Darkling (4 page)

My back is against the wall and I’m balancing on one foot. I don’t even have the candle to defend myself with. The floorboards creak as the thing comes closer and closer. The air around me is growing charged again, tugging at the tips of the hairs on my arms.

Don’t be frightened
, I chant over and over in my head.
Don’t be frightened
.

A weight forms in my chest as the creaking footsteps draw nearer. Then they stop.

For the span of several heartbeats, there isn’t a sound. Then I notice something on the ground out of the corner of my eye. It’s dark and I can’t make it out until I turn my head, and when I do, I have to bite my lip. It’s a toenail. A ridged, yellowed, toenail attached to a browned foot, darkened by rotting.

Something leans around the entryway, peering at me. After the sight of the toe, I don’t want to see the rest, but I force myself to look up. The first impression I have is of hair billowing underwater. Black funerary shrouds flutter in the air about a corpse.

It’s a woman. Clumps of her hair are still sticking to her skull, dangling long past her waist. I wish the fabric was thicker, for through her veil I can glimpse dark eye sockets, a half-attached nose, and long teeth. They look large because there are no longer any lips to cover them. Jewelry adorns the woman’s neck and one of her wrists, and her finery tells me she is the corpse of the spirit of the house.

R
attling comes from within her chest as she shuffles to stand in front of me. Her rotting flesh should stink, but it doesn’t. I remind myself that she can’t smell because she can’t really have a body. The dead can’t reanimate their corpses. Or so I thought.

The heaviness grows in my chest as she leans forward. Her head tilts up and down, surveying me through eyes that melted long ago. How can she see me? How can she experience the world without her senses?

Don’t be frightened
, I chant again, even as the corpse lets out a wheeze in front of me.
She’s only an apparition. She can’t hurt me. She can’t –

Her hand reaches into the folds of her shrouds and pulls out a thin strand of pearls. They’re ivory and elegant as they slither through her rotting fingers. I realize those pearls might have something to do with what’s troubling her. I force steadiness into my voice.

“They’re beautiful,” I whisper.

A bony hand darts forward and clamps on both of my wrists like a shackle. I cry out in surprise at her strength and can’t breathe at all as she leans her skull in to mine. A rattling exhalation blows the hair off my face as she slides the pearls around my wrists, like a snake. They’re smooth, almost like liquid, and their sensation is so pleasant and her eyeless sockets are so near that it takes me too long to realize that she’s binding my hands together. I try to move my arms to get away but the heaviness in me is so strong that I can’t budge.

Her funerary shrouds brush against my mother’s wedding dress. Wheezing comes out from behind her teeth, accompanied with squeaking, and I realize she’s trying to speak.

“Special?” She hisses as the pearls get tighter. “You think you’re special?’

I part my lips but I can’t respond. It’s like my lungs are locked in ice.

The pearls clutched in one hand, she traces my jaw with the forefinger of the other. Her skull tilts to the side as a wheeze-like a growl rumbles in her chest.

“Not so special anymore.”

She lets go and though she isn’t touching me, my wrists are yanked above my head. I scream out the last of my air as my elbows are nearly wrenched out of socket. Only the tips of my toes can touch the ground. The lights begin to snuff out and the corpse disappears, dissolving into the darkness until she is one with the shadows. The weight in my chest fades and I take several strangled breaths.

I am in total darkness once again.

My ankle is pulsing furiously now but I put weight on it anyway. I try to balance as I yank at my bonds but they are held fast to something above me that I can’t even see. Grunting as I try to free myself, I only wind up swaying from side to side, so I hold still and dangle like an animal in a snare.

“Let me go,” I scream so loud that it vibrates in the back of my throat. My demand echoes through the house. There is no response. That’s when I notice the cold again. I can’t even hug myself for warmth.

When minutes slip past and there is no sign of stirring within the house, my pulse slows. Maybe the spirit wanted me here so that I could die. Starvation while my limbs feel like they are slowly tearing at the joints. The cold is numbing me now, slipping up the tear in my dress so that I have no warmth.

Tears escape as I think of Jasper. I try to remember his smiling eyes, but every time I start to see them, they fade. I worry I’ll never be able to remember them. Instead, I can see Draven’s eyes perfectly. They’re so clear that I allow myself to slip inside of them, into memory of a time with the sun.

Draven and I were ten. We lay side by side on our stomachs, the hay beneath us prickling our skin through our clothes. In front of us, nestled in otter fur, was a small egg. Though the chick inside had been
pipping for some time, the egg had yet to open more than a short crack on the side.

“Tell me the story of how you got it again,” I murmured, my chin resting on my folded arms.

Draven shifted to sit up and began tearing at a piece of straw. His blonde curls were streaked with brown and matted together behind his head, like they always were back then. He was afraid of brushes.

“I snuck out a few weeks ago with my bow and quiver,” he said.

The sunlight was pouring into the window of his barn, filling the air with the scent of warm hay. The chickens lived inside during the winter snow, but since it was summer, they were out scratching under bushes elsewhere, leaving us in peace. The light haloed Draven’s messy hair, so golden against the sunkissed tan of his skin.

“Did your mother know you were gone?” I asked, rolling onto my side. The egg wasn’t showing more signs of progress. Draven was more interesting.

“No, I left before she was awake. I walked for hours. So long that my boots were rubbing my feet raw in places.”

“Then what happened?” I asked. Draven was quiet by nature and had a habit of drifting off into thought if I didn’t prompt him. My mother said he was a little daft. Megan liked to tease him, calling him mute. He was neither of those things. He just didn’t waste breath.

“I came to the base of a cliff,” he continued, knotting his piece of hay. “It was taller than the tallest trees. But that’s where the nest was. So I took off my gear and boots and started to climb.”

“Did you fall?”

He shook his head. “I slipped. And cut myself open a bunch. And I couldn’t look down. About halfway up, I reached this sort of grassy place that was flat so I climbed onto it. From there I could hike the rest of the way up to the top.”

“And that’s when you realized the nest was below you?” I asked. I’d heard this story several times before, but I loved listening to stories back then. I still do, when they’re not whispered by strangers, that is.

Draven nodded and looked at me, casting aside his piece of straw. His angel bow lips smiled. “About five lengths down.”

“Lengths of your body, you mean.”

He nodded. “I lay on my belly and looked over the edge and could see four brown eggs in the nest. The parents probably couldn’t raise all those chicks anyway.”

I smiled. This part was my favorite. When Draven would look at me as he told it, I would feel this tingly warmth on the back of my neck, like the sunlight.
Because all of the color in his eyes was focused on me. Just me. And I had time to try to hunt out his pupils amidst all that dark brown.

“So then I was able to use this rope that I’d brought. I tied it to the trunk of a tree at the top –”

“A stump,” I corrected.

“Yeah, a stump, because it was closest to the edge.
Then I tied the other end around my waist and started to lower myself down. Then the rope started feeling floppy and all the sudden I slipped. I grabbed onto a tree root,” he mimicked grabbing something in the air before him, “and could hear all these rocks falling. I was able to climb back up the root and saw that the rope had slid off the stupid stump. It had crumbled in from termites and stuff.”

“You would’ve died.”

Draven nodded. “So this time, I was more careful. I tied the rope to a tree trunk, even if it was farther away. I didn’t have enough rope left to tie it around my waist and still reach the nest, so instead I just wrapped it around my wrists and slid.”

I eyed the scarring marks on his knuckles and palms. He hadn’t been able to use his crossbow for over a week.

“The rope burned really bad, but I slid until my feet touched the ledge the nest was on. I picked the biggest egg and tucked it into my shirt, like this.”

He slipped his hand under his sleeveless tunic and rested it against the left side of his chest. As if in response, the egg started
pipping again.

“Then I had to climb back up. That was the hardest part because my hands hurt so bad and were bleeding. It took a long time but I made it to the top. I just walked all the way down the other side of the cliff – the part that was a slope on the other side of the mountain. It took me until nighttime to reach my gear again but it was better than trying to climb down the face.”

“And safer.” I started to braid three pieces of straw together.

“Yeah.
The egg was still warm against my skin so I hurried home. The moon was bright so I didn’t get lost. I got in a lot of trouble when I got home until I showed my parents the egg.”

“Then what did they do?” I handed the braided straw to Draven, who wound it around his wrist.

“My father wrapped it in his otter pelt since it’s the warmest.” He tried to tie another piece of straw around the braid to secure it, but it was hard with one scabbed hand. “Then my mother slipped it all under a broody hen. She pecked her lots but warmed the egg like it was hers.”

He was still struggling with fastening his bracelet so I sat up and tied it for him. That was when I saw the egg move out of the corner of my eye.
“Draven, look.”

We fell onto our bellies and nearly held our breath as we watched the brown speckled egg. After several moments, it moved again and the crack on the side widened. Draven giggled. “I knew it. Today’s the day!”

“Shh,” I hushed. “Don’t scare the baby.”

We watched as quietly as we could as the egg slowly hatched. The crack grew bigger and bigger and once the shell started to separate, we could glimpse the pink body of the chick. Draven only left once to get his father, Lucian. When the beak was peeking out and the chick was almost free, Lucian slapped Draven on the back. “Pick it up, boy!”

Draven’s eyes grew. “Me?’

Lucian grabbed the bundle and shoved it into his son’s hands. “She’s yours.”

I laughed then because Draven was smiling so much, and his smile was the biggest I’d ever seen. So big that his eyes narrowed and deep lines curved at the sides of his mouth. It always made me smile back. He cradled the bundle in his arms as the little bird fought its way out. It was wet and weak, covered with white feathers that looked like clumps of thin fur. Its eyes were still closed, but I knew that once it could glimpse the outside world, Draven’s smile would be the first thing it would see. From that point onwards, he and the falcon were inseparable.

He named her Lady.

A light appears at the top of the stairs and I am yanked back into the present. I spent so long in my imagination that I wonder if I was sleeping. The only sensation left in my arms is a cold, aching pain. The light at the top of the stairs is a candle’s flame, and it flickers as it slowly moves downwards.

It’s either floating or held by someone but I am too tired to be afraid. Still, I brace myself for the ugly sight of the woman’s corpse again. But as the candle nears, casting flickering light, I glimpse a vest and trousers. The candle is held by a man.

Not just any man, I realize as he nears and I can make out the features of his face. He is the most handsome man I have ever seen.