Silver Hollow

by Jennifer Silverwood

  Shaking her head and once more blaming jetlag, she sank beneath the warm suds and sighed. After trying to hold her breath as long as it took to clear her head, Amie came up for air and found a round face peeking at her over the edge of the tub.

  “Ah! What are you doing in here? You ever heard of privacy?” she shouted while the small woman beside her cowered in shame.

  As soon as she was allowed the woman mumbled in an incoherent rush, “Forgive me, Lady Wenderdowne! I was only coming to check on you since we’ve heard nary a peep from you in days. Do forgive me! Oh salamanders, look what I’ve done to your poor clothes. Please allow me to wash them for you. I’ll bring you a fresh dress and stockings presently.”

  “Wait a second!” Amie called after her, startling the maid so much she threw her recently picked-up clothing on the floor again. Frozen at the edge of the tub, knuckles white against the ceramic, Amie locked eyes with her. “How long have I been out?”

  Sweeping the dripping pile into her arms, Underhill chewed her lip in thought and shrugged. “I’m afraid ye have been asleep for a little under three days, milady.” Attention diverted to the mangled pile, the maid bustled through the open bathroom door, now mumbling, “Dear me…such a clumsy oaf ye are, Rachel Elisedd Underhill! Master won’t be pleased with these shenanigans at all…”

  The door clicked shut of its own accord.

  …

  Amie didn’t have any choice but to wait once she’d dried off with a small, thin towel and unplugged the drain. She stood, hair dripping, staring at her reflection in the wood-framed mirror after using what looked like a toothbrush to the best of her ability.

  “Three days?” she asked herself while staring at her reflection. True, the permanent rings under her eyes looked considerably closer to peach than purple today. And she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so heavily.

  Especially after having dreams like that.

  Once more she opened her towel to trace the white line of the long gaping scar crossing her chest and wrapped her fingers around the ring hanging off its silver chain. Amie’s eyes rested on the carved wood of the mirror and followed the interweaving swirls and lines meeting into the symbol that had marked her journey.

  Now she just needed to understand why Father had never told her the truth about this place before. Could living in a castle really be so bad?

  “Here ye are, milady!” The white-capped lady appeared from midair, it seemed. She beamed as she set the clothes on the towel table beside the sink.

  “Ah!” Amie jumped and then grimaced. “You really ought to warn people before you sneak up on them like that.” The smiling creature only nodded with a sparkle in her muddled gray eyes. “So…” Amie racked her memories for a polite British way to tell the girl to get lost. “I’m guessing your name is…”

  What did Uncle Henry call her?

  Just as enthusiastically the girl gathered her brown skirts and curtsied low, so her pointed green shoes peeking from beneath her hem. “Rachel Elisedd Underhill, milady!” Her skirt came up to crisscross over her billowing shirt beneath, held together by a snug waist jacket.

  Amie was having a difficult time getting past the fluffy white cap covering her hair. “Do all the maids have to wear those?” Amie asked, pointing to the frilly cap.

  Underhill blinked, grin never leaving her face as she placed her hands over it and said, “Oh, this? Yes, I suppose they do, milady.” Her nose scrunched up then, eyes sparkling as she added, “What a very odd question!”

  She tried getting rid of the strange maid another way. “I’m guessing breakfast is ready?”

  “Breakfast? Oh no, it’s well past that, ages past! Master requested you to meet him in his study for a light supper, providing you’d be awake of course.” With a toothy grin Underhill nodded her head. “Oh dear, must be telling him you’ve come round!” Spreading her skirts, she twisted and swept out the bathroom quietly as she came.

  Amie shook her head to herself and began unfolding her new clothes. “People have a weird way of coming and going round here.”

  …

  Dressing up took less time than she’d expected, even if she was wearing a costume. Amie tugged at her corset and marched about her new room to get a better look.

  The stone walls had been covered with wood ages ago, though one had been left its original gloomy gray. Tapestries of things Amie had only ever seen in her imagination, beautiful places of cascading waterfalls and pools smooth as glass had been tacked from floor to rafter. She brushed them with her fingertips and said, “Gram would have killed for needlework like this.”

  Underhill must have stoked the fire because the room wasn’t quite so dark as before. Light poured in from the humongous hearth which was tall as Amie’s chin. The mantel had been carved with the same swirling pattern of Celtic knots as her bathroom mirror.

  Maybe the room had been this bright before? Maybe she had been freaking out too much to see past her moment of insanity. The draped window let in barely a peek of moonlight and the fire blazed hot. Somehow it managed to heat up the whole room to a cozy temperature.

  She paused in front of the giant wardrobe beside her window and frowned at her reflection in the mirror set in its door. Thoughts of home awoke that ache she had felt but repressed ever since Father and Mother died. Home made her think of the twins and James and the town square where she’d spent the last three years living above.

  Her reflection betrayed how far from home she had come. She didn’t even look like herself! Her dress was similar to Underhill’s, but longer, so it pooled to the floor in the back, and richer in its dark, silky green fabric. There wasn’t much she could do about the dress but it was comfortable, even with the strange pants underwear thing. The slippers were comfy as well, more like house shoes. It was all so different from every other account she’d heard of women’s antique fashion. At least she looked the part now.

  And that was the first step Amie took to accepting the world she had woken up to.

  “Lady Wenderdowne! Don’t you look pretty as a portrait?” Underhill didn’t get the jump on her this time, only because of the mirror. The maid’s eager, helpful face appeared over her shoulder, three steps back exactly. “Master is very eager to receive you in his study,” she said. “If you’ll follow me I should be happy to show you the twists and turns!”

  This chick is for real, isn’t she?

  “Lady Wenderdowne?”

  Amie sighed and grumbled, “Why do you people keep calling me that?”

  “Because it is your name, milady!” Underhill giggled from behind her hand, snorting at the finish. As an afterthought she added, “You certainly are a peculiar one! Eddie did say you were full of bamboozled phrases.”

  “Guess that answers that question…Mind showing me the way? I’m starving.” And ready to carry on a conversation which makes sense, she added to herself as they made for the door. Underhill acted as if she had been given the Crown Jewels and proudly showed Lady Wenderdowne the tricky path.

  Chapter 9

  Master of Ceremony

  Uncle Henry was staring through his spyglass when Amie entered the hidden door to his study. Not the sort of spyglass Jack Sparrow would have carried, though it might have come from the same era. No, Amie decided this must be some sort of magnifying glass, because he was using it to stare at a very tiny book currently set on its stand atop his desk. Even after she stepped over the threshold and to the edge of his desk, he had yet to perk his head up.

  She was just happy to see a part of the house that actually looked livable. The manor was as shadow-riddled and haunted-looking as when she arrived, only this time there were no rows of candles to greet them. Threadbare tapestries, scuffed tiles and singed wooden paneling made her new residence look more like a ghost’s haunt than a home.

  “It really is much better in the morning. You’ll see!” Underhill had sheepishly admitted.

  Amie didn’t share her confidence. She was still looking around for
a T.V. or something which would convince her this place was real. Underhill had left her in the hall minutes ago with one last curtsy and a curious giggle echoing in her retreat.

  Uncle Henry chuckled and Amie knew he had been watching her all along. “Still think you’re in a dream, don’t you, Jessamiene?” Pausing in his current study to stand, Henry greeted her the same way he had before. She was wrapped up into his strong arms and crushed into an all-consuming embrace. His smiling eyes danced before hers when he set her back on her feet again and finished his earlier thought. “But I am afraid you will find this quite the opposite. Soon you’ll be thinking of out there as the dream.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” she warned as he led her to their seats in front of the small fire.

  Yet Henry seemed unfazed and only chuckled in response before fluffing out his napkin. Turning his hand towards her with a grin, he said, “Do you realize how much you sound like Drustan?”

  Wrinkling her nose, she gave no comment. Following his example, she edged closer to the table between them. Dinner was similar to and yet completely different from any meal she’d experienced. And she thought sushi in New York was a stretch. Her only comfort was it looked like the English dishes Father had described whenever he mentioned Wenderdowne.

  “I take that as a no,” Henry said after a pregnant pause. A look passed over his face then, sorrow, anger, grief and then finally acceptance, transforming his face into something older and wiser. Once his eyes settled on Amie, however, his exuberance returned. “Take my hand, Jessamiene.”

  The moment their palms touched Amie felt a peculiar jolt she had only ever felt through her father. Tears blurred her vision when he looked beyond the high ceiling and began, “Creator, we thank thee for such gifts, for such life as is undeserving of our kind. Use our Gifts and heal our land, eternally, gratefully thine.”

  Never had she heard anyone pray with so much feeling before. Amie’s father had never prayed as long as she could remember. Always her mother did the honors at their dinner table, but it was ritualistic, like the rest of their faith. Mother had been a staunch Baptist in her youth, until she married Amie’s father. Drustan never did tell Amie what he believed, though she had seen him shaking his fist at the heavens more than once. This made her ever more curious to learn the differences between the brothers. What made Henry so much more seemingly devout?

  As they ate in silence Amie studied her Uncle and his curious retreat through covert glances. His study was spacious enough to be considered a mix of library and man cave. Everything was dusty, cobwebbed and inexplicably desolate. Tapestries were hidden by endless rows of shelves covered by collections in no particular order. His desk and the nearby table were littered with odds and ends. Naturally crafted pieces collected dust on their plaques. Books and parchment and scrolls were in ample variation of size and quantity, as were clocks of what seemed every age ticking softly about the room. Her first comfort all evening was the wristwatch on his desk she had been wearing most of this trip. She glanced back to her Uncle and found a very serious expression waiting on his dark features; as she studied his world he had been studying her.

  “You kept my wristwatch?” she offered with a grin.

  “Ah, yes…yes, indeed I did! Quite the fascinating thing-of-a-gadget, but not built to last, I’d wager.”

  Amie shrugged and spooned the stew. “Wasn’t my aim at the time,” she said. “Guess I always figured I’d buy another one since most of them break.”

  “Perhaps a stouter model should last longer?”

  “I’d just end up breaking it. Never had much luck with nice things.”

  Henry nodded to himself, the corners of his mouth creasing with his grin. “Aye, Drustan would have agreed. My little brother never was one for modern inventions. He thought I was ridiculous, you know, always collecting whatever came through the Vale. Suppose ’tis why I never expected him to do what he did. Especially when he did it, how he did it…” His gaze roamed the room briefly, lost.

  Amie wondered when/how/what her father had done years ago that could make Uncle Henry look like that still. He looked unnaturally old in that moment and lonely. This triggered the loneliness long buried in her heart, that sense of alienation no matter where she lived or who she met.

  So she surprised herself when she opened her heart a crack and said, “It’s so strange hearing you talk about him.” Her words called his attention.

  “You speak of Drustan, I presume,” he said with a troubled glance.

  “Father never talked about you. I started to think you were just another one of his made-up stories, until you sent me the first letter. And by that point I was too upset to listen to what you had to say.” Both frowned at the memory of a much darker time. Amie wondered once again if his second letter had been a warning. Even more troubling was what would have happened if she hadn’t listened. Would something terrifyingly worse have happened than her parents’ car wreck? What if the twins or their parents, the McSpaddens, had been next on the hit list? Amie shivered at the thought.

  “Jessamiene,” Henry whispered during the heavy silence that followed. He waited until her eyes were upon him, even though he seemed reluctant to speak. “I must ask you now before anything else, before you’ve seen and heard too much. I must ask you to forgive me.”

  His soul was in his eyes, as was a kind sorrow her father had never revealed to her. And his words hit the mark too close, crashed against the hard emotional walls she’d spent years building up.

  “For what?” she said hesitantly.

  Without hesitating, he let his emotions pour from his lips, laid bare. “For missing everything, for not being there when you needed me, for not coming for you myself.” Hardness entered his eyes and an anger she knew was for him alone. His features wavered in the firelight, sharpening into someone with golden skin and the kind of nobility that was born, not taught. Blinking back the blurred image, she found only Uncle Henry. Yet she couldn’t shake the tears threatening behind her eyes, or the odd sensation of knowing the man for years instead of minutes.

  Nodding to herself, she tried to smile and failed miserably. “I hadn’t thought about it enough to stay mad at you. But I do. Forgive you, I mean.”

  Clasping his hands together, he exclaimed, “Excellent!” Suddenly he was the eager handsome uncle who had greeted her at the front steps. “Now, you have only just awakened, my dear. I shall not burden you with so much when you are so close to their world still. But we are all very excited about your presence here.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” she deadpanned with a twitch of her lips.

  “Oh aye?” He feigned ignorance while his thick brows rose knowingly. “Well, it is difficult to hide, we must admit. It’s been far too long since the house has smelt so fresh. You have no idea how musty, rusty and dusty it has been! Quite a tomb it was, ever since I did my best to repair it and without his help, I might add. But now you’re here all of this will change, milady.”

  “Why does everyone keep calling me that?” she huffed and tugged her thick curls.

  His eyes widened and he chuckled, “Indeed?”

  It was his way of saying Are you joking? apparently, and when she waited for his answer his eyes widened and brow settled sternly.

  “Can you honestly tell me the battle-axed old fool didn’t even tell you…”

  “Tell me what?” Her voice was enough to calm his tirade. For a long minute, Henry seemed to contemplate something either very pleasant or very grave.

  Settling at last on pleasant he began, “I have a proposition for you, Jessamiene. Our mutual friend tells me we have little time to dally over ceremony. Especially with my own pressing circumstances and the Winter Solstice upon us, I believe the time without drastic measures has passed. So without further riddles, simply put, I want you to agree to apprentice to our ways and allow us to do the telling. Savvy?”

  She blinked at him, not comprehending what he was asking. “You want me to learn the family business?”<
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  “If that is how you wish to call it.” His eyes took on a fresh gleam, alive in the same way he had appeared at the top of the stair. “At the end of your apprenticeship you will have a choice, my dear. To tell you now might give away much more than you can grasp.”

  “So your proposition is?”

  “Learn from us, the family business, as you say. And make me a promise, you will make your choice to stay or leave at the end of it.”

  Amie had always been told it was never wise to make a promise you couldn’t keep. Although unsure of the reasons why, she wasn’t so certain this was the sort she could keep. She equally wasn’t sure why she was half considering it.

  But his strange appearance and strange house and strange ways were beginning to make sense to her. She was a writer, after all. Just because she had an overactive imagination didn’t mean she hadn’t needed an escape, a vacation long before this. Whether it was in France or here didn’t matter.

  He may be a few French fries short of a Happy Meal, but I have a real family again.

  For the first time in ten years she didn’t feel quite so strange and alone. True, the twins had always been steadfast, but they had their own lives. Amie was not foolish enough to think they would be together forever. She would end up exactly like she’d known she would when they were kids: single, published, and a respectable hermit. It wasn’t a bad way to live really, so long as they were nearby.

  But I have family.

  Uncle Henry may be a loony, but he was blood, which was more than she had ever hoped to find again. Maybe it was because of their shared DNA, or maybe because she’d been writing fairy tales long before she could pen them to paper, but Amie felt a connection. She wanted to understand him and the place Father had talked so often about. It was the shock and thrill of her life to suddenly realize at least part of his larger-than-life stories had been true.

  To say no to such an offer would be crazy.