Silver Hollow (16 page)
Whoever made the
se had some sick sense of humor.
Amie was drawn to the glowing hearth at the opposite end of the room. As she passed the shelves and a large gilded table, the pages of the books stirred. Amie chose to bury her chilled feet in the rug nearby a giant sized chair and h
o
ld her hands out toward the flames. This room, unfortunately, was cold as the rest of the castle. For the first time since her dream she realized how frozen and alone she truly felt.
Somewhere in the shadows Amie could feel the presence of eyes watching her, imagined she could hear someone’s bated breath. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she glanced above the hearth and saw what looked like a giant eagle’s head. Its glassy golden eyes glared down disapprovingly at her and Amie lifted her chin.
“Well
,
it’s not my fault you were stupid enough to get caught,” she said. The bronze eyes of the eagle seemed to gleam knowingly then, a bit less condescending too, if she were honest. “See, it doesn’t do anyone good to go around blaming everyone else. I’ll bet if you could do it over again you’d never have left your nest
,
would you?” Almost as an afterthought she added with a grin
,
“A really big nest apparently.”
Something about the eagle’s head, despite being vaguely morbid, made her feel warmer inside. Vaguely she had the impression she was no longer quite as alone as she had previously
though. Curious she hadn’t noticed the stuffed giant before. It was obviously a fake, she reassured herself. No eagle was the size of a horse, after all.
“I’ll bet you’re as messed up as I am, cooped up there on the wall in the creepiest part of the castle.” The eyes turned thoughtful. “Guess we’ll both have to learn to cope. At least we can admit we’re a little insane.” Amie smiled and turned about the room, wondering why the candles and fire had been lit in the first place when no one else was there. She really didn’t know what she had expected to find coming here. But the restlessness in her spirit was quelled and being surrounded by so many books made her feel like she was coming home.
Moving across the carpeted floor she traced the volumes, glancing over their titles. She wasn’t surprised to find many of them were written in that ancient impossible-to-read language. Yet something inside of her was starting to believe Uncle Henry’s words when he told her she
would
be able to read them if she really tried.
On the large table, she noticed a large collection of volumes had already been pulled and strewn over its mahogany surface. A single, three
-
pronged candlestick sat dripping near its right
-
hand corner. Sitting down in a
giant
-
sized
chair, Amie pulled the nearest volume to her and began to read aloud.
“Once, the House of Wenderdowne was the mightiest in the Vale. Because of their service during the Dragon Wars, they were entrusted as guardians over the first of seven gates separating us from the human world.” Amie paused and frowned, flipping to the cover to read the title. “
A History of Silver Hollow: Volume 3
…weird.” She thought briefly of the tapestries she had glanced at coming in, mythical creatures hunting humans. A fresh wave of chills prickled her flesh, only this time it wasn’t because of the cold.
Biting her lip
,
she returned to her previous page and continued. “It was widely believed the forty great Houses feared Wenderdowne the most, because their inner nixie was most unpredictable. So their gifts were split in two, strengthening and weakening them at once. Always two must rule the borderland gates, no more, no less, for the covenant bought by blood to survive.”
Amie smirked and glancing up at the giant eagle’s head, shook her head before commenting, “That’s not morbid at all…
“Many sought refuge within the B
orderlands, which remained long open to them once the Vale had been closed.
S
oon this interspace world grew mistrusting and hostile to visitors. The
ancient races sought refuge from the
humans,
yet
only
House Wenderdowne remained loyal to the old ways. Gryp
hon, dragon, centaur, gnome, faerie
, light and dark alike, they came to the castle whose people remembered best.”
Amie laughed aloud, then, unable to accept these sorts of fairytales. Her father had filled her to the brim with stories of Silver Hollow, the place this castle ruled over, supposedly. Brushing off the idea, she shut the book and moved it aside, only to stare, transfixed
,
at the gleaming object beneath it.
Her eyebrows drew together in a pensive frown as her fingers plucked the golden feather from its perch. Beginning from its white hollow shaft the size of her pinky, down the vane, the plucked plumage was the length of her whole arm. Amie had never seen a feather this large before in her life and she found herself slowly looking up to meet the eagle head’s amused glassy eyes.
She clenched the feather in her hand and then
stud
ied
it until a wild idea possessed her. Under better circumstances she would never have considered it. Yet she had no idea how much time had already passed, and had every intention of hiding her discovery before Underhill arrived with her morning tray. Leaping from her seat
,
she rushed to the tomes and began her search.
…
When Amie woke her neck was sore and her tongue felt stuck to the back of her throat. As she shifted she groaned and realized she had somehow moved herself from the library’s table to the plush rug. The fire was still burning happily, as if magically replenished, Amie was amazed it had not extinguished sometime in the night.
Sometime in the night…
“Crap!” Amie bolted upright and took in her surroundings. The candles were still burning brightly as they had upon her discovery of the hidden room. “How is that possible?” She frowned, realizing they had not melted any lower since her arrival.
Just another odd thing
to add to my list of weirdness.
Books lay prostrate on the table to her left. Amie had learned nothing she wanted to know, like the truth behind all the castle’s secrets. She was determined to find out exactly what seemed to be niggling at the back of her subconscious every time she tried to make sense of things.
With no idea how long she had slept here, Amie was eager to return to her rooms. She could only imagine Underhill’s reaction upon finding her Mistress missing.
Grumbling to herself, she said, “Probably wake the rest of the castle up. No way am I explaining this one to Uncle Henry.” Reaching for the golden feather and happy to find it still tucked between her fingers, Amie grabbed a nearby candle and fled the library.
Lost to her worries, she didn’t hear the beastly sigh of relief or the bright golden eyes appear from the shadows watching her retreat.
The windows Amie passed on
her mad dash back to her rooms
betrayed the first glimpse of dawn. How her bare feet managed to take her back without getting splinters from the fallen wood beams or getting lost, she didn’t have time to dissect.
Amie darted past the shadows
, r
elieved when the West Wing was nearly behind her
.
Home stretch, Wentworth! You’re almost there and you didn’t even last a week in track.
She grinned, touching the end of the feather sticking out of her robe pocket. This was her biggest mystery and most intriguing find. She wondered if any of the books Henry had put in her bookcase could shed some light.
Amie squinted and gasped when the distant candle light winked out of existence. The corner shadows literally
moved
to stand in front of her, blocking her vision. Confused and more than a little freaked out, Amie decided to just plunge through the gap. It had to be a trick of the eyes. She’d been awake most of the night, after all.
When she impacted the shadow, she realized too late it was hard as a brick wall. Within seconds she was flipped onto her back, the breath knocked out of her and the candelabra pooling wax onto the floor beside her head. She was too frightened to shout, flashbacks of the night she was attacked penetrating her mind. So she flinched when the shadows shifted and drew into her candle’s light to reveal the impression of a face.
Amie threw up her hands and scrambled backwards when the shadow reached to touch her. “Don’t come any closer! Get away from me!” she hissed, afraid to scream and wake the house. A part of her was still convinced this
was
a figment of her troubled imagination. Shutting her eyes, she willed the spirit to flee, then froze
in terror
when it spoke.
“Forgive me for startling you. I only intended to be certain ye were real, flying about the castle in
yer nightdress as if ye
had all the golems of the world at your back.”
“Your voice…” she whispered, blinked up at the source of
the
deeply masculine voice. “I feel like I’ve heard that before.” When he chuckled at her words she frowned, so he explained.
“I’ve been told a great many things by maidens far uglier and others with only a reflection of your true beauty, but never this. Tell me,” he said after a tense pause, where she
focused on the reflection of her candle’s flames dancing in his black orbs, “what reason should a blood
-
filled woman have in the West Wing this night, lest she be a
wight
?” He was mocking her yet her curiosity won over her frustration.
“What’s a
wight
?
” she asked and could have sworn his eyes shifted colors, from black to red to silver and then brilliant blue.
“A walking specter, milady, doomed to haunt its resting place forever.”
“I’m not a
wight
,” she said. For a long moment he said nothing, only peered intensely over her, until she felt the blackness would swallow her whole.
“Then neither am I, Jessamiene Wenderdowne,” he whispered, drawing back into the darkness. Amie’s heart was pounding, her blood racing. He shouldn’t have been able to leave so quickly. There were no other rooms past hers, no alcoves she had uncovered, or hidden passages to escape into. Yet as soon as his whisper was nothing more than a memory and his face had left her candle’s glow, she knew she was truly alone.
…
An hour later, after wolfing down her breakfast and trying
not
to act suspicious in front of Underhill, Amie was standing in the middle of the
Looking Room
with Uncle Henry.
Most mornings began here, in the only place in the house that opened up to the sunrise. Roman in design, with a layer of some other period seeking to patch it up, the Looking Room was furnished
in
white. White doves sat mute on their perch, though they were unlike any birds Amie had seen with their opal
-
hued feathers. Mirrors surrounded by silver vine and leaf metalwork hung from the wall facing the East. Fur
niture was surrounded by glass, anything to
make the sunrise more brilliant. Yet Henry never asked Amie to come the only two times of day she could enjoy it. Watching the sky’s daily painting of colors had always been one of Amie’s favorite things.
In a room filled with mirrors, glass and ivory, she could only imagine how beautiful it must be then.
So why doesn’t Uncle Henry want to share it?
He took his tea in glass cups, wore an eggshell
-
tinted overcoat and breeches. Their mutually black locks stood out bold in a room absent of color.
She had been debating for the better part of an hour whether to tell her uncle about the mysterious stranger in the halls or not. There wasn’t really any reason for her to be wandering the halls before dawn.
What is it with bookish chicks and
secret
passages?
Deciding silence was best, Amie listened to Henry’s latest tea
-
time lesson and tried to keep up.
“Won’t you join me?” he said as he lifted the pot and inclined a sooty eyebrow her way.
“Yeah, sorry, my mind’s not fully awake yet,” she replied and plopped into her ivory chair. Carefully, she took the cups and followed through with the time
-
old British tradition. It was much harder to be delicate than she had previously thought. For example, it was nearly impossible to drink with her saucer and stir the sugar cubes in without making a single sound. With her mind in a frazzle over the castle ghost she was in rare form today. She
had
been improving.
Mid-sip, she caught Uncle Henry’s amused grin and set the cup back down. “What?” she asked.
Chuckling and flashing an easy grin, he said, “You’re feeling a bit
krumplekined
this morning
,
I see.”