by A. G. Howard
His voice dragged as if weighted down. Foreboding snaked through me. If this was where his body was buried … it further implicated Chaine. I couldn’t bear to ask if he could see a skeleton.
I crouched closer with my palms on my knees, straining to hear his breath, his clicking teeth.
“Juliet … look out!”
A shove from behind knocked the air from my lungs. My knees slammed onto the platform, my neck slung backward like a whip. The rotted scaffolding gave beneath me. Splintering boards ripped my shin as I fell through.
I was spinning, spinning in my head. Memories jumbled with reality. A child, falling. Stomach queasy with the descent into oblivion. Terror … helplessness. And darkness.
Deaf to it all, not even my own screams to comfort me.
Broken wood floated everywhere. I grabbed blindly at each piece.
Struggling to catch a breath, I hit the ground—right side first. On impact, a shock wave rippled through my body. My teeth jarred in my head. Blood scrambled through my veins. The taste of dirt and bile coated my throat.
I groaned and torqued my neck to see a silhouette looking down from the dizzying heights, perched on the shattered opening. A shadow crept into view beside it. In a moment of horror, I recognized Aunt Bitti and Naldi, the daylight a nimbus behind them. Whimpering, I searched for my locket and found the necklace gone. It had snapped off during the fall; I wasn’t sure I’d had it latched properly to begin with.
I tried to reach with my right arm in search of the locket, crying out for Hawk. Icy fire raced from my shoulder to my elbow, and I fainted dead away.
A warm, rough tongue licked my chin. The scent of musk and fur itched my nose.
The kitten. It must have eaten all of the ham and wanted more.
It hurt to open my eyes, so I kept them shut and started to lift my arm to stroke the persistent feline. Shooting needles of fire leapt through my shoulder. Nausea gushed into my head.
Disoriented, I groaned and tried the other arm. This one worked. I reached out and met a handful of wiry hair that shuddered and jerked free. A burst of kittens scrambled all across my body.
My eyelids eased open. Bright light filtered from somewhere above, dotting my surroundings with patches of illumination. The kittens didn’t look right … black with beady red eyes.
Rats!
I screamed and sat up too fast. Every part of my body ached, as if barbed wire wrapped my bones and joints. Warm wetness soaked through the left leg of my split skirt. Gingerly, I lifted the torn fabric with my left hand and saw the bleeding gash in my shin.
I shivered, cold despite the hot throb in my right shoulder. Groaning, I propped myself against a dirt wall. The sea of rats parted and vanished into the darkness, outside the light’s reach.
Memory crashed over me. My fall … the missing locket. Bitti.
Why had she pushed me?
I looked up at the opening, so high overhead I would never make it out on my own. Tears rushed my cheeks, hot and searing. I was alone, and unless someone discovered me, I would be here when night fell. There would be no sun to warm me or keep the rats at bay. No fairytale or gentle, muddied hands to provide comfort. Only utter darkness.
My insides quaked. I knew deafness, but had never been blind as well … not literally.
I clamped my mouth with my good hand. My mind shuttered, blinking in and out of lucidity. I struggled to catch a breath, the air shallow and dank in my lungs. My past came back, images of spiders, roaches, and rats creeping in and out of my hair and clothes. The muscles in my stomach rolled.
I lurched forward and threw up my biscuit from earlier, coughing to catch a swallow of air between heaves. Bending my knees to my chest, I slid down the wall. The friction of my spine loosened dirt to sprinkle around me. I didn’t stop until the ground met my left side. There I curled up, sick and defeated.
I heard it then … not a living voice, but a voice captured within a memory.
“Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a young man who lived in a hole. He was the prince of mud and grime.”
Chaine had been a child when the monster first tossed him into this pit. Yet he managed to survive. Taking a deep breath, I sat up again, slower this time. I forced myself to stand on trembling legs. My left shin almost gave beneath me, but I took a step to assess my injuries. My right shoulder was useless. I’d lost my hat, but my scarf remained hanging in disarray on my head. With my good hand, I tugged it free and formed a sling. Lightheaded and woozy, I pressed my back against the wall and studied the outskirts of the light for any movement.
“The rats were his chancellors, the spiders his stewards, and the salamanders his jesters of rhyme.”
If a child could tame such creatures, so could I. Smacking my lips to quell the bitter bile on my tongue, I took another shaky step forward in search of the locket. The edge of my hat appeared, just outside the light in a pile of broken wood. A glint of silver glistened from underneath it.
One wary step, then another four. Wincing, I nudged the debris aside with a broken board I’d picked up along the way for a cane, and toppled my riding cap. I laughed, hysterically happy to see my locket, still closed and intact, coiled beneath it.
I bent—as careful and creaky as an old woman—to retrieve the necklace. There was no possibility of putting it around my neck with just one good hand. Instead, I wrapped the chain around my wrist that rested immobile in the sling, so the necklace wouldn’t be dropped again. Then, with my right fist, I clamped the locket as tight as possible without aggravating my shoulder.
“Juliet … thank God …” Hawk’s breathless murmur stirred before I saw him aglow in front of me. He reached out as if to embrace me, then remembered he couldn’t. His hand dropped to his side. “I’ve never felt so damn useless. The shadow appeared behind you and then I was gone.” His jaw twitched. “A part of me kept waiting for you to join me. In my purgatory.” He punched his thigh. “I’m such a selfish worm, to even consider such a thing.”
The remorse on his face made me long to touch him. “I’ve longed for the same, many times. It is only natural.”
“Natural? There is nothing natural about you wanting to die. Do you hear me?” His tortured gaze swept over my body and paused at my sling before catching on my bloodied skirt. “Oh Lord, you’re hurt.”
“I am fine,” I tried to assure him.
“Do you know who pushed you?”
“You didn’t see?”
He shook his head.
Before I could respond, something in the distance distracted me … over Hawk’s shoulder, on the other side of the debris where his glow reached past the shadows.
“Look.” I limped around busted boards and rusted nails, out of the warm comfort of sunshine into the dark. The collapsed platform had opened up a lower end of the tunnel leading to a steep drop and a wall of wooden slats. Several of the boards had cracked, showcasing a dingy white shape on the other side.
“Sweet heaven. That wasn’t opened earlier.” Hawk followed me.
I picked my way through the rubble on the slope, leaning into my makeshift cane to support my left leg. The closer we came, the faster my heartbeat and the slower my pace. A skeleton took shape through slits of broken wood.
A sob pressed against my windpipe. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to see Hawk’s decaying corpse.
The light around me waned and I hesitated, looking behind to find my ghost had stopped moving. Intense apprehension furrowed his brows.
I squeezed the locket in my cold fist. “You do not have to come. You need not even watch. Turn your back. I require only your light.”
His shoulders stiffened along with his chin. “No. Whatever we find, we face it together.”
In that moment, I understood. Like me, he would never be able to believe in Chaine’s guilt lest he saw it for himself. Thus was the strength of his love for his twin … an unsurpassable, inexplicable faith.
Choking back another bout of tears, I nodded and took the fi
nal few steps, putting me face to face with the widest crack. I peered within, inhaling the scent of mildew and rot. Hawk’s glow spread across my shoulder, brightening the morbid scene beyond the wall.
The skeleton, dressed in nothing but a few threadbare rags, caked mud, and cobwebs, lay wedged beneath a heavy pillar which must have fallen upon him during a cave-in. I swallowed a whimper, determined to be strong for Hawk.
My gaze ran the length of the remains, finding the square pocket watch in a macabre pose: the chain twisted around a rib, the hinged lid open, the face cracked, and the hands frozen at half-past midnight. Now I understood why his watch did not disappear with the other things that night I met him. Aside from his ragged boots, it was the sole article that hadn’t decomposed and still remained upon his person.
Upon seeing the skeleton’s right leg, I covered my mouth. The leather boot had rotted enough to split, exposing his foot where bones twisted upon one another, setting the ankle at an awkward slant—an obvious deformity.
I cried behind my hand. Hot moisture streaked from my eyes. I couldn’t look at my ghost. Instead, I waited for him to speak. But I never expected the words he said.
“There’s another one.”
“What?”
“There … in the furthest reaches. I see a second skeleton.”
Sure enough, another frame of bones lay sprawled beneath the debris where the small chamber ended against a dirt wall. I had no time to debate what this meant before Hawk shouted behind me.
“Flood!’
My feet swept up beneath me. A wave of warm water pinned me against the wall, knocking my fist open so the locket dangled from my wrist. The mine’s collapse had busted a reservoir, as if a dam had opened. I struggled with both hands to grasp at slats of wood for balance. I cried out—pitch dark swallowing me in the absence of Hawk’s light. Another gush smashed me against the wall, the water rising up to my waist.
The pressure became too much and the boards snapped, dragging me down into the lower level. Muddy water slithered into my throat, gagging me. The torrent twisted me to my back. Something sharp pressed against my side. Hawk’s skeleton.
I tried to escape, but my braid snagged around his ribs. I tugged free by loosening the plaits so my hair floated in the water all around me. Blindly, I searched for his pocket watch and tucked it in my skirt’s waist before another rush of water spun me around. The raging fire inside my shoulder ignited again.
The ceiling overhead began to buckle. Wave after wave sloughed over me. I tried to clamber to higher ground, but the lack of my right arm, my gouged shin, and the water’s momentum proved too great a challenge.
Gasping for air, I drifted helpless in the surge. It carried me to the furthest dirt wall, slammed me against the barrier. In spite of my body’s reluctance to move, I paddled my feet to stay afloat. The space between ceiling and water diminished bit by bit. I closed my eyes as warm water enveloped my head. Debris tangled in my swirling hair. I immerged to steal another breath.
I knew I faced death, yet I could think only of Chaine—a man more multi-faceted than any diamond.
A murderer. What other explanation could there be? It explained why Bitti pushed me in, so I wouldn’t learn the truth and expose him. Protecting her beloved nephew … his new way of life—so hard earned. She was repaying her debt for betraying his mother all those years ago.
I gulped another breath.
Even were I to live, I could never betray him. Yet I would never be with him. I loved him despite his evil—for his tenderness toward his father; for his fondness of nature; for his rare and extraordinary admiration for all things broken. His horrendous childhood had crippled an otherwise benevolent heart, rendering him deaf to his conscience. Could not I, of all people, understand deafness?
Now Chaine’s past would haunt him always, for he would be alone without me; therein would be his punishment.
The water cocooned me again. Remorse slashed my slowing heart. Uncle would be grief stricken once they found my drowned corpse, so close to losing Mama. I prayed Enya could console him, strengthen their bond through the tragedy.
In a final, desperate plea for life, I thrashed my legs. My nose surfaced for an instant in the tiny space that remained. I sipped one breath before a wave slapped over me. My frantic movements expended the tiny taste of oxygen instantly. Cramps gouged beneath my ribs as I fought the urge to inhale water. My lungs curled and withered, like so many petals of Hawk’s flower.
Hawk.
Serenity surged upon his name. Death waited, along with the strains of my ghost’s sensuous baritone. A familiar and comforting retreat. He would be there when I arrived.
The water swayed my body. My pain subsided, nerves numbing. My mind clouded. Something butted against my right palm—a tiny heart-shaped thing, suspended in the water. I stretched out my fingers and clenched it tightly—strangely unafraid.
Chapter 34
A man need never avenge himself;
The body of his enemy will be brought to his door.
Chinese Proverb
I awoke to someone carrying me over their shoulder. Muddied walls passed by in a sickening, dizzy haze. I thought myself dead, until my lungs jerked and heaved, forcing up a mix of bile and foul-tasting water.
I clenched the locket in my hand, my wet hair hanging over my face. Bits of wood and mud had knotted in the tangles, making it difficult to see. Being placed gently on the ground, I sat, cold and disoriented. With my good arm, I supported myself, trying not to aggravate the angry throbs in my right shoulder. I couldn’t be dead, since I still felt pain.
Steady fingers coaxed hair off my face, dragging out the debris from my tangles, opening my line of sight.
I watched him as he moved, in utter disbelief. My ghost—now flesh and bone with clothes dripping wet—burrowed his nose into my hair before tucking the strands behind my ears.
His eyes studied me, the striking gray of granite with a hint of sunlight. His jaw clenched, so serious and quiet, sharing in my awe.
Without a word between us, he lowered me to my back in the shallow warm water, and propped my head on a large rock sticking out from the stream. The liquid covered my body and swirled my hair on the currents, its warmth easing away my shivers and the ache in my shoulder and shin.
I held my breath as his hands, with the masterful strokes of an architect, brushed over me beneath the water, checking for other wounds from my legs to my shoulders. My body responded to his touch. For it knew him, long before this moment.
My tongue had tasted his chicory scent, my breath had savored his minty flavor—during dreams of death, dancing, and song.
We were settled at the highest point of the mineshaft where I’d first fallen through. The broken platform invited sunlight to slant in. I blinked at the brightness, at Hawk’s solid form blocking the sun.
On his knees, he straddled me, tending my injuries while the water lapped around his thighs.
He had yet to speak—this man who had filled my head with glorious words and sounds over the past months, now speechless and stirring my heart all the more with his silence.
I reached for him with my left hand, arched my body toward him as he submersed himself atop me all the way up to his shoulders. The contact hurt my shoulder, but the wonder of his realness negated any pain. My fingers ran circles along his back, savoring the reality of muscles beneath his shirt.
Water sloshed around us. Sunlight reflected off the waves onto his face and hair—a flash of brilliance along golden skin and sable spikes.
“China Rose …” His voice wavered, as if it hurt him to say it. With one hand he cushioned my nape from the rock, the other skimmed my wounded shoulder inside the water. “If I weren’t wet … our spirits could merge. I could heal you.”
“No. I’d rather hold you.”
His fingertip traced my jaw. Flesh to flesh. He tilted my chin up. My right fist tightened around the locket.
His drizzling fingers coated my forehead, nose, and
cheeks with a mask of wetness. He chased the water with his lips, keeping his mouth against my skin, until he came to my lips. He paused there—as if fearing to step across, to make it real—then our lips met on a kiss so gentle and chaste … the slightest palpitation as if he might break me.
His fingers tangled in my drifting hair. “You do taste like snow.”
I tightened my clasp on his arm. “You’re here.”
He pressed his forehead to mine—eyes shut. “But for how long?”
His words gushed through me like cold mountain springs, icing my veins. So captivated by our connection, I hadn’t even considered the flower at the Manor, or the seven remaining petals that must be withering even as we spoke.
My fist curled around the locket, fingernails biting my palm. If this were true, I held the last one in my hand.
He stared into me, and for once, I read his thoughts, his desires: I’ve waited forever to touch you … all of you. His eyes spoke the plea, not his mouth.
To think I’d watched this moment unfold in slumber for weeks. But now, I was awake. Awake and fervent, but for another man.
Hawk rose to a crouched position, still straddling me, yet putting distance between us. “You’re in love with my brother.”
It wouldn’t do any good to lie; I was more transparent to Hawk than any ghost.
He swore beneath his breath. “Were it any other man …” His hand wrenched from my grasp. I tried to catch him again, to comfort him, but his wet wrist slid out of my fingers. “All along, you’ve been falling for him; as we read the journal; as we discovered ‘our’ pasts were entwined. I was wearing his shoes. What I wouldn’t give to put them on again.”
His agony pierced me through. I sat up and cringed when my shoulder moved. Still, I managed to clasp his fingers.
“I love you both. So many of the reasons I found myself admiring Chaine are yours. Your gift with architecture; your eye for design; your wholeness in spite of a damaged foot. Besides all of this, you have empathy, tenderness, humor—and songs that soothe my soul. My feelings for Chaine no longer matter if he killed you. How could I ever be with him if he’s a murderer?”