A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  The princess turned her beautiful face to look down on Heloise, effectively cutting off anything she might have said. Indeed, Heloise could not say a word in light of that dreadful sadness. It reminded her of . . .

  Of Meme. Of those stolen moments when Meme thought no one watched and her face fell into lines of such age and mourning, it cut Heloise to the quick to see it. Meme who never once forgot Hélène, not for a day, not for a moment.

  “Ayodele was never restored to me,” Princess Imoo-Alala said. “And my Adanna, in time, lost her Faerie powers and became wholly mortal. She retained only her memories of her lost sister and her own failure to break the curse. She died before I did. I sat at her bedside when she was still young, and I held her hand even as her spirit slipped away to the Netherworld and beyond. Her last words were . . .”

  The princess stopped. Her grip on Heloise’s hand tightened, though Heloise knew a ghost should not be able to have such a grip. Though Alala did not speak with her mouth, Heloise felt the struggle inside her head as the princess sought to finish what she intended to say. “Her last words were ‘Forgive me, Ayodele. I tried.’”

  Heloise heard Grandmem’s voice clearly in her memory as though the old woman even now spoke: “I tried. Oh, believe me, Cateline, I did try!”

  So the curse was unbroken. Six hundred years, and it remained unbroken! How many sisters had been stolen away? How many cursebreakers had set out on this same, hopeless quest? How many had lost their powers in the end and faded into despair?

  Heloise stopped in her tracks, unable to make herself take another step, so heavily did the weight of those years and those failures press down upon her heart. She stared at the silver, gold, and diamond branch, the key that looked like no key she had ever before seen, which she held in her hand. Somehow she had thought it was all she needed. Fetch the branch of silver, fetch the branch of gold; finally, fetch the branch of diamond, and all would then be well. Was that not what the verse sent to her by the Dame had implied? A three-part branch will prove the key to set the captives flying free . . .

  “This is only the first step,” said Alala, reading her mind. She placed a gentle hand on Heloise’s shoulder. “The key brought you here. And here I may, by our law, show you what has become of the sister whom you seek to free. But I cannot tell you how the curse may be broken.”

  “Do you know?” Heloise whispered, glancing up quickly at the princess but unable to hold her gaze.

  Alala nodded solemnly. “I do. But if I tell you, I will break the law, and the curse on my line—on your family—will be fixed until the End of Days.”

  The Princess of Night turned then and, with an elegant sweep of her arm, drew back a curtain of blossoms and vines, revealing a meadow full of white light like moonlight, surrounded on all sides by trees of silver, gold, and diamond. From these trees hung enormous tapestries of fine cloth, finer than the softest linen ever woven in Canneberges, soft and sheer and delicate as the threads of a spider’s web.

  Sitting before these tapestries were the pale phantom figures of twelve young maidens, all of the same age. They sat in absolute silence, unaware, perhaps, of anyone else around them, and they stitched away with bright needles and gossamer threads, creating pictures in silk, elaborate pictures which Heloise did not at first discern.

  For her eyes were fixed upon one particular figure sitting apart from the rest.

  “Evette!”

  Alala touched the top of her head with a warning hand. “Hush, child. This is an enchanted place. She cannot hear you in any case.”

  THIRTY

  Heloise approached her sister from behind, softly whispering, “Evette?” But the Princess of Night had spoken truly: The twelve maidens existed in a silent world all their own, visible but unreachable. Heloise put out a trembling hand and tried to touch her sister’s shoulder. It was no use. Her fingers clutched at nothing more than cold, still air.

  Evette, unaware of her presence, stitched at her tapestry, her head tilted to one side, a line of concentration between her brows. She might have been sitting at the family hearth on a spring evening, quietly embroidering an edging of cranberry blossoms around the neck of some humble peasant garment.

  Only here, in this other world, she was as pale in face and form as the shroud-wrapped memory of Hélène.

  Heloise blinked back tears. She longed to catch her sister in her arms, to hear Evette call her dearest in her most appallingly patient voice. Then together they should leave this place, arm in arm, Evette chiding her gently on the state of her gown and the dirt on her face, following up these remonstrations with questions about the family and Gutrund and Rufus the rooster.

  Instead Heloise turned to Alala, who stood behind her, her hands folded, her eyes gently veiled by her long lashes. “How many others have come this far?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer. “How many cursebreakers collected the three branches and came to you?”

  “Of the twelve who set out,” said Alala, “you are the seventh to come this far.”

  “And none of the others succeeded. None of them broke the curse.” Heloise could have smacked herself for the quaver in her voice. She would not, would not cry in front of this beautiful woman, this beautiful great-great-great-something grandmother of hers! She would not disgrace the blood of Rufus the Red.

  “It is a powerful curse,” said the princess, her voice kind but full of a darkness bordering on despair. “Of the six others who came to me, three perished in their attempts to free their sisters. The other three . . . wished they had perished.”

  “But wait!” Heloise cried, scowling. “That’s not right. I know they, your family . . . they cannot kill the cursebreaker.” She recalled the horrible moment of so short a time ago, when she stood surrounded by furious, ravening monsters, and the voice of Aunt, shouting out, “You cannot touch her! Remember the Law!” The monsters, so many of them, enough to have torn her to bloody shreds in mere moments, had left her alive, had abandoned their prey.

  Whoever the Dame of the Haven was, she had been right: The Faerie law forbade the Family of Night from causing her harm.

  But Alala, reading Heloise’s many swirling thoughts, said, “Child, child, they cannot kill you. But they need not interfere should you kill yourself.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  The princess shook her head slowly. “I may not tell you. You must find other means of discovering your answers. I may only tell you my own story.”

  She took Heloise by the shoulders, turning her so that she would look at the tapestry upon which her sister worked. “See what she creates by the skill of her hand,” Alala whispered. With another pressure, she turned Heloise to see the eleven other maidens and their work. “See what they create together.”

  For the first time Heloise forced herself to study the images depicted in the tapestry. They were far more vivid, far more detailed than any of the thick tapestries she had glimpsed during her wanderings through Centrecœur. Unlike those tapestries, these images were wrought on thin, delicate fabric. The slightest breeze made each tapestry shiver and dance as it hung from the low tree boughs.

  When they shivered and danced, the figures picked out with needle and thread danced as well.

  Dancers, Heloise realized. Each tapestry depicted a series of dancers. Some were elegant folk dressed in rich garments of days gone by. Some were peasant folk clad only in rags. But they all danced in forms and movements which Heloise recognized.

  They danced Le Sacre.

  Stepping away from the princess, Heloise moved to the first of the tapestries. The girl who sat at work over it was very like Imoo-Alala. Though her form was pale and ghostly, Heloise could see that, in her own world, she must have possessed the same dark skin, the same wild mass of hair that was not unlike Heloise’s own tangled mane save that it was more carefully arranged. She was probably quite tall, just like the princess, for even seated as she was, her head came as high as Heloise’s own.

  “Ayodele,” Heloise whispered
. For an instant she half wondered if the maiden paused in her work, if a flicker of interest crossed her face at the sound of her own name spoken by a strange voice. But no. She could hear nothing, lost as she was, far from all she knew, all she loved.

  Heloise studied her tapestry. She saw the ringing circles of dancers—noblemen and women in the inner circles; burghers and merchants of repute in the middle rings; peasant folk in the outer edges. And outermost, stitched in black silk, were shadow figures clashing sharp weapons together in the same way the men of Canneberges clashed their canes as they performed Le Sacre.

  In the very center of the tapestry stood the perfect image of Ayodele herself, rendered in exquisite, impossible detail. She held the hands of a young man who stood a good head shorter than she, and Heloise could see the adoration shining in his eyes as he gazed upon his bride-to-be.

  Ayodele’s poor young betrothed, who lost his love and forgot her more than six hundred years ago. But here in the tapestry, they lived on together, dancing for eternity in silk.

  Heloise proceeded to the next tapestry, the next maiden hard at her silent labor. This girl was similar in appearance to Ayodele but much shorter, and her hair was not quite so thick and wild. She too depicted the Le Sacre dance, and when some wind which Heloise could not feel stirred the silk, the figures seemed to move and whirl and stamp their feet. The third tapestry and the fourth were more of the same, as were the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh. Each maiden shared a resemblance with those nearest to her, but Heloise suspected that often several generations passed between them, and in these cases, the differences were more pronounced than the similarities.

  By the time she came to Cateline, the disparity between her and Ayodele was so great that few would have believed a blood connection. Ayodele was the daughter of a princess; Cateline was the offspring of peasant farmers.

  Yet there was a touching, if rough sort of beauty about this girl. A beauty not unlike Evette’s; a beauty of sweetness, of good humor, of kindness, which softened plain features into something lovely.

  “Cateline,” Heloise said, though she knew the square-faced, curly-haired young woman could not hear her, “my Grandmem never forgot you. Your sister. She loves you still.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, tears for Grandmem as much as for herself. For Grandmem had never come this far, she knew. Grandmem had never had one last opportunity to look upon the face of the sister she longed to reclaim. Or perhaps that was easier. Perhaps it was better not to see this glimpse; to come so close and still to—

  But no. She could not think that thought, she dared not. Heloise wiped an angry hand over her face, dashing away any trace of weeping before turning to Princess Imoo-Alala. “Why?” she demanded. “Why do they sit here like this, stitching these images? What is the point of it? What does your mother want from them?”

  “A mortal magic,” the princess replied.

  “A what?”

  Before Alala could answer, however, a sighing, mournful sound filled the whole of that small solitary world. The sound was like a voice, but the voice of someone or something Heloise could not imagine. A single, low, melancholy note, like a plea or a summons.

  At first Heloise could do nothing but stand with her mouth open and her ears filled to bursting. She could not say if the note went on playing in her heart or if she heard only the echoing memory of it. She felt an urge to follow it, and it was all she could do to hold her ground.

  Movement caught her eye. She turned her head this way and that, watching as each of the twelve mortal maidens set aside her work, rose from her low seat, and stood. Evette rose last of all. Though Heloise hastened to her, staring into her face, Evette’s gaze was faraway, unaware of her sister’s nearness.

  A second note played, the same as the first, but longer, more compelling. The maidens, led by Ayodele, proceeded across the clearing, pale wraiths of mingled loss and sorrow. “Evette?” Heloise whispered, and tried in vain to catch her sister’s hand. But Evette moved with the others, passing from the meadow and into the trees.

  Forgetting Princess Alala for the moment, Heloise hastened after them, keeping pace just behind her sister. They moved much faster through this tiny world than Heloise had when walking beside the princess. Within a few paces they came to the Tower door, which opened for them, revealing the forest of silver beyond.

  “Evette! Wait!” Heloise cried, though she knew it was useless. Her sister passed through the door, following but a step or two behind Cateline. But when Heloise tried to pursue, the door shut firmly in her face.

  “Dragons eat it!” Heloise cursed, grabbed hold of the heavy latch, and hauled the door open. Rather than a silver forest, she found herself gazing out into the dark, narrow passage of the stairway. Benedict stood a few steps below her, staring up at her with large, frightened eyes.

  “Heloise?” he gasped.

  “Dragons!” Heloise cursed again, and slammed the door.

  She turned around, her back against the wood and brass, and stood there in that pocket world of light and blossoms. Her breast heaved as she drew great breaths to fill her lungs, struggling to calm her racing heart. Then, clenching the three-part branch in her fist, she stomped through the trees, shoving branches and blossoms from her way, and marched back into the clearing.

  Alala waited for her, surrounded by the twelve tapestries. She held herself like the Lion-Prince had—her hands at her sides, her arms loose, her shoulders back, her head high. No trace of awkwardness, only elegance and grace. She was a sight to behold, a figure of simultaneous beauty and dread.

  Heloise paused but a moment. Then, shaking the branch like a weapon, she hurried across the meadow and stood in the shadow of the princess. “What is a mortal magic?” she demanded.

  “It is a magic worked by mortals, as the name would suggest,” Alala replied.

  “Yes, but what does that mean?”

  The princess didn’t so much as blink an eye in the face of Heloise’s impotent wrath. She turned away slowly and moved amidst the tapestries to sit on a stone seat Heloise had not noticed before. A seat before a windowsill. Heloise saw that the window looked out upon . . . upon Canneberges!

  Wonderingly, she drew nearer to Alala, gazing over the princess’s shoulder at the vista spread below them. She recalled that they were still in the upper Tower, even if the chamber was full of this small forest and groves. This, then, was the solitary window at the very top of the Tower, the one from which she had sometimes felt a prickling sensation that someone watched her. A sensation which, she now realized, was entirely correct.

  Heloise gazed out at the moonlit fields so familiar to her. From this high vantage, she felt she could see all of Canneberges, all the way to Oakwood and beyond to that dreadful crossroads where the gibbet stood.

  Shivering, Heloise closed her eyes and turned away. When she dared look again, she fixed her gaze only upon Alala’s calm face. “Please,” she said, “what is this mortal magic and what does it have to do with Evette?”

  Alala said, “I will tell you. Listen.”

  “I loved my Rufus well through the short years of our life together. But the loss of two daughters—one remembered by no one but myself—cast a pall over my days, a shadow I could never lift or shake. My Rufus grieved with me for the death of our youngest, but he never understood the true depth of my pain. How could he? For him, death was a natural part of life.

  “But for me, such loss was strange and dreadful. Though I was now mortal, I had lived many long ages as a Faerie, and I could not forget the ways and beliefs of my people.

  “The death of my husband was the final blow. Though I had still one daughter, one son, and their growing families to love, I found I could take little joy in the days ahead of me. I began to realize the gift of mortality, to look upon this existence as the end. And what would follow after death? The beginning . . . .

  “Old age fell upon me with a suddenness I never could have expected. After all the centuries (as mortals count time) of my
existence, I came at last to my weakened, sickened, final days. But as I lay me down upon my deathbed, my children and grandchildren gathered on each side, I found that I no longer feared death. I feared only Mother’s promise made to me on the very night she stole Ayodele:

  “‘I will not let you go down to the Final Water at the end of your mortal life. I will rescue you.’

  “I had suspected even then what she intended. Over the years since that night, I had had plenty of time to speculate further. As, with great difficulty, each breath left my lungs, I felt a dread unlike any I had ever before known welling up in my heart.

  “Rufus! Brave, red-blooded Rufus! How I long to be reunited with you. To see you again on the Farthestshore. And Adanna—dear Adanna, my courageous girl. Have you found the peace you craved? Would you have welcomed me with open arms and led me into that new Beginning?

  “But even as I drew my last breath, even as I expelled it and, with the expulsion, left behind my frail, mortal body—I knew it was not to the Final Water my spirit would fly.

  “Instead, I opened my eyes and found myself standing in this world. This beautiful world of flowers and twilight, of soft spring air and crisp autumnal whispers—a world so like the world of my immortal youth. My Mother’s imagining of perfection, a haven to house my soul forever. To keep me alive and close to her.

  “I saw where I had come, saw the restoration of my physical form, incorporeal and yet real—and I screamed with rage and despair!

  “‘Mother! What have you done?’ I demanded. ‘Why have you imprisoned me here?’

  “‘I told you already,’ Mother said, appearing before me and smiling, though her eyes were sad. ‘I told you I would rescue you. I will not let a Princess of Night be lost to death and whatever lies beyond the Final Water. Here you will be safe, my love. Here you will be near to me forever. I will never lose you.’

  “I wept. I pleaded. I screamed and shouted. I tried to make her understand that though this life must end, a beginning awaited me on the Farthestshore. She could not understand, immortal that she is. I could not make her understand no matter how I tried.