From a High Tower (4 page)

“Of course there will be new ribbons,” Giselle promised. “Mother would never forget you.” Luna clapped her hands in glee.

Giselle finished her meal and went back upstairs. She didn't much care for the kitchen either, it was so dark, and so close. But she had to cook her food somewhere, and when Mother was gone, she was locked into the tower.

She took the stone stairs that spiraled up the tower wall two at a time; there was nothing like a handrail, but she had been scampering up and down these stairs since she was old enough to toddle, and it never occurred to her to feel fear.

This tower had four levels. The bottom was the kitchen, and had been her bedroom as well until she was old enough to safely navigate the stairs. The next level was the library and workroom, where she took her lessons and learned her magic. The third level was the storeroom, where everything was kept that wasn't a book, and the final, top story was her bedroom. Besides her bedroom, none of the rooms had anything but slits for windows.

She breathed a sigh as she got to her own room and the wide-open windows again. So did Luna. The sun was just setting, and the view from the tower was particularly glorious tonight. The very air seemed full of golden light, and the long shadows cast by the trees across the meadow were a deep, deep amber.

Damozel woke up, stretched and yawned. Linnet flitted down from the lantern and landed beside the west window. Her fellow sylphs joined her.

“We will see you at dawn, magician,”
Luna said, as the other two took turns balancing on the windowsill before launching themselves out onto the evening breeze. She did not wait for an answer; sylphs lived very much in the moment, and seldom waited on human politeness.

Sylphs could flit about at night, of course, but the ones that did tended to be shy and secretive and seldom visited Giselle. Giselle leaned out of the window to watch her friends soar up into the clouds. She often wondered if they slept up there, and if the clouds were as comfortable as they looked.

She remained leaning out of the window, dreamily watching the sunset and twilight stealing over the forest. From here, it looked so peaceful, and near the abbey, it actually was, but all sorts of things could be lurking deeper into the trees—

“Hello up there!”

A deep voice called from just beneath her, startling her and making her jump, yelp and nearly hit her head on the top of the window frame. Her heart beating wildly, she looked down to see that there was a man standing just beneath the window. A man . . .

She knew what a man was, she'd met at least three when members of the Bruderschaft came to consult with Mother. But none of them had been nearly this handsome. Or young.

Because he certainly was younger than any man she had seen before. She wasn't very good at estimating ages, but she didn't think he could be more than a few years older than she. He was blond, his hair pale in the twilight, with a wonderful face, like a warrior in one of her books: clean-shaven, square jawed, with a fine brow and clear eyes. She couldn't tell what color they were in this light but she thought, given that he was blond, that they were probably blue.

“I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!” the man said, pulling his hunter's hat off and clutching it at his chest.

“How did you get down there?” she asked, telling her heart to calm down. It didn't, but at this point she suspected that had more to do with the man's handsome features than the fact that he had startled her.

“I came around the east side of your tower,” he said. “I'm a hunter, I'm very quiet. I didn't even know there was anyone living here until I saw you at your window. I apologize for frightening you!”

She smiled down at him as he peered earnestly up at her. “Apology accepted. It's all right, really, no harm done.” She felt an odd shyness and found herself tongue-tied. What to say to a handsome young stranger? She had no idea.

He seemed under no such burden. “I thought I would come survey this part of the world before hunting season begins,” he continued, and shrugged. “Too many others in what used to be
my
forest. Time to move on.”

“Oh,” she managed, resting her chin on her hands so she could look down at him more easily. “I don't know anything about that.” After all, the men of the Bruderschaft, although they were hunters, were not
primarily
hunters of game. It was the evil things of the forest that they hunted . . .

“But what are you doing, out here in the middle of the wilderness?” he asked, putting his hat back on his head and tipping it at a jaunty angle.

“I live here, with Mother,” she replied.

He shook his head. “I cannot imagine living alone in such a remote place. What do you do with your time?”

She had to laugh at that. “We work, of course! There are all the animals to tend, the garden to care for, food to make, clothing to sew, cleaning to do—what do you think we do? Gaze out of tower windows all day?”

“And here I thought you were a princess, who only had to do just that!” he replied, with an ingratiating smile. “May I come in to see your tower?”

“When Mother gets home,” she replied truthfully. “She locks the door when she is gone, and she has the only key.”

“Doesn't she trust you?” He frowned.

“She doesn't trust the things in the forest,” she corrected him. “I don't mind.”

“Hmm. Well, there are gypsies in the forest, and tramps. She's probably wise.” He nodded sagely. She smiled.

“You haven't told me your name,” she pointed out. “I'm Giselle.”

“And I am Johann Schmidt,” he replied, and swept off his hat in a flourishing bow. “At your service. Shall I tell you all about myself?”

She felt herself coloring all over again. “Oh,” she replied. “Please!”

Johann stayed until moonrise, then bowed again and took his leave, promising to come back on the morrow. Giselle could not remember ever having been so excited at the prospect of something, not even when learning new magic. After all, her magic had been a part of her for as long as she could remember, but handsome young men were things she had only read of in books, and a handsome young man standing beneath her window for hours just to talk to her was something entirely new.

The men of the Bruderschaft that had visited Mother had not had much time for her; she understood that, of course, to come all this way to this remote part of the Black Forest, deep in the mountains, they must have had very urgent business indeed. They certainly had no time to spare for idle chat. To have another person besides Mother interested enough in her to regale her with tales was wonderful.

To have that person be a very handsome young man was intoxicating.

After Johann was gone, she spent a long time just dreamily staring up at the night sky, for once not watching for the shyer and more elusive sylphs and other Air Elementals that only came out at night.

In the morning there was no sign of Johann Schmidt, not from any of the four tower windows, and with a feeling of disappointment, she went about her usual chores. Of her particular sylph friends only Linnet turned up, and she seemed listless, and soon left.

The milk was set out in pans to rise; she skimmed off the cream and put the separated milk and cream in the “special” pantry where things were not allowed to spoil. Giselle made herself something to eat and had her breakfast up in her room with a glass of milk she had set aside. There still was no sign of Johann.

As listless as Linnet had been, Giselle turned over pages in the history books that Mother had left her to study. Truth to tell, she didn't think she was a very good scholar at the best of times, and right now, with vague discontent standing between her and the pages, she wasn't making much headway with them.

So she set the books aside and turned to another tedious chore, which at least had the virtue of requiring attention without concentration.

She unwound her braids from her head, unbraided them, and began combing out her hair.

This was a far different task for her than it was for Mother. Giselle's hair grew at a rather astonishing pace.

Right now, it was roughly twice as long as she was tall, unbraided, and when Mother returned it would be time for her to cut it again. There was an entire chest full of locks of hair as long as Giselle was tall. Mother said this had something to do with her magic; certainly the smaller of the Air Elementals, the pixies and other little things she had no name for, had something to do with it. Mother was no help there, except to call them
elber,
sort of generally. Some of them looked like very tiny sylphs, some like fantastic winged creatures that were part insect, part human, and part plant. They all liked to play in her hair when she unbound it; she let them, because they untangled it as they went.

The rate at which it grew varied. It could grow as much as a foot in a week, though only rarely. It generally grew about a foot a month, which meant she had to unbraid it, comb it out, and rebraid it at least once a week. Washing it took almost half a day.

Mother used to joke that she should just let it keep growing and never cut it, saying
then you could let yourself down out of the window by your own hair.
As a child that had always made her giggle.

As usual, as soon as she took her hair down and began to unbraid it, the little Air creatures turned up, showing none of Linnet's listlessness. She was very glad for their help, because when it got to its current length, it was practically impossible to comb and braid without their help. Today they made a game out of it, as if her locks were the ribbons of a Maypole, and did most of the work for her.

They had gone, and she was pinning up the coiled braids on the top of her head, when she heard a melodious whistle that sounded nothing like a bird just outside the west window.

Hastily she stabbed the last hairpin in place and practically flew to the opening, and laughed with delight to see Johann Schmidt standing there below. He looked even handsomer in the sunlight, and his eyes were, as she had suspected, a vivid blue.

He swept off his hat to her as he had last night, and now she could see he was dressed in hunting gear of loden green wool, just like the men of the Bruderschaft wore. She wondered for a moment if he might be one of their number—

But he wasn't wearing the silver Saint Hubert badge they all wore on their hats. Instead, it was a fanned cluster of pheasant feathers in a silver holder.

“Good morning, fair maiden!” he said, cheerfully.

“It's nearly afternoon,” she corrected, perhaps more sharply than she had intended, but she was vexed with him. Hadn't he promised to be here? And how long had she waited for him? Hours and hours!

“So it is. I don't suppose you could spare a bite to eat?” he replied, without seeming to take any notice of her temper. “I looked about, but there doesn't seem to be a friendly inn hereabouts.”

She relented immediately. “We've plenty to spare,” she said truthfully. “I shall bring you something.”

He was still calling his thanks as she turned and made for the stairs.

When she came back up, she had a small basket with a sausage, some cheese, an onion, and a couple of boiled eggs in it. Bread was something they
didn't
have a lot to spare of, since flour was one of those things that Mother had to go a long way to get. And she wasn't certain how to get milk down to him; they had cups and pitchers of course, but she was going to have to lower the basket down to him from the window, and she was afraid that the cord she had would break, or the milk would spill.

But he didn't seem to be discontented with her offerings; he took them out of the basket and placed them on his handkerchief, which he spread out on the grass, then sat down and took a flask out of his pocket. She pulled up the basket as he waved at her.

“Shall you dine in your window while I dine below, fair one?” he asked, taking a swig. Since that seemed like a good enough idea to her, she got milk and bread and butter and ate that while he cut off chunks of sausage, cheese and onion and washed them down with whatever was in his flask. As he ate, he regaled her with tales of his hunting, and she listened raptly. The men of the Bruderschaft who had visited had never talked about hunting ordinary creatures, only things like werewolves and other malignant or cursed spirits. Stalking bears, wolves, and stags certainly sounded just as exciting, at least as Johann told it!