The Autumn Castle

by Kim Wilkins

  Mayfridh turned. Her smile didn’t make it all the way to her eyes. Still, she advanced and held out her arms, enclosed Christine in a hug.

  “I was worried about you,” Christine said against her hair.

  “Me too. About you.” Mayfridh stood back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Mayfridh said, and this time her smile worked.

  “You can’t fool me,” Christine said. “You look tense.” She tilted her head to the side, examining Mayfridh’s face. “And kind of pale. Are you sick?”

  Mayfridh shook her head and sighed. “A few problems back home with Hexebart, with the villagers. It was hard to get away at all.”

  “I’m glad you came. Are you staying long?”

  “I don’t . . . look, I came to speak to you about something. Can we go somewhere?”

  Christine glanced around the shop: Tuesday-afternoon quiet. “I’m sure nobody will mind if I leave a little early. Wait here.” She went back to the storeroom to explain her early departure to Natalie and to collect her purse and coat. A few moments later, she and Mayfridh were heading up to Zoo Station.

  “A bit slower,” Christine said, unable to match Mayfridh’s agitated pace.

  “You’re in pain.”

  Christine waved a dismissive hand. “So what do you need to talk to me about?”

  “Eisengrimm said you were concerned about traveling back to our world.”

  “Well, Jude is concerned more than me. But, yes, when you disappeared so suddenly I thought that winter had already come.”

  Mayfridh plunged her hands into the pockets of her long blue coat. “No. In fact, it’s still at least a month away. It’s been warm; the trees are shedding quite slowly.”

  “Still, Jude said that—”

  “Jude doesn’t have to experience your pain,” Mayfridh said firmly.

  Christine was puzzled. Mayfridh had never said a bad word about Jude before. “No, that’s right.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” Mayfridh continued. “You have a month left. In that time, you can be without suffering. Then you have the rest of your life to spend with it. Go. Go to Ewigkreis. Enjoy it. Eisengrimm will look after you.”

  “Eisengrimm? Not you?” They stopped to wait for traffic lights.

  Mayfridh smiled, turned her palms up. “I need to see my mother.”

  “Your mother’s been frantic. She’ll be glad you’re back.”

  The lights changed and they crossed the road, fought their way through swelling Christmas crowds on Kurfürstendamm.

  “So will you go?” Mayfridh asked.

  “I’ll talk to Jude and—”

  Mayfridh was already shaking her head. “No, no, no. He’ll talk you out of it again. Trust me on this. Trust me.” Mayfridh took her hand. “Go. You must have missed it.”

  “I—”

  “Go now. Look at you . . . you’re hobbling like a cripple. You’re in terrible pain.”

  Christine bit her lip. Instant relief; no blue tablets.

  “I’ll explain to Jude. I’ll reassure him.” Mayfridh was intense. It was suspicious, but also persuasive.

  “Why are you so concerned that I go?” Christine asked.

  “Because I care,” Mayfridh said simply. “I care a great deal, and genuinely. You still carry the twine around with you?”

  Christine patted her purse. “Yeah, it’s right here.”

  “Then what’s stopping you?”

  Christine took a deep breath. Eisengrimm and the beautiful woods, and that gorgeous, free, floating feeling of being normal and whole. Oh, she’d missed it, all right. She’d missed it for thirteen years. She shrugged, offered Mayfridh a smile. “Nothing’s stopping me, I guess.”

  Sometimes, since Hexebart had spoken that horrible sentence, Mayfridh had felt like her body might be shaking to pieces. Starting slowly, deep inside, with a shuddering ache of disbelief, then disappointment, then disavowal.

  It simply could not be true.

  Yet, Hexebart had sworn it under magical oath. Again and again, she had repeated the same sentence. Jude killed Christine’s parents. How could it be true? How could such a fact exist in the world without angels weeping? If it were true—

  It can’t be true.

  —then why was he with her? How could he pretend in every moment that he had nothing to do with the accident?

  Mayfridh still had the key to Gerda’s apartment, the key to the front door of the hotel. She let herself in, checked nobody had heard or seen her. No Mandy in the gallery. She crept up the stairs. Only one way existed to know if the awful thing were true: to ask Jude. To hear it directly from his traitorous lips.

  She knocked on the door to the apartment. This was the real reason she had urged Christine so strongly to leave for Ewigkreis. The winter blessings had been distributed and a celebration would take place that evening in the village. She had asked Eisengrimm to take Christine down the slope, to fill her full of wine and firelight and dancing, to keep her there as long as he could; long enough to dig for the truth behind those horrible words.

  Jude killed Christine’s parents.

  She raised her hand, ready to knock again. Footsteps inside. Then the door swung inward.

  He looked at her, speechless.

  “Hello, Jude,” she said. “Can I come in?”

  “I . . .” He had a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was damp. “I was in the shower.”

  “I’ll wait for you to finish. I need to speak to you.”

  His eyes darted about nervously, but he let her in. “Christine will be home any minute,” he said.

  “No, she’s gone to Ewigkreis, she’s . . . look, just go and get dressed. It’s important that I speak to you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s this about? Did you tell her to go?”

  “Please. Get dressed. I don’t want to have this conversation with you in a towel.”

  He still looked dubious, but backed away toward the bathroom. Mayfridh sat down heavily at the kitchen table, closed her eyes, and saw his torso again. Damp, warm, smooth. Desire lurched through her. He was back a moment later, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt.

  “Okay,” Jude said, standing in front of her, arms folded. He looked defiant; like a young boy. “What’s all this about?”

  Mayfridh swallowed, her mouth dry. There was no other way to ask. “Did you kill Christine’s parents?” she managed, her voice squeezed tight and flat.

  She saw the blood drain from his face. He was ashen in an instant. His hand reached for the back of a chair, then he fell into it. Thud.

  Mayfridh felt a violent trembling in her legs. “Jude?” she asked. To hear it from Hexebart was one thing; to see him like this was terrifying her.

  “Please,” he said, his voice little more than a hoarse gasp, “please, don’t tell Christine.”

  Christine had to wait a few minutes for a group of rowdy school children to go by. When their cries died off in the distance, she sank into the shadows of the elm, the ball of twine clutched in her right hand. A shiver. Yes, she was nervous. Understandable, really. For weeks she had stopped herself from performing this act, convinced she would become lost somewhere in the swirl of faerylands forever.

  She checked around her once more. She thought she saw a dark shape dive off the path, but when she peered among the trees she could see no other movement. A bird? Or the shadow cast by a shower of leaves, shivering off branches under the persuasion of a cold draft? Thirty seconds, forty . . . no further movement. She was safe.

  Christine opened her fingers and released the twine.

  The horror subsided, leaving only disbelief. Mayfridh noticed that somehow he was managing to make coffee for them both. How could he make coffee as though today were an ordinary day? But then, she realized, he’d been pretending things were ordinary for a long time now. He had been making coffee for Christine for four years, all the time knowing. All the time remembering.

  He came to the sof
a and placed the coffee in front of her, sitting opposite. His hand shook. The coffee splashed, made a puddle on the table.

  “I’ll clean that later,” he said, thinking aloud.

  She took up her cup to give herself something to do with her hands. “You have to tell me everything,” she said.

  “I know.” He closed his eyes a second. When he opened them, he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You must be thinking . . . I mean, I know what you’re thinking, but whatever your opinion of me is right now, it can never be as low as my opinion of myself. Never.”

  “Just explain it to me from the beginning,” Mayfridh said, growing impatient.

  He sighed. “So simple and yet so complicated,” he said. “It started when I was born, I guess. I was christened Julian Brown. My father left, my mother died, I was raised by an uncle who drank and didn’t care about me. I was always in trouble. I stole things, I wrecked things, I got into fights, I flunked every year of school. I ran away from him at twelve, lived in eight different foster homes, squatted in old warehouses, spent four months living in a sleeping bag under a bridge in California . . . This isn’t to make you feel sorry for me.”

  “Go on.” She did feel sorry for him.

  “Okay, fast-forward to November 1989. I’m fifteen. I steal a car. I drive it all the way across country to New York. I’m planning to sell it, right? To get some money to set me up in a new city. I’m driving it through a tunnel when I lose concentration for a second and—BANG! I hit someone. I stop. I look in the rearview mirror. The car behind me is a total mess, mashed against the wall. I freak out. I drive away.” He dropped his head. His fingers were spread out over his knees. “I drove away.”

  “That was the accident that . . . ?”

  He nodded. “If it had been anyone else in that car, maybe they wouldn’t have found me. But it was Alfa and Finn Starlight. Everyone wanted blood. They traced the wreck of the car that I’d sold for parts, hunted me down. Found a scared kid, someone they couldn’t even name in the press. I went to juvenile detention, was released two years later.”

  Mayfridh didn’t know what to say, so said nothing. She placed her coffee cup on the table, waited for him to continue.

  Jude lifted his head and met her gaze with an attempt at a smile. “I knew by this time what a bad person I was. So I changed everything. I changed my name, I changed my focus, I started to paint. Life improved, gradually.”

  “And you met Christine.”

  “Yes, I met Christine.”

  “It’s incredible. A coincidence that you should meet.”

  He pressed his lips together a moment, thinking. Then said, “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of the gossip columns did an article on her. You know, ‘Reclusive daughter of seventies pop stars lives tragic, empty life’ . . . something like that. I became obsessed with it; so guilty. I knew she was lonely, I knew she was in pain, and I knew it was my fault.”

  Mayfridh realized she was holding her breath. The first horrible truth had at least been an accident, a careless moment in a wild youth. But what was Jude confessing to now? “You mean, you found her on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “So she wouldn’t be lonely anymore.”

  “And then you fell in love with her? Right?”

  Silence.

  “Jude?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You don’t love Christine?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, as though trying to block out a harsh light. “It’s hard to explain,” he said.

  “You’ve started now. You have to finish.”

  He opened his eyes again. “Yes, I feel love for Christine. She’s great: kind, generous, unassuming. No, I never fell in love with her. I’m responsible for her; I care very much what happens to her; I don’t want her to suffer another instant in her life. I want her happiness above all things.”

  “But it’s all because . . . ?”

  “Of my guilt,” he confirmed. “I’ve never been in love with her.”

  Mayfridh sank back on the sofa, bewildering emotions tumbling inside her. The deception was immense, even cruel, but she sensed no cruel intent behind it. Looking at him now, she still saw only beautiful Jude, perhaps even more beautiful now he had revealed how troubled and conflicted he was.

  “I’ve tried,” he said quietly. “I’ve tried to be in love with her.”

  “Four years.”

  “I haven’t been counting. I’m determined to do this for the rest of my life. To atone. I’ve done it for reasons that are pure and true. I never want to hurt her again. I’ve been faithful. I haven’t even looked at another woman.” His eyes dropped, embarrassed. “Well, until . . .”

  Mayfridh suddenly saw her own role in this drama clearly, and recoiled from herself, despised her attempts to make Jude fall in love with her. The flirtation, the dropping-in when Christine wasn’t around, the subtle faery glamour she turned on whenever he was near. But no, that wasn’t fair either. She and Jude had connected; beneath all the silly games she had played to be near him, they had connected.

  “I’ll marry her when I can afford it. I’ll raise a family with her,” he continued. “I’ll go to my grave loving her the way I always have. It just won’t be the way love is usually meant to be.”

  “And if you fell in love with someone else?” Mayfridh asked, challenging him with her gaze. “For real?”

  His eyes met hers and didn’t waver. Desire rushed upon her and she cursed herself for thinking about her own happiness when his and Christine’s were so distant.

  “I never thought that could happen,” he said. “I could never imagine that there existed a woman in the world who could sway me from my purpose. I thought I was making the sacrifice for life.” He paused. “I still believe in that sacrifice, Mayfridh.”

  These last words stung her. Whatever he felt for her—and he’d all but admitted that he felt the connection as much as she did—he was determined to deny it. He was determined to continue in his deception, and how could she persuade him otherwise? The alternative was to tell Christine the truth.

  “Mayfridh,” he said, leaning forward, his voice dark and serious, “Christine can never know.”

  “Of course.”

  “Only you and I know this story. I will never tell her.”

  “Nor will I. She’s . . . I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “Yes. Yes, exactly. And she’s got enough pain in her life. You’ll go. You’ll be back in faeryland and you’ll forget all this, and I’ll be left here with this life that I’ve created for myself, and I’ll get through it and it won’t be so bad. But she can’t know, not ever.”

  “Our little secret,” she said, humorlessly.

  “Until winter. Then just my secret again.”

  A sudden knock on the door startled them both. Jude jerked to his feet, smoothing his hair back, muttering, “I wonder who that is?” Mayfridh felt guilty and flushed, hoping it wasn’t Christine, then realized Christine wouldn’t have knocked.

  Jude opened the door. It was Gerda.

  “Hi, Jude,” she said. “I wondered if—oh, hi, Mayfridh.” She peered into the room curiously. It had begun to grow dark but Jude had switched no lights on. Mayfridh realized she looked anxious and guilty. Gerda, with her keen eye, hadn’t missed it. “What are you two up to?” she asked, only the thinnest veneer of humor over her words.

  “Nothing,” Jude said, his casualness returning. “We just got talking while waiting for Christine to come home.”

  “Where have you been, Mayfridh?” Gerda asked. “We’ve all missed you.”

  Mayfridh rose from the sofa and joined them at the door. “I had some problems back home,” she said. “I won’t be staying long.” She shot a glance at Jude, who ignored it.

  “But you’re staying tonight, right?” Gerda asked. “Come on, Garth sent me a bottle of Swedish vodka—trying to make up with me—and you’re just the g
irl to help me drink it.”

  Mayfridh tried to smile, realized it wasn’t so hard to do. “Yes, I’d love it.”

  Gerda switched her attention back to Jude. “I wanted to borrow some laundry powder. I’m all out.”

  “Um, sure. Wait here.” Jude disappeared into the bathroom.

  Gerda fixed Mayfridh with her eye. “You look guilty.”

  “Do I?”

  “You did when Jude opened the door.”

  “You’re imagining it.”

  Jude returned with a box of laundry powder and handed it to Gerda. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She hooked her elbow through Mayfridh’s and dragged her into the hallway. “Come on,” she said, “you can help me with my laundry.”

  “Good-bye, Mayfridh,” Jude said.

  Mayfridh glanced over her shoulder. Jude at the door, like the first time she had seen him. Perfect, dark-eyed, tangle-haired Jude.

  Before she could say good-bye, he had closed the door.

  Three a.m. came and still Mayfridh was no closer to sleep. The vodka had been the only way to distract Gerda from asking insistently what she and Jude had been “up to.” Now, lying in bed with a narrow band of streetlight that fell through the crack in the curtain, Mayfridh’s mouth tasted sour and her head throbbed lightly. Her body, so saturated with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, could not find a smooth or restful position in the bed. She tried her right side, her left, her back. It was like trying to sleep on a handful of pebbles. She sat up.

  What was she even doing here? So close to Jude. Just one floor below him. Was he sleeping?

  Three a.m. seemed the perfect time to contemplate secrets and deceit and betrayal. The gray darkness and the shadows. Mayfridh dropped her head into her hands. Hexebart had really only told her half the secret: Jude had killed Christine’s parents. The most awful half of the secret was that he had spent four years pretending to love her, and intended to spend the rest of his life living the same deception. She knew she should be angry with him; he lied to Christine with every beat of his heart. Yet Mayfridh felt nothing but sadness and pity and worry and love for him.