Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1)

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

Roar.

  That was in the riddle.

  I am sudden death to calm.

  My roar breaks the hush.

  My song the mind’s somnolence.

  Could it be possible that the answer to the riddle was speech?

  It was written in every journal – as if daring us to break his rule. If this was truly the answer to the riddle, then it was a gauntlet the magic had thrown down to each wife. One that had never been picked up. But why would it do that? Who had written those words in the room and why did it whisper those words to each of us? Had it been a ruse all along?

  When he’d bid me silent, he’d said outright that we would lose the magic if I spoke out of turn. No wonder no one else had tried. And yet ... this poem was written everywhere in the very heart of the magic he had possessed. What if he hadn’t created the room, only brought his brides to it one by one? What if he was as much in the dark as we were about the provenance of the magic or the rules surrounding it? What if he’d been lied to?

  I shook my head. I felt confused ... but also curious.

  Behind me, something snorted and I glanced over my shoulder to see the Sword right at my heels, his beast flaring with little bursts of fire.

  “Forward,” I whispered to my horse, leaning over its neck. “Forward.”

  The horse sped onward, but up ahead I’d lost sight of Bluebeard and Vireo. I’d been too occupied with the words of the riddle.

  I heard a crack behind me, and my horse leapt forward, screaming.

  I glanced back to see the Sword gaining ground. He was almost beside me now, a whip in his hand. He struck my horse with it and a tiny tear formed in the starlight-and-snow of my horse’s hindquarters.

  “Off on your own, mortal wife? What a delicious surprise!”

  “Drawing their swords, they ran directly to Bluebeard. He knew them to be his wife’s brothers ... but the two brothers pursued and overtook him.”

  - Charles Perrault, Bluebeard,

  1697 as translated by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book 1889.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to do. Maybe whip me? Maybe speed by?

  I didn’t expect the shove when it came, hard and fast.

  I fell from the back of the horse, smashing into a tuft of frozen flowers and hitting my shoulder hard against the ground.

  I tumbled, momentum still at work, and then finally stilled, disoriented, head whirling and back screaming.

  I forced myself to my feet, breathing hard. The pain of the impact only hit me as I tried to straighten. My entire left side – shoulder, ribs, arm – was in agony. Snow clung to me, melting and seeping through my clothes. And yet, as I saw the Sword plunging around the corner ahead, the pain seemed less important than what he was doing. He was tucking his whip into his belt and drawing his bow.

  I knew, without knowing how, that he planned to use it on something other than the target.

  Something nudged me from behind, and to my surprise, my horse was there, his velvet frost-nose pressing against my uninjured shoulder.

  “Kneel, friend, and I will mount,” I whispered.

  He knelt and I scrambled onto his back as the Sword’s two companions thundered by on horses that were mixtures of frost and flame. They were neck and neck as they took the corner ahead.

  “Forward,” I whispered, and my horse stood, reared, and pawed the air in a single motion.

  I held on with gritted teeth as he plunged up the moonlit track, banking around the corner. As soon as we rounded the bend, everything before me stood out in the stark relief of the moonlight.

  I gasped, my heart racing as I saw it all, my breath puffing out of me in ghastly clouds.

  Vireo was down on the side of the trail, chasing after his horse. It looked like he’d been thrown on the corner. The Sword’s two companions thundered off the trail toward him, their steeds kicking up clouds of snow as they galloped, whips at the ready and glinting in the moonlight. They were not playing fair.

  That left Bluebeard alone and far ahead, his horse standing still as his back arched and he took aim with bow and arrow toward the second target.

  Behind him, the Sword had stopped, too, his bow at the ready, arrow nocked. But he was not aiming at the target. He was aiming at my husband.

  I couldn’t get there in time to stop him. Or to do anything to warn my husband.

  I could call his name and warn him. But only if I believed the riddle. Only if I thought I’d really solved it.

  But something was sticking in my mind. Bluebeard had warned me personally not to speak or all would be lost.

  And there was that last line speaking of “the mind’s somnolence.”

  My heart was racing, my head seemed to spin, but there was no time to make a clever decision or be sensible about this. If I did not speak, it might be too late.

  What good would any amount of magic do him if he were dead?

  I opened my mouth, summoning all my courage.

  And in that flash of a moment, my heart spoke to me.

  The mind! The mind! It’s in the mind.

  I shut my mouth with a snap and thought with all my might.

  Behind you! Bluebeard! Behind you!

  Bluebeard’s arrow flew from his bow and in the bright moonlight I saw it go wide from the target as he spun on his horse’s back and ducked so quickly that it seemed to all be one motion. The Sword loosed at the same moment and his arrow flew over my husband.

  He was fitting a second arrow to the string when a hand grabbed me from behind, spinning me.

  “I’ve found you just in time, wife of the Arrow.” Coppertomb’s voice sounded triumphant.

  “The Sword attacked him,” I said stupidly, not sure how he came around the corner without me noticing. I felt like I was in shock, like Bluebeard really had heard my voice in his mind. How else would he have known to duck? The importance of it – the possibility of it – changed everything.

  Coppertomb’s horse was huffing in the cold, its frosty body filled with dark swirls like eels living within it.

  He leaned in close so that I could feel his warmth in the cold of the night, and his hands grabbed my jacket.

  “Your day. Give me your day and let your brothers come and save you, or it will be too late. In a moment, the Sword will slay him, and your life will be forfeit with his. Only give me your day, and there is still hope for you.”

  “My brothers?”

  I needed time to think. I needed time to consider what this new development might mean.

  “You’ve done something. I can see it in your eyes, mortal. You are as open books to the Wittenbrand. You’ve broken your marriage somehow, haven’t you?”

  “What?” I peered toward Bluebeard but all I saw was his horse wheeling in the snow as the Sword took another run at him, sword held high. There was no sign that I’d done anything other than warn him.

  “If your marriage was not broken, don’t you think the Arrow would draw on your days to save himself now?” Coppertomb said impatiently. He grabbed my chin between a thumb and forefinger and turned my head back to the battle. “Look!”

  In the distance, Bluebeard was battling the Sword – blade to blade. There were no bursts of light or strange occurrences, just the ring of blade on blade.

  Could it be true? Had speaking within my mind been just as devastating as speaking with my mouth would have been?

  “You’ve been a fool,” Coppertomb said, confirming my thoughts. “Don’t make it worse by continuing on that path.”

  “No,” I began, but I was too distracted to notice when he grabbed me and started to pat at my pockets.

  “Here!” he said, triumphant as he drew the garnet from my doublet. “Was that so hard? Mortals try to complicate everything.”

  He threw the garnet to the ground and when it hit, the earth shook and then tore open.

  My horse screamed, rearing up.

  It leapt over the tear in a cloud of starlight, wrenching me from Copperto
mb’s grasp.

  His curses rang out behind me, but my horse’s hooves pounded over the frozen ground as it tried to outrun the tear in the ground. Out of the fissure spilled dark figures that looked like armed men. They were dazed and stumbling, some of them calling out or raving like madmen.

  “To me! To me!” Coppertomb cried, waving his arms to them.

  I didn’t know if he was rallying the men or trying to call me back, but my horse had a mind of its own and it was thundering straight toward Bluebeard.

  Bluebeard raced toward the Sword. As I watched – shocked – he stood up on the back of his horse, crouching as the stallion galloped. The Sword had his weapon ready, aiming to sweep at Bluebeard’s legs. But as he struck, my husband leapt to the Sword’s horse, knocking his opponent off with him.

  They rolled across the ground, sliding over the light skim of snow.

  I put my hand over my mouth as my horse plunged toward them.

  Bluebeard was going to break his neck. And then I was going to trample him.

  He popped up from the ground and found his balance, wavering slightly. My breath hitched in my throat. A little sound like relief escaped my lips.

  At his feet, the Sword reached for him – but too late. My horse galloped close at the same moment that Bluebeard lunged, leaping in a way that seemed almost effortless onto the back of my horse and then leaning almost over me as he clung to my horse’s bright mane.

  “Bluebeard?” he asked, horror in his voice. “This is what you name me?”

  I squirmed on the horse’s back so I could see him there, leaning over me like a black cat riding a charger.

  You heard me. I ... I solved the riddle.

  His laugh was long and low. “Wondrous as it is, I do hear you, wife of mine, fire of my eyes, despair of my soul.”

  Coppertomb says I have broken our marriage.

  “I think not. I feel your days. I can still reach for them. What riddle do you speak of?”

  There was a riddle the room told me when I entered. It is written on the walls and in every book.

  “A riddle,” he said, his voice growing bright as if something had just finally made sense to him. “And it told you to speak to my mind?”

  I thought so.

  I looked up at his face – at the utter elation I saw there. He did not look angry at all.

  He looked down at me for a half of a heartbeat and then back up again, but that tiny fraction of a second had shown me blazing pride and something that looked almost like fierce affection mixed in.

  “Speak to my riddle, wife of mine. What manner of woman solves a puzzle that fifteen before her could not solve?”

  The type who listens, I said dryly, but I didn’t feel proud or smug. I felt nervous. I had not betrayed him by speaking aloud – but I had betrayed him far worse when I snuck into the room and stole one of my days. Even if I hadn’t given it to Coppertomb with my own hand, he had it now, and he had used it to practice magic.

  We plunged into a copse of trees and Bluebeard pushed the stallion onward as branches beat us from every direction.

  “Something hunts us, solemn wife. Something not of this world.”

  Behind us, I heard a yell.

  “They went in here!”

  Our horse crashed into a small, roughly circular glen, bathed in moonlight. Light, swirling snow in flakes as tiny as dust motes whirled around us.

  Bluebeard urged him to the center of the glen, and he drew his blade, one hand on the mane, one on the hilt of the sword.

  “Do not fear, Izolda. You are under my protection wherever trees breathe and forests take root, wherever rain falls and water floods over the earth, wherever the angry wind blows or the rocks groan with age, there you are mine and always will be,” he said in a low, dangerous way.

  I met his eyes, but I did not see fear there. Instead, my pulse quickened for another reason entirely. He was looking at me with such open vulnerability in his eyes that it made me gasp.

  “I have waited decade upon decade for a wife who is my equal – for a true partner in this adventure of mine.” His lips quirked teasingly. “I had not expected her to mock me for my blue beard.”

  I wanted to answer him. I wanted to return his assurances with my own. But my words cleaved to the roof of my mouth. We had already been betrayed – and I was the traitor. I did not deserve his loyalty or his faith in me.

  “They’re here!” someone called, and just like that we were ringed by dark figures, coming out of the trees, their shadowy weapons raised and faces enshrouded in the dark hoods of their cloaks.

  They charged before I had the chance to scream, weapons raised.

  Our horse reared, pawing the ground, and I clung to his mane, Bluebeard at my back. My body pressed flat against his warmth and my breath hitched in my throat. I felt his breath coming hot and fast, his heart pounding through our clothing as it matched the speed of mine.

  The horse crashed back to the earth and the fight began as Bluebeard clashed sword to sword, making our horse dance around to avoid contact as he fought.

  I clenched my jaw, trying not to bite my tongue. Trying not to scream. I didn’t dare distract him.

  He was nimble and quick, his short sword lightning-fast as it swept a blade aside, twisting and flicking and sending it from the hand of an attacker. He was moving to the next one as I was still watching the first fall back – unarmed now.

  Bluebeard urged the horse ahead at the exact right moment to get under a man’s guard and then he plunged his blade through a chink between the man’s breastplate and shoulder armor. We spun in a circle and his horse kicked back. There was a scream as the man charging us from behind fell to the ground, clutching his broken arm, his battle-axe skittering away across the frozen grass.

  I didn’t dare close my eyes. I didn’t dare let myself scream. I was worried I might forget to breathe

  Bluebeard moved like lightning, like time didn’t touch him, like he was made of magic and wishes and songs of bards. He danced and wove and wheeled, one with the horse, one with the swirling snow, one with the night. And in his eyes, there was fierce violence and something that looked all too much like obsession. He lived for this, I realized. He loved it far too much.

  Perhaps his men had not been joking when they said he collected heads.

  And then someone cried “Hold!”

  I gasped as Coppertomb rode out from the forest on his shadow-caging horse. The ring of soldiers encircling us drew back. All I could hear was panting breath and creaking leather and the squeak of boots on snow.

  “There you are, Arrow. And with your lady wife, I see.” Coppertomb looked far too smug. A shot of terror rippled down my spine. Bluebeard flicked the blood off the end of his sword, wheeling the horse to keep everyone in sight. “You should have stayed by my side, Izolda. It’s harder to bring you to your brother with an angry husband crouched around you.”

  “Brother?” I gasped.

  A dark figure stepped out from the ring, his shoulders back and head held high. He threw back his hood.

  Svetgin.

  It was both him and not him. My hand flew to my throat.

  He looked to be thirty years old. Worn and filled out, his muscles bulky, his eyes narrowed in thought and a wicked scar decorating one cheek that looked old – a decade old. And yet it had not been there last week.

  “Izolda,” he said in wonder, looking at me as if he had seen a ghost. “You have not changed.”

  “What is this?” Bluebeard asked, his words thick with fury.

  “Your lady wife gave me a single day – a day to save her family and her nation and free herself from your grasp.”

  “That’s not –” I started.

  “Shh,” Bluebeard said gently, laying a finger over my lips. I bit his finger. He didn’t even flinch. He merely turned to my brother. “You are here for your sister?”

  Bluebeard tilted his head as he watched Svetgin and Svetgin stood a little straighter.

  “We come for all
the brides you’ve stolen.”

  There was a murmur from the rest of those in the ring, and with that murmur, I realized who they were. The Brotherhood of Stolen Sisters. And they had found a way into the Wittenhame because of me. Because of my betrayal. Because of the garnet I had stolen.

  “My other wives have passed through this life,” Bluebeard said calmly. “Izolda is the only one who still lives.”

  “Then we come for their revenge,” Svetgin said harshly, his once boyish features twisted in a way so unfamiliar to me that they did not seem to be his at all.

  Bluebeard turned my face gently toward him, his finger still on my lip. “Tell me only this, wife. Did he take your garnet, whether by your hand or by force?”

  His grey cat’s eyes held a depth of sadness that twisted in my belly. His finger left my lips.

  He did, I said in my mind, feeling my eyes welling up.

  Bluebeard’s lips crashed into mine so unexpectedly that I didn’t know what was happening at first and then he was kissing me with devouring passion so that I could hardly think, hardly breathe. Desire welled up in me, rising to match his. He moaned slightly into my mouth as if he was breaking apart even as he kissed me. I kissed him back, torn by the agony of my own betrayal. I was breaking, too, shattering apart even as I clung to him. A deep ache started in my heart and flooded through my body.

  He broke away, leaving me gasping, his expression vulnerable and aching. His fingers caressed my cheek – longingly, almost lovingly. “You are beautiful, my betrayer, light of my eyes, breath of my lungs. For you, I would bend an oath and break the skies. Let that kiss be the memory you take of me as you leave me to my fate.”

  And then hand ripped me from the saddle and the sparkling snow horse under Bluebeard collapsed and dissipated in a puff of sparkling motes.

  I couldn’t see him – couldn’t see anything as I was wrenched away, my hood pulled over my eyes, and dragged across the snow in strong, muscled arms.

  I thought I might have screamed, but that, too, was muffled by my cloak.

  Blade met blade in a sharp clang. A loud curse was abruptly cut off and then cries filled the air growing more and more frantic. I kicked and elbowed and lashed out wildly against whoever was holding me.