“Such a saint, you are. Taking in the misfortunate ones among this land of evil. I’d take care Ayla, there’s much at play recently that I’d hate for you to wind up dead. Such a shame, indeed.” The man stared. “Good day.” He shuffled off down the cobblestone path and into an alleyway.
Ayla greeted another customer, cool under pressure, while I tried to rub the embarrassment of it all off my face.
People walked past the booth, their gazes drawn to the next shiny object or item to buy. Some spokeexcitedly, lifting goods off the table to show others. A child pointed at a small toy, a wooden horse. The little boy broke out into a fit of coughing, buckling over upon the ground.
The mother tugged the little boy’s hand until they stopped in front of us. “Excuse me, miss. Do you have a cough remedy? My son, he’s been coughing terribly for the last week, and I fear he has the plague.”
Ayla nodded to me, signaling I should take the lead keenly watching as I rummaged through the bag, pulling out my own blend I had created.
“Here, take this with a few teaspoons of honey, and it should clear up within a couple days.” She took the satchel, holding it close to her chest as she fumbled within her coat for coins.
The boy coughed into his hand, brown pools wide as his attention fixated on me. “Scary woman.” He pointed at Ayla and me, placing his other in his mouth. “Bad. Bad. Bad.”
“That’s enough, sweetie. Here.” She placed the coin onto the table. Flushed, she picked her son up, then the satchel in her fist.
The child continued to beat his fists into his mother’s side. “She’s gonna kill us all. I saw it, Mama,” he wailed, pointing to the space between Ayla and me.
The mother cooed into the boy’s ear, rocking him in her arms. “He is not normally like this. Thank you, both of you. You are saints, wonderful saints.” She walked off down the same cobblestone path, her son coughing into her shoulder.
Ayla neatly adjusted the product on the table, softly humming to herself. “People have their opinions. No matter how hard you try to argue with them, they will hold on to them, even if they are harmful. You’ll get used to it. Sooner or later, you will leave that castle, and you will not be the stranger in town.”
I wondered if the same held true when it came to Silas. If the townspeople saw what Silas was like outside of the walls of the castle, would they change their minds? Silas has been alone in that castle for an eternity, doing who knows what to these people that rather see his head on a pike than be open to the idea that he was less than the monster they portray him as.
Was he less than the monster that I thought him to be? I was not even sure of my own doubt to truly answer the question. He had his secrets—that was clear, but yet he struck me as someone who did not like hiding them. The man simply was afraid of its discovery and the judgment to follow.
Was he lonely? Perhaps it was the reason he did not know how to act human or understand the particulars of the fears to see. Yes, he had all those ghosts, but does a beast often wish for the presence of a living, breathing person?
The warmth and heartbeat from someone.
Silas hiding the truth from me only made me more curious, especially after my last venture to the west wing. One he did not want me to find, to explain how he or even the castle came to be. Perhaps it was I needed to see to prove that he did, in fact, had something to do with the village deaths.
Perhaps only then I’d be able to use the blade against him and be sure enough I was not damning another soul.
Assisting Ayla in packing up the booth, I was struck with the awful task I had to do. If Silas was unwilling to tell me what was going on in his castle, then it was time that I found out what it was—and stop him.
I paced the room, furious and half out of my mind as blood raced through tired limbs. The clock tilling the midnight hour, and all was quiet in the castle. Silas left early that night after our uneventful supper. It was either this or not at all to find the truth hidden in forbidden depths of the west wing.
He could have been back at any moment, and if I did not seize this opportunity, there would be no other chance—not like this one for who knows how long.
I stormed out of the room wearing nothing but my thin nightgown. I retraced my steps to through the wing, getting closer to the whispering voices growing louder in the winding halls. The corridors had shifted, and even with guidance from the light of the moon, it was eerily dark. I clung to the wall, shuffling step by step past the ominous door, body aching to open it once more to learn of what those voices had been trying to show me. The foggy memory of the burning pain and my own gut told me to keep going deeper into the bowls.
Compared to the other wing and much of the rest of the castle, the west wing was a labyrinth. Twisting and turning in different directions, appearing to not adhere to any structural part of the castle. The walls crumbled in sections, with several bricks missing, shattered below onto the rotting wood and giving way to the moonlight. Moths made their home on the shredded curtains, weaving themselves between the sporadic holes. I batted away the creatures as the rafters overhead creaked.
I crept farther, masking the sound of my steps with the groaning rafters and floorboards. When I rattled the knob of a door, I found it was locked. In fact, they were all locked with the entirety of the dead silent space, the castle holding a bated breath.
The farther I went, the more dismayed I became. I counted thirty doors, and they were all locked. Doubt came in at the thought of finding what it was he was hiding. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, but with doors being locked, it was becoming more and more difficult, turning into a fruitless expedition.
I stopped in the middle of the hallway, the corridor split into complete darkness lit by a single flame of a burning candelabra. A ghostly arm held the brass with tender fingers, their face obscured and their pale limbs visible, a glowing beacon into the growing expanse of the dark. I cautiously stepped toward the apparition, and the creaking of a door opening cut through the silence.
“Come,” the ghost beckoned.
I followed them into the foreboding room, swallowed whole by it.
In the wandering dark, images bloomed as a bud does into a fetching rose. The moon, hitting its peak, illuminated the space in soft light to a scene right out of fleeting memory. Ghosts, swathed in harrowing translucent fabric, waltzed across the ballroom floor. Upon the balcony, two figures stood peering down at their glittering guests.
The woman from the other day was dressed in crimson, with copper curls adorning her head nestled among a crown of gold. She held the hand and tender gaze of the boy from the visions and dreams. A crown of silver adorned sweeping raven-hair-framed eyes of clear midnight blue, happy and unabashed straying soft fingers against hers. The ball twirled around me as I stepped closer to the shadows of the past.
Soft voices rang out, “For our alliance and to the peace of our great nations.”
