One Prince

Sayblood's Children: Part Eleven

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

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Previously, the little family returned home, ready to face their fate.

In this chapter, Sayblood must finally confront her past in order to save her future.

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Because time has no measure underground, I know not how long the journey took. And I have no room within these pages—nor strength within my hands—to tell of all the terrors I saw, and the wonders, too. I do long to write these things for you.

Perhaps someday I will find a way.

Mouse and Rooster were deft guides, and with them the journey was more pleasant than I imagined it could be, especially in the small moments, the quiet ones.

Rooster was well-traveled. He told me much about Connemara, the green place Shrike had chosen for my home. He also told me stories of Shrike himself, of their adventures saving souls together. I treasure these things, these glimpses of a lover taken too soon.

The tales I have told you of your father? You have Rooster to thank for them.

For her part, Mouse delighted in showing me little illusions, little magic tricks that she had learned. And she also told stories, though hers were all inventions and fantasies. She liked most to tell of transformations, of people becoming animals and animals becoming people, and maudlin stories about ghosts and spirits.

But she was especially fascinated with a certain animal, a furry beast called a Hound, or a Dog. She described them to me: some were big, some were small. Some were sweet to look upon and some were fearsome. But her favorites were lithe-limbed, twitch-eared beasts with big paws and strong teeth. She wanted a Dog of her very own, one day. I came to understand that they were loyal creatures, guardians of people and places. Beloved pets.

Mouse’s childlike love of them made me think it might be a joy to see one, myself.

*

Long we wandered, followed the shifting paths, hid from the prying eyes of subterranean monsters, taking shelter with strange allies. My belly grew within me, little by little.

We came at last to a crossroads, a splinter of many trails. Rooster pointed down a humble left-hand way and said, “That road will lead us to Connemara. The walk is nearly over.”

We camped for a little while to sleep and eat, to sing soft songs and tell stories, and renew our strength for the final climb.

These are the last pleasant memories I have of my guides.

When I woke hours later it was to the sound of violence as One Prince and his tongueless guards had sniffed us out at last, found us and set upon us while we slept.

In the chaos that followed, I saw Rooster fighting gallant with my blades, slaying starvelings on his left and right hand. But Mouse was dragged into the darkness and away, I know not where. And thinking only of my children I ran, leaving everything behind. Trembling in my undershift, no food, no provisions.

Rooster and Mouse gone. My blades gone. Everything gone.

I ran and I ran, blind, lost. Away from the crossroads, away from Connemara, down the wrong road, down one of Sumble’s many throats.

I heard my father call after me, his voice echoing in the tunnels,

“May you fall prey to none but Him, Daughter!”

But I did not stop running until, without warning and without any sign, I found myself scrambling up a final steep slope and...

Out.

Into the bite of Wind. Into the fragrant, foreign darkness of Above.

By God—by the Starving Sumble-God!—had I but known the very air of this place had teeth…

*******

Grief broke like a silent wave upon Sayblood and Othniel where they knelt in the clearing next to Bill’s body, but there was no time to linger in its frigid cold. The island was besieged, and the threat of a new skirmish with the starvelings rippled like an ill breeze, terrible with potential.

Sayblood felt numb. But when Othniel staggered to his own feet, she let him help her up onto hers. The babies were quiet against her, calmed, but felt so heavy all of a sudden. Everything felt heavy. Too much. Too far.

Shrike. Mouse. Rooster. Bill.

My mother.

The amount of blood shed on her behalf was dizzying, and felt so utterly pointless. Why? For what?

Sayblood swallowed hard and watched as Othniel lifted Bill’s thin body up and over his shoulder, unwilling to leave it for the animals to find. Then Sayblood followed him in silence as he limped away from the blood-stained place, regaining the path to the cabin.

As they walked, Sayblood was aware of something happening under her feet, a strange roiling and pitching, a thrumming of pain, as if the loss of Bill had had an effect on the land itself. If the island had a heart, there was now a crack in it. She held her daughters close, her tears falling on their soft scalps. She followed Othniel with unseeing eyes, trying not to look at the back of Bill’s head, his limp hands swaying lifeless against Othniel’s coat.

Around them the forest was still hushed and wounded, the spirits of the island fluttering between the trees, mouths open in silent wails of sorrow. The branches dipped and dirged. The clouds were still low and somber, like smoke.

After a slow, painful journey Sayblood and Othniel reached the yard and stood still at the treeline for a moment, surveying the scene before them, trying to understand what had happened here. Half a dozen bodies of starvelings littered the wet grass. The door of the cabin was ajar, creaking in the wind, and a front window was smashed.

It was here that Bill had clearly made a stand, after Othniel left him to find Sayblood with the fisherfolk. How long he had been holed up here, battling the starvelings alone, it was impossible to tell.

There was no ambush waiting for them, at least not here. Sayblood scented the air and shook her head at Othniel’s look.

“No,” she said. “None nearby. But they are not too far away.”

Othniel nodded. “Go inside,” he said. “We’ll make our stand here, just as Bill did. Together.”

Sayblood swallowed a sob and reached out, took his hand in hers.

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I’m going to lay Bill to rest in the barn until we can bury him, and gather what tools I can find for weapons,” Othniel replied. His voice was hollow and his eyes distant, but he squeezed her hand. “I’ll follow you presently.”

So they separated, Othniel to the barn carrying his burden and Sayblood to the cabin.

She climbed the porch steps as if they were a mountain, each stair feeling like a weary mile. She was so tired she could scream, her arms heavy, but even the thought of screaming exhausted her utterly.

She entered the cabin with caution, sniffing the air, but she knew that there were no starvelings inside. The stove was cold. There were remnants of meals here and there—dishes stacked neatly, tea cold in the pot—and it was clear that Bill had slept on the cabin’s floor for a night or two during the siege. The starvelings had not ransacked the place. For all their brutality, they were not truly animals.

Overcome, Sayblood sat down on the bed, looking down at her hands where they rested on the wrapped forms of her children. Strong hands, she once thought them. Strong hands and capable of bloodshed, something she used to relish, used to crave. It was power, then, and appetite.

But now, the very idea of death made her sick, cramped her gut. If this was love, to lose people who care for you, she wasn’t sure anymore that she wanted it.

Sacrifice. It was too much to bear.

There was a sound on the porch steps and Sayblood raised her gaze to look through the open door, expecting Othniel.

But instead, silhouetted in the doorway was the long-limbed, curve-spine form of a solitary starveling. A female, older than the average servant of her father.

The starveling stared at her. Sayblood stared back.

The creature did not charge or attack but merely waited, blinking her white, empty eyes. And Sayblood was struck, suddenly, with the weight of how much her father had brought to ruin. How much his devotion to Sumble, to a dying god, had decayed into mindless chaos, blood-red loyalty. An endless thicket of stained thorns, and for what? And endless chain of blood-painted acolytes, and why? Sayblood’s own mother had become nothing but one of One Prince’s riddles, precious life reduced to an offering.

This starveling had a name, once.

Sayblood knew, then. She could feel it. The throes of the land’s grief at Bill’s death, yes, but something else. The island was responding to something unfamiliar, vibrating like a fever to be rid of a terrible infection.

It’s time to finish this.

“He is here,” Sayblood said. “Is he not?”

The starveling swayed her strange head, tongueless mouth ajar.

Tightening her arms around her babies, Sayblood stood on shaking legs.

“I wish I remembered your name,” Sayblood said, taking cautious steps toward the starveling. “You all deserve to be called by your names, and I am so sorry that I cannot remember yours.”

The starveling blinked, stepped back a pace or two.

“Take me where you will,” Sayblood said, “but harm Othniel not. Promise me. Remember that I am still your royalty.”

The starveling seemed, in some way, to understand. She blinked at Sayblood for a moment before she slid down to her hands and feet, crawled down the porch steps. Sayblood followed. Back down the steps she had only just climbed, but this time she knew what she had to do. There was no turning back.

Escorted by four starvelings who had emerged from the treeline on silent feet, Sayblood was led up the hilltop path to the orchard, where she knew that One Prince was waiting for her.

The old female, unseen, slipped away.

*******

Othniel had settled Bill’s body into a corner and was searching the barn for weapons, as many as he could find: a mattock, an axe, a rake, an iron poker that he sometimes used to stoke the fire.

He gathered these and others into a pile just outside the barn door and went back in for the lantern and an armful of extra blankets.

But no sooner had he turned back around that the barn door slammed shut and the heavy beam fell across the frame, slid into place by unseen hands, locking him inside.

Realizing what had happened, Othniel cursed aloud. He limped to the door and peered through a knot hole in the wood. The hole was small and it was difficult to see much of anything, but he saw Sayblood walking away from the cabin, surrounded by starvelings, up toward the orchard.

He shouted her name over and over, but she did not turn.

He realized, once more, that she was facing danger alone.

You fool!

The yard and the trees were crawling with starvelings, keeping an eye on him. They meant to keep him trapped here, away from what was about to happen so that he could not interfere. He pushed hard at the big barn door, straining the beam outside, but the door was solid. He staggered to the smaller door at the back of the barn, only to find it blocked by a barricade of firewood and other flotsam and jetsam from around the yard, patrolled by starvelings visible through the slats. His own animals watched him warily from their stalls and pens.

All of the weapons that could help him now to break down the door—the axe, the mattock—were lying in an innocent pile, outside and out of reach.

Othniel screamed himself hoarse, enraged, calf still in agony from the starveling’s bite, and fell to his knees beside Bill’s body.

I can’t lose her, he thought, desperation choking his throat. Not now.

*******

The hilltop path, usually so green and alive, was faded and sickly as Sayblood climbed up, as if the color had drained from it and left it weakened and fragile.

The very trees seemed to lean away from One Prince as if he was a tall, licking flame, enrobed in pooling crimson, thin hands folded into his sleeves and gray face long and impassive. What once had been Sayblood’s whole world now looked so alien in her new home, her father standing in the orchard like a pillar of blood.

He was not looking at Sayblood as she approached, but instead peering around at the trees, studying them. He seemed especially fascinated by the objects hanging from the big wild apple tree at the heart of it all.

Starvelings throbbed in the treeline, weaving in and out, awaiting their orders. They were the only other movement. No birds sang, and all of the creatures of the woods had scattered, hiding from the infernal beings.

Sayblood came to stand before the wild apple tree, where One Prince finally looked down, took notice of her. He stood at a slight distance, appraising her.

“A strange place,” One Prince said. “And yet this looks familiar.”

He reached out with a slim finger to worry a feather hanging from the apple tree’s branches, softly stroking a piece of calico fabric, an old drape of salmon spine bones, a shard of glass, a tin cup shining with dents and scars.

“Even here, my daughter collects.” A soft smile played about his thin lips, sharp teeth glinting. “My daughter keeps, holds, treasures. Consumes. Even when Sumble is but a memory, He is still her god and her appetite.”

Sayblood heard her own voice as if from far away, very weak and quiet. “Those are gifts, Delius. Offerings of gratitude to a land reluctant to welcome me that I longed to befriend. Not mine to consume at all.”

“A reluctant land,” One Prince echoed. He slipped his hand back into his robe and his eyes flicked to the pale heads of the twins, just visible over their wrappings. “It is because you do not belong here. It is time to return, now. All is forgiven. A Dread Mother you will make, to the children of Sumble’s pleasure. Stronger now without the poet.”

Sayblood looked at the place where her father’s hands were hidden in his robes, unable to meet his eyes. There had been a time when the sound of One Prince’s riddles was like music to her, a cryptic invitation to destroy herself in getting to know him better, an impossible quest. But now his words only sounded empty, even cowardly. Perhaps the echo of his dark library, the temple, the pewter halls had always made him sound grand indeed. But here, in the midst of these towering trees—reaching for a sky beyond One Prince’s grasp—he sounded very small, and even foolish.

“I will not return,” she said.

One Prince’s eyes remained blank. He nodded. “Then give me the children,” he said. “For they were conceived in Sumble’s belly, and belong to Him.”

She shook her head. “They belong to no dying god.”

One Prince paused, considering. Then, he removed his hands from his sleeves, a smooth action, and presented his palms to her.

The Twins lay there, her blades. Kysiel and Vaziel, steel shining. She had last seen them wielded by Rooster as she ran from the crossroads.

She wondered, nauseous, if his death had been swift.

“Take these,” One Prince said. “Forsake the children in your arms and take these, instead. They suit you better. Sayblood. Dread Lady.”

Sayblood replied, her gaze rising to meet her father’s for the first time, “Those are not my children, Delius.”

A flicker of impatience slithered across his flat lips. “I will not return to Sumble empty-handed.”

“I understand,” Sayblood replied. “And I tell you for the final time: I will not return at all, and neither will my children. Let Sumble see your empty hands.”

One Prince studied her, and his eyes softened ever so slightly, a difficult emotion to read. For one wild moment, Sayblood thought he might actually turn and go, leave her in peace.

But it was not to be.

One Prince, like the striking of a serpent, flicked the blades up to take them easily in his long-fingered grip before he whistled them past Sayblood’s ears to pin her backward against the wide, gnarled trunk of the wild apple tree. Kysiel held only the thick fabric of her coat, but Vaziel had flown low and bitten through the coat into the flesh and sinew of her shoulder, and she cried out in surprise and pain. The babies woke and began to shriek, choking on their alarm.

One Prince strode forward, eerily calm. He reached out while Sayblood struggled against the blades and took the babies from the wrappings. Rose and Wren looked so small and delicate in his hands, squalling, their tiny fists beating the air, tiny feet kicking against the sight of their pale-eyed grandfather’s delight.

Sayblood hissed and struggled against the tree, the wood digging into her spine, her blood sliding down the gnarled bark, pain searing down her shoulder, her ribs.

“Beautiful,” One Prince said, holding his grandchildren with something like hunger. “May you make a choice meal, little ones. Tiny queens. Tiny dealers of death. Such a life of appetite lies before you.”

*******

Othniel cried out with every kick.

With his good leg he struck at the small barn door, steadying himself on the wounded one, and it shuddered with pain and effort. He cursed himself for being such an attentive craftsman; the barn door was sturdy, timbers barely reacting when he struck them with his booted foot.

Something was happening. He could feel it, the very land reacting, as if readying itself to leap like an animal, growling with threat. He thought he heard distant screams coming from the orchard. Every fiber of his body was bent toward getting out of here, finding Sayblood, finding the twins.

He reared back to try again when, impossibly, the door creaked open, the barricade outside dismantled. A starveling stood there, peering in with its strange white eyes.

It looked old, somehow, though Othniel knew little about these things. But the starveling beckoned with its strange hand, as if inviting Othniel out of the barn.

Sensing a trap, Othniel hesitated. But the starveling—as if in a show of good faith—threw something down on the ground between them.

It was Othniel’s rifle, that he had left back in the clearing.

He picked it up, and the starveling beckoned again, quickly. So he followed it out of the barn. It took a sharp turn around the side of the building, giving Othniel directions with its hands—crouch, go faster, slow down—and Othniel realized that the creature was taking him on a route through the yard away from the prying eyes of the other sentinel starvelings, sending him on a hidden way up to the orchard.

For whatever reason, it was trying to help.

Othniel was not able to speak to the old starveling, knowing it could not answer his questions with no tongue.

But he did wonder, briefly, if such creatures had names.

*******

The despair filled Sayblood from the feet upward. She could feel the tree thrumming against her back, some combination of rage and pain. The old apple tree’s sap and Sayblood’s own blood mingled, sliding down the trunk, soaking the coat’s fabric. The branches rustled in no wind, the gifts in the branches stirred by invisible wrath.

Sayblood finally managed to slip her good arm from the pinned sleeve of her coat, but could not pull Vaziel from her shoulder. It held fast. The agony was incredible.

One Prince is carrying her children away.

There were nightmarish visions firing through Sayblood’s mind with every beat of her heart, the tree’s pain translating through their mingled blood into images of forest fire, of tidal wave, of drought. These were the things it understood, injuries it recognized.

It did not understand blade. Did not understand steel. Maddened, like a wounded bear.

“I am sorry,” Sayblood sobbed as the tree vibrated, shrilled against her as she tugged against the embedded blade. “I am so sorry. Please…please help me. Please. In Bill’s name. In Shrike’s name. In the name of every bird and beast and bloom of this place, this home, my home…please help me.”

Sayblood bowed her head and wept, helpless. The tree stilled.

The desperate prayer seemed, at first, to go unheard. But it was One Prince’s startled sound—so strange, so unfamiliar—that made Sayblood raise her head to look.

Her babies were gone from One Prince’s hands.

In their place, an impossible transformation had taken hold.

Wren, in the tiny body of a perfect passerine songbird, lifted easily out of her grandfather’s grasp and into the air, landing in the apple tree’s branches. Rose, for her part, had become a darkly-furred, lithe-limbed, twitch-eared beast, and her sharp teeth and strong jaws had latched hard into the wrist of One Prince, who cried out in terror.

Hound. The word fell to Sayblood’s tongue. Mouse’s dream-animal of loyalty and guardianship was a real beast, and here it was before her, even more beautiful than she thought possible.

Sayblood, who had never heard her father express fear and pain before, could only stare, hypnotized.

The Rose-hound let go and dropped to its paws, then followed fast after her fluttering sister-bird until the two of them vanished into the darkness of the woods, too quick and quiet to be pursued by the bewildered starvelings.

As the twins vanished, One Prince let out a guttural hiss, cradling his bleeding wrist against his red robes. He pitched forward with his good hand and reached for Vaziel, digging the blade deeper into the tree, sending a fresh round of pain through Sayblood’s shoulder, arm, side. She scrabbled at his grip with her good hand, but she was not strong enough to move him.

“Blasphemer,” One Prince breathed into her face, cold and dusty as the pages of his books. “Blasphemer. Death take you! This is what happens when you turn your back on your god!”

Sayblood met her father’s eyes unwavering. She hoped he saw her mother in them. She hoped he saw Shrike, and Rooster, and Mouse. She hoped he saw Bill, with all the weight of the island’s authority in that brilliant blue.

“Sumble is no god,” she said. “I know that now. I know it, because I have met a true god here, of trees and spring and apples and Christmas. The poet’s god, the sea’s god, the land’s god.”

One Prince’s gaze narrowed briefly, but then, as the ground below them both began to tremble and heave, his strange pale eyes widened with abject horror.

Sayblood bowed her head.

“May you fall prey to none but Him,” she said.

The earth pitched. The starvelings screamed. One Prince stumbled backward as the island rejected him with violence.

It was a river. An impossible flow of water, bursting up from underground at the center of the orchard and rushing in a terrible torrent. It swept the screaming starvelings out and away, tearing them down the hillside and out to sea. And it grasped One Prince by the ankles, the knees, the crimson robes—ghostly hands holding him fast—and pulled him away, too, shrieking and inarticulate.

What fate he fell to, Sayblood did not know.

The water rose fast and powerful, indiscriminate in its rage, and threw Sayblood against the tree, unable to steady herself. But she felt strong hands, desperate hands, pull Vaziel from her shoulder and take her in his arms.

Strong arms, pulling her back from the torrent.

Sayblood held tightly to Othniel as he carried her away from the flooding orchard into the safety of the woods, limping carefully on his own wounded leg.

When the sound of the water faded, so too did Sayblood, slipping into the darkness of a dream filled with fluttering wings, twitching ears, and the soft padding of clawed feet.

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