The Glass Casket

by Templeman, Mccormick

  “Father!” Rowan cried, and then she screamed, a high, piercing sound that caused her father to drop a cup and saucer in his study down below, the china shattering into slivers of white and blue.

  The rest of the morning passed in a haze. People came and went. They made assessments. And how silly they all seemed to Rowan. There was only one assessment: Emily was dead. Nothing else mattered at all.

  She sat in her father’s study, drinking tea and staring out the picture window, not seeing. Footsteps sounded everywhere. People had descended on the house. She could hear them stomping up the stairs and down the hall to Emily’s room. So much noise. It was hurting her head, hurting her soul. Later, she thought, when Emily gets home, I will tell her.… But she stopped herself when she remembered Emily would never get home.

  And then she heard something that didn’t make sense—footsteps overhead in what could only be her own room. There was no reason for anyone to be in her room. Her head swimming from the medicines Dr. Temper had put in her tea, Rowan lifted herself from the couch and started for the stairs. As she climbed, the walls seemed to expand and contract. The floorboards seemed to swell.

  Before she even reached her room, she knew whom she would find inside, and when Rowan stumbled in, the world slipping like loose marbles beneath her feet, she could barely contain her anger. There she was, Merrilee, the back of her nut-brown hair facing Rowan as she stood at Rowan’s desk.

  “Get out!” Rowan screamed, and footsteps came quickly down the hallway. “Get out, you runt!” There were voices behind her, urging her to be kind to Merrilee, and then someone’s hands on her shoulders. She pushed them off and, lurching across the room, grabbed Merrilee by her wool sleeves and spun her around.

  “Get out of my room!” Rowan screamed again. “Get out!”

  And then Merrilee raised her arms. She held something in her hands, and blinded by rage, Rowan grabbed it and dashed it on the floor.

  There was a terrible crash, followed by weeping from Merrilee, and gasps from the onlookers. And on the floor lay broken glass and water, and flowers.

  “They were for you,” Merrilee wept. “I just wanted to make you feel better.”

  And then the girl ran past her, and the onlookers tuttutted. Rowan saw faces glaring at her, glaring at wicked Rowan who makes children cry. Goi Tate, and Dr. Temper, and the old lady who lived near Arlene.

  “Get out!” she screamed at the lot of them.

  They backed away from her and out into the hall. She slammed the door and collapsed onto her bed.

  Hours later, Rowan sat at the inn, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she sipped brandy and stared into the fire. There was a hollowness inside her. She kept trying to tell herself that Emily was gone, but she couldn’t make herself believe it. Emily was always there. She always had been, and she couldn’t just be gone all of a sudden. She kept feeling her cheek, knowing Emily would never give her another kiss goodbye. Her mind slowly moving through memories of their childhood together—playing in the stream, the warmth of the summer sun on their faces as Emily scolded her about going in too deep. Emily as a child, sitting on the counter, swinging her legs while Antonia cooked beside her. Or was that only the other night? This was wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she told herself. Emily was supposed to marry Bill Holdren and have ten babies she might scold to her heart’s content. Her blond hair was supposed to fade to gray. The skin around her cat’s eyes was supposed to wither and sag. Her face was supposed to happily line, and her body shrink. They were supposed to know each other’s grandchildren. They were supposed to sit side by side as old ladies, Emily making jokes, Rowan quietly choking back her laughter.

  It wasn’t exactly that she had taken Emily for granted, but now that Emily was gone, Rowan felt somehow completely alone in the world. There were many people she loved, and who loved her, but none who knew every single one of her faults and loved her despite them. And there was no one who could drive her so crazy and whom she loved quite as much as she had loved—still loved—Emily.

  She watched the flames dance before her, and took another sip of the brandy that Elsbet had given her. She enjoyed the way it burned her throat and took her away from her own thoughts … her pain. She felt a hand on her shoulder—Tom’s hand, but she looked up to see Jude standing above her. He looked beautiful in the firelight, and for a moment, she forgot that she hated him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he sat down beside her and stared at the fire. They remained there for some time, side by side, watching as the fire slowly died.

  Tom awoke with a start, a strange sense that someone was in the room with him. He lay there a moment, eyes closed, willing himself dead, willing the thing in the room with him, whatever it was, to kill him. To rip his heart out as it had done to his beloved.

  He felt the energy of another entity. Heat. He felt heat, and then he felt the whisper of a finger against his lips. It was not what he expected. It was soft. And there was a scent of dewy, aromatic earth. And then he heard her faint laughter, and smelled her hair, the shining blackness that always seemed to emit the slightest hint of lavender. But it couldn’t be.

  He opened his eyes and flinched when he saw her crouching over him like an animal. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, a wildness in them he didn’t remember from before. The skin of her shoulders and neck looked clean and alive, and her cheeks, though stark white, seemed somehow to be lit from within. Something about her dress was different. It was white instead of red, and it was a sundress, delicate straps revealing the taut muscles of her shoulders. And there was something feral about her, something within her that meant that it couldn’t be her, not really. But then, he knew that already. There was no way it could be her because she was dead. He’d seen her lying in the snow, her heart ripped from her chest.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice lower than he remembered.

  “This is a dream,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows.

  She shook her head and smiled, her lips wet and expectant. And then she leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. Overcome, on the verge of tears, he lifted his hands to her face and kissed her back, knowing that none of it could be real. His hands ran along the length of her body, and he could feel that underneath the white cotton shift, she wore nothing. He caressed the slope of her hip, the softness of her belly, and the more he reached for her, the more she seemed to stay just out of reach. And then she pulled away and looked at him with those pitch-black eyes—the eyes of a beautiful animal.

  “Come on,” she said, and she was off the bed and by the window. She cracked it open and a flurry of snow wafted in, coating her skin, but she didn’t seem to mind it. Her skin that had been so rosy in life, in memory, was now the color of the snow that brushed against it. She swept her unruly hair over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.

  “You coming?” she said, and then, gathering his boots and pants from the floor, she tossed them in his direction.

  He climbed out of bed and pulled on his trousers, but when he looked back up, she was gone. He ran to the window and looked out to the woods, certain he had lost her again forever, but she was still there, leaning against a tree, standing barefoot in the snow. She motioned for him to come.

  He threw on his clothes and hurried downstairs. He opened the door and took his steps slowly. He was awake now. He was sure of it, and yet she still seemed to be there. It was nearly dawn, just the beginning, and the air was colored with lavender. The snow was coming down in gentle flurries like tufts of fur, or feathers kicked up from goose down pillows. But it was cold. And she was standing there in nothing but a sundress. And she was supposed to be dead.

  “Come on,” she said, hand on her hip, feigning annoyance.

  The Fiona Eira he had known had been fragile and shy, but this new girl, this dream girl, was vibrant and bold, wild and free. She was warm. She looked at him like they were old friends, like she adored him, like he was worthy of being adored.

  “I can
’t stand here all day. Do you want someone to see me?” She grinned as if it were a joke. As if the fact of her death were nothing but a humorous anecdote.

  When he reached her, she took his hand in hers and pulled him into a gentle gallop.

  “Come on, will you?”

  And then he was running through the morning light, through the snow and the ice-cold air, still unsure what was happening, her hand so warm in his. She laughed and looked at him with so much excitement, so much love, that his veins seemed to expand, and more oxygen seemed to reach his brain, his lungs, making everything fantastically clear. Making it sparkle. And quite suddenly he felt as if the world had color again—as if he’d lived all his life without some key element that was now granted to him, which Tom knew he could never again live without. He’d never felt so himself before. It was as if with every step he took, he became more of the person he was destined to become. And he was sure he could conquer anything. He could be anything he wanted, and for a moment, he even thought he might understand Jude. His need for freedom. Was this what it felt like to run off into the wilderness alone? And surely he must be alone. The girl who ran beside him couldn’t be there—not really. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be truly free. And for the first time in his life, he realized he could leave Nag’s End. There was nothing stopping him. He could go out and see the world. See the wonders he’d only heard about.

  The snow licked his face, and his nose was growing cold. He looked to his ghostly companion, stretched out an arm’s length away, laughing, her teeth glistening white, her hair whipping around her in wild black waves. Only she was like no ghost he’d ever imagined. If anything, she seemed more alive than when she’d actually been alive. But he knew that she couldn’t be there. He had seen her ravaged and dead. He had seen her laid out in her glass casket for all to gaze on her terrible beauty made colder, more perfect with death. This girl beside him was more alive than any girl he’d ever met. And so warm. Heat seemed to spill from her, warming him simply by his proximity.

  And he knew this had to mean he was losing his mind.

  Up in her room, Rowan dreamed of her mother again. Holding the wooden egg, she smiled at Rowan. Soft morning light filtered through the window, and her mother held her close. Rowan ran her little fingers down the length of her mother’s arm, and at the base of her wrist, she found fastened a golden snake. Startled, Rowan screamed, and then began trying to squeeze her fingers between the snake and the flesh to free her mother, but that only made the snake squeeze tighter. Soon, the snake was burrowing in, cutting into her mother’s flesh, breaking the skin. And then something happened—a blade slipped between the snake and the flesh, and with a quick swish, the snake split in half and fell to the ground.

  “Ah,” her mother sighed. “That’s better.” And taking Rowan into her arms, she held her.

  In her dark bedroom, Rowan woke up crying, longing to be held as her mother held her in her dreams, knowing she never would be. With searching hands, she reached for Pema at the foot of the bed. She ruffled the dog’s fur, and the warmth felt good against her fingers. Pema shifted in her sleep, and then Rowan lay back down again, and turning on her side, she shut her eyes against her pain.

  They were inside the hollow of a tree. Tom didn’t know how this could be possible, but there he was. They’d run for a long time, and now to him it seemed to be even more of a dream than it had before. It was all something of a blur. A luscious blur, and he kept trying to tell himself that he needed to remember everything about each moment, and that if he could do so, he could retain the knowledge, retain the vibrancy of the colors, retain the delicious taste that seemed to hang in the air, and he could take it with him back to reality. He could use it to become something new. Something powerful.

  The inside of the tree was too large, and it seemed to recede impossibly far.

  “It’s a fairy tree, but they don’t mind my using it,” she said, taking a bite of her apple.

  He wanted to tell her that he didn’t believe in fairies. But he didn’t speak. Instead, he took a bite of his apple as well—the fairies had left those too, the apples. Apparently they’d been in a hurry to lend her the place. The apple tasted otherworldly. It tasted like his mouth was lit on fire with thousands of shades of sweetness and tartness, and his tongue traced the apple before each bite, almost not wanting to lose contact with the fruit.

  She was no longer wearing her sundress. Now she wore only her necklace and a purple satin piece of fabric draped lazily over her exquisite frame. Memories flooded his mind. Her face beneath him, above him, somehow around him. His hands surrounding her, bringing her to him, the fire within her warming the two of them. But that couldn’t have happened. It was as if time was being difficult, refusing to unspool like it normally did.

  She snapped her fingers in front of him, the air seeming to part for the pressing digits, sparks seeming to fly.

  “You’re going to have to keep it together if we’re going to do this, Tom. I don’t want to drive you over the edge here.”

  He bit into his apple. “You’re not real,” he said.

  “Of course I’m real.”

  “No. You’re not. You, this place, this apple, all of it, it’s all just in my mind. I’m not even here right now.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Then where are you?”

  “I’m back home in bed. I’m sick. I must be. I have a fever, and I’m dreaming all this.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You dreamed what we just did?”

  He nodded.

  “That must have been one excellent dream, Tom.”

  “I think it was,” he said. “Thanks.”

  And then without hesitating, she reached out and slapped him hard across the face. The burn was spectacular. He raised a hand to the pain.

  “What about that, Tom? Was that a dream?”

  He shook his head. And then she was crouching in front of him, his head in her hands, just like before, only now he had the distinct sense that he was in danger—that she had the capacity and possibly the desire to do him great harm. She held his eyes with her own black pools and spoke with great precision.

  “Now listen to me, Tom. I am not part of your fantasy. I never was. I know you like to think that I am, but I am very much my own thing. I am something different now. I occupy my own space, Tom. Do you understand? I am real. I am here. I am more here than you are. Do you understand me?”

  “But you … died.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But I saw you. Your heart was ripped out.”

  “Stop saying that!” she yelled, rage spilling into her eyes, and her grip on his face tightened. “What if I said that about you? What if I said that you were dead? How would that make you feel, Tom?”

  “But I saw you. Your body was on display. How is that possible?”

  She let go of his face, once again the sweet and sensual girl. Reclining beside him, she pulled the sheet around herself and took a bite of her apple.

  “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to die, Tom,” she said, toying with the coin on the red ribbon she still wore around her neck. “Did you ever think of that?”

  And then she kissed him deep and slow, and his urge to question ceased. After that, he followed her every command, and the hours went by strangely so that by the time she walked him back to the edge of the woods, the daylight that was only barely appearing when she’d come for him was already beginning to wane. He felt queasy, as if he’d had too much of something good, and in doing so had turned it putrid. He could feel it in his head, in his gut, the sick-sweet taste of shame. When they reached the edge of the woods, he stepped over the threshold, and she let go of his hand. He turned to see her, leaning into a tree as if she were a part of it.

  “You’re not coming?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t leave the woods during the day.”

  A panic rose in his
chest, and he reached for her. She took his hand, and as if pulling him through to another realm, she kissed him again.

  “And, Tom,” she said between kisses. “This is a secret. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, right?”

  And then, gently, as if she were dealing with a child, she pushed him away and leaned back into her tree.

  “You’re really staying here?”

  She shrugged. “I have responsibilities, Tom. I have hungry mouths to feed.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand. Hungry mouths?”

  “The forest is my home now. I have to stay.”

  “What—in that fairy hollow?” He felt ridiculous saying it, but then nothing in the world seemed to make sense anymore.

  A strange smile spread across her lips, something powerful, something predatory.

  “I don’t think they’ll be coming back anytime soon.”

  He stepped away from her, and then she looked normal again—a lovely, normal girl who somehow wasn’t dead but wasn’t quite alive either, standing half-naked in the snow.

  “Go now,” she said, shooing him with her hand. “I want to watch you as you walk away.”

  It was only then that he noticed her feet. In the hours since he’d been with her, he’d been pulled in by her strange beauty. He seemed to be covered in moss and dirt from their tryst in the woods, but she was perfectly clean, pristine, except now he saw that her feet and shins were caked with dirt and mud and a strange grayish substance. She noticed him looking, and then she was gone.

  12. THE HIEROPHANT

  THE NEXT MORNING, a small procession made its way through the woods and up to Cairn Hill. It was a short walk through the forest and then up a steep slope that let out above Seelie Lake. There, at the Mouth of the Goddess, Emily’s body, now wrapped in silk and anointed with oils of cedar and hyssop, was placed in the snow, and then solemnly, and with great care, the stones were laid atop. But Rowan did not place a stone. Overtaken with grief, she departed early. She did not even leave the customary offering of cinnamon for the Goddess. Her father would see to it that her share was placed.