Stain

by A. G. Howard

  “Gather all of the shadows from the castle’s corners and hearths! Dig them up from the dungeon if you must!” the king shouted.

  “Your highness,” the trio of mages said simultaneously in bass, baritone, and tenor voices—for they always spoke in unison. “Only the deepest twilight shadows will do, as they hold the night’s turning point. And there is the lack of stars . . . without stardust to stabilize the shadows and weigh them down, they will simply escape.”

  For the next five years, Lyra had to be satisfied looking out from beneath her hood. Even with her body wrapped in heavy fabrics from neck to toe, the sun penetrated and burned. She could only see the beauty of her sparkling kingdom in muted shades from the safety of her home. Thus, her favorite time became that singular moment she could remove the hood to look out a clear window, unprotected, after the day’s westward diurnal course. When that blink of dusk softened the light to a purple-blue haze, she was free for twenty full breaths before the sun brightened again to begin its eastern reversal across the sky for the cessation course.

  Lyra loved the light with such fervor this was enough, until the tragic moment she saw herself within a mirror.

  Avaricette, Griselda’s daughter of fifteen, stood in the sunny kitchen with her two sisters. Twelve-year-old Lyra had followed, lured by the aroma of fresh-baked treats. Covered neck-to-toe-to-finger in heavy cloth, she placed teacups at the table in hopes her cousins might join her for a tea party.

  “Lyra, perhaps we’re too old to play such childish games.” The most studious and brightest of Griselda’s daughters, Lustacia, adjusted the glossy, auburn curls draping her shoulders and blinked her deep-blue, thick-lashed eyes. She had always been kinder than the others, being only a year older than Lyra, so her gentle scolding failed to discourage the princess. She continued to fold napkins and place them on saucers, her hood of shadows surging and swimming around her head.

  “How could she know of anything that’s normal?” Avaricette said before shoving a plum confectionery into her mouth. “She’s too solitary.” Avaricette narrowed her brown eyes and talked around the food squashed between her teeth. “She cannot even walk beside opened windows without wearing mittens and wrapping up like a mummy. Mother says she’s a stain on our royal bloodline.”

  “Yes, a stain.” Wrathalyne puckered her brow in disgust as she adjusted the satiny bows on her dress—the same rusty-brown as her freckles. “That explains why she can’t speak. Stains don’t have tongues. She inveritably belongs with the spiders and centipedes in the dungeon, amongst her own sodiforous kind.” Wrathalyne considered herself very well-spoken for someone of fourteen, often making up words in an effort to prove it.

  Lyra stopped playing then. She backed into a corner and dropped a spoon with a clang beside her feet—ashamed, though not quite sure why.

  “Hush.” Matilde entered, her ruddy, wrinkled face glowering. She covered Lyra’s ears. Those work-roughened fingers were sweet and soothing compared to the sharp-toothed words her cousins had spoken. As if sensing Lyra’s affection for the cook, the nightsky fabric enveloped the elderly woman’s hands, allowing the contact, then closed again over Lyra’s head as she pulled free. Matilde lifted a wooden spoon and shook it in Avaricette’s direction. “I ever hear you speak such ugliness about the princess again, I’ll lose the recipe for your favorite honeyed confits. Could be I’ll forget how to make desserts altogether.”

  Wrathalyne narrowed her licorice-dark eyes, prepared to unleash a retort from her “corpulent vocabulary,” but Avaricette took both her sisters’ hands and dragged them from the room. Having an abundance of sweets at the ready was of utmost importance to her.

  In their absence, insecurity swarmed in Lyra’s head: Was she a stain? As hideous as the hairy spiders rumored to live in the dungeon?

  She’d never looked upon her image . . . had only seen painted portraits of herself, her complexion altered to some normalcy by the artists. Blurred reflections in copper pans and bathwater weren’t enough. Her father kept the mirrors in the castle put away for fear the glass might catch a ray of light and magnify it upon her skin.

  Determined to know, Lyra climbed to one of the highest towers where her mother’s childhood items were stored. There in the dimness, she found an antique mirror gilded with coppery accents. She perched on a pile of books, nose tingling from dust, and slipped off her hood, slippers, and bindings so only her chemise and bloomers remained. After wiping a powdery haze off the glass, she saw her ghostly reflection. Her eyes glowed amber in the darkness and illuminated fanlike lashes. They resembled the silvery metallic strands of tinsel people strung upon lampposts and gates to honor Eldoria’s victory over ice and snow during the sun solstice (a three-month-long celebration that took place in what once served as the winter season centuries earlier).

  Lyra stared. How startling her differences were: such a far cry from the portraits of her mother, her father, cousins, or aunt. Even the castle’s servants and citizens of Eldoria—varying shades of ivory, rose, gold, copper and ebony—didn’t match her anemic pallor.

  Other than her lips which were shaped like her mother’s, “bee-stung” her father often teased, she looked like no one and nothing she’d ever seen, except the sugary cookie dough Matilde tinged with one drop of blue cornflower syrup before baking. If only she could bake to golden perfection so she might stand in the sun, barefaced and sturdy, and at last embrace the light she loved. If only she were a cookie.

  Stain, she repeated in her mind, though didn’t dare try to speak it aloud. Wishing she could somehow trap her grotesque image within the glass, Lyra stretched her hood over the mirror’s frame. She yanked at the seams, pulling so hard the mirror toppled off balance. The glass broke, renting the astral fabric in half. As shadows are prone to do when loosed, they escaped into the farthest corners of the room, leaving nothing but a pile of golden stardust on the floor.

  Lyra regretted the mishap immediately. Warm trickles wet her face and she peered at the broken mirror. Tears of inky violet trailed her cheeks. She had seen other people cry—streams clear as water.

  Even her tears were stained.

  It was too much. Sobbing, she sprang barefoot into the dust and glass. The shards jabbed into her tender skin, and small footprints smeared with blood trailed her as she ran down winding stairs through the castle.

  “Lyra!” As she rounded a corner, the king caught her in his strong embrace. He held her, bleeding and weeping. The dark purple of her tears seemed more unsettling and terrible to him than the cuts on her feet, and she wondered if a bruise was seeping from her soul. He carried her to the kitchen, where even her favorite sugar cookies failed to console her.

  Had King Kiran’s precious child not been heartbroken, and had the nightsky hood not been ruined, perhaps he wouldn’t have started another war. But as often happens in fairy tales—as in life itself—the ripple of one small tragedy can be far and widespread.

  The king sent his best horses and men to uproot the thorny vines at Mount Astra’s base which marked the iron stairway to the dark kingdom of Nerezeth, the selfsame rosebush that had tainted the queen’s health and caused her to die. He intended to take back the nights by force—along with their midnight shadows and stars—so he could at last secure his daughter’s happiness and welfare.

  The night-folk defended their borders with a vigorous determination that matched the king’s desperation. There appeared to be no victor in sight. Griselda saw her opportunity and took it.

  “You must go to the battlefields yourself,” she said to her brother while he paced the floor after speaking to his field marshal one day. “Call for a temporary truce so you might descend Nerezeth’s iron stairway. King Orion has been ill, but you can negotiate with his queen. Make her understand your daughter’s plight. Their son is only a few years older than Lyra; Prince Vesper . . . the evening star, they call him. It’s rumored he has caused some sort of upheaval himself. Perhaps that commonality can breed compassion, if not an alliance.” S
he laughed in her black heart, knowing that peace would not be so easily won. Her brother’s life would be in danger, and if by some dire chance he died, Griselda would be regent to the kingdom until Lyra was of age. All she would have to do was rid herself of her niece, and one day her daughters would reign.

  The king hesitated, fearing something might go wrong and his little Lyra be left an orphan.

  Griselda would not relent. “Do you watch our princess? Each day she cries her dusky tears. Each day she retreats a little deeper into the corners of the house, becoming one with the darkness. Arael would be grief-struck were she here. Your queen would insist we staunch Lyra’s hopelessness before she loses her love of light altogether.”

  In less than a fortnight, the king left for the battlefields with three of the kingdom’s most faithful guards in tow, handpicked by Griselda herself. He carried three gifts for Queen Nova as proof of his daughter’s soul sickness: a thick, braided plait of Lyra’s silvery-white hair, a vial filled with her violet tears, and an echo of her birdsong voice captured within an ensorcelled seashell upon a silver stand.

  On a rainy autumn morning, a fortnight later, news came of a treaty, but only the king knew of the details, for it had been a private meeting between him and the queen. He was said to be behind the messenger so Lyra waited by the window, wrapped in the heavy drapes, imagining her father’s red steed trotting up the path.

  In the king’s absence, the servants had been appointed various tasks by Griselda, keeping them busy so they had little time for Lyra. Not once had she fallen asleep to the gentle stroke of a tender hand, or heard a kind voice practicing writing or reading with her. She’d been lonely. One kiss upon her head by her father, and everything would be right again.

  The door rattled open on a rain-drenched gust, and it was all the princess could do to stand back so the sun filtering through clouds wouldn’t catch her. But King Kiran did not step inside. His limp body was carried in by two of his three guards. Their armor was dented and their heads wounded and bleeding, just like the king’s.

  The minute the door shut, Lyra stumbled toward them, touching her father’s unblinking eyes which looked past her in a faraway stare. Emotionless. Lifeless. A piercing sensation tweaked her heart, as if a thorn burst through the organ’s walls. Her fingers tangled in his hair, chilled by his scalp. She stifled the shouts of anguish growing inside her until she feared she’d bleed musical notes from her eyes and ears. She couldn’t let even one escape, for her song was far too jubilant for this monstrous day.

  Explanations abounded: Night Ravagers, the pale, skull-faced mercenaries of the under realm, attacked them. The guards tried to save the king but were outnumbered; the third one lost his life in the struggle.

  The war would never end now. Neither would Lyra’s sadness.

  At her father’s interment ceremony two days later, she said farewell to his body, which would be buried beneath the ground where moonbeams, absorbed into the soil from the night realm, would cushion his eternal cessation.

  He was gone forever. Just like her mother . . . just like the nightsky hood.

  They held the service in the castle’s great hall with all the drapes closed. The scent of candle wax that had once comforted Lyra hung in her throat, and the smoke stung her eyes.

  The two guards who had fought to save the king were knighted by Griselda for their bravery. They stood at the head and foot of the coffin, bedecked in glistening gold medals and gems.

  Lyra looked upon her father’s body one last time, sunken inside the red satin lining, remembering how safe she felt within his strong arms. How cherished she was, in spite of her differences.

  Dried lavender rose petals drifted across him, sprinkled by his royal subjects to honor his lost queen who loved the plant so much it killed her. The very same plant that had poisoned Lyra’s life from the beginning. Inspired by the floral cascade, dark tears fell to her feet, a violet rain spattering the white marble.

  Griselda stood in the deepest shadows of the room wherein only Lyra could see. Her aunt’s lips curled upward—revealing teeth as unnerving as bleached-out bones at the bottom of a creek. Within that smile, the princess saw the deadly slant of her future, and for the first time in her life, she knew fear.

  2

  A Breath of Death

  Every land has a place where evil congregates. Like a gaping wound, it reeks of spiritual rot, a stench that calls to those of similar faithlessness and disorder.

  In Eldoria, this place was the Ashen Ravine.

  The deep rift in terrain had been caused centuries earlier, when Nerezeth retreated underground with night and all its occupants in tow. The land sutured, but it didn’t fully heal. So, nature and magic came together, forming a mystical forest to cover the wound.

  Large, brambly trees grew almost overnight—their thorn-tipped branches and roots warped and knotted, as if they couldn’t decide which direction to grow, for they fed off both the night from below, and the day from above. The trunks, black as pitch, stooped like withered old men yet had the illusion of eternal youth with leaves that never faded or changed when spring surrendered to summer, and summer to fall.

  Like lions’ manes, the foliage thickened over time to riotous lengths until the dreary gray-green velvet blocked the sunlight. Beneath the conjoined canopy, any wrongdoer could find sanctuary. Thus, it became a metropolis for smugglers, murderers, degenerates and outcasts. The leaves worked as a sponge to absorb the sins of the ravine’s occupants, and they grew thicker and denser each day until at last the trees could no longer bear all of their weight.

  The wickedness began to slink down the trunks in mossy trails—furred and pulsating—a living, breathing umbrage. It overtook the ground, carrying the stink of decomposition, and made smoldering mounds of whatever goodness and beauty—blooms of columbine, bleeding heart and larkspur—had managed to adapt to the sunless terrain. Soon a gray carpet of shifting, rustling ash dusted the base and slinked from tree to tree, resulting in the ravine’s title.

  This was the in-between, a great crack in the earth stretching for hundreds of leagues. Beginning at the northern base of Mount Astra, it carved a distant scar on the other side of the Crystal Lake and the lush hilly valley where the ivory castle and its township nestled, fecund and plentiful with farms, cottages, gardens and shops. The crack then continued off to the west into the lapping waves of the endless ocean.

  Even with its stooped trunks, the ravine’s woodland stood tall. So steep was this pit, that to look down from the castle’s highest turret, the treetops appeared level with the ground, and the crack resembled a living thing that slithered along in the sun with leafy scales shifting from gray to green. To venture within was to risk a fatal fall, unless one followed the steep, winding path without straying—no easy task with the forest’s dangers lying in wait to distract the wayfaring wanderer.

  The day after King Kiran’s burial, Crony emerged from this powdery, poisonous terrain that she called home.

  She was the only one of her kind: a harrower witch. She had existed long before the great magical battle rent the earth and separated night from day centuries earlier. Long before the citizens of both kingdoms were altered by magic to adapt in their new worlds and terrains. Those in Nerezeth became tall and willowy and learned to speak mind-to-mind so they might tread nimbly and quietly on snowdrifts; in the same instant, they absorbed the moonlight and starlight—a silvering that started in their hair and skin then gave amber illumination to their eyes. Eldorians, in contrast, retained their sturdy builds and varied complexions, growing more durable, able to face the sun’s radiance with no pain. Crony had lived long enough she could feel the changes affecting her own comfort.

  She had many reasons for wanting the sky as it once was—a courteous turn from light to dark—and some were tangled with regret. No one would believe a witch could feel any such emotion, so she never spoke of it.

  Clasping the neck of her cloak in place, Crony clambered along the path leading out of
the ravine, toward the entrance where the leaves thinned to let in dapples of grayish-yellow light.

  She paused upon hearing a blood-curdling screech and turned to her right where a gurgling puddle skimmed through the ash—scattering powder on either side—in pursuit of a brown squirrel. There was rarely a bug, bird, rodent, or scavenging animal here, being little vegetation or rotting flesh for them to feed upon. The Shroud Collective in the lowlands left only the bones of their prey which most often fell to wayfaring quag-puddles—swallowed whole and digested—leaving no remains to claim: the very fate to befall this pitiful rodent that had dared to venture in.

  Crony hobbled down off the path, knowing it was already too late. When she reached the squirrel, only its tail could be seen amid the stinky, gurgling spume, flapping like a bushy flag. Shaking her head, Crony used her staff to fish it free. The puddle burped a growl in her direction then turned and fled, being averse to the taste of wood. The rodent’s skeleton had dissolved, leaving nothing but the furry appendage—the thickest end slimy with sludge. Crony tucked the tail behind her, into the rope belted around her waist, thinking to use it for trade in the black market.

  She resumed her trek to the entrance. On the ravine’s side of the vine-cloaked opening, a dripping, jellylike trail of sunlight coated the trunks. Sun-smugglers from the night realm came often to gather the sticky, hot substance into jars for light and warmth. The warped magic of this place not only made light a commodity that could be gleaned, but also affected time and distance across the forest. The expanse should’ve taken weeks to traverse, but somehow the shifting ash acted as momentum—the clustering tree branches as propulsion—and a person could wander one end to the next in mere days while moving at a normal pace.

  The witch drew her oversized hood tighter around her multiple gray braids in anticipation of the wide-open’s glare. Her form was human enough—discounting the obsidian horns, similar to a ram’s, spiraling out from either side of her head—but the likeness stopped there.