#58

Griselda headed towards the room where the twins would be. Each step she took felt as if it wasn’t her own. The day her husband left, it was as if she had emptied her womb along with the fetus. Only a bewildered life remained after being swept away.

The seasons passed her by. Daily life clung to Griselda’s skirts like the bathwater innocently splashed by bathing children.

She alternately nursed, put to sleep, and bathed a beast that looked at her with clear eyes and a child with beautiful golden hair like a child who had died inside her. She fell asleep just before darkness fell. And she woke up just before dawn broke. In between, there was neither hatred nor sadness.

Deep silence.

But occasionally, a heavy hand would rise. It always touched the thin neck of the eldest son. As if trying to strangle the precious beast that now feigned innocence after spreading its wings and standing on the spire.

What exactly are you? She asked inwardly. Is what I saw truly you? But only the usual innocent smile returned. A tiny hand the size of a thumb touched Griselda’s forearm.

Griselda smoothed the eldest son’s disheveled hair and laid him down properly. Sometimes she wondered if killing him would only benefit the duchess, but that wasn’t exactly how she felt. Just a woman left with ashes. An empty, dazed void with no thoughts to speak of in her head.

She only felt a round lump inside her lungs that she could grasp. It was just the size of a fist. With each breath, she felt the wrinkled, hard shell of the lump like a walnut. It seemed like a sculpture of her own offspring that she was nurturing in her lungs instead, no longer able to trust her cruel and merciless womb.

Will you resemble our child?

I don’t know. But at least the child already sent away surely resembled you. Griselda occasionally whispered to someone who wasn’t there.

The cursed belly of the duchess swelled day by day. Griselda would stand at a distance, blankly staring at that quiet, rounded outline. Her gaze held neither anger nor hatred. Just silence.

“You will assist the midwife.”

One day, the heavily pregnant duchess nearing childbirth ordered Griselda.

“It must be you, without fail.”

“Yes.”

Griselda did not raise any objections to that cruel command. Despite the duchess showing subtle anxiety for the first time after appearing unprecedentedly calm, and even while guessing the reason, Griselda’s lump silently maintained its clumped shape. There was no stirring, like someone who had cut away all the flesh capable of feeling pain. Several more days passed in such indifference.

Finally, the day the duchess took to the birthing room.

Dark clouds spread across the entire sky like ashen wildfire. The black ceiling rumbled continuously as if about to pour down torrential rain, but it didn’t quite burst. That day, when even her shoulders felt heavy from her skirts absorbing so much moisture, Griselda watched as the duchess’s ‘first son’ spilled out along with the umbilical cord. After confirming the child was whole, the duchess exclaimed in relief before collapsing from exhaustion.

It was already the middle of the night when Griselda emerged from the birthing room with dull eyes after tending to the duchess’s bloody mess. She left the tower, as if changing places with the priest waiting outside the birthing room. She wanted to rest somewhere secluded. She didn’t want to exchange words with anyone. She didn’t want to share any body heat or glances.

And it was when Griselda had barely managed to drag her exhausted steps to the rear of the fortress.

“You…”

It was then that she encountered Sieglinde with disheveled hair.

Sieglinde’s rough voice lightly scratched Griselda’s ears. Griselda stopped abruptly in her tracks. The faint light barely seeping out from the tower corridors where lights had not yet been extinguished. And beneath it, in the darkness, a fair bare face and bare hands, completely covered in dirt, turned to look at Griselda with eyes startled in shock.

Hesitantly, hesitantly. Upon discovering Griselda, Sieglinde backed away like a bristling animal. Hiding the shovel handle behind her back, which couldn’t be hidden no matter how she tried, she hesitated, then hesitated again.

“I had… no choice…. I, I….”

She stammered incomprehensible excuses at intervals. Before the puzzled Griselda could even say a word.

…Waaah, waaah….

The cry of a baby was heard from somewhere. It was a muffled cry as if coming from behind thick walls, even though it was an open space with nothing but bushes and old trees. The gazes of the two startled women followed the sound to Sieglinde’s feet. Underground.

Plop.

Plop.

Heavy, cold raindrops fell on her cheek and the bridge of her nose. As if on cue, their gazes locked again. Sieglinde’s delicate eyebrows were distorted, crumbling downward. Griselda couldn’t easily part her lips. Strangely, she felt short of breath.

She felt her heart, which had been curled up for a long time, beating again. It was like taking a breath for the first time in her life. Just as Griselda was about to open her mouth to say, “You, could it be,” thud. The shovel handle Sieglinde had been hiding fell to the dirt ground. And suddenly.

“Ah! Aah…!”

Sieglinde screamed and lunged at Griselda. Before Griselda could dodge, she came charging with her long hair flying, and then, whack! She hit Griselda’s shoulder with a sound and disappeared as if sucked into the darkness.

It was like the stormy movement she had witnessed in the kitchen days ago. Griselda stood there, gasping heavily, staring in the direction Sieglinde had disappeared. Her shoulder ached where it had been struck and twisted.

…Waaah, waaah….

The low, muffled crying sound still hadn’t stopped. She turned towards the sound. Darkness rife with sin, without a soul in sight. All her nerves, from her eardrums to her entire body, searched through the night for the source of the crying. Should she leave it, or go?

As if about to break, she took one step forward.

It felt like her knees would give out and she’d lose control of her body. She was trembling from her toes to the top of her head. Heat rose from her belly to her skin, making it seem like the raindrops falling indiscriminately on her crown and cheeks would steam. And then.

Griselda’s gaze fixed on the shovel.

The barely excavated child no longer cried.

Though Griselda removed the cloth covering its tiny mouth with trembling fingertips, still no cry emerged. Griselda put her ear to the child’s philtrum, barely the size of a fingernail. Gasp, gasp. The faint breath, having barely tasted the world, was barely continuing, on the verge of stopping. Suddenly, fire blazed in Griselda’s eyes. The priest!

She ran madly towards the birthing room, holding the dirt-covered child to her chest. The priest!

She had to find the priest. To her eyes, the child’s condition seemed on the verge of death at any moment. Crack! The lump burst. Ah! Finally, tears burst forth. She couldn’t stop the sobs breaking out all the way as she ran to the main tower.

Whoosh!

Her face was completely wet with tears mixing with the pouring rain that seemed about to sweep away both heaven and earth. She herself didn’t know why she was crying so much. Albe, are you watching? Are you there?

She didn’t know why she was reminded of the person she had sent away in flames at this moment. Only tears pouring from her bones. Baby, oh baby! I’ll save you at least! Unable to cry out loud, she pushed her secretly rotten feelings through her eye sockets and the tip of her tongue in her open mouth.

She nearly fell several times as her already soaked skirts wrapped around her ankles, but she desperately maintained her balance.

It must have been due to the late hour. Griselda didn’t encounter a single person on her way to the birthing room. She ran through the empty corridors and up the dizzying stairs for a long time, only catching her ragged breath when she finally reached the birthing room.

Only her breathing and the sound of rain were loud in the corridor in front of the birthing room, which had long since been cleared of people for the mother’s stability. Trembling, Griselda wrung out her thoroughly soaked clothes, then frantically wiped the moisture from her face and the baby’s with her widely spread palms. The rainwater that had streamed down from her clothes and ankles pooled on the floor like a shadow.

Knock, knock, knock.

Unable to even think of tidying the hair clinging to her cheeks and forehead like cobwebs, Griselda knocked on the door. Her knuckles trembled so much as she knocked.

But the silence only stretched on. There was no answer from inside. The child’s breath seemed to grow fainter by the moment. Unable to wait any longer, she finally opened the door anxiously and entered.

There was no one.

Neither the priest nor the midwife were visible in the birthing room lit by a single candle. There was only the duchess lying like a corpse on the bed and a cradle beside it.

Only, the window seemed to be slightly open, and the sound of pouring rain reverberated off the inner walls, nearly deafening. Griselda only realized that the enormous sound of water was even drowning out her own footsteps as she approached the cradle.

She could see the child she had washed well in the cradle. A handful of flesh. A child with golden hair so bright it seemed almost bluish. It was the same golden hair as its older siblings who had come before. And….

The same golden hair as the dirt-covered child in her arms.

She was instantly reminded of Sieglinde’s appearance, with her blue eyes beautiful beneath her hair that rippled like the sun. Griselda suddenly raised her head. The duchess lying in the distance still had her eyes closed and hadn’t moved at all. It seemed that even if she were to approach right now and smother that fair face with a silk pillow, she would barely struggle before dying.

Yes.

I wish you would die. Belatedly rising murderous intent wet Griselda’s eyes. I wish you would die. The hatred pooled in her eyes fell drop by drop down Griselda’s cheeks. In that moment, she was no different from a magic pot spewing long-stored hellfire while still alive. Yes.

I, the duchess, wish you would die. I wish blue flames would eat into your bloodline and enter you. I wish your skin and innards and voice would all burn up so you couldn’t even scream as you died miserably in a moment that felt like eons, just as my husband went, just as the life left before me.

And I hope it is me. I hope it is me who is the thorough executioner who sets fire to your hair. I hope it is my blank face, with neither smile nor tears, anger nor pain, that is the one person watching you writhe, watching your end.

You! Not anyone else, but you! I wish you would die right here, right now! Tears silently overflowed and soaked Griselda’s entire front, contrary to her bursting heart.

I wish you would die.