Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (29 page)

“And I choose you back, Étienne.”

The match was made. It was complete except for the celebrations with their families. He left to tell his parents in the north. And Giselle danced by daylight in the meadow. Danced, and sang. And she spread her wings without a care for the world or who might be watching.

I choose you back.

“She only looks like a simple peasant girl. Are you sure she’s a
gargouille
?”

“Look at the wings, boy! I cut them from her myself—and she put up a hellish struggle!”

Étienne’s jaw clenched. His shoulders lurched. Giselle gasped, terrified that Étienne would reveal himself and suffer her same fate. “There are too many!” she cried. “Too many! Leave! Go!”

Étienne pulled his shoulders back, his face softening at her distress, and Giselle sobbed in relief.

“Quiet, beast!” Frans yelled. “These good people want to look, and look they will!”

The crowd rumbled approval. A few patted him on the back, eager to show their own bravery by stepping closer to the beast. Still others offered to buy him a meal and brew at the tavern. Frans rubbed his chin wistfully. It had been a long ride. His barley bread was brick-hard and dry, and his small wedge of cheese was nearly gone. A hot meal would be welcome, maybe even a bit of meat or smoked eel with some porridge, and then he could feed the beast the remainder of his barley bread. A few moments ago was the first time he had fed her since he caught her, and she was looking weak, with no sign of new wings yet. A dead, wingless
gargouille
would not be worth nearly as much to the duke as a live, healthy one. But he eyed his treasure on top of the cart. Going into the tavern was too big a risk to take. “I’ll have my meal out here.”

Several villagers rushed to the tavern to bring their honored guest some food, and the rest of the crowd dwindled, eager to get home to their own suppers and their twilight chores, possibly more mindful than usual of the darkening sky and the creatures that might inhabit it.

Frans turned to Étienne, who was brave enough to step close to the cart and was broad-shouldered and a head taller than most in the crowd. Frans flipped him a coin, which Étienne easily caught. “I’m going over there to rest and eat. Two more of those coins for you if you wait here and see that no one touches the cart—or beast.” In this village three coins was easily a day’s wages. Étienne properly smiled and nodded. “And mind you,” Frans added, wagging his finger, “I’ll still be watching! I expect diligence for those coins!”

“Of course,” Étienne answered.

Frans walked some distance away and settled against the stone wall of the tavern to view the cart from a more comfortable position and await the meal the villagers were bringing him. A half dozen lingered with him, eager to hear more stories about distant lands, since by now Frans had expanded how far he had traveled and the adventures he had seen.

Étienne stood guard, periodically circling the wagon so that he could speak to Giselle without his lips being seen by the watchful Frans.

“When he sleeps and the others go, I’ll slit his throat and get the key to the lock.”

“No!” Giselle cried through clenched teeth. “It’s wrong to take a life!”

“But look what he’s done to you!”

Giselle hung her head, ashamed for being so careless. Her clan had often retold the story of a long-ago uncle who had flaunted his wings and brought on not only his own death but also those of three more of the clan. His carelessness had been unforgivable. Tears fell from her eyes to the splintered floor of the cart. “What has been done to me can’t be undone,” she whispered.

“There must be something—”

Giselle jerked her head up. “There is nothing, Étienne! You must face it. In a matter of hours I will barely be a
gargouille
. I will be as one of them. I will forget our clans and their stories. I will forget who I am. . . .
I will forget you
.”

Étienne shook his head, his eyes glistening. “You won’t forget me, Giselle!” he whispered. “I won’t let you. And if you do, I’ll find a way to make you remember. We will be together again. Do you hear me?
I’ll find a way.
Say my name so you won’t forget.
Étienne.
Say it! Now!”

“Étienne,” Giselle sobbed.

“Again!”

“Étienne.” Her voice was barely a whisper, weak with sorrow.

“You love me, Giselle. You always will. A
gargouille
match is forever. Remember that.
Forever.
Look into my eyes. Memorize them. You’ll see them again and you’ll remember. You’ll remember
me
.”

Giselle stared into his eyes, memorizing his pale gray irises surrounded by a rich ring of black, the eyes of the north, but still uniquely Étienne’s. He deserved more than she could give him now. More than a landwalker’s life. He was still a watcher of the night. Soon she would be fearful of the dark like most landwalkers were. She would cross herself at shadows flitting past the moon. She would recoil at the hideous creatures that adorned the corners of the cathedral and mocked the
gargouilles
. She would wonder at a stonemaster who could carve such monsters. “Forget me. Bridet was your intended anyway.”

Étienne shook away her comment. “When you reach the duke’s—”

“He’s coming!” Giselle whispered, and looked down at her lap.

Étienne continued his walk around the cart until he was facing Frans, who was reaching into his purse. He flipped two coins to Étienne. “Was the beast a trouble? I saw her talking.”

“She muttered the sounds of an animal. Nothing I could understand.”

Giselle looked up at the voices and for the briefest moment wondered who these two were who imprisoned her in a cage. In the next instant Étienne’s name came to her lips, and it made her gasp. It was happening already—she was forgetting. She moaned, unable to bear for him to see her that way, only a shell of who she once was.

She spat at the ground. “This one, he torments me. Send him away!” She glared at Étienne, trying to convince him she wanted nothing to do with him. She saw the wounded squint of his eyes. She forced another sneer. “Leave!”

“You heard the beast,” Frans said. “Be on your way now. You’ve been paid. We have a long journey ahead, and I don’t want to listen to her howls the whole way.”

Étienne stared for a long while at Giselle, waiting for something, any hint of tenderness, but she only returned his gaze with a steady glare. He finally nodded and walked away.

Giselle followed him with her eyes as Frans readied the horse. She watched Étienne’s back as he walked down the road, his figure growing fainter with each step.
Étienne
, Giselle said over and over again in her head.
Étienne. Étienne. “
I won’t forget you,” she whispered. But by the time he reached the forest, she already had.

The journey took another two days. When they reached the duke’s château, Giselle was weak, her lips cracked with thirst and the wound on her leg festering with ooze. She curled in the corner of the cart, too listless to care anymore about the cruel man who imprisoned her, too frail to wonder why she could remember her name and nothing more.

Frans only got a pittance for the wings.

“Imbecile!” the duke shouted at him for believing such tales. “They’re probably nothing more than the plucked wings of water fowl! Only good for soup stock!”

Frans sputtered. “I cut them from her myself—”

The duke drew up close. “I’ll give you a fair price for the girl. If she lives, she may make a decent servant.”

Frans began to argue but then saw the servants of the duke’s estate closing in. Two field-workers gripped their hoes and stepped closer. Frans unlocked the padlock on the cart, and the duke’s servants lifted Giselle out and whisked her away. The duke counted out payment into Frans’s greasy palm. “Never pass this way again.”

Frans clutched his money in his fist and looked into the icy gray eyes of the duke. “She’s only a beast. You’ll find out.”

The duke’s shoulders lurched forward as if he might strike Frans, but then he carefully pulled them back. It was all that was needed, though, to send Frans scrambling onto his cart and whipping his mare into a frenzy down the road.

By the next day Pauline, the housemaid who helped bathe Giselle and tended the wound on her leg, reported there was no sign on the girl’s back of where wings had been cut away. “Her back is completely healed,” she told the duke.

“Of course it is,” the duke said, rising from his chair. “There never were any wings. She was only the victim of a greedy peddler. Do you
understand
, Pauline? That will be the story if there is to be one.”

Pauline nodded and curtsied. “Of course, sir.”

Under Pauline’s care, Giselle recovered quickly. When she was well enough, the duke gave her duties in the vegetable garden since there was no life that Giselle could remember to go back to. She settled into life at the château, thankful for the kindness of the many servants who watched over her, and grateful to the duke, who gave her a warm, comfortable room off the kitchen. But every day as she worked, she searched for memories, something from her past life, a trigger that would bring it all back.
I’ll find a way
, but even that thought seemed to have no root within her, just words rattling in her head like they belonged to someone else. An overwhelming longing grew inside her, and she tried to will a familiar face into her mind’s eye. But there was none. The garden became her solace.

She found that she loved her work, the sweet peas and the soil, the squash and the sun, and wished for the days to last longer than they did. At the end of the day she would stare out at the horizon long after the sun was gone, searching for something that never materialized, searching for something that had no name even in her own mind, but she watched with a bewildering anticipation until the last ray of light had vanished. She dreaded the nights the most because of the dreams that accompanied them. When she closed her eyes she saw twinkling stars, felt the rush of crisp air across her cheeks, felt the exhilaration of speed as she glided over the world, the tickle of forest tops on her fingertips, a soaring freedom that filled every breath with indescribable joy, but with the joy of the dreams came the inconsolable loss she felt on waking. Too many times she woke to tears already on her cheeks. And sometimes mixed with the tears was a name on the edge of her lips, and she would suck in a breath, trying to take hold of it again, but it always evaded her no matter how hard she tried to get it back.

At the end of one day, only a fortnight after she arrived, she paused to look down the road that had brought her here, longing to know what came before, when the duke walked up behind her, catching her by surprise.

“Waiting for someone?” he asked.

Giselle whirled around. “Of course not,” she answered quickly, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m not waiting for anyone. I’m just on my way to help Pauline with dinner.”

It was only the next day, standing in the same spot, that Giselle spotted a cart coming down the road. Children ran to meet it, shouting their excitement. Giselle hurried to the shadows of the stable to watch as it approached, fearful of the cart, which resembled the one she had arrived in. She could already hear the peddler boasting about his catch. “This one was easy. It practically fell right into my hands. The
gargouilles
may fly like the wind, but they are as dull as lead. I didn’t even have to unfurl my net. It only took two easy slashes to part this one from its wings.”

The creature thrashed in the cart.
Like a beast
, Giselle thought. Pauline came and stood beside Giselle, shaking her head. “What poor soul has been stolen away now?”

“But there
are
wings strapped to the cart,” Giselle replied.

“As there were when you came. Who knows where he really got them? The duke will not be pleased. He’ll send that poor excuse of a peddler on his way with the back of his hand.”

“No!” Giselle cried. “What would become of the one he’s imprisoned?”

Giselle’s tender heart endeared her to Pauline. “I’ll speak with the duke before he comes out to deal with the peddler. I don’t think you need to worry,” she told Giselle, and walked back to the house to find the duke.

It was as Pauline said. The duke was angry and sent the peddler on his way, but not before he forced him to unlock the cart and leave his victim behind. The peddler warily unlocked the cart and fled as soon as his prisoner jumped from it. The boy was stained with blood, as Giselle had been, but was stronger and had no arrow wound. He thrashed wildly at those who encircled him. The duke’s gardeners raised their hoes, ready to strike, but Giselle could see the fear and anger on the boy’s face. “Stop!” she yelled, and ran from the shadows to within feet of where he stood, in spite of Pauline and the duke shouting for her to stay back. The boy saw her and froze.

“No one’s going to harm you,” Giselle told him. “You’re safe now.” His gaze locked on to hers and his breathing calmed while Giselle’s heart raced faster. “My name is Giselle,” she said, and held her hand out to him. “Come with me. Please.”

His shoulders relaxed from their hunched position and he hesitantly took her hand. She walked him to the fountain, while all the servants and the duke followed, holding their breath at her boldness, but not wanting to break the spell she had cast over the boy. She held a pitcher under one of the streams of water and gave it to him. He greedily drank from it and then handed it back to her.

“Why am I here?” the boy asked.

It was the same question that had passed through her own mind in her first days at the château. She still had no answer. “I’m not sure why,” Giselle answered, “but you don’t have to fear anyone here. You’re among friends. Where are you from?”

The boy thought for a moment. “I—” He touched his hand to his temple, and his brows pulled together in worry. He looked back into Giselle’s eyes. “I’m not sure. I can’t—” His head shook in distress.

Giselle felt her heart aching for the boy. She couldn’t recall where she was from either and wondered at the dark magic the peddlers must have cast over them both. She heard a murmur flutter through the servants surrounding them and knew they noticed the similarity too. “Don’t worry about it now. Maybe after you’ve rested and eaten something—”