The Autumn Castle (10 page)

“Yes, my Queen. Let me lead you into the autumn forest.”

Mayfridh followed him through the misty golden dawn into the woods. The trees were close and dark, shading out the pale light.
Dead leaves crackled at their feet, and the constant scuff and skitter of soft falling made it seem as though the woods were
whispering farewell and farewell, farther and farther into the gloom.

“There is a forest in the center of her city. Do you remember it from the spell we drank?”

“Yes, the Tiergarten.”

“The passage is safest taken there. Fewer witnesses, no traffic. It is a short walk from there to Christine’s home. If you
become lost, use one of the spells as a map.”

“I will.”

“Good luck.”

Mayfridh bent to kiss the top of Eisengrimm’s head, then tried to force a breath down into her panic-squeezed lungs. She pulled
one of the spells from the bag and let it rest on her upturned palm.

“Passage,”
she whispered into it, then blew gently. The spell began to dissolve, and in front of her a long oval shape began to flicker.

“You can return whenever you like,” Eisengrimm said.

“Promise me I’ll be safe.”

“I promise you.”

The oval shape resolved itself into a watery picture of the Real World. A dark wood, not unlike the one she stood in. But
already she could hear the distant traffic, smell the odd sharp-sour smells.

“Farewell, Eisengrimm.”

“Farewell, Little May.”

She took a breath, stepped forward into the murky half-light between the worlds, and then through to the other side.

Writing this memoir is affecting my imagination in odd ways. Just the other night, I started to believe that I had a faery
living in my own building. One of the girls, the skinny little thing that hangs on Jude Honeychurch’s arm, had a most revolting
faery odor clinging to her. I was sitting next to her, and she reached her arm toward me and I could smell it faintly. Like
somebody who has stepped in something rotten and can’t detect it himself, she was bewildered when I shot out of my chair and
moved. How could I have eaten with that smell in my nostrils? And yet, a day or two later (after many hours pondering how
I could kill her and bone her without Jude knowing), I ran into her again on the front step. No smell at all. Of course, I
should have known she wasn’t a faery. They are usually confident and glamorous, and this girl is not. She has an air of hungry-dog
desperation about her, like she expects to be kicked at any moment. So what was it? A momentary glitch in my sense of smell?
Or was it simply that I have spent so many hours thinking about my own faery stories to assess their suitability for my memoir—the
triumphs and failures of my past—that I’m smelling faeries where there are only humans?

At least it relieves me of the problem of killing her. But I must be very certain next time I hunt a faery, because if my
senses can lead me astray in such a manner, I could end up murdering an innocent human.

All this talk of killing faeries fills me with such a warm satisfaction, like it’s Boxing Day and the clutter of torn wrapping
paper is consigned to the rubbish bin, and there are just shiny new things waiting to be played with. My memories of happy
moments. I have hunted many faeries in my time, but none were so satisfying as my first kill. I was fourteen and it was Christmastime.

The disagreement with my parents over the faery had never truly been resolved. They grew, I am almost certain, to hate me
for my instincts. We fought a great deal, even after I pretended I no longer bore any ill will toward our faery relatives
in an attempt to win back their love. They looked at me as if they didn’t know me, with a sick despair that drove them eventually
to consign me to a boarding school. Not for my own good or for the possibility of reform, but simply because it became too
painful for them to look upon me. I grew into a strong, if somewhat plump, young man and in the sanctuary of their blind spot
I returned to my deepest fantasies about faeries. While the other boys were comparing their wispy new facial growth, or sharing
their sex dreams about Elke Sommer, or forming sports teams to fill the emptiness of being banished from home, or hefting
each other’s musky ball sacks under the rough blankets at night, I cultivated a zealous solitariness and drew my pictures.
By the time I was fourteen, I had nearly an entire suitcase full.

I was back in Bremen with my parents that Christmas, and they took me shopping to a large department store. I smelled him
immediately.

Sitting on a pedestal, dressed as the Christmas Man, children climbing all over his lap.

A faery.

I had to play it cool, of course. My parents hadn’t noticed him, so I steered them away from him and allowed the afternoon
to pass as if nothing had happened.

But I planned, as soon as I could, to return.

I had an unbearable, sleepless night. I knew I should do something about that awful aberration, but I didn’t know what. I
couldn’t let a faery wander around unchecked in my own city. I fantasized in great detail about killing the faery, but didn’t
know if I could. I was riddled with self-doubts.

I awoke and demanded that my mother take me to my aunt Marta’s house. Aunt Marta lived within walking distance of the department
store and Aunt Marta had a toolshed in the back garden, where my uncle Walt had gone to escape her incessant chatter in the
years before he died. Mother must have been surprised by my sudden desire to see Aunt Marta—I had never before shown a particular
fondness for her—but my parents were always eager to be apart from me. I packed my bags and installed myself at Aunt Marta’s
until Christmas.

Aunt Marta was a stupid old woman who could not stop gossiping. Every morning she made me breakfast and subjected me to an
hour of chatter, made me morning tea and talked some more, made me lunch and so on. But every afternoon at four she went caroling
with the small choir she belonged to, leaving me alone for three blissful hours.

Uncle Walt’s toolshed hadn’t been opened in the two years since he died. I crept out there as soon as Marta was gone, and
slipped inside. Snow had fallen the night before, and the air was very quiet and chilled. I knew by now that it was my destiny
to kill the faery, but I was too innocent to know where to start. It was necessarily going to be a crude and primitive exercise.
As I looked around me, discovering tools that I thought might help—a mallet, a saw, a long screwdriver—I wished for streamlined
equipment like daggers and guns. Every time I thought about what I intended to do that evening, such a warm liquid rush of
excitement would flood my body that I had trouble remaining on my feet. While weighing the mallet in my hands and imagining
bringing it crashing down on the Santa hat, I actually wet my pants. I left my soiled clothes for Aunt Marta to clean up,
took the tools in a sack, and returned to the department store to seek out Santa.

Oh, I could smell him; his reeking bones under his skin called to me. I hovered nearby at a shelf filled with toys and watched
him. Children climbed in and out of his lap, telling him their Christmas wishes. At one stage he caught sight of me, and patted
his lap invitingly. He probably thought I was too embarrassed to volunteer my dearest Christmas wish to him, on account of
being such a large boy. I shook my head and sank back between the shelves, savoring the knowledge that my Christmas wish would
be granted soon.

I watched him all afternoon, then when the store closed, I hid beneath a rack of winter coats near the toy section and waited
to see where he went and what he did. He disappeared from my view and I thought I had lost him. I saw the lights dim, I heard
voices calling good night to each other, and I cursed myself for not thinking more clearly about what to do with him. But
then luck intervened. After the store was quiet and I was considering how to leave now all the doors were locked, I saw him
move back into my line of vision. He still wore his Santa suit and went from shelf to shelf in the toy section, from toy to
toy, touching them with his fingers. I chanced slipping out from behind the coats and creeping closer to watch him. As he
touched each toy, a glimmer of pale light would briefly envelop it, then fade. He was covering all the toys with faery blessings.

I’ve since learned much about faeries. Blessing objects, especially for children, is very characteristic of Dutch faeries.
I had no idea then that he was from the Netherlands, but when I did realize, years later, that my first kill was Dutch, I
took a certain satisfaction in it as I have never liked anybody from that country.

I watched him, horrified that he was putting his foul touch on all those toys. When he had finished two or three shelves,
he tired. I followed him silently as he found a back exit from the department store and slipped out into an alley. I was two
seconds after him, and he looked up and saw me.

“Hello,” he said smiling, “didn’t I see you earlier today?”

I glared at him without speaking. If he was unnerved by the fat boy stalking him, he gave no indication.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, and turned away.

You may be surprised to hear that my first kill, with those primitive instruments, was so effective and satisfying that I
have never actually upgraded to the sleek equipment I fantasized about earlier that day. I still have Uncle Walt’s tools,
and I still use them from time to time for the sake of nostalgia as much as for the way the grooves sit familiar in my hand.
I followed the Dutch faery, I bludgeoned him to death in the alley, and I returned to Aunt Marta’s. It was as wonderful as
I had anticipated, if a little messy.

But before I left, I took out the saw and I sawed off one of the faery’s fingers, wrapping it carefully in his Santa hat.
In the privacy of my bedroom back home in Niederbüren on Christmas Eve, I unwrapped my cherished prize to inspect it. With
patience, remarkable for such a young man, I stripped away the flesh, careful not to scrape the bone, until I revealed the
shining treasure beneath.

Not silver. Although I am color-blind, it was apparent that this bone was not precious metal as I had been told. Rather, it
was whiter than anything in my field of vision, and it glowed softly, catching the light and radiating it at pretty angles.
I scrubbed it to remove the repulsive faery smell, and from that moment on could barely take my eyes off it. That night, after
all the lights in the house had been switched off, I pulled out my old night-light, and by its soft glow placed the bone on
my desk. I reached for the sharp knife I used on my model planes and I began to scratch and scrape, carving a crooked face
upon the bone. Hours passed, and I was deeply immersed in that wonderful thrill of promise and labor known to all artists.
I have yet to experience a Christmas as splendid as that one.

I still have that carving today. It sits in a special silver bracket above the window in my sculpture room. That carving,
crude and childish as it is, is unutterably important to me. It represents the finest season of my childhood, a turning point
in my identity, the moment when I knew I had found my life’s work.

Mayfridh hesitated just outside the building where Christine lived. She had come this far—across worlds, through traffic—but
now she wondered if visiting Christine was an ill-considered scheme. Her old friend had not been happy to be in Ewigkreis;
maybe her unhappiness was something to do with Mayfridh herself? Maybe Christine didn’t like her?

She glanced around her. It was late afternoon, but not yet dark. The Real World was nowhere near as scary as she had anticipated.
Mayfridh reminded herself that she was a native of this world, whatever she had become later, and its rhythms and impressions
were almost familiar. She remembered traffic lights and train lines and cigarette smoke and electricity. Those memories, added
to the spell she had drunk, made her feel almost at home in this land so distant from her own.

Once more she turned her attention to the intercom at the front door. No point in agonizing about it. If Christine didn’t
want to see her, that would be that. But Mayfridh had to give her the opportunity to say as much.

With a deep breath, she approached the door. Eisengrimm had told her which button to push. It was the one marked “Honeychurch.”
She wondered why Christine had called her home such a delicious name.

“Hello?” A man’s voice came out of the intercom—that painstakingly faked magic they called technology—and Mayfridh was too
surprised to speak. Had Eisengrimm got the number wrong? Did Christine live in the unappealingly named “Zweigler” or “Ekman”
instead?

“Hello?” The voice again. Mayfridh realized she should say something.

“Er . . . hello. I had hoped to see Christine Starlight.”

“She’s not back from work yet. Do you want to come up and wait for her?”

Mayfridh realized the voice must belong to the man she had seen Christine with. “Yes, yes I would,” she said.

“We’re in number three.”

The door buzzed and then there was silence. She pressed the button again.