Castle of Sighs

by Jennifer Murgia

  But her hope walks hand in hand with fear. “Will he…be human?”

  “He will be human enough,” I reassure her. “Shall we begin, then?”

  “Yes,” her hoarse voice utters.

  I reach my gnarled hand toward her smooth one, and give her a pat. “I have done this before. There is nothing to fear.” And then, I ask the Mother to forgive me as I open the door.

  “He is magnificent.” She whispers when we have finished.

  The child lies still upon the table. A composite of hair and skin and bones from the village boy—his heart now beats with magick. In time, the delicate stitches will heal and no one will question how, or why.

  It was almost too much to bear the moment we began, and so I created a tonic of herbs and incense to fill the room while we worked. The woman’s nerves have now settled, and by the look upon her face she seems pleased with my work.

  “Utterly magnificent,” she repeats, her finger tracing the delicate flesh of his arm, his collarbone, his jaw. She holds a lock of his hair between her finger and thumb, then reaches for her own, inches shorter in a place at the nape of her neck. “He looks just like my son.”

  “He is your son,” I confirm.

  She nods, her eyes still disbelieving yet accepting, all at once.

  The boy yawns then wakes, as if he’d been asleep this whole time.

  “Will he know me?”

  “Your blood is his now.”

  She approaches the child with caution and the moment he sees her, he smiles and holds his arms out to her. Tears of joy spill down her cheeks.

  My heart clenches, for it too misses the love of a child.

  “But…”

  “You will tell your husband that you found the babe in the forest, crying and alone.” I hand her a small, muslin pouch. “Tonight, you will stir these herbs into his ale, and the rest into your tea. By dawn, it will be as if the boy has been born to you all along.”

  I wait patiently for her to nod and agree with what must be done. “Have you a name for the boy?”

  “After my father,” she tells me. “His name shall be Laurentz.”

  Part Three

  “The most obvious Truth is hidden deep within, and only you will ever know it.”

  Rune

  Pyrmont Castle 1628

  Chapter 36

  With trembling hands I close the grimoire, ending the strange scrying the blank page was able to offer me. The Keep is like a silent tomb, but my memories are a chaotic blur as the past replays in my head. I came to Pyrmont to claim what was mine—an old, dusty castle with secrets buried beneath. Never did I believe that my lineage held such dark secrets, or that the two people I’d loved more than anyone else on this earth were illusions.

  A shadow skitters along the edge of the trees bringing quick silence to my thoughts. I lean within the framework of the sill, careful not to put my weight against the moldy timber. My eyes focus on a dark shape as it travels. Like fluid it weaves in and out of the foliage. So well does it blend in that I lose sight of it, then catch it again in an area entirely too far for it to reach in so little time. The moon slips from beneath its blanket of cloud, shedding pale wintry light upon the forest. A reflection catches. Small and far from the height of the keep’s window…eyes, and with it a slight build. I squint, willing the figure to come into view beneath the swath of moon glow.

  It stares up at me with eyes of black glass.

  My feet fly to the edge of the steps and I slam into a solid wall that grips my shoulders and saves me from flying off the landing. When my eyes focus I realize it is Laurentz who steadies me, shifting my weight with his until I’ve retraced my hurried steps back into the watchtower room.

  I hadn’t expected to see him until tomorrow, but in flesh and blood he stands in front of me, warm and solid and real… only I cannot help the images that flood my head. That cursed grimoire… The truth, the horrifying entries it’s kept secret all these years, begin to slip their way in—a young boy upon a table long ago, a weeping woman, peculiar medical instruments, magick… It is too much to bear. I cannot look at Laurentz without imagining what happened long ago, who he used to be, how he came to be. Does he even know?

  And then I notice the frantic look upon his face.

  “I’ve searched the entire castle,” he breathes. “The secret chamber, the corridor…” He releases me and bends over, hands upon his knees to catch his breath.

  “I thought I saw something and came inside the keep to inspect.” I don’t tell him I’d been sleepwalking, or that a peculiar light glowed from the keep’s lonely window, leading me to the past, revealing his past. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  It takes a few breaths for him to catch on that I’d never intended to cause alarm. Pyrmont is such a large place—the castle, the land—but the fact that I would be here rather than in my warm bed in the middle of a winter’s night has set him on a wild chase searching for me.

  Panic lingers on his expression. “Have you found him?”

  “Have I found you, Laurentz? Do you know what you used to be? Do you even know you’re made of magick and death?” I shake my head.

  In slow motion he takes my hand, leading me toward the rotting steps. “Let’s keep searching, then.”

  The night’s events and lack of sleep still fill my brain, and I fear there is something I am not catching. That Laurentz has come back for me in the dead of night. That he has left the children at Eltz so soon.

  I hold back, my arm going slack in his pull, “Searching? For what?”

  “Niclaus,” Laurentz says hurriedly. “He’s gone missing.”

  The cylindrical walls of the keep’s towers bend close, shifting in on me as I process the truth of his concern.

  “The nurse went to tuck the children in. Only Margret was asleep in her bed. Eltz’s guard combs the forest as we speak but I’ve rode on ahead in case he came looking for you.”

  Niclaus…Niclaus is in the forest. I tear past Laurentz but stop just as the rickety stairs begin their descent. My shoe hovers over open air and suffocating darkness. I turn back to Laurentz, hoping he is fiddling with the match to light our way, but he is immediately at my back, holding me again, preventing my tumble down into the dark.

  “Have you a lantern? I cannot see where to step.”

  Before he answers, a dizzying feeling leaves me swaying and I am grateful to have his arms. In the dark, his eyes flash then go pitch, and something tells me what he is about to say before he even speaks a word.

  “I found you perfectly.”

  “Perfectly, in the dark?”

  I feel his shoulders shrug against my asking as he repositions himself so that he is the first to head down. “Take my hand.”

  Before I know it we are descending. Each creak and groan of the old wood threatens to send us falling, and I instinctively slow my steps. But not Laurentz. He moves steadily forward, pulling me, leading me, until we are safely at the bottom of the keep where the moon’s silvery light pokes around the door. I want nothing more than for him to explain how he has managed to navigate the darkest parts of Pyrmont but there is no time. I race toward the trees whose black boughs sigh as they sway in the night.

  The forest beckons and warns all at once, and I jump through the knee-high ferns that bend and brown in the cold. Past the prickly thorns and spiny branches that grab at me, claw me and whisper their horrid little secrets. This is the frightening forest that worms its way into nightmares—a rumor Matilde created long ago, when an ancient evil roamed Germany.

  It has indeed been too long since I’ve set foot inside these woods, for this part is unrecognizable to me—the way the ground slopes, grabbing at my feet, rising into towering pines and shadows that lurk. The smell of a decaying animal assaults my nose. No, this is not the forest I remember, but a murky playground of molded death, and for the first time in my life I am afraid. I almost laugh. I am witch-born and afraid, but I keep on, summoning my courage, calling on my mother, on Matil
de, on every witch Pyrmont has kept secrets for, and plunge my way through.

  A voice calls in the distance and the sound comes at my back, lashing at me, interrupting the repetitive motion of my feet upon soft mulch. I have no lantern to light my way; I have only my instincts to lead me through the treacherous wood, and I remind myself the forest is good at playing tricks on the mind.

  I stop dead in my tracks, listening, certain I’d heard footsteps close by. Small. Tentative. Lost.

  The trees cluster in such a way that that each step causes me to pause—their narrow trunks appearing like a person in the dark. Movement slips from the shadows.

  “Niclaus?” I whisper, inching forward, hoping not to scare him. “I’ve come for you, Niclaus. Don’t be afraid.”

  There is no answer in the suffocating dark, only eyes reflecting a light that comes from nowhere, and then a shape, cloaked and silent.

  Matilde. She is the one person that comes to mind and my heart stammers at the thought of seeing her, finally. I pull an icy breath into my lungs as the figure steps closer, and I go cold as I realize my mistake.

  The hood falls back, revealing a bone-white face with no eyes. Frozen in a silent death scream, her mouth hangs open as the wind swirls around us, howling like a wild animal. In swift sequence the woman’s face changes to one I know to be my mother. Her ebony hair and piercing eyes are as beautiful in the dark as they are trapped behind brush strokes and painted lacquer. Other faces come, old and young, women, girls, all with the same light emanating from skull-socket eyes.

  I do not know them, yet am somehow able to recognize each one. My ancestors, my bloodline, witches of Pyrmont whose stories have been recorded in the grimoire since the beginning. Each has walked within Pyrmont’s stone passageways to conjure and curse. Each has met an untimely end, passing her powers to a daughter while a dark, malevolent evil watched from the shadows.

  A light stretches from the endless stream of faces, flowing beneath my feet like an iridescent river. It reaches toward the direction I’ve come, and ahead of me, toward Burg Eltz, marking a path along the forest floor. It is the same course I’d traced upon the parchment map and, now, before my eyes is proof the two castles are aligned with one another as they are to the other places marked on the map—the abbey ruins in Munich, a desiccated castle along the Rhine, the Benedictine graveyard.

  But what about Pyrmont is special to anyone else but myself and the witches who lived there long ago? Could it be its sheer power, or our devotion to the Mother, that grants it permission to stand amongst the likes of the others?

  The cloaked figure sweeps past my shoulder, touching me with a clammy chill. I long to follow it, hoping it might reveal more, but I am torn, knowing Niclaus could be anywhere in the forest. He’d been so frightened of the trees that morning when we’d found the bone in the snow.

  My mind sifts back to an entry in the grimoire. Matilde had taken my mother to the sacred chamber deep below the stones of the castle—that dreaded passageway, the hidden staircase. The words are in my head but refuse to materialize, and then, it is as if the grimoire speaks to me here in the forest. The bones. The stones drenched with moisture deep in the tunnel.

  And I know.

  The bones of witches lie deep beneath my home. Witch upon witch, bone upon bone, curse upon curse…the very ground, drenched in blood and rune magic. And the water—the water has been tainted…witches cannot cross this water. It carries the blood of our ancestors.

  The crunch of boots and swaying beams of lantern light find their way to the spot where I stand. The silence is sliced by Eltz’s Guard, the hooves of their horses, the sniffing of their dogs who hunt for a small boy. If they’ve not found him yet, then there is good chance Niclaus might be closer to Pyrmont than I’d thought. With a mad dash, I rethink my direction and hurry back toward Pyrmont, past the specter that leads the way, past the trees and brush and the haunting sounds that come in the deep, dark night.

  I tear past the keep, past the small black fence that juts out from the snow—and stop, gasping air into my lungs. At my feet two graves lie, one old, one new—fresh dirt piles atop the white snow.

  And there is a third—a hole in the ground. Empty. Waiting.

  The witches’ bones lie beneath Pyrmont. They line the path toward the sacred chamber, keeping watch, waiting for the next witch to find her place here.

  At last, Laurentz’s voice draws closer. When I find him in the shadows, my arms wrap about his neck and I cling to him. I don’t care if he’s real or of magick; I am made up of it as much as he is. He is Laurentz, always there for me, always true.

  “Niclaus?” He takes a moment to pull away and take notice that I’ve come back alone. That I haven’t found him yet.

  “We have to search the castle.” My throat tightens with exertion, my voice barely there.

  “I’ve searched it, high and low. I’ve come up empty-handed.” He pauses as the worry creeps into in his eyes. “What am I, Rune? There are times, such as this night, that I don’t need light to see. Times where I am more comfortable in the dark, more myself, yet I am filled with a feeling so strange, as if I am in someone else’s skin. And I see it in your eyes. You know something. You know what I am.”

  I press my palm against his cheek wanting to explain away his worry, to show him what I was able to scry in the keep as the grimoire opened itself up to me. But it will have to wait.

  A cool wind brushes past. He does not see the ancient path or the cloaked figure curl her bony finger, calling us to follow. I reach into my pocket and find the skeleton key. “I promise there is nothing to worry about. But right now there is one room we haven’t searched.”

  Beyond us Pyrmont looms, her shadow a dark stain upon the snow, and my eyes trail her sides toward the tallest spire where the tower room hovers, watching, mocking our efforts.

  Chapter 37

  The moment I open Pyrmont’s great wooden door, the castle bellows a sour breath. So overwhelming is the rot, as if years of death have seeped from the walls in our absence.

  Laurentz reaches for my hand and I am grateful for him. We move through rooms that should look and feel familiar yet they are as if we are seeing them for the first time, decrepit and tainted, in ill repair. When had Pyrmont changed? Why had I not noticed? I’ve been living within the greatest illusion—Pyrmont herself is of ancient magick. Her secrets, her sighs, have been fooling me all this while.

  The kitchen reeks of spoiled food, of damp logs in an ash-coated hearth. Gone is the warm comfort I’d shared with the children. Laurentz and I inch our way down the hall toward the salon, past paintings that sneer at our backs, through musty clouds of stench.

  “Do you remember when we first opened the box? That smell?” I ask him, and he nods with a grimace. The odor is so overpowering, so foul, that I nearly gag.

  “Up here.” I lead him to a stairwell hidden within the recess of a stone wall. Grime and dust litter the curved steps, and I place my shoe upon the first, peering up and around the spiraled railing. Thick shadows congregate at the top and I cannot see. “This is the only section of Pyrmont I’ve yet to explore. I’m certain it leads to the tower.”

  Halfway up, I come to a dead stop.

  “What is it?” he asks me.

  I hadn’t the chance to tell him of the grimoire’s accounts, of Matilde, of Adelaide…and now we are about to set foot inside the one room where it all began to unspool. My arms are chilled to the bone and the air is thin as we climb. The grimoire’s words sift through my mind. Laurentz. My legacy. The darkness.

  And now poor Niclaus has been missing for hours.

  A symphony of whispers stirs the air as we reach the top of the landing. They are urgent and old and remind me I am not alone here, that I’ve never been alone.

  “Do you know what’s on the other side?” Laurentz asks, nodding toward the door that waits for us to open it.

  “Yes, the truth. All of it.” The truth about you, Laurentz. About my family. But I cann
ot bring myself to tell him just yet. “I read of this room in the grimoire, but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.” There is a measure of pride upon his face that I have actually read the grimoire. With all my might I hold onto the key, careful not to let it slip from my palms, which are slick with sweat. When I hold it out, bringing it closer to the iron lock, Laurentz stops me, placing his hand on my wrist.

  He sighs deeply and runs his hand through his hair. “The truth about me is in that grimoire, isn’t it?” I nod, and he sighs before continuing. “One day, I asked my mother about a dream I’d had. I woke up not feeling like myself, that I was someone else, only still me. And then my skin itched…around my arms, my knees, my neck. It felt as if I had been pricked by my mother’s stitching needle, and if I moved too quickly, my limbs would fall off.”

  “And what did your mother say?”

  “She laughed and told me the cream I’d drunk the night before had clotted overnight, and I was falling ill.” Laurentz chuckles darkly at this, so desperately wanting to find the fun in it all. “But Rune, when I lifted my head from the pillow, strands of hair clung to it. Hair that was not mine, yet it came from my own head. And then I started to remember.”

  “Laurentz,” I start, but his eyes quiet my sympathy.

  “I never let my mother know that from that night on, I dreamed of a boy who had fallen gravely ill in the nearby village. That with my mother’s love and blessing, the old witch used the most viable pieces of him and constructed a new child—a child born of magick and blood, of hair like my brother’s, of my mother’s smile, and of the skin and bones of a village boy, too poor for anyone to remember.” A strange silence hangs between us, and then it comes. “I know, Rune,” he says. “I think I already know what I am.”