by Ann Aguirre
“It’s too soon. If you intend to come to me, I can withstand the temptation. As I’ve said before, patience is my primary virtue. Only when you’re ready will I do more than touch your hand.”
Part of me is relieved to hear this. “Will it be so easy? Bitterburn drove you to me tonight, and you were . . . different.”
Hungry. A bit wild.
“My guard was down, and I didn’t realize that my own impulses were being used against me. I know the difference now, and if the tide rises again, I won’t repeat this mistake. If it becomes necessary, I’ll lock myself in the east wing so I can’t get to you.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say then.
A scene flashes in my head, a cloaked figure dashing himself against the wall, until he’s wounded and dazed. Njål cares about me; I’m sure of it. He’d rather hurt himself than allow harm to befall me.
“Perhaps you should be.”
“Rubbish.” This is bold, but I want to give this much, and he’s promised that I will set the pace. “Can I hug you? I won’t peek, I promise.”
“Amarrah . . .”
“Yes?”
“In my current state, this is most unwise, but I’m reluctant to deny you anything.”
I take that as permission and step into his arms, moving closer until I feel the incredible breadth of his chest. Njål is massive, and his body temperature bewilders me, as if he burns with a cold so deep that it emerges as heat. I slide my arms around him, breathing in his distinctive lye and pine scent. My hands don’t quite meet around his back, and I feel him tucking his cloak around me. He holds me with such tentative care, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands.
“It’s been so long,” he whispers with an agonized elation that makes my heart turn over, quivering like a fish at the river’s edge.
Njål does wear clothes. I feel the rasp of a linen shirt, the leather of a belt and part of a buckle. His shirt has laces; they’re slippery against my cheek. For long moments, I hold on to him, until he gently puts me away from him and takes a step back.
“You’re going?” I guess.
“I’ve lingered too long. Don’t underestimate my desire for you.”
Oh, I won’t. It would be impossible to ignore such a sizable response, but it seems polite not to mention it. Part of me is intrigued, however. I wonder how that hard length would feel in my hands. Later, Njål might rub it frantically until he spurts and goes soft. Is that even possible with his claws? Perhaps, if he’s careful, and if so, I hope he thinks of me.
“I won’t. Keep safe and warm until the morning, Njål.” I speak his name with purpose, for the same reason I’m giving his salutation back to him. He should know that he’s seen. I know who he is and often treasure his words.
He says nothing more and I hear him departing. I wait a few moments more to be sure he has the chance to get clear before opening my eyes. Trying to settle my nerves, I put a couple of pieces of wood on the fire. What will I do when we exhaust the broken furniture I’m currently using? No answers spring to mind, but that’s a dilemma for another day.
Exhausted, I stoke the flames to make sure they’ll last the rest of the night, then trudge to my room. My bed is soft and inviting, nicer than the pallet I shared in the loft with Tillie and Millie. I don’t expect to fall asleep quickly, but my body is tired even if my mind is full. I have no impression of drifting off, but suddenly, noise from the kitchen alerts me.
I dart out to find the space transformed. There are people everywhere: a plump, apple-cheeked cook, two thin girls chopping and stirring, a lanky young man rushing out with a platter. Nobody pays any attention to me, attending to their work with single-minded focus. One of the girls drops her paring knife, earning a brisk scold from the chubby woman who must be the cook.
“You’ll get no quarter from the baron if you ruin his banquet. Hurry now! If everything’s not ready in half an hour, they’ll have our heads.”
The tremor in the assistant’s hands tells me that this isn’t an idle threat. Though I don’t understand at all what’s happening because this seems too real to be a dream—it’s more like I’ve traveled back in time—it must be that the keep is allowing me this glimpse of how things used to be. And while I’m alarmed, I’m also curious enough to step out of the kitchen and follow the footman down the long corridor that leads to the great hall.
He edges the door open and I slip in after him. The table is highly polished with gilt dishes at each setting, fluted goblets shimmering with wine as dark as blood. None of the guests in their silks or brocades even look at the young man carefully setting food on their plates, skewered meat and stuffed eggs. They don’t notice me either, but I think that’s because I’m not actually here. Otherwise someone would surely point at the bedraggled, barefoot woman in her nightgown with sleep plaits coming unraveled. Instead, I circle the table taking note of each face. The ones at each end must be the baron and baroness, and I can’t say that I think young Njål exaggerated their twisted nature in his journal. If anything, their blank stares fill me with even more foreboding.
Is Njål at this party?
I take a second look, but none of the guests are as young as I imagine him to be, and they’re all falsely effervescent, as if forced laughter can stave off whatever dreadful thing lurks on the other side of this lavish meal. As I watch, the staff come and go with tray after tray of beautifully prepared food while these ungrateful bastards take one or two bites and then display ennui, waving away their nearly full plates. The waste sickens me.
I hope the kitchen workers get to eat the leftovers. Otherwise I might expire of rage before this dream ends.
“What will you do with him?” A man with a full beard poses the question, snagging my attention.
Before now, the conversation has been related to some hunt that I don’t give a damn about, but this feels pertinent.
“Does he know that his family is dead?” an old woman asks.
The casual cruelty stuns me. I know that people can be terrible, but the pleasure thrumming in this room, the anticipation of Njål’s pain—and it must be Njål they’re speaking of—it enrages me. I wish that I could reach into the past and destroy them before he’s locked into his current torment.
The baron and baroness share a speaking glance. Then the baron replies, “Do we not treat him as our own already?”
Even these terrible people find that statement of ownership alarming, but nobody pursues the matter. Suddenly, a boy bursts into the room in his pajamas. He’s thin with a strong jaw, a sharp nose, and narrow eyes, impossible for me to guess the color in this light. He glares at the baron, hands curled into fists, and I can see that he’s furious but also frightened. He knows there will be punishment for this defiance.
“Why have you told Gerard to stop posting my letters?”
The elderly woman with hands bedecked with too many rings answers before the baron can. “Child, I weary of this game. There is no one to reply, even if he sent them.”
“That’s impossible. Mother and Father are healthy! I have three brothers. Why—”
“That is how the plague works,” the old woman replies in a frosty tone, as if his ignorance affronts her.
“What about the estate? I should be there to—”
“The crown has appointed an executor,” the baron cuts in. “I have been your guardian for the past year and shall continue in that role for the foreseeable future.”
This is the moment when Njål learns that he has nothing. No power, no home waiting for him. His family is dead, and his inheritance has been stolen. They’ve kept this knowledge from him for entertainment and now his grief amuses them as well. Young Njål lets out a choked cry and wheels to run. He dashes past a startled servant, desperate to keep the avid audience from feeding on his pain.
With an aching heart, I follow.
10.
Dream Njål heads for the east wing.
I pause. I’ve been instructed to steer clear, but sure
ly that doesn’t apply to time travel dreams. Another possibility occurs to me. Maybe this entire scene is nonsense? I’ve heard that people will create their own answers if none are available, and that might be what I’m doing. Trying to frame Njål’s imprisonment in a way that offers a palatable explanation. Since I’m drawn to him, I don’t want to entertain the potential that he could’ve been truly bad, so my mind supplies a suitable scenario, encouraged by the journal he claimed not to remember writing. The suspiciously new-looking journal—
I’ll drive myself mad like this. Even if Njål wrote that recently and none of it is true, he can’t walk into my dreams.
Can he?
I’m alone with only my wits to save me, and all my instincts shout that I should follow young Njål, who’s just learned that he’s alone in the world, fully dependent on the baron and baroness. From what little I’ve seen and heard, that’s a dreadful predicament. Maybe I can’t console him, but I should witness this moment, assuming it’s real. Quickly, I decide that this doesn’t count as disregarding his orders regarding the east wing because I’m not really there.
Or am I? What if I’m sleep walking?
That alarms me enough that I almost wake, and for a spit second, I feel the bedsheets beneath my hand. Then I’m solidly back in the dream, committed to this course. I dash the way Njål came, stopping every now and then to listen. Even in the past, the servants don’t clean the east wing regularly. I can tell that at once, as a musty smell permeates everything. Cobwebs hang heavy in the corners, and there are tracks in the dust, tiny footprints made by rats or mice.
This is how they force him to live? Hidden from the world in the most neglected corner of the keep. I’d thought I couldn’t get angrier, but now rage boils my brain inside my skull.
A heartbroken sound reaches me, so faint that I might be imagining it. Yet I chase those little sobs, making wrong turns and backtracking because the east wing is a maze, full of locked doors and inexplicably ominous rooms. Sometimes I stop outside a closed door and I’m simply certain to my bones that something frightful lurks on the other side. I move on, trial and error, until I find Njål hidden in the smallest of chambers. No window, it’s more of a cupboard, but I can tell that he sleeps here. He’s weeping as quietly as he can manage, face tucked into his knees, armed hooked around his lower legs like he wishes he could make himself so small that he would disappear.
I’m intimately acquainted with that desire.
As I step closer, his head snaps up, and he appears to be staring right at me. He can see me? The others definitely couldn’t, and he didn’t seem to before. I have no explanation for any of this.
“Who are you?”
“Eloise.” The reply slips out before I can stop it—my second name, given for my paternal grandmother. I’m named for two of them, Amarrah from my mother’s side.
“Do you work here?” Njål doesn’t wait for my response, hastening to add, “You should go. The baron will punish both of us if he finds you here.”
In fact I do work here, just not right now, so my silence is not precisely a lie. Instead of leaving from fear of reprisal, as he doubtless expects, I close the door and sit before it, leaving sufficient space between us that he shouldn’t fear my intentions. If this is how Njål lived, no wonder he’s more comfortable in the dark, never being seen. I thought that preference related to his current appearance, but perhaps it started earlier than I realized. Here, the shadows are complete.
“I heard what they said. I’m sorry,” I say, because too many words clot my throat, and none of them will come out properly. I could easily burst into tears, like the ones Njål is valiantly fighting.
“That’s odd. Nobody ever comes, no matter what they do to me.”
“I’m new.” Which is also sort of true. I probably ought to be careful what I reveal to Njål in case this isn’t a dream and I’m somehow touching his past.
I wish I could hug this version of him as I did the older Njål in the kitchen, but this version of him would find it entirely alarming. He’s skittish as a feral cat, using the darkness as a shield, even from me. His breathing steadies though, the sobs receding to an occasional unsteady inhalation.
“That means you arrived recently. Is it true what they said about the plague? You wouldn’t know about my family, but if there’s a disease you’d have word of it.”
That much is true, but I don’t have much formal education and before the lending library closed, I read only on matters that interested me. I search my memory and come up with a whisper of knowledge. It does seem that there was a disease that ravaged the land four centuries ago, taking fully one-third of the population. Women were burned as witches for starting it and doctors went about in bird-face masks, claiming it prevented transmission of the illness.
Could Njål have lived that long?
“The plague is real,” I say then, aware that I’m condemning him to despair.
He only reacts with a subtle drop of his shoulders. “Then it’s probably true that my family is gone as well.”
I can’t bring myself to speak aloud the possibility that they might not be. If they’ve made some terrible deal with the baron and agreed not to demand Njål’s release, how would that be better? “I’m sorry,” I say again, like those are magic words.
“It’s not your fault. Don’t you mind, though?”
“Mind what?”
“I already said you’ll get in trouble, that you’ll be punished. You might be beaten or let go for being here with me. Aren’t you afraid of the baron?”
“Not even slightly.” I can say that with complete assurance because in my time, the baron is gone, no more than a bitter memory. In fact, Njål might be the only one who remembers what happened here.
“How are you so brave?”
It’s easy to be brave when you can’t be hurt. I start to demur and realize he’s inching closer. Tiny incremental movements that close the distance until his knee nudges mine. The door is against my back, so I can’t withdraw, not that I want to. He’s so desperate for companionship that anyone will do.
“I’m not, really. It just seemed as if you could use some company.”
His leg is still touching mine, all bony with adolescent awkwardness. “I miss them. My father was cross with me when I left, and I don’t even remember why. He said I wouldn’t be here long. I believed him. Do you think he had no intention of retrieving me?”
So that’s occurred to him as well. That the baron could feel free to lie about everyone dying because Njål’s family has abandoned him to the tender mercies of this place. What’s more, I can’t conceive of the right words to comfort him when I know that for him, the situation only gets worse, not better. Ages hence, he’ll still be trapped, unable to put Bitterburn behind him.
“It’s better to believe they died,” I say with brutal honesty.
“I think so too, but it hurts knowing that nobody is waiting for me.” Such a small voice, cracking with the start of the deepening change. One day, he’ll sound like my Njål, but right now, he’s a boy in a cupboard confronting the specter of his own mortality.
What in the world can I say to make this better? The solution dawns on me, and it has the virtue of being true. “There is, though.”
“What?”
“Someone waiting for you. It won’t be soon, but in time someone will come because she needs you. Her life was terribly sad before, but when she meets you, it gets better.”
“Is that true?” he asks.
“On my honor, it is.”
“How do you know? Are you a witch who sees the future?”
“My stepmother was always saying that I need to be careful or the witch finders will take me.” Not quite the answer he’s asked for, but it’s another truth.
Njål appears to accept that without requiring elaboration. “Is your stepmother like the baroness?”
I think of Catherine, hair like straw, bony shoulders and tired eyes, worn hands and downturned mouth. “What’s t
he baroness like?”
In answer, he shivers and draws into himself, unwilling or unable to respond. Instead, he asks, “Can you tell me more about her, the one who’s waiting for me?”
“Another time,” I hedge.
“Does that mean you’re leaving?”
“Didn’t you want me to before?” It’s a trifle unkind to answer a question with a question, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“I did then, but not now. I wish you’d stay longer.” Tentatively, he reaches out and his hand brushes the hem of my nightdress. “I have terrible dreams. It might be better if you were here.”
I’m no one, a complete stranger, but he already trusts me enough to hope I can drive away the nightmares. My heart can’t take such softness. I might be worse than the baroness for all he knows, but maybe he’s honed his intuition in this place and he senses that I would never hurt him. Not this Njål, not the other one either.
“Let’s try then.”
In the dark, we move to his pallet—it’s not even a proper bed—and he climbs beneath the covers. I stay beside him and like a puppy, he tilts his head for my hand, shifting ever closer to where it rests on my lap. When I finally touch his brow, he relaxes. His hair is soft, and I brush it away from his forehead in soothing strokes until his breathing grows deep and slow. In time, I fall under as well, and when I wake, I’m in my own bed.
I feel like weeping. It’s so strange that the keep gave me that glimpse into Njål’s past. For what reason? It’s like this place wants me to love him—and the faster, the better. Probably I ought to be frightened by that impetus, assuming Njål is correct about its motivations. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more happening here than either of us understands. There seem to be two currents, pulling at cross purposes, though nothing I can clarify right now, as I’m an emotional mess.
With a muffled curse, I roll out of bed and wash up swiftly. I put on my work dress and tidy my hair, everything as usual. But when I get to the kitchen, things have changed. Normally, the fire is nearly dead when I rouse, and I heat water for my morning meal. Today, the fire crackles cheerfully in the hearth, the stove has been lit, and the kettle is on.
