The Sword of Straw

by Amanda Hemingway

  Almost, Lilliat frowned. “Show him to me.”

  Hazel picked up the photo and held it out in front of the mirror. As Lilliat studied it the flowers at her breast seemed to wither, and the blue shadows on her skin deepened, and her lips grew pale. But when she spoke again the fairy colors returned, and there were wild roses in her hair.

  “What is his name?”

  “Jonas Tyler,” Hazel said, and somehow, saying his name made the magic real, and she knew she had taken an irrevocable step, though in what direction she couldn’t guess.

  “It shouldn’t be difficult for a girl like you to enchant him,” Lilliat said sweetly. “A girl with youth in her eyes, and power in her blood…Look at yourself!”

  Hazel’s face appeared beside her in the mirror—a different Hazel, beautiful and aloof, changed and yet the same, with her hair lifted off her face by Lilliat’s phantom breeze and silver shadows on her skin…

  There was a long pause. Then Hazel said: “I found these potions—” She indicated the bottles on the dressing table. “—I thought they might help. What do I do?”

  Her reflection faded.

  “What need of evil medicines?” Lilliat said. “You have seen yourself—yourself as you truly are. I will do the rest.”

  “Thank you.” Hazel felt grateful, hopeful, doubtful. Little showed in her face, but Lilliat saw it all.

  “A favor for a favor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you know the stories?” Her tone was still soft, still with an echo of silvery laughter. “There is always a price. The mermaid who sold her voice to turn her fishtail into legs, the prince who toiled seven years to break a witch’s spell…But what you ask is a little thing. The price will be small, no more than you can afford.”

  “Money?” Hazel said. “I don’t have much money.”

  Lilliat laughed again—laughed and laughed—and the flower petals turned to banknotes that scattered around her like butterflies, and golden coins were shaken from the shower of her hair. “Not money,” she said at last. “Money is a human thing. I am not human.”

  Suddenly, Hazel felt cold.

  “What is the price?”

  NATHAN, BACK at school after the weekend, found himself wondering if his uncle’s interest in Damon Hackforth had been merely idle curiosity. He wasn’t sure—Bartlemy’s manner was too subtle for him to be sure—but he was a perceptive boy, and he knew Uncle Barty wasn’t idly curious by nature. When the opportunity presented itself, he encouraged Ned Gable to talk about his parents’ friends.

  “I really don’t like Damon,” he said. “You can feel the violence coming off him, sort of in pulses. Like a dodgy electric current.”

  “He’s dodgy all right,” Ned affirmed. “Stupid, too. I mean, why steal a car when they’ve got five in the garage? His dad’s got pots of money—he’d probably give him one for his eighteenth if he stayed out of trouble. He won’t now, though.”

  “What’s his sister like?”

  “Melly-Anne? I told you.”

  “Meliane?” Nathan echoed.

  “Melanie-Anne. They shorten it.”

  “How old is she?” It was a starting point.

  “She’s quite old. Twenty-one or -two. She’s really nice. The Hackforths had a do there once, some charity thing, Mum made me go. Melly-Anne talked to me for ages—she was lovely. That was before she was in the wheelchair. At least a year ago.”

  “What did you say was wrong with her?”

  “Muscular dystrophy—multiple sclerosus—one of those diseases that’s slow and fatal and can’t be stopped. Beginning with M. Mum says old Hackforth’s so desperate, he’s trying potty cures now.”

  “Potty cures?” Nathan said, bemused.

  “New Age stuff, weird herbs, acupuncture, that kind of thing.” Ned was a shade impatient. “Potty, poor sod. Still, you can’t blame him. I mean, when you’re desperate, really desperate, I suppose anything’s worth a try.”

  “Are you sure Damon’s jealous of her?” Nathan asked. “With her dying and all that.”

  “He’s warped,” Ned explained. “You know? Warped inside. Like—like when you leave something out in the garden all winter, a rake or something, and the rain gets to it, and it goes all bendy, and you can’t straighten it up.” It was a metaphor that might have surprised his English master, who rarely connected Ned with metaphors. “That’s Damon. He’s bendy. They won’t be able to straighten him. I expect he’ll go to prison in the end.”

  Nathan didn’t say any more. The cricket season was under way, and there were important things to discuss. But he made up his mind he would tell his uncle what he had heard, just in case he wanted to know.

  At night in the dormitory Nathan was torn between trying not to dream and the urge to revisit the dead city, to return to Osskva and say all that needed to be said, to see the princess again. (He didn’t even know her name.) Somehow he sensed that if he resisted, the dreams would not come, but if his curiosity became too much for him then the dreams would take over, and his sleep would be no longer his own. He wondered if particles in physics experienced these dilemmas, or if they simply popped in and out of the world as a matter of course, because it was their nature. And he remembered a saying he had heard or read somewhere: Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. So he wasn’t really surprised, the next night, to find himself back in the dream.

  Not Arkatron: the other city. The city on two hills—he must try to learn some names. His awareness skimmed over the marshland, glimpsing the cloud shapes sliding across the broken pools, breathing the foul-smelling gases that rose here and there in slow bubbles. The reed beds were as tall as a child, and although he saw no living thing he caught the occasional whistling call of some solitary creature, probably a bird. Then he rose high over the city, circling the princess’s house before plunging down into the narrow darkness of a chimney and emerging at the bottom slightly startled by the speed of his descent.

  He found himself in a bedroom, or more accurately a bedchamber: it was too large, too full of shabby grandeur, to be merely a room. The ceiling was very high and the windows tall and heavily curtained—as in so much of the house, daylight was plainly unwelcome, forcibly excluded even when it had the chance to get in. There was a four-poster bed on a dais at the far end draped with still more curtains, layers of curtains, brocade frayed into threads and moth-eaten muslin, looped and scooped and tied with tattered cord. In the bed, supported on a lopsided stack of pillows, was a man in a nightcap. He looked both fat and thin, his limbs like knotted pipe cleaners, his rounded body smothered under a mound of rucked-up bedclothes. The rag end of a bandage showed beneath the hem of his nightshirt. Another person stood beside the bed, holding a candle that dripped wax onto the coverlet. Nathan recognized him at once, even in the gloom—his dandelion-seed hair and elongated nose. The man from the library.

  “You could do with some light in here, Maj,” he was saying. (Madge? Nathan thought.) “Let me open the curtains—open the windows. Fresh air, that’s what you need. Air and light!” He set down the candle, almost setting fire to the drapes, and went to the nearest window.

  “It was Mrs. Prendergoose,” the invalid explained. “She thought the dark would help me sleep. Anyway, she says daylight is bad for the sick. And fresh air.” He sounded almost apologetic.

  “Fiddle-fuddle! Twiddle-piffle! Woman’s a fool. Nurse to the princess, indeed—Nell’s so healthy she’s never needed a nurse. Wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Prendergoose couldn’t nurse a sick rabbit—or cook one, come to that.” Daylight spilled in, revealing their surroundings to be even shabbier than Nathan had suspected, somberly furnished and cobwebby about the corners. “Did she give you lunch?”

  “Beef jelly. She says it’s very nourishing.”

  “Probably right,” said the old man with an abrupt about-face. “Things that taste boring often are.” He came back to the bed, twitching aside both covers and nightshirt to expose a bulky mass of bandagi
ng from calf to thigh. In the stronger light the invalid looked very ill. His face must once have been round and merry, but his cheeks had dropped to the jaw and his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. There were gray shadows on his skin, dark as bruises. His nightcap slipping sideways should have given him a comic look, but instead the effect was merely pathetic. Nathan noticed a tiny crown embroidered on it and realized who he must be.

  He’s the king. Of course. The king who’s sick. Maj…Your Majesty…

  The old man undid the bandage. Nathan couldn’t see very well but there seemed to be a long wound running half the length of the leg, imperfectly closed and seeping an evil ooze. The old man began to clean it, using a white cloth and water from a silver basin. Then he scooped dollops of thick paste from a jar and applied them to the infected area. “Honey,” he muttered. “Amazing stuff. Extraordinary healing properties. Intelligent creatures, bees.”

  “It’s awfully sticky,” the king pointed out. Some of it had found its way onto the bedding.

  “It’s supposed to be sticky. Change the linen later. Give the Prendergoose something useful to do.”

  He covered the lot with padding and a fresh bandage, winding it around and around while the king, with a palpable effort, lifted his leg off the mattress. When it was over he fell back on the pillow stack, his voice suddenly hoarse and faint. “Frimbolus!” He seized the old man’s collar, trying to draw him closer. “Will I—will I ever be cured? Tell me the truth! How long has it been—ten years—twelve? What if I never get well again?”

  Frimbolus detached the grasping hand and laid it gently down on the royal stomach, giving it a pat in the process. “Ten years,” he said, in the tone of one who likes to get things right. “Nellwyn was four when it happened. There’ll be a cure—there’s always a cure. Anyway, we have to keep trying—mustn’t lose hope. Maybe the honey will do the trick. Magical stuff, honey. One of these days—”

  “Will I live long enough to be cured?” the king said with a fretful movement of his head.

  “Spineless guffle!” Frimbolus responded. “You’re the king, aren’t you? Duty—responsibility—loving daughter—loyal subjects! No business to go dying on us.”

  “How are my subjects?” the invalid asked, sounding very weary. “They haven’t seen me for so long. Do they still remember their king?”

  “They’re doing all right. The princess looks after them.” He doesn’t know, Nathan thought. They haven’t told him about the people leaving. “Important thing is to keep your spirits up. They mustn’t see you like this.”

  “Spirits…up…” The king managed a smile, as though mocking himself, and then seemed to fall asleep.

  Frimbolus emptied the basin out of a window, picked up the soiled bandages, and left. Nathan tried to follow him, but the dream plucked him away, transporting him through a network of dim corridors where tapestries billowed in phantom drafts and embroidered horsemen galloped past him. Fireplaces yawned, dust sifted through the still air, pattering footsteps fled from him, vanishing into the muffling gloom of the house. Reality receded; the dream became surreal, the building a vast Gormenghast where his thought roamed endlessly, trapped as if in a maze, searching for something he couldn’t find. Then suddenly there was an open door, daylight, normality. Another room, another scene. A room whose four-poster bed looked small and inviting, patchwork-quilted, its curtains sewn with silver stars, its pelmet carved with more stars and a crescent moon. There was a sheepskin rug on the floor and a dressing table with an oval mirror—a much bigger mirror than Hazel’s, Nathan noted. It was the sort of mirror in front of which a queen might have sat, ermine-collared and velvet-gowned, applying her eyeliner or demanding verification of her beauty from some supernatural source. But the person sitting there had untidy hair and a darned dress and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. The princess.

  He knew now her name was Nellwyn, Nell for short. Princess Nell. It suited her.

  Behind her was the woman he had glimpsed once before, calling her and the other children in from the garden. Her head was bundled up in a species of wimple and her plump face was worn with time and worry. It was the sort of face that Nathan would have called comely, an old-fashioned word that in his mind meant homely, pleasant, almost but not quite pretty. It was marred by the worry lines on her forehead and the pursing of her mouth. She was brushing the princess’s hair, taking it a section at a time, dragging the brush through thickets of tangle while Nell winced and complained.

  “Prenders, please… Ouch! Why can’t I just leave it, like the other girls do?”

  “You’re the princess. You’re not supposed to look like other girls.”

  “Megwen Twymoor comes from one of our oldest families, so does Bronlee Ynglevere, and they don’t have to spend hours brushing their hair. I know: I asked.”

  “Megwen Twymoor looks like a gypsy, and Bronlee is barely six, so she doesn’t count. A woman’s chief beauty is her hair.”

  “I’m not beautiful,” Nell said, pulling faces at the mirror. “Anyway, there’s no one here to see me.”

  “That’s not the point,” said her nurse; Nathan was sure that was who she must be. “You don’t want to get into bad habits.”

  “I’d love some bad habits,” Nell said, adding a sigh.

  “One day you’ll go away from here,” the nurse persisted, “and then things will be different. You’ll go to balls and parties, wear pretty dresses, dance with young men. Your hair will be threaded with flowers and pearls. If you would go to your mother’s family—”

  “I won’t go,” the princess interrupted. “We’ve been through this a hundred times. I won’t leave my father, I won’t leave Wilderslee. That’s that.”

  “Think again, mommet. This is no place for a young girl. I can look after your father. I asked him, the other evening, I said how would he feel, if you went away for a bit, just for a visit, met more young people—”

  “You go too far.” Nell tugged her hair free of the brush and turned to face Mrs. Prendergoose with an expression Nathan thought of as princessly. Proud, a little haughty, very grownup. Her voice was quiet and cold. “You had no business to discuss such matters with him. Whether I go or stay is not up to you.”

  “But your father said it was a good idea, he said—”

  “I am the princess, as you are always reminding me. I may not be princess of much, but it still counts for something. Princesses don’t abandon the kingdom when things go wrong, they don’t run away and go to balls when their people are suffering. Being a princess isn’t about brushing your hair and wearing silk dresses; it’s about duty and honor and love. I love my father, I love my subjects—those I have left. I’m not going. Don’t ever presume to bring up the matter again.”

  The woman looked slightly daunted, but still tried to protest. “Who are you to talk of love? You know nothing about it. I’ve loved you from babyhood—I only want what’s best for you. Who’s turning you against me? It’s that Frimbolus Quayne, isn’t it? He’s always been jealous of me—jealous of my position here—”

  “You may leave now.”

  “What about the Urdemons? They appeared first when you were a child, playing with magic. If you go, maybe they’ll go.”

  “Leave.”

  Nell’s face had hardened with determination. Mrs. Prendergoose whisked around, dropping the hairbrush on the floor, and left on a flounce.

  Alone, Nell picked up the brush, yanking in vain at her tangles. The hardness faded from her face; she looked confused, doubtful, on the verge of tears. It’s not your fault! Nathan wanted to tell her. Whatever’s happening, it can’t be your fault. Listen to Frimbolus. She was surely too young, too brave, too good to be the cause of something evil. He wanted to reassure her so badly he thought he would materialize, but the dream barrier held him back. Nell had set down the brush in frustration, murmuring a word he didn’t recognize: “Ruuissé!” When she shook her hair it sparkled for a moment as if powdered with glitterdust, and the snarls unraveled by themse
lves, and the long waves rippled down her back as if they were alive. As the magic dissipated she swept the loose tresses over her shoulder and started to twist them into a thick braid.

  Suddenly, the room darkened. The wind—or something worse than wind—screeched around the walls. The darkness pressed against the window, and in it there were eyes. Huge eyes full of a yellow fury, hungry and soulless. But the princess didn’t scream or run. She jumped to her feet, knocking over the stool she had been sitting on, confronting the apparition. Her body shook with anger or fear or both. “Go!” she cried. “All I did was tidy my hair! All I did—Go, you foul thing! Go! ” She thrust the hairbrush in front of her like a weapon, since that was all she had. For a second something like the muzzle of an animal was squashed against the pane, the mouth distended into an unnatural gape ragged with teeth. Then it seemed to dissolve, changing, becoming an ogre’s leer with thick lips and warty snout, before it melted back into the dark, leaving only the eyes. They shrank, slowly, until the shadow swallowed them and they vanished, and the pallor of a clouded afternoon came pouring through the glass, bright as sunshine after the horror of the dark.

  But the princess turned away, dropping on her knees beside the bed, her face in the quilt, sobbing not with relief but with despair. Nathan struggled to touch her, to comfort her, but he could feel the dream fading, drifting away from him, and his will couldn’t hold it, and he slid helplessly back into sleep.

  “DO YOU recognize him?” Bartlemy asked, holding out a sketch that, despite his best efforts, made the average Identikit picture look like something by Rembrandt.

  “Should I?” Annie said, clearly baffled by the artwork if not the question.

  “I believe he bought a book from you, probably not long ago.”

  Annie studied the sketch with a wry expression. “I don’t think…”

  “I’m not much of an artist, I know,” Bartlemy conceded. “Even with a little assistance, I’m not going to win any prizes. But I hoped there was enough of a likeness to give you some idea. The book might have been a description of local folklore, a history of satanic practices, even a grimoire. That sort of thing. Or so I suspect.”