Page 13 of As Many Souls as Stars
It does not matter, it does not matter, it does not matter, she thought.It does not—it does not—it does not—
In her wake, the crowd remained silent.
Cybil ignored them. She kept walking until she reached the hitching post; then she paused and cursed beneath her breath, another set of tears welling. Her horse was gone.
Clearly, she had not tied the hitch securely enough. But Charmeuse was Cybil’s favourite palfrey, and usually as loyal as any horse could be. She would not have gone far. Cybil swallowed the scream building in her throat and tramped into the woods.Once I find her, she thought, I shall unlace my stays and ride like a man back to the Hall, and never come to one of these thrice-damned dances again.
5
Cybil’s horse had been utterly terrified of Miriam—as most animals were—and so, once Miriam had untied the rope, the beast had bolted into the trees. She followed its trail languidly, shifting between shadows; when she had found a suitable clearing, she stopped, and melded with the darkness.
For weeks, Miriam had followed Cybil with great interest. She had watched her as shadows in corridors, as a crow in the shade of an apple tree, as a distant silhouette in the October mist. If Cybil knew she was present, she never acknowledged it, although sometimes—in her furtive movements as she drew the curtains of her windows closed, or in the determined slamming of a front door—it had seemed that some part of Cybil realised, somehow, that she was being observed. There had been asinglemoment—only a moment—in which Cybil had sat before the dark wood panelling of the Harding chapel as the sun set. Dust motes had danced in the air before her, tinted a faint pink by the stained-glass window behind her, which depicted a saint bleeding from his neck. But Cybil had ignored this performance. Staring straight ahead, almost unblinking, Miriam had seen in the wide-pupiled vacancy of her eyes a sort of isolation Miriam had found uncannily familiar.
Then the shadows had swarmed beneath Cybil’s feet, hissing and hungry. Cybil had bared her teeth like a wild animal, nearing a snarl. And Miriam had marvelled at this creature: this frightened, furiousgirl, who was too human to embrace the shadows, but not quite human enough to push them away.
She is alone in this world, Miriam had realised.Unique. Near as much, mayhap, as I am.
Although loneliness was not a notion Miriam was particularly intimate with, she still was familiar with the human desire for companionship. Love had given her just as many souls as greed had. For every supplicant seeking their fortune, there was another who wished to mend their heartbreak. And now, on this night—that night of all nights, All Hallows’ Eve—it seemed as good a time as any for her to offer Cybil respite. It was a moment of vulnerability: Miriam had seen the horror and shame and grief in Cybil’s expression as the crowd had stared at her. This was a woman desperate for acceptance, and desperate for connection.
The power Miriam could trade would offer Cybil so many things: it could make her loved, more than anyone else on earth, adored and respected and admired; it could remove her loneliness entirely, excise the emotion from her as one would an abscess, and make that veneer of callousness a reality; or Miriamherselfcould even provide the company Cybil craved. Christopher Harding had desired a servant, after all. Miriam could be that servant to his daughter instead: spend the decades watching that searing soul burn until it had almost snuffed itself out. It had been so long since she had truly savoured a meal. Miriam’s hunger howled just to think of it.
The shadows, impatient, curled around her fingers. She held them close.Soon, she told them.Soon.
Cybil entered the clearing. She had scrubbed her face clean of paint and dirt; her skin was bare and blotchy from friction. The moonlight cast a grey pall over her. The only colours visible were the violent blaze of her red hair and the white-gold glow of her soul in her chest. The metallic threads in her bodice and the pins in her hair glinted faintly as she moved. Her step was not graceful, Miriam noted—more a stomp than anything else—but the manner in which her long, slim fingers trailed at her sides had a certain ethereal elegance, as did the faint tinge of blood at her thumbs, mayhap the result of a nervous picking at the skin.
‘Charmeuse!’ Cybil called. And then again, ‘Charmeuse!’
She took another step forward, stumbling over an upturned log. She cursed. ‘Hell’s bells, this night isabominable…’
Miriam sank further into the darkness, shuddering with anticipation. Soon, she would make herself known, but something was lacking. She dredged up a piece of some long-swallowed soul and offered it to the shadows. ‘Clouds,’ she whispered to them. ‘Pull them near. Astorm, we must have a storm.’
Cybil would look magnificent, Miriam thought, in the furious wind, with her hair flying and terror in her eyes. But the shadows did not understand the significance of the moment, or the artistry behind Miriam’s request. They were reluctant to distance themselves from Cybil, ravenous as they were. They writhed in complaint, even as they took Miriam’s offering from her. Furious at their insolence, Miriam snarled at them with animal fury. In the clearing, Cybil heard the noise. She gasped and froze in shock.
The shadows trembled in fear and contrition. Miriam hissed, ‘Astorm,’ once more, and within moments the bright coin of the moon had been tarnished by clouds.
The wind whipped through the clearing, tearing the pins from Cybil’s hair, sending them glinting through the air like fireflies. She curled her arms around herself, face twisting with fear.
Oh, poor darling, Miriam thought.
‘Is someone there?’ Cybil called, and Miriam laughed. Her laughter echoed through the trees, multiplying itself. Cybil gasped again and made the sign of the cross.
Miriam stepped forward.
Across the clearing, a figure stood between two trees. The light was dim enough that Cybil could see very little, except that the silhouette was feminine: it was wearing a gown of some sort, and a ruff that stretched high above its head.
She had heard the howling of a wolf—had she not? And where were the moon and stars? It was so dark. It had been a clear night before, but now she was half blind.
‘Hello?’ Cybil said, but the wind stole her voice from her and tossed it away.
The figure came closer. It was a woman, tall and imposing. Despite the darkness, the shadows somehow failed to obscure her, and her features were clear. She had a handsome, fierce face, with an aquiline nose, square chin, and high cheekbones. Her thick tangle of dark hair shivered in the wind. There was a mole on her right cheek, and another on the left side of her jaw: a pair of pins keeping her skin taut, stretching it like canvas over her skull.
When their eyes met, the woman smiled at Cybil. Then her features rearranged into something more aggressive, mayhap even predatory. Behind her, thunder cried out, and a fork of lightning sliced through the sky. Something instinctive and terrified took root in Cybil’s chest. She wished to turn, to flee, but she found herself unable to move.
‘The storm suits you,’ the woman said. ‘Like this, my dear—without all that paint on your face, battered and bruised—you burn brightly enough to set this forest alight.’
Her voice was low, accented with some foreign, rolling tone that Cybil did not recognise; although her voice was not loud, it was clearly audible. Cybil had never encountered speech so tangible, speech that seemed to reach out and press against her in its demand to be heard.
Cybil took a small step back. Wind shook her skirts and rustled the autumn leaves on the ground, crisp with frost. As Cybil stepped on them, they snapped like breaking bones.
