Darkling (5 page)

H
is skin is smooth and olive, and even in the flickering light I can tell that it is nearly without flaw. He is young, maybe only a few years older than me. His hair and eyes are dark, his lips slightly downturned at the corners though his expression is relaxed. Pleasant. He is of slight build, as if he has never had to toil in much physical labor, and combined with the air of effortless nobility that clings to him, I know he is the true owner of this house.

I don’t know where he has been all this time. I don’t know why he has come to me now. Those questions are suddenly unimportant. He pauses before me, the candlelight reflecting in his almond-shaped eyes.

“Hello,” he says softly with a shy smile, making the flame jitter.

Setting the sconce on the floor a ways away, he reaches up to my bound wrists. I lick my lips to tell him that it’s no use and that they’re rock solid, but before I can, he has freed me.

My weight is suddenly returned to my feet and my bad ankle. My arms are like lead and useless and my heart skips a beat as I fall. But he catches me, his arms cradling my back. Blood rushes into my limbs, and it is warm and awful. The candlelight illuminates the side of his face. Such dark eyes set into elegant, broad cheekbones. He holds me, nearly lateral for several seconds before picking me up.

Leaving the
chamberstick behind, he slowly climbs the stairs. My limbs are so numb that I can hardly feel the heat from his body, but his heart beats slow and steady against my side. We reach the first door in the hall upstairs and he shoulders it open before entering. I can’t see anything in the dark but he lowers me onto what feels like the bed. Lying still, I let the blood rush about my aching bones. I tentatively lift my right arm as I hear him cross the room. It hurts but I can command it once again. I try my left and start bending my knees while I hear him scraping around. After a minute or two, he lights a fire.

The flames cast bright light around the small room and I have to blink until my eyes adjust. This is the room with the desk and the books. Half of his body is silhouette, as if painted by shadows, but they aren’t frightening. They highlight his curves and angles and I find myself staring because he is pleasant to look at. After a while I realize he is likewise staring at me. A light flush stirs inside.

“You are warm,” he says. His voice is husky and tinted with a whisper, like it fades around the edges of his words.

“I am cold,” I answer, my voice squeaking a little. My throat is dry and my lips are cracking. It has been a long time since I last ate or drank.

His placid expression doesn’t change as he continues to study me. Then, as if rousing himself from his thoughts, he gestures to the fire. “This will warm you.” He strides towards the door. “I will return. Do not leave this room.”

I nod. I am captivated by his voice. It is
both deep and shallow, lyrical and flat. I wonder if it is actually quite normal and if I am losing my grip on reality. I need to eat and sleep. This should feel strange to me, but it doesn’t. It feels welcome.

He has closed the door behind him and I let the warmth from the fire thaw me before I try out my legs. After sliding to the edge of the bed, I press my slipper toes against the floor. Holding onto one of the bedposts, I balance on my good leg for a moment then hobble over to the fire. The snap and hiss of the heat digging into pine makes me smile. Fire is warm and welcoming. Fire is hearth and home.

The man returns with a jug and a goblet that’s still damp, as if he has just washed it. He pours me some water and it’s cool and sweet. The moment it hits my tongue, I realize how parched I am. I drink glass after glass and the jug is nearly empty before I am satiated.

“Who are you?” I
ask, my voice steady now.

“Who are you?” He sets the pitcher and cup on the desk.

“Willow. From the village of Morrot. My father is a merchant. Or… he was.”

He is lingering by the desk, in the shadows. The contrast of his clean, white collared shirt beneath his black vest makes me wonder what I must look like. My mother’s wedding dress is tattered and torn and a slit now stretches up to my hip at the side. I close the top of the gap with my hand. For a moment, I feel shame, but when I look back at him his expression is still placid, as if he hasn’t noticed. “Do you live here?”

He cocks his head slightly. “Do you?”

“No.”

“But you’re here now.”

His questioning is so simple that I wonder if he really understands me. Maybe I’m not speaking his first language. “Only for a little while,” I say back.

A corner of his mouth lifts in a faint smirk. The first true emotion he has shown. “How long is a little while?”

I sigh and rub my face with my hands. In the firelight, I am surprised to find that they’re grimy. The house has dirtied me. “I don’t know. However long it takes, I suppose.”

“However long what takes?”

“Helping the dead in this house.”

His amusement fades.

“The woman who hanged me… the… corpse.
I came here to help her.”

Sorrow flashes in his eyes, making him look so horribly vulnerable that my breath hitches in my lungs. He shakes off his stillness and crosses over to me. Kneeling by the fire, he studies it before looking me in the eye. “Don’t hunt for her.”

“Why?”

He rests his cool hand on mine, his gaze earnest. “Promise me you won’t.”

“All right. I won’t.”

The smile is back and he looks at our hands. “You’re warmer.”

“Thank you for the fire.”

He squeezes my hand then rises.
“Rest here. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

I nod as he heads for the door. “Thank you.”

He pauses with his back to me then looks over his shoulder with a whimsical expression. “I feel it but I don’t recall the word.”

“Thank you?” I ask.

“No…” Then he grins with realization. “Welcome.” He looks me in the eye. “You’re welcome.”

I smile. He slips back out and now I am sure that he hasn’t spoken my language in a long time. His mind is so rusty that I wonder if he has spent years in isolation with only a dead woman for company.
And a creature.

Where has the creature been hiding all this time? It seemed skittish. Maybe it’s back out in the woods. The Bringer would wander the woods. But what did he have to do with the corpse?

Her aggression is as unusual as her still having a body. Dead strangers often tell me their secrets then barrage me with anger. Unlike the corpse, it isn’t anger directed at me. It is anger over what they did or didn’t do in life.

Grandma
Abella was a Listener, as well. She must have been more sensitive than I am. The only way the dead can speak to us is by whispering and making us experience what they feel. Bearing all that remorse inside is not natural. That’s why she jumped off a cliff.

I wait for the man by the fire, but when he doesn’t return soon and my ankle keeps throbbing, I get up and hobble to the bed. The covers haven’t been washed in a while but they are warm. I slip underneath and wish I had something more comfortable to wear. I try to stay awake to wait for him, but I am sleepy. I imagine that the warmth I feel is from the sun, like it was the day everything changed.

It was late summer. Scarlet and I were picking blackberries by the river. Our mother used the juice to dye the fabrics my father sold, but she always left enough for us to eat until we were sick. I was fourteen and though my sister was only three years older than me, she looked like a lady. She had our mother’s cheekbones and father’s black hair. In the sunlight, her eyes glimmered like blue jewels. Her body was lithe and tall, unlike mine, and I wished I looked more like her. Sometimes I wished I was her.

“The woman turned into a horse,” she said finishing recounting a tale she’d recently read as she plopped a handful of berries into the basket. The bottom was permanently stained purple from years of summers. The air was fresh with the scent of water, river mud and berries. A bird chattered loudly overhead. The earth offered such simple joys back then.
“And was never seen again.”

“Just wait until I can share my own stories,” I said with a grin. I’d been holding this news inside the whole length of her recounting.

“What do you mean?” She stained her temple with berry juice as she brushed back a curl, turning to look at me.

I picked a thorn out of my thumb with my teeth while raising my brows. “Elias asked me to come learn. He wants to teach me to read, as well!”

Scarlet didn’t even smile as she gently lifted a clump of leaves to reveal a clutch of ripe berries underneath where the birds hadn’t yet spotted them.

I swallowed and watched her profile. “Scarlet?”

“You already
have
your own stories,” she said in a rush, facing me. “Like the one where you tried to throw that rock in the well when you were six and you were filled with the thoughts of the boy who’d drowned doing the same thing.”

Scarlet had let the basket slide from the c
rook of her arm to her purple hand. Neither of us was picking berries anymore.

“That’s not the same,” I complained.

“It’s far better. What about when I was asleep and Grandma was talking to you after she died and you said she kept getting her words mixed up, like she couldn’t focus for long. Then you realized she was saying ‘You are me.’ That’s better than anything I’ve ever read.”

The bird overhead was still chattering loudly and for a moment, it was the only sound.

“I see,” I whispered. “You don’t want me to be as smart as you.”

The berry she was picking burst in her fingers, staining them anew. 
“Of course not. Lil, you have a wonderful gift. Who needs to read when you can hear the spirits of the Netherworld?”

She linked her glistening red fingers with my purple ones and smiled, as if she was worried about something.

“Promise me you’ll tell him no?”

Something was tugging on me deep behind her eyes, so I nodded. The bird chattering overhead took off. Once in the air, it screeched several times. A screech I knew well. It was Lady. And where Lady was, her master was never far behind.

“Draven!” I hissed.

Scarlet squawked as he popped up from behind the berry bushes several yards downstream. His lips were stained purple and his expression was contrite, a half-finished necklace in his hands.

“What’re you doing here?” I demanded.

He didn’t have time to answer before Scarlet started pelting him with berries. He held up his arms to block them as he made his way over. “You snitch!” she hissed.
“You sneaky little stalker!”

“Hey,” he shouted, but Scarlet didn’t let up her assault and by the time Draven reached us, he looked like he was bleeding from multiple arrow wounds.

I glared at him and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Is it true?”

Scarlet was about to hurl an entire handful of berries at him but subdued herself at his question. I nodded my head at her, approving of the cease-fire. I looked back to Draven.

His eyes are dark like soil, yet always hold a warm, hearth-like ember.

I tensed as his gaze stripped away my body, worrying that he would be frightened, but instead, the ember glowed all the brighter. “How beautiful,” he whispered, so softly that we could hardly hear him.

“What is that, anyway?” I snapped, peering at the necklace in his hands as the glow in his eyes made my chest heat up in response.

“It’s for my father,” he said, holding up the string of beads and molted falcon feathers from Lady.
“To protect him against the shadow when he goes into the woods.”

Scarlet and I exchanged a tight look, for the darkness in the forest was something we liked to pretend wasn’t real.

“I best be off then,” Draven said with a small smile before imitating a falcon’s cry and holding out his arm. Lady swooped through the meadow then landed on the leather that was always wrapped around his wrist to protect his skin from her hunter’s talons.

He inclined his head at both of us then jogged back towards the village. In the distance, I could see Lucian outside his house, lacing up his boots as he prepared to leave.

I never had to ask Draven to keep my secret, just as I didn’t have to ask what had happened when I awoke to him wailing a few days later. The necklace hadn’t worked. Lucian’s body was found at the base of hill after he lost his footing high above. Draven made himself scarcer than ever after that, until the harvest festival.

His mother muttered to mine that he hadn’t spoken in weeks. Across the field of bonfires and dancing families and couples, we gazed at each other. The drums pulsed. He crossed over to me, holding an orange and yellow leaf by the stem. I opened my mouth to say something but he tucked the leaf in my hair, adding it to my autumn crown. He didn’t need to speak. I could tell what he was thinking by looking into his eyes.

I led Draven over to a corner where there was just enough firelight to see each other’s faces. We sat down and I held his hand in both of mine, resting in my lap. I waited for him to ask if I’d ever heard his father, or if I knew where he was, but he doesn’t say anything.