The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  She hovered in the doorway, lips quivering. At first, he thought Essa was going to cry, but she made no further sign or move, merely staring at the floor, hands fiddling apprehensively with one another. She was a nervous wreck, the cloth of her nightshirt wrapping in her fingers and twisting around and around again.

  Rurik swung around to greet her, cocking his head to the side when she would not look at him. She was pale, ghostly so. The sickness must have been worse than he had thought—and to think that they had left her alone all this time. He felt his own stomach churn.

  “Are you coming in?”

  “Y-yes, I just…”

  Such indecision cast shadows about her, much as the torchlight dancing across her skin. It was unbecoming—the very antithesis of her usual character. It worried the boy, such that he hopped from his perch and narrowed the gap between them. She seemed to stiffen, stilling as he drew near. Her breaths came in pinched white clouds.

  “What’s wrong?” Her eyes darted up at him, fluttered, and shrank away again. “Did something happen? Should we send for a doctor?”

  It was only within the last few feet that he noticed the rapidity of her breathing. The usual steady rise and fall was replaced by a furious tempo of pants. She was also near to shining—her face flushed red to the core. His thoughts turned sharply to the flu, and his pace quickened. With a march on the morrow, a flu could prove deadly. It had already taken more than its share.

  Tentatively, he reached a hand to touch her head. “Are you…?”

  She ducked the encroaching limb, swung in, and forced her lips on his. It left him stunned. Eyes widened as his mind caught up to physical reality, though his actions remained no less rigid. Arms enclosed about his waist, drawing them together, and the ferocity of the assault on his lips heightened—a raging hunger that threatened to consume them both.

  But after a few more seconds, she came up for air, her hot breaths playing havoc across his skin, arms never once leaving him. She bit at her lip, eyes locking with his for the first time of the night. For his part, he was still stunned to silence. Rurik’s lips moved, and his body responded to her touch, but his mind was at a struggle to keep up.

  “I just…I forgive you and want-wanted to say, that I, you know, think it’s time we…”

  What? Are you…? His mind reeled. Alarms wailed against him and his thoughts cautioned him. Still. But I thought…

  She threw herself on him again as her words trailed. Kisses dribbled all along his chin and down his neck, an unquenchable fire that touched off a thousand more with every burst. He was faltering.

  “Please, please, please,” she pleaded between advances. “I’ve wanted this for so long…”

  His mind swirled with questions and demands. Everything he thought he knew was being rewritten. Everything he hoped was brought to bear. This wasn’t Essa at all, but his body screamed at him for the implications. Part warned him and part screamed for more—for that part of her that had always been denied him. His hands moved to her hips as her lips sought his own again.

  Please, please, please…let this be real.

  He pressed back into the kiss this time, an active participant in a long-sought dance. Her hand fumbled back for the door as he did, slamming it shut. Yet the sharp clap knocked him back. It reeled his mind back into control of itself and it seized the opportunity, however fleeting. He backed away, but she dragged herself with him, pressing them toward the bed. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp of his belt, until he struck the bed and had nowhere left to flee.

  “Essa,” he breathed, heads resting together, bent lips apart. He dug in his heels, and held her firm. “Are you sure…?”

  Sweet smiles and gentle touches. She ran a hand through his hair and trailed it down his cheek. Her eyes never changed, though—never softened. They boiled with what he now recognized as desire, and no momentary distraction would change the thoughts they reflected. They were wanton, and animal, and he found himself hardening at their intimations.

  “I know what I want, sweetie. Must I take it, or will you give it?”

  The question that set his body aflame so set aside all doubts within his mind. She took him by the hand and pressed him to the bed with the other. She coaxed him on, taking his hand to her body and sliding it under the bare shift that separated them. He reached down for her, her hips leaning into him, and he found her wanting, the heat surprising to him. Then his fingers were stirring inside her and she shivered her way through small, wanton moans. She kissed him once more, and toppled them both back into the feathers and the sheets.

  Chapter 17

  Waking was both the cruelest dread and most elated joy that Rurik had ever known. The darkness of sleep parted with a smoothness he had not felt in a month of slumber, but there was still the knife of anxiety as he felt his embrace to be an empty-handed thing. He dismayed at the possibility of the sweetest and cruelest of dreams as he twisted in the sheets. As soon as he felt his leg graze hers, however, the feeling broke like so much ill wind, and his heart leapt.

  Sweetest chaos greeted his hesitant peek. Sheets entwined between and about them. Essa’s legs were splayed immodestly, and sensuously, her hips writhing occasionally in a restless slumber. Unkempt hair had spilt across her pillow and spread like dew across their bed, and her face, titled toward him, faintly glowed in the morning sun. Her lips were parted, beckoning, as if sleep had struck her in the midst of some forgotten sentence. She was the wild, and beauty, and there was no longer anything between them. His hand on her breast, his lips on her neck. It was not imagined. He smiled as he gathered her into his arms and nestled in beside her. She murmured softly as he laid her head against his chest.

  As he settled into his waking body, Rurik found his own elation tempered somewhat by the satisfying ache of muscles put to labor. His body groaned in protest, but his mind was content to let it. Essa had been a force to be reckoned. Despite her wilder tendencies, she always tottered about the topic of sex enough that he had thought she would be timid in her virginity. She was nothing he might have expected. Quite the contrary, it was she that took the stallion’s lead that night, and he that felt the mare. They had tussled for the role, early on, but she had won through, and in the end, he had been content to let her.

  Amidst her mewls and fevered cries, her claws had scored him deeply and her thighs had squeezed him raw in all the right places. She had ridden him ragged, to exhaustion and beyond, and had begged for more even as her legs stiffened and her voice quailed in her own exalted release. Rurik had obliged as best as he was able, but come marching orders, he would surely feel the results. Yet he concluded a few aches were more than ample price for the smile he would wear throughout the day.

  He tangled a hand through her chocolate locks and savored the feel of her naked body on his own, kissing her cheek and her head in his delight. He touched her thigh and trailed down the smooth cusp of her leg, treasuring the security as he bent deeper into her, her leg enfolding him to her. Little breaths padded against his chest, and as the sound fluttered from her, he could see her gasping, writhing, moaning, drinking of him as he drank of her, without shame.

  When she woke, there was a moment of calm. He leaned down to kiss her, but as he did she actually recoiled, and shoved at him violently. Bloodshot eyes widened, first in shock, then in confusion, horror and disbelief. Rurik had the image of a rabbit suddenly looking upon a lion, and he could almost feel the fear dripping from her. Her eyes rolled off of him, skittishly twisting across the room, settling lastly on the fingers twined against her thigh. Each caught a look as if they were bloodied claws raking at her skin.

  “Take your hand from me, Rurik.” It was like a mouse’s cry, scarcely above a whisper, but there was terror constrained within its tones, and despair within flighting eyes.

  Despite her plea, Rurik drew closer, trying to pull her near. “Essa. What is wrong?” He felt the smile shrinking from his face. “Have I troubled you? It’s alright—”

  “Get off
,” she cried. He started to pull back, but she struck him anyway. “Get off, get off, get off!” Her voice rose shrilly until she was fairly screeching. Like a scalded child, he shrank from her and yanked his hands back to try and take her by the wrists, but she continued to hit him, and wail, “Do not touch me!”

  She clawed him, but as she drew blood his cry for sense seemed to snap her back, and she flew away in renewed terror. She yanked the covers from him and bundled them about herself, and even as he lay unmoving, uncertain of what to do or how any action might be taken, Essa began to weep, long sobbing gasps that shook the bed and bit him to the core.

  They lay as such, each in horror of the other, for several moments. Rurik could not fathom what had happened, how quickly the dream had collapsed upon itself. The night before she had been so unabashed in every aspect of their being. Never had he been touched or loved the way that she had loved him. Like animals, they were, only scarcely human. Yet with morning’s light she was as a virgin again, and he some rapacious highwayman come to ravage her. She would not even meet his eyes.

  There was a fear, however fleeting, that everything that had been was wrought of some cruel illusion. Memory whispered anew what the count had said against him—calling him a rapist and a beast, and all he could think of was the ale, and what he might have said or done. He remembered it all, or thought he did. By the time he had come to bed it was surely teetering out, regardless. Yet nothing he had done in waking could have made her act as such.

  Is the drink so cruel? Could it craft entire worlds, devoid of any alignment with reality? Nothing could be so barbarous as to turn him against her. Yet Pescha’s face loomed amidst his doubt.

  He might have crumbled under his own insinuation. That he might be so wretched a thing was cruelty enough, but the thought of what he might have lost made it all the worse. A friendship, decades old, shattered in one night of excess. A love, so lately blooming, burned before it even had begun.

  Before he could consider them, the words were flooding out of him. “Essa, please, talk to me. If I did something—”

  “Shut up.” The rebuke was short, and quiet, but the force behind it made him tremble. There was loathing, gathered in the very depths of her tones.

  “If I did something to you, I might—please, just say…”

  The broken woman buried her head deeper in the sheets and began to weep even heavier tears, her cries muffled only by the cloth. He let her. Rurik did not know what else to do. Everything in him told him he should reach out and touch her, hold her close and rock this from her, as he always had. That she did not want him only deepened the hurt her tears opened. He had caused this. No one else.

  Yet he did not even know how.

  She wept until there were no more tears to weep, and her sounds gradually deadened to a nearly nonexistent rattle. Outside, several trumpet bursts in quick procession sounded out the signal to rise. Essa’s body spasmed, occasionally, but otherwise stilled to the point of death. For several long moments there was nothing but the hoarse rasping of her breaths.

  Then she quietly asked him, “What have you done?” Rurik stared, blankly, uncertain how to reply. He felt the covers shift and her tear-puffed eyes peered out at him, narrowed with scorn and misery. “You raped me.”

  The accusation sucked the wind out of him. A prickle numbed the back of his neck, like the tightening of a noose. When he recovered his words, they came out as little more than a croak: “What do you mean, Es? You—you came to me.” His confusion only seemed to fuel her anger.

  “How could you not see?”

  “You came to me, Essa.” The boy repeated it, no less firmly, flailing it between them like some paltry buckler shield. “I—please, tell me what you mean.”

  “You were different,” Essa muttered absently. “You say you love, yet you couldn’t see. Did you do it? Did he? Or was it all some sick joke?” Her voice trembled with every accusation, but her body only seemed to shrink further and further from him. “Was it because I took too long? Is that it? I wasn’t like your whores? You—you said you…you…” Her voice caught on the word, and repeated it bitterly, choking.

  “Do what?” he pleaded. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you Rurik, I told you. I would rather die. Yet you didn’t notice. You didn’t even care to think. Arasyl. Like I was trapped in my own skin,” Essa said, clutching at her own arms as she seemed to slink away into some haunted memory, “watching someone else pull me along by a string. Still pulling. You can see me. Hear me. Touch me. And you didn’t know? How could you not know? Not see?”

  “Essa. It was you.” Trying to reach for her hand, he entreated, “It sounded like you. Like—like you do. How could I know? I don’t even—”

  She slapped him. “Am I a whore, Rurik?” He parted his lips to speak, but nothing came. When he did not answer, Essa rose up, her voice breaking as she asked again. “Am I a whore?” He silently shook his head, and she slapped him again. “H-how, how could you not? It wears my voice and it wears my skin, but was it me? Did it act like me? You did not think because you did not want to. And now, and now…” The tears started to roll again, Essa’s lip quavering as the words failed her.

  “Essa, please—” Rurik’s hand shook as he reached for her, but as he touched her leg, she jerked up again, the tears abruptly faltering. With a screech, she slapped his hand from her and flung herself away.

  “DON’T TOUCH ME!”

  The top sheet clung to her as she stumbled from the bed. Rurik struggled up, trying to go after her. “Essa,” he said, trying to calm her, but she swept past him with the wetness trailing down, pausing only long enough to scoop as many of her clothes as her arms could carry.

  “Do not come near me. Do not!” And he did not, for fear of what she might do.

  As she reached the door, Essa didn’t even look back. His oldest friend fled, howling, into the hall, the sheet trailing after her. Rurik wanted to chase her, lest she draw unwanted attention to herself, but he knew she would not have him, and he knew where she would flee. Until this madness could be sorted, Rowan would take her in and keep her.

  Rurik sank slowly back into their bed and put his head in his hands. Suddenly, the migraine of his hangover seemed to surge to the fore, as though it had been waiting for its opportunity to strike.

  Arasyl, Essa said. The word was like ashes in his mouth. It would explain much. Fool, fool, why was I such a fool? He felt his stomach lurch and a bitter taste rise. He thought he might retch, but nothing came. Their perfect night was a lie, then. All of it.

  “How could I have known,” he cried to the cruel silence of the room, but no one answered him. How his father would have hated him. If Kasimir had still been alive, this would have been grounds to disown him all over again. Rurik had taken advantage of a woman seduced by the plant of pimps and predators. There was no lower thing.

  Through the walls, he could hear her, if he listened carefully. All he wanted to say was that he was sorry. He wished to throw himself at her feet and debase himself until there could be no doubt of his innocence. He could not wish it. Not on her. Not this. Everything was supposed to be perfect, and one little drink had ruined it all. He tried to think of who could be so cruel, so wretched, but his mind kept wandering back to her, and to them, and to all the things that he had done. Rowan’s voice was rising through the walls, a solemn revival. In the hall, other shades stirred. Rurik rolled to his side and tried to cover his ears.

  Then he stopped, the breath catching in his lungs. He had not realized it until that moment. The words had been there, but the reality of it had never clicked. There was blood in the sheets.

  * *

  For all the victory that death had wrought, the halls of Vissering Castle were more like those of a tomb than a procession. In those early hours, the witch had come once more to death’s door. At night, she sweated and howled, and took to fever. She would coil in her sheets and weep, and ramble strings of sentences that crashed upon one anot
her without ever gracing the shores of sensibility. Charlotte’s father hid in his study, or with his men, plotting their path atop their mound of corpses. If he worried, he gave no indication, and he never once visited his decaying tool. The witch’s care was left to the maids of the house. Servants came and went from that dismal, frosted room, but always they emerged grayer than they had entered.

  In the morning Charlotte came to her, to see the end for herself. They said it was surely near. Charlotte sat beside the witch as she frothed and moaned, sometimes arching at the back and crying out, at others ranting, railing against some unseen creature. She had grown wan as a ghost.

  Only once did she speak any sense, and it was as Charlotte made to leave. Usuri rounded on her, striking a startled maid’s compress from her fingers.

  “I am betrayed,” the witch cried out savagely. Her cheeks flushed as she rocked forward, and it seemed as though the witch would thrust herself upon her, finger pressed accusingly at her. “I name thee betrayer. Bearer of the words, bearer of the lies—it sees, but it does not tell. It looks and hates and does not tell. It does not think she sees, but she sees. She knows what it is.”

  The maid cried for help as she struggled to hold the witch down. Usuri struggled fiercely, but the sickness had made her weak, and as other hands flooded into the room they pressed her down and gagged her so she would not bite her tongue. Charlotte gracefully fled, thinking it would surely be the girl’s death.

  Yet by week’s end, she was told the fever had died, and the witch would live. The hours after were quieter, but no less troubling. Charlotte thought it would have been best if the girl had simply died, but she made it a point to put it from her mind. For the rest of the day Charlotte avoided the witch’s room and busied herself with a monotony of pleasantries and embroideries, restless, but focused.