Seven winters later

 

“Get to the back of the line, witch.”

A hard elbow jabs me in the ribs and pushes me out of the queue. Penra Griegal takes my place in line for the bakery, the spot I’ve been shivering in for nearly two hours. The crops were poor again this year and there’s little grain being milled. The crops are poor every year, actually.

Penra’s hard eyes dare me to challenge her. I glance at the long line of silent villagers and there’s not one friendly face looking back at me. I could leave, cloaked in my own cowardice as I have so many other days, not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to upset the people who already hate me so much.

If I go to the back of the queue there’ll only be burnt loaves by the time I reach the front and Papa can’t chew them as he’s only got three teeth left. Or there’ll be no bread at all after waiting for so long in the cold.

I’m just so tired of the unfairness of it all. “This is my spot. You’ve no right.”

Penra’s always been a heavyset girl and she knows how to throw her weight around. Securing her shopping basket over her arm she shoves me hard. I’m ready for her and I grab her by both wrists, forcing her to the side. My left hand touches her sleeve.

My assailant immediately begins to wail, drawing back in ostentatious horror. “Heaven preserve me! She nearly touched me with the evil eye!”

I can feel everyone’s loathing gaze on me, but I don’t move. Stupid girl, I can’t hurt her. The mark on my hand does nothing but cause me trouble.

Penra sees that I’m not going to back down and a nasty glint comes into her eyes. “Dirty witch. Sorcerer’s slut.”

Blood rushes to my face. I’m used to people calling me unclean or saying that I bear the evil eye but only I know what he did to me as I lay upon the bed. Only I know about the kiss.

Penra sees that her words have hit their mark and her face lights with triumph. She opens her mouth to say again, louder, that I’m the sorcerer’s slut, and I see red.

I pull back my hand and slap her across the face. Hard. With my left hand. I’ve been left-handed since that day. He changed me.

The instant I feel Meremon’s mark connect with Penra’s flesh I know I’ve done the wrong thing.

Everyone around us gasps, hands to their mouths. Penra staggers back a step, real fear in her eyes now. I touched her with my mark. I hit her with my mark.

There are angry faces all around me and I turn tail and run, tears blurring my eyes. I hate Meremon. I hate him so much for what he’s done to me.

That night I prepare a pathetic dinner of vegetables and the last of the dry cheese for my father and little brothers and sisters, not speaking to any of them, wishing Mama was still alive to tell me that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, that it’s not my fault, that the mark is just a mark and nothing more. I wouldn’t believe her, but it would be a small comfort. We all go to bed hungry and unhappy.

In the morning, things take a turn for the worse.

We’re awoken at dawn by hammering on the front door. I ease the sleeping Ilsa aside, my youngest sister who is just six years old, and clamber out of bed, making it to the door at the same time as Papa. When he opens it a flurry of snow greets us along with two angry faces.

Penra and her father.

Mr. Griegal points a shaking finger in my face. “Your daughter has cursed our family.”

I stare at him, bewildered, and then at Penra. Her cheek where I touched her is unmarred.

“Gillie is going to die,” Penra sobs. “You witch. You evil witch.”

Gillie is Penra’s baby brother. Papa closes the door on them and turns to stare at me with milky eyes. He’s so old now, and very weak since Mama died. He doesn’t understand what is happening and I’m too ashamed to tell him what I did.

I only slapped her. I didn’t curse her.

I looked down at the star burned into the center of my palm like a malevolent eye.

Did I?

A few hours later Ilsa falls ill with a fever and we know right away that it’s no ordinary malady. As she tosses about on the bed she mutters strange words and sickly colors flash across her skin. It’s the same thing that happened to me when I fell ill. I sponge her forehead with a damp cloth, dread boiling in my belly.

Cerys comes and hovers in the doorway, the next eldest but me. “I’ve been out around the village. Three other families have sick children.” When I don’t reply she says, hesitantly, “Rhona?”

I can hear the pleading in her voice. She wants to believe it wasn’t me but everyone must have been telling her it is. I squeeze my eyes shut. I didn’t do this. It wasn’t me. How could I have done this?

I get up and I take her hands in mine. My family has never been afraid to touch me or let me touch them but today Cerys flinches when my left hand touches hers. “I’ll be back soon. Make sure Papa eats. Take care of Ilsa, she’s going to be very ill.”

I don’t know how this disease started, but I know how to stop it.

Cerys watches me with her mouth open as I pull on a heavy cloak. “But where are you going?”

The snow has been falling all day and the path up the mountain will be hard to follow. I don’t even know how far his house is. The game we used to play as children would take us only a dozen steps up the mountain and anyone who said they could see it from there was a liar.

I don’t need to say it. Cerys knows. I’m going to fetch the necromancer.

I leave her to tell the others and hurry out before I can change my mind. In the years since I was sick other families have lost children to strange illnesses but Meremon never came for them. He’ll not go on ignoring us and I will not lose Ilsa on top of everything else.

As I climb higher on the icy path I barely acknowledge my other hope. That when he comes down off the mountain again the villagers will remember who the evil one really is. Him, not me.

The path goes on and on, sometimes gently sloping but mostly steep and slippery. I fall down a lot and I have to keep stopping to catch my breath and despite my exertion I can’t stop shivering. My hands are buried in my sleeves except for when they’re scooping up snow to melt on my tongue.

I know the sun is lowering behind the clouds even though I can’t see it. What if I don’t make it to the necromancer’s house before nightfall? It could be much further than I imagined. No one’s ever said.

I stop again in the dusk light and peer through the snow at a dark smudge up ahead. Could that be his house?

I’m distracted by a dark shape swooping me and I scream and crouch low to the ground. Ravens swirl overhead, more and more of them, each one cawing an alarm like I’m an intruder, their wings a glistening black against the heavy gray clouds and swirling snow. I put arms over my head and stumble through the snow but they keep plunging toward me, clicking their beaks and cawing. I run, thinking that I’m heading for the smudge that I hope is the necromancer’s house when suddenly the side of the mountain disappears and I’m looking into nothing but an abyss. My legs turn to water because I’m going too fast and I know I’m going to die.

A hand grabs a fistful of my cloak and someone pulls me back from the edge just in time. Shrieking, I feel myself lifted up into the air, my legs kicking against nothing.

Through watering eyes, I see him. Meremon, holding me aloft as if I weigh nothing and glaring at me with those black eyes that haunt my dreams. Snow settles flake by flake on his silver hair and there’s a hard, deep line between his brows.

My breath fogs his face as I struggle for breath but there’s no vapor from his mouth. I want to tell him to put me down, that we need his help, but I can’t speak because my cloak is too tight around my neck.

How dare he treat me like this, as if I’m an intruder? He owes me. Seven years of anger and loneliness rise up and I thrust my blackened hand into his face.

Meremon’s eyes widen and he drops me in a gasping heap in the snow.

I expected his house to be warm, but it’s freezing cold.

The necromancer lives in a ramshackle castle perched on one of the mountain peaks. It was the dark smudge I saw through the snow. I stand shivering in the entrance hall, gazing about at the high ceiling and the leering sculptures in shadow. This place looks like he makes me feel. Ghastly.

Meremon is standing by a hearth on the far side of the long room conjuring a fire, a tall, gloomy figure in snow-speckled robes.

Something large appears at my elbow and offers a tray bearing a steaming cup. I reach for it and start to say thank you when I realize that it’s not a person, it’s a … thing. Man-shaped and fleshy but without a face or hair or ears. He’s not wearing any clothes, either. He’s just mottled flesh that looks as if it’s been preserved somehow and then reanimated. He’s not got any parts I see to my small relief, but he’s still terrifying. I think he might be a lich.

Meremon stalks toward us and makes an impatient gesture with his fingers. Unbidden, my right hand accepts the cup as it floats to me. I stare at it, startled. I didn’t make my hand move. I don’t really want to take a mouthful of wine either, but I find myself doing that as well as the lich lumbers away. Then I take another sip of my own accord because it’s spiced and sweet and very warming.

Meremon leans forward and takes my left hand in his and I nearly choke on the wine. He turns it palm-up in his two large, cold hands and studies it carefully. Does he recognize his own handiwork? Does he remember me even though I’ve grown two feet and put on flesh and health?

My eyes scour his face as his are directed at my palm. He’s just as I remember him, cold, hard features, a looming figure in robes fitted against his broad body. His nose is long and aquiline and his jaw smooth and angular. I can’t tell his age. Older. Unnaturally somehow, as if the years he’s seen are a great secret.

I’m brought back into myself by his thumb stroking almost lovingly over my palm and my blood heats so much even my frozen feet start to thaw.

Can he feel my temperature rising? Is he remembering his lips there? All of a sudden I’m a child again and watching in terror as he bends over me, and I snatch my hand back.

“You came.” His voice is measured and deep.

Why aren’t you afraid of death, child?

Sorcerer’s slut.

I take a quick step back and say in a shrill, high voice, “There is sickness in the village. Five children. It is the same sickness as before, the one I…that you…” I trail off. Why must he stare at me so? It’s unnerving.

“How long?” he finally asks, and though his voice doesn’t change I’m sure that I detect sudden anger in the set of his jaw.

I don’t want to go out in the cold either, but does he not realize that there are children who will die without his help? “Since they fell ill? Today. This morning.”

He’s eyeing my left hand again I wonder if he’s even listening to me. Something shifts over my shoulder. The lich. It—he—seems to be looking at me expectantly though I don’t know how I know that as he doesn’t have eyes.

Meremon turns away. “Go to bed. Filax will show you.”

My mouth falls open. “But we need to—”

The sorcerer keeps walking and says in his flat, cold voice. “Either go to bed or get out.”

I watch him disappear through a door on the far side of room, and I’m alone with the lich. Not knowing what else to do I follow him out of the hall and up some stairs. He opens a door for me and I see a bed busily making itself. Spiders are being swept out of the corners by a dancing broom and firewood is stacking itself in the grate. The room is cold and musty but once the fire has lit itself and the broom has swept the creepy-crawlies out the door it’s not so bad.

The lich leaves while I’m marveling at the magic fire, and a few minutes later he comes back with a tray of food and more of the hot wine.

“Can you hear me? Are you…alive? Conscious?”

The lich sketches a bow like I’ve seen the troubadours do when they come to the village in summer to perform. This animated corpse has more manners than its master, it seems. I don’t know if the bow means yes or no but he understands me at least. Then he shuffles out, closing the door behind him.

I eat because I’m ravenous and the stew is strangely flavored but good, and then I get into bed in my shift. I’m angry with Meremon for his peremptory dismissal but I suppose there’s nothing to be done tonight when it’s dark out and snowing heavily. We’ll probably set out in the morning. Yes, that will be it. By this time tomorrow Ilsa and the other children will all be well again, Meremon will be gone and the villagers will be so grateful to me.

I close my eyes on that happy thought and fall into an exhausted sleep.

I’m dreaming, lying on a freshly dug grave beneath a dark sky. My skirt is rucked up around my hips and my knees are parted. I’ve taken my drawers off and they’re bunched up in my hand. The cool night air feels good on that place between my legs. It feels good to be exposed to the darkness, too.

I touch myself with my left hand, the hand that bears his mark. The ground shifts beneath me and I smile to myself.

There’s movement between my legs and something brushes against me. Yes. I’ve been waiting for this. Strange fingers stroke my sex as I rub the hard pearl at the apex of my thighs. This feels better than anything I’ve ever felt, and I wonder why I’ve never done this before. The fingers delve deeper and I feel how cold they are, but I like it, feeling those cool thicknesses exploring me. I rub faster, my hips curving upwards and my breath coming faster. I’m close to something but I don’t know what, and I’m racing toward it with everything I have. The fingers are delving into me, stretching my tight flesh, driving me into a state of mindless pleasure.

I open my eyes and see a figure outlined in the darkness, tall and berobed.

My legs snap together and I sit up with a gasp, pulling the fingers out of me as I shift back. I look down and see a dead hand between my legs, sticking up out of the ground. It’s searching for me, the wet fingers pale and distended with death.

I wake with a cry, my chest heaving, eyes wide and staring in the darkness. The room is freezing cold and clammy sweat covers my body. I’ve had dreams about Meremon before but nothing like that. Nothing where I did such things to myself.

I knew it was a dead hand. I knew it was dead all along and I let it touch me.

It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.

I have the terrible sensation that someone’s watching me and my eyes snap to the right. Is there someone in the room or is it the last vestiges of that terrible dream?

I sit up and call, “Hello? Who’s there?”

What will I do if Meremon is here? I’m alone, friendless. But there’s not a sound, not a flicker in the shadows. It was just a dream. A nightmare.

Finally, I lie back in the dark, breathing hard, still feeling eyes on me, and something else. Restless dissatisfaction. The fingers of my left hand are wet and slippery.