I directed my eyes out to the field, where everything was as stagnant as she might have claimed – until she began to whistle. All across the field the weedflowers perked up – ever so slightly at first, the most tentative yawn of light, and then stronger as Ombri went on. I stared, dumstruck. “You do not even have to go among them,” I breathed. How many times had I weaved the painstaking pattern, fraught with the fear of getting lost in the mist?
She whistled them to full strength, effortlessly, from the comfort of the porch. As the sound died down I looked at her, stirred with astonishment. Perhaps I ought to have felt the threat of replacement, but I felt only intrigue at the things I did not fully understand about her, the extent to which the visions I had seen meant she was someone special.
Besides, replacement meant nothing for someone who finds themselves thrust into greater experiences of their own. As far as I was concerned, she could whistle the flowers awake to her heart's content – for, later that week, I learned what it felt like to fly.
*
Having already made me armor, Tanen seemed loathe to stop there. He finished his chores early one day, and went into the city. When he returned, he carried with him some wooden shafts of different lengths, an assortment of feathers, and numerous lengths of string and wire.
“What's this?” I asked.
“Watch and learn,” he said, and so I was forced to humor him for curiosity's sake. I watched silently from the sidelines as he laid out his supplies and went about his craft for the afternoon, guessing to myself at what he was doing until the product at last began to take form. A bow – and arrows. He could scarcely be serious.
“Do you know how to use those once you make them?” I challenged, skeptical.
“Of course,” he replied without pause.
Somehow, I did not suddenly swell with new confidence in him, corrected.
I would believe it when I saw it.
Then, later, I did see it. He picked up those tokens he had fashioned, put them together in his hands, and aimed an arrow out to pasture. He drew the string back with two careful fingers, the end of the arrow resting between them – much like the smoking stick used by the Ambassador for the Angel of Death. (I shook her from my mind, perturbed that she could worm her way into every-day matters. It was unsettling that there were things that reminded me of her.) Tanen released the string, and the arrow sang out across the field in a graceful arc.
“Did you hit anything?” I quipped.
He put a hand to his brow as if to shield his eyes from the sun. “A Crassweed. I'm sure of it.”
“That is not the most efficient way to weed, just so you know.”
He grinned at me. “I don't suppose you want to be the guinea pig and play fetch?”
“I don't suppose so either.”
He bent to grab another arrow. “Come on. I'll teach you,” he urged.
“Who taught you?”
“Well, growing up... I was a boy,” he explained as if that sufficed, grinning again. “I taught myself.”
“Perfect,” I grunted. Something else to enlarge his head about.
“Actually not. It makes for rather crude method, teaching yourself. But I can hit things, with practice. Come on.”
A little grudgingly, I relented my station by the house and hopped down to join him.
“So, here,” he said, and handed me the bow.
I did my best guessing at the classic hold, but of course was still at a loss as to how to handle the thing.
“Alright.” With his free hand, he swept the arrow out of his opposite grasp, brandishing it for the task. “Not to make an advance on you, but...” he excused himself, flourishing around behind me and folded me into a tutoring hold. His left hand folded around mine on the bow, while his right slid the arrow into place, his head cocked over my shoulder to oversee the maneuver. “Now draw it back, see – lower; you're not as tall as me, sweet, hate to break it to you. You'll only end up shooting your toe, that way.”
“You're not that tall.”
“Now poise your fingers, like this.”
I suffered his tutelage, intent on doing my best.
“And what will you be aiming at for your first epically failed kill?”
“Anything beyond my toes, since I know that's bad.”
“Fair enough. Release at your leisure.”
With a twang, I freed my first arrow. It whistled out into the afternoon yonder, a triumphant vessel. If I had been aiming at anything specific, I'm sure I would have been way off the mark, but at least the arrow did not fall limp at my feet. Tanen spoiled that triumph by shielding his eyes same as earlier, and saying,
“I think you missed.”
I sent a glare and a thwack of the bow his way, and trudged off to retrieve my arrow. He followed in search of his, and we spent a good part of the afternoon tracking down the things.
“We need someone to stand out here for us while we shoot,” I proposed after the last arrow of the bunch proved dedicated to its hiding spot. I poked under another weed, to no avail.
“Then we would shoot him,” Tanen said.
“Well,” I said, “That's one way to get a target to stand for us.”
“Avante of Manor Dorn,” Tanen scolded good-naturedly. “I didn't know you sheltered such sentiments in all of your being.” He bent to peek under a weed as well. “Then again, you could probably count on not hitting them.”
I threw a handful of brush at him.
“Oh, here it is,” he said, and as he stood the brush spilled off his back.
“Perhaps we should paint them?” I suggested next. “A bright color, so they'll be easier to find?”
“A valid solution. Let's.”
Sow we painted them red, and set them to dry propped up against the house, and then sat down and spoke almost as if friends. Tanen went in before sunset, and I followed to put a pot of stew on. After that, Ombri emerged to whistle the weedflowers to light – not as if the task had suddenly become her responsibility, but as one still taken with her own ability to charm them – and as I stood outside admiring her handiwork after she had gone in, Tanan reemerged to check the arrows.
“Dry,” he announced.
“Let's shoot one out there – see if we can't find it in the morning,” I proposed.
“Alright. You want to do the honors?”
I retrieved the bow, and selected the arrow that sported my favorite feather. I had it half-nocked when Tanen moved to help me, and I obstinately shrugged him off so as to do it myself. But it seemed I had not judged his intentness correctly, and he was more difficult to shove off than I thought. The impromptu scuffle saw me slip, and as the bowstring was prematurely released my fingers slipped down the arrow shaft, over the feather, and off the end.
There was the vision of a bloodbath – administered red paint – the smell of red-tailed hawk, and then...the shared sentiment of the arrow's last flight. As the newly-painted arrow arced out over the field, disappearing into the dark, I staggered back, balance lost from the scuffle, and sat unbidden on the ground. The feeling of flight – a memory that lived in that arrow, which I had tapped into with the friction of its release – breathed through my mind. In awe, I stared out after the arrow from my seat on the ground, caught completely off-guard for the sensation. As surely as flying with the arrow itself, I had felt its course.
“Gods, Vant,” Tanen said, sounding both defensive and apologetic at the same time.
But I was not really listening. “Another one...” I prompted, fascinated.
“Another arrow? Tonight?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
Flying again was not the sort of thing fit to wait for morning.
T w e n t y - F o u r –
Victoria
In the silence of the day inside Manor Dorn's brooding reaches, we heard a thing we had not heard in a very long time.
Sound from upstairs, from the master bedroom.
But it was a shriek.
It wailed into the
rest of the house, a tormented, desperate echo. The slaves went still, listening.
And then it was quiet.
I glanced at Letta, as if she could explain the unexpected cry. Tanen shifted uneasily. Henry ran his hat through his hands, standing. “Dashsund,” he said simply, and the two men shared a moment of understanding, and moved toward the stairs to investigate.
“Tread carefully,” Letta bade.
Enda drew a frightened Viola into her embrace, and Dani appeared in the kitchen door frame, hugging it. Ombri was right behind him.
We stood in the common room, waiting for Dashsund and Henry to return safely, hoping they would have word of some sort, though I knew all of us were thinking it could very well be something we didn't want to know.
Momentarily, we heard their voices. They were muffled, but carried persistent quizzical and convincing intonations, as if they were meeting with a distinct lack of cooperation. It went on for a time, but finally relented, and then we could hear them returning to us.
Dashsund appeared first, the strider of the two. Hat in hands, Henry followed.
Shaking his head, Dashsund reported; “They won't talk. Can't get so much as a crack in the door. Felicity gave orders to only come up with the items we've been instructed. No extra visits. We have just been told to stay away, ladies and gentlemen. No answers there.”
“But something happened up there,” Tanen said, as if he needed to convince the rest of us. It did not bode well with him, that was clear.
“Something is happening everywhere, in case you hadn't noticed, Mr. Nysim,” Dashsund pointed out. It was not mean-spirited, but convicting.
“So that's it?”
“They have not broken their silence in many long months,” Enda put in, almost as if siding with Tanen.
“And what would you have us do?” Dashsund asked.
“You're a strong lad,” Enda indicated, a little bit patronizing as he was in his forties. “Perhaps it's time they were made to come out and face the world.”
“Made to?” I put in, a protest in my voice. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I like our Masters better in hiding.”
“It would be their house again,” Henry agreed, his shy voice putting in his lamenting two cents.
“I cannot break the door in,” Dashsund responded to the controversy. “When it's closed, it's as if it's sealed.”
“Did you hear anything else?” Letta wanted to know.
“Someone was whimpering,” Henry said.
“Victoria, Lesleah... hard to say.” Dashsund shook his head. “They're both of age, at this point.”
I sighed, recognizing my own concern. It was inconvenient, but I couldn't ignore it. “Is there any way to gain any semblance of access?”
“Where a door is shut, a window will be opened,” Letta recited, always ready with words of wisdom. “There will be a way.”
It was difficult for me to be so easily convinced, but she had rarely proved wrong in the past. Had she ever? I couldn't remember a time that she had. I was sure there had to be one, but...that could simply be my own skepticism speaking again. My desire to remain skeptical, because that was where I was comfortable.
“There is nothing to be done now,” Letta went on in dismissal, in a manner meant to soothe distress. “Mischief will be mischief.”
Reluctantly, we began to turn back to our duties for the day, but there was no way to shake the echo of that scream from upstairs. It was held over our heads, cut off but left to eddy. Like a pool of blood seeping out from under that door and spreading through the upper reaches of the house. The floor above our heads became heavy with it. It was safe to say we all eyed the stairs during our passings through the common room, wondering when it might begin to creep down the stairwell and spill into the rest of the house.
Mischief will be mischief... Such was true, but that did not make it any easier to share a house with the stuff. That is, what was left of the house, and those in it.
*
In the end, it was not us that pressed a solution to the problem. It was Victoria. I retrieved the supper dishes, and found it: a note smuggled between the plates. With a prick of adrenaline, I dissected its clumsy folds and read the quick scrawl.
Please –
The room has taken Mother and Father. Strange things are happening up here, but Felicity won't let anyone out. She has lost her mind, and cannot see what it is condemning us to. Help us.
Victoria
Dismay and urgency filled me as I read. Regardless of if anyone rightly knew what to make of all this, the note in my hand was a cry for help, and I had always had a soft spot for Victoria. A sense of loyalty inside me made itself known as I read her plea, and I realized this was an obligation I had to act on, for my conscience's sake.
I took the note to the others, presenting the development in the case.
“What does she mean, 'taken' them?” Tanen asked guardedly.
“It is likely she means exactly that,” Dashsund explained, kindly enough. “For all its mystery, you can't do much but take the mischief at face value, at times like these.”
“Can we take down the door with an ax?” was Tanen's resulting suggestion. I had to admire his new-dawning practicality regarding the nature of things.
“Chopping into the house itself may be unwise,” Dashsund advised. “I would not go that far, lest it release something from the bones of the place.”
“We could starve them out.”
“You read the note,” I protested. “Felicity has gone mad. She would probably just as soon not eat, or eat whatever there is in the room, edible or otherwise.”
“You don't suppose she'd...” Henry began, but I cut him off, not letting him go there;
“We're not starving them out.”
“Take them their food. Let the door be opened for you,” Letta proposed. “Surely you can force your way in then.”
“Felicity has taken to spying through the keyhole,” Dashsund said. “She doesn't open it, not even a crack, unless we are at least to the stairwell down the hall.”
“Is there nothing you can do from a distance?” Enda challenged. “You're men! What good is muscle if it doesn't work from a distance?”
“It is against a man's pride to fight from a distance, love,” Letta pointed out. “In the brunt of things is decidedly the point.”
“So you're useless from a distance?” Enda concluded, ruthless.
No... it occurred to me. They're not. “What about the arrows?” I asked.
“You want me to shoot her?” Tanen asked, disbelieving.
“Not her. The keyhole, the lock... jam the mechanism or some such thing.”
“I don't...know that I'm that that good of a shot.”
“Practice.”
No one protested, and so it was that a quizzical form of expectancy grew in the room, waiting for Tanen's response. Since no one else called out the absurdity of the scheme, he seemed to find it in him to admit it could work. However, he did go as far as to point out,
“If I miss, she's on to us. And we don't get another chance.”
A hard twinkle entered Dashsund's eye, something between amusement and gravity. “There's an easy solution to that, Mr. Nysim.”
Don't miss.
*
“It won't be the keyhole,” Tanen said later.
“What?”
“It won't be the lock. I'm going to aim for the hinges; the crack. Other side of the door.”
It was that that I had in mind as I visited the upstairs that night, and stood before the barrier door. One might find it unsettling visiting that door, standing there in the dark before it knowing what had happened beyond it, when I could be at a safe distance downstairs. But it wasn't as if the thing was going to open. I was one of those pointedly banished to this side.
Regarding the door, I debated touching it. There were so many reasons to debate touching a thing, these days. But I felt drawn to it, as if I could unlock some relevant secret, or do someth
ing with my touch that might render the door and I in cahoots, or some such nonsense, so that when the time came for Tanen to lodge that arrow...the door would comply. It was ridiculous, but there I was.
The door stared me in the face, dark and solid and unyielding. But my eyes were not the part of me that was gifted. And after learning of Omrbi's past through my fingertips, the appetite of my curiosity had been whetted. Slowly, I raised a hand and touched my middle finger to the wood of the door, sliding it gently down the surface. It was scarcely a caress, and only a whisper of vision resulted. I saw things through a haze, and sound was muffled as if under water.
Felicity, shuffling across the room. The train of her faded rose-colored dress torn and stained with dust and soot and dry mold.
Victoria, huddled in a corner, her delicate frame beginning to resemble more of a hollow nature. One cheek was blushing, stung, as if she had been slapped.
Lesleah – defiant one moment, wracked with sickness and laid out on the floor the next.
Vandah – the mother of Dani and Viola. She was there, quietly poking the ashes in the fireplace, soot staining a cheekbone.
Mr. and Mrs. Dorn, being devoured by the room in some way that one could not rightly fasten his eyes on. There was perhaps a tremor, something that caused disorientation, and my focus became slippery and jerky as I struggled to keep track of the man and lady of the house, where they were somehow whisked – dragged toward the corner of the room and swallowed by it...
It was all over almost before it began, and only then did focus truly cooperate, leaving one to glance about at an orderly room, where nothing was bent out of proportion.
A small scuffle near the edges of the room that could have been evidence of Christopher tickled my mind then, but I had taken my hand from the door, withdrawing. I cast about for additional reason to be there, considering the hinges that Tanen had said would be his choice of target. Experimentally, I touched one. At first, nothing happened. Then I closed my eyes, and was possessed by the breath of the door. Every time that it had opened and closed pulsed through me, and I shared its creaky breaths from the time that it was mounted. Its breath rattled in its lungs in recent years, and mostly it held its breath altogether these days.
A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 18
