A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  She didn’t much like the idea of lying face down, drenched through and bedraggled, covered in her own spit before the gorgeous, princely being she had met in the moonlight only the night before.

  Gracious, child, don’t start sighing over him! He’s not worth it, I tell you, and he’ll only confuse you more if he catches on.

  “I’m not sighing!” Heloise muttered even as she pulled herself out of the pool and glared up at those strangely blue eyes set in the even more strangely ferocious face of the Lion-Prince. She spat again and sat up, trying to think of something witty and biting, something that would begin to express just how thoroughly she wasn’t sighing over anyone, certainly not under these circumstances.

  All she managed was to gasp through another cough, “Is—is your aunt that skull-woman?”

  Don’t bother asking him questions! He’ll only twist them anyway. Get up and be on your way.

  “Skull-woman?” said the Lion-Prince, tilting his massive head to one side. A breeze played through the luxurious silk of his mane, which was so black that even the golden light shining down upon it seemed to lose itself in the blackness, rendering it blacker still. He snorted, which was a far more majestic sound coming from a lion than it would be from anyone else. “That was a mask. You should see Uncle. His face really is a skull. And yes, she is Aunt. My aunt. Sister’s aunt.”

  The shudder seemed to begin in Heloise’s gut and work its way out to every extremity, even to the ends of her sodden, heavy hair. She was obliged to wait for it to pass before she could say anything. Then, pushing her hair back from her face with the same hand that clutched the branch, she said, “I think you’re lying. I think you’re trying to scare me.”

  “I don’t need to try,” said the Lion-Prince, and his expression, were it not so disdainful, might have been amused. “Nor do I need to lie. But you’ll find out for yourself soon enough. You’ll have to go on the Night Hunt with both Aunt and Uncle in order to break this curse.”

  The shudders wouldn’t stop. Heloise’s whole body quaked as if she were cold, though the air was warm and steaming around her. But her ears were quick, and she pricked them at the Lion-Prince’s words, and her eyes shot briefly to his face. “A curse?” She scowled at him. “I still think you’re lying.”

  Oh, great dragons and imps! It would serve you right if I left you to him. Are you even listening to me?

  “I am not lying,” said the Lion-Prince. He took a seat then and gazed idly over her head as though she were nothing more than an unavoidable nuisance. “I never lie.”

  Which was probably a lie as well. “Besides,” Heloise continued, ignoring the irritable growling of the voice inside her head, “if you’re not lying—if there really is a curse—I suspect you’re the one who set it. So you certainly wouldn’t want me to break it.”

  “Of course I don’t want you to break it,” said the lion, and he might have rolled his eyes at her if it weren’t so undignified a gesture. He continued to stare up at the waterfall, speaking to Heloise as though she were invisible. “For your information, I didn’t set it either.”

  “Who did?”

  That’s two questions. If you must ask them, don’t waste them. But you would be wiser not to ask at all. He’s not to be trusted, even when he speaks the truth.

  The Lion-Prince looked as though he didn’t want to answer. As far as Heloise could tell, he had no reason to. After all, though he had answered a few questions of hers the night before, he’d given her no useful information. Then he’d refused to say anything more but had stormed away into the forest, leaving her to be crushed by ferocious trees. She half expected to watch him rise now and pad away into the golden gloom, his shadowy mass vanishing into deeper shadows.

  Instead, albeit with extreme reluctance, he said, “It’s a curse more powerful than anything I can do . . . yet. Not even Father could do it, and he was always among the greatest of our number.”

  You’ll notice he hasn’t answered you. But he must. Force an answer from him.

  “Who is Father?” Heloise asked.

  Is that what I told you to do? Truly you are a dunce!

  The Lion-Prince gave her a momentary glance then, and his eyes glittered with an expression she didn’t understand. “The King of Night. Be thankful you don’t know him. Be thankful you never will. You’ll be dead and dust long before any of us sees Father again.”

  He resumed his intense contemplation of the waterfall over her head, the tip of his long tail twitching.

  Heloise, the irritable voice in her head plucking away at her nerves, scowled with thought. Then she grinned and drew herself up. “So if you did not set the curse, and neither did your father . . . what does your mother want with my sister and with Cateline?”

  Well done! Maybe you’re not such a dunce after all . . .

  To her delight, the Lion-Prince actually looked surprised. He shot her a glance then quickly masked his face with a bored expression. Too late. She’d startled him with her accurate surmises. A small victory, but she’d cling to it.

  “You have to answer me, don’t you?” Heloise persisted. “You don’t want to, but you have to. Otherwise, you’d have left by now. Or . . . or eaten me. But you’re not supposed to eat me. Why not? Did Mother send you to help me? Does she want the curse broken?”

  Clever child! Not quite right, but clever. My Rufus would have loved you . . .

  “Never,” said the Lion-Prince, and his lip curled in a snarl. “And it never will be.”

  He stood then, so enormous that Heloise could scarcely take in the whole of him. Indeed, she suspected that there was more to him than she was actually able to see, that she would need a different set of eyes entirely if she were to begin to comprehend the power before her. Yet his voice was oddly young, even petulant.

  “Mother wants nothing to do with your sister, with any of your sisters. Throughout the ages she has wanted nothing to do with them. She cannot bear even to look at them. But she will take them, for they are hers by right. And she will go on taking them until your line is dead and gone and there is no one left to take. They will be hers for all time, little mortal; they will be hers long after you have forgotten, long after you are forgotten.”

  He turned his back on her and moved away into the surrounding forest. The shadows and lights falling from the trees above swayed over his mighty form but seemed unable to touch the absolute darkness of his hide. He called back over his shoulder even as he disappeared:

  “You have asked more than your share of questions, mortal beast, and I have answered what I must with truth. Go on the Night Hunt with Aunt and Uncle if you want more answers. But it will do you no good!”

  Heloise, seated where he’d left her, realized that she no longer sat on the edge of the pool. Indeed, the further he got from her, the darker her surroundings became. Darker and smaller and closer, and all the golden light faded away. She was cold too. Not just shuddering, but truly cold, with goose pimples running up her arms and neck as icy air breathed against her wet body.

  The forest was gone. Or mostly gone. She found herself at the foot of the staircase in Centrecœur in the middle of an early spring night. The stones around her captured the cold and held it close, and the floor beneath her was like ice.

  “Heloise?” Someone spoke near to hand.

  The forest vanished entirely, and she knew she was back in the mortal world.

  “I hope you’ll notice,” came Benedict’s voice from the darkness behind her, “that I am not asking how you managed to get sopping wet between my room and here.”

  Something thick and rich-smelling wrapped around Heloise’s shoulders. It should have felt lovely and warm, but instead it seemed to squeeze her own soaking garments more tightly against her shivering skin. Heloise tried to shrug it off, but Benedict caught it and pressed it to her shoulders. “Here now! You’ll catch your death if you’re not careful. What good will that do your sister?”

  Heloise bowed her head, momentarily winded and unable
to protest, as though she’d just run a mile at breakneck speed. All was too dark for her to see much after the brilliance of the golden forest, and the gold branch, suddenly smaller than it had been, was hidden in her hand and offered no light. Minutes passed before her eyes adjusted well enough to notice that she wore the counterpane of fleeing deer around her shoulders, deliciously elegant and acquiring large damp patches where Benedict held it against her.

  As she sat there, relearning to breathe and wishing she knew how to force her limbs to warm themselves, a sound plucked at her ear. At first it was so faint, it was difficult to believe she truly heard it. But the longer she sat there counting the moments in heartbeats, the more certain she was that her ears—or possibly her reflected ears somewhere beyond the mirror glass—did indeed discern the voices falling through the ceiling above:

  “Cianenso

  Nive nur norum.

  Nive noar-ciu, lysa-ciu”

  Her eyes lifted to stare at the wooden beams crisscrossed overhead. Benedict, his vision better adjusted to the darkness, watched her. “Do you hear something?” he whispered.

  “That’s the Great Hall up there, isn’t it?” Heloise whispered.

  “Yes,” said Benedict. Then, though she hadn’t asked, he added, “It’s old, as old as this gallery and the tower. From back in Rufus the Red’s day.” He turned his head, listening intently. But the only sounds to reach his ear were those of a lordly house plunged into sleep.

  “Le Sacre,” Heloise whispered. “They’re singing Le Sacre.”

  Her shoulders hunched beneath the counterpane, and her dripping hair looked strangely lank about her face, giving her a more fragile appearance than Benedict would have thought possible. Slowly she curled into herself, her head low between her shoulders, curled into a ball of wet misery.

  “Heloise?” Benedict said, giving her an anxious shake. “Heloise, are you all right?”

  Then, as though this moment of fear and vulnerability had never happened, the girl sat upright and tossed back the counterpane and her wet hair. She held out both hands, and when her fingers opened to reveal what lay in her palms, Benedict saw in one the silver branch and in the other a gleaming gold branch, larger than the silver and equally as bright.

  “Did you get that in the mirror world?” he asked.

  Heloise nodded. She stared at the two branches, studying them, each twist and curl.

  “By the way,” Benedict said, uncertain whether Heloise would even hear him, so intense was her concentration, “where is the mirror? You had it with you, and—”

  “Oh, dragon’s teeth!” Heloise gasped, closing her fists and turning in place on the stone. Her gaze cast about for the ebony frame and the shimmering glass. “Isn’t it here?”

  “Are you . . . sitting on it?” Benedict suggested, and Heloise immediately leaped to her feet. Then she kicked the counterpane aside, searching beneath its folds. But not until they checked the shadows at the foot of the staircase itself did they find the mirror lying facedown upon the stones.

  Benedict picked it up and with great trepidation turned it over. Both sighed in relief to find the glass unbroken. “Lumé love us!” Benedict said. “When I saw you fall down the stairs, I rather thought the mirror’d had it.” He paused. “I mean, I was worried for you too, of course . . .”

  Heloise shook this off as the nonsense it was. “May I see?” she asked, and he turned the mirror around so that she could look into the glass. She saw her own face or what she assumed was her own face, for it was difficult to say in the gloom. Nothing else. No golden forest. No strange path, no waterfall, no pool.

  Yet she still heard—or almost heard, like the echo of a memory or a dream—Le Sacre falling softly from above.

  “Nivee mher

  Nivien nur jurar

  Nou iran-an.”

  Much to her embarrassment and frustration, Heloise suddenly wanted to scream. She was cold. She was frightened. And she was so, so, so angry. Angry at the Lion-Prince for telling her only so much but leaving her more confused than ever. A curse? What curse? And why? Why? Why was she able to walk in her reflection? Why did the lion call her his enemy? Why did there have to be women wearing skull masks, with husbands whose faces were real skulls? This was all completely beyond the utmost edge of ridiculous. She felt a scream welling up in her breast, and if she didn’t do something soon, all Centrecœur, possibly all Canneberges, would suffer a sudden and rude awakening.

  The voice in her head offered no word or warning.

  The murmur of the incomprehensible Le Sacre still in her ear, Heloise turned her back on Benedict so as not to see his confused, pale face. Just then there could be nothing more appalling, more galling than confusion. Particularly from him. She was confused enough herself, feeling the heaving bile of bewilderment in the back of her throat, and she couldn’t bear even a fraction more. She clenched her fists so tightly, she felt the sharp contours of the twigs digging into her skin.

  Then, frowning even more deeply, she opened her hands again and looked at the two branches. She had seen it before—she knew she had. But she hadn’t understood what it was she saw. Even now she wasn’t absolutely certain, but . . .

  She took the two branches and held them up to each other.

  Like two lovers reunited after a long absence, the silver branch and the gold reached for each other. The stems entwined, the leaves quivered and brushed each other, and the gleaming of moonlight and sunlight made solid was suddenly so bright that it filled the whole of the long gallery.

  “What in Lumé’s name is that?” Benedict gasped, standing close enough to gaze over her shoulder.

  Heloise held up the two branches. But they were now not two but one, fastened together and forming a new shape, a shape she felt she almost recognized but not quite.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “But I think it’s time I visited Grandmem again.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Grandmem watched the figure approach across the fields. She sat in her doorway, gumming her morning carrot and slouching like a wilted blossom on a thin stem, and she knew who was coming. Who but Heloise would venture out to see her at this cold, early hour with the sun only just beginning to rise?

  Her granddaughter’s progress was odd and awkward. Heloise had never been what one would call a graceful child, at least not by ordinary standards of grace and gentility. But she had a certain galloping energy that might in due time pass for grace, especially if she learned to forget her own self-awareness.

  This little figure, however, was entirely lacking in energy, though she shuffled along with great determination and equal consternation. The morning was still too dark for Grandmem to discern the cause until Heloise was well up the path to the humble shack.

  Then Grandmem asked, “What have you got on your feet?”

  Heloise raised a fisted hand in greeting. “Slippers, Grandmem,” she said. “They’re slippers.”

  “Those aren’t proper shoes now, are they?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Heloise, not one to claim expertise where footwear was concerned. “I tried on some of his shoes, but they were much too big. These are too big as well, but we stuffed stockings in the toes, and they’re quite warm.”

  So saying, Heloise drew near enough for her grandmother’s bleary eyes to take in the whole of her. She wore a young man’s tunic, several times too large for her skinny frame, and the bedroom slippers adorning her feet slapped with each footfall and wanted to slide off. They were, nonetheless, extremely fine. Or had been before Heloise slipped her muddy toes into them and trekked across half of Canneberges.

  The tunic was also fine, too elegant for the likes of a flax farmer’s daughter. Heloise had protested when Benedict drew it from the depths of his wardrobe, claiming she daren’t touch it, much less wear it. But, as Benedict had practically pointed out, it wouldn’t do for her to race across the night-shrouded fields and bogs, soaking wet and barefoot on a night as cold as this. She’d be sick by da
wn and dead by dusk.

  Heloise insisted this was a gross exaggeration. “You’re full of bog-dregs!” she’d declared. Still, shivering as she was, she agreed at last to exchange her damp clothes for Benedict’s offered garments and hastily changed into them while he stood outside the door. Benedict had hurled the slippers out the window, just managing to clear the soggy moat so that they landed in the cluster of false-unicorn plants on the far side. Then, with her shift and outer dress in a bundle under her arm and the two joined branches clenched tightly in one fist, Heloise had dropped down into the mud, waded across, wiped off her feet and calves as best she could, and pulled on the slippers, thus ruining them forever.

  They were very uncomfortable, Heloise thought. Why would anyone ever want to bother with shoes? Big though they were, her toes felt constricted, and she couldn’t feel the ground properly to test its various merits. But she stood bravely and, after a wave to Benedict at his window, set off through the night for her grandmother’s hovel.

  So she appeared now, clad in garments far too elegant and far too large for her body. The tunic hung sack-like, caught at the waist by a simple leather belt that was more beautiful by far than the flax-cord belts worn by everyone Heloise knew. The hem of her garment reached well below her knees, and rabbit fur lined its sleeves, which Heloise didn’t like (she liked rabbits well enough but preferred them wearing their own coats).

  She blushed as Grandmem looked her up and down, embarrassed at the old woman’s disapproving inspection.

  “Your father was here last night,” Grandmem said around her carrot. “He asked if I’d seen you.”

  “Really?” Heloise couldn’t keep back the startled question. She’d known that her parents would note her absence, but she hadn’t thought they would care enough to go looking for her. Well, Meme probably didn’t care, if she’d noticed at all. But Papa . . . well . . . She couldn’t decide whether or not she was pleased.