Scarlet in the Snow (6 page)

To my surprise her expression changed, so that for the first time I saw something like real emotion in her face. ‘It is part of the injustice,’ she said.

The sadness in her eyes and voice touched me, despite myself. ‘They are terrible things to look at,’ I said gently.

‘Yes,’ she said, and she looked at me. ‘They are.’

‘Will you not tell me . . .’ I began, but she had already left the room, leaving me there at the table, gazing at the blank spaces where pictures ought to be, trying to make sense of all I’d heard that night. The
abartyen
wasn’t what he was by nature, she’d said: therefore, it meant he was not a shapeshifter by nature, not a born and bred one. I had read that people could be forced by evil sorcery into an
abartyen
shape. But it was very, very rare and extremely difficult to perform. Luel clearly could not break the spell or surely she would have done so. And I had the impression those empty picture-frames were also something over which she had no control.

That was a scary thought. For given the fact she had no reflection, Luel was not human, but a
feya
, like Old Bony. And her magic was powerful, for a place like this is not
maintained by minor enchantment. But whoever it was who had cursed her lord in this terrible way must be even more powerful, if Luel could not break the spell herself. I didn’t want to think of what that might mean, but the feeling that the danger I was in was even greater than I’d imagined hung heavy in my belly, as if I’d swallowed a stone.

I thought I’d never get to sleep that night but the bed was so warm and comfortable, and the room so quiet and peaceful, that I drifted off to sleep without even being aware of it. And sometime during the night I fell into a strange dream – strange due to the fact of it being so uneventful. In the dream, I was looking into a sunny walled garden where climbing white and pink roses rambled on the walls. The air was full of their scent and that of the more exotic blooms of mimosa and jasmine. Not a Ruvenyan garden, then, but rather from some southern country where such flowers grew. I could smell the flowers, which is unusual in a dream, and I could see the bees buzzing around them, and I could hear birds singing. There was a little white wrought-iron table and chair in the garden, and a young woman sat there with her back to me. She wore a pretty, lacy summer hat, her black hair in long, loose ringlets down her back, and her dress was a flurry of pale pink ribbons and snow-white tulle of the same delicate shades as the roses. She was waving at someone I couldn’t see, and it was such a vivid picture
I felt as though I could hear the tinkle of her laughter, though I could not hear anything she said. For a while, I was there, just suspended in the little scene; then it flickered out and I opened my eyes to the darkness of my room. In the dream, I had quite forgotten about what had happened to me, but now everything came flooding back and my mind kept going round and round like a mouse in a maze, trying to find a way out.

The mirror, I thought wildly, I must learn how it works; it’s the key to my escape. But to do that I had to get Luel to take me down to the cellar again; I had to listen carefully to what she said and watch what she did and then later I would find a way to get the key from her. Later – later – that meant staying here for who knew how long, and meanwhile, tomorrow, I had to meet the
abartyen
. Cursed or not, natural shapeshifter or not, he wasn’t fully human any more. And no matter what Luel said, I was afraid of him.

The words she’d spoken to me at dinner, about what I must do, made even less sense now and I was trembling, shaking with the thought that if I didn’t get it right, I would suffer for it. She’d said I’d not be harmed, but could I trust anything she said? Clearly, all that mattered to her was the
abartyen
. She was bound to him by some tie I hadn’t yet fathomed, and I was merely a pawn in a plan whose outline I couldn’t yet glimpse. I had no magical powers, no special distinction, no great beauty or extreme cleverness. I was an ordinary girl with a small talent in storytelling, that was all. And how could that help me now?

And then I remembered something my mother had told me. As a very small child, when I was scared or tired or out of sorts, I could only be calmed by having a story told to me, over and over again. Now I reached back into my memory and told myself my own story, the story of the three sisters.
Three sisters sat spinning at the old tower window, watching for their mother to come home
. And as I told myself the story, I could feel my pulse slowing, my limbs stop shaking and the panic leaving me until gradually I became calmer. I must have fallen asleep, for when I woke next bright sunlight was flooding the room.

I got up and padded to the window in my bare feet. The curtains had been drawn and there was a tray of hot tea and appetising little pastries on the dressing table. Outside, the sun was shining brightly though snow still lay on the ground. It was very quiet; there were no bird calls, which wasn’t surprising, as they hardly stir in the wintertime. In the distance, beyond the lawns, I could see the hedge towering high into the sky, and a figure patrolling its edge, up and down, up and down, like a tiger in a cage. The
abartyen
.

I quickly drew away from the window, in case he should look up and see me. In an ordinary place, at that distance, of course he could never have seen me. But this place was far from ordinary and I felt as if anything could happen here – anything at all.

I had some tea and pastries, and after washing and dressing in a plain green dress, I prowled around my room, trying to work out something – anything – from my surroundings. Nothing told me much though, apart from the books on the shelf. By now I was used to the idea that things had been arranged in this room specially for me, so it was with some surprise that I discovered the books were not the kind I liked to read. There was no fiction, no poetry, no plays, only a six-volume encyclopedia and a battered Ruvenyan–Faustinian dictionary. If I was desperately bored, I thought, I could read the encyclopedia, but when I flipped through it, I discovered it was full of endless reams of dull information on obscure subjects. Even the biographical entries were boring; I didn’t recognise a single name and the style was so long-winded that my heart sank and my eyes glazed over just looking at it. Only the dictionary held a marginal interest
for me, because at least it was about words. I wondered whether the accent of my unlikely hosts was Faustinian. They didn’t sound like my old tutor but they could have come from a different part of that powerful empire to our west, with its many different principalities and dukedoms.

And then, with a prickle of excitement, I remembered that magic was banned in the Faustine Empire, except for that under the control of an official order called the Mancers. That was why our old neighbour Dr ter Zhaber had fled to Ruvenya when he was young. Could the
abartyen
and Luel be Faustinian refugees too? Was that the ‘terrible injustice’ Luel had mentioned?

Driven by a sense that I might at last be on the verge of shedding some light on the mystery – a mystery I knew I had to solve if I was ever to get out of here – I leafed feverishly through all the books again, in the hopes of finding a clue.

My efforts were in vain. I put the books back on the shelf and sat at the desk to compose a letter to Mama. But the lying words I needed to soothe her wouldn’t come, and my spirit of invention seemed to have failed me. Then I had an idea. I decided to write down the facts first – the truth of what had happened to me – and not what I had to tell Mama. So I took out the notebook, opened it to the first page and began to write. But though I tried to start recounting my experiences, I couldn’t find the right words. I started something, crossed it out, started again, to no avail.

This was a new experience for me. I’d always been able to write fluently, easily, ‘too easily’ as another of our tutors said to me once, but then, she also thought that imagination
was a character flaw that must be eradicated. Thank goodness she didn’t last long. My father heard her say that if we were her daughters, she’d make sure all frivolous pastimes were banned. ‘You are not their mother, thank God,’ he’d told her tartly, ‘and if you don’t approve of our family, there’s always the door.’ Which she took, in high dudgeon, while my sisters and I happily watched from the stairs.

And that’s how I found myself writing, my pen loosened at last. About those funny old childhood memories, Liza and Anya and I united in our glee and Papa, standing there with his colour high and his moustache bristling as he told that killjoy exactly what needed to be said. When Mama came back from her outing, we told her what had happened, and she had looked at him with such love and gladness!

Tears sprang to my eyes. How she must miss him, even more than my sisters and I did, though to be sure that was hard enough. But to lose the man you love when you are still deeply in love must be so much worse. And for some reason, as I wrote those words down, the dream I’d had the night before came back to my mind, the sunlit garden, and the girl in her summer clothes, laughing merrily with someone who was just outside my line of sight, but who I was sure now must be her beloved. And a strange feeling crept over me, a feeling that something bad had happened to that girl and her lover.

I put my pen down and stared at what I had just written. It was almost, I thought uneasily, as though they were somebody else’s words. As though some spirit had been whispering them into my ear . . . No, stop that, Natasha,
I scolded myself. You have enough to worry about without being spooked by your own runaway imagination!

I didn’t feel like writing any more. Shoving the notebook back into the desk drawer and out of my sight, I got up and went to the window again. The
abartyen
was no longer to be seen, and the lawns were deserted. The sky, bright blue now with a hard frosty gleam, was empty of cloud. I watched as a tiny speck of black on the far horizon drew closer to resolve itself into a single circling crow, its melancholy cawing audible even from where I stood. It was the first outside sound I’d heard since I came here, I realised suddenly. Normally, a crow’s call would not figure high on my list of favourite sounds, but today, cut off from everyone I loved and everything I understood, it rang in my ears like the most silvery of bells, and I reached for the handle of the window to open it, wanting to hear the sound more clearly.

‘Step away from there at once.’ Luel’s voice made me jump. She must have a footfall as silent as a cat’s, I thought, as I spun around and glared at her defiantly.

‘Why should I?’ I muttered.

‘Just do as you’re told and don’t argue.’ She tugged the curtains across, but not before I’d seen her swift glance out of the window, and the anxiety that leaped into her eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, not expecting an answer.

‘I don’t think he can see you,’ Luel said quietly, looking at me. ‘I hope not.’

Instantly, my heart started banging against my ribs. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I took a risk with you. I hope I’m not wrong.’

Exasperated, I burst out, ‘Why do you always talk in riddles? For once, give me a straight answer! Who is
he
?’

‘Better you don’t know,’ Luel said after a silence. ‘You are safe as long as you don’t.’

I glared at her. ‘I’d hardly call my present circumstances safe, locked up in a magic cage and threatened with death or enslavement!’

‘Nobody is threatening you with either,’ she said with breathtaking cheek. ‘You have been given everything you might wish for – beautiful clothes and a comfortable bed, delicious food and an end to your family’s financial worries – and still you complain!’

I clenched my fists, trying to stop myself from yelling. ‘You have taken my freedom and my family from me, and you think I should be grateful? Are you mad, or just plain evil?’

I realised too late what I’d said, and stood there aghast, certain I would pay bitterly for it, but all Luel did was shrug her shoulders. ‘Think of me what you will, it matters little to me. Whatever I do, it is for my lord, who awaits you in his sitting-room.’