Seventh Bride (10 page)

“There you are,” said Maria, elbow deep in bread dough. “I sent Ingeth to wake you. You’ll need a meal before you go out.”

Out. Yes. Into the woods. At night.
 

Rhea’s stomach knotted up. She dragged her finger around the back of her shoe, flipping the leather up. “Oh. I suppose that’s a good idea.”

I did it once before. I was fine. I had a hedgehog. I’ll be fine this time.
 

“It’s a very good idea,” said Maria. “It’ll be bad enough without being hungry, I expect.”
 

This was not precisely encouraging.
 

“What’s going to happen?” asked Rhea.
 

“I was a witch, not a fortune teller,” said Maria testily. “No one knows what’s going to happen.”

She slid a plate of potatoes in front of Rhea, then went back to the dough. Potatoes seemed to be Maria’s default food. Fortunately, Rhea was fond of them.

She wasn’t exactly hungry, but she took a bite anyway.
 

Sylvie was not at the table. Rhea looked over her shoulder to make sure Ingeth was gone.
 

“Maria?”

“Mm?”

“Why does Ingeth hate me?”

Maria let out a bark of laughter. “She was the last wife. Voice like an angel, and what did she ever use it for, but picking and picking and telling us that we had led our lord to wickedness? She thought she’d had the saving of him, with her sermons and her righteousness, and then she got here and found he had five other wives and only one in the ground.”

Rhea could spare a certain amount of sympathy for Ingeth’s surprise. “She didn’t know?”

“No more than the rest of us. Well, not me. I was the first wife.” She slammed her fist into the dough, perhaps with a little more force than needed. “Hard for someone like Ingeth to admit that they were wrong. Or maybe she’s mad at her god for not saving her. I don’t know. It’s quieter now, thank the saints.”

“What happened to her?” asked Rhea quietly.

Maria looked up at the ceiling, then down at Rhea.
 

I should have asked before. Oh, it was stupid not to ask when I first got here. They were talking freely then. I was tired and scared and upset and that’s still no excuse. She can’t talk with Lord Crevan here, it’s obvious.
 

Lady of Stones, why was I so stupid?
 

In a very small voice, Rhea said “He said that if I wasn’t back before dawn, he’d marry me.”

Maria nodded. She came over and took the half-eaten plate of potatoes away. When her lips were very near Rhea’s ear, she murmured, “I can’t say much. But I’d be back by dawn, if I were you.”
 

When the edge of the moon slithered over the top of the wood, Rhea stepped into the garden. The path continued through the arch, into the overgrown garden, then into the orchard, and then…well, hopefully to the scarecrow.
 

The scarecrow that could drink.
 

She took a deep breath to settle herself. The air smelled of dead leaves and frost.

Rhea made three steps, and then a shadow waddled into the path.
 

The hedgehog sat up in front of her.

“Hedgehogs are not this concerned with humans,” Rhea told it firmly, as a wave of relief washed through her like a cool tide.
 

The hedgehog shrugged, and put its paws in the air to be picked up.

She settled it in her pocket, where it rolled around until it found a comfortable position. “Were the slugs in the garden good?” she asked it.

It poked its nose over the pocket edge and nodded approvingly. Apparently, they had been high-quality slugs.
 

She told the hedgehog about her errand as she walked out of the garden. The path was pale in the moonlight, but not the bone-colored expanse of the white road. When shadows fell over it, they lay like ordinary shadows.
 

The orchard was heavy and overgrown. Weeds turned to brambles and grew up the trunks of apple trees, which bent branches down to meet them. The path became narrower, but it was still six paces across and mostly straight.

This isn’t so bad. If this is all there is, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting home by dawn.
 

The fallen leaves cluttered the edge, but left the center of the path clear.

Rhea looked over her shoulder. She had no sense of anything following her—not the way that she had on the white road—but she didn’t trust her senses. She looked down at the hedgehog.
 

Its tiny paws were tense, but it did not seem afraid.
 

They had been walking no more than fifteen or twenty minutes when the dense tangle swept away on either side, and Rhea stepped into a clearing.
 

The moon streamed down on grass-choked paving stones. The gaps where stones were missing were scabbed with weeds.
 

Tall wooden poles were sunk in the ground at random, like flagpoles. A few had crosspieces on them, lashed with rope. Rhea could see no purpose for them.
 

They’re too big for bean-poles. I suppose you could run a cord between them and dry your laundry.
 

Some people grow vines up a pole. I suppose they could have been for roses or grapes or something.

It did not look as if anything had grown up the poles for a long, long time.
 

She edged out into the clearing. The stones were deeply sunk into the earth and did not move underfoot.

There was a depression on the far side of the clearing. Black trees were reflected in the water, along with a faint dusting of stars.
 

In her pocket, the hedgehog shifted uneasily.
 

The stones were hard underfoot, and the edges dug into the soles of her boots.
 
Rhea picked her way across the clearing.
 

“There’s supposed to be a scarecrow here…” she said aloud. The words made a little space that belonged to her, instead of to the dark woods and the strange poles. She kept talking, to herself or the hedgehog, she wasn’t sure. “I suppose it could be gone. How long do scarecrows last? It would serve Lord—
Himself
right.”
 

She avoided Lord Crevan’s name at the last minute. It sat strangely on her tongue, and suddenly it seemed safer to use Maria’s term, out here, where things might be listening.

He called up things on the white road and didn’t have wit or will enough to put them down again,
Maria had said.

Rhea had no idea where the white road was in relation to this clearing. Surely it was in the same woods, somewhere nearby?

How far could a monster travel? Could something walk off the white road, slither through the woods, and devour—oh, to take an example completely at random, an unwary girl and her hedgehog?

“Can’t think like that,” muttered Rhea. “Otherwise, I’ll turn around and run back to the house and then he’ll marry me.”

The hedgehog shivered. She could tell by the sudden prickle of spines through her skirt, and then it passed.

Rhea reached the edge of the pool.

The stones had sunk here—not as if they had fallen away, but as if the earth had subsided under them. The pool had leaves at the bottom, and mosses grew luxuriantly along the edge.
 

If she had been here during the day, it might have been a pleasant place.

She raised her eyes and saw the scarecrow.

The hedgehog rolled itself into a ball as Rhea flung herself backward. Her ankle caught on something and she fell on her backside. Her breath was driven out in a great startled
whuff!
 

All she could think was:
of course, of course, I should have known, it wouldn’t be a real scarecrow, it would be something horrible, why didn’t I
guess
I should have known—

It was a golem.

Like the bird-golems on the arches, it was a hard, leathery thing, its skin held together with stitching. Its ribs had been broken down the middle and sewn up again, so that the breastbone sank inward, and its bony wrists were lashed to the crossbrace of one of the poles.
 

Its eyes were closed. That was the only mercy. It would have been bad enough if it had stones for eyes like the bird-golems, but if it had human eyes, Rhea thought she might have gone mad right there, gone gibbering and whooping into the woods and never mind Lord Crevan or anyone else.

This isn’t happening. This is not happening. That is not a real person. It wasn’t a real person. It wasn’t alive. It’s just a doll or a statue or something. It can’t have been
real.
 

She closed her eyes, and then snapped them open immediately, because what if it was like the bird golems and it
moved?

“Shouldn’t have thought that,” she said under her breath. “Stupid thing to think. It’s not moving. It’s not alive. It’s not really real. It’s just a horrible…scarecrow. That’s all. He told you it was a scarecrow.”
 

The hedgehog uncurled itself and climbed out onto her chest. She looked down at it. It looked back up at her.

“This is bad,” she said.

The hedgehog nodded.

Rhea flopped backward, flat on her back on the stones. It was not at all comfortable, but getting up again seemed like an unspeakable effort. If she watched down the side of her nose, she could see the golem hanging, unmoving, on a pole.
 

“A golem person,” she said hoarsely. “If he made it out of a dead body, that’s…that’s really bad.”

The hedgehog nodded again.

“But not as bad as if he made it out of…”
 

She stopped, because saying it out loud wouldn’t help. The hedgehog glanced over its shoulder.
 

This is a murderer’s house…
the bird-golem had said.
 

Could he have killed someone and turned them into a golem? Presumably that’s what he had done with the birds…How did you even
make
golems like that?
 

It occurred to her suddenly that Maria had known.
Scarecrow. Is that what she is now?
the other woman had said.

And, much earlier, when Rhea had been half out of her head with exhaustion and terror, Maria had been listing the wives, and one of them had been…

“Oh Lady of Stones,” said Rhea, in a high voice. “It’s the golem-wife.”
 

Eventually she got up, because lying on the ground doesn’t help anything.

Rhea would have sworn that nothing in the world would make her approach the golem-wife. She would have sworn by the Lady of Stones and the bones of her not-yet-deceased parents.
 

She would have been wrong.
 

I have to give her water. Otherwise I’ll fail and he’ll marry me, and if he marries me, I could end up like
her.

She thought of the other wives—blind Sylvie and throat-wounded Ingeth and the dead one in the garden. There was nothing too obvious wrong with Maria, but what did Rhea know? The cook could be concealing anything under her apron.
 

He does something horrible to each of them. He must. That’s what Sylvie was getting at, using their gifts—oh, Lady of Stones! What is he going to do to me?

Her heart pounded wildly, and that was stupid, because Lord Crevan wasn’t here.
I’m sitting in a clearing in the woods and the only things here are a hedgehog and a dead woman tied to a pole. Nothing’s going to eat me. If I do this and get home, he won’t marry me.

She wiped her hands on her skirt and scooped up the hedgehog. “All right,” she croaked. Her voice sounded as if she’d been crying, even thought she hadn’t. “All right. Let’s do this, and get home before morning.”
 

The golem-wife hung mutely on her pole and said nothing.

Rhea waded into the pool.
 

Her feet were immediately soaked. Her boots were sturdy, but not particularly waterproof, and the bottom was slick with rotted leaves. She tucked her skirt up, mindful of the hedgehog, and stepped slowly toward the golem-wife.
 

She had a bad moment when she realized that the only thing she had to cup water with was her bare hands.
I should have brought a cup. Well. All right. He didn’t say how much water to give her.
 

It occurred to her that she would have to touch the golem-wife’s lips with her hand. Her stomach clenched.
 

Suddenly the potatoes for dinner did not seem like such a good idea after all.

She halted in front of the golem-wife.
 

Thick cords bound the golem’s wrists to the pole. They were impossibly thin, bone covered with hard skin, no flesh left on them. The cords looked strong and unfrayed by comparison.
 

She’s tied up. She’s tied to the pole. She can’t reach out and grab me.
 

Rhea swallowed hard.
 

“Do you suppose her eyes are going to open?” she asked the hedgehog. Her voice was shaking terribly.
 

The hedgehog gave her a look.
 

“Yeah,” said Rhea sadly. “Me, too.”
 

She took a deep breath and said, in as conversational a tone as she could manage, “If you’re still alive—or sort of alive—if you’re going to talk like the bird-golems or open your eyes, I’d rather you do it now and get it over with, please.”

There was a rustling that was almost the wind, but not quite.
 

Slowly, jerkily, the golem-wife’s head moved.

In a way it was a relief. Rhea knew it was going to happen. There was no way it wasn’t going to happen. It would have been worse if she had been pressing water to the golem-wife’s lips and those dry eyelids had snapped open. At least, in this fashion, they got it over with.
 

The golem-wife’s eyes opened.
 

They were black river rocks, the same as the bird-golems had been. Rhea let out a shuddering breath.