A Curse of Ash and Embers

by Jo Spurrier

  I hurried back to the cottage, and by the time I drew water for the goat, found a chain in the outbuildings for her tether and carried the basket inside and unpacked it, Mrs Sanford’s scones were a distant memory. I realised then that I hadn’t brought Aleida that hot drink, but when I went to check on her I found her dozing, warm beneath the fur, with the fire crackling beside her and the water simmering. So I made myself a cup of tea and a scone with butter and jam, and then went back to cleaning. It wasn’t even noon yet. Quite enough excitement for one day, I told myself.

  Lunchtime passed, and afternoon tea as well, and in between I pottered around putting the house to rights. I cleaned away the rider’s remains, scooping up chaff and throwing the rags on the fire. Buried in the chaff was a strange contraption of wire, gems and metal discs stamped with strange symbols. When my fingers brushed against it I felt the energy bound up inside — it smarted like a spark from the fire, and left my nerves tingling unpleasantly. Gingerly, I picked it up with some twigs and left it beside the doorstep for my mistress to deal with later.

  Inside, I finished clearing the wreckage from the kitchen and swept the floor clean. I found some clothes I took for Aleida’s shoved into a corner — a skirt and jacket, much mended and dyed to a faded black, along with leather stays just like mine. They were filthy with dirt and what looked like dried blood, and the corset was scratched, like she’d been attacked by some wild beast. I set it all aside for laundry. Next I tried scrubbing at the scorch-marks on the floor but soon gave it up as a bad job; the black streaks looked like they’d been seared right into the stone.

  Of the smashed furniture, only a couple of stools were still usable so long as you were careful not to move much once you were sat upon them. The benches and the trestles and table would need some serious repairs though.

  The cottage was very old, and of a simple design that woke vague memories of the house we’d lived in when Da was still alive, though that was so long ago that I couldn’t remember much at all. The door through which I’d entered the night before was in the middle of the house, with rooms to each side, but at some point the rear half of the hall had been walled off to make the pantry. Remembering the jumble of things all strewn across the floor of the entryway, I decided to sort that out next.

  I opened the front door for light, and sorted through the mess, making a pile of books, and a collection of interesting rocks and crystals, every one as dusty and filthy as the one I’d cleaned that morning. It wasn’t a proper set of shelves that had been torn down, just planks of wood propped on square-cut stones. I took them for salvage from some torn-down building, for they bore fragments of carving. At first the decorations seemed just pretty things, until I found a twisted, demonic face peering out at me. The sight of it made me so uneasy that when I stacked them up to rebuild the shelves I turned it to face the wall. Then I realised that one of the other friezes had a gallows strung with hanging corpses, and the carvings of flowers were all things like foxgloves, belladonna and angel’s trumpet — poisonous things. When I found one with two figures hacking up a corpse with axes I stopped looking too closely at the rest of the stone blocks.

  I lined up the books on the rebuilt shelves, feeling thankful for once that I couldn’t read the letters, and then I turned to the crystals, which I had been saving till last. They were lovely things, pink and purple, yellow and blue and grey, some shifting from one colour to another, some opaque but with such a glassy depth to them that I felt sure that if I stared into them for long enough something would appear. There was an ordinary chunk of grey stone that, when I turned it over, seemed to have been shattered and then all the pieces glued together with a pale, milky rock that rippled with colour and light; and there was a perfectly polished ball as big as my two fists held together, which shimmered with blue and gold when I turned it just so. I lined them all up on a shelf, fussing with them until I was satisfied I’d turned each of them with their best face outwards. I swept the floor too, kicking up so much dust that it gave me a fit of sneezes.

  Then, setting the broom aside, I found myself staring at the bedroom door. Well, I thought, pursing my lips. Lord and Lady know we could use some more plates and cups and such. A goblet of gold can hold water and mint tea as well as fine wine.

  I eased the door open, and crept inside. Despite the enticement of its treasures, this room made my skin crawl. She’s like some dragon from the storybooks, I thought. Holed up in her lair, gloating over all her treasure. But where did it all come from? From what I’ve heard I doubt she came by it through honest means.

  The chest nearest the bed had a cup right on top, set with purple and green stones carved to look like a bunch of grapes. I picked it up carefully, and tried to imagine where it had come from — some grand hall, glittering with mirrors and cut glass, with hundreds of candles scattered around. Ladies in silk dresses, dripping with jewels; handsome, haughty men in crisp suits crusted with embroidery. What would it be like to drink at one of those grand parties? I’d never had wine, just the small beer we brewed at home, but all the stories talked of it. Surely it must taste divine.

  But when I wrapped my hand around the goblet, the cut stones dug into my palm, no matter how I turned it. With a sigh I set it down again. Somehow, that movement started a cascade of coins, heaped up too high for the lid of the trunk to close. Hastily I tried to stop the avalanche of gold and silver, only for a necklace set with a blue stone to fall into my hand.

  The moment my fingertips brushed the stone a wave of gut-wrenching sadness swept over me, the breath whooshed from my lungs and my throat closed over with that feeling that you get when you’ve been crying so hard you feel like you’ll choke on your tears. I thought of the night Ma had told me I was leaving, that I was being sent away, and how hard I’d cried in the darkness after everyone else had gone to sleep, terrified of leaving even though I knew I must. I wasn’t sure I’d ever cried harder in my life than I did that night, but this felt worse; it was a deep, soul-wrenching sadness, an inescapable and undeniable knowing that something precious was lost forever and that nothing would ever be the same.

  Suddenly my hands were shaking like a leaf in a gale, and before I could do a thing about it, while the wave of crushing sorrow was still passing through me, the stone and its fine chain slipped through my fingers and tumbled to the floor.

  I stood there, still as a statue, hands still trembling, my face wet with tears and my throat still choked half-shut. The overwhelming sadness was gone, though I could still feel the effects of it. The breath in my chest hitched and gasped, as though I’d had a fit of sobbing, and I wiped tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand. What in the Lord and Lady’s names just happened? Was it a trap, a curse of some kind that Old Miss Blackbone had left to protect her treasures? Or was it something more?

  The world around me seemed to stretch and warp and then snap back into place, and at once I remembered that this was no story, with a chest of riches for the hero to find. It’s all stolen, I thought, looking around at the gold, the jewels and the chests. Stolen, looted, hoarded, kept as trophies. And the sadness and despair bound up in that sky-blue gem? With a sickening twist of my gut I realised it must be another kind of trophy, a memento of grief and desolation.

  I turned on my heel and marched out of the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind me. I’d rather drink from chipped cups and eat from cracked bowls than take my food and drink from treasures imbued with so much suffering. In fact, I’d rather starve.

  I was working in the garden when I heard Aleida stirring. I’d left a light meal by her bed, just bread and butter with some cheese and smoked sausage, and a scone with jam. It was near the middle of the afternoon, and she came outside to eat it, joining me on the back step.

  The garden had been sorely neglected, but I’d salvaged enough for a pot of soup and was sitting on the step with a board on my knees to cut it all up. Back at home my little brothers and sisters would turn up their noses at vegetables that had been gnawed
by rats and rabbits, but I remembered my time with Ma, long before Lem had come along, before all the little ones had stolen her away from me. Back when we’d been just a starving widow and her child, folks sometimes took pity on us and gave us the rejects from their gardens. If I’d been older I’d have felt the shame of it, I’m sure, but back then I’d loved helping Ma cut the vegetables up, mouth watering at the thought of the soup we’d make from the wilted and chewed-up scraps.

  ‘Is that dinner?’ Aleida said, leaning over to peer into the pot. ‘You’ve been hard at work. I can’t believe you’ve cleared the house out already.’

  I was never sure how to respond to praise. ‘I’ve done about as much as I can inside,’ I said. ‘The table and benches could be salvaged, maybe, but I don’t know anything about working with wood. And most of the crockery is just fit for the trash heap. I . . .’ I felt myself grimacing. ‘I thought we might be able to use some of the things from the other room . . .’

  I trailed off, and Aleida raised her eyebrows. ‘Gyssha’s bedroom?’

  I nodded. ‘But I, I . . .’

  She chewed a mouthful of bread and cheese before she spoke again. ‘Best to leave all that alone, Dee. Gyssha had some rather odd amusements. And she always liked her little mementos.’

  ‘Is it cursed? All that treasure in there, I mean?’

  ‘Might be. This place is covered with little traps and tripwires and curses against anyone who comes sneaking in. It’s going to take me a long time to unravel everything.’

  The thought of more . . . things like the pendant all around me made me shiver, and it was a few moments before I could muster myself to speak again. In the silence, Aleida set her empty plate aside and picked up the contraption I’d dug out from the rider’s body. When I set my knife down for a moment, she picked the blade up and levered the wires apart, and did something to whatever lay within. My ears popped, and there was a smell like thunderstorms and hot iron.

  Aleida tossed the contraption aside and handed the knife back.

  For a moment I couldn’t say anything at all. I didn’t want to know what she’d just done, I decided. It was none of my business. So I reached for the other matter that had been bothering me, instead. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Does the cottage have a bath? Only it’s days now since I’ve had a proper wash.’ After all that time on the dusty roads, and all the cleaning today, I felt truly filthy.

  She shook her head. ‘No bath. But there’s a stream down past the orchard. That’s where I used to go, when I lived here.’ She glanced up at the sky. ‘Best to head down before the sun drops any lower, while the water’s still warm. But I’ll warn you, even at its warmest it’s pretty blessed cold.’

  I bit my lip. There were monsters out there, and the black rider and his construct. The idea of stripping off in an icy stream far from shelter had very little appeal. Aleida must have guessed at my thoughts. ‘I’ll come with you, I’d like to clean up, too. We can keep watch for each other, all right?’

  It wouldn’t be my first choice. In fact, it was a long way from my first choice, but I’d asked for a bath and I wasn’t sure how she’d take it if I turned her down. Who knew when I’d get another chance, anyway? It did seem strange to stop and have a bath at this time of day, but I wasn’t about to argue.

  First, I went inside to fetch a change of clothes and a bar of soap from the pantry, and Aleida called after me. ‘Dee! Bring my wand as well, would you?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I called as I hurried inside.

  I stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen. The fire was out again, and once more the room was as frigid as a winter morning. I growled under my breath as I went shivering to the box bed.

  After my other unpleasant surprises inside the cottage, I tried not to look too closely at what was inside the large wooden cabinet, but I failed utterly. The bed was rumpled and badly needed an airing, but that was no surprise. There was a little shelf that ran around the inside of the cabinet, and upon it were a few pieces of jewellery, some silver rings and a couple of chains, glittering at me in the dark.

  Lying on the rumpled bedclothes was the club I’d seen Aleida wield to banish the ghost in the middle of the night. No, I told myself, not a club. A wand.

  It was hard to think of it as anything but a club, though, its proportions were so grotesque. The head of it was a huge crystal, so short and fat that it was almost square, streaked through with dark grey wisps, like smoke. It was hafted onto the shaft with black wax or pitch and tied down further with leather thongs.

  Outside, she took the wand from me and tucked it away somewhere under the blanket, then stood.

  I looked her over with narrowed eyes. Last night, and early that morning, she’d been doddering on her feet like an invalid, and after facing the black rider she’d seemed even worse.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘What did you do to the fire?’ I said. ‘It’s like an icebox in there again. Did you, I don’t know, suck all the heat out of it, or something?’

  ‘Yep,’ she said, turning away. ‘It’s only a short-term solution, but it’ll keep me on my feet for a little while. So long as I don’t have to do anything else.’

  ‘Anything else? Like, if the rider comes back?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She started walking. ‘Let’s go through the orchard, I haven’t had a proper look at it since I came back.’

  I trailed after her with my bundle of clothes. ‘Uh, do you want me to fetch you something clean to wear?’

  ‘I don’t have anything else,’ she said. ‘Not here. I hid my packs before I came to face Gyssha, and I haven’t been able to go fetch them. I might send you out for them tomorrow.’

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but I didn’t have the energy to argue.

  For all she was steadier on her feet, she still set a slow pace, and it was easy for me to catch up to her, even if her legs were longer than mine. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Yes, Elodie?’

  ‘What are all these trees? I mean, I can see there are apples and pears over there, and here’s an almond and a walnut, but what is this one?’ I pointed at a tree ahead of us, which looked something like a pear tree but not quite — the leaves were serrated at their edges, so much that they seemed frayed, and the bark was all wrong, knotted and knobbly like skin covered with warts.

  Aleida glanced up. ‘That one? Choke-pear. Don’t touch it.’

  ‘What about that one?’ I pointed to a tree on the other side of the path.

  ‘Hearts-blood. It’s a type of apple. Guess what the juice looks like. Go on, guess.’

  ‘Clear spring water?’

  She chuckled. ‘Don’t touch that one, either.’

  ‘Melly Sanford told me that their mule broke into the orchard and Old Miss Blackbone turned him blind,’ I said. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Might be,’ Aleida said. ‘Or it might be the poor dumb beast ate the wrong thing. As likely to be one as the other.’

  The trees made me uneasy. The choke-pear wasn’t the only one that looked diseased, and others were frankly menacing. One of them, a huge, gnarled and twisted thing at the heart of the orchard, looked as though it had never been pruned. Aleida stopped to look it over, scowling, and then set out again, circling well around it as though to stay out of reach, though I could see the remains of an older path that cut much closer under the low, sweeping branches. ‘Stay well clear of that one, Dee.’

  I wasn’t game to ask why. ‘What did Miss Blackbone use these for?’

  ‘Well, some of them are medicinal, if you prepare them the right way, or work the right spells. But a lot of them are just poisons. Gyssha liked her poisons,’ she added with an icy chill.

  ‘Will you get rid of them?’ I asked.

  Aleida stopped again, and I wondered if I’d just put my foot in my mouth. But she just stood, her head tipped back as she gazed up at the trees. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think I was called back here to destroy all this. Gyssha didn
’t plant them all, you know. Some of these trees are older than her — much, much older. It’s not for me to tear down what others have built.’

  Past the orchard, the ground sloped downward, in a little valley with a stream at the bottom, exactly like she had said. There was a pool just right for bathing in, with a little dam of rocks built up to trap the water, and some larger ones scattered around to soak up the sun and dry wet skin.

  I hung back, expecting my mistress to go first. Instead, she sat herself on a large rock, wrapping the blanket around her. ‘You first,’ she said. ‘I need a rest.’

  ‘As you wish, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to be quick.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said. ‘That water’s blessed cold.’

  She sat, not with her back to me exactly, but with her shoulders twisted away and her head held high, scanning the hills and forests around us. It was a pretty spot, I grant you, with velvety green grass running down to the edge of the stream. The far slope was a little gentler than the one we’d come down and the ground was clear for several dozen yards before a dense forest took over. I couldn’t help but think that anyone or anything could be up there, hidden in those trees, and I wondered if Kian was still in this neck of the woods. I reminded myself that no one would dare spy on a witch out here, not after the tales I’d heard about Old Miss Blackbone; and I sat down to take my boots off. ‘What if that fellow comes back again? Or if one of those creatures comes stumbling by?’

  Aleida cleared her throat, and pointed across the field to a stand of trees in the middle distance. I squinted where she pointed — at first I couldn’t figure what she was looking at. But then my eyes picked out a silhouette under the tallest of the trees, something dark and hulking. Then I saw the horns, and recoiled with a yelp. It was the bull-headed thing that had destroyed the rider, sitting patiently under the tree like a sentry. ‘Lord and Lady . . .’

  ‘It’s just a construct, Dee. Think of it like a big doll.’