“Why did you not tell me?” she asked as she traced the lines in his upturned palms.
He pleaded with her. “It is—complicated. Trouble is coming like a beast to devour us. And there is little time to tell you everything before I must return.”
Panic stunted her breath, pulled her out of her chair and to him. Grasping his much larger palms, she said, “No! You mustn’t leave!” She choked on her own tears, amazed she should feel such loss already when she should rightfully be angry.
His calm expression wavered, a rare moment of weakness before he reclaimed his noble mask. Then he pulled her closer and said, “Jessie.”
“You can take me with you!” she exclaimed, already envisioning how they might make their escape attempt. “Or I could fight. I’m stronger every day, Grandfather says so.”
His smile was sad, but then again he was often sad to leave her. She wanted to throw her arms around him and keep him tied to his chair, afraid once he left she could never get him back again.
Finally, he released one of her hands and said, “I wanted to give you this years ago…” And he dropped the cool metal into her small palm.
She could have squeezed three of her tiny fingers inside it was so big. Firelight played off its surface until it glowed. Amie met his eyes and clutched it to her chest. “It’s beautiful!” Her heart soared. If she had something of his, it meant he would come back for it.
“It belongs to you, dear one.”
Amie sat upright with a gasp in her bed, drenched by a cold sweat, and couldn’t shake the feelings this last dream had left her. She pulled the ring from beneath her gown and wished the firelight wasn’t so dim, or that her candles hadn’t been extinguished. After rushing to light the lamps, she held her father’s ring to the firelight and felt chills raise the flesh across her skin.
It can’t be the same ring as the dream.
Shaking her head, Amie crossed the floor to the thick bear rug and paced in front of the hearth. “This is crazy…no way those dreams could have been real. They’re simply a hashing-out of your thoughts, a mental throw-up of your subconscious.” Pausing mid-stride, she held her hands out on either side of her and closed her eyes to calm her heart. “This place is getting to you. Everyone else here is already crazy. It’s because of all Henry’s stories. It was bound to manifest sometime.”
Except Henry didn’t know she had her father’s ring, and the dreams were of the same vein as the ones from her childhood. The room closed in around her, neither bed nor books tempting her to anything but further angst. With the walls closing in around her, daring her to ask more questions, Amie knew what to do.
Barefooted and hardly noticing the stinging cold, she donned her outer robe, snatched a candlestick and fled her chambers.
Amie smirked and glanced at the clock one last time before turning the silver handle and opening her door.
Even during the brightest light of day the house was dark. But at least the halls were filled with gray shadows among the black instead of night’s pitch.
Amie held the candlestick out before her and glanced both ways. A faint wind moaned through the drafty corridors. Moments after leaving the safety of her threshold her resolve fell. She knew the left side of her path very well. It was always lit with candles which would guide her safely to wherever she needed to go without fail. But she didn’t want to see the kitchens or Uncle Henry or the stables right now. She wanted to disappear.
Absently she traced the long white scar hidden beneath her dress while her feet carried her right. The rest of the wing past her suite was darker and older than any part of the house she had seen so far. It was also darker in mood and weight, covered in cobwebs and ash in some places, like a place everyone had forgotten to love. The floor turned from stone-covered wood to marble underneath her feet, a cracked and dust-ridden thing. Torches hung on the walls between tapestries too faded to recognize now, yet Amie couldn’t shake the vague impression of eyes watching her lonely path.
Father along, the ceiling drew lower and its thick charred rafters became visible. Parts of broken and burnt wood fell as she approached them. Amie bit back a scream and held her heart as it raced to catch up, forced to cough through the cloud of ancient ash and dust instead. Blinking past the wreckage, she saw the long tunnel split here in either direction. She could have gone straight ahead, but something compelled her to turn right and discover what waited down this smaller corridor. Stepping over fallen beams and what looked like the slash and hack of metal weapons marking the walls, she couldn’t help but wonder.
What happened here? This doesn’t look like it was done up for decoration or dramatics.
More tapestries had once lined these walls, yet most had crumbled to ash-heaps ages ago, revealing their alcoves and at times their hidden passages. The golden stain of candlelight broke the rule of shadow like a blinking halo. She hardly glanced at the paneled walls surrounding her, the dusty boards which seemed to change the moment she walked past them. Amie had begun to wonder over a few things about the house itself. Like, for instance, why it seemed to change whenever she was around, until she couldn’t tell what was old and what was new.
Only then did it register with her she was wandering around barefoot in a potentially dangerous part of the castle. If she were hurt no one would know where she was. Heart racing with excitement and more than a little fear, Amie wondered distantly how she was supposed to find her way back now.
You made it this far and nothing has jumped out of the shadows to kill you yet, Wentworth.
And a spark of her childhood tenacity made her walk faster in the velvety dark to meet whatever had drawn her down here in the first place.
When she first saw the distant glow of light beneath a door at the end of the passage, she thought her mind was playing tricks with her. But the closer she drew with the darkness pressing so heavily around her, the more inviting the light seemed. Finally, she paused outside the round doorway and said, “This would be so much easier with a flashlight.” Shakily she pushed the propped door aside and gasped. Only the sound of her own steps and breath met her ears and she found a room illuminated with candlelight.
Chapter 15
Feathers and Paper
A hundred candles greeted her on the other side. Amie was shocked to learn there was an actual library in this place. What it lacked in height it made up for in rows upon rows of books. It was nearly impossible to judge how deep the room had been carved. Floor to ceiling was covered in colored volumes labeled with ancient gold script. Candlesticks had been placed in every corner of the main room, yet she still glimpsed deeper hidden passages branching off from there. It went without mention the place was as creepy as the rest of the house. Too many shadows and creaks in the walls kept it from being cozy, as well as the tapestries reflecting the manor’s odd fixation with mythology, hunts involving creatures like centaurs and satyrs, people with antlers and angled features. Most disturbing of all was the hunts ended with these creatures taking vengeance on humans.
Whoever made these had some sick sense of humor.
Amie was drawn to the glowing hearth at the opposite end of the room. As she passed the shelves and a large gilded table, the pages of the books stirred. Amie chose to bury her chilled feet in the rug nearby a giant sized chair and hold her hands out toward the flames. This room, unfortunately, was cold as the rest of the castle. For the first time since her dream she realized how frozen and alone she truly felt.
Somewhere in the shadows Amie could feel the presence of eyes watching her, imagined she could hear someone’s bated breath. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she glanced above the hearth and saw what looked like a giant eagle’s head. Its glassy golden eyes glared down disapprovingly at her and Amie lifted her chin.
“Well, it’s not my fault you were stupid enough to get caught,” she said. The bronze eyes of the eagle seemed to gleam knowingly then, a bit less condescending too, if she were honest. “See, it doesn’t do anyone good to go around blamin
g everyone else. I’ll bet if you could do it over again you’d never have left your nest, would you?” Almost as an afterthought she added with a grin, “A really big nest apparently.”
Something about the eagle’s head, despite being vaguely morbid, made her feel warmer inside. Vaguely she had the impression she was no longer quite as alone as she had previously though. Curious she hadn’t noticed the stuffed giant before. It was obviously a fake, she reassured herself. No eagle was the size of a horse, after all.
“I’ll bet you’re as messed up as I am, cooped up there on the wall in the creepiest part of the castle.” The eyes turned thoughtful. “Guess we’ll both have to learn to cope. At least we can admit we’re a little insane.” Amie smiled and turned about the room, wondering why the candles and fire had been lit in the first place when no one else was there. She really didn’t know what she had expected to find coming here. But the restlessness in her spirit was quelled and being surrounded by so many books made her feel like she was coming home.
Moving across the carpeted floor she traced the volumes, glancing over their titles. She wasn’t surprised to find many of them were written in that ancient impossible-to-read language. Yet something inside of her was starting to believe Uncle Henry’s words when he told her she would be able to read them if she really tried.
On the large table, she noticed a large collection of volumes had already been pulled and strewn over its mahogany surface. A single, three-pronged candlestick sat dripping near its right-hand corner. Sitting down in a giant-sized chair, Amie pulled the nearest volume to her and began to read aloud.
“Once, the House of Wenderdowne was the mightiest in the Vale. Because of their service during the Dragon Wars, they were entrusted as guardians over the first of seven gates separating us from the human world.” Amie paused and frowned, flipping to the cover to read the title. “A History of Silver Hollow: Volume 3…weird.” She thought briefly of the tapestries she had glanced at coming in, mythical creatures hunting humans. A fresh wave of chills prickled her flesh, only this time it wasn’t because of the cold.
Biting her lip, she returned to her previous page and continued. “It was widely believed the forty great Houses feared Wenderdowne the most, because their inner nixie was most unpredictable. So their gifts were split in two, strengthening and weakening them at once. Always two must rule the borderland gates, no more, no less, for the covenant bought by blood to survive.”
Amie smirked and glancing up at the giant eagle’s head, shook her head before commenting, “That’s not morbid at all…
“Many sought refuge within the Borderlands, which remained long open to them once the Vale had been closed. Soon this interspace world grew mistrusting and hostile to visitors. The ancient races sought refuge from the humans, yet only House Wenderdowne remained loyal to the old ways. Gryphon, dragon, centaur, gnome, faerie, light and dark alike, they came to the castle whose people remembered best.”
Amie laughed aloud, then, unable to accept these sorts of fairytales. Her father had filled her to the brim with stories of Silver Hollow, the place this castle ruled over, supposedly. Brushing off the idea, she shut the book and moved it aside, only to stare, transfixed, at the gleaming object beneath it.
Her eyebrows drew together in a pensive frown as her fingers plucked the golden feather from its perch. Beginning from its white hollow shaft the size of her pinky, down the vane, the plucked plumage was the length of her whole arm. Amie had never seen a feather this large before in her life and she found herself slowly looking up to meet the eagle head’s amused glassy eyes.
She clenched the feather in her hand and then studied it until a wild idea possessed her. Under better circumstances she would never have considered it. Yet she had no idea how much time had already passed, and had every intention of hiding her discovery before Underhill arrived with her morning tray. Leaping from her seat, she rushed to the tomes and began her search.
…
When Amie woke her neck was sore and her tongue felt stuck to the back of her throat. As she shifted she groaned and realized she had somehow moved herself from the library’s table to the plush rug. The fire was still burning happily, as if magically replenished, Amie was amazed it had not extinguished sometime in the night.
Sometime in the night…
“Crap!” Amie bolted upright and took in her surroundings. The candles were still burning brightly as they had upon her discovery of the hidden room. “How is that possible?” She frowned, realizing they had not melted any lower since her arrival.
Just another odd thing to add to my list of weirdness.
Books lay prostrate on the table to her left. Amie had learned nothing she wanted to know, like the truth behind all the castle’s secrets. She was determined to find out exactly what seemed to be niggling at the back of her subconscious every time she tried to make sense of things.
With no idea how long she had slept here, Amie was eager to return to her rooms. She could only imagine Underhill’s reaction upon finding her Mistress missing.
Grumbling to herself, she said, “Probably wake the rest of the castle up. No way am I explaining this one to Uncle Henry.” Reaching for the golden feather and happy to find it still tucked between her fingers, Amie grabbed a nearby candle and fled the library.
Lost to her worries, she didn’t hear the beastly sigh of relief or the bright golden eyes appear from the shadows watching her retreat.
Chapter 16
Wight Fright
The windows Amie passed on her mad dash back to her rooms betrayed the first glimpse of dawn. How her bare feet managed to take her back without getting splinters from the fallen wood beams or getting lost, she didn’t have time to dissect. Amie darted past the shadows, relieved when the West Wing was nearly behind her.
Home stretch, Wentworth! You’re almost there and you didn’t even last a week in track.
She grinned, touching the end of the feather sticking out of her robe pocket. This was her biggest mystery and most intriguing find. She wondered if any of the books Henry had put in her bookcase could shed some light.
Amie squinted and gasped when the distant candle light winked out of existence. The corner shadows literally moved to stand in front of her, blocking her vision. Confused and more than a little freaked out, Amie decided to just plunge through the gap. It had to be a trick of the eyes. She’d been awake most of the night, after all.
When she impacted the shadow, she realized too late it was hard as a brick wall. Within seconds she was flipped onto her back, the breath knocked out of her and the candelabra pooling wax onto the floor beside her head. She was too frightened to shout, flashbacks of the night she was attacked penetrating her mind. So she flinched when the shadows shifted and drew into her candle’s light to reveal the impression of a face.
Amie threw up her hands and scrambled backwards when the shadow reached to touch her. “Don’t come any closer! Get away from me!” she hissed, afraid to scream and wake the house. A part of her was still convinced this was a figment of her troubled imagination. Shutting her eyes, she willed the spirit to flee, then froze in terror when it spoke.
“Forgive me for startling you. I only intended to be certain ye were real, flying about the castle in yer nightdress as if ye had all the golems of the world at your back.”
“Your voice…” she whispered, blinked up at the source of the deeply masculine voice. “I feel like I’ve heard that before.” When he chuckled at her words she frowned, so he explained.
“I’ve been told a great many things by maidens far uglier and others with only a reflection of your true beauty, but never this. Tell me,” he said after a tense pause, where she focused on the reflection of her candle’s flames dancing in his black orbs, “what reason should a blood-filled woman have in the West Wing this night, lest she be a wight?” He was mocking her yet her curiosity won over her frustration.
“What’s a wight?” she asked and could have sworn his eyes shifted colors, from
black to red to silver and then brilliant blue.
“A walking specter, milady, doomed to haunt its resting place forever.”
“I’m not a wight,” she said. For a long moment he said nothing, only peered intensely over her, until she felt the blackness would swallow her whole.
“Then neither am I, Jessamiene Wenderdowne,” he whispered, drawing back into the darkness. Amie’s heart was pounding, her blood racing. He shouldn’t have been able to leave so quickly. There were no other rooms past hers, no alcoves she had uncovered, or hidden passages to escape into. Yet as soon as his whisper was nothing more than a memory and his face had left her candle’s glow, she knew she was truly alone.
…
An hour later, after wolfing down her breakfast and trying not to act suspicious in front of Underhill, Amie was standing in the middle of the Looking Room with Uncle Henry.
Most mornings began here, in the only place in the house that opened up to the sunrise. Roman in design, with a layer of some other period seeking to patch it up, the Looking Room was furnished in white. White doves sat mute on their perch, though they were unlike any birds Amie had seen with their opal-hued feathers. Mirrors surrounded by silver vine and leaf metalwork hung from the wall facing the East. Furniture was surrounded by glass, anything to make the sunrise more brilliant. Yet Henry never asked Amie to come the only two times of day she could enjoy it. Watching the sky’s daily painting of colors had always been one of Amie’s favorite things. In a room filled with mirrors, glass and ivory, she could only imagine how beautiful it must be then.
So why doesn’t Uncle Henry want to share it?
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