Ash was mesmerised, watching this thing of awful beauty. It tipped silently towards them on angel’s wings, its inhuman face hungry with the taste for blood. The pale wings tipped diagonally at the height of its arc like knives through the air, wings angling downwards towards them and their carriage. The black, slanted eyes were suddenly clearly visible in the moonlight and Ash could see the carrior looking right at their faces.
“Get away from the windows!”
Seconds later, the giant talons crashed through the glass, shattering the window and Vanita screamed.
Silence again. The foot had pulled out as quickly as it had come, and they could hear nothing of the owl’s silent winging, or calculating mind, so much cleverer than other carriors. Tentatively, Ash kept the others behind her so that both her and Derrick were in front of Vanita and leaned closer to the still in-tact window for another look.
It was lower now, lower but coming in again mercilessly fast and quiet – so quiet! – as it swooped without flapping straight towards Ash’s face. Then, at the last minute, its snowy feathers covered its face and wings seemed to fold in on themselves, hoisting up from the joint as though pulled by an invisible puppeteer’s string. Then the owl flapped its mighty wings and soared up out of view, sending a gust of wind across that rocked the coach.
“What’s it doing?”
A bloodcurdling scream cut the night and the sound of already-broken glass, as the giant talons shot through the other window and grabbed Vanita around the head, face, neck, shoulders.
“No!”
Ash lunged for her sister as the owl made to pull her out of the coach, skin crawling at the scaly feel of those murderous talons, like dragon’s skin. Vanita screamed again as the creature half-pulled her through the jagged window up to her waist, with Ash pulling in the other direction.
“Hang on I’m coming!” Over her shoulder, Ash barely saw Derrick hoist himself out the second window and hoist himself up and out of view. With the owl tethered to the carriage by its half-caught prey, he was going to aim at it from on top of the roof and try shoot it down.
An ear-piercing shriek and Ash screamed as she and Vanita jolted further out the window as one of Derrick’s arrows found its mark. The owl looked furious, flapping and trying to twist Vanita out of the window, the metal spike of something sticking out of its one wing. Vanita had gone heart-sickeningly quiet. Then, with another shriek, Ash almost let go of Vanita as the owl suddenly let go, screaming and in the moonlight, Ash could see the glinting metal spike of an arrow sticking out of its one eye. Vanita, slack and still silent, hung from Ash’s grip and lolled dangerously close to the ground.
“Derrick, help!”
Derrick leaned over his precarious position on the top of the coach and grunted as he scrambled for the skirts of Vanita’s dress, eventually managing to pull her dead weight up enough so that Ash could haul her back through the window, trying not to cut the skin anymore that was already gushing red with deep gouges, glass cuts and punctured holes.
“Vee! Vanita! Wake up, wake up…”
She was a mess, blood soaked all the way through her hair, Ash moved Vanita’s matted sticky hair out of her face and screamed. Where her eye had once been, there was only an angry, gaping red gash.
“Vanita!”
Her chest was barely moving, but Ash could feel the weak thud of a heartbeat beneath the sound of her own crazy pulse. Vanita was alive, she thought, but only just. The blood everywhere, mixed with the refined pretty glitter of the blue dress, sickened Ash and now the feathers on the end of her gown seemed woefully prophetic.
A ripping sound and Derrick was shoving her out of the way, his doublet in ribbon as he tore fabric and bound Vanita’s bleeding arms and chest with it. The sight woke something up in Ash and she began to do the same with her dress, trying to get the more intimate areas so that Derrick didn’t have to do them. Yes, Vanita would have wanted that. She sobbed aloud as she realised that she had already begun thinking of her sister in the past tense.
“What do we do what dowedoo?” she wailed, slumping against Derrick, her syllables all running into each other as she began to cry again.
“Nothing we can do, just wait until we are home. Old Merta will know how to patch her up. We – Wait, Ash!”
Derrick pulled a vaguely familiar blue bottle from under him. The Pathfinder’s bottle.
“Give it here Derrick, quickly! I don’t know exactly how… It’s better than nothing.” Carefully, she trickled a few drops everywhere she could see blood, last of all Vanita’s face, which she could barely look at. Her sister didn’t even stir. Second by second, she was slipping away. “What now? Is there some spell? Derrick, what do we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do Ash. Just wait. Wait until home.”
Now the slow pace of the coach that seemed a boon before was a nightmare. Ash just stared down glassily at her sister, bleeding on the carriage floor in her lap, as the coach rode on and on.
The bird does not understand. The sense-making section of its brain thinks that if it cannot see danger or hear danger, there is nothing to fear. Yet it feels fear. Soon it may taste the sharp claws goes through its neck as it tries to scream.
It is night time and the owls are out. Cold and dark, without the flames the two leggers made for illumination before, the bird is utterly blind in the blackness. It cocks its head, but owls do not flap. They do not hesitate or cry out, make no show of exertion as they glide noiselessly out of the darkness to feed. The only sound the bird can rely on is the shriek of victims as other carriors nearby get plucked off one by one. The sound is chilling, but good. It means that it was not the bird, not this time.
But next time it could be.
No other carrior eats every day, but the owls do. There were giant rats everywhere at first, but thanks to the owls there is not a single one left. Owls. The perfect hunters. Sometimes they are white but more often they are dark like their hunger and, on a moonless night, totally invisible.
It has been an hour or more that the bird has hunched beneath a tree it cannot see, hoping the branches will give away the approach of an owl. Yet there is nothing and there are no carriors’ screams.
The owls must have other meat tonight.
Chapter Eighteen
Put this Pain Away
Things were quiet, very quiet, when the coach finally arrived.
Ash couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the derelict gates which had long broken down, were slightly more skew on what remained of their hinges. As they arrived at the house, they found it in complete darkness.
That puzzled Ash. She knew they had a few candles still and though they tried to be frugal, Old Merta would surely have left one burning in honour of the special occasion and be waiting up at the kitchen table to hear how it was, just as she had last night. In fact, Ash was counting on it, for who else could stitch up Vanita? Ash longed for the comfort of the old woman’s practical arms and no-nonsense advice and she hurried as much as she dared with carrying Vanita’s feet as Derrick held her upper half and they went inside.
The quiet. It was different in here – a nervous, ticking thing, but also as though the place had been abandoned for a hundred years. It felt like one of those fairy stories, where the owner of the home happily set off for the hunt or a festival in the woods, then returned home at the end of the day to find that in the real world a century had passed. Ash shivered, in spite of herself and called out.
“Old Merta? Merta?”
A scuffle in the dark and then Ash collapsed under the dead weight of Vanita as Derrick let go. “Ouch!” he cried and then, another voice, calling his name. Not Old Merta’s, but Tansy’s.
“Derrick? Ash? Ohh, Ash!”
“Tansy what is all this nonsense? Get a candle at once.”
Crying in the dark. Ash could now make out the hunched form of Tansy in front of them.
“Tansy, go get a candle!”
After a few minutes, the form of Tansy, still blubberin
g, came into full view, as she lit a candle. And the horror behind her as lit up.
The kitchen was torn apart as if by a disaster, scrabbling hands had pulled down shelves, broken what remained of the dusty, empty jars. Blood on the floor. The table was overturned, the table where Ash had hoped to put the bleeding form of Vanita that she was still holding, staring around the shell of the room. Gently as she dared, Ash placed Vanita onto the floor and walked slowly to what she knew she would find.
She was by the hearth. Of course she was. Where she would have been waiting for Ash to get home. At first it was the starch white apron she saw – starched every other day and so clean, despite all the madness around them. Old Merta’s usually pristine self was lying in a pool of her own blood, staring up sightlessly at the ceiling. Her arms were flung wide as though in greeting, her face slack and open as though surprised at herself for this show of leisure, lying down on the floor like this. Ash repressed the urge to get into those arms and snuggle there. This wasn’t Old Merta anymore.
“What happened?” asked Derrick’s voice and it sounded so far away.
“Th-there were bandits. They said they had come for the p-pumpkin. Mi-Miss Ash, believe me, we tried t’ stop ‘em but they turned nasty, sayin’ they would be back for the pumpkin.”
Ash was petting down the body, righting the cap and smoothing the apron, when her hand felt a terrible absence, an emptiness beneath the skirts. She lifted the top skirts to reveal where Old Merta’s right leg had been hacked off at the thigh. As though she were a pig, as though she were nothing.
“Th-they said if you want a full body for burial, you’ll give them the pumpkin, Miss. O-or, or they would at least… at least have some meat for the eating.”
That was enough to turn Ash’s head to face Tansy. “What?” she whispered, but Derrick came to her instead and took her shaking hands in his. There were tears on his face.
“Ash. Listen to me. Old Merta is gone and no one loved her more than you. I’m sorry. But Vanita is going, she will die soon. She needs you. Can you put this pain away? Lock it away in your mind for an hour, or two, or do you want to let Vanita die? It is your choice, she’s your sister. And Old Merta cannot be saved, but maybe Vanita can.”
He was right. Ash noticed that Derrick had righted the kitchen table and put Vanita on it as she had thought to. Already, the wood was mostly red from the sheer extent of the wounds. Ash took one last look at Old Merta and put her hands to the cold, soft, papery skin, closing her eyes. It was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do, but she pushed the cracking, writhing, crushing pain down, down below the surface of her conscious and locked it there.
“Derrick, do you still have that Pathfinder’s bottle? Bring it here. Tansy, put something over Old Merta. If I look at it I won’t… Thank you. Right, well, I’ve never done this before.”
Derrick nodded grimly but seemed in control of himself at least. “The silk from this dress should be strong enough to cut threads from. I can use some of the crossbow bolt iron to make me a long needle?”
It was a good idea. Ash nodded, then steeled herself inwardly and turned towards her dying sister.
And so it was that Ash stitched Vanita’s body back together. Breathe, use the dress scraps to clean the blood, using more of the Pathfinder’s liquid, which was water for all she knew. Breathe. Bind up the more superficial wounds with rags from her own dress. Not stitching, not putting something sharp in her sweet sister’s soft flesh, not yet… Breathe. Remember to breathe.
She was not under her tree, but she found herself praying as she worked. Not a complex prayer, not one like the ones her mother used to teach her. The prayer of a single word: please, please, please, said over and over long into the night and the beginnings of the grey morning.
When at last the gashes were stitched, the wounds washed. The hole where Vanita’s eye had once been was treated and bound. The sun was up. Ash’s legs gave way where she stood and she slumped on the floor for tiredness, for sadness, for fear. It was Derrick who carried the near lifeless thing up to her bedroom to sleep and, hopefully, to live.
And Ash, Ash crawled into the cinders, the blackened remains of the long-dead evening fire where Old Merta had last been alive.
***
Ash rolled over in her sleep. Her mother was sitting there. Straight-backed in one of the old chairs that no longer existed, Ash doubted if she had ever seen her so clearly. Her mother was embroidering something in her lap, not looking up. Then she spoke:
“Sitting in ashes was a practise of mourning in biblical times.” Ash had forgotten how pious, how correct, her mother had been. “They would sit in ashes, roll around, revel in sadness. If you were in ashes, everyone knew you had lost someone dear. But then you would rise from the ashes, clean yourself, dress correctly and go back to your life and your position in the community. This time she glanced up and looked meaningfully at Ash in that way she had.
Ash sighed. “I have two choices, Mother. One is to stay in this dying house with dying people, with the knowledge that my Merta is dead and not coming back. The other is to play make-believe by going to become princess of a dying kingdom, reduced to a marriage I am not entirely sure I want.”
This time, Lady Cerentola put down her embroidery. “Do you remember what you said to my sister?”
“That I make my own path.”
Her mother nodded. “Just so. And you will do so now.” Her mother held up the circle of embroidery she had been doing for Ash to see. It was a lump of the iron ore rock from Expansion earth, looking very incongruous rendered in her mother’s pretty stitches.
“You will know what to do.”
Ash opened her eyes, seeing only ashes leaking out from the hearth onto the kitchen floor. It didn’t change anything. She rolled over again and went back to sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
Do Something
She could not believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Ash woke up, sun high in the sky, with her heart pounding and one word resounding in her skull: Stepmother.
It was chaotic, of course, but she should never have simply forgotten about the other member of her family, whose bloody corpse may be strewn anywhere in the upper house. How could she have been so selfish?
“Tansy? Tansy!” Tripping over the still-bloodied table, Ash stumbled from the kitchen. “Tansy, what of the mistress? Tansy? Stepmother!”
These mobs had been known to be especially cruel to anyone from the formerly wealthy class, who knows what could have happened to her. Ash called her, by her first name, in a voice that sounded like a child’s as she climbed the grand staircase. When she finally reached Stepmother’s door, it would not open. Icy dread fell like a rock into her stomach and Ash began throwing herself against the door.
“Stepmother? Ida! Step… Mother, can you hear me? Are you in there?”
It seemed to be barricaded from the inside. Ash did not stop, but began hammering on the door as well, as much as her tiredness would allow.
“Miss?” Tansy came up the stairs slower than usual, eyes looking bruised with fatigue.
“Tansy…last night, with the, the men… where is stepmother? Did they do something to her?”
“The men were shouting in the kitchen and Stepmother came down and shouted too. But they hit her on the head something fierce. I thought they would… You know… But Merta, she let out a sound and ran at them… When Madame got up from the floor she ran, up to her quarters. They never came up here, Miss.”
Ash looked at Tansy, trying to see if there were a message somewhere in her words that made sense. But there was none. Ash looked back at the closed door. Now that she quieted herself, she could hear the reedy lilting of off-key singing coming from the room and shuffling steps that sounded like they were going around and around in a circle.
When Tansy spoke again, her voice was hard and cold. “They had knives, some had gardening tools, the men. After they had rounded us two together and slapped us about a bit,
there was a quiet moment and we heard the scrape of wood upstairs. We thought it was Madame, with an old sword or a something, come to help us. But I think it was the wardrobe being pushed against the door.”
There was nothing to say. Ash turned away and walked back down the stairs.
“Miss?”
“I’m going to be with Old Merta.”
Tansy’s voice sounded confused behind her, but she still asked: “And what about her?”
“Just leave her. Maybe she’ll starve in there. Maybe she should.” Ash put her hate carefully in the box she had put grief over Old Merta in last night and crawled back into her fireplace, seeking the warmth that she had lost.
***
The palace was too small for all of Rize’s thoughts and the stable was not much better. Each time he tried to think, to reason, his mind would circle back stubbornly to three things.
The way she’d looked at him. The way she’d kissed him. And the way she’d left.
Rize growled, setting off a nodding Mouse beside him. He paced around angrily, trying to get perspective or understanding on what had happened at midnight. Not even the sight of Mouse copying him, walking fierce circles in her straw as she eyed his pacing, could cheer him.
Perhaps he was in love. Yet how could someone care for somebody in two days? It was no more or less ridiculous a reaction than most, although you would have thought that his heart would be more cautious in a time where people were dying like flies.
And as for her, the way she felt seemed clear. She did not want him, she did not want to marry him, so she had run – literally run – rather than be proposed to. If she wasn’t there, he couldn’t propose. Now that she had left without enlightening him as to where she stayed, she was gone for good. And clearly that was what she wanted.
Ash Rising Page 14