The Castle Behind Thorns (7 page)

13

Forge

“I
'
M SORRY
,” S
AND SAID, HIS VOICE ROUGHENED BY
he knew not what emotion. There were too many feelings inside of him to know which one was making it hard to speak. Mostly, though, he did feel sorry for this girl who had been dead—or had she merely been broken, like the things in the castle?

“It's not your fault. You didn't do anything,” Perrotte said, wiping away the last of her tears. She looked around the room as if suddenly, all the missing things would reappear.

“I meant, I feel sorrow
for
you.”

She choked on whatever she tried to say in response to that, and turned abruptly, leaving the room. Sand returned to the task of hanging the sheet out the window before heading down after her.

Sand didn't know if Perrotte wanted to be alone or not, but he knew
he
did not want to be. He had spent too many days by himself to give up on even prickly Perrotte. But he didn't know where she'd gone. He looked for her in the kitchen, in the great hall, in the Count's bedroom, but each room was as silent as when he'd haunted the castle alone. Where had she fled to?

He tried the chapel next. Perhaps she had gone to pray. But no one knelt there before the repaired crucifix, or the cracked statues of Saint Salomon and Saint Melor, or any of the relics.

Sand peered into the dark rectangle of the entrance to the crypt, then closed his eyes, listening for any sign of her presence. He heard nothing, but—what
would
he hear, exactly? Her breathing, from all the way down the limestone stair?

Reluctantly, he descended a few steps. The darkness seemed to reach for him. Panic thrummed in his chest. He hurried back into the chapel and lit the stub of an unmended beeswax taper. Armed with light, he descended into the dark to find Perrotte.

He crept all the way to her niche where the crack in the earth ran: empty. He let out a chuffing breath of relief. Turning away, he wondered what he had expected to find—Perrotte crying? Perrotte praying? Perrotte lying on her stone slab, arms folded as if in eternal rest?

He hurried upward into light, chiding himself. Really? He had expected her to go to the crypt? If
he
were awakened from death, the last place he would go was down
there
.

He shivered. “Never mind that thought, Sand,” he muttered.

But as he searched the castle without finding her, his worries grew. He began to wonder not where Perrotte was, but if he had imagined her entirely, both dead in the crypt and then come to life? Was he so lonely that he'd begun to have waking dreams just to feel less alone?

He decided to start over, in the last place he'd seen her, in case she'd stolen back to the observatory while he searched elsewhere. But that room remained as empty as ever, the only movement from the bedsheet gently lifting and falling on the early spring breeze.

Perplexed, Sand stared out the window at the land all around. Had she gotten free of the castle somehow? But no—thorns still surrounded the castle. No small figure in a russet and saffron dress crossed the asparagus fields below, either.

In the distance, the wide ribbon of the Liger River shone like quicksilver in the bright afternoon sun. The cherry orchards between the castle and the river were turning yellow-green with oncoming spring. Sand leaned out of the window, staring at the wide-open world, longing to be a part of it once more. He took a deep breath of the fresh, promise-filled air—

He paused. The fire in the kitchen should have gone out; there really should be no lingering scent of fire on the air. But the scent came to him, and a thin line of smoke from the smithy drew his eye.

He took the circular stairs two at a time, then burst through the door at the bottom. He raced his own thoughts into the smithy, where he found Perrotte pumping the bellows and staring into a pile of kindling and charcoal in the forge.

“Wh-what are you doing?” he panted.

“I want to mend something,” she said fiercely. “Anything in this castle that's not broken is something that you've mended, right? This hammer? These tongs? The bellows here?”

“Except for the outer walls of the castle, yes, everything.”

She nodded, a grim sort of satisfaction on her face. “Including me. Yes? You did something to me.”

He flinched. “That, we don't know. I—I can't believe it was me. All I did in the crypt was straighten everything up, put your—put you back to rights. You'd been knocked over in the sundering. But . . . nothing else.”

She turned her keen eyes on him. “Nothing else—nothing? Tell me the whole story.”

He took a deep breath, eyes darting around the smithy as he tried to think of something to distract her from this question. Nothing in the piles of scrap metal and broken tools around him led to any new thought. He blew out his breath and told his reluctant truth.

“Your tomb was shattered. I'm no stone mason or sculptor; I didn't know how to put that back together. I didn't even try—just shoved the rubble into a pile. Other tombs, they're cracked, the lids were loose, but none were as destroyed as yours. I put them back to rights. But for you, all I could do was . . . your body . . . You were on the ground, all . . .” He mimed the broken and awkward position of her arms, before realizing what he was doing. He dropped his hands. “All I did was set you to rights. Nothing else.”

She was silent for a moment, still pumping the bellows meditatively. Sand kept an eye on the rate of burn, fretting for the lost charcoal. The castle held a lot of charcoal, but when they ran out, they would be out forever, and he'd never smithed with wood fires before. He wasn't sure he could.

“I'm sorry,” Perrotte said. “I was rather caught up in my resurrection. It never occurred to me to ask—how did you get into the castle, Sand?”

“I woke up in the fireplace,” he said. “In the great hall. I don't know how I got there—but the night before, I was running to my grandpère's house after a fight with my father, and I stopped at a shrine of Saint Melor. Do you know it? There's a spring and a small pool. People leave bronze there, sometimes silver.”

“Saint Melor is the patron of the Boisblanc family,” Perrotte said. “And you are the son of a boy who lived here in this castle. There's some connection there.”

He shrugged. “I don't see how.”

“That sounds like someone who lacks imagination to me,” she said.

If she thought that would make him angry, she didn't know anything about blacksmiths. Sand just laughed.

But maybe she wasn't trying to pick a fight, because she grinned at his laughter, appearing pleased with herself. “Well, Sand of the Fireplace, let's not worry about it right now. Instead, teach me how to mend.”

“Certainly,” he said, eager to think about and do things he understood. “In that dress, though?”

She stroked the fabric of her smooth, soft-woven dress, frowning. She sighed. “I wonder if anyone saved my clothes.”

“They'll be torn even if they were saved.”

“Well, I guess this will have to be good enough for now. My sleeves are tight enough not to trail in the fire . . .”

“It's your only whole dress,” Sand pointed out. “In any case, you need a leather apron to protect from sparks, like mine.” He patted his apron. “So we have sewing to do, any way you look at it.”

“Ugh, fine,” she grumbled, and stalked off. Sand banked the fire, then settled down tailor-style in the dirt with an awl and two halves of a smithing apron.

Perrotte returned faster than he would have expected, wearing the intact bodice from a sleeveless gown that she'd laced tightly in place, and a whole skirt torn from a different gown that she had belted on with some cording from a curtain or tapestry. She had knotted her hair in the back with a braid wrapped in more cording.

Sand nodded to her, his lips compressed over his awl while his fingers tied the smithing apron together with fragments of thin twine and leather.

“I wasn't sure if I should look for boys' clothing or girls',” she said.

Sand spat his awl into his palm. “My grandmère wears a skirt when she works in the smithy. It seems no better or worse than what my grandpère wears. The important part is not to wear good clothes that you'll be sad to see burned, or trailing sleeves.”

While he finished repairing the apron, Sand told her how to build up the fire: how to arrange the charcoal and for what purpose. Then he showed her the important parts of the forge: the air pipe that ran from the bellows, and the so-called duck's nest that caught the ashes and cinders as they fell from the fire.

“They should call it a phoenix nest,” Perrotte said.

Sand grinned, handing her a simple piece of steel to learn with.

“What will this be?” she asked, running her fingertips over the triangular corners of the metal.

“You'll need your own spoon, I'm thinking,” he said. “All the other ones are broken, but for my own. A spoon's a good and useful thing to learn how to make.”

He set her to taking out the corners from the broken bit of steel, which had been fresh from the foundry twenty-five or more years before. He instructed her on heating the metal and using the tongs, on swinging the hammer from her shoulder and not her wrist, on not letting the metal get too hot in the forge, nor trying to work it when it had grown too cold. He taught her the colors in the order that meant increasing heat, from faintest red to sparkling white.

Perrotte never appeared scared of the glowing metal, and that was a good sign. Sand told her what he had been taught since he was a baby: Only a fool burns himself on bright metal. Iron lost its light long before it cooled, and a smith should have a care for dark heat.

He worried that once the work started, and she grew tired and dirty, Perrotte might think herself debased, a noble girl learning a peasant's craft. But when she looked up at him from her first bout with the hammer, trembling with effort and exhilaration, and bearing a streak of ash across her brow, he saw only fierce happiness on her face.

He answered her grin with one of his own. “Good work,” he told her. “Now put your iron back in the fire until it is heated again.”

 

A
FTER
P
ERROTTE'S FIRST LESSON
at the forge, during which she turned out a credible spoon, even if it was a bit small in the bowl, they went to the kitchen to find something to eat. Well, Sand wanted to eat; he was unconvinced that Perrotte would eat much. He worried about her.

In the kitchen, she poked at dried apples without swallowing more than a mouthful. Sand wondered what he could make to tempt her. Inspiration struck: There were oats in the pantry, which he sorted from stones and debris by tossing the mixture in water and letting the oats float to the top. Then he mixed the grain with tallow from a melted candle. He formed the grain paste into patties and set them to fry.

“Hm.” Perrotte watched Sand's progress with his little bread cakes. “Those smell good.”

“Would be better with butter,” he couldn't help but point out.

“Or jam.”

“Or venison gravy.”

“Or red-wine sauce.”

“Or milk and honey.”

“Or sugar and cream.”

Sand didn't respond. His cheeks ached from salivation.

They ate the oat cakes, and while they were better than anything Sand had eaten in the castle so far, except for the long-gone marzipan pigs, they still weren't good.

“I'd love a fresh apple, a fresh carrot, a fresh . . . anything,” he said.

Perrotte nodded.

“Is that why you won't eat? Nothing fresh?” he asked.

She frowned. “I don't know. I'm just . . . not terribly hungry. I have more appetite today than I did yesterday. But . . .” She hesitated. “I hardly slept last night. Maybe an hour, if I were to judge from the stars.”

That worried him too, but maybe that's what happened when a person was recently deceased. He didn't know.

“The thing is, we need to try to break through the hedge,” she said.

Immediately, his scar came alive, a shooting ache through his wrist. He clutched it. Her acute eyes followed his gesture.

“One thorn,” he gasped, speaking against the tide of pain. “One thorn tried to kill me, and it does not want me to forget.”

She shook her head, obstinate. “I'm not afraid.”

“Well, I am. I've tried everything, Perrotte. I've tried digging under. I've tried burning them. They are . . .” He didn't know how to finish the sentence. Smart? Evil? Determined?

“If you made me a pair of hedge shears, and I had, say, some armor—gauntlets, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Then I'll just try it without your help. With a sword. With a broken sword.”

“No,” he said again, not because he believed he could talk her out of it, but because it was the right thing to say.

“We can talk about it,” Perrotte said. “For as long as you like. For days. For weeks. But I'll get my way.”

He was a little surprised that she hadn't already tried to order him to help her, on the basis that he was a peasant and she was a lady. But since she didn't . . . he was actually considering it.

But still—no! It was too dangerous. She had no idea, she really did not!

He had his mouth open to argue, when from the kitchen door a gentle
thump
interrupted him.

Perrotte and Sand both froze, staring at each other.

Thump. Thump, thump.
A long pause, then:
Thump.

Wordlessly, Perrotte shot to her feet. She ran across the room and jerked open the door. She ducked just in time: a drenched falcon flew over her head, landed on the mantel, then started to preen its feathers.

14

Heart

“W
HAT IN
H
EAVEN IS THAT
?” P
ERROTTE ASKED,
hands protectively braced over her head.

“Merlin!” Sand exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Was Sand
talking
to the bird? “Sand! Are you listening to me?”

Sand faced Perrotte with a smile of true joy, but when he opened his mouth, his eyes clouded. “I heard you,” he said. “It's . . . well, it's Merlin.”

“A falcon. I can see that. I thought you said nothing lived here?”

Sand's face went blank. “There
was
nothing alive, except for me, until Merlin. And then you.”

Perrotte bit back her exasperation, and said simply, “Go on.”

He twined his blunt-tipped fingers together, staring down at them. “I, erm. I found the falcon in the mews.”

“So, it's not true that there was nothing alive in the castle?”

“The truth is . . . Well, the truth is the truth, and thus worth telling, but sometimes truths are so complicated that it's exhausting to get them out in the right order.” He glanced up at her.

That sounded like an evasion if ever she'd heard one. She raised an eyebrow.

“The falcon was dead!” Sand blurted out. “Stuffed and mounted, and then also damaged in the sundering. I mended him, and put him on the mantel, so I'd have something to talk to. But a couple days before you—you came upstairs—” He gestured helplessly at the bird, who stopped stripping water from its feathers just long enough to glare at the humans.

Perrotte stared. “The bird came to life,” she whispered. “After you put it to rights, this falcon came to life. Just like me.”

“Well . . .”

“It's true, isn't it?” Her gaze landed on an iron pot on the table. She seized it and turned it over in her hands. “Look at this. This was broken too, wasn't it? But it's perfect now.”

“That's just some wrought iron, it was easy enough to—”

“Fine, fine—you're a blacksmith. But you're not a cooper!” She pointed to his mended bucket. “Or any sort of carpenter! And certainly not a tailor. But everything you've mended is as good as new!”

“That's not exactly true.”

Her eyes wandered over the things he'd mended in the room: the shiny copper kettles, the window latches and hearth crane, the bucket. Her mind went back over the repairs he'd made to the mattresses. Yes, some things were obviously kludged together—the tables in the kitchen were prime examples of things he hadn't repaired with any attempt at artistry. But when he
tried
 . . .

“It's like . . .”

“Don't say it out loud,” he said, a pained frown creasing his face.

“Magic,” she said quietly.

His lips were a thin line. He didn't respond. He simply turned on his heel and walked away.

Perrotte let out a huge sigh. She should let Sand spend some time alone; obviously, he didn't want to talk about the magic.

She wandered about the castle, investigating the extent of the sundering. After staring at the enormous rift in the keep and the ground of the courtyard for some time, Perrotte went to the herbary, determined to find something she could turn into a hot drink.

Luck was with her. She mentally scolded Sand for not having looked harder in the herbary. Certainly, the herbs she found were practically dust, but most of the dust retained enough scent to identify. Chamomile, mint, linden blossom, calendula—a bounty of herbs, and though Perrotte didn't recognize everything, the few herbs she salvaged made her feel useful and smart.

Triumphant, she carried her spoils back to the kitchen. Loyse, who had been her nurse and then later her maid, had brewed a nightly tisane for them to share. Apparently, Perrotte had absorbed more about the herbs than she had realized. Not that she remembered what each of these herbs did, besides promoting general well-being. Except chamomile—Loyse was always giving her chamomile in hopes that it would help her sleep.

Had given
. Not
was always giving
. Perrotte felt a pang. Was Loyse still alive? What had happened to her after Perrotte died, after the castle was sundered? As with her unknown sister, Perrotte felt a dark knot of guilt in her chest, thinking that she had left Loyse behind to suffer unprotected under Jannet's rule.

Perrotte heated water and set a bowl of mint tisane to steep. She settled down on the hearthstone and tucked her feet beneath her, leaning against the chimneypiece and absorbing the heat from the hearth. She had gotten chilled, wandering around in the reluctant spring weather. Since her awakening, it seemed Perrotte only noticed she was cold long after she should.

Another effect of death or resurrection?

“Are you cold, Merlin?” she asked, then startled herself with a big yawn. She picked up the mint tisane and sipped. The drink warmed and cooled at the same time. When it was gone, she held the bowl in her lap—the same bowl that Sand had filled with porridge the day before.

Her eyelids felt weighted with lead. She leaned her head against the chimney stones and let her eyes close.

When Perrotte opened her eyes again, dark night showed in the high windows, and the room was lit only by the low fire. Perrotte jumped up. Her forgotten bowl fell to the stones of the floor and shattered.

Her wordless cry disturbed the falcon on the mantel; the bird shot up with a flurry of wings and perched in the rafters, shooting Perrotte a baleful look for the disturbance. She wanted to yell at Merlin, but she bit her tongue. The anger inside her felt endless, and she didn't know how she would stop yelling if she ever started. And the falcon hadn't done anything. Perrotte was the careless one who broke things in a place that could take no more breaking.

She stooped to pick up the pieces of the bowl, fighting back hot tears. A few slipped free nonetheless. How was she going to tell Sand that she had broken something that had been nearly whole?

She took a deep breath. Sand wouldn't be angry. Or disappointed. Or anything bad. He was kind, understanding. Her tears receded as suddenly as they'd come on—not because she remembered Sand's kindness, but because she remembered how Sand had been so upset when she mentioned his strange abilities. It was obvious, wasn't it? He was gifted in ways that a normal boy would not be. She didn't understand why the magic was so hard for him to talk about. It wasn't like he'd been dead or anything.
That
was hard to talk about.

She heard a comforting sound in the distance:
clang, clang, clang, ring
. Perrotte set aside the pieces of the broken bowl and headed for the door.

Clouds obscured the stars above, to Perrotte's dismay. She worried that her nap on the kitchen's hearth meant she wouldn't sleep at all that night—and now there were no stars to watch. She hurried on, cursing the clouds and trying to believe she would fall asleep and stay asleep through the whole of the night like a normal person. Like a girl who had never died.

Inside the smithy, Sand stood at his anvil, shaping metal effortlessly. Before she had a chance to see what he was making, he plunged the metal into the ashes piled beneath his forge.

When he saw her standing at the door, he banked the fire, put down his tools, and went up to the keep.

They barely spoke, but nonetheless he climbed the stairs to the Count's bedchamber with her. He didn't argue about where to lay his head that night, to her relief.

After she blew out the candle and rolled onto her side, she did not have to reach far into the dark for his hand; this time it was there, on the corner of his mattress, waiting for her. He said nothing and she said nothing, as his warm fingers twined with hers. She gave a relieved sigh, and quite easily fell asleep.

 

B
UT SLEEP DID NOT
last for long. A dream woke her, or a memory: an anguished voice that cried,
This wasn't gentle
.

She didn't want that memory. She pushed it behind the door in her mind.

Perrotte wondered how close dawn was. Without stars or moon, she couldn't be sure, but she didn't think she had slept more than an hour. She was wide awake, no longer tired—and yet, she had been exhausted when she climbed into bed.

Maybe—just maybe—she couldn't sleep because she had slept for twenty-five years or so, while her friends grew up and had children and—in some cases—passed away. Twenty-five years of death might function like twenty-five years of sleep.

A sleepless night and a starless night were an ill-matched pair, as far as Perrotte was concerned. If there were stars out, she might dare the tower just to be closer to them, even if it meant braving the memories of her death. As it was—remembering how she died was almost as hard as remembering what it was like to be dead, though for different reasons. The memories of being dead were there, though sort of shrouded in darkness, but remembering what it was like to die . . . that would hurt.

But hurt how? Would it be hard to remember the physical pain, or was there something more?

It was odd, to be able to ask these questions of herself, and yet not conjure up a single memory to answer them. Perrotte imagined the door in her mind: thick oak, triple locked, and barred with iron. On her side dwelled questions and worries. On the other side of the door lived memories and monsters. She'd much rather live with worry than with monsters.

She crept down to the kitchen. The falcon's eyes shone in her candle's light from across the room.

“Did I wake you?” she asked. “Or can't you sleep, either?”

The falcon did not answer. She found that reassuring. Sand's magic was frightening; she was pretty certain it even frightened him. Sand's magic meant that death was no longer a permanent state, and anything broken could be mended. But at least animals hadn't started to speak.

It occurred to her to pray, for the first time since she had been brought back to life. She glanced around the kitchen. Not here.

Perrotte's feet carried her to the chapel. She knelt at the altar, clasping her hands. Her candle's flame seemed tiny in the night, and the way the darkness pressed around her reminded her of something—

—a dark-haired girl, a red seed, an iron throne—

Memories crowded at her, if they could be said to be memories. They were more ghostly than thoughts, less substantial. Like memories of memories. Like dreams of memories. There were not always threads to connect the moments.

First there was darkness and stillness. Relief that her death was done, that the fight to live was over.

That memory trailed away and another rose to take its place.

She awakened in a place where darkness was light. She walked for some time, a march without end—until, abruptly, it did end. She reached a hillock covered with lilies that glowed like tiny suns.

Beyond the hill, a river ran both fast and slow, smelled both fresh and dank. She felt drawn to the water. But when she reached the shore, she turned away, only then noticing the thousands of shadowy people walking beside her, shades who did reach the river, who passed her, knelt down and scooped the water greedily into their mouths. They drank and forgot and faded, then marched on down the riverside, sliding into a distant fog.

In that moment, Perrotte knew: She would not drink. She could not. She burned, and could not fade, could not disappear into fog. The flames that consumed her were anger, sadness, and regret. Her life had been stolen, and she would not forget that.

She fought her way backward, against the tide of shades that yearned toward the river of forgetting, until she found a tree, a tree that gleamed white in the darkness—a birch. Like the white forests of her family's name. She clung to it, turned her face to the bark so as not to see the march of shadow people around her, and held fast.

Perrotte came back to herself with a shudder, her head snapping up. Had she been asleep—and was that a memory or a dream?

She crossed herself and said a prayer for her father's soul. She could not imagine how he had felt when she died; she was having a hard enough time understanding how she felt about his death. Mostly, she regretted the time they did not have together. How were either of them to know that the last time they saw each other their leave-taking would be no more than a kiss on the cheek and a tweak of one of her braids while admonishing her to mind her stepmother and her tutor?

Her thoughts turned as they became too painful. She rested her forehead against her folded thumbs, trying to think of a prayer to say for Sand. Her heart beat too loud in the stillness, though. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her pulse. But instead of slowing, the thumping remained steady and still so very loud. She touched her chest wonderingly. Was she ill? Was she . . . dying?

But once she felt the rhythm of her own heartbeat there, beneath her bodice and skin and flesh and bone, she shook her head in confusion. Her own slow, steady heart shared no rhythm with the thrumming beat that filled the chapel.

The noise was coming from one of the reliquaries resting on the altar.

Slowly, Perrotte got to her feet. With dread, she reached for the silver, oval box that held the holy relic of Sainte Trifine and loosed the clasp.

There, inside the box, lay a beating heart.