by K. C. Lannon
The atmosphere did not shift back to full spirits until Vera began to play once more. Putting her bow to the strings, she struck up a jaunty tune that soon, as if by some spell, drew everyone’s attention away from the mysterious woman in the corner and back to out-clapping, out-stamping, and out-shouting the roaring storm outside.
Kallista held her trembling hands together on the wooden table in front of her. She trembled mostly from the chilly walk and the day’s tiring journey—she was not yet nervous, only determined. Clasped tightly in her hands was a scrap of damp paper she’d produced from her purse moments before. Scrawled on the paper was her only bargaining chip and the only weapon she had: a story to tell and a name to speak.
Glancing around the tiny, crowded room, she scanned for someone who might tell her what she needed to know. The pub was warm from the fire and cozy, smelling of ale and frying oil, and alive with music. Everyone showed their backs to her, focused on the fiddler and their drinks and meals. Kallista had heard the villagers were unwelcoming to outsiders, but she had not expected them to pretend she was not sitting among them.
Despite herself, she found her foot tapping lightly to the music. She glared at it under the table. This was not the time, place, or proper situation to enjoy herself.
“Wonderful set as always, Vera!” A man’s voice, slightly slurred, rose up from her left.
Kallista jolted, looked up. The pub was almost empty at this point, people trickling out. The barkeep was wiping down tables with a dirty rag. The fiddler had stopped playing and was gathering the coins from her instrument case on the floor across from her.
How long had she been sitting there?
She shivered, cupping her hands around her mug of tea. It was cold now and provided no warmth.
“Have a good night, gents.” The same man tipped the brim of his cap to the rest of the patrons before stumbling to the door and out into the cold night.
“So they can speak after all…,” Kallista mused sourly, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her folded hands.
There was a musical giggle beside her. The fiddler, Vera, waltzed up to her table, her long dress swishing as she moved with the grace of a dancer. She wore an old-fashioned navy dress that buttoned with lace just under her chin and tapered at her waist. Her hair, a light golden brown, was pinned up in a neat braid around her head, with small wisps hanging down by her high, pale cheeks. There was a wild flower tucked behind her ear.
“They speak only when they want to,” Vera said, leaning toward her and grinning slyly. “Like teeny children.”
Kallista flushed. She hadn’t known she’d been overheard. Recovering quickly, she said, “Yes, well, it’s likely they are not used to visitors here.” She sighed, waving to dismiss the topic, and said, “You are very gifted with that fiddle of yours.”
Vera was silent for a moment. Kallista wondered if she’d heard—perhaps all the fiddling in loud pubs had lessened her hearing.
“Why are you here?” Vera asked suddenly. She did not seem hostile or overly interested, merely curious. “You must have a good reason to come to a town like this.”
The question was a simple one, but the answers were many and complicated and tinged with pain.
What am I doing here? I should be at home… I should be with my boys, with my husband…
She was supposed to have been back by now. They would start to worry, start to wonder. Would her boys think she’d abandoned them? Would Alan send his troops after her to bring her home? He had not taken her seriously when she had confessed to him what the goblin woman had told him about James being marked by dark magic. He had warned her not to do anything rash.
When she’d left, he had barely said goodbye, not knowing it might be the last time they would meet, and she had wanted to scream at him, maybe to even slap him—anything to get some kind of reaction from him, some sign that he still cared for her. Whether or not he would even miss her, she did not know anymore. She knew nothing and was certain of nothing.
She twisted her wedding band around her finger before clenching her hand into a fist.
No. I have to be here. I have to know why this creature wants my son, what hold it has on him. I have to do this.
Kallista took a steadying breath. “I am here to—”
“Children don’t talk to strangers either,” Vera went on as if she had not asked a question, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Nor do they fancy scary tales of the Moorland Beast. So I suppose these villagers really are like children in many ways. Only, most children don’t drink in pubs—at least not good children.”
Kallista was no longer chilled. The fire was back in her veins now, her determination bolstered. “Do you know much about the Moorland Beast?” she asked, breathless.
Vera nodded enthusiastically. “I know all the local tales and legends! I don’t live here, but I have heard a bit of that particular tale.” She pulled out a chair and sat down across from her eagerly. “That’s why I come here—to hear stories!”
Kallista’s heart began to race. Maybe her journey away from home over the past week would be worth the trouble after all. “I need to hear everything you know about the Moorland Beast. Please. I can buy you a drink, if you’d like, for your trouble—”
That musical laugh bubbled up again. “No, I do not accept drinks. Only stories.” Her blue eyes glinted with excitement in the firelight. “If I am to tell you a tale, you must tell me one in return. It is only fair!”
Kallista let out a nervous chuckle, taken aback. “I-I am not very good at stories.”
“Oh, I am certain that you are. All mothers are.”
Kallista’s eyes stung at the mention of her children as a sudden torrent of yearning shot through her. Her homesickness overpowered her suspicion for a moment. “How do you know that I am a mother?”
Vera was smiling. Her smile no longer seemed friendly and coy. Shadows danced across her knowing face.
“You have that look about you. I was watching you while I performed. Your eyes kept darting around like you were watching for your children, as if they were bound to get into mischief, to see if they were all right.”
Kallista once more felt the scrap of paper in her hands, felt the wedding band on her finger, and clenched her fist around them both.
It occurred to her that this girl knew too much about her. “What… what kind of story would you like to hear?”
Her boys loved stories. Needed them. Sometimes when she was afraid she had run out of stories to tell, she would spend her lunch break at work jotting down ideas or remembering long-forgotten tales from her youth—just to see their eyes light up, to hear their laughter, to watch as they grew into themselves and their personalities and favored certain stories above others.
“Tell me about your boys. You have two of them.”
“My—” Kallista glanced around almost frantically. The barkeep was oblivious to them and their conversation. They were the last people in the pub.
Suddenly she was colder than she’d been before.
“Oh, do not worry about eavesdroppers,” Vera assured her. “She will not even notice us sitting here. I have made certain of that.”
Kallista felt fear wrap around her like a cruel hand.
Magic. She’s using magic.
Vera tilted her head again, strands of hair falling into her face. She stretched across the table, clasped Kallista’s clenched fist, and whispered, “Tell me about the Master’s boy. The little one. Your second born, James.”
Kallista’s chest tightened around a breath, refusing to release it.
Not the Master’s boy…
My son.
The tears that had threatened to brim over in Kallista’s eyes ceased as she blinked them away. Her sorrow hardened to resolve. “You work for him. You’re one of his thralls,” she growled. “You will let my son go—”
“No, no.” Vera tutted. “Story first.”
The young woman lounged back in her seat, pulling her hands away lik
e a receding tide. She waited there with all the patience of a statue, of something that had more time than most to exist.
Kallista dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand, steeling herself. “Fine then,” she said. “I will tell you a story. James’s favorite, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves…”
So she told the tale as she always did when she read from One Thousand and One Nights. Most of the tales were not for little ears, and so she often edited, skipped, or embellished most of the stories, but James had always liked tales of tricksters and treasures, and so she told the same story again and again.
Vera seemed just as interested in the tale as her boys were, having never heard it before. Once she was finished, the young woman clapped her hands together and sighed as if having just consumed a satisfying meal or quenched some great thirst.
“That woman in that tale was very clever,” Vera commented, smiling. “I would like to hear more stories like that one.”
“I’ve done what you asked.” Kallista scooted back her chair, stood, and slammed her hands on the table in front of her. “Now you will keep your promise.”
Vera’s smile remained locked in place on her lips, though it had left her eyes. She stood also and then extended one petite, callused hand toward her. “It is not a story to tell, but one to witness,” Vera said. “It is an ongoing tale, one still being written. One that will never end.”
Staring at the girl’s hand, Kallista realized her own fingers were trembling.
They locked eyes across the table. “I can take you to him, the Moorland Beast,” Vera admitted. “But only”—she held up the index finger of her other hand, a kind of warning—“if you have something with which to bargain.”
Kallista reached out and took Vera’s hand in her own. The girl’s skin was surprisingly warm, not at all as cold or inhuman as she had expected. “Take me to him,” she demanded.
Then Vera, gliding through the room like a specter, led Kallista out of the pub and into the lashing rain, down the old gravel road in the town and out onto the moors beyond.
As she followed Vera across the hilly, heather-covered ground, over rocks and through snares of thistles and slick moss, her mind conjured all manner of terrifying shapes in the darkness around her. Her breath caught in her chest at the sight of some of the boulders in the distance, thinking them to be monstrous creatures or the waiting beast. Every lash of rain felt like a creature’s cold hand, while every howl of wind sounded like a creature’s snarl.
What kind of place could house such a fearsome beast that villagers were too afraid to even mention? A cave? A hollow sinkhole in the earth? A crude lean-to made of ancient stone?
What would such a creature want of a child but to devour it?
What would such a creature want of her, ask of her?
“We’re here!” Vera’s shout over the wind startled Kallista from her thoughts.
She squinted in the low light, shielding her eyes from the whipping rain with her hand, and scoured the landscape. Appearing seemingly out of the darkness, silhouetted against black, rocky hills was an enormous stone building—an old but standing 1600s manor house, the many windows of the three stories lit with flickering candles. It was grand with tall spires and ornate windows, the kind of home that would only be available to someone of great wealth in the past.
That was not there a moment ago!
Kallista gaped. “The beast lives here? In this house?”
“Estate,” Vera corrected her rather tersely. “It is called an estate. And where would you expect him to live, on the dirty ground like some animal?”
“But—isn’t he an animal?”
“The Master takes many forms. The Moorland Beast is one of those forms, but he is not bound to it. He is bound to nothing.”
Kallista could make out the outline of an ornate gate in the distance. The manor was surrounded by a low stone wall that was eroded in some places. There were hedges and trees that circled around the property, which seemed to go on for a mile or two.
The rain had started to ease.
Vera stopped in front of the gate and then went to work unlocking it with an old-fashioned key. Tall spires towered above them, reminding Kallista of some of the iron fences in Neo-London.
She reached out and touched the bars with the tips of her fingers. The metal was cold. She knew what to check for, what iron felt like, as she had learned from her husband to be observant of those types of things; it wasn’t iron.
The gate opened soundlessly, and Vera swept inside, leaving it wide for Kallista to follow her through. She did so, her shoes sinking into the mud with each step.
A wide, wet gravel path lay before her, and she noticed for the first time just how unkempt the yard was and how far away and tall the manor seemed now that it was ahead of her.
There was overgrown vegetation on either side; some of the plants and briar patches and thorny bushes were so rampant and oversized they blocked parts of the path and even seemed to grow through some of the stone there. The trees she’d seen in the distance, she noticed, were all dead or rotting.
Stone statues, crumbling and weathered, stood like sentinels in the yard. And some of them—
They’re moving!
But they weren’t statues, Kallista realized with a jolt, feeling foolish. They were people. Soaked, pale, and emaciated, the people toiled in the rain, some hacking away at the thorny plants with dull trowels or pulling with bare, bloodied hands. Some lifted fallen stone and eroding walls on their backs or dragged it with rope.
Some of them were young. Some were elderly. Some were women. They were of all shapes and colors. There was nothing that seemed to set them apart from other humans, save for their poor condition.
One man lay still on the ground in the distance, only his arm visible under thick threads of vines that had seemed to grow around his forgotten body.
None of them looked up from their work as Kallista stumbled by.
It was a pitiful sight that stirred a struggle within her. Her first instinct was to go to them, but she stopped herself, remembering why she was there and the life she could not risk.
“Who… who are they?” Kallista asked, struggling to catch up with Vera, who seemed to navigate her way through the maze of a path with unnatural ease.
“Thralls. Some of them belong to the Master while others are here awaiting a purpose.”
“Purpose?”
Vera turned her face slightly to Kallista, and she could see the corner of the girl’s mouth twitch at a small smile. “Some will serve other humans while others serve random Fae. And the unlucky ones… they will be sent to the Winter Court.”
The path finally ended at the front of a great wood door. Light seeped out from underneath it, and music, faint and scant, could be heard inside. Vera took the same key from her pocket—only it was different now, with ornate spirals of curling metal. The key fit into the lock on the door, and she opened it.
Before Vera stepped inside, she turned to Kallista and ordered, “Follow me closely. You’re bound to get lost otherwise.”
Beyond the narrow entryway, Kallista saw a hallway that led to rooms beyond and could just make out the wooden stairs that led up to a second floor in the candlelight. The house did not seem large enough for anyone to get lost inside; Kallista wanted to point that out but bit her tongue.
After taking a deep, steadying breath, Kallista said, “All right. Take me to him.”
Her footfalls were determined even if her shoes were a bit squeaky from the rain against the creaking wood floors.
As Kallista followed Vera inside and down the hallway, she noticed even in the dim light that the décor was as old-fashioned as the structure outside, although Kallista could not place a single distinct era or culture. Unlike the outside of the house, the inside seemed to be in perfect condition, save for the occasional layer of dust.
Vera halted once they reached a parlor room.
When Kallista looked back to see where she’d come from, si
lently mapping out the path to the exit, she noticed with a jolt that the hallway was no longer there. It had moved.
There was a wide stone fireplace burning brightly, illuminating a figure crouched by the arm of a great chair in the center of the room. Kallista sucked in a breath, her eyes fixed on the shape.
“Brother?” Vera called, startling Kallista and the figure both.
Brother? She can’t mean—
Her brother must be a thrall as well. That must be it…
The figure leaped up with a gasp, immediately shrinking back as it laid eyes on them. Kallista could see then that the figure was a woman, probably middle-aged, though she shook like a frightened child.
Vera stepped forward. “Where is your Master?” she asked.
The figure did not speak but looked past her to Kallista.
“Answer me.”
The woman just shook her head at first, still staring at her. Then she spoke, finding her words at last, and asked hesitantly: “Have you come to take me home? Have I been good?”
Kallista’s throat tightened. Before she could reply, Vera sighed loudly.
“Oh dear.” Vera glanced back at Kallista, laughing like the haunting sight was a funny one. “This one’s gone loopy again. The daft woman doesn’t remember that her parents left her here nearly thirty years ago.”
“Her parents?” Disgust filled her gut like acid. “How could a parent do such a thing—?”
Vera did not laugh again, but she looked as if she was holding one back as if in on some secret joke. “Don’t you know how thralls work? Not just anyone can make a person a thrall.”
Before Kallista could press further, a loud, piercing cry stopped her. The woman had begun to scream like a child would, sharply and without regard to appearance. She screamed to leave, to go back home.
“Dear gods, what in the hell is that obnoxious noise, and why hasn’t anyone silenced it yet?” a silvery male voice asked. The voice floated through the room inexplicably. Something about the tone, both oddly soothing and commanding, was unsettling.
A man tromped lazily into the room, slightly imbalanced, his long brown hair partially covering his face. He wore old-fashioned breeches and only one stocking, no shoes, and his poet shirt was undone and hanging off one pale, slender shoulder.