The Night Princess

by Grace Martin

  Juniper barely had time to realise that she was inside a wardrobe before Ysande exited the mirror behind her and pushed her even deeper into the coat hangers. She stumbled over some stranger’s shoes, fell heavily against the other end of the wardrobe, ricocheted against the door, and fell out.

  She looked up. A middle-aged woman, with silvery hair spilling over her shoulders, was sitting up in the bed — upside down from Juniper’s perspective. She threw the bedcovers back and approached cautiously. Juniper looked up at her.

  ‘Can I help you, dear?’

  Juniper stared at the woman, brushed an errant coat hanger off her face, getting tangled in the negligee that hung from it, and began to giggle helplessly.

  Ysande emerged from the other side of the wardrobe, looking nothing short of majestic and stepped firmly from the wardrobe. She stared the woman in the eye before focusing her gaze on Juniper. ‘When you’ve finished making a fool of yourself, you can get up.’

  Juniper stopped laughing at once. She pushed the trailing end of the negligee off her and got to her feet.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Ysande asked.

  ‘They’re in the Guesthouse, darling,’ the woman replied. ‘It’s not good for Katie to be in the real world too long, you know.’

  Juniper looked from one to the other. ‘Real world?’ she asked. It wasn’t the first time tonight she had heard the phrase. Quite frankly, there wasn’t much about the night that would have fit her usual criteria for what necessarily constituted real life, but these people were talking about it like there was an alternate option.

  The woman canted her head to the side and looked sympathetically at Juniper. ‘It’s been a long night for you, hasn’t it, dear? And a longer night to come, I think.’ She patted Juniper on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t we all go to the Guesthouse together? Mrs. Danvers can make us all a nice cup of tea. Would you like that?’

  Ysande spun on her heel in a brisk about-face and marched from the room. The woman put her head close to Juniper’s and whispered, ‘She’s always so dramatic. She gets that from her mother — and her father. So flamboyant. I’ll get dressed first, I think. I’d rather not face a horde of angry anything in my nightie. Would you mind waiting in the hall, dear?’

  Juniper nodded and went out into the hall where a small landing stretched atop a flight of stairs. Maybe having some time to think wasn’t a good thing. It had been too long a night. Her parents weren’t her parents. Vampires were real. A Vampire King wanted her dead. Juniper gripped the bannister, but she wasn’t sure if the ground would ever feel solid beneath her feet again.

  The noises coming from behind the bedroom door sounded as if there was a small battle being waged against the coat hangers — and the coat hangers were losing. After a few minutes, the woman emerged, dressed in immaculately tailored beige trousers and a white blouse. Her hair was swept into a bun and she looked like she’d breezed in from the cover of a magazine. ‘Shall we, dear?’

  They went downstairs and through a house that had seen better days. The woman led Juniper through a dishevelled kitchen and out the back door. The backyard was small; most of the space taken up by an old building that looked like it was a granny flat. A quick backwards glance showed that the ordinary house she’d just come from was unlikely to be a guesthouse, so that must be what this structure was.

  Inside there was one big room downstairs that served as a kitchen and lounge room. There was a bank of cupboards on the far wall that looked like they provided some serious storage. Ysande was already there, pacing the length of the room.

  ‘Finally!’ she exploded. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I had to make myself fabulous, darling.’

  Ysande was nearly incandescent with rage, but the woman barely seemed to notice.

  ‘Why don’t we join the others for a cup of tea?’ She pulled a kitsch keyring from her pocket and opened one of the cupboard doors. ‘After you, Ysande.’

  Juniper stared. She’d seen this building from the outside. It wasn’t a big building. It had just enough space for one big room downstairs and maybe two small rooms upstairs. There was nothing behind the building but the back fence… so where did that long corridor go?

  The woman urged Juniper through the door. ‘It’s nothing, dear,’ she said. ‘You’ll get used to it. You’ve had a big night, but after learning that vampires exist, the concept of the Guesthouse shouldn’t be difficult for you at all. You’ll be like my Ricky. He took to it like a duck to water. It took Katie a while longer, and a few fights, but it’s always like that with Katie. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her the sky was blue. Naturally, when I tried to tell her that reality wasn’t what she always thought it was, she took it hard.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘This is the Guesthouse, dear.’

  ‘Is that her?’ Juniper looked around to find the new voice.

  They were in a large, octagonal room that had a high ceiling with a domed glass roof. Plush, scarlet carpet covered the floor, and there was heavy furniture scattered around the room in elegant deshabille. The room was full of… warriors? Actually, there were only two of them, but even two warriors take up a lot of space.

  The person who had spoken was a woman. She was tall and strong, dressed in black leather and midnight blue silk, her long blonde hair pulled back into a utilitarian plait. Juniper tried not to stare because the woman was utterly flat-chested — not just small breasted — but with a chest even flatter than a man’s. Juniper knew without being told that it could only result from surgery.

  ‘It’s her,’ Ysande replied. She looked like she fit in here, among these fierce, leather-clad warriors with their air of menace and competence. ‘That’s the Magnifier. I told you I’d bring her, and here she is.’

  ‘You did well, Ysande,’ the male warrior said, a big Viking dressed in leather with two wickedly curved blades at his belt. He patted Ysande familiarly on the shoulder. She glowed with pride, although she didn’t allow herself to smile. He reached up to the small creature sitting on his shoulder, half-hidden by his hair.

  ‘Meet Meek,’ the man said, coaxing the tiny little kitten-like creature onto his big palm and holding it out to Juniper for inspection.

  ‘How lovely,’ Juniper said, reaching out to take hold of the kitten. It purred and allowed itself to be transferred over to her hands. She cradled it. Its fur was the softest thing she’d ever felt.

  ‘This is Prince Athelric of Daresia,’ Ysande said, ‘and his wife, Queen of Saravan. She is a Meek.’

  Juniper looked up, startled. ‘Wife?’ The Meek just purred in her hands, even if she did look a bit smug. Ysande ignored Juniper’s question.

  The Viking Prince took the Meek gently from Juniper. ‘Call me Rick. And, yes. Meek is a shape-changer. You’ll have to excuse us — neither of us are in the right shape for company. Once she comes to this world, Meek can’t change her shape. We knew that it would be dangerous here in the real world, so she stayed in her feline form. She’s a formidable adversary — she can grow quite large, the size of a leopard or a panther.’

  It was hard to imagine that small, purring thing the size of a panther, but Juniper had a kitten once. She remembered the razor sharp claws and needle pointed teeth.

  Rick was still speaking. ‘Changing shape is natural to her people. Maybe, one day, you might come to Saravan and see it for yourself.’

  ‘Is Saravan another planet?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled gently. ‘It’s a fictional country — from a book. Thanks to the Guesthouse door, though, we can go into the book. Once in a fictional world, it’s as real as any other world.’

  ‘Fictional,’ Juniper repeated dumbly. ‘You mean you’re out of a book?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sort of. I spent most of my childhood in the real world, though. Meek hasn’t been to the real world very often.’

  Juniper looked around then back to Rick. ‘Are you all… um… fictional?’

  ‘Not all of us. Ysande’s fictio
nal, and so is Katie — my twin sister over there — the one

  dressed up like a bruise in black and blue. Our mother, Mrs. Elliot, the woman who brought you here, is from the real world, though.’

  Juniper lowered her voice. ‘Am I… fictional?’

  Rick smiled again. ‘We don’t know what you are, Juniper.’

  Juniper moved slightly closer and spoke even more quietly. ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Because you have something we want,’ Ysande said loudly from halfway across the room. Juniper hadn’t realised that Ysande had been listening and flushed with embarrassment. It hadn’t felt like a stupid question but Ysande made her feel that way.

  ‘Because,’ said Katie, in just as loud a voice, throwing a sour glance at Ysande, ‘someone let the Vardai into my book, and we need your power to help us scourge them from the face of our fictional world.’ The woman’s voice was even sharper than Ysande’s, and that was saying something.

  ‘I don’t have that much power –’ Juniper began, but the woman cut her off.

  ‘We don’t have time for false modesty. By your very presence, you have the ability to magnify the magic of people around you. You can fly. You’re strong. We don’t even know exactly what you are.’

  ‘Do you have special powers, too?’ Juniper asked. The Vampire King had mentioned telepathy as one of the gifts the teenagers might experience. Perhaps Katie was also telepathic.

  ‘No,’ Katie answered. ‘I have no powers of my own. But I am the Author’s Daughter. I serve Cerawen, the goddess of the dead, and she gives me certain advantages.’

  ‘The goddess of the dead,’ Juniper whispered, very, very quietly. Ysande had mentioned something about Cerawen’s gifts earlier. Now it turned out that Katie served the goddess of the dead. Creepy. This night was just getting better and better. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘We need to take you — and your ring — to the Librarians in Alexandria.’ Katie replied.

  Juniper nearly swooned. ‘The Library of Alexandria?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s probably unlikely I meant the local library,’ Katie snapped. ‘Yes, of course, the Library of Alexandria. The Librarians there are the experts. Your ring is the only thing we’ve heard of in any world that has the power to stop the Vardai. They’re the vampires — the life drinkers Ysande rescued you from this evening. They’re the ones we’re fighting. Had you noticed that yet, or should I go back a step?’

  ‘I noticed,’ Juniper said in a small voice.

  Katie sighed and rolled her eyes. She did it very quickly, but even a quick eye roll can be devastating, and Juniper fixed her attention on the floor. Katie sighed again.

  ‘Tea, everyone!’ Mrs. Elliot announced. Juniper looked up. She wasn’t sure if Mrs. Elliot was trying to be helpful or if she was unaware of the undercurrents in the room. She stood in the doorway with a big tray in her hands, smiling brightly while a woman in serviceable grey behind her scowled over her shoulder and turned away.

  ‘Let me take that, Mum,’ Rick said.

  Mrs. Elliot followed him happily and seated herself before the tray and began to pour tea. ‘How do you take yours, Juniper?’ she asked. ‘I should think tonight that strong, sweet tea would be best, don’t you? I’m sure it’s all been quite stressful.’

  ‘Mum, we’re going to be attacked by vampires,’ Katie stared at Mrs. Elliot with unconcealed disdain on her face. ‘It’s quite possible that some or all of us are going to die tonight. It might not be the time for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ Mrs. Elliot responded, which was roughly the equivalent of slapping Katie across the face. ‘There’s no point going into this fight if we’re not at our best. And it should take them a few hours to find us since Ysande and Juniper arrived through a mirror. Why die hungry? Biscuit?’

  Katie muttered something that sounded extremely crunchy, but she took the biscuit her mother held out to her.

  Ysande brought Juniper a cup of tea.

  ‘I don’t drink tea,’ Juniper confessed, taking the cup because Ysande was holding it out. ‘I prefer coffee.’

  ‘Tough,’ Ysande said. ‘I don’t like tea, either. I’m half Vardai, and that part of me doesn’t feel hunger or thirst for food or drink, only the thirst for days.’ She raised the cup to her lips and took a sip, nonetheless, so Juniper did the same. The tea was aggressively sweet.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Juniper asked. ‘How does someone drink days? I thought vampires drank blood?’

  ‘The Vardai aren’t exactly vampires.’ Ysande told her. ‘They’re fictional creatures, from a novel called The Star Keeper. In their world, they live in a symbiotic relationship with witches, and they feed on the witch’s magic. The relationship is mutually beneficial and results in pair-bonding of couples. One of the witches was wronged by her mate, and she banished all the Var from her world. She gave up her own life and turned herself into crystals that hang suspended in the sky and shine like stars at night.

  ‘The Vardai were banished and could never return to their own world. Deprived of the witches’ magic — the source of their nourishment — they found a new way to survive. They discovered that they could feed by stealing life from other people. They don’t even have to touch the person; they just have to be standing nearby while intentionally reaching out to drink their days. They call it drinking days because the life that is stolen from the other person adds to the lifespan of the Vardai. Depending on how much life is stolen, the person who has lost their days may not even know that they have been harvested.

  ‘A responsible Vardai only takes one day at a time, whatever is required to remain alive. Some of us can eat faster than others. Some are greedy for the extra power that a surfeit of days can bring them, and they drink as much as they are able from anyone they can get close to.’

  ‘Ysande, what am I?’ Juniper asked. ‘How do I have these powers? Am I a Vardai too?’

  ‘As I heard Rick telling you earlier, we don’t know what you are,’ Ysande said. ‘That’s the truth. We don’t really know much more than what our melodramatic villain told you this evening. We know that you are something special. We know you’re your presence magnifies the powers of anyone close to you. And what’s most important, we know about that ring your mother gave you.’

  Juniper pulled the opal ring out of her pocket and looked at it. ‘I don’t know how it does what it does’ she said. ‘I didn’t know anything at all about it until today. Now all I know is that it inhibits my magic. It’s a pity we can’t get the Vampire King to wear one.’

  ‘That’s sort of our goal,’ Ysande said. ‘We guessed that since your ring was able to inhibit your powers that it might be possible to use it to inhibit the powers of all the Vardai. They have become a plague. They figured out how to go into other stories from The Star Keeper and then move from world to world, draining it of life and moving on.’ She cast a sulphurous glance at Mrs. Elliot. ‘We’ve got to get you to the Library—the Librarians are the only ones who might be able to tell us how we might use your ring to stop the Vardai. When Mrs. Elliot has drunk her tea, of course.’

  Juniper wasn’t sure what to say, so she took a sip of the tea and pretended to enjoy it.

  Mrs. Elliot just sat there on the lounge, the big Viking and his Meek sitting beside her, sharing a quiet conversation that apparently had more to do with the potential advantages of grandchildren than the fate of the world.

  Ysande remained aloof, but she cast glances towards them from time to time, and Juniper sensed the deep longing inside her. The Author’s Daughter stalked restlessly around the room, having drunk her tea in three quick swallows.

  Juniper wasn’t sure if she was glad that the waiting was over or if she was terrified at what might be beginning.

  Mrs. Elliot finally put down her cup and stood up. ‘Time for you to go on to the Library, I suppose,’ She looked around. ‘I know you’ve all got terribly important things to do. It’s just nice when we’re all together again
.’

  Rick stood up and patted her on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s been so long since the family was together,’ Mrs Elliot said. ‘I never seem to see either of you anymore. And now, with your father gone…’ Her lower lip trembled.

  ‘Be brave, Mum,’ Rick urged.

  ‘If you can manage it for five minutes together,’ Katie muttered, then stalked off down the long hallway.

  The others followed, Juniper keeping close to Ysande.

  At the end of the hallway was a door. Or, rather, a Door. It was the kind of door that was in a class by itself, huge, made of thick wooden planks with ornate carvings all around it. Juniper didn’t need to know that she was in a magical guesthouse to know that this Door would lead somewhere special.

  Katie reached out for the handle. ‘On to the Library of Alexandria,’ she announced and pulled the Door open.

  It opened… to magnificence.

  It was a temple or something very like one. The floor was marble, and enormous columns reached towards a vaulted ceiling far above. Fires burned in brass bowls here and there and gave a warm light. And there were books and scrolls everywhere. Given what had happened to the Library in real life, it seemed a little stupid to have open flames everywhere, but no one asked her opinion. People in robes hurried to and fro and paid no attention to the visitors.

  ‘Don’t they wonder about people just appearing out of nowhere?’ Juniper asked Ysande quietly.

  ‘Usually, the people at the destination wouldn’t be able to see us yet,’ Ysande replied. ‘Until we pass through the Door, we don’t exist in their world. When we go through the Door, they think we’ve just entered through a normal door in their world or story. The Library is slightly different, though. The Librarians are the ones who created the Doors in the first place. They know we’re here, and they don’t really give a crap unless we do something really awful, like touch one of their precious books.’