The Glassheart Chronicles Read online

The next day, Pascal left in the early dark, even before their chickens were awake and ready to be let outside. His parents slept on a heap of straw. Pascal, his four brothers, and his two sisters each had their own spot on the straw-covered floor. In winter, they slept closer together, near the hearth, but since it was summer they kept their distance. His youngest brother slept between the family's two pigs.

  Pascal walked toward the manor house by the light of half a moon, keeping an eye out for wolves and men, both of which were equally dangerous. He had to move early because of his foolish mistake yesterday, leaving the buckets and staff behind. Now he would need to hike up to the manor house, retrieve the buckets—assuming no one had stolen them—and bring them back downhill to the well before he could deliver the knight's water.

  All of this meant he had to approach the stone wall again, by moonlight, and hope not to stir the monster. Fortunately, his buckets and staff were still there, on the ground beneath the crack in the wall. Apparently nobody else wanted to get too close to the beast, either.

  Pascal's curiosity got the better of him, though. He leaned against the crack in the wall and again looked inside. The purple blossoms looked black in the moonlight. He still could not see the monster, but his hands shook with fear.

  “Who's there?” a voice whispered. He jumped, expecting someone from the knight's household to grab hold of him and whip him for trespassing in the dark, and for trying to get a look at the knight's dark secret.

  No one was around, and he wondered whether he might have heard the voice of a ghost.

  “I can hear you out there,” the voice came again. It was a girl's voice, he realized. From the other side of the wall. “Who is it?”

  “My name is Pascal,” he whispered back.

  “I do not know a Pascal.”

  “I'm only a commoner.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  Pascal hesitated, but could think of nothing but the truth. “I have heard that a dangerous monster lives within these walls.”

  “Oh? What have you heard of this monster?”

  “They say she has the horns of a goat, the teeth of a wolf, the tongue of a serpent. They say she will devour any man who sees her.”

  “So you thought it would be wise to see her? Do you wish to die?”

  “No...but I wanted to see if it was true.”

  On the far side of the wall, a shape moved to block his view of the flowers. He could make out a single blue eye in the moonlight, but the face in which it was set was shrouded in darkness. Pascal gasped and backed away, then stopped forward and looked in at her eye again.

  “There,” the voice said. “You have seen the monster now. You may go.”

  “You don't sound like a monster.” Pascal remembered the throaty growls from yesterday. Perhaps she was a shape-shifter, like the garoul, men who were said to change into wolves.

  “I am Isabel,” the girl said. “I am the one you came to see. And if you do not wish to die, I do not know what you could want from me.”

  “Are you truly what they say you are?”

  “Perhaps I am worse. You have described me, Pascal. Tell me how you appear. Are you also a monster with goat horns?”

  “Are you making a joke?”

  “Of course not.”

  Pascal hesitated. Maybe she wanted to see if he was the sort of man she liked to eat. “I am just a normal person. Nothing special.”

  “What is your age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Tell me of your eyes, and hair, and hands.”

  Pascal did the best he could to describe his brown eyes and black hair. He didn't know what to say about his hands, which were callused from years of plowing, digging, weeding and picking. “My hands have five fingers each,” he told her. “They would be tough and chewy to eat.”

  She laughed, and the sound was so lovely that he could not believe she was any kind of monster.

  “Have you ever touched a woman with those hands?” she asked.

  “Once, at the Feast of Fools,” Pascal said. “Marie let me touch her beneath her dress.”

  “And who is Marie?”

  “She is the daughter of Gerard, the candle-maker.”

  “Is she very pretty?”

  “I think she is.”

  “And you? Are you very pretty?”

  Pascal did not know how to answer. His hesitation brought another laugh from her. As if to join in, roosters crowed across the manor, announcing the immanence of dawn.

  “You should leave now,” she said. “My father might have you killed for speaking to me. There is more than one monster in this household.”

  “Can we speak again?”

  “We should not. If you come again, it should be long after sunset, so that no one will see you. But you should not come again. Promise me you won't, Pascal.”

  “I won't,” he said.

  He carried the buckets down into the village, filled them at the well, and then trudged uphill again with them. The sun was high and hot above him.

  Pascal emptied the buckets into the barrel in the kitchen, as usual, but he noticed the three kitchen servants scowling at him this time. A fourth person was there, a very large and hairy man wearing only trousers. He grabbed Pascal by the shirt collar.

  “They tell me you are the reason my breakfast is delayed,” he snarled. “There was no water to boil my eggs.”

  Pascal opened his mouth to apologize, but the man punched him in his teeth. Pascal reeled back out the kitchen door, and the man hurled one of the empty wooden buckets at him. It bashed Pascal in the forehead as he tried to duck. The other bucket followed, cracking into his knee, and Pascal cried out and fell into the dirt.

  The big man stood over Pascal, blocking the sun. He had a layer of fat, a sign of his wealth, but clearly there were still great muscles underneath. Pascal felt blood trickle from his temple and down his cheek. He managed to push himself to his knees, but his left leg felt too wobbly to let him stand yet. Pain throbbed from where the bucket had hit his knee.

  “What happened to the other boy? He was never late,” the man said, and Pascal realized he was the Chevalier Renier de Champcevinel, his landlord. Pascal was accustomed to seeing him in public, dressed in a little finery, with an entourage. Now, wearing only his trousers, the knight looked just like any peasant man scratching himself in the morning.

  “Sire, that was my brother, Robert,” Pascal said. “I apologize. I will never--”

  “His name, and your name, are of no importance.” The knight kicked one of the buckets. “Water. At sunrise. Every day.”

  Pascal nodded and continued kneeling in the dirt, waiting for the knight to depart, but the man kept staring at him.

  “You were the one who left the buckets by the garden wall?” the knight asked.

  “Yes. I am sorry.”

  “Why were you by the wall?”

  “I...don't know, sir.” Pascal felt his heart hammering. Legally, his landlord could beat him or kill him. Pascal thought he might fight back if the knight tried such a thing, but that would surely end with Pascal getting put to death.

  “I don't want to see you near that wall again,” the knight said. “Bring water, and leave.”

  Pascal quickly agreed that he would. He heard snarls and growls from behind the wall, and turned to see seven thrushes flying up from behind it, squawking. They winged away into the forest.

  “Go!” the knight ordered, kicking him in the ribs. Pascal hurriedly gathered his buckets and staff and ran away from the manor house.