Scarlet in the Snow Read online

  ‘No, I am using my inner name here, not the name I was known by in the world. This one carries no echoes. And neither, at the moment, does yours, for different reasons.’

  ‘What are those reasons?’

  ‘They don’t know of your existence,’ she said simply. ‘And they won’t, unless . . .’

  ‘Unless what? Please, tell me. I have a right to know.’

  ‘Unless you make it so,’ she said quietly. ‘And I think you know what that means.’

  I swallowed. She meant if I tried to run away. But even though only a few hours ago that would have been uppermost in my mind, I was now more curious than frightened. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Three years in clock-reckoning. Much longer if you count it in the relentless hours of my lord’s agony.’

  ‘And where are you from?’

  ‘I cannot tell you that for the same reason I cannot speak my lord’s name. If I were to speak the name of our home . . .’ Luel paused and I saw a flicker of sadness cross her face, ‘the feeling in it would alert them. We are not from this country. That is all I can say.’

  I was silent a moment, then I said, carefully, ‘What happened to your lord? Was it a curse?’

  ‘Yes. He crossed a powerful and very dangerous man.’ Her lips peeled back into a snarl. ‘Quite how dangerous, we did not know until it was too late and the spell was cast. I managed to halt the full workings of it and to whisk my lord away. But that is all I could do.’

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel hungry at all and pushed my plate away. ‘You said that your lord is still being – sought. Does that mean –’

  ‘Our enemy does not consider his revenge complete yet. It will not be complete until my lord is utterly destroyed.’ She spoke calmly, but her words chilled me to the bone.

  I whispered, ‘The crow this morning . . .’

  ‘It may be from him. It may not. I checked our defences again, and they have not been breached. But I still cannot take the chance.’

  I shivered. ‘Forgive me, Luel, for asking this, but you are a feya, are you not?’ She nodded in reply. ‘And you are connected to your lord by no ordinary bond.’

  ‘That is so. I’ve served the family for a long, long time. And I have known my lord for all of his twenty-one years, since the very day he was born.’

  Twenty-one, I thought, shocked. Why, the abartyen was only a few years older than me. To think that that terrible thing had happened to him when he was eighteen. A sharp pang went through me, a mixture of pity and horror. ‘One of your kind is surely stronger than a mere human sorcerer,’ I said. ‘So why –’

  ‘There is no mere about it,’ Luel snapped. ‘Our enemy is most certainly no ordinary sorcerer. And yes, I’m what you people call a feya, but there are many grades and ranks of powers amongst us. Mine is only a small one.’

  My eyes widened. I waved a hand around. ‘But this place . . . it is your doing.’

  ‘Yes. So what? I have tried to keep my lord safe and make him comfortable. I have even tried to give him moments of respite, of beauty, like the rose. But every day it grows harder.’

  ‘The . . . the empty frames – are they part of it?’

  Luel nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you wish them away, or whatever it is you do?’

  ‘It is not so simple,’ she said sadly.

  I was tempted to say that someone who could control a magic mirror and make dishes and dresses fly from places all over the land should have no difficulty with getting rid of empty spaces.

  ‘Child, you must understand. There are so many things I cannot do, much as I long to. I cannot reverse the spell. I cannot restore what was taken from my lord – everything he once loved, the life he once lived. I cannot protect him from the darkness that eats away at him. I cannot save him from a cruel injustice that day by merciless day devours more and more of his memory and with it his humanity.’

  ‘Oh, Luel,’ I cried, shaken to the core by the horror of it, ‘the man who did this must surely be no man but a demon from the deepest pit of hell. For how could a human being do such a terrible thing to another and still not consider that his revenge was complete?’

  There was a great sadness in the old woman’s eyes as she looked at me. ‘My dear sweet Natasha,’ she said, ‘he is no demon but indeed a man.’

  ‘Well, if he is no demon, it is simple.’

  Luel’s eyebrows shot up, questioning me.

  ‘What one human can do, another can undo,’ I went on. ‘There must be a way to break this spell. And I want to do it. Come what may. With your help, of course,’ I added.

  Luel’s face filled with light. She grasped my hand, and I felt the strange coolness of her feya skin. ‘Oh, Natasha, my dear child, you have made me so happy,’ she whispered. ‘You cannot know how happy. Before, you gave me hope. Now, you have given so much more. For yes, there may be a way to break the spell, but I could not say so before this very moment.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Luel said. ‘I took a risk letting you in, for I knew it might weaken the spell that has protected this place from unfriendly eyes. But I took that risk because I knew you were different, and I hoped so much that maybe you were the right one. Yet I had to be sure. Because it is only to the right one that I may say it.’ She smiled radiantly. ‘And you have just proven you are the one.’

  What Luel told me then stilled my tongue and made my heart hang heavy as lead. I listened to her speak of the one way that would break the spell, and tried to school my own expression to conceal the horror I felt at what was being asked of me. She looked at me when she’d finished. ‘Well?’

  ‘I . . .’ The simple word snagged in my throat. ‘I . . .’

  ‘It is a shock, I know. But in time . . .’

  I held up a trembling hand. ‘Is there . . .’ I swallowed. ‘Is there no possibility of . . . Are you sure this is the only way?’

  ‘It is the only way I know.’ She laid a hand on mine. ‘Natasha, don’t look so terrified. My lord – what you see now is not what he really is. If you knew him as I do . . .’

  ‘But I don’t,’ I said shakily. ‘That is just it.’

  ‘If you turn your back on my lord now, his fate is sealed. There is nothing surer.’

  ‘I will not turn my back, but I . . . I will do anything to save him but that,’ I said, rising and pushing back my chair so hurriedly that it fell with a crash. ‘You cannot demand such a thing of me! I cannot be forced to think of him as my . . .’ The words caught in my throat.

  ‘You are right. You cannot be forced to love him. You cannot be forced to marry him. And nobody can demand it of you,’ Luel said sadly. ‘My dear child, I’d hoped you understood that. All I can do is suggest it. It must be done of your own free will or it is worthless.’

  With a cry, I fled the room and ran down the corridor, expecting at any moment to hear her coming in pursuit of me. But I reached the glass doors that led to the garden without her voice hailing me. Blindly, feeling as though I were about to suffocate, I pulled open the doors and stumbled out into the empty garden, the crisp cold air making me gasp, half in relief, half in pain.

  I reached a stone bench and sat down. Doubling over, I rocked from side to side, murmuring desperate prayers. I tried to still the panic that burned within me, the fear that Luel was lying and that I was already trapped by my own thoughtless words into a terrifying marriage with a beast.

  My eye was caught at that moment by a splash of scarlet on white – the withered petals of the fateful flower, lying in the snow. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I got up groggily and staggered to where a single petal lay. All the others had vanished as though they’d never existed and the bush was completely bare.

  I picked up the petal. Withered as it was, it still exuded a faint fragrance, and its ragged shape and deep colour reminded me eerily of a heart. A bloody, dying heart, broken beyond repair. And that image undid the last of my precarious self-control, so that I put my
face in my hands and wept, the petal slipping unregarded through my fingers.

  ‘She has told you.’ The voice was quiet, but it made me start violently. I turned to see the abartyen standing on the path. He stood absolutely still and his yellow eyes held no expression at all but glowed like lanterns in his monstrous face. He made a terrifying sight.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered, quailing before him.

  ‘She has no right,’ he said, so quietly that I strained to hear him. ‘No right. I did not ask it. I will not ask it.’ His voice rose a little with each word, so that by the time he got to the end, it was a deep, menacing growl.

  I took a step back. ‘It is all right, sir, I am not –’

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said harshly. ‘I know every fibre in you rebels at the thought, every sense shrinks. Is that not so? Answer me.’

  I did not dare to look at him. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. Whose flesh would not crawl at the sight of me? I am a monster, hollowed out by darkness. But not yet fallen so low as to allow this – this sacrifice of an innocent. I would rather live and die the hideous monster that I am.’ His voice broke a little. For the first time I looked at the abartyen and saw not a grotesquely nightmarish alien thing to be feared or pitied, but a ruined human being valiantly trying to cling to the last shreds of honour.

  Impulsively, I said, ‘Oh, sir, you are no monster but a fellow mortal unjustly condemned to a cruel fate, and it is my dearest wish to help you. I cannot in truth do as Luel asks. I cannot be your lover, your wife but . . .’ Trembling, I took a step towards him, then another. He did not move a muscle and stood there staring at me with his tiger eyes. They didn’t seem quite as glowingly yellow any more but shadowed deep down with a darker, softer shade. I held out my hand. ‘But that does not mean I cannot be your friend.’

  He gave a low groan. ‘No, it is too late.’

  ‘I will not believe that,’ I said, trying to speak lightly. ‘Sir, is it the custom in your country for a gentleman to leave a lady’s hand dangling as if she were a cheeky beggar asking for alms?’

  I saw him blink – the first time I had seen such a homely human tic disturb those alien eyes. ‘Why, I . . .’ He broke off and then resumed a little more strongly, ‘You must excuse me, my lady, but my manners are . . . somewhat rusty.’ Taking my hand shyly and delicately in his, so that I felt neither coarse hair nor ragged claw, but only a very gentle touch, like the soft pad of a cat, he held it for just an instant before dropping it again.

  ‘We are agreed, then,’ I said, my heart thumping so hard against my ribs that I was sure he must hear it. ‘We are to be friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘But if ever . . . if ever you cannot bear the sight of me, you must say so. Send me away. I will understand.’

  A lump formed in my throat. ‘Now why would I do that? Unless, of course, you start taking after Captain Peskov.’

  The anguish on his face was replaced by bewilderment, exactly as I had hoped. ‘Who is Captain Peskov?’ he asked faintly.

  ‘I will tell you all about him, if you want,’ I said briskly. ‘Now, if you do not mind, my feet are rather cold from standing about in this snow. Shall we go inside?’

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ he said, sounding rather dazed. But just before he turned to follow me, I saw him bend down furtively, pick up the petal that I had dropped, and put it away in an inner pocket of his coat. I acted as if I had not seen, though an odd little tremor rippled through me as I led the way towards the glass doors, gossiping about Captain Peskov as though I had not a care in the world.

  Luel met us in the corridor. She looked at us both with shining eyes. ‘It’s cold out there. Perhaps you would like some hot tea and fresh cakes sent to your sitting-room, my lord?’

  ‘Ah, um,’ he replied. His voice sounded a little choked, as if this ordinary request wasn’t something he was used to dealing with. Luel shot me a questioning look.

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ I said heartily. ‘And you’ll join us too, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and smiled. ‘They will be my favourite cream cakes. I wouldn’t miss them for the world.’ Her eyes locked on mine, and I understood the meaning behind her words. This was a moment for great celebration, for everything has changed. Oh no, perhaps she assumed that it meant I’d agreed to marry him? I must disillusion her of that, and fast, because she might broach the subject in front of her lord and that would be too cruel. I was no longer afraid of the abartyen; my offer of friendship had been genuine, if nervous, and I felt instinctively that we could indeed become friends. But there was no chance I could ever feel that way about him. Not for anything in the world could I imagine myself as his lover or his bride, as Luel hoped. And yet not for anything in the world did I want to hurt him, one who had already suffered so much.

  To my relief she said nothing about it. We sat around the fire and drank fragrant steaming tea from a tall china samovar and ate little cream cakes that were piled on a gilded cake stand. At least, Luel and I did, she many more than I, for the bird-like little feya had the prodigious appetite of a blacksmith. But her lord hardly touched a thing, leaving his first cake untouched except for one bite. Yet he seemed, if not cheerful, at least not morose and brooding as before. And he listened as Luel asked me questions about my family, then after a while he shyly asked questions of his own. I answered in the most interesting and natural way I could, trying hard to bring the ordinary human world of my home into this enchanted exile. It wasn’t just for his sake but for mine too.

  Under all my bright chatter and my new determination, a nagging worry kept intruding. I was no longer a prisoner here. But I might as well be. If the spell was not broken, and Luel’s lord not returned to his own shape and his own life, then was I not, too, condemned to this place, unable to leave it because of what his enemy might do to me? Remembering the little Luel had told me, I knew enough to understand that the warnings I’d been given were not idle. There was a great evil prowling somewhere out there beyond the frail edifice of magical safety Luel had built, an evil thirsting still for the blood of its victim; an evil as ruthless as it was powerful, and one I had no hope of defeating or deceiving if a feya such as Luel could only just hold it at bay.

  But I said nothing of this, of course. There was no point in souring the tentative sweetness of those hours, the beginnings of an unlikely friendship forged in such an unexpected way. For the longer we sat together, the closer I felt to them. And the more I became uncomfortable at the fact I had no name for him in my mind. ‘Sir, I understand why I cannot know your true name, but is there none I might know you by? “Sir” is simply not good enough.’

  He shot Luel a glance.

  She shook her head. ‘There is no name we can safely give that truly belongs to him.’

  ‘Then will it be all right if I invent my own?’ I asked, daringly.

  They both stared at me. Then Luel said slowly, ‘Do you have any objections, my lord?’

  He shook his shaggy head. ‘As long as you do not call me after Peskov,’ he said, and his lips curled back. To my astonishment – and Luel’s – I realised that he had made a joke. A small, weak joke, to be sure, but a joke nonetheless.

  I smiled. ‘Set your mind at ease; I would not give that name to a frog croaking in the swamp! I was thinking of Ivan, because it is a name both so common in our country that it must make it difficult to track, and yet also the name of many legendary heroes who triumph over great odds.’

  ‘Ivan! Why not? It is a good name,’ he said, with a lilt in his voice I’d never heard before. ‘Do you not think so, Luel?’

  ‘I think it is excellent,’ the old woman replied, and there was genuine admiration in her eyes as she glanced at me. ‘I think it is most excellent, my lord,’ she added, ‘and it fits you like a glove.’

  ‘I only wish that gloves would fit me so well,’ said Ivan, with a wry glance at one hairy clawed hand. That was his second joke, al
l the more remarkable because it addressed the very source of his pain. From that moment he became Ivan, and the invented name made his besieged humanity more real to me than anything else could have done.

  Later, much later, Ivan fell gently asleep in front of the fire, and Luel motioned to me to tiptoe out. In the corridor, with the door closed behind us, she turned to me and said, with real emotion, ‘My dear, dear child, ask of me whatever you will and I will give it to you if it is in my power to do so.’

  ‘Luel,’ I said uncomfortably, ‘I must tell you that I did not agree to – to . . . what you’d asked of me.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He told me. He was glad. He was unhappy with me, that I had even asked you.’ She paused. ‘Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is another way. And perhaps you have found it.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ I said, with incredulous hope.

  ‘I don’t know yet. But in just a few hours you have done what I could not do in all these years. You have pushed back the darkness for more than a few minutes. His eyes – did you notice? There is more colour in them now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, then impulsively added, ‘and that makes me happy, Luel.’ It was true. In that instant, I was purely, brightly happy.

  She put a hand on my arm. ‘Ah, my dear, dear Natasha. I bless the storm that brought you to our door. And I want so much to give you something in return for what you have done. Is there anything – aside from what you know I cannot give you – that you might want?’

  ‘Might I be allowed to use the mirror sometimes? I know I cannot go home, but if I could speak to my family – if I could see my home – then it would not be so hard for me.’ I hadn’t planned it, the words had just come out of my mouth, and as soon as they did, I knew it was truly the only thing I wanted.

  She smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘Tomorrow I will teach you how to use the mirror, and you will be able to consult it as often as you wish.’ Her tone changed. ‘But beware! On no account must you try to see anything beyond the walls of your home, or speak to anyone other than your family. And you must not tell them the truth but keep to that story you invented or we will all be in great danger. Do you promise?’