Sunlight and Shadow (10 page)

Of all the dirty tricks, I thought. She hadn't turned me into a toad after all. Instead, she'd shown me how well I'd done that myself, all on my own.

“Who says that I dislike you?” I asked. “Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Not that I'd need a reason if I do.”

This time, I was certain that she smiled, for I could see her face full on.

“Ah, so there is something more,” she said. “Let me think.” She scrunched her face up in concentration, and it was then I realized that she had stopped crying. I wondered if the sky outside had done the same, but I didn't want to turn my head to look. I didn't want to break our strange tableau.

“There's really only one thing that it can be, of course. The golden boy Statos.”

“He's not a boy,” I said hotly as I sat up a little straighter on the stool. “He's a grown man, and the Lord Sarastro's apprentice.”

“Is he indeed?” the daughter of the Queen of the Night asked softly. “The Lord Sarastro's chosen apprentice?”

“And what if he is?”

“If he is, then he would make a fitting consort for the Lord Sarastro's daughter.”

If she'd shot a burning arrow straight into my chest, she couldn't have hit the mark more accurately, nor wounded me more.

“That seems to be the general consensus of opinion,” I said, and even I could hear my voice was bitter.

She cocked her head to one side, just like a bird considering which way to pluck a worm from the ground.

“How long have you loved him?”

I opened my mouth to deny it altogether, then shut it with a snap. Why deny the obvious? I thought. There were days it seemed to me the whole world must know how I felt about Statos, even Statos himself.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

She considered for a moment. “In theory, I do, I suppose. Though not from personal experience. That doesn't quite answer my question, though.”

I sighed. “Since I was five. He entered the Lord
Sarastro's household the same year my father was killed.”

“The same year the Lord Sarastro took you in to raise as his own,” the Lady Mina said, her tone thoughtful. And I realized with a start of horror that I had done the thing I'd sworn I'd never do. I had given her her name in my own mind.

“He raised you,” she said again, “as his own daughter. But now he wishes to give the man you love to a total stranger. One who is a daughter by nothing more than a trick of birth. It must be very difficult for you, Gayna. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, for pity's sake!” I cried. “Stop it, can't you? Just stop it!”

I shot to my feet, unable to stay still a moment longer. I took several agitated paces away, then whirled back.

“Why can't you just be mean and nasty and ugly? Why must you be understanding and long-suffering? I liked you a lot better when you ranted and raved. It was much easier to dislike you. And nobody said that you could call me by my name.”

I stopped, panting just a little, and we stared at each other. I half expected her to get to her feet as well. It's what I would have done. Even the playing field so that we could really go at it. Look each other in the face, stare each other down, eye to eye.

But she did not. Instead, she continued to sit in her chair, her hands folded in her lap.

“You liked me better when it was easier to dislike me?”

“Don't you dare make fun of me,” I said, abruptly all too aware of how ridiculous I'd just sounded. I could feel the laughter swarming up the back of my throat. The trouble with being angry is that it not only makes you feel stupid, it encourages you to say stupid things as well. Stupid things that are hard to take back and impossible to erase. And suddenly, there you are.

“I wouldn't,” she said. “I mean, I'm not. I always sort of envied you, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Envied me,” I echoed. “What for?”

“Because you had two fathers,” the Lady Mina said simply. “Yours, and mine, even though you didn't get to know yours very well. Whereas I, for all the attention he paid to me, had none.”

“You had your mother,” I said.

She nodded. “True enough. That was another reason I sometimes envied you. You look much more like her than I.”

I stared at her, appalled. All my life I had heard tales of die Königin der Nacht, and none of them good.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I don't.”

“But you do,” the Lady Mina said simply. “You have dark hair, as she does. Skin so pale you can almost see right through it. You could be her daughter, except for the eyes.”

“Well, but your hair is dark,” I said. I was sounding
ridiculous again and I knew it, but it was genuinely the first thing that came to mind. “You think so?”

At this, she reached up and, with two quick motions, untied and pulled the dark scarf from around her head. Her hair came spilling down around her shoulders.

I think I must have made some sound. To this day, I still don't quite know why I didn't raise a hand to protect my eyes. The only reason I can come up with is that I didn't want to look away. As if, even as my mind went completely blank, it knew this was as close as I would ever come to gazing straight into the rising sun, for that's exactly what color her hair was. Streaming over her shoulders in just the same way the sun spills over the horizon.

“You are beautiful,” I said simply. “Why doesn't that make me hate you even more? It certainly ought to, don't you think?”

“Only if what you felt was truly hate to begin with,” the Lady Mina replied.

“You're doing it again,” I said. “Sounding all sensible and like you know everything. Statos isn't going to like that, you know.”

She did rise to her feet at this, the dark scarf falling from her lap, and all that mass of golden hair tumbling down, down, down, until it almost reached the floor.

“I don't care what Statos likes or doesn't like,” she said, her tone forceful. “I don't want him, Gayna. I
don't want anything the Lord Sarastro has to give. I don't want to take anything from you”

I pulled in a breath. “Do you not even want a father?”

Absolute silence filled the room, more complete than when the Lord and Statos had departed.

“Yes,” the Lady Mina said at last. “Yes, of course I want a father. One who sees me for what I am, or wishes to, at the very least. For only then may he see what I may become. I don't want a father who steals me away in the middle of the night. Who breaks his word. Who sees me only as a pawn in some gigantic cosmic game of one-upmanship against my mother.

“Do you think the Lord Sarastro can be that kind of father?”

He has been a good one to me, I thought. But all my life I had known that I was not the Lady Mina, not the Lord Sarastro's true blood daughter, and so I remained silent.

“I'm not so sure I think so either,” the Lady Mina said, taking my silence for assent to her view that the Lord Sarastro could not be the father that she wanted. “As he's the only one I've got, it seems simplest not to want him at all.”

“You will be very lonely here, then,” I said, then bit my tongue. “I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have offered words of comfort.”

“No,” the Lady Mina said with a quick shake of her head that had her golden hair rippling like the
flames of the fire. “Not if they were false. I'd rather know the truth, however unpleasant.”

“Even in that case, I really hate to tell you this,” I said. “But I think it's nearly dawn. The sky is that funny color that isn't a color. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Mina answered as she turned to look over her shoulder. “I have seen the dawn. There is a moment when the sky goes blank, as if the world is trying to remember what it looks like in the light.”

“That's it exactly,” I said as I moved to stand at her side. She turned, and together we stood for a moment, gazing out the window. “You should get dressed,” I went on finally. “The Lord Sarastro will send for you soon.”

“I should be well dressed when I go to be sacrificed? Why should I do anything to please him? Answer me that.”

“Then don't do it to please him,” I said at once. “Do it to please yourself, and do it for your mother. You speak brave words. Now match it with brave deeds. Show them what the daughter of die Königin der Nacht is made of.”

At this, to my complete astonishment, she threw back her head and laughed. “Now you're appealing to my vanity,” she said. “That is well done. All right, show me this finery.”

“This doesn't mean we're friends, you know,” I said as I moved to a wardrobe tucked into an alcove
on the far side of the fireplace and flung it open.

“Of course it doesn't,” the Lady Mina said, her tone calm. “I think I'm sorry for that. It would be nice to have a friend. I never really had one other than Lapin.”

“Lapin?”

She shook her head, as if sorry that she'd spoken. “Not now,” she said. “Perhaps another time. What do you think of this one?” she asked. And she pulled from the wardrobe exactly the dress I would have chosen had I been in her place, one made of cloth of beaten gold. “If the Lord Sarastro wishes me to make an impression on his subjects, this ought to do the trick.”

Without thinking, I said, “You'll be absolutely blinding.”

She laughed again, but it seemed to me there was sadness in the sound. “My thought precisely,” she said, and she carried the dress over to the bed and laid it out. “Who knows? Perhaps, while they're hiding their eyes at the mere sight of me, I can make good my escape.”

I felt the breath back up inside my lungs. “You would do that? You would try to run?”

She turned her head, then, and those strange eyes looked straight into mine. I'm pretty sure that's when it happened. A single thought, the same thought, appearing simultaneously in two different minds.

“I would,” the Lady Mina said as she straightened
slowly. “But I could not do it on my own. The dwelling of the Lord Sarastro is large, and I do not know my way through it. Help would most definitely be required.”

“And if you had it?” I asked.

“Then I would go and not look back,” the Lady Mina said. “Particularly not at any man with golden hair and bright blue eyes.”

“I will help you,” I said.

By way of answer, the Lady Mina smiled.

At the sight of it, I felt my heart skip a beat inside my chest even as my determination strengthened. Statos must never see that smile, I thought. If he did, he would never look at me again, not that he looked at me all that often now.

“But we must hurry,” I said, and I moved toward her. “The sun is nearly up. The lord will send for you at any moment.”

To my astonishment, she laughed, as if the danger only added pleasure to the challenge.

“I have an idea to buy us a little more time,” the Lady Mina said. “Give me your cloak, and I will give you mine.” Then she leaned down and swept up the golden dress, holding it against me. “Let us see how well you look in this finery, shall we?”

The Outsider

I'll never forget my first sight of the Lord Sarastro's daughter, standing fearful yet uncowed at her mother's side. Nor my second one, for that matter, standing motionless and alone in her father's great entry hall. Did not die Königin der Nacht say three times that the Lord Sarastro would regret his actions in stealing their daughter away? And did she not say that the third time pays for all?

Well, I say this. That lady knows what she is talking about.

I cannot say for certain whether the Lord Sarastro came to regret the actions he performed. It is a thing of which we never spoke. But I do know my third sight of the Lady Mina was the one that sealed my fate, assuming it hadn't been sealed already, long before. Standing in the room her father had prepared for her, the hood of her cloak at long last pushed back, I could see her face clearly for the very first time.

This is the picture of her that has never left me, the one that beats with my heart, runs with my blood, holds up my body right along with my bones.
It will stay in my mind until my brain itself becomes as blank as a sheet of new-made parchment, a thing that will mean my heart has stopped.