Grim

by Anna Waggener

When Megan put her hand into the angel’s palm, she felt the warmth of pure light spread all through her body, like sunbeams under her skin. She tipped up her chin, meaning to search out its eyes, and saw that it was bringing her mother’s necklace up to her face. She blinked at the glittering pinprick of color.

  The angel drew back its other hand and undid the delicate clasp. Megan held stock still as the chain settled down around her neck, dipping over the hollow of her clavicle. She felt those clean, glowing hands on the backs of her shoulders and she relaxed, happy to be safe.

  Shawn and Rebecca watched in a state of wonder so complete it shut out everything else. Only the angel existed, and their little sister, and their mother’s necklace.

  Then came a flash of silver and Megan drew back, her movements stiff and heavy. The spell broke.

  “Meg!” Rebecca dropped to her knees and barely caught her little sister’s falling body. Megan made a soft noise, almost a whine, as her head settled against Rebecca’s chest. Shawn dropped down beside them and pushed the hair out of Megan’s face. Beads of sweat appeared on her upper lip, and he wiped them away as well. Each trembling breath felt hot on his hands.

  “Megan,” Rebecca whispered. “Megan, honey, stay with us. Listen to my voice. Megan. Meg.”

  Megan gasped. Black eyelashes quivered against her pale cheeks. Rebecca adjusted her weight, though it was slight, and pulled her hand out from under Megan’s back. Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to fight back a scream. Blood. Slick and brilliant down her fingers, over her palm, streaked across her wrist. Her little sister’s blood.

  Shawn caught her arm before she could move it into Megan’s field of vision. He gave her a hard look and shoved her hand down to the forest floor.

  “Meg,” he said gently. “Meg, can you hear me?” He was very much aware of the steady white light coming from the angel, but he refused to look up and distract himself. He thought that he saw Megan nod.

  “Good, good,” he said, forcing himself to stay steady. “Hold on to my voice, okay?”

  In answer, Megan reached up and pressed her fingers lightly over Shawn’s lips. She managed a smile, and, as she did, a bubble of saliva escaped her own mouth, trapping her last breath against her skin. When Megan’s pale hand slipped and settled on Shawn’s knee, Rebecca broke down. Then, with her brother frozen and her sister crying hard into her hair, Megan Stripling died.

  Jeremiah and Erika were silent as they made their way back through the starving city. They passed blocks of crumbling apartments that sat like hunkered stone giants in the cool moonlight, and by alleyways lined with the blank, gaping faces of squatters’ hovels. They crossed plank bridges, the make-do shortcuts that spanned open-air sewers, and ducked under the reaching fingers of dead trees. They kept their heads down when the stutter of crying children reached their ears. They picked up their pace when doors opened and closed behind them, or when an echo of footsteps tripped over the cobbles.

  Jeremiah dug a key from his pocket when he reached the manor and took the padlock from the gate. He said nothing to Erika while he opened the front door, or while he let her in, or while he locked it. He said nothing to her when he struck a match to light one of the lamps in the entrance hall, and he gave it to her, still speechless, before turning away to fumble through the dark on his own. Erika watched him go. He headed down the hall and to the left, where his study waited, smelling of books and dipped in memory. On her way up the steps, she imagined him striking another match, lighting a fire, watching his mother’s portrait. Waiting. Wondering.

  He did none of these things.

  Erika took off her gown, washed away her makeup, and let down her hair. The wound on her forehead, the wound that had killed her, now paper dry and ugly, would be visible, she knew, but she didn’t care. She found the clothes that she had died in and put them on. She looked for her jewelry but could only find one earring, and she didn’t need to be reminded of Matt right now. She went into the study instead and approached the mantel and its painting of her twin. Then she slipped out of the house, and because she did not want Martha to catch her, her escape went without a hitch.

  Erika walked through the city of Limbo, alone but only a little bit afraid. She didn’t talk to the faces that peered through cracked windows, and didn’t listen to the wailing of babies kept too long dead. She didn’t know how to get where she was going, except that the many eyes of the palace glowed bright on the hill ahead of her, and she knew that if she walked long enough, she would find what she was looking for.

  The Colonies lay in the Low Kingdom on the wastes of a desert plateau, and were populated by rogues who had outlasted their usefulness, and by those seraphim who had fallen out of favor. When famine came to the bottomlands, as it often did, and the beasts of the Low Kingdom began to roam for food, the Colonies became favored hunting grounds.

  So it was that the buildings were made of mud brick, with the hope that they might blend into the earth and be hidden from view. The summer sun did its part by baking them hard as rock, and by winter, when the rains came, there was nothing soft left to wash away.

  To the west of the Colonies ran the Devil’s Teeth, a mountain range that stretched to both sides of the horizon. When the sun began to set, the barren face of the Teeth threw shadow over the valley like a blanket, giving the only respite from the heat that ever came. The highest of the Teeth was called the Arrowhead because it stretched far above the rest, its summit providing a view of the entire Kingdom. A platform, just wide enough for a man to lie on, jutted out of the side of the mountain, two hundred feet away from the peak. A rope ladder spanned the rest of the way to the Arrowhead’s crest. At the top waited a plain rock cave with a wide mouth. It was there, they said, that the Furies lived.

  When Rome named them, the sisters were already old, and their stories had already been played, but they took the honor as a token forewarning their return. The Winged Women of the Mountain, part human, part eagle, made a bitter, selfish sisterhood. Their history was so winding and steeped in myth that the Kingdoms had largely forgotten them. They had become monsters for children’s stories and old wives’ tales. But this had not always been the case.

  In the old days, under kings and queens long past, the Furies had sought out the masters and learned from them, dreaming to one day serve as a single council for all three Kingdoms.

  As their vanity consumed them, however, their vision came and went, until, ever self-indulgent, each sister promised herself an empire. After a painful war, the queen of the High Kingdom bound the Furies to the Arrowhead and cursed them to share their wisdom with those who made it into the upper cave. They asked only for the power to defend themselves, and this she gave them in pity: Two hundred feet from the crown of the mountain was a shelf, and between that shelf and the top she placed a ladder. Anyone who wished to seek the Furies’ counsel would have to weather the climb, and anyone who fell on the ascent would die before he or she touched the ground. In exchange for this concession, the queen took the eyes from the first sister, the ears from the second, and the mouth from the third, and ruled that each time a rogue offered his or her own in sacrifice, the sisters would be forced to pass judgment on the soul of a human charge. In this way, the Furies became council to the dead, their original wish, but they were slaves to their duty: never sleeping, never living, and always hoping for someone to venture up their mountain that they might dash him to pieces and win back some of their stolen dignity.

  The last of the king’s guests were leaving for the night. Their laughter spilled loud and tipsy out of their carriages as they trundled down the curve of the mountain. Erika climbed and climbed and never hurt because she didn’t want to. Because she was dead and she knew it. Accepted it. Used it. She reached the front gates and looked through the cast-iron bars at the warm and happy-looking palace. Behind closed doors, her mother always said. Only now Erika knew what was going on. What had gone on.

  She took an unsteady breath and walked up to one of the serap
h guards.

  “I want to talk to the king,” she said.

  The guard did not smile, or laugh at her, but his eyes lingered on the gash across her forehead.

  “The palace is closed,” he said.

  She reached up to her neck and fumbled with the ribbon tied there, then held the necklace out for both of the guards to see. They exchanged glances before the first guard unlocked the gates and held them open. Erika refastened the Sickle and stepped through.

  The sun had drowned in the west, and the Devil’s Teeth had vanished into the night, black stone against an empty, starless sky, when a cloud of silver-gray smoke flew, quick as lightning, up the side of the Arrowhead. As it neared the climber’s ledge, it slowed, and then stopped to hover next to the ladder. Jeremiah flexed backward as his body re-formed. He took a few moments to gather his thoughts, and then grabbed a rope in each hand and threw himself into the climb.

  Halfway up, he heard the first gasps of air from beating wings. He kept his eyes firmly set on the rock wall in front of him.

  “The sixth son,” hissed a voice against the back of his neck. “Has your luck run so dry?”

  Jeremiah said nothing. The palms of his hands had begun to ache.

  He felt the hair on his neck rise as the Fury put her lips against his ear. “Poor child,” she cooed. “Wouldn’t you rather fly? Reach out and take my wing.”

  He ignored her and heaved himself up another step.

  The Fury drew back and clicked her tongue. “Clever, clever boy. I wonder why your father let you go.”

  Jeremiah clenched his teeth.

  “Or are you still hoping that he hasn’t? That he’ll change his mind? Oh, Jeremiah. The time is past for dreaming. Why, your own blood brothers already signed away your soul.”

  He paused.

  The Fury crept close again.

  “Aren’t you tired, Jeremiah?” she murmured. “You’ve been so strong, I know, but you must be exhausted by now.”

  A thin breath of air slipped around the Arrowhead, gently rocking the ladder.

  “Let it end, Jeremiah,” hummed the Fury. “Let it go.”

  Jeremiah pressed his eyes shut and heaved himself up another step.

  “Let it go.”

  He paused, shook his head to clear it, and reached up again.

  “Let go.”

  He slipped.

  He knew that he was sliding down, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

  He wanted to listen.

  He wanted to fall.

  His arm caught against one of the knotted rungs and he screamed, slamming back into himself. As the ladder smacked against the side of the cliff, he heard the Fury’s wings again, as she plunged down to finish him.

  Jeremiah wrapped his forearms around the coarse rope and regained his footing before starting over.

  The Fury shrieked, her shrill eagle’s voice echoing up and down the Devil’s Teeth.

  “Fool! Weak fool! You can’t even end it! Weak like your mother! Weak like your sniveling, sneaking mother!”

  Jeremiah grunted but kept going. Hand over hand. Step by step. He tried to concentrate on the pain in his arms rather than on the voice at his back.

  “She left you, Jeremiah! They all left you! None of them wanted the little bastard boy too feeble to speak up for himself!”

  “I tried!” Jeremiah hadn’t meant to say anything aloud, but the words slipped out anyway. He dragged himself up another few feet as the Fury made an angry swoop above his head, the wind from her wings rocking the ladder.

  “You never tried!” she yelled. “Not hard enough, Jeremiah! Not enough to matter!” She hovered behind him, her wings beating the air into a whirlwind. The ladder danced. “Not hard enough then, and not hard enough now!”

  “Leave me!”

  “Like everyone else? Is that what you want, then? You want to be alone?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then take yourself away!”

  He needed to stop and regain his composure, but he knew that wasn’t possible. He sucked in a lungful of thin mountain air.

  “I thought that rogues did as they were told!”

  “I’m not a rogue!”

  “Then are you a prince?” The Fury let out another screech as she did somersaults behind him, throwing him and the ropes against the mountain. “They won’t have you!” she screamed. “No one will have you after what you’ve done!”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  “It’s not so easy to leave your past behind you. There’s only one way to make them all forget.”

  He felt the edge of the cliff above him and scrabbled at it. At last, he pulled himself up, moaning and too worn out to do anything but crawl away from the overhang and collapse against the sandy rock.

  The Fury alighted behind him. She flapped out her wings one last time, to settle the feathers, and then walked on, stepping delicately over Jeremiah’s body.

  “I beat you,” he groaned, not yet ready to raise his head.

  “Yes,” she admitted, unperturbed, and went on into the cave to tell her sisters.

  When he felt well enough, Jeremiah pushed himself up and brushed the dust from his clothes. A light flickered ahead of him, a flame burning just inside the lip of the cave: He walked toward it, trying to look more confident than he felt.

  The guard left Erika in the dark hallway outside the king’s quarters. She rapped lightly on the wooden door before nudging it open, a little bit surprised to find it unlocked. The king looked up from his reading and his face flashed recognition before he composed himself and set the leather-bound book aside. He wore silk pajamas, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, a fire burning happy in the giant hearth beside him. The winged armchair that he sat in was high and plush, cream colored with patterns of pale blue flowers. It reminded Erika of a summer dress she used to love.

  “You’ll have me thinking that I can see ghosts,” said the king. He smiled a little, which gave Erika courage. She stepped into the parlor and shut the door behind her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. The king shook his head, still smiling, and motioned to the chair across from him.

  “Sit, Miss Stripling,” he said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  “I’m here for my children,” said Erika.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “That always makes us a little bit braver, doesn’t it?”

  Erika sank into the armchair, elbows on her knees, back sloped forward. The firelight danced on her face and hair.

  “Do I look like her?” she whispered.

  The king paused, sighed, straightened up. “You’ve seen the portrait, I’m sure. What do you think?”

  Erika stared at her fingertips. “I think that we see people differently when we love them.”

  In the fireplace, a pine log snapped, beads of sap exploding as they warmed. The sound swallowed up the silence, like hunger, because air will always let itself be burned.

  “Who have you lost, Miss Stripling?”

  She glanced up and caught the king’s concerned eyes.

  “A lot of people,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose any more. My kids —”

  The king shook his head to silence her. “I know about your children,” he said. “I may be declining into senility, but I haven’t reached it yet.” He lowered his eyelids, dropping into his own private thoughts. Erika watched him, lip gripped between her teeth. She was scared. She’d never been so scared.

  “I would die for my kids,” Erika said, a last plea, but she knew that there was another side to that promise. She would kill for them, also. And maybe she was sitting here because she wanted to be forgiven; because she’d tried to make them die for her.

  “And I suppose,” said the king, “that you’ve come here to tell me that you would marry for them, as well as die.”

  Erika bit back tears as she reached up and untied the Sickle one last time. She turned the pendant over and over in her fingers, the tarnished metal glinting in the half-light.<
br />
  “I understand you,” the king said, his voice kinder this time. He waited until she looked into his eyes, the blue of his irises gone thin and watery with age. “And I hope that you will understand that sometimes we do things that we’re not proud of. Sometimes, we do things selfishly, even when those choices are made for the ones we love.”

  Erika ground the silver into her palm to keep herself from crying over her own selfishness. She finally understood why souls found it hard to let go of their bodies, since things like mourning and tears always came in pairs. And, if she were honest, she didn’t want to lose that. The world was borne more easily when your body bore it too.

  The king watched her grief for a long time before intervening. “Do you love my son?”

  A little laugh burst from Erika’s lips as she sniffed and tried to calm herself. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hope not. It would be much easier if I didn’t.”

  “But if you did,” he said, “would it be because he takes after his mother?”

  Erika stared at the rug beneath her feet and thought of her own mother and how she always said that you couldn’t change a man. She thought of Jeremiah and how wrong he made her look. And she thought of all the changes he couldn’t help, all the accommodations he made without thinking. How much she hated to watch him struggle over balancing her wants and his own, and how much she hated it when he lied to protect her.

  “It would be because he won’t give up,” she said. “Because he knows what’s right, even when I don’t. Because he tells me when I’m wrong, even when it hurts us both. So no,” she said, “if I love him, it’s not because of his mother and what she was.”

  “You care about Jeremiah most when he’s honest?”

  Erika ran her thumb around the Sickle and nodded. Her eyes burned.

  “Then, regardless of what he is, your love for him is because of his mother.”

  Erika gave him a weak smile and took a breath to steady herself before rising from her chair. She crossed the rug and knelt down at the king’s feet.