The Autumn Castle

by Kim Wilkins

  Ah yes, that word. “Shopping.” It was one of the Real World concepts that appealed to her the most. Vast buildings full of beautiful dresses in ingenious colors and textures, and all to be had by showing a colored square—a credit card.

  “Come, leave all these things behind. You need only take yourself and a bag full of spells.”

  “If Hexebart will comply,” she muttered darkly.

  “Hexebart must comply, and she knows that. She may not believe you are the true queen, but she knows you are Queen Liesebet and King Jasper’s daughter, and she must give you whatever magic you ask for.”

  “After threats and curses.”

  “She likes to see you angry. You shouldn’t give her the satisfaction.”

  Mayfridh marched over to one of the servants and snatched a yellow dress out of her hands. “That will do,” she said. “All of you, you are dismissed. I need nothing further.”

  With bows and nervous murmurs they backed out of the room. She slammed the door shut and flung herself onto the bed next to Eisengrimm, flat on her back with her hair spread out around her, gazing up at the white canopy.

  “I’m frightened, Eisengrimm. I’m so frightened.” The fear was like a big, inescapable bubble welling up inside her, making her tap her fingers, and twitch her legs, and hold back a fragment of every breath.

  “I know you are, Little May. But look at me, I came back. I was gone but a few hours, and then I came back.”

  She turned on her stomach and met his gaze. “Eisengrimm, what do you think happened to my mother and father?”

  “I know not.”

  “Make a guess then.”

  “I have no way of guessing.”

  “Perhaps they were murdered,” Mayfridh said. The dark fear spun down on her. “Oh, I don’t want to be murdered.”

  “The risk is very low in the Real World. Murder accounts for very few deaths. They may have met with an accident.”

  “But Eisengrimm, we sent a dozen men through to find them. Nobody had heard of them or seen them, nobody found them or their bodies. They simply disappeared. A murderer would hide them, would he not? To avoid capture.”

  “It would be best not to think of it, Mayfridh.” He stood and stretched, and jumped from the bed. “Come, we shall pay Hexebart a visit.”

  Mayfridh sat up, her legs hanging over the side of the bed. “Eisengrimm,” she said mournfully, “what if they didn’t want to be found? What if they liked the Real World so much, they wanted to stay? What if they didn’t really love me?”

  Eisengrimm gripped the sleeve of her dress between his teeth and pulled her to her feet.

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” she said, following him with heavy footsteps.

  The early morning was very cool, and a golden autumn glow hung misty over the wild hedges in the garden and the trees in the wood. The aspen had already turned bright yellow, and the beech was stained with golden-red. A chance breeze shook leaves loose and they spun and dived toward the ground. Mayfridh pulled her pale bronze cloak around her against the morning chill as they approached the well.

  “Hexebart!” Eisengrimm called.

  “What do you want, dog-chops?” was the response.

  “Witch, come here!” Mayfridh shouted. The anger jumped in her chest. How she hated Hexebart, the thief of the royal magic.

  “And why should I, you nasty little changeling?”

  “Because I am the queen and I command it!”

  The rope squeaked and began to hoist itself upward. In the end, the witch always complied. Hexebart had once been the most trusted and skilled sorceress of Mayfridh’s faery parents, Queen Liesebet and King Jasper. She had pride of place in the spell chamber where she spun and wove the royal magic. It was customary, if the queen and king left the realm together, to store their magic with a guardian. The night that Mayfridh’s parents had disappeared, Hexebart was chosen as that guardian. But they had failed to return and Hexebart had never accepted Queen Liesebet was dead, or that Mayfridh was the rightful heir, because she was a human child. Mayfridh had cast her down the well as punishment twenty years ago, but still the witch refused to hand the magic over. Yes, she performed any spells that were demanded of her—she had to, she was bound by a magical oath. But she swore that until she saw the dead bodies of the king and queen, she would believe they simply hadn’t returned yet, and would protect their magic as she had been asked.

  Hexebart appeared over the rim of the well, her bony gray fingers gripping the rusty bars of her cage. At her feet was a pile of glowing spells.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I need spells,” Mayfridh said.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t have to tell you what for, just give them to me.” Mayfridh held out the woven bag she carried spells in.

  “Tell me what for.”

  “Just give me the spells.”

  “What will you do if I don’t?”

  Mayfridh’s hands shook with anger. “I’ll sew you in a sack and throw you in the lake; I’ll put you in a barrel of nails and roll you down the hill; I’ll tie you to four oxen and send them off in different directions.”

  “Ha,” Hexebart cried, “you wouldn’t dare.”

  “Give me the spells.” Mayfridh was close to tears. “It’s my magic, give it to me.”

  “It’s not yours,” Hexebart said, snatching up a handful of spells, “it’s Queen Liesebet’s.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying? You’ve probably locked her up in a dungeon somewhere.”

  “How can you suggest such a thing?”

  Hexebart began pitching the spells out of the cage, aiming for Mayfridh’s head. “Here, piglet; here, dog breath.”

  “Ow, stop that!” Mayfridh cried.

  “Here, princess toadling; here, mongrel.” The spells bounced off Mayfridh and to the ground. “Here are your spells, may you accidentally poison yourself with them.” When the cage was empty, Hexebart released the rope and descended into the well with a crash.

  Mayfridh leaned over the edge of the well and screamed, “I hate you!”

  There was a sharp cackle in response and then silence. Mayfridh turned to see Eisengrimm collecting the spells, nudging them with his nose until they gathered at her feet.

  “Come, Little May, forget about her.”

  “How can you be so reasonable?”

  “You must be calm for the passage.”

  She kneeled and began to pick up the spells and slip them into her woven bag. “You are cruel to me, Eisengrimm. I am a poor orphan who is lonely and afraid.”

  He stifled a chuckle. “You shall be lonely no longer, Mayfridh. An old friend awaits you.” He sat on his hind legs, and watched as she collected the last of the spells, a patient statue in the midst of her agitation.

  “So,” she said, climbing to her feet, her knees shaking beneath her, “I suppose it is time.”

  “Yes, my Queen. Let me lead you into the autumn forest.”

  Mayfridh followed him through the misty golden dawn into the woods. The trees were close and dark, shading out the pale light. Dead leaves crackled at their feet, and the constant scuff and skitter of soft falling made it seem as though the woods were whispering farewell and farewell, farther and farther into the gloom.

  “There is a forest in the center of her city. Do you remember it from the spell we drank?”

  “Yes, the Tiergarten.”

  “The passage is safest taken there. Fewer witnesses, no traffic. It is a short walk from there to Christine’s home. If you become lost, use one of the spells as a map.”

  “I will.”

  “Good luck.”

  Mayfridh bent to kiss the top of Eisengrimm’s head, then tried to force a breath down into her panic-squeezed lungs. She pulled one of the spells from the bag and let it rest on her upturned palm.

  “Passage,” she whispered into it, then blew gently. The spell began to dissolve, and in front of her a long oval shape bega
n to flicker.

  “You can return whenever you like,” Eisengrimm said.

  “Promise me I’ll be safe.”

  “I promise you.”

  The oval shape resolved itself into a watery picture of the Real World. A dark wood, not unlike the one she stood in. But already she could hear the distant traffic, smell the odd sharp-sour smells.

  “Farewell, Eisengrimm.”

  “Farewell, Little May.”

  She took a breath, stepped forward into the murky half-light between the worlds, and then through to the other side.

  —from the Memoirs of Mandy Z.

  Writing this memoir is affecting my imagination in odd ways. Just the other night, I started to believe that I had a faery living in my own building. One of the girls, the skinny little thing that hangs on Jude Honeychurch’s arm, had a most revolting faery odor clinging to her. I was sitting next to her, and she reached her arm toward me and I could smell it faintly. Like somebody who has stepped in something rotten and can’t detect it himself, she was bewildered when I shot out of my chair and moved. How could I have eaten with that smell in my nostrils? And yet, a day or two later (after many hours pondering how I could kill her and bone her without Jude knowing), I ran into her again on the front step. No smell at all. Of course, I should have known she wasn’t a faery. They are usually confident and glamorous, and this girl is not. She has an air of hungry-dog desperation about her, like she expects to be kicked at any moment. So what was it? A momentary glitch in my sense of smell? Or was it simply that I have spent so many hours thinking about my own faery stories to assess their suitability for my memoir—the triumphs and failures of my past—that I’m smelling faeries where there are only humans?

  At least it relieves me of the problem of killing her. But I must be very certain next time I hunt a faery, because if my senses can lead me astray in such a manner, I could end up murdering an innocent human.

  All this talk of killing faeries fills me with such a warm satisfaction, like it’s Boxing Day and the clutter of torn wrapping paper is consigned to the rubbish bin, and there are just shiny new things waiting to be played with. My memories of happy moments. I have hunted many faeries in my time, but none were so satisfying as my first kill. I was fourteen and it was Christmastime.

  The disagreement with my parents over the faery had never truly been resolved. They grew, I am almost certain, to hate me for my instincts. We fought a great deal, even after I pretended I no longer bore any ill will toward our faery relatives in an attempt to win back their love. They looked at me as if they didn’t know me, with a sick despair that drove them eventually to consign me to a boarding school. Not for my own good or for the possibility of reform, but simply because it became too painful for them to look upon me. I grew into a strong, if somewhat plump, young man and in the sanctuary of their blind spot I returned to my deepest fantasies about faeries. While the other boys were comparing their wispy new facial growth, or sharing their sex dreams about Elke Sommer, or forming sports teams to fill the emptiness of being banished from home, or hefting each other’s musky ball sacks under the rough blankets at night, I cultivated a zealous solitariness and drew my pictures. By the time I was fourteen, I had nearly an entire suitcase full.

  I was back in Bremen with my parents that Christmas, and they took me shopping to a large department store. I smelled him immediately.

  Sitting on a pedestal, dressed as the Christmas Man, children climbing all over his lap.

  A faery.

  I had to play it cool, of course. My parents hadn’t noticed him, so I steered them away from him and allowed the afternoon to pass as if nothing had happened.

  But I planned, as soon as I could, to return.

  I had an unbearable, sleepless night. I knew I should do something about that awful aberration, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t let a faery wander around unchecked in my own city. I fantasized in great detail about killing the faery, but didn’t know if I could. I was riddled with self-doubts.

  I awoke and demanded that my mother take me to my aunt Marta’s house. Aunt Marta lived within walking distance of the department store and Aunt Marta had a toolshed in the back garden, where my uncle Walt had gone to escape her incessant chatter in the years before he died. Mother must have been surprised by my sudden desire to see Aunt Marta—I had never before shown a particular fondness for her—but my parents were always eager to be apart from me. I packed my bags and installed myself at Aunt Marta’s until Christmas.

  Aunt Marta was a stupid old woman who could not stop gossiping. Every morning she made me breakfast and subjected me to an hour of chatter, made me morning tea and talked some more, made me lunch and so on. But every afternoon at four she went caroling with the small choir she belonged to, leaving me alone for three blissful hours.

  Uncle Walt’s toolshed hadn’t been opened in the two years since he died. I crept out there as soon as Marta was gone, and slipped inside. Snow had fallen the night before, and the air was very quiet and chilled. I knew by now that it was my destiny to kill the faery, but I was too innocent to know where to start. It was necessarily going to be a crude and primitive exercise. As I looked around me, discovering tools that I thought might help—a mallet, a saw, a long screwdriver—I wished for streamlined equipment like daggers and guns. Every time I thought about what I intended to do that evening, such a warm liquid rush of excitement would flood my body that I had trouble remaining on my feet. While weighing the mallet in my hands and imagining bringing it crashing down on the Santa hat, I actually wet my pants. I left my soiled clothes for Aunt Marta to clean up, took the tools in a sack, and returned to the department store to seek out Santa.

  Oh, I could smell him; his reeking bones under his skin called to me. I hovered nearby at a shelf filled with toys and watched him. Children climbed in and out of his lap, telling him their Christmas wishes. At one stage he caught sight of me, and patted his lap invitingly. He probably thought I was too embarrassed to volunteer my dearest Christmas wish to him, on account of being such a large boy. I shook my head and sank back between the shelves, savoring the knowledge that my Christmas wish would be granted soon.

  I watched him all afternoon, then when the store closed, I hid beneath a rack of winter coats near the toy section and waited to see where he went and what he did. He disappeared from my view and I thought I had lost him. I saw the lights dim, I heard voices calling good night to each other, and I cursed myself for not thinking more clearly about what to do with him. But then luck intervened. After the store was quiet and I was considering how to leave now all the doors were locked, I saw him move back into my line of vision. He still wore his Santa suit and went from shelf to shelf in the toy section, from toy to toy, touching them with his fingers. I chanced slipping out from behind the coats and creeping closer to watch him. As he touched each toy, a glimmer of pale light would briefly envelop it, then fade. He was covering all the toys with faery blessings.

  I’ve since learned much about faeries. Blessing objects, especially for children, is very characteristic of Dutch faeries. I had no idea then that he was from the Netherlands, but when I did realize, years later, that my first kill was Dutch, I took a certain satisfaction in it as I have never liked anybody from that country.

  I watched him, horrified that he was putting his foul touch on all those toys. When he had finished two or three shelves, he tired. I followed him silently as he found a back exit from the department store and slipped out into an alley. I was two seconds after him, and he looked up and saw me.

  “Hello,” he said smiling, “didn’t I see you earlier today?”

  I glared at him without speaking. If he was unnerved by the fat boy stalking him, he gave no indication.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, and turned away.

  You may be surprised to hear that my first kill, with those primitive instruments, was so effective and satisfying that I have never actually upgraded to the sleek equipment I fantasized about earlier that
day. I still have Uncle Walt’s tools, and I still use them from time to time for the sake of nostalgia as much as for the way the grooves sit familiar in my hand. I followed the Dutch faery, I bludgeoned him to death in the alley, and I returned to Aunt Marta’s. It was as wonderful as I had anticipated, if a little messy.

  But before I left, I took out the saw and I sawed off one of the faery’s fingers, wrapping it carefully in his Santa hat. In the privacy of my bedroom back home in Niederbüren on Christmas Eve, I unwrapped my cherished prize to inspect it. With patience, remarkable for such a young man, I stripped away the flesh, careful not to scrape the bone, until I revealed the shining treasure beneath.

  Not silver. Although I am color-blind, it was apparent that this bone was not precious metal as I had been told. Rather, it was whiter than anything in my field of vision, and it glowed softly, catching the light and radiating it at pretty angles. I scrubbed it to remove the repulsive faery smell, and from that moment on could barely take my eyes off it. That night, after all the lights in the house had been switched off, I pulled out my old night-light, and by its soft glow placed the bone on my desk. I reached for the sharp knife I used on my model planes and I began to scratch and scrape, carving a crooked face upon the bone. Hours passed, and I was deeply immersed in that wonderful thrill of promise and labor known to all artists. I have yet to experience a Christmas as splendid as that one.

  I still have that carving today. It sits in a special silver bracket above the window in my sculpture room. That carving, crude and childish as it is, is unutterably important to me. It represents the finest season of my childhood, a turning point in my identity, the moment when I knew I had found my life’s work.

  Mayfridh hesitated just outside the building where Christine lived. She had come this far—across worlds, through traffic—but now she wondered if visiting Christine was an ill-considered scheme. Her old friend had not been happy to be in Ewigkreis; maybe her unhappiness was something to do with Mayfridh herself? Maybe Christine didn’t like her?