The Castle Behind Thorns (16 page)

28

Parents

S
AND DOUBTED THAT THE ARMY WAS PLEASED THAT
their representative, sent to parley under the white flag of truce, had been eaten by a magic hedge.

The army sent in two more knights to try to reclaim Sir Jos—this time not bothering with a flag, accompanied by a whole cohort of archers to cover them. They promptly lost those two knights as well.

When four new knights came forward, Sand shouted down: “Don't draw any nearer! You cannot defeat the hedge!”

“We will send a priest next to cast out the demons you have summoned into this hedge, evil sorcerer!” one of the knights called.

“Really,” Sand said, looking down at Perrotte. “Could there be a more willful misinterpretation of this situation?”

“To them, it looks like the hedge is protecting us,” Perrotte said. “It might be a reasonable conclusion. As much as I don't want to give anyone loyal to Jannet any sort of credit for intelligence or . . . anything.”

“What is your name?” a knight called up.

“Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith.” Sand was growing bored of this question, it being the third time he'd answered it that day.

“And what are you doing in that castle?” the knight shouted.

“Mending it,” Sand called. “Still.”

“We demand your immediate surrender of the castle!”

“We cannot leave this castle any more than you all can get in!”

“We? Who else is in there with you? What fell companion aids you in your sorcery?”

Sand could have smacked himself for saying “we.” He decided to ignore the question. “Listen! This castle is a trap! I am not here willingly!”

The knights moved closer to the hedge, but with a great deal more caution than the first three knights. They were able to avoid the thorns when the hedge grasped for them, but the bramble had spooked them. The knights retreated, galloping back to the army.

“What now?” Sand asked.

“I bet Jannet will come out now,” Perrotte said.

But Perrotte was wrong. The day wore away and no one came for several hours—but the next people sent to parley were known to Sand.

“Oh, no,” Sand whispered, his heart pounding in his ears. “They sent my parents.”

Perrotte refused to hang back any longer. She popped up to peer through the crenel, squinting against the full spring sunlight, but staying somewhat out of sight behind a stone merlon. She was silent as Gilles and Agnote walked slowly toward the hedge, alone.

“Father? Agnote? Stay well away from the thorns,” Sand called.

They obeyed, keeping far back. They looked up at Sand, shading their eyes, and Sand's heart swelled. He had missed them so much.

“You look thin!” Agnote called. “Are you not eating?”

“There's not much to eat,” he answered.

“How did you get in there, son?” Gilles asked, far more gently than Sand expected.

“I was at the shrine to Saint Melor, and I left him some nails. I do not remember what happened next, but I woke up here, in the fireplace.”

Gilles ran his hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration that was so familiar to Sand in this strange place that he felt like he was in a dream.

Agnote asked, “Who is that skulking in the shadows next to you?”

Sand didn't think Perrotte would come out. Neither of them wanted to reveal her presence to the army. He was ready to deflect the question, but she stepped forward into the crenel and stared down at his parents.

“Hello, Gilles Shoemaker,” Perrotte said, not loudly.

For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. In that instant, Gilles's face drained of blood. Sand noticed moss growing in the corners of the tower where shadows kept the stone damp and cool. In the distance, a cuckoo sang.

Gilles crossed himself.

“What is it?” Sand heard Agnote ask his father. “What is wrong? Who is that girl?”

“A ghost,” Gilles said, swallowing hard.

“Not a ghost, Papa,” Sand said. “Perrotte has . . . awakened.”

Perrotte poked him hard on the shoulder.

He whispered, “Don't you think it would be easier to tell the world that you were asleep than it would be to say that you died and were resurrected?”

Perrotte darted back behind the merlon, and yanked him out of sight after her. “Easier for who? Easier for you?”

“Easier for both of us?”

“Pretending that I was just asleep and not
dead
is not going to be easier for—” She stopped in the middle of that sentence, shaking her head. “Yes, fine. Maybe that will be easier for me, in some ways. Tell that story. It will definitely be easier for
him
.”

“Why does it need to be easier for my
father
, of all people?”

“Because . . .” She put her hands to her face, pressing her knuckles into the soft flesh of her cheeks. She dropped her hands and reached for one of his. “Because, Sand, it was your father who made and brought the poisoned slippers that killed me.”

He had imagined, ever since it happened to Perrotte, what it must feel like to be stabbed with a hundred or a thousand of the hedge's thorns. It felt just like this, in his imagination.

His father had killed Perrotte.

His
father
.

He closed his eyes. He wanted to suggest that she didn't really remember, though he knew she did. He wanted to suggest that maybe she was lying. But he knew she wouldn't.

It made so many things make sense. It answered why Saint Melor had chosen him. His family owed a debt, for the sins of his father.

He slumped down to his bottom, eyes still closed, back against the guard tower's wall. He heard a thud as Perrotte slid into the same position beside him.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” Perrotte said. “It's been hard to be honest with you, while I've been hiding that. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Sir Bleyz and the rebellion, too. And I want you to know, you were right. I should not bring war to the people. I have forgotten the madness of the War of the League.”

Sand ignored that. “How did it happen? How did you die?”

Perrotte told him about the scented slippers and scented gloves, and how Gilles had prepared them for her. Every word seemed to fall through Sand's chest and strike his heart, one sickening blow after another.

Eventually, the story ended. They sat there in silence for a moment, until Sand heard his name called from outside the castle. He forced himself to his feet, to look down. Agnote was there, hands cupped around her mouth. His father was nowhere in sight.

He shouted down, “If they sent you to convince us to leave the castle, tell them: We are trapped by the thorns. If they sent you for any other reason, you can tell us tomorrow. I love you, Agnote. Tell Avenie and Annick that I miss them.”

“Sand!” Agnote called. “Come back!”

But Sand had turned away. He left the tower, and did not look back.

29

Head

S
AND FLED, AND
P
ERROTTE LET HIM GO
. P
OSSIBLY,
she wanted to be alone with her thoughts as much as he did. Sand wasn't sure that he'd done the right thing, telling his parents that Perrotte was alive, but he didn't know what else he could have done. He hated lies of omission, more now than ever.

He went to the smithy and restacked the bricks of his forge. That made him feel much better. His mind stumped the same question over and over in a tired, worn-out pattern, like mules circling a grinding stone:
How can I fix this? How can I fix this? How can I fix this?

Bring down the thorn hedge and go to war. Leave the thorn hedge and be destroyed. One path led to war. One path led to injustice. Both ended in Perrotte's death, probably, and likely enough, his own as well.

And . . . his own
father
had killed Perrotte. Maybe Papa was coerced, maybe he was lied to, maybe he was bribed, but the guilt had been on his face, and Sand didn't know how to bear it, or how Perrotte could bear being around him, the son of her executioner. She had been so broken in the castle's treasury when she told him about her murder.

He had to fix her.

How did you fix a person, though?

“Everything can be mended,” he muttered. He drew just short of punching a wall. It was so unlike him, and unlike every smith he knew. Smiths were gentle folk; all their aggressions were spent on shaping metal.

He thought about firing up the forge then, and beating his frustrations into something useful, but he
wouldn't
mend anything that might bring down the thorns faster.

His feet knew better what to do than he did, and he found himself in the chapel. He approached the relics.

He opened Sainte Trifine's silver reliquary briefly, and stared in grim wonder at the sight of the beating heart. He closed it.

Anything could be mended. Everything could be mended. The heart was proof. He could mend Perrotte. His father. The whole situation with the Countess. He just had to figure out
how
.

The other reliquary drew him, the golden box that held Saint Melor's fragmented skull. The story about the saint's silver hand and bronze foot tugged at his imagination. If he were to mend the skull, what metal should he use? If bronze was for feet and silver was for hands, then wouldn't gold be the metal for a head?

“You're not mending anything, remember, Sand? The hedge.” He paused and shook his head at himself. “And Perrotte's out of sight for a few minutes, and you're talking to yourself again.”

Talking to himself was bad, but Sand had to admit that the hedge wouldn't fall because he mended
one
more thing in the castle. The amount of mending he had left to do in order to bring down the hedge was . . . No—certainly
one
more thing wouldn't matter.

And the possible benefit was enormous. In the stories, Saint Melor's head spoke. If Sand mended it, quite possibly it would speak again. Sainte Trifine's beating heart was proof of the presence of
something
, but it could not answer his questions.

If anyone was the master smith of this situation, it had to be the saint who brought him to this castle. Saint Melor could show Sand where to apply the sledge. Saint Melor had to know how to mend everything. Why else would Sand have been brought here, if not for this?

  

R
EMOVING THE SKULL FROM
the chapel felt like a kind of sacrilege, but so did setting up a workshop in the chapel. In the end, with slow footsteps and a great deal of reverence, Sand carried the skull of Saint Melor in its reliquary down to the smithy and perched it on his anvil. He built a hot fire around a partially intact, thick crucible that he filled with broken-up bits of the golden reliquary, and waited for them to melt in the blistering heat.

In the meantime, he arranged the pieces of the skull carefully, envisioning how he would fit each one back together. The skull had not merely been broken in half—it had broken along every major seam of the skull, into twelve large pieces.

The whole time he worked, the back of his neck prickled, and at times, he thought he felt other hands guiding his own. The invisible hand on the right felt colder than the one on the left, and Sand shivered. Immediately, the sensation died away, but it returned as he moved on to the next piece.

When at last the gold was molten, Sand cautiously dipped the edge of one skull fragment in the gold, and then pushed it against the matching edge of the other piece. He waited for the gold to cool. The mend held, probably more due to his mending magic than any skill or knowledge: the pieces stuck together, with a seam of gold running between them. Carefully, he did this with the remaining pieces. The jaw, however, needed to move, yes? So Sand quickly tapped out a pair of golden hinges with a very small hammer, and then made tiny steel nails with which to attach the hinges. With great delicacy, he hinged the jaw.

He carried the skull back to the chapel, where he knelt, gazing upon the mended skull, waiting for it to speak.

It did not speak.

Sand crossed himself and prayed, then waited.

The skull did not suddenly plump with flesh. Sand was glad of that. There were no eyes to open, and so Sand could not guess if any spirit were filling the void. And while he stared at the skull, he realized that hinging the jaw had been pointless, since the whole of the skull sat on the jaw, and nothing short of a true miracle would allow the jaw to move and speak. A human head, he realized, mounted on the neck and allowed the jaw to dangle and close at the will of the speaking human. If he rested his own head atop his chin, he would not be able to speak.

He stood to leave, berating himself for his foolishness. Then it occurred to him: He should ask a question.

He turned back to the altar. “Saint Melor, hear me!” He cleared his throat, feeling ridiculous. “I have a question. How can I mend my problems?”

He felt silly. He really did.

But then the skull spoke.

The jaw did not move. He'd absolutely wasted his time with the jaw. But in spite of that, a voice did emanate from the skull, a voice that he heard not through the air, but from within the bones of his own skull—deep, deep inside his ears.

Some things are not meant to be mended.

The sound made his head itch, but deep inside where he could not reach. He dug his finger into his ear canal, but came out with only a bit of wax and no relief from the itching. He swallowed and gaped and yawned, even going so far as to stick a finger to scratch at his tonsils—but this only made him gag. It was maddening, but eventually, the itching faded enough to bear it. Sand shook his head, like a dog shaking off water.

“Some things are not meant to be mended?” Sand asked. “But then why did you—or Sainte Trifine, if it was she—bring me here, if not to mend?”

Some things are not for you to mend.

Again, the itching drove Sand nearly mad. He rubbed his throat, swallowing heavily, and forced himself to cough.

“You don't understand,” Sand said finally. “Perrotte—you brought me here to mend Perrotte, didn't you? And this castle? Well, I can't fix them alone! I don't know what to do! I don't know how to make anything better!”

Some things cannot be mended.

Sand put his hand over his ears, trying to block out the itching voice, but it was no use. He kept his fingers out of his ears and mouth, however, having learned—if it could be called learning—the futility of that. Though he felt hard-pressed not to chew on one of the chapel's candles, for he thought that the lumps of wax would feel very pleasant on the way down, and that they
might
scratch the itch within him.

He left the candles alone. “Can't you at least tell me why?” he asked, plaintive.

The skull didn't answer.

“Why was I brought here, when I am
useless
?”

The skull didn't answer.

“Can't you tell me
anything
?” Sand raged, climbing to his feet.

Finally, the skull spoke again.

Some things just are.

“Argh!”

Sand spun around. Perrotte stood at the door of the chapel, holding her ears.

“What is that? And why is it doing what it's doing?”

“It's Saint Melor's head,” Sand said. Then, “It's, ah, talking.”

The annoyance faded from Perrotte's face. Her eyes went wide, and she came forward as though pulled by an invisible rope.

She knelt beside Sand, yanking his arm to bring him back to kneeling too, and assumed an attitude of quiet prayer.

Sand braced himself for the skull to speak again, but the moments slipped past, and the skull was as silent as Perrotte.

Finally, he nudged her with his elbow. “If you want the skull to talk, you have to ask it a question.”

“But that is not what she has prayed for,” a voice said from behind them.