The Autumn Castle Read online

  “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.

  “Oh, my God. Christine!”

  “I can’t get up, Jude.”

  In an instant he was kneeling in the spilled spaghetti, his hair wild and his shirt splattered with paint. “What happened?”

  “I backed into the corner of the table. I blacked out.”

  “The corner of the . . . oh, God, that’s my fault. I moved it today. I’m so sorry. Christine, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, just . . . can you help me into bed?”

  Slowly and gently, he eased her to her feet. With infinite care he led her, one agonizing step at a time, back to the bedroom.

  She gratefully stretched out on the soft bed. The pain was still hot and sharp, but at least the hard floor wasn’t adding to her discomfort. “Jude, I’m going to need the blue tablets.”

  The blue tablets. How she hated taking them. They were the strongest painkillers she had, but they also made her tongue heavy and her mind cloudy. They would knock her out swiftly, but she would wake in a weary fog.

  “I’ll get them,” Jude said.

  She listened to him in the kitchen—finding a glass, opening the bottle of pills—and contemplated the dream. It wasn’t growing hazy like dreams did. It was staying fresh and clear like a memory. A moment later, Jude was there with a glass of water and two of the tablets in his palm, and the material demands of pain dispelled her reflections.

  “Second time this evening, huh?” Christine said, smiling.

  “You’re such a brave girl to smile.”

  “I had the weirdest dream while I was out. Remind me to tell you about it some time.” She swallowed the tablets and settled back; tears welled up and she was unable to hold them in.

  “Christine, I’m so sorry,” Jude said, his fingers frantically smoothing her hair. “This is all my fault. I would give anything not to see you in pain. Everything is my fault.”

  “God, Jude. It hurts. It hurts so much.” And she found herself wishing she were back in faeryland with her childhood best friend, a shape-shifting wolf, and a witch who lived in a well.

  Where did she go?” Mayfridh sprang from her seat, sending Eisengrimm scrambling to the floor. “Eisengrimm, where is she?”

  Eisengrimm sniffed the place where Christine had stood.

  “Well?” Mayfridh demanded. “How could she leave?” It had been so long since Mayfridh had spent time with a real friend.

  “She must have been pulled back into her own world, Majesty.”

  Mayfridh returned to her seat, pouting. “It was very rude of her to leave like that.”

  “I don’t think she had any control over it.”

  “Oh, Eisengrimm, I remember Christine. We played together as children in the Real World. I loved her so much. And yet I had forgotten her for so long.”

  “It’s the way in our world, you know that. Seasons change—”

  “Yes, and memories bury themselves too deep for us to find them. But now I remember it all.”

  “A sympathy of time and blood, Mayfridh. Our world and hers have aligned. Their season must be the same as ours, she is nearby, and her blood in your veins attracted her.”

  Mayfridh sighed, leaning her head on the side of the chair and idly running her fingers over the carvings in the wood. “You’re so wise, Eisengrimm.” She held out her hand and beckoned him forward, rubbed his smooth ears. “Do you think she’ll come back?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but with Hexebart’s help I believe I could learn more.”

  “Hexebart! That wizened old grape. She becomes more and more willful. It’s not fair, Eisengrimm. It’s my magic.”

  “Hexebart is selfish and stubborn.”

  “I should cut off her feet,” Mayfridh muttered. “I should slice off her nose.” Then remembering what Eisengrimm had suggested, she said, “Why do you speak of Hexebart helping you?”

  “I stole a hair from Christine’s head when first I saw her in the forest. Hexebart could weave a spell with it, and we could learn all about her world.”

  “Do you think we could bring her back?”

  Eisengrimm transformed into Crow and fluttered to the window. “I doubt she’d be willing to return,” he said, “but there may be another way to see Christine.”

  “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “I’m going back to the forest to find the hair, and then I’ll pay Hexebart a visit.” He cocked his head and fixed Mayfridh with a golden eye. “Then, Queen Mayfridh, we can send you through.”

  “To the Real World?” Mayfridh’s chest tightened with fear. Her parents had made a passage to the Real World and never returned. Although many faeries made the passage on the rare occasions when the worlds aligned, Mayfridh had developed a terrible anxiety at the merest suggestion that she do so. Despite this, Eisengrimm persisted in encouraging her to go if she had the opportunity. He believed it would expand her horizons, make her a better queen and a more accomplished ruler.

  �
�Consider it an adventure, Mayfridh,” he said.

  “I won’t go,” she said.

  “We shall see,” Eisengrimm replied, spreading his wings and flying away.

  “I won’t go, I will not go,” Mayfridh called after him. But her stomach lurched and her heart sped. This time she might; this time she just might.

  Hexebart is tired of this old well, yes she is. She’s tired of the cold and the cage and the damp and the ugly frogs. Hexebart is tired of spinning and weaving spells for the nasty little changeling princess.

  Spin, spin, spin and weave,

  Hexebart can never leave.

  Oh, oh! Oh, oh!

  Beastly Queen Mayfridh. Not the real queen, no. Just a cuckoo in the nest. When Hexebart sees the dead body of the real queen, then Hexebart will believe. Until then, all the magic stays here in the well. Hexebart sits in the cage and spins until her fingers dribble blood, and Hexebart dreams of eating the horrid little queen with a knife and a spoon. And Hexebart saves all the magic for herself.

  Mine, mine, mine,

  Until the end of time.

  Hexebart is good at saving things. When the bossy wolf asks for special spells and gives her special stuffs, she rubs them between her scabby fingers and if she likes them she keeps a little. Hexebart has many stuffs. See . . . she has buttons and a silver clasp; she has a scrap of swaddling and a rusty thimble; and here inside this pea shell . . . here, Hexebart has half of a strand of long brown hair. It’s human hair.

  Human hair, human hair,

  Humans all live Over There,

  And when her time in here is through,

  Hexebart will go There too.

  Hexebart clicks her tongue and keeps spinning and weaving. Spinning through the night, spinning through time, saving a little something for herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hey, the cripple walks. It’s a miracle,” Pete exclaimed. Gerda shot him an irritated glance. “Glad you could make it, Miss Starlight. We saved you a seat.”

  Christine laughed. “I don’t mind being called a miracle, Gerda. On Tuesday I thought I might have to spend the rest of my life on my back.” Fabiyan pulled out a chair for her and she eased into it, Jude hovering around in concern. They were at a bent table outside a cheap Tex-Mex cantina on Georgenstrasse, right under the train line out of Friedrichstrasse Station. “But now I’m recovered, I need beer.”