The Glass Casket (15 page)

Everyone agreed that something had to be done. Displaying the dead was a gross offense against the Goddess. Sacrilege like that would surely invite disaster. They needed to get the girl out of that casket. They needed to burn her corpse, and like the unfortunate soldiers, her ashes would be placed east of the village in the old cimetière where the ancients used to lay down their dead.

That morning, though, before anything could be done about the poor girl, when only a few villagers had gathered to see if what old Arlene Blessing said was true, the door had swung open, and the glassblower had emerged with a large shotgun in his hand. He didn’t look at the villagers;
his eyes seemed to be propped open by the sheer force of insanity, voluble as tops all set to spin.

Upon seeing him, the villagers took cover, but it soon became clear he meant them no specific harm. He didn’t even seem to see them exactly. Rather, he walked over to his glass coffin and stroked it like one might a cherished pet.

“That all might see,” he babbled. “That all might see her beauty.”

Eyes wild, he threw the gun strap over his shoulder and began pacing, slowly encircling his creation, guarding it.

He had been walking thusly for hours now, refusing to leave his gruesome post for even a moment. He circled it like a lion gone mad, keeping the spoils for himself as he stalked around his freshly killed gazelle.

“Where is Lareina?” people were heard to say. “Surely she can reason with him.”

But no one had seen Lareina since the previous day.

Slowly throughout the day, the villagers gathered weaponry. “There’s naught to do but put him in the gaol,” Goi Tate said, and it was as if his proclamation made it so. They waited for the glassblower to show a moment of weakness before they would set on him. Their chance came finally when Goi Flint put down his shotgun to remove his heavy overcoat. Tom rushed him as soon as the man’s hand lost contact with the weapon, and when Tom threw Flint to the ground, Rowan grabbed the shotgun.

“Oh, holy Goddess,” Tom cried when he noticed the blood. His hands, which had a moment earlier been on the mad man’s torso, came away sticky and streaked with red.
He jerked away, and several men who had come to help yanked at Goi Flint’s coat, opening it to reveal undershirts soaked through with the red.

“Are you hurt?” Goi Tate asked, but the glassblower shook his head, and with a great howl, he bent forward into the snow, crying out with what they were beginning to realize was grief. From his spasmodic crouch there on the ground, he pointed back to the house.

Rowan’s hand flew to her mouth as she came to understand.

“Lareina!” she screamed, and ran for the front door, only to slip in the snow and fall, smashing her lip on the front step. Ignoring the pain, she pulled herself up and opened the door.

Lareina Flint’s body lay not three feet from the entrance, her throat slit, her soulless eyes wide, her mouth contorted into what must have been one final scream. Behind her was a trail of blood, the path she must have traversed as she’d crawled to the door.

“She was here all along,” Rowan wept, blood from her lip mixing with tears, the acrid sting the only thing that kept her from fainting. “She was just behind the door this whole time while we were on the other side. Oh, great mother, what has become of us? What has become of us all?”

As the villagers dragged Seamus Flint through the snow to the gaol, the man keened like an animal. But when they
opened the cell door and shoved him inside, he only bowed his head, smiling like a child.

Later that evening, Elsbet busied herself wiping down tables at the inn. “When are they saying the rites for Lareina?”

“Tonight,” Wilhelm said, his head bent over a fresh pint. “They’ll lay her up at Cairn Hill in the morning. Once that’s done and the girl’s unclean corpse has been turned to ash, we might all rest. Goddess knows we’re all eager for this to be over.”

“Just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” Elsbet said, and her husband nodded in agreement. “And our Tom, how lost he seems today. I put it down to Jude, you know. Nothing but a bad influence, that one.”

“Elsbet,” Wilhelm sighed, for it pained him when she spoke of their boy as if he were a stranger.

“There’s wickedness in that one, Wilhelm. I tell you there is.” She paused, waiting for a reaction from her husband, but when she got none, she changed the subject. “Mark me, Wilhelm, an evil has come to our village. First those soldiers, and now that girl and her stepmother together like that.”

Her husband nodded and stared into his ale.

“Maybe …,” she went on. “Maybe it was Goi Flint who killed those men up there. Maybe he killed the girl as well. Seemed mad with guilt to me, he did. We should kill him ourselves. Hang him from the old beech tree and watch him die.”

Wilhelm shook his head. “Goi Flint was here in the tavern when the girl was killed, and what he did to his lovely wife was born out of madness and grief. We’re in no danger from him.”

Elsbet set a hand on her hip. “So seven people dead, and we’re not a village in danger?”

“I didn’t say that. We are very much a village in danger, just not at the hands of Goi Flint.”

Villagers started trickling in, and Elsbet began pouring ale. The men would have a big night ahead of them gathering wood for the pyre, and they would need their sustenance. Elsbet was having a word with Goi Tate about what she liked to call
proper tavern behavior
when the double doors burst open and the duke marched in. Quickly the villagers bowed to him, but he waved them off and strode to the center of the room. All eyes followed the great man, and the room fell silent as he cleared his throat.

“I hear there has been talk of burning the bodies,” he said, his voice booming.

“Just the girl,” said Goi Tate, who stood a little straighter against the foreign lord. “The woman is clean, but the girl’s corpse is tainted. Burning’s the only thing for it.”

The villagers nodded, but no one spoke.

“You’ll do no such thing,” said the duke, and a murmur rose among the crowd. “While I understand that these are your customs, I do not share them. I am from the royal city, where, as I’m sure you know, we worship the sea god. We do not burn our dead. Poisoning the air by emolliating rotting flesh is something that, I’m sorry, I simply cannot allow.
You’ve already burned my soldiers, reduced them to nothing. I shall not stand by and watch you do the same again. I will not breathe the fetid air.”

Wilhelm Parstle felt obligated to speak. “Sir, if you’ll excuse me, but that is how we do things in the mountains. If the rites can’t be performed because the allotted time has passed, then the bodies are unclean. They must be burned, and their ashes laid at the old cimetière.”

The duke squinted. “That’s where my soldiers’ ashes rest?”

“Yes. It’s just outside the village, to the east,” Paer Jorgen said, his voice quiet but clear. “It’s where the ancients used to lay down their dead. They dug holes there and put them below ground. It’s not our way. It’s the old way, but we figure it’s better than naught. We did the best we could for your soldiers. We laid some river stones atop to bless them on their journey.”

The duke put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes as if to still the anger within him. “Of course that’s what you did.” He opened his eyes, fresh fire burning there. “And the result is that I have no bodies to bring back to those soldiers’ families. I cannot hand them a pile of ashes to push out to sea. They would call me a monster.”

“Please understand, sir,” said Paer Jorgen. “We meant no harm.”

“No.” The duke shook his head, and his voice grew quiet. “Of course you didn’t. But listen here, this will not happen again. If you can lay the ashes in the cimetière, then you can lay this girl’s body there too. You’ll do it at once.”

“But we can’t do
that
,” Draeden Faez nearly yelped.

The duke’s shoulders slumped, and seemingly exhausted, he asked, “And why not?”

The old man stumbled over his words. “The ground is unquiet there. We … we can’t put her there unburned.”

“But that’s where you put the ashes.”

“That’s different,” said Tate. “Ashes can’t very well rise, can they?”

The duke groaned. “Fine, then it seems your only other choice is to put her up at your Mouth of the Goddess.”

“That we could never do,” said Draeden Faez, solemnly shaking his head.

“And why not?” asked the duke, his face growing red with frustration.

“I don’t know how you do things with your sea burials,” continued the old man, “but up here, the dead are holy things. They are prepared and offered up to the Goddess. To give her something so unclean would be worse than sacrilege. With that ghoulish display, that coffin of glass, we’re already at risk. Mountain folk or sea, displaying a corpse goes against the laws of the dead. You have to admit that.”

“Of course.” The duke nodded. “We would never do such a thing. Like you say, we send our dead out to sea. It is clean and simple and does not leave room for all these complications.”

“So you see,” said Draeden Faez, “we can’t lay her at the Mouth of the Goddess.”

The duke sighed. “Very well. What about my way? What about a water burial? There’s a lake nearby, isn’t there?”

“Seelie Lake,” said Paer Jorgen. “But that’s fairy business.”

The duke couldn’t keep from laughing. “Surely you people can’t still believe in fairies.”

“Fairies or no,” said Tak Carlysle. “The lake is frozen now. Lot of good it would do to set her out there in a boat atop the ice.”

“Listen to me,” the duke said, clearly tired of arguing. “You will bury her at this cimetière you speak of. It may not be your Mouth of the Goddess, but it’s a burial ground at least. If it was good enough for your ancients, it’s good enough for you.”

“But—”

The duke raised his hand. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to bury her in the village square. I’m telling you to lay her in a burial ground. You will do this. If I find out anyone has other plans, if anyone strays from my command, the offense will be punishable by death. Do you understand?”

The room was quiet. Dark eyes watched him, and slowly the villagers nodded. Without another word, the duke turned back around and strode out through the heavy wooden doors.

For Lareina Flint, the rites were performed, her body put to rest up on Cairn Hill at the Mouth of the Goddess with as much pomp as the people of Nag’s End could muster. But things were different for Fiona Eira.

The cimetière was a dark place. Through the wood
and to the east, where men did not often walk, it was an ancient place, surrounded by an archaic stone wall. It was commonly believed that the spirits of the old ones lingered there, polluting the air. The ground in the cimetière never froze. No one knew why. It wasn’t the kind of thing one wanted to spend much time contemplating. The soil there was thick and gray, an unchanging claylike substance that remained malleable despite the weather. No one but an elder was allowed to walk the grounds of the cimetière. It was said that to stay there too long could cause a man’s legs to wither, and his lungs to slowly fill up with blood.

A small group gathered, and Rowan was surprised to see the witches among them. They kept to themselves, though they did look her way once or twice. The day was not without incident. The corpse, already desecrated by its placement in that glass abomination, suffered further sullying when one of the pallbearers tripped, sending Fiona’s body tumbling to the ground. The calamity caused the shroud to unravel, and her body landed faceup in the dirt at Mama Lune’s feet. The villagers gasped, and some covered their eyes, but Rowan noticed a look of fierce intensity—almost horror—on Mama Lune’s face as she stared at the body. Rowan tried to follow the witch’s eyes to see what was causing her such distress, but by then the pallbearers had collected the body, and there was nothing to see. Rowan looked around her, and while people seemed rattled by the chaos of the tumbling body, no one appeared particularly distressed—no one except Mama Lune. She watched the Greenwitch whisper something in the Bluewitch’s ear, and then Rowan turned
her attention back to the proceedings, her heart heavy as she saw the enshrouded body carried through the stone arch to the center of the burial ground. When she looked over to where the witches had been standing, she saw that they were gone.