Page 6 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Still the shadow waited.
All the stories she heard, all the things her mother had told her—they seemed like such mockeries now. Clumsy half-ideas sketched out by the ignorant and proclaimed as the truth, because how could any story convey the reverent, wonderful terror of this? The open door with something waiting behind it? And Estamond wondered—a little wildly, a little heretically—what would happen if she just left it open.
Or what would happen if she simply . . . walked through.
The voice keened louder now, plangent and strange. It was a wail both unearthly and not, both disquieting and oddly familiar. Estamond had the uncomfortable sense that it was for her, somehow, that the voice was lamenting her.
Or if not her, then the Thorn King come to die at the door tonight.
She took another step back, and then another, until she stumbled back against the grassy hump of the ancient earth-covered altar. She felt more terror than wonder now, more horror than awe, because inside of that lamenting voice was her fate, and her fate was a forlorn and lonely death, and she didn’t want it, she didn’t want any of it. She wanted Randolph and her children, she wanted Esau and Esra. She wanted more harvests, more Lammas revels when her biggest fear was making sure there was enough mead and ale for the feasters. She wanted sticky summer nights and snow-heaped winter days, she wanted the hills and the mist and the bright chatter of the River Thorne.
She wanted to live, and yet living was impossible so long as her mother drew breath. Living meant death to someone she loved, and she was incapable of allowing that.
This, and more, the mournful voice seemed to know. Without understanding the words, Estamond understood the meaning.
Life was beautiful and bursting and ripe, and sometimes it had to be given up or given back. Sometimes it had to be sown back into the earth from where it came.
It was a lesson Estamond had always associated with Samhain, the feast of the final harvest, but she supposed it worked for Lammas too. Tonight instead of weaving dolls out of barley or crowns out of meadowsweet, she would be cut down like the first of the grain.
Everything in its time, her mother would say.
John Barleycorn must die, she would say too.
But what if I just left? What if I didn’t close the door?
What was the worst that could happen?
As if hearing her thoughts, the shadow moved. Just a step, just enough so that she could see where its hips tapered to long thighs. And then it lifted its hand, and then she saw the hand itself—a man’s hand like any other man’s hand, except it was glistening with something dark and wet and—
Estamond screamed.
The chanting and singing stopped, so did the drums. The only thing that remained was the piercing voice of sorrow, singing its ageless song. Singing as Estamond stared at the bloody hand, and prayed and prayed she wouldn’t see any more of the man who waited on the other side.
“I’ll do it,” she called out in a trembling voice. “Please, don’t—I shall do it myself.”
The hand lowered but the shadow remained.
Here and there, life and death …
Nearly the same thing.
Estamond felt the weight of the words as surely as she felt the weight of the torc on her neck and the weight of the bottle in her dress pocket. She understood then, why the door must close, why the veil could flutter but not part. Or at least she thought she did, because as terrifying as that shadow was, as maddening as the singing lament became as it urged her on to her own grim fate, she had to admit she was still drawn to the world beyond the door, she was still enlivened by it, even as she unstoppered the bottle that would smother the life right out of her. The world beyond the door was just like here, but more. Both more wonderful and more strange. More sweet and more dangerous.
Perhaps she could’ve lived near the open door, but many others would not wish to. Perhaps even most others.
The brew was bitter, and Estamond wished she’d brought some whisky or sherry to wash out the taste. With a regretful sigh and a careful eye on the door and the shadow behind it, she took the small knife and drew it across her palm.
It hurt.
It hurt and she hated it and her whole body seemed to light up with bone-thrumming pain as she held out her hand and let the blood drip from her fingers to the grass at the door’s threshold. An offering, a prelude to the offering to come.
The shadow didn’t move, but the chanting began again, loud and urgent and wild. There was no malevolence to it, but no benevolence either—just pure, unfettered energy that could be harnessed to any purpose. Like life itself, Estamond thought, and then felt the thought recede with a slowness that mimicked being drunk.
That would be the brew, then. Leaching through her blood like rot through grain.
Blood given to the threshold, Estamond arranged herself on the grass-covered altar. Her hand hurt and she tucked it up against her chest as she fought the urge to throw up. Dizziness came and receded and came again, and it wouldn’t be long, she was certain, it would only be a matter of minutes before she fell asleep. She was very afraid and she didn’t want to do this anymore and her hand hurt so much that she had to scream, but when she opened her mouth to scream, nothing came out, nothing but strangled breath.
