Thorn scrambles in front of me, throwing out his arms as if I'm under assault. His shoulders quickly drop. “It's a brownie,” he grins. “We should turn our backs.”
“Is it dangerous?” It is difficult to believe, but I am learning not to judge by what I see.
“No, they just don't like being looked at...” he glances back at it anyway, mesmerised. “They're supposed to be good luck, help around the house. We should leave some food out. The others will be thrilled.”
“The others?”
“The... remnants of magic. The things that clean and provide us with food.”
“They're brownies?”
“No,” he says forlornly. “They aren't really anything, any more.”
I look back at the little creature, but it has already vanished.
I do not see any more brownies, but I keep my eyes peeled for any signs of these remnants that Thorn described. There was something in the way he spoke about them, like... like he missed them. If the brownies came back, if the garden is returned to life... I don't see why they can't come back either. They must be more than little twinkles of light, if they can materialise food out of nowhere and attend to our whims. They must be.
Thorn was certainly right about the gardens mostly taking care of themselves, however. The lawns rarely appear in need of trimming, and even though nobody is shearing the hedgerows, they remain at a decent length. Sometimes, I think I can hear someone shearing them, but whenever I go to investigate, I find nothing but a few heaps of leaves, which magically make their way to my compost before I can even find a broom to sweep them. I start thanking the castle whenever it does something for me, but I never get a reply.
I awake one morning to a find the garden coated with a fine, white mist. Light rain, nothing like the suffocating fog that imprisons us. It looks almost magical, as if every leaf is decorated with pearls. I grab my lightest coat and go for a wander.
The foyer has emerged from its chrysalis. Cascades of ivy float in through the broken windows, ribboning down the bannisters, pooling into the hall. Wisteria winds round the pillars, fine and delicate as lace. Sunlight glitters on every surface, a myriad of colours scattered by the glass, spasms of amber and gold and honey. The wild, ethereal beauty of the palace haunts every corner, the bright, fresh aroma of spring stirring in every leaf.
The rain is feather-light, soft as silk. Tiny, shy buds begin to bloom in the hedgerows. I whisper good morning and imagine their little voices. Perhaps I can finally start to identify them. There are so many that I have never seen before, do not know the name of. Thorn found me a book on Fey flowers, but the lack of petals on most of them make them hard to identify. The hedges are full of tiny buds, pink and white and orange and purple. A few look like snowdrops or poppies, but are the wrong size, the wrong colour. Nevertheless, impossibly beautiful. The lilies on the pond still lie closed, as do the roses, but slowly life is eking back into this place.
I stop for a moment under a large oak. It was raining like this when Honour told me that Charles LePrince had asked her to marry her. The two of us were out for a walk when we bumped into him. He was fumbling and awfully nervous, saying he had asked for her at the house. I think Honour knew then what he was there to ask her. I certainly did.
“I'll go on ahead,” I told her.
I waited for her in the garden, despite the rain, because I was certain that she would want to tell me first. Sure enough, some twenty minutes later, Honour came skipping out of the woodland, hair, cape, ribbons flying, practically tripping over herself. She could barely catch her breath. “He asked me to marry him, Rosie! He asked me to be his wife!”
She was shaking with happiness as we embraced, spluttering on every word as she told me exactly what he had said, and then we went inside to repeat the story to everyone else. Nanny screamed and started to cry. Hope and Beau both rushed into her arms. Freedom clapped her on the back. Papa almost smiled. Everyone was so overcome with joy, and I was too, for a little while.
By the time that night came, the rain had thickened into a storm. I sat in my reading nook, Hope fast asleep in her bed, listening to the hushed, excited sounds of Nanny and Honour discussing arrangements. I looked at Honour's empty bed and realised that soon, that bed would be empty forever.
When Honour finally came upstairs, she didn't go to her bed or start to undress. She came to me, sat down by my side.
“You should say it, dearheart,” she whispered.
What I wanted to say was that I was going to miss her, that I knew we would still see each other every day, that it was silly and foolish to be afraid of change, and that I was happy for her. What came out was a rushed, sudden, and unexpectedly venomous response.
“I don't want you to marry him.”
Honour just laughed, ignoring any malice in my voice, which made me mad at first. Of course, I didn't mean it, but she didn't know that. Except, of course, she did. She took me in her arms and stroked my hair.
“It's not the end of the world.”
I know.
“I love him and he makes me happy.”
I wouldn't let you go otherwise.
“I know you know that. It's all right to be afraid.”
No, it isn't.
“You'll still see me every day.”
I wanted to cry then and I want to now, but I always so detested letting other people see my tears. My eyes begin to fill. We have not seen each other in so long now, and we were never apart before, not for a day. I was so lost then. I didn't know what I would do without her. There was a reason I didn't really have any close friends; I didn't need them. I had her. I had Hope too, but the two of us were too alike. I needed someone like Honour, who would say the things I never could, who knew what I was thinking sometimes before I thought it.
“Are you all right?”
A voice prickles behind me. I brush my tears away and pretend it was rain. “Just remembering the day my sister got engaged,” I tell him. “It was raining then like it is now.”
Thorn tilts his head. “Not a happy memory?”
“A very happy one,” I insist. “Charles is lovely.” Do not mention the tears.
“You sounded a little forlorn then, is all,” he responds. “My mistake, I'm sure.”
“I...” I swallow. What am I doing? “I was worried about her getting married, and moving away... even if it was only across the village. Foolish, I know.”
“I don't think so,” he says. “Missing someone is rarely foolish.”
I wonder if he misses the other visitors, and if he misses them for them, or merely for company.
“I've never made friends easily,” I confess. I wait for him to ask why, or disagree, but all he says is, “Oh.”
“Oh?” I narrow my eyes. “No, 'oh that can't possibly be true'? You are far too witty to lack for company, dear Rose-”
“Company,” says Thorn, trying not to smile, “Is not the same as friendship. And you said yourself that you've never tried to be someone else to get people to like you. It falls to reason that you do not make friends easily.”
This is true enough. “Honour is the closest thing I have to one,” I tell him.
“What about the friend that you kissed?”
I have known James since we were children. His family used to live next door until his mother re-married and moved across town. He was the same age as me, and I used to love running around and playing with swords and making up adventures with him. Then we started school, and I learnt how to read. It was more comfortable to have adventures in your own head. We were still friends, but we spent so little time together after that. I was never alone with him, we had few conversations, and although we still liked each other, we didn't know each other.
“He doesn't... he doesn't know me,” I explain. “He doesn't understand me. I don't know him really, either. I think that friends usually do, don't they? It's not just a collection of what you know about them, but what you know of them. The sort of person they are. Whether their sou
l is shaped like yours.”
Thorn stares at me for a long moment. I wonder if he is wondering what my soul looks like, if such a thing is possible.
“What are you thinking?” I ask after a while.
“That I am glad that you and are are friends,” he says eventually, and then wordlessly walks back to the castle. It occurs to me, watching him go, that I ought to have included him.
Honour is the closest thing I have to a real friend... apart from you.
Chapter Eight: Shapes and Shadows
Time passes. The garden grows prettier, ever-so-slowly. I have never seen a garden bloom this way before. It is like it is held, suspended. A flower here stays unfurled for weeks, despite the yearning sun. I cannot understand what they are waiting for, but the place sings with expectation.
The animals continue to change and grow. Caterpillars form cocoons, emerge butterflies, which flitter around one day and are gone the next. Hedgehogs occupy the woodland, rabbits hop about the grounds. Our days start and end in birdsong.
Thorn is mesmerised. It has been so long since he has seen any kind of wildlife. While I spend hours gardening, he spends hours prowling the grounds with books on birds and forest creatures. They are all utterly unafraid of him, hopping into his lap, eating from the palms of his hands, but startle whenever I go near.
Thorn tries to teach me to fish. This is difficult, since he can to it with his bare hands and I need a net at very least. I am not the most patient of creatures, wanting to give up if I've not caught anything within a few minutes. Thorn, meanwhile, has the patience of a saint, waiting in the shallows until one almost crawls into his arms.
I teach him how to light a fire without the help of whatever magic dances about the castle walls. We roast the fish on sticks and dine by the lake, whenever the weather will let us.
Some nights, although I never tell him, I forget to cross off my days. I go almost a week, at one point, before I remember.
Only four months left to go.
By the time my second month in the castle is coming to an end, the gardens are coated in daffodils. My herb garden is in full bloom. I snip buckets of them, together with the flowers, to string up around the castle or bulk in vases. Good portions of my day are swallowed by roaming the grounds, searching for new cuttings or blooms, re-planting them where I can see them more often, or making bouquets.
I do not see too much of Thorn during this time. Occasionally, he will come to join me, help with the heavier tasks and the like, but he silently understands that gardening is one of these things I prefer to do solitary. He joins me for meal times, where we either chat amiably or read in contented silence, down by the lake or in the shade of a tree.
One day after clearing out a rose garden, I am so exhausted that I fall asleep in a little patch of sunlight and waste most of the afternoon. Thorn wakes me just before dinner, gently blowing on my face.
“Why didn't you wake me sooner?” I demand.
“You looked so peaceful sleeping. I couldn't help it.”
“Well, I'm not peaceful now!”
“I can gather.”
Annoyed at myself for missing so many good working hours, I retire to the music room and half-compose a piece on the piano that I title “frustration” which is largely created by slamming my fingers on the hard notes in a somewhat discordant order. I'm more myself by dinner time, but when night rolls around, I am restless. Thorn declines my offer of a moonlit walk, perhaps annoyed by how I snapped at him earlier. We go our separate ways early.
I sleep fitfully that night. Whether it is the change in the weather, or my own temper manifesting, my bed feels far too hot. The covers twist around me, my pillow feeling hard and lumpy. I drift in and out of dreams. In one, Freedom is yelling at me. He is in the forest, painting. His hands and the canvas are entirely red. He turns and screams at me, “this is your fault, Rose!” and gestures to the source of the colour; a young buck with a bolt in its side.
Then I dream I'm a little girl, hiding in the meadow. Mama is searching for me, and her voice is growing frantic. I am too young to understand her panic and laugh instead. That's when she sees me.
“Rose!” she cries, half in anger, half in relief. “Where have you been? I thought the fairies must have snatched you away...”
Her face fades until I see my father crying over a coffin. That one's not a dream. A memory I cannot shake.
No, no, not that! Not again-
I wake, clutching the covers against my chest. I am damp with sweat, my throat parched. Something scuttles silently in the darkness, twitching around the mirrors like a spider. Not the remnants; these are shadows. The room is thick with them.
I swallow, brushing away stray tears, and breathe in deeply. You're still dreaming. A moment later, the room is still again, and I do what we all do when we wake from nightmares; I convince myself they're just that.
It was a long time ago, I tell myself. You're all right now.
I'm not sure if years really do lessen the pain of losing a loved one. I think maybe we just get used to the pain, like losing a limb. General Beaumont had a missing leg. He said he still felt it at times. I asked him if he missed it. He said yes, but he found ways of living without it.
It was a lot like that when Mama died. We were constantly, always, aware that something was missing. Her absence was physical, larger and louder and more tangible than the sight of the empty chair by the fire. You could feel where she was wasn't. There was no question of not missing her. But we found ways of living without her. We weren't given another choice.
Too hot and too bothered to sleep, I get up and open the window. Moonlight and cool air pool into the room. The moon is full tonight, and glitters over the lake.
After a few moments of standing there, I am cool enough. I light the little lamp by the side of my bed, pick up the book by my bedside and flick to my last page. It is the story of a young governess in a dark castle with a dark secret. Yesterday it was positively thrilling. Tonight I am finding it a little dull.
Something slithers in the darkness. I jolt, peer out. Nothing. I must have imagined it. No, there it is again, something large and dark.
I snuff out my candle, let my eyes soak up the gloom. It doesn't take long, the moon is large and full tonight. It ekes out corners of the graveyard.
There is a large, black shape, prowling the stones, almost devoid of any other colour. When it turns its head, even at a distance, I can see two monstrous red eyes.
Eventually, it fades into shadow.
I stay awake for several more hours, waiting for it to return, convincing myself I made it up, or it was just Thorn, or a trick of dark. Finally, sleep calls, and I fall into another uneasy dream of screams and shadows.
Emerging from sleep, I could convince myself it was a dream. The night before is always hazy in comparison to the dawn, and much can be thought a mere fancy of the moonlight. But I cannot do this. I can still feel my skin prickling at the mere thought of those dense, angry red eyes.
It was absolutely, most definitely, real.
I dress with trembling fingers, making my way to Thorn's room at little more than a snail's pace. I keep thinking I see something in the corner of my eye, keeping thinking that the thing is going to jump out at any second. Don't be ridiculous. Whatever this monster is, I tell myself, it likely only comes out at night.
There is no sign of any monster now, the hallways as quiet and still as they have ever been. But there is a chill that makes me quicken my gait a little, and I barely knock before shoving open the door to Thorn's room and hurrying inside.
He is lying in a heap beside the bed, curled up under piles of shredded fur. For a horrible moment, I think that he's been wounded, until I remember what he said about sleeping on the floor.
“Thorn!” I call, shaking him roughly by the shoulders. He is so heavy. A dead weight. “Thorn! Wake up!”
There is a low, throaty moan, and his eyes pry open. He blinks at me sluggishly.
“Ros
e?”
“There's something here,” I babble. “Or there was, at least. Last night. I thought... I was worried...”
“What do you mean, something?”
“Last night, there was something in the grounds. A dark shape- and do not tell me that there wasn't, or you were out for a walk, or anything silly like that. I know what I saw!”
Thorn swallows, and sits himself up. He hugs the furs around his waist with one arm and rubs his face with another. He doesn't look well, I realise. His hair is matted and clammy.
“There's something here, isn't there? Something other than the remnants?”
“Oh, they are remnants, all right,” he says solemnly. “But of a much darker kind. When... when the great battle was fought, and the forces of darkness extinguished... a little of their essence, as it was, became trapped inside the walls of the castle.”
“Like... ghosts?” I swallow. The thing last night looked too tangible to be a ghost.
“Yes. Only... they're not really dead. I hadn't seen them for so long, however, I thought perhaps they were all gone. Dried up, like the rest of the magic in this place.”
“But the magic is coming back,” I reason.
“They can't feed off of that,” he explains. “In fact, it should have the opposite effect. But last night being a full moon... dark magic is at its peak, then. A remnant of that power was bound to show itself, sooner or later.”
This makes a certain kind of sense, and I've read about the power of the full moon in one of books from the library. But... but I have seen other things, at other times. Shadows that move of their own accord. The face in the lake.
“These things can't hurt you, Rose,” Thorn insists. “I don't... I didn't want you to be afraid. You're safe here, I promise you. No harm will come to you whilst I am still breathing.”
“I can take care of myself,” I stand up tersely, knowing that, were I confronted with a genuine monster, this would be a complete lie. “And I'm not afraid!”
I cross the room towards the door and grab the handle. “That thing last night isn't the only thing I've seen,” I say shortly. “There have been shadows of other things. And I did see a face in the lake. I know I did.”
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