Inhaltsangabe
In this “creepy as hell” (Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author) queer retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne classic gothic horror story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, a young woman is lured to a lush estate owned by a botanist who might be hiding dark secrets.
Cordelia Beecher is on the run. In search of her missing brother Edward, she has fled the oppressive charity school she was raised in, desperate to find the only family she knows. Using clues from his past letters, she sets off for the sleepy town of Farrow, but everyone there claims to have never heard of Edward—not even the man he was supposedly working for as an apprentice.
With nowhere to go, Cordi turns to Lady Evangeline, a local female botanist who owns the magnificent Edenfield estate. The benevolent lady of the manor has made it her mission to take young, often traumatized, women into her employ and protect them from man’s world of wicked desires and deceits. Hired as a maid and companion to her enigmatic daughters, Prim and Briar, Cordi quickly settles into Edenfield. Even as her relationship with Briar blossoms, Cordi can’t help but suspect that there are secrets in the estate…and when she stumbles across evidence that Edward was once there, she’s determined to find answers.
Atmospheric, eerie, and thoroughly original, Her Wicked Roots will establish Tanya Pell as a “wickedly creepy” (Josh Winning, author of Heads Will Roll) and vital voice in gothic horror.
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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Tanya Pell is a narcoleptic horror author who drinks bougie coffee and lives in the American South. She is the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of Her Wicked Roots, Cicada, and several short stories featured in anthologies like Mother Knows Best and Obsolescence.
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Chapter 1 Chapter 1
CORDELIA’S HEAD BANGED AGAINST THE side of the carriage and she startled awake, fingers clawing reflexively at the small bag in her lap, pulling it closer. For one terrifying moment, she thought the jolt was the carriage being forced to a halt. That at any second the door would open and rough hands would reach in, drag her from her seat, and force her back to the Barrow and the horrors that would await her there.
But it had only been a lurch as the carriage wheel bounced through a pothole. Cordi heard the driver cursing the roads with language that might have made a fainter heart blush but only made her exhale a shaky laugh.
“Are you all right, dear?”
The only other passenger was an elderly woman with a lapful of yarn and knitting needles poised like tiny spears in her hands that had been clicking and clacking since the driver had helped her settle into her seat. Those needles were finally still as she watched Cordi with concern.
Cordi gave a wan smile, trying to keep her features hidden behind the uneven waves of her hair. “Yes, ma’am,” she said meekly, hating the attention she had drawn. “Just startled.”
The old woman clucked and went back to her knitting. “Bad dreams?”
Are there any other kind?
But the woman didn’t seem to need an answer. The door to conversation had been opened and she was apparently happy to fill the quiet while her thin fingers, the skin wrinkled and sagging with age, returned to her nimble knitting and purling. “I sleep like the dead myself. Suppose I’m getting practice in,” she said with a little chuckle. “Not too long till the grave for me. But I simply cannot sleep without a proper bed. Was never able to. And certainly not on a dusty road, jostling about like a package.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cordi said again, not wanting to be rude.
When she had first boarded in the city, she had imagined the eyes of the other passengers on her, scrutinizing her face even as she tried to keep it turned casually away. Surely they were memorizing her so they might later tell the constables what they knew. She had been certain at each stop that she would be arrested, and so had waited with bated breath and a pounding heart as each passenger disembarked and their luggage was handed down, pressed into a corner of the carriage in an effort to make herself as small as possible. She did not breathe until the wheels had begun moving again.
In these moments of uncertain limbo as she waited for the lurch of the carriage, Cordi’s hand would sink into her pocket and clutch her beloved talisman. The treasured fox, a gift from her brother carved from linden wood, offered her some small measure of comfort. Her thumb would stroke its smooth belly as a penitent’s fingers might slide over prayer beads.
When she had been forced to clamber down herself at the stops in order to make water or burst, she had shuffled through the people milling around the station. Men stood about in dark hats and coats, reading papers, checking watches, and guffawing at bawdy jokes. Ladies attended small children or tried to revive wilting feathers in their hats, noses turned up at the scent of horses and tobacco. Cordi had done her business and kept her head down, her collar turned up, forcing her gait to be steady as she wove through the crowd, her face a mask of casual annoyance. Just another passenger eager to be on her way. Just another poor, wretched girl among thousands. She willed all eyes not to linger upon her, retreating to the safety of the coach and the quiet, dreary passengers within.
No one had spoken to her, nor to each other for that matter. Everyone had kept to their own business. It made her wonder about their own secrets. If they were all running from something, just like her.
No, she scolded herself. No. She was not running from something. She was running toward.
“Dear?”
Cordi reflexively straightened against the carriage seat. Years of harsh school inspections gave her a straight spine and folded hands on cue. “Ma’am?”
The older woman’s lips pinched together, eyes narrowed behind tiny golden spectacles, sweeping over Cordi’s poor clothing, lingering on her hands, dotted with scars from a hard life lived. Upon her seeing these, her lips turned at the corners into a tender smile, something warm and comforting. “I said you were much too young and too pretty to be having bad dreams. That’s all.”
Kindness was a gift Cordi had not known for some time. Something she had almost forgotten how to acknowledge. “Th-thank you,” she stuttered. “Ma’am.”
The woman nodded and resumed her knitting, the sound of her needles tapping together filling the small space.
Cordi allowed herself to look out the window and found her eyes dazzled. Green fields and hillocks stretching into the distance, marred only by the occasional fence or copse of trees. Sheep, their wool stained with fresh mud rather than the muck of the city.
Cordi pressed her nose against the frosty glass, fogging it with her breath as she tried to crane her neck, looking for any glimpse of crowded buildings and the life she’d left behind. A world of black and gray and death, the early morning sun choked behind low clouds and smoke from chimneys coughing out soot, ash, and brick dust to corrupt the recent snow.
There was only the lush pastoral scene passing hastily beyond her window. Days and miles separated her from the cruel city and the crimes committed there, both her own and others’. With each mile traveled, she felt a link in the chain tying her to her old life crack and fall away.
The driver cursed again before pulling up the reins, the carriage rolling to a stop.
“Oh,” Cordelia breathed at the sight of a meadow carpeted in an early spray of bluebells.
The purple and blue flowers dipped their heads lazily, heavy with dew yet to burn away, sparkling and twinkling in the changing light. A field of stars.
The coach swayed as the driver hauled himself out of his seat and down to the ground. He rapped quickly on the door before it swung open on her side. Instinctively, Cordi pressed farther back into the seat, one hand clutching her bag. “Why have we stopped?”
The driver pushed his hat back on his head, revealing clean, pale skin beneath, a clear line separating his scalp from his face, dusty and tanned by years in the sun. “That dip we took. One of the team is pulling to the side. May have picked up a stone or I may need to adjust his straps. But you might as well stretch your legs if you’ve a mind.” The driver was a genial man; though curt, he treated her and the other passengers with nothing but respect. His nose was red from a chill even early spring could not quite vanquish and paired splendidly with his red beard peppered with stiff, gray hairs. More of those same hairs sprouted like weeds from his ears.
He backed away from the door and she heard his thick boots on the road as he went to attend to his horses.
“You go right ahead, dear,” the woman offered. “Will do you some good to see some sun. Too pale. I’m staying right here with my work. If I disembark, I’m likely never to make my way back up again.”
Cordi considered staying put, tucked into her corner. But she was tired of sitting and the air wafting into the carriage from the open door was so sweet. She slung her satchel on her shoulder and climbed out, blinking in the bright sunshine.
As she stepped down, knees adjusting to the feel of solid ground beneath...
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Her Wicked Roots
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