Over the following nights, I listened out for more cries in the dark, signs of his nightmares, but I heard none.
The one change was that he asked me for more tales about the village at the end of each day when I came to collect his dinner plates. I was happy enough to oblige. I had twenty years or so worth of them, after all, and the duller, the better, as far as he was concerned.
I resisted any impulse to embroider the stories, because their ordinariness seemed to be what he enjoyed. There certainly wasn’t much that was ordinary about the House, or him.
He found the story of Goodman Whelk making a fool of himself over the baker’s pretty young daughter, for example, more entertaining than my tale of the birth of a two-headed calf. The deformed calf had entertained the whole village for months, but he barely raised an eyebrow at it before asking me to tell the saga of a pub brawl over again.
He listened like a child being told a bedtime story and, like a child, wanted each story repeated in the same way, with the same details. He even corrected me when I left something out.
I have to admit I enjoyed his attention for the short time he gave it to me. Most of the time, while I talked, he was sprawled across his chair doing something pointless, like throwing and catching a ball, or making a cat’s cradle with a tangle of glowing string, but I could tell he was listening intently.
Maybe there was some eldritch meaning to his little baubles, but I suspected not. He reminded me of an indulged little boy, allowed to sit inside and be idle, rather than being pushed outside to go play with his friends and get out from under his mother’s feet.
I suppose I would be the mother, in that scenario.
I talked and talked about my life until I was fairly sick of it, but he said little more about his. Perhaps he regretted telling me so much when he had woken from his nightmare. I did not press him—although, if I didn’t find my heart soon, I was going to have to. I dreaded the thought.
And I was supposed to find hearts for the Snagged, too; any heart, so that even if I never found mine, I would at least be able to replace what I had lost—or so they believed. I didn’t know if I shared their belief in this mysterious person and process that claimed to hold the key to their cure, but I understood their desperation.
One morning, perhaps four or five days after my visit to the Snagged, there was a crash that sounded at first like the whole place was caving in.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” said Cornelius, appearing seemingly from nowhere.
“Get what?”
“The door.”
“That’s thedoor?” Who could hit the door with that amount of force? Another supplicant looking for a hex or a charm? Surely they wouldn’t break the door down before asking for a favor.
I stomped over there and hauled it open, ready to present my most cantankerous self to whoever stood there, but as soon as my eyes focused on the visitor, I was lost.
I had grown used to being almost invisible in the sorcerer’s house. There were no mirrors in my chamber, which suited me just fine, and Cornelius couldn’t give a bald bollock what I looked like as long as bacon kept showing up on his plate every morning. As far as the sorcerer himself went, I might as well have been a piece of his black furniture.
On the doorstep now, however, I felt my plainness again in full force, because I was met with the most beautiful face imaginable, every exquisite line of it a poem. It was the sorceress we had seen at the market, Clarissa.
But seeing her so much closer, breathing her in face-to-face, was dizzying. I must have staggered a little, because I felt myself clutch at the doorframe.
She said nothing to me. She brushed past me with a rustling of silks, and the House opened for her as if it recognized her.
I smelled the scent of her as she passed—strange night-blooming flowers and the drifting mystery of her skin. It smelled familiar, and I remembered the sweet-scented dresses in the mysterious bedchamber.
She walked down the corridor as if she knew where she was going, leaving me gasping in her wake. Her servant followed close behind her, but I could barely take him in, so blinded was I by her presence. He didn’t so much as glance at me, either, but kept his eyes on his sorceress.
“Oh yes, it’s one of them again,” said Cornelius from somewhere around my feet. “Told you.”
I was still breathless from the beauty of her and couldn’t say anything. Of course I remembered her.
“It’ll pass in a second,” said Cornelius, understanding. He dropped to the black floor and started to wash his tail, keeping it carefully in place with one paw. “I’ll wait.”
He was right enough. Whatever influence the sorceress had over me started to fade when I could no longer see or smell her, leaving me with my usual heart-tugging from the sorcerer’s magicks and just the faintest trace of her perfume.
“Don’t you feel it?” I asked when I was able to speak again.
“No. Not even a little,” said Cornelius. “But I can see it on them. Like a cloud. Like pollen. And I can smell it. It works on all the humans.”
Something dreadful occurred to me. “Did she take any more of it?” I clutched at the fabric on my chest, ridiculously, pulling it away from my body as if I had an apronful of blackberries and was afraid to spill them.
“Any more of what?”
