She giggled like a young woman in love should and together, they stepped through the cold void with no surge of passion or sensual tingles and came out the other end by the rift. Smoke trailed along the edges that marked the end of the world for the people who lived in Hiram’s village. He glanced around to make sure all was in order and it did seem to be.
The couple made their way along the bumpy road and straight away to the chapel on the side of the small village. The pastor married them with a few kind words, his gray eyes fixed on the bride.
“You are a lucky man indeed, Hiram Oversher, so very lucky. Your father will be proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Hiram replied before he ushered his bride away.
Nothing had changed at his father’s house. The fences needed mending and the pigs needed to be fed. He found his father raking the rows of the soggy garden behind the house. Secret stayed at her husband’s side, watching the older man approach.
“I see you’ve come home now, my son,” his father said, squinting his one good eye to see better. “And you’ve brought someone along as well. Who is she and will she be staying long?”
“This is my bride, Father. I found her beyond the rift.”
The old man’s face pinched for a moment, but only the tiniest moment of all. “It’s not nearly the safest place to find a bride,” he uttered and took a step closer. He wiped his hands on his pants and reached out to Secret.
“What’s your name, dear?”
“Secret,” she whispered. “I’m Hiram’s Secret.”
“Aha.” His gaze roved over her as he clasped her hands. “You remind me very much of my wife. She was a beauty as you are, smart, smarter than most around these parts. And she didn’t come from Pig’s End either.” He cleared his throat and looked over her shoulder at the neighbor’s house.
Hiram noticed Bigsly Jenks staring out the window at them.
“But don’t you pay no mind to folks who go staring at you round here. They’re just jealous is all. And you go on and be yourself, and be happy in my home. It’s mine and yours as much as it is my son’s. Welcome to my family, small as it is now.”
“Thank you.” She stepped closer and hugged Hiram’s father, closing her eyes and smiling in a sweet way. Hiram almost believed they would be happy now. At least he wouldn’t be alone and his father had approved of the match.
Chapter Nine
The Meaning of the Tablet
For three months, they lived quite happily. Hiram and Secret worked side by side in the fields. They slopped the hogs and picked the root crops when the time came. The couple slept in a new bed he’d fashioned for them. His father had helped him add on a private room to the small house. It was just after dawn one day when Hiram crept out of bed. He pulled on the pair of pants he had gotten from Lord Beorolf, marveling at how well the unusual fabric held up.
He stood by the window and didn’t watch the colors turn in the sky, but instead, looked at his wife, resting on her side, her dark hair spread across the pillow and the bed cover knotted at her ankles. He could just see the small swell of her belly where their child grew.
A mule brayed along down the road outside.
Hiram’s father was already setting to his chores for the day. Life in Pig’s End was hard work, but he didn’t mind so much now. He went off to cook some breakfast for his wife and himself. In the kitchen, he overheard his father shouting. It went on for a time, so he went out to see what the matter was.
“You’ve got something that doesn’t belong to you! You’ll trade it to me as is the way of things.”
“Our bargains ended after Malecer died. You know that, Lysen. Now begone with your cart and your mule and find some other old fool to swindle.”
Hiram stepped into the street where the two men glared at each other. “You heard my father, man, be on your way,” he warned the trader.
Old Lysen’s eyes brightened. He hooked his thumbs in his pants and flashed a crooked grin. “So, you survived my brother, you did. I suspect you had something to do with his death.”
“Your brother did himself in,” Hiram replied. “Be off now. You heard my father. He wants no business with you this day.”
Lysen clucked his tongue. “No, but he did some twenty winters back, he did. We had a bargain then. I’d like to make one again now.”
“My bargain to you was paid in full,” Hiram’s father interrupted. “My wife is dead, and she was a good wife when she was with me. I’ve no ill claim against you, and you should have none against me.”
Lysen wheezed and eyed the house, his beard fluttering in the wind. “It’s a strange boy who lets gremlins free on a keep full of the very thing they’re driven to destroy.”
Hiram narrowed his eyes. “A stranger man who locks away his daughter in a dungeon.”
“Ah! So, it’s true! I knew the truth in the village gossip the moment they spoke of her beauty. You have my niece! Where is she?” He scurried toward the house as fast as his legs could carry him.
Hiram followed, wary.
“Secret!” Lysen shouted inside the doorway. “It’s time you get back to where you belong!” The trader went inside, clomping through the hall to the back rooms.
“You get out of my house!” Hiram shouted, clenching his fists as he gave chase.
A scream made him sprint. He found Lysen and Secret in the bedroom, the old man’s hands at his wife’s throat.
“You’re a vile thing, and I’ll end you now. My brother didn’t have the brains to do it, but I’m not like him.” He snarled and pressed his weight down on her.
She clawed at his face, her nails lengthening, her body shifting, but so slowly, as if she truly had forgotten how to be what was in her nature.
Hiram took up the stool by the door and clubbed Lysen on the back of the head, sending the old man to one side. But he held fast to his target, choking the life out of her.
Secret’s eyes were wide and glassy.
Hiram shrieked and beat the old man again.
A pair of gnarled hands gripped Lysen by the shoulders and yanked him away. Hiram rushed to gather his wife in his arms before she could fall to the floor. Her silence terrified him. Secret’s face had gone blue. Her chest didn’t move at all. Red finger marks stood out on her fair throat where Lysen had choked her…to death.
“No!” he shouted, over and over. “No, no!”
He held her limp body to his chest and wept.
Behind him, his father beat Lysen again.
Silence settled over the house, and a sad melancholy thickened the air and made it hard to breathe or see through his tears. Hiram didn’t want to let go of her body. He couldn’t see placing her in a grave or covering her with the moist earth of the land. It seemed so wrong, so terrible a thing to do to someone he loved so much.
“I’d do anything to bring her back,” he said.
His father sat beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know you would, son. I would have done the same for your mother…if there was a way.”
Hiram thought of Beorolf and the keep, the golems, and the lord’s misshapen body. “Her father knew a way,” he muttered. “If only I had stayed there longer, learned his trade, understood the magic he had.”
“I’ll leave you be for a time,” his father said before he stood and dragged Lysen’s body out.
Hiram set his wife across the pillows and stared down at her. He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets, racked by a fit of sobs. His fingers closed over something he’d long since forgotten.
He pulled out the small clay tablet.
“It’s the key,” he said aloud, realizing what a treasure he had saved. This little trinket had brought the golems to life in Beorolf’s keep. At night, when the lord removed them, the golems were immobile. And in the morning, he had replaced them and the golems went about their chores. Hiram set his gaze on his wife’s motionless chest, and bit his lip. I have to try.
He went to the kitchen to find a knife, thinking himself mad
for attempting such a thing. The golems were forged beings, not creatures of flesh, but Beorolf had been both. It has to work. His mind raced with thoughts of what might go wrong. Whispering a prayer to the Gods, he unlaced her nightshirt and pierced her chest with the tip of the blade. Blood dribbled down her skin in slow, crimson lines. Unsure of how the magic worked or how much of her would still be there, he slipped the tiny piece of clay past the cut and worked it beneath her skin.
With her sewing needle and a length of thread, he stitched closed the injury he’d done and sat beside her to wait. “Please, Gods,” he begged, “Bring her back to me.”
Outside, he heard his father digging a grave. The rhythmic shush-thunk of the shovel sounded like a heartbeat. He shuddered and prayed harder.
Cold fingers slipped over Hiram’s knee. Secret’s eyes opened.
“Can you hear me?” he whispered, fearing the same fate her mother had suffered. “Are you all right?”
“Hiram?” Her voice came out in a weak gasp.
She touched her neck. Bruises had started to form there, blue and gruesome, evidence of what Lysen had done. Her fingers reached lower to her chest, testing the small wound. “You…you…knew my father’s magic?”
“Not really,” he whispered. “Not really at all. I just saw him put the tablets in the golems one morning. I saw them asleep before it and awake afterward.”
She nodded and blinked. A tear rolled down one side of her face. “The tablet…is a soul,” she explained in a pained tone. “You’ve given me a new soul.”
Tears burned their way down his cheeks. “Did it work? Do you…hate me for bringing you back?”
She reached for him, her eyes glittering. “I could never hate you. You are my savior one more time. I love you, my husband. I will love you until the end of your days.”
He lay down beside her and clutched her body close, imagining how his life might have been if he hadn’t saved that tiny piece of Beorolf’s mysterious puzzle.
* * * *
Breene was born late in the night, a large baby with coal black eyes and a screechy cry. Secret nursed their son and cooed to him while Hiram looked on, both proud and a little frightened. He saw the other side of his wife in their child, a side she had all but forgotten, and neither of them spoke of that past. The changeling infant shifted freely from human state to gremlin and curled his tail round his mother’s arm when she set him against her shoulder to burp him.
Secret offered her husband a curious smile, as if she too didn’t know what to make of their offspring. Her attention turned to the doorway.
“Oh, my,” Hiram’s father said as he stepped into the room and saw his grandchild for the first time. The oil lamp flickered, casting wavy shadows over the room.
He hoped his father would think it the bad lighting and go back to bed, but he remained, and even came closer for an inspection. The old man nodded, rubbed at his chin, and made a drawn out, “Hmmm.”
Hiram got up and went to his father, worried now of how to explain. “There’s something I haven’t told you about Secret,” he said, ushering his father out. “Something I—”
“Shh,” his father shushed him in the hall. “The babe will grow out of it in time.”
He scratched the back of his head, surprised by his father’s words. His grandchild looked like a gremlin for the whole time he’d been staring at Breene. Did he think it was some sort of disease, a disfigurement the baby would grow out of? “How do you know?”
His father winked, chuckling to himself. “I’ve been beyond the rift, my son. You’re not the only boy who went looking for greener pastures.” He stepped away, grinned wider and said, “Your tail fell off when you were about two summers old.”
Hiram choked and gasped for air.
“Now get some sleep,” his father chided with a raised finger. “Lysen’s ancient mule doesn’t do well with me at the plow. Best if you’re the one behind him. And don’t let the baby near my clock when he gets old enough to grab things. It won’t be long before that happens, so mind you remember that piece of advice.” He dipped into his bedroom grumbling, “Took me months to find all the pieces of it after you tore it apart.”
In shock, he returned to his bed. He nestled beside his wife.
“He doesn’t look like you at all,” Secret said, sounding a little sad about it.
Hiram sighed. “According to my father, he does.”
She turned on him, a question in her eyes. “What?”
“He also said the tail falls off after two summers, so don’t get too used to it.”
His wife covered her mouth to stifle her laughter.
About the Author
Anastasia writes erotic romance, paranormal erotic romance, and dark fantasy. She often crosses genres in order to follow her muses into the darkness where they seek out destiny in all its forms. She believes in fairies, demons, angels, magic, passion, chocolate, supportive friends, e-books, and writing critique groups. Her deepest desire is to pursue her creative dreams and realize them. Every spare moment she devotes to writing for her haunting muses.
Visit her online at:
www.rabiyahbooks.com
PURPLE SWORD PUBLICATIONS
Romantic Speculative Fiction
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