by Risa Fey
“I know you’re one of Them,” she challenged, veering at him from a different angle.
His blue eyes glittered with the same misty glow she had seen floating above the mirror in the shop. “One of who?” he asked, by way of showing off his ignorance.
“One of They Who Watch.” She grimaced fearfully. “The People of the Stars—the Outer Gods—the Ones who cursed me to be ugly.”
His aspect darkened, the flawless white of his skin taking on a pall of shadow. “How can I be one of Them when I was the one who warned you about Them to begin with?”
“It’s called a lure.” Cora shunted from around the side of the bed, trying to see past his shoulder into the room. She figured she must look like a gorgon to him, with her hair all disarranged and eyes bulging and wild.
Cora’s ankle got caught in the coil of one of the discarded blankets she was standing on. She teetered clumsily as she craned her neck to spy on his surroundings. She cursed, then wrestled herself free. Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden. “Dammit!” she cried, ripping at her hair as if it were a mass of tangled cobwebs. “Why don’t They just kill me, already? I have no reason to go on anymore!”
The man’s eyes fell, and the magic faded from them. His smile receded at her misery. “Because,” he said, “They would prefer you kill yourself, and do Their dirty work for Them. It isn’t everyday They want to destroy one of Their creations.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, forehead puckering in a frown. “But, please, don’t kill yourself,” he said, meaning to forestall any of her potential for self-harm. “It’s what They would want. And the last thing you should do is what They want.”
“Why shouldn’t I? If I’m Their target, then They will get to me eventually. You’re one of Them, after all, and it would be in your self-interest to lie to me.”
He was surprised at her ability to reason at least that much, if he was indeed one of the Outer Gods. “You think I’m a god, but I swear I’m not.” His mouth was taut, expression serious. “If I was, I’d have no regard for your life, and I’d be wheedling you into hurting yourself just like the rest of Them. I’m one of Their constructs, too. I’m also at the mercy of Their whims.”
“How can I believe you?” she asked. She wanted to trust him, and in fact she hoped with all her heart that what he said was true. But she had to still be on the defensive.
If he was not one of Them, then there was potential for friendship. Maybe even a love affair, as he’d suggested just moments before. But Cora dared not entertain those kinds of futile thoughts. Something was amiss. Why someone like him would proposition a girl like her she couldn’t fathom.
While Cora agonized over what his intentions might be, he put a hand on the glass. It gave way slightly at the pressure, forming a watery outline around his hand.
How can I believe you? her mind screamed again, but apparently he heard it.
“Because I love you,” he said.
The world seemed to turn over and then back up again. It was difficult to not laugh directly in his face, but his gravitas was palpable, pushing off any irreverence she might show him.
Her lips thinned, pursing with an undecided mixture of emotion.
“You’re lying,” she decided.
“No,” he said. “I am in love with you. I have been for a long time. Ever since I started watching you from this side of the world, at least.” His mouth trembled a bit, and she couldn’t help but think it was out disgust for what he was saying.
But what did he mean when he said he had been watching her from “this side of the world”?
Her head swam. She glanced briefly away, but then met his eyes again—they were like magnets, drawing her inexorably back to him. Hooking to her soul, they lured her like will-o’-the-wisps, twin gleams of spell-light.
“You aren’t blind,” she managed to say. “You can see my face. Don’t you see how ugly I am? No man in his right mind could ever want me.”
“You know nothing about what I want, Cora, and you certainly don’t see yourself the way I do. I know what you look like, and I know everything you’ve been through. The fact remains, you are still the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and I hate everyone who has ever hurt you.”
With a scowl, she wiped her cheek. “For all I know, you have jackasses for friends, and you’re only trying to humiliate me so that you’ll have a story to tell them.”
The muscles around his mouth tensed perceptibly. “What do I have to do to prove I’m not lying? I’ll do whatever you ask.”
His question felt like torture. “Enough of the prank!”
“It’s not a prank, and you aren’t giving me a chance to prove myself,” he said.
But she cut in tartly, “Men like you deserve no chances!”
An uneasy silence came between them. He looked bemused over how the conversation had devolved.
Poor man! cried one of the voices watching from inside Cora’s head.
How dare she talk to Thaed like that, exclaimed another.
If I were him, I would forget the ugly wench and just move on.
Cora pressed the back of her wrist against her forehead, feeling faint, but taking the opportunity to compose herself.
So. Thaed was his name. It sounded like the name of a Roman warrior, or some sort of medieval knight. She smiled ironically at that latter part. Of course it did… He said he was her knight in shining armor, after all.
It was hard coming to terms with talking to someone in the mirror, but she managed to convince herself of its normality regardless. Mirrors tended to speak only in fairy tales, but when they did, it was to judge the beholder’s appearance—which, she had to admit, he was doing.
Maybe it really was a dream after all. Maybe her childhood fantasies had caught up with her.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, laughed a mocking voice. Who is the fairest of them all?
Cora repeated the quotation without thinking. Thaed squared his shoulders when she spoke, having noticed the bleared, daydreaming look upon her face.
He held out his hand and opened it, turning it over like a magician showing he had nothing up his sleeve. Then he blew into his palm and it combusted like a firework stuffed full of gunpowder. The tentacle-limbs of a fire wriggled into sudden life, licking around his fingers and glowing golden-orange in the protective cupping of his hand.
“You are the fairest,” he answered. “My heart becomes a fire whenever I see you. It turns to ice when you’re not there.” He formed a fist, snuffing the blaze by choking off the fuel, and tiny ice crystals shattered out between his fingers.
What he said sounded ridiculous, but still, it moved her. “Why do you think you are in love with me?” she asked. If she could get an answer to that, then she might believe him.
“If I could tell you why, then I’d know the secrets of the universe.” Streamers of residual smoke meandered from between his blackened fingers. A pungent stench hung on the air, the odor of brimstone. “You are the fairest,” Thaed said again, taking advantage of the half-spell that she was under. “Did the jealous queen convince you that you’re not a lovely maiden?”
Cora stood unblinking, captivated by the liquid ropes of smoke unraveling around his fist. Thaed seemed to wield his love like magic, manipulating hearts like clay. Perhaps that should have warned her, but her heart was already under his sway, forgetting his evident power just as quickly as she had noticed it.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” he said. “I admired from afar, as men tend to do; and I kept stalling, hoping for the perfect moment to approach you.”
Her forehead wrinkled at the strangeness of what he said. “How long have you been watching me?” Perhaps she should be concerned, and even disquieted.
But Thaed was not a stalker. He was not like any other man. He was kind and gentle. And he had promised he would never hurt her.
“You heard my voice many times before,” he said.
“When?”
“Briefly—in moments when you were
at a standstill, at a loss of what to do. I whispered thoughts into your mind, ideas for actions you should take. I was the one who encouraged you to run.”
Her face went pale, realizing the intimate secrets he must know about her.
“The Others were always too loud for you to notice me. But I don’t think you were ready to accept me when you were under the thumb of your parents. Even though I was there, wanting nothing but to help you, you were in a perpetual state of trauma. I couldn’t graze your thoughts without rousing hostile fears. You never would have believed that I was real, let alone in love with you.”
Cora frowned, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I’m sure I would have at least listened.” She would have listened to anyone, if they had only said they loved her.
“Maybe so.” Thaed turned from her, ruffling his hair. “But I wasn’t welcome. Don’t you remember what state you were in during those times?”
Her hands formed fists. “I probably would have begged you to protect me.”
“There was nothing I could do.”
Liar, she thought. There was plenty you could have done.
“So what makes you so different from Them?” Cora asked.
“Well, for a start, you can see me but you can’t see Them.” Dimples showed on either side of his smile, and Cora’s heart skipped at the sight of them. “They came from the Outer World, and that’s why They’re called the Outer Gods. I’ve always lived on earth; I was never a god like Them.”
“But you have power.”
“Magic,” he said. “It’s common where I come from.”
There was uncertainty in her face, but also a vulnerable naiveté.
“I get the impression you are interested in me, but so far you’ve treated me like I’ve got ulterior motives. I’m not offended. But I want to prove otherwise… if you’ll let me.”
Cora swallowed audibly. Intermittent flashes from the window reminded her that it was raining. Rivulets melted down the windowpanes like globs of watercolor, and she only hoped the room was too dark for him to pick up on her blushing. But she was so pale; he undoubtedly could see her changing color. “No.” She shuffled her feet from side to side, not knowing how to arrange her body. “I don’t think your motives are bad…” With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she came to terms with the fact that it was only a matter of time before he pressured her to say it.
“From the first day I set eyes on you, I knew we belonged to each other,” he said. “We need each other.”
“I needed you then,” Cora snapped. “I tried to kill myself, you know.”
“I know. I was there—ready to kill myself as well.”
“Then why didn’t you interfere?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t do it.”
“Ha! I lit my hair on fire!”
“And you immediately threw a blanket on it.” The fire reappeared in his hand, lighting the smoothly sculpted angles on his face. Then his hand moved suddenly to his own hair.
Cora lunged at the mirror, but he put the fire out to quell her fears.
“Now you know how it feels,” he said triumphantly. “Don’t make me die for you, Cora, because I will. I swear on my name, I will die for you if you kill yourself.”
“Why me?” she asked, swallowing around the lump forming in her throat. “A man like you could have any girl he wanted.”
“Evidently not, since you are that girl.” He looked at her from under raised eyebrows.
But Cora still suspected it could be a very convincing prank. She wanted to be sure about his heart, and so she decided to test his sincerity in the only way she knew how: by playing hard to get. “Magicians are habitual liars. I think your shoddy magic tricks are cheap.”
Thaed’s eyebrows drew thoughtfully together, and then he laughed without mirth.
“You can say anything, but it doesn’t mean I’ll be convinced.” Her mouth was set in a grim line. She felt horrible talking to him that way, but she had to defend herself from any possible fooling. “I’ll admit, you’re everything a girl could want and more. But you aren’t even real. You’re a romantic myth—a knight from children’s storybooks. And even if you are real, you’ll really have to prove that you can love an ugly girl like me, because I don’t believe it.”
If his love was real, then he’d understand her reservations and still pursue her. His intentions would eventually be exposed; but until then, she had to be wary of his sorcery. She could only be her only advocate.
“If you want to be alone forever,” Thaed responded charily, “then it’ll be your own undoing. I’ll leave you alone, but only if you ask me to. Until then, I will chase you. And I won’t stop until you’re mine.”
Cora didn’t know what to say to that. What he said sounded flattering, but also somehow menacing. Perhaps it was just because of the way he said it, with a passion in his voice that signaled obsession rather than love. But she couldn’t help feeling a lurch inside her stomach.
Cora slid the black veil over the mirror, and that transformed Thaed into nothing but a gauzy outline. She could just make out the receding of his figure, and every nerve-ending in her body buzzed with involuntary pleasure. His figure coalesced with the lighter darkness around him before vanishing altogether. And from that time on, every shadow in her cottage felt infected with his presence. His eyes were everywhere in the walls, peeping. His ears hung on her every breath. His desire felt like a dagger in her back that melted to a morbid tingle between her legs.
She prayed to the Outer Gods that Thaed would steal her sooner rather than later.
CHAPTER 7
THE VOICES WERE still there the next morning when she got out of the shower. The mirror in the bathroom was coated in steam, but Cora stopped just shy of clearing it, having become paranoid that Thaed might be spying on her through the glass. Her fears were irrational, she thought, since there had been nothing explicitly malevolent in anything he’d said.
But still, she had a faint feeling of dread.
Man confesses his love to an ugly girl, said one of the voices, and she has the gall to refuse him.
She has no right to complain about anything anymore, said a second voice. Oh, woe is me! Oh, woe is me! Whatever will I do?—I’m just so ugly!
Scrunching her hair dry in a towel, Cora padded barefoot to her bedroom, and ignored Their remarks. She stopped short in the middle of the room and stared at the mirror’s veil. She could sense him—feel his eyes searching from the other side, attempting to peer in. Or so she thought; she couldn’t see his outline, and so proceeded to the closet.
She picked an outfit, tossed the towel aside, then felt a telling prickle at her nape. She dressed quickly, with more haste than was her wont. The uncanny sensation of being watched intensified.
After tying on her shoelaces, Cora removed the veil. But he wasn’t there.
Of course he isn’t here, she chided herself. A man like him would have better things to do than moon over a girl like her. If he was even real.
Cora prepared her coffee and breakfast, humming absentmindedly over the stove. Sitting outside the cottage on the bump end of a tree root, she sipped gingerly at her mug, nibbling on a toasted bagel.
The sky darkened with the gathering of clouds, and there was a sound of soles crunching on gravel: someone approaching from behind. A swirl of dead leaves winded through the air before settling at her feet. A feeling of oppression overshadowed her.
From the corner of her eye she could tell no one was there. But someone was.
Cora searched the ground for clues. The heavy, unmistakable prints of a large pair of shoes were outlined in the dirt. A tiny flower-bud peeked out from between the fissured soil in one of the footprints. Its stem elongated, twisting in a sun-seeking confusion of new growth. The closed bulb swelled like a fruit before her eyes, blushing green around the base and flushing to pink around the outer folds. The separate fronds unfurled into a blood red flower, its petals limned along the edges with jet black singe marks.
Cora reached a tentative finger out to stroke its petals—but they shrank from her immediately, wilting and crumpling to a heap.
“You would let my heart wither. Just like that,” Thaed said.
The disembodied words hung like a miasma between them. The midmorning sky turned black. Thaed was with her—or at least his voice was—his ghost filling out the space beside her.
Cora shuddered in the breeze. Vines and virulent plant life sprouted up around her, instilling the muggy air with the hot rankness of vegetable rot. Spongy moss and spotted fungi crept over rugged boles, and vines drooped over the knobbly boughs like dead, pendant overgrowths of weed. The soil gave off an odor of staleness, as if the earth was infected with fetid mold. Everything seemed dark, and everything felt dreamlike and surreal. Everything was lopsided and grotesque, but beautiful; unnatural and profoundly frightening. Thaed’s presence was like an Outer force, distorting everything in its proximity, warping mind and matter.
Cora stood up. The mug jittered in her hand, coffee splashing on all sides. The hellish wilderness seemed to grope like living feelers, leaning in her direction, the faces of flowers trained on her like a horde of people. Tubers and creepers slithered like serpents, drinking in her presence as if she was the sun.
Vines coiled around her neck and limbs, tethering her into place. Blood-tipped thorns pierced her skin, burying beneath the paper thinness of her flesh; and the leaves were like green leeches, their lateral veins latching onto her like claws and fusing with her blue arteries. Ice laced through her veins where the thorns pierced her body, injecting her with toxins that exhilarated her senses and brought vivid color to the infernal world around her.
The leaves sucked at her blood, and all Thaed did was watch, breathing heavily with a sort of repressed arousal. Cora reached out to where he was supposedly standing, but felt nothing.