Author Note

A Note About Chapter 61

If you joined recently, don’t worry about this announcement (and welcome)

After some feedback and lots and lots of thinking about agency and focus, I have rewritten a couple of the last scenes, starting with chapter 57. They are mostly small changes but have one large difference that effects today’s chapter:

Maud does not leave the candle on the streets of Fairhaven.

When she wakes up after being killed she has lost everything, as usual, but the candle is mysteriously with her.

Gunder no longer picks up the candle, but Maud’s bag of throwing bones.

Gabriella’s (chapter 60) pov scene is the same until the end, when it is Maud who opens the portal into the cellar from Downing.

Today's chapter continues from Maud’s point of view.

I feel like these relatively small changes are an improvement to the narrative, and puts the focus back in the proper place.

Apologies for any confusion, and I hope you enjoy today's chapter. 

I’m attached the significantly changed passages to make it easier for anyone who wants to read the differences:

Chapter 58 (Maud wakes up after being killed)

I lift one skeletal hand and stiffen. In my palm is something long and waxy. I lift it up to my eyes. The candle! I am holding the candle! The very same, although without its packaging. Presumably whatever magic transported the candle could not do the same for its wrappings. It buzzes in my hand, like bottled lightning. But how can this be? I am in my bones, everything else is lost, as usual, but somehow the candle has been transported with me! My delight turns to suspicion. What strange magic governs this thing? Why do the natural rules of death and space not apply to it? Perhaps the answers will be found in the method of its creation? Or perhaps its creator? This discovery cheers me slightly, unsettling though it may be.

I sink back down in the snow thinking, letting the candle fall to one side. After a while I drag the fine bones of my fingers up to caress the cold, ivory of my skull.

Chapter 60

“I do know where Maud is,” Gunder said, as they worked. “But the knowledge will do us no good. Forgive me, I could not help but overhear your predicament. Maud is many miles from here, in Downing Forest.”

“So, what now, losers?” said Sara. “We just stay down here and wait to die?” She set a solitary candle atop a barrel. It threw the large room into shadowy relief.

The four girls sat in a circle, shivering in the cold.

“Do you have a better idea?” asked Karine.

“At least we will be able to see each other as we starve to death,” said Sara. “Look on the bright side.”

“If we are going to die,” said Saffron, stoutly. “I’m glad I get to die with you all.”

“Nah,” said Karine. “There are better people to die with.”

They were all silent for a while.

“Ned the cheesemaker,” said Sara, thoughtfully. “Who works in Berry Lane? I’d rather die with him, to be honest. He would be good for a quick snog at least. Take my mind off starving.”

“That’s alright,” said Karine. “Most likely the house will collapse. We will get crushed to death. Pulped by the weight of the stones above us.”

“Eaten by the dragon,” said Saffron. “No time to be hungry. Frozen solid. My money is on frozen solid.”

“You don’t have any money,” said Karine.

“Why do you have to be like that? I could have money. You don’t know, just because you have the taste of a dried up piece of lint -”

“Hacked to death by the undead,” mused Sara. “Or chewed on by rats? Rats would probably be worse-”

“Shut up!” said Gabriella, urgently. “Shut up, all of you! Something is happening!”

Her skin was raised in goosebumps, shivers rippling up and down her spine.

A chime rang out, clear as a silver bell.

The solitary candle winked out, plunging the cellar into absolute darkness. They all screamed, clutching at each other, but a moment later the candle flame was back.

This time it burnt an uncanny, vivid blue, casting the cellar in flickering shadows. The shades dance and swam, cavorting on the edge of Gabriella’s vision. She turned her head to look and they shrank away to nothing, only to pop up again as soon as she looked away. A giggle sounded behind them, echoing strangely in all four corners of the room.

The fabric of reality rippled, like a still pond disturbed by a rock. There was a fiery hiss and a portal opened in the middle of the room. The edges whorled with stars and luminous, gaseous blue. They caught a glimpse of snow covered pines, and a distant castle.

A skeleton climbed through the portal.

All four girls backed away, screaming. Saffron lit a fire ball with one hand, Sara went for her daggers. But Gabriella’s eye was drawn to the black satin ribbons tied to the ornate horns, to the lush, velvet skirts. There was something about the tilt of the skull, and definitely something about the stitching that made her recognisable, even without much skin.

“Maud!” said Gabriella, boldly. “Maud is that you?”