Deep in the lowest layer of the wardmaiden’s dungeon, Aria lay flat on her back in an empty cell, tossing a stone into the air to catch again and again. With every toss, Byzantine bracelets rattled against her wee wrists. The thick, intricately woven chains cursed her to a life without the sun. As long as she remained an obedient prisoner, the chains remained dormant, but obedience wouldn’t bring her uncle back. Aria couldn’t fight the wardmaiden or change the world that had rejected her kind, but she could undo the curse the wardmaiden had placed on her uncle…as soon as she figured out how. With so many myths and spells at the wardmaiden’s disposal, it felt impossible.
First things first, she had to draw the watchman out. She’d have to figure out the rest after that.
Aria set her stone to the side and pulled herself to her feet. The dungeon’s stone floor chilled her bare feet, speckled like her pale cheeks. She paced within her dusty cell, working up the courage she’d need to leave the lonely chamber she called her own. Once she opened that thick wooden door, she would be in the watchman’s domain. The wardmaiden didn’t need to oversee her prison so long as she had him to watch and discipline.
Aria took several deep breaths and walked to the corner of her cell. She knelt to the ground and pulled a loose stone from the wall. A single brass key nestled in the back of the hollow. She pulled it out, replaced the stone, and stuck the key in her patchwork dress’s right pocket.
With shaky hands, Aria walked up to the large, wooden door and turned the chilled doorknob. She stepped into the deathly prison, immediately feeling her heart set out at a runner’s pace, as if the watchman had already spotted her.
She hastened past enclosures with chained jackalopes and ever-shackled leprechauns.
Their sagging heads didn’t even bother to note her passing. Grim would have been a kind description of their faded colors and drooping eyes; undead would’ve been more apt. Everything but their beating hearts had given up on life. Even the shimmering fireflies had lost their luminescence in their tanks.
Aria paused at a stall that held a fox bound in countless manacles and chains. Like Aria, the dusty-gray fox was one of a kind. She wasn’t sure how the wardmaiden had captured the púca, but she would never catch another. The shapeshifters like púcas and selkies all fled human society for the isolation of nature, preferring to live as animals than die as captives.
If she couldn’t get her uncle back, Aria knew she would end up just like the shapeshifter in front of her. Her skin had already lost the sheen it once held from the sun.
Aria tore her raven eyes from the fate she most feared and quickened her step. She stopped at a brass birdcage hanging just above her head. A magical barrier glowed a transparent pink between the thin bars to keep the handful of tiny pixies from slipping through, not that any would try besides the wee blue one staring deep into Aria’s dark eyes. Mistren—her little friend with watchful eyes and calloused hands. Its pointy ears twitched on her arrival, and it peered through the bottom of the metal bars at her.
“Did you find my key?” Its high pitched voice complimented the pixie’s speed of speech.
Aria nodded, not yet prepared to incite her chains’ retaliation. “Right where you left it after last time.”
The pixie stood and stretched its arms. “Are you sure you want to do this again?”
Aria swallowed hard and gritted her teeth. “I think one of us should see the sunlight.”
“Why not you?”
Aria’s eyes drifted to the center of the clasp holding her chains together, where the little keyhole mocked her with the hope of liberation. She did want to run. If she could find the key magically bound to her chains, Aria would have a chance at escaping by herself. Even if the traps hurt her, she could always shift into an animal to heal herself. Then she could find a town, blend in, and live a happy life. Maybe the wardmaiden would forget about her. But that future couldn’t exist without her uncle. She would sooner join the púca’s desaturation than let the wardmaiden use her uncle like a watchdog for her mythical dungeon.
“I can’t give up on him.” Aria’s voice trembled and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. She ground her teeth until the grimace turned to steel. If she let the fear take hold, his lifeless eyes would be the only ones she ever saw.
The pixie cracked its fingers and fluttered its opalescent wings. “Then let’s get started. I bet I can get past the tranquilizing fog this time.”
Its courage seeped into her, and Aria’s hands found the strength to slip the key out of her pocket and into the cage’s lock. The chains around her wrists ignited a fiery red. She stuffed down her cries and turned the key before the spell took hold.
The pixie blasted through the cage door, snagged the key, and vanished as if it and the key had never existed at all. A muted-sage pixie gingerly closed the cage door again, resigning itself and the others to captivity but sparing them the wrath of the watchman.
The chains around Aria’s wrists undulated like the heads of snakes and spiraled up her arms. She thrashed and fought against them, trying to rip and tear at the chain as it formed closer and closer to her neck.
A shadow grew over Aria, dark and unforgiving. She froze, a knot forming in her throat. She slowly forced herself to turn and face the towering watchman. The far door hung open from where he had come, an unearthly darkness waiting beyond. Her heart pled for escape, but without her key, there was no point. As it was, the chains neared her neck, where they would force the air from her lungs and plunge her into darkness. She gripped the floor with her toes. Aria had left herself with only one option.
The watchman loomed over her with unblinking, gray eyes. His once-bright skin had faded like the dead. Even his red hair had a dusting of gray. He wore the same sealskin coat as the day she lost him, the same scarf around his face, the same skinning knife sheathed at his waist. The coat barely reached his elbows, and the scarf still held the hue of spring poppies. The giant ring housing countless magical keys was a new addition, though. It swayed from his belt, taunting her to try and take it.
His face steely and his eyes frigid, the watchman said, “You should m-m-mind your place, child.”
Aria had to listen hard to hear his quiet, slurred rumbles as the burning chains passed her collarbone. “I just wanted to see you.”
“You kn-kn-know the price of disobedience.”
“Uncle, please, I just wanted to talk to you.”
The watchman’s dead eyes bored through her. The burning chains crept around the base of her neck. Her time was running out. Tears streamed down her freckled, alabaster skin. She needed him to recognize her. She needed to see the color come back to his eyes. “You remembered, didn’t you? I saw you that day, Uncle Rowan, you—remembered me. Aria?”
“Aria.” He blinked. Blue flecks danced across his gray eyes. He saw her. Then goosebumps cascaded over his face and the color fled his eyes as his skin turned ashen. “I remember my duty alone.” The watchman slung her over his shoulder as the chains finally cinched around her neck, completing her defeat.
Aria awoke curled inside a pitch-black box. It was tall enough to stand, but she preferred to curl into a wee, forgettable ball, squeezed on all sides by the walls. It was as silent as the dead, save for the light clinking of her chains. Aria felt as if the air was being sucked from her lungs and the walls were closing in around her like a constrictor squeezing the life from her veins.
She’d never seen it from the outside, but she’d always imagined it was a standing coffin.
A neon-blue light flashed above her. Aria shielded her eyes until they adjusted and found the wee blue pixie grinning down at her. Aria swept her jet-black hair out of her eyes, just to be sure they weren’t playing tricks on her.
“What are you doing here? The escape didn’t go so well?”
The pixie fluttered onto Aria’s shoulder. “I didn’t try it yet—just put the key back in your cell and followed you two.”
Aria arched an eyebrow. “Why on earth would you do that?”
A fiendish smirk curled Mistren’s lips, and it said, “The watchman will never look for me here.”
“Because it’s a stupid place to hide.”
The pixie paced back and forth, arms outstretched as if it teetered on a tightrope. “It’s roomier than my cage. How long will we stay?”
“No telling.” Aria clutched her tattered dress. No telling how long she would be stuck in the coffin. No telling how long she would be held captive by her own uncle. How could he forget her? How could he throw her in this box time and time again? She hadn’t given up on him and where had that gotten her? Left to rot, that’s where.
The pixie hopped onto the girl’s knees. It looked up with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
Bluer even than her uncle’s used to be. “How’d he become the watchman?”
“Oh…” She knew in her heart what had happened that day. Aria held her knees tighter.
She had begged him to show her the sun even though it wasn’t allowed. “He was going to take me to the sunrise. He went to talk to the wardmaiden about it and then—” The words stuck in her throat. The wardmaiden had cursed him like she’d done with Aria’s chains. He’d cried out and lost all his color, and then she had been face to face with that thing—that empty shell of her uncle they now called the watchman. She was alone and it was all her fault. Aria gritted her teeth. “The wardmaiden cursed him—stole his color. I thought I lost him forever. But a couple weeks ago, I begged him not to put me in this box and his eyes turned blue. He saw me. Then he shivered, and the watchman was back.”
Aria struggled against her emotions, swirling like a cyclone inside her chest. It welled into her throat, blocking her airway and trapping her with the nightmarish memories of the monster she insisted was still her uncle no matter how many times he locked her in the coffin.
Despite herself, the same question haunted every memory: would she ever see her uncle again? Unbidden, a tear slipped from her eye.
The pixie bobbed its head and tapped a thin finger on its lips. “What will you do if you get him back? The wardmaiden won’t like that very much.”
Aria bit her quivering lip and swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find a way out or a way to stop her. But I don’t even know where to start…”
The pixie fluttered its diaphanous wings and smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant, warm smile. It was the kind of smile that knew too much. The kind that started feuds and wars. It was sleekit mischief.
“Sounds like your uncle’s got a bug,” Mistren said.
“A bug?” Aria rubbed at her eyes, the cold chains sliding across her cheeks. “Surely you’ve seen the adze?”
“The what?”
The pixie smirked and puffed its chest out. “The shiny fireflies in the tanks. They’re adze.”
“And adze take the color out of people?”
“Right,” the pixie jutted a finger in the air. “They dig in and take over.”
“So my uncle is—”
Purple tranquilizing fog sprayed into the box and the pixie dove into Aria’s pocket. What was he doing? He never let her out of the box so soon. Aria had only a moment to question the watchman’s motives before the fog forced her into vicious nightmares.
Aria shot up in a flash. The box was gone. She could feel him watching her, though she couldn’t see him. She stood and turned to take in this new chamber. It was an empty, stone chamber much like her prison cell, but this one had a single, blackened window taunting her.
She’d never seen a window in the dungeon. Aria’s curiosity drew her toward the lightless window. It rested just at eye-level, promising a taste at freedom if she could just glimpse beyond the veil of darkness.
She made it halfway through the chamber when the watchman appeared from thin air, leaning against the windowsill and stealing her momentary reprieve. The watchman had traded his usual distant scrutiny for a light snarl.
“W-w-where’s the pixie?”
Mistren whispered in Aria’s ear, “Draw your uncle out of the watchman.”
Aria forced a step toward the watchman, fighting through the fear pounding in her chest. “Uh—I—I don’t know. I just wanted to see you, Uncle Rowan.”
The watchman shivered and his snarl grew into fully bared teeth. “You will call me Watchman.”
“Uncle Rowan, you must remember me.”
The watchman grabbed his head. “I— I—”
Aria clenched her fists and curled her toes into the dust between stone slabs. “I’m not giving up on you, Uncle Rowan!”
Something squirmed in the watchman’s neck, and he fell to his knees. He contorted and screamed. Blue flooded into his eyes and pink rushed into his skin.
“Uncle!” Aria ran up to the watchman and tugged at his arm. She couldn’t lose him now.
She had to get to his neck. Aria gripped his arm and yanked with all her might to get a better vantage on his neck, but he remained steady as a gargoyle and shoved her away. She tumbled to the ground, scraping her elbow against the stone.
“Get back!” The watchman growled, one hand still gripping his head.
Mistren’s opalescent wings shimmered over the watchman’s shoulder. The pixie dodged his first swat, but he caught Mistren on the back swing, sending the pixie flying to Aria’s feet.
“Get away!” he shouted. The watchman pulled the skinning knife from the sheath at his waist and pointed it at Aria.
Her heart lurched as the color fled his eyes again. She couldn’t be losing him again. She couldn’t bear to see him like this forever. Aria shakily rose to her feet and felt the pixie tug her ear.
Mistren whispered, “When you drew your uncle out, it pushed the adze to the surface. If you can do that again, I can rip it out.”
Aria clenched her wee fists so tight that her white knuckles would rival the moon. She ran at her uncle with the devil in her eyes. She’d rip the thing out herself if she had to. The watchman stumbled back into the wall, waving the knife between them. “Get b-b-back!”
“Get out of my uncle!” she screamed like a banshee, diving into him.
The watchman flung an arm around Aria and spun so fast the room turned into a blur of gray. He slammed her into the wall next to the window. The watchman pinned her there with one heavy hand anchoring her chest to the wall and the other keeping the knife mere inches from her gut.
They stood at an impasse, his lifeless eyes locked onto her untamed determination. Her uncle was somewhere beyond the cold façade, fighting the watchman’s curse. Her uncle protected. The watchman only knew to punish. No matter how much Aria screamed and begged, the watchman always dragged her off to her next punishment, but this melding of monster and man couldn’t decide. He pressed her chest into the wall so hard she swore it might collapse, but the knife quaked in his other hand.
Aria clenched her jaw and whispered, “I’m so sorry,” she slowly lifted a wee hand and gently set it on his trembling wrist, “but whatever the consequence…I need my Uncle Rowan back.”
The watchman launched the skinning knife into her gut just as her uncle’s blue eyes shot wide open. He released the knife. It emitted the same white-hot pain as her chains, but she hardly noticed. Aria’s eyes were glued to her uncle’s crisp, clear eyes, not an ounce of gray in sight.
She breathed, “Uncle…Rowan…”
Mistren shot from Aria’s shoulder, zipping behind Rowan. The pixie dug its tiny hands into his neck and ripped the firefly from beneath the skin. Mistren hurled the glimmering demon over Rowan’s shoulder and screamed, “Kill it!”
The adze spiraled toward Aria, frantically flapping its tiny wings to stabilize its flight.
Aria snatched it from the air and threw it into the ground before it could bore into her. She snapped the knife from her gut and plummeted it into the creature. Tiny shrieks filled the room and the adze’s sickly, gray blood splattered the ground.
Aria fell forward, wooziness taking hold. Her uncle caught her and laid her on the stone. Aria lost herself in her uncle’s tearful, blue eyes that held an ocean of compassion and a sea of worry. He ripped off his seal coat and wrapped it around her. It fit like she did in his arms—like home. As he stroked her dark hair, warmth flooded her body. Her body transformed, arms becoming flippers and whiskers shooting from the freckles on her cheeks. Heat congealed around her wound and the pain vanished.
“A selkie child?” Mistren gasped, plopping atop Rowan’s red hair and peering over the edge at her.
Aria flopped from his embrace and peeled the seal skin from her bones. She wanted, no needed, to be human. She had worked so hard to have her uncle back—she wouldn’t waste a moment as an animal.
Aria left her selkie skin on the floor and slipped into his warm arms. She closed her eyes and melted into her uncle.
Rowan cried, “Oh b-b-bairn, look what I’ve done! I shouldn’t’ve trusted the wardmaiden. She said you’d be s-s-safe if you came willingly. What a f-f-fool, what a stupid, worthless uncle I am!”
She’d waited so long to hear his voice and feel his warmth. “It’s not your fault, Uncle Rowan. I’m just glad you’re back.”
Rowan squeezed her tight. “She’s out on a hunt right n-n-now, but when the wardm-m-maiden returns, there will be consequences, bairn. We c-c-can’t stay.”
Rowan pulled the large ring of keys from the loop around his belt and fitted a silver set into the lock binding the cursed chains around Aria’s wrists. The weight fell from her wrists and the chains clattered to the ground beside the dead adze.
The sky turned a deep blue through the window. Aria peeled herself from her uncle’s chest and met his eyes. Despite the watchman’s curse, he was going to show her the sun. Aria’s eyes welled with tears. The watchman had haunted her every living moment, but she had been right to hope somewhere deep inside that gray husk, her uncle was still watching over her.
Aria sat entranced by the rising sun. It was almost too bright for her dungeon-adapted eyes, but she couldn’t look away. Blue turned to pink and then the sun pierced the horizon in the most brilliant orange. It was one moment, but a moment Aria wanted to share with all the other captives.
She looked to her uncle and the mischievous pixie. “We should take as many as we can with us.”
They would be hunted by the wardmaiden and unwelcome in the world, but better to be hunted and hated than resigned to binding chains.
I had the honor of developmentally editing this story, and man–what a lovely story! CK is one of my favorite authors to work with–with each consecutive pass, she makes the story better than I could’ve imagined.
A unique, and well-executed story. 10/10. :)
I was *so* excited to get this one tuned up and published. It played in my head over and over until we made it everything it could be!
I gotta be real – I thought Aria was a goner when the knife went in. Boy was I relieved when she lasted till the end! So spooky but what a fun story!