She whispered

by Lucas Chesterton

  Elena hesitated a little. She was now only in her underwear and a little slip dress. Her fingers were shaking. She wasn’t sure whether what she was doing was foolish, a stupid girlish attempt at seduction. But damn it, it was the best she could come up with! So she reached behind her back once more, found the clasp of her brassiere under the slip dress and pulled out the sophisticated black-laced item from under it.

  Then, slowly, she turned around.

  Looked up.

  His eyes were on her.

  Black, unwavering, taking her in.

  In fact, there was a brazenness in the way he looked at her that made her brows jump.

  He noticed it and returned her gaze with a roguish gleam in his eyes. ‘It was awfully dark in that lighthouse’, he said matter-of-factly.

  It made her laugh. Which, in turn, made him grin. The ice was broken.

  With a sigh of relief, she lifted the duvet cover, then the duvet and slipped into bed.

  His eyes ��� the blackest eyes she had ever seen ��� followed her every movement. They were a little glassy, mesmerized. There was a quirk around his mouth as if he was on the verge of allowing himself a little lecherous smile, but of course he controlled his facial muscles quickly enough. Yet, Elena had seen it. Her spine was tingling as she edged closer to him. His thin frame was once more stretched out, fully clothed in a fine suit, and there was something about the way he lay there that was surprisingly sensuous. He had one hand behind his head, the other rested on his flat belly, with flexing fingers. His eyes were quite still, on her face, but when she came nearer, they slipped down to her lace-enveloped breasts. His mouth opened slightly, his chest rose and fell, and then he sighed quietly and closed his eyes. She was now close enough to touch him, and she forced herself not to shake or to hesitate as she put her hand on his chest.

  His eyes flew open.

  ‘Don’t’, he said. But there was a small smile around the corners of his mouth.

  She peered at him innocently. ‘Why?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair’, he explained, his voice no more than a whisper, ‘I’m inebriated.’

  ‘What?’ And when she saw that he didn’t understand, she repeated, ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Inebriated. Under the influence.’

  ‘Inebriated ��� in-eeebriated ���’ Giggling, she repeated the word a few times, said it in an exaggerated American accent and then in a deliberately strong Austrian one. Daysen observed her fascination with the new word with amusement.

  ‘What’s so bad about being inebriated?’ she asked eventually, her eyes dancing.

  ‘Makes it difficult to resist’, he slurred.

  The green eyes caressed his face. ‘Why would you want to resist?’

  ‘You asked me not to play with you’, he said, attempting rational argument.

  ‘You can play with me a little’, she whispered.

  The smile fell from his face. She could hear him breathing. The black irises seemed to liquefy, became soft. Elena felt the warmth emanating from his body, felt his desire so palpable she could almost touch it.

  His fingers touched her upper arm, so lightly it made a shiver run from the nape of her neck all down to the bottom of her spine. Then, she felt his grip and very gently, he pushed her away. ‘I might regret it tomorrow. So might you.’

  In spite of his gentleness, she saw that what he’d said was ��� at least for the moment ��� final, and she issued a huge sigh before she edged away from him, rested her head on the soft plump cushion and looked up at him, once more with mischief in her eyes. Her hand, however, remained on his chest. He made no attempt to push it away. And after a while, he very lightly put his hand over hers and continued to look at her in a hard-to-read way that was both amused and guarded. Elena guessed that he was looking for a change of subject and decided to help him.

  ‘Have you had a chance to look at those encrypted papers we found in Leshnikov’s car?’

  It was enough to irritate him. ‘Don’t remind me. It’s a mess.’

  ‘A mess how?’

  ‘Couldn’t break it. Not yet, anyway. I’m usually good at this kind of stuff, but those papers ���’

  ‘Didn’t you ask Hermione for help?’

  ‘I did, and she was eager. However, though she may be a know-it-all and has in the past proven her talent for solving riddles, this one appears to be over her head, as well.’

  ‘Maybe ���’, Elena started.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No, forget it. Daft idea.’

  ‘Speak’, he demanded.

  She sighed. ‘I didn’t tell you about this yet, but ��� I might have an ally at the academy.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘Really? Who?’

  It took her a few seconds to reply. ‘Stephen Periwinkle’, she said at last.

  ‘The one who assessed you? Didn’t you say he was mad?’

  ‘I said no such thing!’

  He looked at her and detected an angry line on her forehead. ‘You implied it’, he insisted.

  ‘No, I didn’t! You did!’

  ‘So you don’t agree?’

  ‘He’s not mad. He’s just ���’

  ‘Peculiar?’ He gave her a sarcastic grin which made Elena glower even more.

  ‘His brain functions differently, I guess.’

  ‘Nice euphemism for madness. Or idiocy.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Her flat hand hit the mattress. ‘You wizards are so limited in your thinking sometimes! You have these concepts of what is ‘normal’ and don’t even care to look beyond that! It’s totally nineteenth century!’

  ‘Alright, alright’, he murmured. ‘Explain to me then what’s so special about this young man. He appears to have made quite an impression on you.’

  Elena relaxed a little, and while her fingers played on his chest she started to tell him in detail about when she’d first met Stephen Periwinkle in Carcass Road, what he’d done and what had been going on between him and his brother.

  ‘When he assessed me’, she explained, ‘I’m pretty sure he picked up on my prescience.’ Immediately, Daysen’s face became worried, and Elena went on quickly. ‘But he didn’t tell. It was ��� as if he’d seen, too, that I wanted to keep it a secret.’

  ‘Why would he oblige you so?’ Jack asked doubtfully.

  ‘Because I was nice to him’, Elena said with conviction. ‘And Waldemar was being a jerk, constantly berated him and called him an idiot, constantly interrupted Stephen in what he was doing ���’

  ‘Ah, I see. So if your Stephen really didn’t tell his brother, it might very well have been out of momentary spite. That doesn’t mean he didn’t tell him later.’

  But Elena shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that Stephen is even capable of spite. Or of lying, for that matter. He didn’t tell Waldemar, I’m sure about it.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I met him. At the academy.’

  His eyes asked her quite impetuously to go on, so Elena slid under the cover again, put her face in her other hand and went on to tell Jack about the second encounter she’d had with Stephen Periwinkle only a few days ago.

  It had been on the Wednesday, the day of the great gathering in the hall and the mutual soul-baring which had worn Elena out much more than she’d been prepared to confess at the Malfoy dinner table. Her heart had been beating after all the things she’d been told ��� about being weak, inconsequential, possessing no witch charisma at all ��� and her hands had been sweaty. So when the gathering took a break, she had fled out into the gardens behind Abrasax House, looking for a quiet place to lick her wounds in. The air outside had been cold ��� a balm for her eyes that were pricking with unshed tears of frustration ��� but the gardens were bathed in sunlight, making the spot look friendly and welcoming. In a quiet corner, she had found Stephen Periwinkle sitting on a stone bench, a sketchbook on his lap, drawing.

  She had seen him the day before, walking the cor
ridors of the academy. Although his nose had been buried in a book, he had still managed to give the people coming from the opposite direction a wide berth. Every fibre of his body had made it very clear that he wished to be left alone, and so Elena hadn’t dared to address him, unsure whether he would even recognize her. In the gardens, however, coming up behind his sitting form on the bench, she had been determined to talk to him. She’d still been trying to find the right words when she’d heard his voice, flat and monotonous. ‘Hello, Elena Horwath.’

  It had almost made her forget the harrowing experience she’d been through, and she had smiled, the tears suddenly forgotten.

  ‘Hello, Stephen Periwinkle!’ she’d chimed out brightly.

  He had turned over his shoulder then, giving her a stern look. ‘You are joking’, he’d stated.

  ‘You are right’, she’d replied with a giggle in her voice, and then, pointing to the bench. ‘May I sit?’

  ‘This bench does not belong to me’, he’d informed her seriously, ‘I cannot forbid you to sit here.’

  ‘Well, do you mind me sitting here?’

  He’d considered it at length, and at last said, ‘No.’

  So Elena had sat down beside him, a couple of feet away because she sensed that he didn’t like physical closeness. Curiously, she had peeked into his sketchbook. He’d been drawing the back of the academy and the gravel path leading up to it through the garden. From what she could see, the proportions and perspective were perfect, cunningly calculated by an observant eye. ‘Looks good.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Not knowing what to say, she’d watched him drawing for a while. ‘Did you just hear me coming up behind you?’ she asked eventually, desperate to start the conversation somehow.

  ‘Evidently’, he replied without looking up.

  ‘I saw you yesterday. On the stairs.’

  ‘I know.’

  She nodded, but had no idea how to go on. Maybe talking to him wasn’t such a good plan. It almost gave her a shock when suddenly he spoke.

  ‘This is your first week at the academy’, he said.

  Again, it sounded monotonous and not very interested. However, Elena sensed that he was inviting her in his own peculiar way.

  ‘Yes’, she confirmed, ‘and an interesting week it was.’ No reaction. ‘I didn’t see you at the gathering.’

  ‘I am not allowed to take part in those’, Stephen murmured, working on the shading that a tree cast onto the gravel path.

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘My comments went unappreciated.’

  She bit her tongue because she found the dead-pan way in which he’d said that faintly amusing. ‘Did that bother you?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘No. I don’t appreciate their comments, either.’

  ‘Yeah’, she sighed, ‘I probably shouldn’t take them too seriously, either.’

  ‘No’, he said, very dryly.

  ‘I find that difficult, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  The question was so simple she found it hard to answer. ‘You know ��� it’s disturbing ��� so many people telling you that you amount to nothing ���’

  ‘People talk. They do it all the time.’

  ‘You think I should shut it out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well. The problem is, I don’t know how.’

  ‘Why?’

  She opened her mouth, struggled.

  Stephen had given her a quick and cool side-glance. ‘You have Occlumency’, he said, ‘it is no good if you don’t use it.’

  It had made her stare. ‘How do you know?’

  Another side-glance, this time a little scornful. ‘I assessed you.’

  ‘You saw?’

  He shrugged, attempted the shading from a different angle.

  ‘But ��� you didn’t tell your brother, did you?’ She glared at him anxiously.

  ‘He’s always interrupting’, Stephen Periwinkle replied with an irritated jerk of his brow.

  ‘And that’s why you didn’t tell him about my Occlumency?’

  ‘Not about the Occlumency. Not about other things.’

  It had taken her seconds to process this and understand what he meant, but then it had become abundantly clear to her. The prescience. She was now completely sure of what she had already suspected during the assessment. Stephen Periwinkle had seen it all, her entire ‘magical landscape’, so to speak. However, as it seemed, he had only shared a fraction of it.

  Elena was at a loss on what to say. She didn’t want to ask why, so as not to question his decision. Nor did she want to ask what exactly he had seen, whether the secret of her dormant divinatory talents was really out of the bag so as not to put him out. ‘That’s good’, she ventured carefully, ‘I’d rather that stay a secret.’

  ‘They have a lot of secrets in there’, Stephen said, pointing to the house with his charcoal pencil. ‘A lot of secrets.’

  She’d let that sink in. ‘So you’re saying ��� if they have secrets, it won’t hurt if I have a secret?’

  ‘Or I.’

  ‘You have secrets?’

  He said nothing, but there was the ghost of a smile around his mouth.

  She took a chance. ‘What secrets?’

  ‘If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.’

  ‘Of course.’ Elena smiled at him warmly. ‘But maybe I can guess?’

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing ���’, she took a deep breath, ‘I’m guessing that you’re much smarter than your brother gives you credit for.’

  Another almost unnoticeable smile, but no reply.

  ‘I’m guessing even’, Elena went on, emboldened, ‘that you’re a bit like the Emperor Claudius.’

  That got Stephen’s attention and he looked up briefly.

  ‘The Emperor Claudius’, Elena explained, ‘was very clever. So clever in fact that as a young man he played the fool, made his family believe he was crazy so they didn’t consider him a worthy candidate for the throne and hence didn’t poison him. He became one of the longest-standing emperors in Roman history.’

  ‘I am not going to be an emperor’, Stephen said reasonably.

  ‘But maybe you are going to be a great man.’

  Again, a fleeting smile, but no comment. He clearly took his secrets very seriously.

  ‘Why are you here, Stephen Periwinkle?’ Elena asked. ‘In this academy?’

  ‘My father wants me to be here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I become like the others.’

  ‘The other idiots?’ She had winked at him, but he clearly didn’t understand jokes so well.

  ‘And so I’ll be out of his hair.’

  ‘Do you like it here?’

  ‘Not any more than anywhere else.’

  Elena understood this to mean that to Stephen all places were equally obnoxious as everywhere he went, people scolded him as a dimwit or idiot. She tried to imagine how lonely his life must be, but found that it was too painful to consider at length. She thought long and hard before she said what she confided to him next. ‘I don’t like it here, either.’

  To her surprise, he’d nodded languidly as if this was already a well-known fact to him.

  ‘However, I’d rather that remain a secret, as well’, Elena had added, trying to establish an eye contact with him. But Stephen didn’t appear to like those, either, and had focussed on his drawing. Again, it had seemed as if he’d forgotten about her, but once more she was surprised because after a while she had heard him murmur very quietly.

  ‘You have a secret, I have a secret. So do they.’

  The sentence said all and nothing at the same time. Yet, Elena was sure that they had an understanding. He would keep her secret if she kept his. And in keeping each other’s secrets, they would form a clandestine front against them, the academy, the soul-baring idiots. There was an alliance of We against the majority of Them. Elena had nothing to add; in fact, she feared that s
aying anymore might upset her and Stephen’s silent agreement. So she had sat with him a little longer, watched the progress of his drawing and had finally gotten up with a friendly smile.

  ‘Have a good day, Stephen Periwinkle. I’ll see you around.’

  He was so engrossed in what he was doing he hadn’t looked up. He might not even have noticed her leaving. By now, however, Elena sensed that Stephen didn’t like to waste unnecessary words, and certainly not on social niceties. To him, everything was clear. So why shouldn’t it be to her?

  Elena had rushed back into the house, back to the gathering, which ��� for the rest of its course ��� hadn’t bothered her half as much as before.

  Jack stared up at the wooden beams, digesting her story.

  ‘I don’t know, Elena. I’m afraid that once more you’re being too trusting.’

  ‘Once more?’

  He’d frowned at her. ‘Remember a certain character called Pavel Leshnikov?’

  ‘Oh, come on! You know exactly how good he was, how could I ���’

  ‘Calm down!’ he demanded impetuously. ‘It’s alright, I wasn’t reproaching you. ��� It’s just ��� your observations on this young man amount to nothing more than feelings on your behalf! You think he hasn’t told anyone. You believe that you’ve come to an understanding with him. But you have no proof! ��� Moreover, I fail to see what that might have to do with the encrypted papers.’

  ‘Listen, Jack’, Elena said and sat up, ‘I’ve been doing a little bit of reading. I think what Stephen Periwinkle has ��� and what makes him the way he is ��� is a condition called autism.’ She saw from his unmoving face that the term meant nothing to him. ‘It’s a mental condition that may vary greatly in severity, but almost always comes along with a certain social ineptitude. It is difficult for these people to express emotions, or see and interpret it in others.’ Elena looked at Daysen pointedly because she thought that what she was telling him should ring a bell. However, he looked back at her as if he had no idea what she was playing at. ‘In some cases’, she went on, ‘autists can exhibit an extraordinary giftedness in certain isolated fields. I’ve read somewhere that autism borders on geniality, and geniuses tend to border on autism.’