Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  But today I don’t want to stand out. I don a dark pair of knee-length trousers and my sturdiest boots, knowing I’ve got five miles of walking to reach Raven’s keep. I’d trade the corset for one of Pa’s shirts if my ma weren’t sewing in one corner of my little bedroom. Instead, I settle for leaving it loose. Since its fastenings and trim are bright red, I pull on my favorite leather jacket, soft as butter from being hard-worn by former owners, and lace it close over my breasts so it hides the bits of color. My black hair suits the situation, but still I twist it up behind my head and pin it to keep it out of my face. Half a dozen spirals tumble down.

  Crossing the room, I kiss Mama’s round, warm cheek. She smells of bread yeast and verbena hand lotion. “See you in a while, Ma.”

  I don’t meet her gaze as she admonishes, “Don’t stay too late, Pearl Esther. I’ve got your favorite supper on.”

  The smell of chicken bones and rosemary simmering for soup stock is almost my undoing—that and the imagining of Ma’s face when I don’t come home in time for dumplings.

  But I step out into the drizzle-gray morning and march across the field. I hope that Ma’s still minding her sewing as I duck behind the tumbledown barn at the line of trees on the other side of the field. Here I’ve stashed a pack with lunch provisions and the only thing we have that might be called a weapon—Pa’s pearl-handled letter-opener. I was reluctant to take it, knowing if I don’t return, it’s just one more piece of Pa that my ma has lost. But Ma’s only got one good kitchen knife, and they’re costly to replace.

  Shouldering the pack, I start out again. A more sensible girl might have saved such a quest for summer. In early spring the trees are bare, leaving the ground beneath exposed to gazes from above, and there’s a chill dampness that goes right to your bones. But it’s a thing I’ve made up my mind to, and Ma always said I’m determined as the skillet is black.

  I glance back once at our cottage, squat and cozy and snug, smoke curling from the chimney. I imagine Ma still at her sewing, humming softly now, not even mindful she’s doing it.

  My throat tightens like corset strings, and I spin on my heel toward the forest.

  The Thief

  It’s not long before my jacket’s gone into my pack and sweat drips between my breasts and shoulder blades. I’d thought to keep to the forest and stay off the road, but I soon realize at this rate I won’t reach the keep before dark.

  When I’m even with the mill, I peer out of the trees and down the road in either direction. A lone pedal cart rattles lazily toward me, and I slip behind the trunk of an oak tree. It’s the baker, Sully, off to market with his cart full of pastries and Ma’s fresh bread.

  After he passes, I step onto the road and continue on my way, keeping near the edge just in case.

  I must be lost in thought, because as I round a bend in the road, there’s no warning before a voice speaks up behind me.

  “You’re awful far from home, Miss Pearl.”

  I turn, startled to find the mayor striding toward me. He’s never used my real name before.

  His eyes don’t even try to avoid dropping to the top laces of my corset, which are loose enough to show the curves of my breasts, glistening with sweat. The sheer black cap sleeves do nothing to ease my sense of standing half-naked before him.

  “Not running away, I hope?”

  He smiles in a way that makes my insides curl, his hand smoothing stringy locks of grizzled hair over his bald spot.

  “Running away, no,” I breathe. My voice turns traitor by sounding hurried and frightened.

  “I should hope not. You’d be sorely missed.” He steps closer to me, and I can’t help taking a tiny step back. “Shall I accompany you wherever you’re going? To market, perhaps?”

  I glance behind him, frowning as a troubling question rises. “What are you doing out here all by yourself, Mayor?”

  He stares, the smile frozen on his undertaker’s face. “Out for a little spring air,” he replies, folding his hands behind his back.

  He’s followed me. Somehow I know this. The same way you sometimes know someone’s got bad news to share, before they speak a word.

  “But by the by, I’ve something to say to ye, Pearl.” He hooks his fingers in his belt loops, squinting down at me through his eyepiece.

  Dread rises up like a dark angel. “I can’t talk now, Mayor,” I blurt. “I’m late for meeting Ida.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “Now, Miss Pearl, I saw Ida packing boxes of greens for market not fifteen minutes ago. She said she didn’t know what you were up to today.”

  He doesn’t seem to notice—or maybe doesn’t care—that he’s just let slip our meeting isn’t by chance. Maybe he figures one lie’s good for another.

  “And on top of all that, I wish you’d finally call me Finn. I’ve known you all these years, since you were a babe in your mama’s arms. Your father and I were friends.”

  My eyes flash at this—I can tell by the startled expression on his face. “If you were my pa’s friend, he wouldn’t be dead,” I snap.

  The smarmy smile finally gives way. “Why would you say such a thing, Pearl?”

  “Everyone knows you sent him to the mines because—because—”

  Admitting I know he wanted me for a wife gives me a sick feeling, like he’s gotten into my bloomers. My face burns with anger and shame.

  “Now you look here,” he says, his voice low and dangerous. He steps forward, grabbing my arm, and I cry out in protest.

  He glances around and I know why. He’s looking for someplace private, and he finds it—a shed in an empty field beside the road. He drags me into the grass, bruising me, as I fight his grip and wear myself out with struggling. He’s taller than me and strong, and I don’t have a prayer. We reach the shed and he shoves me against it, pressing close, his weight plumping my breasts and forcing them higher. His hand comes up and he squeezes one, and I give a yelp of outrage.

  His hand gropes up the outside of my leg and hip, and finally I remember Pa’s letter-opener, which I slipped into a pocket at the start of my journey. My arms are pinned alongside my body until his groping becomes more determined. While he works his fingers into the waist of my trousers, my hand on the opposite side makes it into the pocket.

  The mayor gives a shout of pain and I watch the blood well, filling a gash that runs from temple to chin.

  But I don’t watch for long. As his hands fly to his face, I shove him hard, and his backside strikes the earth. I shoot away like a rabbit.

  “You’ll not leave your ma to mourn you, Ciara,” he shouts after me. “You’ll be back, and I’ll forgive you…as soon as you’ve paid for what you’ve done.”

  —

  By the time I stop running, Raven’s tower looms before me. I keep to the trees as long as I can, but I have to leave cover to reach the moat. I’m counting on the jumble of colors and shapes to hide me if I keep my movements small, and on Raven to remain in the tower until nightfall.

  I’ve only seen this colorful mountain from a distance up to now. As I draw closer, my heart sinks like a stone tossed into the millpond, exiled from light on a whim. His collection curves in a perfect circle around the tower, and it’s high as my head.

  “I’m going to need you, Pa,” I murmur.

  Clocks, windup toys, bric-a-brac. Pieces of mirror, machine cogs, bent silverware. Mateless shoes, porcelain doll heads, swatches of bright fabric. No order to any of it. Just heap upon senseless heap of items plucked from context.

  I know how they feel. What in the name of the Maker am I doing here? What do I hope to gain from such a quest? I’ve broken loose from my place in the world, I know it, sure as I know that if I do make it back home, I’m never going to be the same.

  Taking a deep breath, I blow out the hopelessness curling like chimney smoke around my heart.

  I try to think like Raven. It was bold, stealing that fist of quartz. It had lain on Mama’s sill for a year; she liked the way it gleamed in the moonlight. One evening
when the window stood open, the fresh, early spring breeze wafting into the room, the rock had vanished while both of us were sleeping. Raven avoids folk, so it must have truly caught his eye. Winked a challenge from the windowsill as he flew over the house. Everyone knows crows like a bit of shiny as much as any fine lady.

  The evidence is all around me.

  Raven took a risk with Mama’s stone, so it isn’t likely to be laying atop one of these piles for any passerby to ogle, is it? Or could be a shameless thief with a reputation as a baby stealer doesn’t worry overmuch about passersby.

  Stalling is what I’m doing.

  I decide the most sensible course is to follow the moat round the keep—first outside, then in—and rule out the possibility of the stone having been tossed haphazard onto the pile and, due to the roughly round shape, having rolled down one side.

  Gripping the hilt of Pa’s knife, I start my first circuit.

  Picking my way over glittering debris, I wonder how the crow-man keeps it so clean. As I was taught, this pile’s been accumulating for years, yet everything sparkles and shines like it was stolen yesterday.

  I creep along the edge, my eyes working over the chaotic ridgeline. For a long while I feel like a fool for ever thinking this was something I could do alone, but with each step, my eyes get better at picking out the right size, shape, and color. When I arrive back at my starting point I begin again, intending to use my newly trained vision more carefully in this second circuit.

  Excitement percolates in my gut. I feel alive in a way I haven’t before. Far from the shelter of my mama’s roof, out where harm can find me, if the Maker wills it.

  My head and my heart get so occupied with this new feeling, I don’t realize they’ve dropped communication with my feet until my boot tip strikes a tankard. I swear under my breath as it skitters toward the hillside. This marks the end of its short flight, but the impact looses a small slide, and a moment later I’m up to my ankles in Raven’s spoils.

  “Well, little thief.”

  In my haste to turn, I stumble toward the man standing behind me—a dandy of a fellow in a fine black suit and top hat. He’s got a long-barreled pistol pointed right at my chest.

  “You’re not the first to try,” he says. “Nor the first to find it’s not as easy as it looks.” He smiles at me like we’re having a chat down at the village tavern. He’s a well-formed man, with short chestnut hair and a close-shaved jaw.

  “Who are you?” I demand, but my heart’s pumping the blood at my ears so that I can hardly hear my own voice.

  “You’ve got pluck, expecting an answer to such a question in your position. For that I’ll tell you I’m Wilkes, the manservant here.”

  “Manservant?”

  “I wait upon Master Raven. He doesn’t take kindly to thieves.”

  “Ha!” I bark. “Funny thing, that. But I’m no thief. He’s got something that belongs to me.”

  His smile gets more of a curl to it, and my heart doesn’t like this one bit. “That may be,” he replies. His eyes move slowly over me, the same way the mayor’s did, but for some reason I don’t feel like ants are crawling under my skin. “You’ve got something more than most folk around here, and that’s something as will interest my master.” He waves the gun. “Move.”

  “Move where?” I ask, wishing my voice sounded less like I feel.

  “To the bridge.”

  I swallow. “And if I won’t?”

  He pulls back the hammer of his pistol and my breath freezes in my chest. “I won’t shoot you.” He points the pistol at the sky now. “But if I fire this weapon, he’ll come. If you want to get there under your own power, you’ll do as I say. And you’ll hand that blade over to me.” He gestures at Pa’s letter-opener.

  I glare at him. “I’ll go with you, but you can’t have that.”

  He holds out a gloved fist. “If Master releases you, you’ll have it back. You have my word.”

  If Master releases you.

  I step toward him and lay the knife across his palm. He rubs a thumb over the handle. “You have a name, little thief?”

  The way he says this, combined with the way his thumb moves over my knife, makes my breath stick a little. It occurs to me that in addition to being well formed, he has a rich, full voice and is uncommonly handsome. I clear my throat and reply, “Pearl.”

  Again the corners of his mouth lift. “Well then, Pearl. After you.”

  I trudge toward the bridge with him following. As we cross the moat, I study the lines of the keep’s entryway, so high that three men upon each other’s shoulders could pass through, but narrow enough to require single file. A large clock is embedded in the wall above the door. I watch it long enough to figure out that either time has stopped or it has.

  The door swings open with a succession of loud clicks, and I hesitate before it.

  “Go on,” orders Wilkes.

  Inside, the door closes again behind us, and I see it’s manipulated not by a person, but by levers and gears. The hall that welcomes us is about as gloomy as I’d expect, but like the treasures outside, it’s not dingy or dusty. The space is lit by a crazy assortment of lamps—various colors of bulbs in wire cages, some mounted on what look like pipes, and others on whimsical lamps fashioned to look like animals or insects. Some are fitted with spinning tops with little figures—tiny people and animals, stars and hearts—powered by the heat of the lamp.

  “Wilkes?”

  I don’t see the source of the deep voice at first, but then a shadow shifts into the room through a doorway at the back. I hold my breath as the figure moves, slow and deliberate, into the lamplight.

  He’s both more and less than what I imagined. Less of a monster…yet my heart races. The goosebumps rise along my bare arms and prick the back of my neck.

  The dark wings have their effect, tips brushing the floor while the upper joints rise up higher even than his head. The satiny feathers look real to me, but I can see that the frame supporting them and binding them to his body is not of bone, but metal.

  From the neck up he could be any man. His face is framed by wavy hair the same color as my own, and at his crown rests some sort of eyepiece—a small magnifying scope whose services are apparently not required for greeting visitors. His marble-white flesh looks smooth to the touch, but sinuous muscles work just below the surface. His bare chest is crossed by a complicated pattern of black leather straps connected by metal buckles, perhaps a system for supporting the enormous wings. Over the spot where his heart would be, two straps join at an angle, and the disk at the joint is a clock. The rest of him is concealed by dark, close-fitting trousers and boots.

  “I’ve brought you a pearl, sir,” says Wilkes from behind me. “A thief I caught outside.”

  He steps closer, and I hold my breath. His eyes move over me in the same way that he entered the room: slow and deliberate.

  “Thief?”

  I clench my hands into fists, gripping my courage. “I’m not a thief,” I insist, but my voice wavers. “You’ve taken something that belongs to me, and I’ve come to take it back.”

  Part of what’s got my heart hammering like a steam engine is the way he looks at me, like he’s trying to see my insides. It doesn’t help any that his eyes are so dark the center is almost a perfect circle of blackness.

  “Bring her,” he says, turning and striding out of the room by the same door he entered.

  I glance at Wilkes and he waves me forward.

  “Where are we going?” I demand.

  “To his workshop.”

  There’s a pulse of excitement he’s managed to muffle behind this straightforward answer. In case this isn’t enough, he adds, “Master Raven likes to understand how things work.”

  The Puzzle Box

  We pass through a corridor lit by more of the strange lamps, most notably an octopus with an arm span of a dozen feet and a large green lightbulb for a head. A clock is mounted just under the bulb, and as it strikes the hour, the arms beg
in to adjust their position along the wall, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of grinding gears.

  Wilkes catches me eyeing it and says, “Master makes them all himself.”

  “Who is Master?” I reply, fear sharpening the edges of my voice. “Where does he come from? Who made him like that?”

  “Same as makes us all, Pearl. The Maker.”

  “You mean to say he was born like that?”

  “Are any of us as we were when we first separated from our mothers’ bodies?”

  This sounds like something my pa would say, and is not at all the sort of chat I want to have right now.

  “What makes him do it?” I demand. “Why does he steal things?”

  “Master Raven acquires objects for his inventions. Cast-off things, or things the owner will not long miss.”

  “Ha,” I grunt, “and what would a silly old crow-man who has no use for other living souls know about that?”

  Wilkes follows me down the corridor, so he can’t see it’s not only anger that’s choking me up. But neither can I see what he thinks of my answer.

  At the end of the corridor we climb a dizzying number of steps that wind upward like a corkscrew. We rise through a hole in the floor into the “workshop.”

  Workbenches line the walls, and every surface is covered with what look like machines in various states of repair or assembly. There are heaps of “acquired” objects up here as well, and I steal a quick look around the room for Ma’s stone.

  The tower has but one large window fitted with amber-tinted panes, so it’s only moderately brighter than the rooms below. More lamps range around the perimeter, but these mostly use clear lightbulbs so it feels less like being in a submersible—or at least what I’d imagine a submersible to feel like. Near the window is a tall easel holding a stack of parchment. Symbols and numbers and diagrams have been scratched over almost every inch of the first sheet. I notice now that many sheets, similarly scrawled upon, have been hung along the walls. Some of the diagrams seem to be carefully labeled drawings of Raven himself.