“What has happened to me, mother? I don’t know.” Claere said. “I don’t think I am the same. No. I
know
I am not. I should be . . . dead.”
“Oh God, no, hush!”
But the Infanta was indeed no longer the same submissive creature, for she put her cold stiff hands against her mother’s shuddering warm chest and she pushed her away, gently but firmly.
“No, mother. I am sorry, but I am—not alive. There is no pain, no
. . . anything. I no longer
feel the world
. My fingers—numb—all of me. Not sure how else to describe—but I am . . . As though I am locked in a room with thick walls and thick glass windows, and I am looking out at you and everything through those impenetrable windows. Nothing touches me from . . . your side.”
“Oh God! Claere, my little dearest, dearest one, but how could that be? How, oh how? You are here, you are here with me and you are alive, and—”
“When the knife entered me, it hurt. But only for a moment. Terrible pain, then it dissolved into nothing. Something—I felt something recede and it was like a blink of the eye. I was
not
, and I was pulled inside out and then. . . . And then, I was back. Like this. Locked inside that thick room, feeling nothing.”
“What he did to you.
. . . He will pay, oh how he will pay!” the Empress exclaimed in a sudden fury. “The damned hellspawn of Fiomarre who . . . hurt you. He will be tortured and his family will be brought down at last, and even their memory will be rendered into dust—”
In that instant the door of the chamber opened, and even as the Chamberlain hurried to announce His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor himself walked in, followed by a tall dark bearded man of advanced middle years, with a steady willful gaze who was the Duke Claude Rovait of Morphaea, dressed in travel clothes that showed signs of his having travelled in haste.
The Emperor had also changed from his blinding formal splendor of court to an everyday coat and jacket of deep velvet. His face, scrubbed of makeup, was of an unhealthy color, and wrinkles showed readily. His wig sat almost crookedly over his balding pate, as though donned in a hurry, and his cravat was hastily tied.
“My child
. . . There you are,” Josephuste Liguon II said in a weary tremulous voice. “How . . . How do you feel?”
At his clumsy words, the Empress once again broke out into desolate weeping.
But the Infanta turned her blank face toward her father and she said, “Your Majesty, I am . . . fine.”
The Duke Rovait took the moment to bow. “Your Imperial Majesties, Your Imperial Highness,” he said in a deep voice, speaking with greater gentleness than might have been expected from his thick frame. “Most profound pardons for interrupting. I am newly arrived from my Letheburg visit—having attended the Prince and Princess and Her Majesty’s bedside—with news of some great import, but first I offer my sincerest condolences at your
. . . pain.”
“There is no pain,” the Infanta said again. And her mother, who had in the last several moments gone from silence to crying to silence again, burst into a new fit of weeping.
“Claere, child . . .” the Emperor said. “It is—well, the news the Duke has delivered to me, is something that must be told to you.”
“It pertains to Your Imperial Highness’s present
. . .
condition
,” added the Duke.
The Empress stopped crying and froze, staring at the Duke and then her consort. The Infanta merely turned her face slightly from one to the other, as though she were swiveling a doll’s head along a neck that was nothing more than a wooden dowel.
“Well, go on, repeat what you told me,” said the Emperor with a grim expression.
The Duke inclined his head and proceeded to tell a strange unbelievable story of what had come to pass in the Kingdom of Lethe the night before. He spoke of the apparition of Death, of the demand for the Cobweb Bride, of the old Queen who would not die, and of the armies of the marching living and dead that had returned, all to a man, from a near-slaughter to their respective Dukedoms of Goraque and Chidair. He spoke of the Royal Decree that had been proclaimed, compelling all eligible maidens of the Kingdom and beyond to go forth and present themselves to Death as potential brides. He had ridden hard upon the request of the Prince of Lethe, having put at least four horses into lather, and had arrived to personally warn the Emperor of what was happening.
“There is no more dying, anywhere,” he concluded. “As of last night, the moment of the Apparition and the Demand.”
“It must’ve happened just before the attack upon our child
. . .” the Emperor mused.
“Then
. . . I am dead indeed,” Claere Liguon said softly.
“No!” the Empress exclaimed.
But the Emperor shook his head, his eyes dark and so very old. “She is but at the mercy of Death now. Suspended between life and the . . . other.”
The Duke cleared his throat. “Indeed. Not only Her Imperial Highness—hundreds, nay thousands of others are also suspended thus. Until this infernal Cobweb Bride is found and brought to the Northern Forest and presented before Death.”
“What can be done?” whispered the Empress. “This is unbelievable and I just don’t know if—”
“Your Imperial Majesty realizes, of course, that the world must be returned to its natural course. The dead must be allowed to proceed on to the next world.”
“But—” the Empress said. “If—if so, then, Claere will really die! She will leave us! No, it cannot be!”
“Indeed. But—” the Emperor said, his brow twisted with a frown.
The Duke watched them both, and observed the blank face of the Infanta.
“Then I must be allowed to die,” she said suddenly. “It is not natural that I am
. . . like this. I am dead.”
“Oh, but Claere, sweet child, no! You don’t know what you are saying, this is just impossible—” the Empress began.
But the Infanta ignored her. “What—what can be done to find this Cobweb Bride? She must be found. I—I must find her.”
And then, for the first time, an almost living expression came to her grey wan face. “What if I am the Cobweb Bride?” said the Infanta. “If I am she, then I must present myself before Death and allow him to choose me. Indeed, it makes good sense—since I am no longer one of the living, then it must be that I belong to him.”
“Oh God, child, what are you saying?” the Empress exclaimed, putting her hands to the sides of her face, as though to frame the horror of her expression.
The Emperor meanwhile started to pace the chamber. His face was grim, while conflicting thoughts labored for dominance inside him.
The Duke Rovait continued to observe with some concern. Then, clearing his throat once more, he said, “I suggest that a similar Imperial Decree be proclaimed by Your Imperial Majesty, in regard to the Cobweb Bride. An edict that would bind not merely Lethe but all three Kingdoms of the Realm. I will personally convey your ultimate decision to my own King in Morphaea, and His Majesty King Orphe Geroard will comply immediately.”
“Argh!” exclaimed the Emperor, putting a hand against his temples, squeezing hard, as though he could tear the weight of the decision out of himself. “If we do this, then we condemn my child to certain death. If we don’t, then the world is—the world is not right, is—is—”
He roared in anguish and continued his pacing.
“I do not envy Your Imperial Majesty’s grave decision,” Claude Rovait said. “But—think of the greater balance, the greater good—”
“Greater good?” the Emperor roared once more, his voice no longer thin and wavering. “What greater good can there be when my child—my
life
—when she is gone? How can the world remain, the sun shine? Indeed, will it shine? How can the world go on? How?”
“Father, please
. . .” The Infanta’s soft measured words came like a balm of reason.
Slowly, and stiffly she took several steps forward and reached out to the Emperor her father. A cold wooden limb moved and it was her own. Her hand. With it she touched him on the cheek, an act that would have broken all protocol—but now she was no longer the same retiring and sickly Claere, and she could do such things with impunity, she could dare to do such things and more.
“Proclaim the Edict, Your Imperial Majesty, My Father. It is the only thing to do. And I am going to do the only thing also. I will find Death and he can have me. One way or another. As a Cobweb Bride or as a mortal woman.”
“Claere! No, child, there must be another way!” The Empress began to wring her hands.
But Claere, dead and cold like the grave, like the winter outside, wore the most living expression in her eyes.
And at last the Emperor conceded. Nodding, he said to the Duke, “It will be done then. My beloved child will be taken from us in one way or another, but at least I will not go against her final will. So few get the chance in this life to know the true final will of the ones they cherish.”
“My final will . . .” Claere said softly. “Yes, it is. And there is one other thing. The man who struck me this mortal blow . . . I must see him now.”
“He will be executed tomorrow,” said the Emperor fiercely. “The Fiomarre son will die as his father had before him, a traitor. Their family ends with him. His mother shall be stripped of their rank and the lands will be confiscated and absorbed into the Imperial Crown.”
“No.”
They looked at her.
“No,” the Infanta repeated. “It is a portion of my final will that this man first come and speak with me, so that I can understand why he did this deed. Besides, you know he literally cannot die now. You can only ruin his body, with him still inhabiting it, a macabre horror that I beg you not to enact. Thus, instead, I must take the chance to understand him.”
“What is there to understand, dear child? A horrible wicked traitor! He is an abomination and will be punished as befitting his crime. How can you even endure to look at him, the beast?” her mother said.
“And yet I must see him, if I am to have eternal peace,” the Infanta repeated. “Please. . . . Now.”
And with those words she turned around, turned her back on them all without being dismissed, heedless of Imperial protocol, and returned to her chair near the window.
Protocol did not apply to the dead.
N
iobea stood at the bedside of old Bethesia, listening to her death rattle that had become the heartbeat of their home. A large basket filled with food and covered with a kerchief was sitting on the tabletop, next to a folded shawl.
It was the early dawning morning of the second day. The night before, Alann and Percy had come home in a rush with the news of the Royal Decree, and suddenly it all made sense. At least now Niobea knew why Bethesia was like this, why she was on the verge of going and yet would not leave the world.
Niobea also knew with a sickness that ate at her soul that she had to part with at least one of her daughters. The Decree left no doubt that someone of marriageable age had to go, and she would not be able to face the village if she withheld her daughters. All night they could hear the voices of their different neighbors and the sounds of weeping outside, as mothers grieved.
Alann had been of no help. After telling her what he learned, he gave Niobea one dark look of sorrow, then went to his mother’s bedside and stayed there for several moments, then surprisingly went directly to bed.
Percy had stayed back in the room. After putting a kettle of water to boil she huddled in silence near the stove, watching Belle peel tubers for the next day’s meal, and Patty sift old flour. They were all inordinately quiet after having heard the news.
“Well?” Niobea said suddenly addressing them all. “What is to be done with you, children?”
Silence.
And then, “I suppose I must go
. . .” Belle said in a faint voice. Putting down the knife and the vegetables, she sat looking at her mother. “I am . . . the eldest and most marriageable.”
Niobea stared at her fair oldest child and then her lips began to tremble, while liquid pooled in the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision.
“Ma?” said Patty. “Maybe—maybe I ought to go? I am young but, well, I think I am old enough to be a bride. . . .”
“No, what are you saying, idiot child? You are a little baby still, no! And may the Lord be praised for that!” Niobea exclaimed.
Percy looked at them all. She then threw a glance at her grandmother dying without end. And she glanced at the everpresent shadow in the corner.
And then she got up, and steeled her heart and her facial muscles. “It’s all right. I’ll go,” she said in a dull voice. “Tomorrow morning.”
There was silence.
And then Niobea looked at her middle daughter, and though tears still brimmed in her eyes, the pressure at the back of her throat lessened considerably. “Well, it’s settled then,” she said curtly.
And that was that.
Percy paused for a moment, because there might have been something else any one of them could have said to her at this point. But they did not. Neither Niobea nor Belle. Not even Patty. And Alann was in bed in the other room.