A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  She said, “They’ll never forget Evette. They’ll never forget Hélène. And they’ll never remember Cateline, because there never was such a person.”

  With that she turned, took a few steps, realized she was not going anywhere, and turned again, this time toward the stream. She stopped again, realizing she didn’t have a bucket. The bucket was in the cottage, on a peg beyond Grandmem.

  She froze, her hands clenched into fists, not wanting to face her grandmother.

  In an elaborate performance of crackles and groans, Grandmem stood up from the doorstep, drew herself as tall as she could, and tugged her shawl tight. “Heloise,” she said, “I came to ask you one thing. I came to ask . . . have you met yourself yet?”

  Heloise didn’t answer. She couldn’t. At the moment her ears were roaring with too much rage to comprehend the words.

  “You have to meet yourself,” said Grandmem. “You have to face yourself. Or you’ll fail. Just like I did.”

  Heloise heard her grandmother’s shuffling footsteps. Then she felt the claw-like hand on her shoulder.

  “When they’ve forgotten,” said Grandmem, her whiskery chin close to Heloise’s ear, “come to me. I won’t remember either. But I’ll believe you when they don’t. And I’ll tell you what I can.”

  She let go. Heloise heard the same shuffling steps, this time moving away. The shuffling paused. Grandmem said, “Bring the mirror with you when you come.”

  Mirror.

  With that, she left the cottage yard, shouldering between Evette’s admirers on her way.

  Papa and the older boys had already eaten and sat relaxing in front of the fire before Meme finally came in from the spinning shed, baby Clive asleep in his sling on her back. She glanced around the cottage, saw that Evette had already fed everyone and built up the kitchen fire to keep away the cold, and nodded her approval. She passed silently through the room to the lean-to where she and Papa slept and disappeared inside with the baby.

  She didn’t look at Heloise.

  Heloise, involved in a game of stick-back with Clotaire and Clovis, pretended not to notice. She hadn’t looked up when Meme entered the cottage door. She said not a word, but kept on smiling and even teasingly jabbed Clotaire, causing his stick tower to topple and both boys to roar at the unfairness.

  But through it all, every sense of her body and being was fixed upon her mother. Her mother who never spoke to her on this particular day. On her birthday.

  When Meme disappeared into the lean-to, Heloise dropped the smile from her face. Sitting back, she let the boys continue the game and pretended to watch. But she couldn’t see what went on right before her eyes.

  She heard Meme come back into the room after having bedded down baby Clive. She heard the swish of rough skirts as she drew a stool up alongside her husband’s. She heard the clicking of bone needles as Meme began mending a tear Clement had put in his shirt while out in the fields that day.

  She heard Meme say, “So, Evette, I saw young Gy Pigman leaving as I came up from the shed. A fine young lad is he. Will he be escorting you to Le Sacre?”

  Heloise didn’t wait to hear her sister’s answer. She couldn’t. She was out the door and in the dusk-filled yard before Evette had a chance to open her mouth.

  Evette. Le Sacre. The fine young lads.

  As if any of that mattered!

  She stood a moment a few paces beyond the door, waiting in case someone called out to her, in case someone urged her to come back. She would ignore them, of course. She would storm away just as intended. But she would like them to call.

  They didn’t. No one noticed she was gone.

  Heloise kicked the dirt with her bare toes and made her way to Gutrund’s pen. She didn’t have any real reason for choosing this direction. Her feet happened to take her that way, and she followed them without question. Gutrund grunted a friendly sort of grunt when Heloise leaned over the slats and rubbed the big sow behind her ear.

  Still no one came after her. On her birthday.

  On their birthday . . .

  “Meme! Meme! Don’t! Don’t throw her away!”

  A little girl screaming. Pulling at her father’s arm. Pulling free and running across the field to the small hill where no one ever went. The small hill dotted with the upright wooden markers.

  The small hill in which a fresh hole now yawned. Over which Meme stood and wept.

  “Meme, don’t throw away my sister!”

  “Dragon’s teeth.” Heloise cursed so sharply that Gutrund startled, as much as a contented, well-fed pig can startle on a calm, clear evening. The sow backed away and went to lie down in her comfortable sludge on the opposite side of the pen. Heloise hardly noticed. She pounded the wood slat with her fist then leaned her forehead against it, risking splinters without care.

  She wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t a crying sort of person.

  Mirror.

  Dragons blast it, was that a tear?

  Sniffling loudly, Heloise swung herself up onto the top slat then over into the pen. She marched over to Gutrund, her feet squelching in the mud, and sat down beside her with another squelch. Leaning back against the big, warm, bristly body, she drew her knees up to her chest and sat there, trying not to think.

  Mirror.

  Trying not to remember.

  Mirror.

  And she whispered to herself, or possibly to the pig, or to no one at all: “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been so strong.”

  The wind sighed such a forlorn sigh, one could believe it was a mother’s lament in the night. Heloise shuddered.

  Mirror. Mirror.

  Mirror!

  Heloise wasn’t crying anymore. She frowned at Gutrund’s water trough just opposite her. Gutrund’s water trough, which she had filled with fresh water from the stream but a few short hours ago.

  She got up. Her rump was soaked with mud, and she couldn’t begin to imagine the scolding she would get from Evette when she walked through the door. (Not from Meme. Meme wouldn’t notice. Not today.) She ignored it, however, and approached the trough to grip the edge of it with both hands.

  Above, the sky grew darker, filling with stars. The stars gleamed brightly, caught in the reflection of water there between her hands. It wasn’t the best mirror in the world. But it was better than nothing.

  Heloise leaned over.

  It was too dark to see much more than an outline. A crazed silhouette of mane, a deep shadow under her brow where her eyes should be. A neck, shoulders, but no visible chin, not from that angle. Heloise gripped the trough tightly, the knuckles of both hands white.

  But her reflection tilted its head. Then it lifted a hand and waved at her.

  “Heloise!”

  She didn’t scream. She swallowed the scream with a gulp that nearly choked her. Looking up sharply, like a thief caught with his hand in the jewelry box, she saw Evette leaning over the pen slats, frowning.

  “Heloise, your skirt! What are you doing out here?”

  Heloise didn’t answer. Her heart ramming so hard in her throat she feared it might burst through, she backed away from the trough, still saying nothing. What was she supposed to say? I’m out here sulking because Gutrund doesn’t hate me, and I think Meme does, and my reflection just waved at me.

  No. That wouldn’t do. So she kept her mouth shut.

  Evette sighed. It was the sort of sigh that said she knew what Heloise was thinking (which was often true, but this time definitely not—at least not completely), and she understood, sympathized even. She reached into the pen as though to take Heloise’s hand.

  Heloise wouldn’t give it to her.

  “Dearest,” Evette said in that kind voice, the one that made Heloise want to spit, “she’ll be better tomorrow. It’s a hard day for her, you know that. But she’ll be fine in the morning, she always is. You have to let her—”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” Heloise snapped. “And I don’t have to care, either!”

  With that, she squished to the
other side of the pen, side-stepped Gutrund, and vaulted over. Ignoring Evette’s gentle protests, she returned to the cottage, slipped in through the back door, and scrambled up to the darkness of the loft where no one could see her or her muddy skirts.

  She wiggled out of the soaking garments, pulled on her only spare shift, and slid beneath the rough woolen blanket on her pile of musty straw. Pulling the blanket over her head, she squeezed her eyes tight and wished, so desperately wished, that her birthday would be over.

  No matter how tightly she squeezed, she still saw it. She saw the shadowy hand waving up at her from the water.

  Mirror . . . .

  The hours of night crept slowly by, full of mystery and equally full of sleep. All Canneberges bedded down against the cold and the darkness, waiting in silence for the distant dawn. But before the dawn could come, first there must be . . . Midnight.

  Rufus the Red, roosting in his coop, sensed the Midnight first. His combed head came up, his bright eye flashed, and he bellowed a rooster’s challenge so loud that it woke his entire harem, Gutrund in her pen, and all the Flaxman family in their beds.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Papa, scrambling out from under his blankets. “A fox!”

  “A fox! A fox!” The shout went up throughout the household as the boys threw back their covers and darted for the door, trouserless, long shirts flapping to their knees. Heloise and Evette, up in their loft, leapt from their straw beds and all but fell down the ladder.

  “A fox! A fox!”

  Like an army called to the battlefield, the Flaxmans poured into the yard. By then every hen had joined her cackling to Rufus’s bellows. Gutrund grunted and squealed in her pen, and the goats screamed the most unearthly cries.

  Heloise ran with Evette to Gutrund first. A fox couldn’t make her squeal like that, surely! Nor could it make her circle the pen in this frantic manner, ramming her great head against the slats, digging at the mud, and bashing into her trough so that water sloshed across her bristly back.

  “There’s nothing!” Clement cried from the chicken coop. “All the hens are here!”

  Papa stood in the middle of the yard, hefting his ax. Heloise could not see his face, only his outline, and he looked huge and dreadful in the darkness as all the animals shrieked, bellowed, bleated, and cried.

  Faintly, far away, Heloise thought she heard more animal sounds rising in the night, from the next farmhouse over, perhaps. It was as though all Canneberges—all the world—were awake and screaming.

  Then something whispered in her ear. “Come this way! Come and see!”

  She knew that voice. It was the sylph. The invisible wind-being.

  And her own voice inside her head urged, Follow.

  Heloise turned toward the sound of the sylph, which was foolish, of course, since she already knew there would be nothing to see. But she did, in fact, see the ground spinning with dust and moonlight and remnant pieces of parchment. She felt invisible hands pulling at her skirts. “Come see! Quickly!”

  Follow. Follow!

  Evette was over by the chicken coop. Everyone was busy, no one was paying attention.

  Follow, child!

  Heloise caught up her skirts above her knees and ran, pursuing the wind and its luring voice. “This way! Come see! Come see!”

  Under the wind-being’s whispered influence she crossed the stream, hardly noticing her freezing feet or the icy water splashing up to her waist, then ran out into the fallow flax fields beyond.

  Suddenly, she was aware of something beside her. Not right next to her—many yards to her left. She turned to look at it, but nothing was there. Nothing to be seen, that is, only a presence, a shadowy presence so big that it shook the air around it. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that it was same presence she’d felt in the Oakwood that morning. The shadow that sang to her.

  Follow! Follow faster!

  She ran up the hill on the far side of the field, the hill dotted with little leaning wooden markers. “Quickly, quickly!” urged the sylph. “I’ll show you!”

  Heloise’s side split with pain, and her heart could have choked her with terror. But she put on an extra burst of speed and reached the top of the hill at the same moment as that dark presence did a few yards away. She saw a certain small mound, a certain well-remembered wooden marker, and there she stopped.

  There she stared.

  Before her, flooding her vision with a landscape far greater than anything her poor mortal eyes should have been able to hold, she saw Canneberges, the whole of the estate spreading out before her, as though she were a huge giantess standing above it all. She saw the great house of Centrecœur, except it wasn’t Centrecœur as she had seen it that day.

  It was an old castle surrounded by a high wall. Many bright lights blazed from each window, eerie as starlight, otherworldly, terrifying.

  She saw someone riding out from the gate. Even at that distance she saw him vividly, a great red man on a great red horse, and she knew him at once: Rufus the Red. The real Rufus the Red, forefather of all Canneberges. He was too great, too awful, too full of his own redness to be anyone else.

  And then she realized that someone stood beside her. Not the windy sylph, not the shadowy presence. Someone real and solid.

  She turned and gazed upon the most beautiful woman in all the worlds.

  She was tall, taller than any man Heloise had ever met, even her own father. Her limbs were long and graceful, and her neck was long as well, supporting the most elegant face, a face that might have been carved from pure onyx, it was so black and so smooth, so completely without fault or marring. And her hair, the most glorious hair imaginable! An enormous lion’s mane of black curls standing high about her head like a crown of thunderclouds, the only crown worthy of so beautiful a face.

  Her eyes staring out across the fields toward the splendid red man—her eyes were the clearest blue of summer skies.

  She raised up her bare arms, unaware perhaps or simply not caring to notice Heloise standing beside her. She reached out as though to catch all of Canneberges in her embrace, and there was such a magnificence of love in her voice when she spoke that Heloise fell to her knees.

  “Beloved!”

  Heloise thought, I know that voice.

  Then the beautiful woman was running, her black hair trailing behind her. As lithe as a leaping deer, she sprang down that hillside and on across the fields as swiftly as the approaching horse could gallop.

  So the two figures—the beautiful woman and Rufus the Red—closed the distance between them in what felt like mere moments to Heloise. She saw the great red man spring from his horse and catch the woman in his arms.

  A roar like the tearing of a sundered heart rent across the sky. Heloise screamed in response but could not hear her own voice. She clapped her hands to her ears and fell over, pressing her head to the dirt, wishing, only wishing that the roar would cease! Oh, would it only cease before it tore her in half and left her bleeding!

  And then . . .

  “Heloise, child, what are you doing up here?”

  Heloise opened her bleary eyes. She lay with her head pillowed in her arms, out on the marker-dotted hilltop across the flax field. She had the worst crick in her neck.

  “Heloise.” Her father knelt before her, one hand resting on her back. “Are you hurt?”

  The rising sun was a little too bright, and she twisted her face into funny knots as she squinted up at him. She could hardly make out his face, but she clearly heard the concern in his voice. “I—I’m all right, Papa,” she said.

  Her father looked at the marker nearest her head, recognized it, and his face clouded momentarily with a mixture of sorrow and understanding. Without a word he took Heloise’s hand and helped her to unfold herself and rise from her uncomfortable sleeping position. Then he said, “We’ll not tell Meme you came up here. Do you understand?”

  For a blinking, groggy moment, Heloise did not. Then she too looked down at the stone, at the small mound.
Her heart caught in her throat, and she nodded. “We’ll not tell Meme,” she whispered in response.

  Not being a man for much talk or explanations, Papa merely shook his head at her, offered a few scolding words, and marched her back down the hill.

  As they went, a breeze tugged at their hair and a voice whispered lightly in Heloise’s ear: “Did you see? Did you see the princess?”

  Heloise shivered and pretended not to hear.

  I would ask you to see the shadow crouching so near, watching even as the girl’s father helps her to her feet and leads her from the grave markers and across the field. I would ask you to picture it, but this would be unkind, for that shadow, or rather, the person contained within that shadow, cannot be seen by mortal eyes if he chooses not to be.

  Unlike the sylph, he is not invisible. He is far stealthier than mere invisibility. He simply—well, no. Not simply, for there is nothing simple about the art he practices. I should know. It was my own art once, and a fine art it is, studied and perfected over centuries of mortal years.

  He lies there in the broad light of dawning day, no covering or shield for miles on either side, yet he blends into his surroundings, changing neither color nor form. It is as though his breath becomes one with the breath of earth beneath him. As though his skin, muscles, blood, and bones are made up of the grass, soil, water, and stone on which he crouches. You cannot see him though you stand beside him. You cannot see him until he lashes out . . . and by then it’s too late even to scream.

  But the one thing he cannot hide, at least from a more intuitive soul, is the magnitude of his presence. This is far more difficult to suppress.

  So I do not ask you to see him. Rather, I ask you to feel him as he lies so still upon the hillside, pressed into the dirt, his chin mere inches from the ground, his eyes fixed upon that mortal girl and her father. Even as he watches them, another sight fills his eyes.