A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

  “And what does he want from me, my dear brother?” she asked in her rasping voice.

  The Doyenne moved a step forward, lifted her black dress to curtsey to her and replied: “The marriage, beautiful Artemis, do you recall?”

  Artemis’s yellow eyes swiveled towards the old woman in black, then towards the feathered hat of the mother, who was fanning herself feverishly, before landing straight on Ophelia. She shuddered, her damp hair clinging to her cheeks like seaweed. Artemis, of whom she could only see a blurred and fragmented image, was her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. And there were doubtless still one or two greats missing.

  Evidently, her relation didn’t recognize her. The family spirit never recognized anyone. For a long time now she had given up trying to memorize the faces of all her descendants, faces that were too ephemeral for this ageless goddess. Ophelia sometimes wondered whether Artemis had once been close to her children. She wasn’t a very maternal creature, she never left her observatory to join her offspring, and she had long since delegated all her responsibilities to the Doyennes.

  It wasn’t entirely Artemis’s fault, however, if she had so little memory. Nothing stuck firmly in her mind, events flowed over her without lingering. This predisposition to forget was probably to compensate for her immortality, a safety valve to avoid sinking into madness or despair. Artemis knew nothing of her past; she lived in an eternal present. No one knew what her life had been like before founding her own dynasty on Anima, several centuries back. For the family, she was there, she had always been there, she would always be there.

  And this was how it went for each ark and each family spirit.

  With a nervous gesture, Ophelia pushed her broken glasses back up her nose. Sometimes she still asked herself this question: what really were the family spirits and where did they come from? That the blood of a phenomenon such as Artemis should run in her own veins seemed barely credible to her, and yet run it did, spreading its Animism to the whole line without ever running dry.

  “Yes, I do remember,” Artemis finally admitted. “So what do you call yourself, my daughter?”

  “Ophelia.”

  There was a disdainful snort. Ophelia looked at Thorn. He had his back to her, as rigid as a large stuffed bear. Although she couldn’t see the expression on his face, she didn’t doubt that this snort came from him. Her reedy little voice had clearly not pleased him.

  “Ophelia,” said Artemis, “I offer you my congratulations for your marriage and I thank you for this alliance that will reinforce the cordial relations between my brother and me.”

  It was a fitting formula, devoid of enthusiasm, spoken only for the sake of protocol. Thorn moved towards Artemis and offered her the lacquered-wood casket. Approaching so close to this sublime creature, who could turn the heads of a whole procession of old scientists, left him cold as marble.

  “On behalf of Lord Farouk.”

  Ophelia consulted her mother with a flash of her glasses. Would she also be expected to offer a tribute to the spirit of her in-laws’ family, the day of her arrival in the Pole? Judging by her mother’s shocked lipstick grimace, she realized that she was asking herself the same question.

  Artemis accepted the offering with a nonchalant gesture. Her face, impassive up to now, tensed slightly as soon as she had discovered, through the surface of her skin, the contents of the casket. “Why?” she asked, looking through half-closed eyelids.

  “I don’t know what this casket contains,” Thorn informed her, bowing very stiffly. “Indeed, I have no other message to pass on to you.”

  The family spirit stroked the lacquered wood, pensively, turned her yellow eyes back to Ophelia, seemed about to say something to her, then casually shrugged a shoulder. “You may leave, all of you. I have work to do.”

  Thorn hadn’t waited for a blessing to turn on his heels, watch in hand, and go back down the stairs with his energetic step. The three women hastily took their leave of Artemis and hurried after him, fearing that he would be rude enough to set off in the carriage without them.

  “Ancestors alive, I refuse to give up my daughter to this lout!”

  Ophelia’s mother had exploded in the midst of animated whispering, right in the center of a planetarium in which a crowd of scientists were all talking about the imminent passage of the comet. Thorn didn’t hear her. His ill-bred bearskin had already left the dark room in which the globes’ mechanisms were humming like clockwork cogs.

  Ophelia’s heart leapt in her chest, racing with hope, but the Doyenne shattered all her illusions with a mere smile. “An agreement has been reached between two families, dear girl. No one, apart from Farouk and Artemis, can go back on that without sparking off a diplomatic incident.”

  Her mother’s large bun had collapsed under her fine hat, and her pointed nose was visibly turning purple, despite the layers of makeup. “Yes, but all the same, my magnificent meal!”

  Ophelia scowled behind her scarf while gazing up at the ballet of the stars under the vault of the planetarium. Between the behavior of her fiancé, of her mother, and of the Doyenne, she couldn’t decide which was most infuriating. “If, by chance, you should ask me for my opinion . . . ” she muttered.

  “No one is asking you for it,” cut in the Doyenne, with her little smile.

  In other circumstances, Ophelia wouldn’t have insisted. She valued her tranquility too much to debate, argue, stick up for herself, but this evening, it was the rest of her life that was at stake. “I’m giving it to you anyway,” she said. “Mr. Thorn feels no more like chaining himself to me than I do to him. I think you must have made a mistake at some stage.”

  The Doyenne came to a halt. Her body, all twisted with arthritis, slowly straightened up, getting taller and taller, as she turned towards Ophelia. Beneath the web of wrinkles, the kindly smile had disappeared. The dull blue iris, on the verge of blindness, locked on to her glasses with such coldness that Ophelia was staggered. Her mother herself shrank upon witnessing this metamorphosis. It was no longer a shriveled old woman who stood before them, amid this whirlwind of overexcited scientists. It was the incarnation of the supreme authority on Anima. The worthy representative of the matriarchal Council. The mother among mothers.

  “There is no mistake whatsoever,” the Doyenne said, icily. “Mr. Thorn put forward an official request to marry an Animist. Among all the marriageable young girls, you are the one that we chose.”

  “It would appear that Mr. Thorn doesn’t approve of your choice,” Ophelia commented, calmly.

  “He will have to put up with it. The families have spoken.”

  “Why me?” insisted Ophelia, not caring about the horrified expression on her mother’s face. “Are you punishing me?”

  That was her firm belief. She had turned down too many proposals, too many arrangements. She stuck out among all her cousins, who were already housewives, and that false note was disliked. The Doyennes were using this marriage as an example to others.

  With her pale eyes, the old woman looked deep into Ophelia’s glasses, beyond the broken lenses. When not bent double, she was taller than Ophelia. “We have granted you a final chance. Be an honor to our family, child. If you fail at this task, if you make this marriage fail, I swear to you that you will never again set foot on Anima.”

  The Kitchen

  Ophelia ran fast as the wind. She crossed rivers, cut through forests, flew over towns, passed through mountains, but the horizon remained out of reach. Sometimes she sped across the surface of a vast ocean, and the watery landscape went on forever, but she always ended up reaching land. This wasn’t Anima. This wasn’t even an ark. This world was all of a piece. It was whole, with no break, round like a ball. The old world of before the Rupture.

  Suddenly, Ophelia spotted a vertical arrow piercing the horizon like a flash of lightning. She didn’t think she’d ever seen it before, this arrow. Cu
rious, she ran towards it, faster than the wind. The closer she got to it, the less the arrow looked like an arrow. On second thought, it was more a kind of tower. Or statue.

  No, it was a man.

  Ophelia wanted to slow down, change direction, turn back, but an irresistible force pulled her, against her will, towards this man. The old world had disappeared. There was no longer a horizon, just Ophelia rushing, despite herself, towards this thin, huge man, who stubbornly kept his back turned to her.

  Ophelia opened her eyes wide, head on pillow, hair fanning around her like some wild vegetation. She blew her nose. It sounded like a blocked trumpet. Breathing through her mouth, she gazed at the slatted base of Hector’s bed, just above hers. She wondered whether her little brother was still asleep, up there, or had already climbed down the wooden ladder. She hadn’t the slightest idea what time it might be.

  Propping herself up on an elbow, she peered myopically around the room, where bedding had been improvised on the carpet, now a tangle of sheets and bolsters. Her little sisters were all up. A cold wind whistled around the window frame, making the curtains billow. The sun was already up, the children must have left for school.

  Ophelia noticed that the family’s old cat had curled up in the gap between her feet, at the end of the bed. She dived back under her patchwork quilt and blew her nose once more. She felt as though she had cotton wool in her throat, ears, and eyes. She was used to it—she caught colds from the slightest draft. She groped around for her glasses on the bedside table. The cracked lenses were already starting to heal up, but they’d still need several more hours to get the all clear. Ophelia placed them on her nose. An object repaired itself quicker if it felt useful, it was all a question of psychology.

  She stretched her arms under the covers, in no hurry to leave her bed. Ophelia had struggled to get to sleep once they’d got back home. She knew she wasn’t the only one. From the moment he’d shut himself in it, with a snort by way of “good night,” Thorn hadn’t stopped pacing up and down the room above, making the floor creak, back and forth. Ophelia had tired before him, finally sinking into sleep.

  With head deep in pillow, she tried hard to untangle the emotions tightening her chest. The Doyenne’s chilling words echoed in her head: “If you fail at this task, if you make this marriage fail, I swear to you that you will never again set foot on Anima.”

  Banishment was worse than death. Ophelia’s entire world was on this ark; if she were cast out, she’d never have any family to turn to, ever again. She’d have to marry this bear, she had no choice.

  A marriage of convenience always served a purpose, particularly if it reinforced diplomatic relations between two arks. It could be supplying new blood to avoid the degeneration linked to too much consanguinity. It could be a strategic alliance to benefit business and commerce. It could also, though that remained rare, be a marriage of love arising from a holiday romance.

  However much Ophelia examined the question, its most important aspect continued to elude her: this man, who seemed disgusted by everything on Anima, what benefit did he really hope to reap from this marriage?

  She nosedived back into her checked handkerchief and blew with all her might. She felt relieved. Thorn was a barely civilized madman, who towered two heads above her, and whose long, tense hands had surely handled weapons. But at least he didn’t like her. And he’d like her no better by the end of summer, when the traditional period between betrothal and wedding was over.

  Ophelia blew her nose one last time, then pushed back the covers. A furious meowing rumbled under the patchwork quilt when she pushed it; she’d forgotten about the cat. In the wall mirror she contemplated, not without a certain satisfaction, her dazed face, her skew-whiff glasses, her red nose and her messy hair. Thorn would never want to put her in his bed. She had sensed his disapproval, she was not the woman he was looking for. Their respective families could force them to marry, but together they would ensure that it remained a union in appearance only.

  Ophelia wrapped an old dressing gown around her nightdress. If it were only up to her, she’d stay toasty in bed until midday, but her mother had imposed a crazy timetable for the days to come, before the great departure. Picnic in the family park. Tea with the grandmothers, Sidonia and Antoinette. Walk along the river. Drinks at Uncle Benjamin’s with his new wife. Evening at the theatre followed by dinner and dancing. Ophelia had indigestion just thinking about it all. She would have preferred a less frantic pace to bid farewell properly to her native ark.

  The wood creaked under her feet as she came down the stairs. The house seemed too quiet to her. But she soon realized that everyone had gathered in the kitchen; she could hear muffled conversation through the small glass door. Silence fell as soon as she opened it.

  All eyes were focused on Ophelia. The scrutinizing eyes of her mother, stationed close to the gas stove. The apologetic eyes of her father, half-slumped on the table. The disapproving eyes of Aunt Rosaline, her long nose wedged in her cup of tea. The pensive eyes of her great-uncle, over the top of the newspaper he was leafing through, his back to the window.

  All told, it was only Thorn, on his stool, busy filling a pipe, who wasn’t remotely interested in her. His silver-blond hair wildly thrown back, his ill-shaven chin, his thinness, his flimsy tunic and the dagger stuck down his boot all spoke more of a vagabond than a court gentleman. He seemed out of place in the middle of the kitchen’s hot copper pans and aroma of jam.

  “Morning,” croaked Ophelia.

  An uncomfortable silence followed her to the table. She’d known more cheery mornings. She pushed her broken glasses up with a finger, purely mechanically, and poured herself a full mug of hot chocolate. The plashing of the milk on the china, the protesting of the tiles as she pulled in her chair, the scraping of her butter knife on the bread, the whistling from her blocked nostrils . . . She felt as though each sound that emanated from her, even the tiniest one, assumed gigantic proportions.

  She jumped when her mother’s voice rang out once again: “Mr. Thorn, you’ve still not swallowed a thing since your arrival among us. Won’t you allow yourself to be tempted by a mug of coffee and some buttered bread?”

  The tone had changed. It was neither warm nor sharp. Polite, the bare minimum. Her mother must have spent the night thinking about what the Doyenne had said and calming herself down. Ophelia looked questioningly at her, but her mother turned away, pretending to check on her oven.

  Something wasn’t right; there was a whiff of conspiracy in the air.

  Ophelia looked to her great-uncle, but he was fuming behind his moustache. So she turned to the balding, dithering head of her father, sitting opposite her at the table, and stared as hard as she could at him. As she was expecting, he gave in. “Daughter, something . . . slightly unexpected has cropped up.”

  He had measured his “slightly unexpected” between thumb and index finger. Ophelia’s heart pounded in her ears and, for one crazy second, she thought the engagement was off. Her father cast an eye over his shoulder in Thorn’s direction, as though hoping for a denial. From his stool, the man offered them only a penknife-hewn profile, obdurate brow, teeth gnawing at the horn of his pipe. His long legs twitched with impatience. If, stripped of his fur, he no longer looked as much like a bear, Ophelia now saw in him the stance of a peregrine falcon, alert and restless, about to take flight.

  She turned back to her father when he gently patted her hand. “I know your mother had an amazing schedule for the week . . . ”

  He was interrupted by the furious coughing of his wife, as she leant over her gas stove, but he continued with a sigh: “Mr. Thorn was explaining earlier to us that duties await him back home. Duties of the utmost importance, d’you see? In short, he can’t waste time on great receptions, on various amusements and . . . ”

  Exasperated, Thorn cut him short by snapping the cover of his fob watch. “We’re leaving today on the airship
at four o’clock sharp.”

  The blood drained from Ophelia’s cheeks. Today. Four o’clock sharp. Her brother, her sisters, her nephews and nieces wouldn’t be back from school. She wouldn’t say goodbye to them. She would never see them grow up.

  “Go home then, sir, as duty calls. I’m not stopping you.” Her lips had moved of their own accord. It was but a barely audible whisper, partly due to her cold, but it had the effect of a thunderbolt in the kitchen. Her father’s face fell, her mother looked daggers at her, Aunt Rosaline spluttered into her tea, and her great-uncle took cover behind a fit of sneezing. Ophelia looked at none of them. Her attention was focused on Thorn, who, for the first time since they’d met, was studying her closely, straight on, from top to bottom. His lanky legs had jerked him straight up off his stool, like a spring being released. She was seeing him in triple, thanks to her broken lenses. Three towering figures, six eyes as sharp as razors, and thirty clenched fingers. It all added up to a lot for just one guy, even such a massive one . . .

  Ophelia expected an explosion. The response was but a deep murmur: “Is this a refusal?”

  “Of course not,” chided her mother, thrusting out her enormous bust. “She hasn’t a word to say on the matter, Mr. Thorn, she will accompany you wherever you please.”

  “And me, my word, am I allowed to have it?”

  This question, issued in a shrill voice, came from Rosaline, who was glaring venomously at the bottom of her empty teacup.

  Rosaline was Ophelia’s aunt, but more importantly, she was her godmother, and as such had been designated her chaperone. A widow and childless, her status made her the natural choice to accompany her goddaughter in the Pole until her marriage. She was a mature woman, with horse’s teeth, thin as a bag of bones, nervy as a cutlet. She wore her hair in a bun, like Ophelia’s mother, but hers resembled a pincushion.