Along the landing I stood before, bare-limbed trees jutted in through broken windows. Spiked and sharp, they sliced through the hall like a gruesome kind of maze. Vines, dead and dry, clung to the rocks and packed earth of the walls, strangling them with their coiling, twisting stems. On one entire side of the hallway the ceiling had collapsed in, and feathery gray cinders drifted gently down from its jagged edges. The rest of the hallway, which last time I was there had a grand stone balcony overlooking the winding stairs, had deteriorated into a crumbling edge, piled with rocks and what looked like long, white, dried-out bones.
Carefully, I walked along the edge of the hall, my shoes leaving marks in the thick layers of rubble and dust. The last door on the landing was made of thick splintered wood that seemed to pulse and hum, and when I touched my hand down onto its rusted handle, it sighed as if lifted from a heavy burden.
For a brief moment I stood still, hand clasped over the rough surface of the metal, and felt a rumbling vibration. I yanked my hand off and still felt the sensation of thousands of butterfly wings beating against my palm.
As I examined my hand, a soft glow appeared in the crack of the door as it slowly creaked open, all on its own.
I’d sat in this room many times before. A small room at the tippy top of a tower, which contained only one single item: an old piano, with warped rotting wood, broken keys, and a worn, rickety bench that wobbled when I sat on it. A thick layer of dust clung to every surface, as if no one had been inside for a thousand years.
One tall window took up the farthest wall. It had neither glass nor screen to block the outside mist from wafting in, and from its position atop one of the tallest towers of this place, the whole of Ravenswood could be seen from its viewpoint. Dark-roofed houses, crooked and strangely angled, curling and bending cobbled roads, and a forest of dead, wintery trees that faded into a dark haunting mist.
I stuck my entire head out of the window and looked down. Between each stone of the exterior wall a vine of flowers bloomed. A shock of color in a dreary nightmarish world. Olive green and sage, to brilliant hues of blue and red, covered the façade of the tower.
Breathless and dizzy, I watched as the flowers all seemed to tilt up toward the window as if greeting me. I stepped back immediately, heart pounding wildly in my chest.
When I turned around, the piano and bench were dusted clean.
“Oh my God,” I said, the words escaping my lips without thought, my fingertips against my heart.I heard no one behind me. How did someone come in and clean off the surfaces without making a noise?
Then slowly, with the lowest of creaks, the bench shifted out by an unseen hand, as if inviting me to sit and play.
“Holy Hell in a handbasket,” I whispered under my breath. I nervously giggled to myself; I felt like I was quickly losing my sanity with each strange thing I encountered. This wasn’t the first time I played for whateveror whoeverit was thaturged me to, but this time I hesitated only a short moment and thrust my head back out of the window one last time. I swept my eyes over the front of the wall, counting one, two, three, four, five, six flowers, all in different colors.
I wanted to see what happened after I finished playing—I wanted to know if, somehow, I had brought the flowers to this world—color and life to Ravenswood, like everyone thought.
The bench resisted my weight with a series of shudders and groans, but didn’t break or splinter or buckle under me. Slowly I ran my finger along the tips of the ivory keys, contemplating what to play, when the instrument heaved out a long low sigh, as if just waking from a deep sleep.
“You need to hear something hopeful and beautiful, don’t you?” I whispered.
The flat stones of the floor quaked in response.
I touched down the pads of my fingertips to the ivory, and sparks of heat and electricity zapped through my hands and spread warmth through my wrists. Soon a soft, sweet melody filled the room, drifting and echoing out of the window with a subtle breeze.
Music surged from my fingers; slow deliberate notes that gradually transformed into a rhythmic profusion of melody and emotion. Symphony after symphony, I played. Each composition more full of joy than the last.
I played until my forearms ached, until my fingers stiffened and my eyelids became heavy.
I played through the sound of the soft, jingling chimes reverberating over the notes, calling for the dead to awaken and haunt the darkened corners of Ravenswood.
The music room dimmed and the keys faded under my fingertips, the music dying instantly. I tried to press down on the C key, but my finger moved right through and I suddenly found myself back in my room, sitting before my dressing table, listening to the hum and chaos as Ravenswood’s dead awoke from their ghostly slumber. I didn’t even get to see if another flower grew outside the window, I’d have to remember to do so next time. If there was a next time.
With a raucous clatter, Rose busted through the door. Bowls of steaming liquid balanced on a tray in her hands, along with tattered rags and a worried expression across her face. She didn’t look at me right away, just busied herself in a hurried manner, putting her odd things around the room and readying herself for something I wasn’t yet aware of.
“Does no one knock in this place?” I asked, from where I sat near the dressing table.
Rose’s eyes snapped up, and her body flinched back a step. “What are you doing over there, child?” Her words were a garbled mixture of whispers and choked gasps. “Get back in bed and take off your shirt. I’ve been sent here to tend to your wounds.” She unrolled a soiled towel and dipped it into one of the steaming bowls. “You’ll make them worse.”
She didn’t know. If she hadn’t healed me before, then who the hell did? “Who sent you to take care of me?” I asked in a small whisper.
“Why, the king, of course.” She sighed heavily and wrung the towel out in her hands. “You were to have kneeled before the king. How could you have been so careless and foolish?”
Hemlock sent her to tend to my wounds. He didn’t know I was healed either.Somewhere in this godforsaken place I had an ally, one besides Mathias. “How long have I been in bed?”
“Not long enough for your bloody sheets to fully dry,” she said, pointing her gloved finger toward my bed.
When I didn’t move, she huffed loudly and walked her tray of goodies to me and slammed them onto the dressing table. Thick, black liquid sloshed over the rim of one of the dishes and I winced in disgust from the filth of it all.
“Thanks, but I’m fine.”
