Chapter 31 #2
She fled again and the castle pulled her on, bright dream after bright dream, like sweets strewn across her path.
She knew with a cold, creeping terror that as she wearied, her ability to parse the truth from the fantasy would grow less and less.
Until in the end she’d choose one, because she could fight no more.
This was a trap, laid by the korriganed, for mortals who dared their realm.
Had Moreau run through these halls? Had he chosen a dream to live in? What dream was it? She suspected that he might have wanted Keris, but in the end all he had was poisoned hope and murder.
The next chamber contained her own mother, who had died when Anne was small. She told Anne that she loved her and would never leave her.
Anne turned her back on this apparition too, but she was breathing hard, her hip beginning to spasm.
Think.
Louis was here somewhere. So was Moreau. Perhaps each walked as she did, in a gallery of his own dreams. She must leave her own behind and find theirs.
Anne left the peaceful room with her mother’s voice calling plaintively that her daughter’s heart had grown cold. Carefully, Anne began to retrace her steps.
She paused in the grand hall in which they had crowned her empress and stood swaying, thinking, Oh, yes, this is my day and my hour. Then she shook the thought off, frightened, and kept walking, limping badly.
Finally she found her way back, trembling, to the simple room, round as though in a tower, where Louis again waited with sharp teeth and a great bed behind him and yellow eyes that promised joy.
He smiled. “Have you chosen me, lady?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Anne.
In the courtyard of doors, there had been a barrier of thorns in her mind when she sought to travel by shadows. But this time she did not seek her sister. Instead, she thought, This would be one of Louis’s rooms too. Or near enough.
How near?
She looked for his shadow on the floor.
It was there, unmistakable.
She reached for it, saw the korrigan’s eyes widen, saw his long-nailed hand go out. But it was too late; she caught the hand attached to that shadow and pulled herself into the never-was of Louis of Orléans.
She was in the same tower room. But somewhat to Anne’s surprise, she did not catch Orléans in wild license with a korrigan wearing her face.
No, the korrigan was sitting by a fire, turning a piece of embroidery delicately in her hands. She did look like Anne, except that her long lashes veiled yellow eyes. Louis sat by the fire opposite her, watching her.
Anne said, “My lord of Orléans.”
He startled to his feet. He stared at her as though she was anaon and not Anne at all. It was him: his own eyes and hands and teeth. But when Anne appeared, the girl by the fire dropped her embroidery and bared fangs that were as long as a wolf’s. Her eyes were wider and rounder than a woman’s.
Anne said to this lady, politely, “Madame, I wish you would not wear my face.”
The lady blinked and the last humanity left her; her taut skin was dull ivory in clothes like cobweb, her gaze speculative. She said, “It is my task.”
Louis held back from Anne, a long arm’s reach away. “Are you real?”
“Yes, wretch.” Anne wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. “I cannot believe you thought she was I. She has fox ears.”
Louis looked. “I suppose she does.” He bowed to the korrigan and swallowed. “Forgive me, lady, for my mistake.”
The korrigan merely barked with laughter and stepped casually into the shadows and disappeared.
“God preserve us,” said Louis, fervently. He pulled Anne to him, his hands tentative in her hair as though to prove her to himself.
Anne was distracted. “That was your Never-Was? Not some mad passion, but—?” She pulled back to see his face.
He looked embarrassed. “The whole court would smile when you were happy, in Nantes.”
She laughed at him, then turned her face upward and kissed him. “Come,” she said, sobering. “We must find my sister. And Julien Moreau.”
Isabeau, with Moreau’s hand gripping hard to her hair, stepped from the brightly lit feasting hall in Rennes into the place with leaf-litter and all the doors.
Elesbed had seized hold of Isabeau’s skirt with two clinging hands, and stepped with them, from firelight into damp shadow.
There, she instantly lunged like a ferret, biting the hand that was clutching Isabeau’s hair.
She bit it as hard as she could, so that he shouted and let go.
Isabeau must also have made a plan for herself, for at the very same moment, her eyes spilling tears from how he pulled her hair, she grabbed Moreau’s other hand and stole his mirror.
“Run!” screamed Elesbed, dragging Isabeau with her. They would have escaped too, except that Isabeau took a long, precious second to slam the mirror to the floor and grind it under her foot.
Julien screamed as the mirror broke. His wound slowed his enraged lunge, but Isabeau had taken too long.
Moreau had caught her other wrist, yanked her away, and picked her up bodily, all his teeth bared.
Then he stepped back and vanished into the shadows.
Elesbed cried out with rage, but they were both gone, and her clever ploy had failed.
She was left alone again, in that same cold courtyard with doors in the castle of Never-Was.
And this time there was no Butter to save her.
“Butter,” said Elesbed. “Butter—please, I’m sorry I left you in Nantes, but Hawiz needed you, and I don’t think you’d have liked trying to ride a horse. Butter, I don’t know what to do.”
Talking to an absent cat sounded foolish to her own ears. She wiped snot and tears from her face. Tried to think. Which door? Where had Butter led her that first time?
Maybe she could think like a cat. She looked at all the doors in turn.
One was white like the duchess’s pearls, but she didn’t trust it.
One looked just like the door to her house before the bandits came, but that scared her.
One was just a shimmering veil of cloth, and she thought she saw a moving silhouette behind it.
Which one?
A lady was standing under the dead tree in the courtyard. Elesbed had not seen her at first glance, because the lady was gnarled like the tree. She squeaked and stumbled back.
The lady was smiling a little. Elesbed frowned. “You are the abbess,” she said. Only the lady was not dressed like an abbess anymore. She was wearing a robe with a belt of white stones and a great tall hat whose veil swept gracefully down.
“I am many things, small one,” said the lady. “You are trespassing.”
The lady was frightening, in the same way a wolf can stand quietly and be frightening, with bright watchful eyes. “Oh, I am not, Madame!” said Elesbed earnestly. “I am trying to save my lady and my friend; she was stolen away by a wicked sorcerer. Do you know where they have gone?”
The lady looked faintly amused. She said, “Well, you are a bold child, at least. Why do you think you can save anyone from a sorcerer?”
Elesbed didn’t know. Her voice turned small. “I have to try. And I am clever. Everyone says so.”
“With a quick tongue in your head, to be sure. I have a granddaughter, but I have not seen her in—in a long time. She went mad, you see.”
“Oh,” said Elesbed. “I am sorry.”
“Would you like to come away with me? I could make you a princess in her place.” The bright eyes bored into hers.
Elesbed said, “No, indeed! I do not want to be a princess. My lady Isabeau is practically a princess and they will not let her stir a foot by herself.”
“A wise child too,” murmured the lady. “What do you want, then?”
“My cat,” said Elesbed at once. “She will help me, I know, and also she is very handsome and yellow. But she is far away in Nantes.”
The lady laughed; really laughed. She suddenly sounded like someone much younger and happier. “Well, then,” she said, “I suppose there is yet wisdom in the children of men. You shall have your cat, child. And more, if you ever seek me out.”
Elesbed said cautiously, “Are you a korrigan?”
But the lady had stepped away and was gone, as was the light she’d stood within.
Something moved in the leaf-litter. Elesbed stared.
Butter sauntered out of the leaves and licked a paw. Elesbed burst into the loudest, snottiest tears she’d ever cried in her life, snatched up her cat, and buried her damp face in the yellow fur.
Butter tolerated this for a moment, then batted Elesbed away, jumped down, and ran to a door Elesbed had not noticed. It was a door made all of metal.
“That one, really?” said Elesbed.
The cat just looked at her.
“All right,” said Elesbed, and wiped her nose.
The rooms of Never-Was changed after Anne found Louis.
Now they passed through rooms made for both of them, and that made it harder.
They saw a coronation with pomp and circumstance, two thrones side by side.
A Christmas feast. A rumpled bed, with dawn light pouring in.
A sunny nursery and a boy with Anne’s eyes in the arms of a wet-nurse.
They stopped at that one, their hands closing tight each upon the other.
Anne said, after a long pause, “It’s not real. ”
Louis did not move. “Anne,” he said. “I have not the strength for too many more. It is starting to blur, what is real and what is not, especially when there are rooms that I—wish were real. What are you looking for?”
“Our wedding-feast,” she said. She gave him a sidelong look, half-despairing. “I think there will be one. Don’t you?”
And he nodded, wordless.
It took a long time. Anne was stumbling, leaning into him with each step, and they were bruising each other’s hands, so desperately were they clinging on, when they walked into a great hall bright with flowers, people in glittering clothes, laughter, sunlight.
All the delicacies in the world were spread upon the groaning boards.
Two great chairs in the center of the high table stood above the others, twined with flowers.