by Kathryn Hore
Except for the children. The children were never found. Never seen again.
And then the children had begun disappearing from within the town. From within their very own beds.
She did not blame the townspeople their fear. She had no children and perhaps they thought she did not understand, but she did. Really she did. Only it was her name pulled from the box, her body tied out here in the night with the shadows reaching. She was the one they were giving up to the woods, their sacrifice, given to suffer for their children.
Damn it. She had to stop crying. She had to do something.
She sniffed back the tears and tried to inspect her bonds. The knots were tight, but they were only knots. Tied by men who were strong, but afraid and desperate to get away, rushing too quickly to check their handiwork. Surely she could find a loose slip in one of the knots, a catch in the ropes she could work to her advantage.
She picked with one hand at the ropes around the other. As she did, she heard the trees behind her sway.
Her head snapped up. Every nerve in her body froze. Even the breath in her throat was still as she focused her listening.
Nothing.
Then something.
A shift in the trees. Movement. In the distance.
Coming closer.
She turned back to the knotted rope with renewed scrambling. Frantic, pulling with her nails, her fingers, her teeth. Blinking rapidly to clear her vision; the tears were back, but this time they were of panic and she paid them no heed. The ropes around her right wrist held. She gave it up and switched hands, trying to work at her left instead.
A finger caught under the edge of the rope. Her breath caught with it.
She heard rustling behind her. Her chest tightened, dropped into her gut.
Yanking, pulling. Her skin tearing with it, under the ropes. She barely noticed, kicking at the pole instead, grunting with effort as she wrenched hard and felt something give way.
Her left hand tore free. It allowed slack in the rope and with frenzied movement she pulled again at the knots at her right. Breaking nails, burning skin, she managed to get it loose. Ropes were everywhere, around her waist, her ankles, but she tried to shake them off, tried to get a foot out.
Something. Something moving in the trees.
Something stepping into the clearing behind her.
The torch-lit shadows stretching before her shifted. Something moving in front of the light. The skin beneath her hair crawled and she heard a terrified sound, realising only distantly it was from her own throat. And bonds only partially loosened or not, she tried her best to run.
She bolted toward the path, shaking off the remaining rope as she did so.
Her left ankle slid out beneath her. Still tied too tight.
She cried out as she fell and hit the ground hard. Her shoulder, her hip. The thump of it took the breath out of her and left her wheezing in the dirt. She heaved back into winded lungs, gasping for air as she lay on the ground. Too long. She had to get up. Struggling for breath, twisting to reach for her ankle. But the ropes cut in too tight and the knots held. Brutal spikes of pain shot through her leg as she yanked at it. The joint was twisted.
No. No, she couldn’t let it take her. She couldn’t die here and let the townsfolk get away with doing this to her.
A shadow fell across the ground. A darkness over her body. It brought cold. She shivered. She had to draw her hands together to stop their shake.
‘Please,’ she whispered, not daring to look up. ‘Please. Just... please.’
‘Yes. They do often plead.’
The voice was smooth. Deep and resonant, it sounded a vibration low in her gut. Despite herself, she began to look up. She had to see. She wanted to know. What manner of thing could speak so? Her eyes lifted slowly and she told herself not to scream, no matter what she saw there. Whatever the horrific visage or inhuman dread made solid, whatever abomination that was the monster in these woods.
It was a man.
A handsome one, at that. Leaning one shoulder against the pole, muscled arms bare and crossed over a vest, looking down at her. The kind of man that had always caught her eye. Shadows played havoc with the features of his face. He seemed to have blonde hair, or maybe it was brown. His arms were strong, thick, his torso solid; there was a strength in him, a raw masculinity to his broad shoulders. In the semi-darkness, it seemed his eyes were only black.
She closed her eyes and wiped them with torn fingers. When she opened them again, he was still there. Still the same, unmoved and unimpressed by her pleas.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, a breathless sound, because she wasn’t sure what else to say.
He grinned. She had the fleeting impression the teeth in his mouth were sharp.
‘They see what they want. What they fear most. Or want most. Or both,’ he said. His voice rattled in her head. It seemed to contain its own echo. ‘Not often do they see a man.’
She felt herself swallow. Her throat was suddenly dry.
‘It is a mask,’ she said. ‘This before me, what I see. So it is a mask.’
The man shrugged, uninterested in her attempts to make sense of what was happening. It seemed to bore him. He stood straight and came toward her. She shied back, a cowering movement she immediately regretted, but he did not attempt to touch her. He only stood above and looked down.
‘And never,’ he said, ‘do they ask the right questions.’
She had to stop staring. Lying sprawled on the ground in his shadow, gazing up with breathless wonder. He was tall above her, and when he moved, she saw the muscles in his arms flex, the strength of his shoulders, torchlight and shadow against skin. It brought a gasp to her throat, an unwitting catch to her breath as she stared and could not stop. Could not tear her eyes away.
Move — she must move. Anything to shake some sense back into herself. She made herself stand, despite the pain shooting up from her ankle and the stinging burns from the rope. It was a slow process with little grace, wobbling lopsided to her feet bit by bit. But it got her up. It let her hobble backwards as far as the rope would allow her. It stopped her crouching in his shadow.
More importantly, it made her eyes turn away. Even still, she could not stop thinking of those arms. What would they be like held about her? What would the touch of his hands, firm with intent, feel like against her skin?
No. He was no man.
‘What are you?’
His laughter echoed low. ‘You would not want to know. Be satisfied with what you see.’
She fought to hold her ground as he stepped closer. She shook, but would not turn, not even as the space between them diminished. He came so close she could feel his breath cool on her cheek, the shifting strength of his body in the wake of her own. She had to fight an inexplicable urge to reach out and touch him.
He bent his head to her ear. She did not pull away.
‘What do you want?’ he whispered.
‘Me?’ she breathed, trying to clear her head. It was fuzzy. Hard to think with him so close. ‘No. Wait. What do you want? I should be asking...’
He shifted again, his body almost touching hers. Stepping behind her, moving around her, shifting near. She stayed very still. Waiting. She wasn’t sure why, for him to grab her maybe. To touch her. Perhaps to tear her apart. To do whatever he desired. Her breath was short, fast, coming in gasps. Her every muscle was yearning toward him. No, not waiting; anticipating.
He did not touch her. He did not bridge the final inch between them.
She felt his lips by her other ear. ‘Then ask.’
‘What... what is it you want?’
She heard that laughter again. A rumble through her limbs.
‘It is not I who wants.’
She tried to lift her chin, find defiance. Found herself leaning back toward him instead. She should be struggling, fighting, not just standing waiting for him to touch her. She saw him raise a hand. He brought it close to her face, her cheek. She braced herself, thought finally.
Leaned her head back as if already under his hold.
His skin did not brush hers. His fingers hovered millimetres from her face, but kept at that same distance as he traced them down the line of her chin, her throat, her shoulder. Her body, her breasts, her waist. Her hip. Maddening. She wanted to cry out at him, she wanted to scream: touch me!
She forced a breath back and turned to look straight into those midnight black eyes.
‘Is that...’ she began, then had to stop, swallow, start again. ‘Is that all you are? A temptation made flesh? A trick of the mind seducing me?’
His lips twisted in the shadows; a smile, sharp like his teeth.
‘If such is a trick, it is a good one, no?’
His voice vibrated her core. She found herself leaning toward it. It was all she could do not to clutch him.
‘I should be fighting you. I should be running from you.’
‘Then fight. Run. But why worry about should? Focus instead on want.’
‘What do I want?’
She wasn’t sure why she asked that. The words were out of her mouth before she could consider them.
‘Now you are asking the right questions.’
He turned, a languid movement, stepping away. An emptiness left behind, the feeling of something lost.
As he moved, he raised a hand, held it up. Around his wrist something weaved. Silk. Silk cuffs, ravelling, pulling together, cloth stitching around him even as she watched, spun from the air, from the darkness and shadows. Down his arms, a fine jacket in green appeared stitch by stitch across those broad shoulders. It was fitted and trimmed. The other arm held out, he turned, cocked his head as the cloth stitched its way about him, down his body, covering his skin. Jacket and shirt, belt and pants. Thick, leather boots, polished and expensive, with silver buckles gleaming bright.
A hat. Bowing his head, a cane forming in one hand. When he raised his head again, when he tipped that hat to her, it was with a very familiar face.
‘Greswold’ she said and heard the disgust in her own voice.
But this was not the Greswold of now. This was the Greswold of the past. Brown hair not yet greyed, round face not yet lined. Muscular shoulders and youthful strength; yes, he’d had those once. There had been attractions. It had been many years since she’d seen that one so young, and maybe back then it had been different, but now all it did was bring a sour taste to her mouth.
Her jaw clenched, she felt herself shift back. It was Greswold who looked at her, but that smile was still sharp and those eyes were still black.
‘Greswold is not what I want,’ she said.
‘You did once.’
‘A long time ago. I learned my lesson.’
The sharp grin grew. ‘But not the right one.’
A raised hand lashed out. She was beyond arm’s reach, too far away for it to connect. But it did not need to. It was enough that it once had.
It wasn’t that she felt the slap; she remembered it. The stinging open palm blow to her cheek, the shock and shame flooding through her with it. Her head flicked back, a grunt passing her lips. She was pushed back a step by the force of it.
She gasped. A memory should never hurt so much.
He stood several feet from her. But she felt the grip around her wrist now just as she had then and she fought against it now as then too. Crying out, yanking herself back. This wasn’t happening, this wasn’t now. She fought to tell herself that. This was then, back when they were young, little more than teenagers. Back when he’d been just another village kid, if one with fierce ambition, and she a young fool attracted by good looks and charm alone.
The grip about her waist bit in, held by hands she could not see but only remember. She twisted in them, fighting, yanking herself away. Forming a fist, lashing out with her arms. She felt her punch connect. She heard the ghost whispers of his cursing on the wind.
She turned to run. Back then she had run.
The rope tugged back on her ankle and she cried out with the agony of it, staggering forward. The spikes of pain bolted up her leg and shocked the memory, if such was what it was, as physical as it was, away.
She found herself panting, gulping back breath. Untouched and standing in the night, shaking with the adrenalin of a struggle which had happened twenty years before. She had got away then. She had assumed it was over, done with. Had she been wrong in that?
She looked back over her shoulder, her face still stinging from the slap of long ago. It was no longer Greswold there. He had returned to his first appearance, that strength of man, and she could not have said she was sorry. Perhaps this creature with his hungry black eyes pulled her forward too easily, but she would take that over Greswold any day.
And yet there was something of Greswold which remained. Before the creature was a box. A great wooden box, just like the one she had watched the lord take a name from. The one from which he had pulled her own name.
She eyed it with suspicion. It could not be real. ‘What…’ she began, but her words dragged off. Instead, she stepped forward, limping, trying to ignore the low burning of suspicion deep inside her.
‘There is a price for knowing,’ he told her. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
She said nothing, just kept shuffling to that box. She could see the little bits of twisted card inside, innocuous as they lay there. Folded over so she could not read them. She stared at them. Raised a hand. Hesitated.
Her eyes flicked upward. He was watching her. Black eyes waiting. Hungry.
She plunged her hand amid the cards. It felt real and her fingers closed around something. She pulled a tiny piece of card out and flicked it open.
Her name was written across it.
But of course. That made sense. It had been her name.
She let the card drop, let it flutter to the ground, and looked up to stare at him. He said nothing, only waited while she made her decisions.
Quicker now, staring at him still, she plunged her hand back among the cards. Pulled out another and tore it open.
Her name again.
And again.
And again.
‘No.’
Again.
‘No!’
She yanked at the box with both hands as the bile rose up in her throat. The box was solid, heavy, all too real. It rocked as she grabbed it, pushed it. It fell with a thud, spilling its contents across the dirt. All those innocuous bits of card, all those secrets, scattered across the forest floor.
‘No!’ she cried out, as one after the other, those bits of cards showed her own name.
She yanked herself away, staggering, stumbling. Barely staying upright, standing in the middle of the clearing, shaking and clenching her fists, the truth too hard, too bitter.
‘It was meant to be fair,’ she said, as if that made a difference. ‘It was meant to be…’
But what did that even mean, fair? The selection of a sacrifice in some equitable manner all would accept? As if that could make it right. As if that changed anything. She was still the body given to suffer, still the one they gave up to the beast.
He was still standing, waiting, patient.
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why are you here? Why do you show me this?’
‘I come when called.’ He shifted, moved behind her, beyond her vision. She saw him reappear from the corner of her other eye. ‘I take what is given.’
‘The children are not given! They are not…’
But her words dragged off. She thought of the bits of card. Her eyes clenched shut, tight enough to squeeze back the tears. She wanted to shake the suspicion from her head and refuse the possibility. There were too many secrets here which should never be found out. She told herself she no longer wanted to know them. That she no longer wanted to know any of it.
That was a lie. The truth was still the biggest temptation of all.
He stepped around in front of her. He held out one hand, one long muscled arm.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come and find out what you r
eally want.’
Her own hands were sweaty and she wiped them against her skirts. ‘I do not want to die,’ she said, because that much was truth she could be sure of. ‘I do not want to be torn apart.’
‘You will not mind. It is but a price.’
There seemed no options, no escapes. Yet he did nothing but hold out a hand. Waiting with the patience of one who knows the conclusion is forgone. She could not deny the heat which rose to her cheeks, the warmth low down in her belly as she looked back at him. She could not deny just how much she really wanted, even if she wasn’t quite sure what.
Come and find out. The gesture seemed to offer answers, explanations. Perhaps it also offered pain and death. The unknown made her insides turn, though she did not back away. She understood this was her choice. She had not expected that. Her choice. And so she chose.
She raised a shaking hand and put her clammy fingers into his.
A sound rose up out of her, a cry in the night. She tried to pull her hand away again, but once in his hold, he did not give it up. His grip was cold, icily burning. The piercing of a thousand needles into her skin. It felt as if the flesh of her fingers was searing, tearing. As if it were ripping away from her bones.
She cried out and gripped tighter. And the instant her skin touched his, she knew.
Around her in the clearing, she saw it. The past, the truth. The young Greswold cursing her own retreating form, running from him and leaving him furious, thwarted. She had not given him what he wanted. His blame lashed out at her, at everyone. At the town itself. Hunched over in these woods, calling out his wants to the night.
She heard his cries on the wind. Power. Wealth. Land. Always the same. Power. Of course.
She heard another come to bring answer to his desires. What would you give to have what you want?
Greswold hadn’t even hesitated.
The first born of all who owe me allegiance.
And in the darkness of the wood, she cried with the sadness of it and the pain, grabbed at her own wrist, and pulled.
The contact broke. She went stumbling back, numbed hand clutched to her, staggering on her injured ankle. She fell to her knees, heaving nausea, the truth sitting rancid in her belly. It rose up her throat and she leaned over, coughing, retching. Spitting out strands of foul-tasting bile, bitter tears mixing with vomit. Heaving over and over again.