by O. Rose
“Your energy is running inefficiently,” he said. “It’s burning excessively trying to keep up with the ways of existing here.”
Could he read her mind? Emma wondered. She didn’t think so. There was no probing gaze, no pressure weighing on her head. He’d guessed what she was thinking, but he hadn’t breached her privacy to do it.
It would be unusual for him to be wrong.
All those thoughts about him, knowing he was powerful in frightening ways, and she still wanted to know, “Why did you kill me?”
“So you would understand your place.”
He didn’t speak, he didn’t look at her, but the words from yesterday echoed in her mind as clearly as if he’d spoken them again.
What place was that? The place where she knew she could die? Of course she could die! Everyone could. Except maybe him.
“Do you know what the mad queen gave in exchange?”
She couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her tone, “Her sanity?”
“That was gone long before she was offered a trade. No, not her mind, the rights to her child.”
Like Rumpelstiltskin. Were all those fairy-tales based in reality? Her reality? An insane queen who was taken advantage of by him?
“She took the lives of many for one,” he leveled a dark-eyed stare on her. “A choice she made in her madness. She was to give hers.” He looked away and Emma released the breath she’d not realized she was holding. “The life was tarnished by her actions. One for one was equal, her additions needed to be balanced.”
He looked at her again and asked, “Do you know how many times you’ve died?”
She didn’t. “It feels like hundreds.” If not thousands and her voice was less than a whisper; she couldn’t breathe. He was about to speak a truth.
“Seven.”
∞
He left in an instant. There one second, gone the next. Not through a door or window. Disappeared where he sat and Emma supposed she’d have to get used to it because it sounded like she wouldn’t be dying again.
Once more she was flabbergasted; how often would that happen?
She didn’t know what to think, didn’t want to trust his words; she still had no idea who he was, but somehow she couldn’t convince herself that he was lying.
The house was imbued with magic, with him and the magic was his own. The way he spoke suggested, well more than that, that he was the one her original mother made a deal with, yet the story he told was one she partially knew. The queen was out of her mind, she murdered in the pursuit of having a child. What Emma never heard before was the of the trade; the queen was to die for her wish of having a child, not others.
He said the trade was made while the queen was in the throws of insanity and that was underhanded at best.
And why a trade at all?
Emma didn’t know anything about real magic. She was interested, of course. Knowing all her life it was real intrigued her, but people made it complicated with specific timing and weird ritualistic rules. None of it seemed right to her. What she saw made her believe in things beyond basic human perception, but she had no way to study it and there was always the question of what else might be out there. Just because she could see more didn’t mean she could see it all.
Could he see more?
Asking him was out of the question; she still didn’t want to be near him. The fear of sudden death was fading, but that was a far cry from trust.
She stood from the table, moved to the wall of shelves. The spines of the books were either blank or in an indecipherable script. Taking one and opening it didn’t help her understanding. Some presented diagrams she couldn’t make sense of, but most were full of twisting hieroglyphs. They appeared to shift before her eyes, moving places and rearranging. She recalled a few books of similar composition within the school library; none as ancient as his appeared of course.
Looking to the glass ceiling, remembering the way it changed when she wished it would, Emma wondered if she had power or if he’d guessed what she was thinking and did it himself. This building was definitely his; she had the distinct impression that it was something like an extension of him. If he was gone for good, it would be gone for good. Yet, that couldn't happen. He would always be.
Where did he come from? When was he born?
She wasn’t going to ask.
Chapter Four
The door she’d entered didn’t lead back to her bedroom and she found herself alone in the foyer. She would never know where she was going or how to get there, but compared to dying it was nothing.
“Only seven..?” she whispered to the air. That had to be wrong. Drowning. Suffocating. Burning. It felt like each mode of death happened a hundred times over!
The front door was one that opened where it should, to the same concrete step and front yard that looked too big but was probably not big enough all things considered.
She stepped out, wearing inappropriate sneakers with the dress, and in a fit of her own madness barreled down the lawn, took the footwear off, and chucked them over the wall.
She didn’t think she’d need them anymore. What good were sneakers in a house like this? A place one step to the right of the world. Out of reach, she was sure, unless the master requested your presence.
Outside felt better. She could breathe easier.
The house was so dark and despite it’s magical size, claustrophobic. Everything was too close together and too far apart at the same time. A person could be anywhere, maybe nowhere, in a second and she didn’t like it.
In the open air she could see where she was going, each step took her where she meant it to, and she could hear the distant sounds of civilization. She’d started to believe no one else existed, but there was the blare of a car’s horn and she wasn’t the only normal, relatively speaking, person left alive after all.
Toward the house again she cupped hands around her eyes, pushed back ivy, and peered through the windows, but saw nothing except darkness. These windows were for show, let in next to no light, and it was impossible to sneak a peak indoors.
She wondered what Lori saw when she looked at this place. Emma guessed she would never know and doubted she would see the social worker again. There was no love lost, it wasn’t as if she’d miss the woman or anything. She wasn’t close to anyone or anywhere. Even people she’d known for years didn’t know her.
Now, she found herself with a man who might actually know something about her and she didn’t want his answers. Nothing would change even if she knew and she could never rely on his words. Everything about him was subterfuge. This house, the gate and disorderly stone wall, the deceptively charming lawn.
When Lori saw him she met with another person, Emma was sure of that. There was no possible way child services would place a teenage girl in the care of a single young man.
She didn’t know what he’d done to bring her there, but it involved lying. And death.
The spell required the queen to die; he called it a trade, a life for a life.
He implied Emma’s deaths weren’t his fault, but if he hadn’t done anything, if he’d left nature to its course, she wouldn't have been born at all. She couldn’t say if that would be better or worse;
either way she wasn’t going to thank him.
Ungratefulness weighing on her heart, she tripped to the back of the house, hoping to find some kind of sign that would point her toward understanding. That wasn’t there, instead an extensive stone walkway, hedges, and all manner of growing things met her. There were waterways and pots. Little falls. Vines creeping here and there and everywhere.
How the outside could be so bright and the indoors so black she didn’t know; it really was like night and day.
Emma felt like Alice entering Wonderland, wandering barefoot through the hedgerow. Her dress was dirty at the hem, dusty. She wondered if it would tear, if a branch might reach out to trip her. What would he do, if she returned with bloodied knees?
She shook the thought from her mind.
<
br /> ∞
She had no sense of time anymore, didn’t know how long she’d been awake or how long she’d slept. How long she sat at the table or what time it was now. Did she eat earlier or did the food go to waste? She couldn’t remember.
In the back of the back was a line of misty shadow. Trees curved, bent toward each other at the tops and formed a ceiling above a narrow pathway that led into the forest. She suffered a nasty sting after attempting to cross over to that place; there was no mark left, but the pain lingered.
He was there, not two steps away, when she turned, irritable, to go back the way she came.
“That way is not for you.”
His voice was so smooth, so controlled, and she didn’t like it.
“No, duh,” a petulant mutter.
Childish? Absolutely, but why should she be grownup? She never grew-up, she always died before she got the chance, and it was his fault she’d been born in the first place. She didn’t have anything to be thankful to him for and there was no reason to respect him either.
He could have said so before, could have put up signage, but he didn’t. Instead he let her get stung. She didn’t deserve that. She wasn’t warned. It wasn’t as if she was trying to break a rule, she was punished without cause.
If her wishes could all come true he’d be hit on the head by a falling boulder. Well, rock. She didn’t really want to see someone flattened.
But, it didn’t happen. He stood there, staring serenely like nothing about anything mattered, and if she wanted to leave she’d have to walk around him, but that meant getting closer because somehow he seemed to be taking up a lot of space. She instinctively knew sidestepping wouldn’t work.
She stepped back instead, one step and that was as far as she could go without being stung again. Then she turned and sat. She wasn’t going to look at him. He couldn’t make her.
Then, just as suddenly as every moment before, he was ahead of her, striding into the woods and never once looking back.
She turned away again, immediately, so she wouldn’t see him disappear down the lane that wasn’t for her.
A stone was thrown, hard as she could and that wasn’t saying much, after him.
Back to the walkways and she moved quickly. Unlike the house it didn’t shift every time she moved, but she didn’t trust it to stay that way.
She was stopped in her tracks by the explosive appearance of an avian trio. She didn’t know what kind of birds they were, three of the same, but they were as abruptly there as he ever was. Bursting in song and red-purple plumage. Accompanied by a cloud of sparkle.
They danced wildly in the air, joy was the only word for them, and despite herself Emma laughed. She’d never seen anything like it before. The wind took them away, or they took the wind away, she wasn’t sure which, leaving behind a feather each. Shimmering feathers that caught the sun and tingled in her fingers when she caught them before they could hit the ground.
She held them, pins and needles dissipated leaving her with the impression that it was their laughter. A sound she couldn’t hear manifest. It was enchanting, unlike anything she’d ever seen or heard or felt before.
She kept the feathers, held them close, making use of a basin full of water for a mirror. They caught easily when she lifted them to her hair, didn’t snag, pull, or slip out-of-place. Magic. More magic and she could feel him in it, but those birds... They weren’t just him. They were their own beings with their own joys and she was sure they’d each left a feather on their own.
Or, maybe, she didn’t want to believe he’d do that for her.
∞
Emma never thought herself stubborn. In fact, she didn’t think much about herself. She didn’t have time and there wasn’t a reason. She was waiting to end, so how could she begin?
Now, she knew she was obstinate. Mulishly standing outside the house, still in the back, and refusing to go inside even as her body demanded she find a toilet.
She didn’t want to go back in there. What if she could never leave? There was no guarantee she’d find the entrance/exit again, that was all luck or up to him or the house or something. But, she knew she couldn’t stay outside either. She wouldn’t do that. Not when there was the chance he would come around a corner and catch her at it. No matter what he would know, that was bad enough, but to be seen? No. The worst humiliation and she wouldn’t visit it upon herself.
So, despite serious misgivings she went back in through a door she hadn’t used before and went rushing to find the kind of room she needed. Of course, in true unlucky fashion, no matter what way she went she didn’t find what she searched for. A library was no help to her, neither was a sitting room, and everywhere she looked was dark as night.
Things were getting desperate by that point and she had half a mind to high tail it back outdoors, if she could find the way, when at last the right room opened to her. She ignored everything but the toilet.
Done in a moment, all that rushing for a few seconds relief, Emma washed her hands and noticed the room. A claw foot tub, a high long window wasn’t blacked out and instead stained glass, the sink was pedestal. Tiles on the floor were tiny and intricate, a free-form mosaic in all luminous colors that gleamed in filtered light.
There was no looking glass.
She didn’t linger, there was no reason, and the door didn’t lead to the hall she’d been in. She was back in the little dining room; food was on the table, but he wasn’t there. She certainly didn’t miss his presence and ate more at ease.
They were simple foods. A chicken salad sandwich on bread that must’ve been freshly baked, there were sugar cookies for dessert and purple grape juice. She wondered who cooked here, if they thought she was a child who demanded cookies and juice, and if she’d ever see the kitchen. In her furious searching earlier, despite how many useless areas she’d found, the kitchen was not among them.
She’d quickly learned she could only go where she was allowed.
Gazing upward, to the sky now visible because of the glass dome, Emma pondered the turn in her life. She never would have guessed any of this was coming. A day ago she’d believed herself headed for a group home and soon thereafter to the streets. Then, she’d believed she would be killed by the hand of the man she’d married, but that didn’t seem to be his aim.
New questions occurred to her.
What did she mean to him and were they still married?
Chapter Five
He was tall. Devastatingly handsome. She didn’t trust him at all. His name might as well have been Magic; she didn’t know what it actually was. He was still gone and for all she knew he’d never return.
Emma told herself she wouldn’t miss him if he didn’t.
But, he did.
She was trapped in the foyer when he came in the front door. There was nowhere to run. She’d left the little dining room and ended up in the entrance, but there were no doors left. Even the front door was missing for her.
She considered making a run for it and darting outside, but she didn’t want to be near him so instead she backed into the furthest corner and played creepy ghost girl. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean he couldn’t see her, but it was better than looking at him.
She didn’t want to be drawn closer and if she kept looking she would be. Like a magnet or a moth to flickering flame.
He didn’t leave though, she could feel the breeze and his eyes; she knew he was standing still in the doorway, watching her. What he was waiting for she didn’t know, but she refused to budge.
His quiet chuckle jolted her, but she wouldn’t turn. It was closer than it should have been, she’d not heard his steps.
“Such a child.” His fingers found the feathers in her hair, touched them lightly, tugged them softly. It made her tremble and it was a struggle to keep from leaning into his touch.
When was the last time anyone even came close to her? It was never a voluntary endeavor; school, and the group projects tha
t came with it, were forced association. People didn’t want to be around Emma, not ever.
Tears pooled, of grief and desolation, but that would have been the height of embarrassing so she held them back. Still, she was sure he knew the effect he was having, knew how she was alone every time she lived.
And it was his fault.
That thought propelled her away from him; she whirled and dodged, though he didn’t try to catch her. There was a door for her to disappear through, one that led to her bedroom, and he didn’t follow.
She sat on the bed, heart racing. He’d barely touched her and she was losing it. How could she possibly survive here? The whole place was him, it was like he was all around her. He was the reason she died and the reason she lived.
The queen shouldn’t have given birth. She wasn’t in her right mind and she could never have been a good mother, but here she was because the insane woman made a deal to die. What kind of devil must he be?
“To bring life and die in the effort, what evil is in that?”
It was a reflection of his voice, quiet as a whisper, clear as a bell.
“Her only wish was granted. There was evil in her no doubt, in the lie she told when she traded her life. She wasn’t truly willing and the ones she took she hoped would substitute. Seven children for one infant.”
Emma wanted to ignore him, but couldn’t. The very air was speaking.
“You remember her laughter turning to screams. She was furious, thought she’d broken her self-placed curse and then felt death come for her. I’m sure she suffers to this day for what she did.”
Whether she did or not, what did that matter?
“Of all the things you don’t know, and the things you say you don’t want to know, there are some you can’t avoid.”
His voice faded and silence fell.
∞
Emma slept for a while, dreamed of his terribly handsome face for a moment. Of he and the queen and the words they must’ve exchanged, of the promises made. In the end the bargain was kept, despite her best efforts, and she died without even a glimpse of the child she birthed.