The Glass Casket

by Templeman, Mccormick

  “Oh Goddess,” Jude said, stepping away and out into the cold, trying to fill his lungs with fresh mountain air.

  “Doctor,” the duke said, turning to the older man. “What … what happened here?”

  “Like I said, I think he might have been skinned,” Dr. Temper said, unable to take his eyes from the scene. “Before he was … taken apart.”

  The men made their way out of the cell and processed outside into the snow. The duke stared off into the forest as if searching for an answer. “I don’t understand it,” he nearly whispered.

  “My lord,” said Dr. Temper. “Under the circumstances … given the state of the body … I want to formally request that we be allowed to burn the remains. We cannot offer him to the Goddess in such a state, and given the nature of—”

  But the duke cut him off with a raised glove. “Please, Doctor, I am in no mood to argue, and neither, I suspect, is your village. Do what you will with the body. I shall sequester myself from the vapors.”

  The villagers thought it best to burn the body immediately. There was nothing else to do, and they had taken enough chances with their dead in recent times so as soon as men could be roused and supplies gathered, a bonfire was started in the middle of the square, and the body was brought piecemeal over by wheelbarrow.

  The day was already strong when Tom awoke. He propped himself up on his elbows. Fiona was gone. The blood was gone. Had he dreamed it? Rubbing his eyes, he pulled himself up to stand and quickly made his way out of the hollow.

  When he saw her, his heart stopped for a moment. She stood in the snow, her eyes closed, dark spidery lashes kissing her cheeks, as she held her tongue out to catch the falling flakes.

  “Hello, Tom,” she said, her eyes still shut.

  He walked toward her. “What are you doing?”

  “Enjoying the beauty of it all,” she said, and then slowly she opened her eyes, and when she focused them on him, it felt like coming home after a long journey. She ran to him and kissed him, but immediately she seemed to sense his hesitation.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking him over as if trying to understand a riddle. “You look upset.”

  “Something is wrong with me,” he said, his voice shaking.

  She considered him a moment, and then dancing away from him, she kicked her pointed toes through the snow. “But, Tom,” she crooned. “Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re perfection.”

  He held his hands to his face, fighting back the tears. “I think I’ve gone mad. I think … I think I killed someone.”

  She laughed, a strange, cutting sound. “You couldn’t kill a rabbit.”

  “I had blood on my hands yesterday. I’m sure of it.”

  She shook her head. “That was the blood of a deer. Don’t you remember? You were trying to save it. Trust me, Tom. You’d not hurt a person if your life depended on it.”

  “A deer?” he said, longing to believe her. “I was trying to save a deer?”

  Images flashed through his head, Fiona’s eyes—no, a deer’s—and bleeding. It was injured. Something was injuring it—a wolf, blood on its incisors, feeding. Only it wasn’t a wolf.

  With a single raised eyebrow, she managed to assuage his earlier fear while raising yet a greater one.

  “You were trying to save it. You mustn’t do that again, Tom. You could get hurt.”

  And he knew. Just like that, he knew. Shaking his head, he backed away from her.

  “We can’t do this anymore,” he said, his heart in his throat.

  “Surely you must be joking,” she said, spinning around with her arms held out to the sky. “We can do whatever we like.”

  “Last night,” he said, stumbling over the words. “Last night I found you covered in blood. It wasn’t your blood, and it wasn’t a deer’s, was it, Fiona?”

  She stopped, held a hand to her milky-white hip, and observed him. “I hope you realize you’re being no fun at all right now, Tom.”

  “Whose blood was it, Fiona?” he demanded, his voice straining with anger.

  She stared at him, her face pinched as if she was caught between two worlds, and then she smiled, fairly drenching him in her beauty. “You’ve had a bad dream, Tom. You must forget about it at once and come enjoy yourself with me.”

  The anger gradually drained from his eyes, and he looked at her with utter heartbreak. “I know,” he said.

  “What?” she laughed. “What do you know?”

  Slowly he walked to her, and gazing at her with the love of a broken man, he said, “You can enchant me all you want. You can confuse me, and exhaust me, and drive me half mad, but I’m still a man, and I know what you are.”

  She stared at him, silent, her face devoid of emotion, and then it was as if something within her switched off, and her face seemed to crumble. Tears filling her eyes, she backed away from him. “Tom,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I know what you’ve done. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone or anything like I love you. Without my love for you, I don’t even know that I’m a person anymore, but I have to let you go.”

  “No!” she shrieked, her face contorted, panicked. “You can’t leave me! I’ll stop it.”

  “You can’t stop it.”

  “I can,” she said, and flinging herself at his feet, she wrapped herself around his knees. “I promise you that I can.”

  Reaching down, he gently pulled her up to stand. He looked into her dazzling eyes. “Fiona.”

  “I can,” she said. “I promise you. I promise you with everything that I am, that we are. I won’t do it again.”

  “Please,” he said, nearly crying, taking her hands and pressing them to his heart. “Promise me it will stop.”

  “I promise,” she said. “No more. I promise.”

  He pulled her close to his chest and kissed her head, knowing that no matter what he might say, he could never leave her.

  When Rowan awoke, she smelled an awful stench coming from the center of the village. A fire. A funeral pyre, she thought. Only, whose could it be?

  “Tom,” she gasped, and dressing quickly, she set out from the house, pulling the hood of her cloak down over her eyes.

  When she reached the center of the village, she saw that everyone was already there, gathered round the pyre. She searched the crowd. Her father was engaged in serious conversation with Goi Parstle. Elsbet fanned the flames, while holding the ear of several of the older women. Jude sat alone, a short distance from the fray.

  She rushed over to him.

  “It’s not Tom, is it?” she asked, desperate.

  “Goi Flint,” he answered, shaking his head. “He was to be executed tonight at sunset, but it seems someone has gotten to him before the elders and their noose.”

  “But who?”

  “No one knows. The cell was locked.”

  “Where’s Tom?” she asked, looking around, but Jude just shrugged.

  “Missing, as usual.”

  Rowan put her face in her hands and tried to staunch the flow of her tears. Then something began to rise inside her, and she shook her head. “This has to stop. I’m going to find him.”

  “And how will you do that?” Jude asked.

  “I have an idea where he is,” she said, thinking back to the ancient yew in the woods.

  “Do you want me to come?” Jude asked, and while Rowan appreciated the gesture, she wanted to speak to Tom alone.

  “No,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, but this is between me and Tom.”

  He nodded. “Be careful,” he said, and with that, she turned and headed into the forest.

  Jude watched Rowan disappear between the trees, his heart heavy with worry. He was deciding whether or not he should secretly follow her as he’d done the day he pretended to abandon her outside of the village barrier, when he saw Goi Tate approaching and realized his opportunity had slipped away.

  “Terrible business this,” Goi Tate said, whistling through his teeth.

  Jude nodded, not bothe
ring to rise.

  “I’ve been wanting to speak with you,” Goi Tate continued. “These meetings we’ve been having at the tavern, the ones where we make plans about how to stop the killings. I wanted you to know that there have started to be other meetings as well, ones we’ve kept secret from your family.”

  “Is that the case?” Jude asked, trying to hide his concern.

  “It is. It was actually Tom’s betrothed who put the idea in our heads. It was during that meeting. She wondered aloud if the thing we seek might not be a monster at all but a man who walks among us.”

  “What are you saying?” Jude asked, suddenly cold.

  “I’m trying to do you a favor here,” Goi Tate said.

  “And what favor is that?”

  Goi Tate leaned in close. “We know something is wrong with Tom. Everyone can see it, and we know he goes off into the woods nearly every chance he can get. We’ve tried to follow him, but we always lose him. He always seems to vanish.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I like Tom, and I don’t want to hang an innocent man, and that is what the others are just about ready to do.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Jude said, but he could see that Goi Tate was. He wondered if the elders had told the men what their oracles had seen—the darkness they’d seen over the inn—and his heartbeat began to speed up.

  “My advice is that you find him,” Goi Tate said. “Find out where he goes and clear his name while you still have the chance.”

  And with that, Goi Tate turned and headed back to the fire.

  Rowan knew exactly where she was going. She weaved through the trees with long, purposeful strides. Earlier, she had heard Tom’s voice out in the woods, seeming to emanate from the ancient yew tree. She didn’t know what that might mean, or how it might be possible, but she was going to find out. She was tired of feeling helpless.

  And yet, as she walked, fear seemed to bite into her, and with each step, she grew warier. When she was nearly to the clearing, she heard his voice again, only this time much more audibly. She stopped where she was and crept up toward the area, careful not to let herself be seen. As quietly as she could, she rounded the bend in the path, and they came into view.

  What she saw shocked her. Tom stood in the snow. In his arms, he held a girl clad only in a white dress, and he was kissing her passionately, his lips traveling to her neck, her shoulders, and all the while he gripped her body with an intensity Rowan hadn’t imagined Tom could possess.

  So this was the source of Tom’s secrecy? A girl? A hidden love affair? She could barely contain her relief. So Tom loved another. That was his great crime. He was no murderer. He was just a lovesick fool, and a reckless one at that, having risked the woods the previous night just to meet a girl. But who was she?

  Rowan was stepping forward to get a better look when something about the scene struck her. The two had stopped kissing, and now Tom held the girl close to his chest, and on his face was the most beautiful look of complete and profound love. This was not a boy straying randomly, his infidelity catalyzed by fear at his approaching nuptials. This was something wholly different. This was how a man gazed at the mother of his child. This was something she knew she could never touch.

  And that was when she realized who the girl was, who she must be, her long black hair falling wild down her back. The beauty tilted her face to smile up at Tom with a reciprocal ardor, a burning affection, and then Rowan knew with utter certainty that it was Fiona Eira standing before her.

  Rowan turned and she ran, her mind no longer connected to her body. When she reached the village, her heart was hammering, and she felt like she was drowning. The thing she had just seen, she couldn’t have seen. That girl … that girl with Tom. That girl was dead. Rowan had seen her lying pale and lifeless in that unholy coffin. She needed to talk to someone. She needed to tell someone what was happening. Only, she didn’t know who would believe her … except perhaps Jude.

  When she got back to the square, Jude was nowhere to be found, so she hurried to the inn, where his mother informed her he was out back taking apart a fox in the shed. Jude was digging his knife into the dead animal when she flung open the door.

  He looked up from his task and smiled. “You’re back,” he said, and wiped his knife with a cloth.

  “I’m back,” she said, still trying to understand what she had just seen.

  “What’s going on with you? Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I saw them,” she said, her head still spinning. “Tom and … Fiona. They were in the woods. They were kissing. Jude—what’s happening?”

  Stunned, Jude dropped the knife and turned to her with wide eyes, his face utterly serious.

  “Fiona Eira is dead,” he said slowly.

  “You have to believe me,” she said, on the verge of tears. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  He nodded, appearing to collect his thoughts. He looked her straight in the eyes, and there was such intensity behind them that for a moment, Rowan wondered how she ever could have hated him. All she could think was how absolutely beautiful he was. He took off his gloves and laid them on the counter. Slowly he walked over to her, that intensity seeming to grow, and she found herself wondering what it might feel like to have his lips on her neck again.

  “You’re telling me that’s where my brother has been? With a … a dead girl?”

  Rowan nodded. “I know it’s impossible.”

  Jude’s breath caught. “But we saw her laid out. She was dead.”

  “It was her,” Rowan said, still struggling to find the words. “It was her out there. She wasn’t a rotting corpse. She was radiant. Jude, you have to believe me.”

  She looked to him with pleading eyes, and gripping her gently by the shoulders, he stared back into hers. “Rowan. Of course I believe you. I don’t want to, but I do.”

  “How is it possible?” Rowan said, trying to find a solution where there was none. And then something occurred to her. She remembered Mama Lune’s face, staring down at Fiona’s dead body. “At the funeral, when Mama Lune looked at Fiona’s corpse, she saw something there that frightened her. Do you think she knew what was going to happen? Do you think it’s possible that a Greywitch brought Fiona back?”

  Jude considered her words and then spoke softly. “I don’t know, Ro. I think we need to go and speak with Mama Lune and Mama Tetri.”

  Rowan considered. “If it’s true … if she has risen, and we tell them, what will they do to her?”

  Jude frowned. “I don’t know. There’s hardly a precedent.”

  Rowan cringed, a spike of fear suddenly upon her, for something inside her still trembled at the thought of any harm coming to her cousin. “You’re sure we can trust the witches?”

  Jude nodded. “I think we have to. We have no choice. I have to finish up here, and then I’m going to go speak with Mama Lune. Will you come with me?”

  He held a hand out to her, and after a slight hesitation, she reached out for it, and pressed her own hand against it. The warmth of him caused her to lose her breath for a moment, and then, nodding, she backed away.

  “I’ll return in an hour,” she said.

  Jude stepped toward her. “You can stay here if you like.”

  “No,” she said. “I have something I need to do.”

  He looked at her with suspicious eyes, and Rowan could tell he wanted to stop her, but he didn’t. “Be careful,” he said, holding her gaze.

  “I will,” she said, and then she turned and stepped out into the snow. Slowly she walked toward the woods. She recalled that beautiful girl she’d spoken with on the path, snow glittering in her hair. She’d seemed so fragile, so lost, a lifetime away from the boldness of the girl she’d seen with Tom in the woods. Rowan had to go back out. She had to see her again. She had to make sure.

  But as she walked, fear was building in her spine, because if it was true—if Fiona Eira truly had come back from the dead, then there was something terribl
e she had to consider. For Fiona Eira, monster though she might be now, had indeed been born of the Goddess, and as such, she would have had no problem crossing the village boundary.

  Wrapping her cloak tight around her chest, she quickened her pace, the forest seeming to close in around her.

  16. THE FOOL

  OUT IN THE woods, knife strapped to her leg, Rowan sat atop the large rock that overlooked the clearing and the ancient yew. Knees pulled to her chest, she was certain an hour must have come and gone. She should be heading back to Jude. Disappointed, she was beginning to climb back down when she heard a familiar voice.

  “I know you’re there,” the voice called. “There’s no need to hide from me.”

  Terrified, her legs threatening to give way beneath her, Rowan climbed the rest of the way down the rock.

  Fiona stood in the clearing, arms outstretched, a ghoulish smile on her ruby lips.

  “Come,” the dead girl said. “Let’s talk.”

  Trembling, Rowan approached, but paused when she felt her legs would carry her no farther.

  “Closer,” Fiona commanded, and Rowan, knowing she had no other choice, did as she was told, stopping when she was within arm’s reach of the girl.

  From such a close distance, Fiona looked different than she had in life—somehow more beautiful and more ghastly all at once. Her black hair hung in wild glossy waves, and she wasn’t dressed for the weather. She was barefoot, her naked toes nestled into the snow, and she wore neither cloak nor dress. Instead, she wore a lightweight shift. Rowan thought it looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t concentrate on it for too long because her gaze was drawn back down to the girl’s feet, which seemed to be caked with a strange, horrible kind of mud.

  “Hello,” Fiona said, her quicksilver voice sliding through the air.

  Rowan stared at her as if she were seeing something that wasn’t there. That couldn’t be there. “What … are you?” she whispered.

  The girl smiled, and Rowan thought she saw the dying light catch and glimmer off the tip of an incisor. And then Rowan saw something she couldn’t understand. Strung around Fiona’s neck with a red ribbon was a coin, the design of which matched the drawing she’d found in her father’s study.