An Unclean Legacy

Once Upon a Time

Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

April 7, 1498

Violet Groeneveldt stands before the scrying mirror. She is nearly ten.

Show me the face of my destined, she says.

The mirror’s image wavers. It shows her Samael, who sleeps beneath the earth. It shows her Prince Cadmus, whom she has recently rejected. It shows her a twisting matrix of equations writ in gold. Lastly it displays for her her dead old uncle, Baltasar, who turns his death-dulled eyes to stare upon her through the glass.

Coldness moves in her arms, in her chest, in her throat. She reminds herself to breathe. Her eyes trace the patterns in the wood alongside the mirror, up and down along the lines. She tries to remember that she is Violet Groeneveldt but it is difficult with horror instead of her own face looking back at her just outside the focus of her eyes.

Finally she shakes her head, once, and the mirror becomes a mirror once again.

Violet disappears into Castle Groeneveldt. She dodges several Princes. She admires the windowsill hiding place of her younger brother Francescu, who is dodging suitors of his own, and then she shakes the admiration off. She is not in hiding nor in siblinghood, not properly, today. She pounds on her father’s door. She waits. After ten long minutes he answers. After thirty he comes out. She is practically dancing from foot to foot with frustration and impatience as she leads him back and he trudges along slowly after.

Dardanos the Younger emerges from around a corner. He stops. His eyes widen. He takes in Groeneveldt in his nightshirt and his cap and Violet in her formal gown.

Milord Groeneveldt! he says. Frantically he brushes back his hair. Violet tries to keep walking. He skitters backwards to stay in front of them and performs a frantic, accelerated bow. The Lady Violet had told me you were indisposed; that you are always indisposed; that you were probably dead and only the inadequacies of local cremation practices had you walking around at all; I am so very glad to see you well.

Hnk, snorts Montechristien Groeneveldt.

He looks at Violet. He looks back at Dardanos. Your father was intemperate, lad. Spoke too much. Left me unpleasant memories. I hope that’s not the same for you?

Dardanos gulps. He shakes his head. He holds up a finger as if he’s going to say something, and then he squeaks, loudly, and retreats.

Hnk, Montechristien says again.

Violet drags him in front of the mirror. Montechristien makes faces at himself. He turns his head to one side and then the other. Violet points at the mirror, demonstratively. It does nothing. Montechristien stretches his face out, showing the mirror his teeth, and then settles into offering his reflection a stern and regal look. Violet gestures to the mirror, broadly, once again.

Montechristien’s finger twitches.

The Violet of fifty minutes past shimmers into view within the mirror’s frame. ‘Show me the face of my destined,’ she commands, and in a sharp clear voice. She fades away.

The mirror shows.

Samael. Cadmus. Equations writ in pure, alchemic gold. And Baltasar. The eyes of Baltasar in the reflection light up with an eerie interest. He grins. He laughs. He points at Montechristien Groeneveldt. Shadows wrap around Baltasar and fires begin to burn in his flesh and in his eyes.

Montechristien’s finger twitches once again and the mirror becomes blank glass.

Well, says Montechristien.

He hesitates.

You have a plethora of choices, at the least, he says. He attempts a creaky grin. It fails, because his face is inadequate for it. He manages a crooked, tired sneer. So there is that.

Violet looks at him helplessly.

I—I had thought, she says, that if I knew my destined, I could beg off from my suitors; or select the one that the mirror declared I’d want, at least. But the results are as you see.

There is no point in divination, says Montechristien. I have said.

Please, father.

When I was your age, says Montechristien, you know, not many Princes and Princesses gathered to vie for my hand. I’d often think, ‘ho ho ho! They’re missing out!’ But in the secret corners of my soul I knew that often I was lonelier than they.

He tries again to smile.

She is looking at his eyes. He hates it when people do that. He shifts his eyes to the side lest she see something of his truths.

When he looks at her again her face has fallen and she is struggling not to cry.

He sighs.

He leans on his walking stick. He lowers himself down onto one knee. He touches her shoulder.

I could enchant you, he says. When the man who is to marry you comes within ten yards, snap! A rope seizes his foot. He is swung up into a tree. He is doomed to dangle there, fed scraps and filth by birds and golden monkeys, for seventy and seven days; or until he cuts the rope, at any rate, whichsoever should happen first. Then he may of course advance to press the suit again, but what is this? You have flitted away, you are as elusive as the wind, or more than ten yards’ distance away again, at any rate. He must relent or cross that terrifying ten-yard line, and be hauled up into the trees again.

She snorts. Please.

Eh?

Do you think, she says, that I will be pretty? I mean, when I am grown?

Of course. He looks away again. As beautiful as the stars.

So you would have me be, she says, "an enchanted princess, as beautiful as the stars, that men may not approach. And this is your plan for reducing the trouble that I shall have from suitors."

Ah, he says. Well.

He clears his throat.

Perhaps you could also give me some sort of rhyming animal companion, she says, inexorably. "And bind me into enchanted sleep. Just to make certain, absolutely certain, you see, that nothing untoward takes place."

He clears his throat again.

Your mother was not so sarcastic, he says. It was a virtue.

She looks fiercely away from him and at the floor.

Also when suitors troubled her, he says, "she would dig up ancient horrors from before the days of man and have them strangle them; or poke out their eyes, shove them from a height, and beg me to finish them off in some sort of inimitable and heroic manner. What she did not do was drag her father out of bed and make him talk to Princes and look in on the damned when in fact he wants to sleep."

You have taught me a valuable lesson, she says, "about independent spirit. A girl should be polite, non-sarcastic, leave her father to sleep for seventeen days and fourteen hours at a time, and defend her virtue and autonomy through the performance of Goetia, or, if necessary, by poking out her suitors’ eyes: these are the characteristics distinguishing a lady from the common sort."

You will doubtless master the non-sarcastic part, he says, in time.

Look at them! she says, and such is the raw force of fear in her that the mirror lights up again against his will and he must see his brother Baltasar again.

What would you have of me? Montechristien asks.

Kill them, she says. "Kill them, thresh them, cut up the pieces of them, scatter them, drain their blood into the ground and set their spirit free in mist. Enchant me, but not to suspend arrant suitors from trees or inflict a cheerful little dance upon the rampant but to finish them off, father, to end it, to end it, if these should be what is destined for me, and for the love of God."

He is staring at her.

She meets his eyes, intending to throw him a defiant glare, but there is such fondness in his expression that she is lost and confused and very young and small instead. It catches her like a deer in headlights. He can only smirk, he cannot smile, but his eyes—

You are so like her, he says, down his long nose, and she can see the tears that glitter in his eyes.

Kill them, she’d said. Kill them, thresh them, cut them up; finish them off, father, if these are the suitors destined for me, and for the love of God.

And so he does.

She is an enchanted princess from that day, and she grows to become as free and as beautiful as the stars, and her legend only spreads: but she is named murderess, and monster, too, though perhaps it is unfairly; and the knights, the princes, and the troubadours who come to seek her hand are few and far between, and for the most part, they do not stay.

Twenty-one years go by.

The Devil and the Unicorn

a tale of Ys

Isle of Ys,

The Lower World

1468-1499

Once upon a time, they say, the sorcerer Montechristien Groeneveldt bound the Devil between five peaks.

The people of that mountainous region were not well-pleased. Once-fertile land lay now permanently in shadow under the Devil’s back. His thrashing brought earthquakes. His cords and tail cut scores across the land.

The locals were human.

They adapted.

They built a new city on the Devil’s rich stomach. They used his bonds as bridges. They learned to tune out his tempting whispers, his ear-piercing wails, his threats and his promises.

Life went on.

Then came Santrieste the unicorn.

He was beautiful, was Santrieste. His eyes were the color of smoked glass. His mane was wild and his heart was clean.

He was a holy fire of the freedom of the void.

His feet clicked and clacked on the stone as he walked along the mountain ledges.

Free me, said the Devil.

Santrieste twisted his head. He eyed the Devil. His nostrils flared, as if to say: Why should I do that, O enemy of the world?

It is not right, said the Devil, that any being should be thus chained, even should that being be myself.

The unicorn hesitated. These words struck him as terribly just, and it was not in his nature to hide from anything that was true. He lowered his head. He whuffed.

There is a price for such an act, he said. Why should I be the one to pay it?

And the Devil’s answer was cold and clean and it cut the unicorn’s soul down to the bone: Because you are here, and because you can.

So Santrieste cantered down to the rope that held the left arm of the Devil, and with one stroke of his marvelous horn he cut the Devil’s bonds away.

The Devil is Coming

Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

September 15, 1519

Bent and hunched and frail is Montechristien Groeneveldt. His hair is gray. In a mere few days he will be dead, and no longer can he keep the power of Castle Groeneveldt out of his children’s hands.

They are like maggots, says Montechristien.

He holds his spyglass to one eye. He stares off into the woods with it.

He is watching for their arrival.

Maggots, gathering to the body of the dead.

Thirty-one-year-old Violet, his eldest child, is there already. She mostly lives at the castle anyway; she’d been there when the first signs of trouble came, and she’s stayed with him ever since.

Are they here? she asks.

She looks out into the woods. She has no spyglass. She can see nothing.

If I did not need them — Montechristien mutters darkly.

He sighs. He shakes his head. Then he nods.

They are coming, he says. Each and every last. I will be in the tower. Keep them from killing one another, Violet. Keep them alive, until the Devil comes.

Violet squares her shoulders. She lifts her chin. She grits her teeth.

I will, she promises.

Hnk, snorts Groeneveldt. The subtext is Good luck!

The old man half-stomps, half-shuffles off.

Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

September 15, 1519 (continued)

The third-born child of Montechristien Groeneveldt is riding from the forest now. His armor is white save for the arms of it. Those are stained red. His face is austere. He is tall and he is broad. He rides a beast that is both like a horse and like a serpent. Its head is scaled and its ears are flat. He carries a twisted black spear with a wrought iron head. His name is Manfred.

Violet descends from the battlements of the castle. She walks down the winding steps. She reaches the gate.

The tops of the trees are shifting and moving in an irregular fashion. This catches Violet’s attention as Manfred rides closer.

Violet lifts a finger. Ah—

The seventh-born child is in the trees. She is the color and substance of autumn shadows. She is as the warm darkness under a blanket or the shade beneath a fallen leaf. Her shape is not a human’s shape, but rather amorphous, with thirteen great long limbs that lengthen and shorten as she moves. Her surface is strange and slick and seems vaguely to be oiled.

She has no face.

Her name is Elisabet.

She is behind Manfred and his beast and she has no smell and she makes no sound but Manfred catches her reflection in Violet’s eyes.

Three of Elisabet’s limbs rush past Manfred. They anchor in the ground. They begin to pull her closer. Three of her limbs still cling to trees in the forest behind them. The trees bend down towards him like apostles bowing before their God.

Seven limbs rush for Manfred, falling towards him in that very fashion that shadows stretch at night.

Manfred is broad but he is quick.

As Elisabet plunges towards him, as Violet lifts her finger in dismay, Manfred raises his spear and sweeps it around. He tangles it in the shadows and the shadows with it. He slams it forward into the ground, dragging Elisabet along, and as she thumps into the earth Elisabet yelps loudly. Tiny stars and birds spin around the lump that is her head.

Ninjas, curses Manfred.

He spits.

! says Elisabet, angrily. Her forward tendrils relax their grip. The trees behind Manfred draw straight. They pull Elisabet back, yanking Manfred and his spear into the air with her. The snake-horse rears and screams. Elisabet wraps around Manfred, drowning him in black.

Violet has time to say just one thing, but it is fortunately well-spoken.

Father would just resurrect him, you know.

There is an outraged spluttering sound from Elisabet. Her grip grows slack and Manfred becomes visible through the shadow.

But he is—

Manfred sets his palms against the shadows and extends his arms. The crimson brassards glow red. Elisabet decoheses and Manfred falls to the forest floor.

He stands up, creakily. He dusts himself off. He picks up his spear.

Manfred looks up.

Elisabet is still sputtering. "Look at him, she says. And his horse!"

Manfred grunts.

It is our father’s wish, says Violet, "to have seven living children when he dies."

Elisabet sulkily gathers herself into the shape of a black-clad woman. Her skin and eyes become visible as her ninjutsu fades.

Fine, she says.

Fine, Violet agrees.

You’ll regret it, Elisabet says, when he kills everybody and takes father’s power.

Manfred walks back towards the castle. After a moment, Elisabet hurries after him. When Manfred reaches his steed and takes its reins in his hand, he stops for a moment. He turns. He asks Elisabet, in the low thunder of his voice, Is that, then, what you would have me do?

And Elisabet flushes, and her face works through many emotions, and she looks very young.

And won’t you? she says.

Manfred tugs on the reins of his snake-horse. He walks forward towards the castle.

Not today.

Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

September 16, 1519

Hop hop hop! says Elisabet.

Elisabet hops.

Hide in shadows!

Elisabet deforms into a protoplasmic blob of murky substance that flails its way into a nearby shadow and is gone.

Then she emerges from the shadow, taking form as herself again.

Hop hop hop!

Elisabet hops.

She walks into the room at the base of Groeneveldt’s tower. It is a room with many entrances. The entrance opposite her is a door, which opens. Manfred stands there, silhouetted against the light.

Ack! shrieks Elisabet. She flails back towards the entrance, eight shuriken winging from her hands towards Manfred. She stumbles a little, because the room has an unexpected gutter around its circular edge.

Manfred slams the door. The shuriken stick into the wood.

There’s a pause.

Slowly, Manfred opens the door again.

Elisabet waits there, tensely, afraid.

Manfred sighs. He shakes his head. I’ll visit father later, he says.

He closes the door. His footsteps loud, then ever softer, he walks away.

Between the Proprevalles and Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

September 17, 1519

Christine and Sophie meet along the road from Proprevalles to Groeneveldt.

They are Montechristien’s fifth- and sixth-born children.

They are twins.

Sophie is trudging along, slowly, with a travel bag over her shoulder. In the distance, behind her, she can hear a clamoring and clanging as of the smith-gods on their anvils. In between the bursts of metallic sound there is the silence of the night and an occasional high-pitched whistling scream.

It is getting closer.

Heck, says Sophie.

She steps to the side of the road, but she does not step off of it entirely.

Soon Christine’s house hoves into view. It runs clangorously on its three great iron legs. Steam pours from its chimneys into the cloudless night. The lights through its windows are red.

There is a fourth limb, a sickle-limb, crooked and sharp. When there are branches that overhang the road, it cuts them down and knocks them out of the way. When trees pack too closely around the road, it severs them at the root.

As the house passes Sophie, its sickle-limb cuts down the tree to Sophie’s left, the tree behind her, and the tree to her right with one great sweeping blow.

Between the Proprevalles and Castle Groeneveldt,

Isle of Ys,

Lands of Romance and of Fairy Tales

September 17, 1519 (continued)

Sophie flickers as the sickle-limb passes through her. For a moment she is not herself. Then she is standing there, pale, in the wake of the blade.

The house shudders to a stop. It hunkers down.

Christine opens the front door.

Sophie, says Christine flatly. She’s wearing an apron over her dress. She has flour on her sleeves. She flicks her eyes up and down Sophie’s unhurt form. I didn’t see you there.

I’m all right, Sophie says.

Christine shakes her head, just a bit, as if resigned. Going to try for the old man’s legacy?

He invited me, Sophie says.

Christine steps down to the ground. She marches up to Sophie. She taps Sophie’s chest, just under the neck. You want the power, she says. You want the eidolons that he’s hoarded all those wicked years in Castle Groeneveldt. But you won’t ever claim them.

Sophie’s eyes shift. She looks uneasy. Then her chin comes up and her jaw tightens.

That’s a mighty high horse you’re on, Sophie says. "You think you’re going to get his legacy?"

Christine laughs. It’s a disdainful laugh. She steps aside.

Come in, she says. It’s faster than walking.

They enter the house.

Sit down, says Christine.

She gestures at a chair. So Sophie gathers up her skirt and sits.

There are tiny flecks of ash on almost everything in the house—the furniture, the walls, the tapestries. It is surprising to Sophie that none of it is burned. There is palpable heat pushing against her face.

I have food, Christine says. Bread, cake, other things.

Sophie looks up. Why would you feed me?

Because you’re my sister, Christine says.

Bread, Sophie says.

Christine heads deeper in the house to fetch it.

I didn’t, says Sophie,