Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  ‘Jasmyn,

  There are some things that I have to go and do. I’m sorry for everything.

  Ben.’

  I turned the piece of paper over hoping for more on the other side but there was nothing. That was the entirety of the message. I glared at it before angrily screwing it up into a ball. He’d left me. I could hardly believe it but it was true. He’d gone without so much as a goodbye. Maybe I really had imagined him speaking so tenderly to me the night before. Maybe it had been the effect of delirium. Perhaps there had been no one in the room holding my hand at all ...

  My parents arrived in a state of near hysteria that morning. But Ben did not return. Not that day or the day after. Every time I was asked, I repeated that I did not remember what had happened and - finally - the police told me that Ben had said we’d been walking back from a restaurant after having dinner when we’d been set upon by muggers who had beaten him and stabbed me before running away in a panic.

  Ben had been interviewed thoroughly by the police and answered all their questions until they said they didn’t need anything else from him. And then he had simply disappeared. I got my mother to phone every number I had for him, then to write and to email. But every attempt at contact was met only with silence.

  27

  The White Violectra

  I was finally discharged from hospital three weeks later, during which time there was no word from Ben, and Christmas and New Year came and went in a miserable blur. I wasn’t completely sure why but - for whatever reason - it seemed that he was gone, and was not coming back. As for the Ice Hotel, it seemed to have disappeared altogether. No one could understand it, for it had been emptied of staff and guests after concerns were raised about a structural fault, but when officials had turned up just over an hour later, the hotel wasn’t there. There were no signs of collapse, melting or movement - it had simply disappeared and no one could make any sense out of it. Investors had lost money, guests had lost reservations ... but no one could offer an explanation for what might have happened to it and, already, it had its very own place in the conspiracy theory books right next to crop circles and sightings of Elvis.

  A week after getting out of hospital, I went with my mother to see my grandparents. Since the attack everyone had been treating me as if I was made of glass and I was sick of it. Physically I was much recovered, but I was still struggling alone with the heartache of Ben’s sudden and unexplained departure; I couldn’t tell anyone about it and I had never felt so isolated in my entire life. I had put my house up for sale from my hospital bed, for I had no wish to ever again return to the place I had lived during my twisted sham of a marriage to Liam.

  After lunch that day I said that I was going down to see the horses. I just had to get away from everyone for a while. I walked slowly down to the stables on my own and deeply breathed in the familiar, sweet scent when I opened the door and walked inside, hay dust dancing down the thick shafts of sunlight that shone in through the windows.

  I had been running a brush down Ed’s already glossy coat for about fifteen minutes when a voice behind me said quietly, ‘Are you a snow princess?’

  I dropped the brush in alarm for I had not heard anyone come in, but I recognised that voice as well as the question and would have known who it was even if Ed’s lips hadn’t twitched at the very first word. I turned around and saw Ben standing just outside the box, an uncertain smile on his face. He looked much improved from that night when he had left me at the hospital and the cut across his right cheek had healed leaving only the faintest white scar. Happiness bubbled up in me at the sight of him but I thrust it back down, annoyed with myself, and snapped, ‘You’ve got some nerve turning up here like this after four weeks!’

  The smile vanished from his face at once and he looked troubled as he said, ‘I know. But there were some things that I had to go and do.’

  ‘Things that couldn’t wait?’ I raged. ‘Don’t you realise how much I needed you while I was lying there in the hospital?’

  ‘I couldn’t delay leaving,’ Ben said quietly. ‘How are you? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I replied stiffly, trying not to let too much of the hurt sound in my voice.

  ‘You understand why I had to go though, don’t you?’ he said anxiously. ‘I had no choice. The swan princess fled when Lukas was killed but I had to return her song so that Ludwig would be able to find her. He couldn’t discharge the remaining knights until he found his way out of faeryland. They’ve all been exiled now and had their powers stripped away.’

  ‘Ludwig could do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. When he died he became the king of faeryland,’ Ben replied, ‘so he effectively rules over the swan knights now, and all the other magical creatures. I didn’t think it would take as long as it did but I had to do it, Jasmyn, otherwise neither one of us would ever have been safe.’

  For a moment I said nothing. I was unhappy to learn that he’d been back into faeryland but I couldn’t deny the logic of his reasoning. Whilst I’d been recovering in hospital it had never occurred to me that I might not really be safe - that the knights might send someone else after us or even come themselves.

  ‘You still should have told me,’ I said, unwilling to give up my anger. ‘You left without even a word!’

  He frowned. ‘But I left a note explaining everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ I repeated, my voice rising. ‘Everything? The note was two sentences long, Ben!’

  I drew the crumpled piece of paper out of my pocket and threw it at him. He caught it in his right hand and I noticed - for the first time - the healed stump where his index finger had been before. He straightened the note out and gazed down at it for a moment before looking back up at me. ‘You carry it around with you?’ he said.

  I felt myself blushing as I realised that I had just given the depth of my feeling away. It surely said a lot that I was still carrying the wretched, useless thing around after a whole month had passed.

  ‘I’m sorry for this,’ Ben sighed, gesturing with the note. ‘I remember it being longer and making more sense. But I wasn’t really thinking straight the night I left.’

  ‘How did you know I was here today?’

  ‘Kini’s outside,’ Ben said, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘Since Lukas died he’s sort of attached himself to me.’

  I nodded. There was silence for a moment as I carefully put my left hand into the pocket of my jeans. When I asked my next question I didn’t want Ben to look down and see that I was still wearing the engagement ring he had left behind. I had not quite been able to bring myself to take it off even as the weeks passed and I began to think Ben would never return. It had drawn a few raised eyebrows from my mother but when she had tried to ask me about it I had cut her off dead. I couldn’t tell her what it meant because I didn’t know myself.

  ‘Why are you here, Ben?’ I said. The words came out a little colder than I’d meant and he seemed to recoil slightly at my tone.

  ‘I ... I brought you something,’ he said stiffly.

  I watched in surprise as he swung the box door open to reveal what had been hidden from my view before - there was a black violin case resting in the straw at his feet. When I looked up from it to meet his gaze he turned his eyes away from me quickly.

  ‘It’s ... to replace your old one,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were broke?’ I asked.

  He blushed to the roots of his hair. ‘I took out another loan.’

  I put down the brush I was still holding and walked out of the box, closing the door behind me. Then I knelt down and unbuckled the shiny new clasps before undoing the zip and pushing back the lid to reveal the new Violectra inside. Unlike my old blue and silver one, this violin was pure white with a pale-gold chin rest and tuning pegs. My previous Violectra had been beautiful, but this was the most exquisite-looking instrument I had ever seen in my life.

  ‘I thought ... a new violin ... for new music,’ Ben muttered. ‘But if you would pref
er a different design then just tell me what you want and I’ll have it made for you.’

  Slowly I closed the lid and clipped the buckles shut before standing up. I hesitated to say anything too direct, for if Ben didn’t love me any more - and I had never once heard him say that he still did since this whole thing began - if he wanted to make a clean break and try to find some happiness in a new life and a fresh start, then I didn’t want to embarrass him and further wound myself by speaking too plainly. I had to think of some way of phrasing it - some subtle way of testing the water and seeing whether there was any inkling of a chance that he and I could ever be back together again, so that if he turned me down flat I would still have some small shred of dignity left intact. But after wracking my brain for appropriately delicate and ambiguous words, the ones that actually blurted from my mouth were, ‘I love you so much, Ben.’

  I stared at him, having just shocked myself. I could not have laid myself open to further pain if I’d tried. What if he’d just come to give me the violin? What if he turned on his heel right now and walked out of the stable without so much as a word? The image was such a vivid one in my mind that suddenly I was quite convinced that was what he was going to do and my eyes squeezed shut, unable to bear it. What had I been thinking? It was too late, he had told me so himself. I heard Ben’s feet crunch on the straw and was sure that I’d embarrassed him into leaving. Tears squeezed out from under my eyelids and I willed myself to hold it together until he was gone.

  But then I felt his hands on my arms and when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me, looking right down into my face. ‘Jasmyn, do you really?’ he said, sounding hopeful and doubtful both at the same time. ‘After all that’s happened ... the way I treated you in Germany ... those things I said in the Ice Hotel and everything that happened with Jaxon. There’s ... there’s blood on my hands that will never come out. You almost died because of me. I thought you wouldn’t ever want to see me again. That you wouldn’t even be able to stand the sight of me.’

  ‘You saved my life, Ben,’ I said softly. I swallowed hard and went on, ‘I know that it will be difficult for us - especially for you - to get past everything that happened with Liam. But can we ... please can we at least give it another try?’

  I was still afraid that he would break my heart and tell me it was too late but, instead, a warm smile spread across his face and he moved his hands up to my neck and said quietly, ‘You’re still my snow princess, Jaz. I’ll love you until the day I die and probably even after that.’

  Then he bent his head and kissed me. I reached up and linked my hands at the back of his neck and for a few blissful minutes all that existed was Ben and the golden, sunny stable in which we stood - the only sounds the nearby horses munching peacefully on their hay. But then Ben jerked away from me with a sudden exclamation of pain, clapping his hand to the side of his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said in alarm.

  ‘Ed just nibbled my ear,’ Ben replied.

  I turned and saw that Ed did indeed have his head all the way over the top of the box door and was staring at Ben intently with large, bright eyes.

  ‘What am I - some sort of enigma to that horse?’ Ben said exasperatedly.

  Helpless laughter bubbled up in my chest, for Ed was already twitching his lips back from his teeth in response to Ben’s voice. I remembered suddenly back to the day I had come to visit my grandparents just before going to California and how I had stood here in this very box, my heart aching fit to burst at the thought that I would never see the delightful sight of Mr Ed talking for the only person he ever did it for ever again.

  ‘He always was a peculiar old beast,’ Ben said, putting one arm around my waist and pulling me to him whilst searching through his pockets with his free hand. ‘I know I have a Polo in here somewhere ...’

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my agent, Carolyn Whitaker, and to my editor, Gillian Redfearn - as well as all the other lovely people at Gollancz - for all their hard work on Jasmyn. The cover artwork by Kustaa Saksi is, as always, perfect.

  Jaine Fenn, Jim Anderson, Mike Lewis and Bob Dean read an early section of the book and provided some very useful feedback. Shirley Bell read the entire thing and provided encouragement, feedback and regular bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.

  This story was inspired by various books that I would never have read had it not been for the recommendations of Shirley Bell, Joan Willrich and Christine Moffat.

  My parents, Shirley and Trevor Bell, must be thanked, once again, for all the travelling, as pretty much every location in this book has been a family holiday at some point. Most importantly of all (and John Willrich deserves some credit for this, as it was his idea) thank you for the ... er ... you-know-what that we did at the you-know-where. I don’t think this book would have been written without that.

  Finally - Cindy, Chloe and Suki, my three utterly, utterly perfect cats have all continued to do a fine job of keeping me company, and keeping me sane.