Mccormick Templeman: The Glass Casket

Roughly Rowan’s age, the girl had been beautiful in the way that a crisp apple was delicious—almost too sharp, but with an underlying sweetness that makes its jaggedness seem merely bright. She was tall, with red lips and raven hair pulled back into a tight braid, and from where Rowan had sat perched in her window, the girl’s dark eyes seemed to sparkle. Rowan’s father had gone out to speak with them, but Rowan had been unable to hear his words. After a brief exchange, her father, clearly agitated, proceeded back inside and locked the door behind him.

“But what did they want?” Rowan asked.

“That’s not your concern,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I’m hoping they’ve left the village by now, but if you see them about, I want you to avoid them.”

Rowan opened her mouth to speak, but her father brushed past her. “We’ll talk later, Daughter. I’m due to deliver some papers to Ollen Bittern.” And with that, he strode out of the yard, his blond hair flopping in the winter breeze.

Rowan stood staring after him, disconcerted by his uncharacteristic brusqueness. Catching movement on the western wall, she turned, hoping to see her little bluebird, but there atop the stones, she saw an enormous crow, its wings frayed and its eyes black as night. It was said that before the crows came to Nag’s End, fairies and wood sprites and other forest things lived openly in the woods. But death rode in on the black wings of the crows, for a fairy hatchling is a crow’s favorite food, and it was upon the birds’ arrival that the benevolent forest things began disappearing, wicked ones lingering in their stead.

Hearing footfalls coming through the snow, Rowan turned to see Emily stalking toward her, a stern expression on her face. Emily was only a few years older than Rowan, but she’d been acting like Rowan’s nursemaid since she herself had been in milk teeth. Emily’s mother, Antonia, had been Rowan’s actual nursemaid, and since Rowan had grown up without a mother, Antonia had raised the girl as her own, the three of them eating dinners together at the kitchen table while Rowan’s father, more often than not, kept to himself, translating texts in his study. But now Antonia was gone as well, taken the previous year by fever, and although Rowan adored her father, it often felt as though she and Emily were the closest thing either had to a real family.

“You’ll catch a chill out here. What are you doing, anyway? Waiting for Tom?”

Rowan shook her head. “He won’t be back just yet.”

“I heard your father talking to you,” Emily said, concerned. “You saw that family last night?”

“I did.”

Emily shook her head, disapproval in her eyes. “Strange, your father telling you not to talk to them.”

Rowan nodded, hesitant. “He says they’re dangerous.”

“Does he?” Emily raised an eyebrow. “And did he tell you who the girl is?”

“No, though she was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Like a rose, she was. But he didn’t tell you who she is?”

Rowan set her hand on her hip, her patience growing thin. “Emily, don’t be tiresome. Clearly you have something you want to tell me. Who is the girl?”

“She’s your cousin,” Emily said.

The words came like a jolt to Rowan’s heart. Her cousin? Her father had never told her she had a cousin. Something felt very wrong. Trying to collect her thoughts, Rowan walked through the snow toward the northern wall of the yard. Behind them, ice-capped mountains climbed toward the sky.

She needed to speak with Tom. That morning, when she’d said her farewell, she’d told him about the mysterious strangers from the night before, but she hadn’t known then that the girl was her own cousin. She wondered what Tom would make of it all.

Emily linked her arm with Rowan’s and stared up toward Beggar’s Drift. “I have a bad feeling about that mountain, I do.”

“So do I,” Rowan said.

From behind them came a cry and a tremendous beating of wings as the great black crow pushed off from its perch and hurtled up into the sky. Rowan shuddered. She had the strong sense that somewhere up on that mountain Tom was in terrible danger. She wrapped her cloak tight against the winter chill, hoping for some sign that everything would be okay, nearly certain that everything would not.

Tom and Jude stared at the journal, neither sure what to make of it. They could hear their father beginning to organize the men, and when he called for his sons, Tom set the journal down and stepped outside, Jude in tow.

“Right. Fan out, everyone,” his father said, sending groups off in various directions. As the men dispersed, Wilhelm looked to his sons and lowered his voice. “Stay close,” he said. “Something’s not right here.”

Tom nodded and started after the others, leaving Bartlett the tailor to puzzle over the tear in the tent. Tom’s eyes swept across the landscape, white as far as he could see, and up ahead to where the men were moving like animals, fear evident in their bodies. He turned to speak with Jude, but there was no sign of him. No doubt he’d headed off on his own as soon as the moment had presented itself.

In the distance, among the nearly naked trees, Tak Carlysle was waving his hands above his head, trying to get the others’ attention. Tom set off running, and even before he reached Tak, he could see the trail of blood, crimson against white, leading into the trees beyond.

That was where they found the first body. It took all of Tom’s restraint not to cry out when he saw the snow mingled with frozen blood and bone. He turned away and closed his eyes lest he lose his breakfast in the snow, but his father was watching, so he forced himself to look again upon the corpse. The man’s tongue had been torn from his mouth, his eyes gouged from their sockets, and wounds of varying size and depth covered his body, as if he had been set upon from every direction.

“Animal attack,” Dr. Temper was quick to say, for he knew their minds would drift somewhere worse given their whereabouts.

Tom’s father cleared his throat. “We need to keep looking. We must find the others.”

With no tracks to follow, the men set out through the trees in grid formation, Tom’s belly clenching ever tighter at the thought of what might lie ahead. They had gone only a short distance when little Natty Whitt, no more than fourteen and a little slow in the head, began shouting for the others.

Natty stood over what appeared to be four sets of clothes, folded and stacked neatly. They were covered in blood.

Tom’s father shook his head. “Holy Goddess. What happened here?”

That was when they heard Jude’s voice ring out from behind a thick line of trees.

“Over here!” he called, and Tom gritted his teeth, not wanting to see what his brother had found.

They were all there, the four other missing men, spread out in the snow. They were naked, save for their undergarments, and as far as Tom could see, they bore no injuries. It was almost as if they had disrobed and lain down in the snow, where they had quietly frozen to death.

Tom looked away as Dr. Temper examined the bodies.

The cause of death was clear. They had been frozen solid, victims of the elements.

“But this is lunacy” was all Tom’s father could say. “No man would allow himself to freeze to death.”

Dr. Temper raised his eyebrows at Tom’s father. “Goi Parstle,” he said, careful to use the honorific. “Are you doubting my assessment?”

“Please,” Wilhelm said, raising his thumb in apology. “I meant no disrespect. But surely there must be some explanation.”

“They must have been attacked,” Paer Jorgen said, and since he was the only village elder in the party, the rest of the men fell silent. “Something tore into that tent back there, and that first man, clearly he was mauled by an animal.”