Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  I soon realised that I had made a wrong turning because the route was utterly unfamiliar to me. I considered turning back but thought that I must be going in the right direction because I could still see Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau above me, and so I hoped I had merely stumbled upon an alternate route. After all, there must have been several possible ways of getting to the castles and the lake. So I kept driving and soon turned onto a long, straight road I thought I recognised as the one that led to the Alpsee Lake. When I turned onto it I could clearly see both castles resting on their mountainous perches above me - like great eagles in their mountain nests.

  But by the time I got to the end of the road both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau had disappeared.

  At first I thought that fog or low clouds must be hiding them from view for I could picture exactly where they should be and yet neither one of them was there. But it was a clear, starry night without a tendril of mist. My head whirling with incomprehension, I slowed the car to a stop and looked over my shoulder, out through the back window, wondering if I could have got turned around somehow so that they were now behind me. But all I could see back there was the long road I had just driven down, tall pines lining it on either side, the branches weighed down beneath the weight of so much snow.

  This was madness. The castles had both been there less than five minutes ago. I pulled the car over to the side of the road and got out, just to get my bearings. I was sure that if I stood there, turning on the spot, I would see them again. But they were nowhere in sight - not even as little bright pinpricks in the distance. It was as if I had been driving for hours and left them far behind me. But I had only been driving for a matter of minutes and this was most definitely the same road I had started on. Indeed, it stood out for the fact that it was long and dead straight rather than twisty and turny like most of the other roads in the area.

  I got back into the car. Dark mountains rose up all around me and a skyful of stars twinkled down softly upon the deserted road. I didn’t understand how but there was no denying the fact that I was extremely lost. I rested my head briefly against the steering wheel. So much for taking charge of things myself. All I had managed to do was get in the car, drive straight into the maze of mountain roads and promptly lose myself. I was totally and completely bloody useless and my cheeks flushed pink at the thought. I had almost a full tank of petrol, so the only thing for it was to carry on driving until I either came to a road I recognised, caught sight of one of the castles again or got myself onto a main road that was signposted. One of those things was bound to happen soon enough - after all, the castles simply couldn’t have disappeared. They had to be up there somewhere and close - I just couldn’t see them, that was all. I sat back, buckled my seatbelt and turned the key in the ignition.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no reassuring thrum of the engine coming to life or even the choke and splutter of it trying to. There was just nothing - as if the car had no engine at all. I tried several times but it was useless and I felt panic rise up in my throat. I was on a deserted mountain road in the middle of the freezing night, completely alone with no one who even knew where I was ... But I forced myself to look at it calmly. Yes, it was a highly irritating inconvenience, but it was hardly anything more than that. I may have been lost but I was, at least, prepared. Before leaving I had packed a flashlight and the German guidebook I had bought in the Californian airport. I had also made sure that my phone was charged and had put more credit on it after using it all up that afternoon. With those things I should be able to call for help. There were emergency services numbers listed in the guidebook and there was sure to be a breakdown number amongst them. No doubt this would involve more time and money and I would have to give up on seeing the lake that night. It was extremely irritating, but how could I have known that the car would just inexplicably stop working like that?

  I fumbled through my bag for the book and found the emergency numbers. But as I was getting my phone out of my pocket I hesitated. English was such an international language that I was sure someone would be able to understand me, but if anyone was going to come and pick me up I was going to have to tell them where I was first. I could not simply say that I was in the mountains somewhere around Neuschwanstein. They’d be looking for me all night, if they even agreed to come at all.

  I sat there for a moment, trying not to wring my hands. Although my plan all along had been to venture outside on my own in the dark once I reached the lake, the prospect of going outside now seemed so much more unnerving, somehow, for the fact that I was lost and had become so in such a short space of time. But there was no getting away from the fact that if I wanted someone to come and tow my car then I was going to have to tell them where it was.

  I couldn’t risk wandering far in case I got even more lost but I decided that, at the very least, I could walk the remaining few yards of the road to the corner, in the hopes of seeing a sign or a road name or some identifiable landmark. So I took my flashlight which - thankfully - was a wind-up one rather than battery powered, meaning that the beam was weaker but at least was not going to suddenly run out on me, which seemed a good thing considering the way my luck was going that night.

  As I walked down the utterly silent road, the snow compacting beneath my feet, I couldn’t help turning back repeatedly to check that the car was still there. I carried on, trying hard not to think of knights or magical swans or hidden doors into faeryland. I jumped at every tiny noise or rustle of leaves and the breeze seemed to stir my hair in a most disconcerting way - as if long fingers were running themselves through its white strands ...

  I forced myself to walk to the end of the road but, when I got there, there wasn’t a sign in sight, just more empty road stretching away into the darkness. I turned back around, desperately trying to remain calm but rapidly becoming fearful at my predicament - as well as angry with myself for allowing this to happen in the first place. I walked back towards the car, my breath horribly loud in my ears. I felt watched. That horrible, all too familiar feeling that had plagued me on and off since Liam’s death. When I glanced up at the trees they looked too tall and too thin - the dead branches at the top silhouetted against the full moon in a most disconcerting way so that they seemed alive and watchful ... I thought I heard the rustling of leaves even though all the trees were weighed down with snow. The wind stirred my hair unnaturally once again, threading through it like fingers. Then a lone wolf - or something like it - howled in the distance and I almost jumped out of my skin before breaking into a run. Not a good idea for I instantly became twice as scared, convinced that something was right behind me, about to latch on to me at any moment. I tripped and sprawled over in the snow. My heart in my mouth, I scrambled back to my feet, ran the last few paces to the car, jumped back into the driver’s seat and then slammed the door behind me before reaching around to manually lock all the others.

  The breakdown people would simply have to find me without a specific address. Perhaps they could trace the signal on my mobile phone or something ... I flipped the phone open but my heart instantly sank at the words No Signal clearly displayed on the screen.

  I closed my eyes briefly. It was almost as if someone was testing me, relentlessly, and I honestly didn’t know how much more bad luck I could take. I ran my hands through my hair in frustration and that was when I felt them. Physically jumping in alarm, as if I’d been electrocuted, I scrabbled to pull down the sunshield and look into the mirror. There were several plaits running down the left side of my head. They were loose and starting to come undone already but someone had most definitely plaited my hair. And it had not been me.

  I can hardly do justice to the utter horror I felt as I stared at my reflection in the dark car. After all, they were only plaits. But my skin couldn’t have crawled more if I had looked in the mirror to see a man sitting on the back seat behind me. As I’d walked down the road I had assumed it was the breeze that made it feel as if someone were touching my hair. Now
I realised that someone - or something - really had been touching me. Something I had not so much as caught a glimpse of but that had been there just the same.

  My hands tore through the plaits to undo them. I ran my hands through my hair, patted down my clothes and stared owlishly around the car, half-expecting to see someone in there with me. That was it. Nothing - nothing could possess me to take so much as one step out of the car again for the rest of that night. I would simply have to bear the cold and stay there until morning, hoping that I didn’t freeze to death. Leaving was not an option. It simply was not an—

  My mouth dropped open and my heart turned over in my chest as I saw, by the silver light of the moon and stars, a tiny black horse standing in the middle of the road in front of my car, its head raised, sniffing the air. My head snapped around to the box on the passenger seat beside me and I saw at once that it had fallen over on its side, the lid was open and the horse was gone. Somehow, it must have slipped out of the car in the seconds it took me to jump in.

  ‘No.’ The word slipped softly from my lips as the little horse began to trot away down the road, leaving behind it a trail of tiny hoof prints. ‘No, no, no!’

  I lunged for the door, scrabbling to unlock it, hoping to catch up with the horse, grab it and run back to the safety of the car before it could go too far and disappear altogether. It was the one thing I had that Ben didn’t. It was the one thing that might possibly lead me to the swansong before him. I could not allow something so precious and magical to simply trot away out of sight, lost to me forever. So I opened the car door and ran after it, torch in hand, my heart hammering in my chest and my heels kicking up an icy spray of snow behind me.

  18

  Faery Funeral

  Of course, the horse could not possibly just run off down the long, straight road. It had to prance straight into the trees to the side, right into the thick of the forest. Instantly it was darker, with only a faint dappling of silver where the moonlight managed to push its way through the treetop roof. The air was still and slightly dank compared to the freshness of the road - as if last year’s rotting leaves lay beneath the crisp blanket of snow, for all that the pines were evergreen.

  With the weak beam of my torch I managed to keep the little horse in sight, stumbling after it desperately, horribly aware that I was moving steadily further and further from the car all the time. Every time my hair caught on a low hanging branch I whirled around in panic, thinking that unseen fingers were plaiting it again.

  I couldn’t afford to lose sight of the horse for more than a moment because then I would lose it for good. If it hadn’t been for the snow it would have been quite impossible to keep it in sight at all but - fortunately - its black coat stood out against the white and I could see its little head bobbing along as it went. I tried calling out to it softly but the combination of running and fear had made me breathless and I was terrified that if I spoke someone might hear me - I was already making more noise than I was comfortable with, crashing through the trees after the horse.

  The snow here was old, not soft and powdery but hard and jagged like glass so that when I tripped and sprawled over a tree root, I cut the palms of my hands on the sharp, unforgiving surface, leaving splatters of blood vivid against the white.

  The torch flew away from me when I fell, the light went out and, for a moment, I lay there panting in what seemed like utter darkness. I had never been so scared before in my life and could almost have wept with fear. I should never have left the car. I should have simply let the horse go ... I felt blindly about for the torch but my fingers only came into contact with more snow, breaking through the crisp, brittle surface to the softer, slushier snow beneath.

  Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw my torch lying close by. Hurriedly I grabbed it and wound it up with trembling fingers, praying this would be all that was needed to set it going again. I gave a sigh of relief when, with a soft whirring sound, the beam of light shone out, softly illuminating my way and making me just a tiny bit less ridiculously helpless.

  I brushed the snow off my knees and coat and looked around. There was nothing to distinguish this patch of wood from the rest that I had run through and the fall had disorientated me even further. But as I glanced down at the snow for any sign of the long-gone horse, I was relieved to realise that I was not lost after all. A clear trail of disturbed snow stretched back the way I had come where I had ploughed through it. If I wanted to get back to the car I only had to follow the trail of my own footprints. I could get back any time I wanted to.

  The tracks ended where I stood but, when I looked closely, I saw that tiny hoof prints stretched on into the forest. I stood there for a moment, wracked with indecision. Should I summon up my courage and go after it? Or should I turn back right now? I longed to return to the car - to get into it, lock all the doors behind me and curl up in a terrified ball on the back seat to wait for morning.

  Something was out here in the forest - something had plaited my hair out there on the road. Perhaps the sensible thing would be to turn back ... I very nearly did so. My desire to hurt Ben was not as strong as my desire to get out of the woods and I suddenly felt that maybe finding the swansong simply wasn’t worth it. After all - what would I do with it if I found it? I certainly wouldn’t sell it and, indeed, I would have no idea how to go about doing so at any rate ...

  I shook my head and took a step back in the direction of the car. But then I stopped. A sense of terrible loss welled up inside me - the first time it had ever happened while I was fully awake. Usually I only experienced it in the first few seconds of waking from a dream - that overwhelming sense of having lost something irreplaceable - but it wasn’t for Liam and I couldn’t work out what else of importance it could possibly be. Lukas had mentioned it to me down at the Alpsee Lake. He had known somehow, and told me I might still be able to get it back if only I found the swansong quickly enough.

  I had no reason whatsoever to trust Lukas. In fact, I distrusted him entirely for he seemed to be on friendly terms with Ben. But there was no denying that that sense of loss was there inside me, terrifying for the fact that I had no idea what it was for. And I suddenly felt - with a strange conviction - that if I walked away back to the car now, that would be it. I would never find whatever I was missing. It would be gone for good. So I took a deep breath and - as quietly as I could - carried on following the hoof prints in the snow, trying to reassure myself with the thought that I could turn around and follow my own tracks back to the car whenever I wanted to - like Hansel and Gretel following their trail of breadcrumbs home.

  I walked on for a while, quickening my pace in an attempt to catch up with the horse, my feet crunching on the crisp snow. The tall trees around me seemed to be always reaching out their wet branches to tug at my clothes or entangle themselves in my hair. I struggled on for about five minutes in silence. If there were any animals nearby, I didn’t hear them. It was as if I was the only living thing in the entire mountains. But after five minutes or so, the silence was broken by the sound of a swan singing somewhere close by. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard - as if I was listening to the voice of an angel - a clear, silvery song that echoed softly all around me, like falling snow. It seemed to be coming from the direction in which the tiny horse had disappeared and I blundered instinctively on, desperate to get nearer to that enchanting song, no longer caring about how much noise I made.

  Moments later, I staggered into a little clearing that was surrounded by a circle of white candles and the singing stopped abruptly. There was a flurry of blurred movement around the edges of my vision as bright things flittered away into the trees. Even without the candles it would have been lighter in the clearing for thick beams of moonlight shone down, clearly illuminating the dozens of tiny little footprints that were all over the place. It was as if, by bursting out of the trees in such a way, I had disturbed something that had been taking place here. But I had caught up with the black horse at last. It st
ood in the middle of the clearing in one of the shafts of moonlight. I walked into the circle of candles to see what it was standing next to and then stopped in my tracks. It was a small, pearly white coffin no more than six inches long.

  I had interrupted a faery funeral.

  I stared for a moment, feeling faintly horrified. When something brushed against my arm I thought at first that it had started to snow again. But then I looked down and saw a black petal on the ground at my feet. Then there was another one beside it and, when I looked up, they were falling down all around me, velvety soft when they touched my skin, filling the air with that familiar sweet scent.

  When the petal-fall stopped, the entire circle was covered in black, making the white coffin stand out starkly in contrast. Then a final object tumbled from the sky, heavier than the rest: a whole rose that landed right on the lid of the white coffin itself.

  I had goosebumps, partly from where the petals had brushed against me on their way down but partly because this whole thing reminded me of the dreams I’d had of falling feathers. I brushed a few stray petals out of my hair, knocked them off my shoulders and then froze. The soft light I had at first taken to be one of the flickering candles was moving towards me and now that I looked straight at it I saw that, although it glowed softly, it was not a candle - but a faery - much like the one I had seen at my grandparents’ all those years ago, except that this one was male.

  He had the same cyan hair, elfin features and bare feet but much grander clothes - a long winter coat of royal blue with gleaming silver buttons. I wondered if I ought to get away from the circle in case he was angry with me for interrupting the funeral. But I couldn’t move - in fact, I could hardly take my eyes off him. I felt quite as captivated as that first time when I’d been five years old and I couldn’t help but watch as he picked the black rose up. The flower was much taller than him so he carried it horizontally, both hands carefully placed around non-thorny parts of the stem. Then he walked over to me and held the rose up, clearly intending that I take it.