“Go on, then,” Marianne said. “I shall see you in a week’s time, perhaps.”
Emily got to her feet shakily, feeling that she had just escaped something, but unsure what it had been. She turned from the woman and made her way across the room.
As she reached the door, Marianne called after her.
“Oh, and Emily?”
She looked back. Marianne wasn’t looking at her. The woman had turned her chair to face the window and was rocking gently as a breeze blew her hair back from her face.
“Yes?”
“No more meetings with Marcom before dawn.”
Emily’s heart sank, but she wasn’t really surprised. She turned toward the door, but Marianne’s voice stopped her again.
“If you are to take lessons from him, don’t skulk in the dark of night. Do it in the bright light of day.”
Emily stood motionless, staring at the door, and tried to make sense of Marianne’s words.
Before she could say anything, the door swung open, and she stumbled forward into the cool, dim light of the candle that waited beyond.
The lush greenery was gone from the tower. Plain stone walls surrounded her on all sides. Not so much as a twig snapped beneath her feet as she made her way down the stairs in the candle’s wake. The scent of flowers was gone, replaced by the damp, musty smell of old stone and drafty passages.
At the bottom, the candle turned right, leading her back the way she’d come. The corridor was still lined with the same portraits, but now the men and women who gazed from the gilded frames were little more than the husks of old and dried out corpses. Flesh flaked from their bones like white rose petals, and their mouthes hung open in grimaces of death. All of their eyes had been gouged from the canvases—a gallery of the dead.
Emily’s thoughts were in such turmoil that she did not, at first, realize what was happening. Her heart still thudded too heavily against her ribs. Her muscles were too taut with anxiety. Her head still swam from the remembered perfume of jasmine and wild roses.
It wasn’t until she was halfway back to the door through which she’d entered that she felt the electricity building in her body, and the low whine gearing up deep within her skull.
Not now, she pleaded. She’d been through enough. She wanted a chance to rest and think and clear her head.
But the knowing had never obeyed demands to leave her be—not on the ice—and not anywhere else, either. When it came, it came—and it must be heeded.
The feeling grew until she was quivering so badly she could hardly stand. She halted and raised her hands to her face, trying to beat the wave back. Her hands shook with violent tremors before her eyes, and she thought distractedly of a television documentary she’d seen once about Parkinson’s disease.
To her left, a narrow set of stairs led downward through little more than a crack in the stone. She felt the knowing tugging her inexorably in that direction. She fought it, but felt her feet turn toward those stairs and carry her forward. If she went to see what the knowing wanted to show her, it would stop and she could go and sleep. She thought she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted to sleep just then.
The candle hung silently behind her at first, then followed in her wake.
The stairs led down only a few feet to a damp and narrow passage. Water dripped from the ceiling and ran down the walls, making them slick with slime. The air was so cold…so very, very cold…
The knowing led her along the winding corridor, which curved around and around in an ever tightening coil, until at last it came to an abrupt end.
Before her was a webwork of thick vines, once again seeming to grow right out of the rock around them. Sharp thorns, some as long as a finger, protruded from every inch of them. They grew across a narrow arch at the very end of the passage, lacing together like the bars on the door of a prison cell.
Staring back at her from between the vines was a boy about her own age, though the look in his eyes made him seem much younger. His long, dirty hair was uneven and unkempt, and was tied back with a hank of worn leather. His clothes were patched and mended with red thread in a thousand places, and the damp made them stick to his body like a second skin.
She’d found the boy.
Chapter Eleven
They stared at one another through the mesh of thorns, and the electric feeling of the knowing, with its mission now accomplished, began to recede. The world wavered before her eyes. The sick thudding in her head reasserted itself. The candle’s tiny flame reflected and danced in the boy’s wide, sad eyes.
He reached out toward her, but as he did, there was a rustling sound, and one of the vines sprouted a new tendril that whipped out toward him like a snake. It raked its monstrous thorns across his arm, leaving a half dozen shallow gashes behind that gleamed wetly in the candlelight. He drew back with a hiss, cradling his arm to his chest, and made no other sound. He only bowed his head slightly and let a few loose strands of his hair fall into his face.
“Hello?” Emily whispered with an effort. She felt as though she were moving underwater again. The boy raised his head and gazed at her with an almost painfully hopeful look in his eyes.
There was something more there, too. Something in the lines and plains of his face, and the way his jaw was set, that contrasted with the look of childlike innocence. He looked familiar. Yes, he was the same boy she’d seen in the locker room mirror, the Starbucks window, and in the picture from the House of Horrors funhouse. But now, as she stood facing him, she felt a gnawing in her gut that she’d seen this boy—or someone who looked very much like him—before. Déjà vu? Or simply a side effect of her spinning head?
The candle bobbed gently beside her shoulder. It moved back down the corridor a few feet, then returned before retreating again. The meaning was plain, even in her current state. It was time to go. What on earth was she doing, anyway? Surely she wasn’t supposed to be here. She needed to get back outside and clear her head.
As if the thought had summoned it, a bolt of pain lanced through her skull, making her vision double. Wincing, she rubbed her eyes with her palms and looked back at the boy. He wouldn’t, or more likely couldn’t respond. Probably didn’t even speak English.
“I’ll come back…some time…” she slurred, uncertain if he understood. Then she turned and started unsteadily back down the corridor.
A soft sound, almost missed, made her stop and look around after only a few steps. The sudden motion made her head swim, and she had to reach out and catch herself on the slick stone wall.
Behind her, the boy had fallen to his knees, just beyond the vines that held him captive. He was ringing his hands, and his face was a mask of concentration that nearly bordered on agony. A low choking noise came from his throat, and he gasped for air. God! Was he having a fit or something?
Emily took an uncertain step toward him, and then his mouth opened.
“Help…me…” he croaked. The words were hoarse and malformed. They were broken things, uttered by someone who had long ago forgotten the delicate ballet of tongue and lips that was human speech. His eyes spoke more eloquently. They pleaded with her to understand. They asked her to—what? Remember?
For a heartbeat, they only stared at one another. Emily’s head continued to throb sickeningly, but, for the moment, she hardly noticed. It was a telegram coming in from a long, long way away.
At last, she reached up with one trembling hand and brushed a few strands of hair out of her sweaty face. They doubled before her eyes, then tripled, turning momentarily into a shimmering curtain that obscured the boy from her view.
“I will,” she said, and she turned and staggered down the passage.
She weaved her way along the corridor, then stumbled up the stairs. Every step sent thudding agony into her brain. The world began to spin around her again, and her stomach lurched and rolled in turns. Sweat poured off of her in rivers, and she felt alternately burning hot and freezing cold. The stones around her moved and breathed, dripping an
d reshaping themselves over one another like wax melting in the sun. The floor teased her, rushing up to meet her with one step, then rushing away with the next.
Going to be sick, she thought, looking down and watching with fascination as her foot sought contact with the undulating floor.
By the time she all but fell down the steps outside in the bright sunshine, everything seemed to be happening in fits and starts. The world around her was a film reel being played back on a badly broken projector. Sometimes things moved at breakneck speed, leaving her feeling breathless and terrified, then everything would slow down to a crawl, and she’d want to scream with the frustration of it. Often, whole sections of the movie were missing entirely.
She lay with her cheek against the sun-warmed pavement at the foot of the stairs and stared at an ant making its slow, deliberate way between two stones. Its head was strangely magnified, finger-like antennae waving cheerily at her.
She tried to raise her head and look toward the garden, wondering if she could see Celine from here. Everything seemed too bright, a cartoon landscape in the morning glare.
Where’s the cat? she wondered. This is when I see the cat.
The babble of the fountain seemed a deafening roar that she felt more than heard in the center of her skull. The vibrations made her teeth ache and her eyeballs feel loose and unsettled in their sockets, but lost in that roar was the frantic music of a lunatic orchestra, playing a song she knew but did not recognize. It was impossible; it was true.
This is not good, she thought dazedly. This is so not good.
There was another break in the film.
Now she was lying on her back, staring up into Celine’s frightened face. The sunlight drove white hot daggers into her eyes. She closed them, moaning.
Celine was saying something, but her voice was strangely slow and garbled. Her words were broken things, twisted and misshapen, spoken in a dream. They were the stones she’d seen, melting and running down the walls; they were drops of candle wax, flowing smoothly into a tarnished, silver holder; they were the boy’s words, warped with disuse.
“I can’t understand you. Talk faster,” she wanted to say—maybe she did say it, but then there was another cut, and…
…Now it was cool and dark again, and someone was carrying her up a flight of stairs. Up and up and round and round until her stomach lurched…
…Cut…
Now, she was in her bed. Good. She needed to sleep. If she slept, she’d be okay. She just…needed…to…
…Remember…
No, she didn’t want to remember. She wanted to…
…Sleep…
* * *
She awoke in slow stages. At first, she was aware only of the damp sheet beneath her body. A cool breeze caressed her bare skin, and she realized the fever must have broken. She thought about opening her eyes and wondered if she really wanted to. She let her mind work its way dreamily backward through the broken fragments of memory and blurry images that were the last few things she could recall. The tower…the trees…the flowers…the sorceress…
Finally, her thoughts came to rest on the boy, locked away in what was essentially a dungeon. She could still see the way the candlelight reflected in his baffled dark blue eyes. Seeing him again now, in her mind’s eye, made her heart ache. He’d seemed so lost and confused; he’d seemed so sad.
She opened her eyes cautiously, and found herself staring at the stone wall beside her bed. Silver moonlight filled the room, and all was still and silent. She wondered what time it was, and how long she’d been asleep—or delirious.
She rolled over to face the window, expecting to see Celine asleep in her bed. Instead, she found the girl had dragged her trunk across the room and shoved it against the wall beside her. Celine was sitting on it, leaning against the cold stones, one hand on the corner of Emily’s mattress, her chin on her chest. She was fast asleep. The evidence of Celine’s obvious concern for her made Emily’s eyes sting, and she blinked the tears away.
She reached out and gently touched Celine’s knee. The girl woke with a start, sitting up and blinking sleep from her eyes. Then she smiled with such relief that Emily felt a wild stab of guilt. That was totally ridiculous, of course, but…
“Yeh’re awake!” Celine cried in a whisper. “Jaisus, Em, I was thinkin’ yeh might die on me. Goin’ on and on about trees and blood and I don’t know what else.” She leaned over and threw her arms around her.
“Thanks,” Emily croaked, patting Celine’s back awkwardly. Her mouth felt dry and stuffed with cotton. “I’m…okay…now…I think.”
“’Ang on.” Celine moved down to Emily’s trunk and returned holding a cup in her hands.
“I nicked this from dinner. It’s tea. Won’t be ’ot or nothin’ no more, but I thought yeh might need somethin’ to drink when yeh woke up.”
Emily sat up and took the cup from her gratefully. The tea was cool and felt heavenly against her parched throat. She took two long draughts, and then her stomach squirmed uneasily. She lowered the cup, swallowing hard. At least her head was no longer pounding.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, looking down into the cup. “You could’ve gotten in trouble.” She imagined Celine, small and pale, making her way alone through the strange landscape of Marianne’s tower. “You don’t want to get in trouble.”
Celine made an impatient sort of sound, and Emily looked up in time to see her friend rolling her eyes. “Yeh were burn in’ up, Em. What was I s’posed to do? After all that time I wasn’t gonna let yeh drink that muck.” She gestured at the basin, then dropped back down onto the trunk beside Emily’s bed and watched her anxiously.
“What ’appened to yeh over there, anyway?” she asked. “I’m not jokin’, Em…yeh scared the devil out of me.”
Emily told the story in fits and starts, pausing frequently to sip her tea. She found it difficult to explain the strange, drugged feeling she’d had as she’d made her way to Marianne’s room, or the strangeness of the unnatural flora that grew everywhere. Much of it felt hardly more substantial than a dream now.
When she finished describing her encounter with the boy, she fell back against her pillow, cradling her teacup on her chest, and stared at the ceiling. She felt hollowed out. It was a relief to have shared it all, but now she was exhausted all over again.
There was a long silence.
“Yeh told ’im yeh’d ’elp ’im? Are yeh mad? What if he’s a lunatic or somethin’? Maybe Marianne ’as a good reason for keepin’ ’im locked up. Didn’t yeh never think of that? Maybe he killed somebody—or worse. Yeh don’t know nothin’ about it, Em!”
“I don’t think he’s a lunatic,” Emily said quietly. “And I don’t think he killed anyone, either.”
“Yeh don’t think. But yeh don’t really know.”
Emily thought about that. Did she know? The way she sometimes had on the ice, or the way that she’d known during the swordplay with Marcom? She wasn’t sure. She certainly felt something very strong about the boy wasting away beneath Marianne’s tower, but she didn’t think it was the same as knowing. There was something about the boy—something that called out to her. She recognized something in those blue eyes; whether it was the knowing that saw it or something else, it was real.
“If you could see him, Celine,” she said, still staring at the ceiling. “You’d understand. He’s…” She broke off. ‘Mentally challenged,’ was the politically correct phrase that had come to mind, but of course that wouldn’t mean anything to Celine. Certainly it wouldn’t evoke her sympathy.
“He’s like a child,” she said instead.
“So what? I once saw a kid beatin’ a dog with a stick. Don’t mean nothin’. Kids can be just as cruel as anyone. Worse maybe.”
A fierce emotion bubbled up inside Emily then, catching her off guard.
“I don’t think he’s like that at all,” she said, surprised by her own vehemence.
“Fine. Fine. But why don’t we try to find o
ut more about ’im and why he’s in there before we go off plannin’ feckin’ rescue missions?”
Emily turned her head to look at Celine, the strange, disconnected emotion melting away as quickly as it had come.
“We?”
“Yeah…well…if yeh’re right and she is keepin’ ’im locked up for no good reason…” Celine trailed off, then offered Emily a small, crooked smile. “Yeh didn’t think I’d let yeh go off and do the rescuin’ on yer own, did yeh?”
Emily smiled back. “Thank you.”
Celine got to her feet and started dragging the trunk across the room. She struggled with it for a moment, managing to move it a few inches, then stopped, shrugged, and fell gracelessly into her own bed.
“Tired,” she yawned. “I’ll get the damn thing in the mornin’.”
* * *
In the morning, Emily felt almost like herself again. She followed Celine down to the dining room and, surprised to find herself ravenous, ate her porridge with everyone else. Chatter amongst the other girls was subdued, and they kept stealing glances her way. She supposed they were wondering what Marianne had been like and was relieved when none dared to ask. She was a curiosity now. The feeling was intensely uncomfortable. Was she going to have to endure this all day?
That question was answered as soon as she headed out into the gardens with the other girls. Marcom was waiting in the bright sunshine just outside the tower doors. He clasped Emily’s shoulder with a strong hand and hauled her off to one side, allowing the other girls to file past. Celine paused, her face apprehensive, but Marcom waved her on.
“I’ll tend yer cabbage for yeh, Em, until yeh come out,” she called back over her shoulder, giving Marcom a pointed glance.
Marcom let out a bark of gruff laughter. “Your little friend don’t trust me much, do she?”
“She’s just…worried…after yesterday.”
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