A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Another laugh echoed off the trees, galloping through the shadows, circling round and round. Then a form as tall as a giant (or so it seemed to Heloise) approached through the shimmering light. It was like watching a heat-vapor turned living and dark, so indistinct were its contours. Yet it walked with a strange litheness almost akin to grace had it not been simultaneously ugly. It was impossible to say whether the silhouette was animal or human. Both at once, perhaps. All Heloise knew for certain was that it was female.
Her hand holding the branch shook. Realizing this, Heloise clasped her other hand tightly around the first, steadying it. Her eyes blazing, she shouted at the approaching figure, “Are you Aunt?”
Another laugh. The darkness between the shining lights shifted, and the shape was definitely human now, or close to human, but so tall that it would have stood a head or more taller than Heloise’s father. As the creature drew nearer, either her form became solid where it had been vaporous, or Heloise’s vision clarified. The woman’s neck was so thick and her shoulders so powerful that she might pull the load of five oxen without strain. Once again Heloise stared up at the great figure, cringing despite her best efforts under the empty-eyed gaze of that white skull mask. The mask grinned at Heloise in the diamond light.
The woman spoke in that voice as strange as her laugh. “I am Aunt. I am Sister. I am Wife. I am Family.”
“Not my family,” said Heloise. “You’ve taken my family. And I want her back.” She cringed again, cursing herself but unable to help it, when another laugh burst through the clenched teeth of the skull-mask grin.
“Not your family?” said the woman. “Indeed, would that it were true!”
She began to circle Heloise, who turned in place so as to keep the sharp, pointed end of her silver-gold branch between them. This didn’t seem to worry Aunt in the least; the skull mask went on grinning even as it had, even as it always would. She moved with a heavy tread, her feet coming down hard upon the ground, grinding diamond dust with loud crunches at each step. Her head lowered, and Heloise sensed eyes studying her through the mask’s empty eye holes.
“Have you come,” Aunt said at last, still circling Heloise as she would her prey, “to hunt with Uncle and with me?”
Heloise recalled the tale her grandmother had told—the hunt of Marcel, the miller lad for whom Cateline had smiled a special smile. But Evette had no special smile for any boy in Canneberges. So surely this hunt could not be as awful as that one. Perhaps Aunt and Uncle would be unable to find a proper prey. Perhaps . . .
Perhaps nothing. She could reason and she could hope, but the fact remained: She must continue what she had begun.
“Uh,” said Heloise. “I—I don’t intend to hunt anything. Or anyone, for that matter. But . . . but I’ll follow your hunt if that’s what I have to do. To get Evette back.”
“To get what back?” said Aunt.
“My sister.”
“Oh. That thing.”
Suddenly, to Heloise’s horror, a tongue shot out from between the mask’s teeth. A long black tongue that licked across the sharp edges once, twice, then disappeared.
Heloise’s stomach heaved, and she thought she might cough up all the fish broth and healthsome herbs she had eaten in recent history. Her face went green with the effort it took to keep her stomach contents in place. But she brandished her branch and took a step forward, half expecting that rictus jaw to open wide and devour her even as she did so. Nevertheless, she put all the force and fury of her spirit into her voice as she demanded, “Where is my sister? Where have you taken her?”
Aunt laughed again. She crouched, and her limbs changed. Or rather, Heloise’s perspective on them changed, for Aunt was always herself, unchanging as the sun and the sky. Heloise knew as she gazed upon the powerful creature before her, with its great spotted shoulders and its sturdy forelimbs, that this was as much Aunt’s true form and self as the womanly body she had appeared in but a moment before.
Heloise had never heard the word hyena. She had no frame of reference from which to understand what she looked upon. It was too strange, too ugly . . . and yet there was so much power in its ugliness. Nothing like the power of a lion. This was a strength far more raw, far less majestic.
Aunt still wore a mask upon her face, a skull-shaped mask with a jutting muzzle. Once again the black tongue shot out between the cage of teeth, licking the cavity where a nose should have been.
“Come, little mortal bane,” said the hyena-woman. “Let us join Uncle in the Night Hunt!”
TWENTY-SEVEN
They progressed through the forest, Heloise always just a few paces behind the loping form of Aunt. Sometimes the light cast by the diamonds was so bright, she lost sight of her grotesque guide entirely. But within a few paces, the light would shift and Heloise would see the broad-shouldered creature which, in an instant, might transform into the shape of a woman. Then back again. Then back again.
Heloise stopped trying to keep track.
Before they had gone far, she sensed that someone had joined them. “Uncle,” she whispered, and could not stop herself from turning her head, from trying to spot him . . . from trying to see if he indeed had the head of a skull as the Lion-Prince had claimed. But if it was he, she could not see him, no matter how close he came. He kept the light of the diamond trees close about him like a shield. If Heloise tried to look too closely, she would be blinded.
A weird duet of laughs filled the forest around her. They were so alike, it was impossible to say which laugh belonged to which monster. As they ran, they never seemed to stop laughing. The sound got into Heloise’s ears and wriggled its way deep inside her head until she almost felt like laughing herself. But she wouldn’t.
Soon it was no longer a laughing duet, it was a whole chorus. The light of the diamond forest flickered with more shadows as a dozen more hyenas joined the chase.
What were they hunting? Heloise wondered, but the voice in her head offered no answers. The image of the fleeing deer embroidered into Benedict’s counterpane flashed across her mind’s eye. Would she be expected to participate in the kill? To feast on newly dead flesh?
Her stomach heaved again. She recalled Grandmem on her doorstep in the morning sun, doubled up and gagging upon a memory so hideous even all these years later.
Aunt was near to hand, fallen back a few paces to run alongside Heloise. Her black tongue hung over the skull’s sagging jaw.
“What are we chasing?” Heloise demanded, afraid to hear the answer but determined nevertheless.
“Chasing?” said Aunt, turning to glance at her through the skull’s empty eye-sockets. “We chase nothing. We hunt only that which is already dead, and we feast upon that which remains.”
Heloise came to a stop, clutching the silver-gold branch tightly in her fist. She did not think she could go a single step further.
This did not matter. In that moment the diamond light of the forest dimmed before her vision. Straight ahead, as though seen through a tunnel of alternating lights and shadows, stood a strange figure the like of which she could not have described even to herself. It was man-like but warped, bent, and . . . and writhing, somehow. Like liquid or smoke made just solid enough to stand on two feet.
Though stand wasn’t the right word at all. For this creature, whatever it was, was braced as though it had died upright while receiving blows of the most extreme agony.
It stank. Far beyond the stench of retted flax. Far beyond the stench of the chandler’s tallow caldrons. Far, far beyond even the stink of the dyer’s yard, so far beyond that the comparison could scarcely be made. It stank like the very breath of Death himself. Like some treasure, once beautiful, left out to rot and decay.
With a manic, gluttonous cry, the shadow of Uncle, who had been just out of sight, surged forward, nearly knocking Heloise from her feet with the force of his passing. She saw a thick neck topped with a skull that may or may not have been living. She saw powerful forelegs and shoulders more massive even than Au
So the beast that was Uncle fell upon the dead, smoke-like creature and tore into it, worrying it, savaging it even as it stood there, defenseless in its death. It should not be possible to tear out lashings of twisted darkness, but Uncle did just that, gulping down mouthfuls while uttering hideous, guttural sounds that Heloise could not stand to hear.
He was joined a moment later by others of his kind, laughing, roaring monsters who ripped into the . . . the thing, whatever it was, from all sides. They pushed it from a standing death to a kneeling death and slashed with their teeth into the back of what Heloise considered, for want of a better word, its neck. Black flecks of what might have been blood, or might have been something else entirely, stained their muzzles.
Heloise could not think, could not find the strength or courage to make her mind work. She stared unblinking in the light of the diamond trees at the gorging taking place, a gorging she could not understand.
Then Aunt, standing beside her, grinning though she did not join the carnage, spoke in a low growl: “Do you recognize this dead thing? Do you know who it is we have hunted down? Do you know upon what we feast?”
It came over Heloise in a terrible rush. She recognized it. She recognized . . . him!
She blinked.
When her eyes opened, Heloise was not in the diamond forest anymore. She stood in the dark dining hall of Centrecœur, clutching the mirror in her hands, staring not into the glass but over it. Staring at Benedict.
He stood like one struck numb. His eyes were open and fixed upon her, but his vision was far away. His face, pale with sickness, pale with near-death, was ghastly in the glow of his one small candle.
Suddenly he moaned and dropped the candle, which sputtered out in its own pool of hot wax. Benedict sank to his knees, moaned again, then was silent. Utterly silent even as he buried his face in his hands, frozen, bowed down, bent almost to the breaking point.
“Benedict!” Heloise cried, nearly dropping her mirror as she rushed to him. She felt his arms, felt his chest, put her trembling hand to the back of his neck. But there was nothing. No tearing animal wounds.
He grunted. His body convulsed beneath her touch. She put down the mirror and grabbed his hands in both of hers, struggling to pull them away from his face. “Benedict! Benedict, what’s happening to you?”
Heloise heard the memory of her own voice asking her grandmother about the Night Hunt and the miller boy upon whom Aunt and Uncle had preyed. “Did they kill him?”
“No, child. No, they did not kill him. Much worse than that. Much worse . . .”
Heloise wept without realizing it. At the sight of the young lord so utterly broken, so lost in pain, she could not help herself. She clutched his hands harder and, half afraid she would hurt him, pried them at last from his face. It was too dark in that room to see him well, so she grabbed his cheeks, turning his head toward the window.
His eyes gleamed in the pale light. But they were the eyes of a dead man.
“What are they doing to you?” Heloise whispered, dropping her hold on him and falling away. Then, cursing herself for her cowardice, she fumbled around in the darkness. Her hands found the mirror, and she took it up swiftly and stared into it, nearly blinded by the brilliance of the diamond forest within. She shook her head fiercely . . .
. . . and she was back among the trees, surrounded by the sounds of slaughter and savagery. Aunt stood before her, grinning through her mask, her great shoulders drawn back and her arms crossed over her chest.
“Do you understand, mortal beast?” she asked. “Do you understand what we do?”
“No! I don’t understand!” Heloise cried, but even as she did so, she stared at the black, writhing form. It had grown. In those few moments since she fled the forest it had grown, and more monsters had come from all corners to feast upon its pain.
The voice in her head whispered at last, They feast upon the shadow of his despair. Here in the Between it is made living, though it is a dead sort of life. And the more they feast, the greater it will become.
I’m sorry it has come to this.
“You can stop it, cursebreaker,” Aunt said, bending so that the snarling muzzle of her mask was level with Heloise’s face. “You can put an end to this even now. Walk away. Leave the Between, leave this forest. Never return.”
Heloise blinked again.
She stood in Centrecœur. Benedict lay prostrate on the ground, weeping, groaning, convulsing in agony he could not comprehend. It was her fault. She had led him into this. He had wanted nothing more than to help her, though he had no reason to. He had been a true friend to her, believing her madness, aiding her in a quest not his own.
This was his thanks. Even now, what sights did those dead eyes of his look upon? What dreams now ripped to shreds?
Before her vision flashed the memory of that dark day, that dark hole dug in that dark ground. And the pale dead face of her sister. Her heart. Her goodness. Buried and lost forever . . .
“I am stronger than I think,” she whispered, and lifted the mirror.
“What will it be, cursebreaker?” Aunt demanded as Heloise appeared in the diamond forest. “Will you continue this madness of yours in the face of his suffering? Are you so cruel as to allow this innocent to bear the punishment for your family’s sin?”
Heloise swayed where she stood, feeling the strange wobbling of the world around her wanting to push her back out again. How easy it would be to slip back into her own world and never return! To accept the loss of Evette, whom no one else remembered in any case. No one would miss her. No one would know of Heloise’s failure. Not even Grandmem, who couldn’t possibly live much longer. Who would blame her for making this choice, for saving the kind young lord who had done nothing to deserve this pain! No one would fault her, no one would know, except . . .
“I would blame myself,” Heloise hissed through clenched teeth.
She turned away from the shadow, from the laughter, from the gory sounds of gorging. She marched to the nearest of the diamond trees, its heavy boughs bending down to her, sharper than any sword, stronger than any steel.
Take the diamond branch, said the voice in her head, thin and strained with anxiety and need.
“I’m stronger than I think,” Heloise said.
She took hold of the lowest branch even as she had before. And she pulled.
“What are you doing?” Aunt snarled behind her. The monsters looked up from their prey, and Heloise felt the force of their many, awful gazes boring into her from behind. “What are you doing?” Aunt demanded. “You cannot break the diamond! Give it up!”
“Give it up!”
“Give it up!”
“Give it up!”
The monsters chortled and roared. The brilliance of the forest swam with shifting, racing shadows swarming around the edge of Heloise’s vision. She felt them close in, felt the potent wrath of their spirits.
“You cannot break the diamond!” Aunt shouted and laughed. The others joined in her laughter, mocking and threatening all at once.
Heloise pulled again. She lacked the strength in her mortal limbs. But these weren’t her mortal limbs.
She was her reflection. Her reflection was her.
“I’m stronger than I think!” she cried, adjusted her grip, and twisted with all her might. All the might of her sister, her dear, dead Hélène, whose strength she had stolen since before they were born. And such a strength it was, coursing through her veins, through her bones, through every sinew and muscle!
She felt fire, the fire of strength which had always been hers but which she had never known until this moment. The branch groaned, cracked. The diamond shivered with life and energy and sudden heat far more vital than stone.
“Hélène!” she gasped and then, “Evette!”
A branch of silver . . . a branch of gold . . . a branch of diamond adamant . . .
The branch broke off in her grasp. Heloise staggered and fell on her back, both hands gripping the strange
Heloise rolled onto her stomach then up to her knees, then her feet. She clutched the diamond branch inexpertly in the way she thought perhaps a sword should be held, the sharp ends faced away, the broken stump gripped in both hands. The shadows spun dizzyingly around her, a whirlwind of fury. She could scarcely make out distinct forms. This didn’t matter.
With a wild yell equal to any of theirs, Heloise flung herself at the nearest shadow, swinging the diamond for all she was worth. It connected with a crack that didn’t come from the unbreakable branch itself, and she felt a shudder roll up her arm even as the monster she’d struck roared in pain.
She didn’t pause even a moment to triumph; there were still far too many. With another yell, she whirled and struck again. They pressed in so close upon her that she could hardly move without striking something. She saw a bright red stream trickle down the brilliant diamond, and it made her sick to see. But she redoubled her energies, swinging again, thrusting and striking at anything that moved.
Someone shouted beyond the howls of the monsters, a voice she recognized distantly as Aunt’s:
“Away! Away! You cannot touch her! Remember the Law!”
A last blast of angry roaring, like the final gusts of a raging thunderstorm, was enough to throw Heloise hard onto her knees. But she braced herself, clutching the diamond branch, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Suddenly they were gone. All the monsters and their fury. She felt the warmth of the diamond forest’s glare upon her, and the force of a single angry glare. Opening her eyes, she looked up into the face of Aunt.
Aunt, who no longer wore her mask. Who stood before Heloise, weirdly fey, with skin black and speckled, and eyes the bright blue of a summer sky. Whatever glamour of terror she had worn before had dropped away, and the truth of her beauty was more terrible still.