Magpie, page 23
“That girl will follow you to death and back.”
I jump at the voice, darting my feverish eyes around the tent. The once cramped space, barely big enough to fit Irina and me inside, is now the size of a small room. I press a hand to my clammy forehead, wondering if I’m still dreaming.
I hear a steady, rhythmic creaking, and turn to the noise. Swaying back and forth on a rocking chair sits a figure I instantly recognize. Elspeth, the witch who travels with our roaming group. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I try to determine if she is real, or just another hallucination of my fever.
She’s sitting across from me, taking drags on a long pipe, letting the twisting clouds of smoke fill the tent. It makes the space hazy, harder to see in the muted light of the tent. The wind cries softly outside. It sounds almost like a warning bell.
“Did you hear me, boy?” she asks, leaning forward, her dark eyes holding mine.
I balk, gripping the blankets around me. “I’m no boy. I am five and ten,” I say, raising my chin.
She has the audacity to laugh at me, the sound like the crackling of logs in a fire. I flinch at the noise, snapping my mouth shut and watching her. Leaning back in her chair, she busies herself filling her pipe again. Elspeth is a reclusive member of our group; I only ever see her when she is doling out fortunes and spells to earn a few coins. She keeps mostly to herself outside of performances, preferring to sit alone in her tent, reading her books.
Her books…
My stomach drops as I look down at the books scattered around Irina. The strange ones with the words and symbols I do not recognize. I only have a basic understanding of my letters, but even I know enough to realize these books are not written in the language of man. This is the language of the old gods. They are the witch’s books, and I have no idea how they ended up in our tent.
My mouth falls open, my feverish mind still trying to shake the delirium of sickness as it runs wild. Surely Irina didn’t take them.
“She did indeed,” the witch answers, drawing my attention back to her as she grins around the pipe between her lips. For the life of me I can’t remember if I spoke those words, or if I only thought them.
I scrub at my eyes, forcing myself to focus on her, desperately trying to peer through my tired eyes and the fog of smoke her pipe is spewing forth. “My apologies, Elspeth. I am sure Irina only meant to borrow them,” I say, my lips dry and cracking, stinging as they split open.
“She stole them, boy,” Elspeth says.
I fight the urge to glower at her as she continues to call me a boy. It’s taking damn near all my energy to remain upright. I’m near fainting. The sickness is coursing through me, trying to pull me back under those murky depths, but I fight against it. Something about this encounter feels…important.
“It is a fool’s errand to steal from a witch,” Elspeth says, rocking gently in her chair as she clutches her shawl around her shoulders.
“She wouldn’t have done that,” I argue, gripping the thin blanket tightly.
The witch lets out another sharp cackle. “You don’t know her at all, boy. I wonder if you ever will.” She blows out rings of smoke. Heat rises to my cheeks as I narrow my eyes at her. How dare she. I know Irina better than anyone.
“I will pay for it, whatever the cost,” I say, ignoring her cutting remark as I try to catch her gaze. She refuses to look at me, instead throwing her head back and laughing wildly. The sound grates down my spine, and I feel my irritation rising through the fog of my fever.
“You should never agree to pay when you have no idea what the bill is,” Elspeth says, rocking in her seat, coming in and out of the strip of moonlight spilling in from the tent flap. Her features shift in the shadows, turning from the young woman I know to an old hag version of herself, twisting and changing as she rocks. I can’t make myself meet her gaze, too unsettled by the trick of the light and the way it seems to change her face. “If you know her so well, then tell me: why do you think she decided to invade my tent and steal my tomes? What could have possibly possessed your dear friend to risk the ire of a witch?”
The glow of her pipe illuminates her sharp eyes as they pierce me. I open my mouth, ready to argue, when I realize…I don’t know. Embarrassment burns my cheeks, and she flashes me another wolfish grin.
“For love, Alister,” she says. “She risked it all for love.”
“She…what?” I ask, annoyed at my own confusion as I glance down at Irina. Her shoulders rise and fall in a soft rhythm, her hair blowing about her face as a gust of cold wind breaks through the tent door. The tent flaps and shakes, snow flurries gushing into the space. The wind doesn’t seem to touch the witch, as though it doesn’t dare. Even her thick, swirling cloud of smoke remains unmoved by the icy gale.
“What do you fear, boy?” Elspeth asks, making me look at her. She is young again, wearing the face I know. I can’t help but wonder if it’s her real face, or a mask hiding the wicked creature underneath.
“Death,” I say, the single word pulled from me without my consent.
I balk, anger gnawing in my stomach at this woman. How dare she use a power over me? Had anyone else asked me that question, I would have laughed, telling them I feared nothing and no one in this great wide world. Ever since I met Irina, however, I’ve become terrified of the idea of leaving her, losing her, including to pass on to the other side.
“It is cruel and unfair that death should be the one to decide when my story ends. It is my life, after all. Why should I not be in charge of the finale?”
“You want to control death,” Elspeth whispers. Bursts of snow and ice pelt through the tent flap, leaving a layer of frost covering every inch of our tent. Yet I don’t feel a single freezing touch of it. Even as frost covers my skin and snow cakes my hair, I remain numb.
I look down at Irina. She is frozen solid, encased in ice, her rising and falling shoulders the only sign that she isn’t a statue, that she is still alive.
You want to control death.
“Yes,” I say, this time not needing the answer to be pulled from me. I place my hand on Irina’s head, stroking her hair. She smiles in her sleep, curling into my touch. She is all I need in this world, and I cannot imagine ever being parted from her. It would shatter my soul. So, with a clear head, I turn to the witch and say, “Yes, I want control over death.”
For her. I’ll control death for her.
“You said you would pay, whatever the cost. Is that still your offer?” Elspeth croons, tossing my words back in my face as she stands. Somehow her small frame takes up the entire tent, her shadow stretching and filling every corner. The storm screams around us. The snowbank inside the tent is growing, covering Irina’s small form as she sleeps peacefully beside me.
“Yes,” I say again, my voice stronger this time, even as I try to keep the desperation out of it. “Show me how to control death, and I will give anything, pay whatever it costs.” The cold builds around me, but I burn inside. Sweat drips down my forehead, spilling off my nose. I’m going to burn alive from the heat of it.
Elspeth moves, coming to stand directly in front of me. She tugs the collar of her dress aside, revealing the top of her chest in the strip of pale moonlight. Resting her long, dark nails against her skin, directly over her heart, she pierces her skin. I gasp, reeling back from the sight of her hand sinking deep into her flesh. Before I can do more than gape at her, she is pulling her hand out, and between her fingers she’s holding a key.
I blink, refusing to believe what I’m seeing. I struggle to stay upright, the fever burning through me, my stomach churning uneasily. No wound or scar appears on her flesh, and no blood drips from her fingers as she holds out the wrought iron key toward me, the handle curling into the shape of a spade.
I’m not sure what she is offering. Her mocking words of warning to never agree to pay until you know what is owed circle my mind. I’m frozen, my eyes darting between her outstretched hand and Irina’s sleeping form.
The witch moves like flowing water. She kneels in front of the bed. She holds out the key, closer this time, dangling it in front of my face.
“What is the price?” I ask, my mouth dry. My eyes trace the key in a hypnotic dance, unable to look away from it. From the promise of life.
“The price, boy, for dominance over death, is everything.”
Irina stirs, letting out a small whimper, but I ignore her. The storm rages on outside, but the only sound I hear is the witch’s voice.
“I have lived on this earth for a long time, longer than any being before me,” she says, her words possessing me, snaring me. Through it all, I watch the iron key in her hand. “Death has chased me, and I have evaded her at every turn. I may have been able to outrun her, but I have never had the power to control her. That dark magic has always eluded me.”
Irina squirms, and I pet her head absentmindedly, unable to look away from the witch and the key she offers.
“I saw the power in her the moment she arrived in this camp. From the very moment she and her mother joined our group, I felt the wellspring of potential spilling from her,” Elspeth says, nodding toward Irina.
I am transported back to the day when Irina’s mother died, and the others began whispering about leaving her at the nearest village. Something in her soft eyes called out to me, and I knew then that I would do anything to keep her. Somehow, I knew even then that she was my destiny.
“As I said, this girl will go to the ends of the earth for you. You may even be able to persuade her to go to the gates of death…” Elspeth smiles at me, her own hand resting on Irina’s head. Irina frowns in her sleep, becoming restless, but I do not move the witch’s hand, watching as Irina thrashes.
“Irina will do anything I ask…” I say, suddenly uneasy, not liking the way the witch’s hand curls and grips Irina’s hair, far too possessively. And still, I don’t stop her, don’t move her hand from Irina’s forehead. I look away from it, holding Elspeth’s gaze. “I will ask her, and she will do it. You just need to show us how.”
I frown when the witch just shakes her head. “Oh yes, boy, you will ask her,” she says. “Time and time again you will ask her, and it will be the only thing she denies you.”
I scowl. Irina never tells me no. How dare this witch insinuate that?
Elspeth grins. “You could live endlessly like me, and be content with that, knowing that no matter how far you run, one day Death will catch up to you. Or…”
I wait. The key is still dangling between us. I don’t move to take it.
“Or you can convince her to give you everything, to give you that sweet control you so desperately crave. One day, if you press her enough, she will grant you that power, and it will cost you everything.”
Looking down at Irina, I see her sweet face pulled into a look of anguish as the witch strokes her hair.
She would want us to be together forever. She would do anything to ensure it.
For her, I tell myself. I am doing this for her.
Looking away from the sorrow on Irina’s sleeping face, I lock eyes with the witch, and as the storm screams on around us, I take the key.
Ido not carry many memories of my youth. The few that trickled back into my mind after leaving Alister are mostly of my years leading up to the House. The further back in my life I try to remember, the muddier it becomes, like wading deep into a swamp.
I do, however, remember my father taking me to the zoo. I cannot call to mind his features, or any familial bond we may have had, but I remember the animals. The jaguars in particular. I was young, young enough for everything around me to feel big. I remember holding his hand as I begged to see the big cats. He led me to the jaguar exhibit. I excitedly watched the three sleeping beasts, waiting for them to stretch and curl like housecats. Instead, they slumbered. I began to fidget, pouting about how boring they were, sunbathing on the many branches and rocks that made up their cage.
“Daddy, look,” I said, pressing my face against the mesh wall that blocked the animals from the path. The jaguars were rousing, their eyes trained on the center of the cage. I was entranced, watching as their muscles tensed, their limbs moving with the grace of dancers. I thought they were beautiful, a wondrous, powerful thing. I was completely enthralled.
It wasn’t until a mother screamed at her child not to look that I realized what had woken the slumbering beasts.
A stray cat had somehow made its way into the animals’ cage. It was a hissing and spitting ball of panic as the jaguars closed in. I was frozen, my childlike mind unable to see the very near future, unable to understand the death waiting in the predators’ gazes. My father realized too late what was happening, and before he could pull me away, a jaguar pounced, and then all I could see was claws, and teeth, and hunger.
The ravenous look in the jaguars’ eyes is mirrored in Alister’s, the same predatory need to devour etched into every line of his face. He leans against the door, sticking his hands casually in his pockets as he once again traces his eyes over every inch of my exposed skin. The sky is still dark, the sun hours from rising. The ritual will be going on for some time. It’s unusual for him to abandon the performance before the ending.
But tonight is an unusual night.
He pushes off the door, taking one slow step forward. Just one. He is testing the distance between us, testing to see if I will bolt. It takes all my strength to stay rigid, smiling pleasantly back at him.
The jaguar sizes up its prey. My plan, feeble as it may be, requires him much closer than this, and before he can make another move, I rush forward and throw my arms around him. Standing as tall as I can, I guide his face to mine and kiss him.
He instantly rears back, shock and perhaps fear of me giving him pause. He peers down at me, scrutinizing my docile expression. I press myself closer to him, looking up at him meekly through my lashes, and he gives me that crescent-moon smile. The one that has haunted my dreams since the moment I left. His arms twine around me, binding and tight. His touch is strong, and far too greedy, trying to pull me closer, press me into him. His lips are on mine in a second, and that grave-cold sensation splinters out of him, trying to worm its way into me.
Before the numbing fissures can break through my steel wall of defiance, I break the kiss, pulling back. He doesn’t let me get far, caging me in his arms.
“You returned to me,” he says. I hate the way he speaks of me like I’m an object, nothing more than the wrought iron key stored inside his heart. How little my life ever meant to him outside of fueling his endless flame.
I nod at him, trying to not scowl. Some hint of my true feelings must betray me, because his eyes narrow, suspicion clear on his face as he studies me. Before he can speak, I fall into him, burying my head in his chest, listening for the heartbeat I know isn’t there.
“I came back,” I say, because I may have returned, but I certainly didn’t return to him.
He pushes away from me, taking a step back, eyeing me with cold judgment, and my heart sinks. My plan is failing spectacularly.
“You’ve been quite a disobedient little brat, Magpie,” he snaps, his grin replaced with a grimace, his voice dripping with indignation. His tone is sardonic, painting my efforts to dig my key out of the cavern of his chest as nothing more than a childish tantrum. Like my escape means nothing, my efforts completely pointless. I resist the urge to rip his shirt open and expose the scar I suspect is covering his chest, proof that my fight made its mark.
I drop my head in false shame. My hair falls over my shoulders, covering my face. Undeterred by my mock contrition, he grips my chin, roughly forcing my head up to meet his eyes. Real shock and fear rise in me as I realize how wildly out of control of the situation I am.
“I was…lost,” I say, fumbling for an excuse.
“You were willful, selfish, and impudent,” he snaps, letting my chin go and storming away from me.
“I know. I am sorry, Alister.” I move to stand behind him and wrap my arms around him. He pulls away from my touch, spinning on me suddenly. Grabbing my shoulders, he pushes me back and slams me against the wall. He pins me there with one arm pressed against my chest, the other hand around my throat, tilting my head back to look at him.
“Do you think I’m a fucking fool?” he hisses, his grip on my throat tightening. His face is contorted with rage. “Do you think I can be tricked by a bawdy display of flesh and fake smiles?”
He moves the hand around my neck, roughly grabbing my breast and squeezing tightly. I bite my lip to keep from crying out.
“You think displaying yourself like a vulgar feast will erase what you did to me?”
I cast my eyes to the side, unable to hold his deranged gaze.
That only serves to enrage him. He slams his fist against the wall by my head, the glass splintering on impact as he bellows, “Look at me!”
Taking a steadying breath, I slowly turn my face back to his and shed the mask of complacency and adoration. Getting him to drop his guard through false contrition isn’t working, and I’m more than happy to show my true colors. I pour every ounce of hatred I have into my eyes, every last drop of disdain.
He grins at me, a wolfish, devilish smile. “There she is,” he says, stroking my cheek with one of those damned white gloves. I squirm away from his touch, and he chuckles at the motion, before his laugh is abruptly cut off as he pulls me forward by my throat and slams me back against the wall.
I grunt, my head cracking hard against the glass, but I have no time to focus on the pain as he squeezes my throat again. Tighter and tighter, only allowing the barest trickle of air in.
“Do you even realize what you did by leaving me?” he hisses. “You nearly ended this. All of this.”
