by Alex Bell
‘I saw her,’ I gasped, feeling cold with horror and quite unable to look back towards the window. The lovely enchantment of the setting had been broken and now I felt nothing but dread. Suddenly I was stupidly afraid that Ben might walk away and leave me here so I grabbed his arm to stop him from going. ‘What can it mean?’ I croaked.
Ben frowned down at me as if disapproving of my fear. ‘Calm down—’ he began, but I cut him off.
‘Don’t tell me to calm down!’ I hissed. ‘I just saw myself up there in the turret window - I have every bloody right to be anything other than bloody calm!’
My fingers dug even harder into his arm as I glared at him but he just gazed back at me, looking puzzled. ‘What,’ he said, ‘are you talking about?’
‘You . . . you did see her, didn’t you?’ My anger dropped away and I spoke almost pleadingly. I couldn’t bear the thought that Ben might look at me like I was mad and declare that he hadn’t seen a thing.
But, to my relief, he said, ‘Of course I saw her. But she wasn’t you, you daft woman!’
I still gripped his arm but said nothing as I tried to recall her image. She had only been at the window for a moment but she had most definitely had long white hair, just like mine, and pale, pale skin . . .
‘You think there’s another albino woman here?’ I said, desperately hoping that was the case but struggling with the gross improbability of it.
‘I don’t think she’s an albino,’ Ben replied. ‘Go and knock on the door. I’ll wait here.’
‘What? ’ I looked at him to see if he was trying to make some sort of joke but he appeared to be quite serious. Suddenly I felt like a child creeping up to the castle to play some kind of truth-or-dare game. ‘Why don’t you go and knock on the door and I’ll wait here?’ I said. ‘There’s a white woman in there! Did the sight of her really not send a chill down your spine? What are you - made of iron or something?’
‘Look, you told me so yourself,’ Ben replied. ‘Lukas said you were the one who had to come here. I don’t think she’ll answer the door to me. Of course, you don’t have to try if you don’t want to. We could just go back to the guest house if you like. If that means something bad happens later on - well - it can’t be any worse than Liam’s death, can it? Come on, you don’t want to do it so let’s just go back.’
He took a step towards the car, gripping my wrist to pull me along like a naughty child. I shook him off furiously, turned on my heel and marched up to the wooden door, so angry that I had no room left for fear as I banged on the door hard enough to send an echo back across the chilly mountains. Nothing happened and I glanced around at Ben who was standing back but watching the castle intently. He had clearly intended to provoke me into knocking on the door and it irritated the hell out of me that he had succeeded in pushing my buttons. The creak of a latch being lifted on the other side of the door brought my attention sharply back to it and, in another moment, it opened. I ducked with a yell as a large white swan came bursting out at me, knocking me over on my back in the snow. Something black fell from its beak and landed on the ground with a heavy thump, narrowly missing my head, before the swan swooped away into the darkness - a pale blur vanishing into the dark night.
I rolled over and pushed myself up to stare after it and then looked down at the thing it had dropped. It was a small black horse made of marble. I could even see a faint tracing of golden veins across its surface. It was perfect in every detail, as if someone had spent hours making it . . . Its carved mane flowed about its shoulders and its thick, dark tail fell all the way down to brush against its shiny hooves . . . A magical, enchanting thing, quite as captivating as any white unicorn . . .
And almost as soon as I picked it up, I was aware of warmth emanating from it - some golden, beautiful warmth that seemed to creep into my hand and spread up through my arm and into my chest, lessening some of the pain I’d been carrying there and putting some bright, hopeful feeling in its place . . .
In my preoccupation with it I had almost forgotten Ben for a moment, but suddenly his fingers were digging into my shoulder as he dropped down onto his knees and said, ‘What did she give you?’
The warm feeling was gone so fast that it was almost as if I had imagined it. I held up the little black horse for him to see. He reached out to take it but I found myself drawing back my hand. I didn’t want him to touch it. I didn’t want anyone to touch it. It was mine and suddenly I was scared that . . . somehow . . . it was going to be taken from me. And I couldn’t let that happen. Somehow I could sense how important it was - almost as if my whole life depended on not losing it . . .
‘I just want to look at it,’ Ben said, sounding mildly hurt.
Reluctantly, I forced myself to hand it to him. He held it up so that the blue floodlight illuminating the castle glimmered off its smooth surface.
‘What do you think?’ I said eagerly, hoping that Ben would know what to do. ‘What is it?’
‘It appears to be a small ornamental horse,’ he replied, sounding distinctly disgruntled and practically throwing it back at me. ‘Perhaps she’s gone insane, waiting alone for so long.’
‘She?’ I repeated, clutching the tiny horse and staring at him. ‘Do you think that swan was a . . . was Ludwig’s . . . ?’ The question trailed off and I found I couldn’t finish it, but Ben - for some reason - looked suddenly annoyed.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ he said shortly, still glaring at the horse in my hand. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Could it be the swansong?’ I asked, for it certainly seemed magical enough.
But Ben shook his head. ‘No. We would know. Anyway, it’s not singing. Let’s get back to the guest house. Maybe, in better light, we’ll be able to see . . . I don’t know . . . writing on the horse or something. Something that makes it less meaningless than it appears to be right now.’
When I stood up my eyes went back to the door. It was closed, even though I hadn’t seen or heard it move. Ben pushed his hand against it but it seemed to be locked once again, so we walked away from the castle and back towards the car.
We used the key to let ourselves into the guest house, taking care to tiptoe up the stairs as it was now past one o’clock and everyone else was in their rooms, the lights in the bar and restaurant had been turned off and everything was closed up for the night.
We headed for my bedroom as, being on the second floor, it was the closer of the two. I opened the door and stepped inside to turn on the light but, instantly, there was a horrible crunching underfoot and I could feel that I had trodden on - and broken - something. I hastily turned on the light and then Ben and I stared at the sight before us.
There were human bones all over the room. They were scattered about the carpet, on the bed and on the coffee table. Just like the ones on the Queen Mary, they were in very poor condition, chipped and yellowed with age. The skull on the pillow had a huge chunk missing between the eyes so that it was practically split in half right down the middle.
It seemed worse, somehow, than it had on the Queen Mary. Maybe it was because this was my bedroom - my personal space - not a public deck and it felt much more like an invasion, a violation . . . I had sat on those chairs and slept in that bed with my head upon the pillow in the exact spot where the gaping skull now lay. If they had just appeared out of thin air like they had before, then it was simply luck that I had not been in the bed at the time . . . I shuddered at the very thought of waking up with a skull tangled in my hair and dirty bones breaking beneath me . . .
Within seconds, the bones crumbled away into dust, just like on the Queen Mary. But because we weren’t outside this time, the dust could not blow away. It lay there, coating the room with a horrible grimy film.
Next to me, Ben sighed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Do you want to stay in my room?’
‘What?’
‘Or do you just want to try to clean all this up now?’
‘Oh. No,’ I said, my skin crawling at the thought of slee
ping in that bed. We could shake the dust from the sheets but the idea of laying down my head where a grinning skull had been mere moments earlier made me cringe. ‘I can’t sleep here now.’
‘All right. I’ll take the couch.’
‘No, I will,’ I said. ‘After all, it’s your room.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Ben said mildly. ‘Why don’t you just get what you need for the night?’
I rummaged around in my suitcase, which, fortunately, had been closed and so was free from bone dust, as was the bathroom. I took my violin too, without even thinking about it. It occurred to me as we left my room behind and walked up to the third floor that Ben’s room could be in the exact same state. But, to my relief, when he opened the door and turned on the light, there wasn’t a rib or a skull in sight.
His room was tidy and neat - much neater than mine, in fact. His bed was made, his suitcase was over in one corner of the room and the only personal possession I could see was the box containing his portable chess set on the coffee table.
We sat down on the couch; I then drew the tiny horse out of my pocket and held it up so we could examine it more closely. The better light illuminated even more clearly what an exquisite piece it was but, although we examined it from every possible angle, there did not appear to be any writing on it as Ben had suggested. No writing, no symbols, no clue or even the tiniest hint about what we were supposed to do with it or how it could possibly help us locate the swansong Liam had taken.
I was now finding it harder and harder to doubt that was what he had done. It fitted with everything else I had learned since coming to Neuschwanstein. If it really was as powerfully magical as everyone seemed to think then it explained why Jaxon and Lukas had an interest. But what I still couldn’t work out was why Liam had taken it in the first place and what he had wanted it for. Ben was wrong - it couldn’t have been to do with greed or money. We had not been rich, but we certainly hadn’t been desperately poor either. And although Liam’s parachute jumps and things cost quite a lot, there were no other expensive hobbies that we indulged in. We had been happy as we were. So he must have taken it for some other reason . . .
‘It’s not just an ornament,’ I said at last.
‘What makes you say that?’ Ben asked.
‘I don’t know. But look at it. It feels,’ I hesitated for a moment, but then forced myself to finish the sentence, ‘magical. It seems magical. Like a unicorn or something.’
I half-expected Ben to ridicule me for that, but instead he said, ‘Hmm. There is something about it.’
It was no ordinary ornament - I was quite certain of it. I felt like a child fascinated with a new toy. I wanted always to be touching it and looking at it.
‘Well, we’re just going to have to think again about what we do next tomorrow,’ Ben said.
He sounded suddenly tired and I could practically feel his disappointment, which seemed a little odd for we could easily have gone to the castle that night and seen nothing. And I wondered whether, like Lukas, he had been expecting more to happen. I asked him about it as he stood up from the couch but he turned back and merely said evenly, ‘No, of course I didn’t expect anything to happen. Why should I?’
I shrugged, looked back at the horse and said, ‘I’m sure it’s important. I don’t know why but, when I look at it, I feel sure it will lead us to something, somehow.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Ben replied.
It was late and there was nothing more to be done so we agreed to try and get some sleep. Whilst Ben was in the bathroom getting changed I rummaged through the bag of stuff I had brought from my room until I found the knight and the framed photo of Liam. Even though it was just for one night, I had grown used to having them by my bed and would have missed them if they hadn’t been there.
I set them down on the coffee table to make it clear that I was settling in to sleep on the couch, for I genuinely didn’t want Ben sleeping there. Chivalry was all very well but it was his room and it made sense for me to take the couch because I was a lot smaller than him. I had propped up the photo and was just setting down the knight when Ben came out of the bathroom.
We both noticed it at the same time. The knight and the horse matched each other. They looked like a pair - like they were meant to be together, despite the fact that they were made from different materials.
‘Where did you say you found that knight again?’ Ben asked.
‘It was . . . in Liam’s pocket. The day he died.’
‘But you’d never seen it before?’
‘No. I assumed some children had lost it and that he found it and picked it up.’
‘That could be it, I suppose.’
But I didn’t think he really believed that and I found that I didn’t either. Now that I looked at it more closely, it seemed hard to believe it was a toy. It was made of metal, not plastic, and felt heavy and expensive. And there was no ‘Made in China’ stamp anywhere on the knight’s form.
Finally I set it down by the black horse and went into the bathroom to get changed and brush my teeth, for it was late and sleep was starting to beckon most temptingly, even if it meant being wedged on a couch rather than lying flat in a bed.
But when I went back into the bedroom, Ben had moved the knight, horse and photo onto the bedside table. He was already on the couch with a blanket and pillow and - although I tried - he could not be persuaded to shift. So, in the end, I was forced to take the bed, feeling distinctly guilty but more than a little bit warmer towards Ben.
Before getting in I sat down on the edge of the mattress and combed through my hair. It was so long that it easily became tangled if I didn’t brush it through before sleeping. I found it an almost soothing ritual - the sweep of the comb gliding rhythmically through my hair . . .
I abruptly stopped combing when I became aware, from the corner of my eye, that Ben was watching me from the couch. My white hair had been beautiful to Liam but I mustn’t forget how freakish it was to everyone else. Hurriedly I put the comb down, my fingers fumbling with it so that it clattered noisily on the bedside table, making me cringe for I had given away the fact that I felt self-conscious.
What happened next was a pure quirk of fate. Usually I always left my comb on the bedside table so that it was the first thing I picked up the next morning. But, because I was feeling awkward and embarrassed, my hands searched for something else to do and I pulled open the little drawer in the table to put my comb inside. The ring would have been obvious at once even if I hadn’t pulled the drawer open so hard that it hit the front with a loud, heavy clang.
The drawer was completely empty but for that one elegant band of white gold identical in every way to the one I had seen on Ben’s finger. At first I thought it must be his and I glanced at him involuntarily where he sat frozen on the couch, staring towards the open drawer. His face had turned white. I could see from the book he was still holding that his own ring was on his finger. The one in the drawer belonged to somebody else.
‘Ben—’ I began, but broke off as he suddenly threw back the blanket and got up from the couch, the book falling disregarded from his hand to land on the floor as he strode across the room to the bed. He stopped by the table, reached in and grabbed the ring with a hand that seemed to shake slightly.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words burst from my mouth for he looked so upset that I felt I must have done something dreadfully wrong in opening the drawer. He hadn’t told me not to but it suddenly felt like an invasion - as if I had been snooping and found something private and personal that I had no right to see . . . ‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ I said again.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ he said quietly. ‘I just couldn’t bear to tell you the truth.’
‘What happened?’ I said tentatively.
He took a deep breath and said, ‘She’s ill.’
‘Is it serious?’ I said, my heart sinking.
His eyes closed briefly and his answer came out softly, ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Ben, I’m so s
orry,’ I said.
He sat down next to me on the bed. ‘I don’t tell anyone who doesn’t already know because it . . . makes it more real,’ he said.
I nodded. It was a sentiment I could fully understand. Every time I had to tell another person that Liam was dead I had to go through their horror and their grief, making the whole thing even more unbearable than it already was. I wondered if that was why Ben had hesitated before coming back for the funeral and felt suddenly guilty for my anger towards him when he had returned to Germany so quickly afterwards.
‘What’s . . . what’s wrong with her?’
‘I don’t want to go into it,’ Ben replied wearily. ‘What difference does it make? She’s ill and if something doesn’t change fairly soon then I’ll lose her for good.’
I hesitated to say anything for it really was none of my business, but I couldn’t shake the horrible image of Ben’s poor, ill fiancée dying at home on her own and so I said, ‘Why aren’t you with her?’
‘She doesn’t want me.’ He held up the engagement ring to emphasise the point and said, ‘She sent me away. We’ll only be together again if she gets back to her usual self.’
‘Is that why you’re looking for the swansong?’ I asked. ‘Do you think if you sell it you could get enough money to help her?’
‘Something like that,’ Ben replied.
The strained voice he spoke in made me glance at him and I was horrified to see tears glimmering in his eyes and pain etched onto his face that he had always kept hidden from me before.
‘Ben, I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ he replied, struggling a little with his voice. His hand tightened around the ring, his shoulders hunched even further forwards and he said, ‘I don’t know if it will even work. It might already be too late. It might have been hopeless from the start. We had something once but now . . . what with everything . . . maybe it’s too late to ever get it back.’