Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [34]
I was mute with terror.
“Roger, can you cross over to the country of the Dead?”
Lord Robert said impatiently, “That is impossible. I have told you and told you, Caro—crossing over is a superstition. A belief among the ignorant country folk, who still believe that spitting at frogs at midnight causes thunderstorms.”
The queen ignored him. Her gaze, black flecked with submerged silver, never left mine. Terror held me mute. She could torture me, burn me for a witch. . . .
“Think carefully, Roger, before you answer me. I will have the truth, and there are ways of obtaining it. They are not pleasant ways. I don’t want to have to use them on you but—”
“For sweet sake, Caro, he’s just a boy!”
“—but I will if necessary. I am not a cruel woman, Roger. I am a woman who wants to rule my country well. Who faces obstacles to my rule, obstacles you cannot begin to imagine. Who will do whatever is necessary to rule well, for the greater good and for the sake of my daughter, who must rule after me. Do you understand me?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then I will ask you one more time. Answer truthfully, and answer with full awareness of the consequences. You are not stupid. I can see that you are not stupid. Roger, can you cross over to the country of the Dead?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Show me.”
“Caro—” Lord Robert began.
“Show me now. Here.”
I said wildly, “I must have . . .” I couldn’t say it, but I had to say it. “I must have pain. I can do it myself.”
“Then do so.”
I laid my little bundle on the polished table and unwrapped it. Lord Robert, now looking elaborately bored, smiled condescendingly at the plain nightshirt made from a bedsheet. I took my shaving knife and plunged it into my thigh. Pain burned along my nerves. Even as I made the necessary effort of will, I heard the queen cry out as my body toppled, and dimly I felt Lord Robert, cat-fast, catch me as I fell.
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt in my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—
For the first time in half a year, I crossed over.
The palace was gone. Only the river remained, wide and calm as in the land of the living, but the ring of jagged western mountains had vanished; they must be farther away here. Everything had stretched out. The island was so huge I could not see across it, and trees dotted the vast plain on the opposite bank, where there had been farms and fields. Trees and groves and ponds and the Dead.
There were many more of them than there had been in the countryside, but the huge plain didn’t seem crowded. Perhaps—and it wasn’t the first time I’d had this idea—the very earth expanded to accept however many died. More of the Dead were well-dressed than in the villages where Hartah had set up his booth. Silk gowns, burnished armor, old-fashioned farthingales, brocade cloaks and doublets, all alongside strange white robes or crudely stitched clothing of leather and fur. People had lived by this river for a very long time.
No matter what they wore, these Dead behaved like all the others: sitting in circles, gazing at the grass or sky, doing nothing. I tripped over a soldier in peculiar copper-colored armor and went sprawling. He said nothing, just went on staring at the featureless gray clouds. Scrambling to my feet, I saw blood on my hand where I had just cut it on a stone, blood on my leggings from the knife I had thrust into my thigh. I was the only one here who could bleed. And yet I felt no pain. That would not recur until I went back.
Frantically I raced among the silent groups. I needed an old person, preferably a woman, or a newly arrived Dead—someone who would talk to me. “I will have the truth, and there are ways of obtaining it. They are not pleasant ways. . . .”
A man suddenly materialized a few yards away. One moment he was not there, and the next moment he was. He wore a long white nightshirt of rich cream-colored linen and a woolen nightcap, and on his shriveled