The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet ^{Robin Furth}

“Have you brought her?” Sir Henry eyed the heavy burlap sack that Kane held in his right hand and impatiently tapped the steel tip of his ebony gentleman’s cane against the polished marble tiles of his summer house floor. It was dusk—the time he always preferred to meet with Kane—and the sun was setting over his vast estate and over the crashing, ever-encroaching sea. But neither the beauty of the sunset nor the sound of the waves against the ragged cliffs were what made his pulse quicken. His heart was set upon much more sublime treasures.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” Kane half-bowed as he removed his cap, exposing thick, unkempt black hair threaded with gray. Sir Henry grimaced with distaste. He despised Kane’s overt show of obsequiousness. It was a sham, and they both knew it. Yet it was as much a part of their twenty-year business interactions as the fat velvet purses which Sir Henry regularly handed over and which Kane inevitably stashed into his seemingly bottomless pockets. Sir Henry pointed at Kane’s boots with the spiked tip of his cane. Graveyard mud still clung to his soles and heels in heavy clumps. In fact, he’d left a trail of dirt across the polished floor.

“Come now, man. You could have at least wiped your feet. Especially in the presence of a lady.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Kane walked dutifully to the doormat and wiped his shoes. There was something comical in his earnestness as he scuffed his soles back and forth, back and forth across the coarse fibers. “She was ever so hard to dig up,” he said. “Buried in clay, she was. And ever so deep. No coffin, neither. Had to dig the clay out of her eyes.”

With characteristic impatience, Sir Henry motioned for Kane to hand over the sack. But Kane tutted. “She cleaned up ever so well,” he said. “But I had to do the work myself. Bought special detergent and all.”

“You’ll be remunerated, as you always are.” Sir Henry held out his hand again, but Kane still did not budge. Instead, he stared at Sir Henry placidly.

“The field gate-guard, he had a gun. I risked my life, sir, to get this one for you. Though I must say, she’s a beauty.”

It was torture now, and Kane knew it. Sir Henry thought he would burst if he did not feel the sensuous weight of the sack in his hands. “Come, man. There will be an extra guinea for your trouble.”

“Six.”

“Excuse me?”

“Six guineas, sir. With regret.”

Sir Henry rolled his eyes. The man was a pickpocket as well as a grave robber, but Sir Henry raised his hand and clicked his fingers. The manservant who had been standing by the door, quiet as a shadow, slipped out of the room. He returned a few moments later with a velvet purse, even fatter than usual.

“Your money,” Sir Henry said as he held out the purse with one hand and held out his other for the sack.

“I would appreciate it if you counted it for me, sir, so that I can see it. It’s not that I don’t trust you, sir, but it’s the guild’s rules, as you know.”

Sir Henry gave an exasperated sigh. That damnable guild. Thieves, pickpockets, drug dealers, grave robbers. Sir Henry felt demeaned by the need to work with them, but how else would he procure his darlings? He would have had an assassin kill Kane long ago if he could have found a more amenable lackey to cater to his needs, but none was available. In the sordid graveyard circles he trod, Kane was the best. Besides, do in Kane and one of his brethren would come in the night and slit the throats of everyone in the household. Or perhaps they would choose exposure or blackmail. He was certain the guild had a file on him heavier than this velvet purse.

“Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. That’s fifty pounds, man.” Kane did not reply, but waited patiently as Sir Henry counted out the final six shillings of his bonus. “…Five-and-ten, five-and-eleven, six shillings.” Scowling, Sir Henry held out the purse. “For some men, Kane, that’s a year’s wages.”

“And for some,” Kane retorted, “it’s less than pocket money.” Covered in graveyard dirt as he was, Kane flashed a grin as false as a three-bob bit, then took the purse and stashed it in his coat’s deep inner pocket. As he did so, the light caught the skull-and-crossbones insignia of his damnable guild, tattooed on the web between left thumb and forefinger. Sir Henry grimaced in distaste.

“Kane,” Sir Henry said as the man turned to go. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Grin wider than ever, Kane placed the voluptuously rounded sack in Sir Henry’s hand—a hand that trembled with barely contained excitement.

“Thank you,” Sir Henry said. “You are dismissed.”

Kane bowed. “You know how to reach me should you need me,” he said, and then stepped out of the French doors and into the shadows of the night.

Listening to the crashing of the sea against the cliffs’ sheer drop only yards from the summer house’s large glass doors, Sir Henry waited until Kane disappeared. Then, his hands shaking, he reached into the rough burlap sack and withdrew his prize.

His heart skipped a beat. Even in the jaundiced light of the gas lamp, she was exquisite. The very foundation of beauty lay in his hands. No flesh or sinew or muscle to mar the gorgeous symmetry, the perfection of the skull. Large, round eye sockets, gently curved orbital bones, delicate nasal cavity, slightly pointed chin, brow ridge both smooth and understated. She was the very essence of feminine charm. Scoundrel that he was, Kane had outdone himself. Hands still shaking, Sir Henry returned his prize to the grubby burlap sack. Blowing out the lamp, he exited the summer house, carefully locking it behind him.

As he walked toward the château’s west wing, Sir Henry inhaled the scent of flowering gorse. To his left was the steep drop of the black cliffs, and beyond them the whispering sea where so many ancient sailors had drowned, mourned now only by the cries of gulls. The waters here were notoriously dangerous, as were the old gods who haunted them. Mara, queen of the hungry deep, keeper of the waters’ secrets and of fishermen’s nightmares. Sir Henry smiled grimly. She, too, loved to collect bones.

The studio sat at the end of a long, winding corridor, one of the many maze-like passages in this, the oldest part of the château. Once this great sprawl of buildings and subterranean tunnels had been part of a monastery, but the order had been dissolved in the late Middle Ages when the abbot was accused of sorcery. After that, the lands and buildings were taken over by Sir Henry’s ancestors—an aristocratic but bastard line that some said the abbot had seeded himself.

As he listened to the echo of his footsteps and the distant rumble of the sea, Sir Henry contemplated the abbot’s sad fate. He supposed that the Church just didn’t understand what it meant to live this close to the salt, where life was precarious. But then again, any who had been stationed here long enough began to comprehend the risk. Even a hundred years ago, when the local church’s façade had been restored, they left the mermaid there with her comb and her mirror, and the barnacle-encrusted skulls that encircled the front door. But then again, the workmen had been locals, and forcing them to obliterate such protective charms would have ended in mutiny.

Lifting the ancient iron keyring from his pocket and selecting an unusually ornate key embellished with gold filigree, Sir Henry unlocked the cast-iron gate that separated the studio from the rest of the building. The only other copy of the key belonged to DeMains.

Traversing the short corridor in a few swift steps, Sir Henry knocked on the studio door. A deep baritone voice called, “Enter!” and Sir Henry opened the door. As the hinges squeaked and the ancient oak portal swung inward, the smell of linseed oil and wet clay filled Sir Henry’s nostrils. DeMains was there, as he almost always was. But today he sat at his desk, ink pen in hand, his face bathed in the mellow glow of an oil lamp. No doubt he was expounding on his latest theory about the benefits of flesh-depth measurement.

Glancing up from his work, DeMains smiled. “Sir Henry!” He stood and held out his hand. His fingers were surprisingly long and tapered for such a squarely built fellow. “To what do I owe the honor? I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

Sir Henry glanced at the nearby table covered with DeMains’s sculpting tools: micrometer, several levels, piping, and bits of leather and sandpaper. On the far side of it sat a guillotine, a drill, and a bowl full of depth pins. They always made Sir Henry think of miniature golf tees.

“Something special today, DeMains,” Sir Henry said, and then he passed the sack to his resident sculptor. DeMains withdrew the skull.

“My, but she’s a beauty!” With a connoisseur’s touch, he rubbed his fingers along the wide brow and the delicate eye sockets, finally fingering the sutures of the skull. “Not a day over twenty. Where did you get her? The palace cemetery?”

“No. The hangman’s yard.”

DeMains’s eyes widened. “Her crime?”

“Murdering a faithless lover.”

DeMains’s smile spread into a grin as he stroked the girl’s bare cheekbone. “Then we shall give her red hair.”

“According to the police records, it was black.”

“Red for passion,” DeMains replied, and Sir Henry nodded.

“DeMains, you are a consummate artist, capturing the soul as well as the face of beauty.”

“That’s what you pay me for,” DeMains replied, and then quieted for a moment. “On the subject of payment, it’s your forty-ninth birthday next month. On the night of the Summer Solstice.”

Sir Henry tucked his cane into the crook of his arm and sank his hands deep in his suit pockets. “Yes. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“Seven times seven,” DeMains said. “It’s an important one.” He tilted his head and stared sympathetically into Sir Henry’s eyes. “You will need a special gift. One that entails a sacrifice.” He glanced at the skull cradled in his hands. “She would do nicely.”

Sir Henry pursed his lips. “It’s not fair,” he said, “for my birthday to interrupt what could be a lovely relationship.”

“Life isn’t fair,” DeMains replied. “Regardless, the people expect it. With great tracts of land comes great responsibility. Remember what happened to your father.”

“That occurred before I was born,” Sir Henry stated as he frowned. “And I believe a good part of the tale was fabricated by fishwives eager for scandal.”

But DeMains shook his head. “Belief does not change your responsibility, especially in the eyes of the villagers. We don’t want outsiders involved, or the police, and local girls won’t do. Times have changed. It’s an elegant solution.”

“Quite.” Sir Henry took his hands out of his pockets and tapped his cane on the floor, his lips pouting. “It’s still not fair,” he said, “but I suppose you’re right.” He turned to go, then paused at the door. “Spare no expense,” he said. “And call me when you give her eyes.”

One week later, Sir Henry stood on the cliff edge and stared down at the moaning, ever-hungry sea. In his hand was an unopened bottle of cognac. Sea-fret blew into his face as the incoming tide boomed and crashed, eating away at the rock beneath his feet. It was only a matter of time before the cliff face tumbled into the depths, and with it, a little more of Sir Henry’s heritage. But that was what it meant to be an aristocrat in these parts. To hold on to what you could, however you could, sacrificing whatever was necessary. It was rarely a pretty business.

Turning his back to the wind, which was redolent with brine and seaweed, Sir Henry strode to the most ancient part of the old abbey. Tucking the cognac under his arm, he removed a rusted iron key from the vast ring he’d hooked to his belt and unlocked the stout oak door that led to the catacombs. Once inside, he lifted the waiting torch from its iron sconce and reached into his coat for his silver pocket lamp. With the ease of long practice, he pressed the side button to pop the lid, and a second time to ignite the cap. The fluid-drenched wick caught with a crack and a hiss. Sir Henry stared at the yellow flame as it engulfed the torch’s pitch-soaked head. It stank, but his nose no longer crinkled with distaste. After so many decades of traveling these lightless tunnels, he was used to it.

Shadows lurked around each corner and the dark spill behind every pebble and stone stretched long and ominous, like poisonous little secrets. Here in this underground place every sound was distorted. His footsteps echoed like the pounding of the sea in the caves below, and the very blood in his veins pulsed like a tide.

Soon he came to the shelves which housed his father’s collection. He paused for a moment, letting the firelight play across a delicate crown of bone, the elegant arch of a brow, or plumb the lovely mystery of an eye socket. These were his first darlings, his earliest fantasies. As a boy, he had come down and played with them. In his imagination, he’d dressed them in exquisite flesh, though secretly he’d thought, even then, that bone was best—the very foundation of feminine splendor. In fact, he never found a woman so truly beautiful as one he had seen fully disrobed, one whose face he had been able to rebuild at his pleasure.

Placing his torch in a nearby sconce and setting the bottle at his feet, he reached to the highest shelf and grasped a bony visage by its hollows. He cradled it in his hands, as if it were the most precious jewel. His father had etched a name on every head in his harem, but this one had always been Henry’s favorite. Lady Godiva—the woman who had ridden naked through a town, dressed only in her long, luxuriant hair. To her, bareness would be second nature. He kissed her serene, bony brow and tucked her under his arm. Picking up the bottle at his feet, he began to walk deeper into the catacombs. Despite his vows, the abbot always appreciated female company.

By flickering torchlight, Sir Henry journeyed deeper into the catacombs’ twisting intestines. Veins of sea-green malachite and foam-colored quartz caught the light like phosphorescent algae. Long ago, before Christianity had been dreamed of, these tunnels were hollowed out by Stone Age miners who used the crystals in the strange rites they performed in honor of their sea gods, and later by men hungry for copper ore. Sir Henry paused near an ancient stone altar scattered with votive offerings of bone. Not even those Bronze Age innovators—mining for copper and trading for tin—could forget about the Old Ones of the sea. Clutching the skull more tightly, Sir Henry hurried on, suddenly eager for company.

Compared to the narrow, twisting tunnels used to reach it, the abbot’s cell was palatial. A natural cavern, it had been painstakingly carved into fan arches, though instead of columns, the walls were adorned with glistening stalagmites and stalactites that made Sir Henry think of cascades of glittering seafoam.

After lighting the cell’s seven torches, Sir Henry set his own torch in an eighth ornate sconce. The light flickered eerily across wall frescoes depicting the abbot’s martyrdom. Images of the man being hanged, drawn, quartered, and burned shimmered in the torchlight. His scorched bones now lay in an oak chest bound with gold, which rested in a niche cut into the granite wall.

Sir Henry placed the skull on the stone slab that served as a table and then sat on a nearby boulder. “I’ve brought company,” he said as he poured cognac into three waiting glasses.

A shadow unfolded itself from the oaken box and drifted toward the table. It had the rough dimensions of a man. Sir Henry knew from experience that the longer he stayed and the more he drank, the more manlike the shadow would become. Whether that was due to the abbot’s memory returning or merely to the effect of the alcohol, he had no idea. But he supposed that, either way, the abbot’s lack of distinct form was hardly surprising. He doubted he’d remember his own face after five hundred years of dust.

“To Beauty,” Sir Henry cried as he stood and raised his glass to Lady Godiva’s pale, bony visage. The Shadow raised the shadow of its glass in an equally enthusiastic toast, and the two—man and shadow—drank. Sir Henry swished the cognac around his mouth and felt the dull heat course through his body. It helped to disperse the chill of these ancient sea caves. He took a deep breath, since he wasn’t certain how to phrase his next question. In the end, he decided that bluntness was best.

“My dear Abbot,” he said finally, “may I borrow your treatise on the transmutation of base clay into flesh?” He could feel his companion’s surprise. After all, that treatise had sealed the abbot’s unhappy fate. “You see,” Sir Henry continued, “it’s my forty-ninth birthday soon. Seven times seven, on Midsummer Night.”

Sir Henry thought he saw the shadow give a quick nod of understanding, and perhaps of sympathy. Slowly, it rose and drifted to a far corner of the room, directly below the section of the fresco that depicted his hanged body being pulled in four directions by galloping horses. Only in this image, the horses were sea horses, like mad kelpies charging through seafoam.

The abbot pointed to a foundation stone which, at some point in the past, had been loosened. Sir Henry’s knees cracked as he knelt down and dragged the heavy stone out of the wall. Just as he’d thought: a hiding place. Slowly and carefully, he inserted his hand and then his forearm. Sifting through dirt and dust, he combed his fingers through every inch of the enclosed space. He soon realized that the hole was much deeper than he’d expected and had to thrust the rest of his upper arm into the hollow before his fingers brushed against what felt like a roll of parchment. Grunting, he pressed his shoulder against the wall and reached in as deep as he could. With a husky cry of triumph, he grasped the manuscript and withdrew it from its centuries-old hiding place.

Knees complaining, Sir Henry stood up with another grunt. Ignoring the dirt on his clothes, he broke the seal and unrolled the furled vellum. Just as he’d hoped: the last surviving copy of the abbot’s blasphemous treatise. Brushing dust from his jacket-sleeve, Sir Henry decided to leave Lady Godiva for the night, despite the fact that she was one of his favorites. He only hoped that one day, when he was no more than a shadow, someone would be as kind to him.

The next morning dawned gray and stormy. Sea rain clattered against the windowpane as the wind swirled and howled. Sir Henry awoke with an aching head. His only solace was that the abbot probably didn’t feel any better despite—or perhaps because of—a night spent discussing the miracle of transmutation.

At breakfast, his housekeeper informed him that DeMains had sent a message boy. The project was ready to view. Swallowing some peppermint water, Sir Henry wiped his lips and set out for the west wing, his heart beating in his chest.

At the doorway to DeMains’s inner sanctum, Sir Henry paused. In an unusual moment of self-reflection, he wondered about the wisdom of the path he was about to tread. Why go through the trouble of winning a girl back from the dead only to then sacrifice her to the demons of the sea?

DeMains was right, times had changed, and sacrificing a living girl would be too dangerous. Yet the thought of abandoning such beauty to the demons of this place troubled and angered him. When it came to magic, he was competent enough, but he knew he could never best that vast power that crashed against stone and beach and cliff face, eating away at the land with its omnivorous hunger. Had it not consumed his father when he’d defied it? It was like time itself—eternal, intractable, beyond the power of any mortal to control.

“But occasionally it can be shaped to one’s will,” Sir Henry whispered to himself. “That, a mere mortal can do.” He opened the door.

The first thing Henry saw when he entered was a sculptor’s stand and on top of it, his newest darling veiled in sea-green velvet. DeMains came out of the back room, assiduously wiping his hands on a towel. He was smiling.

“I worked all night,” he said. “She’s far from finished, but I think you’ll like what you see.”

Sir Henry unveiled his prize. The pins were still visible and DeMains had only roughed in the fundamental musculature, but her eyes were in place, green as malachite.

“She has a soul, now,” Sir Henry said.

“Or will soon,” DeMains replied. “Have you thought of a name for her yet?”

“Lady Galatea,” Sir Henry replied.

DeMains nodded his approval. “After Pygmalion’s ivory lady?”

“In part,” Sir Henry said. “But also after the pale nereid. She who is milk-white, the name means in Greek. The most beautiful of all.”

In his mind’s eye, Sir Henry saw the tenuous, invisible thread that still connected this skull to the spirit of a beautiful murderess, sent to the underworld well before her time. Closing his lids, he imagined that thread thickening, and then visualized himself—like the fishermen on that vast stretch of coastline over which he had dominion—hauling her back to the world of the living. It would not be easy. But then again, nothing worth doing ever was.

For three weeks, Sir Henry pored over the abbot’s manuscript, puzzling out arcane symbols, referencing and re-referencing dusty books in his vast library. Sometimes he went out and stared at the sea, cursing it. The sea laughed at him. And then DeMains called him. She was ready.

In DeMains’s studio, surrounded by the scents of turpentine and wet clay, Sir Henry removed the green velvet veil of his sea bride and gasped. She was exquisite—from the malachite of her eyes to the ivory of her skin and the arterial cascade of her hair, she fulfilled every promise of her beauty. “DeMains,” he whispered, “you are a true artist.”

With a small proud smile playing over his lips, DeMains bowed. “And I finished her just in time,” he replied.

“Yes,” Sir Henry said. “Tomorrow is Solstice Eve, and the eve of my birthday.”

“Seven times seven,” DeMains added.

Sir Henry sighed.

“Is everything else in order?” DeMains asked.

Sir Henry nodded. “The seamstresses have been working for a fortnight.”

“Ah. It bodes well.” DeMains cleared his throat. “Would you like… um… someone to accompany you?”

Sir Henry shook his head. “No. A man’s birthdays, like his marriages, are a private affair.”

DeMains bowed again. “As you wish.”

“I wish nothing of the sort,” Sir Henry added querulously. He was staring at his sea bride and felt his heart ache at the sight of her long red hair and green eyes. “But the law is the law.”

“So it is,” DeMains added philosophically. “So it is.”

At half-past nine on Solstice Eve, Sir Henry set out from his château, eager to finish the night’s sordid business. As the sun sank toward the horizon and the full moon rose in the sky, the pink clouds of sunset deepened to violet, and then to indigo. The seven-hour twilight had begun.

Though the air was warm, the sea breeze was chill, and Sir Henry shivered as he carried his shrouded beloved in his arms. Over one shoulder he’d slung a sack filled with everything he would need to welcome the dawning of his birthday, as he had every year since he’d come of age. Tomorrow was his birthday as it had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s, and his great-grandfather’s. He’d never questioned the oddness of this reoccurrence any more than he’d questioned the existence of the sea cliffs, or the gulls, or the hunger of the briny deep. It was as much a part of his inheritance as the château or the deference of the sailors, the fishermen, and their fishwives.

Climbing carefully down the steps cut into the sea cliffs, he focused on the worn stone beneath his feet. How long had this staircase been here? No one knew, but he suspected it was as ancient as the Stone Age settlements dotting the coastline, as old as the standing stones and barrows lining the grand processional that led here from the great stone circles of the east and north.

The staircase ended and Sir Henry carefully tucked his beloved into his shoulder sack before beginning the final stage of his journey. With an agility that belied his years, he scrambled down the steep scree-face, holding tightly to the old knotted rope his father had secured to the rock overhead. He knew from childhood outings that the scree, fallen from the cliffside, was full of fossilized sea creatures—oysters, trilobites, and the twisting palaces of conch shells.

Landing on the sand with a thump, Sir Henry turned his back to the cliff and let his gaze drift over the moonlit beach. The tide was out, but this was no natural tide, as this was no natural night. Though at its zenith the sea usually crashed against the black cliffs and at its nadir was reduced to a gentle lapping at the sand just a few yards away, tonight the mellow gold beach was exposed for more than half a mile, and the sea had been forced to lay bare her hidden treasures of kelp and bladder wrack, starfish and coral, wrecked ships and rotting sea serpents. Even those secret creatures usually hidden in the ocean’s depths were stranded in tide pools. Now those strange, phosphorescent monsters stared up at the moon and pale stars with huge lidless eyes, or gasped, their razor-sharp gills open, dying on the sand. The bones of a long-dead sailor and those of a mermaid, entangled in a final, passionate embrace, shimmered in Diana’s light. But it was on the horizon that Henry’s eyes focused as he stood with his back to the cliff.

Halfway between himself and the water’s edge rose a stone circle, enormous and ancient, exposed by the withdrawing tide. Like this expanse of beach, it was only visible one night each year. Sir Henry couldn’t help but wonder whether it existed in some liminal realm between worlds, a place that came into being during this night’s strange twilight.

Behind him, a low croak sounded. Glancing over his shoulder, Sir Henry spied a frog crouching on the scree between two clumps of rough seagrass. Swiftly, he reached down and snatched it. The frog struggled, but Sir Henry held it fast and then secured it in his sack. It kicked and bounced for a moment before lying still. Sir Henry smiled. Finding it was lucky. Carefully balancing his shoulder sack again, he began to walk, bending now and then to gather the strange treasures that would help him accomplish his task.

By the time he reached the seahenge, Sir Henry’s arms were piled high with magical finds and he was sweating. But still, as he approached the circle of monoliths, he felt his skin grow cold. Carefully he placed his treasures on the ground, and then his sack. He was so close now. The moon was bright and the tall stones jutted like the ragged teeth from the gaping maw of some enormous buried beast. And at the circle’s center, rising like a many-headed hydra or the tentacles of some colossal, fossilized kraken, were the roots of an ancient oak. It had been buried in a time before remembering, its branches and bole within the earth and its lower trunk and thick roots rising and writhing toward the sky. Like the stones, it was only visible one night each year, and belonged to this twilight world which itself belonged to both sea and land, below and above, sleeping and waking.

With a courtly bow, Sir Henry took a step forward and entered the circle. His skin tingled as the shadows of the stones fell upon him. “I have come,” he said, “as was promised long ago. I have come as my father came, and his father, and his father before him, back to the time before time when we emerged from your branches and bark; back before we wrested this land from the sea. I have brought you my bride, who is also my gift to you, as she is to the Ancient Ones of the Salt. But first, as you gave us life, I give you light.”

Sir Henry approached the tree deferentially. When he was close enough to touch the roots, he reached for his silver pocket lamp and pressed the side button. The cap ignited with a hiss and a whoosh, lighting the wick already drenched with fluid.

Delicately, Sir Henry reached forward and touched the flame to each rootling tip. The old sea-soaked oak caught and sparked and spat and finally burned with the aqua flame of salt-infused driftwood. Around and around the tree he walked, lighting the lowest rootlings like the many wicks of a giant candelabrum. And as each thin finger of wood ignited, the aqua flames spread upward from root to root, until the whole underworld canopy was ablaze and Sir Henry had returned to where he had started.

Stepping back, he shaded his face from the heat of the weirdling fire that flared up without devouring the wood, and which left the bole untouched. Beneath the flaming underworld oak, he loosened the drawstring of his sack. Ignoring the croak and hop of the struggling frog, he reached inside. As the sea slapped its watery hands against the beach, drawing a murmur of pebbles toward the deep before tossing them back with a hiss of seafoam, Henry withdrew a silver knife engraved with runes, a small sack of grave clay taken from his lady’s first resting place, a purse of herbs, a vial of elixir, a goblet whose cup had been cut from his great-grandfather’s skull, a bottle of his best champagne, a shimmering folded dress, and a huge conch shell inlaid with silver. Finally, he withdrew his veiled prize.

Slowly, like a man undressing his bride on their wedding night, Sir Henry unwound her caul of sea-green velvet. As her long red hair caught in the salt breeze and blew about his arm like freshets of blood, he let her wrappings fall to the sand. Then, in triumph, he held her up to the night sky.

In the aqua light of the flaming tree, her hair burned with all the colors of hell and her glass eyes sparkled, green as sea urchins. The most gorgeous mother-of-pearl could not compare with the luster of her pale skin, nor oysters with the succulence of her lips.

With the deference of a courting suitor, Sir Henry laid the head of his lady upon the sand. Then he set about building her a body.

Her spine—from neck to curved pelvis—he took from the remains of the amorous mermaid. The bones of legs and feet, arms and hands, lovely fingers and precious toes he built from driftwood and coral. Her lungs were sea sponges and her tendons long strands of kelp wrapped around the muscular innards scooped from great scallop shells. Womb and bladder were sea cucumbers, her ovaries starfish, and her liver a giant sea leach. Her gallbladder was a yellow snail and her innards a writhing sea worm pulled from below the sand, its circular mouthful of teeth snapping. For breasts, two more lovely rounded sea sponges, and for nipples, tiny pearls.

Almost finished, he sat back on his heels and gazed upon the body of his beloved, and at her head, which rested several feet away. She looked like a beautiful saint—beheaded and flayed—though the gods this lady served were no Christian ones. Sir Henry sighed. The only missing organ was a heart.

He reached into his sack. With a frightened ribbit the frog leaped, but Sir Henry caught it deftly in one hand. Lifting it high, he felt the strength of its struggles and the rhythmic swelling and pulsing of its throat as it breathed. Oh, it would do nicely! He plunged it into his beloved’s chest where it snuggled between the sea sponges and hid.

Now all he needed was skin.

At the tide line, Henry filled his sack with wet sand rich with sea lice and tiny, translucent crabs, then lugged it back to the circle of stones surrounding the flaming tree. Once inside its circumference, he rested the heavy sack on the ground beside his lady’s body and knelt down.

One by one, he added grave clay, herbs, and elixir. When the last of these was added, the mixture frothed and bubbled. Tiny lice and crabs rose on the foam and scuttled madly over the sides of the sack, trying to escape. Unbuttoning his fly, Sir Henry withdrew his stiff member and began to stroke it, focusing his mind on the beautiful face of his lady and the lovely skull beneath. He came to climax swiftly, directing his pearly glitter into the mixture. As he buttoned his fly, he thought it was time to add the final ingredient necessary to bring this flesh to life.

Raising the ritual knife, he uttered a guttural prayer and then sliced into the flesh of his right forearm. As blood poured into the sand mixture, he whispered another spell. Arm still bleeding, he reached both hands into the bubbling, frothing mix and began to knead.

He could feel its texture change. The grains of sand—both shell fragments and pebbles—began to dissolve. The smoothness of what resulted reminded him, oddly, that sand was the main substance in glass. But what he kneaded and stretched was neither sand nor glass but something between clay and flesh. Its color, softly ruddy from the red of his blood, was the hue of a lady’s blushing cheek.

With the finesse of a skilled sculptor, Sir Henry attached head to body with muscles and tendons formed of stout kelp, and then he began to layer skin upon his beloved. As each delicate membrane was stretched over her muscles and bones and organs, it set for a moment and then softened. Sir Henry could see the little capillaries sprout and grow and spread through the dermal strata as he prepared and stretched each one, thin and delicate as a frond of seaweed, over her sleeping form. As the seventh layer set and softened, her chest rose in a gentle sigh. But though the body had begun to respond he knew that her form was, on the whole, still lifeless, since it was not yet animated by a spirit. And though the form he had given her was beautifully feminine, its nether regions were, externally at least, still sexless. But before he performed that particular surgery, his lady deserved to be dressed.

From the sand where he had laid it with such care, Sir Henry lifted her shimmering folded dress. In the light of the blazing underworld oak, he shook it out.

Ah! His seamstresses had not disappointed him! Blue-green as velvet seahorn and trimmed with sand-gold braid, the gossamer-fine gown glistened in the light of the fire. Turning his back to the flame, he held it up to the sky and saw the Pearl of Diana shining through it. Such translucent delicacy! The great fan sleeves were like the wings of a butterfly and the dainty bodice like a sheath sewn from the overlapping petals of fragrant flowers.

With the care of a lady’s maid, Sir Henry dressed his doll. Over her head went the gown, and into the great fan sleeves he slid her arms. The bodice he loosened, since the color of her nipples was not yet complete, and though he pulled the gown to her hips, he left the join between her legs—as yet virginally unbroken—bared.

For this bit of work, Sir Henry would need more of his own fluids.

Uncorking the champagne, he poured some bubbly liquid into the chalice cut from his great-grandfather’s skull and drained it. Thinking of God, and of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, Sir Henry cupped the swell of his Galatea’s breasts, traced his fingers over her colorless nipples, then ran his hands along the base of her ribs and clasped the taper of her waist.

He was ready. Once more he brought himself to climax, spraying his jism into what remained of the flesh-clay mixture contained in his sack. Then he squeezed the cut on his arm, breaking the scabby clot so that it could bleed some more.

In his excitement, he’d been reckless with the initial incision, and the reopened wound was deeper than the original. The spray of blood that flooded the sand both fascinated and horrified him. As a wave of weak dizziness swept over him, he quickly bound his wound, fearing he would faint and bleed to death if he did not do so with alacrity. Blinking, he began to knead again. Blood spread through the mix, dyeing it the crimson of a newly opened rose. The mixture, already smooth, was now as soft and silky as petals.

First, Sir Henry gave color to her nipples, and the addition of this ruddy clay made him swollen and erect again. Her legs were—by necessity—already splayed, and so he formed the delicate folds of her labia, fine and slick and smooth. Her full skirt was still rucked high, and so he inserted his middle finger between those nether folds, creating her vagina. Though most of his jism had gone into the making of this, the smoothest and most delicate of flesh, a single pearl-like drop of his own fluid remained, and so he balanced it on the tip of his finger and reached into the recesses of her, where that tight tunnel met the neck of her womb, and deposited it there. After all, it was their wedding night. When this was accomplished and their marriage consummated, Sir Henry stepped back so that he could examine his creation.

Oh! His hands must have been guided by the gods, since not even DeMains at his most inspired could have created a lovelier or more perfect form. With her skirt pooled around her hips and her bodice undone, she looked like a ravished bride, though the porcelain calm of her expression bespoke a serenity rarely experienced by mere mortals.

Slopping more champagne into the bone chalice, Henry drank deeply. Drunk on bubbly and beauty and moonlight and fire, and giddy from loss of blood, he began to dance around his lady, singing and chanting in the guttural language of the dead which he’d memorized from the abbot’s treatise.

As the sea wind—until now unnaturally calm—picked up force, Sir Henry danced, reckless as a teenage boy drunk on his own lustiness. With a final rasp of spells, he picked up the silver conch shell and raised it to his lips. Then he blew.

The blast—clear as a silver horn—bounced off the cliffs and echoed over the beach. For a moment the wind calmed, and then, as if in answer to his call, it gusted in his face, carrying with it the smell of salt and the echo of some great droning instrument of the deep. The sound sent a chill down his spine and raised gooseflesh on his body.

The unearthly echoes died back, and for a moment there was silence. Sir Henry could feel the quickening of his pulse and the pounding of blood in his ears. Something was coming. A wave crashed upon the beach with a frill of white seafoam and then drew back again.

From the far end of the beach, where the sand curved and disappeared and the cliffs met the sea, came a woman’s high-pitched scream of terror. Almost immediately, it was followed by the angry howl of a pack of dogs.

Holding his breath, Sir Henry waited. His right arm was bloody and bandaged, his trousers sand-caked and rolled to the knee, his shirt unbuttoned, and both cravat and jacket had been abandoned. But for the first time in his life, he had forgotten about himself—so focused was he on the fate of another.

Straining his ears until he thought his head would burst with the tension that stretched from temple to temple, he tried to listen for any new sounds on the beach. At first there were none. But finally, he thought he discerned something other than the throbbing of his blood and the blowing of the wind and the crashing of the wavelets upon the sand.

Yes! Coming toward him now from the far end of the beach was the rapid, crunching sound of someone running. He squinted. In the light of the full moon he thought he saw movement, but the bright blaze of the tree behind his back obscured his vision. He waited, heart hammering in his chest.

Yes! Yes! There it was! Someone or something was most definitely running toward him. Though he could not see what it was, churning sand flew upward, as if sprayed by invisible toes and heels as they hit the beach, flying forward in a panicked fury. Sir Henry squinted again, trying to discern the exact form of the thing. But as it came closer, he realized with a terrible chill that what arrowed toward him was not a thing at all. It was a shadow.

From the far end of the beach, those unearthly dogs howled again. Henry thought of his own hounds at the chase, mad for the scent of blood, jaws lathering, eyes wild. But the beasts that barreled toward him sounded gargantuan. They howled with deep, brutish, unearthly yowls that echoed off the cliffs and rolled out to sea. The air was full of it!

The shadow-girl whimpered in terror. Henry felt the breeze of her movement as she swept past him, saw her footprints impress upon the sand, delicate as a deer’s tracks, toes splayed, balanced on the balls of her feet. And for a moment, he saw a wavering silhouette standing between himself and the light of the blazing tree. It was a darkness—a shadow cast by nothing—and then it dove into the vacant body he had made, as if for solace and for shelter. And Henry noticed for the first time that until now his sculpture had cast no shadow of its own.

But there was no more time for thought. The hounds were pounding along the beach, their howls thick with saliva and excitement. They, too, were shadows—great looming blots of muscular darkness. Henry could feel the vibration of their weightiness as their invisible paws struck the sand, sending sharp grains flying upward. He felt them leap and he ducked and rolled—uncertain of his safety if they fell upon him—but even as they leaped into the light to fall upon the girl, the blazing tree sparked and spat and blazed to twice its size, engulfing the shadow-hounds in its blue-green rage.

Screeches of animal pain—yowling and whimpering and squealing, both as pathetic and as terrible as their fearsome, hungry barking. Rising to his knees, Sir Henry covered his ears. He could not bear it! But even as he squeezed his eyes shut, the squealing dwindled and disappeared. Finally, he felt safe enough to open his eyes again.

His lady was no longer inert clay; she was living flesh. She writhed on the beach, her smooth, bare legs shimmering in the oak’s bonfire light, her thighs and sex still gleaming with his spent seed. He could see her beautifully formed breasts with their coral-colored nipples and the cascade of her blood-red hair.

But something was wrong. She clawed up her dress to expose her belly and screeched, back arching in agony. Her belly was swelling, doming, a vertical line darkening the flesh between navel and pubis. Dumbfounded, Sir Henry’s own legs weakened. He had brought her back, yes. But he had brought her back with child. His child.

Suddenly he thought about the tales of his father’s demise and a chill froze his heart. By the blazing tree, the girl held her swollen belly with one hand and coughed into the other, emptying her newly formed lungs of sand. Tiny crabs scrabbled from between her lips, and Sir Henry saw with dawning horror that one of those tiny, almost translucent crustaceans was crawling across the web of skin stretched between the girl’s left thumb and forefinger, its tiny appendages pausing, for less than a moment, upon the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the guild.

NO! Sir Henry thought as he shook his head from side to side. He would not be replaced. Not by some bastard child he had not meant to seed, child born of a murderess, a bitch of the guild. Kane had tricked him!

Lunging forward, Sir Henry grabbed the girl by the hair and dragged her toward the encroaching tide.

“They are coming for you!” he screamed hysterically. “They are coming for you!”

Flailing and screaming, the girl fought him. She grabbed the hand entwined in her hair and hammered the sand with her feet. At the circle’s edge, she bit his injured forearm, and with a spasm and a curse he released her tresses. As she scrambled toward the fire on her hands and knees, she swept the sand, searching for a weapon. As if by providence, her fingers brushed against Sir Henry’s knife.

Braying like a mad beast, he dove at her and grabbed her by the throat. As he shook her, trying at once to break her neck and throttle her, she raised the knife as high as she could and brought it down with all her strength.

A hiss escaped from Sir Henry’s lips, a hiss which quickly rose into a wail. The sharp blade had pierced the intercostal space between his ribs, just to the right of his breastbone, skewering his lung.

With a shocked, gurgling cry, he reeled backward, his lax hands releasing his Galatea’s neck. Mouth wide, he slapped the hole in his chest, as if he either couldn’t believe the blade’s edge had been real, or thought he could stanch the blood that now flowed everywhere. But it was too late. Gasping like a fish hauled onto the beach, he fell onto his side, desperately trying to suck air. His skin turned blue and great gouts of blood poured from between his lips.

Still clutching the knife in her left hand, the girl stumbled to her feet. But as Sir Henry gasped and crawled toward her, she danced back on the pretty toes he had shaped, eluding his grasp.

From somewhere on the cliffs above, a conch shell sounded three times, and the flames of the underworld oak flared up into the night, as if eager to eat the stars. Then, as if the oaken bonfire had seeded distant flames, fifty torches flared into life. A chanting began, carried out to the sea on the swirling winds.

Ave Mara, Salve Regina, Dea sancta… thou divine controller of sky and sea and of all things… winds, rains, and tempests thou dost detain, and, at thy will, let loose… . Deservedly art thou called Mighty Mother of Gods… divine one, queen of divinities, we invoke thee…

A great glowing wave rose up out of the sea and crashed on the beach in a glitter of phosphorescence, bringing with it a spill of bones and shells and long-lost jewels dredged from the deep. And then, as if rising from the seafoam itself, came the Ancient Ones.

They wore the bones of long-drowned lords and ladies, and of sailors washed overboard and lost at sea. Their robes were sea-green and sewn with pearls. Their crowns were of shells, woven with the purple blisters of sea wrack.

In the unsteady light of the burning tree, their faces flickered, now with the delicate beauty of mermaids and the hulking girth of mermen, then with skin like mother-of-pearl, and finally with the faces of sea-eaten skulls. They drifted forward with each incoming wave that crashed upon the beach, their silent robes sweeping the sand and stones and litter of broken shells which murmured softly as they were caressed by the foam.

A woman stepped forward, taller than the rest and both regal and terrible. Her hair was of kelp, her nails sharks’ teeth, and her lips pink coral. The jewels she wore must have belonged to a long-dead queen and her crown was a circlet of gold. Her eyes were two snails whose antennae moved back and forth restlessly as they surveyed the scene. From the cliffside, the prayer swelled again: Te, diva, adoro tuumque ego numen invoco, facilisque praestes hoc mihi quod te rogo… .

The queen smiled a small, mocking smile. Her teeth were white barnacles, finely made but razor-sharp. She gave an almost imperceptible nod and two drowned sailors, still partially fleshed, walked forward. Brandishing her knife, the heavily pregnant girl danced backward. But it was not for her they came.

Sir Henry’s head lolled to one side. He wanted desperately to beg for mercy but could barely drag a single rasping breath into his lungs, which felt like they were being crushed by his own thudding heart. His lips were as blue as those of the long-dead sailors who hauled him up. In some fast-fading recess of his mind, he recognized the weave of their pullovers, the particular pattern of stitches and knots that identified this shoreline. These were the ghosts of men who owed him their allegiance, but allegiance, it seemed, shifted with the tide.

Bowing to the pregnant girl, they dragged Sir Henry back into the water. From between his lips burbled one final belch of blood before his skin and muscle and integument—formed from the stuff of this beach and mixed with the blood of his father almost fifty years before—began to return to that from which they were made. Even as he struggled weakly, Sir Henry’s flesh fell from his bones in great chunks of sand, like a child’s castle built upon the shore and then demolished by the waves.

Though her pulse beat in her throat, the pregnant girl stood tall, as was right for one of such noble blood. The queen regarded her coolly, the snails of her eyes stretching forth. The tide had now drawn in enough to lap at the girl’s bare feet, and to occasionally splash at the underworld oak’s lower branches, making the flames hiss in that ancient animosity of fire and water even older than the world.

“What will you do with him?” the girl asked quietly.

“’Tis the night of the tithe,” the queen responded in a voice as raspy as the cries of seagulls but resonant as whale-song. “We shall suck his bones, as is our right.”

“And what of me?”

The queen gave another thin smile. “Serve us well, daughter mine. And remember, this land is ours.” As she turned to go, her mermen lifted her high, and her mermaids strewed her watery path with pearls.

“In seven years, then,” the queen said without turning, and her mermen transformed into kelpies, great water horses which bore her upon their backs. Then queen and retinue dissolved into a receding wave and were gone.

Alone on the beach, Lady Galatea fainted.

When she awoke, the Solstice was dawning. She lay upon the scree at the base of the cliffs, surrounded by seed pearls. The underworld oak was invisible beneath the waves, as it was on each day of the year, save one.

Wiping her salt-stiff hair out of her eyes, Lady Galatea sat up. Staring at the skull-and-crossbones insignia on the webbing of her left hand, she listened to the hiss of the waves upon the scree and drew in a ragged breath. She could remember nothing before this moment.

The baby kicked and she pressed her hand against her swollen belly. An image of Sir Henry rose before her eyes. Him, she remembered. A shadow fell between her and the dawning light. She looked up.

A man stood before her, his cap in his hand. He had a mop of unkempt black hair, threaded with gray. Between his left thumb and forefinger was a skull-and-crossbones tattoo exactly like her own. She shaded her eyes with her hand.

“Do I know you, sir?”

The man nodded gravely.

She stared at that tattoo again, so black against his pale skin. “I do believe we are related.”

The man knelt before her. “That we are, Lady. By blood as well as by calling.” He offered his hand and she took it, standing with difficulty.

“I murdered my husband,” she said, though she held her head high, both proud and defiant. Kane did not reply, but continued to clasp her hand in his. “He betrayed me and so I killed him. I believe I shall hang for it.”

Kane squeezed her hand gently. “Your husband was taken by the tide. All the village was witness. He was given back to the sea as was just and right, like every man of his line as far back as any can remember. It was the tithe they swore to keep these lands.”

“Will it happen to me?”

“No, Lady.”

“And to my son?”

Kane did not answer at first, but then replied, “He will have many fine years before such a fate befalls him.” He offered his arm, and she took it.

“Where are we going?”

“To the Great House on the cliff.”

“The château?”

Kane nodded.

“Do I live there?”

“Aye, Lady.”

At the base of the cliff, DeMains waited, a brocade shawl in his hands. When she approached, he placed it around her shoulders. “You are even lovelier than I thought possible,” he said.

“Your words are kind, good sir,” she answered graciously. “And your name is?”

“DeMains, Lady,” he said with a sweeping bow. “Ever your servant.” Then he took her hand and kissed it.

But even as the sculptor lifted his lips from her pale hand, Lady Galatea gave a little cry and clutched her belly.

“The child,” she said. “I think it is time.”

The two men exchanged a glance.

“Yes,” Kane said. “Today is the Solstice. Come. We must get you to safety.”

With the two men holding her arms and gently guiding her, Lady Galatea made her way up the cliff to the château, where the morning fires were already being lit.