A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

  Ophelia pushed her glasses up her nose. “What do you mean by that?”

  “If I had the slightest idea, you wouldn’t see me hesitating like this,” said Berenilde, annoyed. “Who knows with Farouk, he’s so unpredictable! What I dread is his impatience. Until now, I’ve concealed your presence in his own Citaceleste—do you know why?”

  Ophelia was already preparing for the worst.

  “Because I dread that he’ll get you started on his Book. The outcome of such a reading terrifies me. If you fail, which I don’t doubt given the difficulties of your predecessors, I fear that he’ll succumb to a fit of bad temper.”

  Ophelia gave up on her coffee, and put the cup back on the saucer. “You’re telling me that he might punish me if I don’t give him immediate satisfaction?”

  “He certainly wouldn’t want to make you suffer,” sighed Berenilde, “but I fear that the outcome will be the same in the end. So many others have left their spirit there before you! And he, child that he is, will be sorry when it’s too late, as usual. Farouk can’t get used to the vulnerability of mortals, in particular those who haven’t inherited his powers. In his hands, you’re but a wisp of straw.”

  “Might he be a bit stupid, your family spirit?”

  Berenilde looked with astonishment at Ophelia, but she didn’t bat an eyelid. She’d lived through too much recently to keep her thoughts to herself any longer. “That’s the kind of suggestion that will shorten your stay with us if you make it in public,” Berenilde warned her.

  “What makes Farouk’s Book so different from Artemis’s?” asked Ophelia, adopting a professional tone. “Why should one be readable, and the other not?”

  Berenilde shrugged a shoulder, which escaped seductively from her dress. “To be honest with you, my girl, I’m barely interested in this business. I’ve only seen this Book once, and that was enough for me. It’s a totally hideous and unwholesome object. It looks

  like—”

  “Human skin,” murmured Ophelia, “or something resembling it. I was wondering whether a particular element featured in its composition.”

  Berenilde gave her a look sparkling with malice. “Well, that’s not your business, it’s Thorn’s. Be content with marrying him, giving him your family power, and a few heirs along the way. We ask nothing more of you.”

  Cut to the quick, Ophelia’s lips tightened. She felt negated, both as a person and as a professional. “In that case, what do you suggest we do?”

  Berenilde stood up, looking resolute. “I’m going to reason with Farouk. He will understand that, in his own interest, he must guarantee your safety until the marriage, and, in particular, not expect anything of you. He’ll listen to me, I carry influence with him. Thorn will be furious with me, but I can’t see a better solution.”

  Ophelia contemplated the light playing on the surface of her coffee, disturbed by the movement of her spoon. What would really make Thorn furious? That wrong be done to his fiancée, or that she become unusable before even being of any use? And what then, she asked herself, bitterly. Once she’d transmitted her power to him, and he’d used it, what would become of her? Wouldn’t her life in the Pole just be reduced to drinking tea and making polite conversation? No, she decided, observing her face upside down in the bowl of her spoon, I’ll be sure to create a different future for myself, whether they like it or not.

  Berenilde’s astonished gasp jolted Ophelia from her ruminations. Aunt Rosaline had just sat up on the divan to give a sharp look at the clock. “Second-hands alive!” she cursed. “Soon midday and I’m still lounging in bed.”

  Ophelia’s dark thoughts were instantly dispelled. She leapt up so suddenly from her chair that she knocked it over on to the carpet. Berenilde, in contrast, sat down, hands on stomach, flabbergasted. “Madam Rosaline? Are you really here, among us?”

  Aunt Rosaline stuck pins into her loosened bun. “Do I look as if I’m somewhere else?”

  “It’s quite simply impossible.”

  “The more time I spend with you, the less I understand you,” muttered Aunt Rosaline, frowning. “And you, what have you got to smile about like that?” she asked, turning to Ophelia. “You’re wearing a dress now? And what’s that dressing on your cheek? Gadzooks, what did you go and tear that on?” Aunt Rosaline seized her hand and squinted at her little finger, playing peekaboo through the hole. “You’re going to be reading here, there, and everywhere! Where are your spare pairs? Pass me that glove so I can mend it for you. And put that grin away, it sends shivers down my spine.”

  Try as she might, Ophelia couldn’t put it away; it was either that or crying. As for Berenilde, she still hadn’t got over her surprise, as Aunt Rosaline was fetching the sewing box from a cupboard. “Was I mistaken?”

  Ophelia felt sorry for her, but she certainly wasn’t about to tell her that she’d sought the services of a Nihilist.

  The wall telephone started ringing again. “The phone’s ringing,” remarked Aunt Rosaline with her unshakeable sense of reality. “It may be important.”

  Berenilde, sitting pensively, concurred, and looked up at Ophelia. “Answer it, my dear.”

  Aunt Rosaline, who was pushing thread through the eye of her needle, panicked. “Her? But her voice? Her accent?”

  “The time for secrets is over,” declared Berenilde. “Answer it, dear girl.”

  Ophelia breathed in. If it was Archibald, it would make a great prologue to her entrance on the scene. Awkwardly, she unhooked the ivory telephone with her remaining gloved hand. She’d seen her parents using a telephone occasionally, but had never used one herself. Barely had she pressed the receiver to her ear when a crash of thunder burst her eardrum: “Hello!” Ophelia almost dropped the phone. “Thorn?”

  There was a sudden silence, broken by Thorn’s choked breathing. Ophelia resisted the urge to hang up on him. She would have preferred to settle her scores with him face-to-face. If he ever had the gall to get angry with her, she was ready for him.

  “You?” Thorn uttered, reluctantly. “Very good. That’s . . . that’s very good. And my aunt, she is . . . is she near you?” Ophelia stared, wide-eyed. Such confused stuttering, coming from Thorn’s mouth, was certainly unusual. “Yes, in the end we stayed here, all three of us.”

  In the receiver, she heard Thorn catching his breath. It was impressive, being able to hear him like this, as if he were close by, without having to face him. “No doubt you would like to speak to her?” suggested Ophelia, coldly. “I think you have plenty to talk about.”

  It was when she was no longer expecting it that the explosion occurred. “Stayed here?” roared Thorn. “I’ve been trying to join you for hours now, banging on your door. Do you have the slightest idea what I . . . No, clearly, it didn’t even occur to you!”

  Ophelia held the receiver a few centimeters away. She was starting to think that Thorn must have been drinking. “You’re bursting my eardrum. You don’t need to shout, I’m receiving you loud and clear. For your information, it’s not yet midday, and we’ve just woken up.”

  “Midday?” repeated Thorn, bewildered. “How in god’s name can one confuse midday and midnight?”

  “Midnight?” asked Ophelia, astonished.

  “Midnight?” echoed Berenilde and Aunt Rosaline in unison behind her.

  “So you’re aware of nothing? You’ve been sleeping all this time?” Thorn’s voice was bristling with static electricity. Ophelia clung to the receiver. He hadn’t been drinking, it was much more serious than that. “What’s happened?” she whispered.

  Another silence filled the telephone, so lengthy that Ophelia thought they’d been cut off. When Thorn spoke once more, his voice had regained its distant tone and hard accent. “I’m calling you from Archibald’s office. Allow three minutes for me to come up and join you. Don’t open your door before then.”

  “Why? Thorn, what’s going on?”

/>   “Freya, Godfrey, Father Vladimir, and the others,” he said slowly. “It would seem that they are all dead.”

  The Angel

  Berenilde had turned so white that Ophelia and Aunt Rosaline each held her by an arm to help her up. But she displayed Olympian calm as she gave them her advice. “Awaiting us, on the other side of that door, are nothing but vultures. Answer none of their questions, avoid revealing anything about yourself.”

  She grabbed her little key studded with precious stones and pushed it into the lock. With a simple click, she plunged all three of them into Clairdelune’s mayhem. The antechamber next door had been besieged by policemen and nobles. All was confusion, the sounds of coming and going, stifled exclamations. As soon as they saw the door half-opening, silence fell. Everyone stared at Berenilde with unseemly curiosity, and then the questions shot out like fireworks.

  “Madam Berenilde, we’ve been told your whole family has perished due to a poorly organized hunt. Have the Dragons belied their reputation as peerless hunters?”

  “Why weren’t you with your family? It’s said you had words with them, only yesterday. Did you, then, have a premonition of what was going to happen?”

  “Your clan has gone; do you think your position at court is still legitimate?”

  Ophelia, unsurprised at such maliciousness, heard it all without seeing those who were spouting it. Standing bravely in the doorway, Berenilde blocked her view of the antechamber. She faced the onslaught in silence, her hands crossed on her dress, searching for Thorn. Ophelia stiffened when she heard a woman start to speak. “The rumor’s going around that you’re hiding a reader from Anima. Is she in these apartments? Why aren’t you introducing her to us?”

  The woman cried out and several voices protested. Ophelia didn’t have to witness the scene to know that Thorn had just arrived, and was pushing aside all these charming people.

  “Mr. Treasurer, will the death of the hunters affect our larder?”

  “What measures do you intend to take?”

  Thorn’s only response was to push his aunt inside, usher Archibald and another man in, and then lock the apartments. The din from the antechamber ceased immediately; they had now moved beyond space. Berenilde then threw herself at Thorn with a fervor that knocked them both against the door. She gripped his big, thin body, a head taller than hers, with all her might. “My dear boy, I’m so relieved to see you!”

  Stiff as a post, Thorn didn’t seem to know what to do with his too-long arms. His hawk’s eyes bored into Ophelia’s glasses. She mustn’t have looked great, with her bruised face, streaming hair, maid’s dress, bare arms, and only one hand gloved out of two, but none of that bothered her. What bothered her was to be bursting with an anger that she couldn’t express. She was furious with Thorn, but given the circumstances, couldn’t have a go at him.

  Ophelia went from this predicament straight into another one. Archibald bowed low before her, top hat held to chest. “My humble respects, Thorn’s fiancée! How the devil have you landed at my place?”

  His angelic face, pale and delicate, tipped her a knowing wink. As was to be expected, Ophelia’s little improvisation in the poppy garden hadn’t deceived him. All she could hope was that he wouldn’t choose this very evening to give her away.

  “Might I finally know your name?” he persisted, with a candid smile.

  “Ophelia,” replied Berenilde, on her behalf. “If you don’t mind, we’ll do the introductions some other time. We have much more urgent business to discuss.”

  Archibald barely listened to her. His luminous eyes were studying Ophelia more closely. “Have you suffered ill-­treatment, little Ophelia?”

  She struggled to answer him. She was hardly going to accuse his own policemen, was she? Since she lowered her eyes, Archibald passed a finger over the dressing on her cheek with such familiarity that Aunt Rosaline coughed against her fist. As for Thorn, he frowned hard enough to split his forehead. “We’ve gathered this evening to talk,” declared Archibald. “So, let’s talk!”

  He threw himself into an armchair and perched his gaping shoes on a footrest. Aunt Rosaline prepared tea. Thorn folded each limb down on to the divan, awkward among such feminine furnishings. When Berenilde sat beside him and collapsed against the epaulettes of his uniform, he didn’t look at her once; his ferrous eyes followed Ophelia’s slightest move and gesture. Feeling uncomfortable, she didn’t know where to put herself, or what to do with her hands. She backed into a corner of the room, even banging her head on a shelf.

  The man who had entered with Thorn and Archibald remained standing in the middle of the carpet. Clad in a thick, gray fur, he was no young thing. His prominent nose, reddened with rosacea, dominated his ill-shaven face. He was rubbing his dirty shoes against his trousers to make them more presentable.

  “Jan,” said Archibald, “deliver your report to Madam Berenilde.”

  “A nasty business,” muttered the man. “A nasty business.”

  Ophelia had no memory for faces, so it took her a while to recall where she’d seen him before. He was the gamekeeper who had escorted them to Citaceleste, on the day they’d arrived in the Pole.

  “We’re listening to you, Jan,” Berenilde said, gently. “Express yourself freely, you’ll be rewarded for your sincerity.”

  “A massacre, my dear lady,” growled the man. “If I escaped meself, it’s a miracle. A true miracle, lady.” He clumsily grabbed the cup of tea Aunt Rosaline was serving him, emptied it noisily, put it down on a pedestal table, and started shaking his hands about as if they were puppets. “I’m going to repeat to you what I told yer nephew and the ambassador. Yer family, they were all there, down yonder. Even three kids whose mugs I’d never seen before. ’Scuse me if I seem coarse, but I mustn’t keep nothing from you, eh? So, I’d better warn you, lady, yer absence was fiercely criticized. They was saying that you was disowning yer own, and about to start yer own line, and that they’d got the message, loud and clear. And that the ‘bastard’s fiancée,’ to use their words—I’d be ashamed, I would, to come out with the like—they’d never recognize her, not her, and not the brats she’d pull out the oven. At that, they launched the hunt, just like they do every year. Me, knowing the forest like the back of me hand, I played me part and I picked ’em some Beasts. Not the knocked-up females, eh, them we never touch. But I’d got three big males there, enough to give you meat all year. All that was left was to comb, surround, isolate, and kill—just the old routine!”

  Ophelia was listening to him with increasing apprehension. This man had the strongest of accents, but she found him easier to understand today.

  “Never witnessed the like, I haven’t. The Beasts, they started charging from all directions, randomly, all foaming at the mouth. As if possessed. Well, the Dragons, they went for it with their claws, slashing away straight into the flesh, again, and again, and again. But the Beasts, there were always more of ’em, it were never-ending! They trampled over those they didn’t devour. I thought . . . Dammit, I thought I was a goner, and yet I know my job.”

  Hidden in her corner, Ophelia closed her eyes. Yesterday, she’d wanted never to see her in-laws ever again. But never, ever would she have wanted things to end up like this. She thought of Thorn’s memories, she thought of Godfrey and Freya as children, she thought of the triplets, whom Father Vladimir was so proud to take hunting . . . All night, Ophelia had felt stifled by a stormy atmosphere. The lightning had well and truly struck.

  The gamekeeper rubbed his chin, on which a bushy beard grew. His eyes glazed over. “You’ll think I’ve lost the plot, and even I, when I hear meself, I think I’m nuts. An angel, lady, an angel saved me from the carnage. He appeared in the middle of the snow and the Beasts, they all left, gentle as lambs. It’s thanks to that angel I were spared. One hell of a miracle . . . with all due respect, madam.” The man opened a flask of spirits and downed several swigs. “Why me?” he
asked, wiping his moustache on his sleeve. “Why that cherub saved me, and not them others. That I’ll never understand.”

  Stunned, Ophelia couldn’t resist a sidelong glance at Thorn to see his reaction, but she couldn’t gauge his state of mind. He’d been staring at his fob watch for some time, as if its hands had frozen.

  “So, you are confirming to me that all the members of my family died during this hunt?” Berenilde asked, patiently. “Every single one of them?”

  The gamekeeper couldn’t bring himself to look anyone in the eye. “We found not one survivor. Some bodies, they’re unrecognizable. I swear to you on me life, we’ll comb that forest as long as it takes to collect them bodies. Give ’em a decent burial, you know? And who knows, eh? The angel might have saved some others?”

  Berenilde managed a voluptuous smile. “You’re naïve! What did he look like, then, this cherub who fell from the sky? Like a well-dressed child, with golden-blond hair and cute chubby cheeks?”

  Ophelia puffed on the lenses of her glasses and wiped them on her dress. The Knight. Again, and always, the Knight.

  “You know ’im?” asked the man, alarmed.

  Berenilde let out a resounding laugh. Thorn, roused from his lethargy, looked sharply down at her to make her control herself. She was very flushed and her curls were tumbling over her cheeks with an abandon that wasn’t like her. “Possessed Beasts, is that it? Your angel blew illusions into their brains that only a depraved imagination could conceive of. Illusions that enraged them, starved them, and that he then dismissed with a click of his fingers.” Berenilde matched the action to the words with such a flourish that it took the gamekeeper’s breath away. Overcome, he stared with eyes like plates. “Do you know why that little angel saved you?” continued Berenilde. “So that you could then describe, in the minutest detail, exactly how my family was massacred.”