by Jon Jacks
*
The czarina gracefully rose up through the darkness, as if flying away from Sandy.
Sandy gave a kick of her own legs to follow after the czarina: but there was no energy, no power, left in them. Her motions were weak, ineffectual.
Rather than beginning to rise back to the surface, she was dropping deeper into the darkness, having apparently lost all buoyancy.
She struggled fearfully, all her limbs flailing uselessly for purchase on the frustratingly fluid darkness.
She needed air!
Her eyes bulged with panic. Her cheeks exploded as she let out the stale, overused air in her lungs.
She tried to gulp in a fresh supply of air; only to painfully flood her lungs with nothing but hard water.
She panicked, thrashed around, realising she was about to die, that there was little she could do about it.
The czarina was now high above her, a glittering white star in the darkness.
Sandy’s fruitless thrashing at last came to an end.
She even managed a thankful smile as she slipped deeper into the dark waters of death.
*
Chapter 20
The hands that had clutched at her earlier, dragging her down into the waters, were now gripping her with equal ferocity about her arms, her waist.
They were pulling her up, not down.
Dragging her up and out of ferociously clinging mud.
Her dress, previously so white, was filthy at its farthermost edges, ruined. It continued for the most part to splay out around her, pure and pristine. Yet it had also been partially deeply trodden into the filth, the tracks left by two darkly clad men who were struggling to wrench her free of the river’s hold.
The men gasped with the strain, swore at the ridiculousness of it all.
She herself spluttered and coughed up what felt like the last dregs of mud from her mouth.
‘The girl!’ she announced worriedly, trying to glance everywhere about herself as the men continued to haul her to safety. ‘And the other girls – are they all safe?’
There was no point asking after the czarina, she realised forlornly: all that had been nothing but some odd daydream, a misfiring of her reasoning brought on by her lack of air and near-death experience.
There was a slight pause in the movement of the men as Sandy sensed them stopping to look for any signs of the children she’d asked after.
‘There aren’t any girls or boys here, Miss Sandys.’
Surprised by the fact that one of her rescuers knew her name, Sandy looked up at the man who had spoken.
It was Frederic Leighton: one of her brother’s friends.
‘They must have run away,’ Sandy persisted. ‘They were here: I saw them!’
‘We didn’t see any as we drove up,’ Frederic answered, drawing her attention to his carriage standing motionless upon the river bank. Its door were thrown wide open, as if Frederic had hurriedly, almost carelessly leapt out in his urgency to save her.
‘But they were…’
Sandy looked around, hoping to see some proof or indication that the children had been here, that the girl who had slipped into the water was safe.
And yet, when she glanced up at the protruding jib, the one the girl had supposedly fallen from, she saw that there were no signs that a rope swing had ever been tied around it.
*
As Frederic helped Sandy into his carriage, ignoring the filth she was bringing with her and spreading around the otherwise gloriously maintained upholstery, the other man – whom Sandy now assumed must be Frederic’s driver – ran around the back to bring out a variety of rugs and blankets from the locker. As Sandy gratefully accepted these blankets, draping them around her filthy dress, she realised for the first time that her upper body was completely dry, not drenched as she might have supposed.
She hadn’t been underwater after all.
‘What were you doing in there, Miss Sandys?’ Frederic asked politely as his driver urged the carriage’s horses into motion. ‘Had you tripped? Had you got too close to the river’s sides?’
‘I…yes, yes: I must have done,’ Sandy lied, recognising any explanation she attempted to make would only confuse Frederic. ‘I can’t remember exactly: the shock, I suppose.’
Frederic nodded, accepting this.
The carriage’s windows were fully open in the forlorn hope that the evil smells emanating from their filthily caked clothing might be dispersed. Sandy worried that the smartly dressed people they were passing must be wondering where the particularly pungent stench was coming from.
How embarrassing for Frederic if they realised his carriage was to blame!
‘I’m sorry for putting you in this unfortunate situation, Mr Leighton,’ Sandy said with a flush of shame. ‘And, naturally, I’m incredibly grateful that you sought to and successfully rescued me from my own folly!’
Frederic grinned.
‘How could I resist offering help to a beautiful swan caught in the mud?’
‘Swan?’
Sandy was both shocked and yet suddenly supremely hopeful: had Frederic seen the czarina after all?
‘Why, yourself of course, Miss Sandys,’ Frederic replied with yet another charming smile. ‘With your perfectly white dress spread around you, I could have sworn I’d seen a truly glorious swan floating upon the river.’
*
Chapter 21
Sandy stayed seated within the patiently waiting carriage while a muddy Frederic knocked upon the door of her brother’s house. When her brother opened the door to Frederic’s knocking, he momentarily looked surprised at the bedraggled state of his friend, then managed to appear even more shocked when he glanced Sandy’s way.
Obviously, Frederic was making a valiant attempt to explain Sandy’s unfortunate condition for, with a concerned grimace, her brother rushed over to the side of the carriage, wincing a little as he caught the stench strongly emanating from its confined interior.
‘Sandy, are you–’
His expression of anxiety abruptly changed to one of laughter when he saw that, despite her miserable frown and condition, she was in all other ways perfectly healthy and safe.
‘It’s nothing to laugh at, Frederick!’ Sandy responded petulantly.
‘Ah, but I think even you’ll agree you’re wrong about that!’ Frederick replied mysteriously with a mischievous smirk.
As they had talked, Sandy was glad to see that Mr Leighton had managed to alert the rest of her brother’s household to her condition. The housekeeper and maid were already dashing her way with fresh, clean blankets.
‘I’m glad that you can see the humour of my pitiful situation, dear brother!’ Sandy sarcastically snapped.
‘But you have a visitor! A visitor from Russia!’
‘The general?’ Sandy asked, abruptly brightening and almost leaping up out of her seat in her excitement. ‘He’s here?’
Although Frederick shook his head, his mischievous grin never left his face.
‘No, no: not the general, I’m afraid!’
‘Then who?’ Sandy asked, unable to hide either her disappointment or her impatience with Frederick’s childish determination to tease her by prolonging his answer. ‘Who is it, Frederick?’
‘Your beautiful sleeping czarina, of course! But I must say, she doesn’t seem in any way asleep to me!’
*
Chapter 22
Sandy had indeed laughed with joy and pleasant surprise when she had heard that the czarina was not only awake at last, but was actually waiting inside their morning room and was eager to meet up with her.
‘Give her some tea, or whatever it is czarinas prefer to drink!’ she had declared elatedly to Frederick as, virtually pushing him aside, she had jumped out of the carriage and rushed up towards the house without a care of anyone seeing the distressed state she was in.
‘I’ll change as quickly as I can,’ she added, avoiding the morning room and heading off towards her ow
n room, skilfully using her cocoon of blankets to ensure she wasn’t spreading the filth of the river everywhere she went. ‘I can’t let her see me like this!’
*
With her flowing gown of pure white feathers, the seated czarina emanated an even greater sense of imperiousness than when she had been laid out upon her bier.
She politely rose to her feet as, at last, a freshly dressed and cleaned (after the quickest and coldest of baths!) Sandy entered the morning room. The czarina’s moves were graceful, flowing, even as she reached into her gown and somehow brought forth from it a small, wrapped parcel which she handed to Sandy. The package may not have been large, yet it was still hard to work out how it could have been securely held in place amongst the folds of the czarina’s elegant dress.
‘It may appear presumptuous of me, I know,’ the czarina said, ‘but I’m sure my sisters and brother would wish you to have to this as a sign of our gratitude that you have managed to wake us all.’
She smiled graciously as she tenderly placed the package in Sandy’s hands, her eyes glistening as beautifully as those of the czarina Sandy had encountered earlier within the river’s dark depths. However this czarina, Sandy noticed, differed from the first – the one she had embraced while bathing within the mystical lake – in that she had a slightly darker tone to her hair and complexion.
Frederick certainly appeared entranced by her, his eyes never leaving her as she so gracefully gave Sandy a brief yet lusciously warm embrace. Mary didn’t seem to mind his obvious bewitchment, as she too appeared to have been charmed by this tall, slim czarina whose every move seemed soothingly hypnotic in its fluidity.
‘Woke you?’ Sandy couldn’t understand what the czarina could mean. ‘B…but I don’t see how I…’
‘This shows that the world isn’t as we think it is,’ the czarina said, indicating the package held within Sandy’s hands, ‘and yet it is the world that reveals everything to us.’
What else did the czarina say after that?
A great deal, Sandy was sure: for didn’t she stay quite a while, displaying her talent at the piano, talking of her passion for embroidery?
Frederick didn’t quite remember the afternoon passing in exactly the same way that Sandy recalled it – and Mary had her own version of events too. Similarly, neither of them could agree on how or when the czarina had arrived at the house, or how she had announced herself to them.
They could recall only that they had talked pleasantly over tea, over cake: but what that conversation entailed, neither could say for sure.
The czarina’s leaving was as mysterious as her arrival, with no one being able to say with any certainty how she had left them, or even if a carriage had arrived to pick her up.
Her name was Tatiana; that was one of the few things they could recall her disclosing to them.
Everything else – well, that was cloudy, indistinct.
The one thing about her visit that wasn’t in anyway intangible, of course, was the package she had left for Sandy.
All three of them agreed that Sandy should open it, in the hope that the purpose of the czarina’s visit might be suddenly be made so much clearer.
The wrapping was of glittering gold and dark blue paper, incredibly expensive and beautiful, but otherwise nothing unusual.
The small box inside was once again decorated with a finish similar to lapis lazuli, as if it were a dark sky scattered with shimmering stars.
Opening the box, Sandy was confronted by an interior of softly cushioning velvet of the kind customarily used to protect precious pieces of jewellery.
Within the velvet’s cocooning embrace, however, there lay nothing but a simple stone: one that wasn’t even white, one that bore nothing approaching any type of inscription.
It was a gift, in other words, that left everyone in the room more puzzled than ever.
*
Chapter 23
Sandy was every bit as bemused by the gift the czarina had left her as she was by the cards that had previously taunted her with their unfathomability.
Of course, she no longer held any of the three cards given to her: all that remained now were the copies she herself had made
At least, she now had some understanding of the third card, the one of the girl twirling on the end of the maypole garland.
Somehow, it had led her to jumping into the river.
Somehow, jumping into the river had led to the waking up of Tatiana, her sisters, and her brother.
And that had led to Sandy being presented with this most curious gift of all.
Curious, because it seemed all so unremarkable.
A stone, perhaps vaguely heart shaped, but in all other respects it could be any other stone you could pick up off the street.
As she had done many times before, Sandy twirled it through her fingers, examining it closely. She held it up to the light flooding in through the window, in the hope she might pick up some faint image inscribed upon the stone that had been missed.
Staring intently at the stone, spinning it slowly so as to catch the light at differing angles, Sandy flattered herself that she was beginning at last to detect the very faintest of lines: traces that, even more remarkably, appeared to be thickening, spreading, burgeoning.
The threads began to branch out across her hand: and so it was with a strange mingling of profound relief and disappointment that Sandy realised the eerie tracing didn’t really exist at all, other than within the dappling of the light coming in through the window.
The pane had frosted over, a veil of flowering ice, a paisley feathering of sparkling water crystals. The light passing through this most gorgeous of nature’s lacing spun through the air, throwing its elaborate tracery over everything it touched, setting it all rippling, flowing, moving.
The embroidery of crackling ice rushed across the sill, the walls, the table: the stone held between Sandy’s suddenly freezing fingers.
With a shrieking crunch, the stone heart split perfectly in two. It fell open, the two halves dropping onto the small wall table situated beneath the window.
The split stone revealed the fossil that had lain hidden within its heart.
A fossil of a fragilely winged insect.
Sandy stared curiously at the two stone fragments, one with a raised image, the other with what could have been its indented mould.
It was like no insect that she had ever seen before.
It only had four, rather prominent limbs.
Two legs: two arms.
And a strangely large head.
The head of what could be a young, incredibly minute girl
It wasn’t an insect after all.
It was the perfectly, delicately rendered fossil of a fairy.
*
The intensity of the cold seeping in through the window made even the air seem ready to crackle, to snap.
And so yes, now the very air itself, like that transparent pane, began to crystallise, to burst into an endlessly repeating feathering.
The crystallisation spreading across the fossil was even more pronounced, the ice sprouting into what could have been a thick, white fur, glistening like the frozen dew-coated trees we wake up to on winter mornings. And yet it sparkled, too, with the blue, silvery glow of ice illuminated on a night with nothing save the moon’s rays.
Then it all abruptly began to melt, to swirl into the indented image, glittering still, only now flickering orange and yellow as if containing a vibrant flame.
The frosty weather lying beyond the window pane had vanished, replaced almost miraculously with a low yet wondrously bright spring sun. The icy decorations writhed, shrunk, the patterns now swirling up into the air as delicate vaporous swirls.
And rising amongst them, her wings as immaculately diaphanous as those whirls of transmuted air, was the fairy.
*
Chapter 24
The fairy hovered in the air, her rapidly vibrating wings as silent as a drifting dandelion seed.
She was aware of Sandy’s presence. Aware, too, that Sandy could see here; for she gave her a friendly wave, a warm grin.
Then she whirled in the air, and rushed hurriedly towards the now only slightly frosted window pane.
‘No!’ Sandy screamed out in horror, vainly reaching out in the hope of preventing the unknowing fairy violently colliding into the transparent glass.
She was too late.
But far from crashing into the glass pane, the fairy swooped through it as if it wasn’t there, using what could well have been a minute doorway formed by what was left of the crusting of ice.
As soon as the fairy had passed through the magical portal, the decorative whirls forming the porchway melted, like the most perfectly white roses dissolving, running away into nothing.
Everywhere, now, the embroidering of ice was rippling, flowing away. Where it sparkled most now was no longer a slivery blue but, rather, a golden hue, a fiery orange, or blossoming yellow.
The low spring sun had become one of high summer, its glorious rays caught as a fragmentary star in the pane’s lower corner.
The seasons had changed, had vanished, so ridiculously quickly, Sandy realised: had the fairy really flown through the window just a few seconds ago, or was it an event now lying months in her past?
Although fearing she would be too late to catch any further glimpses of the fairy, Sandy dashed for the door leading out into the street. She wasn’t dressed in a manner that many would declare as decent wear for the town, but she couldn’t let this remarkable creature just fly out of her life as abruptly as it had become a part of it.
As she stepped out into the street, she was gratified to be rewarded with an almost imperceptible flickering of ever-changing rainbow hues, a burst of sparkling colours swiftly flowing through the labyrinthine branches of the trees lining the street.
It had to be the fairy!
Sandy followed the glittering light, as one would follow a wandering star at night, her eyes never leaving it, her pace rushed for fear that she would drop too far behind and lose all sight of it. As such, there were a number of times when she almost carelessly blundered into other people out on the street, or only narrowly avoided being run over by a passing carriage.