The Autumn Castle

by Kim Wilkins

  “I’ll teach you a lesson,” Hexebart says, dragging Diana toward the kitchen. “I’ll teach you for giving your daughter to Liesebet.”

  Diana moans. How funny. How excruciatingly funny.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mandy couldn’t get the smell off the bones. Normally, one good scrub was enough to remove the scent almost completely. But he’d been scrubbing his two new sets for two hours, and still he could smell it, faint but permanent. He even sneaked into the castle kitchen and stole a lemon, cut it in two, and squeezed the juice onto a cloth to rub the bones with. He sat, waist-deep and shivering in the river, scrubbing and scrubbing. The smell lingered everywhere. He sniffed the sack. Was that where it was coming from? Dunked the sack, rubbed it vigorously under the water.

  The damned smell was everywhere, he couldn’t escape it.

  “What did you expect, Immanuel?” he muttered bitterly. “You are in faeryland.” The sickening smell was wearing him down, making him nauseous, irritated. It was the kind of detail that might eventually send a man crazy, like a ringing in the ears or an itch under the skin.

  “Damn it!” he cried, flinging a collarbone away from him in despair. It bounced on the muddy bank and came to rest under a tree. He forced a big, shuddering breath into his lungs. It would not do to lose his wits. Quite clearly, it was time to return to Berlin. He had five sets of bones, and he had Mayfridh. It was enough. He rose from the river and walked to the bank, wringing water out of his pants. For a few excited seconds, as a cold wind tore past, he thought the smell was gone. But no, as the air stilled, there it was. Not fainter. Growing stronger.

  This was like a nightmare.

  He was freezing. He had to get back to the dungeon and warm himself on Eisengrimm’s fire. Slinging the bone sack over his shoulder, he began to contemplate how he could get Mayfridh out safely. Perhaps two trips to Berlin? One with the sack, and one with the queen. He pulled the ball of twine out of his top pocket; it glinted in the sun. What a clever little device. As long as he kept it, he could return anytime he wanted to this place and hunt more bones. Fantastic!

  Unless Mayfridh’s threats of the worlds moving apart were true. He looked to the sky. It had become wintry since he had been here. That first day, the sky had been sunset colors. Now it was dark gray and leaden. The air had a bite to it, but perhaps he was just feeling that because he was wet. How he longed to be back in his warm apartment, on his soft sofa, with his new treasures spread around him.

  Voices in the distance. Mandy frowned. All the time he had been in faeryland, he hadn’t heard another soul here near the river. He shrank into the shadows of a tree, pushing the twine back into his pocket, and listened as hard as he could.

  “. . . go towards the river, the others can go . . .”

  Someone was coming. Mandy glanced around frantically. Where could he hide himself and his treasures? A rock jutting over the water caught his eye. He dashed toward it and stuffed the sack of bones beneath it, then he looked about for a place for himself.

  About five steps away, beyond the mud of the bank, he spotted a deadfall all overgrown with moss and weeds, part of a large tree trunk on its side, and an arc of thorny bushes. He dived toward it. Scrambling on his belly, he tried to hide himself under the curve of the log. Thorns caught and scraped at him and he had to stifle a cry of pain. When he thought he was sufficiently hidden, he lay very still on his front, cold and sore. A drop of blood fell onto his hand from his forehead with a splat. For a few moments all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing.

  Footsteps approaching. Men’s voices. Mandy tried to count them. Three, no four. Four men, heading purposefully this way.

  “Now, you search the riverbank,” one said. “I’ll search for him among these trees.”

  Mandy struggled to keep up with the language. They were looking for someone. With an awful lurch of fear, he wondered if they were looking for him. He tried to shrink back farther but found an unbroken section of log. Too tight a squeeze.

  He listened, trying to catch their conversations, as they began to search nearby. Running footsteps came pounding down to the bank. They stopped near enough for Mandy to hear the exchange that followed.

  “Einar? What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve been following you for twenty minutes. Didn’t you hear me call?”

  “No.”

  “We checked Oma’s house. I found Sig’s hand.”

  A shocked silence. “His hand?”

  “On the cutting board. Sig didn’t murder Oma, somebody else did.”

  Oh, this was a bad sign. They hadn’t been looking for Mandy at all. For some reason they had deduced that Oma was murdered (though why the death of a woman already three hundred and thirty years old should be a matter for investigation was beyond him) and that the murderer was Sig, because he had disappeared. Damn. Mandy should never have left the hand there on the cutting board. He’d allowed his sense of drama to override his reason. Now, the hunt would be pursued even more vigorously, and Mandy was the prey.

  The other voices drew near. They crowded around Einar, and spoke rapidly. Mandy couldn’t keep up except for a few key phrases.

  “Who would do this?”

  “Is it an outsider?”

  “This explains the weather.”

  Again, the weather. Mayfridh was telling the truth; winter was coming early. Let it come. This afternoon he would be gone, with his stash of bones and his faery queen.

  “Resume the search!” a man cried.

  Once more, the footsteps began to circle near his hiding place. He dreaded to think what they would do if they found him. Kill him? Drag him down to the dungeons? He couldn’t finish his sculpture in a filthy prison in faeryland, and he’d never escape the horrible smell. Mandy was overwhelmed with such a tide of self-pity that he almost began to cry. He inched backward, managed to get his legs into the log.

  “Here! Here!” One of the men was shouting frantically. The footsteps pounded past, and Mandy allowed himself a breath of relief. They were heading in the other direction.

  A commotion ensued, and Mandy couldn’t make out much of what they were saying. They were speaking too fast, and their voices were being carried away on the wind. He strained his ears.

  Then he caught a single word, “bone,” and realized what had happened. The collarbone he had thrown aside in his earlier tantrum; he had forgotten to pick it up and now they had found it. The footsteps grew closer again, and a rhythmic, heavy beating sound.

  “He must be nearby,” somebody said. Thump, thump . . . thump. They were beating at the hedges and undergrowth with a heavy object, hoping to find him, hoping to drive him out.

  Mandy cowered under his crumbling log and deadfall. The bark above him was thin and he didn’t trust it to save him from a blow. He inched farther inside the log. His legs were compressed horribly; the crude pants he wore ripped and he could feel his flesh torn. But still he wriggled in all the way to his waist, and then his belly wouldn’t allow him any further access, no matter how hard he tried. He went limp, tucked his head under, and hoped the roof of bark above him would hold.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Closer and closer they drew. Mandy clutched at the dirty bark beneath him. Termites and tiny brown beetles crawled over his fingers. He set his teeth. He didn’t like bugs.

  Thump, thump, thump. They were standing not more than a few feet away, hacking at the deadfall, cutting through the thorns.

  Thump, thump, thump. This from the other end of his log, sending shuddering pulses along it, dislodging flakes of bark which bounced into his eyes.

  Thump, thump, thump. Now they moved on. He was too well hidden, they hadn’t found him. Ha! Why did he suspect for a moment that faeries could outsmart him?

  He lay very still now, and listened for a half-hour as they beat and searched the bushes and moved away into the forest. When he was very sure that they were all gone, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hands. A close call.
But when he thought of his stash of bones in the river and in the dungeon, perhaps such danger was worth it. He was a hero, a braver of peril in the name of art.

  As he began to relax and become more aware of the sound of his own breathing, he noticed the smell. The horrible, horrible smell.

  His eyes flew open, he pressed his nose to his hands and sniffed. The smell of faery bones. On his skin.

  No. No, no. Not on his skin. It hadn’t the power to cling so tightly to his skin, not after all the scrubbing and the soaking and the rinsing. And besides, he could tell the smell was coming from beneath his flesh and his veins.

  The smell was coming from his own bones.

  He cried out. His first instinct was to flee, but he was still too firmly tucked inside the log to move very far. And if you stay, you’ll eventually become one of us. He sniffed as far along his arms as he could. Without any doubt, his bones smelled distinctly like faery bones. His breath became panicky and shallow in his lungs, and a shot of bile rose in his throat. He remembered now the evening that Christine Starlight had sat next to him, and he’d thought he could smell the faintest scent of faery. She had been here. Mayfridh was telling the truth. Humans who came to faeryland became faeries. No! No! He had to get home. Immediately.

  Mandy heaved himself forward. He moved a half-inch, maybe even less, then stuck.

  “What the—?”

  Heave. This time, he didn’t move at all. Frantically, he jerked his body forward. But he was stuck fast inside the log.

  Mandy fell forward on his hands and let out a sob. Tried to wriggle his legs, tried to contract his buttock muscles, cursed his hips. At their broadest measure, they had become lodged behind a dip in the bark. No matter how hard he pulled against it, it wouldn’t give.

  “No!” he cried. His field of vision spangled with gold and black spots, and he realized he was breathing too shallowly. He forced deep breaths into his body, was horrified all over again by the smell of himself. Despair washed over him. He collapsed forward, tasted the ground beneath him as he sobbed and drooled. He could barely control the impulse to chew his own skin and liberate the bones within. I will change back, I will change back, he said over and over in his head, hoping it were true, needing to be home.

  When he had sobbed a while and calmed himself, he remembered the ball of magic twine in his pocket. Perhaps he could use it, right now, to get home. He could come back for the bones another time. The thought made him glad, relieved, and with a shift and a wriggle he managed to free it from his pocket and hold it before him.

  The damage was apparent immediately. His pocket must have been shredded by thorns and bark, and the twine had been frayed. He attempted to roll it out in front of him. Loose threads spun off it, and the twine itself separated into three strands, then broke completely. Desperate, still hoping for escape, he pulled on the twine and attempted to heave himself forward.

  Nothing moved, not him, not the space around him. He was not back in the Tiergarten; he was still trapped inside a dead log with the bugs and the ghastly, ghastly smell of his bones.

  See how very clever Hexebart is? Oh, yes, there are surely not many who could adapt so well to the Real World and all its shrewd devices. Of course the spell helped, but Hexebart is very bold and sharp, and look what she has mastered: electric frying pan, refrigerator, television, CD player . . . well, that’s all for now. Diana has many other things that Hexebart would love to learn about, but that will do for now.

  “Once the mince has browned nicely, add the crushed tomatoes and half a cup of water.”

  Hexebart thinks that the meal the television man is cooking looks very tasty, and her own rather lackluster in comparison. She glances at the frying pan. Yes, she has chopped onion and garlic and fried them in butter. But she has no mince to brown and no crushed tomatoes to add. Oh, oh! Only four poor toes. She supposes she could have cut off all the fingers and toes that Diana has, but she may be here for a few days and wants to ration herself on fun.

  “Stir and allow to simmer uncovered for about ten minutes.”

  Hexebart keeps a close eye on the television on the bench and hums along with the tune playing on the CD player. The cooking-show music doesn’t go with the CD music, but it drowns out those annoying little mews that Diana is making.

  “Mew, mew!”

  Hexebart marches to the cupboard, flings open the door, and glares at Diana. “You be quiet!” she shouts.

  Diana, her feet all bleeding and bandaged with tea towels, looks up with haunted gray eyes and a tear-streaked face. She has been screaming and screaming, but Hexebart has used a silence spell. The only sounds that Diana can make now are kitten noises.

  “Mew, mew!”

  “I’ll drown you in a sack!”

  “Mew, mew!”

  Hexebart slams the cupboard door shut and returns to the frying pan. She samples a toe. It’s very tasty, despite the fact that it isn’t a real “spaghetti bolo-gnese.” A new man is on the television now. There is a breeze on Hexebart’s back from the refrigerator so she closes the door and warms her hands over the frying pan, picking at the food inside.

  Oh, what a merry adventure! This is so much more fun than Ewigkreis, and Hexebart never never never wants to go back. She’s glad that Mayfridh is in a dungeon, far away. Because if Mayfridh catches Hexebart and locks her up again, all the fun will stop. Liesebet’s rules. Ah, how Hexebart misses Liesebet.

  Diana thumps from inside the cupboard. She’s kicking the door again, despite her bandaged feet.

  “I said be quiet!” Hexebart shrieks. The music on the CD reaches a crescendo and dies off. The pan sizzles and a woman on the television reads the news. Diana is quiet at last. Hexebart turns to the book of pictures she has found. Here, Mayfridh as a tiny little girl, like she was when she first arrived in Ewigkreis. Why on earth had Liesebet chosen such an ugly little child? Why hadn’t Liesebet chosen Hexebart’s daughter? Klarlied is much more beautiful, of that Hexebart is certain, even though she hasn’t seen her in many long years.

  Hexebart’s eyes fill with tears as she remembers the day, many many years past, when she offered Klarlied to Liesebet to adopt and keep forever as her very own child.

  “No, no,” Liesebet said. “She’s a witch. A witch can’t be queen!”

  But a human could? Just because she has pretty red ringlets and eyes like sapphires?

  Hexebart reaches for the carving knife. Suddenly she is hungry again.

  Jude held Mayfridh while she sobbed.

  “I’m so tired and thirsty,” she said.

  His hands were warm in her hair and she tried to sink into him, to disappear into him, but something black and iron and cold was in the way . . .

  Mayfridh woke, her neck uncomfortably crooked, her arm pinned under her on the filthy bed of straw. The sick disappointment of being brought back to her reality, of warm Jude disappearing from her arms, stole her breath from her lungs.

  Still in the dungeon.

  “Eisengrimm?”

  He didn’t answer, and she began to accept that he might be dead. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, her knees under her chin, and let her tears fall. When long minutes had passed with only the sound of her own crying, she rose and went to the door. If Eisengrimm were already dead, she would be foolish to stay locked in here. She pushed the door hard. No, it was as she thought. Mandy had locked her in. That meant he had the enchanted keys and was the only person who could set her free.

  She stood at the barred window for a few minutes, watching the still figure of the crow in the cage, silhouetted in the firelight. She felt her face contort into a sob, but no sound emerged and no tears moistened her eyes. A huge guttural scream was trapped between her throat and her face.

  “Good-bye, friend,” she managed to whisper, and returned to the pile of straw.

  She closed her eyes and thought about Eisengrimm. Liesebet and Jasper had brought her to Ewigkreis just before the change of season. Those first bewildering days of deep wint
er, when the sun never shone and Mayfridh was confused and screaming for her parents all the time, soon passed into the warm colors of the Spring Palace. There, the sense of always-belonging had first embraced her, and Liesebet had begun to introduce her as Princess Mayfridh, heir to the throne.

  It was at the Spring Palace that she had first met Eisengrimm. He had seemed very forbidding and serious, with his yellow wolf eyes and solemn demeanor. Truth be told, she was afraid of him for a long time. But then Queen Liesebet’s favorite bracelet had gone missing, and Eisengrimm had transformed to Fox to search all the nooks and crannies of the palace. Mayfridh had been enchanted with him in this form; small enough to pick up and cuddle, like a pet who could teach her and converse with her. By the time summer came, she wanted him with her all the time. The friendship had been good for both of them. While he had helped her prepare for the duties that would all too soon be thrust upon her, she had helped him become more light of heart, not so serious and somber.

  And now he had gone beyond death’s incomprehensible barrier, and become as deaf and unknowing as a stone. Mayfridh opened her eyes and sat up, clutching the straw in her hands and knowing it could not save her from falling into death. Mandy would return, he would kill her, and the moment of horrified realization was so hot and bright upon her that she yelped. But it was only a moment, and then death became ordinary again, something that happened to everyone. Yes, she was afraid of dying, wondered if it would be painful or filled with frightful noises and sensations, but death, once it came, was resolution. Acceptance. She slumped back into her bed of straw and closed her eyes again. If only she had died in that moment with Jude, lying in his arms after making love, feeling whole and warm and embodied, feeling as though she had found the one place where care and woe were not permitted to enter. With a sigh she re-created the scene in her mind, replacing the cold darkness with a pair of warm arms; the still body of her dear friend with the live presence of her one love, her only lover. If Fate intervened and she saw Jude again, she would not let him go. Friendship, royal duty, his history of lies—nothing could persuade her to give him up again.