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e did not kill me when he found out. I know he was tempted, but he has too much invested in me. He does not know yet that two hearts beat within my body, but it would be too hard to replace me regardless. The villagers will not tolerate another girl taken as a wife, another girl who might never return to see her family. If I do not succeed where the others have failed, I know how cheap my life may become. If it comes to that, he will have to scout further afield. In these parts, tales of his ways precede him. Not all women are as feckless as me.
How could I not look? I should have obeyed him. I know that. But given such an order few could have stayed away.
I was certain I would not get caught. When he left the castle on yet another errand, the purposes of which he never explains to me, I crept out of our bed in the middle of the night. I lit a candle and crept down the hall to the locked room. The key, taken from his tall, wooden valet, was cold in my hand, and remained cold even as I clenched it.
I unlocked the door but could not tell what I was seeing. I crept back out and fetched a lantern, lighting it with the candle. I cringed when I finally saw them, hanging from hooks in the ceiling, ghastly wind chimes motionless in an airless room. I did not scream until I saw the large jars at their feet. I crumpled to the ground, boneless, shivering and cursedly afraid.
I may have wept. I can’t recall. It doesn’t matter. Tears will do me no good now.
The townspeople warned me, my sisters begged me not to go, but I would not be told. I wanted to marry the big, exotic, rich man who courted me so ardently. I was the youngest, and that he wanted my eldest sisters before me played no small part in my decision. Fools that they were, they could not see past his unusual mien and were repulsed by him, but my father was unwilling to insult him and tell him to stop courting my sisters. It was during one of those visits that he finally saw me.
I would show them, I thought. I might be second choice but I would live better than them. Elsa, my middle sister, who was not as pretty as me but obedient to our parents’ every word, brushed my hair as she pleaded with me to stay. I ignored her. Dog in the manger, I thought. I wanted to live in a castle on a hill, lady of all I surveyed. I had little dowry yet I longed to be grand. I stole away from my home in the middle of the night and met him at the edge of the forest. He knelt before me and said, “Your hair, so raven. Your skin, so white. You are the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. Many may fear me but I promise I will never harm a hair on your head.”
“I am not afraid,” I bragged and I took his hand. I turned my back on my village and swore never to return. I nodded obediently when he told me never to go into the locked room, all the while the cogs and wheels in my mind started turning.
Truly, I think he wanted me to look. He wanted someone to know. It is a heavy secret to bear alone.
Days later when he returned to the castle, my terrible knowledge showed clearly on my face. No one can hide such a discovery for long. He took me by the hand and led me back to the room. In a monotone, he introduced me to them.
Mariam, red-haired and spirited, gave birth to a daughter with one large eye in the center of her forehead. The wee thing lived only hours after birth and Mariam, hysterical with grief, sorely provoked him until he lashed out at her. The unnamed girl floats in clear liquid, her preserved eye following closely those who dare enter the room.
Emma, small and dark, bore a daughter with her heart on the outside of her body. She screamed, “This has never happened to my people before! It must be your family line!” Aggrieved, he threw her down the stairs. The babe also did not live long after birth, but without a mam to nurse her, she would have died anyway. My lord would not have suffered a wet nurse to see his shame. She too floats in a jar, her face hidden behind her heart, her little hands in tight, clenched fists.
Caroline, blonde and fair, birthed twin girls, monsters each, with extra arms in the centers of their chests, small tails, and webbed feet. They lived to be named but he will not tell me what they were called. Caroline threatened to leave him and take the girls, for he wanted them sheltered forever from prying eyes and she could not bear the idea her girls would never feel the sun on their skin. He prevented Caroline from leaving and the struggle was the end of her. He claims the twins died in due course, but I doubt him. The girls, small bodies close, sleeping in sera, extra limbs entwined, look bluish to me. I dare not look at their necks. Caroline’s corpse is not complete, her ribs are broken and her jawbone is gone.
It is Caroline I think he loved the best. He is a man of passions, both violent and tender.
“’Tis not just my beard that is blue, my girl, but also my heart, for I loved them all,” he said. I believe him. His fervent desire for a healthy child aside, he could not bear to part with them, even through death, even though he killed them.
“My sisters, they all died at birth,” he said. He stared at me hard when he spoke, eyes locked with mine, exactly the way he locks gazes with me when he takes me nightly. “I will not rest until I have a healthy child. My own father did not rest until he had me.” I wonder if his sisters had the same mother as him and how many tries it took before he was born.
He is not a liar. If he kills me, he will leave all the hair intact on my head, as he did with the others. I now brush the dust out of their dry, brittle hair. I braid it and wrap it in coronets, pinning it in place. I am very careful as I do this, anxious that I might pull the hair from the thin scalps that remain on their skulls. My own hair gleams in near-defiance to the idea that I could one day too hang beside them.
They are a queer sort of comfort, company for me now. They may well be company for me forever.
I pray for a son. |
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