by Kim Wilkins
She glanced around her. It was late afternoon, but not yet dark. The Real World was nowhere near as scary as she had anticipated. Mayfridh reminded herself that she was a native of this world, whatever she had become later, and its rhythms and impressions were almost familiar. She remembered traffic lights and train lines and cigarette smoke and electricity. Those memories, added to the spell she had drunk, made her feel almost at home in this land so distant from her own.
Once more she turned her attention to the intercom at the front door. No point in agonizing about it. If Christine didn’t want to see her, that would be that. But Mayfridh had to give her the opportunity to say as much.
With a deep breath, she approached the door. Eisengrimm had told her which button to push. It was the one marked “Honeychurch.” She wondered why Christine had called her home such a delicious name.
“Hello?” A man’s voice came out of the intercom—that painstakingly faked magic they called technology—and Mayfridh was too surprised to speak. Had Eisengrimm got the number wrong? Did Christine live in the unappealingly named “Zweigler” or “Ekman” instead?
“Hello?” The voice again. Mayfridh realized she should say something.
“Er . . . hello. I had hoped to see Christine Starlight.”
“She’s not back from work yet. Do you want to come up and wait for her?”
Mayfridh realized the voice must belong to the man she had seen Christine with. “Yes, yes I would,” she said.
“We’re in number three.”
The door buzzed and then there was silence. She pressed the button again.
“Hello?” He was impatient, and Mayfridh’s heart hiccupped. She wanted Christine’s lover to like her.
“I’m sorry, but can I come in?” she asked, warily.
The voice laughed, a soft warm laugh, releasing the impatience. “You have to push the door open when I buzz it. Okay?”
“Sorry.” Why hadn’t that important detail made it into the spell? She supposed Christine had never had to ring her own doorbell.
The door buzzed again and she pushed it open, and headed up the stairs. This lover of Christine’s sounded very friendly. She liked him already, which surprised her. He had seemed like such an ugly stocky fellow when Eisengrimm saw him. She found a door with a “3” marked on it, and knocked.
The door opened. “Hi,” he said with a smile. It wasn’t the dark, fat man.
Mayfridh stood, stunned into silence. He was beautiful, unspeakably beautiful. His hair was the color of straw, tousled and curling into his neck. His eyes were dark and gleaming under a broad, noble forehead. He smelled of exotic spices and warm clean skin. And he smiled as though he knew the most intimate secrets of all the lovers in the history of the universe.
“Do you want to come in?”
“Who are you?” she asked.
His smile dwindled around the corners, and his face took on a puzzled look. Mayfridh was enchanted by the way his expression moved, his feelings shifting like fluid across his forehead and eyes and mouth.
“I’m Jude,” he said, slowly now as though talking to a madwoman.
Mayfridh gathered herself. “I’m Miranda,” she said, superstitiously reverting to her old human name. A name was a dangerous thing to reveal to the wrong person. “I’m an old friend of Christine’s.”
He held open the door and indicated the sofa. “Look, go on in and wait for her. I’m going down to the studio.”
“The studio?”
“I’m a painter.”
Christine had her own painter? Even Mayfridh didn’t have a dedicated painter living with her. But maybe she’d misunderstood the situation. “How interesting,” she said, stepping inside. His body was so close her arm brushed his sleeve and she felt a sudden hot shiver.
“Okay, I’ll just be downstairs. Christine should be home any minute.”
“I’ll wait right here.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Mayfridh went obediently to the sofa and sat down. All the details of Christine’s life that Mayfridh had been so eager to witness—the objects with which she filled her home, the sights and smells with which she surrounded herself—were suddenly vastly and ever-dwindlingly unimportant.
Jude was a painter. Mayfridh turned the thought over and over in her head, savoring the pleasure that it gave her. A spinning, falling feeling of promise pulled at her heart. With a bubble of joy caught in her throat, she realized she had just fallen in love.
CHAPTER SIX
Christine shut out the windy street and ran directly into Gerda. “Hi, how was work?” Gerda asked, unhooking her coat from the rack beside the front door.
“Same as always. Boring and unrewarding,” Christine replied.
Gerda narrowed her eyes slightly. Christine knew what she was thinking: But you don’t need to work, Christine, you’re a millionaire. It had been the topic of one of the first conversations the two women had shared. Gerda had made it clear that Christine’s reason for sitting on her inheritance—her discomfort about benefiting so greatly from the death of her parents—was sweet, but misplaced. Nobody except Jude ever understood. Christine maintained that the right time to crack open the account and make guilt-free use of it would be when she was married and planning children of her own.
“I’m going out for a coffee,” Gerda said. “Want to come?”
“Maybe another time,” Christine said.
Gerda pulled open the door to the gray afternoon. “Jude’s in the studio if you’re looking for him.”
“Thanks.”
Christine shrugged out of her light coat and hung it up, then ducked around the side of the staircase and into the gallery.
The Immanuel K. Zweigler Collection was officially open from one p.m. until eight p.m. Mondays to Thursdays. The walls were painted stark white, and the floor was made of the same broad planks of unpolished wood as every other floor in Hotel Mandy-Z. The gallery was cluttered and overfull: a row of paintings around the walls, and sculptures and installations jammed into every corner. Pete’s latest—video footage of eight cats roaming in a fast-food restaurant after hours, while eerie Japanese music played—had a dedicated area marked off with plastic chain. It was Friday, so the gallery was closed. Mandy was nowhere in sight, and the lights in the ceiling were dark. The Japanese music had been left on, hissing and shadowy like a radio tuned just off the station. A corridor opened off the gallery, four doors lined it: one for each of the artists’ cramped but warm studios. She pushed open the door to number three.
“Hi,” she said.
Jude turned, semidistracted, his mouth pressed into a downward curve of consideration. “Oh, hi.”
“Sorry for interrupting.”
“It’s fine,” he said, putting down his paintbrush, then immediately picking it up again. On the canvas in front of him, a gray curve. The blue sofa behind him was covered in rags and paint tubes and canvases. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here.”
“Painting a picture?”
He didn’t smile; probably hadn’t even heard her. “I’m so sick of the shapes of my own brushstrokes. I’m tired of Jude Honeychurch.”
She backed off. Jude got like this periodically, and was best left alone. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
“Okay, I’ll be up for dinner.” Then, remembering something, he turned to her and said, “There’s someone waiting upstairs for you. Can’t remember her name, sorry.”
“Who is it?” Christine didn’t know anybody in Berlin who Jude didn’t also know.
“She says she’s an old friend of yours. Her name started with ‘M.’”
Christine felt a sharp flutter of cold in her stomach. “What?”
“Miranda, that’s it. She’s wearing weird clothes, like she’s dressed for a medieval costume party or something.”
Christine stood rooted to the spot for a moment as Jude started loading up his brush with paint. “What does she look like?”
�
��Pretty, long red hair. Why don’t you go up and see her? She’s just waiting in the lounge room.” Jude sounded so unaffected, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Go on, I can’t concentrate with you here.”
She turned and left, closing the door behind her, grabbing a breath in the corridor before heading for the stairs—
Miranda
—There would be a logical explanation—
like she’s dressed for a medieval costume party
—There had to be a logical explanation and the quicker she got upstairs—
pretty, long red hair
—the quicker she would know that explanation and be able to laugh at the blundering panic that now thumbed its way up her ribs.
Her hand shook as she reached for the door and pushed it open. She took one step inside and saw the faery queen from her dream, sitting on her sofa.
Christine yelped and jumped back.
Mayfridh rose and came toward her. “Christine, what’s the matter?”
Christine pressed her hands to her head and screwed her eyes shut. “Get out, get out, get out,” she said, willing the vision to go away. But Jude had seen her too. Jude had spoken to her. How could that be?
“You want me to go already?” Mayfridh sounded irritated, even petulant. “You haven’t even asked why I’m here.”
Christine dropped her hands and stared. Mayfridh looked real, flesh and blood, and Jude had seen her and . . . A surge of dread and nausea and white spangles whooshed up through her lungs. She fought for breath. This was it, she was finally succumbing to insanity. “You’re not real,” Christine managed to say. “Get out of my head.”
“I’m not . . .” Mayfridh paused, considering. “Oh, I see. It’s not because you don’t like me that you want me to leave, it’s because I’m frightening you.” And then, before Christine could understand what was happening, Mayfridh had reached into her hessian bag and pulled out a glowing translucent ball.
“Believe,” Mayfridh said, blowing gently on the ball. It dissolved on her palm, and a sheer curtain of fresh, clear light washed through Christine’s mind.
“What the . . . ?” Suddenly, Christine’s dread was gone. She wasn’t crazy. Mayfridh really was here, really was the queen of the faeries. Her dream had always been a real experience, and none of these facts threatened to undo her or overwhelm her. “What did you do to me?” Christine said, pressing her fingers into her temple.
“I stopped you from being frightened.” Mayfridh beamed, pleased with herself.
“You put a spell on me?” The words should have been so ridiculous, but weren’t.
“A little spell.” Mayfridh held her thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. “You needed it.”
Christine was annoyed. “Isn’t there some code of ethics about putting spells on people? What if I didn’t want you to put a spell on me?”
“I was trying to help you.”
Christine stared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“But what . . .” Christine turned and pushed the door shut with her toe. “But what could you possibly want with me?”
“To talk to you. I’d forgotten all about you until you came, and then I remembered how much fun we’d had as children and I thought you might want to renew our friendship.” Although Mayfridh’s noble posture and dignified voice matched her status, her dark blue eyes betrayed a childlike vulnerability, a longing.
Christine sighed. “This is just too weird.”
“Do you want another spell?”
“No, no more spells. Just give me a minute here. It’s not every day the queen of the faeries turns up on my sofa.” Christine took a deep breath. “What happened to you, May?”
“My name’s Mayfridh now.”
“Where did you go that morning?”
“Two faeries came in the night and took me, adopted me. Queen Liesebet and King Jasper. I forgot the Real World soon after.”
“There was a crow in your bed.”
“Probably Eisengrimm.”
“And this . . . faery world of yours. Where is it?”
“It’s just Over There.” She gestured vaguely around her with both hands. “I think.”
“That’s not very specific.”
This annoyed Mayfridh. “You explain where your world is then,” she said.
“It’s . . .” Christine paused. “It’s somewhere in the universe,” she finished.
“So is Ewigkreis.”
“And why is it all old-fashioned? I mean, if it exists now like this world exists now, why does it look so . . . medieval?”
“Most faerylands are simple and rural; but thanks to Oma Edelheid, my great-grandmother, ours is particularly antiquated. She was approaching her four-hundredth birthday and wanted time to stop. So it did, in 1487. But she died shortly afterwards, taking the words of the spell with her. Ewigkreis is stuck there, cycling through seasons and starting all over again.”
“How did she die?”
“Edelheid? Old age, of course.”
Christine raised her eyebrows. “Of course.”
“Look, all this is very boring for me. I’ll have Eisengrimm explain it all to you sometime,” Mayfridh said, flicking her long wavy hair over her shoulder. “I want you to be my friend and I want to get to know about the Real World—it’s my native land, after all—and I had rather hoped you would be as eager as me.”
Christine shook her head. It was too much, with or without the believe spell. She needed some time and space to breathe. “I’m finding it very hard to cope with all this. Can you maybe come back tomorrow? Give me time to sleep on it?”
Mayfridh puffed up with indignation. “But—”
Christine found herself growing amused. “First lesson about the Real World, Mayfridh,” she said gently, “you’re not the queen here.”
Mayfridh smiled sheepishly. “I suppose I’m not.”
“You always were kind of bossy,” Christine said. “Remember?”
“And you always sulked,” Mayfridh said, laughing.
As she laughed, Christine could see in her features the little girl who had once been her dearest friend. “Come back tomorrow,” Christine said. “We can have coffee and a long talk, and I’ll take you for a walk or something.”
“Will Jude be here?”
“Jude?” Christine was perplexed. What did Mayfridh care about Jude?
“Jude, your painter.”
Christine laughed. “Jude’s not my painter.”
“But he said—”
“He’s a painter, yes. But he’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Mayfridh’s eyes flicked downward, and a wariness stole into Christine’s heart. Could a faery with believe spells also perform love me spells?
“No, he won’t be around,” Christine said. She would make sure of that.
“I see. I shall return to my home, then. But tomorrow, I’ll come back.” She hesitated, her eyes darting over her shoulder. “Can I use your bathroom?”
The idea that faeries needed to pee seemed so out of kilter, Christine almost laughed. “Sure.”
Christine waited, hoping that Jude wouldn’t return. How was she going to explain this to anyone? It wasn’t like she had a believe spell to hand out with her explanation. Jude would finally agree that she was going nuts if she tried to tell him the truth about Mayfridh.
Mayfridh emerged from the bathroom checking her hessian bag, and moved toward the door.
“Don’t you just disappear into thin air?” Christine asked.
“No, I have to return to the passage. It’s in the Tiergarten.”
“Do you know the way? Do you want me to come?”
“No, no, I can manage,” Mayfridh replied.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“I can’t wait.” Mayfridh gave Christine a spontaneous hug and then, embarrassed, hurried off. Christine winced. The faery was determined to be her friend, and she was even higher maintenance tha
n Gerda. She collapsed onto the sofa and let her head fall back, closing her eyes. Her back twinged and her shoulders felt stiff.
A glowing fissure of understanding had opened up in her universe. Until twenty minutes ago, she hadn’t even believed in ghosts. Not even ghosts. But now, an alternative realm full of magic and faeries and shape-shifters had become real for her, thanks to Mayfridh’s spell. She didn’t know whether to sob uncontrollably or laugh hysterically. What wonders, what unknown joys and horrors, had been there all along as she lived her gray life, pole to dreary pole, smugly thinking she knew the limits of reality?
Faeries. Good God, faeries.
And then she opened her eyes, realization feathering into her consciousness like pale clouds at sunset. No pain. A place genuinely existed where she experienced no pain.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, “it’s real.”
Mayfridh? I had not expected you back so soon.”
Mayfridh slammed the door to her bedchamber behind her and flung herself on the bed. “She sent me home!”
“What? Why?”
Mayfridh flipped over and her gaze was drawn to the yellowed leaves in the hazy sunset falling from the massive beech outside her window. Something about their hesitant descent made her feel melancholy. “She said she needed time to think. She wants me to go back, though.”
Eisengrimm leapt from the wool rug and joined Mayfridh among the soft white covers. She propped herself on her side, one of her hands idly tangling in the fur over the wolf’s ribs.
“That is good, is it not?” Eisengrimm said. “If she wants you to go back.”
“Tomorrow.” Even though her visit had gone well, even though she was home safe and sound and Christine had invited her to return, Mayfridh felt a gloomy sense of destiny mislaid, of her fingertips grasping for something wonderful only for it to spin past without her.
“What is wrong, Mayfridh?” Eisengrimm asked. She could feel his deep voice rumbling under his rib cage.
“She has a lover. His name is Jude.”
“And you are jealous of this lover? You wish for her only to be your friend and nobody else’s?”
