by Anya Allyn
My mind closed in. Shaking, I stepped inside the compartment. My elbows knocked against the sides. A wooden ledge behind me was barely large enough to sit upon. Voulo closed the door and pushed the key into the lock. He stopped to admire his placement of me in the cabinet before ambling from the room. Pressing my hands against the thick glass, my mind screamed over and over and over. There was not enough room to kick or elbow the glass—and even if I did manage to crack it, a diamond-patterned metal grid secured the door.
What if Voulo did not return?
What if I died here? Of every kind of death that had rushed through my mind this night, every one of them had set me free of the castle. But this death, this death would hold me here forever.
Breaths stuttered through my chest. Voulo had told me to steady my breathing. But he had most probably never been inside such a thing as this himself. I slowed my breathing, trying to find a center of calm, anything to stop the madness that spiraled through my head. I pushed my fingers in the join between the door and the walls of my tiny prison. There was a gap—enough for a small amount of air to come through. Stale, underground air.
On the wall opposite, the board holding the myriad keys mocked me. Each key was large and of a dark metal, but every one of them was different. If a key was lost, the matching compartment could not be opened. If the key to my door were to be lost, I would remain here forever.
Stop, I told myself. Stop thinking such thoughts.
My head grew heavy.
If I slept and never woke, then so be it.
~.~
I snapped my eyes open to the rattle of metal.
Voulo stood there, staring upward, key ring in hand. He’d been watching me sleep. Every one of my muscles tensed as he scraped the stool over to the cabinets. But the door he pushed the key into was not mine. Nor the next, or the next. When he reached the compartment beside mine—Etiennette’s—he reached for a key he had on a chain around his neck.
My nerves jangled into a twisted knot by the time he reached my door. Was it a game he was playing with me? But his eyes were mirthless.
He inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
Stiffly, I rose and pushed myself out. I would have fallen had he not caught me. He eased me to the ground.
“Non! Thou canst not move so in such haste. Thou must take care.” He eyed the girls in the cabinet. “Just like wood. Thou limbs must not be forced. Thou must stretch and work the flesh first. Yes, work the flesh.”
With a gasping cry I moved away from him. I’d been promised the air of the ocean and the terror struck me that he might push me back in there again before I’d had a chance to get out of here.
He brushed a hand across the air. “The cabinets—I doth crafted them at the master’s request. But they were never meant to be made for the... living.” He eyed me distastefully. “The beauty of the butterfly is better preserved in death than in life.”
Revulsion washed through me at his words. I turned my head. The door of the chambers was open. Wordlessly, I stumbled toward it.
Like a starving man, I raced out and along the corridor. Wind blew across my face and I gulped it down into my lungs. The night sky beyond the ocean passage was black, but not the colorless black of Balthazar’s chambers. The sky was rich and velvety.
Voulo appeared at my side, almost out of my line of sight. “I wilt return for thee just before the dawn.”
Staring directly ahead, I gave a rigid nod.
Balthazar gained pleasure in looking at all his past wives, while Voulo viewed us all as butterflies skewered in a glass case. I sensed he couldn’t wait for his latest butterfly to stop uselessly fluttering her wings.
I stepped alongside the balcony wall, my hands scraping over the weather-roughened stone work, trying to move as far away from Voulo as possible. But when I turned my head, he was gone.
I dropped to my hands and knees, seeking solace in the cold floor.
Moments slipped away while my mind moved into a grayness, into a void. Into insanity.
Willfully, I let it happen. Insanity would be my best defense against my life as it was now. To become as Emerson had been—catatonic, unthinking.
But underneath everything—a place that only Ethan had seen—something refused to give me that peace. It was the drumbeat I’d heard in the dollhouse when I’d tried to die, that distant heartbeat urging me to seek life.
Rising, I let the fresh night air seep through me, let it wash the foul air of Balthazar’s chambers away. I would live for the nights out here in the ocean passage.
I walked to the antechamber where Zach and Parker’s fathers had taken me. As they had said it would, a meal waited for me there. At every bite, my stomach twisted, but I forced the food down. To stay strong, I had to eat.
There was a bowl of water, to freshen up with, and two clean dresses. I changed out of the wedding dress, casting it aside like a disease-laden cloth.
At the first dim light just before sunrise, Voulo returned. I walked ahead, trying not to show my fear.
My day locked away in the cabinet became days. Days of staring out at the last place Etiennette had known before she died. The sight of the empty cradles of her babies haunted me whether I slept or remained awake. Sometimes I imagined the cradles rocking, or imagined the flame of the candles on the nearby set of drawers flickering as though someone had brushed past them.
My mind was a shattered mirror. I saw only parts of the whole. I saw only what was reflected back to me, not what was really all around me. I imagined that if I could see past the broken pieces of mirror of my mind, I would see everything.
Balthazar slept on. I knew that part of him never slept. I sensed his hunger roaming the chambers like a caged lion.
At midnight, Voulo came to unlock the cabinet. As he did every time, he unlocked a series of cabinets before mine. This time, I watched his movements closely. He unlocked six cabinets before mine, then remained behind and rapidly locked them again after I was out. Voulo was a strange man, and perhaps it was part of some ritual in his deranged head that made no sense.
Out in the ocean passage, I ate the food left for me, and spent my time running as fast as I could to the end of the passage and back again. The passage was only around two hundred feet in length, but enough to build up pace. I would not allow myself to wither and waste.
Each morning, at first light, my mind rebelled as Voulo led me back to my prison. Each time, I had to calm the mounting fear that threatened to envelop every one of my senses. I learned to sleep in that strange half-sitting half-standing position, learned to measure out my breaths. I learned to start flexing and loosening my muscles as soon as I heard Voulo in the chambers.
The jangle of the keys wakened me yet again. Voulo carried out his unlocking ritual. He unlocked the doors in exactly the same pattern as he had done the night before—the same pattern as every night.
I moved out from my compartment as he unlocked my door. As always, he hurried to lock the other doors. In exactly the same pattern, but in reverse.
I stretched my back. Pain shot through it like a vice. The hours I spent out of the compartment were not enough.
Voulo noticed my wincing expression. “Yes, it is not a place for live flesh. I didst not construct it for the living.” His quick eyes moved over me. “Come. I have something to show thee.” He gestured toward the room where he had painted my picture.
I shook my head. “I-I want to go out of here now.”
“In time. But thou must see.”
Reluctantly, I followed him into the room of the paintings.
As before, dozens of sets of eyes pierced me with their terror. My heart raced, knowing the fear these girls had suffered. It was overwhelming, suffocating.
Oblivious, Voulo took me to a mannequin-shaped object that had a cloth over it. He whipped the cloth from the object, then studied my face for a reaction.
My body shook. It was me. Me, in the wedding dress I had worn, my face and body captured in a woode
n marionette—the face painted to match the portrait.
“Look.” Excited, Voulo pried the two sides of the marionette apart. The marionette was hollow inside, in two equal halves. “I crafted it in my room in the dungeons, so that the workings of my knife doth not disturb Balthazar. He wilt indeed be pleased when he sees it.” He took the wig of hair from the scalp. “Bah! This is made from the tail of a horse. It wilt not remain. In time, it wilt be made of the real hair.”
I struggled to speak. “Put her in the cabinet, and let me stay out.”
Voulo’s shining eyes clouded and he eyed me strangely. “She cannot take her place in the cabinet. She is not... complete.” His gaze strayed to my left hand and stayed there.
I stared downward at my fingers. Between my thumb and forefinger was a small, dark patch. I inhaled sharply. The affliction that had plagued the other girls... it had started on my body.
My limbs were rigid as I stepped backward. “I need air.”
He was no longer paying attention to me. He hummed a disjointed tune as he ran his hands over the wood of the figurine.
I fled from the chambers, gasping as I reached the narrow corridor. My lungs felt as though they were closing in, compressing. I could almost feel Voulo fitting the thin casing of the marionette to me.
Clinging to the wall of the ocean passage, I made my way out into the night.
I let my meal grow cold and congealed on the table.
The night passed into dawn in the blink of an eye. My mind had gone away.
Voulo came to take me back and press me into the cabinet compartment.
When he returned at midnight to free me, I hadn’t slept. I’d stayed awake—my eyes and mind frozen. He didn’t speak to me, seeming to know I was beyond communication. I sensed that he had seen the girls from the cabinet in this state before— girls who knew the fate that was to befall them.
~.~
So began the summer of my seventeenth year in Balthazar’s caverns.
Days and nights bled into each other like diseases feeding from each other. I lost count of how many days had passed. I only witnessed the nights—walking the passages from Balthazar’s chambers to the walkway like a dead thing, devoid of anything human. Only on my nights outside did I have any connection to the world. Outside I smelled the ocean. And now and again, I imagined I could smell the fruit ripening in the orchards far, far above.
My mind began decaying, turning to dust. Thick, coppery air laced with brine became my blood. The walls of the castle became my bones. Each day, I lived Etiennette’s sorrow, lived the sorrow of every life that had ended in Balthazar’s cabinets—the horror and grief of every one of those lives blanketing my mind.
Each night, I let the wind breathe on me and watched the stars burn in the black sky. So many stars—billions of stars—yet they were only the stars of one galaxy, in one universe. I imagined the light of each star burning out... extinguishing one by one, and the universe turning to nothing but infinite blackness.
Each day I spent in the suffocating horror of the chambers, seeing the blackened, wizened body of Balthazar lying on the bed, every ticking moment moving closer to the time he would wake. I’d grown used to only sleeping for stolen snippets of time. My mind was a jagged pile of disconnected images. The affliction grew on me day by day, but I barely cared, anymore. On the webbing between my toes and fingers, under my arms and a spot beneath my right ear.
I took my one meal of the day in the vestibule. Meals tasted like dust to me and I barely ate. I had conditioned myself to deal with hunger in the dollhouse—but now, I barely sensed that gnawing emptiness in my stomach that I used to feel. Day by day, the need to keep my mind and body strong slipped away from me.
Twice, I heard the grind and shudder of the désorienter, but the désorienter didn’t come to me. There was to be no night of change for Balthazar’s wife. I knew Molly would have turned nineteen by now. She was all alone, at the mercy of those people. And when she died, she would die alone.
Tonight, I walked the passage yet again. The same scene played out endlessly. I had become one of Jessamine’s dolls—mindlessly walking the corridors. I left the meal untouched.
Music began to play in my head—Jessamine’s music from the dollhouse. I heard it clearly, every note. My body moved into a waltz. Something solid formed beneath my arms—Ethan’s broad shoulders. I remembered that dance with him on the second day of the dollhouse. It was the closest I had ever been to him—shock waves of heat and shame travelling through my body.
But I couldn’t hold onto him. He disappeared from my arms. I would never have him again. He was gone.
My mind was ice—like the lands out there in all directions beyond the castle. All dead. No lights at all. Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Gripping the rail, I gazed out at the ocean. I had stopped finding the sight and sound of the ocean soothing long ago. Now, the ocean just seemed endless and unforgiving, its noise like a relentless push sending me far below.
Moonlight cut a pale reflection across the ocean’s surface. As I gazed, a dark figure rose from the depths, water rushing down from the immense frame as it lifted its head.
The serpent.
My crazed mind was imagining her here. Moonlight picked out her silvery scales, her cold eyes. She remained still, returning my gaze with cold hatred. I didn’t turn away, didn’t falter.
She thrust herself up and dived back into the depths of the ocean.
The next moment, the ocean’s surface was calm, as though she had never broken through it. My mind was failing me—imagining the serpent, imagining Ethan. Would all the ghosts of my past life start crowding in on me? I imagined myself grown old, still taking my lonely walks out here, joined by the ghosts of everyone and everything I’d ever known.
The image of the painting beneath the black curtain moved into my mind, haunting me.
No, I would shrivel and die soon, like all of Balthazar’s brides.
4. The Wardens
ETHAN
Dark air rushes at me as I wake. Back in the forest, I reached the tree where Cassie kept the music box I gave her. The panthers leapt on me—the weight of their bodies crashing me to the ground. I waited for death, but I fell backward at enormous speed. Someone, at some time, must have traveled through a shadow to that tree—and left a refraction behind. The speed of travel between worlds knocked my mind into a whirl, and I must have been hurtling through the shadow-tunnel unconscious.
I brace myself for what must come. Landing on the ice world at this speed will kill me. Wind shrieks in my ears as I’m thrust out in the face of a distant silver moon. A blizzard captures my body and tosses it about like a crazed dog with a bone. I don’t know where I am, but there is nothing but white below in all directions. My velocity broken, I plummet. I have seconds before it’s all over. Mere seconds. Cassie’s tortured expression hangs in the space before my eyes. Two thoughts puncture my mind:
I didn’t save her.
Her fate is infinitely worse than mine.
White death pushes toward me. My eyes close and I see only her.
I hit the ground with a shattering force. My consciousness tears away.
~.~
“He’s not from here. That much I know.”
The voice is gruff and to the point. My limbs feel frozen, fused to the surface below me. I concentrate on moving, opening my eyes, but I’m immobile.
“I can see by the scars on his neck that he’s been mixing with bad sorts. Those are old knife wounds.”
It’s a woman’s voice this time—crisp and questioning. I sense her peering at me.
“True. Perhaps I should have left him to drown. We don’t know who he is or why he’s here. There’s been too many people about who I don’t recognize.”
Drown. So I ended up in a lake. Or a river. Something that had no layer of ice over it. Scattered footfall runs near me—light footfall—like there are children here. The smell of wood chips and baking bread drifts
into my nostrils. I can guess I’m in someone’s home. There’s a fire—a weak warmth drifts over me. But I can still feel the chill underneath the warmth. Whoever these people are, they’re either running low on wood or afraid to draw attention to themselves by sending too much smoke into the air.
My eyelids begin twitching. I remember Cassie’s terrified eyes. I remember Balthazar sending me tumbling into the moors. I remember the yellow panther eyes. Fractured images spill into my eyes as I open them. Cassie’s face merges with the face of a young girl, no more than eight years of age. A ruddy-face boy of about four stands close by her, holding a toy airplane.
The woman touches the boy’s shoulders protectively, examining my face. “You’ve been unconscious for three days. My husband fished you from Clear Lake on Sunday. We’re park wardens, or we were, until the day winter came and never left.” She pauses for a moment. “We’ve got guns and know how to use them.”
Her eyes are calm, with a reserve behind them that tell me she means what she says. I’m confused with her accent. She sounds American, but the tone is softer, more like the Australians.
I try to nod a thank you, but my neck’s too stiff. According to the woman, I’ve been lying here for three long days. Panic engulfs me. I need to get out of here. I can guess these people have checked my clothing for weapons and have taken everything they could find.
The man moves into my field of vision, and gives me a sip of water. Bushy fair eyebrows frame heavy-lidded blue eyes. His cheeks and nose bear the yellowish patches of frost nip. He’s most probably been venturing further and further out into the freezing temperatures around him, looking for wood and supplies. “We won’t be here much longer. Would have been already gone if you hadn’t of showed up.”
“Where?” My throat is as dry as old carpet. “Where am I?”
“You don’t know where you are, eh?” His expression changes—a guarded veil closing over his eyes.
