The Autumn Castle

by Kim Wilkins

  “A little, yes. But I need to get out of here, really quick.”

  “So do I. Christine, I think Eisengrimm is dead.”

  “What?”

  Mayfridh indicated the cage, hanging still in the sputtering firelight. A sob stopped up her speech. “He’s . . .”

  Christine went to the cell, eyed the rope above her and pulled it to bring the birdcage close to the bars. She tied a knot to hold it there. “Mayfridh, he’s breathing.”

  Relief leapt into her heart. “Breathing?”

  “I can feel his heart. He’s alive.”

  “Eisengrimm? Can you hear me?”

  “He’s not conscious. Is there someone in the village who can tend to him?”

  “Klarlied. If you get us out of here . . .”

  Christine was trying the door.

  “But . . . Mandy has the keys.”

  Christine turned on her heel and gazed across at Mayfridh. “Mandy has the keys.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can’t use a magic spell to get out?”

  “The locks are all enchanted. Only the keys will open them.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. I dread to think what he’s doing. He hasn’t been back for a long time.”

  “It might take forever to find him. What if he’s hiding in the Eternal Woods?”

  “You have to find him. I can’t do anything in here.”

  “What if I miss him and he comes back here to kill you?” Christine approached the cell door and pulled a spell out of her pocket. “Can you find him with one of these?”

  “I don’t . . . well, yes. Yes, I could. I can locate a foreign presence, and that’s exactly what he is. Here. Hand it to me.”

  Mayfridh’s fingers closed over the spell. Her brain was racing—Christine here, Eisengrimm alive, spells to use—but she concentrated as hard as she could and let her eyes roll back, seeking out the foreign presence in Ewigkreis. In her mind’s eye she scanned the land, like a bird might see it, rolling off east and west and into the shadows. A dim splash under the castle: that was Christine, such a veteran of her visits to Ewigkreis that she barely made an impression. Mayfridh took a moment to examine the shadow. Christine was changing rapidly. If she stayed as little as a month she’d be all faery.

  Scanning again across the land. A dark cancerous speck caught her attention down near the river. She homed in on it, down and down, plunging toward the ground. A deadfall, an old tree; down and down farther.

  Mayfridh laughed.

  “What is it?”

  “He’s stuck in a fallen log near the river. He can’t move.”

  Christine smiled. “He can’t hurt me.”

  “You can bargain with him. Help him free if he gives you the keys.”

  “But if I free him—?”

  “Not free in Ewigkreis. Banish him back to the Real World.”

  “How? I can’t do that. I don’t have any magic.”

  Mayfridh paused, her lips tightly compressed, as she considered. “If you give me your hands and a spell, I can pass to you a limited ability to wield enchantment. Limited. You are only a human after all.”

  “Sorry,” Christine said, her voice touched with sarcasm.

  Mayfridh felt a jolt of guilt; her mind skating back to the memories of Jude. “I didn’t mean to be—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Here, do your work. I want to get out of these dungeons.” Christine passed her hands through the bars. She glanced around her, agitated. “I feel like I’m choking on the dark.”

  Mayfridh pressed her palms against Christine’s, molding the spell into her skin and willing it down into her bones. “There,” she said, “your hands are faery hands now. You can work magic.”

  “Really? That easily?” Christine withdrew her hands.

  “I’m the queen,” she replied, knowing she sounded imperious. “I make the rules here.”

  “Most of the time,” Christine said with a wry smile. “There’s Hexebart.”

  “Yes, yes. Most of the time,” Mayfridh conceded, embarrassed. “Beware of Mandy, Christine. He’s dangerous and he’s clever.”

  “I’m sending him back to Berlin, and then I’m going home to New York and I’ll try to forget I ever met him.”

  An incongruity occurred to Mayfridh. She had been too preoccupied to think of it before. “Christine, how did you get across to this world?”

  Christine touched her back, not looking up. “Jude and a sculptor’s mallet.”

  Mayfridh winced. Guilt like nausea. “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “There was no other way. Quickly, explain to me where Mandy is and how to make a spell work.”

  Mayfridh explained and sent Christine back up the long tunnel toward daylight. Then she sagged against the door, gazing across at Eisengrimm’s dark, still, silhouette. All around her, she had caused pain and suffering. She despised herself for it. And despised herself all the more for knowing she couldn’t be any other way.

  Christine breathed daylight into her pores, feeling her lungs unfold with relief after the pressing dark of the dungeons. Mayfridh’s calm spell had only worked briefly and superficially, like a bandage on a gash, barely holding her together. She took a moment in the garden to collect her thoughts. Mandy was trapped in a log by the river. She had spells in her pockets and faery hands, making her feel a little invincible.

  Christine set out toward the river.

  The sky had grown dark and the wind had picked up. Rain clouds swirled, heavy with winter. Leaves whipped across the ground, yellow and frantic, as though trying to escape the coming season. Christine found herself hurrying her step too, reacting to some primitive instinct that affected all natural things when inclemency threatened: prepare yourself, collect your things, go inside. How she longed to be home, back in New York, surrounded by familiarity.

  The river. She followed Mayfridh’s instructions, picking her way along the rocky edge until she saw the outcrop she had been directed to. From here, she scanned the surrounding area. Deadfall. Mandy was under there, lying very still and quiet. He certainly would have heard her footsteps on the dead leaves. She felt in her pocket for the banish spell. Once she had the keys she could send him away.

  “Mandy?” she called. “I know you’re there.”

  His silence spooked her. Perhaps Mayfridh had been wrong, or he had escaped already. She approached the fall of old branches and trailing gray foliage, gingerly lifting it.

  “Ha!” A snarl and a flash of pink skin.

  Christine jumped back. He was under there all right, and he was angry.

  “Mandy, I can get you out of there,” she said, “but only if you cooperate.”

  “Christine Starlight?” His voice sounded no different from the Mandy she knew; friendly, even.

  “Yes, it’s me.” She pushed aside the branches again, throwing them to one side so she could see him properly. He lay half on his side, his legs twisted together inside a trunk. She almost laughed. He looked like a fat, helpless seal.

  “Get me out of here,” he said.

  “I will. If you cooperate.”

  “Cooperate how? I’m stuck here. I took your ball of twine and ended up here. I didn’t know what I was doing, and now look at me! I’ve been here for days.”

  So he was lying to her. He hoped she knew nothing.

  “Let me clear these leaves away.” She cleared the area, staying in a safe arc away from him.

  “I think if you pulled me hard enough I’d come free. Or you can try to break away some of the bark. I just want to go home.”

  “I’ll get you home, don’t worry.” She kicked away the last few branches and sat cross-legged in front of him, just beyond his reach.

  “Christine? Are you going to help me?” His eyes were desperate.

  “If you hand over the keys.”

  “What keys? What are you talking about?”

  “I know everything, Mandy. I know what you do, I know what you’re planning. And I
know you have Mayfridh’s keys. If you hand them over, I’ll send you home.”

  A twisted expression of anger and hatred stole over his face in that instant, and Christine recoiled with a gasp. All this time she had known him and found him loathsome, as if that expression were barely concealed beneath the congenial surface. Now she was seeing the real Immanuel Zweigler and it horrified her. This was the face that his victims must have seen in their final grisly moments. Suddenly, he was no longer a man, but a monster, an ogre, a child’s nightmare.

  “Get me out of here!” he hissed.

  “Hand over the keys.”

  His fingers went to his neck, where Christine could see the chain biting into his pallid skin. “What color is that shirt you are wearing?”

  The question threw her. “What?”

  “Answer me!”

  “It’s blue.”

  He sighed. “I wish it were red. I’d like to see red. People speak so highly of it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Mandy took an imperious tone. “I will give you the keys on the condition that you fetch me the sack hidden under that rock.”

  Christine glanced over her shoulder at the place he indicated.

  “I want to take it with me.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Never you mind.”

  Christine rose and walked to the rocky outcrop, leaned over the water, and felt around beneath. Her hand caught on a wet piece of material. She hauled it toward her. It was heavy and it clattered. She pulled it up out of the water, dreading to peer inside. Bones, there would be bones in here.

  “Bring it to me,” Mandy demanded.

  Christine pulled the sack to the log and dropped it out of Mandy’s reach.

  “Give me the keys,” she said.

  “Give me the bones.”

  “If you give me the keys, I’ll send you home. You won’t be stuck anymore.”

  “I’m not leaving without my bones.”

  “You’ll have to stay, then.”

  “And Mayfridh and the bird will remain locked up, and we’ll all go off to winter together and you’ll never get back either.”

  Christine crouched in front of him. “The keys.”

  “It seems to me unfair that I should have to comply with my part of the bargain first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In exchange for the keys you will give me two things: my bones and my freedom. How can I trust you to give me one if you won’t advance me the other?”

  Christine slid the sack toward him. She hadn’t the energy or patience to quibble. “Here. Now hand over the keys.”

  He pulled the bones toward him greedily, tucking the sack up under his abdomen with all the relish of a fat boy given a bag of sweets. “Your keys,” he said, pulling the chain over his neck and holding it out for her.

  “Thank you.” She knelt and reached out to take the chain, saw his nose flare. He was sniffing her. She shuddered, snatched the keys, and hung them around her own neck. “Okay, now I’m sending you back and you should know that Jude and I are leaving as soon as we can, and that everybody at the hotel knows what a monster you are.”

  He twisted his lips into a smile. “And whatever shall you do about it? Report me to the police? Expose me in Der Tagesspiegel?”

  Flustered and angry, Christine felt in her pocket for a spell. She allowed it to rest in her palm, felt the almost-hollow weight of it, then blew on her palm and whispered, “Banish.” She pushed the spell forward as Mayfridh had instructed her, triggering a blur of events.

  First, Mandy seized her hand. In the split second she thought he intended to take her with him, he had gathered with unnatural speed a shiny object from among the fallen leaves, then pain bit her wrist and he released her.

  Then, he said, “Ah, red.”

  Last, he disappeared and blood was pouring onto the ground. Her blood.

  Confusion. Pain.

  Realization: her hand was gone.

  Christine screamed and pulled her wrist toward her. Bleeding and bleeding. She screamed again, in pain and shock. From somewhere she collected wits enough to feel in her pocket with her remaining hand for a spell, pressed it down on the wound and cried out, “Stop bleeding! Stop bleeding!”

  Seconds passed. She was aware of the sound of her breathing, the dull gray of the sky. Slowly, she turned her eyes to her wrist, dreading the sight. The stump was sealed over, a mass of twisted skin and blood. She gasped for breath. Surely this wasn’t really happening. Her jeans were stained with blood, her remaining hand streaked and dirty. She sank forward, sobbing. The keys clattered around her neck. The world had taken on a surreal edge. Bare branches seemed sharp against the sky, and the clouds were low enough to touch. For the rest of her life, she would have pain; for the rest of her life, she would be maimed.

  Long afternoon sunbeams broke from the clouds, filling the cramped room in Klarlied’s cottage with warm light. Now that Mandy was gone, the weather was trying to rebalance. The gray wintry clouds had blown away, but still the cold was sharp, and the fire was roaring in the grate. Mayfridh had brought Eisengrimm and Christine here because she simply didn’t know what else to do. Usually Eisengrimm would have advised her, but he was still unconscious. Klarlied was a witch and a healer, and she had taken them in graciously.

  Mayfridh watched as Klarlied bandaged Christine’s wrist with infinite care. In the next bed Eisengrimm lay on his side—he had woken briefly to change into Wolf—breathing shallowly, his eyes closed. All this pain and suffering on her behalf, because she had been stupidly adventurous, because she had unwittingly lured a faery hunter into her safe, peaceful world. Beyond her two friends’ suffering, there was also the horrible knowledge that Mandy had killed a half-dozen of her subjects. She was a bad queen, a bad friend.

  “Does it hurt very much, Christine?” Mayfridh asked.

  Christine looked up with shadowed eyes. Her face was pale and drawn. “I can deal with pain,” she snapped, “but I don’t know how I’m supposed to live normally with only one hand.”

  Mayfridh approached and sat on the bed next to her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you.” The strain in Christine’s voice told a different story.

  “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

  “Can you make it magically grow back?”

  Mayfridh couldn’t tell if Christine was serious. “I . . . no. That’s not possible.”

  Klarlied tied off the bandage. “Perhaps Queen Mayfridh can have a smith from the village make you a hand of silver,” she said in her melodic voice, “then she could enchant it so it behaved like a real hand.”

  Christine turned eager eyes on Mayfridh. “Can you do that?”

  “It would only work while you were here.”

  Her shoulders slumped forward again. “Oh.” She lay down on the rough blanket, her bandaged wrist across her chest.

  Mayfridh shifted to the next bed, touched Eisengrimm’s ears gently. “Do you think he will live?”

  Klarlied went to a side table, where she washed her hands in a deep basin. “I do. He’ll need a lot of rest. Some of his bones are crushed. But he is a shape-shifter, and they are resilient.”

  Mayfridh gazed at Eisengrimm’s face. As with any friend, she had long ago ceased to see his physical features. The fact that he was a wolf rarely crossed her mind. But now, looking at him unconscious, she was acutely aware of the gray fur around his muzzle, slightly darker under his chin, of the whiskers around his nose, the pink of his gums and the white flash of his teeth as he twitched in a dream. She leaned to kiss his bristly head. “I wish he’d wake up.”

  “The longer he slumbers, the more he heals.”

  Mayfridh glanced at Christine, then said to Klarlied, “Could you leave us alone a few moments?”

  “Of course, your Majesty.” Klarlied took the water basin under her arm. “Call me if you need me.”

  When the hessian curtains swun
g closed behind Klarlied, Mayfridh leaned over Christine.

  “I have to find Hexebart,” she said.

  “I know,” Christine replied. “We should go back.”

  “You took a serious blow to your back. If you stay here a little longer it will have time to heal before the pain returns. And Klarlied can tend to your wound.”

  “So could a nice, modern German hospital.”

  “No, it couldn’t. You used a spell on the wound. Klarlied is a witch, she knows how to treat a wound which has been enchanted.”

  “You think I should stay here?”

  Mayfridh nodded. “A little while. Then somebody would be here when Eisengrimm wakes.”

  Christine turned her head to look at Eisengrimm. “What if the seasons change? It’s getting very cold.”

  “I’ll send one of the royal guard to mind the giant birch. A warning will be dispatched.”

  “Do I even have a choice about when I go back? I mean, the first time I came, I got home just by waking up.”

  “We can anchor you here with a spell—then when it’s time to go, you can use the passage in the forest as I do.” Mayfridh touched her hand. “You are partly faery, the passage will work.”

  Christine frowned. Mayfridh could tell she didn’t want her to be alone with Jude.

  “You don’t think Hexebart will come back of her own accord?” Christine said.

  “I doubt it. Her passage was from the dungeons. A royal guard waits there, but she would expect that. If she doesn’t return and the seasons change, we’ll be left without any magic. Our race will die off.”

  “Oh,” Christine said, casting her eyes down.

  They sat quietly in the warm room for a few moments, listening to Eisengrimm’s breathing. The golden sun faded out of the window, and velvety twilight settled over them.

  “I’m very sorry, Christine,” Mayfridh said. For everything. For your injuries, for knowing Jude’s deception, for loving him so passionately. “You’ve done so much for me, and I can’t think how I deserve it.”

  “Perhaps little girls who become blood sisters just grow up to do this for each other,” Christine said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Mayfridh said. Or, at least, they should.