Red as Blood: or tales from the Sisters Grimmer

by Tanith Lee

  “You shall,” said the girl. “Trust me, you shall. For my name, I would rather keep it secret for the present. But you may call me, if you will, a pet name I have given myself— Ashella.”

  “Ashella… But I see no ash about you,” said the prince, dazzled by her gleam, laughing a little, stiffly, for laughter was not his habit.

  “Ash and cinders from a cold and bitter hearth,” said she. But she smiled again. “Now everyone is staring at us, my lord, and the musicians are impatient to begin again. Out of all these ladies, can it be you will lead me in the dance?”

  “As long as you will dance,” he said. “You shall dance with me.”

  And that is how it was.

  There were many dances, slow and fast, whirling measures and gentle ones. And here and there, the prince and the maiden were parted. Always then he looked eagerly after her, sparing no regard for the other girls whose hands lay in his. It was not like him, he was usually so careful. But the other young men who danced on that floor, who clasped her fingers or her narrow waist in the dance, also gazed after her when she was gone. She danced, as she appeared, like fire. Though if you had asked those young men whether they would rather tie her to themselves, as the prince did, they would have been at a loss. For it is not easy to keep pace with fire.

  The hour of the hag struck on the clock.

  The prince grew weary of dancing with the girl and losing her in the dance to others and refinding her and losing her again.

  Behind the curtains there is a tall window in the east wall that opens on the terrace above the garden. He drew her out there, into the spring night. He gave an order, and small tables were brought with delicacies and sweets and wine. He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.

  In the ballroom, here, under the clock, the people murmured. But it was not quite the murmur you would expect, the scandalous murmur about a woman come from nowhere that the prince had made so much of. At the periphery of the ballroom, the silk merchant sat, pale as a ghost, thinking of a ghost, the living ghost of his true daughter. No one else recognized her. Only he. Some trick of the heart had enabled him to know her. He said nothing of it. As the step-sisters and wife gossiped with other wives and sisters, an awful foreboding weighed him down, sent him cold and dumb.

  And now it is almost midnight, the moment when the page of the night turns over into day. Almost midnight, the hour when the figure of Death strikes the golden bell of the clock. And what will happen when the clock strikes? Your face announces that you know. Be patient; let us see if you do.

  —

  “I am being foolish,” said the prince to Ashella on the terrace. “But perhaps I am entitled to foolish, just once in my life. What are you saying?” For the girl was speaking low beside him, and he could not catch her words. “I am saying a spell to bind you to me,” she said.

  “But I am already bound.”

  “Be bound then. Never go free.”

  “I do not wish it,” he said. He kissed her hands and he said, “I do not know you, but I will wed you. Is that proof your spell has worked? I will wed you, and get back for you the rights you have lost.”

  “If it were only so simple,” said Ashella, smiling, smiling. “But the debt is too cruel. Justice requires a harsher payment.”

  And then, in the ballroom, Death struck the first note on the golden bell.

  The girl smiled and she said,

  “I curse you in my mother’s name.”

  The second stroke.

  “I curse you in my own name.”

  The third stroke.

  “And in the name of those that your father slew.”

  The fourth stroke.

  “And in the name of my Master, who rules the world.”

  As the fifth, the sixth, the seventh strokes pealed out, the prince stood nonplussed. At the eighth and the ninth strokes, the strength of the malediction seemed to curdle his blood. He shivered and his brain writhed. At the tenth stroke, he saw a change in the loveliness before him. She grew thinner, taller. At the eleventh stroke, he beheld a thing in a ragged black cowl and robe. It grinned at him. It was all grin below a triangle of sockets of nose and eyes. At the twelfth stroke, the prince saw Death and knew him.

  In the ballroom, a hideous grinding noise, as the gears of the clock failed. Followed by a hollow booming, as the mechanism stopped entirely.

  The conjuration of Death vanished from the terrace.

  Only one thing was left behind. A woman’s shoe. A shoe no woman could ever have danced in. It was made of glass.

  —

  Did you intend to protest about the shoe? Shall I finish the story, or would you rather I did not? It is not the ending you are familiar with. Yes, I perceive you understand that, now.

  I will go quickly, then, for your carriage must soon be here. And there is not a great deal more to relate.

  The prince lost his mind. Partly from what he had seen, partly from the spells the young witch had netted him in. He could think of nothing but the girl who had named herself Ashella. He raved that Death had borne her away but he would recover her from Death. She had left the glass shoe as token of her love. He must discover her with the aid of the shoe. Whomsoever the shoe fitted would be Ashella. For there was this added complication, that Death might hide her actual appearance. None had seen the girl before. She had disappeared like smoke. The one infallible test was the shoe. That was why she had left it for him.

  His ministers would have reasoned with the prince, but he was past reason. His intellect had collapsed as totally as only a profound intellect can. A lunatic, he rode about the city. He struck out at those who argued with him. On a particular occasion, drawing a dagger, he killed, not apparently noticing what he did. His demand was explicit. Every woman, young or old, maid or married, must come forth from her home, must put her foot into the shoe of glass. They came. They had not choice. Some approached in terror, some weeping. Even the aged beggar women obliged, and they cackled, enjoying the sight of royalty gone mad. One alone did not come.

  Now it is not illogical that out of the hundreds of women whose feet were put into the shoe, a single woman might have been found that the shoe fitted. But this did not happen. Nor did the situation alter, despite a lurid fable that some, tickled by the idea of wedding the prince, cut off their toes that the shoe might fit them. And if they did, it was to no avail, for still the shoe did not.

  Is it really surprising? The shoe was sorcerous. It constantly changed itself, its shape, its size, in order that no foot, save one, could ever be got into it.

  Summer spread across the land. The city took on its golden summer glaze, its fetid summer smell.

  What had been a whisper of intrigue, swelled into a steady distant thunder. Plots were being hatched.

  One day, the silk merchant was brought, trembling and grey of face, to the prince. The merchant’s dumbness had broken. He had unburdened himself of his fear at confession, but the priest had not proved honest. In the dawn, men had knocked on the door of the merchant’s house. Now he stumbled to the chair of the prince.

  Both looked twice their years, but, if anything, the prince looked the elder. He did not lift his eyes. Over and over in his hands he turned the glass shoe.

  The merchant, stumbling too in his speech, told the tale of his first wife and his daughter. He told everything, leaving out no detail. He did not even omit the end: that since the night of the banquet the girl had been absent from his house, taking nothing with her—save a young hazel from the garden beneath the tower.

  The prince leapt from his chair.

  His clothes were filthy and unkempt. His face was smeared with sweat and dust… it resembled, momentarily, another face.

  Without guard or attendant, the prince ran through the city toward the merchant’s house, and on the road, the intriguers waylaid and slew him. As he fell, the glass shoe dropped from his hands, and shattered in a thousand fragments.

  There is little
else worth mentioning.

  Those who usurped the city were villains and not merely that, but fools. Within a year, external enemies were at the gates. A year more, and the city had been sacked, half burnt out, ruined. The manner in which you find it now, is somewhat better than it was then. And it is not now anything for a man to be proud of. As you were quick to note, many here earn a miserable existence by conducting visitors about the streets, the palace, showing them the dregs of the city’s past.

  Which was not a request, in fact, for you to give me money. Throw some from your carriage window if your conscience bothers you. My own wants are few.

  No, I have no further news of the girl, Ashella, the witch. A devotee of Satanas, she has doubtless worked plentiful woe in the world. And a witch is long-lived. Even so, she will die eventually. None escapes Death. Then you may pity her, if you like. Those who serve the gentleman below—who can guess what their final lot will be? But I am very sorry the story did not please you. It is not, maybe, a happy choice before a journey.

  And there is your carriage at last.

  What? Ah, no, I shall stay here in the ballroom where you came on me. I have often paused here through the years. It is the clock. It has a certain—what shall I call it—power, to draw me back.

  I am not trying to unnerve you. Why should you suppose that? Because of my knowledge of the city, of the story? You think that I am implying that I myself am Death? Now you laugh. Yes, it is absurd. Observe the twelfth figure on the clock. Is he not as you have always heard Death described? And am I in the least like that twelfth figure?

  Although, of course, the story was not as you have heard it, either.

  The Golden Rope

  ONE

  In the stone house amid the white wood, the woman sat and brooded on a power that only one might give her. She had wooed him long and diligently, and she had given her life over to learning and study that she might commune with him. But, like an unrequited love, so far she had been ignored.

  All around the house the dead trees, a palisade, out-stared the moon. They were a constant reminder of her youth which she had given up, her vitality which had been drained. And yet, tonight, it seemed to her there was a strange stirring in the trees, and in her blood.

  When loud knocking came on her gates, she was not amazed, nor quite calm. Very seldom did any seek admittance here. Those who knew of her—and she had not courted fame—understood her scholarship and disliked it. Others guessed her ambition, and feared her. Presently, her servant entered the room, a tall, dark-skinned man from the East, dressed in silken clothes, and tongueless. He bowed low, then indicated to her, in a gesture language she had taught him, and which none but she and he could comprehend, that a city fellow had sought her door. He was of the lowest urban class, a rogue requiring her aid for his wife who, it seemed, was sick to the death.

  Her normal practice, in such a case, was to dismiss the petitioner without seeing him. Now she instructed her servant to bring the man in. She gave the order with a curious excitement, and took care to compose herself that nothing of her mood should be detectable.

  The man appeared a moment later. By her trained instincts and intelligence the woman told instantly much about him. He was a thief, one of the dregs of the world. That he cared so for his wife’s health that he came seeking a witch implied no love, merely that his wife was some use to him. The woman noted, toe, that her visitor was afraid of her. And that, under its filth, his hair was like new gold.

  “So,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “My wife is with child. The condition does not suit her. I dread she may die.”

  The woman nodded coldly. He would never have known how her pulse had quickened.

  “I understand. Your wife sells her body and brings you a fair wage from the enterprise. You suppose that when she grows big and cumbersome, her customers will dwindle.”

  The man faltered, then smiled at her ingratiatingly.

  “I see I was a fool to try hiding anything from you, my lady. As you say. I find it hard to come by honest work. If we starve, it will do none of us any good. But if you could give me some of your clever herbs, so the trouble goes away—”

  “And this child is yours, you think, that you will be rid of it so freely.”

  “I do not, alas, know.”

  “I know. It is. You are aware,” she said, “I ask a price for any service.”

  He grinned and panted like an eager dog.

  “When she is well, her first month’s wages shall all be yours.” The woman watched him. He grew uneasy. “We would never cheat you.”

  “Tell me, then, what that month’s wage would be.”

  He shuffled, and named a sum.

  The woman waited, concentrating, until she read from him the aura of thought which showed his wife. Though he had made a whore of her, this girl was beautiful.

  The woman nodded again.

  “I think you have halved the amount. No arguments, if you please. I shall be generous to you. I myself will double the coins, and you shall be given such a figure every twenty days. Providing your wife carries to term, and bears.”

  The cutpurse gaped.

  “A wonderful bargain for you,” she said. “You will benefit outrageously by it.”

  “But why—”

  “Once the child is fit to travel, you will bring it here to me.”

  “But—”

  “I will then settle upon you one last payment, to compensate your doleful loss.”

  “But—”

  “Do not dare,” she said, “to question me.”

  He balked. Clearly he was unsure if he was in luck, or if she was simply a lunatic who might renege, then harm him.

  “Or,” she said; “to doubt me.”

  “Ah no, no, my lady.”

  She rose, he cowered.

  “Wait here, and touch nothing. There are safeguards on my property which prove injurious to meddlers. Do you believe me?” His pallor showed he did. “When I return, I will have for you your first payment. Also herbs and powders you must give your wife to strengthen her, so the child is robust.”

  She went from the room and along a passageway. She unlocked, in an unusual manner, a black lacquer door, and passed down a long flight of steps to the vast underground chamber that was her study and her insularium. As her fingers busied themselves in the preparation of those medicines she had prescribed, they trembled slightly.

  Infallibly, she knew a golden rope had been placed in her hands. She had only, with patience and wisdom, to draw it in.

  —

  The child was born, and opened its unfocused eyes on dirt and squalor. Then, if it was even properly aware of such things, came an upheaval, a cessation of warmth, the dim wailing of a woman—someone was sorry to see it go after all. The child cried, then slept. Bundled in its covers it was taken to high gates, and given over to a pair of dark lean hands. Money rang inside a leather bag. As thin snow began to fall, a door thudded shut.

  “A girl,” said the woman. “That is very well. This wisp of hair is dark now, but will change inside a year. She is whole and will be lovely.”

  The world was altered.

  —

  The earliest memory, the first impression, did not linger, was wiped away. Life was this: A beautiful apartment which opened on a large garden. The walls about the garden were very tall; on three sides the stone piles of the house leaned over it. On the fourth a few dead branches, like a handful of white bones, were all that might be glimpsed of any other place. The ceilings of the beautiful apartment were themselves extremely lofty, but they sank a little closer as the years passed, just as the childish bed and chairs and desk were taken away, and adult furniture replaced them. There came to be an exquisite harpsichord, two guitars of dark and blond wood, with ivory frets. Tapestries and paintings came, and hand-painted books, sweeping pleated dresses of pale lemon silk and cream satin and blanched-almond brocade where there had hung little-girl dresses of similar materials and tin
ts. In a box lined in velvet lay some pieces of priceless flawless jewelry, several of an Eastern cast.

  The child, too, had changed, was no longer a child. She was thirteen, the age at which many a damsel of good house might already be contracted if not married. The girl had, however, never seen a man, save in a painting, never heard of one save in a book. She knew they existed, just as lions, wolves, unicorns existed, far beyond the walls, another species in another country. Yet from this same outer wonderland her toys, her furnishings, her books somehow transpired. Everything was delivered as she slept, or taken away as she slept—like magic. Sometimes shocking, and sometimes delightful, yet she was used to it. Magic, as with the apartment, the garden, was an everyday matter.

  And beyond the walls of the house and the garden which divided her from the far-off mythology of the earth? The bones of the trees gave evidence of a waste. No other evidence was awarded her.

  The woman, whom she did not call “Mother” but “my lady,” was the only live thing the young girl saw, or had ever seen. It was a fact, as the ceilings drew lower, the woman became smaller, until she and the girl were almost of the same height. Otherwise, the woman seemed not to change at all. She wore plain clothes, dark and without ornament. Her face was colorless, expressionless. She offered neither love nor friendship, not even the shelter of another personality. Yet it was this woman who, without passion, without enthusiasm of any kind, taught the girl all she had come to know, and brought in to her, by those mysterious nocturnal means, the literature, the musical instruments, that were the accessories and gilding of knowledge; the elegant garments, and the jewels.

  The young girl knew her origins, also. My lady had told her from the first. “You are not the child of my body. You are the child of a man and woman who did not want you. I wanted you, and so you were brought to me. You are named Jaspre, since I sent to your mother powders of jaspre to strengthen her while she carried you. Do not feel any regret or any betrayal. Your natural parents are nothing to you.” And the girl named Jaspre felt nothing. The ideas of parentage, of love, even, were unconvincing, alien to her. In her world, such things did not exist