[story] landlocked
author: hacy morris (issen4)
e-mail: issen.llo [ at ] gmail dot com
Silvia was never sure whether it was him or the castle that summoned her back. When she woke up once more in the bedroom with the ceiling painted like the evening sky, icy fear gripped her limbs. It was more than the realisation that she had returned to this place: the castle seemed far too quiet, even at false dawn. Something was wrong, surely. She glanced out of the window, but her window faced the woods beyond the invisible fences (the only room that offered a glimpse of the outside world) and she could see nothing of the castle grounds.
Her painted bedroom was bitterly cold, which shocked her, for it had been the height of summer only the day before, when Tricia had been married in a purple dress to the village's only schoolteacher, and they had all showered the pair with wildflowers plucked from the riverbanks. They had feasted into the night, and she had danced with the stableboys, and for a moment before she fell into the bed in Tricia's old bedroom, thought, "If only he had seen me!"
That she now woke shivering was a mocking reminder of her happiness the previous night. But Silvia knew something had awoken her, even if it was only something at the edge of her consciousness. After being on the alert for so long, it was as though her intuition had been sharpened many times over. She had to get up. Her feet hit the floor with a loud clang, and no wonder: she was still wearing the wooden clogs she had gone to bed in. And the old gown of Charity's that had been hastily amended to fit her, because she had refused to wear the fine white silk gown she had found in her bags. In the village no one save the ladies who passed by from the great town two days away ever wore silk.
No one had undressed her this time. That only made it more disturbing. Silvia breathed out, saw her breath mist, and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. It was the old patchwork blanket Charity had made for her before she died, too, and not the down coverlet she had been expecting. She wrapped it around herself more tightly and walked slowly to the doorway. True dawn was approaching.
Down the stairs she went, holding on to the handrail lightly. She had made this trip a hundred times over, it seemed, and it was as though her feet knew how to find the way. Once she reached the ground level, the sense of wrongness came stronger than ever. It was getting light enough for her to explore the northeast wing where she and the servants lived, but there was no one, no presence that she could detect. Nor in the southwest wing. Ordinarily, even if she could not see them, she could hear the murmurs of the kitchen staff preparing breakfast, starting on their self-assigned tasks to clean the castle from top to bottom, as though the castle was going to hold a wedding feast that very day.
The castle was empty. She even ventured into his suite, where she had only been once. It was as she remembered: littered with broken furniture and debris, neither a mirror nor anything else capable of reflection left un-smashed, ruins of what could be recognised as clothes, everything that had once been whole or beautiful, destroyed.
But of its occupant, there was no sign. Silvia stood staring down the length of the rooms - all the doors torn off their hinges - and the hairs down the back of her neck stood on end.
She turned and ran for the last place she had yet to look, seized by the thought that she was already too late.
By the time she reached the rose garden, he was lying there amidst the dying blooms, mud and velvety red petals mixed with clumps of dark brown hair and the remains of his clothes reduced to ribbons by sharp claws.
Only curiosity stopped her from turning around right then and running away. Or so she had thought, hearing her heartbeat thudding fear in her ear. Perhaps it was simply an instinct that she ought not turn her back on him. She had to see this through to the end. Without conscious decision, she was already drawing up handfuls of Mercy's gown - of plain, coarse linen that Mercy had spun herself, a far cry from the shining rich silks he'd offered her - to take slow steps towards him. The blanket trailed behind her.
He twisted around, quick as a snake, and she leapt back, but there was no need for alarm, she saw. His eyelids lifted to their widest extent, and she saw again his large, blue eyes, like the image of a summer sky caught under glass, and his shoulders writhed in a futile attempt to heave himself upright.
She was careful to stay out of range, nonetheless.
His lips parted. "Beauty, my Beauty," he said, his voice so soft that her ears strained in spite of herself. It was rare that he spoke so gently. So weakly, she corrected herself. He was weakened now, but she could not underestimate him. "Speak to me," he ordered.
"Beast." Her hands clenched in her skirts. The word came almost unbidden, and she would have bit them back if she could. Her throat burned.
His expression softened - his brow smoothing out, the hard lines around his lips lightening - and he looked at her. "You are finally back, Beauty."
She took a deep breath. "Yes, I am," she answered.
"My Beauty. You have been gone for so long."
"Only a while, Beast."
"I have weakened from missing you, Beauty."
"You will be well, Beast."
The ritualised replies came unbidden to her tongue, so used was she to the platitudes. It was no longer even necessary to think "My name is not Beauty"; she spoke from long habit and a refusal to put any part of herself into the words.
"No, I think not, Beauty."
"You will be-" She stopped herself from the final word.
His eyes were bulging. "My Beauty."
She retreated, just one step. "Beast." She glanced up, seeing the last of night fading away, and the sun coming up.
"My Beauty," he said as he had for every night ever since she had known him. "Will you marry me, Beauty?"
She was shaking her head even before he finished asking. "No, Beast. I will not marry you," she replied as she had done so many times before. She watched as he tried to move closer to her, and hitched her skirts up so that he did not and could not possibly touch her.
His scowl was terrible to behold, yet it slipped into pleading, when she looked. "I beg of you, my Beauty. Marry me. Don't you know that you are the only one I want?"
She trembled all over. Perhaps she was foolish, to believe the promises of a stableboy. "I do not love you," she said, feeling the words slip out like ice.
His eyes widened, and he roared like no animal she had ever heard, all jagged glass and broken splinters. "You must marry me!" he screamed. All the heads of the roses, rotted, dropped to the ground.
"I will never marry you," she said into the silence.
It seemed as though he summoned up the last of his energy at that, for he leapt at her, but she stumbled back so that his claws only caught on the hem of her skirts, tearing long strips away. "You must marry me," he said, spittle flying from his mouth. "Beauty, my Beauty, I have never told you my secret. Once I was human, and a witch cursed me to stay in this shape until a girl would agree to marry me despite my ugliness."
Ah. She had guessed that part right, it seemed. She wondered if that long-ago witch had known what a monster she had set upon the world.
"I I care for you, Beauty. Please marry me."
"No. Let me go."
He reached for her, the black claws wet with mud. "You can never leave, Beauty. I love you. You belong here. You will belong here forever with me."
"No." What spell he had set upon her she did not know, only that magic - either his or that of the castle's - would summon her back wherever she was. She had begged to return home for her sister's wedding, knowing that she could only stay mere days. Every morning she woke and pushed, with all her will, against the wave of alien longing that made her want to return right away. More than once, in the middle of the night, she had woken to find herself in the stable saddling her mare.
"Marry me!" he ordered again, but even as the roar died away he had already collapsed, unmoving, on himself, black fluid leaking from his lips. His chest heaved a few times and stopped, finally.
She stood there until the sun was overhead and she was sure that he would move no more. Then slowly, she backed away, racing to the kitchen for the largest knife she could find. In her hurry, she barely noted the strange fact that the kitchen looked as though it had been lain abandoned for weeks, but all her thoughts were focused on one thing. She did not pause to put down the patchwork blanket. It seemed a talisman for her safety.
It took far longer than she expected and her hands were slippery by the time she finished, but finally it was done. She sat back, abruptly aware that she was hungry and thirsty. She turned away from the shallow grave and walked back to the castle.
The kitchen held flasks of water - there was a well on the castle grounds, she knew. There was nothing to eat but a few stale loaves of bread, but she swallowed them with the water, ravenous. It was too late to do anything else, Silvia thought. She needed to rest. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I will return to my family.
Before it grew too dark she explored the castle again, belatedly noticing the thick layer of dust that now overlaid everything. Where were the invisible servants, she wondered. Had they left once the master of the castle started to ail? She managed to start a fire in one of the kitchen hearths, after picking up enough sticks from the trees on the grounds. There were candles in the corner of the smallest cupboard. She wondered at the cold that permeated the entire castle. It seemed as though there was nothing left, but there were apple trees in the yard and radishes and lettuce grew in the vegetable patch by the kitchen.
She had always known that he spent a lot of time in his rooms, either out of self-consciousness about his appearance or because he was preoccupied with something, she couldn't say. Now that she finally felt free to explore the castle, she knew, she thought, feeling her mouth fall open in shock.
Above his rooms was a great room that was easily twice the size of the great ballroom (also closed and full of dust) that held nothing but books. Shelves reached up to more than twice her height, all filled with books on every imaginable subject. There was love poetry and there were tales of the deeds of knights on quests. There were books on languages and philosophy and architecture, on poetics and mathematics and on music. But there were also more than scholarly volumes. There were farmers' almanacs and guides on animal husbandry. There were drawings of medicinal herbs and there were anatomical drawings of exotic animals.
And there were books on magic. There were spells to travel great distances and enchantments to stop the seasons and there were curses to make a grown man forget his own name. There were potions to restore one's beauty and tricks to spin straw into gold. There were formulas for healing and there were runes to kill.
Silvia ran from first one shelf to another, unable to decide which to read first, feeling a fierce glee begin to fill her from the inside. All the books that she could ever hope to read. No, there were more books than anyone could read in a lifetime. Most were leather-bound, but some were simply pages of parchment sewn together. She could see herself bringing the books back to the village - no, what was she thinking, she had to leave the books here where they could be protected from leaky roofs, and only come back when she wanted to read. She imagined her father's surprise, Tricia's delight and Tricia's husband's envy at all the books she had. Silvia started reading a tale about a group of pilgrims, fell asleep and woke up with a smile on her face, ready to be reunited with her family.
Only, the castle's gates would not open.
The end
e-mail: issen.llo [ at ] gmail dot com
Silvia was never sure whether it was him or the castle that summoned her back. When she woke up once more in the bedroom with the ceiling painted like the evening sky, icy fear gripped her limbs. It was more than the realisation that she had returned to this place: the castle seemed far too quiet, even at false dawn. Something was wrong, surely. She glanced out of the window, but her window faced the woods beyond the invisible fences (the only room that offered a glimpse of the outside world) and she could see nothing of the castle grounds.
Her painted bedroom was bitterly cold, which shocked her, for it had been the height of summer only the day before, when Tricia had been married in a purple dress to the village's only schoolteacher, and they had all showered the pair with wildflowers plucked from the riverbanks. They had feasted into the night, and she had danced with the stableboys, and for a moment before she fell into the bed in Tricia's old bedroom, thought, "If only he had seen me!"
That she now woke shivering was a mocking reminder of her happiness the previous night. But Silvia knew something had awoken her, even if it was only something at the edge of her consciousness. After being on the alert for so long, it was as though her intuition had been sharpened many times over. She had to get up. Her feet hit the floor with a loud clang, and no wonder: she was still wearing the wooden clogs she had gone to bed in. And the old gown of Charity's that had been hastily amended to fit her, because she had refused to wear the fine white silk gown she had found in her bags. In the village no one save the ladies who passed by from the great town two days away ever wore silk.
No one had undressed her this time. That only made it more disturbing. Silvia breathed out, saw her breath mist, and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. It was the old patchwork blanket Charity had made for her before she died, too, and not the down coverlet she had been expecting. She wrapped it around herself more tightly and walked slowly to the doorway. True dawn was approaching.
Down the stairs she went, holding on to the handrail lightly. She had made this trip a hundred times over, it seemed, and it was as though her feet knew how to find the way. Once she reached the ground level, the sense of wrongness came stronger than ever. It was getting light enough for her to explore the northeast wing where she and the servants lived, but there was no one, no presence that she could detect. Nor in the southwest wing. Ordinarily, even if she could not see them, she could hear the murmurs of the kitchen staff preparing breakfast, starting on their self-assigned tasks to clean the castle from top to bottom, as though the castle was going to hold a wedding feast that very day.
The castle was empty. She even ventured into his suite, where she had only been once. It was as she remembered: littered with broken furniture and debris, neither a mirror nor anything else capable of reflection left un-smashed, ruins of what could be recognised as clothes, everything that had once been whole or beautiful, destroyed.
But of its occupant, there was no sign. Silvia stood staring down the length of the rooms - all the doors torn off their hinges - and the hairs down the back of her neck stood on end.
She turned and ran for the last place she had yet to look, seized by the thought that she was already too late.
By the time she reached the rose garden, he was lying there amidst the dying blooms, mud and velvety red petals mixed with clumps of dark brown hair and the remains of his clothes reduced to ribbons by sharp claws.
Only curiosity stopped her from turning around right then and running away. Or so she had thought, hearing her heartbeat thudding fear in her ear. Perhaps it was simply an instinct that she ought not turn her back on him. She had to see this through to the end. Without conscious decision, she was already drawing up handfuls of Mercy's gown - of plain, coarse linen that Mercy had spun herself, a far cry from the shining rich silks he'd offered her - to take slow steps towards him. The blanket trailed behind her.
He twisted around, quick as a snake, and she leapt back, but there was no need for alarm, she saw. His eyelids lifted to their widest extent, and she saw again his large, blue eyes, like the image of a summer sky caught under glass, and his shoulders writhed in a futile attempt to heave himself upright.
She was careful to stay out of range, nonetheless.
His lips parted. "Beauty, my Beauty," he said, his voice so soft that her ears strained in spite of herself. It was rare that he spoke so gently. So weakly, she corrected herself. He was weakened now, but she could not underestimate him. "Speak to me," he ordered.
"Beast." Her hands clenched in her skirts. The word came almost unbidden, and she would have bit them back if she could. Her throat burned.
His expression softened - his brow smoothing out, the hard lines around his lips lightening - and he looked at her. "You are finally back, Beauty."
She took a deep breath. "Yes, I am," she answered.
"My Beauty. You have been gone for so long."
"Only a while, Beast."
"I have weakened from missing you, Beauty."
"You will be well, Beast."
The ritualised replies came unbidden to her tongue, so used was she to the platitudes. It was no longer even necessary to think "My name is not Beauty"; she spoke from long habit and a refusal to put any part of herself into the words.
"No, I think not, Beauty."
"You will be-" She stopped herself from the final word.
His eyes were bulging. "My Beauty."
She retreated, just one step. "Beast." She glanced up, seeing the last of night fading away, and the sun coming up.
"My Beauty," he said as he had for every night ever since she had known him. "Will you marry me, Beauty?"
She was shaking her head even before he finished asking. "No, Beast. I will not marry you," she replied as she had done so many times before. She watched as he tried to move closer to her, and hitched her skirts up so that he did not and could not possibly touch her.
His scowl was terrible to behold, yet it slipped into pleading, when she looked. "I beg of you, my Beauty. Marry me. Don't you know that you are the only one I want?"
She trembled all over. Perhaps she was foolish, to believe the promises of a stableboy. "I do not love you," she said, feeling the words slip out like ice.
His eyes widened, and he roared like no animal she had ever heard, all jagged glass and broken splinters. "You must marry me!" he screamed. All the heads of the roses, rotted, dropped to the ground.
"I will never marry you," she said into the silence.
It seemed as though he summoned up the last of his energy at that, for he leapt at her, but she stumbled back so that his claws only caught on the hem of her skirts, tearing long strips away. "You must marry me," he said, spittle flying from his mouth. "Beauty, my Beauty, I have never told you my secret. Once I was human, and a witch cursed me to stay in this shape until a girl would agree to marry me despite my ugliness."
Ah. She had guessed that part right, it seemed. She wondered if that long-ago witch had known what a monster she had set upon the world.
"I I care for you, Beauty. Please marry me."
"No. Let me go."
He reached for her, the black claws wet with mud. "You can never leave, Beauty. I love you. You belong here. You will belong here forever with me."
"No." What spell he had set upon her she did not know, only that magic - either his or that of the castle's - would summon her back wherever she was. She had begged to return home for her sister's wedding, knowing that she could only stay mere days. Every morning she woke and pushed, with all her will, against the wave of alien longing that made her want to return right away. More than once, in the middle of the night, she had woken to find herself in the stable saddling her mare.
"Marry me!" he ordered again, but even as the roar died away he had already collapsed, unmoving, on himself, black fluid leaking from his lips. His chest heaved a few times and stopped, finally.
She stood there until the sun was overhead and she was sure that he would move no more. Then slowly, she backed away, racing to the kitchen for the largest knife she could find. In her hurry, she barely noted the strange fact that the kitchen looked as though it had been lain abandoned for weeks, but all her thoughts were focused on one thing. She did not pause to put down the patchwork blanket. It seemed a talisman for her safety.
It took far longer than she expected and her hands were slippery by the time she finished, but finally it was done. She sat back, abruptly aware that she was hungry and thirsty. She turned away from the shallow grave and walked back to the castle.
The kitchen held flasks of water - there was a well on the castle grounds, she knew. There was nothing to eat but a few stale loaves of bread, but she swallowed them with the water, ravenous. It was too late to do anything else, Silvia thought. She needed to rest. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I will return to my family.
Before it grew too dark she explored the castle again, belatedly noticing the thick layer of dust that now overlaid everything. Where were the invisible servants, she wondered. Had they left once the master of the castle started to ail? She managed to start a fire in one of the kitchen hearths, after picking up enough sticks from the trees on the grounds. There were candles in the corner of the smallest cupboard. She wondered at the cold that permeated the entire castle. It seemed as though there was nothing left, but there were apple trees in the yard and radishes and lettuce grew in the vegetable patch by the kitchen.
She had always known that he spent a lot of time in his rooms, either out of self-consciousness about his appearance or because he was preoccupied with something, she couldn't say. Now that she finally felt free to explore the castle, she knew, she thought, feeling her mouth fall open in shock.
Above his rooms was a great room that was easily twice the size of the great ballroom (also closed and full of dust) that held nothing but books. Shelves reached up to more than twice her height, all filled with books on every imaginable subject. There was love poetry and there were tales of the deeds of knights on quests. There were books on languages and philosophy and architecture, on poetics and mathematics and on music. But there were also more than scholarly volumes. There were farmers' almanacs and guides on animal husbandry. There were drawings of medicinal herbs and there were anatomical drawings of exotic animals.
And there were books on magic. There were spells to travel great distances and enchantments to stop the seasons and there were curses to make a grown man forget his own name. There were potions to restore one's beauty and tricks to spin straw into gold. There were formulas for healing and there were runes to kill.
Silvia ran from first one shelf to another, unable to decide which to read first, feeling a fierce glee begin to fill her from the inside. All the books that she could ever hope to read. No, there were more books than anyone could read in a lifetime. Most were leather-bound, but some were simply pages of parchment sewn together. She could see herself bringing the books back to the village - no, what was she thinking, she had to leave the books here where they could be protected from leaky roofs, and only come back when she wanted to read. She imagined her father's surprise, Tricia's delight and Tricia's husband's envy at all the books she had. Silvia started reading a tale about a group of pilgrims, fell asleep and woke up with a smile on her face, ready to be reunited with her family.
Only, the castle's gates would not open.
The end