by Kim Wilkins
And yet not smart enough. Just a stupid dog in the end. Hexebart is free.
It won’t take long to fix. Hexebart is clever and Hexebart is patient. See? If she rubs the ropes on the rough edge of this hollow, they will eventually wear right through and drop off. Then Hexebart will clap her hands with glee and make magic with her fingers, and who can stop Hexebart then? Nobody. Certainly not a smelly little changeling princess and her dog.
Ha, ha, la, la, la,
Hexebart is going far.
My, that’s a cold wind. Brr! Hexebart tries to wriggle her fingers. They are icy on the tips, poor things. But never mind, because Hexebart won’t be here for long, no. Hexebart is going somewhere where the houses are warm and the windows don’t let in drafts and people don’t have to live in cages. Hexebart is going to the Real World.
Over There, Over There,
Who but Hexebart would dare?
Hexebart isn’t afraid. Hexebart knows people there and will be sure to visit them. Especially that girl with the long brown hair . . . her name is . . . Christine, that’s right.
Hexebart has a little story to tell Christine.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Where’s Miranda?” Christine took a wary step back from Mandy, who stood outside her door, wild-eyed and with his shirt only half-buttoned. His pale, hairy belly was exposed. “I don’t know,” Christine said, “I haven’t seen her for nearly a week.”
“Gerda told me she left. Did she say she was leaving? Is she coming back?”
A thread of unease curled in her stomach. Mandy sounded desperate. Christine had no idea he had fallen so hard for Mayfridh. She also had no idea why Mayfridh had gone. She hadn’t left a note and the suddenness of her departure made Christine wonder whether the seasons had changed early back on Ewigkreis, and whether her friend had disappeared forever with them. Already she had fielded three frantic calls from Diana Frith, who also suspected the worst.
“Mandy, she could be gone forever,” Christine said, hoping this would end the conversation definitively. “It was always a possibility.”
“Forever?” His voice was forlorn, a child who’d seen his favorite teddy washed out to sea.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d grown so fond of her.”
He turned away without answering and started up the stairs. Christine gratefully closed the door, leaning back on it with a sigh. Mandy was becoming weirder and weirder. It made her wonder if there was more to him than simply a few disgusting habits and a lot of money.
And if so, what more was there? She shuddered. What an unnerving thought.
Gerda was relating the name and physical dimensions of every man she had ever slept with—an astonishingly full and thorough list—when Christine realized she had lost Jude.
She stopped Gerda mid-sentence and turned to check the dark, slick street behind her. “ Where are the boys?”
Gerda turned with her, keeping the umbrella steady overhead. “They must have stopped to buy cigars. Remember we were all talking about it at dinner? Come on, let’s keep going. I don’t want to stand out here in the rain.”
They set course for home, and Christine said, “Go on, Gerda, you were saying?”
“I’ve forgotten where I was up to.”
“Lars, seven-and-a-half inches,” Christine reminded her.
“I’m tired of it now.”
“I wish they’d told us they were stopping somewhere. The rain’s getting heavier.”
“We wouldn’t have all fitted under one umbrella,” Gerda said, giving the umbrella a twirl. “This is pretty, Miss Starlight. Where did you buy it?”
“Can’t remember. I’ve had it for years.” Christine glanced over her shoulder again.
Gerda punched her arm lightly. “Don’t worry about Jude, he’ll be fine. Pete will look after him.”
Christine raised an eyebrow. “Pete? Look after anybody?”
Gerda giggled. “I see your point. Hey, have you heard from Mayfridh?”
“Not a word.”
“I miss her,” Gerda said, “she was a lot of fun.”
“You miss her because you’re not getting free clothes anymore.”
“That too. But I do miss her.”
“So do I.” More than she could put into words.
“It was weird, wasn’t it, how she just disappeared?”
Christine sidestepped a puddle. The rain was heavy now, infringing on the dry space under the umbrella. “I expect she had to go back. You know, with winter coming.”
“She told me she’d be here for weeks yet. At least a month.”
“Perhaps something happened back in Ewigkreis.”
“You’d think she’d leave a note.”
“It’s strange.”
“You could go and see her.”
“Jude’s worried that winter has already started there. That I’d get stuck.”
Gerda frowned. “Not yet. Hey, give me the twine. I’m not afraid to go.”
Christine couldn’t bear the thought of Gerda being able to share in her precious journeys to Ewigkreis. She’d convince Eisengrimm to smoke cigars and the locals to build a jazz club before a week was out. “Sorry. Mayfridh made me promise not to give it to anyone else,” she lied.
Gerda showed no signs of disappointment. “Mandy’s taken her disappearance badly.”
Christine shivered, but it may have been from the sudden cold wind that roared down the street, chilling the rain on her sleeve to ice. “What has he said to you?”
“He just asks about her a lot. Where did she go? Is she coming back? Did she say anything before she left?” Gerda fished a cigarette out of her pocket and jammed it in her mouth. “What do you think it’s all about? Was he in love with her?”
“I guess so. He’s been freaky since she left. On edge. Watching me closely.” Christine laughed. “I thought he was creepy before, but it was only the tip of the iceberg.”
“Oh yeah, he has unknown depths of creepiness,” Gerda said. Her lighter flashed in the dark, then sputtered out. “Damn rain,” she said.
“Here, let me help.”
Christine stopped and cupped her hand around Gerda’s while she lit her cigarette. She took the opportunity to check behind her again. Where was Jude? Normally she wouldn’t worry, but he’d been so vague and withdrawn lately. She could easily imagine him stepping out in front of a car without seeing it.
“Still,” Gerda said as they turned into Friedrichstrasse, “you must be a little relieved that she’s gone.”
“Relieved?”
“She had her eye on Jude. Didn’t you notice?”
“Many women before her have had their eyes on Jude,” Christine said. “Nothing ever comes of it.”
“Any as beautiful as Mayfridh?” Gerda smiled and poked her elbow in Christine’s ribs. “Apart from me, of course?”
Christine took the poke with good humor. “I don’t know if beauty comes into it, Gerda. You’ve seen what he paints.”
“Ouch, Miss Art Critic,” Gerda said, pulling the umbrella away. “You can walk in the rain for that remark. You’re talking about Jude the genius.”
“Don’t, Gerda, I hate getting wet.”
“Sorry.” The umbrella was restored. “Has Jude said anything about Mayfridh going?”
“No. I told him she’d disappeared and he just went back to his painting.”
“So you really think he doesn’t notice other women?”
Christine thought about that splash of red, so hastily painted out. “Sometimes he doesn’t even notice me, Gerda.”
“Maybe he just pretends not to notice them. Maybe he has a secret other life where he indulges all his sexual fantasies.”
Christine gave Gerda a cautionary frown. “Don’t put ideas like that in my head.” For an instant she imagined finding out that Jude had slept with Gerda. It would kill her.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to be nasty.”
“You never do.” She checked over her shoulder once more before they turned i
nto Vogelwald-Allee. “Look, there they are.”
Gerda turned and waved madly at Jude and Pete, who were huddling together in the rain about two hundred yards behind them. “Christine,” she said, “wait here under this awning. I’ll take them the umbrella.”
“But—”
A second later, Gerda was tearing off down the street and Christine had to slip under the awning of a music shop to protect herself from the downpour. The movement pulled a muscle in her back, and she pressed her hand against it. From here, she could see diagonally across the road to Hotel Mandy-Z. She supposed she could dash the distance in the rain; it was only about fifty yards. As she looked at the front of the building, her eye was drawn upward to the gabled window at the top of the building. The attic. Mandy’s attic. She remembered the door with the three deadlocks. That was where it led.
The streetlight over the storm drain, obscured by the swinging branches of the big elms, reflected in the window but illuminated nothing within. Everything was black behind it. What was in there?
The gurgling of the storm drain and the thundering of the rain on the awning meant she didn’t hear the others approach. When Jude grabbed her in a wet embrace she nearly shrieked.
“Sorry, babe. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. I was thinking about something unpleasant.” She touched his wet curls. “You’re soaked.”
“Let’s go inside and dry off,” Pete said.
“Good idea.”
The four of them squashed together under the umbrella and made it across the street to Hotel Mandy-Z, then inside where it was warm and dry.
Early the next morning, before Jude was awake, Christine dressed and let herself out of the building. She stood under the elms in the drenched dawn and looked up at the gabled window again. No wonder it had been black the night before. The window was painted over. She returned to her apartment and lay down on the bed next to Jude, wondering why someone would need to lock an attic up with three deadlocks, and paint the window black.
—from the Memoirs of Mandy Z.
I am so filled with frustration and anger. Where is Miranda? Why can’t anyone give me an answer? I go to sleep thinking about her, I dream about her, I wake up with her name on my lips like the bad aftertaste of an ill-digested meal the evening before.
So much of this frustration and anger is misdirected too. I also feel enraged with myself, because I know that whatever is in Miranda, whatever it is that makes her a creature apart from the human race, it is in me in small measure. I am, remember, the product of a union between human and faery. Thirteen generations ago, yes, but not necessarily thirteen generations diluted. Have you never seen a painting of a distant ancestor, and marveled at how his teeth are prominent like your teeth, or how her eyes are heavy-lidded like your eyes? Each of my twelve male ancestors in a direct line from the faery has been blind or color-blind as I am. I know, whether I’m comfortable with it or not, that it is in me.
Now humans don’t normally breed with faeries. The story of my family’s original union with them goes like this. In the far north on the borders with Denmark, there lived a wealthy man with two sons named Oswald and Diebolt. The man thought it would be good for his sons to go out into the wide world and try their fortune. He gave them each a knapsack with food and gold coins in it, and waved them off on their adventure.
The younger son, Diebolt, walked for a day through forest and found a little cottage in bad repair. The dense shade allowed only a few stains of sunlight to shine on the rotted panels and abandoned birds’ nests. Beyond, in the distance, he could see the turrets of a castle. The sun was low in the sky and he wondered if he should stop for the night at the cottage, or make for the castle even if it meant spending a night in the forest. The choice was taken from his hands when a strange-looking little man—a dwarfish fellow with thin wrinkled arms and a tuft of white hair—popped out of the cottage doorway and said, “I am old and poor, but you may stay here the night as long as you give me half of what’s in your knapsack.”
Diebolt looked at the dwarf, who was indeed very old, and at his rundown cottage, and thought, “Why should I have so much more than this little man? Half the gold and food in my knapsack is a high price for a night’s rest, but he needs it more than I do. I’m young and strong.”
So Diebolt agreed. He came inside and laid out all the food and coins from his knapsack on the table, divided them carefully in half, and gave the dwarf his share. Then he set about helping the dwarf prepare a meal, swept the hearth, and fixed a leak in the roof. He became exhausted soon after and the dwarf led him to a warm, soft bed, where he slept soundly.
The next morning, as he bade the dwarf farewell, the dwarf pulled a shining object out of his pocket and handed it to Diebolt.
“What’s this?” Diebolt said, examining the object. It was a gleaming red jewel strung on a silver chain.
“It’s a token of my gratitude. Wear it always and it will bring you good fortune.”
Diebolt thanked the dwarf warmly and hung the jewel about his neck. Then he hoisted his knapsack on his back and went on his way.
Now Diebolt’s brother Oswald had been lazy and slow in leaving his father’s home, and was many hours behind him. As Diebolt was leaving the dwarf’s house, Oswald arrived. He saw the jewel about Diebolt’s neck and said, “Where did you get that beautiful jewel?”
Diebolt explained how he had spent the night with the dwarf (Oswald had spent it at an expensive inn not far from his father’s house) and how the dwarf had rewarded him with the jewel.
“Now, if you’ll come with me,” Diebolt said, “we can share in my good fortune and take on the wide world together.”
“No, thank you,” Oswald said, for he had another plan, “I’d prefer to travel at my own pace.” Then they waved each other good-bye and went their separate ways.
Oswald eyed the dwarf’s house. How could someone in such a tumbledown house have such a fine jewel, and if he had one, might he have another? Oswald knocked on the door and the dwarf appeared.
“I would like a jewel like the one you gave my brother,” Oswald said.
“I am old and poor, but you may stay here the night as long as you give me half of what’s in your knapsack,” the dwarf said.
Oswald could barely contain his laughter. Half of what was in his knapsack for a bed in this hovel! Then he thought of a way to trick the dwarf so he agreed.
They went inside and Oswald took from his knapsack one loaf of bread. “This is all I have,” he said, “but you may take half of it.”
The dwarf took the bread gratefully and asked Oswald to sweep the hearth. Oswald thought that sweeping the hearth was beneath him, so he did it halfheartedly and accidentally spread ashes onto the floorboards. Then the dwarf asked him to fix a loose window, but he was growing tired from all the work, so he pretended to fix it by stuffing the gap with a rag. Then, although it was only midday, Oswald said he was tired and where was the bed he had been promised? The dwarf led him to a soft, warm bed and he spent all day in it, dreaming about the jewel that the dwarf would give him and feeling very pleased with himself.
The next morning, Oswald awoke early and was so impatient for his jewel that he rose and made a lot of noise to wake the dwarf up.
“I’m going now, little man,” Oswald said. “I know you paid my brother handsomely, and expect the same courtesy.”
“Ah, I see,” said the dwarf. “Very well, hold out your hand.” And the dwarf handed Oswald a shining jewel strung on a silver chain. “There you are, it’s what you deserve.”
Oswald hung it about his neck and set off in the early morning light.
About a mile from the cottage, he noticed a strange buzzing noise. He looked around but couldn’t see where it came from. He took a few steps farther, but the buzzing was growing louder. In fact, it seemed to be coming from under his shirt. He pulled open the front of his shirt and the jewel on the silver chain was gone. In its place was a piece of string with a fly tied
to it.
“Argh!” he cried, tearing the string from around his neck and flinging it to the ground.
The fly slipped the knot and took flight, but not before it darted toward Oswald’s face and, in the very voice of the dwarf, said, “You lied and were lazy and greedy. You have received precisely what you deserved.”
Oswald was so angry that he stomped through the forest, cursing and breaking branches with rage. He walked so fast that he managed to catch up with Diebolt, who had spent the night in the forest, and was incensed to see that Diebolt’s jewel still hung around his neck
“How is it possible that your jewel hasn’t turned into a fly?” Oswald demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“The dwarf gave me a jewel too, but because I only shared a loaf of bread with him, and spread the ashes rather than sweeping them, and fixed the window with an old rag, it turned into a fly and flew away.”
“If you lied and were lazy, why would you deserve a jewel?” Diebolt said. “Come, brother, don’t be sad. I’ll share my jewel with you. You see, it’s magic. Last night when I realized I’d have to spend the night here in the forest, I just held the jewel and wished for a warm bed, and one appeared in front of me. In the morning, when I woke, the bed disappeared again.”
Now Oswald was even more angry. A magic jewel! He didn’t want to share it, he wanted it all to himself. So he raised his staff and hit Diebolt over the head. When Diebolt fell to the ground, he stole the jewel and hung it about his own neck, then proceeded on his way to the castle.