The Autumn Castle (5 page)

“Ich verstehe nicht,” Christine said again, slowly in case her pronunciation was bad.

“Aha,” the woman said, nodding to indicate that Christine’s point was understood. Then the woman rose from her throne—a throne,
that must make her the queen—barked orders at the assembly, and descended the stairs to take Christine’s hand.

“Kom.”
It was close enough to “come” in any language she knew, so Christine allowed herself to be led, several people and the wolf
following her, around the back of the dais to a wooden doorway. The queen stepped forward and threw the doors open, admitting
a shaft of golden light into the cavernous room. She led them into an overgrown garden of trailing vines and wild hedges,
all spattered with the first yellow streaks of autumn. Beyond the garden they reached a slope that led to a crumbling stone
wall and an iron gate. The queen ushered Christine ahead of her into dense trees.

Christine hesitated. Was she going to be taken back to the place where she had first arrived? Was she being sent back to her
own world, where a week of painkiller-induced half-existence was waiting for her? For a moment she couldn’t decide which was
worse—dreams or reality—but it appeared the choice was out of her hands anyway.

“Kom,”
the queen said again, pulling Christine’s hand gently.

“Okay, okay,” she muttered, and the queen looked at her sharply, but didn’t pause, leading her deeper into the forest. The
sun had now almost disappeared over the horizon, but its flaming golden fingers bathed the scene. Christine could hear the
noises of little animals at work in the forest, and the skitter of lonely leaves dropping to the ground, early casualties
of the season. Finally, they came to a clearing surrounding a crooked stone well. The woman released Christine’s hand and
leaned over the well.

“Hechse!”
she called.
“Hechse!”

It sounded like the German word for “witch,” and Christine steeled herself for what ghastly thing might emerge from the well.

A stream of words Christine didn’t understand was directed down into the dark. Then slowly, as if by magic, the reel began
to creak and roll upward. Christine watched as, squeak-clunk-squeak-clunk, something heaved itself out of the well. A black
shape appeared, an ancient rusty cage. It drew slowly above the stones, then stopped with a lurch. Hunched over inside it,
dressed in smeared rags of an indeterminate color, was a white-haired hag with a wispy beard.

The queen seized Christine and forced her forward.

“Hey,” Christine cried in protest. Four other pairs of hands were on her, and she was forced to her knees in front of the
well, her head held down on the cold stone.

The queen directed more commands at the witch and, without warning, the hag’s bony gray hands shot out and clapped Christine
deafeningly around the ears.

“Ouch!” Christine cried, then heard somebody say, “Don’t complain, we do you a favor.” Only, she didn’t really hear it. She
heard something completely different—a sentence in that garbled half- German they all spoke—and yet when it entered her ears
and slid into her mind, it turned into words she understood completely. She raised her head, gasping.

“Give Hexebart your tongue,” the queen said.

Christine flinched away, tried to get to her feet, but more hands forced her down.

“Your tongue, foolish girl,” one of the queen’s assembly said. “You must speak as well as hear.”

The thought of the hag touching her tongue repulsed her, but she was afraid these dream-characters were about to get violent,
so she gingerly poked out her tongue. Once more Hexebart’s fingers stole out from behind the bars of her cage. The witch grabbed
her tongue, yanked it, and then released it.

“Jesus! That really hurt.” But even though these were the words she said, they came out sounding completely different to the
collected assembly. Hexebart cackled at Christine’s bewildered expression. The queen pressed a dainty hand to her mouth to
hide her smile, then collected her queenly demeanor.

“Hexebart,” she said, turning to the hag. “Begone!”

“Gladly, you preening pig, you buttered turd, you sugared sow.” Hexebart released the rope and slid back down the well.

The queen turned her attention to Christine and tried a smile. “I shall receive you in the south turret in twenty minutes.”

“Okay. Fine.” The odd echo of her words in a foreign tongue shivered in her ears.

“Hilda, take her and feed her. She’s far too thin.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” a portly woman said, stepping forward to seize Christine’s arm. “Come, girl.”

Christine was led back into the dim castle, hoping that she would stay in the dream for the next twenty minutes so she could
hear what this dream-queen was going to say. Perhaps she knew all the secrets of the universe: the truth about God, the reason
evil exists, life after death . . .

Christine’s skin froze. Perhaps this wasn’t a dream at all; perhaps it was a near-death experience. What if she had been hurt
so seriously in her fall in Jude’s apartment that she was even now lying on a hospital bed, a drip in her arm and a monitor
blithely blipping out the beats of her heart? What if these visions were the result of horrific brain trauma, trauma that
grew worse every second she was unconscious? Was Jude there by her bedside, crying and praying for her to live? A panicked
grief gripped her, and she seized Hilda’s hand and said, “You must help me. I have to get home.”

Hilda laughed. “You have to meet with the queen first.” She was leading Christine down a paneled hallway lined with closed
doors.

“Then take me to her now.”

“She’s not expecting you for twenty minutes, girl.”

“You don’t understand,” Christine said, stopping and taking Hilda by the shoulders. “I might die if I don’t get back.”

“You look alive and well to me.”

“But I’m not from this world. I belong somewhere else.”

Hilda detached herself from Christine’s pleading hands and propelled her firmly forward. “You will do as the queen says. You
are not sick and you will not die if you wait a mere twenty minutes.”

“But—”

Hilda unlocked a door, bumped it open with her hip, and pulled Christine through. A mullioned window was pushed open to reveal
the autumnal landscape beyond, with the dying sunset beams diffused through it. A table was laid with a wooden plate and a
hunk of rough bread, and a tarnished silver cup.

“I’m really not hungry.”

“I don’t care. You will stay here, and you will eat, and I will return to fetch you when the queen tells me to.” Hilda slammed
out of the room, and the lock clicked into place. Christine took deep breaths, trying to calm herself.
You don’t even know if you believe in near-death experiences, so just get a grip.
This was merely a wild dream, wilder than usual because she had fainted. She lowered herself to the floor, curled her arms
around her knees, and screwed her eyes tight. “I want to wake up, I want to wake up,” she said, over and over, but nothing
happened. Tears began to prick at her eyes and her skin twitched. Pain or no pain, she just wanted to be back home with Jude.

For a long time she lay curled up on the floor, willing and willing herself to wake up from this dream—preferably at home
and not in a hospital—without any success. Finally, footsteps approached and Hilda unlocked the door. She saw that Christine
hadn’t touched the food and sniffed disapprovingly.

“I said I wasn’t hungry,” Christine said, springing to her feet.

She followed Hilda dutifully along the hall and into a steep spiral staircase; it wound unevenly up and up in a windowed stone
turret saturated with dusty twilight colors. At the top of the stairs, Hilda thrust Christine ahead of her into a cool stone
room. The round walls were hewn smooth and covered in lavish tapestries. The floor was spread with thick rugs of dirty sheepskins
that overlapped each other. Three hard wooden chairs were arranged around a low wooden chest, topped with dripping candlesticks
and a large brass bear. The last rays of sunlight filtered in through windows made of dozens of tiny diamond-shaped panes.

The queen, her hair loose around her shoulders, knelt on the floor next to the wolf in the dim light, feeding him treats.
She glanced up as Christine entered the room.

“Thank you, Hilda,” she said. “You may leave us.”

Hilda nodded and closed the door behind her.

Christine didn’t wait for the queen to speak. “Listen, you have to help me. I need to get back to my own world because I’m
really worried that I’m dying all the time I’m here.”

The queen stood, a puzzled expression on her face. “What you say makes little sense.”

“I’m not from here. This is a . . . a dream, or a vision, or something. I need to be conscious again.” She sounded helpless
and needy.

The queen extended a hand. “I shall endeavor to understand you better, stranger. My name is Mayfridh.”

Christine grasped her hand distractedly. “Of course it is. You’re named after a little girl I once knew.”

Mayfridh shook her head, dropping Christine’s hand. “No, I’m sure the little girl was named after me. I’m the queen, after
all. Children are often named in my honor. What’s your name?”

“Christine Starlight,” Christine replied. “Please, you’ve got to—”

“Christine Starlight?” Mayfridh said sharply. “Truly?”

“Queen Mayfridh?” the wolf said, uncurling himself and standing. “You seem surprised.”

Mayfridh ignored him and moved closer to Christine to examine her. “Of course it’s Christine. You’ll forgive me for not recognizing
you. It has been a long time.”

Christine flinched away from her inspection. “What are you talking about?”

Mayfridh smiled at her and, in perfect crisp English, said, “Christine, don’t you remember me?”

Christine was momentarily disoriented. She had only just grown used to the odd word-echo-word-echo of their language. To hear
her own language, and spoken like a British public school graduate, startled her.

“We were friends in our youth,” Mayfridh continued. “You lived next door to me. Oh, we have so much to catch up on.” Mayfridh
stepped back and settled in one of the heavy wooden chairs. She patted her knee and slipped back into her own language. “Eisengrimm,
come.” The wolf approached her, resting his head between her knees to gaze up at her adoringly. “Fox,” Mayfridh said, and
Christine was astonished at what happened next. In an instant, the wolfish features had reduced and contracted, the gray fur
had burnished over with red, and Eisengrimm jumped into Mayfridh’s lap, a perfect, gleaming fox. Mayfridh caressed his head
and looked at Christine expectantly.

“I’m tired of this dream,” Christine said. The light in the room was changing. Although Christine had been certain a moment
past that the sun had just set, it seemed a glimmer of dim morning light reflected in the windows.

“Dream? You think this is a dream?”

“Yes . . . no . . . I’m scared that I’m lying nearly dead on some hospital bed, and the longer I stay here the closer I get
to dying.”

Mayfridh shook her head. “You should never name the very thing of which you’re most afraid. It’s dangerous.” Then she held
up her thumb. “It’s because of this, you know. It’s because we mixed blood as children. Why, I’d forgotten until just now.
You and I are blood sisters. Do you remember?”

“I remember. I’ve been remembering for two weeks, and that’s why I’m dreaming about you.”

“We made a bond, and somehow we’ve been drawn back together.” She pulled gently at the fox’s ears. “Do you have any idea how
that happened, Eisengrimm?”

The fox looked up. “No, Queen Mayfridh. Though I will think upon it.” Eisengrimm’s voice stayed the same whichever form he
took: a rich mellow tone that made Christine think of oak and honey.

“Eisengrimm is very wise,” Mayfridh said to Christine. “He’ll find the answer. I’ve never had a human visit me here before.”

“You mean you’re not human?”

“Not after all these years, no. I’m a faery. Everyone you’ve met here is a faery.”

At this, Christine felt a huge laugh bubbling up inside her. “Of course. Yeah. I’m in faeryland, right?”

Mayfridh frowned. “Our land is called Ewigkreis. Why do you laugh?”

“And this is a faery castle?”

“It’s called the Autumn Castle. Why do you laugh?”

“And that thing on your lap is some kind of a faery pet?”

“His name is Eisengrimm and he’s my most trusted counselor. Christine,
why
do you laugh? It’s very rude.”

“Because this is the stupidest dream I’ve ever had, and I want to go home.”

A strange shuddering began to move under her feet.

Mayfridh gazed at her forlornly. “But I don’t want you to go. I’ve been so lonely.”

A finger of pain crept into Christine’s back. She stiffened, placed her hand there.

“What’s the matter, Christine?” Eisengrimm asked.

“The pain,” she said, then the turret room, and Mayfridh and Eisengrimm, all started to shimmer and pale and she knew she
was waking up. She screwed her eyes tight. Reality pressed in on her. The next time she opened her eyes she was in the kitchen
in Jude’s apartment, on the floor, in the dark. And the pain was a heavy juddering pressure on her spine.

Christine groaned. She flailed her right hand out to find something to help pull her up. She grasped the table leg, heaved,
felt a shot of agony spreading up from the curve of her back toward her neck, and down toward her tailbone. It felt like someone
had lit a blowtorch inside her spine. Tears and sobs and moans flowed out of her spontaneously and uncontrollably. To come
back to this, after the wonderful dreaming respite, was almost more than she could endure.

She tried once more to stand, without success. She lay back, managed to get her watch in front of her eyes. As far as she
could deduce, she’d been out for only three minutes. She flopped her arm back down and looked up at the ceiling in the dark,
trying to breathe through the pain, setting her jaw against it, wriggling slightly in hopes of easing it. Then the jingle
of keys outside the door. Jude returning from the studio. The light went on.