At that moment, far away, there is another howl. This time it is the deep throaty howl of the leader of the grey pack, and every hair on my body stands on end as I remember his red maw and ravenous eyes. But my son stretches his neck and gives a long ululating call in reply, then he leaps away and is gone.
Returning to the courtyard, I sign to Cloud-Marie that we must collect the petals for the Princess Chamber. I can see, writ in her body, that she does not want to go into the mist garden, and I do not blame her. It was always a strange and unsettling place, thick with the smell of magic, but I must go there at once, or I may lose the courage I will need to go there at all, and I have my part to play this one last time.
I steel myself as we make our way down to the mist garden, yet my heart pounds and my gorge rises as a vile picture comes unstoppably into my mind of the last candidate: the bloody gash at her throat and the spray of red so bright against her pale cheeks, the way her eyes stared so horribly and absently at the sky as we sewed her into her shroud.
I bite my lip hard and begin to tear handfuls of petals from the clusters of roses on the bushes and from those climbers trained over decorative frames which display the blooms in cascades and sheaves and coiling swathes. We gather petals for more than an hour, feeding them into my hold-all baskets until I decide we have enough. The scent of the petals is very strong because those on the bottom are being crushed by the weight of those on top.
I am about to signal to Cloud-Marie that we have enough when I notice a spray of shadow flowers beneath one of the bushes. On impulse, I bid Cloud-Marie carry the basket to the top of the stairs and wait there for me. She looks anxious but obeys me. As soon as she has gone out of sight, I pick a few of the tiny lavender-grey blossoms, then hurry through the garden to a gap in the surrounding wall and run lightly up the hill beyond. Being outside the garden, I see the sun has set and the moon shines brilliantly in the dusk, and illuminating the grave atop the knoll. I kneel and lay the flowers where I imagine her breast might be.
I swear to her bones that this new candidate will come to no harm at the hands – nay, the teeth and claws – of my son.
Returning to the palace, I take the petal-filled baskets from Cloud-Marie and we return to the Princess Chamber. As we strew the petals, re-lay the fire and renew the bed, which I never thought to do again, I find myself thinking of all of those maidens for whom I have made this same preparation. Five did not accept the invitation, and of those who did, nine turned back at the Threeways Path and seven of those who went forward did not pass through the Wolfsgate. Of the seventy-eight who passed through it, sixty-two failed the tests there in one way or another. Sixteen passed through the wood and came to my door, but three turned away without knocking. Of the thirteen young women who entered my house, two were convinced by trickery or reason to abandon their quest at once, five failed the tasks they were set by me and two refused to undertake them. One tripped down the stairs and broke her neck. That had been near the beginning and my son had been man-shaped and still soft enough to pity the young woman her fatal clumsiness. He had left her at the bottom of some steps in my own world, where it would appear she had stumbled. Only three had been shown to the Princess Chamber. Only two slept in the bed and neither had brought enough for the princess spell to be woven. The thirteenth was the last, she who walked in the mist garden and died in the teeth of the beast, my son.
I frown, realising the final tally is ninety-nine. I count again, certain I must have miscounted, but I did not. I lick my lips. The current hunt is the hundredth, and I have been too long in Faerie not to recognise an omen when I encounter one. Even the fact that I have never thought to add up the number of candidates before is significant. All at once I am utterly exhausted. It seems to me that I have not been so tired since I came to the palace seeking refuge after my own three nightmarish days in a walled garden that had turned into a wild valley full of wolves.
I stumble to my own bed, cast myself down and sleep. But there is no escape for, in my dreams, the memories await me.
There were three passages before me, all narrow, all identical, running away out of sight. With nothing to decide between them, for the handsome Ranulf had not told me the way forked, I chose the middle path, and as I stepped into it, a gritty wind whirled up out of nowhere, dragging at my hair and scouring my cheeks. Instead of coming from one direction it seemed perversely to be coming from all directions at once, though I could not see how that was possible in such a narrow alley.
The grit in the wind got into my eyes and they began to water. I felt my way along, eyes streaming, as I steadily cursed my foolishness for taking directions from a stranger.
A handsome stranger, my mother’s voice sneered, waspish with disapproval, for she distrusted good looks on principle.
I shook her voice from my head, reasoning that the bullying wind was not the fault of the man, though he might have mentioned the fork in the way. I could have turned back, but I went on, wondering at my ill-luck in choosing the one lane in the whole city that seemed to contain not a single doorway that could provide refuge.
After what seemed a very long time, the lane reached a small square. At once, the wind died. Bemused by the sudden silence, I gazed about the empty square in a sort of battered daze. The sun shone through ragged patches in the billowing banks of black cloud overhead and lit up odd details. Instinctively I moved towards the nearest patch of sunlight, my cheeks stinging as if they had been sandpapered. I touched them gingerly, wishing there was a canal running by so that I could wet them. But the square was closed, save for the lane I had come through. This explained why I had not seen any other tourist since entering it. But where were the people who lived in the buildings around the square? Ordinary citizens here appeared to regard the squares adjacent their apartment buildings as extensions of their living rooms or public meeting halls and they would come out on the slightest pretext, bringing chairs to sit on while they took the sun and gossiped or smoked or played cards. Yet here was a square empty of people.
I looked around more carefully, wondering if it was possible that the buildings were deserted. I had heard it said that the whole city was sinking into the water a fraction every year, and my own landlady had told me many first floors in buildings were not used at all. Perhaps these buildings had degenerated so badly they had been condemned, or had been sold to a developer who was yet to decide their fate. I grimaced at the thought of a KFC or a McDonalds or Taco Bell in this ancient place.
Then I noticed that one of the walls of the square was not the exterior of a building, but a high wall above which rose foliage. There was a door set into an alcove, which surely must be the gate Ranulf had mentioned. The stones of the wall had a weathered look that made it appear even older than the beautiful crumbling facades of the buildings around the square, and when I reached the door, for it was truly more door than gate, I saw a tarnished metal plaque affixed to the blackened timber, featuring a murky, heavily furred dog baring his teeth. I thought it might be a warning against a resident dog, but when I set my fist to the door and knocked, no dog came leaping and barking at the other side. The wood was pitted, charred and oiled but there was a small square opening in it crossed by two stubby bars. I stood on tiptoe to look through them and saw a stretch of open ground that ran to a line of trees whose branches flailed and twisted in the wind. I could not feel a breath of wind now, but perhaps the wall was shielding the square.
Though I strained to make out what lay beyond the trees, the clouds cast their shadows too heavily beyond the wall for me to see. I reached for the handle to the door, then noticed there was a lock in the wood under it, a great heavy thing of iron that looked as if it had not been opened in centuries. I was disappointed, for any moving parts would long ago have fused together in the damp sea air that permeated the place, and besides, there was no key. What had the man in the passage been playing at, saying I could use the door? Had it been a joke?
A voice hailed me and I turned to see an old b
eggar woman sitting on the cobbles by the wall. She must be a good deal more spry than she seemed, to have appeared in the few moments I had my back turned to the square. She was turning and turning a plastic cup in her fingers, her faced tilted in my direction, and feeling the same combination of guilt and pity that beggars always roused in me, I went to her, scooping coins from my pocket. No doubt she would spend the coins on drink or cigarettes, but at least I had given her the means to get some food if she chose. I leaned forward to drop them into her cup and she started violently.
‘What do you want?’ she shrieked, so loudly that I staggered back in shock. She turned her head awkwardly as if her neck was wrongly joined and, seeing her face, I almost gasped at her marvellous ugliness. Then it struck me that I might have frightened her, for there was a cloudiness in her eyes that suggested cataracts. Probably I had been no more to her than a dark shape looming over her, and from the way she had bellowed she was deaf, too, and so had not heard my approach.
I bent closer and said clearly, ‘I put in some coins. In your cup.’ Swift as a striking snake, one of her hands darted out and her dry bony fingers closed on my wrist like a manacle of twigs. I wanted to snatch my hand away, because now that she had moved, her ripe stench had risen to envelop me.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said gently, trying to breathe only through my mouth. ‘I just put money into your cup.’
‘I am no beggar,’ she said. ‘I will tell your fortune for the coins.’ She gave me a smile that bared stained and broken teeth, and turned my hand to flatten it out. I endured this, thinking the mysterious man in the alley and the old woman must surely be partners in trickery, though to what end I could not guess. But a tiny part of me was also curious to hear what she might say about my future.
Idiot, my mother’s voice chided me.
The old beggar looked at me so sharply that for a moment I thought she must have heard the thought, but she only said, ‘When you were a girl, you dreamed a prince would come to claim you.’
As predictions go, it left something to be desired, but just the same, her words roused a queer reckless bitterness as I thought of the married lover for whom my parents had disowned me. ‘That is the wish of a girl. I am a woman and I have learned that there are no real princes,’ I said.
‘Oh, there are princes, but there is a price for the having of them,’ she answered.
‘What price?’ I asked, half mesmerised by her intensity. ‘I gave you all the coin I have and I do not have my purse with me.’ It was true, but I did not expect her to believe me.
‘The price is all that you have,’ she said. Then she released my wrist and tapped at the scuffed toe of one of my shoes.
A chill slipped down my spine, because how could she know about my safety money – the little flat foil package of notes I had carried around the world in the toe of my sensible shoe? I had forgotten it myself, but now I found myself imagining taking off the shoe and giving the notes in it to her, and then realised that I was doing just that.
Madness, I thought as she took the packet from me and slipped it into her grubby bodice. I waited to feel humiliated by what I had done, but instead I felt as if I had put down something heavy. It was absurd, but I straightened up, drawing my hand from hers to flex my shoulders.
‘Give me your hand again,’ the old woman urged, making a little crabbed gesture towards me with her grimy fingers.
‘I don’t want to know the future,’ I said, amazed to discover that this was true. ‘I will know it when it comes.’
‘So you will, child,’ she cackled, seeming pleased by my response.
My hair had begun to whip my cheeks and I realised the weather was about to show its claws again. ‘I think there is a storm coming,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to help you somewhere?’
The old woman cackled again and shooed me away. ‘I don’t need help, but you might.’ She rummaged in her skirts and drew out a length of light rope. She pressed it into my hand and then rummaged again before bringing out a disposable lighter. Bewildered, I told her I did not smoke, but she only grinned and bade me take the things she had given me, for I would have need of them ere the end. To my dismay, rain suddenly began to fall. I had stupidly brought my notebooks in a cloth bag, and I struggled to push it up the front of my coat.
‘Will you go through the Wolfsgate?’ the old woman asked, nodding towards the rain-lashed wall.
‘It is locked,’ I told her distractedly, realising the metal plate showed a wolf, not a dog.
‘It is?’ she asked archly.
I was about to say impatiently that of course it was, then remembered I had not actually turned the handle. I ran to it, hoping to get out of the rain and the wind on the far side of the wall. I was still holding the rope and lighter the old woman had given me and I thrust them into my coat pocket to take hold of the handle. It was slippery with rain and the mechanism shifted slowly as if the gate had not been opened for a long time. Then it gave a distinct click. I pushed, but still the door would not budge. Then I saw weeds and grass had grown in a thick tuft at the bottom of the door, jamming it firmly in place. I leaned my shoulder against the dark, stained wood and pushed hard. It gave with a tearing sound. As the gate opened wide, I turned to tell the old woman she ought to come out of the rain, but she had vanished. I had no idea how, but there was no sense standing in the rain wondering about it. I slipped through the opening and pushed the gate closed behind me. As I had guessed, the wall blocked the wind-driven rain, and I sighed with relief. Some rain was still falling but an overhang atop the wall jutted out to bridge the narrow gap between it and a hedge growing along the inside of the wall, so I slipped into the gap and moved along it until I found a place where there was enough space for me to sit down. Scraping together a pile of crackling brown leaves as a cushion, I settled with my back to the wall and pulled a shawl from my book bag to wrap around my shoulders, hoping the rain would not last for hours.
Too late to wish I had gone straight to the library, but the more I considered the events of the last hour, the stranger they seemed to me, and the more foolish my behaviour. I did not understand what had possessed me to take directions from a stranger, let alone to give my safety money to an old beggar, but it was done and my head was beginning to ache. I leaned forward to rest my forehead on my knees, closed my eyes and watched motes of light dance behind them, trying to let the soft sound of the falling rain fill my mind. I was not aware of falling asleep, but when I woke, the rain had stopped and I was lying stretched out along the base of the wall, my hair full of leaves. Luckily the rain had not seeped into my shelter.
I sat up, grimacing, combed my fingers through my hair and squinted at the illuminated hands of my watch. It had stopped, but it was dark enough that I knew I had missed my appointment with the library curator by several hours. I swore as I crawled out from under the hedge and got to my feet.
I went to the door in the wall and grasped its handle but, to my horror, it moved without engaging. Apparently it could be opened only from the other side. I rattled the bars and stood on tiptoe to look through them, only to see the square was as empty as before. I shouted out for help just the same, in the hope that the old beggar woman was nearby, but if she was, she did not heed my cries, or perhaps she did not hear them. Finally, I shrugged and turned to face the walled garden, thinking that at least I might have the pleasure of crossing it and the interest of an encounter with its owner at the other end, when I gave Ranulf’s armlet to her.
Feeling my arm to be sure I still had the armlet pushed above my elbow, I made my way across the grass to the line of trees, curious to see what lay beyond them. As I drew closer, I saw there were several rows of coppiced trees, planted in such a manner that each row prevented me seeing beyond to the next row. Fortunately they were planted far enough apart to allow me to squeeze through, and as I moved forward, I wondered how the trees managed when they were planted so close to one another.
As I wove through line after line of the trees, I be
gan to wonder if I had not entered a tree nursery, for there was nothing aesthetically appealing in the suffocatingly close grid of trees. Then it struck me that the grid must curve, for the long fingers of light that managed to slant through the interlaced foliage were now striking the left sides of the trees where before they had struck the right sides. I turned to look left and saw to my horror that the view was exactly the same as when I looked forward. Or back! In any direction I saw only close-planted lines of trees. Was it possible I had been turning without noticing it as I walked? Or was it that the rows themselves were now marching at a slightly different angle?
I began to feel claustrophobic, but mastered myself. All I had to do was to make sure I was walking straight now and sooner or later I would reach the end of the trees. I set off again and counted fifteen rows of trees before I stepped out into the open. The brief surge of relief I experienced gave way to horror, for I found myself teetering on the edge of a low escarpment. A densely forested valley stretched away from the foot of the escarpment, bordered on one side by a long range of jagged white mountains. I had one brief, astounded glimpse of that long, narrow valley, then the ground crumbled under my feet and I fell.
Even all this time later, I sometimes have nightmares of that fall, from which I wake, heart pounding, half starting up. Of course, I had not entered any ordinary garden. No. I had passed through the Wolfsgate and, in doing so, had come to the very heart of Faerie. As tales and myths tell of the otherworld, the hearts of things are always larger than what contains them, so I had entered a garden only to find it encompassed mountains and a forest and streams and lakes. My husband told me later that there was no settlement in the valley, for the heart of Faerie was truly wild and inhabited only by beasts or to those given over to the beast in their natures. The most ferocious of these were the wolves whose territory it was.
Metro Winds Page 24