“Tell the toad how to get to Antlerdale’s house, Grosbeak,” I told my friend a little roughly, keeping my voice firm to anchor me. I dared not wander in the past with my husband’s slipping mind, no matter how bewitching his memories may be.
“Am I now your carriage driver that you order me about?” Grosbeak protested but in the same moment, Sparrow rolled her eyes and delivered a very passable croak and the toad spun and hopped onto what almost seemed like a beaten trail.
My husband,I said in my mind and the words were sweet on my mental tongue. He was that still.
“I fade,” he whispered softly, and his whisper was precious to me. “But I have a memory of a word upon your lips. You spoke to me of love.”
I love you,I said in my mind and the words ripped at my heart, shredding the last bits of me and I did not care that it was my responsibility to keep us all on this hopping toad. I shifted so that I could hold the lantern pole wedged under my seat and use my free hand to cup my precious Bluebeard’s cheek.With all my heart I do. If this world no longer holds you then I want no part of it either.
And in my mind his memories tumbled and fluttered and I saw myself as he did that day that I greeted him, only while that was most certainly my carefully remade dress and long pale face, and while that was the golden bell in my hand, I looked different in his mind’s eye — powerful, vibrant, alive in a way I did not recognize from any mirror. And his emotions in this memory were a sharp combination of shock, hope, and dread.
“My true bride,” he whispered but his eyes were glassy and his words stumbled and then stuttered. “True. True. Bride.”
And then they faded away and in their place his mental channel opened, but it was not words he gave me but rather a strange soaring emotion and with it, the memory of flying on the back of a dragonfly, my arms wrapped around him and the air streaming through our hair. With it came a burst of such true contentment that it made me ache.
My long-dead mother had wanted me to be married and happy. What would she think now if she looked down at me and at my collection of friendly corpses fleeing for our lives, and discovered that this is what a happy marriage looked like for me? Perhaps I was, indeed, never made for the mortal world, ill-suited for good or wholesomeness, as fit for grim adventure as my skeletal hand.
I let my Bluebeard drift, and did not try to wake him. If this was that of which he dreamed, then who would deny him? Certainly not me. Certainly not now. Let him dream. And if I could not call him back to life, then at least he would go to death knowing he was beloved.
It was bare minutes before Sparrow asked me acerbically, “Are you going to sit there all day like a love-lorn girl, or are you going to dismount and take us to the book?”
I blinked back surprise. The toad had stopped in a clearing and when I slid from its back there was nothing here but pale, waving grass.
“Where is it?” I asked, carefully.
“Turn the key and we’ll see if it still stands,” she said impatiently.
I took out the silver key and turned it, and madness hit us hard as an axe blow. This was not my first time leaping between worlds, but the terrible feeling of being ripped apart and stitched back in a different way, tore through my mind and I was left reeling and sobbing, gibbering into my fist, one hand wrapped behind me to cling to what was left of my husband. I missed him. I feared for him. I was pressed beyond what one heart ought to suffer in this terrible lingering death of his.
I shook myself. I dare not let the madness break me.
The others recovered sooner. I knew because I could hear their voices as though through water and then, when I finally surfaced, they grew clear.
“Different, but still standing,” Sparrow was saying. “I always told the Arrow that a few crenelated towers give a place a better martial look than those ridiculous bird’s feet. At least his invisible mortals keep the place up nicely.”
“Is that what he did with his winnings? Set them to gardening?” Grosbeak snickered. “I hadn’t heard that. Waste of slaves, if you ask me.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’d do with mortal slaves, Grosbeak, invisible or not.”
“You really don’t. But we should hurry. If he finds us here he’ll be furious, especially when he’s keepingherhere. Did you know he had a new captive?”
“When doesn’t he? He’s a serial monogamist. What happened to the last one?”
“Maybe she didn’t fall in love by the time the last petal fell,” Grosbeak snickered. “Don’t ask me. I think it’s a needlessly cruel game and I’m the one wholikesneedless cruelty. It was fun to watch the first five or six times but now it’s too predictable. He should shake it up. Pick an older woman maybe. One with some experience with men who can see through his stories. That would make it harder.”
“Well, he couldn’t guarantee winning then,” Sparrow replied. “Besides, few older women have cleavage so firm you could use it to hold the extra copies of your books. Where does he even find these mortals?”
“Could yours? When you had a body, I mean?” Grosbeak sounded speculative.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I do. It’s why I’m asking.”
I cleared my throat. “Discussions about lost bodies aside, I think we have a book to find.”
“Sane again, grim mortal?” Grosbeak asked, a strange tone to his voice that sounded both mocking and … was that actually concern behind his teasing?
A small brown bird circled us and then settled on my husband’s shoulder and began to sing.
