by Alex Bell
‘Nope,’ Lukas said, shaking his head briskly. ‘Not going to work this time, I’m afraid. It’s a good thing I booked you a room.’
‘I don’t need a room!’ Ben snapped. ‘I can’t change now. I’ve got to—’ He was interrupted by the horrible, nauseating snap of a bone breaking in his leg. His knee buckled to the ground and he cried out in raw pain that made my skin prickle with horror.
‘Try not to resist it,’ Lukas said calmly as he hauled Ben up by the arm, promptly causing the bones inside that to break as well. Ben clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle the shout but it still seemed to ring loudly off the ice pillars in the hallway.
‘What’s happening to him?’ I gasped, hurrying after them as Lukas half-dragged Ben to a door nearby.
‘Oh, he’s just turning into a swan, that’s all,’ Lukas replied, pushing the door open with his foot. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
I followed them into one of the hotel’s bedrooms and only vaguely took in the snow-carpeted floor, the two ice beds covered in reindeer skins with great twisted bedposts at all four corners, the window seat carved straight out of the wall and the perfect, sparkling ice sculpture of an angel in the centre of the floor.
I watched helplessly as Lukas dropped Ben down on the bed, causing his spine to snap like a stick of glass. He went white and let out what was more a breathless gurgle of pain than a scream, but Lukas looked at me and said, ‘Better close the door.’
Hurriedly I did so, noting thankfully how thick the walls were. The last thing we needed right now was some other guest in the hotel coming to see what all the noise was about.
‘Try not to resist it,’ Lukas said quietly to Ben. ‘It’ll only make it even more unpleasant.’
‘How pleasant can every bone in your body breaking possibly be?’ Ben snapped. I was almost surprised to hear his usual voice for, with his scarlet eyes and sweat-soaked body, he hardly looked like Ben at all.
The act of speaking broke his jaw, quickly followed by his neck and all the small bones in his fingers as his body transformed before my eyes. Dark bruises spread out from all the broken bones before black feathers ripped through his skin, causing sprays of blood to splatter across the carpet of snow on the floor; his body shrank into his clothes, his long coat now far too big for him; his black hair crept down his neck, which lengthened with more cracking and snapping of bones; his shoulders wrenched back; his arms swept into wings and - in less than a minute - Ben was gone and there was a shivering, sweat-soaked black swan on the bed in his place.
‘There,’ Lukas said cheerfully. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
The swan hissed at him.
‘Language!’ Lukas said with a grin. ‘You’ve got to learn to control that temper of yours, Ben.’
The black swan struggled out of the mass of human clothes weighing it down, promptly tripped over its pink webbed feet and fell almost drunkenly off the bed.
‘Come on now,’ Lukas said firmly, picking the thrashing bird up and depositing it back on the pile of clothes. ‘Just stay put on the bed until ... well, until you feel more like yourself. You don’t want to crack your thick skull open on the ice, do you?’
The swan shook itself angrily, dislodging the snow clinging to its feathers. Then it sprawled down on the mound of clothes in a most inelegant and un-swan-like way - like a gangly foal that didn’t yet have control of its body.
‘Half an hour,’ Lukas said sternly. ‘Don’t turn back for at least half an hour, Ben. I mean it. We’ll be down in the bar.’
He took me by the elbow and steered me out of the room, the huddled black swan watching sullenly from the bed until Lukas closed the door behind us.
‘You’re not squeamish, are you?’ he said, glancing at me. ‘Do you need to sit down?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘But you’re trembling.’
‘I’m not trembling. I’m shivering,’ I said, through chattering teeth. ‘It’s bloody freezing!’
‘Oh,’ Lukas said. ‘Yes. Of course. Sorry - I didn’t realise. Knights don’t feel the cold the same way, you see. Come on, we’ll go downstairs and get some snowsuits. Then we’ll go to the ice bar and play twenty questions. You probably have a few you’d like to ask, don’t you?’
I nodded dumbly. It wasn’t just the cold that was making me shake, but his voice somehow had the effect of soothing me a little. It was the light, cheerful way in which he spoke - as if nothing was as bad as it seemed and everything was going to be okay.
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted.
Lukas looked at me, puzzled. ‘For what?’
‘For those things I said to you on the mountain road,’ I said. I hadn’t known who he was then, or who Ben really was, or Liam - but I remembered the hatred I had felt for him when he’d told me Liam was a bad man and I was ashamed of it.
‘Oh, that.’ Lukas laughed. ‘Don’t worry about that. I was only relieved to get you out of faeryland in one piece. Ben would have killed me if I’d lost you in there.’
We walked to the end of the hallway, the snow crunching as it compacted beneath our shoes. When we got to the end of the pillared corridor we found ourselves on a large landing at the top of a great sweeping staircase that led down to the atrium. Of course the Ice Hotel looked different every year, for it melted away in the spring and had to be rebuilt each winter - always by a new team of designers, artists and architects. But the photos I’d seen from the outside had always made it look more like a huge, sprawling igloo than a castle and I was sure there had only been one floor before. I realised that they must have tried a new approach this year by adding the stairs and wondered vaguely if some extra money had come from somewhere. I found myself focusing desperately on the hotel and the wonder of its construction, for while I was thinking about that I wasn’t thinking about Ben and the pain was almost kept at bay.
The staircase itself was made of ice, but a royal-blue carpet stretched down its length to prevent guests from slipping on it. Under any other circumstances I would have been delighted with the scene. It seemed hard to believe that mere human hands had made this entirely out of ice - the staircase and the long reception desk and the great arches and the chandeliers - like a castle cut straight from crystal. Elegant ice sculptures adorned the foyer: there was a perfect, flawless swan, a life-size horse rearing up on its hind legs, a majestic centaur and a vase with an entire bouquet of ice flowers inside it. They were all built around lights so that they glowed green, orange and pink in cycles.
It was every bit as perfect as I’d imagined it would be in all my time spent dreaming about it from the first moment Ben had brought photos into school to the hours we had spent talking about coming here for our anniversary one day ... Suddenly I wished to God that we could be anywhere but the Ice Hotel. Being here like this now was ruining it forever. It could never seem magical and lovely again after being the scene of such bitter heartache. Why couldn’t we be in some dingy little motel that I need never see ever again?
We were provided with shiny silver snowsuits that went over the top of our normal clothes, grey furry hats that came down over our ears and thick winter gloves. Then we went into the Absolut Ice Bar - a large room with a high ceiling supported by ice pillars. The frozen bar took up almost the entire length of one side of the room and on the wall behind it was a huge ice carving of a bottle, lit up from behind. There were strategically placed tables and chairs - all made out of ice - although the chairs had reindeer skins placed on them as well. I only vaguely noticed all this as we walked up to the bar for I was too consumed with longing for things to be other than the way they were. I should have known by then that wishing didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change the fact that Ben and I weren’t really here in this enchanting place on holiday as we had always talked about - spending the days dog-sledding and skiing and racing on snowmobiles before returning to the Ice Hotel at night to eat from ice plates and sleep in our own little iglooed ice bedroom ...
Lukas handed me a h
ollowed-out ice glass full of vodka and as he did so I noticed the plain black ring on the index finger of his right hand. I recognised it because I had seen it before, but it took me a moment to remember that I’d noticed Ben wearing one just like it when we’d been on the Queen Mary.
‘What is that?’ I said, gesturing at the ring.
‘That? It’s something all knights are given. It protects us from the swansong and means we can’t be enchanted by it. Come on, let’s get a table.’
I had to carry my glass in two hands to avoid dropping it, my gloves were so thick. We went to the quietest table at the far end of the room. It was deserted back there for most people were talking and laughing around the bar. But I had to exert all my willpower to stop myself from dropping my head onto the slab of ice that was the tabletop, putting my gloved hands over my head and giving up there and then. It was so cold that I was sure any tear that fell from my eye would freeze to my cheek before it could drop away anyway. I picked up the ice glass and knocked the vodka back in one, feeling it spread warmly through my body.
‘He’ll be all right again in half an hour,’ Lukas said.
I lowered my voice, even though there was no one near enough to hear us, and said, ‘You mean he’ll be human again in half an hour?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Could he ... could he understand you when you said we’d be in the bar?’
‘Yes, he could understand. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just not used to it - being a swan, that is. He can’t control the body properly yet. It’s like learning a new language. The one you grow up with comes on its own but any other you try to learn as an adult will never come as naturally. It takes practice.’
‘Is it always like that?’ I asked, remembering the horrific scene upstairs - bones cracking, skin stretching ... ‘I mean, is it always that painful, changing from one to the other?’
‘It is, unfortunately,’ Lukas replied. ‘It would be quicker usually, and so not quite as bad as that, but Ben resists it. Not deliberately, of course - it’s not his fault. It’s just the body’s natural defence mechanism. That’ll stop eventually.’
‘But why does he have to change forms at all?’
‘Because swan knights are both men and swans. Both bodies need to have their turn. You have to get a balance. Ben doesn’t like it - he tries to suppress the swan form and ends up making himself ill. The only reason he became a knight was to find the swansong.’
‘How did it happen?’ I said quietly. ‘How did he get like that in the first place?’
‘Ludwig’s princess knighted him,’ Lukas replied. ‘I took him to her a few months before Liam’s death. He hadn’t got any closer to finding the swansong on his own, so he made an agreement with the princess that she would knight him in return for his agreeing to return the song to her once he’d found it. I’ll take it back to her as soon as Ben comes down.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Can it be reversed?’ I asked quietly.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Lukas replied. ‘One-way ticket and all that. Knights can be exiled but they can’t be unknighted. I told him all this before we went back to Neuschwanstein but it didn’t change his mind.’
‘What did Ben do,’ I asked, barely managing to keep my voice steady, ‘to make Liam hate him so badly that he would do all this to us?’
‘I’m partly to blame for that, I’m afraid,’ Lukas replied. ‘After Liam told Ben what he’d seen at the lake, Ben went to see for himself one night and realised that it was true. When Liam told him he was going to steal one of the swans and sell it to a science lab Ben told him to leave them be. Naturally, Liam took umbrage at being ordered about. So Ben went back to the lake, found one of the swans and warned her that Liam might be coming and they should be prepared. Neither he nor Liam knew about the knights at that point. But the swan he spoke to told us what he’d said later on and we agreed they would keep their bird forms after dark for a while to be on the safe side. When Liam came that night and I dragged him into the lake, I told him before I let him go that we’d known he was coming and that if he ever came again he’d be killed. I didn’t mention Ben’s name, but he was the only other person who knew about it and when Liam confronted him, Ben didn’t deny it. He tried to explain that he hadn’t known about the knights and had only warned the swans, but as far as Liam was concerned, Ben had betrayed him, almost got him killed and was solely responsible for ruining his plan to catapult himself to fame and riches. So he swore to get him back any way he could.
‘The next time Ben saw Liam was when he saw you together in your house just before the wedding. As soon as his mother phoned him saying you two had suddenly announced you were engaged, he realised that Liam had stolen a swan’s song from somewhere. So he went back to Liam and told him he could name his price if he’d drop the enchantment on you but, of course, he refused. Ben left to try to find the swansong himself before the wedding but didn’t get anywhere, so he went to see Liam when you were on your honeymoon and ... well ... I don’t know what he thought he was going to do but they got into a fight, of course. Ben stopped it before it got out of hand because he knew you were waiting in the room thinking Liam would be back at any moment ... I know it must seem like he walked away but he was just trying to protect you. We only found out later that Liam was going to release you from the enchantment in a year or two because he’d promised Jaxon they would sell the swansong to a buyer he’d found who wouldn’t ask questions. In the meantime, Ben carried on looking for the swansong on his own and when he got no closer to finding it he turned himself into a knight. It would have worked too because swan knights can sense stolen swansong from quite a distance away, but the catacombs were too good a hiding place. Even we can’t see or hear it when it’s that deep underground. ’
‘I heard it,’ I said stiffly. ‘I heard it all the way from the Montparnasse cemetery.’
‘Well, that’s because you were the one being enchanted by it,’ Lukas replied with a shrug. ‘So the swansong was linked more strongly to you than anyone else, with the exception of the swan princess herself. That’s why Ben took you to see her. When he came to see me in the middle of the night, when you first arrived at the castle, I told him about the faery horse. You wouldn’t have been able to trace the song to the catacombs if it hadn’t been for Ben, because it was the horse that led you there in the first place. He didn’t just sit around doing nothing, he searched for it tirelessly.’
‘But he left me there with him!’ I said - the words coming out louder and bitterer than I had intended.
‘Yes,’ Lukas said quietly with a soft sigh. ‘That’s true. But he knew Liam wouldn’t hurt you. You weren’t the one he was punishing. If Ben had thought - even for a moment - that there was any danger of that then he would have risked prison and kidnapped you. Or he would have done something to Liam. But he wouldn’t have left you there if he thought you weren’t safe, Jasmyn, you’ve got to believe that—Ah, here he is now,’ Lukas said.
When Ben stopped beside our table there was no outward sign of what had happened upstairs earlier but for the one black feather sticking out of the collar of his snowsuit.
‘You have a little something there,’ Lukas said mildly, indicating his neck.
Ben put his hand to his collar and pulled the feather out irritably, thrusting it deep into his pocket.
‘I’d better be off,’ Lukas said. ‘There’s a princess waiting to get her voice back.’
‘Make sure the others don’t see you this time,’ Ben said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll go to the castle at dusk before it gets properly dark. There won’t be any problems. Stay here till I get back though, eh? After that you can borrow Kini to take you ... well, wherever you’re going from here. Save you one last plane ticket.’
We left the bar and walked out to the Ice Garden at the back of the hotel - a winter wonderland of twinkling lights and ice sculptures and fine, powder-soft snow. Kini appeared from nowhere, picking his way carefully through the g
lass trees and wrought-iron lamp posts towards us - a glossy, living thing in the midst of so much frozen, lifeless beauty. I glanced anxiously at a couple of guests who were also walking round the Ice Garden. They couldn’t help but notice Kini walking calmly through it all and I saw them point him out to each other. What must have seemed especially odd was the fact that he wore no saddle or tack of any kind. He didn’t therefore obviously belong to anyone, but in such a remote wilderness he couldn’t possibly be a wild horse. He seemed more like a winter mirage than a living, breathing animal.
But then he stopped before Lukas, and Ben gave him a leg-up onto his back.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, looking down at us. ‘Be nice to each other while I’m gone, won’t you?’
He waited until the two other guests had rounded the corner out of sight, then he urged Kini forwards and they faded away into the snow together, leaving Ben and I standing awkwardly alone.
There were so many things I wanted to say to him that I didn’t even know where to begin. I needed him to understand that I’d only loved Liam because I’d believed him to be Ben. I’d never loved Liam for himself. I’d never even particularly liked him, not that I’d ever seen that much of him. Being two years younger than Ben and I he had never been allowed to join in our games as children. When he got older he had girls eating out of his hand, for he was handsome and charming and smooth rather than antisocial and quiet like Ben was. He tried to flirt with me a couple of times but I never responded. After we got engaged, Ben used to joke that I was the only girlfriend he’d ever had who he’d trusted completely around Liam - confident that I would never betray his trust no matter what Liam said or did ... I cringed at the memory and tried to shut it out, for it was like a newly sharpened blade sliding straight into my heart. I could never take back what had happened - it would always be there between us.
‘Are you all right now?’ I asked to break the silence.
‘I’m fine,’ Ben replied.
‘Good,’ I said weakly.
