Teeth in the Mist

by Dawn Kurtagich

  “What could possibly harm anyone in such a fine prison?” Emma asks, smiling. “And where is our grand host?”

  Seamus flushes. “Emma, please.”

  “The master has not yet returned.” Mrs. Goode’s face is a sickly gray in the shadows of the hall, yet her eyes have a sinister glint.

  “When is he likely to return?” Roan asks. Or are we to fester here forever?

  Mrs. Goode looks down at Seamus. “Andrew is expected soon. Until then, you are to be served tea in the parlor.”

  “Andrew?” Roan asks.

  “The hall boy. He will carry young Mr. O’Brien to his chambers in the East Wing.”

  So. The man on the mountain has a name.

  “If you think anyone but me is touching my brother, you’ve got a surprise coming t’you!” Emma snaps. “I carry Seamus. And we’ll be sharing chambers as we always have.”

  Mrs. Goode looks down her nose at the girl and half smiles. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sharing chambers? Miss O’Brien, you are no longer a child.”

  Emma’s cheeks blaze and she opens her mouth to retort, truly like a little cornered hare. But a muttered, “Please, Emma. Don’t” from Seamus stills her tongue.

  Mrs. Goode turns on her heel, expecting them to follow. Emma glances at Seamus, who nods, and she leaves him sitting in his chair and follows both Mrs. Goode and Roan up the stairs.

  Roan trails behind, suddenly straddled with a weight on her soul that she cannot shake. This is it. This place, these people… this is it.

  Mrs. Goode stops outside the narrow room.

  “This is your chamber,” she says to Emma. “The wardrobe has been stocked.” She turns to Roan, who hovers outside the Blue Room. “You’ll be expected to dress for each meal.” Her eyes subtly roam up and down Roan’s still mud-stained dress.

  Roan looks away to find that her portmanteau and cloak have been left outside the Blue Room against the wall.

  “Breakfast is in half an hour. I’ll send one of the girls up to collect you.” She turns and strides away without another word.

  “Wait,” Roan says as Emma turns to her room.

  “I daren’t look at what monstrosities they’ve stocked the wardrobe with. I won’t be corsettin’ up if that’s what your lot expect.”

  “Do you want to exchange rooms?” Roan blurts. She opens her door wide.

  Emma scowls and opens her own door, then stops. “Two beds. And she made that fuss about Seamus staying with me! The cheek of her. The damn cheek!” She glances at Roan and then clucks her tongue, stomping over.

  At the precipice to the Blue Room, her mouth falls open.

  “Lord almighty, did you ever see such a room?” she says at last.

  “Do you like it?”

  Emma turns a look upon Roan that might express a question about Roan’s sanity. “Knew this was too good to be true. I told Seamus. I said, ‘We’ll be serving them lot, just you wait and see.’ And here I am. Next to you. They’ll make me your personal maid. You’d love that, wouldn’ye?”

  Roan folds her hands before her. “Not especially. Do you want the room or not?”

  Emma crosses her arms, eyes narrowing. “And why should a lady such as y’self want to live in a narrow hovel for the rest of her life?”

  Roan sighs. “If you must have an excuse to accept, then think on how it’ll anger the housekeeper.”

  Emma’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile, but then returns to its tight state. “I want a reason from you. A true one.”

  “I am not here for charity,” Roan growls through her teeth. “If I must stay, then I will. But to be kept in a gilded cage is more than I can tolerate.”

  Emma’s brows shoot up. “God. You’re about as bad as I am at accepting a helping hand.”

  Roan’s voice is gravel. “I don’t need anyone’s hand.”

  Emma considers her for a moment more and then walks into the Blue Room, holding both doors. “Grand,” she says, and slams the doors.

  The three new wards sit in silence as a young servant girl pours tea. “Do you have beer?” Emma asks her.

  The girl startles and her mouth flaps like a fish on dry land, color rising into her neck and cheeks.

  “She’s joking,” Roan murmurs, and the servant girl gives a nervous curtsy and hurries away.

  “Was not,” Emma says.

  “I know.”

  Emma takes a sip of her tea, but then spits it out with a cry. “Vile! Poison me, would you? Don’t take a sip, Seamus, don’t!”

  Seamus puts his teacup down.

  “You might prefer it with cream and sugar,” Roan notes, adding both to her own.

  Emma’s eyes glint. “Sugar?”

  Roan nods at the silver bowl. Within moments, Emma has poured a great deal of the contents onto her plate, and the rest onto Seamus’s without replacing the lid.

  The servant girl returns, this time with a lidded silver tray, followed by another girl carrying a basket of bread and a small tray holding pots of jam, and more milk. They place everything upon the table.

  The first servant girl, the nervous, mouse-like one, pours another measure of tea into Roan’s cup.

  “Dr. Maudley has not yet returned?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Roan nods. “Unusual. To be away when your guests arrive. What is your name?”

  “Jenny, ma’am.”

  “You are to let me know the moment he arrives. Do you understand?”

  Jenny curtsies by way of acknowledgment.

  “Good. Thank you, Jenny.”

  Jenny glances at Emma, who is staring at her with open hostility, and then curtsies again and hurries out of the room, followed by the second servant girl, this time closing the door to allow privacy.

  Emma lifts the lid of the first tray, revealing a steaming platter of meat that Roan cannot identify.

  Emma laughs. “Meat! Actual God-to-heaven meat!” Seamus grins up at Roan with delight, and she can’t help smiling in return despite such rough manners.

  “I wonder why the table is set for four,” Roan says, noting the extra place setting. “Are we expecting another?”

  Seamus shrugs, but Emma is too busy loading her plate, and then her brother’s, to notice. She grabs a small loaf of bread and tears it in two, plonking down one half on her brother’s plate and digging her teeth into the other. Roan watches as the girl dips both meat and bread into the pile of sugar before devouring them, grunting in her throat. Seamus follows suit. Then, noticing Roan has not eaten, he nudges the tray toward her.

  She nods, but doesn’t take any meat. It does not look like pork, nor chicken, nor pheasant. Never having been partial to meat in particular, she reaches for a bread roll instead and tears off a small piece, only to find, when it is in her mouth, that it is stale. No doubt a little cheeky snub from the housekeeper.

  She swallows but has no more, instead drinking tea and glancing around the room.

  Dark walls seem to be the fashion, but here drapes of green adorn the narrow windows. It is peculiar to have candles lit during the morning, but the house is so gloomy that without the tiny flames, they would be sitting in complete darkness as opposed to the current night-like murk.

  A gargoyle leers down at them from one corner of the ceiling. Roan shudders. Never before has she seen one so realistically sculpted, nor indoors. Used to ward off evil in holy places, they are usually placed outside the dwelling. The candlelight barely reaches him, but what illumination does has a startling effect on his eyes.

  Look not upon me, she thinks, scowling at him.

  “Please eat.” Seamus’s small voice drips concern. Roan looks across at him to find that he has stopped his own eating.

  Roan pulls a slice of the meat onto her plate, noting its slightly slimy quality, and puts her knife and fork to it. Seamus watches her intently. Ignoring as best she can the noises of Emma’s feast, her mastication, gulping belches, and her general bad smell, Roan cuts a small section, perfectly square, and puts it into her mo
uth.

  It is not pork.

  Nor chicken.

  Nor pheasant.

  Pigeon? She is not certain, only that it is odd, strangely textured, and unpleasant to the taste. She swallows, drinks more tea, her cutlery hovering in the air over the meat.

  “Too fine a meal for you?” Emma says through a mouth of garbled meat and bread. “No accepting of charity.” She laughs. “You’ll die of that soon enough!”

  A fleck of meat flies from her mouth and bounces across the table. Roan shuts her eyes. Damn these people. Why do they have to be here? This is worse than being alone.

  When she opens her eyes, ready to leave the table, she notices that Seamus is no longer eating with his hands. Instead, he is using the cutlery provided, studying her own hands.

  For his sake, she cuts another piece, and another, until the entire slice is a pile of perfect squares, warming a little as Seamus mimics her motions. Once done, she places her cutlery down, excuses herself, and leaves the room.

  Emma says something Roan is sure is cutting, but she is already out and does not hear.

  At first, Roan thinks it is a trick of the light. Some odd shadow or a stone illuminated by the lightning, there and then gone. She has seen no livestock on the mountain—not one sheep, goat, or cow. In fact, she realizes, she has not even seen a bird.

  But this is no trick of the light. It is no shadow or rock. It is an animal.

  He stands proud, backlit by the storm. Slashes of lightning paint him onyx, except for the eyes, which gleam a rich, violent red.

  Roan peers closer.

  The beast is a kind of bovid—a mountain ram. Yet it cannot be. It has the look, almost, of a Soay sheep, but the beast is too large. Far, far too large. Like a cow, or a horse, it stands several feet high, unnaturally still. Watching her. His horns curl, gnarled monstrosities, textured like the bark of ancient trees; and she senses… sentience.

  She squints through her window, trying to see farther, trying to see more. It cannot be, and yet it is…

  The thing regards her.

  It watches her.

  It smiles.

  Roan grins back, a flush of excitement trilling through her, and she reaches for the window catch.

  “Hello? Emma? Roan?” Seamus. In the corridor.

  She hesitates, wanting to go out into the storm—to be a part of it. To run with the wild thing out there and scream and dance and—

  “Anyone here?”

  She withdraws, closing her curtains, and opens her bedroom door. Seamus sits in his chair at the end of the corridor, straining to peer into the darkness.

  “Seamus,” Roan calls. “Down here.”

  He does not see her for the gloom, but begins to wheel himself forward, his eyes wide with sightlessness. As his vision adjusts to the darkness, they narrow and he smiles at her.

  “Where have you come from?” Roan asks, walking part of the way to meet him.

  “My room. They put me across the landing. Though I have a lamp in my corridor. They’re going to keep it lit for me, even in the day. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

  Roan laughs. “At home in London we had no need to light the tapers during the day. But this house is so gloomy.” She shivers and rubs her arms. Even the mention of the cold umbra of the house seems to deepen it.

  “But all this space…” Seamus says. “I don’t think I mind too much about the darkness.”

  Roan grins. “Yes, you are fair of skin, like me. We do not dwell comfortably in sunlight, do we?”

  Seamus grins and his spectacles slip down his nose. “I have freckles, though. And the sun makes them dark. But you…” He touches his face with his fingertips, the unself-conscious contact of a child, and then regards her carefully. “I never saw such white skin before. And no freckles anywhere.”

  Roan pretends to leer. “I am a Vampyre!”

  Seamus laughs in a boyish, unrestrained manner, then his smile fades. “D’you know where they put Emma?”

  “Of course. She is there, next to me. Back a little way. Here, let me help you turn around.”

  Taking the handles at the back of Seamus’s chair, she maneuvers him around and then wheels him back the way he came until they are outside the double doors.

  “Shall I knock for you?” Roan asks.

  “Please.”

  She does as requested but there is no immediate reply. “Emma? Are you awake? I have your brother here.”

  where are you?

  Another knock. “Emma?”

  Her door flies open. Emma barrels out of the room and onto Seamus like a cat. Roan steps back, alarmed, but she is only hugging him, and he laughs, his spindly arms gripping her back.

  “Where’ve they put ye?” Emma asks, ignoring Roan.

  “Down the way. Come and see—my room’s yellow! Bright yellow, Em!”

  Emma laughs and steps in front of Roan, pushing her brother down the corridor with nary a word to her as they depart.

  Chapter 8

  A SERVANT’S TALE

  Roan cannot sleep.

  The storm outside her window shakes the glass so forcefully that it almost seems to bend. Even the curtains, thick and heavy-hanging, move in the breeze that manages to seep through the sodden window frame. There is a storm within her as well. The air in the room is close—too close. Cloying.

  She sits up and pulls her father’s letter from the drawer beside her bed, running her fingers gently over the handwriting as she has done for so many days.

  “Tell me why,” she murmurs, her lips close to the fragile page.

  But the night is empty and she is alone.

  Her stomach growls and startles her. She did not eat much during the fiasco dinner earlier; indeed, she has not taken much food since the night she found her father…

  Throwing off the bedcovers to cut off all thought and all memory, she puts on her slippers and her heavy quilted robe, leaving both the small room and her memories behind. The letter she tucks into her pocket and takes with her, an ever-present reminder of her father and the reason she is here.

  It takes some time for her to find the kitchen. Though she arrived not long ago—was it only yesterday?—she cannot, as she predicted, find the way back.

  Mill House is a labyrinth of stairs and corridors. Still, finding her way is a diversion, and that is all she is really seeking.

  At last, she finds the watery-green room with the gargoyle, and along the same hallway, the kitchen.

  It is a cold, desolate room now the fire has burned down to embers. Mrs. Goode has placed a large log on the coals, which itself glows orange and white at the base, simmering low with solemnity.

  Roan hurries to it, blowing so that the embers wake from their somnolence and then dance into flame. By the time she has found bread and some apples, the fire is crackling merrily, throwing light upon the plain walls.

  “I should have stoked the fire myself,” comes a soft voice from the other end of the room, the side still bathed in deepest shadow.

  “Who is there?” Roan calls, her hackles rising. “Show yourself.”

  Movement.

  And then a man—a young man—steps into the light, a cup in his hands. He is dark of feature and hair, and seems almost too young for the voice attached to him, which is deep and rough.

  Roan is suddenly acutely aware of her nightdress, her robe, and her hair free from a nightcap, her obsidian curls falling wild.

  “Who are you?” she asks. “Dr. Maudley?”

  He laughs. “No, miss. My name is Andrew.”

  So Mountain Man remains nameless, since Andrew now stands before her, an altogether different person.

  “I’m the servant,” the young man—Andrew—adds. “Butler, repairman, footman—anything the Master wants me to be. I’m nobody.”

  “Well, Nobody,” Roan says. “Come and sit by the fire. You make me nervous standing in the shadows so solemn and tall.”

  Andrew joins her at the table, sitting across from her. “Thank you, miss
.”

  “My name is Roan. You may call me that.”

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate, miss.”

  “Damn what is appropriate.” She bites her tongue. “I apologize. But I do not require a servant. I require… some talk. To distract me from this storm.”

  Andrew grins, taking a sip from his cup.

  “Tell me why you smile so,” Roan says.

  “In truth, you are not what I was expecting.”

  “But you were expecting me,” Roan says, biting into an old apple. It is papery in her mouth, thick and disappointing. How she yearns for the sweet juiciness of the London apples. How she longs to return to the life she had. Strange and lonely—and painful—it had been, but it had been hers.

  “Master knew you were coming,” Andrew says. “Yes. That is why we came back so soon. Most of the time, he does not linger here. He likes to travel out of the country.”

  “Why?”

  Andrew hesitates. “I’m not sure he likes the house very much.”

  Roan smiles mirthlessly. “It is a little… grim.”

  Andrew looks around, taking in the still, silent room. Beyond the walls that contain them, the storm rages, thrashing about without end.

  “It is home.”

  “Does it storm here often?” Roan asks after a long silence.

  “Almost nightly. The repairs are continual.”

  “Why not hire more men, then?”

  “Because,” comes a new voice. “No local man will come into this house.”

  Both Roan and Andrew turn at the new arrival.

  “Jenny,” Andrew says. “Why are you up at this hour?”

  “This hour? It is gone dawn! I should ask why you keep Miss Eddington out of bed so long.”

  “I could not sleep,” Roan admits. “And I took very little dinner.”

  Jenny smiles shyly at her, but turns down her mouth as she glances at Andrew. “You know the house rules. No eating outside of mealtimes and no wandering after nine o’clock. You ought to have set a better example by the lady, Andrew.”

  He grins. “Ah, lass. You’ll make Mrs. Goode a fine replacement someday. But not today.”