by Kim Wilkins
“Get the girl a beer,” Gerda said to Pete.
“I’ll get everyone a beer,” he said. “With a bit of luck Mandy will foot the bill.” He shot out of his chair and headed for the bar.
“Mandy?” Jude asked.
“He’s coming,” Gerda replied. “Sorry. He caught us at the front door and asked where we were going.”
Jude reached for Christine’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. “I guess we can’t keep avoiding him.”
Christine shifted in her chair, trying to make herself more comfortable. The truth was that her back was still throbbing and pulling, but she had been flat out in bed for four days and needed to get out. Not just out of bed, but out of her own claustrophobic head.
“Why, thank you, Gerda,” Mandy said, horrifying Christine by pulling up a chair next to hers. “Tell the waitress to bring out a tray of dips and so on. Dinner will be on me tonight.”
Pete cheered and joined Gerda in finding a waitress. Mandy smiled at Christine, baring an uneven row of small yellowed teeth. “I see you are up and about. Jude told me you hurt yourself.”
Christine shrank back an inch. “Yes, I’m feeling better.”
He clicked his tongue. “A nasty business, falling in the kitchen. You know most accidental deaths occur at home.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, it is. You may worry more about flying, or driving, or swimming. But you’re far more likely to meet your death by slipping in the bath.” He smiled.
“How . . . interesting.”
“What’s your fear, Christine?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What accident do you fear most of all?”
Jude leaned forward and curled a protective arm around Christine. “Mandy, Christine lost her parents in a car accident.”
“I am so sorry,” Mandy said, smiling and nodding. “I hadn’t meant to upset you.”
“It’s fine,” Christine muttered, reaching for her beer. She noticed Mandy watching her hands move, and his nostrils flared slightly. She barely controlled a shudder. He glanced up at her quickly, a puzzled look crossing his face.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“Nothing. You reminded me of . . . something.”
“Something nice, I hope?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stood up, said, “I should mingle,” without any trace of humor, and plonked himself down at the other end of the table between Pete and Gerda.
“You okay?” Jude asked, his breath soft against her ear.
“Yeah. It’s good to be out.”
He gently kissed her cheek.
“I love you, Jude.”
“I love you too.”
There, he said it, it must be true. Cling to it. Too late. Already a part of her heart reminded her that he never said it first; that his love was reactive, not spontaneous, so she must love him more than he loved her. Then she got sick of herself, sick of her weird abandonment issues. So she’d lost her parents when she was eighteen; it didn’t excuse all this babyish fretting at the age of thirty-one. If he didn’t love her, then he deserved an Oscar for the previous four years’ performance. She put it out of her mind, determined to enjoy herself for at least a couple of hours.
The food was good, the beer was better, and around ten o’clock Mandy paid the bill and departed, telling them all he was an early riser. The remaining five pulled the chairs closer around the table, a circle of cigarettes was lit, and Gerda said, “I cannot stand him. I simply cannot stand him.”
“He’s creepy,” Christine agreed. “The way he looks at people.”
“The way he looks at you,” Pete said. “I’d never noticed it before tonight.”
Christine shivered. “Gross. Don’t mess with my head.”
“What do you hate most about him, Jude?” Gerda said, blowing out a long stream of cigarette smoke.
“The way he looks at Christine,” Jude said, laughing. “Truly, Christine, didn’t you see? He sat up there and kept sneaking glances at you all night. I think you’ve won his heart.”
“Don’t,” Christine protested. “I mean it, Jude, he gives me the creeps.”
“How about you, Fabiyan?” Gerda said, speaking slowly. “Do you hate Mandy?”
“He come to me on the Wednesday,” Fabiyan said. “I think he will ask me about my new sculpture. No. He ask me to make him a point.”
“A point?” Pete asked.
Fabiyan mimed plugging an electrical cord into a wall. “Yes, for electricity.”
“He asked you to install an outlet?” Christine asked. “Are you kidding?”
Fabiyan shook his head.
“That’s so disrespectful. You’re an artist,” Gerda said, enthusiastically stubbing her cigarette on the side of the table. Fabiyan looked puzzled so Christine translated into German for him.
“Did you do it?” Jude asked.
Fabiyan nodded. “I feel I must say yes to him.”
“I hate him because he listens to the worst music in the universe,” Pete said. “New Age Pan flute music, and classical symphonies with a pop backbeat. Sometimes he puts it on in the gallery when I’m trying to work in the studio and it’s counter-inspirational.”
“I’m with you on that one,” Jude said.
“And there’s something weird about the way he moves,” Pete added. “He’s this big, lumbering fat guy, and yet he has this uncanny speed and accuracy. I’ve seen him catch a fly in mid-flight.”
“No way!” Jude exclaimed.
“Yeah. He let it out a window. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to eat it.”
They all laughed, then Gerda tapped out a cascade of ash and said, “I wish I had a good reason to hate him, but I think I just hate him because he’s hateable.”
“Unbelievably hateable,” Christine agreed.
“Irrationally hateable,” Gerda continued, “because he’s generous, he loves art, he’s devoted his life to the development of artists from all over the world, and he never interferes creatively with any of us.”
“There’s just something about him,” Pete said.
Christine drained her beer. “I’m glad to hear someone else say that. It’s true, there’s just something about him.”
“Poor guy,” Jude said. “Imagine going through life being irrationally hateable.”
“There are worse fates,” Gerda said, indicating Christine’s empty bottle. “More beer?”
“More beer,” Christine said, gazing off down the long dark street. The giant TV tower at Alexanderplatz blinked against the night sky in the distance. Jude was right, now she thought back on it. Mandy had been staring at her tonight. But that was strange, because at first it had seemed as if he wanted to get away from her. He had said she reminded him of something and then moved to the other end of the table.
“Where are you?” Jude said quietly in her ear.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a million miles away.”
“Just thinking about something,” she said with a smile, and decided not to think any more about Immanuel Zweigler.
Jude’s body was one of the undiscovered wonders of the world. His skin was hot and smooth, his lips and his hands were agile and passionate and gentle. Late that night, the best way he knew how, he managed to take Christine’s mind off the pain.
“You’re a god,” Christine gasped as he slid back to his side of the bed.
He smiled at her in the dark. “The pleasure’s all mine, I promise.”
“Why do you love me?” she asked.
“Because you remind me so much of Christine Starlight, who I’ve always had a big crush on.”
She laughed. “Idiot.”
“Hey, you asked the stupid question.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Yes, it is. Anyone who ever loves anyone truly loves them because of their indefinable essence, not because they conform to some checklist.”
“A checklist would be nice th
ough,” Christine said, rolling carefully onto her side. “Sometimes girls like compliments.”
“All right then. You’re beautiful and clever and kind.”
“No, it’s no good giving me a compliment when I asked for it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I asked for it. Because it’s not sincere. You have to give me one when I’m not expecting it.”
“But you’ll still know you asked for it, won’t you?”
“Not if you leave it long enough between this conversation and the compliment.”
“But if I leave it too long, you’ll remind me again and then we’ll be back where we started.”
Christine giggled. “Nobody said love was easy.”
He pinned her down and kissed her again, and her senses flared with passion. This bodily response was the only physical thing that could match her pain for intensity. He let her go and she sighed.
“You know,” she said, “I had the strangest dream when I blacked out the other day. I was in a place where I felt no pain at all.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
“In the dream? Not much. Just silly dream stuff.” Telling him would be too much like acknowledging its power.
“Was it nice? To be without the pain?”
“It was incredible, Jude. Absolute freedom.” She locked her fingers with his under the covers and thought about how pain had become a default setting in her life. Everything was geared around it. How she walked, how she moved, how long she could stay in a conversation without distraction, how she slept, showered, ate, drank. “Do you think someone can go mad from pain?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But you’re strong, you’ll be okay.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream,” she said carefully. “Maybe it was a hallucination. Maybe I’m going nuts.”
“Hey, don’t worry yourself about silly things like that,” he said. “You’re perfectly sane.”
“But the dream was so—”
“Shh, you’re getting worked up over nothing,” Jude said, stroking her hair. “Don’t be afraid of shadows. A dream is only ever just a dream.”
Eisengrimm!” Mayfridh swept up the corridor, setting the autumn-colored tapestries dancing in her wake. “Eisengrimm, where are you?”
She poked her head into the dim, low-ceilinged kitchen. “Has anyone seen Eisengrimm?”
A flurry of fumbling curtsies and slack mouths and shaking heads greeted her. Idiots. She backed out and kept walking. Why did people have to turn all silent and fearful in her presence? She was not a cruel queen. Nobody ever spoke to her with their hearts, only with their heads—ever mindful of their careers, or their reputations, or their fortunes. Her own heart was aching under the unexpressed weight of this truth. Eisengrimm was the only one she could tell her woes and insecurities to, and he was a good listener and a good counselor. But he was a wolf. She couldn’t marry him or adopt him as a brother; he could never be of her kind.
She threw open the door to the garden and called, “Eisengrimm!”
The garden was strewn with fallen leaves. She knew she had until the last leaf of autumn fell to find Christine, because then it would be time to move to the Winter Castle and away from this favorable alignment of their worlds. Mayfridh couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she had become so desperate to find Christine again. The faery world worked on the memory in strange ways. She had forgotten so much about her previous existence, about Christine and her own Real World parents, but now it was swirling back to her in gentle waves. All those warm memories, filling her with an unutterable longing for a simpler, happier time.
Mayfridh lowered herself to the ground and stretched out on her back among the leaves. The sky was pale above her and she breathed deeply. Every breath brought her closer to agreeing to make passage to the Real World. She reexamined all those nasty fears about the disappearance of the king and queen before her—her faery parents. Perhaps they had not been murdered or killed in an accident, but had good reasons of their own for disappearing. They would have known that, after the six-week period decreed for their people to wait for their return, the throne would pass to their daughter. Perhaps they even had reasons for wanting her to take the throne at nine years of age, though she couldn’t imagine what those reasons might be. A nine-year-old girl is a poor ruler, a fifteen-year-old one even worse. She shuddered as she remembered some of her mistakes.
A leaf descended and brushed her shoulder. Footsteps alerted her to Eisengrimm’s presence.
“So there you are,” she said, turning her head to see him nearby, his jaw wrapped tight around a glowing object. “What do you have for me?”
He loped over and stood above her. She could see now that his mouth was full of spells. He released them so that they bounced over her. She sat up and gathered them.
“Sorry,” he said, “you know I can’t talk and carry at the same time.”
Three spells. She nursed them in her lap, tiny glowing balls of woven magic from the well. Two were the usual general-purpose spells that Mayfridh could use as she wished. The third had a strand of brown hair threaded through it. “What’s this one?” she said, holding it up.
“I had Hexebart weave a special introduction to Christine’s world. To prepare yourself.”
“I need not prepare myself. I remember it.”
“Things change quickly in the Real World. It’s not like here, where things don’t change at all. Twenty-five years is a long time.”
“I see.”
“The other two are to use as you wish. To conjure the passage, to contact me back here, to protect yourself against emergencies.”
Emergencies? Her heart jumped. “So you think I’ll go?”
“I know not, Mayfridh. Do you think you’ll go?”
She fiddled with the spells in her lap. They were smooth and warm, feather-light. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps, my Queen?”
Mayfridh narrowed her eyes. “Are you laughing at me?”
“You know wolves can neither laugh nor cry.”
“But if you could laugh, would you be laughing now?”
Eisengrimm nudged one of the spells with his nose. “Go on, Mayfridh. Try it.”
She collected the spells in her left hand and stood. “Fine, then. We shall go to the spell chamber, and I shall reacquaint myself with the Real World.”
The Autumn Castle’s spell chamber was under the ground, above the crypt and the dungeons. No light permeated the gloom except for the brass lantern Mayfridh brought with her, and the soft daylight from a tiny high window that opened onto the grass outside. The room was cold, the rough-hewn stone bare of tapestries or hangings or anything else that might absorb magic. Laid out around the chamber were mirrors and bowls and burners and ladles and mortars and pestles and bottles. Once, before her faery parents had departed for the Real World, all magic in the realm had been spun and woven in here, rather than in Hexebart’s well. Mayfridh always looked around the room with a sense of sadness. Its ghostly emptiness was a reminder of her inadequacies as a ruler.
“One day, Eisengrimm—” she started.
“Be kind to yourself, my Queen. You are still young, and if you are patient and strong, this difficulty with Hexebart will be overcome.”
Mayfridh had brought wine from the kitchen. She slumped on an unsteady stool in front of the long wooden table that ran almost the length of the room and stood the bottle in front of her. Eisengrimm transformed to Crow and joined her. He used his beak to uncork the bottle.
“I wish you would be Bear and use your hands. Why do you never change to Bear?” she asked him.
“You know it hurts my joints. Bear is so heavy. I’m bruised for weeks afterwards.”
“I don’t like you as Crow. I know you eat the eyes of dead squirrels in the forest.”
“As Crow, I can think of nothing tastier.” He clicked his beak on the table. “Come, Mayfridh. Pour yourself a cup of wine.”
Mayfridh reached for a cup and filled it with wine
. Eisengrimm plucked out the spell that had Christine’s hair woven through it, hopped across the table, and dropped it into the cup.
“What will it do?” Mayfridh asked as she waited for it to sizzle and shimmer into the wine.
“It will introduce you to the feel and pace of her world. As it is only hair, it will give you no insight into her personal circumstances. If I could have snatched one of her eyes, I might have been able to furnish you with memories, dreams, visions . . .”
“I prefer her with two eyes in her head, as I’m sure she does.” She swirled the cup and looked into it. The spell had vanished, and the wine was now golden. “Well, then, I’ll drink it.”
“Go on.”
Mayfridh raised the cup to her lips and took a cautious sip. At once, unfamiliar sensations began to wash over her and she closed her eyes. In a rush, with a sound like a great breath being expelled, she experienced—refrigerator noise, demolition sites, antihistamines, newspaper ink, cheap plastic toys, techno-pop, eyelash curlers, Internet porn, central heating, the Love Parade, roller coasters, roadworks, bookshops, building cranes, cigarettes, lawn mowers, airplanes, fluorocarbons, chlorine, shampoo, traffic, Coke, Shrek, smog, bombs, PVC, FTP, DVD—
Mayfridh opened her eyes and caught her breath.
“My Queen?”
She closed her eyes again, and more sensations charged at her, slipped past her, and left their traces on her. “When will it stop?” she shouted over the barrage of images, sounds, smells.
“Be patient, it should slow down soon.”
She took big breaths, tried to relax through the assault of impressions. Finally, as Eisengrimm had said, they began to slow, to fade, to grow still. But she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want Eisengrimm to see the disappointed tears that pricked at them, because now she was terrified, now she doubted she had enough courage to make passage to such a world.
“It’s awful,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.