Page 58 of These Eternal Bones

I heard of a town where flowers never grow, but one that’s covered in them all the same, painted along the faded brick buildings by a woman who tamed the beast that was trapped within its borders.

A fantastical story whispered from ear to ear until no doubt the truth was far from those events that happened eighty-some-odd years ago.

I spent my entire life looking for my sister, the one who ran in the middle of the night.

The one who was strong enough to do what the rest of us only dared to dream of, and some of us not even that.

I had to know if the stories were true, not the sweet ones of a great battle, of gods, angels, witches, and fae.

No, the one our prophet muttered about how Molly had fled into the night, fled from her duty to God, a duty…

an honor we all paid. Even to this day, sometimes I can feel phantom kicks of his children in my belly, although they are long grown with families of their own.

Far away from what little remains of New Eden.

She never knew what her leaving had started, that it was the beginning of the end for that terrible place .

My steps shuffle along the cobblestone path, hope building in my chest along with something else…

fear? Anticipation? Awe? The brick walls are, in fact, painted with flowers, ones I recognize.

There’s a canvas filled with them in my home.

It’s odd to think I’ll never see them again, those flowers or that home.

The last eighty years have been hard on me, the boat trip here was even harder.

The captain of the boat I paid passage for had thought to tell me no.

That hadn’t worked for my sister, and it wouldn’t for me either.

I’d long stopped letting a man tell me no.

Joseph had spoken of letters he’d received, how my sister had paid her passage to a strange man. He’d called it shame. Vile and unnatural, it was the first time we’d ever seen a crack in his skillfully crafted facade…seen him enraged. He’d thought it shameful.

I’d thought she was strong.

Brave.

A man passes me, leading a horse hooked up for a carriage. I wave him over, steeling my hunched back as much as I can. “I wish to speak to the Vampire of Port Clyde.”

I’d had many years after we left New Eden to ask questions. They’d seemed mindless, timid, and meek at first. They didn’t stay that way.

His eyes widen, taking me in, hesitating…I scowl at him. “Nobody goes up there, ma’am.”

I slam my cane into his shins, making him hiss out a curse. “You mean to make an old woman walk? I can pay you, but we go now.”

He inhales a deep, wavering breath as I fish a thick satchel of coin from my bag.

It’s a lot, the rest of what I have. If I’m wrong, I suppose it won’t matter.

I’m tired, I won’t be leaving here again.

I can feel it as sure as I can feel the rattling in my lungs.

He accepts, like I knew he would, nodding at me to wait here.

After so long, I worried he wouldn’t return.

He’d changed his mind. He did return though, taking the coin from me like he thought I was going to change mine.

The journey up the steep incline jostles me, making me wince as I grip the seat with brittle hands.

I’d played this moment out in my mind since I’d first heard the tale years and years ago.

I worked hard and dreamed of what I’d ask him.

How I’d stand tall and demand he tell me if he knew her.

What kind of fate befell my sister after she’d come into his care?

If he’d killed her like they say he did the others.

If it was true, that she’d tamed him at all.

If he’d buried her well.

The man doesn’t go as far as I think he should for the amount of coin I’d given him, but honestly, I don’t care enough to argue.

He doesn’t wait around either, assuming the vampire will kill me, or I’ll keel over myself.

Either is likely, I suppose. My eyes widen at the castle the closer I get.

It’s grand, a dark, hazy, twisted version of the fairytale we’d told to the children in the last few years at New Eden.

The nicer ones we read out in the open, unafraid, a few years after Joseph died.

It wasn’t a pretty death.

And it wasn’t quick.

He’d kicked around something terrible as he choked on his own sick.

Fitting.

I only wished I’d been braver sooner.

I’d expected to feel a great deal of nerves, if not fear, by this point, but I don’t.

Perhaps that’s the disease. The one they say is rotting my mind.

The one that makes me forget, makes them look at me with pity in their eyes.

My daughters cried when I told them I was leaving, and said I was confused.

I don’t think I am. Not standing in front of it.

I saw the painted flowers.

They were real .

There isn’t a real one in sight.

The door opens before I can knock. Not that they’d probably heard that anyhow.

A small, wide, pale-eyed woman stares back at me. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to–”

“Who is that, selkie?” A familiar musical voice finds me. My heart shudders in my chest.

“Come away from the door, my love.”

“Hush. Perhaps it’s another supernatural.”

The small woman, about the same height as me, tilts her head. “No, mistress, it’s a human.”

A human.

My chest and lungs ache, tears budding in my eyes as I stare behind her, willing the voice to speak again. I take a weak step forward when a mop of copper colored curls the same shade mine used to be pulls the doors wide.

Molly?

My attention snaps toward the jarring man lording behind her, silken things wrapping over her flesh. It's him, the vampire. It’s all real…

She…she hasn’t aged a day.

She doesn’t remember me.

It hurts for a moment before I realize I look quite a bit different from what I once did. I was a little girl the night she left. A child. She taught me how to look at the bright side.

I’d kept doing it.

“Do I know you?” Molly asks.

I laugh, blinking tears from my eyes. “No.”

“You came all this way, my god. You must be exhausted.” She slips through the tendrils, which seem to displease him greatly, her gown made of stunning embroidered silk. She pays him no mind as he growls and fusses.

A tamed beast, indeed.

I stifle my laugh at that.

She offers me an arm, and for once…it feels right to accept it. “Come inside.”

I nod, following her in, only for my eyes to widen at the inside of the castle.

Not so much the décor, but the beings that fill it.

An overly large fox lounging on the bottom of a step.

It eyes me eerily before languidly getting to its feet.

Very put out to be moving, but sticking close to Molly.

Another woman with odd, pale, bluish skin walks down the hall, and soon after that, I lose track of all the different creatures.

My heart is pounding by the time we settle in a sunroom filled with dead flowers, all in various stages of decay.

Like someone keeps trying to grow them, my bet is on the broody, dark-haired one.

Molly speaks first, while I eye the odd faint dark veins under her skin. “Most of the townspeople don’t venture up this far.”

I nod before sucking down a glass of water. “They seem like a stuffy lot.”

She laughs. “But you’re not.”

“I was once, then I changed. My name is Remmy.”

For a moment, I wait, wondering if she’d recognize me, but she only smiles. That same warm smile I remember from my dreams. It’s brighter and happier than I’d ever seen it.

“It’s nice to meet you, Remmy.” Something about those words heals a part of me I hadn’t realized was still broken, mends a bone that had never set right like mother used to say. My bottom lip wobbles, just a bit. “You’re welcome to stay here if you need, as long as you don’t mind the company.”

I eye the man towering toward the entrance of the room, scowling in my direction, but he seems mild enough. My brow quirks as he’s joined by another…shirtless man, odd burnt orange hair dipped in black. The man with the tendrils glares at him to but only barely, like a reflex.

“Don’t mind them, they linger.”

My brows shoot wide as her cheeks flush, barely. So much so, you’d miss it if you weren’t staring. She downturns her eyes, something she’s always done, looking up from underneath her lashes.

I nod, worried my voice will betray my emotions if I speak, as she places her hands on mine.

“Truly, you’re welcome here, if you don’t feel up to the trip back down.

” My eyes find the light scar on her finger.

There’s a matching one on mine, but I keep it under the table, hidden in my lap.

I take in the room again, figuring this magical, beautiful town would be the perfect place to say goodbye.