Seventh Bride (11 page)

The golem-wife’s lips had not pulled back from her teeth like the dead were supposed to do. They opened now, just a crack.

In a voice like dried leaves rubbing together, the golem-wife whispered
“…thirsty…”

Rhea’s horror did not fade, but it was mixed in with pity.
She’s not dead, even if she’s not quite alive, and she can feel thirst and oh god, how long has she been here?

She tried to imagine hanging on a pole for hours—days—years—with water at her feet, unable to drink. She could not even begin. Her mind skittered away from the image of days and years piled up like dead leaves.

Let her sleep through it. Let her not really be awake and suffering, unless someone wakes her up. Oh, Lady of Stones, please, please, let her not be aware of it.

“….please…”
whispered the dry voice.

Hurriedly, before she could change her mind or imagine something worse, Rhea ducked down and cupped water into her hands. She lifted the makeshift cup, dripping, and set it against the cracked lips.

She had to reach up, for the pole was tall. Water poured down her wrists and soaked her shirt, while the golem-wife drank awkwardly over her thumb.
 

When the water running down her forearms had slowed to a trickle, she scooped more up, and more again. Five times Rhea gave the golem-wife water to drink, before she whispered
“…enough.”

Rhea dropped her hands. She noticed suddenly that she was cold and soaked and standing in water and began to shiver.

“…thank you…”
 

“I have to go back,” said Rhea miserably. “I have to be back by dawn. Otherwise I’d—I’d cut you down or—oh, I don’t know! Is there anything I can do?”

There was a crackling noise as the golem-wife shook her head.
 

Rhea backed away. It seemed disrespectful to turn her back on what was, in a terrible fashion, another woman. Eventually, though, she had to look down at her feet, to avoid skidding on the scum-slick stones.

When she reached the edge of the pool and looked back, the golem-wife’s eyes were closed and she hung limply on the pole, as unliving as a scarecrow.

Let her be asleep. Let her be mostly dead. Let her be anything but alive and awake for all this time.

Rhea turned and ran.
 

She did not run very far, because as soon as she reached the other side of the clearing, she realized that the path was gone.

Rhea staggered to a halt. It was like going down a ladder and thinking you still had another rung left under you, only to slam your foot into the floor.
 

She did not panic. It was absurd that the path was gone—it had been wide enough for a couple of horses. She was just looking in the wrong place. She had been running and frightened and gotten turned around. Nothing else.

But there was no path into the clearing.

She turned in place, looking, and there was the pool and the poles and the golem-wife. The trees grew in a dense, unbroken wall around the edges.

Too many things had happened tonight. That was undoubtedly why she was so calm. In a place where dead women were partly alive and hung on poles, getting upset about a missing path seemed futile.

“I think we have a problem,” she said to the hedgehog.

The hedgehog considered this, and made put-me-down gestures with its paws. Rhea set the little creature on the ground, and it trundled up to the treeline and sat back, looking grave.
 

The brambles had grown in under the tree trunks, and the thickets were sewn together with vines. There were pockets where she might get a few feet in, but no farther.

He made the path vanish. He made the white road appear and now he’s made the path vanish so I can’t get back. He wants me to be lost out here.
 

And on a sudden rush of outrage—
That’s not fair! He’s cheating!

She fumed for a minute, while the hedgehog studied the trees. How dare Crevan cheat? Set someone an impossible task and—and—

And what?
 

Did you really think he’d let you go? Did you think this was something you could win?

Her thoughts stuttered to a halt.
 

The hedgehog was off again, trundling along the edge of the woods, snuffling in the leaves. Rhea followed, because when your future husband is a mad sorcerer, following hedgehogs sometimes seems like the only option.
 

It occurred to her that Lord Crevan had sent her to find the golem-wife, knowing full well that she must be terrified by it.

For what? Just to scare me, like a little boy with a frog? Why would he do this to me?

And a cold voice came from the back of her head and whispered,
To show you the price of disobedience.

A chill set in that had nothing to do with her wet shoes.

The hedgehog halted in front of a particular set of brambles. Rhea could see no difference, but the little animal snuffled at the base of the thicket, stirring up last years’ leaves with its nose. Then it looked up at her, and back to the trees.
 

“I’d need an ax,” Rhea said. A little bubble of fear rose up in her throat and burst into horrified laughter. “Oh Lady! If I had an ax, I’d take it to him, and never mind the trees!”

I’ve been acting as if I could get out of this somehow—if I just said or did the right things, he’d have to let me go. But he’s mad, completely mad, and he turns his wives into golems. He needs killing, not negotiation.
 

There was a strange relief to the thought. She was not doing something wrong. She was not failing. She was not a peasant girl marrying above her station and doing it badly. She had run afoul of a murderer, that was all.
 

She laughed again, feeling light-headed. She had a sudden desire to grab her aunt by the wrists and shake her and yell “See! See, I told you there was something wrong with it!”
 

The hedgehog gave her a worried look.
 

“Sorry,” she said contritely. “I’ll stop laughing. I’m not losing my mind, I promise. Losing my mind won’t help, will it?”

The hedgehog managed to convey that it most definitely would
not
help.

“Right.”

The hedgehog looked at the wall of brambles again.

“Um,” said Rhea. “Is the path on the other side of this? Is that it?”

The hedgehog nodded.

Rhea considered for a moment, then said “Stand back.”

She lifted her boot and tried to stomp down part of the thicket. It yielded a few leaves and a calf full of thorns.
 

I have to get through this. If I’m not back by dawn, he’ll marry me and I’ll wind up like the golem-wife.
 

She kicked at the brambles again, and again, and then she had to stop. There was blood running down both legs and the wall of wood and thorn had not changed in the slightest.
 

“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” she told the hedgehog. It sighed.

She sat down on one of the paving stones, and the hedgehog helped her pull thorns out of her skin. They were long and jagged edged, not smooth like rose thorns. She washed her legs off in the pool and saw the blood welling up black in the moonlight.

I’ll have no skin left, and I won’t get any farther in. You’d need to be wearing armor.
 

There were tears in her eyes from the pain, but she did not cry. The golem-wife was too near.
 

I can’t cry about thorns when she’s been hanging from a pole for…however long it’s been.
 

The hedgehog held up its paws, crossed, and turned away.
 

“Err…”

It turned back, held up its paws again.

“Do you want me to stay here?”

A nod.

“Okay, then…”

It dropped back to all fours and trundled into the brambles. Thorns that would stop a human girl were no barrier to a hedgehog.

She could watch its progress for only a moment or two, and then it was gone.

I wonder if it’s going for help…

She hoped it was. She was going to need help.
 

The gods help those who help themselves…or at least, that’s what Aunt always says…

She circled the clearing. The sunken stones gleamed in the moonlight. The trees were black and dense and impassable.
 

She tried pulling up one of the wooden poles, to see if she could use it to beat back the thicket. The poles appeared to be set deeply in the ground and did not budge an inch.
 

As the moon crawled by overhead and the hedgehog did not return, she found herself thinking
What if it isn’t coming back?

She didn’t know why it had come to her in the first place. What if it had decided that she was beyond help? What if it had just gone home?

Rhea eyed the bramble wall again.

No. I can’t get out like that. If daylight comes, he’ll just have to come get me, and while he’s making marriage plans, I’ll—I’ll excuse myself to go to the privy and climb out the window if I have to.
 

Leaves rustled, and the hedgehog re-emerged.
 

Rhea exhaled. “Thank goodness,” she said. “I was worried—”

A second hedgehog came out of the brambles after it.
 

Rhea blinked. “You brought a friend…?”

And then a third hedgehog emerged, and a fourth, and then there were a dozen and twenty and thirty and the whole clearing was full of tiny, fist-sized animals with prickly backs and blinking, black-bead eyes.

“Oh…” said Rhea, because she could think of nothing else to say.

The first hedgehog—
her
hedgehog—patted her ankle.
 

It turned to the others. They crowded together, making grunting, squeaking noises, having a conversation in hedgehog-tongue.
 

Perhaps I’ve lost my mind after all…

Then they separated. They began to waddle away, taking up positions throughout the clearing. When they found their spot (and Rhea could not tell what made one spot better than another) the hedgehogs would sit down and turn their faces up toward the moon.
 

Her hedgehog lifted its paws and squeaked.

One by one, in no pattern Rhea could determine, the other hedgehogs lifted their paws and squeaked.

Hers repeated the act. So did the others. And again. And again.
 

They were doing it in the same order, Rhea realized.
Look, it’s mine, then the little one on top of the rock, then the big one down in the hollow with the moss, then that one, then that one in the back…

The hedgehogs moved faster and faster. Their squeaks dropped, becoming an odd sort of croon, as they all gazed up at the moon, lifting their paws and dropping them, over and over.

Rhea began to wonder if she was dreaming.
 

Something cold touched her hand. She glanced down and snatched her fingers away with a yelp, because it was a slug.
 

It had crawled across the paving she was sitting on, and fetched up against her. When she moved out of the way, it slid slowly forward, through the place she’d been sitting, leaving a gleaming trail behind it.

Boy, did you come to the wrong place!
thought Rhea, looking from the slug to the crooning hedgehogs.

Except it wasn’t just one slug.

There was another one over there, and three on the paving stone next to her, and dozens coming up behind those and—

They’re summoning slugs.
 

The hedgehogs have called up slugs. Oh, Lady of Stones, there’s thousands of them!

It was like a gardener’s nightmare come to life. The slugs had fat, gleaming bodies with thick grey spots. The stones were criss-crossed with slime trails. As the hedgehogs kept chanting and the slugs kept emerging from the forest, the trails merged together, until it was impossible to tell one from another.
 

Rhea backed up until she was nearly in the pool again, and only her mingled fear and pity of the golem-wife kept her from retreating clear into the water.
 

Gradually, the slugs converged together. They passed between the hedgehogs and formed a blunt grey wedge, pointing toward the bramble wall.
 

Why would slugs come when hedgehogs call them? They’re enemies.
 

Maybe the hedgehogs promised to stop eating them for a bit?

It made no sense to Rhea, but on the other hand, she was watching hedgehogs sing to the moon to summon a carpet of slugs, so clearly there was very little sense to be made of anything. She took another step back and felt water slosh against her heels.
 

This is unspeakably bizarre. This cannot possibly be happening. I am having a dream. Real people do not stand in ponds while hedgehogs summon an army of slugs. This is
not
happening.
 

She darted a glance over her shoulder, and saw the golem-wife hanging in shadow.
 

If this is a dream, it has been going on for a very long time.
 

The moon was sinking now, almost behind the edge of the trees. The night was old. And the slugs had reached the brambles and were climbing into the wall of vegetation…

…and began to eat.

Rhea had to pick her way slowly across the slimy rocks, but even before she was halfway across the clearing, it became obvious that the slugs were devouring the thicket. Leaves and stems were cut away. They could not remove trees, but they gnawed through vines, and a dozen together could rasp away a bramble cane.

Someone who was not familiar with the havoc a slug could wreak on a vegetable garden might have been surprised by the speed at which they worked, but Rhea was not. Already she could walk a few feet into the woods—and there, very clearly, was the beginning of the orchard path.

“Thank you,” breathed Rhea. “Oh, thank you! I will never step on a slug again!”