"Let me go! Please!" I wailed as the prison guards dragged me from my dungeon cell. There were three of them, escorting me down the corridor. Two to carry me by the arms in bruising grips and one to guide the way with a highly held torch. "Please!" I sobbed again, wincing as skin tore away from my toes where they dragged against the floor. The men continued on, ignoring me. Beneath the echo of the men's heavy footsteps, I could hear the scurrying of little feet. Looking down, I saw them there, my goblin guards running beside us, keeping pace.
Before us, loomed a heavy door and the nearer we drew to it, the louder the screams of those poor souls trapped behind it became. And the more I fought against their iron holds. "No! No, please!" I screamed writhing between the two guards that held me. With grunts of effort, they lifted me more off the ground to stop my feet from dragging and to make it more difficult for me to struggle.
Behind that terrible door, was a cavernous room filled with instruments of torture. Above fiery pits, men cooked in iron cages. On racks, others were pulled limb from limb and everywhere criminals of all sorts were receiving their flogging before they were to be executed. I was passed to one of these torturers, a man just as ugly and twisted as a goblin, who wielded a pair of large, rusty scissors.
Just as Knut had warned me would happen, I was stripped and made to kneel on the gore bathed floor of the torture room. Then those scissors set to work on my hair, stripping away my pride with each snip just as easily as they had my clothing. I shivered, watching as strands of gold fluttered to the ground around me. I caught a lock of hair in my hands and held it tightly as I wept. I didn't even notice the man switch the scissors for the whip until it cracked against my back. Again and again, the whip came down, cutting into my skin and muscle with each blow. The gold locks of hair around me soon turned red with my blood.
The goblins sat before me, their eyes bright, shimmering with the firelight from the pits below the cages. "Help me." I mouthed between screams.
Pig-nosed patted my hand as the whip came down again and I twisted against the searing pain. "We can't." It said, sadly. "We're just here to make sure you don't die."
"Pull the thread." The Rat-tailed growled. Its tail thrashed more and more irritably with each blow of the whip. "Pull it and this ends." Knut was still controlling it, somehow, and speaking through that borrowed mouth, that much was clear. "It has to be your choice."
"Please, Miss Bride?" Pig-nosed pleaded. I bared my teeth at them in answer, my anger burning more than the wounds stung.
"I'll do what I can, though it'll only hasten your end." Rat-tailed harrumphed like a grumpy cat and leaped up onto the torturer's shoulder.
The whipping stopped as the man listened to the goblin's whispers. The torturer's arm that held the whip fell to his side. "That's enough for you." He said and hoisted me to my feet. "It's near time they take you to the gallows, anyway." He pulled a plain dingy shift over me to cover my nakedness- more for the execution's audience's modesty than my own- before dragging me out of the dungeon to the outside courtyard where the cart, loaded with the soon to be dead, sat waiting to take me to the gallows.
Pig-nosed clung to the skirt of the shift and Rat-tailed rode on my shoulder as I staggered towards that cart full of screaming and wailing men. They reached through the bars, grasping for the freedom they'd never know again and the world they were about to leave. As badly as this cold world had treated them, they were still terrified to leave it. I knew that feeling well, in every sense. "Do you think I enjoy seeing you hurt, Matilda?" Rat-tailed/Knut whispered in my ear. "I felt every blow of that whip. I'm not letting this happen because I want you to hurt. I'm letting this happen because it is what you are choosing. You cannot go back to your old life. You've been caught. All this world offers you now is death. Please, Matilda, Love, end this. Let me take you home and I'll give you back your pretty hair."
I ignored him. My mind was elsewhere, consumed in a misery I didn't know could exist, for I'd spotted two familiar faces within the cart, reaching for me with sixteen desperate fingers. "Rhys! Rolland!" I screamed. I lunged forward, needing to get to them. God, their faces were so swollen and bloody. It made me ache all the worse just looking at them.
"Matilda!" Rolland screamed, trying to squeeze through the narrow bars as if he could revert to the size of a mouse through sheer force of will.
Rhys let out a mournful wail, covering his face with his hands. "Not you too!" He cried. The guards tossed me into the cart and my brothers rushed to cocoon me in their protective arms. Rhys held me close and kissed the uneven shag of hair atop my head. "What have they done to your hair?" He sobbed, running his thick fingers through it, searching for its missing length.
"Leave her alone!" Rolland shoved at the men around us, threatening everyone that dared to even look my way. "Lay a finger on her, and they won't have to hang you." He warned them, meaning every word.
We huddled together in the back of the cart, speaking in hushed tones. Rhys was...having a difficult time keeping himself together. Rolland was just angry. I think I was somewhere in-between. Trapped in a limbo world of uncertainty. I could save myself. All I had to do was pull a thread and I'd be gone. Gone to an uncertain life among creatures that, frankly, terrified me. Creatures that would either worship me or eat me. But my brothers would remain. Knut had offered nothing to them, and he made no move to. He sat in his borrowed body upon Rolland's lap, watching my hands as I had watched Lily's not very long ago.
"We're gonna die! Just like Father did! Kicking and flailing, gasping for breath!" Rhys sobbed, tearing at his hair.
"Shut up!" Rolland barked at him. "Not another word out of you! You want to go blubbering up to meet the hangman, fine, but do it quietly!" Rolland put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed me to his side. "There's no need to make the girl more scared than she already is." Beneath his breath, he growled, "Damn Jasper for this. I hope there's a special place in hell for that bastard."
"Jasper?" I raised my head from Rolland's shoulder. My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"He betrayed us." Rolland spat with disgust.
"Don't tell her that!" Rhys pleaded. "It'd be better if she died not knowing!" Rhys' face was slick with tears, sweat, and blood.
"I'm already well aware," I said, looking down at the ribbon. "That suitor he wanted me to meet wanted to buy me. He was going to sell me to him to pay him back for a loan. Apparently, he's gambled away someone else's money. When that man tried to..." I couldn't even say it. "I killed him. That's why I'm here."
Rolland let out a stream of curses, condemning our eldest brother to the hottest part of hell's fiery pit.
"I can't believe he's done this." Rhys sighed, rubbing at his swollen face.
"I can." Rolland hissed. "Jasper ratted us out. He turned us in to the city guard for the bounty money. He led them to us. Brought them right to the house and stood there watching as they dragged us off. We're worth more dead than alive to him. And once we're gone, he'll only have to worry about himself."
When did the boy that loved us die? Was it when he buried himself in debt or much, much sooner? I wondered as I listened to my brothers rant and sob and the wagon creak as it made its way to the gallows. My mind went back to that first night of orphanhood when I'd asked Jasper what I could do to help. The look of pity he'd given me when I asked him that should have warned me of my doomed future. My soul wasn't the only one to wither and rot the day my father died.
The carriage rolled to a stop and our fellow prisoners' wailing eased off into a cold silence. Outside, was a different matter. A crowd of blood-thirsty observers had already gathered, eager to watch us all choke. They shouted and cursed us and threw rotten food at our cage. In sets of five, the prisoners were taken and killed. Each death stirred the audience into a greater and greater frenzy. We waited our turn, clinging to each other. The goblins sat in my brothers' laps, waiting.
"We're sorry, Matilda, for the things we've done...for dragging you into this life." Rhys sniffled. "If not for us, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be dying this way."
"If not for you, I'd have died years ago." I pulled Rhys to me and hugged him.
"At least then you'd have died of hunger and not dangling by a rope. That's no way for a girl to go." Rolland said lowly. "You should be getting married and having babies. Not this. That's our doing."
I grabbed him and hugged him too. I held them both, comforting them or trying to. "You did your best and raised me up." I watched Rat-tail/Knut over Rolland's shoulder. "You all made me who I am. Jasper too." I added, hearing a sharpness in my voice like a steel blade's edge.
"That's enough, you three. The reunion's over." Guards seized us and quickly bound our hands behind our backs. I shuttered with a wave of panic. How would I reach the thread now? I pulled against the guards' grabbing hands, reaching for Rolland and Rhys, my only true brothers. The only ones who ever cared. And they reached for me.
"We love you, Matilda!" Rolland and Rhys said together, always together.
"I love you too!" I answered them, tears of grief and fear and anger pouring from my eyes and strangling my voice. This was the first time I'd ever told them such a thing, at least the first time I could remember. My brothers smiled those goofy smiles, showing all those broken and rotting teeth before the guards wrenched us apart for good.
We were led up onto the gallows' platform along with two other prisoners. I was given the last noose, behind my two brothers. The hangman walked down the line, placing the nooses around each of our necks and tightening the ropes as a priest droned on, asking God to show us mercy. It was the feeling of those rough ropes around our necks that broke the facade of calmness that had fallen over us. Rhys began sobbing again, mumbling prayers to a God he'd never shown the slightest interest in before. Rolland raved like a lunatic, shouting obscenities, and damning every person there. I lost control of my bowels. I could feel the warm moisture drip down my trembling legs.
I couldn't see my two goblin guards anymore but noticed a familiar gray cloaked figure watching from among the rabid crowd. He stood silently among his fellow onlookers his thin arms crossed over his chest as the wind blew strands of his mousy gray hair over his pallid, dour face. Our eyes met and his thin lips tweaked into a victorious grin.
That's right. You win, you damn rat. I pulled and twisted my hands, trying to break my bindings so that I could pull the thread, but they were good and tight, the rope strong and unyielding. This wasn't good. My heart throbbed and my mind's wheels began to turn in hurried thought. I had to get these bindings off to reach the thread. But how? I had no weapon to cut them with and my guards had gone and disappeared on me.
The hangman sniffled, reminding me of his presence. The hangman had come to stand beside me to wait for the order to kick the stools out from under our feet. I eyed him out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing a hood, but he had a young man's eyes. Clear and blue as sky ringed with longish dark lashes. No wrinkles around them. Young men were more likely to feel sympathy for a poor, doomed maid than a hardened old man who'd lived long enough to know better. I hoped my feminine allure didn't rely too much on my hair. "Sir," I drew my body inward to appear smaller and more pathetic as I looked towards him. "Can you loosen my bindings? They're hurting me." I whispered. I didn't have to try very hard to make myself sob and shake. I was doing plenty of that already.
After a moment's hesitation, the hangman adjusted my bindings. "Is that better?" He asked in a whisper.
I bobbed my head. "Thank you, Sir. You're very kind." I smiled warmly and bat my eyelashes, blinking more tears from my eyes.
"Hangman," The official carrying out our execution called to my new friend. He snapped back to attention and dropped his hands away as if he hadn't been doing anything. "We're ready to begin." The official said. The hangman gave me a final, pitying nod before he moved away. I released the breath I'd been holding, relieved that he was starting at the other end. The bindings weren't as loose as I would have liked, but I had more mobility than before. I quickly went to work trying to wiggle my hand up enough that I could get a hold of the thread.
There was a clatter and a terrible gasp of surprise as the first prisoner's stool went out from under him. The man kicked and flailed at the end of the rope, his face turning colors as he tried to catch his breath. Hurry. Hurry. I told myself, struggling in my bindings.
Another clatter. The second had dropped. Rhys prayed louder. "Come on," I whispered. My trembling fingers had managed to slip beneath the ropes keeping my hands together but couldn't find the loose end of the thread.
The hangman stepped behind Rhys. My movements became more frantic. Maybe if I pulled the thread now, I could grab Rhys and Rolland as the goblins took me. Maybe there was still a way. I nearly shouted in joy as my fingers touched the loose end of the thread.
But I was already too late. The hangman tipped the stool beneath Rhys over. The enraged Rolland leaped out towards the cheering crowd as his twin dropped only to come swinging back, dangling on a taut rope. They did not flail and gasp. They just hung there limply with their heads tilted at odd angles. Already dead. The fall was too short to break their necks, they should have died of suffocation, yet dead they were. Rolland and Rhys. Always together, from their births till their deaths. Always. Always together.
An all too familiar shriek burst from my chest as I watched my brothers' corpses swing back and forth beside me. I screamed, my eyes wide and wild. I bared my teeth at those grinning faces, my chest aflame with hatred and malice, spewing curses from my mouth that belonged on the tongues of witches.
I didn't hear the hangman step behind me, nor feel him kick the stool from under me. All I felt was the drop. All I heard was my own screams. All I saw was my hands raised over my head and a red ribbon dancing free in my grip as I fell to my doom.