Tenebrae Manor (17 page)

Deadsol pressed for the exit with Comets, his curled silk shoes leaving behind prints of greasy cream on the already putrid floor.

Deadsol sighed cheekily as he left, whispering as though only to himself, “Never mind about the mess. In the dark, all cats are grey. Good night, good night.”

18: Madlyn Attempts An Avowal

Bordeaux had suspected for some time now that, to a certain extent, the black rose in his possession was responsible in part for the outbreak of golems. His time had been consumed; enveloped by the stony confines of his room in the high tower, reading the mighty tome borrowed from Rune, so that his eyes ached from the excessive strain. Time and again he lifted his head from his desk and rubbed gingerly at his forehead, wondering whether the ancient ink of the book's pages had imprinted itself on his forehead as he slumbered heavily upon its open face. The wood golems worshipped something known as a black rose tree; they were notoriously territorial. This he knew from his studies. The resemblance of the brooch to the sketches drawn in the old book was undeniable - the onyx hue of the almost crystalline petals, rough and unyielding to the touch. And such properties and notes had led him to believe that the brooch was a random blossom from nothing other than a black rose tree.

From this accusation there bloomed a budding hope; perhaps, should the rose be returned to the golems, they would cease their attack on Tenebrae Manor. This attack, of which the effects were increasingly prominent, was a slow disintegration. Just as rust bites at sword and shield with an omnipresent corrosion, so too did the golems claw at the walls of the house and the vines and branches of nearby trees tightened their stranglehold on the facade. It was fast becoming a dire predicament; several rooms of Tenebrae Manor had become completely inaccessible, due in turn to a smothering overgrowth invading. The manor, once so abundant in isolated rooms shut off to all life, now felt the tightness of its constriction to such extent that the residents had to choose their paths carefully - lest they be turned about by obstruction.

Bordeaux was relieved that no golem had yet been able to find its way inside the house, where it may pose a threat to any of the more ignorant or invalid denizens such as Madlyn, Rune or the Mute Chef. Yet as the time passed and as the effects of the invasion increased, the crimson demon's cause for concern amplified to a point where he would try anything to save his home. Perhaps his propitiation would please the creatures.

He would admit himself that his idea was riddled with flaws. Who could say that a black rose tree actually existed? In his centuries of existence, Bordeaux could not vouch for its tangibility. Was there only one? This answer too, evaded him. The scribblings of the book were vague at best. Perhaps it stood concealed as one entity in the far reaches of a forgotten taiga or as manifold about the world's more isolated corners.

There then remained the question of the brooch. With no plausible evidence of a black rose tree, who was he to say that the brooch was one of its trimmings? Libra had been impossibly dismissive of the whole subject; unable or unwilling to disclose how the rose came to be in her possession. But most pressing on Bordeaux's mind was the motives of the wood golems. In his heightening pessimism, he failed to see how returning the rose would end the attacks. He had too little proof and too much to lose. If the golems remained abundant after his relinquishing of the brooch, then Bordeaux would be at a loss and concede that the golems' violence was purely a mindless survival tactic. Tenebrae Manor would fall, its residents exiled - and where else would there be appropriate isolation for the magic of an eternal night to flourish?

The crimson demon had travelled the entire world, happening upon Tenebrae Manor by purely desperate coincidence. He could not see lightning striking twice on his luck. Some would certainly perish; Edweena would turn to ash on the sunrise, while the fantastical horrors associated with denizens like Comets and Sinders could not hide amongst society as Deadsol or Libra could. Bordeaux winced at the thought; he had been in such a position before, living in human society - forced to remain enigmatic, only to change his identity every few generations. He sighed to think of the friends he had seen come and go, die in their own time, while he was cursed to live on.

With these thoughts plaguing his mind, Bordeaux resolved to give the rose back to the golems. How he would do this he was not sure. He could not risk a confrontation with them, after being taken off guard by a random golem almost cost him his life. Bordeaux had to leave the black rose in a place where the golems might find it.

It was beyond the furthest frontage of the manor that he found an appropriate pedestal. Further past the rusted letterbox and beyond the first cluster of birch and conifer, Bordeaux knew of a small clearing, surely no more than fifty metres in its radius. And it was here that there stood, rather forlornly isolated, a charred tree stump. Bordeaux had envisioned the stump to have once been another faceless tree in the forest, perhaps struck down by a thunderbolt and seemingly poisoning the earth about its circumference, so that no other tree dared blossom nearby. Yet its segregated status made it a perfectly exposed pedestal for the crimson demon to place the rose upon it, where it glistened as though a native plumage of the blackened tree stump.

Though appearing so natural to the scene, Bordeaux knew that if his thoughts were correct, its camouflage would not be of any matter. For he assumed the wood golems were drawn towards it and had they sensed that the rose lay within the confines of Tenebrae Manor, then they should be more than capable of locating it on a stump in an open clearing.

So as he placed it in position, the grass lay damp with dew, the air crisp with cold and Bordeaux's breath hung in the air like mist. Sidling slowly back into the trees, Bordeaux continued to pause sporadically and glance over his shoulder to confirm the whereabouts of the rose. It remained where he had left it, shimmering with moonlight, glaring menacingly as though it had sight of its own. Patience was of utmost importance; he would have to wait a little while to see if the relic disappeared. And what if it didn't? His desperate plan would reach its end and he would be back to the drawing board.

Bordeaux sighed longingly and too pessimistic to pray for hope from any deity that would listen, made his way back home where he resolved to rest in his room.

****

She had deemed her theft as daring, however the inane Madlyn had afterwards found herself to be more wary of the venom of her superior to the extent of paranoid fear. She carried on about her tasks, answering to Miss Libra's impossible expectations with her native albeit reluctant servitude. There had been innumerable times gone where she had considered the possibility of a personal renegade towards Libra's demands, only to be hindered by the directionless performance of her hindered mind. In the all-knowing amber eyes of the lady of the manor, she would suspect rebellion.

Lady Libra had said nothing to her about the disappearance of the black rose brooch and Madlyn's immaturity suggested that just maybe she had gotten away with the deed. But something of the savvy coiled about her chest, though a feeling of very foreign nature to the maladroit Madlyn, she trusted it and spent the hours of her lengthening reprieve in fear of impending punishment.

Her knees shivering with a combination of fright and cold, young Madlyn carried a tea tray up the many flights of the central stairwell and timidly approached Libra's door. She knocked hesitantly, defying her own clumsiness by balancing the tray across the palm of her other hand. No response came. Madlyn felt a brush of adrenalin sweeping through her, pushing her into the dark room and placing the tray on a low table next to the chaise lounge. She spun about quickly, her ponytail whipping her in the back as she raced for the exit. Her egress was on the horizon and, for a moment, it felt insurmountably far away, the darkness of the room clawing at her from behind as she plunged through the yawning gap of the open doors. The door shut swiftly behind her; she had made it. Libra was not there.

Back pressed to the door, Madlyn's attention was arrested by a wayward bat that squeaked from its inverted perch on the window to her left. To her right, her shadow was dragged into the umbra by the cold steel shafts of moonlight that permeated the dusky air.

Kneeling to clip her shoe tighter and to adjust her stubborn stockings, Madlyn arose and ran back down the hall to the stairs from whence she had come. She felt a veil of cold sweat stinging her skin and her lungs burned with exhaustion as she charged back into her room at the base of the castle.

Struggling in vain to regulate her frantic breathing, Madlyn made an attempt to compose herself, wiping the sweat from her palms on her dirty smock. Her slowing breath filled the silence around her as she felt for a match with which to light to stubby candle that latched to her little table.

With the match in her grasp it became a struggle to steady her hand, for she almost dropped it twice before striking it on the stone wall. The match head burst into life and for a split second, Madlyn could discern an ominous shape of an intruder in the light of the flame. She screamed, the match whistling from her grasp and extinguishing on the floor. Yet it would only remain dark for a heartbeat; the candle sparked with a blood red flame that revealed Libra standing chillingly close to Madlyn, surrounded by those claustrophobic walls. Her eyes - the sticky globules of puddled amber pierced with violence.

"Hello Madlyn."

Madlyn gasped for air and felt her eyes heat up as if she were about to cry. Libra’s stare bore into her with an intense hatred; venom that she had not seen before for her overbearing superior. Long had Libra threatened her but this was different. Madlyn was at a loss to predict what Libra would do.

“Did I startle you?”

Madlyn struggled for words. “I just left a tray for you. In your room.”

“Very good.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I wasn’t.”

They stared at one another for a second.

“So I just left it there.”

“I am sure you did, Madlyn. You always leave things as you find them, don’t you?” said Libra.

Madlyn gaped for an answer.

“I know you stole my jewelry, Madlyn. What else have you been hiding from me?”

“I didn’t! I didn’t mean to!”

“Shush.” Libra raised her pale hand to Madlyn’s lips, “Allow me to make something clear, Madlyn. This house is mine. Tenebrae Manor. You steal from me, I can send you back into the forest where we found you, left to fend for yourself. Or perhaps we can make it worse. I can make it so that you never see your little hero Bordeaux anymore. I see how you pine for him. Does that sound like an apt punishment?”

“No. Miss, please don’t!”

“Just remember this, Madlyn. I always get my way. Don’t you ever forget it, little girl.”

As if to confirm her words, Libra’s gaze continued to ooze with poison; Madlyn shifted uncomfortably, desperate for Libra to leave her alone. This was her room after all and her sanctuary; the very paramount of her discomfort had breached her only haven from the thrashings of strenuous demands.

“I am going back to my room now,” said Libra. “You are not to disturb me for a few hours. Not for anything. Is that understood?”

Madlyn, who had pulled her lower lip into the clutches of her teeth, nodded quickly.

“Good.”

Libra tossed a curl of her dark hair over her shoulder and left the room, leaving Madlyn to slouch and gasp for air. The kitchen girl was free of those constricting eyes and dropped like a rag doll onto her bed. Those piercing pupils appeared in her mind’s eye and she shuddered to recall them. She knew she had to do something. She did not want to think of life without Bordeaux there, even were they to be distanced apart.

A thought dawned on her. He could protect her. If there were anyone to rival Libra’s echelon, it would be Bordeaux. Madlyn’s heart raced; she would have to confess her feelings properly. The brooch must have confused him, the message lost in translation. It was time to stop pretending, it had to be her that made the move. She had waited too long for Bordeaux to sweep her from her feet like the knights in her fairytales. Maybe, even in this world of shadows and fantasy, those knights did not exist.

****

“… Plumage of roses, coal black branches and a glowing heart made of wood that remains an object of great power… This is futile.”

Bordeaux beat his fist on the great book and groaned with frustration. He drained the remains of his wine glass and stood achingly. Adjusting the lapels of his burgundy coat, he stretched, his back and legs pained from being seated for so long. The book he had borrowed was so long, yet several reads from cover to cover had revealed nothing prominent. Bordeaux had had no idea that there was so much recorded on wood golems; despite his now knowledgeable brain on the matter, he could not find any anchored reason as to why the golems were destroying Tenebrae Manor.

He took up the wine glass in his hand, forgetting that he had just emptied its contents and proceeded to clutch the bridge of his aquiline nose vexingly. His eyes remained shut fast and he tapped his foot impatiently. But then, flinging his arms skyward in a gesture of defeat he moved to the windowsill, where he appeared to leap into the open air. Yet he had merely clasped hold of the ivy that had grown so thick against his wall that he was able to climb to the roofs of Tenebrae Manor with ease.

Reaching a higher part of the roof where the pitch stood at a comfortable angle for him to stand upright and where he was able to brush the heart-shaped leaves of ivy from his coat, he hissed, “Let it burn to ashes.”