The nearest proper dwelling to the Wolfsgate was the King’s Palace and all the rest of Faerie lay beyond that.
‘What if I had not come through the Wolfsgate?’ I teased my husband the morning after our wedding. His heavy beard had been shaven away along with the pelt of hair covering his body, though in truth it had not troubled me as much as maybe it ought to have done. Now his luxuriant black hair had been combed and trimmed into a handsome mane and he looked urbane and civilised. But his turquoise eyes were the same, save that the savagery in them had gone and they were full of laughter and delight.
He kissed me instead of answering my question, and his clever hands became so busy in so explicit a manner that I blushed despite all that had already been done between us. Satisfied, he held me back from him, examined my flushed cheeks smugly and laughed, a throaty growl that made my skin prickle. ‘You could never have resisted, faced with that gate. It blocked your way and it is your nature to refuse deflections and hindrances. Princesses decide their own limits and always transgress in order to discover them. It is part of what drew me to hunt you.’
‘So, courage and curiosity and some sort of subversive stubbornness are needed for the princess spell?’ I asked.
‘They are vital qualities, for those who would make rules must be able to exist beyond them,’ my husband murmured, examining a freckle on my breast closely.
‘And the old woman?’
‘Was my mother got up in that guise,’ he said, and he stretched out his pale, slender fingers over my bare breast, as if it were a ripe fruit to be plucked. ‘She said that she wanted to give you some tokens to aid you, if you pleased her.’
The sound of cutlery and the smell of toast and coffee brings me pleasantly to the present as Cloud-Marie manoeuvres the tray into my chamber. I sit up and smooth the bedclothes with more appetite than I have had in many a long day. When she has set down her burden, I sign for parchment and a quill, wanting to make a shopping list. I have decided on the meal I will serve my daughter-in-law and I mean to obtain the ingredients from our world, hers and mine.
After I eat and make my list, it strikes me that I can see the mortal girl my son hunts in my scrying bowl. The last thing I saw in it was my son bending over the girl he had slain and I have not looked into it since, but now I dress and eagerly mount the long spiral of stairs leading to the small, circular tower room. There is nothing in the room but the enormous stone scrying bowl filled with water so black and still it might have been a hole full of shadow. The bowl is a strikingly beautiful but sinister object from which power emanates like an electrical current. It was a gift sent by my husband.
I do not know if, when he set out the morning before our son began his first hunt, he intended to return soon, and became distracted, or if he always meant to return once our son found his princess bride, but I have not seen him from that day to this. He occasionally sends gifts. In the early days of his departure, they always arrived after I had sent missives to him using various magical devices he had given me over the years for this purpose, though he never sent any message with them. In recent times they come rarely, and still without a word of his whereabouts, though there have sometimes been small notes accompanying a gift, explaining its use.
My husband’s first gift came after I notified him of the failure of our son’s first hunt. It was a mechanical nightingale that sang with the tongue of any bird that ever existed. A pretty toy, it sits gleaming on my dresser. The brush and comb Cloud-Marie uses on my hair were a gift too, part of a set that included a magic mirror that would let me see my face at any age. It was a grim sort of gift for a mortal, but one day when I spoke my husband’s name to curse him, I noticed his face reflected in the glass. The image moved and I realised that the mirror was showing me him not only as he was but also where he was. He looked handsome and windblown, and the sky behind his head was like a sheet of raw grey silk flawed with lighter strands. I spoke his name beseechingly, and though he did not answer, his lips twisted. With longing or regret, I thought, believing in his love of me, for all his neglect. But when the mirror clouded and I saw him no more, I came to wonder if his pained grimace had been no more than the shape made of him by the spell he wrought to stop me spying on him. Or perhaps he had given up hope and did not want me to see it.
The mirror was ruined after that and would not even show my face, but on the verge of smashing it I hesitated, for it struck me that even if I could not see my husband, perhaps he could hear me. Often during the long years of failed hunts and growing despair that followed, I found bitter consolation in whispering curses into the smoky glass.
It was some months after the mirror clouded that the scrying bowl arrived. It will show you our son and that which he sees, said the little scroll that accompanied it.
The water in it does not offer a reflection of the shadowed stone walls of the room or of the four windows that look out in four different directions over Faerie, and there is not a fleck of dust upon it. There is no dust on any of the surfaces in the chamber, though I have not been here since my son last hunted. Is it magic that keeps the chamber clean or Cloud-Marie’s vigilance?
I cross to the scrying bowl and kneel, leaning over its rim to look down into the liquid blackness within it. That it does not show my reflection makes me feel dizzy, and I take a moment to steady myself and to gather courage enough to reach down into the bowl. I close my eyes, for I have always experienced a childish horror in doing this. Sometimes in nightmares things have reached back to grasp me. Once it was my son leaping out to close his teeth in my throat.
I feel the wetness of the water, if water it is, and stir my hand. Feeling it begin to whirl, I open my eyes and see my son in wolf form loping through the forest at a purposeful speed. But it is not a wolf form, I remind myself. My son is now a wolf in truth, and for a split second I do not see him as degenerate and cursed, but as a creature of breathtaking beauty and terrifying grace, a snow-white wolf prince.
I study the terrain he is speeding through, and understand he is heading towards the mountains. That my son goes this way can only mean that the girl has chosen to go towards the mountains, for there is no doubt he is going to her. I am eager to see her face and to discover if I can judge her character from it, but I cannot do so until he finds her. I withdraw, resolving to return after I have completed my preparations.
I descend from the tower, wondering why the girl went towards the mountains. I, too, had considered going that way when I woke in a bed of moss at the bottom of the escarpment. The fact that there was no way back up the sheer drop behind me meant I had no choice but to go forward one way or another, and my fleeting glimpse of the mountains had shown them to be extraordinarily beautiful. But I was forced to recognise the impossibility of a range of mountains on a muddy island in a lagoon. I settled instead upon climbing the long wooded slope I could see on the other side of the valley, which would offer me a view. I wondered what it said of the maid chosen by my son that she had decided to travel towards the mountains. Was she a fool who would follow any mad vision, or someone capable of holding to a vision despite the lack of concrete evidence?
In my chamber as I prepare myself for the journey to my old world to fetch the ingredients I will need, I focus my thoughts determinedly on the meal I will serve my son’s chosen, rather than worrying about what she is doing and why. I have decided upon a simple repast and not the elaborate feasts I have prepared before: sliced fresh tomatoes served with pungent chopped onions on thick slabs of fragrant rough bread, olives and a good parmesan broken into little crumbling pieces, and instead of eating inside, we will sup in the fountain courtyard.
I reach into the basket to ensure I have my pouch of jewels and gasp in pain. Withdrawing my finger, I find I have driven a hidden needle in a small tapestry deep into my thumb. When I withdraw it, blood wells dark and thick, and one drop falls like a ruby bead onto the white linen that is yet to be embroidered.
My hair stirs on my scalp, for surely this is an
other omen.
Dismissing my fears, I set off for the nearest crossing place. There are only a few ways from that world which was once my own to this one, but there has never been much difficulty or formality about moving from Faerie to the real world. Ever since the first faerie king opened a way to the mortal realm, fell in love and brought a mortal back with him, there have been numerous ways to cross. These are always closing and opening according to the whims of the king whose task it is to weave and renew the ways.
The first two crossing places are obscured by a mist which is nothing to wonder at, for mists of obfuscation are common in Faerie, and I feel only a mild irritation when I cannot find my way through them to the mortal realm. The third time, I use a wooden bridge I have often used before, remembering to check for trolls before setting foot on it. Few things are more tedious than having one of the great brutes grasp your ankle and force you to play their wretched riddling game for hours. Reassured I am not to be waylaid, I climb the steps to the bridge and set off into the thick mist, only to find myself coming back to the same bank I had just left, as on the last two attempts! I turn and try again, with the same result, though I cannot detect myself being turned around.
Only then do I recall reading in one of the tomes bestowed upon me by the old queens that once a prince begins to hunt his bride, the powers of kingship devolve to him, but that he cannot take them into himself until he has wed his bride. That meant there would be a hiatus during which the powers of kingship are inaccessible to the old king or to the one who would be king. At the time I read the words, I barely took them in, but now I am sure the crossing places have been slowly degenerating in the years since my son undertook his first hunt, and that some are now unusable.
Perhaps all.
I have thought little of my old world since the birth of my son, but I feel a stab of something very like terror at the thought of not being able to go home, and it comes to me that perhaps I am less resigned to living out my life in Faerie than I have believed.
When I am back in the palace, I calm myself, for the cure to one problem is the cure to both. If my son can hunt a true princess to be his bride, he will be saved, and then, as king, he can repair and reopen the ways between the two realms.
Forced to abandon my plan to obtain ingredients for the meal I will offer my son’s chosen, I find all I need in my garden or with the aid of the magic cloth. The meal itself does not take long. Once I have kneaded the bread and set it to rise, I slice tomatoes and onions and steep them in oil, brown vinegar and basil, and set out several cheeses and a good red wine. I consider going to look in the scrying bowl, but tell myself that too little time has passed. Better to wait a while longer, especially when I can do nothing, no matter what I see. I pace for a time and then go to my sewing chamber and sign for Cloud-Marie to get out my basket of threads. Taking up a needle, I begin to sew, but my thoughts run like a wolf through a shifty wilderness of fears and hopes that have grown up in me. They bring me at length and inexorably to the Wolfsgate Valley, to the moment that I woke at the bottom of the cliff over which I had fallen, utterly bewildered.
After dusting myself off and gathering my wits as best I could, I set off for the rise I could see, but the ground sloped down and I soon lost sight of it. I walked for half an hour using the position of the sun to keep a straight course, trying to figure out what had happened. It was impossible that this wilderness was on an island in the midst of a city. No, somehow I was somewhere else. The only thing I could imagine was that the man, Ranulf, who had given me the stone circlet, found me unconscious at the bottom of the cliff and carried me in a boat to some remote place on the mainland.
It made no sense and yet there was no other explanation.
I noticed that the carved ring had grown tight about my upper arm and I was about to ease it down when I noticed a small track winding through the trees to my right. My heart leapt, for a path meant people and I set off at once upon it. Gradually it wended its way up into a dense copse of trees and though there was no sign of human habitation, it curved in the direction I had originally intended to go, and I felt sure that it would eventually bring me to the bare hill I had seen that would offer a better vantage point from which to study the terrain.
Half an hour later, I spotted a small clearing a little way down one side of the ridge, where there was a rough hut. A subsidiary path split off and ran down to the hut, which seemed as picturesque as an illustration in a children’s book as I drew closer. Then I saw a man sitting on a stool by the door, whetting the edge of an axe. This sight was alarming enough that I hesitated, but feeling sure he had already noticed me, I did not feel I could turn tail like a frightened rabbit, so after a slight pause, I continued on. When I came to a halt, I saw the whetting stone still a moment as the old man looked at me, then he went calmly on with his work.
The sound of the stone on the metal set my teeth on edge, but I was in no position to be finicky. ‘Excuse me, but I am lost,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you have a map and could show me where I am.’
He scowled at me, or maybe it was a smile. It was hard to tell in a face so seamed and leathery and sprouting great feathery tufts of hair from incongruous parts. It occurred to me belatedly that he might not understand English, so haltingly I began to translate my request into the language of the land, but the man wagged his head and said something to me in words that, if they bore any relationship to the language I had just spoken, must be distant. A dialect, I told myself, dismayed. But I smiled reassuringly and tried to convey by hand motions and mime that I needed to find a way out of the wilderness. The man looked suspicious and even offended as I persisted, my cheeks growing redder and redder, but suddenly he laughed uproariously.
Completely taken aback, I stopped and watched him bellow and rock and slap his knee until his mirth had run its course. Then he pointed to me and to a path that ran away from the clearing towards a heavily wooded hill. I tried to ask if the path led to a village, but the best I could get from him was that I must go that way and that I should not stray from the path. He made the latter very clear. I mimed that I was thirsty and hungry, but he shook his head sternly and showed three fingers to me. Then he pointed along the path again. I took the show of fingers to mean I must walk three kilometres to find what I needed, for surely he would not send me off on a three-hour walk without water. In any case there was nothing to do but to go on, since I had no means of making him give me water or food and he was clearly waiting for me to leave.
Mistaking my hesitation for incomprehension, he again pointed insistently along the path and shook three fingers in my face. I nodded wearily and trudged off, consoling myself that it would be better anyway to find a place where I could beg a bed for the night, as it was growing late.
By now I had given up all hope of trying to make any sense of what was happening to me. I must go through it, that was all, and when I came to the end of whatever it was, I would understand it. There were times in life when that was the only thing you could do. The affair with the married man had been just such a thing; an inexplicable and inescapable folly, seen as such only from without. Sometimes you simply could not see properly when you were in the middle of something, no matter how clear-headed and certain you were.
The path narrowed to a mere track as it wound among the trees, which were thick enough that the path grew quite dark in places, certainly dark enough for me to have to slow down to be sure I had not strayed from it. The old man’s stern warning had impressed me, and now I thought I understood his insistence. He had been trying to tell me that I must not leave the path lest I lose sight of it and become irrevocably lost. I was uneasily conscious, too, that the day was steadily but surely drawing to a close. Whether or not I had reached a village, I would have to stop once it became too dark to see.
I was terribly thirsty by now, for I had drunk nothing since I had left the pension to seek out the library. Was it really possible this was the same day? If only I could find a stream, but I dared not l
eave the path. In faerie stories, the worst thing anyone could ever do was to leave the path. A path was like a clear intention that must be followed, but there were always other tempting possibilities trying to draw the hero or heroine away from their original pure purpose.
But I am not a heroine in a story, I thought. I am a historian and the daughter of two pragmatic parents who disliked imaginary games and thought imaginary stories the province of the foolish and uneducated. And I am thirsty. As if conjured by my desire, I saw a gleaming pool of water in a little clearing only two or three steps from the path. Head pounding with thirst, I hurried to the edge and flung myself down on my belly to drink. The water was ice cold and very pure. I drank until my belly ached and then I lifted my head to gasp a breath and saw it: a coal-black wolf sitting on the other side of the pool watching me with eyes that shone like mercury.
I froze, water dripping from my chin and the ends of my hair, but I could not push them back or mop my face without moving, for I was still kneeling forward, resting on my hands. On all fours, I thought, wildly. I could feel gooseflesh rising over my entire body, even on my scalp. I did not want to be eaten by a wolf. Especially I did not want to be eaten in the middle of an inexplicable adventure so that I would never know how it ended.
Except that I would know exactly how it ended.
It is not the end of the story that matters, I think, my needle darting in and out of the tapestry, but understanding the meaning of it, unless the end is the meaning. The memory of the extreme terror I experienced seeing the black wolf gazing at me is dimmed in my mind for a moment by this thought, by the sense of its importance. Then memory floods back, carrying me with it into the past.
The stone armlet suddenly slipped from where it had been lodged about my upper arm and fell down to give the back of my hand a good hard rap. I bit back a cry of pain, but perhaps I made some involuntary sound, for the black wolf suddenly rose.
Metro Winds Page 25