Fallow Stone—by dave ring

The ancient facade of the big house loomed grey and gleaming over the wild verdancy of Cyan’s demesne. The walls whistled, low and long, whenever the wind blew. Cyan had filled the house with imported brocade throws and beautiful rugs, but they did little to tame the toe-biting cold. The Berber carpet in the great room claimed the most space in my memory. It bore vivid saffron line work cutting through a field of oak leaf green, lit by the glowing blue screen of the immaculate console we’d all been forbidden to touch.

I’d reigned over the grounds ever since being banned from entering the house. The estate’s grounds sprawled and I savored the tending of them; they sheltered knots of wildness that I couldn’t have untangled even if I’d wanted to. Whenever he was in residence, Cyan strayed from the house only rarely, perhaps to sit in the gardens and watch his hummingbirds feast on pink foxgloves and petunias, or to relax beside whatever spot his wife called his favorite. The last one enjoyed the dogwoods. We’d all been fond of that wife, in our own ways. I’ve forgotten his name, but I could never forget the fine indigo tattoos that limned his arms. With James’ help, I’d spent a week constructing the pergola for his rocking chair. A week of balmy afternoons passed as we busied ourselves with wood and hammer and the pretty wife recited poetry.

Pity he didn’t even last a season.

We called them wives, but they were boys really—the last one scarcely eighteen. But Cyan treated them like proper ladies, making them choose the tea and the china and the curtains. 

It was an obsession. Even though he couldn’t keep them hale or whole, Cyan couldn’t stop collecting wives. He coveted them and their beauty. I reckon it’s the keys, with their terrible jangle. The keys, and their temptation. How many hips had I seen them grace? 

He’d had a real wife once. My mother. She left us both for the ground a decade ago. Magnificent roses blossomed from her grave, surrounding the walls of the estate and even barring the gate. They bristled with thorns as long as daggers and refused attention from anything but my hand. It used to plague me, wondering how exactly she cursed him when she died. To never touch another woman, perhaps? But I’d decided that it didn’t matter. Her death had given Cyan permission to lust openly after his true desires: violence and excess. That was the bitter seed laid by her loss. 

A new one was coming, Cook told me. A dancer. Cook and James were tasked with clearing out the east salon so that the new wife could practice in it. James even oiled the floor. Their mothers weren’t buried beneath the demesne’s black dirt, but nonetheless, their loyalty was as unquestionable. We’d all seen what became of those who betrayed our lord’s trust. 

At noon, the gong summoned me to the gate, and I parted the brambles with my presence. It should be a strange thing. The feral buds that secured the gate, stems thick as wrists and nearly twenty feet deep, parted as I grew close Without the flesh of my body walking alongside the carriage, the thorns would snap shut. We’d lost a horse to them once. 

Cyan nodded to me from his perch, reins firm in his grip, as he drove the carriage in. It would be so much simpler to travel by automobile, but Cyan wouldn’t have it. And though they were demanding creatures, I adored the horses. Cyan stepped down and I led them away to the stables, not looking back as the carriage disgorged the latest wife.

I threw myself into work to better ignore the commotion in the days following our new arrival. I trimmed the hedges, swept the grounds, and made sure the roses were content. In return, Cyan ignored me. Just as he’d banished me from the house so that he wouldn’t have to be reminded of her, he had acquired the gong so that he wasn’t forced to utter my name. My name had always been a subtle ward; I shared it with Cyan’s own mother. 

Cyan is wicked, but so were we. I knew that. Wickedness settled into our bones the longer we lived in Cyan’s demesne. When I first understood what he’d done with his wives, I packed a bag. But as my mother’s roses unraveled at the gate, the thought of Cyan’s wrath if he were to return and find me absent made me shake. He would burn the roses to ash. 

So when he returned yet again with a new wife, I waited there to meet him at the gate. 

We learned to track time by Cyan’s courting. The wooing and waning of his wives overlaid the seasons like a wretched calendar.

Keeping busy did not spare me the new wife’s attentions. He finally found me at sunset, nearly two weeks after his arrival. The jangling keys preceded him long before he noticed me, but I kept pruning dead canes. 

“Oh, hello there.” His eyes surveyed me from beneath peach-blonde curls. “What have I found? A princess hiding in the wood?”

My lip curled, though I had to admit, his comeliness managed to diminish even the poet. Gauze draped his lean torso, linen clad his taut hips. His nipples, pink fruit amidst a chest fuzzed with auburn hair, begged to be plucked. 

Long after my inspection veered into crudity, I met his eyes. “I am merely the groundskeeper, milord.” 

A blush bloomed in his cheeks while his hand fidgeted carelessly with the keys. “They, ah—didn’t mention a groundskeeper.”

I took pity on him. “Would you like a tour of the estate, milord?”

I put down my shears at his assent. 

There were plenty of places to show him, even without sharing the wild spaces I kept hidden for myself. The old arbor, with the six stately oaks. The last wife’s bower on the hill. The hedge maze, a favorite of mine. By the time we returned to the heart of the rose gardens, the last rind of sun blazed orange on their blossoms. Their radiance drew a small sound of appreciation from him.

“Be wary of them,” I said curtly.

As I expected, he was contrary and reached out towards a flower. I thrust my leather glove between the thorns and his palm. He gasped.

“Be wary of them,” I said again. I tugged the flower from its branch and handed it over without looking at him.

He tucked it behind his ear, silent for a moment. “I should have heeded your warning.”

“Yes.” I withdrew the small shears from my belt and clipped away another dead cane.

“Do you have any other wisdom I should abide by?”

Perhaps this one was smarter than he looked. Putting away my shears, I counted advice on my fingers: “Don’t touch the roses. Don’t play the coquette. Don’t go into that damn room.”

“I shall hardly need to play the coquette. Lord Cyan is very handsome.”

“Fine.” If he didn’t want to listen to the wisdom beneath my warning, he could write his own death sentence. “I’m glad to hear it.” 

“Which room—” he started to ask.

“Don’t play dumb.” I couldn’t help it. “You know exactly which room I mean.”

He looked down. “You may call me Tristan.” I expect he blushed again but it was too dark to tell. 

I could try to use his name, as a small kindness. But there was hardly any point in remembering it. “Let me walk you back to the house, milord.” 

With a new wife to impress, Cyan became generous with us. We ate venison and fine cheese for a week. The lord spent his days in his room, behind the stone door, the one his wives had been proscribed from entering. He doted upon young Tristan in the evenings and left orders to fetch his bride whatever he wanted. James procured him treasures: a sterling gramophone to play music while he danced; a razor-thin tablet with a gem-like screen, to ogle; an ornate rapier, so that he could fence with his shadow. 

Tristan liked lavender tea. He chose boring modern china. And he replaced the curtains with automatic blinds. 

Those first few weeks must be heady for a wife. For a wealthy and virile lord, more than rival to his father, to treat him with both adoration and animal want? Even more than the ones who came before, Tristan seemed genuinely drawn to Cyan. Whatever practice he’d had before at spreading his legs, his eyes soon grew wanton and lawless. If we needed proof of his ardor—and we certainly didn’t—the sounds of his pleasure drifted like unwanted guests throughout the night air. 

We knew to savor these cloying evenings, because like with the others, Cyan’s attentions soon became cruel. On the fourth week of their marriage, midway through an elaborate outdoor feast, some offhand comment from the wife led Cyan to sweet all of the assembled food from the table and lay Tristan upon it between a rack of candles and a tray of jellied lamb. Tristan protested briefly as Cyan unbuckled his belt, but soon seemed to enjoy the spectacle of being savaged in front of the help. James and I averted our eyes from the heaving of pink and white flesh and ensured that they didn’t set the table linens on fire. The next day, James reported with a savage glee that Tristan had been guilted to his knees during breakfast as Cook served tea and toast. The depravities grew greater and greater. Weeks of this. 

Then, to the staff’s complete lack of surprise, as quickly as Cyan reached new depths of hedonism and humiliation, his attentions ceased completely, and he abandoned the demesne for one of his hunting trips. 

Initially, after this unexpected departure, Tristan wandered the demense, unmoored and listless. But he soon realized that Cyan had left no instructions but for him to be indulged. Tristan ordered Cook to make him grandiose meals of his own. He went from room to room with James, keys jangling on his hip, sampling Cyan’s treasures. He danced in his studio for hours, until he would slink sweaty and languid into the garden, commanding me to fetch him cold pears and fresh water. 

A month of such sloth, and a message appeared upon the blue console’s display indicating that Cyan would be home the next day. The three of us on staff became industrious, readying for the lord’s return. Tristan’s reaction to the news manifested as petulance, interrupting our chores with especially frivolous requests. I almost felt bad for him; though he tried, he could not eat or dance or fence away his growing dread. 

Late the next day, I swept the flagstones of the courtyard for the third time. James’s voice, calling my name, cut through the air.

I ran, knowing what I would find.

That damn door had been opened. The stink coming out of it was terrible; we would have to open all the windows to get it out of the house. Tristan lay like a puddle of cream on the awful slate floor. James hovered over the threshold, eyes averted from the ceiling. I didn’t have to look up to know that the other wives hung from the rafters, glistening specimens within their jars. But not the poet it seemed; I noticed that Cyan had had him skinned.

As I stepped inside, self-preservation lifted the horror from my body the way Cook filleted bones from a fish. Safer than thinking about those poor boys. The poet’s splayed and pinned remains threatened that safety, but I knew I could manage if I kept the sight of him outside the range of my vision.

“Get up,” I said.

Tristan moaned. He didn’t even raise his head.

“Get up,” I said again. “Or James and I will have to carry you.”

Tristan whimpered, levering himself up using the barrel of formalin. He vomited noisily just after he rose and hunched back over to his knees. I counted slate tiles while he collected himself. The corner of that lovely Berber rug just beyond the doorway provoked me with longing. Would Cyan object to me taking it to my cottage if I found something else in storage to replace it?

“They’re dead.” His words were flat enough to skip across a pond.

I sighed. “I told you not to open the door.” 

The gong sounded. James whistled like the wind, low and long.

I took charge. “Tristan, go clean yourself up. Wear the white tunic with the straps. He likes to tear that off you, maybe it will distract him. James, the windows. Immediately. And tell Cook to burn something in the kitchen.” 

I fetched water and cleaned up Tristan’s mess before I dashed to the gate. Along the way, I smeared a muddy hand through my hair. Something to excuse my tardiness. 

When the carriage came through, Cyan nodded to me as always, his gaze skimming along my mucky face without mention. The roses closed behind him like a fist.

I waited, wondering if I would hear screams as I rubbed down the horses. Hearing nothing but silence, I turned to the roses, pruning in near darkness. 

“What’s my place in all this, mother?” 

The thorns didn’t answer.

The sound that eventually broke the quiet was much lower than I expected. A bellow that ended abruptly. A smack of boots against paving stones brought Tristan before me, a frantic mess of white linen. His teary face glinted in the flickering light of his lantern. “You need to let me out,” he shouted.

“Why?” I averted my eyes from his light. The script had deviated from the usual program, but Cyan couldn’t be far behind. “He’ll just hunt you down.”

“No.” Tristan’s voice whistled like a kettle. “That bloody murderer is dead.” He raised his rapier, its silver blade stained along its length.

“Dead,” I echoed, scarce believing him. I might have actually been offended.

“Yes. Now, get me a horse and take me to the bloody gate.” A weight fell away from me. I became emptier, somehow. He jabbed the blade toward me. “Their families need to know where their sons are.”

I didn’t disagree with Tristan’s sentiment, but he was a fool if he thought that the families of Cyan’s wives hadn’t knowingly sent their sons to this fate. I readied him a steed, but I couldn’t move fast enough for the young lord. He pushed the tip of his rapier against my spine. Warm blood trickled down my back and anger flared in me. 

I’d seen the gifts that Cyan had taken with him when he went “courting.” The loss of their sons had been a price they’d long since paid, and not a transaction they would thank anyone to remind them of. What would remain of the estate, if Tristan drew strangers to this house?

The answer hardened something in me. Resolve flooded the newly hollow space that Cyan had just vacated. That was when I chose the young stallion to die, my fingers light against the beast’s bridle. 

The feral greenery exposed the gate as we approached.

“Goodbye, my lord.” My words twisted in the uneven light amidst the roses and their glory, sweet-scented and vibrant. He pressed forward and I halted, seizing the lantern from where he’d hooked it on his saddle. As simple as that. The thorns fell upon him and that poor horse. These were the screams I’d been expecting. 

Resolve gave way to grief. That poor beast. I let my body shake. The lamplight led me to a copse of birches where the white bark shone in the dark like spears of bone. I sat shuddering amidst soft earth, studded with tightly furled poppies that had never known Cyan’s iniquity, beneath the looming shape of the house’s silhouette blotting out the stars. Even empty of him, it smothered me.

The lantern’s flame danced within its glass prison until it swallowed the last bit of oil and died. The fire’s afterimage, glistering and fading against the night sky, fueled my resolve. I still had a home here, even if it wasn’t inside those walls. 

Berber carpet be damned. The wives did deserve better. They deserved a small, bright mercy. Not just for me, but for the land and for everyone he’d hurt. 

The kindest thing to do for Cyan’s late wives would be to cremate them.

AUTHOR BIO:

dave ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Hidden Ones (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and numerous short stories. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, and the co-editor of Baffling Magazine. Find him online at www.dave-ring.com or @slickhop on Twitter.