When I hurry to my feet, a sharp pain sparks up my leg, and I wince. The monster stills, a catch of white fabric so real I can almost touch it. Agony rips through the back of my skull, sending me to my knees, before I name the thing I see before me. The mist knits together more firmly, a mosaic of pieces I recognize as human but not. A hand, its fingers too long, a cheek with bones too sharp. It becomes feral, unnatural, and fear bleeds across my belly.
Mother. My throat aches with the name.Mother.
I blink and it is gone. Just a line of rowans, dry grasses swaying in the breeze.
Cool relief rushes from the center of my chest, and I heave a sigh. But the breath catches in my throat, snagging on the skin like wool on a rusty nail. A cough rattles from my lungs, trying to clear the space, and my body tightens. I scrabble for my neck, my wrist, behind my ear, anything to remind me I am alive, but my pulse is silent. No steady beat to guide me.
My legs buckle, knees almost crashing to the bloodied river.
And that’s when I spot it, rocking, lapped by icy waves, before the blackness takes me.
Hester Samuel’s cold body.
four
I am locked in the garden shed when they bring the body up the hill, a single window open to let in air. Neck craned as high as I can, I watch four men—village elders—slip their way down to the riverbank and roll her onto a rough cut of burlap. Dark hair sticks to her white face like leeches, and her dress is soaked through, half-frozen, hem ripped and stained with mud. I cannot see much more. But the men whisper.
A tear across her throat, a clutch of wilted bitterbloom in her hands, blood smeared across her lips.
I push to my feet using a pile of rough-hewn boards as leverage against my trembling legs. Father likes for the garden shed to serve as extra punishment for the moments when I black out, as if I have any control over it. Those in the village who know of this turn their eyes the other way, whispering that I deserve the treatment. Better to commune with Erybrus in private than out where Ithrandril can bear witness to my wickedness.
The bell in my pocket rubs against my thigh, and I fish it out. The metal catches the light streaming in through the small window. Designs are etched across the surface: twining veins, thorns, the empty sockets and toothy grin of a skull. The sight fills my stomach with vinegar, but I only tighten my grip on the wooden handle.
I kept the bell quiet when Father brought me up from the river and locked me in the shed, covered in river mud and blood he knew could onlybe mine. It was missing a piece—the tiny wire that held the bead to the dome. I tied it up with a lavender ribbon from my hair and wrapped the whole thing in a shred of my skirt hem to keep it silent before stuffing it back in my pocket.
Now, abandoned to the cold and dirt of the garden shed, I want to ring it and hear the clear cut of its note. But fear sinks hooks into my flesh. I wrap it back in cloth, returning it to my pocket. Only in my greatest need will I ring it.
I drop to the ground and release a breath trapped between my lungs. My fingers worry the edge of my sleeve where it is cut and stained with dirt. I already know what the villagers are whispering amongst themselves, that I am the one who killed Hester. And truthfully, how am I to know I didn’t?
When my world turned black the day of Lilith’s burial, where did I go? Did I call the monsters forth, just to watch them settle their teeth into the flesh of Hester’s throat?
I glance around the darkened space of my prison. Every inch of it makes me ache with the remembrance of what I have lost. My mother who loved her garden beds. Upended rusty trowels, seed packets with faded print, crooked mountains of old terra-cotta pots, a pair of kidskin gloves gathering dust. I cross to the gloves and run a finger along their soft surface, blemished with dirt and the yellowing age of disuse.
Mother loved her flowers. Me most of all.
Oh, my Morning Glory.
I lift one of the gloves and fit my hand inside. The grit of old soil rubs into my palms. They are rather small, even on my own wiry fingers. I can barely remember her in full—Mother. Nine years is so much longer than it feels sometimes. But I do remember how small she was.
Father always told me it was her own sickness that kept her that way, burrowing into her bones and shrinking her from the inside out. But I didn’t pay attention to that bit—not until the end. When I close my eyes, I picture her as she was. Lovely and whip-smart, always smelling of fresh citrus and lavender soap, her laugh like church bells. Before they learned to only ring the funeral songs.
For a moment, I allow memories to wash over me. Just a sweet sting until the bitterness clouds the air once more.
I am on the edge of thirteen, my body quickly becoming something I no longer recognize. Angles where the skin has tightened and the baby fat has trimmed itself away. Fuller lips, wider eyes, and a slimming waist. I sit at the small table tucked in a corner beside the hearth in the kitchen, braiding a crown of rosemary and hyssop.
Only days before, they pulled another body from the riverbanks. Rosalyn Eckers, the butcher’s daughter. Skin sloughed from her bone, and Father shielded my eyes. But I saw enough. Enough to know Erybrus was at work in Rixton.
I braid the crown for Rosalyn, to toss it on her casket and pray that Ithrandril claims her soul. Pray I am not taken next.
Out the open window, the wind shushes in the trees, and the sparrows sing their night songs in the lilac bushes. Despite the death and fear running like the plague through the village, there is a peace to be found. I twist off the end of the braid, securing it with a mauve ribbon.
And that’s when the shouting starts.
I leap from my chair, rushing to the kitchen door leading down to the valley. Shadows gather at the edge of the river, voices of my parents. Mother’s coughing fits started months ago, small at first, then tinged with blood. I narrow my eyes, searching the darkness for their forms.
Stars glitter above, but they are the only lights shining when Father appears on the crest of the hill. He holds something in his arms.
Someone.
