The Bloody Nightingale: Adult Fairytales

Lady Bluebeard

When I dream of him, I am combing indigo through my Master's mane, the rich deposits of spackled dark dye giving him the bluest beard. Like Celtic woad, Master paints it into his locks each morning, like a warrior of old Gaul, and we take long walks through the woods together in his realm that is always shrouded in twilight. In the wan light of the midnight woods, trees grow bent over by gales, twisted oakthorn and fragrant applevice, and grackles feast on worms so pale, they match my own wan flesh.

I have always lived in this castle, here at the border between worlds. Bluebeard, my Master, rescued me as a young girl when I strayed too far in the woods, over the border between realms. No one has broken his curse – for below his waist are the hind quarters of a biped lion, and he has claws as thick as the talons of my gyrfalcon that we use to hunt small quarry. The maidens always fail, and so he sacrifices them to his cruel God Phooka – the God of Mischief, the God of Tricksters, the God of Death – to guard the ways between worlds, pools of ichor in the bloody chamber that I am only too happy to stay away from when I clean.

They call Bluebeard wicked, fey – but me, I do not ask questions. 'Twas him that nursed my wounds, saved my life, gives me partridges fat and succulent, and it is I that tends his chambers.

I am nineteen today, and Master is taking me to the great waterfall where wishes are sometimes granted if you write them on the pale quartz rocks and cast them into the grotto.

"Happy birthday, Evangeline," Bluebeard says, his woad-dyed mane and cat-shaped fey eyes tilted at the edges like a question. His great green irises and long black hair are too elegant and pigmented to be human. His lion parts twist in the complexity of a chimera.

You must forgive him, this Bluebeard – if you are his bride. You see, beasts are always hungry. The only reason he hasn't eaten me is because he has already tasted my blood, that night I was lost in the woods, came to the midnight forest, and was gored by a boar's tusk. I had already been marked the prey of another beast, and boars – and Bluebeard – are quite territorial, and never kill another's prey. We had roast ham that night, after Master saved me.

That is where the maidens always make mistakes: they cut themselves on his little bone key that is engraved with birds and eggs, and then the stain never washes out. His thin, light-haired brides come begging and screaming to me to clean the red paint of their veins from Master's keys, and scrub as I might, with lye and spring water, I have never yet managed to remove their marks from the bloody, forbidden chamber's skeleton key.

And so, having violated the terms of his curse, Bluebeard eats their hearts, and decorates the lintel stone of the old accords between fey and man that lives deep within his castle with the maidens' blood and bones.

Nature is cruel, after all, and woman's only natural predator is man.

Does that make me an accomplice?

Maybe.

I never share his bed. I never lust after the riches he has, like the peasant maidens and princesses that come here seeking dark fortunes and vices do.

Me, I just clean the dark castle and read in the library, swim in the waterfall, and dance with the fey boys of Bluebeard's kingdom at our nightly revelries. It is a changeling I seem to have become - death and life matter little to me.

"Thank you, Master, for the birthday wishes," I smile softly, riding on a dappled mare alongside Bluebeard's mighty roan. We come to the grotto and the waterfall splashes upon sharp rose quartz stones, forming a greenish clear pool that has gold coins and bones at the bottom.

It is never too hot and never too cold in Bluebeard's shadow realm, perfect for swimming or a fire in equal measure, depending on the time of the day, and so we strip down to our underthings and go for a swim.