A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

  Ophelia was next to place a wary foot out of her sleigh and she tested the grip of her shoes on the ice. She promptly fell flat on her back. As for Thorn’s ridged boots, they gripped the thick frosty layer perfectly as he unharnessed his dogs to combine them with those of the gamekeeper.

  “All done, m’lord?” inquired the last, winding the tethers round his wrists.

  “Yes.”

  With a flick of the reins, the sleigh took off without a sound, caught an air current, and, along with its lantern, disappeared into the night like a shooting star. Slumped on the ice, Ophelia followed it with her eyes, sure that it took with it all hope of turning back. She couldn’t fathom how it was physically possible for a sleigh harnessed to some dogs to fly like that.

  Thorn’s large, stiff body was bent over behind his empty sleigh and he apparently expected Ophelia to do likewise. She skidded over to him as best she could. He indicated a stake that he’d just planted in the snow. “Press your foot against it. At my signal, push as hard as you can.”

  She agreed to try, but wasn’t convinced: she could barely feel her toes against the stake. As soon as Thorn gave her the signal, she leant with all her weight against the sleigh. The vehicle, which had moved so easily behind the great wolfhounds, seemed to have got stuck in the ice since the dogs had been released. Ophelia was relieved to see the runners responding to their pushing. “Again,” demanded Thorn, his tone flat, while he planted more stakes.

  “Will anyone actually explain to me what this whole palaver is in aid of?” asked an outraged Aunt Rosaline, observing their activity. “Why is no one coming to meet us, as is customary? Why are we being treated with so little consideration? And why do I get the impression that your family hasn’t been informed of our arrival?”

  She was gesticulating in her brown fur coat while struggling to find her balance. The look that Thorn shot at her transfixed her on the spot. His eyes stood out like two flashes of a blade in the bluish dark of the night. “Because,” he hissed between his teeth. “A little discretion, madam, would it really kill you?”

  He turned his sullen face back down to Ophelia and indicated to her to push. By repeating their maneuver over and over again, they reached a massive barn whose huge doors, loosely fastened with chains, were creaking in the wind. Thorn lifted up his fur cloak, revealing a bag slung across his body, and pulled out a bunch of keys. The padlocks sprang open, the chains slid apart. Rows of sleighs similar to theirs were lined up in the dark. An access ramp had been installed inside and Thorn parked their vehicle in the barn without needing help from Ophelia. He retrieved his case and signaled to them to follow him to the back of the barn.

  “You’re not letting us in through the front door,” commented Aunt Rosaline.

  Thorn glared down at the two women, one after the other. “From now on,” he said in a voice full of thunder, “you will follow me without questioning, without dithering, without dragging your feet, without a sound.”

  Aunt Rosaline pursed her lips. Ophelia kept her true thoughts to herself since, in any case, Thorn didn’t seek consent. They were sneaking into the citadel like outlaws, but he had his reasons. Whether they were good or bad was another matter.

  Thorn slid back a heavy wooden door. Barely had they entered a dark room with a pungent animal smell when there was movement in the shadows. Kennels. Behind the bars of every pen, large paws scratched, enormous snouts snorted, huge muzzles whined. The dogs were so big, Ophelia would have thought she were in a stable. Thorn whistled between his teeth to calm them down. He ducked into a cast-iron goods lift, waited while the women got in, pulled across the safety shutter, and turned a crank. With a metallic clatter, the lift gained height, clambering from floor to floor. Clouds of ice crystals rose up around them as the temperature increased.

  The warmth entering Ophelia’s veins soon became a trial, burning her cheeks and misting up her glasses. Her godmother stifled a squeal when the goods lift screeched to a halt. Thorn pulled back the lift’s concertina shutter, and swung his long neck from one side of the landing to the other.

  “Turn right. Hurry up.”

  This floor strangely resembled a seedy alley, with half-loose cobblestones, badly maintained pavements, walls covered in old bill posters, and a thick fog. Wafting in the air was a vague aroma of baking and spices that made Ophelia’s stomach rumble.

  Clutching his case, Thorn led them through deserted districts, using hidden paths and dilapidated stairs. Twice he shoved them into the shadow of a passageway, prompted by the passing of a carriage or a distant burst of laughter. Then he dragged Ophelia by the wrist to speed her up. Each of his long strides required two of her own.

  By the light of the street lamps, she observed Thorn’s clenched jaw, his very pale eyes, and, right up there, his determined brow. Once again she wondered quite how legitimate her place at court really was, for him to be acting in this way. His long, tense fingers released her arm once they had made it to the backyard of a pitifully decrepit house. A cat nosing around the dustbins bolted at the sight of them. After a final wary glance, Thorn pushed the two women behind a door, which he immediately closed behind him and double-locked.

  Aunt Rosaline gasped with astonishment and Ophelia’s eyes widened behind her glasses: resplendent at the close of day, a country park flaunted its autumn foliage all around them. No more night. No more snow. No more Citaceleste. By some unbelievable conjuring trick, they had popped up somewhere else entirely. Ophelia turned on her heels: the door they’d just come through was just standing there, absurdly, in the middle of the lawn.

  Since Thorn seemed to be breathing easier, they thought his prohibitions were now lifted. “This is extraordinary,” stammered Aunt Rosaline, her long, pinched face opening up in admiration. “Where are we?”

  Case in hand, Thorn had immediately set off again, between the rows of elm and poplar. “On my aunt’s estate. Kindly keep your other questions for later and don’t delay us any further,” he added, cuttingly, as Rosaline was about to continue where she’d left off.

  They followed Thorn along the well-maintained avenue, which was bordered by two-tiered streams. The aunt unfastened her fur coat, relishing the warm breeze. “Extraordinary,” she repeated with a smile that displayed her long teeth. “Quite simply extraordinary . . . ”

  Less effusive, Ophelia blew her nose. Her hair and clothes wouldn’t stop weeping melted snow and she was leaving scattered puddles in her wake.

  She looked at the grass of the lawn at her feet, then at the sparkling streams, then at the leaves trembling in the breeze, then at the sky turning pink in the dusk. She couldn’t dismiss a slight uneasiness—the sun wasn’t in its place here; the lawn was far too green; the russet trees shed not a leaf. And neither the singing of birds nor the buzzing of insects could be heard.

  Ophelia remembered the travel journal of her forebear, Adelaide: The lady ambassador kindly received us on her estate, where an eternal summer evening reigns. I’m dazzled by so many marvels. The people here are courteous, very considerate, and their powers surpass all understanding.

  “Don’t take your coat off, aunt,” Ophelia said quietly. “I think this park is fake.”

  “Fake?” repeated Rosaline, baffled.

  Thorn half-turned. Ophelia caught but a brief glimpse of his scarred and unshaven profile, but the look he’d thrown at her had betrayed a flicker of surprise.

  A grand residence was outlined in filigree behind a lace of branches. It appeared to them in its entirety, standing out clearly against the red backcloth of the sunset, where the avenue left the rustic wood for pretty symmetrical gardens. It was a manor house draped in ivy, topped with slate, and adorned with weather vanes.

  On the stone perron, with its concave steps, stood an elderly lady. With her hands linked on her black apron and a shawl around her shoulders, she seemed to have been looking out for them forever. She eyed them hungrily as soo
n as they were climbing the steps, her wrinkles spreading around a radiant smile. “Thorn, my little boy, what a joy to see you again!”

  Despite her tiredness, despite her cold, despite her doubts, Ophelia couldn’t hide her amusement. In her eyes, Thorn was everything but “little.” She frowned, however, when he rebuffed the overtures of the old woman with no consideration. “Thorn, Thorn, so you’re not going to kiss your grandmother?” lamented the woman.

  “Stop that,” he hissed.

  He rushed into the hall of the manor, leaving the three of them on the threshold. “What a heartless man!” said a shocked Rosaline, who seemed to have forgotten any policy of rapprochement. But the grandmother had already found herself another victim. Her fingers were squeezing Ophelia’s cheeks as though to ascertain how fresh she was, almost knocking off her glasses. “So here’s the new blood coming to save the Dragons,” she said with a dreamy smile.

  “I beg your pardon?” stammered Ophelia. She hadn’t understood a single word of this formula of welcome.

  “You’ve got a good face,” said the old woman with amusement. “Very innocent.”

  Ophelia thought to herself that, more than anything, she must look dazed. The grandmother’s wrinkled hands were covered in strange tattoos. The same tattoos as on the arms of the hunters in Augustus’s sketches. “Forgive me, madam, I’m getting water on you,” said Ophelia as she pulled back her dripping hair.

  “By our illustrious forefathers, you’re shivering, my poor child! Come in, come right in, ladies. Supper will soon be served.”

  The Dragon

  Deep in the steaming water, Ophelia was coming back to life.

  Normally, she didn’t really like using someone else’s bath—reading these small private places could be embarrassing—but she was taking full advantage of this one. Her toes, which the cold had turned numb as stone, had just returned to a reassuring color under the water. Drowsy in the hot steam, Ophelia let her eyes wander sleepily along the long enameled edge of the bath, to the pewter kettle, to the fleur-de-lys borders of the tapestry, and to the fine porcelain vases on the console. Every element of the decor was a veritable work of art.

  “I’m both reassured and concerned, my dear!”

  Ophelia turned her misted-up glasses towards the canvas screen on which Aunt Rosaline’s shadow was gesticulating, like at some children’s theatre. She was pinning up her little bun, putting on her pearls, powdering her nose.

  “Reassured,” continued the aunt’s shadow, “because this ark isn’t as inhospitable as I feared it would be. Never have I seen such a well-kept house, and, although her accent does offend my ears somewhat, that venerable grandmother is a sweetie!”

  Rosaline came around the screen to lean over Ophelia’s bath. Her blond hair, neat as a new pin, smelt strongly of eau de toilette. She had squeezed her narrow body into a lovely dark-green dress. The grandmother had given it to her as a present to make up for the damage to her sewing machine at the gamekeeper’s.

  “But I’m concerned because the man you’re about to marry is a lout,” she whispered.

  Ophelia slid her heavy, dripping locks off her shoulders and stared at her knees, emerging from the foam like two pink bubbles. For a moment, she wondered whether she shouldn’t tell her godmother about Thorn’s warnings.

  “Get out of there,” said Aunt Rosaline, snapping her fingers. “You’re turning as wrinkled as a prune.”

  When Ophelia dragged herself out of the hot bathwater, the air felt like a cold slap to her whole body. Her first reflex was to put on her reader’s gloves. Then she gladly wrapped herself in the white bath sheet her godmother held out to her and rubbed herself down in front of the fire. Thorn’s grandmother had put several dresses at her disposal. Spread out on the large canopied four-poster bed, like languishing women, they rivaled each other in elegance and style. Paying no attention to Rosaline’s protestations, she chose the plainest among them: a pearl-gray outfit, belted at the waist and buttoned to the chin. She perched her glasses on her nose and darkened the lenses. When she saw herself in this getup, with her hair plaited at the nape, in the mirror she missed her usual scruffiness. She held out her arm to her scarf, which was still cold, and it coiled its three-colored loops into their familiar position around her neck, its fringe sweeping the carpet.

  “My poor niece, you’re irredeemably lacking in taste,” said an irritated Rosaline.

  There was a knock on their door. A young girl in white apron and white bonnet bowed respectfully. “The meal is served, if these ladies would care to follow me.”

  Ophelia looked at this pretty face sprinkled with freckles. She tried, in vain, to guess how she was related to Thorn. If she was a sister, she looked nothing like him. “Thank you, miss,” she replied, returning her formal reverence. The young girl looked so taken aback that Ophelia thought she must have made a faux pas. Should she have called her “cousin” rather than “miss,” to be polite?

  “I think she’s a servant,” her aunt whispered in her ear as they were descending the velvet-lined stairway. “I’d already heard of them, but it’s the first time in my life I’ve seen one with my own eyes.” Ophelia knew nothing about them. She’d read some scissors that had belonged to a maid, while at the museum, but she thought such occupations had disappeared with the old world.

  The young girl showed them into a huge dining room. It felt gloomier than the corridors, with its brown paneling, its high coffered ceiling, its chiaroscuro paintings, and its cased windows, through which one could just make out, between two lead lattices, the park by night. The candelabras barely dispelled this darkness along the large table, casting delicate golden glimmers on the silverware.

  In the midst of all these shadows, a luminous creature sat enthroned at the head of the table, deep in a carved armchair. “My sweet child,” she said in a sensual voice, to greet Ophelia. “Come closer now, so that I can admire you.”

  Ophelia awkwardly offered her hand to the delicate fingers extended towards her. The woman to whom they belonged was breathtakingly beautiful. Her supple, voluptuous body made her dress, of blue taffeta banded with cream ribbon, rustle with its every movement. The milky skin of her neck flowed up from the bodice, and was haloed with a blond cloud. An ethereal smile hovered on her sweet face, which was ageless, and once one’s eyes had alighted on it, it was impossible to tear them away. Ophelia did have to tear hers away, however, to look at the satin arm the woman had held out to her. The under-sleeve of embroidered tulle, being sheer, allowed a glimpse of intertwined tattoos, the very ones that the grandmother had on her arms, and that the hunters in Augustus’s sketches had on theirs.

  “I’m afraid to be too ordinary to be ‘admired,’” Ophelia muttered, impulsively.

  The woman’s smile broadened, creating a dimple in her creamy skin. “You’re certainly not lacking in candor. Which is a novelty for us, isn’t that so, Mother?”

  The Northern accent, whose inflections were so hard coming from Thorn’s mouth, rolled sensually on this woman’s tongue, endowing her with even more charm. Two chairs further along, the grandmother concurred with a kind smile. “That’s what I was telling you, my dear. This young person is of an ingenuous simplicity!”

  “I’m forgetting all my duties,” apologized the beautiful woman. “I’ve not even introduced myself to you! Berenilde, Thorn’s aunt. I love him like a son and I’m sure that, very soon, I’ll love you like my own daughter. So you may address me as you would a mother. Take a seat, my dear child, and you, too, Madam Rosaline.”

  It was when Ophelia sat down in front of her soup plate that she became aware of Thorn’s presence, on the opposite side of the table. He blended so well into the surrounding gloom that she hadn’t noticed him.

  He was only just recognizable. His mane, short and light, was no longer sprouting, weedlike, in all directions. He had shaved off the beard, which had crept up to his cheeks, in s
uch a way that all that remained was an anchor-shaped goatee. The coarse traveling fur had been exchanged for a slim, high-collared, midnight-blue jacket, from which emerged the full sleeves of an impeccably white shirt. These clothes made his long, thin body seem even stiffer, but like this Thorn did look more like a gentleman than a wild animal. The chain of his fob watch and his cuff links caught the candlelight.

  His face, long and chiseled, wasn’t any friendlier, for all that. He kept his eyelids resolutely lowered onto his pumpkin soup. He seemed to be silently counting every journey between spoon and lips.

  “I’ve not heard much out of you, Thorn!” commented the beautiful Berenilde, glass of wine in hand. “There I was, hoping that a touch of femininity in your life would make you more talkative.”

  When he raised his eyes, it wasn’t his aunt that he blatantly stared at, but Ophelia. A defiant gleam still shone from the leaden sky of his pupils. His two scars, one at the temple, the other across the eyebrow, almost jarred on his newly symmetrical face, well shaved, hair well combed. Slowly he turned to Berenilde. “I killed a man.”

  He had thrown this out casually, like small talk, between two gulps of soup. Ophelia’s glasses went pale. Beside her, Aunt Rosaline choked, nearly passing out. Berenilde calmly put her glass of wine down on the lace tablecloth. “Where? When?”

  Ophelia would, herself, have asked, “Who? Why?”

  “At the airship terminal, before embarking for Anima,” replied Thorn in a steady voice. “A disgraced man whom a malicious individual had set on my tail. I hastened my journey somewhat as a result.”

  “You did well.”

  Ophelia stiffened on her chair. Really, that was it? “You’re a murderer, perfect, pass me the salt . . . ”

  Berenilde noticed her stiffness. With a graceful flourish, she placed her tattooed hand on Ophelia’s glove. “You must find us terrifying,” she whispered. “I notice that my dear nephew, true to form, hasn’t bothered to put you in the picture.”