The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Forty Eight: Dreaming's End

My fever grew worse as my children slept soundly at my every side. I shivered in my winter clothing and heavy blankets, sweat cooling on my paling skin. Calls for help froze in my throat, my teeth chattering too hard to form a syllable. My swollen leg throbbed with my heartbeat, racking my body with pain. I didn't even have the energy to cry out. Mercifully, my moments of consciousness were few and far between. 

I slipped in and out of waking, my mind pulled ever further into increasingly vivid dreams. At the beginning, the dreams were kind if bittersweet. I imagined Knut lying next to me, his lips against my hot cheek, words of love and comfort pouring into my ear. As the fever grew worse, however, the dreams soured...rotted into horrors that jolted me awake only for me to fall into another that was even worse. 

Knut's kind words turned into hateful ones. "You loved it, didn't you? The way he used you? You betrayed me." While Knut remained beside me, another figure loomed over me, a shadow darker than the rest of the lightless room. Eyes, their green-grey color boiling like a raging sea, was the only source of light at all. Wings spread out over me, brushing my cheeks. I was back in that beast's bed and again I let him have me, let him devour me whole. Lysander's familiar hand pressed over my mouth to keep my cries quiet while Knut laughed in my ear. "It's your fault Magni died." Teeth grazed against my skin, breaking the skin. 

I awoke briefly, shuttering beneath my blankets. I could hear someone moving and glanced over where Odd was snorring, scratching his belly in his sleep. I saw Dara stand, her image clear as day to Knut's eye, her lithe form silhouetted in silver. Her eyes glowed like that of a wolf's in the dark. The knife in her hand glinted as she carefully, soundlessly, crept over my sons' sleeping bodies.

The next moment, I was hanging.

I flailed at the end of a red noose, swaying as I kicked my legs. My hands clawed at the ribbon tightening about my throat. It was slick. My fingers came away bloody. Beside me hung the decayed bodies of my brothers, their heads bent at odd angles, their eyes and tongues plucked out by crows. Rats made nests within their rib cages.

Out amid the jeering crowd stood five children. Four little boys and an older girl. I knew Cat immediately. Her dark eyes were round with fright, her pitch black hair coiling about her shoulders. Between her arms, she held the four boys. The boys were my boys, though their goblin features were gone. They appeared before me fully human without claws and with rounded ears. Floki and Frit clung to Cat's sides while the youngest children clutched hands in front of her, watching me die in frozen terror. Odd and Magni. Odd's mouth opened wide with a terrible screech, dropping to his knees while he clawed at his own ears, echoing my own actions all those years ago. Magni never moved from his spot, though tears bubbled over his cheeks and his tiny hands, now without his brother's warmth, clutched at his own chest as if it great pain and cried out for his mother.

"It doesn't have to be this way." Agi perched on the top of the gallows. Its tail hung down over the wooden beam, swinging like a pendulum. "Just pull the thread and all your worries will be over." Agi's lips curled in their corners, showing more and more teeth. "No more struggling. No more strife. No more want. You will drip jewels, be cocooned in silks and lace." Agi's voice warped more and more until it was Knut's voice slipping from Agi's slimy tongue. "Pull the thread, Dear Mouse. Let me spoil you deliciously rotten." The drool dripping from its teeth and tongue were as red as the bloody noose about my neck and its eyes burned with green light.

"You smell of rot." Dara's thin face was inches from mine when I jumped free of the dream's hold. Her lip was curled in disgust, her nostrils flaring. She was straddling my chest, squatting over me without actually sitting on me. I could feel the cold edge of her knife against the underside of my jaw. "You're dieing. You know that don't you? I can sense him on you."