The Tangleroot Palace

by Marjorie Liu

  “They think Henry is dead.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You won’t have it easy, either.”

  “I don’t care,” I lied.

  We got home. A small part of me was glad to see it still standing. Cats waited at the gate. Several perched on the posts, watching the woods. And one of them—a scarred bull-necked tom—laid a dead mouse on my boot when I stopped to undo the lock and chain. I thanked him with a scratch behind the ears, and nudged the small corpse into the grass.

  Steven did not talk to me. He headed for the barn. I didn’t ask why. I went into the house, trying not to trip on the cats, and set my shotgun down on the kitchen table. Blinds had been pulled. Henry sat on the couch in the dark room. He still wore the quilt. Kittens squirmed in his lap, chewing the fingers of his right hand. In his left he held a small heart carved from wood.

  “I wondered all these years where this had gone,” he said softly.

  “You could have asked.”

  “Maybe I was afraid of the answer.” He tore his gaze from the heart, and looked at me. “You had it hidden under your mattress.”

  I tilted my head. “Been going through my things?”

  “It was an accident,” he said, unconvincingly. “Why was it there?”

  So I could touch it at night without having to see it, I almost told him. So I could remember watching your hands as you made it.

  Instead I said, “Today went badly. But we both knew it would.”

  Henry stared down at the kittens. “I hoped otherwise.”

  I hesitated, watching him, wondering how so much had changed. Seemed too far in the past—too painful—but I remembered, in clear moments: fishing on Lost River; eating corn fresh from the stalk under the blazing sun; holding hands in secret, while hiding under the branches of an oak during some spring storm. We had loved being caught in storms.

  I walked to the cellar door, grabbed a candle off the shelf, and lit the wick with the butane lighter. Down the stairs, into the cold, dark air. Shadows flickered, some cat-shaped: fleeting, agile, skipping across the cellar floor, in and out of the light as they twined around my legs. I passed crates of cabbage and potatoes, and dried beef. Walked to a massive chest set against the wall and knelt in front of the combination lock. A new, shiny lock, straight from the plastic, part of a good trade from an elderly junk woman named Trace who rode through a couple times a year.

  Cats butted their heads against my hips, rubbing hard, surrounding me with tails and purrs. I opened the chest. Held up a candle so that I could see the boxes of bullets, and guns wrapped in cloth. Two pistols. One rifle. One hundred boxes of ammunition. Twenty alone were for the shotgun, making a total of two hundred shells. My father’s stash. He had been a careful man, even before the Big Death.

  And now I was a rich woman. But not in any way I wanted to make public.

  “Going to battle?” Henry asked, behind me.

  “Make love, not war,” I quoted my father, and shut the chest, nudging aside paws that got in the way. I locked it one-handed, and turned to face Henry. He still wore nothing but the quilt. Candlelight shimmered across his smooth chest and face. His gaze was cold. Had been for years, since the change.

  “Been a while since I saw you without a beard,” I said.

  “I never could bring myself to shave it,” he replied softly. “I didn’t want to look unmarried.”

  I tried to smile. “Too bad. I’ve heard you’re a catch. Aside from an aversion to the sun, and all the blood.”

  “Aside from that.” Henry’s own faint smile faded. “About today. Whatever happened, I’m sorry.”

  “Talk to Steven.” I walked to another metal chest, the one unlocked. Inside, clothes. I set down a candle and pulled out my father’s jeans and a red flannel shirt. Musty, old, but no mice had been in them. I fought back a sneeze, and held out the clothing to Henry. He did not take them. Just stared.

  “You’re a dead man,” I said bluntly. “To them, you’re dead. Would’ve been that way even if your father hadn’t set you on fire. You couldn’t pretend forever.”

  His gaze was so cold. “That doesn’t change who I am.”

  I tossed the clothing at his feet. “You changed years ago, even before what happened in the woods. You’ve just been slow to admit it.”

  I picked up the candle, stood—and his fingers slid around my arm. Warm, strong grip. I closed my eyes.

  “Wife,” he whispered.

  I flinched. “Don’t call me that.”

  Henry tried to pull me closer. I wrenched my arm free, spilling hot wax on the stone floor and myself. Cats scattered. Upstairs, a door banged. Footsteps passed overhead. I stopped moving. So did Henry. My eyes burned with tears.

  “Amanda?” Steven called out from the cellar door. “Henry?”

  “Coming,” I croaked, stumbling toward the stairs. Henry grabbed my arm again, and pressed his lips against my temple. He whispered something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar in my ears and my thudding heart.

  “Not again,” I finally heard, clearly.

  “What?” I mumbled.

  But Henry did not answer. He let go, and passed me. I heard him say something to Steven, but that was nothing but buzz, and I pushed him aside, running up the stairs, from the darkness, from him.

  Steven stood in the kitchen. He had been crying. His eyes were red, same as his nose and cheeks. He glanced from my face to Henry—who appeared behind me at the top of the stairs—and his expression twisted with grief or anger. I could not tell.

  “I made a bed in the barn,” he said.

  “I’ll cook something,” I replied, because it was the right thing to say, and I couldn’t think. “Then we’ll talk about where to put you. The attic will be too cold in the winter, but so will the barn.”

  “Won’t be here that long,” Steven said. “Not me, not any of us.”

  I stared at him. Henry said, “Steven.”

  But the young man gave us a look so hollow it chilled my bones. He backed away, across the living room to the front door, whipping off his hat and crushing it with his hands.

  “I see what I see,” he said, and then turned, stumbling from the house. Henry started after him. I grabbed his arm, yanking hard.

  “Sun,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” Henry replied harshly, but stayed where he was, staring at the door. I did not let go. My hand slid down his arm until our fingers entwined. He squeezed hard.

  “What happened?” he whispered. “Out there? What changed us? We were human, Amanda. And then we weren’t.”

  “We’re human,” I said. “Just different.”

  “Don’t be naïve.” He tried to pull away from me, but this time I was the one holding on, stubborn.

  “It wasn’t our fault,” I told him. “Everything was out of our control.”

  “Not everything,” he replied, and grabbed the back of my neck. “I made a bad choice. Crawled on my stomach back to what was familiar and normal. I should have stayed instead. Stayed for good, instead of returning to you only when something was wrong.”

  “Something was wrong almost once a week,” I reminded him. “I pushed you away. We both needed time.”

  “And now this.” Henry’s fingers slid into my hair. “What do you want, Amanda?”

  “Nothing,” I told him. “You’re here only because you have to be. You’re like a fox smoked out of its den. Secret marriage, secret life. You’re good at pretending to be something you’re not. Ask yourself what you want, Henry. But don’t ask me.”

  I pulled his hand off my neck, and walked toward the front door. He didn’t stop me. I escaped into the sunlight.

  I walked through the fields and ate a tomato fresh from the vine, biting into the red flesh like it was an apple. I ate a carrot, too, and some raw, ripe corn, then threw down the cob after only a few bites. Restles
s, aching, heartsick: a man in my house, a boy in my barn, and a world beyond the fence, threatening me now, in more ways than the woods could harm me.

  I stood on the border of my land, staring over the fence at the dense shadows beyond the trees. Cats twined around my legs and climbed the boards and posts. Watching the woods.

  You’re not free, I told myself, holding still, holding my breath. It had always been Henry who was caught—in his own lies, his confusion, his conflict. Before, after. And me, trapped in limbo. Waiting. Not for him, but for myself. Years, waiting, to wake up from the haze and bad dreams. Waiting for a little peace.

  I had built my fortress. Guarded it with guns and blood. Told myself it would help. Bit by bit, help. Only nothing had changed. Until now.

  What do you want, Amanda?

  A cat hissed. I glimpsed movement deep in the woods. A flash of white twisted around two dark spots and a moving hole. I saw it again, never still, but always facing me. Restless and hungry.

  I stood for a long time, staring, prickly with heat. Burning up, burning, hardly breathing. Caught, trapped. Caught, trapped. Two words that filled my head, droning on and on, until I forced myself to grab the fence, fingers digging into the wood.

  What do you want, Amanda?

  I climbed the fence. Stopped halfway up, swaying on the rails, and then kept going. Relentless. I jumped down on the other side, the wrong side, tasting blood as I bit my tongue. Cats followed, yowling, ears pressed flat against their skulls. I ignored them and walked across the grass toward the woods. This was my neighbor’s land, but his house was far away on the hill. I heard his dog barking. I didn’t know if the old man ever entered the woods, but his nights were safe. He had not been marked like me—and Henry, and Steven.

  It was late afternoon, sun leaning west, lines of light falling away from the trees. Only a matter of time before the shadows grew thick and long. My feet bumped cats—spitting, hissing, growling cats—but I kept walking. Sweating, heart thudding, stomach hurting so badly I wanted to sit down and vomit.

  Instead I stood on the other side of the sunlight, a golden barrier bathing the grass between the woods and me. Less than a stone’s throw from the dense tangle of branches, vines, knotting together like awful fingers, an undergrowth that seemed made to scratch and bind and close around bodies like barbed, clawed nets. Forests had become strange places after the plague—not just here, I had heard, and not just around the dead cities, but everywhere. Made me wonder, sometimes, if there were others out in the world like me and Henry, and Steven. Others, like them.

  I forced myself to look at the pale monster that waited in the shadows, holding my breath as it licked the edges of its lipless mouth with a long, pink tongue. No eyelids. Hardly a nose, just a stub that looked partially melted, as though it had frozen in mid-drip off that ashen face.

  We stared at each other. Years rolled. Memories. I remembered the woods, and the coarse laughter, and the fear. I still felt those hands on my body. I felt naked again, without my shotgun.

  “I know you,” I breathed, trembling—and then, again, louder. “I know you. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed, I still know who you were, before.”

  I picked up a cat, hugging its quivering body against mine. No purrs. Just a deep-throated growl. I watched that monster in the woods tilt back its head, cutting its cheeks with long nails that sank into its thin skin. That pit of a mouth made a rasping sound, like a sob.

  “Yeah. You cry,” I whispered, scrubbing my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. “Living for night so you can finish what you started. But I’m not going to let you.”

  Cats pushed hard against my legs, reaching up to claw my thighs. I backed away from the woods, gaze locked on the monster. Branches broke somewhere deeper behind it, and wet coughs hacked at the air, followed by a faint whine. Sun was sliding lower. The cat in my arms struggled free, hitting the ground with a hiss. I continued to retreat. Never breaking that gaze, though the terror crept on me, harder and heavier with each slow step, something building in my throat—a scream.

  Until finally, my back hit the fence. I climbed it, flew over it, tumbling over the rails and landing on my ass. I sat there, light-headed, heart pounding. Sweat-soaked. My finger throbbed, and so did my wrist. I looked down. Blood seeped through the white bandage and dotted the end of my index finger, which I had been nicking all day. All my fingers were lightly scarred.

  I looked through the rails. The monster was gone, but I heard wet coughs and the struggling movements of slow-waking bodies. Men, rotting, rising from their day graves: pushing aside leaves and brush; ripping the sod pulled over their bodies. Cats gathered close. I petted heads and tried to stand. Took several attempts. My knees were weak, and my skull throbbed.

  But I made it. Sun was sitting pretty on the horizon. I walked, slowly, staring at the land and the fence, and those long rows of crops I had planted with my own hands. For a moment it didn’t seem real. I should have been somewhere else. I didn’t know where—all I’d had were books and pictures from old magazines, conversations with my parents—but I knew there had been universities and jobs, once—all kinds of work that needed doing, and that had to be easier than growing food to stay alive.

  The world had been smaller, before—and brighter. Faraway cities that took only hours to reach. Endless streams of music and art—so much brilliant color—and those never-ending aisles in the pharmacies and grocery stores where nothing ever ran out and no one ever went hungry. A world with laws and justice, and safety. Where being . . . a little different . . . was not a mark on the soul.

  The Big Death had stolen away that simpler life.

  I saw the house long before I reached it. Small, white, just a box beneath the golden haze of the sky. Red roses grew in massive bushes that surrounded the neat rows of my herb garden.

  Henry stood on the porch, dressed in my father’s clothes. They looked strange on him—almost as odd as seeing him bald, without a beard. I stopped walking, caught differently than I had been earlier when facing the monster—another kind of heartache.

  He saw me standing on the hill, and strode to the edge of the porch. He held a knife and a small block of wood, which he pushed into his pocket. Sun was almost down, but not quite, and I was too far away to stop him as he walked down the steps. Smoke rose from his skin. I started running. Henry did not return to the porch shadows. He teetered, but kept moving toward me. Walking, then stumbling. He fell before I reached him, fire racing across his smoking scalp.

  I barreled into his body, rolling us both into the grass. Fire went out before we hit the ground—a little patch hidden from sunlight by a low-rising knoll. I lay on Henry anyway, covering him, pressing my hands against his partially charred face. Blisters formed on his scalp, and his lips were pressed together in a tight white line of pain—but he stared at me, stared as if none of it mattered—just me and him, me and him, like the old days.

  “Stupid,” I whispered. “Sometimes you make me hate you.”

  “I hate myself,” he said, grimacing as I pulled my hands from his head—taking some of the burned skin with me. It was disgusting. I tried to sit up, but he touched my face, sliding his other arm around me. He was stronger than I remembered, and I closed my eyes, holding my breath as he brushed his lips over mine. Brief, warm. I relaxed, just a little; and the next time he kissed me, I kissed back.

  Henry pulled me down beside him. I lay against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. The sky had darkened. I saw the first hint of stars in the purple east. Purrs rumbled as cats pressed near, settling warm against our bodies.

  “You were in braids,” he murmured. “My first memory of you. Sitting on a white sheet in braids and a dress, playing with a doll. My mother told me to look after you. I remember that.”

  “I remember other things.” I fingered a button on his flannel shirt. “Maybe we didn’t have vows ordained by any minister, but we
made promises to each other.”

  “Which I broke,” Henry said quietly. “I failed you. Not just that night, or after—but all those years before, when I loved you and never said a word to anyone. You deserved better than that. And now I’m supposed to be dead.”

  I unsnapped a button and slid my hand inside his shirt to press my palm against his bare skin, above his heart. Henry stopped breathing; he fumbled for my hand. He held it tightly against his chest.

  “You’re not dead to me,” I said. “But I don’t know what to do, Henry.”

  “If I was a better man, I would take Steven and leave.”

  Bitter laughter choked me, and my eyes started burning again. “Don’t start doing the right thing now. I don’t think I could take it.”

  “Neither could I,” he whispered, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the small block of wood. I thought it must be a scrap from the stove bin. He had started carving into it. I could already see the promise of what it would become.

  “It’s not much yet,” he said, turning it around in his large hands.

  “It’s going to be a heart.” I reached out and touched the edge, lightly.

  Henry cleared his throat. “I wanted to make you a new one.”

  A warm ache filled my chest. I tried to speak, lost my voice, then whispered, “Don’t take your time.”

  Henry exhaled slowly, closing his eyes. I kissed the edge of his jaw—once, twice. When I kissed him again, he turned his head and caught my mouth with his. Gentle at first, then harder. His sharp teeth cut my lip. I tasted blood. He broke away.

  I grabbed his jaw. “Don’t.”

  Henry shuddered, twisting out of my grip. “Amanda—”

  He stopped, looking sharply to the east. A moment later, I heard the neighbor’s dog begin to bark. Distant, urgent. Cats scattered. I sat up, Henry following me—both of us holding still, listening.

  “They’ve left the woods,” I said. “Hunting.”

  Henry made a small, dissatisfied sound. “Hunting just us. I’ve always wondered why they never actively sought out other families. If all they wanted was to kill—”