He summoned a footman to show her to a small sitting room. The young man lit a lamp, poked at the slumbering fire, left without once looking at her face. She stood by the fireplace, indifferent to the ache of warming blood. After a while she unwrapped her scarf and took the mittens off her hands.
The door opened.
“Zel! Should it be my turn to say, ‘so soon’?”
Audey, in the flesh. She wore blue velvet that bared her shoulders and sapphires in her hair. Her smile cooled to a wary expression. She pressed the door closed without turning her back to Zel.
“You have a face like a lion. Is it my blood you want?”
Zel raised her hand to her face. “Lioness.”
“Yes.” Audey drew a careful breath. “Of course I’ve never seen one. I’ve never been south of the mountains.”
“I have only seen them dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Audey approached the fire with a hushing of skirts. “I’d like to see one alive.”
“They would miss the sun,” Zel whispered.
Audey smiled, cupped Zel’s face in her hands. “I would miss the cold.” She dropped her hands, gestured Zel to a chair as she sat. “You spoke to your friend.”
Zel touched her cheek again, then sat and told Audey Gannet’s demands. When she was done, Audey sat for some time turning the rings on her fingers.
“Is it possible?” Zel asked. “Could you give him to her?”
Audey straightened a ring. She had beautiful hands, long-fingered and strong. “Yes,” she said, but in her voice there was a qualification.
“Will you?”
Audey lifted her gaze. “Do you wish it?”
“Yes.”
A lifted brow. “So easily?”
“Easily!”
Audey smiled briefly, returned to the study of her hands. Finally she said, “I must speak with my sisters, but I think. . . .” She stood. “I think yes.”
Zel stood as well. “When?”
“Oh, tonight, once the people are gone and our father has been put to bed. But Zel, we will not be able to do it without you. And this, too, will not be easy.”
~ ~ ~
“Are the witches free where you come from?” one of the sisters asked. Zel thought it was Masha, but they looked so much alike, in the dim cellar she wasn’t sure.
“There are no witches,” Zel said. “Where I come from, there are only priests.”
“Oh, it’s the same,” another sister said. “Everywhere it’s the same.”
Zel smiled, thinly. “Some of the priests are women.”
“It makes no difference,” Audey said. “Hide us in cellars and use us for secret gain, or try and turn us into men: neither lets us be.”
“Is that what you want?” Zel asked. “Just to be?”
“To be left alone,” a sister said.
“To be free,” another said.
“To be unafraid,” Audey whispered.
The women undressed, the Bodils to lacey shifts, Zel to linen undershirt and drawers. Masha poured oil in the hollows in the earthen floor, Liran followed with matches and Godeth with wicks. The northern women’s skin bloomed like new ivory in the light; Zel’s was rich as gold. Audey let down her hair, careless of gem-headed pins, then reached to undo Zel’s. Zel stepped aside. She heard Gannet cry, They stole you from me! Audey gave her a sober look.
“This is dangerous work we do, my heart. There must be trust between us or it will turn awry.”
Zel nodded, but she untied her braids herself.
The sisters knelt within the ring of firelight, patting a soft rhythm with their palms on the floor, chanting invocations that were meaningless to Zel, even those in a language she knew. She sat amongst them, silent, but her hands twitched to the drumming. This went on and on. She was tired. The oil-flames blurred to red-gold scarves across her eyes.
Dark girl gleaming like amber in a ring of golden fire. Dark girl dancing like light across a jewel.
She is a bead strung on the web of their intentions. Their knowledge moves in her—moves her—like instinct. Their power, fluid as a cat loping across a desert plain, easy as a bird lying on the arctic wind. Memory, morality, burned away, meaningless to the wild creature she has become. Restraint is essential, instinct tells her so, but theirs are the hands that have set her free. Let them restrain her if they can. Meanwhile, she dances.
When the owl comes, she recognizes herself. Likewise with the knife.
Likewise, the blood.
~ ~ ~
Zel fell into a kind of sick exhaustion while Audey and her sisters made their charm. When she woke on a cot in a dark alcove of the cellar, her hands were stiff with blood, her skin everywhere flecked white with down. Her throat caught on some sound and she struggled to sit. Audey appeared wearing a robe, her hair still loose around her face.
“You’re awake,” she said.
Zel hid her hands between her knees and wept.
“I know.” Audey put her arms around her. “Oh, I know. It’s hard. It’s always hard. Think how terrible it would be if it were easy.”
~ ~ ~
She had to deliver the charm to Torrend herself. Audey did not make it an order, but Zel understood the necessity. It was almost a moral necessity, though how—she had to wonder—how could one possibly use that word in this context? A man’s will subverted, his heart and mind ensnared, and why? Because a thief entered the wrong house. Because a foolish woman fell in love. Yet she could not deny what the Bodils had said. Existence, freedom, fearlessness: these were not trivial desires.
“Don’t pity him,” Audey said, reading her face. “He would burn us like candles and never think himself anything but righteous and just. Our enemies are not innocent men.”
So Zel delivered the charm, which was in the shape of a letter sealed with a fat blob of red wax. When he broke the seal, the magic would take hold.
It was still bitterly cold. Audey had offered Zel a fur cloak, but she had refused, and wearing her servant’s wool she threaded her way past stables and coach house to knock at the Torrends’ servants’ door. A maid answered.
“Come in quick, it’s colder than a witch’s behind.”
Zel, strung tight as a crossbow, broke into painful laughter. When she could speak, she said, “I have a letter to deliver to Captain Torrend. My mistress told me to be sure to put it directly into his hand.”
“Eh, well.” The maid looked her over. “Wait here. I’d best go ask Master Gherd.”
Zel waited.
The butler came, studied her coldly, demanded the letter.
“I can’t deliver it to anyone but him.”
“Captain Torrend is not at home. You must leave it with me.”
“I’ll wait.”
He scowled at her, went away. Came back. “Follow me.”
Willam Torrend was in the same room as before, a high, cold chamber with as many weapons as paintings on the wall. He stood, tall and straight in his black uniform, with his back to the fire. He said, “Wait in the hall, Gherd.”
“Sir.”
Gray eyes fixed on Zel. “I have only agreed to see you because I want it made clear to your mistress, once and for all, that there is no point to these continued attempts at communication. I do not count myself her enemy, but it is impossible that I should count such a woman as any acquaintance of mine. Take that and her letter back to her, and let there be an end to it.”
Stiff and cold, she thought. As stiff and as cold as a sheet of glass that showed all the pain behind. Poor man. He was not making it easier for her. “Sir,” she said, “I’m afraid there has been some confusion. The letter is from Audey Bodil.”
He gave a kind of laugh. “Audey Bodil! Have you changed mistresses, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I am doubly confused.”
“Pardon me, sir, but I believe the letter will explain everything.” She pulled the letter from the breast of her coat and held it out.
He shook his head and murm
ured, “I don’t understand.” Put out his hand, took the letter.
Broke the seal.
~ ~ ~
When she left the house, snow had begun to fall.
She walked aimlessly, cut loose, but not at peace. She wanted to see Gannet, yet could not think of a single reaction of Gannet’s she could bear to witness. Joy, fear, regret, guilt: any of them would only add to Zel’s confusion. She had seen the blood rush to Torrend’s face, the sudden shaking in his hands. The charm was cast. Perhaps Zel wanted to see Gannet only because, by judging Gannet’s reactions, Zel might put some name to her own.
The fine snow hissed on the wind. Her face was numb, her hands aching in their bones. It began to dawn on her that if she could not go to Gannet, she had nowhere else to go. No place, no money, no friends—no one but the Bodils. She thought she did not want to see them, she thought she would live a better life if she never saw them again, but it was so cold, and she was so tired, and she had spent all her pennies on the bath. Freedom, she thought bitterly: she had left her father’s home because she wanted freedom, and now she knew there was no such thing. As Torrend had said, she had only changed her mistress.
She went back to the Bodils’, and the Bodil butler showed her to Audey’s sitting room as if she were a favorite guest. Audey was on a footstool by the hearth, rustling the coals with a bit of burning kindling. When Zel came in she leapt to her feet. “Well? Did he take it?”
Zel pulled off her mittens, unwound her scarf. “You’re going to burn your skirt.”
Audey tossed the burning stick into the fire. “He took it.” Her color was high, her eyes brilliant. She looked powerful, vulnerable, trembling on the edge of fear.
“Yes,” Zel said, “he took it.”
“So.” Audey’s hands gripped each other over her heart. “So.” Then, bringing her joined fists to her mouth, she cried, “Oh, Zel, you don’t know what we’ve done!” and she burst into tears.
Strangely, this only served to calm Zel, almost to reassure her. It wasn’t really over; she had known as much, without knowing that she knew. She doffed her servant’s coat and laid it over the back of a chair. Audey watched, done with her brief storm of tears.
“Tell me,” Zel said.
They sat on a low couch by the fire. Audey poured two glasses of wine that then sat on a table, untouched.
Audey spoke to her hands. “We laid a curse on the Torrends. That night, when you first found us. We had never worked such a powerful magic, nor such a dark one. Oh, it was so hard! And then, when the owl died, and you ran, we realized some of you had worked its way into the spell. Everything was wrong. Or at least, everything was changed.”
“Why the Torrends?”
A calm question, calmly answered:
“Because if that family falls, they will take half the witch-haters with them.”
“And you will be free.”
“No.” Audey looked up, a reflection of Zel’s wryness in her smile. “No, but at least we would have a little room to breathe. Then we might begin to think about freedom.” Her look changed. “You know, it isn’t only for my sisters and me.”
“Isn’t it?” A small silence. Then: “So the charm I took to Willam Torrend wasn’t really a love charm, it was a curse on him and his family.” Oh, poor Gannet. Poor man.
But Audey shook her head. “It was both, I think.”
“You think?” Zel gave her an offended stare.
“I think.” Audey held her eyes. “You are the wild element in all of this, my heart. You come tearing into our lives pulling Gannet and Willam Torrend in your wake, you with your dark eyes and your lion’s soul. You broke our curse. We tried to mend it.” Her mouth quirked. “Mending a curse with a love charm. Zel, I cannot begin to predict what might come of such a thing. What was in your mind as you danced? What was in your heart when you killed the bird?”
Zel reached for a glass of wine to give herself time for thought. “I don’t know. Freedom. Anger. Love. I loved her.” She swallowed tears. “I never hated him.”
“So.” Audey smiled a difficult smile. “My heart, you may have saved us from becoming doom-bringers in spite of ourselves.”
Zel met her eyes briefly, looked down into her glass. “I don’t know that I could be sorry if that were true.”
“I know,” Audey said. “I think I might almost be glad.”
Zel took a sip. The wine was red as rubies in the firelight, sweet and warm going down.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Holly Phillips is the author of the award-winning story collection In the Palace of Repose. She is a full-time writer and part-time editor, and likes to refer to herself as a “professional fantasist.” Her most recent novel, The Engine’s Child, was published by Del Rey in 2008. She lives on an island off the west coast of Canada and is hard at work on her next book.
ENDLESS SKIES
Rick Sardinha
Rick Sardinha is a professional illustrator/fine artist living and working on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island. His passion is to create in traditional oil media, however, he is just as comfortable in front of a computer and often uses multiple disciplines in the image creation process.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine
For literary adventure fantasy short stories and audio fiction podcasts, visit our magazine's website at
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
“The Sword of Loving Kindness,” Copyright © 2008 by Chris Willrich
“Architectural Constants,” Copyright © 2008 by Yoon Ha Lee
“Silk and Shadow,” Copyright © 2009 by Tony Pi
“Driftwood,” Copyright © 2009 by Marie Brennan
“Unrest,” Copyright © 2009 by Grace Seybold
“Dragon’s-Eyes,” Copyright © 2009 by Margaret Ronald
“Kreisler’s Automata,” Copyright © 2009 by Matthew David Surridge
“The Alchemist’s Feather,” Copyright © 2009 by Erin Cashier
“Mathematics of Faith,” Copyright © 2009 by Jonathan Wood
“The Mansion of Bones,” Copyright © 2009 by Richard Parks
“The Tinyman and Caroline,” Copyright © 2009 by Sarah L. Edwards
“Blighted Heart,” Copyright © 2009 by Aliette de Bodard
“Father’s Kill,” Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Green
“Thieves of Silence,” Copyright © 2009 by Holly Phillips
“Endless Skies,” Copyright © 2008 by Rick Sardhina
The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One Page 32
