Summers at Castle Auburn (19 page)

I teased, “Oh, then, I should not marry him just to please you?”

She met my eyes in the mirror. She was not laughing. “Do not marry to please anyone except yourself.”

I tossed a sachet ball in the air. Greta wanted me to tuck it in my pocket, to create “a perfumed air of mystery” as I walked, but I hated its smell and refused to carry it. “I don't think I shall marry anyone,” I said nonchalantly. “And I don't know that I will flirt
with any of them, either. It's not as pleasant as I always thought it would be.”

Now Elisandra permitted herself a small smile. “Perhaps you have not flirted with the right people.”

I shook my head. “Even Bryan—it feels so odd when he takes my hand and says such things. He never did anything like that before. I can't believe how he's changed.”

Now Elisandra's eyes were on her own reflection. “Bryan has not changed,” she said in a low voice.

Am I the one who changed, then?
I wondered. But perhaps that was not what she had meant. Daria gave Elisandra's hair a final pat and said, “Done, my lady.”

Elisandra nodded gravely. “Thank you.” She came to her feet, lovely in a silver-blue gown, and said to the maid, “You need not wait up for me tonight. I believe there's entertainment after the meal, and I don't want you to be up till all hours.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Daria said, dropping a small curtsey. I could not keep a quick resentful thought from crossing my mind:
With what attractive guardsman will you be spending your free hours?
But, of course, I did not ask the question aloud. It was too absurd.

Downstairs, the seating was more formal than usual, which I instantly knew spelled trouble for me. Indeed, the servants directed Elisandra to the head table, while I was placed at the second of the perpendicular tables—a fairly high honor, which I knew, and which I did not appreciate. For Hennessey of Mellidon was already seated in the chair next to mine, and he smiled as he watched me approach.

 

W
E MADE IT
through dinner amiably enough, though Hennessey's conversational abilities did not improve much with familiarity, and I made absolutely no replies to his attempts at gallantry, which he must have found discouraging. I managed to elude him as the guests all filed into the large salon for the evening's entertainment. I had no idea what this might be, so I caught up with Angela as people began to seat themselves in rows of chairs set up before a low dais.

“What's going on? Is someone performing?” I asked.

She grabbed my arm and led me to the row where Marian had already settled. “
Corie!
You were seated by Lord Hennessey! What an honor for you! There's talk that he might be the next viceroy, once his father dies and his brother proves impotent—”

“I thought he was a little boring,” I said.

“It doesn't matter if he's boring! A husband doesn't have to be interesting to make you wealthy and powerful.”

I wanted to get off this topic. “Well, you didn't fare so badly yourself,” I said, for I'd noticed. This matchmaking game was new to me, but I was beginning to make out its intricacies and arabesques. “Wasn't that Lord Lester seated beside you?”

This she was just as happy to talk about. Then we discussed Marian's dinner partner as well, while the rest of the guests filed in and made themselves comfortable. I still had no idea who would be performing, so I was amazed to see a half dozen aliora enter the room and climb to the small stage. Three were creatures I had never seen before, a very old woman, a fair-haired young man, and a young woman with absolutely luminescent skin. With them were Andrew and two of the other aliora who lived at Castle Auburn.

“What is—are the aliora going to sing?” I asked, dumbfounded, for I had never witnessed such a thing.

Angela shook her head. “They don't sing, but they play music—it's unearthly beautiful. You've never heard them?”

“No.”

“Actually, it's rare that they perform anymore. Those two—the old woman and the young one—apparently were part of some, I don't know, musical clan in Alora before they were captured. The old one lives in Tregonia and the young one in Mellidon, so they're rarely together. When they are, they always perform concerts. My mother said it was the best reason to invite Hennessey here.” She giggled.

I was incapable of even the smallest smile. The image conjured up—aliora torn from their homes, separated, reunited in bondage and only then being able to enjoy one of their simple, essential pleasures—suddenly made me mute and horrified. How had such a thing happened? I knew the answer to that—I had almost been part
of it, just three years ago. How could my uncle do such things? How could I have thought they were permissible? I could not fit my mind around the answers. I could not dream up an acceptable solution.

While I wrestled with guilt and anger, the aliora arranged themselves on the stage and took up their instruments. Three of them carried long, thin tubes that appeared to be hollowed-out tree limbs; but their own arms were so long and thin, and so carefully placed around the tubes, that at times it looked as though they held not one but three of the attenuated instruments. The two visiting women seated themselves and unfolded metal boxes in their laps. From where I sat, I could not tell if there were strings inside the boxes or some other device for creating music. Andrew idly juggled a handful of glass cylinders which made a loopy crystal chiming as they struck together.

The old woman addressed some question to her fellow musicians and they all grew still. Then, on some signal that I could not see, they all began playing simultaneously.

It was as if the trees in the forest suddenly sat down and began to speak; it was as if the river pursed its lacy lips to tell a tale. The aliora did not produce music as I was used to hearing it, but sounds, voices, the whispers of the woodland animals in a language suddenly ordered and comprehensible. Except that it was not comprehensible—there was no story—but there was the sense of communication, of mysteries made clear and universal truths unfolded. I sat there under the patter and sigh of their windsong and thought,
Yes, now I understand. Of course. Why did I not know before?
I was spellbound. I was ecstatic. I was ensorceled.

When the music abruptly halted, I literally gasped—as did half the humans in the room. I felt stupid and heavy, as if I had dragged myself from a woodland pool where I had lain all day letting the water take my weight. The room seemed to close in, the walls were too dense and the air was too thick with the scent of nearby bodies. Someone near me began to speak, but I could not understand her words.

Before I had time to panic, or even wonder, the music started
again. Once more I was buoyed by its soothing explanatory rhythms. The world seemed huge, suffused with sparkling diaphanous lights; every single creature, every single object within it, swayed to its preordained melody. There were no lapses, nothing did not fit in. The castle, the surrounding countryside, the provinces stretching farther away than I could even imagine, seemed part of one harmonious whole, laid out in a pattern that was beautiful and complete. I lifted my hand, as if I could stroke the weave of the tapestry. Even the fact that there was nothing substantial to feel did not lessen my understanding of the canvas. Everything was brilliantly clear.

The music stopped again, and again I was disoriented and at a loss. I had enough clarity of mind to think, in that wretched interlude,
If everyone feels as I am feeling, why would they ever allow the aliora to play for men?
Then the music began again, and I did not care that without it I was forlorn and confused; I just wanted it to continue for the rest of the night.

I couldn't say exactly how long the concert continued in this fashion. It seemed like days that we were hypnotized by the aliora, but it might have been only an hour or two. And who knows how long they would have continued playing, if not for a sudden interruption at the back of the salon. The door was flung open and a loud voice cried, “This concert can go on all night! Because I've brought another one to join the orchestra.”

And with that sudden, sickening cessation of sound, the aliora stopped playing. The human crowd produced equal numbers of protests and cries of astonishment. Some people leapt to their feet and pointed. I heard someone laugh. More distantly, I heard a soft, keening sound as if a child was crying. Slowly, because I knew what I would see, I turned in my chair.

To see my uncle Jaxon filling the doorway, his hands on his big hips, his smile breaking the dark riot of his beard. He was wearing travel-stained clothes and looked as if he had just this minute ridden in through the gate. Crouched beside him on the floor, scantily dressed and whimpering over the gold chains around her wrists, was an aliora girl who looked scarcely older than a child. She was so small, and so thin, that the strands of her long full hair seemed
more robust than her arms and legs. I could have lifted her with one arm and cradled her against me, and still had room left in my arms to hug my sister.

The gentry around me were greeting this astonishing sight with low exclamations of delight. “Another aliora! Jaxon, you promised me first bid.” “Look at how small she is! She'll be wonderful with children.” “The greatest hunter of our generation.” “Congratulations, Jaxon! Well done!”

I could not listen to them. I could not look at my uncle. Heedless of how I might appear to anyone who saw me, I struggled to my feet and hurried past the stage to the small servants' door nearby. I had not gotten very far down the hallway when I came to my knees and became sick right there in the corridor.

L
ater, of course, it was Angela who told the tale. It's possible I could have had it from Jaxon himself, except that there was no way I could have asked him the story. During the days following his arrival, I was not sure I would ever be able to speak to him again.

I don't know at what keyholes Angela listened to come by her information, but since it tallied with what I already knew, I believed her. Although I wished with all my heart that I did not.

According to Angela, Jaxon had spent two weeks in the forest by Faelyn River, hunting for aliora. He had been incredibly patient, making an almost nonexistent camp where he would lie for hours, night and day, unmoving on the forest floor. He became so familiar to the birds and wild creatures that lived in this part of the forest that they no longer feared him; they chattered in his ears and built their nests in his beard. The creeping ivy that twined around all the great oaks wrapped around one of his ankles with a slow and spiraling motion. Seeds took root in the creases and pockets of his clothes.

He stayed there so long that eventually even the aliora grew careless. Groups of three and four came wandering by, chattering as excitedly as the squirrels and the crows. He made no attempt to snare one of these travelers, but he had an idea: He would follow
them back to their home and finally see the fabled boulevards of Alora.

He waited another three days until a party of five aliora passed through—a group so large, he reasoned, that they would travel slowly and not listen for sounds on the trail behind them. Indeed, this band of travelers included two very young aliora, so young they could scarcely walk on their spindly legs, and the adults evinced much merriment as the toddlers tripped and waddled down the paths. Jaxon rose stealthily from his hiding place and followed them through the forest.

They had not gone far before the aliora he was trailing disappeared.

Jaxon stood on the path and stared about him, wondering if he might have imagined the whole thing. He had eaten very little in the past week, after all, and the forest could induce hallucinations. But he had absolutely believed they had walked before him, laughing and gesturing. Perhaps they had crossed some invisible boundary. Perhaps they had stepped through a warded door.

So, he took a deep breath and continued in the same direction, stepping boldly where the aliora had stepped—and he felt a feathery tingle along his whole body as he crossed into wonderland.

This was not the forest he had traversed so many times and slept in for half a month. This was a place of glancing white light, open blue skies, fantastical dwellings in riotous colors, and streets cobbled in alabaster. He stood on the edge of paradise and stared. Aliora were everywhere, congregating at open doorways, spilling out of the fanciful windows, calling to each other across the white streets. He could not see to the edge of the city. He could not count the aliora.

As he stood there, gaping, he became aware of a soft, incessant noise—a humming or a buzzing or a rapping—it changed as he listened, changed in pitch, changed in quality. It was as if bees flew by, then birds caught the melody and changed it to a unison trill, and then hundreds of kittens overtook them with their rough and boisterous purring. It seemed to be communication of a sort, though he would not call it language.

He would learn, in the next few days, that it was the sound of
the aliora. It was their collective voice, the harmonious reverberations of their subconscious, attuned to each other and playing back the mood of the whole.

He would say, later, that he stood there an hour watching the streets of Alora, incapable of moving forward or stepping back into the familiar emerald forest. But perhaps it was not that long; he would also learn that time, in Alora, was fluid and hard to segment. He might only have been standing there five minutes before a completely unexpected figure bounded up to him.

“Jaxon Halsing!” it exclaimed, and a few seconds later, Jaxon realized that it was a human and one that he recognized—a hunter named Jed Cortay. “I cannot believe my eyes!”

Neither could Jaxon, for this was a man he had known well. Jed Cortay had been a coarse, burly, damn-your-eyes woodsman who would take any pelt, whether or not it had value. The man who stood before him now had the same height and the same body, though considerably slimmed down, and a face with roughly the same features—yet he appeared transformed somehow. Almost how Jaxon imagined a man might look transmogrified by death and elevation to the realm of angels.

“Cortay,” Jaxon named him, and they grasped hands with tremendous vigor. At one time, they had been great friends. “What are you—is it possible? All this time I thought you were dead.”

Cortay laughed loudly, and the ubiquitous hum around them jumped with a surge of hilarity. “No! Living here—a changed man—a blessed man. Halsing, you don't know what you've stumbled onto.”

Jaxon looked around again. “It's Alora,” he said. “Or at least it matches my dreams of it.”

Cortay took him by the arm. “Your dreams could never have been this miraculous,” he assured Jaxon. “Let me show you. You will not believe it. It is too beautiful for words.”

Indeed, at this point in Angela's recital of Jaxon's tale, the descriptions became sketchy and filled with superlatives. It was as if human speech could not re-create the marvels of Alora; there were no adjectives gorgeous enough to encompass the architecture, the music, the texture, the scent of that place. Jaxon and Cortay spent
hours (perhaps minutes) wandering through that amazing city, until they at last came to the most splendid house of all. I could not visualize it from Angela's telling—“It had five stairways and no walls, except walls of ivory lace, and trees grew in the front rooms, and golden light spilled over everything”—but it was not hard to guess who lived here. The queen of the aliora, the woman who called herself Rowena.

He had seen her since that summer evening by the river when I had overheard their conversation, for his opening words to her were, “You look wearier than you did last fall.” And she replied, “I have but recently come from searching the land of humans for something I lost. I find that whenever I cross out of the boundaries of Alora, I grow tired and feel my age, but when I am home again, I am renewed and fulfilled. In a day or so, you will not be able to make such an accusation.”

“It was not an accusation,” he said. “Merely, I noticed.”

“And what I notice about you, Jaxon Halsing,” she said, “is that you are standing in my home, where you have often been invited, and where I never thought to actually see you.”

“I have decided to take you up on your offer of hospitality,” he said, “and see just how generous the aliora can be.”

She glanced at him out of her dark, slanted eyes as if assessing him—his motives or his nerve. “And are you not afraid?” she asked. “To be here—among my people and their sorcery—afraid of being held prisoner or seduced by beauty?”

“I fear nothing,” he said brazenly. “You claim that no one is kept here under duress—I wish to prove it by my own experience. You say that no one who arrives ever wishes to leave—but I tell you now I will not stay. I have come to see you in your home and walk out again.”

She extended one hand to him, so long and delicate and small that he was almost afraid to take it for fear of bruising the flawless skin. “Stay as long as you like and leave when you wish,” she said. “All that I ask is that you enjoy yourself while you are here. For this is Alora, a place of wonders, and all who abide here are filled with joy.”

He spent the next ten days in Alora. He lived in Rowena's lacework house, and at her table he ate food that was even more impossible to describe than the city itself. He spent his days drinking some strange potent brew and reminiscing with old friends. For in Alora were five men he had once known very well—hunters who had vanished some years ago and been presumed dead or enslaved. But no, here they were, happy, healthy, delighted to have him among them, constantly praising the gentleness of the aliora and the sweetness of their life among their former prey. He spent his evenings flirting with the queen of the aliora, though Angela's story did not include many of the details of that pastime.

And one day, well-fed, content, welcomed and unwatched, he snatched up Rowena's niece and dove back out through the magical boundary, into the forest he knew. He ran for hours, the weeping child in his arms, and he did not stop running until he made it clear of the forest.

And then he came to Castle Auburn to show off his prize.

 

J
AXON STAYED AT
the castle for the next three days, urged by the regent to attend the summer ball. The only time I saw him in semiprivacy was one afternoon when he came up to visit Elisandra and me in my sister's sitting room.

“How are my favorite girls?” he demanded, giving each of us a fierce hug that carried us off our feet. “Corie! You look so much like your sister! Matthew says all the young men are circling around you like hawks on the hunt. I'll be hearing an interesting announcement any day now, I suppose. And Elisandra—such a beauty. Your father would be so proud of you.”

I could not speak to him, the man I had always adored. But Elisandra took his arm with every evidence of affection, led him to her favorite sofa, and sat beside him. “I've missed you,” she said. “Tell me about your travels.”

He obliged, describing a recent visit to Faelyn Market as well as a journey farther afield, to Chillain. He made no mention of the successful hunting venture—but then, I reflected, he seldom did.
Those tales apparently were only for the ears of men, seasoned hunters and hardened warriors not affronted by tales of violence and betrayal. I wondered again how Angela had gotten the story. Jaxon reserved his more charming exploits for recitation to the ladies.

“And in Faelyn Market,” he was saying, “I purchased gifts for both of you.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and came out with slim packets wrapped in tissue and marked with our initials. I had to come forward from the chair where I had taken up residence—across the room, as far from him as I could get—to gingerly take my gift. “I think you'll be pleased,” he said. “Only girls as beautiful as you two could wear such things.”

Elisandra opened hers and gave a soft cry of delight. My fingers were clumsier but I managed to rip back the paper. Inside lay a delicate gold chain strung with rubies. Elisandra's necklet was hung with emeralds and onyx.

“Let me see you wear them,” he asked next, and perforce I fastened the chain around my neck as Elisandra donned hers as well. It was the perfect length, the largest central jewel coming to rest in the hollow of my throat. We both went to the full-length mirror in its dark oval stand to admire our newfound treasures.

“Uncle Jaxon, this is so lovely,” Elisandra said, crossing the room to his side. He had pulled himself to his feet and was smiling down at us with great satisfaction. “Thank you so very much for thinking of me.” And she hugged him, then stretched up to kiss him on the cheek.

I followed her more slowly and did not speak with quite as much enthusiasm. “Yes—very beautiful. I can wear the necklace with my new ballgown.”

Jaxon laughed and swept me into an embrace that took no account of my reluctance. When he released me, he caught me by the shoulders and peered shrewdly down at me. “You're not my usual sunny Corie, but I know what ails you,” he said. “Don't worry—there are plenty of beaux out there if this one doesn't suit you. No need to fear that you won't be wed.”

At this, I could not help staring at him, possibly the first time I had met his gaze since he arrived at the castle. My expression
amused him, for his laugh rolled out again and he gave me a final hug.

“I'll see you both at the ball,” he promised. “Save a dance for me.”

And he was finally gone.

I turned my stare on Elisandra. “He thinks I'm mooning over some
beau
?” I choked out. “What could he—why would—I don't know what to say to him, I don't know what to think—”

Elisandra had moved to the door behind Jaxon, and now she stood across the room, watching me from a distance. She knew something of what I was feeling, for I had wept in her arms the night after the young aliora was brought to the castle. But I had not told her Angela's story—I was not capable of repeating it.

“He asked me yesterday why you seemed so preoccupied,” she said. “This is a man you have loved your whole life. You cannot expect him not to notice when you suddenly do not speak to him.”

“And you said—?”

“I told him you were heartsick. Which is the truth. Although I knew he would misinterpret my words.”

I shook my head and sank to the chair where I had taken refuge before. “I am—he is—I don't know that I can bear to be in the same room with him. That girl—that child—and he stole her from Alora—”

Elisandra crossed the room and came to a halt directly in front of me. My head was in my hands and I did not look up; I stared at her fine silk slippers through a haze of falling tears.

“He is the same man he always was,” she said calmly. “He loves you as much as he ever did. He has hunted aliora for twenty years, and you loved him for seventeen of those years. What has changed? How is he different?”