The Castle Behind Thorns

by Merrie Haskell

  It struck her then afresh, like biting down on a tooth she’d forgotten she’d broken: the overwhelming grief and the horrible wonder of having been dead. The feeling of loss and fear were strong, even though her memories of the darkness and the stone beneath the chapel were fading. Each time she remembered, it was as though another layer had been scraped from a parchment, turning inked words and images into so much dust.

  Her memories of the time before that also grew fainter. Somewhere, somehow, she had eaten something. Someone had spoken to her, in the darkness of death; a soft hand had brushed her forehead; she had felt a mother’s love in that moment, when she had been fed something sweet yet tart, fresh yet moldering. Perrotte remembered: a woman’s face—her brown eyes—a red seed—

  It had all happened in a place so dark that it was hard to remember anything, a place so deep that it was starless.

  Except there were stars.

  Her feet itched to climb the tower stairs up to her old observatory room, but her legs wouldn’t take her. So she stayed in the courtyard, tilting her head back, back, back, and turned wide eyes to the stars.

  She tried to be as still as possible, but her heartbeat rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She swayed on the balls of her feet just a little. At first she fought the rhythm, trying to be stiller than still. But stars were not still; they had their movements just like the rest of the living universe.

  So Perrotte let her body rock with the beating of her heart, while her mind whirled with the circling of the stars, until dawn faded them away.

  12

  Tower

  SAND OPENED HIS EYES. HE FACED A DIFFERENT WALL than usual. He frowned, confused.

  Then he remembered Perrotte.

  He sat up, twisting to look at the mattress cornered with his. Perrotte wasn’t there.

  He jumped from bed and went to find her, willing his heart to stop its frantic beating. He hadn’t dreamed her. He hadn’t imagined her. And she wasn’t dead again, just because he’d taken his eyes off her for the night. He would find her.

  He didn’t have to go far; Perrotte was in the kitchen, which was warm with the scent of the fire and cooked venison. Perrotte was crouched over the pot, occasionally stirring the stew. She smiled at him when he came in, and his heart settled.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He nodded, not really sure what to say. He wanted to ask why she’d moved his mattress to the Count’s room the night before. He wanted to ask her why she’d held his hand. He thought he knew why, that she’d simply been lonely and scared. But he’d thought he understood things about girls before, and been proved wrong nearly every time.

  He served them both bowls of stew, giving her the spoon while he ate with his hands. While he was thinking about how to phrase his questions, Perrotte asked, “Are there any herbs?”

  “All dried up and withered away, as far as I can tell,” Sand said. “But you are welcome to look.”

  “Ah. But at least there are onions and garlic. Though . . .” She picked up an onion piece and knocked it against the table. It rustled more than knocked. “So dry. That’s how I felt when I woke: dry.”

  When she “woke.” Sand supposed there was some value in talking about it like that, in not saying “dead.” Christ and several of his saints had resurrected people. Sand wondered how they had all referred to that process of coming back to life. Maybe it felt like waking.

  A cold thought overcame him. He had woken, in the fireplace. He had not known how he’d gotten there—could he have been dead first?

  But—but no. He would know. Wouldn’t he?

  Perrotte poked at her stew. “What was your life like, Sand? Before?”

  He shrugged, sipping broth from the bowl before scooping up a chunk of turnip with his fingers. “I hoped to apprentice with my father, but I guess that was never going to happen.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He wanted me to leave Boisblanc. He didn’t intend for me to become a blacksmith. He made me learn to read, and study every day with the village priest. Papa meant for me to go to a university and study there.”

  “The village priest? Why not send you to a cathedral school?”

  “I don’t know. My father never told me. We lived too far from a cathedral school? We had too little money?”

  “Cathedral schools are free—but hard to gain entrance to.”

  “I don’t think my father ever tried to get me into one.”

  “And what would he have you study at university?”

  “Papa didn’t even know that much! I used to ask him the same question. He would say, ‘Study what you like!’ And I would tell him that I wanted to stay home and ‘study’ blacksmithing, and he would get angry. We fought all the time about it. It didn’t matter how ridiculous his dream was, he wanted it. But me, go to Paris? Or even Angers? Show up at the city gates, alone? And find tutors? With what money? With what sponsors? Even if someone took pity on me, they would not be inspired by my intellect. I am terrible at reading Latin.”

  “I could teach you to read better.”

  “I don’t want to read better! Everything I want to know, a smith can teach me. Without a book.” Sand laughed, and noticed how bitter he sounded. “I love blacksmithing, and my father refused to teach me any more of it. I used to sneak over the fields in the early morning while my father slept and have lessons with my grandpère.”

  “Why did your father want you to go away so badly?”

  “I’ve only wondered that my whole life.”

  “Your stepmother?” Perrotte guessed. “She didn’t want you around?”

  “Agnote? No! Agnote loves me. She’s tried to make peace between us since I was little. She doesn’t understand my father either.”

  “Your mother—died in childbirth?”

  “That would be easy to understand, wouldn’t it? If my father didn’t want me around because I killed my mother by being born? But no—poor Maman died when I was a toddler, from a summer fever.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, noting how long it had gotten since he’d awakened in the castle. Only as he lowered his arm did he realize his hands trembled. “My father doesn’t even seem to want my little half sisters around. During our last fight, he said not going to university was selfish, because after a few years, I could find educated men to marry my sisters to.” He shook his head.

  “Parents never make any sense,” Perrotte said, almost to herself.

  Sand wanted to disagree, but the specter of his last fight with his father hung before him, and he had no heart to argue otherwise right then.

  Perrotte put aside her mostly full bowl. “Have you tried contacting the outside world?”

  “I build a fire every day. If anyone has noticed the smoke, it hasn’t led to any sort of rescue or even basic investigation that I have seen.”

  Perrotte looked thoughtful. “We could hang a sheet from a tower window,” she said. “In case . . . in case for whatever reason they aren’t seeing the smoke, or are just imagining some silly reason for it to exist. A sheet from a tower window would look too strange to ignore or explain away. I think someone would see it and know we wanted rescuing, if we did that.”

  Sand shrugged. Hanging a sheet couldn’t hurt, although he didn’t think it would help. He’d lived in sight of the castle his whole life, and no one ever really looked at it, except maybe small children. In addition to the sundering and the thorns, the determined ignoring of the place by the outside world was like part of the castle’s curse. “We have sheets aplenty, and no shortage of tower windows,” he said.

  “Good! Let’s go.”

  “Are you done eating? I’m not done eating.”

  “I’m full.”

  He was dubious. She’d had barely five bites.

  “You could fetch a sheet while I finish,” Sand told her, and she went off.

  He grabbed his spoon back. He chewed an astringent chunk of turnip, chasing it quickly with a bite of venison. He did not look forward to a tim
e when turnips might figure more prominently in their diet.

  He was licking the last bits of stew from the bowl when Perrotte returned with half a bedsheet. Sand took her to the smithy to scrounge up some nails, then led the way upstairs to the strange little room at the top of the tallest tower.

  He went directly to the window overlooking the valley, inhaling the fresh breeze from the fields. But when he turned to ask Perrotte to hold one end of the sheet, she was standing stone-still at the edge of the stairs.

  “Perrotte? Are you all well?”

  “This room,” she whispered. He drew closer, and saw tears brimming in her eyes. “This was my most favorite room in the whole castle. This room was my observatory.”

  “Observatory?”

  “I used to study the stars from here. Until she took it all away. What did she do with my things?” She made a half-hearted gesture, as though waving at objects that were no longer there.

  “She who?”

  Perrotte shook her head confusedly. “My father’s wife.”

  Her stepmother? Sand could not imagine Agnote taking away his favorite things. Not more than temporarily, as a punishment for a true misdeed. It was against her nature.

  But the suddenness of Perrotte’s stone stillness and her tears made no sense to Sand. “Did you just remember that all your stuff was gone?” he asked. “Had you forgotten about it until we came up here?”

  “No.” Perrotte twisted her hands together. “I remembered that. I wanted to see this room again anyway. What I didn’t remember . . .” Her breath caught on a deep, shuddering sob.

  Sand’s heart wrung itself for her. He didn’t think he had cried that hard since he was a small child, but he still remembered how it felt.

  “What I didn’t remember ’til now,” Perrotte said at last, “is that this is the room where I died.”

  13

  Forge

  “I’M SORRY,” SAND SAID, HIS VOICE ROUGHENED BY he knew not what emotion. There were too many feelings inside of him to know which one was making it hard to speak. Mostly, though, he did feel sorry for this girl who had been dead—or had she merely been broken, like the things in the castle?

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything,” Perrotte said, wiping away the last of her tears. She looked around the room as if suddenly, all the missing things would reappear.

  “I meant, I feel sorrow for you.”

  She choked on whatever she tried to say in response to that, and turned abruptly, leaving the room. Sand returned to the task of hanging the sheet out the window before heading down after her.

  Sand didn’t know if Perrotte wanted to be alone or not, but he knew he did not want to be. He had spent too many days by himself to give up on even prickly Perrotte. But he didn’t know where she’d gone. He looked for her in the kitchen, in the great hall, in the Count’s bedroom, but each room was as silent as when he’d haunted the castle alone. Where had she fled to?

  He tried the chapel next. Perhaps she had gone to pray. But no one knelt there before the repaired crucifix, or the cracked statues of Saint Salomon and Saint Melor, or any of the relics.

  Sand peered into the dark rectangle of the entrance to the crypt, then closed his eyes, listening for any sign of her presence. He heard nothing, but—what would he hear, exactly? Her breathing, from all the way down the limestone stair?

  Reluctantly, he descended a few steps. The darkness seemed to reach for him. Panic thrummed in his chest. He hurried back into the chapel and lit the stub of an unmended beeswax taper. Armed with light, he descended into the dark to find Perrotte.

  He crept all the way to her niche where the crack in the earth ran: empty. He let out a chuffing breath of relief. Turning away, he wondered what he had expected to find—Perrotte crying? Perrotte praying? Perrotte lying on her stone slab, arms folded as if in eternal rest?

  He hurried upward into light, chiding himself. Really? He had expected her to go to the crypt? If he were awakened from death, the last place he would go was down there.

  He shivered. “Never mind that thought, Sand,” he muttered.

  But as he searched the castle without finding her, his worries grew. He began to wonder not where Perrotte was, but if he had imagined her entirely, both dead in the crypt and then come to life? Was he so lonely that he’d begun to have waking dreams just to feel less alone?

  He decided to start over, in the last place he’d seen her, in case she’d stolen back to the observatory while he searched elsewhere. But that room remained as empty as ever, the only movement from the bedsheet gently lifting and falling on the early spring breeze.

  Perplexed, Sand stared out the window at the land all around. Had she gotten free of the castle somehow? But no—thorns still surrounded the castle. No small figure in a russet and saffron dress crossed the asparagus fields below, either.

  In the distance, the wide ribbon of the Liger River shone like quicksilver in the bright afternoon sun. The cherry orchards between the castle and the river were turning yellow-green with oncoming spring. Sand leaned out of the window, staring at the wide-open world, longing to be a part of it once more. He took a deep breath of the fresh, promise-filled air—

  He paused. The fire in the kitchen should have gone out; there really should be no lingering scent of fire on the air. But the scent came to him, and a thin line of smoke from the smithy drew his eye.

  He took the circular stairs two at a time, then burst through the door at the bottom. He raced his own thoughts into the smithy, where he found Perrotte pumping the bellows and staring into a pile of kindling and charcoal in the forge.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” he panted.

  “I want to mend something,” she said fiercely. “Anything in this castle that’s not broken is something that you’ve mended, right? This hammer? These tongs? The bellows here?”

  “Except for the outer walls of the castle, yes, everything.”

  She nodded, a grim sort of satisfaction on her face. “Including me. Yes? You did something to me.”

  He flinched. “That, we don’t know. I—I can’t believe it was me. All I did in the crypt was straighten everything up, put your—put you back to rights. You’d been knocked over in the sundering. But . . . nothing else.”

  She turned her keen eyes on him. “Nothing else—nothing? Tell me the whole story.”

  He took a deep breath, eyes darting around the smithy as he tried to think of something to distract her from this question. Nothing in the piles of scrap metal and broken tools around him led to any new thought. He blew out his breath and told his reluctant truth.

  “Your tomb was shattered. I’m no stone mason or sculptor; I didn’t know how to put that back together. I didn’t even try—just shoved the rubble into a pile. Other tombs, they’re cracked, the lids were loose, but none were as destroyed as yours. I put them back to rights. But for you, all I could do was . . . your body . . . You were on the ground, all . . .” He mimed the broken and awkward position of her arms, before realizing what he was doing. He dropped his hands. “All I did was set you to rights. Nothing else.”

  She was silent for a moment, still pumping the bellows meditatively. Sand kept an eye on the rate of burn, fretting for the lost charcoal. The castle held a lot of charcoal, but when they ran out, they would be out forever, and he’d never smithed with wood fires before. He wasn’t sure he could.

  “I’m sorry,” Perrotte said. “I was rather caught up in my resurrection. It never occurred to me to ask—how did you get into the castle, Sand?”

  “I woke up in the fireplace,” he said. “In the great hall. I don’t know how I got there—but the night before, I was running to my grandpère’s house after a fight with my father, and I stopped at a shrine of Saint Melor. Do you know it? There’s a spring and a small pool. People leave bronze there, sometimes silver.”

  “Saint Melor is the patron of the Boisblanc family,” Perrotte said. “And you are the son of a boy who lived here in this castle. There’s so
me connection there.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t see how.”

  “That sounds like someone who lacks imagination to me,” she said.

  If she thought that would make him angry, she didn’t know anything about blacksmiths. Sand just laughed.

  But maybe she wasn’t trying to pick a fight, because she grinned at his laughter, appearing pleased with herself. “Well, Sand of the Fireplace, let’s not worry about it right now. Instead, teach me how to mend.”

  “Certainly,” he said, eager to think about and do things he understood. “In that dress, though?”

  She stroked the fabric of her smooth, soft-woven dress, frowning. She sighed. “I wonder if anyone saved my clothes.”

  “They’ll be torn even if they were saved.”

  “Well, I guess this will have to be good enough for now. My sleeves are tight enough not to trail in the fire . . .”

  “It’s your only whole dress,” Sand pointed out. “In any case, you need a leather apron to protect from sparks, like mine.” He patted his apron. “So we have sewing to do, any way you look at it.”

  “Ugh, fine,” she grumbled, and stalked off. Sand banked the fire, then settled down tailor-style in the dirt with an awl and two halves of a smithing apron.

  Perrotte returned faster than he would have expected, wearing the intact bodice from a sleeveless gown that she’d laced tightly in place, and a whole skirt torn from a different gown that she had belted on with some cording from a curtain or tapestry. She had knotted her hair in the back with a braid wrapped in more cording.

  Sand nodded to her, his lips compressed over his awl while his fingers tied the smithing apron together with fragments of thin twine and leather.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should look for boys’ clothing or girls’,” she said.

  Sand spat his awl into his palm. “My grandmère wears a skirt when she works in the smithy. It seems no better or worse than what my grandpère wears. The important part is not to wear good clothes that you’ll be sad to see burned, or trailing sleeves.”