by Beth Hudson
Sidonie’s bright laugh sounded across the barn as Josúe chased her through frost, straw-dust and earthy mold. ‘Catch me if you dare!’ she called at the bottom of the ladder which led to the loft. A spear of sun glanced off her fair hair and rebounded in spots along the wall, reminding Josúe of fairy gold. Sidonie clambered easily up the first two rungs despite the encumbrance of her skirts, then paused and turned.
Determined to take the challenge, Josúe reached the ladder and lunged for Sidonie. She swung lightly around the ladder’s frame and hung from its underside to avoid his grasp. Finally Josúe ducked under the ladder and caught Sidonie by the waist, pulling them both in a fall to the wooden floor. Josúe felt Sidonie’s soft skin and gentle curves with pleasure before she sat up, still laughing.
Josúe rose from the planking and helped Sidonie to her feet. Bits of straw, only a little paler than Sidonie’s hair, adorned her like bleached jewels. Josúe leaned forward to kiss her, but she evaded his grasp with another high, tinkling laugh.
‘I’m not so free yet, that I’d let a boy kiss me when we have no understanding!’ Sidonie’s eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘You must prove yourself, Josúe, or I’ll think you mean only to steal my kisses and boast of your conquest to the other boys.’
Josúe sighed dramatically and wished that Sidonie were not such a tease. ‘What must I do this time?’ he asked, remembering her other tests of his love; fighting the cooper’s son; gathering evergreen berries from a wall of fiercely thorned bushes; and swimming the ice-filled river just above the rapids, which had nearly led to serious injury.
‘Let me think.’ Sidonie chewed a lock of hair and walked toward the barn’s open door. She paused within its frame, squinting at the brilliance of sunlight against unblemished snow. Then she stepped outside, stamping her boot-prints into the drift by the barn door. Her breath left a wispy trail in the air as she turned to smile provocatively.
‘I know,’ she said, her voice enticingly sweet. ‘Midwinter’s Eve is tomorrow night, and the moon is old.’ She reached out and drew a finger down Josúe’s cheek, making his whole body ache with longing. Heedless of the cold, pearls of sweat squeezed through the pores of his forehead and dripped slowly down the sides of Josúe’s face.
‘We both know the tale,’ Sidonie continued. ‘If a man spends a moonless Midwinter’s night in the graveyard, the dead will rise and try to claim him. Only the very bravest man can withstand such terrors. Are you the bravest, my Josúe? I will have none other.’
Josúe stared at Sidonie in dismay. Such tales were cautionary; a man would be a fool to brook the otherworldly, especially now. This winter’s piercing cold had brought plague, the like of which had not been seen for ten hands of years. It wracked the countryside, killing without distinction of age, rank, sex, or even health. ‘Ringrash’, it was called for the rash of blue rings that heralded its entrance into the body. Soon afterward, the cough would begin, eating at the lungs from the inside out. When the rash disappeared, death would follow soon; from first outbreak to last rattling gasp, three days. New trenches now pitted the graveyard earth, and more dead waited in the town, packed in ice, for a thaw in which more graves could be hacked from the rigid earth.
As he hesitated with his answer, Sidonie arched her brows. ‘What, am I not worth risking the dead? Is your courage so weak?’
Josúe knew from experience that Sidonie would not accept his refusal; she might even find another youth to court her, were she sufficiently disappointed with his willingness to give everything for her. That had been the fate of her previous two suitors. He determined it would not be his own.
‘… yes …’ His voice shredded as it rasped past his suddenly dry throat. A shiver, made of cold and perspiration, ran through him.
‘Yes what?’ Sidonie’s mouth puckered. ‘Yes, I am worth it – or yes, your courage is so weak?’
Josúe briefly considered life without Sidonie before he answered. But he had given too much for her already. Grotesque and terrifying tales of the dead struggled in his mind with old stories of love that defied the grave. He studied her carefully: golden hair blew across her oval face as if to screen every thought. Sidonie was a bewitching puzzle, a mystery – yet one that Josúe must solve to gain her sure affections.
Love won. He swallowed carefully, wondering if he were mad to agree to such a test. ‘You know I would do anything for you,’ Josúe told her, more quietly than he intended, but audible still in the lee of the wind. ‘I will brave even the dead if that is your wish.’ A hard knot formed in his throat; for all he was a courageous man, there were things mortals were not meant to face. Yet love must be his shield against the power of death.
‘It is my wish.’ Sidonie leaned forward and brought her face up to Josúe’s. Josúe bent to kiss her, treasuring her scent; essence of lilies and roses. He closed his eyes as he moved his lips to meet hers.
He met nothing but Sidonie’s giggle. Josúe snapped his eyes open in time to see her skip lightly away in a swirl of skirts and snowflakes.
‘After you have done your part. My Josúe.’
He could do nothing but watch her go. Suddenly, despite his horror of what it would bring, Midwinter’s Eve seemed unbearably distant.
* * *
Ancient trees, rough-barked and dripping with leafless ivy, encircled the graveyard. On the older side, white hummocks sprouted in neat circles from an undisturbed frozen coverlet; nearer the village, many humps of bare earth and crystalline ice clothed bodies of the recent dead. Despite the raw chill, the odors of dirt, mold, and putrid flesh hung like a veil just above the snowy facade, undisturbed by the faint but steady breeze which blew from the west.
Josúe left the worn track which led to the burial ground and entered the older side, gagging at the smell of ringrash and death which saturated the clearing. Light still filtered through the bony branches of the western trees, a wan ghost of gold which did not hide the emerging stars. Constellations sprouted in the darkening sky; the Reaper, the Wolf, the Lovers.
His preparations consisted of a score of childhood tales: a ritual washing with rosemary and bay; a sprig of holly, worn over his heart; and a rare protective iron amulet, depicting the sun’s disk, which hung around his neck. Josúe did not know if any of these were sufficient to keep him safe, but no matter the cost, he would prove to Sidonie that he loved her beyond all measure. He only hoped the price would not be to join those who dwelled below.
A hooded wool cloak, two layers of clothing, heavy socks, and a tinderbox comprised more mundane preparations. It would be foolish for Josúe to escape Midwinter haunts only to fall victim to bitter weather.
Turning back, he scoured the tree line for pieces of old wood not impossibly soaked with frost. An armload of branches gathered, he returned to the graveyard, threading between the hillocks with great care. In some places it was hard to tell where mounds grew amidst the hip-deep drifts which filled the glade like frozen pools and shallows.
He dropped the wood into the snow and squatted to clear a place for his fire. Striking the flint against the box’s steel, he managed to ignite the scrap of linen kindling kept for the purpose. Lighting the wood was harder; not only was the bark coated with damp lichen and hoarfrost, but the relentless wind threatened to douse each flame at its inception. Josúe moved to block the wind and tried again.
Sparks from his tinder, like spectral flickers or winter fireflies, pricked the air. Like a malevolent presence, silence oppressed the glade. Despite the movement of the breeze, Josúe could hear no wind stir, nor could he perceive any other noise; no creaking of tree limbs, no hushed flap of owls on the hunt. It was as if his were the only movement within the graveyard’s leafy borders. Quickly Josúe quenched the thought; it might have more truth than he cared to remember just now.
His eyes acclimated to the darkness as the sun’s phantom paled to the color of blood and melted into the frigid winter night. The inexplicably pungent wind assaulted him, changing from the west to a northerly direction. His stomach heaved, and Josúe wished he had eaten no dinner that night.
Tiny pains, like pinches of lightning, jabbed at his skin. His head swirled, hollow and dizzy, as if he stood on a precipice. The lack of sound now felt like an active thing, a mantle of silence which seemed almost louder than a bedlam wail.
‘Be at peace,’ said a voice from behind him in the pure tones of a young woman; the voice extinguished all fear in Josúe’s mind. He smelled a rising odor of lilies and clean earth which cloaked even the surrounding putrefaction. Josúe did not notice that his heart still drummed powerfully in his chest and that his breath still raced, nor that the lightning prickles continued their attack against his skin and the roots of his hair. He felt no cold, though numbness infused his hands and face.
He turned slowly, not sure what he would see. What manifested was not what he had expected on this of all nights.
A lovely maiden he did not know stood an arm’s length from his body. She seemed perhaps Josúe’s age, though she wore a white dress more styled for his grandmother’s era than for the fashions of the present day. Chestnut hair tumbled down her back, held by a silver clip, and her feet were bare over the crust of snow. It took Josúe’s fogged mind several moments to realize that he could see her clearly, despite the lack of moon. Where she trod, she left no footprints. Even then fear did not assail him; it seemed most natural to meet this girl he did not know in the dark of a Midwinter’s graveyard.
Looking at her face, Josúe felt a muffled shock; she had no eyes. Instead, dark vacuum filled the empty hollows, a black emptiness into which Josúe’s mind plummeted, leaving only dazed glamour. He could think of little else but the girl who stood before him. Shadows seeped from her lips as she spoke, sending smoky tendrils wisping toward Josúe where he squatted between two grave mounds.
The girl reached out to caress to Josúe’s cheek with her palm. At her touch, Josúe’s heart leapt wildly and pounded so hard it felt like a separate thing, a live creature which longed to free itself from its prison under his ribs. But only the periphery of his mind noted this; Josúe was captivated by the girl, forgetting completely about Sidonie and her capricious games. He stood and caught the girl’s hand, holding it tightly. Her skin was soft and very cold against his touch.
‘Dance with me,’ she said, and reached out her other hand. Josúe took it and followed her lead as she began to follow the measures of a dance he did not know. Around them, the echoes of voices swelled to sing a lively dirge, incongruously neither of the living nor of the mournful dead. Despite the depth of snow and his ignorance of the steps, Josúe’s feet seemed to easily move of themselves as the girl drew him into the center of the graveyard, directly between the older and newer sides.
‘Who are you?’ Josúe asked softly.
The emptiness flickered like flame in the girl’s eyes, the only trace of warmth about her. She smiled a close smile and shook her head. ‘No one,’ she responded in a tone so clear that it pierced Josúe’s ears and seemed to drill straight into his skull. ‘A memory only.’
Josúe shook his head from side to side, trying to dampen the alarm embedded in his body’s response. ‘Of whom?’ The instinctive part of Josúe’s mind, smothered by the girl’s allure, fought her fascination as it struggled for recognition. It was not sufficient to notice that they stood above the surface, never setting foot to the ground.
At first she did not answer. A tear of blood leaked out of the corner of one eye socket and tracked down her cheek, dripping stainless onto her white gown. Then she fixed her blind vision on Josúe, seeming to stare directly into his spirit.
‘I once had a lover,’ she said, so quietly that he could barely hear her beyond the echoes around them. ‘He told me he would love me beyond the grave. But such love as he offered was too weak to withstand the terror of the plague.’ Her eerie voice continued, relentless and dispassionate. ‘He deserted me as I died of the ringrash. So like you, he was… tall and strong, and brave. Or so I thought. But even in death he would not join me.’
A new emotion woke in Josúe’s heart: compassion. ‘How may I help you?’ Perhaps there was a greater purpose in his presence than he knew.
‘You are much like him,’ said the girl in her knife-clear voice. ‘I ask only one thing. I died without a final kiss from my dearest, and I cannot rest without the love for which I have waited so long. Give me only one kiss, and then I may sleep.’
Unfelt in Josúe’s stomach, acid roiled, but the glamour over him strengthened as he gazed at the chestnut-haired maiden. ‘So meager a gift,’ he said. ‘I cannot deny you. I will give you what you ask.’ In a tiny part of his consciousness a dozen unheeded tales of peril clamored to be heard.
Josúe ignored them all. Instead, he leaned in close, taking the girl in his arms, though he felt as if he held a maiden of frost rather than a beautiful young girl. She tilted her face toward him, and he closed his lips over hers, tasting the strong flavor of earth instead of human lips.
As soon as their mouths met, the girl made a sound like a muffled laugh. His senses whirled, and he felt his spirit pull away from its anchor in his mortal body. Muted terror surged, and Josúe at last understood that the girl meant him to join her in her final rest. He could not move; she had severed his power over each muscle and sinew. The thought of Sidonie rose, and he willed her a farewell, the returning love rushing as strongly in his veins as the panic.
Though his feet floated in the air, Josúe’s knees buckled under his burden of fear. He dropped backward, falling into an icy heap of snow. In the short space of time before she could reach him again, Josúe forced his hand to obey him, and grasped his iron amulet, yanking its chain so hard that it broke and scraped the skin of his neck. He held it up shakily against her approach, not knowing if the amulet were sufficient to save him.
The phantom girl halted. Her invisible eyes widened, and visionless gaze held a hint of red. She reached forward, but her hand stopped close to the amulet. Josúe felt a sharp twinge over his heart.
Then the girl laughed, an icicle dagger of sound that shattered what was left of Josúe’s courage. His consciousness eddied, and darkness wheeled around him. The girl’s form seemed to collapse upon itself, gown, chestnut hair, and skin folding inward. Two pinpoints of black flame eclipsed the night for a brief moment. Josúe’s awareness plummeted into the safer embrace of oblivion.
* * *
Morning sun dazzled Josúe’s closed eyelids. He stretched, feeling extremely cold, but grateful that his body responded to the command of his thoughts. As recollection gathered, he began to shudder, understanding what fate had so nearly taken him.
A pain sharper than the cold stabbed in his closed hand. He opened his eyes, then his fingers, and looked for its source. Blood covered his palm, cut by the edges of the sun amulet he still held. As Josúe watched, the bloodstained metal corroded, cracked, and shivered into red powder. He let it run into the earth and dropped the chain after; it had done its work. Reaching into his shirt, he felt for the sprig of holly, but instead found only a raw scrape.
Morning sun riddled the graveyard with thousands of blinding reflections. Josúe climbed stiffly to his feet and looked around. How had he survived the night’s cold? He almost thought that the new graves had increased, but he could not be sure, and upon consideration he did not see how anyone could have dug them without seeing Josúe lying in the center of the clearing. His own tracks were invisible beneath a new layer of snow, but nothing clung to his clothes or hair. His body began to tremble with the cold, and he rose, anxious for the warmth of a hearth fire.
Fear still stabbed with every beat of his heart, but gladness tempered it; Josúe had overcome Sidonie’s trial, and she would love him again, perhaps enough for a betrothal. As fast as he could convince his tortured body to move, Josúe slogged out of death’s realm and back toward the village.
Entering the outskirts, he met the village midwife; a middle-aged woman, deeply scarred by pox. She looked at him and gasped, dropping the basket she held in her arms.
‘Josúe?’ she asked, the incredulity in her voice wrestling with some undisclosed emotion. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Who else should it be?’ Josúe could not understand why the woman looked at him so strangely. He wondered if Midwinter’s night had marked him in some way others could see.
‘Sidonie told us…’ The midwife blanched. ‘Josúe, how did you survive Midwinter, let alone the following two nights? We thought the graves had swallowed you whole!’
‘Three nights?’ Josúe stared at her, understanding the words, but not their sense. ‘How is that possible?’ The thought of Sidonie rose into his thought. ‘I’ll tell my tale later – but now I must let Sidonie know I am safe!’ He turned from the midwife toward the direction of his beloved’s house and began a limping run as fast as he could move.
‘Wait, Josúe!’ The midwife called, sharp concern in her voice. Josúe ignored her and continued to run.
He drew up to the house where Sidonie lived with her father. Just before lifting the latch he stopped, horror seeping into his heart. Tacked to the door was a blue cloth; a sign of the quarantine for ringrash.
He hesitated only for a moment; then he entered. The low, thatched roof allowed some light to leak onto the floor, but Josúe did not need light to smell the characteristic odor of the ringrash. A massive fire blazed in the hearth, heating the room almost to summer discomfort. Josúe looked around him wildly.
Sidonie’s father suddenly loomed before him, the older man’s skin acrawl with a multitude of overlapping blue rings. His rasping breath and bitter hacking told Josúe that Sidonie’s father was an advanced victim of the terrible disease.
‘You shouldn’t be here, boy,’ coughed the old man. ‘Leave before you fall to the plague. You can do nothing for us.’
Josúe’s heart seemed to still; he could barely feel it beat. ‘Sidonie?’
‘In there, boy.’ Her father pointed to a closed door in the back of the room. ‘But there is nothing you can do.’
Josúe ignored him and headed directly for Sidonie’s room. Entering, he paused. Unlike the main room, the heat was not so suffocating, and light flashed unevenly through the banging of unlatched shutters. Still, the stench of ringrash warred with Sidonie’s scent of roses and lilies. Sidonie lay upon her straw-stuffed bed, fading blue circles etched on her skin. As Josúe entered, she opened her eyes, her breathing shallow and labored.
‘Josúe,’ she forced out, though her voice was fainter than the ghostly voices of Midwinter. ‘My Josúe. You came.’
‘Yes,’ he told her very gently, and knelt beside her. ‘I have a gift for you.’ He leaned over and kissed her cold lips gently.
On them, Josúe could taste the strong savor of earth.
About the Author
Beth is a serious writer as well as a mother of three terrific sons. She has several published short stories, in anthologies and small press magazines, including a chapbook, “Following Seas” from Sam’s Dot Publishing, “The Seal King” in the Fine Tooth Press anthology “Strange Stories of Sand and Sea“, and “House Call” in the April 2009 edition of Kaleidotrope magazine. She is always hard at work on the next idea!
©2009 Beth Hudson
