A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  But Heloise, the moment she could get her feet under her, sprang up. “Stop it at once!” she barked, and held out her arms. “Come here!”

  Much to her surprise, the sylph not only heard her command but also, with a yelp of delight, obeyed it. She found herself standing, swaying for balance, with her arms full of wind as the many fingers of the wind-creature played in her hair, tugged on her ears, and wrapped themselves around her neck. Size was apparently no issue with the sylph; while a moment ago it had been great enough to bend a tree in half, it was now nothing more than a breeze, almost pleasant were it not for the strangeness of its giggling voice.

  “Mortal girl! Mortal girl!” it cooed, pulling on her curls with its invisible hands. “I can help you! Help you, help you! The Dame said to help you, and I will!”

  “No, you won’t,” Benedict, still prostrate on the floor, growled. “You’re a dragon-eaten nuisance, and we certainly don’t need—”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Heloise said, which was rude, she knew, but she hadn’t the time to worry about rudeness just then. She looked earnestly into the empty whirling in her arms. “You know a gate into the Faerie world, don’t you? You came through one yourself.”

  “Many gates!” said the sylph. “Many gates, to and fro. From the Near World into the Between. From the Far World into the Near. So many gates! So many worlds! So many Times!”

  “Many gates, yes,” said Heloise, trying not to be impatient. She rather doubted impatience had any worthwhile effect on this creature. “But is there one close by? A gate to the Between?”

  “Yes!” cried the sylph, and swirled up so enthusiastically around her that Heloise was momentarily lifted off her feet. “Yes, there is a gate! A gate close by, so very close! Just up above!”

  “Up above? In the Great Hall?”

  “Up above. Over and up. Follow me!”

  With that, the sylph caught Heloise by her arms and dragged her across the floor so hard that she would have fallen had the wind not held her up. The door stopped it, however, for it did not know how to work a latch, and it let go of Heloise in order to hurl itself at it. Heloise landed flat, only just catching herself in time to keep from striking her nose rather painfully. The door, solid oak though it was, rattled in its frame.

  Benedict scrambled up and hastened to Heloise’s side. “Are you out of your mind?” he snarled even as he helped her upright. “You can’t trust this . . . this thing! It’s one of them, one of those Faerie creatures, and it’s as likely to hurt you as help you. More likely, I should think!”

  Heloise gave her head a vigorous shake. “It brought me the letter from the Dame, and that proved helpful, didn’t it? And it must know a way to and from its world. It must! How else did it get here? I don’t think it’s one of the Family of Night; it’s nothing like any of them that I’ve met.”

  Benedict opened his mouth to protest. Before he could put the words together, however, there flashed across his brain the memory of the tall, stone-black woman wrapped in her garments of flame. He had to admit, even if only in the privacy of his own head, that truly she was nothing like this merry, mad little creature.

  “You know I’m right,” Heloise said, studying his face with far more acumen than he appreciated. “We’ve got to try. I’ve got to try.”

  Stepping through the whirling wind, Heloise reached for the door latch. Before she could touch it, however, Benedict interfered, catching her by the wrist.

  “Wait,” he said. “I’ve got—”

  Before he could finish, he found himself caught up in a strong set of invisible arms and flung from his feet across the room. By some luck or good fortune—perhaps by the intention of the sylph—he landed on his bed and, with a groan of the bed-ropes, bounced off of it and landed in a pile on the floor. He lay stunned, staring up at his own spinning ceiling.

  “Dragons blast you, stupid thing!” Heloise cried even as she hastened around the bed. At first Benedict wondered if she meant him, so fierce was the gaze she fixed upon him. But then she whirled about, addressing herself to the air. “What’d you do that for?”

  “I was helping you,” said the sylph, its voice surprisingly meek and coming from up on top of the canopy. “The mortal was going to stop you.”

  “I’d like to see him try!” Heloise snapped. She bent then and offered Benedict a helping hand, which he accepted, albeit reluctantly. Once he was back on his feet, she let go and folded her arms again, her feet braced as though for a fight. “All right, out with it,” she said. “I assume you have an idea, and you’d better tell me quick or I’m on my way.”

  Any peasant overheard speaking to the son of her lord that way would have spent the night in the household dungeon and received five lashes in a public display of punishment for disrespect. It was the law. It was a law which hadn’t been enforced for decades, for not a man, woman, or child in all Canneberges would ever have thought to speak to their betters in that tone of voice.

  But Benedict, rather to his surprise, found he didn’t mind. Not at all, in fact. It was rather nice to be spoken to like—well, like an equal. Like a friend.

  He blushed and mumbled, “I’m sorry. But I do have a thought: If we’re going to ally ourselves with this invisible being, we should make use of its invisibility.”

  “Yes?” said Heloise. “Go on.”

  Thus permitted, Benedict continued. “We don’t know but that my room may even now be watched. Doctor Dupont could have staged the household guards at intervals up and down the gallery or even in the Great Hall itself. So if you could convince your . . . friend . . . to go before us and give a signal if all is clear, we might actually be able to get you to this gate successfully, without being caught.”

  Heloise considered the merits of this suggestion, her face tightening into a knot of concentration. Then, without replying to Benedict himself, she looked up at the canopy. It was shivering with the sylph’s presence, and the embroidered deer on the dark, heavy fabric seemed to run and leap with movement. “Did you hear him, sylph?”

  “I heard him!” said the sylph.

  “Did you understand him?”

  “Yes!” Then, “No.” Then, “Maybe?”

  Heloise sighed. She went over Benedict’s scheme again, then Benedict himself tried to explain it. After the third or fourth time through, the sylph finally offered a cheerful “Oooooooh! I understand now!” which inspired no confidence in either mortal heart.

  Benedict persisted, however, saying, “When you get up to the Great Hall, if you have seen no other mortals at all on your way, knock on the floor four times. Like this.” He knelt and tapped on the floor with his knuckles to demonstrate. “But if you have seen any mortals between this room and the Great Hall above, you must knock three times, like this.” He demonstrated again.

  Silence overhead. Not even the canopy moved or shifted.

  “Wind?” Heloise said, her eyebrows rising on her forehead. “Are you there? Do you understand?”

  “Yes!” said the sylph, and darted down to plant a gusty kiss on Heloise’s forehead. “I understand! I will knock on the floor, and I will see the mortals, and I will show you the gate!”

  With that it hurled itself again at the door like an eager puppy desperate to go out. Heloise and Benedict exchanged glances. Heloise shrugged. They could stand there explaining for hours and never know if any of their words got through to what passed for the sylph’s brain. And they didn’t have hours to spare.

  So Heloise opened the door to Benedict’s room, and the sylph darted out into the long gallery, smothering its giggles into little hiccupping gasps, for Benedict had done his best to impress the need for silence upon it. Heloise and Benedict stood in the shelter of the doorway and watched the ripples in the gallery rugs, the only sign they could discern of the sylph’s passing.

  Then it was gone, and they stood in expectant silence.

  “Do you think it understands?” Benedict whispered at length.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Heloi
se replied. “I’m going no matter what.”

  Benedict gave her a sidelong glance. “You know, there might not be a gate up there at all. We’re only guessing and hoping. It might all be for—”

  “Shut your mouth,” Heloise said in a small, small whisper. He almost didn’t hear her, but he saw the movement of her lips. He saw the desperation in her eyes and hadn’t the heart to continue his protests and warnings.

  For he saw too that she was half-hoping he would be right. If he was, then she wouldn’t have to go through with her dangerous purpose.

  He had no words of either comfort or argument. So he did as he was told and shut his mouth, and they waited for a sign from the sylph overhead.

  At last they heard through the ceiling above, faint but unmistakable: Tap, tap, tap.

  “Three taps,” Benedict whispered. “It must have seen someone—”

  Tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap, tap, tap. Pause, Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . .

  Benedict groaned and smacked his face with his palm. “Lumé’s crown! What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Be thankful it remembered to tap at all,” Heloise said. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she added, even as she had said before. “I’ve got to try. You can wait here, and—”

  “I’m going with you.” That was the end of that argument.

  Benedict led the way as he had the previous several nights, Heloise following close at his heels, the idea being that she could somehow hide behind him if they were set upon by any of the household. It was a foolish, useless idea, but the only one they had, so they clung to it as they might have clung to a spell of invisibility.

  Rather to their surprise, they successfully made it to the great stair and crept on up as swiftly as they could. They stood at the great wooden screen and listened to the ongoing tapping of the sylph on the other side, straining their ears and other senses for any indication of watchful eyes and waiting hands.

  Heloise peered through the doorway. The great red Hall of Rufus was empty so far as she could see. She spotted at last a bit of broken railing, taken from the decrepit minstrels’ gallery no doubt, which the sylph was using like a drumstick, enthusiastically tapping the floor in all manner of weird beats and rhythms.

  “Oi!” Heloise whispered as loudly as she dared. “Stop it, now!”

  The sylph gave a squeak of joy, dropped its stick, and sprang across the room to Heloise, nearly knocking her flat with the force of its approach. “You came!” it cried, as delighted as though it had not seen her in years, and showered her with kisses.

  “Yes, of course,” Heloise replied, trying hopelessly to push it away. “Where is the gate?”

  “This way, this way!” said the sylph, and both dragged and pushed her into the Hall. “This way, behind the chair!”

  Heloise frowned. For behind the chair was nothing except . . .

  “I can’t use the mirror,” she said, and stopped in her tracks, which took a quite a lot of strength with the sylph still urging her on. “I need a gate that I can get through. Me. In this body. I don’t need a mirror. I can’t use a mirror.”

  The sylph continued to pluck at her hair and skin. “There is the gate! See the gate?” it said. Heloise realized that, invisible as it was, it probably had little to no concept of mirrors.

  She cursed then, bitterly. All her plans, all her fine aspirations—all her worked-up self-sacrifice—and for what? Not for nothing. It couldn’t be for nothing!

  “There has to be some other gate,” she said. Her voice rose as she spoke, mounting with the pressure of panic inside her. “There has to be. Somewhere close. Tell me where the gates are, wind!”

  “The gate is there! Behind the chair!” the sylph persisted. “As long as you know it’s there, it will be a gate for you. If you do not know, it will not serve and you will remain in your world. But I have told you, so you know, and you may pass through the gate!”

  With that, the sylph left her, darted across the floor, whipped around behind Rufus’s chair, and blew against the mirror glass, which gleamed and shivered, looking insubstantial for a moment. Was that the green of forest Heloise glimpsed or only her imagination seeking to show her things she wanted—and feared—to see?

  The sun was setting. She hadn’t much time now.

  “See the gate! See the gate!” said the sylph.

  What other choice did she have? How she loathed the idea of approaching the glass, of seeing the absence of her reflection as she gazed inside! But she was out of options. She had to try.

  She took a step.

  “Wait!” Benedict’s hand came down upon her shoulder. She didn’t turn and lash out at him, didn’t shrug him off . . . and she hated herself for it. Was she waiting for him to protest? To restrain her? Did she want him to convince her, finally, to back down? To give up?

  Was she such a coward?

  “Heloise,” he said, his voice uneasy in her ear, “let me go. Let me do it for you.”

  “What?” She couldn’t speak the word out loud. Her mouth moved without sound.

  “I’m dying anyway,” he went on. She felt his hand tremble on her shoulder. “I haven’t much time, a year, two years maybe, and that’s at best. So let me try to do this. For you.”

  A stillness, a quiet bubble, surrounded her from the inside out. A complete emptiness of thought, reason, or resistance. Nothing but silence, no thought, no emotion.

  Then the fire roared to life in her head.

  Heloise whirled about, smacking Benedict’s hand away. For a moment he feared she would fly at him, so intense was the rage in her eyes. “This is my task!” she cried. “Mine, and only mine! I will die for my sister! I am stronger than I think! I took all the strength from Hélène, and I’ll make up for it now! I will rescue Evette, I will dance Le Sacre, and if I die, I die, but I’ll be the one doing it!”

  She ran out of words. She ran out of breath. Her face went red with the effort needed to draw air into her lungs. At last she managed a great gasp then stood there, fists clenched, and stared up at Benedict as though he were her first and greatest enemy.

  He stared back, his eyes bright with emotions she could not read. He opened his mouth, closed it, and ground his teeth together.

  Then, to her surprise, he answered in a low voice, “I understand.”

  So that was it. He wouldn’t fight her. He wouldn’t restrain her or argue or anything more. No more protection, no more grasping, gasping hope for reprieve. He understood.

  She must go.

  Heloise turned away from him and started across the hall. Each step was a battle, but each battle she won. The sylph, still shivering by the mirror glass, beckoned her with its voice, “The gate! The gate! I’ll show you the gate!” and she followed its beckoning.

  Before she’d gone five paces, she heard Benedict speak softly behind her. “You matter, Heloise,” he said.

  She didn’t stop. She didn’t turn.

  “Whether or not you believe it. Whether or not you rescue your sister tonight,” he said, his voice reaching out to her as the distance grew between them. “You matter. You matter . . . to me.”

  Another step. Then another. The Great Hall was so terribly long! But she kept walking, and she would climb those dais steps.

  “You reminded me what it means to live. I thought I was dead and done, but you taught me otherwise. I . . . I’ll never . . .”

  She could hear what he was going to say: I’ll never forget you. It caught in his throat, but she heard it as clearly as though he’d spoken the words. But he could not say them, for what did they even mean? They both knew he wouldn’t remember for long. Never and forever meant little to a dying man. And the Family of Night might steal away the memory of her once she was dead. They might steal away her memory as they stole the memory of Evette.

  She approached the dais. She couldn’t see the mirror from this angle, hidden as it was behind Rufus’s chair. But she felt it waiting for her; she felt the worlds beyond its glass. Perhaps the sylph w
as right. Perhaps it was a gate after all. It felt to her like a gaping mouth ready to gobble her up and gulp her down, never to be seen again.

  “I thought so!”

  The deep, deep voice filled the hall as it had not been filled in centuries, rising up to echo among the rafters like the ghosts of lords and mages and courtiers of the past. Heloise whirled around and saw the gaunt form of Doctor Dupont step through the doorway of the screen. His hand was upraised, one long finger pointed and trembling, first at Benedict, who stood staring at him in opened-mouthed terror, then at Heloise.

  “I thought so!” he said, striding toward Benedict like a marching minion of the Netherworld. “I thought I would find you here! There was too much truth about the guard’s warnings, though I wanted to disbelieve him. You are carrying on with this peasant wench. Just as I feared! The worst, the worst.”

  “Doctor!” Benedict protested, raising both hands and backing away. “It’s not what you think. Not in the slightest! You’ve got to believe me, and you’ve—”

  “Believe you?” The doctor drew back as though stung, and his heavy-lidded eyes widened momentarily. “How can I believe you? It is not you who speaks! The evil spirit indwelling you forces you into these wicked acts! Forces you to disgrace the name of your father and forefathers.”

  “What? No!” Benedict cast a desperate glance toward Heloise, who stood frozen, one foot on the dais steps. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have a spirit inside me, and I’m not—”

  “Lies!” cried the doctor. He raised a fist in a summoning gesture, bellowing as he did so, “Guards!”

  At the doctor’s cry, three of the five household guardsmen stepped into the room behind him. They were armed with their pikes, and their gazes fixed, not on Benedict, but on Heloise. On the intruder.