rapt wonder, the knight’s eyes widened. Then he screamed, ripping his hair out in bloody clumps. “I was following orders! It wasn’t my idea, I swear it . . .” Tears and snot streaked his face, transforming the dirt upon his cheeks to mud. “Majesty, I beg you; have mercy!”
Majesty. Stain’s shadows pressed in around her, a gentle persuasion to turn back to the broken mirror. This time, she viewed a long mane of white crickets and a crown of moths. And she saw her true self at last: a murdered princess, resurrected.
24
The Splendid Subtlety of Singularity
