Work Text:
It was during a late, damp spring that Fitcher came a-courting for eldest sister, and he came wearing a face that was not his own.
He came as a widower, straight-backed, grey-haired, with a lined face and crooked gait, the result, he said, of an injury sustained as a child. Eldest sister was above all practical, and Fitcher offered her security and friendship, if not love. So when he asked her for marriage she agreed, and they went away together to his fine house beyond the river and were married, and lived happily for a time.
Fitcher’s house had room upon room upon room, each full of precious things. Eldest sister had never seen such a place, and she explored it for many days after the wedding. She found the music room, with a harp on a stand and a harpsichord, its strings in perfect tune inside the long box of polished and patterned wood. She found the library, floor to ceiling lined with shelves of books bound in leather, their gilded leaves filled with words in many languages. She found guest rooms, dustless and smelling of rosemary, and she found a ballroom with what seemed half an acre of parquet floors. Below stairs she found a stillroom stocked beyond anything she'd imagined, and she made perfumes and potpourri to fill her idle hours.
Eldest sister, being unused to service, did not remark upon the absences. There were no housemaids, yet no dust collected on mantelpieces or windowsills. There were no stable-boys, yet the horses were always groomed and the stables clean. There were no gardeners, yet the hedges were always clipped and the rolling lawns neat as velvet. The only soul that lived in that house beside Fitcher and eldest sister was the cook, a middle-aged woman with pale, watchful eyes.
Come summertide eldest sister took to exploring the many acres of Fitcher's gardens. There were lawns and woods, a rose garden, an herb garden, an orchard and a cultivated wilderness, stretching for acres between the green road and the river. Walking through the woods eldest sister saw a little building at the water's edge, but the day was wending towards evening and she turned back to Fitcher’s house.
That night at supper she asked her husband, "What is that building by the river, with peaked roof and stone walls, sheltered by a great oak?"
"The chapel by the river," her husband said. "I don't want you to go there."
Eldest sister held her peace and kept her distance, but the chapel grew in her mind's eye until she could see nothing else. When at last the day of the hunt came and her husband set out with his hounds and horses, eldest sister put on her good walking boots, kilted her skirts up around her calves and made her way to the chapel by the river. A little bone-yard rimmed its eastern wall, and the grass grew long and yellow-gold between the stones.
The doors of the chapel were old, grey wood, bound in bronze and hung so lightly on their hinges that they opened with a touch.
It was dusty inside, and dim, and eldest sister explored the aisles by touch: the carved pews, the raised dais, hints of gilt leaf on the chantry-stone. Behind the chancel she found a door which opened into a brick courtyard with a roof of iron and glass. Dead leaves lay in drifts around a dry fountain. Eldest sister sat on the rim of the fountain and wondered why her husband feared the chapel. When she looked up, she saw the ghosts.
They were shapes and shadows in the air, faded like paper. They suggested men and women, the drape of rich cloth and poor. They whispered to each other, a dry susurrus of snakeskin on stone. And then they spoke to her.
Eldest sister returned to Fitcher's house with a shaking horror in her breast, to pace the bounds of her still-room in the lowering evening. The pale-eyed cook watched her go.
She could not stay in Fitcher's house. If she was to have her freedom, she thought, she would have to run; so she brewed a poison that Fitcher might sleep, that she might be miles away before his hunt began. She laced his tea with it that very evening, but she did not know Fitcher's nature. Her potion failed, and in his wrath he slew her for her betrayal, that had been his own betrayal. He buried her bones outside the chapel by the river, under the great oak, next to the graves of his other victims. And Fitcher mourned for three long years.
#
There were now two sisters living in the neat little house at the edge of the village, where there had once been three. They received news of their eldest sister's death in a letter that spoke of illness and decline, with no whisper of poison nor murder. And when three years had gone, Fitcher came a-courting for middle sister, wearing a face that was not his own. It was a heady, sun-hazed summer, and Fitcher came as a young man, his hair the colour of straw, his face unlined and his eyes bright, with a brisk step and brave heart. He touched middle sister's fancy with his wit and his energy, for she was romantic, and he offered her excitement and adventure besides his own heart; and they went away together to his house beyond the river and were married, and were happy together for a time.
In the days after the wedding middle sister explored Fitcher's house. She found every room a treasure trove of riches, painted china and pierced screens and silks, but she found no sign of her sister, for all she'd lived there but some years before. She found the dining hall, panelled in dark wood, and the gun-room smelling of oil and metal, and the stables with their small array of horses. Fitcher gave her a chestnut mare, for her own, and they rode together in the hunt.
Middle sister noticed the emptiness of the house, the lack of dust, the quiet stables and empty gardens, with the only soul besides herself and Fitcher the cook, a middle-aged woman with shorn hair and weathered hands. But she did not understand.
And in the long days of early autumn, middle sister took to exploring the grounds of Fitcher’s house, for there were acres between the green road and the river; lawns and forests, a stone garden, a topiary, a steam crossed by a curved bridge, and an orchard of fruit trees standing in rows. Walking beneath the heavy boughs of peach and apple trees, she saw a building by the river. But the day was late, and the lowering clouds hinted of rain, so she turned away.
That evening, fingers a-tap on the table, she asked her husband, "What is that building by the river, with the slit windows and long hall, shadowed by a great oak?"
"The chapel by the river," her husband said. "I don't want you to go there."
"Why not?" she asked, but he would not say, for all she cajoled. So she let the matter drop for a time, but hers was a curious nature. And when Fitcher went away to town middle sister put on her riding skirts and good leather boots, and walked to the chapel under the great oak, whose leaves were turning dusty with the shortening days. Here the unseen gardeners had not been at work; the gravestones were a tumble of brambles and grass gone to seed. Daisies grew about the stone archway and a half-seen carved face peered down from the lintel of the door.
The dust within the chapel made middle sister sneeze. Light fell in stripes from the clouded windows, across carved benches and raised dais. She found the door behind the chancel and went through into the courtyard, where three more years of dead leaves had gathered around the dry fountain. She ran her fingers across the gargoyle's head and thought for a time in the hot still air, wondering at her husband's dread. When she looked up, she saw the ghosts standing in the dappled oak-leaf light.
Eldest sister was foremost among them. They spoke at length in the little courtyard, and middle sister was struck with a fury so cold and mountainous that she felt she might shatter under the weight of it. "Fitcher may be immune to poison," she told her sister, "But no man is immune to bullets."
She returned to the house and retired to the gun-room, where she polished and prepared the pistols and waited for her husband's return. The pale-eyed cook watched her go.
But though middle sister knew her husband's death would not come easily, she did not know the circumstances that had made him hard to kill. He did not die by gunpowder but arose with metal in him, and in his wrath he slew middle sister and her blood mixed with his on the parquet floors. He buried her bones next to her sister’s in the bone-yard under the great oak. And Fitcher mourned for three long years.
#
There was now only one sister living in the neat little house at the edge of the village, where there had once been three. She received news of her sister's death in a letter that spoke of a riding accident, not bullets and bloodied floors.
The letter arrived in hard times, on the heels of a pestilence that carried off her parents in its grim harvest. Many houses stood empty in the village that year, and youngest sister felt a ghost herself with neither sisters nor parents and only the lonely house to keep. Without eldest sister's potions and sauces there was little coin, and without middle sister's gun, rabbits ate the seed and foxes hunted the chickens.
Youngest sister was handy with leather and wood and wool and wire. She had once kept her sisters clothed and warm; now she kept herself fed through the work of her hands. And alone, she made a life for herself as well as she was able. Time passed. And when three long years had gone, in the first dry days of autumn, Fitcher came riding once more through the village, wearing a face that was not his own. He did not come a-courting for youngest sister, not at first. He came searching for a saddler to mend a broken rein.
Fitcher came with his hair dark, his face grave and his fingers stained with ink, but youngest sister heard his cadences echo the young soldier's, and saw his gestures resemble the old widower's. Sitting in the parlour, hands busy with needle and waxed thread, she felt as though she spoke to a carnival mask. And she remembered the circumstances of her sister's affiancements and their deaths, and she began to wonder.
Fitcher visited again and again over the next weeks, for he had a hole within himself, and for all his years and lengths and failures, he still believed it could be filled. Youngest sister let herself be courted, and when he asked her to marry him, she asked a favour in return.
"Whatever you ask, my love," he said.
"Don't ever lie to me," she said. "This face," and she touched his cheek, "is a lie."
He did not intend to admit it. But he had made a promise, and he was bound to it by their engagement, and under her touch his features shifted and twisted. Sickened, youngest sister closed her eyes as he took her hand and pulled it away. "I will not lie," he said, wearing his own face at last, with no expression upon it at all: pain-lined, pale eyes, with tawny skin and hair the colour of rust. "But if you want the truth, you will have to ask for it."
And so Fitcher and youngest sister were affianced, and they went away together to Fitcher's house beyond the river, but they did not marry, and they did not live happily. Honesty is uncomfortable for a face-changer, and youngest sister was wary of Fitcher, and of the empty house, and full of questions she dared not ask.
Youngest sister found attics full of worn furniture, with wooden floors and leather trunks filled with the house’s histories. She found a courtyard tucked between two wings of the house, paved with stone, and an old well covered by rusting iron bars. She found middle sister’s gun-room, and she found eldest sister’s still-room, and she found the kitchens, and the cook with her short hair and pale, animal eyes. She was dressing the carcase of a pig with rosemary and ginger, A row of chicken skulls sat upon the shelf. And the cook looked at youngest sister and sniffed and said, "I don't know what it is you think you're doing here, girlie."
And youngest sister herself was no longer sure. She and Fitcher were bound to each other like stars drawn into circuit. She could not leave, and he could not lie. They lived in a fragile balance, and both knew that it would take only a breath to shake them all to pieces.
And so it was that in the harvesttide youngest sister went out to walk the gardens, and found herself at dusk on a stile at the wilderness’ edge looking out towards the river. And that night at dinner she asked Fitcher, "What is the building by the water, with gargoyles on the pillars and a glass roof, shadowed by a great oak?"
"The chapel by the river," Fitcher said, his heart of ice, knowing what would come. "I don’t want you to go there."
Youngest sister watched him with her dark eyes patient and said, "Why not?"
But he only shook his head, his eyes wide and scared. "Don’t go there," he said again.
Youngest sister asked his pale-eyed cook instead. "What is in the chapel by the river that Fitcher so fears its discovery?"
The cook cackled. "Go find out," she said.
But still youngest sister hesitated through the faded autumn days.
She took to wandering the mansion from basement to garret. With her hair loose and her feet bare she walked the halls and thought upon her sisters' fates and her own future. She walked her feet to blistering, and still she had no answer for herself.
Fitcher had given her a russet colt, kin to the chestnut mare that had been her sister’s. It was to the colt’s stall that youngest sister came after her long wandering.
The air smelled of hay and manure and leather polish. The colt twitched an ear at a buzzing fly. Though still young, he stood tall, all dark eyes and groomed perfection. But he shifted, and backed away from her stare, and would not be coaxed forward.
Youngest sister lifted the latch and stepped into the stall, straw harsh on her bare feet. The colt backed away until he could back no more, head tossing, white showing around his eyes. Her hand on his shoulder stilled him. She could feel his muscles tense and shift.
Out of curiosity more than malice, and with a monstrous strength she had not previously possessed, she broke his neck.
Fitcher found her there, hours later, kneeling in hay and muck on the stable floor, the colt’s head in her lap. Her eyes were dry and clear as he helped her to her feet. She did not know what to do with her hands. They tingled from the force and friction, the tearing muscle and bone. She could not look away from the tangled limbs and hooves and horse-hair that had once been a living beast. A fly was walking on the colt’s staring eye. "What happens now?" she said.
"The carcase will go to meat for the dogs," Fitcher said. "The horsehair and leather will not be wasted."
Youngest sister took a deep breath. "I want the skull," she said.
"Then you shall have it," Fitcher said. As if everything were so simple. But she knew it was not: no human had the strength to do what she had done. While she hesitated on the edge of action, she was being acted upon by whatever rough art Fitcher possessed or was possessed by.
On the day of the hunt, when Fitcher donned his tweeds and saddled his horses and rode out, she put on her walking shoes and tied her skirts away from the morning dew. The hounds were belling in the distance, and horn calls sounded bright against the grey and peach of the morning sky. Waterfowl rose up from the river like moths.
The air was still and heavy when she reached the chapel by the river, and she smelled willows and woodsmoke. She circled its walls, noting the bone-yard, the headstones carved with curling knots and spirals. The chapel was grown with ivy and moss, the gargoyles' features worn down by the turning seasons, the bronze on the door green with time and rain. Youngest sister, like her sisters before her, went inside.
Another three years of dust limned the ancient wood; another three years of fallen leaves circled the dry fountain, overflowing the basin in an autumn bone-fire. The glass panes of the roof were edged in iron and coloured with many decades’ slow decay. In striated shadows the ghosts came drifting to circle the fountain. They came in hints of colour, the smell of sunlight and wet earth. Youngest sister tasted heat and rot and the acrid tang of nausea in her throat, and she swallowed it away.
Her sisters were foremost among the ghosts. Eldest sister perched on the rim of the fountain and middle sister moved ceaselessly from wall to window and back, her passage stirring the tinder-dry leaves. Youngest sister knelt silently on the bricks of the courtyard and her sisters spoke to her as the day passed and shadows moved across the room. They counselled her to flee, to fight, to run, to disappear; and youngest sister said nothing at all, but kept her heart as still and close as a stone. The older ghosts watched with bright bird eyes from the shifting shadows of the oak tree. The sun rose high in the sky and began to sink towards the evening. At last, as gathering clouds painted the sky the colour of hard granite, youngest sister stirred. "I cannot leave," she said. "There are things I must do."
And in the lowering dusk she returned to the house, and she greeted Fitcher with a smile on her lips, and she said, "Shall we set a date for the wedding?"
#
As a wedding gift, Fitcher gave youngest sister a pair of earrings fashioned from the claws of a fox. He had had them set in gold and hung below beads of amber. She wore them to a dance the next day and smiled as the matrons frowned and muttered, and the maidens watched her with wide, spooked eyes.
The claws proved sharp enough, still, to draw blood: that night when she took off her mantel they caught and tore, tracing a line of dark droplets on the skin below her ear. "I will have them blunted," Fitcher said, catching her chin and tilting her head gently to the side to see the damage.
"Don’t," youngest sister replied, and when he looked away from the blood to meet her eyes, she said, "What good is a claw that cannot cut?"
Fitcher’s smile was thin. He brushed his thumb across the wound and licked off the blood, and when she kissed him, the taste of it was metallic on her tongue.
They set their wedding day for the end of autumn. Youngest sister wrote up the invitations in her neatest hand and sent them out, stamped in verdigris ink. That afternoon, in the kitchens, the cook eyed her sidelong and said, "I’d have thought you’d leave well enough alone."
"I saw the chapel," youngest sister told her. "I saw the ghosts."
"But you’ll still marry him?" The cook was sorting bundles of dried herbs. She tossed a pinch of this one and that into the embers, filling the kitchen with sharp and savoury smells. "I’d have thought you’d want something different than what the other girls got."
Youngest sister touched a knife on the bench and said, "Did you warn them?"
The cook smiled. It was a hard expression. "I could have told them such tales," she said. "But they never asked. No more did you, for all you came swanning in here with your eyes wide open. Have you got what you bargained for?"
"What do you mean?"
"Girlie," she said, "The whole county knows what he is."
Youngest sister tilted the knife, and light glanced off its edge. "But they did not warn his brides," she said quietly. It was cool in the kitchen, sunken as it was beneath the earth and out of the sun. "Tell me," youngest sister said, "What should I be asking you?"
"It's not me that needs asking," the cook said. She pointed at youngest sister with a gnarled finger. "It’s you. What is it that you want? And who are you willing to hurt to get it?"
#
Youngest sister returned to the chapel by the river and knelt before the bone-fire fountain until her bones ached and her arms were goose-bumped with cold. A rainstorm marched across the sky, pounding on the glass roof, dripping from the gargoyles on the eaves, tearing leaves from the oak tree and strewing them across the wild river.
Eldest sister’s ghost sat on the rim of the fountain. Tell me, she said. Why are you doing this?
"Doing what?" youngest sister asked, sullen.
Why did you come here? Why do you remain?
"I needed answers," youngest sister said. "Why did you come here? Why," she echoed, "do you remain?"
I needed, eldest sister began. I wanted... She turned, and turned again, and could not finish. Have you found your answers?
"I am finding them."
And you are losing yourself. Youngest sister’s hands twitched in her lap. Did you think I would not see it? I have known you as a child, as a girl and as a woman, but I barely recognise you as you are now.
The water had found a crack in the ceiling, and it dripped, dripped, onto the tiles. Youngest sister tilted her head, and her eyes caught the low light. They seemed for a moment as pale as the rain. "It is not loss," she said. "It is transformation."
He will destroy you.
Youngest sister shook her head. "He will allow me to destroy myself," she said. And she knew she had made her decision.
#
"Tell me your story."
The cook paused in her kneading. "It’ll cost you," she said.
"Something of myself," youngest sister agreed. "I know. But I am already paying."
"So you are." The old woman began to knead the bread again. For a long moment she did not speak. "I lived in the great house here long before Fitcher came to it," she said at last, "I had a child, a fine boy of few years. The son of the old lord, he was, and the young lord's brother in blood if not in name.
"It was winter, the hardest in all my life, when my child caught the blood-fever and bled to death within his own skin. Come spring I was dying of it too, and I fell to my knees by the well in the old courtyard and spat blood onto the stones. I brought the child back with wine and spices and his father's finger-bones, a rope of my own hair and the heart of a fox." Her voice was soft. "My hair never grew back. Nor did wine ever taste so good again, after. It soured in my mouth, and spices turned bitter and dull. But my child lived, and so did I.
"The years passed.
"The first to die was the maid that watched my boy while I worked. I found her on a summer's evening at the bottom of the steps, her neck broken, her hands flung wide upon the tiles, and my child standing at the top of the flight, the mark of a blow upon his cheek.
"The years passed.
"Foxes had plagued the countryside since the fever-winter. The young lord was often a-hunting, and as a youth, my son would go with him to care for the horses and the hounds. Once, of an autumn day, the young lord returned from the hunt in a fury. He called my boy a horror and swore he would be gone from the house before night fell; and by nightfall only one of the brothers remained. He wore the young lord's face, but it was not his own.
"The years passed.
"The next to die was a young man that worked in the stables. I found him there of a winter morning, his body broken. The horses were screaming in their stalls, but they fell silent when Fitcher came.
"The years passed.
"So far as Fitcher had friends, he had a friend in the man who kept the grounds. They walked together in the gardens and the orchards and spoke together as friends do. He wasn't supposed to tend the grounds of the chapel by the river, but as the years passed he came to wonder why. After he had seen, he came to Fitcher and they fought, first with words and then with fists. And he was the next to die. After that, I found ways to do without servants.
"The years passed, and there were others. Not many; not often; but enough. And in between, he changed his face, and he hunted the foxes. But it wasn’t enough, and it never will be. And then it came to Fitcher that he was lonely, so he went a-courting, and he found your sisters. He found you."
Youngest sister watched her, dark eyes without expression. "I will be the last," she said.
"Yes."
"I have to finish it," youngest sister said, "Because you won’t."
"Sometimes I think there is nothing in my heart at all," said the old woman. "But I never could bring myself to kill him."
"Teach me," youngest sister said.
#
When Fitcher left for town on one of his many such excursions youngest sister and the cook climbed the hill behind the house. The cook put her hands on youngest sister's head and youngest sister could not hear. She blew in youngest sister's face and youngest sister could not see. She tied a strip of leather around youngest sister's wrist and youngest sister could not help but follow.
Together they walked through fields of thorns that cut them, and barren earth that tripped them, and pungent herbs that they crushed underfoot. The cook stood still, and youngest sister stood beside her. She could not hear the cook call down storms of rain and hail and finest snow. But she felt the water wash her clean, the hail bruise her skin and the snow fall like pale ashes on her tongue. She could not see the cook pour wine and water and blood onto the bare earth. But she smelled the smell the earth gave up as it drank them down.
The cook took the leather strip from youngest sister's wrist and she was free to move; the old woman blew in youngest sister's face and she could see once more; the witch touched youngest sister's head, and she could hear again. She was standing on the high hill behind Fitcher’s house, looking out across the rain-dull fields.
"Do you understand?" said the woman at her side.
Youngest sister looked at her with eyes bleached pale as bone. "Yes," she said. "I understand."
#
Youngest sister returned to the chapel by the river, and knelt in the still air before the bone-fire fountain until her bones ached and her head was heavy with the weight of her hair.
Middle sister moved around the rim of the fountain, her hair catching in the leaf-light, her arms a restless suggestion of wings. She stirred a whirlwind in the leaves and they spun about the covered courtyard and caught in the folds of youngest sister’s dress.
I won’t try to change your mind, middle sister said. But what do you hope to gain from this?
"I do not want to destroy myself," youngest sister whispered. "Nor do I want to be destroyed."
It is well, middle sister said. But these are things you would not have. What do you want?
"I don't know."
Consider it, middle sister said.
Youngest sister felt middle sister’s hand on her hair and closed her eyes. If she could not see, she could pretend herself at her childhood home, mending by the fireplace while eldest sister cooked, and middle sister cleaned their father’s old rifle. But she could smell dust and dry leaves, and the damp green scent of the river. She opened her eyes. "I have told you what I can do," she said. "Will you help?"
Of course I will help, middle sister said. What else are sisters for? She moved back and called to her own brothers and sisters, the ghosts of Fitcher’s victims. Well? What say you all?
#
On the last day of autumn youngest sister dressed in feathers and honey-coloured silk and climbed to the attic of Fitcher's house. She carried a leather suitcase and moved between wooden chests and threadbare furniture on bare feet, as silent as the ghosts that followed her. It was the morning of her wedding day.
She set the leather case down on a table. The latches opened with dry clicks. She removed the bones from it one by one, eggshell white and dirt brown and yellowing like old parchment. Last of all she took the skull of her russet colt and set it on the windowsill to face the sleeping trees, the dark earth and steel-grey sky. Her sisters watched from the windows, and they would whisper her when Fitcher came home.
In the dust-light of the attic youngest sister built herself an automaton of bone, hemp, copper and strands of her own hair. She gave it the horse’s skull for a head and hung fox-claw earrings on it. She dressed it in bridal veils and a crown of autumn flowers and amber, and when it was done she smiled and kissed the skull's dry mouth, breathing her own breath into it. It rose from the parquet floor and stood before her with empty eyes. Copper flashed at the finger bones as the automaton ordered its skirts and sank into a deep curtsey, horse skull long and blindly smiling.
Downstairs, Fitcher’s guests were arriving. The house was full of voices and music. Youngest sister descended the staircase flanked by her sister's ghosts, her feet bare, her hair loose and tangled with feathers.
Three men stood with brandy and talked in the library. One saw her pass by the door and hailed her. "Girlie," he said, "Little bird, have you seen Fitcher's bride?"
Youngest sister smiled and curtsied. "I have, sir," she said. "She's ever so excited. She's waiting at the attic window and watching for her bridegroom to come home. I’m sure she will be here soon."
He's coming, eldest sister whispered in her ear. He's on the carriageway.
The man toasted her and quaffed his brandy. Youngest sister passed by the door and looked into the music room. A matron stood within, listening to a young woman playing the harpsichord. The matron looked up and saw youngest sister. "Child," she said, "Little bird, have you seen Fitcher's bride?"
Youngest sister ducked her head. "I have, ma'am," she said. "She's so very nervous. She's waiting by the attic window to see her bridegroom when he comes home. I’m sure she will be here soon."
He's coming, middle sister hissed. He's in the courtyard.
The matron nodded and returned her attention to the music. Youngest sister passed by the door and entered the ballroom. Candles burned in a dozen candelabra. The guests swirled and talked in groups of silks and furs.
He’s coming, said eldest sister.
He’s coming, said middle sister.
He’s here. They faded away into the flickering candlelight shadows.
Youngest sister turned. Her bridegroom stood behind her, in quiet consultation with the priest. He seemed to feel her regard, for he turned away from the priest and looked directly at her, and she froze; but he didn't recognise her, and she felt something run through her like exhilaration. "Young lady," said Fitcher, "Little bird, have you seen my bride?"
"I have, sir," youngest sister said. "She's been watching for you from the attic window. I'm sure she will be here soon."
"I saw a face at the attic window," Fitcher said. "A face draped in bridal veils. I waved to her, and she stepped away from the glass. I'm sure she will be here soon."
"She's here now," youngest sister said.
Fitcher turned to the doorway, where youngest sister's creation stood, dressed in veils and silk. He took it by the elbow and led it to the front of the room as the guests moved to their seats, and the priest to his pulpit. The automaton bowed its horse’s head beneath his gestured benediction.
Youngest sister watched the ceremony from the doorway. "You could do more if you married him yourself," the cook said, watching beside her.
"I could compel more," youngest sister replied. "I do not think that I want that power."
On her shoulder, eldest sister stirred and said, if you don't want to compel him, what do you want?
And for a moment youngest sister could not answer.
Justice, middle sister suggested. Escape, eldest sister whispered. The older ghosts had other ideas. They showed her Fitcher dead, his skin drained grey, the ballroom painted with his blood; Fitcher drowned in the well, his tawny hair billowing in the dark water; Fitcher’s pale eyes put out, his house a fire on the hillside.
Youngest sister closed her eyes, but the images would not stop. She saw Fitcher on his knees, begging, his hands straining to hold his guts inside him; Fitcher strangled, choking, his eyes bulging; Fitcher’s skin burned with acid, his skull showing through rotted and burned flesh.
On the dais, Fitcher slid a pale ring onto her creation’s bone finger.
"Enough," said youngest sister. There was acid in her throat. "Stop."
Her voice was loud, and the crowded room was filled with a stirring and a murmur. The priest talked on for one sentence, two, then faltered into stammering silence. On the dais, bone and hemp hands clamped down on Fitcher’s wrists.
"What is it?" Fitcher asked her silent creature. But it could not speak, and though the dead screamed at him, he could not hear them. Their voices echoed in youngest sister's ears as she walked the aisle in her silk and bare feet. Fitcher watched her in confusion and wrested a hand free to pull the veil from his bride’s skull.
Amber and autumn flowers scattered on the floor. The priest stepped back and knocked his holy book from its stand. It landed face down on the parquet floor, pages bent and bruised. In the gathered crowd of witnesses, someone made a noise like the echo of the echo of a scream.
Fitcher struggled, trying to free his other hand from the bruising grasp of metal and bone. His features shifted, his skin growing paler, his hands thinner, his hair darker, his arms stronger, but to no effect; her creature's hands and her sister’s ghosts held him tight and still. "What is this?" He said again. His voice was hard and scared.
"I have married you to the dead, my love," youngest sister told him. "It seemed fitting. Who else could sit in judgement on you?" She glanced at the empty-handed priest and the people of the county, the men and women who drank brandy and held balls and hunted foxes; who had watched him through the long years and done nothing. She met the empty eyes of Fitcher’s mother, who had seen what she had created and done nothing. She looked for the ghosts but saw only patterns in the air around the bones of her creation, force and fury, less human now than the man who had murdered them. "No," said youngest sister. "No. Not even the dead could give you justice."
Fitcher tugged again at the grip on his wrist and fell still. She touched his cheek. When he blinked, his eyelashes brushed her thumb. His pulse trembled under her fingertips like a bird, a bound and frightened creature. She felt neither wrath nor tenderness to look at him, only a distant pity. "Do you trust me?" she asked, and she held out her hand.
How could Fitcher trust her? She held his body in a grip of bone and copper and hemp, his soul between her fingertips, his heart in her own ribcage, and he had killed her sisters. But he took her hand.
She touched his forehead and the sound of the congregation faded from him. She blew in his face and he could not see. She held his hand and he could not help but follow. The ghosts circled them, silent. They rested in youngest sister’s hair and sparked against the copper of the automaton that followed behind.
Youngest sister led Fitcher through three doorways, into the hall, into the parlour, into the pale winter light of the courtyard, silent under the skeletons of trees and dark birds. She led and he followed, and they walked through the fields, through frost, through thorns and bitter herbs.
Youngest sister stopped. With Fitcher standing silent at her side, she poured out three libations into the dry soil. Clear water from the courtyard well, pale wine from the mansion’s cellars, and dark river water steeped in the earth of the graveyard chapel, tempered with a drop of her own blood.
She touched Fitcher's cheek and he could hear. She blew in his face and he could see. She let go of Fitcher’s hand and he stood beside her under the eaves of a chapel by a river, under a sunless sky. "You know this place," said youngest sister. "You’ve been here before."
"I don’t want to go," he whispered. "I am afraid."
"I have opened the door for you," youngest sister said. "You can choose whether you will step through. But you cannot return with me. I will not allow it." Fitcher did not speak, but his eyes pleaded. Youngest sister hardened her heart towards him and stepped away to wait, and watch.
Fitcher stood in the sunless, dusty doorway. First he watched youngest sister, but he did not speak. Then his eyes drifted past her shoulder to the rushing darkness of the river. "You taught me honesty. I had not thought to need it." His mouth crooked in an expression that might have been a smile. "I do not want to go."
"Do you understand why I cannot let you return?" Youngest sister asked.
"I understand," he said.
"Then perhaps that is enough." She closed her eyes and breathed out, and when she looked again, Fitcher was gone.
Her automaton waited at her shoulder. It raised a hand toward her, and when she held out her hand it placed something in her palm. Sparks stung where her fingers met bone. Her fingers curled open around the fox-claw earrings and the wedding ring.
"Oh," she said. "I see." She moved aside, and the automaton walked past her into the river. The ghosts went with it, riding as sparks and shadows in the hollows of bone and silk. And youngest sister was alone.
For a moment she hesitated on the shore, her weight balanced forward as if to follow. But she turned away from the river and the sunless sky and made her way back through the winter gardens.
Fitcher’s house was empty, the wreckage of the celebration spread through the halls, the silent congregation fled. On the parquet floor of the ballroom was a pouch of wine-washed leather. She stooped to unwrap it. It contained a rope of pale hair, and finger-bones, and a scrap of dried meat that might once have been the heart of a fox.
#
It was a dust-grey winter morning when, not knowing how to live with it and unable to forget, the county folk burned down Fitcher’s house. They waited at the doors with hatchets and rifles ready, but the house was empty; no-one stirred within and soon the heat forced them back. They remained, dull-eyed, watching, until the last of the flames were smothered in the falling timbers.
The ruins smouldered for days, until a rainstorm put the last embers out. Then there were only piles of blackened stone, and the courtyard well choked with rubble. The gardens turned to wilderness. In the bone-yard, the headstones stood crookedly amid the brambles and grass. The old stone chapel stood beneath the great oak on the wild riverbank. The wooden fittings gathered dust, and beneath the dirty glass roof year after year of tinder-dry leaves collected in the fountain.