The Autumn Castle (58 page)

Hexebart searches the cupboard again, but all the cans are empty and gone. Oh, woe. Real World food is so tasty and exciting
on her tongue, and now it’s all gone. All, all gone. She runs her fingers around the edge of an empty can and laps up the
tiny dollop of sauce. If only Immanuel would go shopping soon. Hexebart is growing hungry again.

She leans her head out of the kitchen and listens. Immanuel is still sleeping. Hexebart hears his snores. Why, she could sneak
in there right now and have a piece of him for lunch. There’s certainly enough meat on him. But no; Hexebart grinds her teeth.
She needs Immanuel for now. Immanuel can kill the queen before she finds Hexebart, and Hexebart can go free with the royal
magic and spend her life looking for Liesebet.

Hmmm . . . but while Immanuel sleeps, Hexebart could get up to other mischief. He often hides himself up in the room behind
the door with many locks . . . Hexebart wonders what’s behind that door. A mystery. Maybe he has more food up there. That’s
it! He’s hiding food from Hexebart! Or maybe he has jewels and other pretty Real World things that he doesn’t want Hexebart
to have. Selfish, selfish. Hexebart begins to creep up the stairs.

Then stops. And listens.

Downstairs, far below, somebody has come home. Is it the pig queen? Is it time to wake Immanuel and tell him to kill her?

No, it’s somebody else. It’s Christine.

Oh, Christine, oh, Christine,

Where have you come from, where have you been?

Hexebart isn’t so interested in Immanuel’s secret room of food and treasures now. She would rather go and speak with Christine.
Hexebart opens the door and dances lightly down the stairs to Christine’s apartment. She can’t wait to see Christine’s face.
Oh, ha ha! Hexebart has so much to tell her.

M
ayfridh hadn’t expected to find herself sharing a hotel room with her mother on one of her last nights in the Real World.
She woke up disoriented. The colors of the room were unfamiliar, the sheets stiff and tight. It took a moment to remember:
Gerda walking in, spitting lizards and insects with rage, insisting that Mayfridh make a quick exit before Gerda took it upon
herself to tell Christine everything. Jude had bundled her out the door in less than twenty seconds. “It’s better this way,”
he said. “I’ll sort it out with Gerda. You go stay with your mother.”

Mayfridh sat up, cradling her head in her hands. Why was she so worried about what Christine would think? Hadn’t she been
trying to encourage Jude to leave Christine, to tell her that the New York wedding was off and that he was going to become
King Jude of Ewigkreis?

“Are you all right, love?” This was Diana, awake in the next bed.

Mayfridh dropped her hands and forced a smile. “Yes, Mum. I’m fine.”

Diana reached out and grabbed her fingers. “Thanks for coming to stay with me. I felt much safer.”

Mayfridh squeezed Diana’s hand fondly. “I’m glad.”

“What has the day got in store for you?”

Mayfridh was climbing out of bed and pulling on her clothes. “Same as yesterday. Find Hexebart.”

“I’ll just stay here, shall I?”

“Stay here and rest your feet. It’s safer that way. I’ll come to get you if I find her.”

“And then you’ll leave?”

Mayfridh nodded. “I’ll have to leave very soon after.”

Diana’s head drooped. Mayfridh sat next to her on the bed. “Mum, promise me something.”

“What?”

“Promise me that . . . if I can’t take you with me . . .”

Diana looked away quickly, a petulant expression crossing her face.

“Mum, I might not be able to take you with me.”

“You’re the queen.”

“There are other considerations. It’s very complex.” She patted Diana’s knee. “Mum, if I can’t take you with me, will you
promise to get on with your life? Will you go home to England and find old friends?”

“I have no old friends.”

“Then make new ones. You can’t organize your life around me.”

Diana’s lips twitched with irritation. “If I hadn’t organized my life around you, I wouldn’t have been there for you to come
home to after twenty-five years. You’re my daughter, May. One day, perhaps, you’ll have a child and you’ll know what true
fear is. To lose my daughter, not to know on any day for twenty-five years whether you were alive or dead, sick, in pain,
miserable, longing to be home . . .”

Mayfridh let the silence beat out for a long time, and she thought about all the times she had missed with her mother and
all the times she was yet to miss. Shopping trips and morning teas and mother’s days and first grandchildren. A flicker of
imagination teased her: Diana in a few years, learning to trust the world again, smiling or laughing, holding a plump-armed
child. The knowledge that it wasn’t to be made her heart lurch under her ribs. “I’m so sorry, Mum.”

A knock at the door.

“Who would that be?” asked Diana.

“Jude,” Mayfridh said, rising and heading toward the door. “He’s going to help me with Hexebart.”

“Jude? Christine’s boyfriend?”

Mayfridh tensed at the appellation. “That’s right.” She opened the door and Jude came in.

“Hi,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek.

Mayfridh pulled back and glanced at Diana. Had she seen?

“Oh, hello, Diana,” Jude said, trying to sound smooth and not managing. “I didn’t realize you were sharing a room. I thought
you might be . . . next door . . . or something.”

Mayfridh saw the spark of realization in her mother’s eyes.

“Be careful,” Diana said quietly. “I hope you find your witch.”

“I hope so too,” Mayfridh muttered, grabbing her coat. “Come on, Jude.”

They turned off Unter-den-Linden and headed down Friedrichstrasse, past gleaming car showrooms and dusty building sites. The
sky was pale and streaked with clouds, and early morning sun reflected off the crooked-pin shapes of building cranes. Streetcars,
trains, taxis moved in the rhythm and tune of city mornings; other people’s overcoats brushed against her as they vied for
space on the narrow wooden boardwalk under a construction site. Mayfridh was overwhelmed by it, by the addictive cadence of
the Real World, by the proximity of Jude who was the Real World’s star citizen and witness. The vast silent spaces of Ewigkreis
were empty and bare by comparison. A measureless ache suffused her, and she couldn’t identify if it was in her heart, or her
head, or her hands.
How could I forget this? It is everything to me, it makes me who I am.

“So, we need to talk about the Gerda situation,” Jude was saying.

For a moment she was bewildered. How was she to discuss something so mundane when such an epiphany of self-knowing was upon
her? But of course, it was the very mundanity of the Real World that gave it its addictive flavor.

“Okay,” she said. “Have you spoken to her?”

“Yeah, I talked to her last night. I promised I’d tell Christine about you and me, but only after you’ve gone. Only after
we’re back home in New York.”

“And Gerda agreed not to mention it in the meantime?”

“Gerda was pretty dubious, actually. But she hates talking so much at the moment that she nodded.”

“And will you tell Christine?”

“Oh, yeah. I have to, I know that. Gerda will check up on me.” He lit a cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. “I’ll
tell Christine before we get married, give her a chance to back out.”

“She won’t back out.”

“I hope not.”

They walked in silence a few moments, then Mayfridh had to ask, “So, you’ve decided not to take up my offer?”

“Mayfridh, I—”

“Did you give it ten seconds’ thought? Like you promised?”

“I did. I gave it more than ten seconds. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.”

“And still you decided not to come with me?”

He swept his arm around him. “I belong here.”

“I know.” Mayfridh refused to give up hope; she might convince him yet. At least he’d admitted to thinking about it.

“I have to take care of Christine.” He shook his head. “I’m not looking forward to seeing her face when I tell her about you
and me. Guilt is a terrible feeling, Mayfridh. It’s like a kind of nausea that never goes away.”

“If you come with me, you’ll forget all your guilt. You’ll forget Christine, the accident, the betrayal . . .”

“Don’t, Mayfridh,” he said. “I’ve thought of that. I’ve thought of everything.”

“Ewigkreis is very beautiful,” she said. “It’s—”

“No. No. Here, I’m alive. There, I’d be a shadow.”

As will I.

He led her down the street behind Vogelwald-Allee, into the park near Hotel Mandy-Z. Jude had seen Hexebart run in there to
hide, and Mayfridh hoped she might be there again, waiting for Mandy to return.

“That’s where I last saw her,” Jude said, indicating a tall elm. “She just seemed to disappear.”

“She can climb trees very quickly and hide in them, although not so easily now that all the leaves are falling.” Mayfridh
thought about the birch outside the great hall. When would the last leaf drop? Would she be pulled back, empty-handed, to
Ewigkreis? The thought sickened her with dread. “She also likes to hide in bushes and hedges, so we’ll have to check them
all.”

“What do I do if I find her? I mean, what if she turns me into a frog or something?”

“She can’t turn you into a frog. If you find her, grab her as hard as you can.”

“But—”

“Whatever she does to you, I can undo. Once she’s in my presence, I command her magic again. She has to do as I say.”

They began the search. The grass was overgrown and Mayfridh’s feet sank into the bed of sodden leaves.

“And what happens if we don’t find her?”

Mayfridh shook her head. “We have to find her.”

“Would it be very bad?”

“She has the royal magic that our world runs on. Without it, we’ll be caught in winter forever. Endless night, frozen ground,
nothing will grow. Our race will die out.”

Jude stared at her, astonished. “I had no idea it was so serious.”

“We still have time.”

“She could be anywhere in the world. She could have jumped a train to Frankfurt by now.”

“No, she can’t go too far. We’re bound by the passage until it closes.”

For an hour they searched the park with no success. Mayfridh taught Jude to look for the little signs that Hexebart had been
present—bent twigs, dropped threads or spells—but there was no sign of her. A headache had started throbbing over her right
eye. Perhaps it was worth going back to Ewigkreis briefly to take the remaining spells from Christine. Hexebart could hide
from a searching spell, but magic might pick up the signs of her movement in the Real World where their eyes couldn’t.

Jude touched her elbow gently. “She’s not here. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go out to Zehlendorf. She might have returned to my mother’s house. We can search the streets out there.”

“Sure, if you like.”

“And then we’ll scour the newspapers for reports of strange events—anything that might be related to Hexebart. We’ll get Fabiyan
and Gerda to help. Christine might even be back soon.” Mayfridh felt a sudden jolt of guilt as she realized she still hadn’t
told Jude about Christine’s injury. Not because she was deliberately withholding it; she had simply forgotten.

Christine let herself into Hotel Mandy-Z and hung her coat on the hook. Her back was throbbing and she needed painkillers
and a soft place to lie, but she couldn’t walk past Gerda’s door without stopping to undo Hexebart’s enchantment. Poor Gerda
had suffered for days, and must have been frantic when Mayfridh arrived without spells to help her. Christine had the last
four spells in the pocket of her jeans and she patted them lightly with her silver hand. She knew she had to give them back,
and wondered at her extreme reluctance to do so. Surely she should be happy to put all this faery magic behind her and try
to lead a normal life. But then, what was normal about her life? The chronic pain, the missing hand, the fiancé who loved
somebody else, the still-unaccessed multimillion-dollar trust fund?

She knocked lightly at Gerda’s door, then pushed it open. Gerda sat on the sofa, her knees drawn up, a bucket positioned between
them.

“Hi,” Christine said. “Don’t say a word. I have spells to fix you.”

Gerda’s eyes rounded in surprise and excitement. Christine closed the door behind her and approached, sitting on the coffee
table in front of Gerda. She fished in her pocket for a spell. Gerda reached out to touch the silver hand, her eyebrows shooting
up in shock.

“It’s a long story. Let’s fix you first,” Christine said, balancing a spell on her palm. She wasn’t exactly sure what to say,
and bit her lip as she thought about it. Moments passed and Gerda began to look worried. Christine took a deep breath, and
said,
“Speak normally.”
She couldn’t be more specific than that. She blew on the spell; it dissolved.

Gerda tentatively opened her mouth and said, “Did it work?”