Stain pointed at her throat, indicating she couldn’t speak.
“Ah, have you lost your tongue? Fret not; I can look into one’s heart, read their deepest desires. But there must be nothing between us but flesh.” Mistress Umbra’s phantasmal hands became a half-dozen jagged twigs that reached for Stain’s clothes.
Stain stepped back, causing the mother shroud’s fingers to miss their mark. A gust of wind bristled the shaved hairs along Stain’s neck. The ring of vaporous creatures tightened around her, pushing her forward.
Mistress Umbra siphoned in and out of her children, one part ethereal, and the other substance. “Foolish boy. Do you not realize there’s no escape this time? You haven’t your pets to protect you. No rime scorpionsss,” Mistress Umbra’s beakish mouth hissed. “No shadowsss.”
Stain hadn’t expected that information. Scorpions and shadows . . . protecting her. Her mind reverted to Crony’s cryptic allusion in the garden, about shadows offering freedom. Had she, in her half-dead state, somehow brought such creatures into the ravine with her? Where were they now? Had they been captured by Dregs and mounted as displays in his shop?
Remorse tightened in her chest as she thought upon her abandoned jars of earlier. She had to return to the ravager’s camp and steal them back.
The wispy shrouds expanded to a wall of solid soot around her, leaving no opening. Meeting Mistress Umbra’s beady gaze, Stain pointed to the path above, indicating she wished to leave.
“We have captured you,” the mother shroud said, “thus we own you. We need but choose whether to absorb your mind and memories, or gorge upon your flesh.”
Stain’s throat grew dry. She signed out of instinct and desperation, having no expectation of being understood, for who could possibly read the strange language shared by her, Luce, and Crony?
You didn’t capture me. I know you to be tricksters, but I chose to brave entering. To seek answers. I’ve no memory for you to consume. Your lair is as much my birthplace as it is yours . . . the place where my identity both ended and originated.
To Stain’s surprise, the circle of shrouds drew back, their eyes dimming as they turned to their mother.
“How do you know the old language?” Mistress Umbra asked, her beakish nose tipping sideways, as if weighed with curiosity.
Stain gasped in disbelief. Her fingers grew more eager with the next question. Old language?
“Ancient.”
Where did it come from? Who first used it? Stain asked these both as questions and wondrous epiphanies. There were a people somewhere with whom she could communicate.
“Its origins are vague. We know only that it abides within our consciousness.” The mother shroud waved a twiggy arm to encompass her children. “Our eldest souls brought it with them after the moon dropped from the sky. They remembered it from a great war involving deadly beasts. It harkens back to a time when there was no ravine . . . no split in the earth. No collection of disembodied corpses craving everything they’ve lost.”
That was Stain’s cue. She opened her bag and dragged out a chime, holding it up. The glassy cylinders glistened faintly in the stagnant, shrouded miasma surrounding her.
I propose a trade . . . fresh human memories for my freedom.
She forwent asking for any further information. Given that the multitude of white eyes pierced her through—as though surmising how she might taste—securing her present seemed much more crucial than any past ever could.
Mistress Umbra took one look at a mother and daughter singing nursery rhymes in the jingling glass and laughed—a thick, frothy sound, like the gurgle of a stray quag-puddle. “No, child. There will be no bargain. These memories sing of sleep and cessation. The search for rest is what trapped us here. We have slept long enough. What we wish for is to live, to experience. To wake . . . eternal.”
The mother shroud’s refusal spurred her children to rise, bobbing in front of Stain with cavernous mouths open, their cold breath rife with the stench of blood and death. Stain suppressed a soundless scream and dropped the chimes while holding tight to her bag.
Mistress Umbra sidled close enough her beak touched the tip of Stain’s nose. Her ghoulish beauty sent a chill through Stain’s spine. “Many long years ago, a sylph man fluttered in and took a prize from us. A princess of Eldoria that we marked as our own.”
Stain sucked in a shocked breath. A sylph. Were they speaking of Luce when he still had his wings?
“In the bargain, he left us a part of her, to experience the robust flavor of her sins. But it escaped our watch. Then, you came to fulfill that emptiness. We felt the same draw to you, as you were also from that castle.”
Stain tensed. From Eldoria’s castle? How do you know?
“We recognized the page boy’s royal vestments; only two other witnesses realized you were wearing Eldoria’s traditional habiliments. A shame those two have been keeping that secret from you.”
Stain stood her ground, though the reminder of Luce and Crony’s betrayal made her want to sink.
“You came today in hopes to understand who you are. I will tell you.” Mistress Umbra stretched tall as a tree. Stain craned her neck to look up at her and lost her balance, landing on her rump. “You are payment for a debt long overdue. We’ve thought of you often, wishing to see inside your mind and understand how a boy of Eldoria’s courts merited the fealty of Nerezeth’s creatures. Day and night, together, here in our wasteland. When you first came, we had hoped to absorb your memories, your identity, your power; for our need to conquer and assimilate roils as deep and dark as our hunger for flesh.”
The shrouds whipped around Stain’s head, slapping her with fallen leaves and bits of ash. Their gusty passage swiped at her eyelashes, stirring them so they tickled unsettlingly.
“However, mostly dead and broken as you were, the old witch thought you valuable. So she promised us recompense should we turn you over.” The mother shroud snarled. “She gave us an important memory from a dying knight then vowed to send that marked princess to us again, so we could share the memory with her. For it will break her. Thus, we released you, as the promise of vengeance is sweeter by far than any other flavor. But five years have passed, and all we have to show for our patience is the bouquet of roses that rested upon your chest in your coffin.” Two of the shrouds sank into the ground then returned with a bouquet of withered black roses held between their nebulous forms. They tossed them toward Stain. She picked them up. The perfume was powerful and stung her nose, triggering a ripple of familiarity. Not from a memory, but from a dream she’d had just before waking the first time in Crony’s keep. A dream of lavender petals and golden ink on black pages. “As you have no memories to share, your mind has little to satisfy our consciousness. Thus, we’ll settle for your tender flesh to appease our appetite.”
Stain’s pulse lurched. The shrouds hissed and gathered so thickly, they blotted out the canopy overhead until there was nothing but blinking white eyes and gaping, hollow mouths. Stain drew up her hands to protect her face, pleading in silence. Her eyes squeezed so tightly, she didn’t realize her fingers had lit up until she felt the burn. She peeked, seeing the golden glow and that the roses had revived in her hands, the petals soft and velvety again—as if freshly plucked.
The shrouds pulled back to make room for Mistress Umbra. Her twiggy fingers took the bouquet away. “You’ve sunlight in your hands, boy . . . another fascinating anomaly. But not enough to save you. Not enough.”
The shrouds advanced and siphoned into her skin, their blackness spreading alongside her veins in jagged trails. She felt herself becoming vaporous, her heart slowing its beat.
If you’re done entertaining your playmates, I could show them some real light.
Stain’s body stiffened at Scorch’s voice in her mind. He sounded out of breath, yet strong.
Help me, she pleaded.
As you say, tiny trifling thing, but you will owe me a token of service. Things are going to get hot. Protect yourself.
She forced her body into a ball—a monumental effort, as her limbs and torso felt as insubstantial as air. The moment she’d covered her head with the canvas bag, rescue came in a rush of hoofbeats, heat, and harrowing shrieks. An uncomfortable pulsation stretched beneath her skin and out her fingertips as the shrouds abandoned her. They dispersed behind their trees, leaving Mistress Umbra to fend off Scorch’s fiery attack alone.