The Autumn Castle (28 page)

“I didn’t mean to offend you, but it’s important,” he said. “You see, I spend my whole life trying to put a feeling into an
image. Most of the time, nobody can see what that feeling is. But you see it, you
know
it. It’s like, my work has finally reached its audience.”

“It has. It really has.” Electricity was growing in the two-inch space between her hand and his on the table. “Jude, I’m not
lying. I’m not tricking you.”

“I feel like that,” he said, nodding toward the photograph she still held. “That’s how I feel.”

“Lonely? You’re lonely?”

“I am,” he breathed, barely audible, “sometimes.”

“And sad?”

He nodded once, his eyes fixed on the table.

A tide of half-confused feelings and half-formed questions washed through her. Danger had twined with the blood in her veins.
She felt his fingers move, glanced down. The back of his hand, his knuckles, brushed the side of her index finger. Deliberately,
slowly. Her whole body was a held breath.

He belongs to Christine.

Mayfridh snatched her hand away and shot out of her chair, dropping the photo on the table. The bewildered guilt on Jude’s
face stopped her from running out as she’d intended. She stood tensed in front of him. He looked up at her, that same expression
of pain and confusion on his face. The longer she stood there, the harder it was to pull herself away.

“Jude . . .” His name came out strangled and breathless.

Jude reached for her hands and pulled her one step toward him. He closed his eyes, his thumbs stroking her fingers. Then he
leaned forward and—slowly, so slowly—pressed his face into her belly, kissed her through the blue lace and black velvet. The
heat of his lips expanded through her, singing in her stomach and her lungs and her heart, gliding like electricity up her
throat and into her brain. She gently shook off his hands and touched his hair, an awful pain of desire coiling between her
ribs. His own hands curled around her hips. It was all she could do to keep breathing. Bliss, utter bliss.

Then his shoulders hitched, and she realized he was crying.

“Jude, what’s wrong?”

Suddenly, he tore himself away, turning from her, leaping from his chair and hurrying from the room. She stood in empty space,
her body and heart bereft.

He belongs to Christine.

She had to go. She had to get out of here, go home where she couldn’t hurt people, couldn’t hurt herself. In her hurry to
leave, she tipped over a chair, left it lying on its side in Christine’s kitchen.

This wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. Her heart ached, but all would be forgotten soon if she could just get home
and wait quietly.

Winter was coming.

Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

“Ode to the West Wind,”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Aye, granny, what are you doing there?”

“I’m scraping intestines, my child. Tomorrow I’ll scrape yours as well!”

“The Castle of Murder,”
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

H
eedless of the cold air outside, Mayfridh threw open her bedroom window and let the fresh wind bite her cheeks and nose. A
gust moved the gauzy canopy and curtains, which fluttered white like desperate flags around her face. Four deep breaths later
she was buried in the white layers of her bed, sobbing and sobbing. Leaves torn from the trees outside skidded into the bedroom.

She cried for Christine, who loved Jude and whom she had betrayed. She cried for Jude, who was lonely and sad and whom she
had led to disloyalty. But mostly—as the red and brown and yellow leaves pattered onto the floor like rain and settled on
the white blankets and pillows and caught in her crimson hair—she cried for herself. And no matter how many times Eisengrimm
bumped on the door to her room and pleaded with her to let him in, she called out “No” and continued to cry until the room
wore a carpet of dead leaves and her face was flushed and hot despite the autumn chill.

“Mayfridh.”

His voice was close this time. She sat up and looked toward the window, where Eisengrimm perched as Crow.

“Leave me alone,” she said, her voice hoarse and her own language heavy on her tongue. She palmed tears from her cheeks.

He hopped to the floor and transformed to Wolf, placed his paws on the sill, and pushed the windows closed with his nose.
“You’ll catch a bite in your lungs by letting all this cold air in.”

“I don’t care!”

He jumped up onto the bed next to her. “Mayfridh, what has happened? Why are you so distressed?”

Even though she knew he wouldn’t approve, her heart ached to tell somebody her sad story. She threw her arms around his neck
and confessed the whole tale, even found some more tears inside her. When she had finished, she sat back and waited for his
stern lecture.

Instead, he gazed at her with soft silent eyes.

“Well,” she said, “say something.”

“I’m sorry, Mayfridh. It hurts me to see you so unhappy.” His deep, honeyed voice was tender.

“You’re not angry at me?”

“I think you behaved unwisely, but love makes people unwise.”

“I do love him, Eisengrimm,” she said, choking on the words. She took a deep shuddering breath to try to regain her composure.
“And he loves me, there can be no doubt.”

“He hasn’t said he loves you.”

“Eisengrimm,
I felt it.
He loves me, and he can’t bear to love me.”

“Does he not love Christine?”

“Yes, I think he does love Christine. But not as he loves me. Perhaps he once loved her as much, but now he loves her as a
brother might love a sister. She doesn’t understand him or his wonderful paintings. They aren’t a good match for each other,
and now that he has fallen in love with me—”

“Wait, wait. Do you know all this for a fact?”

“Yes.”

“But he said nothing to you about Christine.”

“Words aren’t everything,” she snapped. “I’m right, Eisengrimm. He does love me.”

Eisengrimm paused and seemed to be choosing his response carefully. “Mayfridh,” he said at last, “humans are . . . humans
can be driven by feelings other than love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you understand what sexual desire is?”

Mayfridh grew annoyed. Now he was treating her like a little girl. Of course she understood sexual desire; she felt it herself.
“Do you think that because I am a virgin I am a complete fool?”

“Be not angry, Mayfridh. I only suggest that perhaps Jude’s feelings are not love, but desire. A man can love one woman and
desire another. Desire quickly turns to distaste once an attempt to fulfill it is made. Love remains. Love endures.”

Mayfridh closed her eyes and slumped back on her bed. Leaves crackled and turned to dust beneath her. She should never have
expected Eisengrimm to understand. She knew that Jude loved her, as certainly as she knew that the sun lived in the sky. Eisengrimm
curled up next to her, and she put her arms around him, suddenly bone-weary.

“I feel I haven’t slept for days,” she murmured.

“Then sleep now, and I shall keep you warm.”

“My heart hurts, Eisengrimm.”

“In just a few weeks we’ll move to the Winter Castle. You will forget.”

“But it’s so sad to forget things that matter.” She thought now not just of Jude and Christine, but of her mother, Diana.

“Imagine how much worse it could be, Mayfridh. Imagine if you loved somebody in this world and couldn’t have that person.
No change of seasons could ever make you forget.”

“Hush, Eisengrimm, don’t make me even sadder. What a terrible thought.” She curled on her side against his warm back, her
fingers spread in the fur over his ribs, and fell into a deep slumber.

Eisengrimm was waiting when she emerged the following morning, the golden chain and medallion of his office as counselor fastened
around his neck. Mayfridh took a step back.

“No, not official business. Not today.”

“My Queen, you have been absent for a number of weeks. There are angry questions in the village, and Hilda says the domestic
staff have started to doubt your fitness to rule us. You must make an appearance this morning, you must show that you are
still the queen.”

“Of course I am still the queen!” she snapped. “How dare they question my activities?”

“Because you have not been here, Mayfridh,” he replied forcefully. “The seasons must turn soon; the citizens of this world
require your magic and your blessings. They grow worried that you aren’t preparing them sufficiently for winter.” He dropped
his voice, gentle now. “Little May, to be queen involves responsibilities.”

Damn Eisengrimm and damn the rest of the world! The change of seasons never faltered. Plenty of time still remained for her
to distribute the magic and make the blessings. Were they all nervous old ladies? How could she even think about official
duties while nursing a broken heart?

“My Queen?”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming.”

“Official robes, Mayfridh. I doubt the others will deem your current attire . . . appropriate.”

Now she wanted to cry. The Real World was slipping farther and farther away from her every moment. “But Eisengrimm . . .”

“Please, Little May. It will make matters easier.”

She retreated to her bedroom and slammed the door, pulled off her tartan pinafore, replaced it with her yellow gown and bronze
robe, hung her keys about her waist, and scraped her hair beneath a scarf. With as much dignity as she could assemble, she
descended the stairs to the great hall and took her place on the throne. This was where she had sat that first day, when Christine
had unwittingly wandered into her world. What a twisted and miserable path life had taken since then.

“Majesty,” Hilda said with a curtsy.

One by one the others in the gloomy hall acknowledged her: Thorsten the village mayor, the three village aldermen (she never
remembered their names), Brathr the hatchet-faced reeve, and Eisengrimm.

“Well then,” Mayfridh said, “why the sudden meeting?”

“Majesty,” Thorsten began, “we are only weeks away from the turn of season, and haven’t received our winter magic yet.”

“We still have time,” she said, irritated.

“The villagers grow restless,” one of the aldermen said.

“You may feel there is plenty of time, Queen Mayfridh,” Hilda said, “but the opinion of your subjects and your staff is not
to be ignored.”

How petty this was. She fantasized about enchanting them all into silence, then remembered she hadn’t a single spell left.
Damn Hexebart.

“Eisengrimm,” Mayfridh said, turning her attention to him, “do you not think we have plenty of time still?”

“Your Majesty, I agree that the opinion of your subjects is a pressing issue.”

“But we have many weeks, do we not? And the magic and the blessings can be administered in a day.”

“That is true,” Eisengrimm conceded.

Thorsten turned hostile eyes on the wolf. “Perhaps another issue we might discuss is the issue of counsel.”

“Counsel?” Mayfridh asked, watching Thorsten carefully. “What do you mean?”

“The issue, my Queen, of an adviser who sees no harm in your being from your home and duties for weeks at a time.”

Mayfridh quickly examined the faces assembled around her. Each had turned suspicious gazes on Eisengrimm, and she was gripped
by guilt. Had Eisengrimm been fending off their questions and accusations all this time, while she enjoyed herself in the
Real World? “Eisengrimm’s counsel is not in question,” she said firmly. “It was my own decision to spend time in the Real
World. In fact, Eisengrimm discouraged me from being away for so long. But now I am returned.”

“For good?” Brathr asked.

“I . . . I believe so.”

“Majesty,” Thorsten said, taking a penitent step forward, “be not angry with us. We have all been bearing the weight of the
many questions asked of your behavior. Your subjects are not happy, but they remain loyal. Some gesture must be made to reward
their continued loyalty.”