I was surprised when he answered.Did I not gift my heart to the barrow? Am I not a corpse in your arms?
He had indeed, though Coppertomb had claimed the victory.
Words and claims are powerful geases. And I have set all of my claims on you, heart of my own heart.
I was warmed by that. He had claimed me again and again and I was claiming him, but that aside, he might have given his heart to the barrow, and yet, the Wittenhame was collapsing around us as if it were tied to the man slowly ebbing out in my arms. I drew him in close to rest his head better on my shoulder.
I shifted on the backs of the ravens, feeling their feathery forms bump and lift, fall away and lift again, as they distributed my weight over their small bodies, providing just enough lift to keep me from tumbling to the ground. That I accepted this without balking showed how deeply the Wittenhame had crept into my bones.
“And based on what Coppertomb said,” I continued. “I have barely two days to draw back his life.”
And if I did not, what would happen? Would this world and my husband with it be gone forever? There was no place left for me in the mortal world. If there was no place here, either, then I was adrift.
“And what? You think that you, a mortal, can wrest the Wittenhame from the grip of Coppertomb, restore life to a dead man, and then dismiss the Hounds of Heaven and Death himself from our midst?” Sparrow asked wryly.
“She’s done odder things before,” Grosbeak mused.
“Name them.”
“Well, she chose to take you along for this journey,” he sniped. “That takes more intestinal fortitude than dismissing Death, I’d say. Surely, you know you’re a horror to behold. Your pretty face frozen in the rictus of death and your once fine locks bedraggled.”
Sparrow sniffed dismissively.
“I need to work this out,” I muttered to myself as Bluebeard slumped further into my arms, pressing his cheek to mine as he shifted so that his chest was to my back again. “The blood of nations, the rib. It’s all one big puzzle.”
I tapped my lip in thought.
I keep my heart in your chest now,Bluebeard murmured, as though trying to help, but his thoughts were drifting again.When I was a boy in Riverbarrow, I would fold tiny birchbark boats for the small people and set them to sail. I once folded one hundred in a single day. Can you build me a boat of birchbark for the river of death, Izolda, my heart?
I am hoping it will not come to that,I said wryly. I shivered. It was cold up here in the winds.
Or perhaps, I will build one for you, and when the world washes away we will float in it together.
Yes, us and a pair of severed heads, what a terribly romantic prospect.
You should speak to Death,he whispered in my mind, seeming to be fading again.He is not bound as I am. He could speak to you more plainly.
Husband?
His mind drifted away and he was gone.
I sighed.
“Is it just me, or is this place getting more confusing as it falls apart?” I asked as the ravens bore us further up. Oddly, a warm breeze met us there, easing the cold from my bones.
I could see between the ravens’ backs to the ground below as Coppertomb’s subjects formed hunting parties, some hundreds of people thick, but others with as few as four or five people, and began to disperse across the darkened terrain, searching for the Hounds of Heaven.
Sparrow coughed and then swung to look at me.
“Do you truly think your husband is the Bramble King?” She asked me and to my surprise, her tone was reverent.
“I see no other answer to why your world is falling apart,” I said plainly.
“Perhaps Coppertomb is merely an epically bad king,” Grosbeak countered. “We’ve had bad kings in the past. Remember the Blood Rains, Sparrow?”
“They were before my time,” she said, but her expression was thoughtful.
“It rained blood for three years when the Bramble King was wounded in a joust. A terrible time. Everything was red and slick. I hated it. And then there was the Plague of Frogs. Frogs everywhere. You could barely sleep for them hopping all over you. That was when the Mad Bramble was Lord of the Wittenhame. Is it all that surprising that the world is disintegrating under Coppertomb?”
