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My mind is spinning itself to pieces.
I dream I am an animal, lifting on great wings. The light is playing tricks on me, but there is a face by my side. Blurred and dreaming, lost and shouting, we are found and bleeding. We are lifting into the clouds.
Then I wake.
And it’s cold, and I am here.
I don’t know how long Erik and the king continued talking. I don’t know what crowns were promised, and what decisions were made. By the time I regained consciousness, I was crumbled in a pile in the middle of my cell. My hair smelling of apples, a pool of tears beneath my cheek.
My stomach lurched, and I lifted my head slowly off the ground; peeling the rest of my body inch by inch. Never had I experienced such dizziness, such utter incapacity. When the walls began to spin in a slow circle, I blinked painfully, curling my knees into my chest.
Was it real?
No matter how many times I asked, I didn’t think I’d ever get a satisfactory answer to that question. You could have asked each day for the rest of my life, and I’d still be scrambling to find the words. The simple answer was no, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be real. People didn’t just turn into random birds and start eavesdropping all over the village. I had been dreaming, or I had been drugged. Or quite possibly, I’d suffered the aforementioned mental break.
With a faint stirring of dread, I chanced a look at my body, checking for feathers.
Definitely a mental break.
And yet...?
The room steadied and I rolled slowly onto my back, staring at the cracks in the ceiling.
It had been real, a part of me was sure of it. A part that I’d repeatedly denied a voice, but in the last few days, it had blossomed suddenly to life. I didn’t know how it was possible, I wouldn’t even venture a guess. But never had something felt so vivid, so clear. It couldn’t possibly have been a dream; I hadn’t even been asleep. When the hawk landed on the ledge—
I stopped myself, turning blankly to the window.
The sky was black as pitch; a moonless night, without even the faint pinprick of stars. I searched for them anyway, suddenly unconcerned with anything that had come before.
This is my final night. I die in the morning.
The thought struck me like a bag of stones, toppling some inner part of me, while the rest lay pinned upon the floor. For a few seconds, I was unable to breathe past it, feeling the pressure on my chest like a tangible thing. Then quiet as a ghost, I got to my feet and drifted to the window.
The sky was dark, but it couldn’t have been as late as I’d imagined. A ring of torches was still dancing around the courtyard, and there were drunken voices singing in the Great Hall. I wondered, for a random moment, if anyone had told the kitchen mistress what had happened. The woman had been good to me. Did she look around blankly one morning, when I didn’t show up for work? It was a silly thought; she must have heard the gossip immediately, same as everyone else.
My thoughts drifted a bit farther, turning to Trina instead.
It was impossible to see the forest, let alone the hillside beyond. My window faced the north, turning slightly towards the ocean, but I knew she wouldn’t have gone that way.
You know where to find me.
An echo of her voice flitted through my mind, and I almost toppled all over again, gripping hard onto the windowsill and pulling in slow breaths through my mouth.
No, Trina wouldn’t have gone that way. The woman lived for sunshine, for heat. She was heading south, winding along the coastal towns until she found one where the snow promised to melt by springtime. A town big enough for both of us, where our story could disappear.
She was expecting me to join her. She would be waiting somewhere on the road.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
My eyes zeroed on a specific spot in the darkness, the space that had been cleared days earlier, where I knew the pyre was going to sit. It would be burning, I’d heard the king say it from his own mouth. No need for guessing; shivering as I imagined a stone tied to my ankle, the taut weave of a noose. I would be strapped to a pole and roasted, screaming. The people I’d known all my life would gather in a crowd to applaud.
For a short time, I was unable to think of anything beyond it.
There wasn’t anything beyond it. With nothing standing between us but the length of a few hours, there was no longer a way to shield myself from the horror, to silence those internal screams.
An overriding part of me was simply paralyzed, petrified of the pain.
Ironically enough, there hadn’t been much pain in my life—not considering the disaster that haunted most houses. A few broken bones, nothing serious. Even then, clinging to Trina’s skirt as she tried to calm me, I’d felt as though I’d reached some threshold. I couldn’t imagine anything worse, anything longer. A pain that would only cease when I was no longer able to breathe.
A rush of panic swept over me, and I lowered my forehead to the cool ledge of the window, forcing myself to think of other things. A groove in the stone, a flicker of torchlight. The cool strips of skin on my face where tears had slipped unnoticed down my cheeks.
I thought again of the hawk, the flowering courtyard. No longer did my thoughts stop at the transformation. My world had narrowed to the point where there was no longer time to do it justice.
I looked past it, remembering the conversation instead.
Not everyone will be cheering.
Despite the impending horror of the sunrise, despite the fact I was choking for every breath, a part of me still couldn’t believe what had happened. Erik had looked the king in the eye, and asked him to release me. I remembered the look on his face when he said it, the sound of his voice.
Mercy is divine.
There was nothing in him that was like his father. But the king had spoken of Ander as well. My brow creased as the memory flitted back, the king’s voice beneath the branches. ‘I’m going to tell you the same thing I told your father, when he came to me one night, asking the same thing.’
Asking the same thing...
A gentle breezed poured through the window, stirring the damp tangle of my hair.
So Ander had regretted his decision, delivering my mother into the hands of those who would put her to death. More than just regretted it, he’d tried to change the outcome. He’d done the impossible, just like his son. He’d actually put the heartsick request before the king.
He could have been killed himself just for asking, same as Erik. He must have known this, as he walked the dusky street towards the royal chambers. He did it anyway, a final request.
For all the good it did.
There was a burst of laughter somewhere across the courtyard, muffled by distance and slurred with ale. I lifted my eyes on impulse, then turned deliberately away from the window.
A few days earlier, I would have been straining at the frame. But that was something apart from me, now. Something separate. As though an invisible barrier had been set in between. I could no more seek their company, derive some comfort in it, than a bird could seek counsel from a fish.
That time in my life was over. It seemed one was meant to finish things alone.
Knock, knock.
Like the spinning of a top, my eyes swung to the door—staring as though it had come to life, as though it had spoken suddenly in a human voice. I was a dastardly witch, imprisoned and reviled, sentenced to death by the only man in our lands we had given a crown. This was my cell.
Who would knock?
In a voice that felt much smaller than my own, I answered, half-cringing as I called the familiar words, “Come in.”
I might have said something different. I might have begged the hawk to return, so that I might slip once again from my chains and cram my body through the tiny window, falling a few blessed seconds to my death. It would be better, worlds better, than what the village had in store.
Nothing happened for a moment, then the door pushed open and a beam of torchlight splintered inside. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, to see the beautiful face just behind.
Erik.
I let out a silent breath, staring into his glittering eyes. At this point, it felt like there was nothing in the world that might still surprise me, yet there he stood, like a flame in the dark.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, half-wondering if it was a dream. It had been risky enough when he’d climbed the outside of the tower—clinging to the rock and searching for footholds in the shadows. It seemed more dangerous still, to have walked through the front door.
He took a step inside, a single hand wrapped around the torch.
“They let me come,” he stammered, more unsteady than I’d ever heard. His voice caught in his throat, and he started again. “They let me come...to say goodbye.”
I stared in silence, feeling like some part of me was floating away.
What a strange people we came from, what a strange place we lived. A place where you were allowed to bid farewell to the person who’d saved your life...only to watch them die.
“The king has sentenced me, then?” I asked, louder than I’d intended.
Erik flinched like I’d shouted, gripping fiercely at the torch. Unable to answer directly, he merely nodded, eyes darting into the shadows, before returning to mine.
I already knew the answer. I’d heard it myself.
But I made him say it.
“What did he decide?”
For all I knew, the answer had changed in the time since the courtyard. The hawk had lifted on silent wings into the air, while they were still talking, heads bent together on the bench. They might have amended things, struck a compromise. I should have known better from Erik’s face.
“It will be a pyre,” he said softly, haunted by the very words. “I asked for a quick death, an arrow, but...” He dropped his eyes to the floor, shaking his head.
Of course, it would never have been quick. I was surprised he’d even asked.
And then I wasn’t. He’d asked for a great many things.
Mercy is divine.
“So that’s the end of it,” I finally answered, strangely flat. “There’s nothing else.”
From the corner of my vision, I saw him tense—clutching the torch like it was keeping his head from water, searching for anything to say. Most days, I would have tried to help. But there was nothing in me to face him now. Nothing that hadn’t already been scraped across the floor.
Since the moment I was dragged from the courtyard, I’d tormented myself with questions: Why did I do it? What is to become of me? Is there a way to make it undone? Like it was somehow going to fix things, something that needed to be settled before I could open the next door.
I realized now, how much time I’d wasted.
There wasn’t a next door. The one on my cell was the last I would ever cross. I was bound for the pyre, always had been. And that made things feel strangely pragmatic.
At any rate, it inspired a degree of honesty.
“I can’t breathe,” I admitted, “when I think about it.” The torchlight swelled, and I swayed dizzily in the middle of the floor. When was the last time I’d eaten? “Every time I try to...” I shook my head, arms hanging limp at my sides. “I can’t breathe, I am so afraid.”
For a fleeting moment, his composure slipped and his face rushed with feeling. It swept over him like a fever, flushing his skin and shining in his eyes. Our silhouettes danced in the trembling torchlight. His fingers clenched reflexively, stopping themselves from reaching for mine.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, wanting to say so much more. “Liv, I have been...” He trailed into silence, looking like he’d been stung. “I’m so terribly sorry. There is nothing to be done.”
I gazed back at him, staring at the top of his bowed head. A part of me was grateful he was being so plain about it. There was something steadying about that, though I couldn’t begin to tell you why. Yet there was another part that still couldn’t believe we weren’t talking about someone else’s story, gossiping over drinks at some tavern, before going home for the night.
“Would you do me a favor?” I asked, after a long silence. “Would you give me a knife?”
His eyes flew up immediately, locking on mine in shock. At that point, I could scarcely blame him. I hadn’t known what I was going to say myself until the words were leaving my mouth.
Yet, they hung between us now. Waiting for an answer.
“A knife,” he repeated, buying himself time. It was an obvious stall, but I couldn’t blame him for that either. His skin, in the firelight, had grown frightfully pale. “So you can...?” He trailed away, unable to finish.
“What,” I quipped, hating the dryness in my voice, “kill myself?”
He stared in bracing silence, our shadows flickering on the wall.
For a fleeting moment, I thought how strange it must have looked. The two of us standing together, locked in a prison at the top of the world. I was not yet seventeen, Erik had scarcely begun to grow a beard. We seemed too young to be in such a place, though many had lost their lives much sooner. Such matters seemed beyond us, for those with lines already carved deep in their faces.
Yet, here we stood. A lone point of connection, amidst all that crushing silence.
“Is it not better?” I reasoned quietly, regretting my harshness before. “When I think of the pyre...” I will not think of the pyre, “there is no comparison.” I took a step forward before he could answer, speaking quietly. “You asked for a quick death, you said it yourself—”
“I have no blade,” he interrupted, looking as though it might kill him. My eyebrows arched in silence, but he repeated it almost at once. “I had many blades, but the soldiers took them before I was allowed to see you. I had not thought...” He caught his breath, unable to say the rest.
Perhaps he was thinking of places he might have stashed it.
Perhaps he was secretly glad.
It was impossible to tell, and no sooner had the thought crossed my mind, it was instantly disregarded. He didn’t have a blade, so it no longer mattered. I had been wrong before.
This was truly the end.
Then he said something that truly surprised me.
“Can you not just escape?”
It was barely more than a whisper, the slightest fluttering of lips and breath. If he’d been unsteady before, he was now utterly shaken. I could see his eyes shining in the darkness, like he could be damned just for saying the words. And yet, he’d said them.
I stared at him a lengthy moment, then shook my head. “If I escape today, then it’s a hundred girls tomorrow. Their dark imaginings of us will all be proven, and they won’t stop until the land is steeped in blood. If a witch is discovered, she is to die in silence. Not for her own life, but for all the others. No more guilty of anything than me.”
It was the only time I’d allowed myself to say it, to express even the slightest anger at the injustice of what was about to be done. It had seemed no better than whining, and like everything else, I was quickly discovering it no longer bore any relevance. But I had to say it, at least once.
It steadied me to say it. I hadn’t found that balance until now.
Erik stared at me in silence, like he was burning the image into his mind. “You could save yourself,” he finally replied. “You could walk out of this cell right now.”
Both were said in a peculiar tone, neither was a question. I wasn’t sure if he even wished me to answer. He merely stood before me, staring deep into my eyes.
“I was going to task you to come with me,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “That night I walked you home, when I asked if you wanted to travel...I was going to ask you to come with me.”
He shook his head a little, the memory dancing before his eyes.
You were?
It would have been madness. A few days, we’d known each other. No matter how deeply they’d been felt. A few days, yet for a suspended moment, I allowed myself to imagine it. Striking out on some grand adventure, sitting on the back of his horse. I remember how captivated I’d been the night he’d arrived at the festival. I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head.
When I drifted back, there were tears in my eyes. “Why would you tell me that?” I asked in a whisper.
His lips curved in a wistful smile. “Because I’ll always wish you had.”
