19
In the days that followed, I sometimes felt like I was dreaming.
All my life, I had known I would marry the Gentle Lord, and all my life, I had expected it to be a horror and a doom. I had never thought that I would know love at all, much less in his arms. Now that every hour was a delight, I couldn’t quite believe it was real.
We still looked for an answer. We still hunted through the library and prowled the corridors. But it seemed less like a quest and more like a game. And we played in that house. We chased each other through the rose garden, hiding and seeking in turns; we built castles in a room full of sand; I made him sit in the kitchen while I tried to cook for him and set the pans on fire.
And I was his delight and he was mine. I had read love poems when studying the ancient tongues, though I had never sought them out like Astraia; I had learnt the rhythm of the words and phrases, but I had always thought them empty decorations. They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.
But now I knew that every mad word was true. For Ignifex was still himself, still mocking and wild and inhuman, terrible as a legion arrayed for war; but in my arms he became gentle, and his kisses were sweeter than wine.
From time to time, the bell still rang, and he would leave me to speak with whatever desperate fool had summoned him. But when he returned, he no longer told me what capricious bargain he had struck, and he seemed tired, not laughing at all the world. So I took him in my arms and kissed him without asking, holding back my fears as well as hopes.
From time to time, I thought of Astraia, of Father, of my mission. Of Damocles and my mother and everyone who had suffered. But with the mirror shattered, there was no way to see Astraia anymore, no remotest chance to guess what she was thinking of me. And now that I knew Ignifex was a captive as well, I couldn’t wish vengeance on him.
And sometimes a fall of light, the creak of a door—some little, ordinary thing—would start the crackling in my ears, and I would speak to Ignifex in words of flame. But he would never tell me what I said.
“We’re receiving messages from the Kindly Ones and you won’t tell me what they are?” I demanded one afternoon. We were in a musty room with shelf upon shelf of enameled clockwork birds, and when Ignifex wound one up, the jerky motion of its red-and-blue wings made the strange words tumble from my lips until Ignifex pressed me against the shelves and kissed me thoroughly. There was now a cramp in my neck and I did not feel patient.
Ignifex turned away, flung the offending bird to the ground, and crushed it under his boot.
“It’s not ‘messages,’ it’s always the same thing.”
“Then it can’t hurt me to hear, if you’ve survived fifteen repetitions.”
He didn’t look at me. “Do you know why I survive the darkness, no matter how it burns me?”
“Because you’re an immortal demon lord?”
“Because I forget. I always hear a voice in the darkness, saying words that burn me alive. I survive because I always make myself forget that voice as soon as it speaks. But you, my dear Pandora—” He turned on me with a vicious smile. “You are not half so good at forgetting. So I will have to do it for you.”
He whirled and strode out of the room. I stared at the remains of the bird, shattered enamel and twisted springs, and the colorful wreckage made warmth flicker at my temples until I ran after him. I didn’t want to risk an attack when he was not there to break me out of it.
After that, no matter how I begged, goaded, or kissed him, he wouldn’t drop another hint about what I said in words of flame, or what voice spoke to him in the darkness.
Even so, the days were like a dream of delight. But the nights were different. Ignifex was still haunted by the darkness, and he still slept in my arms. And sometimes I slept easily beside him, but more often, I lay awake for hours, staring at the shadows in the corners of the room. At night even more than in the day, I felt as if the past were beneath my fingertips, trembling between one breath and the next, a bottomless well that would drown me if I blinked.
When I did fall asleep, I always dreamt of the garden and the sparrow. Leaves swirled around me, turning to sparks as they flew through the air. I tried to catch a handful; they crackled in my grasp and crumbled to gritty ash.
One is one and all alone, said the sparrow, and ever more shall be so.
“Please,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
The dream always changed then. Sometimes I glimpsed a blue-eyed prince. I was sure he was Shade, for I would know those eyes anywhere—but though I could never quite remember his face when I woke, I remembered that it was always full of life. He shouted, wept, and laughed: he was never calm and blank like Shade had usually been.
But then he had been free and sane, not a prisoner for nine hundred years and driven to desperate measures.
Sometimes I saw the castle torn down, stone by stone, with wind and fire. Sometimes I saw a wooden door swing open and the Children of Typhon crawl out. Sometimes I saw roses wilting into shriveled brown heaps that burst into flames.
Until one night I did not dream of the sparrow at all. I dreamt that I walked into the room of Ignifex’s dead wives, and there lay Astraia with the rest of them.
I knew I was dreaming, and I knew that nightmares always ended with the moment of pure horror, that just when the dream became impossible to bear, it was over. As I stared at Astraia’s pale face, my throat tight, I knew that I would wake in a moment.
But I didn’t. I stared at my dead sister until I began to sob, and then I cried for what seemed like an eternity, until at last my tears ran dry. Still I did not wake, and by that time I had forgotten I was dreaming. I only knew that I had failed my sister, and that for my punishment I must live with that sin forever. I lay down beside her—the cold, clammy skin was horrible to touch, but I curled closer—and I stared into the darkness and waited.
And waited.
I cried again, and stopped. The tears itched and dried on my face. And I waited, until my vision had faded away, leaving me in total darkness, and I could not feel my sister or the stone slab, only cold all around me.
Finally Ignifex shook me awake. I huddled shaking in his arms, and would not tell him what I had dreamt. All my life had been veined with hatred; I didn’t want to remind us both of the feud between us and maybe awake it again.
But after that night, I couldn’t entirely ignore the knowledge that it was still there.
“Our sky is the dome of that room, right?” I said one evening.
“More or less,” said Ignifex without looking up.
We were in a room with wood-paneled walls and a great fireplace; the entire floor was covered with puzzle pieces that drifted as if moved by invisible currents. The only piece of furniture was a plump maroon couch with gold tassels; I lay draped across the couch while Ignifex sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to assemble the puzzle.
I was trying to read a book about astronomy, but half the words were burnt out. I wanted to know why the Kindly Ones had censored thoughts of the sky and the ancients’ theory of celestial spheres.
“But no one’s ever seen you looming over the horizon,” I said thoughtfully, watching his shoulders move. For once he was not wearing his coat, and the firelight glowed through the white fabric of his shirt.
Ignifex lunged forward, hair swinging, to catch a drifting piece with one finger. He drew it back and fitted it into a corner between two other pieces; it trembled a moment and then was still.
“You would know better than I,” he said, tapping a finger thoughtfully against what he’d assembled. So far it showed part of a castle.
“And when you’re in that room, it looks like a model instead of the whole world. What would happen if you dropped a rock on it?”
He finally looked up, the firelight flickering in his eyes. “And they call me cold-blooded.”
“I wouldn’t do it, I just want to know how this house works.”
“
I’m not sure even the Kindly Ones know that.”
“Most of the other rooms have windows,” I said, as much to myself as him. “And I can always see the sky through them. They’re inside Arcadia and Arcadia is inside that room, so . . . that’s the only real place, isn’t it?”
“Or that room is the only place that isn’t real. Does it matter?” He caught a piece that had drifted up from the floor and twisted it between his fingers.
I leaned forward. “What was that box?”
“What box?”
I poked his head. “You know, the one I picked up and then you bore down on me like all the Furies rolled into one.”
“Oh, that box.” He stared at the fire, still twirling the puzzle piece in one hand. “I don’t know.”
“More of your philosophy?”
“No, when I . . . first was, they told me that if I opened the box, it would be the end.”
Upon the box were written the words “AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT.” That was a Hermetic saying: was the box too, like the house, a Hermetic working?
“The end of you?” I asked slowly. “Or Arcadia?”
“They did not specify, and shockingly, I did not put their warning to the test.” He smiled up at me and slipped the puzzle piece into my hand. “This world’s already seen enough Pandoras, don’t you think?”
I looked at the puzzle piece. It showed stones, and lying against them either a rose petal or a drop of blood. Or perhaps a flame.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously.
“It’s part of this house, so who knows?” The firelight glinted in his eyes as he looked up at me.
I rolled my eyes. “You are entirely too pleased with your own sayings sometimes. I suppose you even have a quip prepared for your death?”
“Are you planning to find out?”
I trailed my fingers through his hair. His scalp was warm and dry beneath my fingertips. It startled me, as it still did sometimes, that he was solid and alive; that this wild, unnamable creature was not a phantom but sat still beneath my hand. That the demon who ruled all our world was mine.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Have you come up with any reasons why I shouldn’t?”
He sat up straighter and kissed me. I leaned forward, kissing him back, until I lost my balance and we both tumbled to the ground, with me landing on top of him.
All around us, loose puzzle pieces flew into the air as lightly as feathers. Once airborne, they did not fall but began a slow, stately swirl about the room, like a formal dance. From the corner of my eye, I saw the ragged portion that Ignifex had assembled was dissolving too, little castle bits lifting up into the air, their collective meaning forgotten. Something—half memory, half guess—niggled at my mind.
Then Ignifex reached up to touch my face. I leaned down to kiss my husband, and thought no more of puzzles.
I wanted to forget. I wanted so much to think only of Ignifex, to make his house into my home. Most of all, I did not want to remember I was on a mission to avenge my mother and save my world.
But more and more, I thought of Astraia. And Mother, and Father, and Aunt Telomache. I thought of Elspeth’s wormwood smile and the one time I had spied her weeping. I thought of all the other people in the village, who must always be afraid that this year the tithe wouldn’t work; of the Resurgandi, who had labored for two hundred years and put their trust in me; of Damocles and Philippa and the people screaming in my father’s study.
Who was I, to consider my happiness more important?
“You’re solemn today,” said Ignifex one morning. We were in a large room with white marble floors and walls covered in ivy. The ceiling was all tree branches, with one window at the center. Under the diffuse circle of sunlight pooled a thick red rug; we had brought books and a pot of tea, but instead of doing research, I ended up resting my chin on a pile of books and staring at the ivy, while Ignifex sipped tea and stroked my hair.
“It’s autumn,” I said. “I can see the trees turning through the windows.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“It’s going to be the Day of the Dead soon,” I said.
“Sounds gruesome.”
“It’s a festival.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “The only one that gentry and peasants share. We celebrate Persephone going down to Hades for the winter, they remember Tom-a-Lone getting his head cut off by Nanny-Anna. Everybody makes grave offerings, then there’s a great sacrifice to Hades and Persephone, and that night there’s a bonfire and they burn a straw Tom-a-Lone dressed up in ribbons.”
I had always loathed the trip to the graveyard. Astraia and I were bundled into our best black outfits, stiff with ribbons and lace, and we would kneel for an hour as Father and Aunt Telomache burned incense and recited endless prayers together, their faces nauseatingly pious. Astraia would sniffle through the whole affair, while I would stare at the carved words “THISBE TRISKELION” and carefully not ask Father why he didn’t just make love to Aunt Telomache atop the grave and have done with it.
“Charming way to honor a god,” said Ignifex.
“Well, he’s already dead. He needs a pyre.”
Ignifex raised his eyebrows questioningly.
I sighed. “I suppose a demon wouldn’t pay attention to the hedge-gods. The story goes, Tom was the son of Brigit, who’s a bit like Demeter and Persephone combined. She rules everything underground, seeds and the dead alike. Anyway, Tom fell in love with Nanny-Anna, the hedge-goddess who dances with the birds. But Brigit was jealous; she didn’t want to share her son with a lover. So she told Nanny-Anna that Tom was mortal like his father—true—but that if his lover cut his head off, he’d turn into a god. Which was also true, but what she didn’t tell her was that he would turn into a dead god, trapped in the darkness beneath the earth. So that’s why he’s called Tom-a-Lone: because he’s sundered from his love, Nanny-Anna, except for the Day of the Dead, when he can meet her from sunset to sunrise. Though really the name doesn’t make sense, since he still has Brigit and all the dead to keep him company.” I shrugged. “The scholars say it’s a corruption of the story about Adonis and Aphrodite, but the peasants swear up and down he’s real as Zeus. Anyway, that’s why the day is for mourning the dead but the night is for drinking and lovers.”
Father always forbade us from attending the “vulgar celebrations,” but Astraia and I had snuck out of the house every year since we were thirteen. And Father never noticed, because he always spent that night with Aunt Telomache.
Ignifex seemed quite taken with the story; he stared off into the air, very still, then rubbed his forehead as if it pained him. Brigit’s advice to Nanny-Anna was not unlike the mocking bargains of the Kindly Ones; I wondered if he had handed out a similar fate to some foolish girl.
My own memories were pulling at me. I remembered Astraia laughing as we danced around the bonfire with all the village—even the people who normally disdained the hedge-gods joined in. Last year we had slipped back home hand in hand, and Astraia had whispered, I don’t mind this day so much when I’m with you.
“I want to visit her grave,” I said.
“Hm?”
“My mother.” The words felt awkward, but I made myself meet his eyes. “I want—I need to visit her grave. I’ve always been a terrible daughter.”
I did not say, And now I am making love to her killer, but I was sure Ignifex knew I was thinking it.
“You’re not supposed to leave this house,” he said. “That is a rule.”
“There’s nowhere I can go but this house,” I pointed out. “Anyway, what about the Heart of Air? That was about as outside as anywhere in Arcadia.”
“I was with you then.”
“So, take me to the graveyard. We don’t have to go on the Day of the Dead, just . . . soon.”
His fingers drummed against a stack of books. From outside, the wind moaned softly.
“Please,” I said.
Abruptly he smiled. “Then I will take you. Since you ask so ve
ry nicely.”
“Thank you,” I said, and kissed his cheek.
Ignifex kept his word: he took me only a few hours later, when the sun glinted high in the sky and the parchment around it glowed a honey-gold that put its gilt rays to shame.
“Get whatever you want for an offering,” he said, so I hunted through the house until I found candles and a bottle of wine. Ignifex took out an ivory key and unlocked a white door that I had never seen before. On the other side of it lay the graveyard; I went through it, and found myself stepping in the main gate. Before us a jumble of tombstones sprouted up in ragged rows, from plain little slab markers to statues and miniature shrines twice as large as a man.
Mother’s tomb lay near the back of the graveyard. I could have walked there in my sleep, and it did feel like I was dreaming, to stride there in clean daylight with the Gentle Lord at my side. The air was crisp, and the wind blew in ragged gusts that smelled faintly of smoke; the red-gold leaves swirled about us and crackled under our boots. Above us, the holes in the sky yawned like open tombs, but I was growing used to them. Instead, my back crawled with the fear that human eyes could see us, that all the world was waiting behind the tombstones to leap out and condemn me for my impiety. I looked around again and again, but though I saw no one, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
My mother’s was not the largest of the tombs, but it was elegant: a stone canopy sheltered a marble bed on which lay a statue of a shrouded woman, so delicately carved that you could see the lines of her face through the gauzy folds. On the side of the bed was carved “THISBE TRISKELION,” and below it the verse—in Latin, since Father was such a scholar—“IN NIHIL AB NIHILO QUAM CITO RECIDIMUS.”
From nothing into nothing how swiftly we return.
I knelt and set out the candles. Ignifex, standing beside me, lit them with a snap of his fingers, then stuck his hands in the pockets of his long dark coat. For the first time that I had known him, there was something stiff and awkward in the way he stood.
“You look like a scarecrow,” I said. “Kneel down and give me the corkscrew.”
Cruel Beauty Page 18