“We?” He stopped the wheel mid-spin. My head cracked against the pillory. “Are there others?”
“No! I meant I! There’s nobody else.” I searched frantically through the crowd, but Rawthorne disappeared.
“Hmm.” He circled me. “She has confessed to her guilt, and now it seems she is concealing others! She must face the public’s justice! People of Polidor, how shall she be punished?”
A torrent of hate. Howls of death and torture. “Bury her alive!” some called. “Cut her flesh and reveal her bones!” roared others. Why do they hate me so? They do not treat normal thieves like this.
Then the constable cried: “Let’s see if she’s better looking from the back.”
The cleric grinned. “I do not usually condone such things, but I consent to Polidorian justice.” He took a prayerful bow, snatched the bottom of my tattered cloak, whipped it up and over my head, and with disdain jaunted away.
The crowd stormed the platform. What little undergarments I had were torn shredded, and then I felt the hands.
Wet hands, slick hands, calloused hands. Hands like eels slithering up my skin. Hands like raw meat creeping and pinching and leaving trails of slime where they’ve touched. Hands so much worse than the bones of the dead. They slunk their way upward and I felt them push –
Screaming. Screaming begging pleading sobbing make them stop make them stop make them stopstopstopSTOP!
Purple light erupted, blotted out the sun. The hands skittered away like cold leaves. I tried to sense what was happening, but tears blurred my little vision and blood clogged my ringing ears. I made out muffled shrieks and the sounds of confusion. Somewhere a terrified horse reared and galloped away. I tried to turn in the pillory, but my body was weak and wracked with pain. My fear seemed to have vanished, replaced by a surging, primal current not unlike standing on a mountaintop during a terrible storm. What was going on?
Cold hands gripped my shoulder.
“Posy! Posy! Calm down!” I heard a voice say. “I have to get you out of here!”
“Thorny?” Hot relief flooded through me like booze on a winter night. “Rawthorne, you came back for me! I thought you’d left—”
“Shut up and stop moving! I have to get this fucking lock…”
Click.
The top of the pillory fell away and I toppled into Rawthorne’s arms, muttering a constant stream of thanks. My senses began to clear as I regained my footing.
It was pandemonium. The townsfolk fled in every direction, attempting to clear the town square. The constable and some other armed men moved in the direction of the graveyard, brandishing weapons. There was something there, at the edge of my vision…
“Posy! Now!” He cracked me hard in the face, and the last of the fuzziness vanished. He leapt from the platform and offered his hand.
“Wait a minute,” I murmured. “Where’s Lord Bram?”
“I never thought I’d see you again, Rawthorne, son of Sigorna,” his voice said from close by. Rawthorne’s eyes darted wildly, but could not find the source. The cleric had become invisible.
“Nor you, Posy. It seems you have inherited your family’s powers. Tell me, was I the lucky one who shredded your face the night we killed them, or did one of my friends have the honor?” He was circling us, trying to toy with us.
But I do not fear the invisible.
Swift and accurate, I lashed out behind me and struck the lurking cleric. He stumbled, surprised, and I seized his little torture wheel and spun, causing him to lose his footing and tumble down to the ground.
“Run!” I cried. Rawthorne grabbed my hand and we sprinted out of the village and into the woodland. Into that safe, enveloping darkness.
I did not look back as I ran, but instead kept my eyes firmly navigating the dense foliage and underbrush. Several times I stumbled to the ground with a groan, but Rawthorne was always there to seize me by the wrist or hair and hurl me onward.
“Is he following us?” I managed to gasp.
“I don’t think so.”
“Where are we going?”
“Angler’s Cave.”
We were both fond of Angler’s Cave, and camped many a night there. Isolated and generally feared by the public, it seemed like a good hiding place for two such hated personages as ourselves. When we arrived, crouched over and panting before its gaping maw, I already began to feel its comfort.
So when a fist flew from the shadows, striking me in the jaw, I was taken entirely by surprise.
“Rawthorne! What the fuck?” I winced as I hit the ground. My backside hurt. Everything hurt.
“You stupid bitch!” he stammered, swinging his leather boot at me. I dodged most of it, but the blow still skid of the bruise left by Lord Bram. He dove on top of me in flurry of punches. “How could you do that? We’re dead now, dead! He knows who we are! He knows how to find us!”
“Done what?” I grunted in a pause between fists. “I never said it was us! He didn’t know we were Sigorna until you showed your face—”
Boom! Rawthorne had found a large stone and cracked it across my brow.
“No, you cunt, magic! Magic! You had to go conjure up an army, you couldn’t just die like a decent human being and finally let me be free of all this…”
He trailed off, and we looked at each other in horror.
I decided to attack the less intimidating aspect of his statement: “What do you mean, conjure an army? I can’t do magic, neither of us can.”
“Apparently not. Something broke inside you when they were hurting you on that platform. Something was unleashed. A great purple light exploded and then…”
“What?”
“Undead came. A multitude.”
“Undead?” I remembered that feeling of power, of current coursing through me. Could it possibly be magic?
“That’s why they killed our kin.” Rawthorne was sobbing now. Hot tears trickled from his face onto mine. “Our magic. Unholy, they called it. You can’t use it. They’ll hunt us if you use it.”
“But, Thorny—”
“No. I will not allow it. I… I’ll snuff it out of you if I must.”
“Rawthorne, please…”
He drew back his hand, clutching the bloodied stone, and struck.
I slept for nearly three days after that. I would rouse occasionally to hear Rawthorne depositing food beside me, and sometimes dishing water onto my lips. I was sticky with blood. On my face and in my ears. Between my legs. But he would not wash me as he once would have done. “You’re a woman now,” he’d say. “You wash yourself.”
While I slept I dreamed, dark dreams and nightmares about sticky, fish-smelling hands clawing up my thighs, about Lord Bram laughing as clots of hair and skin were torn my scalp and liquid drowned my hearing. The worst one was about Rawthorne, who crawled into the sleeping bag beside me, begged for forgiveness, but then touched me just as bad as the hands.
Finally, my mind pieced itself together. I saw more of the darkly dripping cave than the starkly gripping fingers. During these moments of clarity, I thought. These thoughts raged:
Why do they hate me so? I didn’t want to hurt anybody.
They hate you because they fear you. Look at him. Even Rawthorne fears you.
Why? My face? I know my face is ugly.
Uglyuglyuglyugly
But… I didn’t chose this life. Rawthorne did, and it’s destroying him.
They fear you because you are a reminder.
Of what?
Of death.
I…
You are a creature of the night. A freak. You tread the world in darkness while they cower from you in the light. They flock to men like Bram, who promise amnesty, try to deny death with torch lights and brands. You remind them that such efforts are futile.