by L. V Russell
He nodded, “I think so.”
Brittle light cast shadows against the stone walls, glittering against the cobwebs that hung so thickly overhead I couldn’t see the beams. Spiders scurried back into the eaves, huge and bloated, disturbing the carcasses of long dead birds so they dropped to the floor with a dry thud.
“I think I preferred the dark,” I half joked, not daring to look up again. I glanced around the room, noting the macabre harps that lined the walls. “On second thought-”
“Don’t touch them,” Laphaniel said, filling the fireplace with old, dusty logs. “Unless you’re curious as to what they have to say.”
“I’m really not.”
I took a step closer anyway, to look at the delicate etchings that had been painstakingly carved into the wood. I didn’t dare touch the strings which were knotted and red and still impossibly wet looking. Even though I hadn’t touched them, I could hear a faint hum that quivered through their strings, as if they were singing to themselves. I moved away, swallowing my disgust.
Against the far wall stood an ancient bed, the wooden headboard so rotten, chunks of it lay crumbled around the base. I pulled off the mouldering covers and blackened pillows, replacing them with our blankets. There was nothing I could do about the mattress.
Laphaniel managed to get a meagre fire crackling, and for the first time in ages, I began to remember what it felt like to be warm.
I sat on the edge of the bed, its creak echoing around the room, and watched as Laphaniel pulled his knife from his belt and disappeared outside. He was gone only moments, and my heart sank at what he brought back in to roast over the fire.
“Is there no bacon running around out there?” I asked, eyeing the long tails that dangled from his fingers.
Laphaniel smiled, a quick quirk of his lips that did nothing to lighten the shadows in his eyes. “The place is infested with them.”
He readied himself to clean them, but I stopped him, holding my hand out for the knife. “Can I help?”
“You don’t have to, Teya,” he replied but handed me the knife when I didn’t back down.
We prepared the rats together, some of the tension lifting ever so slightly as we worked. Laphaniel’s skilled fingers showed me how to skin them whole, how to take out the bits we didn’t want, and then how to skewer them over the fire.
“They didn’t teach this in the Girl Guides,” I said, as the fat bubbled and dripped from the tiny carcasses making the flames hiss.
“It is a privilege to teach you, Teya,” Laphaniel replied, turning the meat, so it blackened and cooked. “Despite the circumstances.”
“It seems a shame to waste these.” I held up the skins, each of them looking like empty glove puppets. “Maybe we could sew them together and make a really small blanket?”
His laugh was wonderful and too brief. Any fragments of joy we managed to scavenge between us were always too fleeting and too few.
“I never thought I would be so hungry I would look forward to eating rodents,” I said, as Laphaniel passed me one. “But, these look like the most delicious things in the world right now.”
“Try not to get too excited. They’re mostly skin and bone,” Laphaniel answered, watching as I sunk my teeth into my food before starting his.
The feeling of having hot food was almost overwhelming, and before I knew it, I had a pile of little bones in front of me. Laphaniel picked his clean also, snapping the bones to suck out the marrow inside. He did it with such practised skill, one only someone who had known true hunger could possess.
“How was your first rat?” he asked, a smile dancing against his lips.
“Better than roast chicken,” I said, reaching for another. “Which is something I thought I’d never say about eating rodents.”
We finished eating and crawled under the covers of the bed, trying to ignore the reek of mould and damp that rose from the ancient mattress. Laphaniel had covered the fire, so only the embers glowed, barely giving any warmth but not sending smoke up the chimney like a beacon.
It was still cold inside the cottage, and my breath fogged in front of me as I wrapped the blankets tight around myself, but it was still a much more forgiving chill than what we faced outside.
“Close your eyes, I’ll keep watch,” Laphaniel said beside me, his head resting against mine as he ran his fingers along my arm.
“You need to get some sleep,” I answered, turning to face him. “We both do.”
He looked set to argue, but he said nothing as he ran a hand over his face, breathing out a heavy sigh I recognised as defeat. He closed his eyes, exhaustion dragging him under as if someone had flipped a switch.
I stayed awake a while longer, listening to the faint murmurs of the harps as they whispered in the shadows, the cold breeze teasing their strings as it crept through the cracks in the walls. I was just drifting off when Laphaniel kicked out, his hands tense on the mattress as he struggled with whatever dark dream had hold of him. He gasped, a frightened and broken sound that rasped through his lips, he took another breath, and it caught and another...the sound scraping against his throat as his nightmare choked him.
“I’m right here,” I whispered to him, catching his hand as he made to lash out. “You’re not alone, I’m right beside you.”
The blankets twisted around him as he struggled, his breaths almost barking up past his lips. I pulled him closer, my lips at his ear.
“I love you,” I breathed. “I love you, and I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
With a shuddering sigh, he opened his eyes, blinking at me in confusion before swiping a hand over his face.
“Teya?” My name slipped strangely from his mouth, his black eyes not quite looking at me. “Can you close the window, it’s cold.”
I had missed him rambling in his sleep, the feel of him mumbling incoherently in my ear as I slept. He seldom did it anymore. Stroking the dark hair back from his face, I watched as his breathing settled, the nightmare retreating elsewhere for a while.
I wished I had Glamour like a true Queen of Faerie should. I would have loved nothing more than to weave threads of dreams from starlight just for him, to have the wind sing a lullaby. To hold the nightmares at bay simply because I willed them away. Like he had once done for me.
But I didn’t have Glamour because I was a human girl. The mortal Queens held no true power but were merely figureheads…something to hold the Seelie crown and to be hated from a distance. I would have gladly given it up to Luthien if I could.
If the price for losing the crown wasn’t my life.
Burying myself closer to Laphaniel, I closed my eyes, keeping my arms wrapped tight around his body, my forehead to his. Sometimes… just sometimes, it was enough to keep his nightmares away, a tiny fragment of magic only I possessed.
I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing, accompanied by the almost gentle plucking of strings.
Chapter Two
The stench of mould filled my nostrils as I woke, making me recoil from the damp mattress. Laphaniel stood by the cold fireplace, his back to me.
“Here,” I got up and passed him the cloak he had tucked over me. “You need to keep warm too.”
“You were shivering.”
“Have you been up long?” I hadn’t felt him get up, but his side of the bed had been cold.
“A while.” He gave the crumbling logs a kick to ensure they were all out. “The storm is clearing.”
Early morning sun filtered through the grimy windows, catching the dust motes swirling down from the webs above us. Light bounced off the ancient table, revealing bloodstains that had seeped deep into the wood. The floor bore marks too, splatters of red, which went unnoticed in the darkness. We had eaten at that table.
Away from the harps, stood a cabinet, shelves filled with bottles. Yellowing labels curled around the glass, the ink faded and barely legible. Many were empty, with whatever they once contained, long shrivelled up. Bottles of baby teeth remained beside broken
fingernails and a couple of eyeballs all milky with age.
I had seen worse. It was the jar almost hidden at the back, which caught my attention. Thick webbing crackled around my hand as I reached into the cabinet, causing little black spiders to scurry indignantly into the corners as I tugged it free.
Light danced from within the glass, radiating through the filth covering it. But there was a manic feel to it, a desperation against the brightness. Peeling back the label, I read the scrawl and cried out.
I had seen so many awful things in Faerie. Too many.
“Laphaniel?”
He was instantly at my side, moving with fluid grace, and took the bottle from my hands. “Why do you always have to touch everything?” There was no anger in his voice, only mild exasperation.
“All those little skulls outside, do you think she bottled up their souls in here?”
“Most likely,” Laphaniel said, holding the bottle up to the sunlight, causing the souls inside to spin and swirl. “Looks as if the witch died before she could use them.”
He took a step away from me, lifting the bottle higher before dropping it to the floor. Glass shattered on stone, spilling chaotic light around the room. At first, they screamed, and the harps screamed too.
Then they laughed, even as the harps carried on screaming.
Bright orbs of light circled us, flickering through the dusty sunbeams to tease at our hair, squealing with the kind of laughter only children truly possess.
The lights vanished before the sound of joy did, each little orb seemingly soaked up by the light until nothing was left. The harps continued shrieking, their strings plucked by ghostly fingers that drowned out any remaining echoes except horror and pain.
“Where will they go?” I called out over the wails.
“I don’t know,” Laphaniel answered. “Perhaps wherever I went.”
He wouldn’t talk about it, saying he didn’t remember much about dying and what happened after. But far beneath the nightmares and fear, I could sense an odd longing in him.
He had been dragged back from wherever, kicking and screaming… as if he didn’t want to come back at all.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
The miserable song of the harps followed us as we left the witch’s cottage far behind, the cries drifting over the wind-torn trees until they, too, began to moan.
My footsteps grew leaden as we walked on, the fulness in my belly long gone, leaving nothing but an aching hollowness. I felt sick with it, my head throbbing. I stumbled. My hands reacted too slowly as I fell forwards, but Laphaniel’s didn’t. My legs gave way as the world tilted; shadows formed around the corners of my vision.
“Teya?” Laphaniel’s voice sounded too far away, even though his arms were around me. “Look at me, can you hear me?” He tapped my cheek before gently guiding my head to my knees.
“I’m fine. I just got a little dizzy…” I forced myself to my feet.
“Wait, don’t stand up—”
I barely heard him over the ringing in my ears, then everything went black, and I didn’t hear anything at all.
Darkness swam around me, warm and comforting. How long it kept me, I didn’t know. Hours…days, it didn’t seem to matter.
The world righted itself slowly, leaving a thickness in my head and mouth and a strange heaviness everywhere else. Laphaniel’s arms were still around me, my head cradled against his chest as he walked. He saw my eyes flicker open, and a sigh hissed through his lips.
“You fainted,” he said, concern stark across his face. “You’ve been out for hours.”
He set me gently to my feet, keeping one arm around me until I found my footing.
“You carried me all this time?”
“I didn’t want to stop and risk getting caught up in another storm,” Laphaniel said, tightening the cloak around my shoulders. “How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts,” I answered honestly. “Is it much further?”
“No, the path is just through those trees. It looks like we’ve been granted a little bit of good fortune.”
I smiled. “I think we’re owed some.” He made to scoop me up again, but I placed a hand on his arm. “I’ll be okay to walk from here.”
The trees thinned out around us, creaking in the wind. They had started to unwind from each other, bare branches pulling apart as we moved from Faerie back to the place that had once been my home.
I could sense the magic fading as we walked away; the world around us hushed its whisperings, and the wind stopped singing. The strange brightness of the world we were leaving, dwindled while my world closed in around us. The echo of the sun vanished, the ordinary sky no longer having room for the magic of a double sunrise.
There was a fence at the edge of the trees, the wood glistening with a thin layer of frost while the beginnings of dawn peeked over the distant houses. I looked to the looming hills and at the soft glow of the streetlights casting shadows on the ground. The shadows remained still—no matter how hard I stared, they didn’t dance.
I closed my eyes against the little village, realising I had outgrown it. The home I longed for, had gone up in flames.
“It’s still winter here,” I said as Laphaniel helped me over the fence. “I left when it was winter and walked into spring. It is freezing in Faerie, and it’s freezing here. I can’t even work out how long I’ve been away.”
Laphaniel glanced over at the rows of houses, and I wondered if he remembered which one was mine. Where once he had promised to bring my body back if I died on him.
“You’re trying to find logic in the rules of faeries when there is none.”
“Time really means nothing to you, does it?” I said, taking his hand to lead him down the road. He squeezed my hand.
“It does now.”
Beneath the streetlights, he looked pale and filthy, and I knew I looked no better. If anyone happened to pass us, we would look like a couple of homeless youths.
I took the lead, walking past the row of cottages that led to my house, pausing at the gate. My hand slipped from Laphaniel’s to slide along the perfect paintwork, my eyes darting from the clear, neat path to the perfectly trimmed rose bushes each side of the door. Their naked branches glinted with frost, giving nothing away about how magnificent they must have looked when spring woke them.
“Your mother watered them,” Laphaniel said, turning to me as I reached for one of the vines curling up over the doorframe.
I didn’t look at him. The roses I knew had been dead and brittle. “You remembered.”
“Six Mulberry Close,” he replied, pointing to the gleaming number on the door. “I would have kept my word.”
The curtains were open, the well-maintained driveway empty.
“Can you get us inside?” I asked, peering under the doormat in a futile attempt to find a spare key.
“Of course.”
I made a sweeping gesture with my hand, and with a smile on his lips, he moved past me, running his hand over the bottom left panel of glass.
“Don’t you dare...” I started, closing my eyes as he used his elbow to smash out the panel, reaching inside to flick the catch on the door, so it swung open.
“And we’re in,” he said, sounding too pleased with himself.
“Yes.” I shook my head as I moved past him. “Well done you.”
The smell hit me first, a flood of memories pouring over me as the scent of fabric conditioner and stale smoke filled my head. I recoiled instantly, feeling Laphaniel’s hand on me as I fought the urge to turn and run.
“I don’t want to be here,” I began. “I’m not ready for this.”
I hadn’t thought of what I would say to Mum if I saw her. How I could even begin to explain where I had been and why I looked so ragged and bruised...and lost. But she wasn’t there, and suddenly all I wanted was to fall into her arms.
I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Niven.
Laphaniel followed me as I wandered into the living r
oom, flicking on the light switch to banish the shadows the early morning sun could not. The wallpaper had changed, and it no longer curled up from the wall where my mother hadn’t used enough paste.
Stepping closer to the fireplace, my heart twisted at the familiar faces staring back at me. I ran my fingers over the frames, hardly noticing that they shook as I brushed against photos of my mum and dad, smiling and posing for the camera.
They looked much older than I had ever remembered them being; more wrinkles around Mum’s eyes, and my dad had silver in his hair.
With a jolt, I realised they were recent pictures.
There were six photographs along the fireplace, many more scattered over the bookcases and windowsills in the cosy room. There were only a few with four people in them. My own face beamed at me, held up in the arms of my dad or smiling at a birthday party I couldn’t remember.
I appeared in only a handful, some as a baby then as a toddler. There was one of my first day at school, holding hands with a scowling Niven...then nothing.
“No…” Dread curdled in my stomach as the unfamiliarity of everything began to sink in.
“Teya?”
I brushed off Laphaniel’s hand as I rushed upstairs. Pausing at Niven’s door, I sucked in a quick breath before pushing the door open.
The room had been painted a deep blue, the mirrored surfaces of the furniture were flawless, reflecting the black bed that dominated the area. The covers were rumpled, pillows strewn across the floor to lie amongst the dirty laundry that was gathering in a heap at the end of the bed. Mingling with the scent of perfume was the sickly-sweet smell of smoke, one that didn’t come from smoking regular roll-ups.
I backed out of her room, slipping past Laphaniel who silently watched me, and reached out my hand to what had been my bedroom door. The wood was discoloured where countless stickers had once been.
With a sob, I opened the door.
I remembered back when it had just been Mum and me. I remembered the phantom dinners and all the gifts that would never be opened. I remembered Niven’s shrine. Her untouched bedroom that would always belong to a young girl. And wondered why I was so... so different.