A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  How strange all this must seem to him, unable to see what she would see, unable to hear what she would hear. He should have called her mad and sent her running with dogs at her heels long ago! Yet there he stood, supportive and helpful. Heloise felt her heart go out to him in sudden gratitude. She raised her own fist and clenched it in response.

  Then she turned her back on him and lifted his mirror to her face.

  The shadows along the walls were suddenly full of indeterminate shapes—perhaps animal, perhaps human, it was impossible to say which, for either form was equally true, equally vital. Out of the darkness gleamed a host of brilliant, star-like eyes.

  And every gaze fixed upon Heloise.

  Heloise stood on the far side of the mirror. How easy it had become to step into her reflected self and so to pass into this strange world! Her powers must be growing with practice, and this idea gave her courage. She spun slowly in place, there in the center of that hall, and saw that it wasn’t a hall anymore, or not completely. But neither was it a forest. The floor under her feet was black and gleamed with the reflection of lights from above. When she looked up she saw sky, deep blue but with a thin line of red rimming its borders. In the very highest, deepest vaults the stars gleamed, and they seemed to spread out and increase in number even as she watched.

  It was too much, too . . . too big a sight. It might kill her to try to take it in, to understand it. So she focused her gaze instead on the far end of the hall.

  There was the dais framed by tall pillars which, when Heloise blinked, momentarily became oak trees. On that dais, instead of Rufus’s chair stood a black throne. It was empty. But even as she watched, Heloise saw a shadow (whose shape she could not determine) slip up the dais steps, a small light held in its hands—not a candle, but a white flame cupped in two dark palms. This the figure dropped into a silver brazier that stood beside the throne. The brazier lit up at once in a brilliant white light, like a cluster of stars held together and made to shine upon command.

  The silence was profound. But, though there was no disturbance in the air, nothing to catch her ear, Heloise felt a change take place behind her. A movement perhaps, a small vibration that touched her bones. Turning around, she saw that the screen through which she had passed was now a thick-grown grove of oak trees, and the minstrels’ gallery where Benedict had stood moments before was now intertwining branches. But there was a door—a huge, huge door, taller than five men, built of a blackness so deep it may have been the spirit of night made solid. Fantastic shapes decorated its panels, shapes Heloise could not quite discern.

  The door opened. The tallest woman in the world—taller by far than Princess Alala—stepped through, her hand resting on the arm of the magnificent Lion-Prince. Though the prince was himself as beautiful as ever, clad in rich garments, his bountiful hair caught back in a long queue of braids, no eye could bear to look upon him when she was present.

  She was so great, so majestic that she overshadowed the prince with ease. Her face was black as night, but with skin so luminous that the contours of her high cheekbones caught the light and made her shine like a polished stone. Her head was shaved bald, and as she approached, moving with a silken tread, Heloise could see the little cuts and nicks where her shaving knife had sliced her scalp. But this marring only added to her majesty, for she wore her scars like a crown.

  Her eyes were closed fast. They looked as though they might never open.

  Heloise did not doubt for an instant upon whom she looked: Mother. The Queen of Night.

  Together, Mother and Son progressed up the great length of the hall. They were coming right toward her, Heloise realized suddenly. She cast about, wondering if there was anywhere she might hide. But this was foolish—there could be no such place in that hall where shadows and shining eyes lurked. She could not hide, not here.

  So, even as Mother and Son approached, Heloise simply ducked a few paces to one side. She thought perhaps she saw a flicker of movement in the Lion-Prince’s eye as though he saw her, though he did not deign to acknowledge her presence. She blushed, knowing how small, how dirty, how . . . how mortal she must look to him!

  Mother allowed Son to guide her up the dais stairs, taking each step slowly and with extreme deliberation so that she never once faltered or stumbled. Before she sat, she put one hand out to the brazier of shining white flames. To Heloise’s horror, the flames shot up her arm and swiftly engulfed her. But though she flamed bright, the fire did not hurt or harm her. She wore it about her like a rich gown, and when she sat upon her throne, it too was soon covered in flames.

  It was all so strange. So beautiful and so strange. Heloise could have stood there in the center of the black floor and stared for an age of mortal lives upon that sight.

  But then the sun set. The music began to play.

  It was the song and soul of Le Sacre. Heloise recognized it at once. But the instrument playing those familiar yet bizarre opening notes wasn’t the shawm. It was what the shawm makers dreamed their instruments could be, a dream that would never be fully realized no matter how they labored to perfect their skill. The sound this instrument produced was living, moving, like water and earth and sky and flame, all combined into a single voice.

  The song was sorrow. The song was life. Heloise closed her eyes and allowed the music to fill her up from the inside out, rushing through her veins, rushing through her spirit. The soaring melody flowed down in a whirlwind then rose again like a fountain of magma erupting from the deeps of the earth.

  Other instruments began to join—she heard the wind-like sighing of pipes. She heard the rock-grinding groan of ceterone and bandora. The first instrument, carrying still the dominant melody, rose even higher than before, flinging out notes with wild abandon, rushing toward a brilliant, explosive crescendo.

  DOOM!

  The drum that beat was no timpani. Its voice was much greater, much deeper. This drum was the drum of the sky itself, and Heloise thought her bones would break at the force of the reverberations striking her from all sides. She fell to her knees, and as she did so, her eyes flew open.

  Around her stood the twelve maidens. Twelve sisters through time. Each was dressed in a gown of shimmering starlight. Their faces were pale, empty, and exactly alike. Yet Heloise could tell them apart, for she guessed in an instant which one was Evette standing with her arms upraised directly in front of her. She tried to speak, tried to cry out her sister’s name. But her voice was lost in the roar of the drum:

  Doom-doom! DOOM!

  This time when the drum sounded, Heloise braced herself. She knew how this song went. She knew each beat, she knew each measure. When the echoes of that final doom faded, she knew there would be a long silence.

  She got to her feet. There in the center of the circle of white phantoms she stood. Outside that circle were other circles made up of fierce black figures bearing sharp weapons, not canes. Her fellow dancers, she knew, prepared to perform Le Sacre.

  The twelve sisters reached out to one other, each hand touching the shoulder of the nearest maiden. Their gazes fixed unseeing upon Heloise. The music did not play, but they moved with slow, careful steps in a rhythm heard inside their heads.

  The instrument-that-wasn’t-a-shawm played again, a new variation on the first tune. Heloise knew it well. She knew what would happen. The maidens moved in time and then out of time, and their circle tightened around her. The choice must be made. And Heloise must be chosen. She closed her eyes again, standing perfectly still even as the phantoms drew near. She felt them close to her and, though they did not speak, she sensed their desperation.

  Save us! Save us!

  Save us, sister!

  The circle parted. The maidens dispersed into the surrounding shadows and disappeared.

  Heloise stood in the center of ringing shadows—the Chosen One who must sing the opening lines. She knew her role like the beat of her heart. She listened to the melody, listened to the progression of notes.

  Lifting her han
ds above her head and raising her right foot in preparation for the first step, she opened her mouth and sang:

  “Cianenso

  Nive nur norum.

  Nive noar-ciu, lysa-ciu.”

  In her mortal body she had never been able to make her voice hit those high notes. But here in this world she sang them with ease, each word pouring from her throat as though they had always waited there, ready to be sung.

  In her head the words shifted. She heard herself singing:

  “Night comes to fall

  Upon the forest,

  Night so hopeless and so pure.”

  She went on to the second verse. But she could not hear her own voice now, lost as it was in the enormous, all-consuming darkness of the Night rising up all around her. Together with the Faerie-folk of Nivien she sang:

  “Nivee mher

  Nivien nur jurar

  Nou iran-an.”

  And she heard:

  “Evening comes to promise

  All my children

  Of a deeper night.”

  She began to dance. The steps came to her as though from practiced memory. She had watched them performed every year upon the lawn of Centrecœur. So she danced the wild paces, the strange rhythms. The heavenly angels who watched over her birth had not seen fit to gift her with particular grace of form or movement, and yet the magic of Le Sacre dictated that she would not misstep. Or perhaps there was no magic. Perhaps it was only that her belief in magic was strong enough to generate such confidence inside her.

  However it was, she danced against the beat of the drums, following instead the manic beckoning of the shawm-like instrument, her hair and skirts whirling about her like the rush of the pipes, her hands clapping with fervor to the pulse of the ceterone.

  The Faerie folk around her sang:

  “Shadows of the Night,

  Dance with me,

  Dance with your arms entwined.

  Shadows of the Night,

  Sing with me,

  Sing with your voices combined.”

  The Lion-Prince did not join the dance. Sometimes as she twirled, Heloise caught a glimpse of him through the gyrating darkness and movement and music. He stood beside Mother’s throne, his bright eyes watching her every move with the intensity of a stalking predator.

  Mother sat wrapped in white fire, her eyes closed, refusing to look upon the mortal beast or the phantom maidens before her.

  The music’s tempo increased—faster, faster, wilder, wilder. The drum beat with a dangerous urgency, and Heloise fled before it, chasing the shawm’s melody. Like a deer fleeing through the forest, fleeing from the hunter’s spear and bow, so she moved and danced. Her mortal heart raced in her breast, and she knew that were she even now in her own world, in her own body, she must be gasping with exhaustion. On the lawn of Centrecœur, another maiden would prepare to take her place.

  But this was not Centrecœur. Here in the center of the whirling People of Night, she was without aid.

  You are stronger than you think! she told herself, each word pulsing in time to the ceterone. I am my reflection. My reflection is me.

  Somewhere, on the far side of the mirror glass, did her mortal body stand in the center of Rufus’s Hall, clutching the mirror frame? Did Benedict, in the gallery above, watch her sway and move her head in time to music he could not hear?

  Faster! Faster! Wilder! Wilder!

  Voices of the Night, sing with me! Promise a deeper Night!

  The music staggered and stumbled, falling into a heavier, slower cadence, a rhythm of exhaustion. Heloise felt her heart beating far too quickly, throwing off the movement of the shawm melody and the drums. But she adjusted her pace accordingly. How weighty did each step become, pounding into that black floor as though she would crush it beneath her heel!

  Her sisters—sisters of centuries gone by—surrounded her again. She glimpsed their faces half hidden behind their twirling hair. She glimpsed their apprehension. On Evette’s face she saw great fear. But this must have been imaginary, for their expressions were still, their eyes blank. Perhaps she felt the truth beneath the outward form. Or perhaps she saw only her own anxiety, her own fear, reflected more clearly than in any mirror glass.

  The shawm-like instrument dominated all, soaring above the rest of the music like a wind suddenly rising among the tree tops. The trees surrounding that dark hall rustled and moved suddenly as though under a heavy gale. Leaves fell and darted, whirling among the dancers like dancers themselves. The Faeries of Nivien, formless wraiths, clashed their weapons together, and Heloise thought she saw a flash of crimson blood. Her heart flinched, but she did not falter.

  You are stronger than you think! She wondered briefly if Princess Alala spoke in her head. But no. No, she was alone here, alone among these dreadful figures, alone with Le Sacre. There was no one to help her, not now.

  But she would succeed. Already she had danced longer than her mortal body would be capable of doing. She did not tire, for her reflection did not need what her body needed. She could succeed. She could keep going all night long. She could dance Le Sacre until the sun rose upon the horizon.

  DOOM! roared the drum.

  Mother, seated upon her throne, tilted her head to one side.

  Then she stood.

  A gasp rose amid the dancers. The music froze as though caught suddenly in the grasp of Time and restrained. Only the shimmering strains of the shawm-like instrument could still be heard upon that dark air.

  Heloise went on dancing. She could not stop. She must dance Le Sacre all night through! She must, for this alone could break the curse! She knew it. She knew it, and she could not be wrong!

  Around her the other dancers made no movement. Even those caught in the most dreadful contortions held themselves with such perfect stillness that she might have believed they were turned to stone. But their eyes watched Mother.

  The Queen of Night descended the dais stairs, trailing fire behind her like the train of a long robe. Her feet moved to a rhythm all her own, a stately rhythm more graceful than any dancer’s tread. She passed through the bizarre figures of her people as though they were insubstantial as ghosts.

  Heloise, still dancing, watched her approach. She cannot kill me, she told herself even as she raised her arms again and clapped her hands. The silence caught the sound of her clap and smothered it into nothing. She cannot kill me, for it would break the Law.

  Mother stood before her, her head still tilted, her eyes still closed. She spoke, and white flames shot from her tongue:

  “Do you think I would let you cheat Nivien Law?”

  Heloise gasped. The black Hall of Night was gone. She stood in Rufus’s Hall upon his red floor, surrounded by his red pillars. Night poured through the windows, and moonlight fell upon the towering form of Mother, who was so much bigger here in the mortal world. Fire flamed about her body, no longer white but red.

  She opened her eyes.

  For a moment Heloise saw her reflection. She saw it twice over, trapped in the depths of two round onyx mirrors, so enormous, so furious. Her reflection stared out at her from behind Mother’s gaze.

  She saw them move of their own accord. She saw them, both of them, raise their hands and slap against the confines of the black orbs in which they stood. She saw her own mouth forming a scream, and she heard herself scream in response. “NO!”

  Mother blinked. When her lids rose again, the reflection was gone.

  Heloise collapsed in a faint upon the floor of Rufus’s Hall.

  Before there can be a beginning, there must first be an end.

  But how can there be an end if one never truly begins?

  I fear for her. I have always feared for her, for each of my brave girls. I fear she will realize now the truth of what she must do and, in the realization, turn and run. She will regret forever that choice, though it is the choice of a rational mind.

  What would I have her do? March into certain death with certain knowledge that death is insufficient?
Others have done so before her, three brave young girls. Dead. Gone.

  Beyond the Final Water . . .

  THIRTY-FOUR

  At first she was aware only of an extreme discomfort stemming from her neck and shooting through her shoulder. She tried to move, to adjust her position in order to relieve this discomfort, and in so doing discovered that she was paralyzed. A moment later she knew it was merely the heaviness of a deep sleep, so deep that her body was slow to catch up with her awakening consciousness.

  Then she felt the cold, hard floor underneath her, not the prickly straw or woolen blanket of her loft bed. So she wasn’t home. But where in Lumé’s name was she?

  “Heloise?” whispered a voice she did not at first recognize. “Are you alive?”

  She groaned. Then her eyes flew wide and slowly focused on Benedict’s face above her, pale in the moonlight. Over his head arched the great red rafters of Rufus’s Hall and the railing of the minstrels’ gallery. He held her with one arm under her shoulders so that her head and neck lolled at an uncomfortable angle, and with his other hand he pulled hair from her face and mouth.

  Heloise groaned again and, summoning what control she could over her half-conscious body, put up a hand to push Benedict away.

  “Iubdan’s beard!” His voice was hushed but tense. “Oh, great Iubdan’s beard! You’re alive. I saw that . . . that person! That fire-woman! She appeared right here, right in this hall, and I saw her. She didn’t touch you, but you fell, and I thought she’d killed you! I can’t believe it. I mean, I didn’t doubt you before, not really, but . . . Iubdan’s beard and mustache! That was beyond anything I’ve ever—”

  “Dragons eat you,” Heloise muttered and turned sharply where she lay so that he lost his tentative hold on her and she fell hard upon her shoulder, her face pressed into the floor.