The Autumn Castle

by Kim Wilkins

  Mayfridh woke to an empty apartment. Gerda had left a note saying she had been struck by early morning inspiration and was going to exorcise it in the studio. This, despite her having promised to go shopping for new boots today. How unfair! Still, Mayfridh wasn’t queen in this world and had to get used to people occasionally letting her down. Even though Christine wasn’t as much fun to shop with, at least she was good to talk to on the bus. Maybe they could go out to Zehlendorf together and visit Diana. She dressed in her favorite blue lace blouse and black velvet skirt, put on her makeup—she was an expert at applying it now, and had determined to take a lifetime’s supply of liquid eyeliner back to Ewigkreis—and headed upstairs to Christine’s apartment.

  She knocked. Waited. Knocked again. Heard footsteps inside. Then the door opened, and a sleepy-eyed Jude stood there.

  “Sorry, did I wake you?” she said, taking an embarrassed step backward.

  “Um . . . yeah. But it’s pretty late. I should get to work.” He was wearing loose-fitting gray track pants and a pale blue shirt, unbuttoned. His feet were bare.

  “Is Christine here?”

  “She’s at the bookshop.”

  “Oh. I must have my days mixed up. I thought she was off today.”

  “She was supposed to be. Somebody’s sick.” He ran a hand through his blond hair. “Do you want to come in? I can make coffee.”

  Mayfridh knew she should say no, but found herself nodding anyway. No Gerda, no Christine. What else was she to do with her morning? “Yes, thank you.”

  He closed the door behind her, then scuffed into the kitchen, buttoning his shirt and yawning. She moved to the table where a handful of photos was strewn. Jude’s paintings. She picked one up and studied it, astonished by its dark beauty.

  “They’re the bad photos.”

  Mayfridh turned around. Jude was very close, his dark eyes flicking from her face to the photo. “Sorry?” she said.

  “I sent the good ones away with a fellowship application. The colors didn’t come out in these.”

  She leafed through them. “I think they’re beautiful.”

  “We’ve only got instant. You have milk and sugar?” He shook a half-full coffee jar in front of her.

  “No, black, thank you.”

  “Sit down,” he said, returning to the kitchen bench. “I’ve got an old Danish in here, if you want to share. I know it’s not much to offer a royal faery but . . .” He laughed to himself, uncomfortable.

  Mayfridh barely noticed. “Hmm? No, I’ll have breakfast later. I’m never hungry in the mornings.”

  “Me neither. But if I don’t eat I can’t seem to paint.”

  One by one she studied the photographs. Every single painting was a masterpiece, a shadowy enchantment. How she longed to see them for real.

  Jude set down a cup of coffee in front of her, then sat beside her. “You like them?”

  “I love them. Where are they all?” she asked, placing the photos carefully on the table.

  “Mostly in New York. In galleries. A couple are in Washington. I’ve got one in London but it’s not hanging. Two downstairs, and . . . I’ve forgotten where the others are. Oh, yeah. One in a university in Barcelona, and four in some merchant bank office in Texas. They put them in glass frames. I hate that. It changes the texture.”

  She raised her eyes to steal a glance at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was concentrating instead on his Danish. His hair was messy and his hands looked warm.

  “Could I . . . buy one of your paintings?” she asked. To take with her; to hang in the great hall so she would have some small piece of Jude forever, even though winter would obliterate any memory of his face and voice and personality.

  “Really? You want to buy one? They’re expensive.”

  “I have a lot of . . .” She was bragging and she knew it, but couldn’t stop herself. “Money isn’t a problem.”

  “Real money? Not magic faery money that will disappear when you do.” He was smiling, teasing her.

  “Yes, real money,” she said. “I’d pay any price to own one of your paintings.”

  “Well, sure. But I’ve already sold the two I’ve done here. You might have to wait for the next one.”

  “I can wait.” She felt embarrassed now, as though she had said too much. She bent her head to the photographs once more, spreading them out on the table in front of her.

  A few moments passed, then Jude said to her softly, “Which one do you like best?”

  Mayfridh caught her lip between her teeth. This was like a test she had to pass to make Jude like her. From the corner of her eye, she could see him finish the Danish and dust his fingers off. His hand stole out and he plucked one of the photos from the spread.

  “This one?” he asked. “This is Christine’s favorite.”

  Mayfridh shook her head. Christine’s favorite. He belongs to Christine. “I think I prefer this one.” She reached for the picture that had touched her heart, a scratchy white line not perfectly centered on a canvas of dark swirling colors.

  “Really,” Jude said, his voice gentle. “This one?”

  “Why? Don’t you like it?” Her gaze met his. His eyes were dark and deep.

  “The opposite. It’s my favorite too.”

  Encouraged, she continued: “Can I tell you what I see in it?”

  “Of course. I’d love to know.”

  “It reminds me . . . it reminds me of how I feel back home at an official banquet, when I’m surrounded by people and they’re all telling me how much they love and admire me, but I feel completely and utterly alone.” She pointed to the white line. “This is me. I hear them saying my name, but I don’t even know who I am and why that name should fit me. I’m as lonely as a distant star.” She indicated the swirling gray and brown patterns around it. “This is them, and they’re all pushing at me and wanting something from me, stripping me bare, and never knowing the delicate core of who I am. Never caring that they’re obliterating it in every second.”

  She ventured a glance at him. His expression was unreadable. At first she thought he was in pain, but perhaps it was confusion. “Jude?”

  “Mayfridh, that’s exactly it.”

  Mayfridh repressed a self-satisfied smile. “Really?”

  His hand reached toward hers on the table, then drew back. She glanced from his fingers to his eyes.

  “Mayfridh, can you promise me something? If I ask you what I’m going to ask you next, will you promise that you’ll tell me absolutely the truth?”

  The weight of his words sobered her. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Do you really see that, or have you used some kind of faery magic to read my mind?”

  Her heart fell. He thought she was trying to manipulate him. “It’s not possible for me to read minds,” she said, knowing she sounded irritated. If only he knew how often she had tried to get inside his head without success.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, but it’s important,” he said. “You see, I spend my whole life trying to put a feeling into an image. Most of the time, nobody can see what that feeling is. But you see it, you know it. It’s like, my work has finally reached its audience.”

  “It has. It really has.” Electricity was growing in the two-inch space between her hand and his on the table. “Jude, I’m not lying. I’m not tricking you.”

  “I feel like that,” he said, nodding toward the photograph she still held. “That’s how I feel.”

  “Lonely? You’re lonely?”

  “I am,” he breathed, barely audible, “sometimes.”

  “And sad?”

  He nodded once, his eyes fixed on the table.

  A tide of half-confused feelings and half-formed questions washed through her. Danger had twined with the blood in her veins. She felt his fingers move, glanced down. The back of his hand, his knuckles, brushed the side of her index finger. Deliberately, slowly. Her whole body was a held breath.

  He belongs to Christine.

  Mayfridh snatched
her hand away and shot out of her chair, dropping the photo on the table. The bewildered guilt on Jude’s face stopped her from running out as she’d intended. She stood tensed in front of him. He looked up at her, that same expression of pain and confusion on his face. The longer she stood there, the harder it was to pull herself away.

  “Jude . . .” His name came out strangled and breathless.

  Jude reached for her hands and pulled her one step toward him. He closed his eyes, his thumbs stroking her fingers. Then he leaned forward and—slowly, so slowly—pressed his face into her belly, kissed her through the blue lace and black velvet. The heat of his lips expanded through her, singing in her stomach and her lungs and her heart, gliding like electricity up her throat and into her brain. She gently shook off his hands and touched his hair, an awful pain of desire coiling between her ribs. His own hands curled around her hips. It was all she could do to keep breathing. Bliss, utter bliss.

  Then his shoulders hitched, and she realized he was crying.

  “Jude, what’s wrong?”

  Suddenly, he tore himself away, turning from her, leaping from his chair and hurrying from the room. She stood in empty space, her body and heart bereft.

  He belongs to Christine.

  She had to go. She had to get out of here, go home where she couldn’t hurt people, couldn’t hurt herself. In her hurry to leave, she tipped over a chair, left it lying on its side in Christine’s kitchen.

  This wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. Her heart ached, but all would be forgotten soon if she could just get home and wait quietly.

  Winter was coming.

  PART TWO

  Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

  I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

  “Ode to the West Wind,” Percy Bysshe Shelley

  “Aye, granny, what are you doing there?”

  “I’m scraping intestines, my child. Tomorrow I’ll scrape yours as well!”

  “The Castle of Murder,” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Heedless of the cold air outside, Mayfridh threw open her bedroom window and let the fresh wind bite her cheeks and nose. A gust moved the gauzy canopy and curtains, which fluttered white like desperate flags around her face. Four deep breaths later she was buried in the white layers of her bed, sobbing and sobbing. Leaves torn from the trees outside skidded into the bedroom.

  She cried for Christine, who loved Jude and whom she had betrayed. She cried for Jude, who was lonely and sad and whom she had led to disloyalty. But mostly—as the red and brown and yellow leaves pattered onto the floor like rain and settled on the white blankets and pillows and caught in her crimson hair—she cried for herself. And no matter how many times Eisengrimm bumped on the door to her room and pleaded with her to let him in, she called out “No” and continued to cry until the room wore a carpet of dead leaves and her face was flushed and hot despite the autumn chill.

  “Mayfridh.”

  His voice was close this time. She sat up and looked toward the window, where Eisengrimm perched as Crow.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice hoarse and her own language heavy on her tongue. She palmed tears from her cheeks.

  He hopped to the floor and transformed to Wolf, placed his paws on the sill, and pushed the windows closed with his nose. “You’ll catch a bite in your lungs by letting all this cold air in.”

  “I don’t care!”

  He jumped up onto the bed next to her. “Mayfridh, what has happened? Why are you so distressed?”

  Even though she knew he wouldn’t approve, her heart ached to tell somebody her sad story. She threw her arms around his neck and confessed the whole tale, even found some more tears inside her. When she had finished, she sat back and waited for his stern lecture.

  Instead, he gazed at her with soft silent eyes.

  “Well,” she said, “say something.”

  “I’m sorry, Mayfridh. It hurts me to see you so unhappy.” His deep, honeyed voice was tender.

  “You’re not angry at me?”

  “I think you behaved unwisely, but love makes people unwise.”

  “I do love him, Eisengrimm,” she said, choking on the words. She took a deep shuddering breath to try to regain her composure. “And he loves me, there can be no doubt.”

  “He hasn’t said he loves you.”

  “Eisengrimm, I felt it. He loves me, and he can’t bear to love me.”

  “Does he not love Christine?”

  “Yes, I think he does love Christine. But not as he loves me. Perhaps he once loved her as much, but now he loves her as a brother might love a sister. She doesn’t understand him or his wonderful paintings. They aren’t a good match for each other, and now that he has fallen in love with me—”

  “Wait, wait. Do you know all this for a fact?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he said nothing to you about Christine.”

  “Words aren’t everything,” she snapped. “I’m right, Eisengrimm. He does love me.”

  Eisengrimm paused and seemed to be choosing his response carefully. “Mayfridh,” he said at last, “humans are . . . humans can be driven by feelings other than love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you understand what sexual desire is?”

  Mayfridh grew annoyed. Now he was treating her like a little girl. Of course she understood sexual desire; she felt it herself. “Do you think that because I am a virgin I am a complete fool?”

  “Be not angry, Mayfridh. I only suggest that perhaps Jude’s feelings are not love, but desire. A man can love one woman and desire another. Desire quickly turns to distaste once an attempt to fulfill it is made. Love remains. Love endures.”

  Mayfridh closed her eyes and slumped back on her bed. Leaves crackled and turned to dust beneath her. She should never have expected Eisengrimm to understand. She knew that Jude loved her, as certainly as she knew that the sun lived in the sky. Eisengrimm curled up next to her, and she put her arms around him, suddenly bone-weary.

  “I feel I haven’t slept for days,” she murmured.

  “Then sleep now, and I shall keep you warm.”

  “My heart hurts, Eisengrimm.”

  “In just a few weeks we’ll move to the Winter Castle. You will forget.”

  “But it’s so sad to forget things that matter.” She thought now not just of Jude and Christine, but of her mother, Diana.

  “Imagine how much worse it could be, Mayfridh. Imagine if you loved somebody in this world and couldn’t have that person. No change of seasons could ever make you forget.”

  “Hush, Eisengrimm, don’t make me even sadder. What a terrible thought.” She curled on her side against his warm back, her fingers spread in the fur over his ribs, and fell into a deep slumber.

  Eisengrimm was waiting when she emerged the following morning, the golden chain and medallion of his office as counselor fastened around his neck. Mayfridh took a step back.

  “No, not official business. Not today.”

  “My Queen, you have been absent for a number of weeks. There are angry questions in the village, and Hilda says the domestic staff have started to doubt your fitness to rule us. You must make an appearance this morning, you must show that you are still the queen.”

  “Of course I am still the queen!” she snapped. “How dare they question my activities?”

  “Because you have not been here, Mayfridh,” he replied forcefully. “The seasons must turn soon; the citizens of this world require your magic and your blessings. They grow worried that you aren’t preparing them sufficiently for winter.” He dropped his voice, gentle now. “Little May, to be queen involves responsibilities.”

  Damn Eisengrimm and damn the rest of the world! The change of seasons never faltered. Plenty of time still remained for her to distribute the magic and make the blessings. Were they all nervous old ladies? How could she even think about official duties while nursing a broken heart?

  “My Q
ueen?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming.”

  “Official robes, Mayfridh. I doubt the others will deem your current attire . . . appropriate.”

  Now she wanted to cry. The Real World was slipping farther and farther away from her every moment. “But Eisengrimm . . .”

  “Please, Little May. It will make matters easier.”

  She retreated to her bedroom and slammed the door, pulled off her tartan pinafore, replaced it with her yellow gown and bronze robe, hung her keys about her waist, and scraped her hair beneath a scarf. With as much dignity as she could assemble, she descended the stairs to the great hall and took her place on the throne. This was where she had sat that first day, when Christine had unwittingly wandered into her world. What a twisted and miserable path life had taken since then.

  “Majesty,” Hilda said with a curtsy.

  One by one the others in the gloomy hall acknowledged her: Thorsten the village mayor, the three village aldermen (she never remembered their names), Brathr the hatchet-faced reeve, and Eisengrimm.

  “Well then,” Mayfridh said, “why the sudden meeting?”

  “Majesty,” Thorsten began, “we are only weeks away from the turn of season, and haven’t received our winter magic yet.”

  “We still have time,” she said, irritated.

  “The villagers grow restless,” one of the aldermen said.

  “You may feel there is plenty of time, Queen Mayfridh,” Hilda said, “but the opinion of your subjects and your staff is not to be ignored.”

  How petty this was. She fantasized about enchanting them all into silence, then remembered she hadn’t a single spell left. Damn Hexebart.

  “Eisengrimm,” Mayfridh said, turning her attention to him, “do you not think we have plenty of time still?”

  “Your Majesty, I agree that the opinion of your subjects is a pressing issue.”

  “But we have many weeks, do we not? And the magic and the blessings can be administered in a day.”

  “That is true,” Eisengrimm conceded.