Gifts

Sayblood's Children: Part Seven

Sayblood’s Children is a folk horror/romance novella, serialized in twelve parts. This is Part Seven.

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Previously, Sayblood and Othniel grew closer, while danger drew nearer.

In this chapter, Sayblood attempts to appease the island, learns new secrets, and a holiday brings unexpected gifts.

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Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

My hands ache. It happens more and more, these days, this ache. As if the strength that once filled them has finally been spent, seeping out through the pores in my skin. They tremble when I take up the pen and begin.

They tremble to remember, and yet I must.

*

From that moment in the dying garden of One Prince, something bloomed between the poet and myself. Something beyond simple fascination, the education of my curious mind.

Shrike and I spent hours talking in the ballroom while the music wrapped its tendrils around us. We disappeared into back rooms—finally, to disappear!—to whisper and cling and seethe together. We needed no drinkings or tinctures; we were intoxicated in each other’s presence.

Shrike had always spoken of things I did not understand, but now their nature changed. He spoke of love, of giving one’s self for the other. Of sacrifice, and of the shortcomings of a life of pure survival. When I told him about my mother’s death, he nodded.

“Perhaps she gave herself willingly,” he said. “Perhaps. Some mothers do as much for their children.”

This I had never considered.

When I returned to the palace of my father—careful to ensure that the guards were called away, kept busy and occupied—Shrike lurked hooded and cloaked and stole souls from Sumble’s teeth. We carried on like this, over and over.

I loved him. He loved me, too. It has been so many years, and I still remember that love. I remember how each day that he loved me drained the color from the Underside so that it no longer satisfied any of my appetites. They all seemed small and childish. I wanted to run away with Shrike, to escape Above and see the marvels. I yearned to be Dread Lady no longer, but myself. Whatever new thing I could be under a new sky.

When the first stirring within me told me that my love for Shrike had turned to seed in my womb, I was not afraid. I told him, and he rejoiced with me, and we began to plan.

To leave would be to strike a dangerous blow to One Prince, but I refused to raise a child in Sumble’s belly, born in the grave. I would raise my child under the grace of Sun, in color, in song, in beauty. My child would know Birds. My child would know Flowers. My child would see things I had never seen before, even if I had to die to ensure it.

If my mother was the strength of my hands, I would be so much and more for my child.

And Shrike, my poet, would be a matchless father. Without riddles, without gardens of death, without crimson robes and horrors…

Shrike would love me—would love us—well.

*

My hands.

My hands ache. I cannot continue today.

*******

As one week on the little wooded island turned into two, then three, Sayblood was increasingly plagued with a recurring dream as she slept in the little storage room.

In the dream, she stood in the middle of her father’s dark library, dwarfed by the high ribbed ceiling and the miasma of dust and loam and mold. She waited in bare feet, cold on the stone floor.

Her father’s guards were not near. She knew somehow—the way one does in dreams—that there was no one else, as though Sumble’s vast belly had been emptied of its contents. As though Sumble Himself had died and calcified around them, great lungs ceasing to fill and recede. All that remained was this dark library, pewter spires dull in the gloom, and Sayblood, and her father.

One Prince stood before her, a tall silhouette, a gray phantom robed in crimson. He raised his thin arms and held out his long-fingered hands.

In his palms lay Sayblood’s own blades, Kysiel and Vaziel, polished to a glittering shine and singing for slaughter.

He held the blades out to her and said, “You left these behind. Take them now.”

But she shook her head gently and stepped back, cold stone on bare soles.

“No,” she would say. “Those are not my children.”

And One Prince would step closer. “Take them now.”

And she would repeat, again and again, “No. Those are not my children. Those are not my children. Those are not my children…”

She would wake shivering despite the faithful warmth of the woodstove through the wall and think fleetingly of Othniel lying in his own bed under the starry frost-rimed window in the other room. She would consider how it would feel to lie beside him, safe in his arms.

But this thought remained only a thought, and she would soothe herself back to sleep with it until she heard his waking footsteps on the cabin floor.

*******

One morning, it was a gentle tapping on the storage room door that woke Sayblood, and Othniel calling, “Say? Say, are you awake?”

There was a giddy quality to his voice, unusual for such a steady man. She called back, “Yes. Is all well?”

“Rise quickly, dress warm. I have something to show you.”

His footsteps retreated from the door, and she rose as quickly as she could—heavier and heavier these days!—and dressed in her warmest clothes. Then she left the storage room.

Her pale eyes picked up the shift in the light peering through the misted cabin windows immediately. It was subtle but strange; brighter than usual, and flattened.

Othniel was standing beside the cabin door, beckoning, smiling. She approached, unusually cautious.

Then, he opened the door.

It took Sayblood a moment to understand what she was looking at. The entire yard, only just becoming deeply familiar to her, had vanished. In its place was a carpet of white, and there was still more falling from the sky, fluffy flecks swirling lazily and landing, piling up on the grass, the treetops, the fenceposts.

The cold that seeped in through the door smelled fresh and mineral.

Sayblood looked at Othniel for help, for translation, and he smiled.

“Snow,” he said. “It’s called snow.”

Snow. Had the poet ever spoken of snow? She couldn’t recall.

“It’s ice,” Othniel explained. “Water that freezes, turns to tiny, tiny families of ice, forming together in the air and falling. It piles up in drifts, you see?”

Sayblood walked to the threshold and peered out. The snow was fluttering down at a steady pace, already two or three inches thick on the ground below.

“Does this happen every winter?” she asked.

Othniel shook his head. “Not here. It’s not common at all, in fact, and doesn’t usually stay for long. Always vital to enjoy beautiful things before they disappear.”

Sayblood caught a wistful note in his voice and glanced at him, but he was looking out at the snow-covered trees.

Othniel was handsome, she had decided. He did not look or speak much like the poet at all, but he had his own charms. Where Shrike had been beautiful yet distant, Othniel was close and unfettered. There was an openness to his expression, his eyes. Calming.

“Here,” Othniel said, and he walked out onto the porch and raised his hand, palm up, out from under the sheltering roof. Snowflakes fell on his palm and melted into water.

Sayblood imitated the action and the two of them stood facing each other, smiling like children. The snow felt like cold kisses on the skin of her hand, and Sayblood laughed with abandon when the droplets tickled.

Othniel spent the better part of the morning introducing Sayblood to the joys of snow. He taught her to catch the flakes on her tongue, the way he had done when he was a small boy. He showed her how to form a ball of it and they took turns throwing snowballs at a woodgrain hole in the side of the shed to see who could hit the target closest. It was hardly fair; Sayblood’s training took over and she hit it easily every time. But Othniel was gracious, conceding defeat.

“If we’re lucky,” he said later after morning chores were over, warming their hands by the stove with breakfast and tea, “the snow may stay through Christmas Eve tomorrow.”

Sayblood sipped her tea and cocked her head.

“Did you have holidays underground?” Othniel asked. “Special days? Observances?”

Sayblood shook her head slowly. “All days were the same. And on all days, we did whatever we pleased. None were special.”

“Hmm.” Othniel carefully removed a pan of biscuits from the innards of the stove and set them on the hob. “Well, let’s see. Christmas is…”

He struggled silently for a moment. Sayblood was patient. The more she had learned about Above, the more she and Othniel were encountering issues like this: the basics had nearly been exhausted, and more complicated concepts needed to be explained with care.

“Christmas is a feast day,” he said, finally. “It’s when we celebrate the birth of God.”

This piqued Sayblood’s interest. Though the poet had told Sayblood that Above had many gods, important to each tribe and people, Othniel had not spoken much of gods, if at all.

“Who is this god?” she asked.

Othniel winced. “I’m the wrong man to ask. I have not spoken to the God of Christmas for many years. Even so, the holy day remains, and people observe it.”

“How?”

“With food,” Othniel said. “Good food, and revelry, and games, and gifts.”

“What sort of gifts?”

Othniel smiled, slicing a biscuit in half to prepare for preserves. “Whatever you think might please the other person best. It could be anything, so long as it’s meant to bring them joy.”

Sayblood considered this. “Will we celebrate Christmas?”

“If you like,” Othniel replied. “I’m usually on my own, so I don’t have much in the way of revelry. But we can make do.”

*******

Though Othniel protested, Sayblood made what had become her daily trek up the hill to the orchard. It was slow going, for the snow had a way of pulling at the feet, but she was determined.

By the time she reached the top of the rise the snow had stopped falling and now lay in piles, coating the bare branches of the apple trees. The birds left cross-hatch prints as they hopped here and there, searching the edges of the drifts for wayward seeds and insects.

Sayblood approached the old wild apple tree, the one at the center of it all. The gnarled tree stood aloof as ever, but over the last weeks there had been a change. It was now festooned with gifts that Sayblood had brought for it: feathers fallen from the wings of raven, owl, seagull, flicker, robin, wren; shells and pebbles from the beach; bits and pieces leftover from meals; broken crockery and shards of glass; colorful fabric; unusual leaves and sprigs of evergreen. Sayblood had used twine to tie what she could to the tree’s branches, and the rest she nestled into the wrinkles and whorls in the tree’s ancient bark.

It was not an offering of flesh on thorns, as she was used to, but it would do.

Though covered now with snow, the feathers still fluttered in the wind and the colorful glint of fabric and glass and pottery winked at Sayblood from their hiding places. As she approached, she pulled a new gift from her pocket. It was a biscuit from breakfast, squirreled quickly into her coat before Othniel might see and ask after it.

She nestled the biscuit into one of the thick gnarls in the tree’s trunk so that it stayed, then stepped back.

“I wonder,” she said, “if you might tell me about the God of Christmas?”

The tree tensed. But unlike their first encounter with each other, it no longer seemed to blatantly ignore her. Now, she sensed its quiet bewilderment; it did not expect her to ask any questions, and certainly not that sort of question.

Sayblood reached out and touched the tree’s bark and—suspicious—it thrummed under her hand.

“I want to give Othniel a gift,” she said. “He has been so kind to me. I want to repay him. Please tell me how.”

The tree hesitated. And then, as though it were sun-warmed sap seeping from the tree’s heart through her fingers, Sayblood saw a vision.

She saw the island untouched, pristine.

She saw the Native people who had visited its edges since before history to gather their provisions—berries and bark and fish—leaving it otherwise alone to do as it pleased.

She saw the arrival of the others, the ones who looked more like Othniel, and she felt the island’s initial curiosity sour into hatred.

She saw a familiar face. A cursed face.

The newcomers took. They trapped. They ruined and dammed and built and buried and it would only get worse, only get worse, only turn to pain.

They were not careful. They were not listening.

Sayblood removed her hand, hissing, and stepped back. The place where her skin had touched the bark was throbbing now, like a burn.

But she tipped her face up to the branches in something like pity.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

The tree glanced at her, and then away, wounded.

“Othniel is not…he is not like that,” Sayblood said. “He wants to do right. I believe it is so.”

The tree did not return its attention to her.

“I am listening.” Sayblood said the word with emphasis, with the deepest sincerity she could muster. “Where I come from, all is dead and none like you speak. But you are alive and beautiful under all that snow, and I am listening. I promise you.”

A shiver of something from the tree, then. Hope? Hope, in all its miraculous impossibility?

Sayblood reached out once more to give the tree an affectionate touch. Then she turned. And when she turned, she saw something in the thick woods off to the left.

It was a deer. She had seen them passing through the yard to graze, lithe-limbed things, some crowned and some bare-headed, with big dark eyes. They did not often linger, spooking easily and leaping into the woods to vanish in a blink.

But not now. Now, this deer—a doe, uncrowned—stood and watched her. It was the closest Sayblood had ever been to one of these creatures and she froze, desperate not to frighten it.

But the doe did not flinch. Her heavy sides moved easily with calm breath, exhaling from her wide nostrils in plumes of mist and her wide eyes stared deeply into Sayblood’s gaze.

Behind the doe, movement: two yearling fawns emerged from the shadows and watched Sayblood from the safety of their mother’s side, perfect reflections of each other.

Sayblood rested her hand on her belly, an idle action.

The doe blinked.

It was the animals who broke the spell. Not by crashing away into the woods, but by gentle steps, moving easily away into the trees with a flick of their white tails.

Sayblood exhaled, feeling somehow that she had stepped over a threshold, though she could hardly say what kind.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the very air.

Or, perhaps, to the God of Christmas.

*******

Othniel had not made merry at Christmas for many years. He hadn’t had an occasion to do so. But on this Christmas Eve he felt festive in a way he had never experienced before. He cut and gathered fragrant evergreen boughs and holly sprigs into the cabin and showed Sayblood how to fashion a wreath for the door, tie the boughs together into garlands decorated with ribbons made from old fabric to drape over the windows and doors. Candles were lit on the sills against the gathering evening, like tiny lighthouses to draw in lonely ghosts.

The effect was immediate upon the little cabin: it felt like home.

One lonely ghost did arrive that night. It was Bill traveling through the snow, as if he had known that this night was different. He was immediately invited inside for Christmas. To the surprise of all, he accepted, though initially shy.

“A feast,” he muttered, forlorn, “and Old Bill in his ragged finery.”

But soon, calmed with a cup of tea, he seemed to slip into the proper spirit.

A chicken hung in the shed for a modest Christmas Day feast, but for Christmas Eve the three of them supped simply on stew and toasted with strong tea. Othniel and Bill taught Sayblood how to play Charades, since it was one of the few Christmastide games from their youth that could be played with three people, and she proved surprisingly good at it.

After dinner, Bill sang what carols of the season he remembered in a surprising, rich tenor voice. Othniel joined in softly. He did not merit himself much of a singer, and the carols were laced through with memories he would rather ignore. But Sayblood was enchanted by the songs and closed her pale eyes to drink them in.

After all had lapsed into a comfortable quiet, warm and fragrant with evergreen, Sayblood opened her eyes and looked at Bill.

“The island told me something about you,” she said. “And I wonder if it is true.”

Bill gave away nothing.

“It told me that you were the first.”

Othniel’s brow furrowed. “The first?”

But Bill tapped his teacup with an idle finger. “The first, yes. She told you that?”

Sayblood nodded. “The big island. Ferris Island. Because of you.”

“Bill Ferris, yes.” Bill avoided their gaze. “Old Bill’s mistake.”

Othniel set down his own cup on the nearby table. “You were part of Vancouver’s crew?”

The famous voyage of George Vancouver, mapping the region, naming each body of water and island on their path. Everyone knew of it. But young sailor William Ferris had been swept out to sea in an August squall, or so the story went. The “big” island—small, relative to the rest—had been named for him as a tribute.

Bill sighed. “Once, yes, no longer. Crew, then curse. And here I am. And here I’ll stay.”

Sayblood asked, “Did you have a family? Where you came from?”

The wild man shook his head, and a smile fluttered across his lips. “Not Bill. The great love of my life is still centuries away yet.”

He paused, disappeared into himself, and then returned within seconds. “Not all ghosts are past. Some of us are haunted by the future.”

Othniel shivered. Over the last few weeks he had not seen Shrike, the phantom father of Sayblood’s child, and had half-hoped he wouldn’t see the ghost ever again. But he did catch an occasional whisper of cold, the feel of a hand on his shoulder, the sharp tang of blood on the air.

He did not like to speak of ghosts, especially on such a thin-veiled night.

Thankfully, Bill said no more on the subject. He stood. “I’ll ask for use of the barn tonight, Brack.”

“Of course, if you like,” Othniel replied. “You’d be just as welcome in here.”

But the wild man waved it away. “The barn was fine enough for the Holy Family and it’ll be fine enough for Old Bill. And a Merry Christmas to all.”

And he went, out into the snow to spend the night in the barn.

Othniel and Sayblood sat quietly for a few moments, the stove popping. He cleared his throat, finally, and said, “I um…I do have a gift for you.”

She looked up at him, genuinely surprised. “You do?”

“I do, yes. One moment.”

He crossed to his bed. At its foot was an old trunk. This he flipped open, and he pulled something out of it—a precious thing—and he held it hidden behind his back. He returned then to her, heart thundering, and said, “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

She did so immediately, all trust. His heart squeezed within him, and he set the object carefully in her hands.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

She did. It was a silver hairbrush that she held, polished lovingly to a bright shine, bristles clean and neat.

“It was my mother’s,” Othniel said quickly, unable to read her silence. “Turn it over.”

She did, and he pointed to the beautiful, wrought floral design on its paddle back.

“This decoration here, this is a rose,” he said. “You’re always saying how…how you loved hearing about the roses when you lived underground, and you can’t wait to see them bloom for real. Well, they’re still a ways off yet, but here’s one that never stops blooming, so you can always see….what it looks like.”

His voice faltered slightly, because Sayblood was staring at the back of the hairbrush with an inscrutable expression. He thought, for one horrible moment, that he had made a foolish mistake.

But she tipped her face up at him, and her pale eyes had filled with tears. He had never seen her cry, before.

“It was your mother’s?” she said, quietly.

He felt a thin ribbon of regret rising in him. “Yes. Her name was Helen.”

“Helen.” Sayblood looked back down at the brush, stroked the soft bristles, then ran her fingers over the rose design as if attempting to memorize it. “It’s beautiful.”

Othniel let out a breath. “I’m glad you like it.”

She did not raise her eyes from the gift. “I did not know my mother.”

“Yes, you’ve said so. I’m so sorry.”

“But you knew yours?”

Othniel nodded. He did not want to speak of these things. Ghosts and thorns. “She was a good woman. The best of them. Too good, perhaps.”

“Did she die?”

Every sinew of Othniel’s heart screamed, refused the question, but he replied, “Yes. She died.”

“How?”

Why? Why do you need to know, Queen of the Underworld? So beautiful! So strange!

Othniel cleared his throat. “My father—Lord Brackford—was a very wealthy man, but he was also a gambler. It was the worst-kept secret in Lancaster. When he accrued more debt than he could pay, our whole family was taken to debtor’s prison while he worked off the debt. It was no place for anyone to live, least of all a young family. My mother grew ill and died there. I was twelve.”

It was clear that Sayblood did not understand much of this explanation, but she understood enough. She finally looked up at him. “And that’s when you left to go to sea?”

“We were all released one year later,” he said. “I could not stay with my father. I refused to be anywhere near him, for what he did to her. To all of us.”

“So we are not so different, after all,” Sayblood murmured.

Othniel waited, because Sayblood’s lips parted to say something more.

Finally, when she spoke, it was so quiet that he almost thought he had imagined it.

“I am so very afraid, Othniel,” she said, “that I shall fail.”

“Fail? How?”

With one hand cradling the hairbrush in her lap, the other strayed to her belly.

Othniel understood her meaning and quickly shook his head. “I know very little, Say, but I know this: all good mothers love their children so, that they think nothing of crossing worlds and braving the ire of angry gods to protect them. And unlike most, you’ve already done that. That tells me all that I need to know about you.”

She reached out and took his hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “I confess, I wanted to give you a gift for Christmas, but I have never given one before, and I did not know what to offer.”

He squeezed her hand, hoped he wouldn’t speak wrong.

“I was given my gift when I found you on the shore,” he replied. “The gift of your company, for however long you offer it, is enough.”

*******

That night, the dream returned to Sayblood’s bed, hovering over her like a cloud.

Her father’s dark library, thin hands, his soft voice.

The twin blades, screaming for blood.

“Take them now.”

And her refusal.

“Those are not my children.”

And when she woke in the dark, she lay staring at the invisible ceiling above her, shivering violently.

But this time, she did not stay there.

Carefully she rose and left the little room, her pale eyes seeing easily in the dark. The cabin was still lit golden with the stove’s embers, a radiant heat pulling scent from the evergreen boughs. The candles on the sills had long since been snuffed and she could see a new snow falling outside, bathing the woods in a cold glow.

She crossed to Othniel’s bed and gently sat beside him.

The movement woke him and he stirred, rolling over to look at her, dressed in his soft cotton undershirt and britches for sleeping.

“Sayblood?” he said. “Are you well?”

She shook her head.

“May I lie beside you, Othniel?”

He hesitated, and she watched his good manners argue and debate behind his eyes. She had ascertained that in the place where he came from, men and women did not lie together without the ceremony of marriage. The very idea that they were sharing a home was sin enough, from what she understood.

But what god of propriety he might have otherwise feared must have been asleep. It certainly was not the God of Christmas, who seemed only to smile. A holy day of subversion, indeed, when kings sleep in the barn and animals prophesy. A God of gifts, not punishments. Roses, not thorns.

Snow-morning, feast-morning, the birth of a gracious God!

Othniel pulled back the quilt and furs, and Sayblood slipped in beside him.

They did not touch—not yet, not yet—but lay sleeping together in warmth and safety until the advent of the dawn.

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