Scarlet in the Snow

by Sophie Masson

  I don’t know what I expected. But it was certainly not what actually happened. For at that very moment, a familiar voice came floating through the garden. ‘Papa? Are you there?’

  A startled expression flooded the sorcerer’s face. He made a rapid pass with one hand and the wolf-shadow disappeared. Another movement of his hand and my throat seemed to close up, my tongue stilled. Edmond Durant got up quickly, just as Celeste came into view. Wrapped in a velvet robe, with her glossy hair in a net, she looked a little dazed, as though she had just emerged from sleep. ‘Why are you out here, Papa?’ she complained. ‘It’s cold . . .’ Then she saw me and Gabriel. Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Gabriel? You’re awake?’

  ‘Yes, Celeste. I am,’ he replied gently. ‘Wide awake now.’

  Celeste looked in confusion at her father, and I realised in that moment that the girl had no idea what was happening, nor who her father really was. ‘But Dr Golpech said the cure would take a long time.’

  ‘Then I guess he was wrong, sweetheart,’ said her father uncomfortably. ‘Now, why don’t you just go inside and . . .’

  But Celeste wasn’t listening. She looked at me, then at Gabriel. ‘You know her,’ she said, bemusedly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, still in that gentle voice. ‘I do. She is the girl I love.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ She absorbed the information without a flicker of emotion. Gabriel’s eyes met mine. And I understood then that what I’d taken for grief over lost love was actually a kind of protective pity.

  ‘Papa, I don’t understand,’ said Celeste, fretfully. ‘Why are they out here in the garden with you? Felix wouldn’t say.’

  Gabriel gasped. But before he could speak, Durant cut across him. ‘Felix is here?’ His voice sounded calm but the expression on his face belied it.

  ‘Yes. That’s what I came out to tell you,’ Celeste said, with a hint of asperity. ‘He wants to speak to you. He said I’d find you in the garden.’

  Baffled, I looked at Gabriel. He looked back with the same confused expression. He had no idea either.

  ‘Well, tell him to wait,’ snapped Durant.

  ‘But he won’t, Papa. He says it’s urgent, that he must see you, or he’ll tell what he knows. What does he mean?’

  Hope flared within me again. The sorcerer would have to deal promptly with this unexpected new danger. If he left us here we might get away. But he did nothing of the kind. Visibly controlling his anger, Durant remarked, ‘I can’t imagine what he thinks he means, but you know what Felix is like. Gets in a flap over nothing. Very well. Tell him to come out here.’

  Celeste nodded.

  ‘But you stay inside,’ he continued. ‘You hear?’

  She shrugged. ‘Why would I want to be out here, anyhow?’ Her gaze slid over us, without interest or expression. ‘It’s cold and I want to go back to bed.’

  ‘You do that, my dear,’ her father said quietly. ‘And sweet dreams.’

  As Celeste wafted back across the garden and towards the house, Gabriel turned to Durant. ‘It’s over, Edmond. If you don’t want to be destroyed, go now. It’s your only chance.’

  For half a heartbeat, Durant stared at him, looking as astonished as I felt. Then he laughed. ‘You fool. Do you think you can bluff me? Me?’

  ‘Felix is turning on you. You know what that means.’

  ‘It means he’ll be destroyed along with you,’ said Durant lightly. ‘Most satisfying symmetry, I’d say. Ah, here he is. Now we are all together. Isn’t that nice?’

  I turned to see Felix approaching, alone. He was wearing evening dress, as though he’d just come from a ball or the theatre, but his expression was wild, his face pale. He did not look at us, but only at Durant. Without preamble, he said, ‘I remember now. It’s come back.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ said Durant, casually holding up a hand and halting him where he stood, ‘what’s come back? Your wits? Your will? Somehow I doubt it.’

  Felix’s eyes did not waver. ‘You bound me.’

  ‘Willingly, as I recall,’ said the sorcerer lightly. ‘Didn’t I give you exactly what I promised? Fame? Adulation?’

  ‘You only let me have it for a short while,’ muttered Felix. ‘And then you had him –’ and he pointed at Gabriel while still looking at Durant – ‘steal my painting.’

  ‘Ah, there I must protest,’ said Durant. ‘That was not my doing at all. Indeed, it was I who got that painting back for you, when I destroyed that old witch’s magic. Yes, that’s right. It was her. Luel took the painting. But then she always did everything her dear boy wanted. Isn’t that right, Gabriel?’

  Gabriel did not reply.

  ‘He was jealous of you, Felix,’ Durant continued. ‘You were right. He didn’t win that prize. You did. He didn’t touch my daughter’s heart. You did. No wonder he tried to destroy you. He is your enemy, you know that.’

  Felix’s eyes turned to Gabriel.

  ‘Don’t let him do this, Felix,’ Gabriel said quietly. ‘Not for my sake. Think of Celeste. Think what’s it’s done to her.’

  ‘But she wanted it, too,’ said Felix dully. ‘She wanted to be famous.’

  ‘But she didn’t understand,’ said Gabriel sadly. ‘She isn’t made that way.’

  ‘My daughter never did have much imagination,’ said the sorcerer, smiling. He did not seem in the least put out by the exchange. ‘And the little she had troubled her. Better it should live in the painting, along with Felix’s poor excuse for a spirit. Those fools at the School of Light and in Faustina have no idea. They think that enchanted paintings can be spotted easily. But then they had never seen anything like this one. People look at Summer Morning and see a great love story – the love of a painter for his lovely muse. In art, it might live for ever. In life, it was a weak, poor thing, and doomed to failure. It’s a kindness I did them both, really.’

  Gabriel’s face darkened. ‘You are a monster,’ he growled.

  ‘Actually, I rather fancy that was you,’ said Durant cheerfully. ‘A beast for three years. That’s bound to have an effect. Mind you, I could hardly have done it if the beast hadn’t been slumbering inside you all the time.’ He looked at me. ‘Don’t you know, my dear, that your beloved could revert at any time? Just look at that nasty violent light in his eyes. Oh, I grant he had a good deal more spine than Felix. He’s riven by dark passions – rage, hatred, jealousy, pride, recklessness, all roiling inside him. That’s what he’s really like and one day you would have found that out to your cost. Oh well, it’s all academic now.’

  Durant made a pass with his hand and the shimmering wolf reappeared. Another movement of his hand, and Felix was pulled towards the wolf as if he were on strings, his eyes wide in mute, disbelieving horror.

  ‘No!’ shouted Gabriel. ‘Don’t do this, Durant. What threat is he to you?’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Durant calmly.

  ‘I was wrong. He was never going to fight you. He can’t. In the name of God, Edmond, he has been your faithful servant. Have mercy.’

  ‘How very touching,’ said the sorcerer. ‘He pleads for his enemy. But what use to me is a tool that has gone rusty?’

  Felix looked at Gabriel, and into his eyes came an expression that struck me to the heart. There was hopeless sadness in it, and bitter shame. I saw his lips move, trying to speak. I thought I saw him form two words: Celeste, forgive – But he got no further, for the sorcerer’s hand moved again, and Felix crumpled as though he’d been felled, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  As we watched in horror, Felix’s body seemed to fold in on itself, to shrink, change shape. Before our very eyes, he turned into a thin, bedraggled crow with dull, filmy eyes. The bird struggled up, hopped a few steps, twitched, then fell sideways. Blood appeared at the corners of its eyes. It twitched once more, then lay quite still.

  ‘That was mercy,’ said Durant, kicking the crow’s body aside. ‘A quick death, no lingering agony. For you, I’m afraid, it will be different –’ Durant’s hands mov
ed rapidly so that the wolf grew bigger and brighter, hovering beside him like a giant guardian. Or a familiar. A sorcerer’s familiar, in the shape of a white wolf. But not like Old Bony’s feline familiars. Those had been solid things, real albeit weird. This was different. Images flashed through my mind. A row of photographs. A white wolf caught in mid-pounce. A room of light. And a thread of memory: a macabre little newspaper story, casually seen, almost instantly forgotten. Until now. A man devoured by a spirit-wolf called up by a northern shaman . . .

  My tongue moved. My throat unblocked. ‘I know where you got the spirit-wolf – from a northern shaman,’ I said.

  The sorcerer’s hands stilled. He turned his head to look at me. ‘Well, well, well. The little Ruvenyan is full of surprises. You’re right, my dear. But only in part. The shaman – Byelfin – he didn’t give it to me. He couldn’t. Oh, he had power. He knew the ways of shapeshifters, and it was from him I learned the beast-spells. He said I was the best pupil he’d ever had. And he was very good, in his way. But his understanding was limited, as was his power.’ Durant was warming to his story, and I held my breath, hoping the pleasure of it would be enough to distract him for a few moments at least. I caught Gabriel’s glance, trying to telegraph to him to stay quiet, and saw in his eyes that he understood.

  ‘Byelfin had no notion of the world outside his little patch,’ Durant went on in a reminiscent tone. ‘Indeed, he feared and hated it. He lived in an unchanging world bound with rules he had never tried to challenge. He had no notion how new, modern methods could be used to radically transform ordinary magic into something much more powerful. Yet it is true that it was when I was with him that my great inspiration came. It was his reaction to the very mention of a camera that gave me the germ of the idea.’

  Another piece fell into place in my mind as I remembered something about the customs of the north. To the northern shamans and witches photography was not a benign thing, an attempt to record a moment of time; it was attempted robbery – a theft of the spirit. Unsuspecting travellers had been killed for just carrying a camera, let alone trying to take a photo. It was probably why the man in the newspaper report had died. ‘Most people think it’s just superstition,’ I said, ‘but you understood it was not.’

  Durant raised an eyebrow. ‘Quite right. Their hatred of photography is based on an instinctive understanding. Light in the lands of the northerners is not what it is elsewhere. In summer their nights are white, in winter their days are black, in autumn their dawns are filled with rainbows, in spring there are lightning storms that last for hours. Unique. Strange. Unbelievably potent. So for them a photograph isn’t just a photograph. It takes on the strangeness of the light, which is the very magical spirit of those lands. It captures it. It is that light which the shamans and witches bring into themselves, like living cameras. It is that which they turn into their spirit-guardians, like living photographs – wolves, bears, birds.’

  His words had an eerie poetic quality, which resonated uneasily with me. I thought of my flight in Old Bony’s sleigh. Of deep lake waters. Of frozen salt marshes and grey forests. Of the weird, shifting light of northern skies. It was there, in an island on the Northern Lake, that Old Bony had chosen to hide Luel’s box . . .

  Instinctively, my hand reached for it. My heart thumped. I could not look at Gabriel. I could not let him see what was in my eyes. For now I had to take the biggest risk of my life. ‘But you don’t do it that way,’ I said quietly. ‘It is not your own spirit mixing with the light. That is too great a risk, for a shaman can be killed if his spirit is captured while in animal shape. Indeed, that is exactly how you disposed of your old teacher so he could tell no tales. He trusted you. It was easy for you to ambush him.’

  Durant smiled a wintry smile. ‘You are quite right. Byelfin was limited, as I said. He lived in a world where pupils did not turn on their masters.’ He shook his head a little sadly. ‘You are a clever girl. It is almost a pity that you have to –’

  ‘You don’t risk your own spirit. Instead, you take the spirit of others – human and animal,’ I went on, as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘With humans, you must have an agreement, even if they don’t fully understand. But with animals, like the white wolf you tracked and captured in the north – that’s not needed. You used spells to hook its spirit – Byelfin’s spells, twisted out of shape. And then you funnelled it through the camera. You fix it for ever in your photograph.’ I looked him straight in the eyes. ‘You told me you did not like to live the little life. But that is precisely what you are doing. You are not a great sorcerer, Messir Durant. You are a thief. Just a common thi–’

  The wolf pounced, its eyes glowing into mine with a wild, murderous hatred; it was like looking into the deepest pit of hell. A breath of fire and ice enveloped me whole, and I felt the flesh dissolving from my bones and my veins seizing and sparking, squeezing my heart in a fist of fury till I fell to the ground and knew no more.

  I’m struggling up through deep murky water, into a thick, clinging grey fog. I can’t see anything. My eyelids are pressed down as though they are stone. I’ve died. I must be in the afterlife . . .

  ‘There she goes again, thinking she’s died. What an imagination that girl’s got.’

  ‘Lucky for us all that she does, my friend.’

  I know those voices.

  I’m wandering in the fog again, for how long I do not know. Then out of it comes another voice. I strain to hear it.

  ‘She’s stirring. She’s awake.’

  I know that voice too. I want to reach out to touch him but I cannot. It is as if I am made of marble.

  ‘Not yet,’ says the light voice.

  ‘Be patient,’ says the harsh one.

  He takes my hand. His hand is warm so I know he cannot be dead. Does that mean I am not? My hand lies in his, cold, inert, heavy. I can feel words in my throat and tears in my eyes, but the words cannot rise and the tears cannot fall.

  I feel the touch of his fingers tracing the outline of my face. The fog thins. I feel the touch of his lips. On my forehead, ears, eyes, lips. His lips are so soft, but mine might as well be made of stone. The fog thins some more and I can now see his shape, but oh, so far away. Despair fills me, the fog rolls in again and I am alone, wandering in greyness.

  ‘Leave her,’ says the harsh voice. ‘It is not yet time.’

  ‘Our friend is right, my lord,’ says the light voice. ‘You must let her rest.’

  No, I want to say, no, it is not rest I need. I need him to keep hold of me, to not let me go.

  ‘I will not let her go,’ Gabriel says, and it is as though he has heard my thoughts. A tingle begins in me, deep down. ‘I will never let you go,’ he breathes. ‘Never.’

  He isn’t far away, as I feared. But close. So close! The tingle is growing. Growing.

  ‘You remember, my love, when you told me you thought the scarlet flower against the snow was like a living painting?’ he whispers, and there is a slight shake in his voice, as if he is trying to hold back a smile, though a smile mixed with tears. ‘Well, there is such a painting now. My first in a long, long time. I’ve called it Scarlet in the Snow. And I do so need your opinion on it, so you really must wake up.’

  The tingle flushes through my veins, itching, roaring, and quite suddenly the fog rolls away and my eyes fly open. I gasp and look straight up into my lover’s anxious face and, without a word, reach up to him.

  Time disappears as we hold each other tight, my head against his chest, his mouth on my hair, breathing in each other’s smell and warmth, feeling our hearts beat so close they might as well be one. ‘You said something about wanting my opinion . . .’ I murmur happily. And without another word he lifts something up from beside him.

  My breath catches. It is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen, though it is so simple. It shows a snowy garden under a pale blue sky, framed in a window – a snowy garden where a glorious scarlet rose blooms on a bush, like a living ruby. It is just as I saw it and
yet not, for on the same bush blooms another rose – a white one. They are twined together, and it seems to me as though I can smell the double fragrance of the flowers, a fragrance that goes directly to my heart.

  ‘I know I’ve been out of practice for a long time,’ Gabriel says, a little uncertainly. ‘And that shows. I’m not sure even that it’s finished – it probably still needs –’

  ‘No . . . Oh, Gabriel. It’s just that . . .’ I struggle to express what I feel. ‘It’s as if I am in there, looking through that window with you. It’s so perfect, so beautiful, I have no words for it.’ And all at once, the tears that wouldn’t fall start flowing.

  Gabriel puts down the painting and catches me in his arms again. He dries my tears and kisses my eyes and says, with a little laugh in his voice, ‘Now there’s a reaction any artist would relish.’

  ‘Just as long as you don’t get a swollen head,’ I say, smiling.

  ‘Me? God forbid!’ He laughs, before a little cough sounds. ‘But, my darling, I was forgetting we have company.’

  I emerge from the shelter of his arms to see Luel and Old Bony regarding us with calm patience, from two chairs on the other side of the room.

  ‘Good day to you, child,’ they say in unison.

  I smile a little shakily. ‘Er, good day to you, too. I am glad to see you both, though I do not understand how any of this is possible or where we are or how long I’ve been here.’ I look around at a charming wood-panelled room I do not recognise, through a window beyond whose glass is half-familiar, sunny woodland.

  Old Bony crosses her arms. ‘As to how long you’ve been here, that’s quickly told. Five nights.’

  ‘Five nights!’ I echo in astonishment.

  ‘The poison had got into you,’ Luel explains, ‘and already sent your spirit wandering. It took time and our combined efforts to bring you back. As to where we are, that is also swift to say. It is the old Fontenoy house, deep in the heart of the woods outside Palume. Gabriel was born here, but it was shut up when his parents died. Now it lives and breathes again.’