Page 53 of Enthralled

This is the truth. The truth I’ve known for some time, though I’ve not fully understood it.

“Let me see you,” I say, gazing into the captain’s dead eyes.

“Amelia,” he repeats, drawing nearer and nearer. He lets go of his abdomen, and his guts spill forth, trailing behind him as he stretches out both hands to me. “Amelia, Amelia, I should never have left you.”

Horror rises in my heart. I feel the pull of the fen, but I force myself to look into his face, to look into his eyes. To search for what is truly there, not this grim apparition of death.

“Let me see you,” I say again. “I know you’re there.”

He stops. His wavering form solidifies before me, or perhaps my vision sharpens. I see him, no longer wounded and dead, but alive. His uniform is bright and new, a line of silver buttons adorning his proud chest. He sports a little mustache that must have taken him an age to grow, and there’s a scar beneath his eye, a fine line of white skin that only one intimately familiar with his face would ever notice. He is everything he was meant to be, a bright young officer, full of optimism and arrogance, brimming with potential. But this is not the truth.

“No.” I shake my head. “Let me see the real you.”

His pretty face puckers, petulant and stubborn.

“Please,” I urge. “What reason have you to hide from me? We are in this place together. Our own choices led us here. Why should there be any pretense now?” I tip my chin, wishing I could reach out to him. He’s close enough, I might be able to take his hand if I tried. But I can’t quite summon the courage. So I say again only, “Please.”

He bows his head, his face momentarily hidden from me by the brim of his plumed hat. Then, slowly, he looks at me again. Hat and uniform melt away, along with all traces of youth, replaced by, not a phantom, but a man, very old and on the brink of death. Life drains from him in a river of pain that cannot quite sweep him away. He sways, his thin lips drawn back from gaping gums.

Then he whispers: “I failed them all.”

“Who are you?” I demand. “Tell me your name.”

“Amelia.” His faded eyes flicker with understanding. “You . . . are not Amelia.”

My heartbeat quickens. I know better than anyone how swiftly Noswraiths turn violent when provoked. “No,” I answer softly. “But Amelia would want you to tell me. She would want me to know.” His solid form flashes back to the wafting phantom clad in that tattered uniform, cold and frightened and dead. Have I pushed too far? “Tell me,” I urge, forcing myself not to look down at his gory death wound. “Please.”

We are Dulmier Fen.

The voices whisper from every one of the ghosts surrounding me. They’ve closed in while my attention has been fixed on their captain. I glance around at all those dead soldiers, so pale, so stricken with horror and grief. I feel the pull of the hungry fen once more, feel myself sinking into the mud. Hastily I focus my gaze on the captain once more. “But who are you?”

We are endless.

We are desolate.

We are alone.

“I know you’re in there,” I persist. “This burden you carry is terrible. Was it a relief to put it down in words? Was it a relief to open your heart and let this pain flow out from your pen onto the page?”

The phantoms do not answer. They merely look at me. The fen mud is cold and lapping at my calves. I force myself not to struggle, knowing I will only sink faster. “I know you’re there,” I say. “I know because . . . I know what I felt when I first put everything down in ink and words. When I first let the page carry what was in my heart. It was like lancing a boil, painful and disgusting and such relief! I remember.” I tilt my head to one side, gaze into the eyes of the young dead man, struggling to see what I now know lies on the far side of that image. “I remember. And I think you do too.”

He doesn’t answer. He blinks and looks down at the wound in his abdomen, pressing his hand into the opening, pushing his intestines back inside.

“Who are you?” I urge again. “Tell me your name.”

He closes his eyes. The muscles in his hollow cheeks tighten. Then finally the ravaged face of the young man melts away again, along with his uniform. Now I see a man past his prime but not so old as he was before. In place of a uniform, he wears a dark dressing gown of forest green, the cuffs stained with ink. An iron-gray beard flows like a waterfall down a great barrel chest, and slightly darker hair sweeps back from a broad, intelligent forehead. Huge eyebrows form a formidable ledge above eyes so bright, keen, and full of pain.

A shuddering breath escapes my lips. Somehow I feel as though I know him, though I’ve never met him before. “What is your name?” I ask again.

“My name doesn’t matter,” he says in the rough tones of a heavy smoker. He lifts his head, drawing a breath through his teeth as he turns to look across the endless fen, taking in the phantoms around us. “What matters is their names. My brothers. Who died.”

I try to move, but the clinging mud holds me fast. So I stretch out one hand and find I am just close enough to take hold of his. His fingers are cold and, like his cuffs, stained with ink. Writer’s hands; I recognize the signs. “Your name does matter,” I persist. “Will you tell me? Your true name?”

But he will not meet my gaze. He stares into the face of the nearest phantom, one I recognize from my first experience with this Noswraith: Sergeant Guntor. He died of red fever, and his ghost bares all the ravages of that disease. He tips his head to one side, his eyes great death-hollows, deep enough to swallow a man whole. But his author does not flinch from that horrible gaze. “So many died,” he says, his voice a terrible growl. “Why not me? Why should I be spared? They perished, one by one . . . yet I was cursed to live on.”

“Please,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. “Your name. Tell me.”

He shakes his head sadly. Were it not for my grip on him, I believe he would reach for the phantom of Sergeant Guntor. I don’t know what would happen to him then. “I suppose,” he says, “I never really left this place, did I? For here I am. And here they are. Together, as we were meant to be. Faithful to the end and beyond, just as we vowed.”

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