Darkling (7 page)

As is how a dead woman could possibly suck energy out of a living man. To make a connection like that she would have to be able to enter his spirit. And as far as I know, the only way she could do that is if he’s a Listener.

Maybe that’s what she’s been doing to me, too. Why I feel like I can’t breathe while she’s near. Maybe that’s why she wants me. She’ll suck all of the life out of me for herself then let me rot. I grab the skewer again. I’m not a sacrifice anymore.

I wait for hours, but I am not bored, I am on edge. Every once in a while there’s a noise downstairs. The clatter of a pot. A thud. Sounds that could be caused by rats but could just as well be the corpse. Sounds that remind me that I am safe up here, and I don’t want to leave the room anymore.

When there are footsteps on the stairs, I tense. I wait for the heavy feeling in my chest but it doesn’t come. The steps are lighter, anyway, and relief calms me as I recognize them as Tristan’s. He stops outside the door.

“Willow?”

I hobble over and unlock it, letting him in. He takes two steps then sags, collapsing in front of the fire. I fumble with the key, locking the door again as I look at him. The side of his face is slick with blood. Hurrying over to Tristan, I kneel at his side. “What happened?”

Gently brushing away his now unruly hair, I peer at his wound. The blood is coming from gouge marks in the side of his face. Tearing off a tattered piece of my dress, I press it against his temple. He winces at the touch. “I need the fire,” he whispers. “I’m so cold.”

I grab his hand. He isn’t cold. He’s freezing. I begin rubbing his back to help him warm up. My fingers slide over bumps that feel like his spine until I realize they’re too far to the side. Rubbing my hand in a slow circle, I realize his back is covered in the lumps.

Something sour tugs at the bottom of my stomach as I realize what I’m feeling. Tristan’s breathing hitches in his throat when my hand stops and he gazes at me. His eyes are asking me not to, but I un-tuck his shirt and loosen his vest so that I can see his back.

I close my eyes. It is the corded, red skin of the creature I glimpsed scurrying up the wall. Grabbing his wrist, I yank up his sleeve. Though his hands are untouched, his arms are the same. My eyes lock onto his. He is the Bringer.

T
ristan’s eyes are apprehensive. He holds the fabric against his cheek as I scoot away and study him long enough for the bleeding to stop. Clenching my teeth, I don’t know if I’m angrier at him for being the cause of all our distress or at myself for having been foolish enough to have been wooed by a pretty face. To have trusted him.

“You’re a monster,” I whisper.

He can’t hold my gaze anymore and looks away.

“Why?”

He shakes his head, his bangs curtaining his eyes.

“My people are starving. My family is going to die.”

“We all die,” he says softly, and I find nothing pleasant in his peculiar voice now.

“But you’re not even giving us a chance.”

Tristan looks at me, his dark eyes confused. “Me?”

“You’re the Bringer of Darkness.”

“No…”

“We’ve seen you in the woods. And that was you who touched me at Sacrifice Rock, wasn’t it?”

He gingerly peels the fabric off of his wound. “Did they expect me to eat you?”

I narrow my eyes. “I was the sacrifice.”

“Like the pig and cow?”

I nod.

He sneers. “Who would send their own daughter to die?”

I lick my lips. “No one sent me. I volunteered.”

“Why?”

“I’m a Listener. I thought I could help you. Reason with you. Do something to get you to bring the light back. But that was before I knew you were also a Listener.”

“Willow,” he says thoughtfully, carefully setting the cloth on the hearth. “I may be beyond help, but I am not this Bringer of Darkness you speak of.”

I lean my back against the foot of the bed. I feel like I don’t speak anyone’s language anymore for how little I understand. “Then who are you?”

A corner of his lips lifts in a smile. “I am Tristan.”

I try not to let the simplicity of his charm infiltrate my logic again. “Who are you really?”

“I told you, I can’t remember.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Too long.”

“Since you were a child?”

He shakes his head.

“Since before the darkness began?”

“Certainly.”

I sigh. Getting answers out of him, in fact, even getting him to think is like trying to grab a slippery trout in a stream. I can’t make sense of the creature climbing up the wall and the handsome young man before me. “Did you live here alone?”

“No. I was with my family.”

“What happened to them?”

His eyes darken. “Death.”

I furrow my brow. “Then… is the spirit in this house… is the corpse woman someone you knew?”

He nods, closing his eyes for a moment, as if he’s exhausted, and I’m reminded that he is injured. That the corpse did something to him to make him scream so horribly earlier. And here I am, not giving him a moment’s peace.

“I can’t escape her,” he says so quietly that his voice cracks. “I’ve tried.”

When he opens his eyes, they’re shimmering in the firelight and I realize he’s holding back tears.

“I’ve tried so hard. But her grip upon me is as iron. We were once bonded by such affection but now…” Tristan shakes his head. “Now we are like a cat and mouse.”

“What does she do to you?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

He closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. “She… feeds off of me. I used to not notice. It used to be gentle. But that was when her body was sound. Once decay set in… she fought against it as hard as she could. She should be bones. Now it hurts because she is doing something so unnatural.
So grotesque. She needs more and more from me. And she often takes it in anger so that it hurts me more.”

Tristan looks so broken, sitting slumped by the fire, blood staining his
cheek, that I scoot over and hug him. He is still cool but not half as much as before. He doesn’t move for several moments then slowly wraps his arms around me. When he leans in, as his chest gently presses against mine, and I feel him tremble.

“What is this?” he whispers.

“A hug.”

“A hug… I remember hugs now.”

He relaxes and I close my eyes. For several long moments, I listen to the fire and feel the tickling brush of his hair against my ear. He smells like autumn leaves and rain. Like the forest. My hand is resting on the lumps beneath his clothing and I remind myself that I saw him crawl on a wall once. Pulling away, I tilt my head to look him in the eye but am distracted when I notice that his wound is gone, leaving only dried blood on his cheek.

I shake my head. “What are you?”

He looks confused so I slide his sleeve back, revealing the red, gnarled skin there. He follows my gaze and sighs. “Burns.”

“Did she do this to you?”

He nods, his hair falling into his face again.

“I know that as a Listener it’s hard to block them out sometimes. But you need to try. Otherwise you’ll never escape her.”

“Oh, Willow,” he says, pulling his arm out of my touch. “It’s not like that. You see…”

He folds his sleeve all the way back to reveal the full extent of his scarring. I’ve never seen burns like this before. These look like there’s no skin left. Only scars on muscle.

“I am not a Listener.” Tristan rises and the fire suddenly snuffs down to embers. At the same moment, his scars fade away to smooth skin like his hands, rippled by a hidden vein.

I don’t move. I have seen more in this house that would make me question my sanity than most people see in a lifetime. “Then what are you?”

His eyes take on that horrible sadness again. A sadness that is so vulnerable and pure and one-dimensional that I realize I already know what he is about to say.

“Not what. Why.”

The coolness of his skin. The strength of his emotions. His attachment to the corpse. His simplicity. “You’re dead,” I whisper.

“No… but I am also not living. I am trapped in-between.”

I
am only just starting to understand the true nature of Tristan’s imprisonment. It takes a while for what he has told me to sink in. In fact, I have to rework most of what I thought was true. I feel lost in my own mind. Like all of the walls of the world just started floating around and now I have to stick them back down in a new shape. A new shape that defies gravity. Like Tristan.

“Why?” I manage to whisper back, repeating him.

“Yes, why am I?” he asks, crouching a few feet before me. “Because there is no answer to what or how.”

My head is empty except for a sort of wind that is fluttering about leaves that used to be thoughts. I notice how young and alive he looks, gazing at me. How much I want to touch his skin. Then I remind myself not to use him as an anchor. He isn’t an anchor. He’s an abomination.

Think of Jasper
, I tell myself. And then I am filled with the memory of the scent of his head. Cradlecap and blankets. How little his hands and body are. How I am secretly happy that he is small because it means I can hold him all the longer. Hold him. I would hold him as I slept. Then I see Draven’s face, gaunt and pale with hunger, and though he isn’t saying anything, he’s warning me to back away. To leave this place behind.

It’s dark. The fire has dimmed. No, I correct myself. Tristan made it dim when he healed himself.
When he hid his scars. He drew energy from the flames. That’s why he was drawn to the fire. Not really for the warmth, but for the strength.

I look past him to the ashes and he follows my gaze. He looks back at me, as if for confirmation, before he grabs more wood and stokes the fire again. He is so
simple, he probably thinks I am worried about the fire instead of my sanity.

The flames hiss and snap once more and it’s a long time before either of us speaks again. Tristan seems content with the silence and I realize he’s more than used to it. He wanders about the room. He makes the bed, cleans the dried blood from his face,
uses his fingers to dust off the shelves of the book case. And all the while, I stare at the flames, mesmerized by their shifting shades. I realize that this isn’t so bad.

What did I think I knew, anyway? I don’t even know what fire is. No one does. All we know is that it’s heat. But for some reason, I decided that was all I needed to know. Why had I set up that limitation like a barrier?

Life is full of barriers. We just ignore them because it’s easier that way. Why are there so many different eye colors? Why do some of us like sour and some sweet? Why do I hear the dead? I turn my gaze to Tristan. I’m sure I look ridiculous with the expression on my face but he doesn’t laugh at me. He looks down at me as he dusts off a book with his sleeve, his countenance simple but curious.

He can’t think enough to understand my confusion. When you’re half dead, you must experience the world differently. When Tristan is near the fire, I know he feels the heat but he also feels the strength, which I can’t. I know I walk on the ground and that that’s the way it is for everyone alive, but Tristan crawled on a wall. Maybe when we die, the barriers of understanding that we set up in life disappear.