Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (19 page)

“If I might ask,” the pretend Ner said. “Don’t you wish your wife to be happy?”

“I do not care for her either way, except that I must have a wife, one who won’t dishonor me.” The warlord clenched his claws. “I believe it is time I seek a new wife and remove the old.”

“I will see to it,” Ramire told Korophel from beneath his cloaks, and then he hurried to Delirah. “I am sent to kill you, my lady.”

Delirah’s face took on the destitute nature of their first meeting. “If my husband wants someone dead, he is dead.”

“And is that so with me? Have no fear. We will run to where Korophel cannot go, to the house of dreams and promises.” They sped through the castle’s secret avenues, to where the walls opened into brush and grass outside the city, and then Ramire led Delirah over the vales.

A day and a night passed before Korophel realized both his assassin and his wife were missing, and only when he found the bell beside his wife’s bed did he realize the fool lived. “I have been made a fool again!” he shouted. “Fetch dogs, fetch horses, fetch axes and chains! I will lead the charge myself to the place of this fool! I will flay him alive and then we’ll see who wears his face!”

Ramire and Delirah stopped in villages along the way, but told none to hide the fool’s visit from pursuers, for the couple were off to live in dreams and promises, not secrets. They ran and ran, the warlord and his warriors dogging their tracks and razing any home that had given them shelter.

After three days, the couple reached the house and its beauty stunned Delirah. She was used to grays only, not reds and whites, greens and yellows. She was used to rooftops that pointed like swords, not a soft, rounded surfaces and pretty wooden arches. “I may live here?”

“You will
be
within, like you have never been,” Ramire said. “And you will see the truth of dreams and the power of promises. You will be happy.”

The door opened and a chipper bald man waved them inside. “They’re close now. Hurry!”

“Who is that?” Delirah asked.

“The secrets-master, Ner,” Ramire said. “You will find stranger and more wonderful truths within.” He held Delirah’s hand, reassuring her before they stepped through the doorway into a bright, colorful light, and Ner closed the door.

Korophel and his warriors arrived moments later. The house was the most beautiful any had seen, its soft corners inviting, its colors swimming like dye in water across its surface. The warlord was put off for an instant, but quickly remembered why he had ridden so far and hunted so vigorously. He stormed up to the door and gave a great shove, but it wouldn’t budge, in or out. His claws snapped at the knob and his maul pounded, but even that heavy iron hammer could not force the door.

“Chains!” he shouted. “Dig into the walls and rip this house apart!” The warriors did as their warlord commanded, nailing chains into the sides of the house and wrapping them round teams of horses. “Pull!” Korophel screamed and the horses tugged. “Pull!” he demanded and the walls groaned. “Pull!” he screamed and the walls broke from the house of dreams and promises.

Then the sides began to writhe and sway like grass in the wind. The bricks tugged back at the chains, drawing the horse teams and their riders into a swirling storm of colors. Korophel whipped his steed to flee, but the tendrils of the house grasped for him, for his warriors, for their dogs and horses and servants, for the grass, the wind, the earth, armor, weapons, supplies, everything sucked in by the power released from the broken, beautiful house of dreams and promises.

The nightmare spun and screeched until it had erased the divisions between blade and flesh, dog and horse, man and earth, all melted together in a rotting mound capped by a giant, horned skull made of iron. The house was gone and Corpse Hill stood where it had been, the final resting place of the warlord Korophel and his mighty warband.

But not the resting place of Delirah and Ramire. Had you the will and stomach to pick apart Corpse Hill, you wouldn’t find a speck of either. Some say the house sent them to the land of dreams, while others say they learned of a great promise where they might exist in all things. Some say they became the beautiful power within. No one knows for certain.

In the cold lands, Branya’s mother kept a blanket with the girl to fight back the chill of winter, and Branya kept it close in fear of the shadows. The family couldn’t burn a fire in any room but the den, and while its warmth stretched to all but the fringes of the house, its shadows seemed to creep everywhere. Even in Branya’s room, in the dark of night, when the fire shrank and clung weakly to charred splinters of woods, its light cast shadows through her doorway.

“You will not grow brave when you’re fearing the shadows of our home,” her father Tumark said. “Better you know that you’re safe here, and fear only men.” Tumark was a man of the town watch, but he had friends in the czar’s army, some of whom had friends in their commanding officers, and so Tumark often knew the goings-on of raiding vagrants and foreign invaders.

Branya’s father was brave beyond her understanding, and her fear was beyond his—he could not see the shadows or the fear they struck in her. All he saw was a daughter he loved.

There came a night when Branya couldn’t sleep. Her parents were arguing somewhere, their voices muffled but their tones vehement, and worse, the shadows were livelier with the grand fire, built strong to fight the winter cold. She faced the wall beside her bed and forced her eyes closed, but the shadows danced on the wall and flickered through her eyelids. So she got up in hopes that her father might know what to do.

“They’re coming,” she heard him say to her mother. “This is our village and home. I will not flee. The guard must fight.”

“Then we stay here,” her mother said to him. “We’ll freeze to death if we hide in the woods through the night anyway.”

When her parents turned from each other in disgust, Branya tugged her father’s pants and told him of the fearsome shadows. Tumark’s mood remained dark and pensive, but he scooped his little daughter into his arms and carried her back to her room.

“Ignore the shadows,” he told her. “Put your blanket over you and hide, for it might mean your life. If you must, no matter what your mother tells you, run into the woods. Keep the blanket over you tight and stay warm, stay alive, under any circumstance.” He then kissed her cheek, put the blanket over her, and marched back through the house, grabbing his sword along the way. The front door opened and closed with a gust of wind and Branya’s father was gone, off to fight some enemy she was supposed to fear worse than the shadows.

They danced on the wall once her father had left her, but she did as he said and tucked the blanket over her body. It covered her feet, her legs, her chest and arms, and finally she pulled it over her head. The warmth soaked into her clothes and skin, and while the shadows were still there, unseen, she could feel safe under the cover knitted by her mother.

Her eyes fluttered open again in the middle of the night, when the fire had died down, yet still cast enough light for tiny shadows to creep into her room. Only tonight they seemed to be large shadows—not the narrow lines cast by embers in charred wood, but the wide pillars of darkness made by men. She heard commotion outside, and screaming, and more shadows broke through her window, as if a great fire had engulfed their neighbor’s home. The shadows sprayed over the room like running women and armed men, like sword points and devil horns, and Branya knew only one place safe from shadows.

The blanket swept over her head, covering all her body, and she sat motionless on the bed, hoping the dancing shadows would carry their parade off to some other town, to dance in its fires. She did not move when she heard stamping in the den and didn’t make a peep when she heard her mother’s scream. Nothing moved before her eyes but the shadow-free darkness of the blanket’s inside.

Heavy feet stomped in the doorway and Branya’s breath rattled out through chattering teeth. These shadows were the biggest, she was sure, heavy enough to make noises like the other shadows couldn’t. They laughed too, as if their dance had amused them, and then she felt the heat of them through the blanket. No wonder these shadows were so great—they carried a fire with them so there would always be light to make them.

“What’s this one?” a voice asked. “Someone’s child?”

“Another for the pile,” another, gruffer voice answered.

The two men raised their swords while Branya sat petrified, terrified of shadows the two raiders weren’t aware of, and they thought they’d found an easier kill than the squealing babe they’d yanked from a young woman’s arm in the last house. Yet when their swords hit the blanket, one man’s ricocheted off like he’d slashed at a steel shield, and the other split from its hilt. They cursed, confused, and the one with an intact sword tried running Branya through. His blade bent, crumpling like paper, and both men believed there had to be an enchantment here.

One reached out for the blanket to pull it free of Branya. He would keep it for himself, beneath his clothes, a better protection than any shield or armor. Yet when he touched the wool, his fingers became tangled in the knitting, and when he tried pulling back, his hand came free, but his fingers remained stuck in the blanket.

Shouting in pain and panic, the two men returned to the den and snatched up what remained of the fiery logs in the fireplace. Then one grabbed an oil lamp from the kitchen. One burned his finger stumps on the log to stop the bleeding, and then laid the fiery wood on Branya’s bed. The other stood at the girl’s bedroom doorway, hefted back, and tossed the lamp onto the floor. Oil sprayed over the room, touching the log’s embers, and then flames tore through the wooden walls, the cloth of the bed, and engulfed the room.

“Let us leave, before the fire catches us too,” said one man, and the two quickly fled the house. Half the village burned, but the raiders seemed to be losing, and the two who’d entered Branya’s house and slain her mother retreated into the woods with their comrades.

Tumark didn’t return until dawn. He’d lost a half-dozen friends in the fighting near the frozen river and beating back the marauders there had taken the town watch away from the village. He would’ve preferred to lose another half-dozen friends if it meant changing what had become of his home. A square of black ash awaited him where once there had been a wife and child. Not a single wall stood, not a piece of furniture remained bigger than Tumark’s thumb, and he hoped against all glaring truth that his daughter had run into the woods, though he knew that was where the retreating raiders had gone.

“We should have fled,” he said, falling to his knees in the snow. “I shouldn’t have fought.”

Something shuffled in the ashes and he looked up. He was afraid then that he’d seen a ghost of his daughter, one that would haunt him all his days for leaving her to fend for herself with a mother who refused to flee. Only this ghost hugged him and began crying, and a knitted blanket fell from her shoulders as he picked her up. He stroked her back and held her head against his chest, vowing to build a new house, a safer one, and promised his daughter that the shadows would do nothing to her ever again.

When Tumark looked back to the ashes to fetch his daughter’s blanket, to protect her against the cold, he saw only a new pile of ash flaking across the snow, drifting from a cluster of small, white chunks that resembled a man’s finger bones.

There are things that winter brings, and things that winter makes.

There are things in winter that want, and things in winter that take.

On a cold winter’s eve, Ann awoke in the darkness. Every candle in the house had been snuffed out. Something scratched at a wood floor, like a small creature running, and Ann leaned over to her bedside drawer for a match. Her hand pawed blindly until she found one in her rummaging, but she might’ve run instead had she known she was watched by the cold thing.

Ann heard the scratching again as she clutched the long match in her fist, and didn’t know if the sound came from out in the hall or from within the room until something heavy struck her from behind, clouding her head in blackness. Her breath struggled in and out, like her face was covered by a damp cloth. She struggled to fully awaken too, drifting in and out of consciousness.

At last, she shuddered awake from the stinging at her fingers and toes, a spiteful chill creeping over her arms, her legs, and under her clothes. She’d been dropped flat on her belly on a tree-spotted, snowy slope in the dark of night, and two other girls lay nearby. Then she heard a scraping from something in the snow, and spied a rail-thin figure vanishing swiftly into the night, and dragging a sack behind it. Its burlap surface had dampened on the bottom half, darkening most heavily against the ground, and it left a dark streak in the snow to the point where it vanished too.