“As sane as I’ll ever be when I’m dealing with you,” I said as I surveyed the castle before us.
It was so large that I felt my heart sinking. Sheer walls rose to ridiculous heights topped by crenelated towers at various distances. I counted seven and more could be hidden by our limited perspective. Every inch of the place was disguised by tangled thorny vines and heavy red roses. Someone had taken care to trim wide swaths of tidy grass in every direction leading out from the castle. This lawn was dotted with topiaries clipped into couples dancing or kissing or engaging in other romantic pursuits … and yet I did not fail to notice the sinister twist to the topiaries. Was I wrong or did that branch twist in such a way that it could be a supportive hand or it could be a dagger in his lover’s back? Or how about that one where the two figures could be bathing in a river together — or he could be in the act of drowning her beneath the waves?
“This place makes my skin crawl,” I said just as a woman stepped out from behind one of the topiaries wearing a scarlet cloak with a wide red hood and bearing a basket of long-stemmed red roses.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Sparrow muttered as I strode toward the woman. Perhaps she would know where the book was.
The roses woman was beautiful in the way of Bluebeard’s other wives — mortal, but one of those rare mortals of which no flaw could be found beyond their mere mortality.
“Why are all the mortals in the Wittenhame so lovely?” I asked.
“All? I rather think you’re the exception to that,” Grosbeak snickered while Sparrow spoke over him, “Physical beauty is the only way to disguise the stink of death you all carry. You embrace Death so tightly that you might as well be the specter himself come to call.”
I flushed at her description but there had been none of that stink in my husband’s memories of me. I could no more help being mortal than they could help being bodiless heads. We could none of us help what we were.
The other woman smiled blankly at me when I finally reached speaking distance.
“Good lady,” I addressed her, “I beg you, please lend me your help.”
“The castle is not open to visitors,” she told me with glassy eyes. She was maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, just the right age to be married in my world.
“Can you help me find a book written by Lord Antlerdale?” I asked politely.
“The castle is not open to visitors.” Was she looking over my shoulder? I glanced behind me but no one else was there, just me, my dead husband, and my two bodiless advisors. Nothing to see here.
“They’re always like this,” Grosbeak said dismissively. “Just ignore her and go into the castle.”
“That has the taste of terrible rudeness,” I objected, but I walked past her to where the castle doors were wide open. “And how will I enter? Do I not need the permission of the owner to cross? I thought that was true for Wittenhame homes.”
“For most homes,” Grosbeak chuckled, “But Anterdale’s pride opens him up to invasion. He’s opened this home to his invisible mortal slaves to come and go and to this beauty to slip in and out and that makes it open to us, too. A terrible flaw and one I expect he did not consider. Look you at the runes carved into the threshold. They bar the feet of other Wittenbrand but allow the feet of mortals.”
“And we have no feet,” Sparrow growled in agreement.
The gravel of the path crunched behind me and I looked over my shoulder to find the girl following me. At least the Hounds of Heaven had not made it to this place yet, but I dare not linger. They could not be far behind.
“Is this your home?” I asked her, but I did not let up my speed, increasing it instead. The girl kept pace with me.
“It is the home of my beloved beast,” she said with a swooning look in her eyes — eyes that still did not meet mine.
“There’s a beast in there?” I hissed to Grosbeak. “We should have brought a weapon.”
“You can’t wield one,” Grosbeak said dismissively. “Do you remember the joust? What a disaster. Never in my days have I seen so disgraceful a showing.”
“I believe I won,” I said coolly but it was not him I was watching in fascination, it was Sparrow who was sputtering through a suppressed laugh.
“You have been in the Wittenhame too long, Izolda,” she said once she had control of herself. “How would you describe Lord Antlerdale?”
“Aloof. A detached Lord of the Wittenhame who seems happy to work in the background of things,” I said as we passed over his threshold. This place was massive. How would we find one book within it quickly enough? I wanted to shake the Bramble King — figuratively, I’d seen what happened to those whoactuallydefied him. Why couldn’t he have told us the key instead of giving us this riddle?
Sparrow was still snickering as we stepped into a grand entrance. “Lord Antlerdale has antlers, wife of the Arrow. Though that is no uncommon thing in the Wittenhame, I believe he would qualify as a “beast” to a true mortal.”
The ceiling of the entrance was so high that it rivaled the ceiling in Bluebeard’s home. Gilded chandeliers hung in clusters of five or six at various heights, all fitted with hundreds of unlit candles. Tall, narrow stained glass windows lit the room and the light was reflected and amplified by the walls which were made entirely of polished golden mirrors in gilded frames. The floor was a golden-toned wood polished and waxed until it reflected as brightly as they did.
One wall bore a larger stained glass window that clearly featured Antlerdale wearing a crown of red roses and dancing with a faceless woman in a flowing red dress. The place certainly had a theme. And like the others in the Wittenhame, the Lord of Antlerdale seemed glad to lean into it.
I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the golden mirrors, my braid wild and undone, little locks of hair escaping everywhere to wave around my face. There was a streak of blood across my jaw and chin and a smear of fresh earth on my forehead. The grisly lantern pole I held bore two twisted faces, tangled hair failing to disguise the ragged necks where once a body could be found, and on my back was slung a fully grown man who wore a short beard and dead, dead, pale-as-death skin. The mirror had dressed me in a high-necked jacket with a stiff collar and frogging that made me look like a conquering general — if conquering generals wore tightly fitted leather trousers and thigh-high buckled boots.
I was surprised to realize that I looked more Wittenbrand than mortal — more like a conquering power than the wisp of a girl who had been stolen away as an unwilling bride. I looked as though I was here to do the stealing. Good. That was exactly what I was here to do.
