Cursed Read online

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  To Marjorie Brigham Miller

  —F. M.

  For Luca and Amelia,

  The two greatest adventures of my life.

  May you both seize the sword in your own stories.

  —T. W.

  But there was heard among the holy hymns,

  A voice as of the waters, for she dwells

  Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms

  May shake the world, and when the surface rolls,

  Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

  —ALFRED LORD TENNYSON,

  Idylls of the King

  Well, said Merlin,

  I know whom thou seekest,

  for thou seekest Merlin;

  therefore seek no farther,

  for I am he.

  —THOMAS MALORY,

  Le Morte d’Arthur

  THE WATER STIRRED AND NIMUE ROSE SLOWLY FROM THE POND, THE SWORD OF POWER CLUTCHED IN HER FISTS . . .

  ONE

  FROM HER HIDING PLACE IN the straw pile and through eyes filled with tears, Nimue thought Father Carden looked like a spirit of light. It was how he stood, back to the bleached sun, and the way the clouds poured under his draping sleeves and upraised palms, like a man standing on the sky. His trembling voice rose above the din of bleating goats, crackling wood, screaming infants, and wailing mothers. “God is love. It is a love that purifies, a love that sanctifies, a love that unites us.” Carden’s pale blue eyes passed over the piteous, howling mob, prostrated in the mud, barricaded by monks in red robes.

  “And God sees,” Carden continued, “and today he smiles. Because we have done His work today. We have washed ourselves clean with God’s love. We have seared away the rotten flesh.” The clouds of smoke billowing around Carden’s arms and legs swirled with flakes of red ash. Spit flecked his lips. “Sawed away the corruption of demonism. Expelled the blackened humors from this land. God smiles today!” As Carden lowered his arms, his draping sleeves dropped away like curtains, revealing an inferno of thirty burning crosses in the field behind him. The crucified were hard to see in the thick black smoke.

  Biette, a sturdy block of a woman and mother of four, rose up like a wounded bear and hobbled on her knees toward Carden before one of the tonsured monks in red stepped forward, planted his boot between her shoulder blades and kicked her face-first into the mud. And there Biette stayed, groaning into the wet earth.

  Nimue’s ears had been ringing since she and Pym rode into the village on Dusk Lady and saw the first dead body on the trail. They thought it might’ve been Mikkel, the tanner’s boy, who grew orchids for the May rituals, but his head had been crushed by something heavy. They could not even stop to check, for the entire village was on fire and Red Paladins swarmed, their billowing robes dancing with the flames. On the fallow hill, a half-dozen village elders were already burning to death on hastily erected crosses. Pym’s screams had seemed far away to Nimue as her mind went white. Everywhere she looked, she saw her people being choked in the mud or torn from their homes. Two paladins dragged old Betsy by her flailing arms and hair through her pen of geese. The birds squawked and fluttered in the air, adding to the surreal chaos. Shortly thereafter, Nimue and Pym were separated, and Nimue took shelter in the straw pile, where she held her breath as monks stomped past her carrying blanket bundles of confiscated goods. They unfurled the blankets on the floor of the open wagon where Carden stood, spilling the contents around his feet. The priest looked down and nodded, expecting this: roots of yew and alder, wooden figurines of elder gods, totems, and animal bones. Carden sighed patiently. “God sees, my friends. He sees these instruments of demonic conjuring. You cannot hide from Him. He shall dredge this poison out. And shielding others like you will only prolong your suffering.” Father Carden brushed ashes from his gray tunic. “My Red Paladins are eager for your confessions. For your sakes, offer them freely, for my brothers are deft with the tools of inquisition.”

  The Red Paladins waded into the mob to single out targets for torture. Nimue watched as family and friends clawed over one another to avoid the paladins’ reach. There were more screams as children were pried from their mothers’ grips.

  Unmoved, Father Carden stepped down from the wagon and crossed the muddy road to a tall and broad-shouldered monk in gray. His cheeks were lean beneath his cowl, and strange black birthmarks were blotted around his eyes and ran down his face like streaming tears of ink. Nimue could not hear their words for the shouting around her, but Carden rested a hand on the monk’s shoulder, like a father, and pulled him into a whisper. Head bowed, the monk nodded several times in response to Carden’s words. Carden gestured to the Iron Wood; the monk nodded a final time, then climbed onto his white courser.

  Nimue turned to the Iron Wood and saw ten-year-old Squirrel standing in the monk’s path, bewildered, blood dribbling down his cheek as he dragged a sword behind him. At this, Nimue burst from the straw pile and charged at Squirrel. She heard the Gray Monk’s hoofbeats getting louder behind her.

  “Nimue!” Squirrel reached for her, and she yanked him against the wall of a hut as the monk thundered past.

  “I can’t find Papa!” Squirrel cried.

  “Squirrel, listen to me. Go to the hollow in the ash tree and hide there until it’s night. Do you understand?”

  Squirrel tried to pull away from her. “Papa!”

  Nimue shook him. “Squirrel! Run now. As fast as you can. Are you listening!” Nimue was shouting into his face. Squirrel nodded. “Be a brave one. Run like you do in our fox races. No one can catch you.”

  “No one,” Squirrel whispered, summoning the courage.

  “You’re the fastest of us all.” Nimue swallowed back tears, for she did not want to let him go.

  “You’ll come?” Squirrel pleaded.

  “I will,” Nimue promised, “but first I have to find Pym and Mother and your father.”

  “I saw your mother near the temple.” Squirrel hesitated. “They were chasing her.”

  Ice coursed through Nimue’s veins at this news. She shot a look to the temple at the top of the rise. Then she turned back to Squirrel. “Fast as the fox,” she commanded.

  “Fast as the fox,” Squirrel repeated, tensing as he shot furtive glances left and right. The nearest paladins were too occupied with the beating of a resisting farmer to notice them. So without a look back, Squirrel shot across the pasture for the Iron Wood.

  Nimue lunged into the road and ran for the temple. She slid and fell in the mud dredged up from horses and blood. As she climbed to her feet, a horseman suddenly swung around from one of the burning huts. Nimue barely saw the ball of iron whip around on its chain. She tried to turn away, but it caught her at the base of her skull with such force it sent her nearly airborne into a pile of firewood. The world unglued as stars burst behind Nimue’s eyes and she felt warm liquid stream down her neck and back. Splayed out on the ground, firewood all around her, Nimue saw a longbow snapped in two pieces beside her. The broken bow. The fawn. The council. Hawksbridge.

  Arthur.

  It seemed impossible that only a day had passed. And as she lost consciousness, one thought left her choking with dread: this was all her fault.

  TWO

  BUT WHY DO YOU HAVE to leave?” Squirrel asked as he climbed over the moss
-covered arm of a broken statue.

  “I’m not going yet,” Nimue said, inspecting a bough of purple flowers growing between the exposed roots of an ancient ash tree. She tried to think of a way to change the subject, but Squirrel would not let it go.

  “But why do you want to leave?”

  Nimue hesitated. How could she tell him the truth? It would only hurt and confuse him and lead to more questions. She wanted to leave because she was unwanted in her own village. Feared. Judged. Whispered about. Pointed at. Village children were told not to play with her because of the scars on her back. Because of the dark stories of her childhood. Because her father had left her. Because she was cursed. And perhaps she was. Her “connection”—her mother’s word; Nimue would call it “possession”—to the Hidden was strong and dark and different from any other Sky Folk she knew. And it came unbidden through her in strange, sometimes violent and unexpected ways, in visions or fits, or sometimes the ground would buckle or tremble or wooden objects near her would warp into grotesque masses. The sensation was like vomiting. And the feelings after were the same: sweaty, ashamed, empty. It was only her mother’s prominence as Arch Druid that kept Nimue from being chased out of the village with knives and sticks. Why burden Squirrel with it all? His mother, Nella, was like a sister to her mother and like an aunt to Nimue. So she had kindly spared Squirrel all the dark gossip. To him, Nimue was normal, even boring (especially on nature walks), and that was just how she liked it. But she knew it wouldn’t last.

  She felt a pang of guilt as she looked over the primordial green slopes of the Iron Wood, buzzing and chirping and chattering with life, and the mysterious faces of Old Gods, faces that pushed through the vines and black earth, faces she had named through the years: Big Nose, the Sad Lady, Scar Bald, remnants of a long-dead civilization. Leaving here would be like leaving old friends.

  Rather than confuse Squirrel, Nimue kept up the lie. “I don’t know, Squirrel. Don’t you ever long to see things you’ve never seen before?”

  “Like a Moon Wing?”

  Nimue smiled. Squirrel’s eyes were always searching the canopy of the forest for a glimpse of a Moon Wing. “Yes, or the ocean? Or the Lost Cities of the Sun Gods? The Floating Temples?”

  “They’re not real,” said Squirrel.

  “How do we know unless we look for them?”

  Squirrel put his hands on his hips. “Are you going to leave and never come back like Gawain?”

  Nimue glowed inside at the name. She remembered being seven years old, her arms clutched around Gawain’s neck as he carried her on his back through these very same woods. At fourteen, he knew the special gifts of every blossom, leaf, and bark of the Iron Wood, remedies, poisons, which tea-brewed leaves bestowed visions and which captured hearts, which chewed barks induced labor and which bird’s nests predicted the weather. She recalled sitting between his knees, his long arms draped over her like a big brother’s, as kite hatchlings meeped in their laps while Gawain taught her how to read the patterns inside the broken eggs for clues to the health of the forest.

  He never judged Nimue for her scars. His smile was always easy and kind.

  “He might come back someday,” Nimue said with more hope than belief.

  “Is that who you’re going looking for?” Squirrel grinned.

  “What? No, don’t be ridiculous.” Nimue pinched Squirrel on the arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Now pay attention,” Nimue demanded, exaggerating a glower, “because I’m tired of saving your butt during lessons.”

  Nimue pointed to a shrub defended by nettles.

  Squirrel rolled his eyes. “Osha root. It protects us from the dark magic.”

  “And?”

  Squirrel scrunched his nose, thinking. “Good for sore throats?”

  “Lucky guess,” Nimue teased. She lifted a rock, exposing small white blossoms.

  Squirrel picked for a booger, deep in thought. “Bloodwort, for hexes,” he said, “and for hangovers.”

  “What do you know about hangovers?” Nimue shoved Squirrel gently, and he giggled as he somersaulted backward into the soft moss. She chased after him, but she’d never catch Squirrel. He shot under the drooping chin of the Sad Lady and leaped to a branch that allowed for an unobstructed view of Dewdenn’s pastures and huts.

  Nimue joined him, a bit out of breath, enjoying the breeze in her hair.

  “I’ll miss you,” Squirrel said simply, taking her hand.

  “You will?” Nimue gave him a little hip check and pulled his sweaty head to her ribs. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “Does your mum know you’re leaving?”

  Nimue was considering her answer when she felt the hum in her stomach of the Hidden. She stiffened. It was an ugly feeling, like a thief climbing in her window. Her throat went dry. She croaked a little when she nudged Squirrel and said, “Run along now. Lesson over.”

  That was music to Squirrel’s ears. “Yay! No more learning!” He darted between boulders and was gone, leaving Nimue alone with her queasy stomach.

  The Sky Folk were no strangers to the Hidden, invisible nature spirits from whom Nimue’s clan were believed to be descended. Indeed, Sky Folk rituals invoked the Hidden for all matters great and small. While the Arch Druid presided over the crucial ceremonies of the year and arbitrated disputes between elders and families, the Summoner was expected to call upon the Hidden to bless the harvest or bring the rain, ease a birth, guide spirits back to the sun. Yet as Nimue had learned early on as a child, these invocations, these calls to the Hidden, were largely ceremonial. The Hidden rarely answered. Almost never. Even the Summoner, chosen for their believed connection to the Hidden, were usually left to intuit the spirits’ messages by reading the clouds or tasting the dirt. For most Sky Folk, the Hidden came in a trickle, a dewdrop. To Nimue, it was a rushing river.

  But this feeling, in this moment, was different. The hum throbbed in her belly, but a calm settled over the Iron Wood, a stillness. Nimue’s heart kicked in her chest, but it wasn’t only from fear but anticipation. Like something was coming. She heard it in the rattle of leaves, the hum of cicadas, the hush of the breeze. Inside those sounds, Nimue could hear words, like the murmur of excited voices in a crowded room. It gave her hope for a communion that made sense. That gave answers. That told her why she was different.

  She sensed movement and turned to a small fawn standing quite close to her. The hum in her belly grew louder. The fawn stared at Nimue with deep black eyes that were older than the dead stump beneath her and older than the sunlight on her cheeks.

  Don’t be afraid. Nimue heard the voice, and it was not her thought. It was the fawn’s. Death is not the end.

  Nimue could not breathe. She feared to move. The silence roared in her ears. An overwhelming awe, like the expanses of a dream, filled the space behind her eyes. She fought the urge to run or squeeze her eyes shut, as she usually did until the wave passed. No, she wanted to be awake to this moment. Finally, after so many years, the Hidden wanted to tell her something.

  The sun went behind a cloud and the forest grew dark and cold. Nimue held the fawn’s gaze despite her fear. She was the daughter of the Arch Druid and would not flinch from the secret mind of the Hidden.

  Nimue heard herself ask, “Who will die?”

  She heard the twang of catgut, a whistle, and an arrow thudded into the fawn’s neck. A burst of blackbirds erupted from the trees as the connection was severed. Nimue whirled around in a fury. There was Josse, one of the shepherd’s twins, pumping his fist in victory. Nimue turned back to the fawn lying in the dirt, its eyes glazed and empty.

  “What have you done?” Nimue shouted as Josse pushed through the branches to retrieve his kill.

  “What’s it look like? I was fetching supper.” Josse grabbed the fawn by the back legs and hauled it onto his shoulders.

  Silvery vines crept up Nimue’s neck and cheek as her temper flashed, and Josse’s longbow contorted impossibly, then snapped in his hands, cutting
the flesh. Shocked, he dropped the fawn and the bow to the ground, where it writhed on the ground like a dying snake.

  Josse looked up at Nimue. Unlike Squirrel, he knew all the dark gossip. “You crazy hag!”

  He shoved Nimue hard against the stump as he reached for his ruined bow. Nimue wound up to punch Josse’s face in when her mother appeared, specter-like, at the edge of the wood.

  “Nimue.” Lenore’s voice was icy enough to cool Nimue’s temper.

  Snuffling, Josse gathered the fawn and the bow pieces and tromped off. “You’ll hear of this, you bloody witch! They’re right about you!”

  Nimue shot right back, “Good! Be afraid! And leave me alone!”

  Josse stormed off, and Nimue was left to wither under Lenore’s disapproving gaze.

  Moments later Nimue trailed behind her mother, who walked the smooth stones of the Sacred Sun Path toward the veiled entrance to the Sunken Temple. Though she never seemed to rush, Lenore was always ten steps ahead.

  “You will find the wood, you will carve it, and you will string the bow,” Lenore told her.

  “Josse is a half-wit.”

  “And you will apologize to his father,” Lenore continued.

  “Anis? Another half-wit. It would be nice if you took my side for once.”

  “That fawn will feed many hungry mouths,” Lenore reminded her.

  “It was more than a fawn,” Nimue countered.

  “The proper rituals will be offered.”

  Nimue shook her head. “You’re not even listening.”

  Lenore turned, fierce. “What, Nimue, what? What is it I’m not hearing?” She lowered her voice. “You know what they say. You know how they feel. This sort of outburst only feeds their fear.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Nimue said, hating the shame she felt.

  “But your anger is your own. That is your fault. You show no discipline. No care. Last month it was Hawlon’s fence—”