talons on your bones
originally intended to be a sort-of birthday fic for lovelylytton ...until it ended up being not very birthday-friendly at all ;D seriously, though, no idea where this came from, but i hope you guys enjoy! i'm quite rusty, so i apologize in advance for any clunkiness. title is taken from "the king of owls" by louise erdrich.
oh, and warnings: erm, ah......on the dark side of things.
talons on your bones
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When Kostan was a small boy, his mother used to tease, two mischievous imps liked to sit atop his brow. Whenever his eyelids drooped, they hauled on his lashes like sailors did ropes, and ensured that he never slept. No matter how many songs she sang or how many stories she told, he would lie awake and ask for more.
Years later, when Kostan was a man and anything but small, he teased his mother that the songs she sang and the stories she told would keep anyone awake, so full of devils and spirits were they. He did not know then that war would be much the same, though the devils and spirits did not need the excuse of night to walk.
Even now, as everyone in the steamer car coughed and sighed in their slumber, he lay in his bunk with eyes wide open in the low light of dawn.The surly conductor stalked the aisle, mumbling the time for those few awake to hear it. His station was still hours away.
Outside, villages whipped by. Green by the water and gold by the plains.
Kostan had not seen his own village for six long years.
He thought of the clay house in the wheat fields, the iron gate he used to climb over until he could step over. He thought of the one-eared cat who prowled for roaches by the well. Would his home be changed?
But of course it would be changed, he chided his fancy. After all, he was not the same bloodthirsty Kostan who silently packed his things and left for the warfront, long before his mother stirred in the room by his. What would she look like? What would she look like? he thought with a pang of misgiving. What would she say, to learn where he had been?
Ah, but I will face those ghosts soon enough. If he didn't get some sleep, surely all that she and his mother'd cook for him would have him under the table by midday. As his breathing evened and his thoughts wove in and out of sense, he could already hear her fennel-scented murmur in his ear, feel her worn-smooth fingers in his hair. That is the way of them, Kostan.
Ghosts sleep, yet they do not rest.
...
He didn't know what he had been expecting, exactly.
But when Kostan stepped off the train and surveyed the empty platform shaded by hazel trees, he felt a quiet flowering in his heart. Here, despite all the hardship of the place he had been, the warm breeze swirling down the train tracks was a benediction. Inhaling, he lifted his face briefly to the sunlight through the slats of the roof.
Kostan started on his way.
The closer he came to his home, the more he saw: nothing was changed.
Here was the house of the deaf priest; there was the girls' school. Kostan could almost hear their giggling from the courtyard, like bells in the dusty air. He passed the crumbled fountain of lions in the center of the village, so old no one could say who had made it, and if he squinted and looked very hard, he could see the jail on the horizon, six hills away. He turned away from it, down a sidewinding street that led to the largest wheat fields in three villages' distance.
His and his mother's.
The only sound was his shoes dislodging pebbles in the road; the only movement a wrinkled lizard that ran ahead. She paused every so often and looked back with alert eyes, waiting for him to catch up. Her twitching black tail guided Kostan home.
His house grew large in his eye as he approached, squatting in the wheat like a gray mouse in a dish of honey. He had often hidden in these fields upon some mischief, he and -
"Kostan!"
He stopped short.
Her voice had come from within the house, certainly; there was not another thing standing for acres.
But her voice was not his mother's.
Frowning, Kostan took a step forward, then stopped again. He strained to see some sign of movement inside, but the shadow fell full over the shutter. The lizard, he noticed, quite irrelevantly, had run off. Even the breeze seemed to hold its breath.
Yet beneath his fingers, the bristling stalks of wheat seemed to shudder.
"Kostan?" came the voice again, younger and less certain.
He breathed in, recognition slackening his stern features, and broke into a half-walk, half-run.
How could he not have known? Had it truly been so long?
His already long stride lengthened as he pounded the cracked path, hurdled the iron gate, and threw the door open with a thud.
"Maro," he smiled a smile his lips had forgotten, and she flew into his arms.
...
By the time he turned fifteen and she turned ten, it was a foregone conclusion that Kostan and Mariam would marry. An orphan who had lived with his family since before she could remember her own - what could be more obvious? That she now outstripped every other village boy in height simply put invisible ink to the promise.
He was lucky, all of the men said, rubbing their beards and watching her speculatively. Her body already promised much; her disposition was sensible. And a girl who learned the culinary arts from Kostan's mother? The envy of every household.
At fifteen, Kostan knew better. Her body was soft, but her fists were hard. Her disposition was sensible, but her desires were like fairy tales. There was a consummate and contradictory balance in Mariam, and this was evident even in her coffee. The best in the village, both strong and sweet, and the thick grounds at the bottom like a shot of lightning, making a man feel he could do anything. He had known her all her life, knocked her to the ground when she learned to walk and bloodied the boys who dared do the same ten years after. For these things, he loved her. But at fifteen, Kostan knew he would not marry Mariam.
What he did not know was how to tell her.
So they went on as they always had, walking in the hills and lying in the fields at night. Talking of when they would run away and where they would go when the war was over and it was safe to leave. She never gave Kostan a reason to tell her no, and because he was so relieved, he never did.
All was well between them until, quite suddenly, he turned eighteen and she turned thirteen. Until the shape of her eyes when she looked at him deepened with her secret. I desire you above all others.
It was not the reason he went to war. That was a lust in him only killing could sate.
But it was the reason he came home. For now he had a reason to tell her: I do not.
...
She had laid out a feast for his homecoming.
Warm wheat bread, edges crackling from the fire and dripping with garlic oil; red peppers charred until they were soft and studded with nuts; fried fish with all their bones from the pond, their guts sparkling with salt; creamy ropes of milk; bowls of candied almonds; moist cakes made with apricots and orange blossom water.
She lingered close, watched him hungrily. He ate until he was replete, and then he ate a few bites more. "Who have you been fattening while I was gone?" he half-accused. "I see no volunteers. Why, this village seems half empty since I left it."
"They are lazy and sleeping off the midday heat.” Mariam dimpled. “Until the hour of prayer, at least. Really, who cares if they never wake up? You are here now, Kostan."
"And where is Ma? I thought she would be home."
"In the fields," she laid a hand on his arm as he rose from his chair. "Let's not, not yet. Let's wait until she comes home at dusk, and we'll surprise her, you and I."
You and I, Kostan thought, and exhaled. "Who were you making all this for?"
Agitation furrowed her brow. "You, stupid Kostan."
“I sent no word.” He gestured at the plates. "How did you know I’d come today?"
Her features smoothed immediately. "Do I ever need an excuse to cook this much?”
“I suppose not.” Kostan felt the blood rush to his head and almost swayed where he stood. "Maro - something to drink. I did not sleep as well as I should have on the train.”
Sinking into his chair, he watched the early afternoon light filter through the deep window.
From his vantage point, he could see her slim arms flexing as she yanked the bucket up the fraying rope, one foot against the well for leverage. How strong she always was, how gracious and giving. And how beautiful she had become, he couldn't help but notice, catching a glimpse of her brown legs slipping through her linens. Not like Mélusine. Never like Mélusine, with her sea eyes and sun hair.
But watching Mariam did not make what he had to do any easier.
"Water, Kostan," and he almost smacked the tin cup from her hand.
"Maro!" he looked out, then back at her quizzical expression. "But you were just - "
Mariam rolled her olive-leaf eyes fondly. "Did you daydream like this at the warfront? Drink," and Kostan took the overflowing cup from her hands.
The water was cool, and it quieted the drum in his head. And yet, something in it tasted...he didn't know the word. Sweet? No. Sickly? Not that, either.
Rotten.
...
"Don't tell her," Janissarius had urged. In their gloomy tent, his eyes were as piercing as the sky after a night with too many bottles. "Go with Mélusine. Take your freedom in your hands. You'll only break this Mariam's heart, and make a devil of her hate."
He had thought this advice quite magnanimous coming from Jan, who had desired Mélusine long before he laid eyes on her. Perhaps this was why Kostan stubbornly refused to follow it. He did not trust Jan, not then, not ever, and neither he nor Nilas - whose lusty snore rattled the tent yet again - were the sort of men he wanted speaking or even thinking about naive Mariam.
So Kostan turned over in his thin coverlet, pinching a louse between his fingers as he did so. A drop of blood spurted over his thumb, and he idly reflected that it supped better than he did. "I will not make her wait, while I marry another woman and serve my own happiness.”
The next day, he boarded the train.
...
"Do you remember how we used to play?" she laughed, and executed an impromptu twirl. "Your mother always said we would be safe hiding here if the enemy came to our home. In the tall wheat by the well. You played a soldier - and we hid here until night fell and it was safe to sneak into their camp and steal their plans." Mariam laughed again. "The spanking your mother gave you when you cut off my hair with shears..."
"No good soldier has a horsetail like yours, Maro."
She blushed, as she always did when he accidentally complimented her. "Is that why yours is gone?"
He felt his neck grow hot with embarrassment. "It was - unclean," he said, unwilling to explain. "When I scratched, I bled. So I shaved it."
She was silent for a time as they walked, her face serious. Her gait was light, her cheeks full of health and her mouth stained with mulberry juice.
Watching her, Kostan mused that as man of the house, it would fall upon him to find someone worthy of Mariam. If indeed such a man existed.
"Perhaps it’s for the best," she said gaily as they reached the end of a spring crop and started in a summer one. "Your mother said that those who die without a chance to prepare themselves, to shave their beards or cut their hair... it grows the tallest wheat. There is so much of it, and it tastes so fine no one can resist. But then…the madness sets in." Mariam elbowed him in the side. "No need for you to eat any. You're quite mad enough."
"My mother was only trying to scare us into sleeping," he returned. "Look around. There's more wheat than I ever remember growing as a boy. Why, she would tell us the whole of the village was laid to rest here, before even seeing the barber first."
She sighed. "Your humor was always strange. Must you say unlucky things?"
"I will protect you," Kostan answered simply. "I went to war to protect you, and my mother, and my fields. If I say unlucky things, it is because I know the enemy will not harm us. Not here. And if I remember, I was not the only one playing a soldier."
"When I was a girl, I played a soldier," she corrected. "Things change, Kostan."
Kostan did not think himself a perceptive sort, but even he could hear the hope springing there. "This place is just as peaceful as my memories made out, and I thank God and the Prince I serve for that peace. Nothing is different."
Mariam reached up, pushed her fingers into the short pile of his hair.
"Stupid Kostan. Nothing is the same."
...
Late afternoon fell quickly upon them, turning the sun red and the wheat redder.
At the warfront, this time of day was washed by blood in more ways than one. As villagers rose from their naps, and sleepily knelt to offer prayers - as people of his own village did - Kostan and his regiment tore through. None lived to see sunset. Rumors followed their army. Of silenced streets and houses filled with ghosts.
But here, he remembered, the hour was marked by the emergence of the strays. Dogs, cats, even the occasional goat crept from the shadows as the women’s stoves started and the cooking smoke rose. Whatever scraps of cartilage and bone deemed unworthy by the village’s chatelaines were tossed out for the strays. Kostan remembered that Mariam was more generous than most, and so found herself the owner of the one-eared cat, who still enjoyed roaches above all other delicacies.
He had long ago decided, upon reflection, that Mariam had the warm heart of a woman where Mélusine had the cool mind of a man. When he told Mélusine of the villages he had burned and men he had murdered, she laid one finger to his lips and said: An eagle doesn’t wait for his enemy to grow talons. Wasn’t it necessary? Isn’t your home safe?
And it was, but he couldn’t imagine telling Mariam how that safety was secured. Nor could he imagine telling her that the man she’d pinned her childhood hopes to was no longer hers to hope for. So Kostan put it off a little longer. He would tell her and Ma together, and then he would leave again, but this time, in daylight. He would bring Mélusine here, to this place he’d given six years of his blood, and marry her.
“Hey!” Mariam seized his hand. “Did the robber ghosts steal your thoughts?”
Kostan smiled, albeit faintly. “My mother has been a terrible influence on you.”
“Shhh,” she shushed. “Don’t say that here, we’re near the jail. They’ll come and - “
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maro. They’ll do no such thing, not while they’re all still alive.”
“They’re not. They were all beheaded some years ago.”
“What?” he stopped short. “Why? They were all petty thieves, even - ”
“Even Zey, that little shit who stole your mother’s jeweled dagger. Yes. Dead.”
Kostan silently digested this information. When had the judges of his village become so callous? And - he snuck a glance down at her russet head - when had she learned to send curses after the dead? He had many hard questions to ask his mother, after Mariam went to sleep.
Out loud, he simply said: “Beheaded men hardly have the wits to steal our thoughts.”
“That’s why they want our thoughts to begin with,” she retorted. “Not every story your mother told us was just a story. You remember that saying, I am sure. An eagle flies back to find his nest broken. There are ghosts out here, Kostan - ”
“You’re talking nonsense.” It discomfited him to hear her use the same endearment that Mélusine used for him. “I’m thirsty. Let’s go back to the well for water.”
“Let’s,” she sighed, tirade cut short, and they turned their feet homeward.
...
He stopped her just as they reached the well, his fingers snagging her wrist as she reached for the rope and bucket. “Wait, Maro. I had hoped this could wait until we saw Ma…but perhaps it is best that we talk alone. I have something…I must speak.”
Mariam turned to him, expectant. His heart ached to see the smile she bestowed upon him, brighter than the moon anchoring the deep sky above. “I always know what it is you want to say, Kostan, even if you don’t have the words to say it - ”
“I am marrying,” he said bluntly. “In a day, I will bring her here. My - my Mélusine.”
Until now, Kostan realized, he had expected that she might gasp, or even cry. She did neither. Her grip on the rope remained firm, but her smile seemed to shake at the corners. He rushed ahead uncharacteristically, not giving her a chance to speak.
“You will like her, Maro. She’s no gift in the kitchen or garden, like you, but she…” he trailed off. “She speaks what no one else will. What I need to hear. As you do. And…”
Mariam turned away from him and began to pull up the bucket, reddish hair falling over her face. He wondered if she meant to conceal her tears, and almost touched her before he thought better of it. “Maro,” he said, a little helplessly. “Maro, I…”
“Does she believe in stories?”
Kostan’s pale eyebrows knit together at this odd inquiry. “Who knows? She may be more a fool than you and Ma put together. I have not told her any…stories.”
He stepped closer, and the breeze picked up, making the highest stalks of wheat crowd around his elbows.
"What are you going on about now? And where is Ma? And everyone? The hour of prayer is long over."
She did not answer.
For a moment, it seemed no breeze touched her. Her hair hung stilly in her face, and the same stalks of wheat that pressed close to him stood away from her. Her body was held taut but for the slow, inexorable movement of her arms.
Seeing her lean so far over the well made him uneasy, though he could not think why.
Kostan reached out to took the rope - and slammed his foot to the side of the well to keep from falling in. The weight of the bucket was far too much. How did Mariam manage it? He grunted and yanked upward. It came, but grudgingly.
“Maro...if you, too, have something to speak…” with his other hand - barely holding on - he reached out, pushed the hair off her face. Something in him was relieved to see she was still his Mariam, looking out of those same olive-leaf eyes.
But of course she was, he thought, startled. What else would she be?
He could not quite read Mariam's expression as she clasped his palm to her cheek for a moment, then let go. But her quiet words gave him relief: “Only - only that I cannot wait to meet your bride, Kostan.”
It was like an anvil lifted from his shoulders, a feeling so light he almost laughed with it.
“Of course. She does not know about you, or Ma, or anything but the name of the village. I want it all to be new. I will fetch her tomorrow, and you will meet her. And you and Ma can test her appetite for stories of imps and ghouls.”
“There is a story your mother never had a chance to tell you before you left,” she said thoughtfully as he looped the rope around his other hand. "Shall I tell it in her stead?"
"I am sure I shall hear it eventually," Kostan answered, his good humor restored. He did not care what story she told, so long as her eyes were dry when she met his bride. A glint from the well’s depths caught his attention - the bucket finally breaking clear of water.
“There is a most vicious spirit, a queen among pawns,” Mariam continued as Kostan hauled with newfound zeal, invigorated by his progress. “Her form is always pleasing, for it is always the form of one loved and lost. She means terrible ill to all she meets. But...it is her man she lies in wait for.”
“So where is this doomed fellow, then?” he encouraged, only half-listening. Sweat poured down his chest, and his thirst was greater than ever...but now he could almost make out the bucket's moonlit rim. "Where is her man?"
“At the warfront.”
He paused in his efforts. His throat closed with anger. And under it, something else.
Kostan pulled harder on the rope, purposely devouring the breath that would instead be used for a sharp reprimand. A feeling like flies buzzing over flesh was coming over him. He would not indulge it. But something that made the lizard fear and the water foul, the wheat too tall and the village too quiet - something terrible writhed inside him.
“When he returns, she calls for him. Once, twice. The first time, he is not sure. The second time, his guilt at leaving her is his undoing. He runs up the path, over the gate, through the door. Only to embrace death.”
He trained his eyes on the rope, not wanting to look up at her smirk. Not wanting to look up at her. No doubt she was all too pleased with her childish taunt. His words emerged tight with displeasure.
“I did not expect such pettiness from you. The Maro I knew was different.”
All was silence. Only the thick - thick? sound of water in the well.
Then, it spoke.
Things change, Kostan.
It was the voice of something smiling and screaming all at once.
Kostan’s ears immediately burst, so quickly he felt no pain, only saw red drip down his neck. His eyes widened, but he could not look up. It would not let him look up. Its noise like a thousand animals forced his head down, so his face was plunged into the well itself.
The smell filled his nose first, and then when he retched, the taste entered his mouth.
The bucket came to the surface, its bloated contents clear in the moonlight.
Kostan fell to his knees.
…
When Mélusine was the only one left on the train, she was not surprised. Far from it. It was how she knew she was going to the right place, for of late, there had been many rumors about his village. She was not a woman to care overmuch for rumors. She was not a woman to follow her lover, either, she thought, a bit grumpily, and tossed her yellow hair back. Like a jealous wife hiding under a mistress’s bedroom window - how ridiculous! But...she had not heard from Kostan in over a month. It was not like him.
What she had heard would have kept any other woman away. Lucky for her lover, she was not a woman to care overmuch for stories, either.
“The enemy came at the hour of prayer, so swiftly and silently that none knew of the village’s demise for months and years after,” gossiped a woman buying a ticket.
“The men fought swords with shovels, the women ran and were caught. The thieves dead in their cells. Thin corpses and fat dogs,” her friend tutted. “Wheat fields thick with ghosts who sleep in the day - out of habit, you understand - but they do not rest.”
“And don't forget about the woman who killed many of the enemy with no weapon but her teeth and nails and will,” a passenger sighed importantly. “Who, rather than face a woman’s fate, leapt into her own well. From her body rose the most vengeful of spirits. She called to her lover, once, twice, and oh, what do you think happened when he finally answered?”
“Have any of you actually been to this village?” Mélusine demanded impatiently. “So what if the enemy came, once? That only means they will not return. There is no safer place to go!”
“She can only call a name twice,” the conductor said, eyes glued to Mélusine’s lithe waist and legs. “Anyway, it’s only her own lover she wants. Don’t fear the bitch.”
“I don’t fear her,” Mélusine laughed at the very thought, rather tauntingly, but she felt it was warranted. “I admire her. She deserved better than a lover who left her to die at her own hand. I should like to meet her, in fact. I sho - “
“God help you,” the conductor mumbled, making a sign as the train slowed to a stop.
…
She didn't know what she had been expecting, exactly.
But when Mélusine stepped off the train and surveyed the empty platform shaded by hazel trees, she felt a quiet flowering in her heart. Here, despite all the hardship of the place she had been, the warm breeze swirling down the train tracks was a benediction. Inhaling, she lifted her face briefly to the sunlight through the slats of the roof.
Mélusine started on her way.
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oh, and warnings: erm, ah......on the dark side of things.
talons on your bones
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When Kostan was a small boy, his mother used to tease, two mischievous imps liked to sit atop his brow. Whenever his eyelids drooped, they hauled on his lashes like sailors did ropes, and ensured that he never slept. No matter how many songs she sang or how many stories she told, he would lie awake and ask for more.
Years later, when Kostan was a man and anything but small, he teased his mother that the songs she sang and the stories she told would keep anyone awake, so full of devils and spirits were they. He did not know then that war would be much the same, though the devils and spirits did not need the excuse of night to walk.
Even now, as everyone in the steamer car coughed and sighed in their slumber, he lay in his bunk with eyes wide open in the low light of dawn.The surly conductor stalked the aisle, mumbling the time for those few awake to hear it. His station was still hours away.
Outside, villages whipped by. Green by the water and gold by the plains.
Kostan had not seen his own village for six long years.
He thought of the clay house in the wheat fields, the iron gate he used to climb over until he could step over. He thought of the one-eared cat who prowled for roaches by the well. Would his home be changed?
But of course it would be changed, he chided his fancy. After all, he was not the same bloodthirsty Kostan who silently packed his things and left for the warfront, long before his mother stirred in the room by his. What would she look like? What would she look like? he thought with a pang of misgiving. What would she say, to learn where he had been?
Ah, but I will face those ghosts soon enough. If he didn't get some sleep, surely all that she and his mother'd cook for him would have him under the table by midday. As his breathing evened and his thoughts wove in and out of sense, he could already hear her fennel-scented murmur in his ear, feel her worn-smooth fingers in his hair. That is the way of them, Kostan.
Ghosts sleep, yet they do not rest.
...
He didn't know what he had been expecting, exactly.
But when Kostan stepped off the train and surveyed the empty platform shaded by hazel trees, he felt a quiet flowering in his heart. Here, despite all the hardship of the place he had been, the warm breeze swirling down the train tracks was a benediction. Inhaling, he lifted his face briefly to the sunlight through the slats of the roof.
Kostan started on his way.
The closer he came to his home, the more he saw: nothing was changed.
Here was the house of the deaf priest; there was the girls' school. Kostan could almost hear their giggling from the courtyard, like bells in the dusty air. He passed the crumbled fountain of lions in the center of the village, so old no one could say who had made it, and if he squinted and looked very hard, he could see the jail on the horizon, six hills away. He turned away from it, down a sidewinding street that led to the largest wheat fields in three villages' distance.
His and his mother's.
The only sound was his shoes dislodging pebbles in the road; the only movement a wrinkled lizard that ran ahead. She paused every so often and looked back with alert eyes, waiting for him to catch up. Her twitching black tail guided Kostan home.
His house grew large in his eye as he approached, squatting in the wheat like a gray mouse in a dish of honey. He had often hidden in these fields upon some mischief, he and -
"Kostan!"
He stopped short.
Her voice had come from within the house, certainly; there was not another thing standing for acres.
But her voice was not his mother's.
Frowning, Kostan took a step forward, then stopped again. He strained to see some sign of movement inside, but the shadow fell full over the shutter. The lizard, he noticed, quite irrelevantly, had run off. Even the breeze seemed to hold its breath.
Yet beneath his fingers, the bristling stalks of wheat seemed to shudder.
"Kostan?" came the voice again, younger and less certain.
He breathed in, recognition slackening his stern features, and broke into a half-walk, half-run.
How could he not have known? Had it truly been so long?
His already long stride lengthened as he pounded the cracked path, hurdled the iron gate, and threw the door open with a thud.
"Maro," he smiled a smile his lips had forgotten, and she flew into his arms.
...
By the time he turned fifteen and she turned ten, it was a foregone conclusion that Kostan and Mariam would marry. An orphan who had lived with his family since before she could remember her own - what could be more obvious? That she now outstripped every other village boy in height simply put invisible ink to the promise.
He was lucky, all of the men said, rubbing their beards and watching her speculatively. Her body already promised much; her disposition was sensible. And a girl who learned the culinary arts from Kostan's mother? The envy of every household.
At fifteen, Kostan knew better. Her body was soft, but her fists were hard. Her disposition was sensible, but her desires were like fairy tales. There was a consummate and contradictory balance in Mariam, and this was evident even in her coffee. The best in the village, both strong and sweet, and the thick grounds at the bottom like a shot of lightning, making a man feel he could do anything. He had known her all her life, knocked her to the ground when she learned to walk and bloodied the boys who dared do the same ten years after. For these things, he loved her. But at fifteen, Kostan knew he would not marry Mariam.
What he did not know was how to tell her.
So they went on as they always had, walking in the hills and lying in the fields at night. Talking of when they would run away and where they would go when the war was over and it was safe to leave. She never gave Kostan a reason to tell her no, and because he was so relieved, he never did.
All was well between them until, quite suddenly, he turned eighteen and she turned thirteen. Until the shape of her eyes when she looked at him deepened with her secret. I desire you above all others.
It was not the reason he went to war. That was a lust in him only killing could sate.
But it was the reason he came home. For now he had a reason to tell her: I do not.
...
She had laid out a feast for his homecoming.
Warm wheat bread, edges crackling from the fire and dripping with garlic oil; red peppers charred until they were soft and studded with nuts; fried fish with all their bones from the pond, their guts sparkling with salt; creamy ropes of milk; bowls of candied almonds; moist cakes made with apricots and orange blossom water.
She lingered close, watched him hungrily. He ate until he was replete, and then he ate a few bites more. "Who have you been fattening while I was gone?" he half-accused. "I see no volunteers. Why, this village seems half empty since I left it."
"They are lazy and sleeping off the midday heat.” Mariam dimpled. “Until the hour of prayer, at least. Really, who cares if they never wake up? You are here now, Kostan."
"And where is Ma? I thought she would be home."
"In the fields," she laid a hand on his arm as he rose from his chair. "Let's not, not yet. Let's wait until she comes home at dusk, and we'll surprise her, you and I."
You and I, Kostan thought, and exhaled. "Who were you making all this for?"
Agitation furrowed her brow. "You, stupid Kostan."
“I sent no word.” He gestured at the plates. "How did you know I’d come today?"
Her features smoothed immediately. "Do I ever need an excuse to cook this much?”
“I suppose not.” Kostan felt the blood rush to his head and almost swayed where he stood. "Maro - something to drink. I did not sleep as well as I should have on the train.”
Sinking into his chair, he watched the early afternoon light filter through the deep window.
From his vantage point, he could see her slim arms flexing as she yanked the bucket up the fraying rope, one foot against the well for leverage. How strong she always was, how gracious and giving. And how beautiful she had become, he couldn't help but notice, catching a glimpse of her brown legs slipping through her linens. Not like Mélusine. Never like Mélusine, with her sea eyes and sun hair.
But watching Mariam did not make what he had to do any easier.
"Water, Kostan," and he almost smacked the tin cup from her hand.
"Maro!" he looked out, then back at her quizzical expression. "But you were just - "
Mariam rolled her olive-leaf eyes fondly. "Did you daydream like this at the warfront? Drink," and Kostan took the overflowing cup from her hands.
The water was cool, and it quieted the drum in his head. And yet, something in it tasted...he didn't know the word. Sweet? No. Sickly? Not that, either.
Rotten.
...
"Don't tell her," Janissarius had urged. In their gloomy tent, his eyes were as piercing as the sky after a night with too many bottles. "Go with Mélusine. Take your freedom in your hands. You'll only break this Mariam's heart, and make a devil of her hate."
He had thought this advice quite magnanimous coming from Jan, who had desired Mélusine long before he laid eyes on her. Perhaps this was why Kostan stubbornly refused to follow it. He did not trust Jan, not then, not ever, and neither he nor Nilas - whose lusty snore rattled the tent yet again - were the sort of men he wanted speaking or even thinking about naive Mariam.
So Kostan turned over in his thin coverlet, pinching a louse between his fingers as he did so. A drop of blood spurted over his thumb, and he idly reflected that it supped better than he did. "I will not make her wait, while I marry another woman and serve my own happiness.”
The next day, he boarded the train.
...
"Do you remember how we used to play?" she laughed, and executed an impromptu twirl. "Your mother always said we would be safe hiding here if the enemy came to our home. In the tall wheat by the well. You played a soldier - and we hid here until night fell and it was safe to sneak into their camp and steal their plans." Mariam laughed again. "The spanking your mother gave you when you cut off my hair with shears..."
"No good soldier has a horsetail like yours, Maro."
She blushed, as she always did when he accidentally complimented her. "Is that why yours is gone?"
He felt his neck grow hot with embarrassment. "It was - unclean," he said, unwilling to explain. "When I scratched, I bled. So I shaved it."
She was silent for a time as they walked, her face serious. Her gait was light, her cheeks full of health and her mouth stained with mulberry juice.
Watching her, Kostan mused that as man of the house, it would fall upon him to find someone worthy of Mariam. If indeed such a man existed.
"Perhaps it’s for the best," she said gaily as they reached the end of a spring crop and started in a summer one. "Your mother said that those who die without a chance to prepare themselves, to shave their beards or cut their hair... it grows the tallest wheat. There is so much of it, and it tastes so fine no one can resist. But then…the madness sets in." Mariam elbowed him in the side. "No need for you to eat any. You're quite mad enough."
"My mother was only trying to scare us into sleeping," he returned. "Look around. There's more wheat than I ever remember growing as a boy. Why, she would tell us the whole of the village was laid to rest here, before even seeing the barber first."
She sighed. "Your humor was always strange. Must you say unlucky things?"
"I will protect you," Kostan answered simply. "I went to war to protect you, and my mother, and my fields. If I say unlucky things, it is because I know the enemy will not harm us. Not here. And if I remember, I was not the only one playing a soldier."
"When I was a girl, I played a soldier," she corrected. "Things change, Kostan."
Kostan did not think himself a perceptive sort, but even he could hear the hope springing there. "This place is just as peaceful as my memories made out, and I thank God and the Prince I serve for that peace. Nothing is different."
Mariam reached up, pushed her fingers into the short pile of his hair.
"Stupid Kostan. Nothing is the same."
...
Late afternoon fell quickly upon them, turning the sun red and the wheat redder.
At the warfront, this time of day was washed by blood in more ways than one. As villagers rose from their naps, and sleepily knelt to offer prayers - as people of his own village did - Kostan and his regiment tore through. None lived to see sunset. Rumors followed their army. Of silenced streets and houses filled with ghosts.
But here, he remembered, the hour was marked by the emergence of the strays. Dogs, cats, even the occasional goat crept from the shadows as the women’s stoves started and the cooking smoke rose. Whatever scraps of cartilage and bone deemed unworthy by the village’s chatelaines were tossed out for the strays. Kostan remembered that Mariam was more generous than most, and so found herself the owner of the one-eared cat, who still enjoyed roaches above all other delicacies.
He had long ago decided, upon reflection, that Mariam had the warm heart of a woman where Mélusine had the cool mind of a man. When he told Mélusine of the villages he had burned and men he had murdered, she laid one finger to his lips and said: An eagle doesn’t wait for his enemy to grow talons. Wasn’t it necessary? Isn’t your home safe?
And it was, but he couldn’t imagine telling Mariam how that safety was secured. Nor could he imagine telling her that the man she’d pinned her childhood hopes to was no longer hers to hope for. So Kostan put it off a little longer. He would tell her and Ma together, and then he would leave again, but this time, in daylight. He would bring Mélusine here, to this place he’d given six years of his blood, and marry her.
“Hey!” Mariam seized his hand. “Did the robber ghosts steal your thoughts?”
Kostan smiled, albeit faintly. “My mother has been a terrible influence on you.”
“Shhh,” she shushed. “Don’t say that here, we’re near the jail. They’ll come and - “
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maro. They’ll do no such thing, not while they’re all still alive.”
“They’re not. They were all beheaded some years ago.”
“What?” he stopped short. “Why? They were all petty thieves, even - ”
“Even Zey, that little shit who stole your mother’s jeweled dagger. Yes. Dead.”
Kostan silently digested this information. When had the judges of his village become so callous? And - he snuck a glance down at her russet head - when had she learned to send curses after the dead? He had many hard questions to ask his mother, after Mariam went to sleep.
Out loud, he simply said: “Beheaded men hardly have the wits to steal our thoughts.”
“That’s why they want our thoughts to begin with,” she retorted. “Not every story your mother told us was just a story. You remember that saying, I am sure. An eagle flies back to find his nest broken. There are ghosts out here, Kostan - ”
“You’re talking nonsense.” It discomfited him to hear her use the same endearment that Mélusine used for him. “I’m thirsty. Let’s go back to the well for water.”
“Let’s,” she sighed, tirade cut short, and they turned their feet homeward.
...
He stopped her just as they reached the well, his fingers snagging her wrist as she reached for the rope and bucket. “Wait, Maro. I had hoped this could wait until we saw Ma…but perhaps it is best that we talk alone. I have something…I must speak.”
Mariam turned to him, expectant. His heart ached to see the smile she bestowed upon him, brighter than the moon anchoring the deep sky above. “I always know what it is you want to say, Kostan, even if you don’t have the words to say it - ”
“I am marrying,” he said bluntly. “In a day, I will bring her here. My - my Mélusine.”
Until now, Kostan realized, he had expected that she might gasp, or even cry. She did neither. Her grip on the rope remained firm, but her smile seemed to shake at the corners. He rushed ahead uncharacteristically, not giving her a chance to speak.
“You will like her, Maro. She’s no gift in the kitchen or garden, like you, but she…” he trailed off. “She speaks what no one else will. What I need to hear. As you do. And…”
Mariam turned away from him and began to pull up the bucket, reddish hair falling over her face. He wondered if she meant to conceal her tears, and almost touched her before he thought better of it. “Maro,” he said, a little helplessly. “Maro, I…”
“Does she believe in stories?”
Kostan’s pale eyebrows knit together at this odd inquiry. “Who knows? She may be more a fool than you and Ma put together. I have not told her any…stories.”
He stepped closer, and the breeze picked up, making the highest stalks of wheat crowd around his elbows.
"What are you going on about now? And where is Ma? And everyone? The hour of prayer is long over."
She did not answer.
For a moment, it seemed no breeze touched her. Her hair hung stilly in her face, and the same stalks of wheat that pressed close to him stood away from her. Her body was held taut but for the slow, inexorable movement of her arms.
Seeing her lean so far over the well made him uneasy, though he could not think why.
Kostan reached out to took the rope - and slammed his foot to the side of the well to keep from falling in. The weight of the bucket was far too much. How did Mariam manage it? He grunted and yanked upward. It came, but grudgingly.
“Maro...if you, too, have something to speak…” with his other hand - barely holding on - he reached out, pushed the hair off her face. Something in him was relieved to see she was still his Mariam, looking out of those same olive-leaf eyes.
But of course she was, he thought, startled. What else would she be?
He could not quite read Mariam's expression as she clasped his palm to her cheek for a moment, then let go. But her quiet words gave him relief: “Only - only that I cannot wait to meet your bride, Kostan.”
It was like an anvil lifted from his shoulders, a feeling so light he almost laughed with it.
“Of course. She does not know about you, or Ma, or anything but the name of the village. I want it all to be new. I will fetch her tomorrow, and you will meet her. And you and Ma can test her appetite for stories of imps and ghouls.”
“There is a story your mother never had a chance to tell you before you left,” she said thoughtfully as he looped the rope around his other hand. "Shall I tell it in her stead?"
"I am sure I shall hear it eventually," Kostan answered, his good humor restored. He did not care what story she told, so long as her eyes were dry when she met his bride. A glint from the well’s depths caught his attention - the bucket finally breaking clear of water.
“There is a most vicious spirit, a queen among pawns,” Mariam continued as Kostan hauled with newfound zeal, invigorated by his progress. “Her form is always pleasing, for it is always the form of one loved and lost. She means terrible ill to all she meets. But...it is her man she lies in wait for.”
“So where is this doomed fellow, then?” he encouraged, only half-listening. Sweat poured down his chest, and his thirst was greater than ever...but now he could almost make out the bucket's moonlit rim. "Where is her man?"
“At the warfront.”
He paused in his efforts. His throat closed with anger. And under it, something else.
Kostan pulled harder on the rope, purposely devouring the breath that would instead be used for a sharp reprimand. A feeling like flies buzzing over flesh was coming over him. He would not indulge it. But something that made the lizard fear and the water foul, the wheat too tall and the village too quiet - something terrible writhed inside him.
“When he returns, she calls for him. Once, twice. The first time, he is not sure. The second time, his guilt at leaving her is his undoing. He runs up the path, over the gate, through the door. Only to embrace death.”
He trained his eyes on the rope, not wanting to look up at her smirk. Not wanting to look up at her. No doubt she was all too pleased with her childish taunt. His words emerged tight with displeasure.
“I did not expect such pettiness from you. The Maro I knew was different.”
All was silence. Only the thick - thick? sound of water in the well.
Then, it spoke.
Things change, Kostan.
It was the voice of something smiling and screaming all at once.
Kostan’s ears immediately burst, so quickly he felt no pain, only saw red drip down his neck. His eyes widened, but he could not look up. It would not let him look up. Its noise like a thousand animals forced his head down, so his face was plunged into the well itself.
The smell filled his nose first, and then when he retched, the taste entered his mouth.
The bucket came to the surface, its bloated contents clear in the moonlight.
Kostan fell to his knees.
…
When Mélusine was the only one left on the train, she was not surprised. Far from it. It was how she knew she was going to the right place, for of late, there had been many rumors about his village. She was not a woman to care overmuch for rumors. She was not a woman to follow her lover, either, she thought, a bit grumpily, and tossed her yellow hair back. Like a jealous wife hiding under a mistress’s bedroom window - how ridiculous! But...she had not heard from Kostan in over a month. It was not like him.
What she had heard would have kept any other woman away. Lucky for her lover, she was not a woman to care overmuch for stories, either.
“The enemy came at the hour of prayer, so swiftly and silently that none knew of the village’s demise for months and years after,” gossiped a woman buying a ticket.
“The men fought swords with shovels, the women ran and were caught. The thieves dead in their cells. Thin corpses and fat dogs,” her friend tutted. “Wheat fields thick with ghosts who sleep in the day - out of habit, you understand - but they do not rest.”
“And don't forget about the woman who killed many of the enemy with no weapon but her teeth and nails and will,” a passenger sighed importantly. “Who, rather than face a woman’s fate, leapt into her own well. From her body rose the most vengeful of spirits. She called to her lover, once, twice, and oh, what do you think happened when he finally answered?”
“Have any of you actually been to this village?” Mélusine demanded impatiently. “So what if the enemy came, once? That only means they will not return. There is no safer place to go!”
“She can only call a name twice,” the conductor said, eyes glued to Mélusine’s lithe waist and legs. “Anyway, it’s only her own lover she wants. Don’t fear the bitch.”
“I don’t fear her,” Mélusine laughed at the very thought, rather tauntingly, but she felt it was warranted. “I admire her. She deserved better than a lover who left her to die at her own hand. I should like to meet her, in fact. I sho - “
“God help you,” the conductor mumbled, making a sign as the train slowed to a stop.
…
She didn't know what she had been expecting, exactly.
But when Mélusine stepped off the train and surveyed the empty platform shaded by hazel trees, she felt a quiet flowering in her heart. Here, despite all the hardship of the place she had been, the warm breeze swirling down the train tracks was a benediction. Inhaling, she lifted her face briefly to the sunlight through the slats of the roof.
Mélusine started on her way.
…
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