by Alex Bell
Slowly, I knelt down onto the scented black carpet of rose petals before him, close enough to see that his eyes were silver and that he had long, pale lashes. I offered my hand palm upwards and he dropped the rose into it.
A sudden movement above caught my eye and I saw the glow of other indistinct faeries flitting between the treetops and sitting on the branches. I looked back down at the rose and it fell apart in my hand, the petals fluttering into my lap. And, at the exact same moment, the song I had heard before started again - seeming to burst right from within the rose as if it had been contained inside it. Now it rang out clear and perfect around the clearing.
The effect upon the faeries was instantaneous. They came dancing and tumbling down from the treetops. They all appeared to be wearing winter coats and dresses of the same royal blue as the first one; they all had cyan hair and the same silvery delicate wings. But I couldn’t see them in any detail beyond that for they were moving too fast - leaping up into the air, flitting about the circle joyously in the starlight, apparently just as entranced by the song echoing around us as I was.
I can’t be sure how long I sat there. In some ways it felt like an eternity. The song made me feel peaceful and content - happy simply to watch the faeries dancing about me forever, quite prepared never to leave this place ever again. When I glanced down into my lap I dimly noticed the petals that had fallen from the rose earlier. But five of them were different from the others: they each had a gold letter painted onto them.
I had just gathered them up into my hand when a great drowsiness swept over me. I looked at the soft bed of black petals and lying down in them to sleep suddenly seemed the most attractive prospect in the world. A small voice in the back of my mind kept on insisting that I mustn’t go to sleep in this place and I was aware that the faeries had stopped dancing. They were perched up on the treetops, staring down at me with eager, bright eyes as if waiting for me to perform some sort of magic trick. I looked again at the bed of petals - fragrant, soft and alluring - and I couldn’t help myself. I had to lie down in them ...
But just as I was about to lay my head on the scented carpet of flowers, there was the sound of something large crashing through the trees nearby. The faeries disappeared at once, the song faded away into silence and I was left in the clearing alone, clutching the petals and staring around in vain for somewhere to hide when a black horse broke out of the trees. This was not a faery horse but a full-size stallion, snorting and stamping in the frosty air. It was Kini - and he had a rider on his back. Lukas looked down at me with a frighteningly horrified expression on his face.
‘So you are here!’ he said, although he seemed to be speaking to himself more than to me. ‘My God, what are you doing?’
‘I—’ I began, but that was as far as I got before he reached down, gripped my arm and dragged me bodily up onto the horse. No mean feat - especially as I tried to squirm out of his grip on principle. My arm felt like it had been half-yanked out of its socket, but as soon as I was sprawled across Kini’s back he took off, thundering through the trees at a breakneck pace, leaving the faery ring with its carpet of petals far behind us. Riding a fast horse can be thrilling and exhilarating - when you’re wearing a riding hat, holding on to the reins and have a strong grip, feet firmly in the stirrups. But when you have no protective clothing, the horse does not appear to be wearing tack of any kind and your seat is precarious, with both legs dangling over the same side, it ceases to be any fun whatsoever. It was no exaggeration to say that my life was entirely in Lukas’s hands, for it was only his grip that stopped me from falling off. As it was I still bounced around painfully on the horse’s back and every muscle in my stomach, arms and shoulders seemed to scream with the effort of staying upright and clinging to Lukas’s arm.
Finally, we broke out of the trees onto a road and Kini slowed to a trot, then to a walk and then stopped. I shook off Lukas’s hand and slid inelegantly off the horse, staggering on the tarmac before righting myself.
‘You lunatic!’ I gasped, still shaking from the fear of that awful ride. ‘You might have killed us both!’
Lukas swung himself lightly off Kini’s back, hardly seeming to have heard me. And, when he spoke, his words astonished me. ‘Did you eat anything?’ he demanded.
‘What?’ I frowned. ‘When?’
‘Just now! While you were in the forest!’
‘No, of course I didn’t eat anything!’ I replied.
‘The fey didn’t offer you any food?’
‘No,’ I said. But my mind went back to how I had almost laid down and gone to sleep inside a faery ring - a fact that now both frightened and alarmed me. I would certainly have done it if Lukas hadn’t turned up when he did.
‘Thank God for that! Those damn faeries are a menace, Jasmyn, you have to be so careful around them! You mustn’t ever wander about these mountains on your own after nightfall again. It’s not safe! Looking the way you do, it’s a miracle nothing happened to you this time!’
‘What do you mean, looking the way I do?’ I asked. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Your albinism makes you too similar to the swan princesses,’ he said. ‘That’s what any random mountain witch will take you for and they’ll try to steal your voice. But even for a normal person ...’ He shook his head, gestured back towards the forest and said, ‘These mountains overlap with the faerylands below. People get lost out there for a few hours and then find their way out only to discover that - as far as everyone else is concerned - they’ve been gone for years. Or they eat the food the faeries offer them and find themselves trapped there forever, unable to leave. Why the hell did you leave the road in the first place?’
‘My car broke down,’ I said vaguely, not wanting to say anything about the tiny horse. ‘And then I heard the singing.’
‘Singing?’ Lukas said sharply. ‘What singing?’
‘It led me to that faery ring. I think it came from the black rose.’
‘The swansong’s trying to communicate with you,’ Lukas said. ‘You’re linked to it.’
‘How can I possibly be linked to it?’
He looked at me and said evasively, ‘Well, you obviously have some degree of second sight otherwise you would not have been able to get into faeryland at all. The swansong itself comes from there, so it was probably able to communicate with you better whilst you were there too. It wants you to find it.’ He paused, then said sharply, ‘What are you holding in your hand?’
I looked down in surprise, for I had hardly been aware that my hand was still clenched. When I uncurled my fingers I saw the five petals I had picked up just before Lukas crashed into the clearing. They were a little crumpled but I could still clearly see that a different golden letter was printed on the surface of each.
I closed my fist back round them hurriedly, hoping that Lukas had not seen them properly. They didn’t mean anything at all to me but if they were a clue or a message of some kind then I did not want it getting back to Ben somehow.
‘I’ll walk you back to your car,’ Lukas said calmly.
I looked up sharply. ‘How do you know where it is?’
‘That’s it just there, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing down the road.
I turned around and was taken aback at the sight of my car not far away, for I had thought we’d ridden from the faery ring in the opposite direction. We certainly hadn’t gone back the way I had come ... I tried to persuade myself that I had simply got turned around in the forest. That was all. But then I noticed the castles - both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau - up there in the mountains glowing blue and orange respectively beneath their floodlights, right where they should have been all along.
‘They ... they weren’t there before,’ I managed, staring in astonishment. ‘I lost sight of them. That’s how I got lost.’
I glanced around, wondering if someone had moved my car. But the road seemed to be the same one I had left - long and straight with tall tree sentries standing guard on eit
her side. I expected Lukas to sneer at my preposterous suggestion that the castles had apparently ceased to exist for a few minutes or more but instead he said simply, ‘This is what I’m talking about. Things change around here at night. Come on, let’s get you back to the car.’
‘It’s no good, it’s broken down.’
‘Well, let’s just see,’ he replied.
I didn’t trust Lukas and felt uncomfortable being out there alone with him but I didn’t have much of a choice, my only other option being to run blindly back into the forest. So I walked down the road with him, Kini keeping step with us without any apparent command from Lukas. I found the clip-clop of hooves strangely reassuring - perhaps because I had long since associated anything to do with horses with feelings of happiness and contentment.
I sneaked a sideways glance at Lukas and saw that he was wearing a long, black winter coat that must have been his own, for it fitted him much better than any of Ben’s clothes would have done.
‘Your arm seems to be all better now,’ I said, breaking the silence. In fact, from the way he had just been riding I would never have known his arm had ever been injured in the first place.
‘We heal fast,’ he said, with a brief glance at me.
I considered asking him if he knew where Ben had gone or why he had destroyed my Violectra so cruelly, but I found I hated the idea of even so much as saying his name aloud after what he had done. Besides, it didn’t matter much where Ben was so long as he was nowhere near me. So instead I said, ‘Were you at the lake the night Liam went there with the others?’
Lukas gave a brief nod. ‘I was.’
‘Did you see what happened?’
‘You mean did I see Liam and Adrian kill the swan? Yes, I saw it. And I intervened, albeit belatedly.’
‘Intervened?’ I repeated. Then my eyes narrowed as I recalled Adrian’s description of the knight he had seen that night - almost seven feet tall ... and Lukas’s own statement that he had first met Liam at Lake Alpsee - that they had had a ‘disagreement’ ...
‘You were the one who dragged Liam and Adrian into the lake and almost drowned them.’ It wasn’t a question so much as a flat statement. Suddenly I didn’t see how I could have missed it before. I should have realised the truth as soon as I found out what Lukas truly was.
‘That’s right,’ he said calmly, without any apparent hint of shame or regret.
‘Did you mean for them to survive or was that a miscalculation on your part?’ I asked in a voice of ice.
‘No, it was deliberate,’ he said calmly. ‘Despite the fact that they were both bad men.’
Don’t do anything rash, I said to myself as we stopped beside the car. You’re out here with him all alone. Don’t do anything stupid. I looked down at the snow to avoid looking at Lukas and my eyes focused on the little trail of tiny hoof prints alongside my own, both sets vanishing into the trees. This was definitely the place where I had left my car for all that the castles had not been there before.
‘You obviously weren’t exiled at that point,’ I said, ignoring his previous remark and trying to keep my voice level.
‘No. I was exiled after the incident with your husband.’
I looked up at him. ‘They punished you for what you did?’ I said, a gleam of satisfaction coming into my eye at the thought.
‘No, they punished me for what I didn’t do. It’s supposed to be an eye for an eye, you see. Liam killed one of our swans so I should have killed him in return. That’s the way it works. We’re bound by strict rules.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Temporary lapse of judgement, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘But killing people isn’t something I particularly want to be a part of. And
I’m not against humans the way most of the other knights are. I suppose I took pity on them, not that they deserved it. Looking back at it now it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble if I’d just drowned Liam in the lake that night. Especially as he was only going to die a year later anyway.’
Anger and hate welled up inside me so viciously that I drew my hand back to hit him, hardly caring that this might make him hit me back. But he caught my wrist easily, which infuriated me all the more, and so I jerked my knee upright in an attempt to kick him but he sidestepped deftly, then twisted my arm behind my back to pin me to the car. ‘Calm down,’ he said, almost beseechingly. ‘I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, Jasmyn. Ben is a good man, but the fact is that Liam was a cruel, selfish bastard.’
‘He was my husband!’ I shouted, my voice echoing back to us and disturbing a bird in a tree above, which hastily took flight. ‘If he was as bad as all that, don’t you think I would have known? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Ben is the cruel one! He destroyed my Violectra a few hours ago out of spite! I knew Liam for years before we were married and in all that time I never knew him to be anything other than a kind, decent, honourable man! You’ve got no right to tell such awful lies about him and it doesn’t matter how many people try to convince me, I will never believe a word of it! I know who Liam was! Whatever you think you know about him, you’re wrong!’
I meant every word I said. They were the ones who must be wrong, not me. I would never doubt Liam for them. I knew him - I knew the little boy who’d sat in the stables with me watching for faeries and I knew him as the man I’d fallen in love with - the man who’d bought me a Violectra, who’d made me feel beautiful and safe and loved. Those feelings had been real and I would never doubt them - no matter what I might find out about Liam before all this was over. There wasn’t anything iniquitous enough he could possibly have done that would ever make me stop loving him.
Lukas sighed and stepped back. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Jasmyn,’ he said quietly - but surely - as though just as certain of his beliefs as I was. ‘Why don’t I drive back with you and direct you to the guest house? You might get lost again.’
‘I won’t be in the same car as you!’ I spat venomously. ‘I’d rather be lost forever than that!’
‘There’s a main road,’ he said calmly, as if he hadn’t heard me, ‘about five minutes on from here. You should be able to find your way back if you follow the signposts.’
Loath to take so much as a word of advice from him, I pulled open the car door, intending to jump straight in and firmly lock all the doors behind me before trying to start it. But when I opened the door, something fell out onto the snow. It was the little metal knight. After noting how the marble horse and he had seemed to match, I had decided to carry him with me as Liam had done but he must have fallen from my pocket when I’d been in the car.
Lukas automatically bent to pick it up for me but no sooner had his fingers closed around it than there was a hiss, a cloud of steam and the pungent smell of burning flesh. Lukas dropped the figure and jumped back, smacking into Kini who was standing behind him.
‘Damn!’ he muttered, leaning down to grab a fistful of snow to soothe his burnt skin. Then he glanced at me and said, ‘That’s some powerful black magic you have there. I wonder if Liam found someone to curse it or if he learned to do it himself.’
He spoke in a light tone, but I noticed with a keen interest that he didn’t take so much as a single step nearer, keeping his back firmly against his horse and his eyes on the little knight lying in the snow - as if he were a vampire and it was a crucifix.
‘It’s a curse that needs to be repeated regularly. So if a witch was doing it for him he would have needed to keep coming back to Germany with it,’ Lukas went on. I thought back to Liam’s repeated visits to the country but said nothing.
‘Ben told me about the five dead swan knights that fell from the sky at the funeral,’ Lukas said. ‘Liam threatened that if anything were to happen to him, five of us would die on the day he was buried. That’s the only reason they didn’t go after him to get the swansong back. Sounds like the sort of thing a clever man might do, maybe, but hardly something a kind, decent, honourable man would consider, wouldn�
��t you say?’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said stiffly, before scooping up the knight and getting into the car. The key was still in the ignition and when I turned it the engine sprang to life as if there had never been anything wrong with it. I pulled back onto the road and drove away, keeping my eyes on Lukas and his horse in the rear-view mirror until I turned a corner in the road and lost them from sight.
19
Separation of a Couple
I thought about trying to go on to the lake, but when I looked at the illuminated clock in the car I was shocked to see that it was gone five o’clock in the morning when it should have been more like only one o’clock. I checked my watch as well, but it showed the same hour. Here was firm proof indeed that time sometimes worked differently in the mountains, for I had surely been lost in the forest for no more than an hour and yet five had passed since my car broke down.
I did not want to get lost again, at any rate, and it was easier to head back towards Füssen and find the guest house than to try to find the lake. Thankfully the main road was where Lukas had said it would be and it was so easy finding my way back from there that it was as if I had never been lost to begin with.
It was a relief to finally let myself in and tiptoe up to my room. I was bone tired and my jeans were damp from kneeling in the snow. But I ignored the bed and sat at the desk instead where I spread the five petals out before me. The black roses had appeared several times and, on this last occasion, that beautiful song had seemed to burst right out of it. I remembered what Ben had said about being able to disguise the swansong as any everyday object and I was sure now that I knew what this object must be - it had to be a black rose. I felt a tiny surge of triumph for at least now I knew what I was looking for. And - as such - the letters on the petals had to mean something, if only I could arrange them into the right order.
