House of Salt and Sorrows

by Erin A. Craig

  Camille turned to the pitcher at the bedside table, but I reached out, stopping her. “When your story is done.”

  She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Oh, what does it matter now? I’m going to die tonight anyway. Someone ought to know the truth.” She turned toward the window, her eyes flickering back and forth as if watching her story unfold like a play onstage. “I’d never seen the sea before. Or a house as lovely as Highmoor. I spent most of my first afternoon here dreaming of someday being mistress of such an estate…. When I felt Ortun’s eyes on me, I decided someday was too far away.”

  A bark of laughter burst from me. “You’re lying. Papa was devoted to Mama. He never would have strayed from her.”

  “Don’t be so naive. I knew he wanted me. I could see it in every one of his glances.” She smiled so widely, her lower lip cracked open and began to weep blood as a stab of lightning danced outside the window.

  Camille made a noise of disgust.

  Morella’s eyelids fluttered shut. “After Verity was born, your mother was so weak. So tired and worn out. Birthing twelve daughters…No one was truly surprised when she died….”

  Hearing the words Morella didn’t speak made my blood run cold. Her forehead tightened as another contraction hit. When it passed, she dared to meet my stony gaze.

  “It was an act of kindness, Annaleigh, truly, you must believe me. She was in pain, so much pain. I mixed a bit of hemlock into her nightly medicine, and she died in her sleep, none the wiser.”

  “You murdered Mama?” Camille’s face twisted in rage. She grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace, wielding it at her. “You bitch!”

  “It wasn’t a bad death,” she gasped. “She didn’t suffer.”

  “Are we supposed to be thankful for that?” Camille brought the poker down over her legs—not hard enough to break bone, though it did leave a nasty welt. Morella shrieked and scooted away from the rod’s reach.

  I held out my hand toward Camille. “Let her finish. We need to hear everything. You killed Mama. Then what?”

  “Annaleigh,” she pleaded, “it wasn’t murder. She was going to die anyway, probably. I just…helped.”

  I clenched my teeth, trying to hold in my fury. “What. Next?”

  “After Cecilia’s death, we were all sent away. My mother begged me to return home, but I stayed in the capital. One day I crossed paths with Ortun—he was there on business at court, and he…he was so lost without Cecilia, so in need of comfort and care…so I got him over his grief the only way I knew how to.” She smiled, her face relaxing for a brief moment as memories washed over her. “Ortun sent for me every night that week…. When he returned here, he wrote, saying how he longed for me, yearned for me.” She closed her eyes again. “And like a stupid calf, I believed him.”

  Another contraction. Another crash of thunder.

  “It went on like this for months. Nights of bliss, followed by weeks of waiting for him. Publicly, he needed to mourn Cecilia. I only needed to wait a year. Just one little year.” She swallowed. “Five years passed. Every time one of your sisters died, Ortun had to start the mourning process all over again. He said I needed to be patient and then we could be together, but I…I should have known better.”

  Morella paused, her face blood red and thick with sweat.

  “One night, I was coming home from a delivery and I saw your father. I didn’t know he was in town. He hadn’t written, hadn’t sent for me.” Morella pushed back a damp lock of hair, wheezing. “And on his arm was a woman. Just a girl, really.”

  She rippled in pain, but I couldn’t tell if it was from a contraction or memories of that night.

  “I flew at him, cursing and shouting, making such a scene.” She gasped, then let out a deep groan. “Water, please.”

  Camille pointed the poker toward her neck, and she tipped her head back, cringing. “Keep talking.”

  “He struck me. In front of his new little whore. He didn’t even care that she saw. He called me names, screamed, berated me. Said I was a fool for ever believing a person like him would marry a nothing like me. I wasn’t titled, I wasn’t rich. I was just…me.” Tears now openly streamed down her face.

  Despite the horrors she’d confessed, in this one awful moment, with my own words ringing in her voice, I wanted to comfort her. She’d been hurt by my own father, a man who claimed to love her.

  A sharp crack of thunder sounded directly above us, snapping me back to my senses. Impossibly, the afternoon grew darker still, the storm ready to slash the sky to bits.

  “He left me there, lying in the street, as if I’d never mattered to him.” She let out a broken sob. “But even after all that…I still wanted him.”

  A groan welled up from the very bowels of Morella’s belly. Her legs flailed with such force, it gave the impression there were more than two under the sheets. My gaze strayed to the Thaumas octopus at the top of the bed’s canopy. Its eyes seemed alive with condemnation, squinting down in judgment as it listened to her tale. Its arms spiraled down the posts, beaten metal against dark mahogany, reaching out in retribution. The silver reflected shots of lightning outside, and the wind picked up, howling past the windows in uneven pitches.

  “So you summoned Viscardi,” I filled in. “You summoned him to make Papa fall in love with you?”

  Morella nodded. “And to become pregnant with a son. If I was with child, Ortun would have to marry me. After all I’d done for him…I deserved that much. Once I returned to Highmoor, I saw Eulalie watching closely. She was starting to remember. Then that awful night…she confronted me, saying she was going to tell everyone. I…I couldn’t let her ruin everything.”

  Edgar’s shadow on the cliff.

  “You killed Eulalie?”

  Her fevered eyes darted over mine, beseeching me to understand. “She wouldn’t keep it a secret.”

  I recoiled, as if hit in the stomach. I’d befriended this woman, and all along she’d been killing off my family with no greater pain than crossing items off a list. A red mist clouded my vision, and my heart beat in double time. Fury raced through my body, pulsing from my core out to the very tips of my fingers. I grabbed the poker from Camille and pointed it at Morella’s throat.

  “You used us as payment for a son.”

  She cringed back toward the headboard, trying to escape the metal hook. “And it was all for naught. My son is dead, and I will be too before the night’s end.”

  “Good,” Camille spat out.

  A crack of thunder exploded directly over us, and Morella began to laugh, clinging to her belly as the next contraction ripped through her. A commotion rose at the far end of the hall, shouts and screaming.

  “Go see what it is.” I kept the iron trained on Morella. “I’ll stay with her.”

  Morella watched Camille go before meeting my gaze once more. “Annaleigh, you must believe me. I didn’t want you to die. I…I did at first, before I knew you—I wanted to make Ortun pay for how he’d treated me—but then…You’ve been so kind to me. You took care of me, befriended me. I didn’t know Viscardi would use the Harbinger to collect his payment, truly I didn’t. That’s why I gave you the book to read…so you wouldn’t sleep at night. So you wouldn’t dream of that thing.”

  I said nothing.

  A feeble mewing squeezed out of her. “I can’t do this, I can’t,” Morella groaned, shoulder blades popping. Her lower jaw jutted forward, sinking into her upper lip. “You could do it, you know. Just go ahead and do it.”

  “Do what?”

  A crazed sheen glazed her eyes. “Hit me. I know you want to. You know you want to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Just raise it up and bring it down over my head. Then it’ll all be over.”

  I backed away from the bed, looking out into the hall as the shouting grew. Servants ran by with buckets of water and towel
s. Smoke poured out of a room at the far end.

  “Do it, Annaleigh,” she called out. “Bash my head in. Bash my brains out. I killed your mother. I killed your sisters. Take your revenge and kill me.” A bloodcurdling howl ripped from her mouth, and a spot of red appeared on her nightgown, growing larger and wet over her thighs. “Please!”

  “I don’t care what happens to you, but I’m not killing my brother.”

  Laughter erupted past bared teeth, cruel, sharp pieces of shrapnel ricocheting off the walls. “You idiot girl.” She groaned and hunkered down as she began to push, pushing around the contractions, pushing past the pain, pushing the baby free. Her voice was low and grating, like metal skidding down a cliff. “This is not your father’s son.”

  My stomach lurched. “What?”

  She gasped for air. “Viscardi and I had to seal our bargain somehow…. Once it was set, Ortun fell at my feet, begging for forgiveness, begging for another chance, begging to come back to my bed. And I let him. I let them both in. And then…I let them ravish me.”

  Her groans turned to a shriek of anguish as a dark shape hurtled from her, spilling onto the bed in a mess of tangled limbs and dark, membraned wings. My eyes couldn’t seem to focus on the details, couldn’t make sense of the shapes flailing through the air. A mouth too wide, too full of teeth, opened and let out a lusty wail.

  It wasn’t a baby. It was a monster.

  Camille burst back into the bedroom, her face flushed and smudged in soot. “Lightning struck the roof. The fourth floor is on fire! We have to get out!” She came to a screeching halt as she saw the writhing mass on the bed.

  The thing flipped over, exposing its winged back, and grabbed at its umbilical cord. It tugged on the opposite end, and Morella cried out in pain, clutching her stomach. Raising the cord to its mouth, it bit through the muscle in one snap, freeing itself. I turned to the side, unable to stop myself from throwing up.

  Camille grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door. Servants ran by, shouting for us to hurry downstairs. The fire couldn’t be controlled. We needed to escape now.

  “Wait, don’t go!” Morella called to us, her voice high and reedy. For a brief moment, her eyes lost their madness and she looked like our stepmother again. “I can’t get downstairs by myself! You wouldn’t leave me to burn to death, would you?”

  Standing on the threshold, I dug my heels in, stopping Camille’s race for the stairs. “We can’t just leave her here.”

  She groaned in exasperation. “That’s exactly what she’d do to us!”

  Morella struggled to free her blood-soaked legs from the wet sheets. She tilted her head, listening to something beyond our hearing. From the adjoining sitting room came the sound of heavy footsteps. My mouth went dry as a black spider of fear sank its fangs deep into my stomach.

  Viscardi had arrived.

  Camille yanked on my arm again. “We can’t stay here! The fire is already in the hallway!”

  The door to the sitting room whipped open with a crack, stopping us in our tracks. A familiar dark figure appeared, silhouetted in smoke and flames. His silver curls sprang out, writhing like snakes.

  As he strode past the fireplace, like a king traversing his throne room, he cast a shadow on the far wall. A great horned three-headed dragon was shown in stark relief, wings puffed out in ferocity and teeth bared.

  Morella burst into a fresh set of tears before him. “My lord, I don’t understand. My son was born dead. You betrayed me!”

  He raised up one finger with fluid grace, swishing it back and forth. His voice dripped like honey, melodious and modulated. “Morella, my sweet. Is that any way to greet me?”

  “You lied!”

  In a shaky, jittering flash, he stood over her, looming, leering like a gargoyle from hell. On the wall, his dragon shadow glowered, flexing and snapping, while Morella’s writhed beneath it.

  “I. Never. Lie!” he snarled.

  “My son is dead!”

  He shook his head. “Our son lives.”

  “Ortun’s is gone. You swore I would have a son! You swore—”

  He held up his hand, silencing her. “I swore you’d have a son. And you did. Was the little body taken from this room by your husband not the perfect specimen of maleness?” His face turned stony, his eyes narrowed. “Next time you summon the god of bargains, remember to ask for exactly what you want.”

  “I did!” she howled.

  Viscardi shook his head, his eyes hidden in the dark shadows. “You went into great amounts of detail with what you wanted—the husband, the house, the son you so foolishly thought would inherit the estate—but you failed to specify the child should be born alive.” He reached out and cupped her cheek, running an elongated thumb across her lips. “But just think, my darling. Your boy provided ours with all the nourishment he’ll need for the long trip home.”

  He scooped up the squalling monster from the bedclothes, peering down at the tiny, fanged face. Viscardi’s visage softened with tenderness. He even gurgled coos as the creature bit at his finger.

  “No!” Morella cried, struggling to stand on the uneven mattress. “No! I gave you your son. You’ve taken two of the Thaumas girls. Our deal is off. I want this bargain broken!”

  He whirled back to her, cradling his son in the crook of his arm. “Broken? Who are you to take back an oath?”

  “I don’t want any part of this oath. You took my son; you don’t get the other girls!”

  With fire swirling in his eyes, he licked a forked tongue over his teeth, considering the small woman in front of him. Across the wall behind them, the dragons reared back, giddy with bloodlust. “You can’t just say you want our bargain ended and expect it to be so. You know the price I demand. The only thing I’ll accept in payment.”

  Morella blew out a shaky breath and nodded, resignation clouding her face. She glanced over his shoulder, meeting my eyes. “Don’t tell your father any of this. Tell him…tell him I loved him. Always.”

  Viscardi looked back at us again, his lips—too thin to even call them that, really—raised into a painful smile, and he winked. Then, in that strange blur of movement, he descended on Morella, suddenly so much more than a man. Wings and scales and talons slashed in and out of the bedlam.

  Cries rose from the chaos, and for one awful moment, they echoed the sounds I’d heard her make when I’d walked in on her with Papa. But the pleasure was short-lived, and her whimpers of ecstasy soon turned into shrieks. The shrieks turned to screams. And then the screams cut off into silence.

  Camille covered her mouth, holding back cries of her own as we spotted the pale curve of a rib rising from the bedding. Morella had come from the People of the Bones and was now reduced to nothing but a pile of them.

  A man once more, Viscardi turned to us, a lusty appreciation shining in his flaming eyes. “I always did like dancing with you two best,” he said, his gaze burning over our bodies like scorched earth. “Pretty, pretty Annaleigh and my darling Camille…what fun we could have together…you need only ask.”

  Camille’s jaw clenched as she stepped forward. “How powerful are you, Trickster? Are you able to change the course of things? To change the past?”

  “Camille, no!” I shouted, sensing what she was about to do. I grabbed at her arms, pulling her away from the grinning god.

  “He could bring back our sisters!” she hissed. “He could bring back Mama!”

  “At what cost?”

  “I could,” Viscardi said, raising his voice to be heard over us. “I could do all that and more.” A forked tongue slithered out from his blood-covered mouth, beckoning us. “And you might find you quite enjoy the trade.”

  I shook my head. “Never!”

  He looked at me with his glittering, fiery eyes. “You’re worried about what happened to Morella? I understand completely, Annaleigh. But you�
�d never be so foolish as to make the same mistakes she did. You’re far more clever and so much more…dazzling.”

  My feet started to inch closer, seemingly under my control, but as I tried to force myself to stop, they continued forward. He drew me toward him like an anglerfish luring in prey with its hypnotic, flashing orb.

  His fingers traced over my cheek, caressing the skin with a seductive tenderness I was unable to resist. It wasn’t until I nuzzled back into his palm that I realized it was covered in Morella’s blood.

  “Annaleigh, stop!” Camille cried out, grabbing my hand and yanking me out of the trance and far from Viscardi’s reach. She squeezed me tight, rooting us to where we stood.

  Viscardi sighed, a cloud of sulfur wafting from his lip, but shrugged it off, offering a low bow to us both. “Suit yourself.” Swooping up his wailing progeny, he disappeared in a crack of thunder.

  Camille and I stared into each other’s eyes, gasping in the smoky air, as we absorbed everything that had happened on this horrible day.

  Was it truly over? I’d expected to feel different, to feel less marked. Surely there ought to be something to signal the bargain was broken—but there was nothing.

  A cry from the corridor snapped us back to the present. The fire raged unchecked through Highmoor. If we didn’t leave right now, we would not get another chance.

  We raced into the hall as a ceiling timber, blazing as red as Viscardi’s eyes, splintered to the floor, catching the runner on fire. Orange flames licked up the wallpaper, and in a sudden burst of fire, an oil painting of Eulalie and Elizabeth was gone.

  “The back staircase!” I had to shout to be heard over the crackling flames.

  “The third floor is already on fire,” Camille said as we reached the landing. “Where are the Graces?”