The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 05

Chapter Five: Flight

Once again, huge appreciation to everyone reading, rating, bookmarking and commenting! Happy (late) May Day, spooky people!

For my cub.

Full work summary: Cast out of his village and freezing to death in the snow, Sparrow finds himself rescued by a mysterious and beautiful woman, living in a grand house in the mountains. As he falls under the spell of his strange host, he finds himself brought into a dark world that presents a destiny he never could have imagined. Submission to a vampire is only the beginning.

Previously: Sandu arrived at Sparrow's village and heard from the priest that Sparrow was banished for raising a dead child as a ghastly puppet, a child some suspected him of killing. Sparrow explored the library and found a secret door to an underground temple and prison, where he found Sandu's men chained to a bed and under an enchantment. He witnessed Vestalia take pleasure from the men, killing and draining one of them, revealing her monstrous nature. Sparrow fled the manor, but not before Cyrus saw him and warned Vestalia of his escape.

Chapter summary: Sandu continues investigating Sparrow's past. Sparrow races from the manor into the night, but Vestalia pursues him and he finds there is no escape.

CW: Dub-con through physical and verbal coercion. Blood.

"What do you do if you see a vampire, Little Bird?"

"Run."

"Say it again."

"Run."

*

Sparrow pelted through the knot garden, the hiss of bristling leaves like angry vipers as he tore past the bushes. Stray roots snatched at his ankles. Spidering branches clawed his coat and scratched his hands and cheeks. The darkness bore down on him, the starlight steely cold, the shadows engulfing and clawing and deformed. The house yawned at his back, its long, arched windows like the open beaks of a murder of ravens. He felt its shadow crushing him as he ran, slippery under his drumming feet and sticky in his hair, snaring him, pulling him back. He gulped the cold night air, purging his body of everything but piercing fear, icicles stabbing his lungs.

He must not look back.

Not even once.

He passed the hothouse, his heart clenched. He glugged more cutting air and hastened on.

He skidded to a halt at the grand, iron gates, towering over him, their spined crowns turning them into imperious princesses standing shoulder to shoulder and refusing to let him pass. His pulse banged. He grasped the iron bars and shook them urgently. The noise clanged around the stone garden walls. Sparrow's stomach lurched. He was trapped.

Trapped with that... thing.

He let out a strangled gasp. He wheeled frantically around, heart careening into his throat. His pulse galloped sickeningly in his wrists and head. His mind ricocheted inside his skull. Could he hide? Could he fit through the bars?

Should he go back?

No. She killed. She killed that man. And that other man just watched like it was nothing.

The wind was picking up around him, as if stirred by his chaotic movements, plucking at his coat, buffeting his face, howling like gathering wolves.

She was a monster. He had to escape. Or he would be next. He had to escape. He had to escape. He had to -

In his scurrying and whirling he spotted a thick waterfall of ivy cascading over the brim of the high wall and down to the grass. The waxy leaves glimmered in the misty moonlight. He sprang towards it. He gathered handfuls of the vines into his hands and tugged hard. They held. His heart flipped. All the hairs on his body pricked. He grit his teeth and hauled himself up, scrabbling with his feet to lodge his toes into shallow crevices in the wall. He huffed a steadying breath and began to climb.

The ivy rustled and strained under his weight. His blood jolted and his breath snagged painfully with every snap of vine or leaf whisking away. The wind flung him against the rough bricks, ramming his back, like a riled bull. He heaved and scrambled and nimbly pulled himself to the top.

The gale rushed him as he swung his legs over and came to sit on the top of the wall. He yelped and clutched the ivy under him to stay firm. His muscles burned, but the pain was iced by panic. Before him, the mountain avalanched down into a well of dark, dense forest, the treetops swishing. It looked like a poison potion poured into a rock cauldron. The ground was treacherous, steep drops and gashes in the granite swallowing the starlight. Sparrow gulped. He tilted forward. His eyes pricked. Before he could stop himself, he twisted and took one last look at the manor. The warm firelight of the comforting hearths glimmered fiendish scarlet in the windows. The iron detailing on the ridged roof glinted pale, the illusion of vast, folded, draconic wings sharpening.

And inside. Her.

Kissing.

Laughing.

Eating.

Killing.

Blood-soaked.

Beautiful.

A sob ripped from his throat. He tensed himself against a longing shudder, screwed his wet eyes shut with a hot sting, and pushed off the ledge.

He fell through a spiral of air.

His feet jammed hard to the ground, the impact shocking up his body. His springy legs crumpled and he rolled through the grass, the dusty scent of earth spinning around him. He landed heavily on his side, bruised and dizzy. He hauled himself onto all-fours. He allowed himself a split second's shivering, frost-bitten breath. He launched up and into a fleeting run down the mountain.

Behind him, a vaulting window banged open and a moon pale body soared into the wind, a pair of great, black wings unfurling and streaming into the night.

*

Sandu stooped through Father Petru's cottage door and out into the starlight. She had claimed she needed to smoke a pipe before turning in, being kindly allowed to sleep on a mat by his hearth. But truthfully she needed a moment to think. The priest's tale seemed like something from myth, even to her. A young child resurrected as a monster by a boy barely more than a child himself. That was far different from a creature of hellish hunger. That was a grotesque twist in nature. Not only undeath, unlife.

This village moved much more in time with the sun than did Skarpo. The assortment of low, rickety, stone cottages was largely unlit. The uneven plain of rocky grass and fluttering crocuses was deserted. She took a deep, clarifying breath of the fresh, thin, night air. The stars were dazzling here, a festival of diamond confetti spangling space. She let herself exist in the heavens for a moment, above the dirt and mess of the world. She sighed out through her nose. She rubbed her jaw.

What sort of creature could puppet the dead? She leafed through the bestiary in her mind. Nothing. She could think of nothing that could bring a person back to half a life on a scrub of mountain land. Even the most powerful witch would need a ritual, and likely the support of a coven. She clucked her tongue. She played and replayed her meeting with the boy at the manor. She'd seen something in him. But that infernal bitch had interfered before she could learn enough. He seemed very docile. She tried to imagine him building murderous marionettes out of corpses. It was a struggle. But, then, the devil wears many guises.

"Um, I beg pardon."

A hoarse murmur nudged her thoughts off track. Sandu snapped her gaze up sharply, her hand instinctively moving to her large, weapons-laden coat. She quickly dropped her hand and smoothed her expression. A few feet from the cottage was an elderly man, leaning on a walking stick, wrapped in a weather-beaten fleece. His frame was spindly and his hair and eyes were both turning to mist. He was looking at her with a vulnerable mix of anxiety and hope.

Sandu cleared her throat and nodded in greeting, walking over to him.

"Madam," he wheezed, "you are the captain, yes? The one from Sang Mortel? In the valley?"

Sandu nodded again.

The old man glanced nervously at the priest's cottage behind her, then back at her, his wiry eyebrows worming up to meet in the middle. His voice dropped so quiet that she could barely hear it over the breeze brushing the grass. "May we speak? At my home?"

Sandu raised an eyebrow. "Of course, is there something I can help with?"

The old man tightened his thin lips and chewed them. He looked away, then back up at her with renewed determination. "I hope you can. Sparrow is my son."

Sandu's forearms prickled. "You're Cristian?"

"I am." He ferreted his walking stick in the pebbly terrain and shuffled around, leading her away from Father Petru's. "My house is this way."

Sandu followed, moving carefully to keep her hefty boots and the clattering stakes inside her coat quiet. She'd never known quiet like this, not around people. This village felt hardly alive.

Cristian led her almost to the outskirts, to a tiny, stone hovel nestled into a bed of purple and yellow crocuses. The lintel above the door was painted with braided spring flowers. Cristian pushed the lockless door open and hobbled inside. Sandu had to duck under the frame; the homes here made her feel like an interloping giantess. She stepped immediately into the pungent scent of wool musk and butter and embers, with the undercurrent of a zingy balm, something for the man's joints, perhaps. The cottage was a single room. Two walls were lined with rough, low beds, watched over by a small, wooden crucifix tacked up in the corner. Along the right hand wall was a set of shelves bearing pots and jars and baskets above a simple table with two chairs. Darkness sucked on the dim glow of the small, dying hearth and the stub of a candle on the table.

"Please, sit. Would you like something to drink?" Cristian's voice was quavering and dry, like the pages of a book being thumbed.

Sandu eyed the meagre cottage. She'd already accepted alms today from someone with little to give. She sat in one of the chairs, creaking under her weight, and shook her head. Cristian nodded politely and moved his bundle-of-sticks body gingerly into the other chair. His staff thunked against the table edge. Sandu kept looking around. The cottage was very plain, but on a second glance through the dimness, colour had been smuggled in. A basket in the corner with a red, woven pattern. A cross-stitch panel of a swarm of butterflies over the fireplace. A wooden toy goat with a blue, wool coat lying on a bed. Squinting at the dark table, she even saw more flowers painted in the corners. She peered at them.

"It was all Sparrow," Cristian said softly.

Sandu looked up. In the swilling shadows from the candle, his face looked drawn, mottled under his eyes. His thin lips turned down grimly at the corners, hollowing his cheeks.

He spoke to his knotted fingers on the table in front of him. "You had the cheese with the father? Sparrow made that too. He is so good at these things. At anything that gives people a little joy. Any time he wasn't working or wandering about, he was in here painting or stitching, and I told him there's no need, but he never listened. It's just an extra touch, something to make us smile. That's what he always said. One time, I was out with the herd and I came back to find he'd tried to paint the floor. Can you imagine? What a mess. But a pretty one. He was only small then. Feels recent, but the years pass. He probably doesn't even remember it." He smiled wistfully at his calloused hands, the shadows dripping in the dips where his veins protruded. Then he took an abrupt, grating breath and fixed his pale, clouding eyes on Sandu. "It isn't true, what they say about him."

Sandu's face flickered. She gave him a calm, questioning look.

"I check on the herd at night from time to time as we get to kidding," Cristian explained with gentle defiance. "I heard Father Petru and his sour toad of a mother telling you their tale."

Sandu didn't say anything. She returned his gaze patiently.

His brow crumpled. "Please," he wheezed. "Sparrow would never do the things they say. Not my boy. He's no demon. He was a blessing, a gift sent to me by God." He wrung his hands and his knobbly knuckles clicked. His face was that of a beggar on the steps of a cathedral, that of last hope, his pain made more stark by the wan candlelight. "I always wanted a child, but a wife was not in God's plan for me. I had long resigned myself to a life alone, when one fine, spring day, a blizzard came down on the mountain. It was totally unexpected. Angelic, almost. I hurried out to see the herd was all rounded up, and that's when I saw him. A little boy curled up in the snow, his nose blue and his eyes all foggy. I'm sure if I had found him even an hour later, he would have been dead. I scooped him up in my arms. Light as a blade of grass, he was, the scrawniest little thing, with this big tangle of long hair. He never really changed, you know, just got taller and more bolshy." He chuckled vaguely to himself, then lifted his cupped hands, as if holding something. "And the strangest thing, in his tiny hands he was clutching a sparrow. Holding it to his chest like it was the love of his life." His empty grasp drifted to his chest, then back to the table. His eyes kept shifting in undefined directions. "I got him back to the cottage and warmed him up and, as he lay in a swoon on the bed, I tried to ease the body of the bird from his hand. Does no child good to wake holding a dead animal. But he wouldn't let go of it. Just mumbled and held it faster. I've never known a grip like that boy had on that poor creature."

Sandu listened carefully, keeping her expression blank. "He clung to a corpse?"

"No, Captain," Cristian insisted. "That's just the thing. I thought the sparrow was dead, but it wasn't. The boy came round and opened his hands and the little thing twittered and flew off, happy as you like."

Sandu's palms itched. "And you didn't see him try to keep the bird as a pet, or give it any commands?"

"No." Cristian's badger-grey brows bunched. "He just watched it fly away and smiled after it, sweet as a lamb. It was a miracle. It's where I got his name. I always said the bird must have been guarding his soul to keep him alive. But I think he thought he was guarding it. He's always been so protective of others, you see, from wild birds to the goats to the village. He'd never hurt anyone. It would undo him." He chewed his thin lips. He seemed to be choosing his words with great effort. "I used to have to send him on long walks when it was slaughtering time because even that upset him so much. He's kind, Captain, the kindest one of us. He would never... He couldn't..." He faltered and took a shaking, rattling breath. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes, leaving them glistening in the flame of the candle. He sniffed and tugged the fleece closer about him. "When he was just on the cusp of growing up, I let him help with the births. And one nanny, she had a stillborn. At least, I was certain of it. The birth was bloody and poor Sparrow was beside himself, sobbing his dear heart out. But he was brave. He stayed. And when the kid was born, he picked it up and wept over it with all the tenderness of Mary Magdalene herself. And then, wouldn't you know it, the kid let out a bleat and woke to life in his hands!" He smiled in remembered wonder, slightly frantic as he looked urgently for agreement in Sandu's impassive face. "Don't you see? My boy is a miracle! Things just stay alive around him, it's all his goodness. He's God's child, full of His grace! He'd never take a life, and never use one in evil. Never."

Sandu frowned slightly at the harried press in Cristian's rasp. He was frost pale. Sandu glanced at the too-neat beds. She wondered how long it had been since this man had slept properly. She measured her words carefully. "You know the lad better than anyone, I'm certain. But I'm not sure why you're telling me all this."

Cristian swallowed, his Adam's apple sinking down his papery throat. His watery expression hardened, his knuckles white on clenched fists. "To make you understand that Sparrow could not have hurt or defiled Forina." He gulped again. "So you won't think I'm just a grieving old man when I tell you what I have to tell you. What I dread to tell you. Because in the telling it is made real."

Sandu leaned forward across the table, the clogging, sour scent of wool filling her nose. She hooked his misty eyes in a hard stare. "What do you have to tell me?"

Cristian rubbed his gnarled wrist. He looked away then pushed his eyes back up to hers. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Father Petru and Vasile, our Headman, have been spreading lies about Sparrow to cover how Forina really died."

His voice ran cold through Sandu's veins. She waited again as he gathered his courage.

"A few nights ago, I was wardening in the church. A few of us take turns, you see. And I should have gone in daylight, but one of the billies was sick and... Anyway, I was under the altar, laying mouse traps, so I was hidden by the cloth." He gulped and flexed his fingers, the joints cracking. "And I'm quiet, you see. I always make Sparrow jump when I come into the cottage while he's absorbed in one of his somethings." He smiled his weak, mournful smile. He sniffed and flitted back on track. "I heard footsteps coming into the church. I was about to announce myself, call out a goodnight, but then I heard Vasile's voice, sounding very serious. 'You're sure we'll be unheard here?' he said. Then Father Petru, 'Yes, there's only us and God.' And Vasile said, 'And maybe not even him.' Now, Captain, I thought that was very odd, very strange. And there was something in their voices that unsettled me more than the blasphemy. I felt a cold steal over me, something making me feel like, if they knew I was here, I might be in trouble. Danger even. So I used my quiet and I stayed very still under the altar cloth to wait them out. It sounds so foolish, like what a child would do, I even told myself that at the time. But then I heard what I heard and now I can't help but wonder, was God telling me to stay put? So that someone might know on earth what they thought only He knew in Heaven?" His eyes drifted off, the dim glint of his pupils flickering.

Sandu watched his frightened expression. She leaned a little closer, the table creaking. "What did you hear, Cristian?"

He looked back at her warily, voice thin and faded. "Vasile asked the father if he had thought more about the new faith."

Sandu frowned, the beads of her rosary pressing a little on the back of her neck. "New faith?"

Cristian nodded timidly. "Father Petru said he'd done nothing but think on it. Vasile said, 'Then you see that God has abandoned the mountains?' And Father Petru sounded in great pain, very great pain. He said something about Gomorrah, about prosperity not meaning God's love, or poverty not meaning we didn't have it. And then Vasile cut him off, angry, in a voice that made me curl up tighter under the altar, like I was one of the mice myself. 'Do not speak to me of the virtues of poverty,' he said. 'This winter almost ended us, while they lived like nobles.' He's not wrong, Captain, it was a hard winter this year. Very bad for the herd..."

Sandu spoke quickly as he began to tangent. "Who was he talking about, living like nobles?"

Cristian blinked, then nodded in realisation. "Oh, of course, it's probably not known in Skarpo. But there's another village, long-time neighbours of ours, just a couple of miles around the mountain. Like I said, long-time neighbours, could barely tell us apart if you didn't know the places. Until this winter. We went to them to see if we could share together in the troubles, and we found them rich as kings! They were wearing fine wools and silks, their houses had grown, there was a huge new window in the church, stained glass, no less! And they were eating. Oh, Captain, how they were eating. It was as if they had been blessed. Or enchanted. Very peculiar. They shared some with us, though, so we didn't think too much of it. We supposed maybe a wealthy set of merchants had travelled through, done some good trade. One time, a few years back..."