The Tangleroot Palace

by Marjorie Liu

  A chill settled between her shoulders. Lucy heard a whisper, wordless but human. A hush, heart-stopping. She paused in mid-step and turned. There was no one behind her.

  Lucy heard it again, and terror squeezed her heart. Ghostly, yes; a voice like the wind, high and cool. She caught movement out the corner of her eye—cried out, turning—and saw a face peering from the shadows of the underbrush.

  A woman. A woman in the wood, pale and fair, with eyes as blue as cornflowers. Lucy stared, trying to make sense of it—unable to speak or move as she met that terrible gaze, which was lost and so utterly lonely, Lucy felt her heart squeeze again, but softer, with a pang.

  “Help me,” whispered the woman. “Please, help me.”

  Lucy tried to speak, and choked. Around her, other voices seemed to seep free of the wood; whispers and hoarse cries and birds screaming into the cool wet air, a rising wind that blasted Lucy with a bone-chill to her heart, swelling like her insides were growing on the hum of the wood, engorged on sound.

  She heard a shout—a man—but she could not turn to see. His voice felt far away, and the woman cried, “She’s coming.”

  Something broke inside Lucy: she could move again. She tried to run—heard another shout, desperate, and turned in time to see a brown, flailing blur, a streak of silver, a shock of white hair.

  Arms caught Lucy from behind. She cried out as she was lifted into the air, screaming as the sky and trees spun into a blur, so sickening she closed her eyes. She heard the woman sobbing, a man crying a name—Mary, Mary—and then nothing except a heartbeat beneath her ear, sure and steady as a hammer falling.

  Her heart hurt. Lucy opened her eyes and found the world changed.

  She was no longer caught on the path in the woods. A meadow surrounded her, small and green and lush with grass and wild daisies, scattered with heavy oaks; somewhere nearby, a creek burbled and goats bleated. Lucy saw a small, white house behind a grove of lilac trees, and beyond, again, the rising forest, only gentler, without the dense shadows that seemed to live and breathe. No women lost in the leaves.

  There were arms around her body, and movement on her left. Lucy struggled, managing to pull away until she could dance backward, staring.

  Two men stood before her, one young, the other older. The elder man was Henry Lindsay. Lucy remembered his face. Up close, however, he did not look quite so aged. His body was straight and hard and lean; he had few wrinkles and his eyes were bright, startling, the color of gold. His white hair was the only symptom of age, but that seemed a trivial thing compared with the fire in his gaze, which was so alive, she thought she must have imagined the man who had stood at the side of the road with a face as slack and dead as a corpse.

  The young man with him had quieter eyes, but just as bold. He wore a faded blue cotton, a complement to his blue eyes, his shirt patched with bits and pieces of rags, the stitches neat, made with thick red thread, his skin brown from the sun, hair dark and wild like a scarecrow. He glanced at Henry, just before the older man lurched toward Lucy: a half step, the edge of a full run, stopping before he reached her as though pulled back by strings. His hands clenched into fists. The silver mirror jutted from his coat pocket.

  “She spoke to you,” said Henry, his voice deceptively quiet, easy—frightening, because Lucy could tell it was a lie. She said nothing, uncertain how to answer him. In her head she could see the woman in the wood, her pale face and lost eyes: a mirror to how this man had looked while standing on the road.

  Henry said it again, louder: “She spoke. Tell me what she said.”

  Lucy stared, bewildered, and he rocked toward her with a low cry, hand outstretched. She staggered back, holding up her arms, but the young man stepped between them and caught Henry before he could touch her, holding him back with his size and easy strength. Lucy readied herself to run.

  “Stop this,” said a new voice. “Henry.”

  Lucy turned. She had to steady herself—all of this was too much—but she dug her nails into her palms and gazed at the newcomer: a woman who stood a stone’s throw distant, her mature face a reflection of Henry Lindsay, who quieted and stilled until the young man let him go.

  Black hair, threaded with white; golden eyes and an unlined face; a small, narrow body dressed in a simple dark red dress, finely mended. The woman stood barefoot in the grass, hair loose and wild; proud, confident, utterly at ease. Lucy felt drab as a titmouse compared to her. In the trees, crows shrieked, raucous and loud.

  “Miss Lindsay,” she whispered, following her intuition. “Ma’am.”

  The woman tilted her head. “I don’t know you.”

  “My father heard you were looking for a girl,” she replied, hoarse.

  Henry swayed. Lucy forced herself to stay strong, to look him in the eye as her father had always said to do, that eyes were important when dealing with strangers, especially men.

  He said, “She spoke to Mary. She spoke to Mary in the woods.”

  “Did she now?” asked Miss Lindsay slowly, her gaze sharpening. She moved close, hips swaying gracefully. “Did you speak to someone in the woods, child?”

  “No,” Lucy said softly. “But the woman . . . the woman in the trees spoke to me. And I heard . . .”

  She stopped. Miss Lindsay stood near, her golden gaze like fire: hot, burning. She reached out and touched Lucy’s forehead with one finger, just between the eyes, and whispered, “What did you hear?”

  “Voices,” Lucy replied, compelled by those eyes, that searing touch. “Many voices.”

  “Mary,” said Henry, in a broken voice. “Tell me what she said.”

  Lucy looked at him, and finally could see again the man from the road, lost and dull. She was sorry about that, and said, gently, “The woman asked me to help her. And then . . . then she said . . . someone was coming.”

  She’s coming, echoed that urgent voice, inside her head. Lucy felt a chill race through her body. Miss Lindsay flinched, and moved away. She turned her head until her hair shifted and Lucy could not see her eyes.

  “You’ll do,” said the woman softly. “Yes, if you like, I’ll hire you.”

  “If she wants to stay,” said Henry, also turning away, his voice rough, shoulders bowed. His hand was in his coat pocket, clutching the mirror. A wedding ring glinted on his finger.

  Lucy stared at them, helpless, unsure what to do. Her gaze finally fell on the one person who had said nothing at all—the young man, who was calm and steady, who watched her with that same straightforward regard. Lucy imagined a clear, pure tone when she looked at him, and it was an unexpected comfort.

  “I’ll stay,” she found herself saying—two words that could have been a leap off a cliff for the falling sensation she felt on uttering them. It was dangerous—something was not right; there were ghosts in the woods and spirits unseen, and here, here, these people knew of such things. And she was joining them, would cook and clean for them.

  But it was better than going home.

  Lucy imagined a whisper on the wind. Miss Lindsay briefly closed her eyes, then held out her hand and gave the girl a long, piercing look.

  “Come,” she said, in a voice gentler than her eyes. “I’ll show you the house.”

  And that was that.

  Nothing happened that first week, except that afterward, Lucy’s life felt irrevocably changed. The sensation crept on her slowly, nudged along by little things that she had never had a chance to experience: reading as a leisure activity, for starters (Miss Lindsay insisted on it, in the evenings), or being treated as a thinking person, something more than a girl or daughter or sister or future wife. Something beyond drudge. An equal, perhaps.

  It was a fine house, much larger than anything Lucy was accustomed to, with a second floor and an actual parlor and fireplace just for sitting and warming the feet. There were books shelved against the walls, more than she had ever seen—a
library of them, all around—as well as journals and odd paintings, and stacks of newspapers bound with string. Most of those were crumbling and yellow; Lucy was careful as she cleaned around them, gazing as she did upon faded images of President Lincoln, as well as cramped headlines about the War, some fifty years past.

  Lucy had her own room with a lock on the door, just off the kitchen. Miss Lindsay slept upstairs, as did her brother, Henry. The young man, Barnabus, kept his bed and belongings in the work shed off the garden. He was like her—there for odd jobs—although unlike her, he was treated more like family, though Miss Lindsay explained that he was not. Or rather, not by blood.

  “A child of the forest,” the woman called him, that first night. “Found in the woods as a boy, living wild as the coyotes and foxes. Folks brought him here. It was that or the circus, with those men. So I raised him. Taught him. Oh, he’s a good one, that Barnabus. Talk to him as you like—he’s as smart as you and I—but don’t expect a word from his mouth. He can’t speak. Not like us. The forest stole his voice.”

  Given what Lucy had experienced, she thought that might be the literal—if not fantastical—truth. And it disturbed her greatly. She did not know what to make of it. The forest was dangerous—she knew that in her heart—and while it went unspoken that she should not walk near the tree line, ever, the others did so all the time.

  No one ever explained the threat she felt so keenly. She tried asking, but Miss Lindsay always managed to change the subject—so smoothly, Lucy hardly realized what she was doing until it was too late and she was off scrubbing a floor or cooking or weeding, and thinking hard about why she was there, and how Miss Lindsay had managed, yet again, to deflect a question about a situation that Lucy found threatening and frightening and undeniably odd.

  She dreamed of the woman at night, the woman in the wood, and listened to her pleas for help beneath a wail of wind and whispers, endless and cold and pained. Sometimes she sensed another voice beneath the other—Mary, Mary, she would hear Henry cry—and something else, bells and the pound of hooves, and music playing high and wild like a storm of thunder and fiddle strikes.

  And sometimes in her dream she would open her eyes and Miss Lindsay would be sitting by her bed, with that cool hand pressed against her forehead and her golden eyes shining with unearthly light. And in those moments of fantasy Lucy would think of her mother, and stop feeling afraid, and slip into softer, gentler, dreams: buttercups and horses, and afternoons by the river with her feet in the sun-riddled water. Sometimes Barnabus was there, holding her hand. She liked that, though it scared her too. In a different way.

  There were several surprises that first week, the biggest one being that Miss Lindsay had a cemetery on her land, only a short walk away along a narrow wagon track. Her family was buried there, but mostly other folk—from town, the surrounding areas—anyone who did not have the money to be planted in one of the church plots near the bigger towns. Miss Lindsay called it a service to the public, and several times Lucy saw strangers exit the trail through the forest bearing gifts of cloth and food. Payment served.

  Folks never lingered, though. They visited the graveyard, then left quick, hardly looking around, as though afraid of what they would see. Lucy wondered how they managed to make it through the forest unmolested, and said as much to Henry, whom she found one afternoon in a rare moment of responsiveness—sitting in the sun, reading a book by someone with a long, rather familiar, name. Shakes Spear, or something of the kind. She settled down beside him with a pile of mending in her lap. Barnabus was nearby, chopping wood. His shirt was off, draped over a low tree branch.

  “The forest has a mind of its own,” Henry replied, after some deep thought. He gazed at the tree line, and his eyes began to glaze over, lost. Lucy pricked him—accidentally, of course—with her needle. He flinched, frowning, but his expression cleared.

  “You were saying?” Lucy prodded.

  “A mind, a spirit. This is the forest primeval,” murmured Henry, “darkened by shadows of earth.” He looked at her. “Longfellow. Do you know him?”

  “We never met,” she said, and then blushed when she realized that was not at all what he meant.

  Henry smiled kindly, though, idly tapping the book in his hands. Lucy, in part to hide her embarrassment—but mostly because she was suddenly quite motivated to educate herself—pointed and asked, “What are you reading?”

  “The Bard.” Henry handed her the book. “Specifically, Romeo and Juliet. A great and tragic love story.”

  Lucy made a small sound, savoring the smooth feel of the slender red volume in her hands. “Seems like tragic is the only kind of love there is.”

  Henry tilted his head. “Broken heart?”

  She frowned. “Oh, no. Not me, sir. Never been in love. Just . . . I’ve seen things, that’s all.”

  “And I suppose you’ve heard of me,” he said with a hint of darkness in his voice. Lucy felt a moment’s panic, but then she looked at him and found his eyes thoughtful, distant—but not lost. Not angry.

  “I heard something from someone,” Lucy said slowly. “First time I saw you on the road, coming here.”

  “You saw me?” Henry looked surprised. “Ah. Well.”

  “You were . . . distracted,” Lucy told him, not wanting him to feel bad. “Staring at the forest.”

  A rueful smile touched his mouth. “That happens.”

  Lucy hesitated. “Because of the woman? Mary?”

  She knew it was a mistake the moment that name left her mouth. Too much said, too fast. Henry’s expression crumpled, then hardened; shadows gathered beneath his eyes, which seemed to change color, glittering like amber caught in sunlight. Lucy had to look away, and found Barnabus watching them with a frown. He put down his ax and began walking toward them.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said to Henry. “Please, I’m—”

  He cut her off, leaning close. “You saw her. In the forest. What did she look like?”

  Barnabus reached them. He sat beside Lucy, the corner of his knee brushing her thigh. He was big and warm and safe, and she was glad for his presence.

  “She was beautiful,” Lucy said simply, and then, softer: “She was your wife.”

  “My wife,” echoed Henry, staring at his hands. “She is still my wife.”

  Lucy stared. “I thought . . . I thought your wife was dead. What I saw . . . just a ghost.” The ghost of a woman lost in the forest; the walking, speaking dead; an illusion of life. Nothing else made sense. Not even the forest, a forest that had almost captured her—a terrible dream full of ghosts, spirits.

  Barnabus went still. Henry exhaled very slowly. Lucy felt a whisper of air against her neck, a chill that went down her spine. Miss Lindsay was behind her. She could feel the woman, even though she could not see or hear her. Lucy always knew when she was close.

  Miss Lindsay said, “Perhaps you’d like to walk with me,” and Lucy rose on unsteady legs, and joined the woman as she turned and strode away toward the cemetery.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said.

  Miss Lindsay raised a fine, dark brow. “Curiosity is no crime. And you have a right to know.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head. “I’m just the house girl. You didn’t hire me for—”

  “Stop.” Miss Lindsay quit walking and gave her a hard look. “Close your eyes.”

  The demand was unexpected, odd. Lucy almost refused, but after a moment, Miss Lindsay’s gaze softened and she said, “I will not hurt you. Just do as I say. Close your eyes.”

  So Lucy closed them, and waited. Miss Lindsay gave her no more instructions, which was curious enough in itself, though the girl did not break the silence between them. The darkness inside her mind was suddenly fraught with color, images dancing: not memories, but something new, unexpected. Like a daydream, only as real as the grass beneath her feet.

  She saw a thunderstorm, night; f
elt herself standing in a doorway, staring at the rain. A warm hand touched her waist.

  And then that touch disappeared and she stood in the forest, within the twilight of the trees, and the woman was once again in front of her—Mary—hands outstretched, weeping.

  Gone, again, gone. Other visions flashed—feathers and crows, golden glowing eyes—but they were too quick and odd to make sense. Except for one: Henry, younger, standing beneath a bough of flowers, holding hands with the woman from the wood. Mary. Smiling. Staring into his eyes like he was where her heart lived.

  Then, later: Henry and Mary, riding away in a buggy. Henry and Mary, kissing. Henry and Mary, in the dark, his hands shaking against the clasps of her wedding gown, the white of the cloth glowing beneath the dappled moon. On a blanket, in the forest.

  Lucy saw a shadow behind them, something separate and unnatural, creeping across the forest floor. She tried to shout a warning, but her throat swelled, breath rattling, and all she could do was watch in horror as that slither of night spread like a poison through the moonlight, closer and closer—until it nudged Mary’s foot.

  And swallowed the rest of her. One moment in Henry’s arms—in the next, gone. Gone, screaming. Henry, screaming.

  Lucy, screaming. Snapping back into the world. Curled on her side in the thick grass. Arms around her. A large, tanned hand clutching her own and Miss Lindsay crouched close, fingers pressed against Lucy’s forehead.

  “You’re safe,” said the woman, but that was not it at all. Henry and Mary were not safe. Henry and Mary had been torn apart, and Lucy could not bear to think about it. Not for them, not for herself—not when she suddenly could remember so clearly the night her own mother had disappeared, swallowed up by the world. Her choice to go—but with the same pain left behind.

  “Ah,” breathed Miss Lindsay, and her fingers slid sideways to caress Lucy’s cheek. “Poor child.”

  Lucy took a deep breath and struggled to sit up. The world spun. The arms around her tightened—Barnabus—and she closed her eyes, slipping back into darkness.