by Kim Wilkins
Christine fetched Mayfridh from Gerda’s place in the morning, and the two of them went walking in the Tiergarten.
“Did you have fun last night?” Christine asked as they passed under the Brandenburg Gate.
“Yes, though I couldn’t really get used to the smoke and the loud music.” Mayfridh was wearing a much more sober outfit this morning, a dark blue pullover and black velvet skirt. Her hair glistened in the morning sunshine.
“Gerda took a shine to you.”
“Yes,” Mayfridh said guardedly, “though I don’t know yet if I trust her.”
“No, no, Gerda’s harmless, believe me. Deep down she has a generous spirit. Just don’t tell her anything she might use against you later.” They entered the park now. A deep drift of fallen leaves swirled at their feet. In the distance, church bells rang from two directions, eerily out of tune with each other. “Ah, I love the sound of bells.”
“Let’s sit here,” Mayfridh said, indicating a bench under a red-gold canopy of leaves.
“Okay.” Christine sat beside her, eyes closed, listening to the bells.
“I remember you always loved the bells on that church near where we lived,” Mayfridh said.
Christine opened her eyes on the shady wood. “Yes, that’s right. I’d wake up Sunday morning and just lie in bed listening to them.”
“You were such a strange little girl.”
“I was?”
“Oh, yes. I always thought so, that’s why I liked you. I’m sure it was Alfa and Finn’s intention to bring you up as the weirdest child on the planet.”
“You’re probably right,” Christine said, smiling. “Do you remember that pinafore my mother made for me?”
“Yes. The paisley one with the tiny stuffed animals hanging off the hem.”
“God, what was she thinking!”
“As I recall, you loved that dress.”
“Yeah, I was six. I didn’t know better.”
“She offered my mother to make me a matching one—”
“—and your mother looked horrified! I remember. You were always so beautifully dressed. Your mother really doted on you. She spoiled you.”
“Do you think so?” Mayfridh asked.
“Yeah, of course. Remember that fresco she painted on your ceiling? Moon and stars and clouds and colored balloons?”
“I loved that. But I always loved your house better. It was chaotic and warm and smelled like peaches and cinnamon.”
“Probably my mom’s incense,” Christine said. Mayfridh was right; her parents had always been as chaotic as they were compassionate. For the first time in many years, she was sharing memories of her parents with someone who had actually known them. She felt a fond flush of feeling for Mayfridh.
Mayfridh was watching her. “You know, Christine, you’re almost beautiful when you smile.”
“Um, thanks.”
Mayfridh shook her head. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”
“Yeah.” Christine laughed. “Yeah, it was.”
“I’m used to being able to say whatever I want, and do whatever I want.”
“It’s okay, I know it’s true. I’m not beautiful.”
“Jude must think you are.”
Christine shrugged. “I guess so, I don’t know. He says he does.”
“Before I came, I sent Eisengrimm to watch you a while. I saw you with another man, a dark-haired fellow, rather large.”
Christine felt herself shudder. “Ooh, Mandy.”
“Mandy?”
“Immanuel Zweigler. He owns the building. He runs the gallery.”
“And you don’t like him?”
“He’s kind of revolting. Avoid him at all costs. There’s about a three-foot gap between the foyer and the stairs where he can spot you from the gallery. Always run past it. He’s weird and he asks strange questions and he gives me the creeps.”
“I’ll take your word for it and avoid him as best I can.” They settled into silence for a few minutes. Two joggers ran past, and a woman pushed a pram up the leaf-strewn path.
Mayfridh turned to Christine and patted her hand. “I want to give you a present.”
“A present?”
“You make me happy, Christine. You make me feel less lonely. I want to take away some of your pain too.” She reached in her bag and pulled out one of her spells.
“Ah, I’d rather you didn’t cast any more spells on me,” Christine said.
“No, no. I’ll give you something you can use whenever you want.” Mayfridh closed her hands over the spell, muttered a word Christine couldn’t hear—it sounded like “twice” or “wine”—and then opened her hands again. The spell was gone, and in its place was a ball of golden thread.
“What is it?” Christine asked, gingerly reaching out to touch it.
“It’s enchanted twine.” Mayfridh pressed the ball into Christine’s hands. “If you come here to the Tiergarten, to the passage, hold one end and cast it away from you, then follow the thread, it will lead you into the autumn forest.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“The place where you feel no pain. Collect the twine and walk around to the gate of the castle. If you call out, Eisengrimm will hear you and come to get you.”
Christine studied the ball of golden twine in her hands. Relief, instant relief. She became acutely aware of the humming and pressing in her back. In a second it could be gone.
“All I ask is that you keep it safe,” Mayfridh said, “and keep it near you. Don’t leave it where someone else could find it.”
“Of course I’ll keep it safe,” Christine answered, her fingers testing the texture of the twine.
“Do you want to go now?”
“Will you come?”
“I’ll go back to the hotel. I’ll spend the day with Gerda. I’m having too much fun to go home just yet.”
Christine considered the offer: although she was unsure whether to trust Mayfridh around Jude, she knew that Gerda would keep an eye on her. “Maybe,” she said.
“If Jude asks I’ll tell him—”
“He won’t ask. He’ll be in the studio all day.” Jude was working hard on a new painting, torturing himself over it. He would be too busy to concern himself with Mayfridh. “Don’t disturb him.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe I’ll just go for a couple of hours.”
Mayfridh touched Christine on the wrist. “Keep an eye on your watch. Time doesn’t run the same in Ewigkreis.”
“No? Faster, slower?”
“Both. Neither. It’s just different.”
Wonderful relief was calling her. Just a couple of hours. Nothing bad could happen. Christine checked her watch. It was seven minutes to eleven. “Okay, I’m going. I’ll be back at one o’clock. I’ll come to Gerda’s to look for you.”
“I’ll be waiting. Come on, let me show you where the passage is.”
Mayfridh led her deeper into the park, away from the road. They approached a dark elm, its leaves spattered with yellow. “Quickly,” Mayfridh said, “while there’s nobody to see.”
Christine crouched and rolled the ball of twine away from her, holding the loose end between her fingers. It glimmered as though lit from within, and a soft sighing noise accompanied it. She thought the twine would completely unravel in about ten feet but the ball just kept rolling away.
“Go on,” Mayfridh said, “follow it.”
Christine stood, hand over hand following the twine that ran on ahead of her. “When will it stop?” she asked. Mayfridh didn’t answer. Christine checked over her shoulder. Mayfridh was gone; the Tiergarten was gone. She stood amongst the diving golden leaves and slanted sunbeams of the autumn forest.
Mayfridh watched Christine disappear and turned toward the road. It was good to know that Jude would be in the studio today, rather than in his apartment. Mayfridh needed to get in there and collect a few of his personal possessions—ones he wouldn’t necessarily miss—and make Hexebart weave a good strong mind-reading spe
ll. What Gerda had said to her the previous night played on her thoughts. Christine was a millionaire, and had vowed not to touch a cent until she was married. Jude was a penniless artist who had lived his adult life so far on scholarships and grants. After his Zweigler Fellowship ran out he would be faced with teaching art to ungrateful amateurs if he were lucky, measuring fat businessmen for suits in a department store if he were unlucky. Christine not only provided him with a great address, having inherited her parents’ West Chelsea home, if he stuck around for long enough he would never have to worry about money again.
“You watch,” Gerda had said, “he will have proposed to her before the end of his fellowship.”
Mayfridh wandered up Unter-den-Linden, past sausage vendors and coffee carts. She didn’t want to believe it, not of Jude. Surely Jude must possess the most beautiful spirit that had ever found its way into a human body. Also, she didn’t want to believe it for Christine’s sake. Then some other instinct engaged, one she wasn’t proud of. Surely Christine’s millions must pale in comparison to Mayfridh’s entire faery kingdom? If Jude sought riches, then . . . She chastised herself for want-ing anything to do with a man who could be so deceitful.
If he was deceitful. If Gerda was right.
So was it a protective instinct for Christine, or a need to prove to herself that Jude was good, that drove her this morning? Jude had a secret and she had to know it; even more now than before, with Gerda poisoning her ears with stories. If she found out through the mind-reading spell that Jude really was in love with Christine, then she would let him go. She would stop turning on her faery glamour whenever he was around, and she certainly wouldn’t be so cruel as to steal Christine’s happiness.
Or at least she would try her very best not to.
Eisengrimm!” Christine stood at the gate to the castle wall, which spanned away gleaming in the golden light. She couldn’t imagine that Eisengrimm would be able to hear her through all the stone and at such a distance, so she stretched herself out on the ground and enjoyed the liberation of her back.
“Ahh,” she sighed, releasing a deep breath. She checked her watch. The hands hadn’t moved. She closed her eyes, felt a leaf skitter over her legs. A soft breeze blew, and in the distance were the faint, earthy smells of harvest. This was bliss; this was paradise.
A flapping of wings. She looked up. A crow perched on top of the gate.
“Eisengrimm?”
He fluttered to the ground and, as his feet touched the grass, transformed to Wolf. “Christine?”
She stood, reveling in the freedom. “Hello. Mayfridh gave me this.” Her native words were echoed in the strange Old German of the castle. She held out the ball of twine for his inspection.
“Ah, enchanted twine. You wish to visit us regularly then?”
“Yes, I like it here.”
“And is my queen in good health?” No expression marked his face, but from his voice she could tell he had concerns.
“Yeah, in good health, in good company, and in great clothes. She said you would . . . you know . . . show me around.”
“Certainly. Follow me.” He led her through the gate and around the side of the castle. The sunlight was dappled here, and the stone was covered in lichen and moss. Ahead, they reached the grassy edge of a precipice. Christine hung back, but Eisengrimm walked all the way to the edge and lifted his snout to the breeze.
“Come closer,” he said, “it’s quite safe.”
Christine moved forward, testing the ground in front of her with her toes. A deep, rocky slope fell away beneath them.
Eisengrimm tilted his ears. “Behold,” he said, “this is Ewigkreis.”
A rural village spread out far below them. Two wide dirt roads converged on a large stone well, other narrow streets sprouting left and right and tapering off into forests and farms. The streets were lined with half-timbered buildings and stone cottages with flowering window boxes. Around the well was a bustling marketplace with stalls, vendors pushing carts, and villagers dressed in colorful clothes. Others worked in broad, flat fields, their movements seeming exaggerated and slow at this distance. Puffs of smoke from chimneys drifted lazy and gilded in the late sunshine.
“How many people live here?”
“Three hundred in the village, eleven in the castle with Mayfridh.”
That explained the emptied, hollow feeling of the castle. “Ewigkreis is small,” she said.
“All the faeries in what you would call Germany live here. We are one of the smallest races of faeries.”
Christine cast her eyes into the far distance peering into the afternoon haze to see past the forests, and the river that ran lazy and glittering off to the east. The cliffs, water, and trees dissolved into the misty golden horizon. “What’s beyond it?”
“We know not.”
Christine was surprised by this answer. “Has no one tried to travel into those forests?”
“Yes. I have traveled in the Eternal Woods myself. For many days I moved forward, through dark woods with no clear paths. Then the woods began to thin, a road spread out in front of me. I thought I was approaching a new village, but I wasn’t. I was back in the same forest you first found.”
“It goes around in a circle?”
“I cannot answer that, for I do not know. It is one of the mysteries of our world, and of every other faery world. No map can describe them. It is a Real World phenomenon to understand land in terms of definitive space.”
Christine tried to comprehend this, couldn’t, gave up. “And Mayfridh is the queen of the whole land?”
“Yes.”
“Unelected, right? It’s like a monarchy.”
“That’s right.”
“The villagers don’t mind?”
“They are not humans. They are faeries, and care about more important things than politics and titles. They care about the harvest, the swing of seasons, the magical essence of the air.” Eisengrimm turned and began to walk away from the precipice. “Come,” he said, “I will show you the castle.”
Christine once again glanced at her watch. Although it felt as though twenty minutes had passed, the hands had moved only one minute. She calculated, figured three minutes must pass for every hour, and decided she had plenty of time. Relax, enjoy.
Eisengrimm led her through the back gate and the wild garden, then into the cavernous stone room where she had first met Mayfridh.
“This is our great hall. There is Mayfridh’s throne.”
“Who are the eleven people living in the castle?” Christine asked, looking around at the tapestries and brass decorations.
“Cooks, servants, and me.”
“No guards? Soldiers?”
“We have no real need for them. There is a royal guard, but its role is official rather than martial.”
“And you’re Mayfridh’s only adviser?”
Eisengrimm sat on his hind legs and tipped his head back to look up. Christine followed his gaze up past the long tapestries to the tiny windows at the top of the room. On pedestals carved into the dark stone sat three crooked gargoyles, their mouths stretched open, their snouts crinkled into sneers, their eyes hideous spheres on stalks.
“Mayfridh was only nine when she took the throne. Wolfram, Reinmar, and Sivridh were the counselors appointed to her. I blush for the partiality she showed me, simply because I could turn into a fox and be toted around under her arm. They were good counselors at first, sound politicians. But when she was fifteen—”
“That’s them?” Christine asked, astonished.
“They disagreed with her over something petty. They forced their will on her, greedy now of the power, and told her she was just a stupid child. But she wasn’t a child anymore.
“It happened that a visitor from the icy north lands was staying in the castle at the time. He was the court magician in his own realm, and a very powerful sorcerer. Sorcery is unknown in Ewigkreis; we use magic for peaceful purposes. In secret, Mayfridh offered him all of Liesebet’s jewelry in ex
change for a spell of sorcery. Then, in the heat of an argument, she turned the spell on Wolfram, Reinmar, and Sivridh.”
“She turned them into gargoyles?”
“Yes. So now they watch the affairs of Ewigkreis from a different vantage point.”
“Can they ever . . . I mean . . . are they stuck like that forever?”
“She tries from time to time to turn the spell back, but she did it in such a fit of anger—the anger of a fifteen-year-old girl—that the wrath became part of the spell. She cannot find an equivalent amount of forgiveness for a reversal spell, especially as, I suspect, she is still angry with them for calling her a stupid child.”
“Will they die?”
“Who knows? Perhaps.”
She was surprised by the lightness of his tone. “Is life very cruel here?”
“We are mostly peaceful folk. No one need fear cruelty if they work for the smooth turning of the seasons and pay their dues to Mayfridh.”
“Are the villagers loyal to her?”
“Oh yes, because all faery magic is royal magic. It descends only from the queen.” He nudged her hand. “Come, Christine, I will show you the rest of the Autumn Castle.”
He tried to lead her downstairs to a windowless area of chambers and dungeons, but she refused, so instead he led her up the long narrow corridor, showing her each room in turn—a bewildering array of dusty libraries, empty drawing rooms, cramped state rooms, and a dark kitchen. Then they ascended the north turret—crooked and narrow—to the royal chambers. Eisengrimm led her to Mayfridh’s bedchamber, which was decorated in filmy white curtains and layers of white cloth.
“You may lie down if you are tired,” Eisengrimm said, jumping onto the bed and making himself comfortable.
Christine lay down, sinking into the deep covers with a warm weariness stretching through her bones. She considered the ceiling in the half-light for a while, trying to process all she had seen and heard. Did it really matter if it was all too ridiculous ever to be uttered to another human being? Here she felt no pain; here she was the Christine she might have been were it not for the accident. She found the castle’s emptiness and gloominess soothing, addictive.