Oliver puts his hands on my waist. “Olly, we can’t--”
He moans and presses cool lips against the side of my neck. “I wouldn’t blame him for wanting you.”
My jaw drops, and I shake my head at the thought, pulling myself away from Oliver. “No, Olly. Don’t even joke about that. Purgatory wants me unharmed. Asch even said he has a keen interest in me.” I pause, a revelation alighting my mind. “How would this Purgatory know about me in the first place?”
Oliver reaches over and starts playing with strands of my hair. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all those Shadowmen, mostly the men, would want something to do with you.”
I can tell Oliver doesn’t want to talk, and I suppose I can’t blame him. Talking about a part of himself he seems ashamed of must be difficult. I have to know this though, because I was spared and Colette wasn’t. There is something special Purgatory must see in me, and I must know what it is to protect myself.
I stay his hand and put it by his side. Disappointment passes through his eyes but is gone in an instant with a look from me. “I need to know, Olly. Asch mentioned Maladies. Start with those.”
“Maladies…” Bitterness creeps into his voice. “They’re these horrid, dreaded things Deus uses to remind us where we stand. Because each Shadowman has special abilities specific to his or her greatest strengths in life, Deus reminds us that being a Shadowman is not a luxury by also cursing us with Maladies. My ability is that I can control nature because it is something I adored in life. But my Malady is that I desire too much. This might not seem much because human beings desire something every day, but in life, I desired so hard I sacrificed who I was. Amelia, I would have murdered to get what I wanted. Now that desire has been compounded ten times as a Shadowman.”
“What do you desire now? Would you kill for it?”
Oliver sits up straighter and looks in the direction of my vanity. “Now that I have you, I feel like my desires are satiated, but Maladies are never-ending. I have no doubt I will desire something new in the coming days, whatever that may be. I don’t wish to think about it.” He falls silent, and I decide not to push him further on Maladies.
Then I wonder what my Malady would be? My greatest weakness is self-doubt, I believe. My greatest strength would be the undying love I have for my little brother. I wonder how those will translate when I find myself transforming into a Shadowman. And I wonder what Colette’s abilities and her Malady are.
I sit closer to Oliver until our thighs touch. “I think it would be amazing to be able to control nature,” I say, trying to lighten his mood. “What can you do, Olly? Oh, please show me!”
A smile replaces his dour mood, and he is up and at the window in no time. He gestures me over. “This window ledge has all the ingredients I need,” Oliver says, pointing at the snow that crusts it.
“What could you possibly do with that?”
Oliver moves some of the snow aside, revealing a layer of soil beneath. He passes a hand over the soil, and before my eyes, a Winter Daphne, with a rich white-pink coloring, climbs four feet tall, leaning dangerously over the ledge. He tears the flower by the stem and presents it to me with a flourish. Its sweet perfume assaults my nose, bringing a light heat to my cheeks. I accept the flower.
“As long as all the ingredients are there, I can make things happen. I can make roses bloom in the freezing winter, so long as healthy seeds are there, and I can make trees dance, if I want to. But I don’t use it often.”
I keep staring at the flower, this little miracle Oliver created with magic I couldn’t even see. The beauty of his power makes me feel even more strongly for him. He must have been a beautiful person in life. I want to tell him I wished I could have known him before he died, but I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Whether or not Oliver is a Shadowman, he is here and fully alive to me. “Olly, this is wonderful. Is this how you care for the plants in the greenhouse?”
He nods. “But I don’t use it often. I don’t want anyone suspecting anything. There were so many times when I felt tempted to make the plum trees blossom in the dead of winter. They’re so ugly otherwise.”
I brush my fingers over the delicate petals, still in disbelief that Oliver can do this. I carefully bring it over to one of my rosewater bowls and gently set the flower in. The scent in my room is now intoxicating, both roses and Winter Daphne mingling to form a perfume that I wish I could buy at a boutique.
The mood grows somber again, so I turn away from the flower. “Now what do those Shadowmen want with witches?”
Oliver stares out the window, an elbow resting on the sill. “I am not entirely certain, but I think they’re gathering witches to get revenge on those who harmed them in life, which would be all those who aren’t witches. By gathering witches, they can turn them into Shadowmen, thus swelling their ranks.”
I go over to Oliver and look out the window as well, my eyes locked on the silvery moon that sits high and is enormous in the wintry sky. “Then it makes sense why they took the blood of that girl, because now they can find witches without any effort just by taking on the appearance of a human. Olly, when we were on the train, did you see that vision?”
He shakes his head, giving me a curt “No.”
“When we were on the train, you pushed me away, like you didn’t want me to see something.”
Without warning, Oliver grabs my upper arms and pins me against the wall with his lips. My eyelids flutter close, lost in his kiss that tastes like fresh snow. He pulls away, his lips gently nibbling my ear lobe. His breath is cool against me. “Don’t you worry about anything, Amelia. Let me do all the worrying. I doubt these Shadowmen will want anything to do with you, but I will spy on them and find a way to stop them. Not all Shadowmen want what they want. They are, after all, a small group, easily dismantled.”
He kisses me again, turning me around and gently pushing me back until I’m on the bed. He hovers over me, his lips still pressed to mine. I don’t know how long we kiss, but I have forgotten anything else I wanted to ask him. When he pulls away, his face a faint red and both of us gasping, he turns on his side and traces circles on my stomach. This simple touch sends pleasant shivers through me that make me want to do more.
“Olly,” I say, “you haven’t told me everything.”
“What haven’t I told you?”
“You haven’t told me what made you a Shadowman. I know it’s really personal, Olly, but I want to know everything about you, even the uncomfortable parts, so that way you never have a reason to feel alone.”
Oliver pulls me to him, resting my head in the crook of his arm. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll never feel alone.”
I look him full in the face. “Are you going to tell me then?”
He shakes his head. “I-I can’t, Amelia.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too painful. Maybe one day, maybe never, but it’s something I’m trying to forget, day-by-day.”
I sigh. “Olly…why won’t you trust me?”
“I do trust you, Amelia. But I’m certain even you have things so painful that you don’t want to talk about them. Can you at least respect that this is something I want to forget? If I force myself to remember, if I even allow myself, then I fear I won’t be quite who I am right now. There is too much bitterness.”
I nod. Oliver is right. If I refuse to tell him about Theosodore, then I also have to accept that there are some things Oliver will never tell me. A secret for a secret. As long as I have my secrets, then it is hypocritical of me to expect Oliver to reveal everything about himself, especially the parts of him that are like open flesh wounds.
Instead of pondering over Oliver’s unknown past, I let myself relax against him and fall asleep--a restful sleep, for once.
Chapter Nineteen
The train ride to Malva is a quiet affair, Father, Nathaniel, and I all lost in our own worlds. I muse over what Oliver told me yesterday. I feel like I should be numb to the idea that I will die into a
Shadowman, but I see my future etched in Oliver’s eyes, full of suffering in uncertainty, and no matter how much I want to accept that unavoidable future, I can’t. All of me rebels against the idea that Deus punishes witches further in the afterlife. If being a Shadowman is supposed to be an apology for suffering in life, then I argue we’re better off dying into nothingness.
Even more, the witch burning is not something that helps these feelings of mine at all. Just knowing what the fate of those witches will be after their bodies have burned to ash is enough to make me hate people. Perhaps if I keep my eyes shut the entire time, and keep Nathaniel’s shut too, we’ll make it through. We’ll be okay. We might even be so far back in the crowd, we won’t see anything but the boughs of Parson Hill’s oak tree.
After we check in with the city’s officials, we gather around the hill, the oak tree greeting us with its strong, graceful boughs and snow-crusted bark. Pity it won’t be strong and beautiful after today when its trunk is marred and its soil littered with ashes. Father tries to lead us to the back, but the priests of Cathedral Reims keep pushing us forward to the point where we’re almost on the outer ring, six men deep. Up at the top of the hill are Bishop Brandon, Pope Gilford’s preferati; Pope Gilford himself; and the cross bearers who are all men with burly arms, red faces, and straining necks.
I wonder where Oliver is, if he is somewhere in the crowd, looking out for me. He left before I woke up--gone, just like that. My heart aches and ached this morning when I woke up without his physical presence beside me.
Nathaniel latches on to me, pressing his face against my ribcage. “The sky shouldn’t be blue,” he says, his voice muffled. One moment Nathaniel is a child wanting to get me an enormous teddy bear and the next he is an entirely different creature speaking in poetry instead of throwing a temper tantrum as any child would.
I ruffle his hair. “Stay like that, Nat. All right?” There should be no beauty. But there is. The world doesn’t want to change its clothes to foreshadow the impending tragedy about to take place in Malva. The snow is not enough. It is too white. Too pure.
My eyes dart back to the hill. The men plant the crosses in the ground, gouging away precious soil. The faces of the witches reveal themselves to us, and what is most horrifying is they don’t scream or cry against the ropes biting into their bodies. Bruises taint their skin, as if they’d been whipped before this, and their eyes are mere husks, drained of whatever life was in them before all this.
They’re not children and yet they’re not old enough to be considered wise. But I’m certain their imprisonment has made them realize that fighting will breed more resentment. People will only remember them as stupid animals anyway. Then they will be forgotten. Witches are thought of but never spoken about. They are quietly tucked away, never heard from again. The only reminders that people should hate them are The Vulgate and propaganda.
Pope Gilford, a haggard old man dressed in white with a matching headdress, steps in the middle of the semi-circle of crosses and puts his arms in the air. “Citizens of Malva!” Energy radiates through his old muscles, making him seem younger than he really is. “Today Norbury shall witness its very first witch burning. Other parts of the world have burned witches in centuries past, but they no longer tolerate such practices as Warbele now does. In the coming months, I and Cardinal Bishop Brandon will be attending numerous witch burnings. It is my hope that within the decade we can eliminate all sin.”
Eliminate all sin?
It occurs to me that these witch burnings are actually beneficial to the Shadowmen Alliance. Though they care nothing of cleansing sin, they do care about swelling their ranks, and this is exactly what Pope Gilford is doing by burning today’s witches. There are ten of them, enough to take out an entire city. But I can’t do anything about this. I am a mere girl who has no idea how to even control her fire, if that’s possible. Perhaps this is my paranoia, but I feel like there is a connection to this and the alliance, as though the Shadowmen are somehow using him.
Then again, they can see witches through a mere glance. Doing all of this just to obtain a few seems impractical. There is something more to this, though I do not know what.
Pope Gilford continues. “Witches are born of the Seven Deadly Sins, and The Vulgate says we must treat them as such.” Every tremulous heart in Malva joins together as one, creating one giant heart that sends earthquakes through each of us. “These witches were caught pulling food from open windows and heating that food with their fire. They stole off with the food to feed their greedy bellies. Not only have they sinned with magic, but they have also sinned with thievery. Deus does not forgive.”
He spreads his arms, a signal for the cross bearers to make their way downhill. Only the witches and some of the Professed Order are left. Their faces are white as they grip their baskets of calla lilies. I wonder what must be going through Mother Aurelia’s mind knowing the Professed Order has probably been forced to participate in this act of cruelty. While hatred of witches is accepted, not everyone agrees that they should suffer in this manner.
The cross bearers make their way down the hill, and as one passes us, my heart almost escapes from my rib cage. There is a scar above his lip, and it’s on a smooth face with a sloped jaw.
That can’t be Sash.
He doesn’t look at me, but I can’t look away. That can’t be Sash. That can’t be. He would be with the Shadowmen Alliance--not among people in Malva.
I shake my head. He would be among people now that he and all the others have the appearance of human beings. Sash’s being among the cross bearers somewhat confirms my suspicion that they are using Pope Gilford--and the man probably doesn’t know it. I wonder who had the idea? Asch, no doubt. For what reason, I don’t know. They can easily seek out witches now, so why go through all the trouble of having a ceremony? All it does is take a slice to the throat. Sash snuffed that woman’s life out with ease.
The Professed Order cluster around Bishop Brandon. He takes them beneath the oak tree and instructs them to pray. Pope Gilford comes to the front of the hill and holds up his arms. The white sleeves of his outfit flow down like the feathers of a bird’s wings.
He must think himself an angel.
“Remember these faces, for they are the faces of witches. And if you can recognize the face of a witch, then you can recognize the face of any witch and bring Warbele into a new era, where getting rid of sin means killing all witches.”
Pope Gilford falls silent, implying he wants us to mull over his words. I refuse to digest such ghastly talk. They are human beings, people who happen to be witches through no faults of their own. No one is a witch by fault. If anyone should be burned, it should be the parents who gave birth to them. Parents are the sinners, the ones who disobeyed The Vulgate and Deus. But The Vulgate says we must burn witches, and it says we must hate them.
It just doesn’t tell us why.
While we are silent, several people push to the front of the crowd bearing white candles with lit wicks, little flames tamed by brutal hands. They pass us, and as they do, my heart has that feeling of wanting to escape from my chest. When I saw that vision on the train, I was only able to memorize Sash’s face. But all of these candle bearers look familiar.
My legs become more brittle than burnt wood.
Pope Gilford rises from his silence. “Burn the sinners!”
The candle bearers walk up to the witches, and one of them bears a can of oil--a man, I think. He pulls the cap off and douses each cross in the flammable substance. The victims moan, but don’t fight beyond that.
The candle bearers separate, two to each cross. They touch their wicks to the oil, and the crosses ignite, the flames crawling along the crosses like a swarm of wasps.
Now they scream and cry, and I want to collapse from their pain. Nathaniel lets out a choked cry. I bury his head in my ribs, wrapping my arms tight around him.
Bishop Brandon pushes the Professed Order forward, and they each dance around the crosses, loop
ing around one cross and then looping around the next. They throw the lilies at their feet, forced smiles on their faces.
“Deus!” Pope Gilford says, throwing his arms in the air again. “Take these sinful beings and bury them in the Gates of Hell. Do not let them linger any longer on this earth. They were bred through sin and to sin they must return!”
And just like that, the world around me freezes, including the air I expel from my lungs. Pope Gilford’s arms remain frozen in the air, and his mouth freezes in what I can only describe as someone having a seizure. The Professed Order stop on the tips of their toes, their hands flying out behind them with lily petals floating behind. The tips of the flames lick the sky and remain that way.
Only I am able to move--or so it seems.
There is movement among the frozen bodies, and it isn’t just mine. Should I follow? There is no reason not to, I suppose. I have experienced enough bizarre things in the past year to know that coincidences are nonexistent.
I slip out of Nathaniel’s grasp, leaving him a frozen statue with a face twisted and ruined by tears. I squeeze myself through the bodies that remain solid as boulders. Someone else moves behind me, though I am unable to see who it is--I can only hear. I keep my attention on the figure moving ahead. I make out a white sleeve, and I assume it’s one of the cross bearers: Sash. And whoever moves behind me could be one of the candle bearers.
I don’t know what is going on, but this is the same feeling I had on that train. Oliver can’t be doing this. His powers concern themselves with nature. And the Shadowmen Alliance can’t possibly be doing this for me either. Asch made it clear he’d kill me if he discovered my meddling in their affairs.
I come out of the crowd to find that it is indeed one of the cross bearers blazing down the main street. I keep after him, though I find myself weaving around carriages and lampposts to disguise myself. I throw a glance over my shoulder, but don’t see the other figure that was in the crowd. Perhaps I was imagining things.
When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) Page 16