Delphinia awoke to sunlight softly warming her blankets. For a moment her mind was untroubled till like lights all of the present issues in her life lit up. Her gaze lifted to the opposite wall of hard stone, reminding her of her presence in the Markgraf’s castle. Next to her bed in a saucer lay a sparkling ring, a diamond encircled by pearls and gold scrolling. It was a princess’s ring, a token of ideal love. Her gaze fell further to the breakfast tray her maid had brought, and on the tray was a small vase of velvet pink roses.

A susurration across the room caught her attention. She saw Gervaise’s stooped form in the drifting light, laying out her clothing.

“Gervaise? You brought me flowers?”

“They were lying in a cluster at your door. I put them in some water for you.”

“Oh.” Delphinia fingered the roses. A sick feeling washed over her as she realized all signs pointed to Christoph actually loving her.

She sat up in the bed and slipped the ring onto her finger. As she swung around she heard shouts from the courtyard below. She made a small sound of dismay, bringing Gervaise’s attention to her once more.

“Allow me to assist you, Fraulein.” Gervaise pulled Delphinia’s wooden leg carefully from its trunk and moved to her quickly, helping her to affix its harness beneath her nightdress. She watched Delphinia for a moment as she moved unsteadily to the window.

She is as useful as Beatrice, Delphinia mused, and unlike the old nurse, Gervaise had the good grace to stay out of Delphinia’s business. Or at least she did not try to hinder it, even if she suspected Delphinia’s secret longings.

Delphinia cried out as she looked below. Her fiance was engrossed in a duel with Oskar Weisse. She felt a chill of horror till, at closer look, she saw the protective blunts on the ends of their swords. Both men were thoroughly immersed in their contest. Christoph was an expert fencer, and Oskar had a high color that Delphinia had never seen across his blanched face, and believed he might be experiencing real enjoyment.

Delphinia withdrew the cluster of roses from her bedside and clutched them as she moved to the balcony. As she did so, the men were finishing their contest. Christoph had won, and Oskar was pulling himself from the paving with a satisfied grin. As they clutched hands, Christoph glanced upward to her window.

“Guten morgen, my betrothed.”

Delphinia curtsied briefly. “Guten morgen. I see an introduction is unncecessary.”

Oskar followed Christoph in his glance with a more thoughtful look at Delphinia. “An agreeable fellow is this young lord you’ve promised to wed.”

“What is that you hold, darling?”

“Flowers from you, of course,” she responded.

Christoph cocked his head. It was not often that he looked bewildered. “Not I.”

Delphinia stepped back from the balcony rail briefly as she contemplated the import of his words. “Then…”

Suddenly her eyes met Oskar’s. His skeptical glance confirmed her fears. The Markgraf did not know of Christoph’s presence in the castle. It was a great deal she must communicate in a moment of silence, but she managed with a baleful look at him.

“I must confess the part of the rake,” Oskar said readily. “I am aware of your lady’s passion for pink.”

Christoph looked taken aback. “You have been bringing gifts to Lady Delphinia?”

“I would own to it did I not fear you would remove the blunt from your sword.” Oskar lifted a brow carelessly.

“My lord Christoph, there is no reason for alarm. Oskar has been kind to me in my stay here, but I believe his heart…” She realized she chanced to say more than she should about Oskar’s private business.

“… is elsewhere,” Oskar finished briefly, and a shadowed look covered his face once more.

The conversation died away and Delphinia moved back into the shadows of her room. Gervaise was gone, but her clothing was laid out, and she knew the maid would return to help her dress and collect her breakfast dishes. For a moment her heart turned over as she breathed deeply of the fragranced roses, longing and hope sending her blood tingling.

But amidst the hope was doubt. The Markgraf was betrothed and had shown every sign of carrying out his promise to Adelia. What did this gesture mean, and what would her acceptance of Christoph mean to him?

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

Delphinia lay on the floor of the old gazebo. She had no tears. Her emotions were a lump in her throat, and her spirits were too subdued to release them and give her peace. Instead she languished and listened to the soft pattern of rain on the sagging roof above her. She heard footsteps on the crisp leaves and turned lazily to the side to peer into the forest gloom that separated her from the burg. Her filmy shawl stretched across her shoulders as she glanced here and there, expecting Oskar's dusky head to appear at any moment beneath the canopy of trees.

Instead a white booted foot fell on the step before her, startling her. The heeled pearl-like shoe was buckled with gold and laced with white satin ribbon. A preternatural disquiet rose in her, chilling her blood, blighting her melancholy for instant fear. The shoe was too fine for Oskar's, too small for Gauvain's.

Delphinia leaned back on her hands, her shawl spilling behind her to the rotted boards. In careful study she watched the figure advancing on her. His hair was a halo of gold massed around a small, slender head. In the midst of his pale features blue eyes stared. His lips were twisted in amusement. His coat, not quite his most fine, was a confection of ivory adorned with new lace, which he must have purchased during his recent stay in France. She wondered dimly if he had sent his mistress packing as he had intended, or if those pretty implications were a matter of courtesy before their relationship advanced the next step.

His eyes fell to her fallen shawl, her damp and stained gown, her bedraggled hair and flushed face. "I thought I would find you this way."

"How did you find me at all?"

"I made it my business to know where you where."

She rose and sat more properly, arranged her shawl and clasped her hands in her lap. "Lord Christoph, why have you come to me?"

"I love you. I want to marry you." He said it with such seriousness that she felt slightly hot in the face, though behind his words was irony, for he was stating what was obvious.

"My father must have told you where I was."

"Of course he did. He does not want you here. I want to take you to my chateau, Lady Delphinia. You will love it. I have spent weeks preparing it for you."

"That's not what--" Delphinia shook off the impulse to speak plainly. "Do you actually love me, Lord Christoph?"

"I have loved you as long as I have known you. And I want to marry you, if you will have me."

He knelt beside her on the rotten stairs, and Delphinia gazed at him through the gloom. She felt Christoph's cool hand move over her own and pull it toward him. In the distance she saw a tall, broad figure moving slowly beyond the castle bounds and caught her breath.

She felt for the first time that she was in control. She did not think of herself as holding Christoph's heart in her hands. She looked at his finely-tailored clothes and pale, curling hair and thought behind those trappings there must be no human being, no soul.

An evening bird gave a sorrowing call from somewhere close by them. Delphinia glanced away nervously, but Christoph's gaze remained fastened on her face. "Will you have me, Lady Delphinia?" he asked, and she started at the low, thrilling note in his voice.

"Yes, my lord Christoph," she said on a cadence of laughter that stuck in her throat. He put his arms around her, held her closely, and she thought, you will not be the one to use me. You may have your celebrity marriage, but you will serve my purposes as well. The dark figure advanced on them ever closer.

"You are as beautiful as a dream. I have so much I have yearned to share with you. Only a week before I was walking throughout my chateau, looking over its empty garden, sorrowing for you. Wanting to hear your footsteps near mine in the corridor, to see the shadow of your form on the wall. The larders are stocked with delicacies to tempt you to decadence. The Lady's chamber is newly refurbished in your preferred color."

She looked at him with astonishment. "It is all pink? Truly?"

"Everything that can be pink, is pink, my darling." He held her close against his cheek, stroking her hair.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

From my story Cambriel, in November 2006.

The next morning, I went out into the city alone.

The sky was gray and everything felt dead in the cold mist. Even though I was frightened of the rusty elevator, I stepped inside and lowered myself as I had seen Shelley do. Every time the wind blew, the cage swayed, clanging against the shaft, jarring me mentally far more than physically.

I knew a thrill when I stepped out of it. For once there was no one to check what I did. My mantle wrapped firmly around me, I moved furtively along the alley. I did not know where I would go—only that I would see this place that humans had long forsaken—and at a time when the werewolves would be at their weakest.

I crossed a deserted parking lot which weeds had mostly overtaken. There was one car which was dilapidated almost beyond recognition. Every available crevice was stuffed with straw where birds had made their nests. As I moved across the pavement, a vision came to me in a blinding flash.

I was carrying a heavy burden, my strength from a surge of adrenaline. A trail of blood followed me, darkening the cracked pavement with crimson. My mind moved from one thought to the other—from the past to the present—and I could see shifting images of horror and blood.

In the adjacent field I lay my bundle, then picked up a shovel and started digging. Blood covered the front of my dress. I moaned and wailed as I dug up the dry, dusty earth, wiping my running nose on my dirty sleeve.

It took hours to dig this grave. I had to crawl inside and trowel out the earth. I shook all over as I did so, barely able to suppress the scream rising in my throat. Shakily I crawled partly out, fell in again, then dragged myself onto the grass, dropping my head near the linen-wrapped bundle.

“My darling,” I whispered. “I failed you. Forgive me.”

Then I dragged the form into the grave as gently as I could and started covering it up. Tears streamed down my face as I did so.

The vision affected my physically. I felt it pierce my heart, and I began to cry senselessly as I made my way across the parking lot. There were no spots of blood on the pavement—as there had been in my vision. They would have faded long ago. However, in the adjacent field there was a pile of pieces of asphalt, mostly sunken into the ground.

I approached it, knowing as I did so that it was that grave—lain undisturbed for a hundred years. In it were the darkest of my memories.

Labels: excerpt

Delphinia moved past them, her fingers clutching the handle of her cane with deep consternation. She felt herself adrift as before, the night in transit with Adelia, when she had sought the peace of nature and dreamed fervently, and wakened to find her friend abdicated. She threw herself near the river, on soft green grass amid snowy drifts of edelweiss.

"There is no one," she whispered, behind her closed eyes reflecting on the self-serving expression of Oskar, the cold looks of Gauvain, Adelia's crafty smile, and Beatrice's condemnation.

She turned in a fever with her face to the grass, inhaling soil, tasting dew. A fragrance rose in her nostrils: a soft crush of sound on the grass reached her. Through bleary eyes Delphinia saw a wavering shape blotting out the sun. She blinked away her fevered tears. The shape knelt.

"Be still, my sister, my luckless other self. You are not alone." A fairy-like touch alighted on her shoulder.

"I love him," Delphinia whispered in fever, "and it is hopeless."

A cold hand slipped under her own in the grass. Delphinia felt herself urged to her feet. She stood and walked beside the shade as bid. Together they looked over the Rhine, glimmering in impossible silvered beauty beneath black cliffs.

Her heart thudded dully in her chest. She dared not glance at the being next to her. She knew her voice, her scent, as though they had been united every day of their lives. Whatever spectral gift lie between them, Delphinia feared to disintegrate by searching for more of Oriente that she now sensed.

"My dear," Oriente whispered in a soft, musical voice. It was then Delphinia realized the dumb girl spoke in death, restored to perfection by Heaven, perhaps. But it was no human voice in the air between them. It resounded in Delphinia's mind, "you long for the restoration of the past days you have shared with your love. I can help you, but I must gain human form. In this castle lies the ingredients to my reanimation. In the library, a book."

Oriente then imparted a plan to Delphinia that was complicated, dark and even horrible. Portions terrified her.

"Why do you come to me, ask this of me? There is one who would give his life to resurrect your living breath, who would not shirk the terrible duties you require."

Oriente faced her with a cold eye. Delphinia stared at her, witnessed her powerful beauty, her straight form. The hint of wickedness about her was an additional opiate to the rapture her presence stirred. "Are you the self-same girl?" Delphinia asked. "How can this be?"

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

The ramshackle structure was an impressionistic smear in the wind, partially obliterated by wind-burned twists of trees, mottled in patches of white paint clinging and bare, pale clapboards.

The pathway was a tangled mess of vines over cracked concrete, morning glories glowing pale purple with blanched green leaves.

The structure gave the impression of lacking, leaving a sense of aching, and yet also of abundance, profusion and self-sufficiency.

I was only a boy when I first saw this place. I didn't have the nerve to come closer yet, but I knew I would come back when the impression had settled in my mind, and I had thought of what I must do and how.

Labels: excerpt

Tarquin knew he dreamed, but he knew the irrational fear of the dream. He did not know if he was afraid of the woman, or afraid for her, because he had no information about her additional to her glaring eyes and black hair whipping in the wind like a tattered standard. The dream, which might be a vision, centered around her face and her voice, which spoke only two words: “Save me.”

The dreams came nearly every night now, similar, but increasingly explicable, and he was beginning to believe the woman was real.

He lay for a moment staring at the ceiling, turning the facts over in his mind. Her words indicated helplessness. Her eyes did not. The contradiction spearheaded his confusion. He did not recognize the gray beach, which appeared to surround a barren wasteland.

Sunlight filtered through the blinds from his window, covering the bed with pale bands of light.

Tarquin rose and reached for his shirt, buttoned it, then opened the blinds to reveal smooth hills dotted with leafless trees. Sunlight dazzled the frost on brown, shorn grass.

He could hear his father shuffling around upstairs, muttering to himself. Tarquin made toast and coffee in the kitchen, feeling more detached from his surroundings after the dream, a feeling he had experienced before.

Crane shuffled down the stairs, and Tarquin offered him a half-hearted smile. "Coffee?"

"Thank you. You slept in this morning." Crane took a seat at the kitchen table and accepted a cup, then drank it slowly.

"It's my day off." Usually Tarquin was by this time gone to any part of Chary's wide, flat countryside, surveying the new territory in service to the queen. With Chary's chilly, forbidding climate, the job dictated a resistance to elements which Tarquin had acquired through years of experience.

He added to the court's map as he went, documenting rivers, caves and cliffs. The queen, Electra, wanted to access the small continent's resources as soon as they could be discovered.

Tarquin opened the blinds in the kitchen, spilling white light over the table and sink. Crane squinted and looked out over the land. "It's a cold day," he commented. "I can't believe Gemi's gone riding. She'd better get it out of her system before the winter storms hit."

"That won't stop her," Tarquin returned. "She'd rather suffer frostbite than stay indoors with the likes of us."

Crane studied Tarquin thoughtfully. "You don’t look like yourself."

"I'm not." Not meeting his father's eyes, he studied his coffee cup. His eyes locked on the black pool there, where a shape was beginning to form. Crane was saying something but Tarquin wasn't listening.

He could see her there, hovering just beneath the surface, her angular face and long black hair.

He returned to reality with a gasp, feeling drained. Crane was staring at him with interest.

"Is there an insect in your coffee?" he asked with a chuckle.

Tarquin tossed the dregs into the sink and left the cup to clatter there. "I'm going out. Want anything?"

"Tell Gelin to open the rookery. The birds will want fresh air this morning. Going toward the palace?"

"Not if I can help it."

"If you see Gemi tell her to let out Steban. I haven't ridden him in over two weeks."

"Will do."

"Confound it, you're distracted, Tarquin. What is wrong with you?"

Tarquin's lips narrowed to a thin line. He paused briefly, but no words would come, and quickly stepped from the kitchen, into the backyard toward the rookery.

Tarquin unlatched the wire-enclosed gate and the birds sprang toward the opening eagerly. The cold air was invigorating, carrying the smell of burning wood. One white lorynx sailed down to him and he lifted a gloved hand.

“Jacus.”

“Good morning, master. How are you?”

He stroked the bird's soft white plumage. “I could be better,” he said ruefully.

“You look tired. Your dreams were disturbed again,” the bird guessed.

“What if I told you I were going on a journey?”

“Then I would make plans to accompany you,” Jacus answered promptly.

Tarquin smiled at the creature's answer. “I believe I’ve lost my reason.”

“You're the sanest of them.” The lorynx's gold-colored eyes met his own reassuringly.

Labels: excerpt, The Immortal

I scraped into the night, a primordial world swarming outside my window, warm, fetid Paris air and pestilence.

I scraped at an old canvas by the glow of a candle. The excess of paint and grime came up in disgusting ribbons around my gloved hands, and I wiped at it absently, never taking my eyes from the canvas, from the face that glowed with light into the early morning darkness.

My master did not arrive for another hour. In the dark, quiet emptiness I brooded over the beacon-like face, the pale countenance and eyes the color of an ocean that must be boundless and bottomless, so deep and variant was the color.

The painting had obviously been crafted from the most costly materials. The unaffordable lapis was dashed liberally over the canvas, as the subject wore an axtravagant sapphire-colored gown to accentuate the color of her eyes.

The warm gloom around me was soon dispelled by the sound of footsteps. Giraud came into the room and put his things down, drew off his coat, and came over to inspect my progress.

"Gisele, you have an instinct," he commented, referring to my declaration the previous day that something was definitely beneath the bleak landscape portrait he had salvaged.

"Where did you find this painting?"

He averted his eyes. "It was in an alley, with many others, discarded."

"You have an instinct as well, Giraud," I said.

I knew that my employer was a thief as well as an art restorer. I asked the question because I desired to know more about the painting. I was not troubled by the dishonest taint to my work. There were so few things a woman alone in Paris could do for work. I would keep this and dispel my troubled conscience occasionally.

Though it was late summer, and hot, the sun seemed never to rise that day. The sky began to glow later that morning through fog the color of hydrochloric acid haze. The air felt equally stifling in my lungs, and I was not sorry to remain in a small, dark room, with a candle to illuminate that work.

I stayed in the studio after my master was gone. The painting was now nearly completely restored. I would coat it with a protective varnish once I was sure my treatment was dried.

I took a pile of heavy burlap tarpaulins and dropped them near the canvas. I balled my sweater under my head and crouched near the painting, watching it in the last spurts of my dying candle, till my heavy eyelids closed, and I slept deeply.

Labels: excerpt, The Awakening

The prince

They were closing in on me, though their movements were ever so subtle. They looked at me, and averted their eyes when I saw them staring. I knew I must stand out from the dancers in my plain clothes, but there was something more to it than that.

Suddenly a hand grabbed my wrist. Grips came around my arms. I cried out, frightened. I found myself leaning against my dance partner and staring as Angelica approached me. Her eyes had gone pale: the pupils were slits, even though the room was shadowed.

The grip on my arms tightened. "You fool," he said to me. "I told you to leave, that it was dangerous for you."

I turned and saw that Lysander held me. I was speechless as when we had last met, each time with the expectation that I would not see him again. I was so beguiled by his presence I could say nothing intelligent.

Impatiently he looked passed me to the others that had crowded close, dispelling them with a glinting look. In a moment it became clear to me.

They were all wolves, and he was their prince.

Labels: excerpt

They knew a peace and solace in the old summerhouse that was mixed with pain. A cold wind with a bitter note of burning timber filled Delphinia's lungs as she stood in the doorway, watching Oskar's terrible looks.

He was like a restless cat pacing, penned in by his own grief, about to fight, like a cat, with unbending will.

She too had bitter memories in this place. They were so few, so brief, but they consumed all of her. Gauvain would never hold her again. Soon he would belong to someone else, and she had not even the consolation of his love. He viewed her and her love as utterly wrong. Now that she understood the integrity in him she knew he would not spare her another look. This mingled bitterly with the sweet sting of knowledge that she had found, she was convinced, the person she had sought all of her life, someone who had loved her genuinely and unreservedly.

In that moment she knew she would never marry Christoph. She felt equal to the burden of disapproval, loneliness and perhaps even poverty. She saw herself hobbling, hulking in the shadows of a London alley and was not daunted. The only thing she feared now was the ownership of a soulless man who had never wanted for anything, who would soon realize the deep imperfection of his pretty new piece.

"'Her eyes are with her thoughts, and they are far away,'" quoth Oskar softly.

Delphinia was startled. "They are in England," she said.

"You have a serenity about your looks that seems much at odds with the scenes I have witnessed in the past two days."

"Peace comes with decision," she said, "no matter the decision. And what is your interpretation of what you have seen?"

"I have seen that you and my brother are in love, and that he is to marry your friend. Through a system of errors not yet explained to me you arrived in her place, became fond of Gauvain, and now you are to play your original role of organizing the bride."

"Everything you have said is correct, but there may be things you believe that are not correct."

"If you think so, how do you allow me into your presence alone?"

"Because..." Because she knew too much about him to be worried for her virtue, she thought. She sensed that Oskar's ardour lay in the grave forever.

"Because men are not the threat protective mamas and strident fathers would have maidens believe. Sometimes we are the threat."

Oskar laughed. "That is only too terribly true. I lost my poor virtue to a maid like yourself."

"Tell me about her," Delphinia said lightly, but suddenly the lingering wisteria and decay scent closed in on her, stifling her breath. The wind was like a caress of silk across her face.

"She is dead," he said. "My brother separated us, and she died alone of a lingering illness."

"It is Oriente," Delphinia said, because she knew it was what he was implying. "Can you forgive him?"

"How can I forgive someone who repeats the same sin again, who regrets not his wrong? He seeks now to punish himself far worse than I ever could." He looked at Delphinia more closely. "Or perhaps I could punish him still. See how strictly he can hold to his lofty integrity."

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

I stared into those eyes, memerized like a mouse by a cobra. Something whispered in the back of my mind to take caution, but I could not logically associate it with the strange but evidently benign gathering.

"Hello," she said, her eyes sweeping me up and down, delineating the plainness of my clothing, saying as politely as possible, you were not invited.

"What's going on?" I stammered. "I thought this building was abandoned."

"Why, so did we," she returned. "We thought we would have a gathering without disturbing anyone." I could not tell if she meant for me to go, or if she meant to apologize.

"I'm Angelica," she said, turning and, over her shoulder, "You are welcome to join."

I was soon so lost in the whirling costumes, haunting music and tantalizing sweets I forgot that I was an intruder. Others watched me while they danced, and I stared at them; they were all smiling, but not overtly.

Soon I was invited to dance. I drew into the whirlwind and was passed from partner to partner, as though I was a novelty in the group, something desirable. I sensed the interest of everything. Soon I grew breathless, and there was that haunting suspicion that something was wrong.

Labels: excerpt, The Empty City

They were dancing, dozens of men and women, in tattered costumes that looked as though they had moldered in attic trunks for a hundred years or more. I knew not one among them, but I stared raptly at the largest gathering of people I had seen in years.

The source of the music was an old crank phonograph, loud even above the talk and laughter. No one seemed to notice me, so I drew closer to watch. The dance tune it played was lively, but hectic would be a better description for it than cheerful, and the flaws in the record the phonograph played rasped and crackled as loudly as the music, making it sound as dilapidated as the dancers' costumes, as the room itself.

Spread along one wall was a tempting assortment of sweets. Where had they secured this repast? I looked at the food hungrily. I had probably forgotten what such treats tasted like. They would be better than I could imagine. I found myself drifting into the room.

Finally someone noticed me. A woman in a watered silk gown of rose mauve, with long, curling black hair and eyes like coals. Her lips curved in a smile of welcome I had not expected. My eyes widened, and I stared.

She turned to her dancing partner, whose gold hair was bound in a queue and whispered something to him with a sly look. As her eyes drifted back to me I colored, certain somehow she must be mentioning my intrusion.

It was very poor manners to barge into a party this way, uninvited... once. But if only I could speak to someone, ask what this was about, I would not trespass further. I only wanted to speak to someone.

The reel ended. There was crackle through the horn that reminded me of electricity, which was only a distant memory to me. The couple broke apart, and the dark-haired woman moved toward me purposefully.

As I met her gaze I felt a brief shock.
Her black eyes were like two bottomless pits.

Labels: excerpt, The Empty City

I stood in the stillness for a long moment, watching dust motes drift on the gold-colored space, aware of shadows shifting subtly, the sun rising.

I moved to the window and watched the rising sun with a sense of awe. I had not seen it in longer than I could remember; it brought memories of warmer, gentler times that grew around me momentarily stronger than the present darkness. I dreamed of Lysander, though briefly, for we had shared such a small time, and then further back my mind's eye reached, to my time with my mother.

She had disappeared when I was sixteen or seventeen. My father I had never known, and without her I was completely alone, except for old Agatha on the roof, here, and some other neighbors.

It was not a question of my dependence on her. She and I needed each other emotionally far more than I needed a parent. Our world was too decentralized already to allow for the traditional means of income. We both foraged for what we had. But without her, I noticed the cold that had slowly permeated our world, and all alone I found that void unbearable.

I never learned any clue about where she had gone, though others I knew disappeared around the time she did with the same abruptness.

I listened to the morning sounds with a sense of acceptance: the clear air ringing in my ears, branches scraping a glass window, even the faint chirp of a bird. In that void I heard music rasping out of tune, echoing somewhere from the reaches below.

Startled, I focused on the sound, prickles going all over me as I realized I was not alone. But a wolf could not play music and a human, no human could give me cause for fear now. I, once timorous of strangers, would be happy to meet anyone.

I moved slowly down the stairs toward the ghost sound. With the stirrings I created it vanished, and only when I stilled for a long moment could I sense it again. On the landing I leaned into the window. I could hear it more clearly. I looked down the dizzying length of the building. I would have to descend fifteen, maybe twenty flights of stairs to reach the source, but the beckoning melody offered me a diversion I could not refuse. I descended quickly.

Labels: excerpt, The Empty City

At sunrise the air was crisp. For the first time in longer than I could remember I detected a touch of gold at the very borders of the sky. Some touch of the sun had penetrated the heavy soot that surrounded my planet, encasing it in a frozen drear.

There was one other thing besides the thought of Lysander that could lighten my heart, I discovered that morning. It was a hope for reprieve. An idea, even one small thing I could do to stave off the monotonous, identical days, to visit old Agatha on the roof, if there she still lived.

Dust motes drifted like vapor in the dawning light as I softly climbed the carpeted stairs. There were leaves blown across the landing through a broken window. The debris was withered and colorless, turning the carpet to a forest floor, where things decayed.

The wind stirred my hair across my neck as I ascended, growing more breathless at each floor.

The building was generic. My apartments might have been anything: a hospital, a school, a dorm. Memories of all these assailed my senses. I felt how vulnerable was my heart, that I was prey to any seduction, any vice, but there was nothing to console me but that by wish I had no wish to die, my overwhelming unhappiness.

When I arrived at the rooftop garden there was no one. The wind blew the tufts of half-grown, withered plants flat like hairs.

Labels: excerpt, The Empty City

Josette faced off the wolf with a sad, cold stare. She was divided. Her mind was clear and resigned, but her heart pumped furiously at the certainty of meeting her death.

It lingered in the gloom like scarcely more than a shadow and slowly melted away without a sound. After a moment Josette thought she heard the patter of claws on stairs.

She stared unmoving for a long moment. Her fear and excitement had been replaced with a heavier despair than previously, and she knew she could not continue for much longer in this void.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would go to the only other human she knew yet existed, in all the world she had ever known.

Josette could not really sleep. She was aware of the passing of time as she tossed and listened to the silence of the streets below, where once cars had sped all hours of the day and night. She felt the emptiness of her tall apartment building like an ache in her chest. She was so vulnerable, and yet so careless of herself.

Once, she murmured, "Why didn't you just end all of this for me?" She remembered nothing after that. She must have fallen asleep.

Labels: excerpt, The Empty City

"This is all your fault, you wretched creature." My stepmother's eyes flared at me, hot as flames in her haggard, tear-stained face. It was not in me to look at her with anything but sorrow in my heavy heart. Though she and I had much different ways of loving, still we had both loved him.

It was my fault. I knew what she meant. She had been driven to impetuosity, endangering my father's life in bad weather, by jealousy over a love in him that my presence had kept alive, a love that was unacceptable to her. Or perhaps it was his fault. He had never been able to get over loving my mother, and Regina knew that he knew, and was able to play him like a marionette, taking advantage of his guilt feelings.

However, I said the most sensible thing. "'Twas your stupid bonnet! You and your stupid vanity! You knew he would do anything for you, wasn't that enough? Couldn't I have had his attention for just one evening?"

It still rained. The same rain that had slicked the road beneath my father's carriage, driving it relentlessly over a bridge and extinguishing his life, still pelted the glass. It was like torture on my senses. I thought I would scream from the pain.

Portia and Melisande, my stepsisters, were crying prettily. They didn't really care. They had not loved my father. This was between me and my stepmother.

My vision narrowed as I looked at her. This thorn in my side was suddenly my lifeline. I felt my mother's locket burning in my pocket. They were dead, both of my parents. I had no one but this woman who hated me. For a moment, through my streaming grief, I felt the hell that my life was to become.

However, I had no idea, really.

My father's funeral necessarily must befit his station, and when it came time to arrange, it was suddenly found that there was almost nothing with which to pay. We had been living on borrowed money for some time. My head spun too much with grief for the truth to sink in totally, and it might have driven me beyond the brink to do so at the beginning.

My stepmother and stepsisters had cleaned him out. We had no inheritance and on his death we owed a great deal.

Our home, the family home which had belonged to my ancestors for generations, was immediately sold. Regina did it gleefully, with no sensitivity to my memories there, nor my right to it as my father's daughter. Everything that I had known was turned over to creditors.

"Of course," Regina said, "for Frederick's sake, and that alone, I am taking you in. You have not endeared yourself to me, Cinderella. You do not have the potential that my daughters have in the marriage market, either. Therefore I see no point in bringing you out. In you will stay. Below you will stay." She pointed to the door in the kitchen of our townhouse. It led to the basement.

I was still holding my bundle of things in my arms. It was all I had left. All of my dresses had been sold, all my trinkets, books and jewels. Except one jewel, about which my stepmother would never know. "What will my living in your basement accomplish?" I asked. "There are three spare rooms, in addition to the master bedroom."

"There are two bedrooms for my daughters, and a sitting-room between them, for their musical instruments, and their art. I will not have their talents stifled. You, Cinderella, may ply your work in the basement. In addition to cooking and cleaning, mending and making up all our garments from now on, I expect you to turn out a goodly portion of lace each week to sell at market. You must earn your keep here. If you slack from these duties, Cinderella, I will turn you out."

Though I was a headstrong girl, her words chilled my blood. To be turned out was an unknown thing. There was no place for me in the city fog, and I would vanish as though I had never been. I would become a gray, indeterminate thing. I would suffer and starve. I would lose my honor. My eyes filled with tears and I let her see how hateful she was, but she did not see. Even though my father was dead, and could not hurt her any longer with his love for Evangeline, my mother, she could go on punishing me. It was the closest she could come to Evangeline.

The first days were hard. It took a while for my new position to sink in. I had never been treated well by the three, but Regina had counseled her daughters carefully in their behavior, and they unleashed their demands with a vengeance. They delighted in watching me be brought low. They loved to see how it rubbed me raw to serve them. When I didn't think I could go on any longer, I would close my eyes and see the gray void outside our street. There was nowhere for me to run. I was trapped.

Portia, Regina's oldest daughter, loved to eat. She was a heavy girl, and I was brought upon to let out her gowns almost weekly. Regina disapproved of Portia's habits, but it only stressed Portia into eating more. She did not mind stealing my portions as well as Melisande's, who had no appetite at all, and languished anemically.

If I were a man, I thought hatefully, I would never, never marry them, or give them a second glance. They are ugly, through and through.

At first my hatred was extreme. It ate at me, damaged me. I did not feel how much less I was really eating, or my lack of sleep in the cold, damp basement. When I looked at myself in my stepsisters' gilt mirrors I was startled by the change. My expression changed my whole face. The light in my eyes that my father had so loved was gone.

They love what they are doing to me, I thought, and I hated them even more.

After a time, I knew I must make a compromise with my reduced circumstances. The shop girls who worked endless hours in factories bore this somehow. I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but it didn't mean I didn't deserve to work, too. I would work for myself, and for the memory of my father. This was a Cinderella he had never seen before. Indeed, it was one I barely knew myself.

One night I burned their dinner, badly. It was a mistake. I did not want to hear their harpy-like shrieks at me any more than they wished to eat burned food, but I had no natural cooking abilities, either, and the mystery which distinguished delightful souffle from sunken, brown souffle eluded me.

My stepsisters cried out loudly when they saw what I had done. "Mother, look! Cinderella's burned dinner. Now what will we eat? She will make paupers of us. Oh, it isn't fair."

My stepmother jerked me by the arm furiously.

"It was a mistake," I said.

"You make too many mistakes," Regina hissed. "It's time I knocked some sense into you." She slapped my face, and I went rigid. I stared at her, my back ramrod straight.

"If only he could see you now," I said. "If only my father would see you. Every last bit of love for you in his heart would wither and blow away."

Melisande threw the souffle face-down on the floor with a splat. Regina thrust a broom at me. "Clean that up, you fool. The only dinner you'll have 'twill be that."

At least, I thought, it might prevent Portia from stealing my food tonight.

In my basement room that evening, I wept. I was beyond despair. I had not the strength to bear up under this labor, and my pride was too great. I could not give up that pride. I sensed I would need it for more important things in my life, when this crisis was past. I must find some middle ground between destroying myself with hate, and losing myself entirely.

I cannot do this. My life has become unbearable.

I bowed my head and shivered beside the boiler. I felt a weight on my head, a caressing touch, like a hand stroking my hair. I shuddered.

"'Tis a rat."

But when I looked around, there was no rat. I was alone in the room.

 

I worked on my lace-making by the window. It was an arduous task, guaranteed to make me cross-eyed and pinched before I was thirty. When my back ached, I stood up and looked out of the basement window. The ground was at my eye level and looked out into a courtyard of a home that was slightly nicer than our own.

There was a young maid who spent a lot of time in the courtyard. She must have had a nicer mistress than myself, one who allotted her fresh air during the day to do her handwork. Her hair was black as soot, and upon her dead-white skin was a lively blush.

Whenever I got the chance, I watched her, for it made me feel less lonely. This maiden had a sweetheart who visited her often. Before my bewildered gaze they would move to the shadowed portions of the courtyard and caress one another.

I watched her cheeks crimson with pleasure as he took her in his arms, her lips grow swollen from his kisses, her eyes drift closed as his hands roved around her rigidly corseted waist, searching in vain for some means to unlock the trap.

I forgot myself and my miserable life as I watched them, and the matted pile that ought to have been a length of lace fell at my feet, forgotten.

Desire pierced like an arrow through my desolate loneliness. Beneath my decrepit little figure lay a maiden's heart which longed to love and be loved by a man. Please, God, I thought piteously. One day, before I die.

Labels: Cinderella, excerpt

On my sixteenth birthday my father gave me a locket which contained a miniature of my mother, whom I had never known. It had been a breast-pin of his that he had sent to a jeweler to have done up fabulously. Encrusted with diamonds and aquamarines the color of water, it glimmered like a sea jewel in my hand, which it filled entirely. I caressed the locket lovingly and threw my arms around him.

"Just remember, my child, she is with you still. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of her."

I met his eyes, which were misty. He spoke in a hushed whisper, and I knew intuitively that this was a secret time, words that my stepmother must never hear, nor must she know about this gift. It was not something that I needed other people to see. To keep this sweet secret locket was enough for me. As I pressed it against my breast I felt for a moment that my family circle was complete.

"I can feel her, father," I whispered, holding him close, as my heart warmed with a feeling like incandescent light.

"I see her, my darling, every time I look at you. Which reminds me that you are a woman now, and there is another matter we must discuss." He held me at arm's length.

I laughed, but his serious looks made me nervous.

"I have made an important provision for your future. At first you may be angry."

He did not have the chance to continue. I whirled around and stamped my foot, my back to my father, facing the well-manicured gardens below the balcony.

"You should not have done this," I said in a choked voice.

"You knew it must be done. Darling, I would never arrange a marriage for you that I did not think would work. You must trust me. It was something that your mother and I discussed. She was very fond of the idea."

"How can this be?" I demanded. "When she was well, I was a babe, and my prospective mate could not have been old enough to merit a fair assessment. Or was he? Would you see me married to-"

"An old man? Like me?" He chuckled. "He is older than you are, Cinderella, but not by more than a score. He comes from good stock, very good stock, and his parents are of excellent character. We knew he has been reared well, and as we predicted, his temperament is most complementary to your own." His eyes twinkled. "'Twould be a rare man to deserve my Cinderella."

"Well, then," I said haughtily, for though my father's smile melted my heart readily, I knew I must not let go of my growing independence as a young woman and bow easily to his wishes. "What is the name of this paragon?"

"I think, my dear, that it will be a time before I tell you. He would win you in his own way."

My face, and my hands clutching the balcony rail, colored at my father's words. The notion of being won by a man was foreign to me, but it stirred my heart. That a man was close at hand, and aware of me in this way, cut off my breath. "Then, he agrees to this cold contract?"

"Readily. I knew he would be pleased. He is a practical man, as well as a wealthy one, and desires an heir to continue his legacy."

My quick-bloomed tender feelings were wilted as though by a sudden, pelting rain. "Please, Father, don't say any more to me about this. I don't want to be cross with you on my birthday."

Just then the balcony door burst open. I turned in time to see my well-coiffed stepmother stride toward us. She was very tall, with dark hair made up in fashionable curls. She did not look at me at all, instead said to my father, "Will you not come inside? The girls are ready to have cake."

"That would be my cake," I said somewhat sourly, drawing her notice not at all.

"Come, my dear." I felt my father's steadying hand on my back, effectively staying my temper toward the three self-centered females who occupied our home. His presence, and the locket clutched in my fingers beneath my shawl, reminded me of the moment we had recently shared, when I had felt my mother between us, before he had spoiled everything by mentioning the terrible constriction he had put on my liberty.

It seemed very far away to me, and I put it out of my mind. I could not imagine my life being any different than it was, or that my father would let go of me soon. He needed me, I told myself.

My father was attentive to me as I served my birthday cake to my stepmother and stepsisters, in lieu of the maid, who was still attending nearby and fretting over the icing I dripped onto the carpet. I laughed merrily and passed the cake around, and many times I felt my father's affectionate grasp on my arm.

"Frederick," my stepmother said, jarring our merry laughter. "I have forgotten to fetch a bonnet from the milliner's, which I intend to wear to Cinderella's banquet tonight."

"Darling, but fortunately you have many lovely bonnets to wear."

"But I had this one made up specifically for this evening." Her scowl darkened the parlor's warm glow.

"Well, then, you must send Hughes after it."

"The milliner has not been paid. He requires one of us to settle the account. We cannot send that amount of money with Hughes."

"Regina." A warning flashed in his eyes.

She pleaded with him, looking suddenly heartbreakingly vulnerable. "Oh, Frederick, you would not send me out in this weather. You are a man. You are far more capable of braving the elements. Darling, I care for nothing more than looking well-turned out for you."

Her ploy had worked. I did not release my grasp on my father's arm before leaning close and whispering, "Another moment or two and the party will be broken up. And anyway, your gift to me renders this birthday the most wonderful of my life."

My stepmother gave me a withering look, as though she suspected me of conspiring against her. Indeed, to love my father, and feel the glow of his love, was a betrayal in her mind. She would never open her heart to me, because she could not accept that my father had loved before her, and that I was made in the image of that late wife.

My heart felt colder as I went to the window and saw the rain beginning to streak down the panes. As my father's carriage rolled from beneath the porte cochere, the storm broke, though he continued doggedly. My stepmother watched him at my side with eyes glassy with irritation and something else. Perhaps it was desperation.

A dreadful feeling came over me. I left the small party in the parlor and went to my room. I held my father's locket close to my heart and began to cry.

Labels: Cinderella, excerpt

I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket.

I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus.

I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict.

My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those catastrophes.

But this was death, this powerless waiting. I dreamed of the world into which I had been born, and I dreamed of the world I had made for myself, with the help of my friends. It was a clear, practical world, but without the love for which I had longed, it was not a happy one, and perhaps this darkness was better.

I drifted through dreams and saw things I never saw in life. I wandered through the halls of my castle home and saw the Queen standing before her mirror, adorning herself as she always did. But her face was harder, colder. For the first time, I saw misery in her eyes. I longed to run to her and press my face to her skirts, and promise to make her happy.

But the Queen wanted me dead. It was impossible for me to return. The Queen did not want me.

Then the castle changed, became lighter. I saw cobwebs and rubble vanish before my eyes. I scarcely recognized the place where I walked. The old paintings of my ancestors in the corridors were bright, cleared of grime and smoke stains, and stared down on me with benevolent eyes, reminding me that we were part of one another.

My steps were light. I felt as though I were floating as I drifted into the Queen's chamber and there saw a young maiden, poised in the window, looking out onto the snow-covered courtyard with a beatific expression. Her long, dark hair flowered nearly to her knees, and her pale brow was adorned with a royal diadem.

She pressed one hand to her abdomen. The hand glimmered with a radiant diamond ring. "I wish that she might be as white as this snow-covered ground, as black as the ebony frame of this window, and as red as blood."

I realized then that in the window I beheld the image of my mother, and that through some magic I was being allowed a private moment of my mother's life, when she had learned she would give birth to a child. My heart swelled within me at the sight of her simple beauty. I felt too that I saw a more womanly image of myself.

"This," I whispered, "is what I long to be."

What corruptive evil could have ruined the simple, perfect beauty of this moment? What was death, to corrode this picture of perfect happiness and commit it to dust?

I knew a burning desire to make what was wrong, right. I had never had a mother to love me this way, but could it be, that my mother's dreams lived in me, that I could carry on her goodness and light?

It could not be, if I never awakened. And there was nothing for me to do but wait.

 

He came for me on a white-maned horse, drifting through the woods like a phantom from a dream to the glass coffin adorned with flowers.

The seven dwarves had laid me to rest with the best riches they possessed, constructing for me an elaborate platform with their precious metals, and announcing my name, Snow White, when my identity would no longer be a threat to my safety. Indeed, now, I was beyond the wrath of the Queen.

The Prince beheld me tenderly as he dismounted and rushed to my side. The dwarves drew back in astonishment, and they knew that this must be the love of my heart, of which I had spoken so briefly and poignantly.

"In life, she was never mine," the Prince mourned, removing the lid of the casket to caress my coal-black tresses. "Let me have her now."

The dwarves could not dispute the Prince's power, and while they felt a certain ownership of my remains, they were forced to stand by as the Prince ordered a cart to transport the coffin to his castle.

The coffin was strapped to the cart and began the rocky journey to the Prince's mountain-top castle.

 

The apple which had closed off my life and cloaked my mind in darkness was dislodged as I found myself bumped and jostled indecorously on a steep incline.

My eyes flew wide and through the glass of the coffin I was able to look at the vastly-changed landscape around me.

I knocked furiously at the glass until the guards around me were brought to attention. The procession was halted immediately, and the Prince came around to see the cause for commotion.

The guards unstrapped the coffin and I opened the lid in short order, frantic to leave the stifling box. When I fell into the arms of her Prince, I gazed into his eyes, wondering if I had left one dream for another.

"She lives," he whispered. "My Snow White lives."

I looked around, taking in the procession, the coffin, all that had occurred. "Can it be that you have chosen me, even in death?"

He held me close. "I have looked for you for weeks, months. There were rumors at Court that your Stepmother had found a means to dispose of you. I was determined to find out the truth, for such a deed could not go unpunished, and I alone have the power to subdue the Queen. She cannot harm you now. To the end of your life, you will belong to me."

No words were ever sweeter to me. "Take me, then, to the place that is to be my home."

Labels: excerpt, Snow White

It is but a little before my story is told and its end rests with me here, at my writing desk. Gervaise has brought a cup of tea and a shawl to keep me warm, but a part of me that she and they will never see is bitterly cold, in the desolate place with my love.

It was not once but twice that my false family stole from me the one thing that made my life purely sweet: my Oskar.

We continued to love one another openly until my brother’s return from Baden Baden.

Gauvain was stricken immediately by my debilitated looks. I was wasting away; could nothing be done? The fresh air did me good, the fresh air was my enemy—sweet cakes revived my spirit, then reviled it. The doctor was making but guesses and would have put a frailer form through torture who dared to live by his advice.

I was dying. What was the difference? I told Gauvain that I wanted Oskar to live with us. I held his hand and wept to recall his letter. I had written my reply in his absence and merely handed it to him when he entered my sitting room. I had not mentioned a word in it of my love. It still remained pointing against my heart like a thorn.

In this lapse of my health the pretense of friendship came easily for myself and Oskar. Our platonic nature was unfeigned as my constitution could not withstand more than ordinary tenderness.

But, he held my hand. He read to me. I played for him. Gauvain saw that Oskar had become my whole world, and he did not know what to make of this. The servants were as yet discreet.

It was I who told my brother the truth. I had begun to hope, wildly and against all good sense, that Gauvain would bless our feelings for one another given the particularly impermanent nature of my being.

I did not tell Oskar what I planned. On a good day, I walked to Gauvain’s study myself and signaled him.

He called my name and guided me to a chair, pleased and fond as ever brother could be.

The state of my dumbness was disadvantage to be sure, but I had profited at this time by the liberty of drafting at length a record to Gauvain of my doings till it said precisely what I wished, and this I withdrew from my pocket and passed onto his desk.

“My dear brother,” I wrote, “I am obliged to make a confession to you of feelings you must have long suspected. Though I am so frail, my will has always been strong, and unable to be controlled by man’s law. I love, and am loved in return, and I am unbelievably rich for it. Will you not fill with joy likewise for your sister’s mirth in this time of darkness?”

I had deliberately left the page at this, and before he turned to the next, he took my hand, as I hoped he would, and said, “Oriente, can this be true? I want only happiness for you, though I cannot conceive of the one who would fully master a heart such as yours.”

I watched him with burning gaze as he read down, and I turned cold as I knew he turned cold, and I watched the blood drain from his face with a sinking heart. He looked back at me; I pleaded him with my eyes to understand.

“Oriente,” he said in a changed, cold voice. “You have been many things in your life, but I have never known you to be a deceiver.”

“Deceiver!” I scrawled frantically across the page. “As though I might be capable of concealing my emotions. You have seen them writ across me a thousand times.”

“I did not take that to mean…” He could not go on, and I could not write. My hand shook too wildly when I realized what I had done. I gathered to my feet, clutching my cane frantically. “Oriente, you knew how things were. You knew as a child, I’m sure, that Oskar was one of us.”

Oskar entered the room carelessly till he saw me standing, tears spilling from my eyes. He stopped immediately and stared aghast between myself and Gauvain. “What’s this?”

Gauvain went to him, and I thought from the look of him that he would strangle Oskar. “You. Are no better than a rutting dog on his kin. The best animals guard against this disgrace.”

I reached them and pushed myself between them, watching Gauvain fiercely. No matter what terrible things he would say, this was my choice, there was honor in it, even if only in my own private world. His murderous gaze turned to me.

“A fancy bitch you are. Your affections are but lies and deceit. Can it be that the grave which beckons you has already curled around your heart all the wickedness of its hell?”

“She’s a woman, Gauvain. Not a child to be led like a pony on a string. Darling,” he looked at me. “I know what you would say.” He held me fast. “She and I have lived apart, matured separately. Between us is not the familiarity of kin. This would be perversity indeed, but for her I am not a brother, but a forbidden friendship and now, love. We understand each other in a way—I should say it—that stems perhaps from our similar beings, cast from the same mold, and no one else will ever understand either of us. We could not be more loving. We could not be more one.”

I choked convulsively, for it seemed Gauvain would kill him with looks alone. Oskar went too fast, too far, but he was impassioned, and God knows what I would have said if I could speak. Gauvain struck his half-brother, his face hard as stone, his eyes like hell as he withdrew the violating fist.

Oskar recovered and went from the room, and guided by a desperate instinct, I followed with every last bit of my strength. My pathetic effort was for nothing, and Gauvain caught me, held me fast as I struggled on the ground and beat at his feet and legs.

He shouted for Gervaise—oh, this obedient creature—who confined me and looked after me so that I could not chase Oskar, who I knew was leaving—who I feared desperately I would see nevermore, and after days of mindless grief I learned that Oskar was thrown in prison, for some crime he could not possibly have committed, and his only witness a sad, poor mute easily constrained.

But this is the power of the Markgraf, and has always been.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

My life continued as an idle pace as I discovered the joys of the countryside. I heard myself think. I sang to myself as I attacked the momentous prospect of righting the dwarves' neglected abode. I studied the accounts with Dieter over tea and learned as much about this foreign race, attracted to money as moths to light, as I did about dollars and sense.

I was almost totally happy. I forged friendships with the dwarves, and they became as much, if not more, my family, than my employers. Edritch assumed a fatherly position over me, which touched me keenly, for father I had never had.

But I did not forget the shadowed and incongruous life I had lived before. I almost longed at times for my prison, for my stepmother's cruelty and even more for the stolen moments at the well with my secret prince.

By now he must have married a noble maiden, though I would have been more than suitable, because I had been forced to abdicate my home.

Soon I would discover, in another unexpected turn of my life, that no one from my former kingdom had forgotten about me, either.

It all came back to me in the form of a Drummondi nomad visiting the cottage. I was alone, for it was Dieter's first day in the mine with the others. As I swept, I was attracted to the sound of her singing outside the cottage. I peered out the window and saw all of her bohemian grace. She was a very old woman who moved with the carelessness of the unfettered, and she was pushing a cart full of tinkling things.

Her eyes lit on me with a sparkle as she conversed with me through the open window. "I thought this cottage to be inhabited by men only."

I was seized with caution. Neither Edritch nor Dieter had mentioned this particular solicitor to me before.

"Don't be afraid, my dear. I suppose you don't get many visitors in the woods. Come out into the light. I want to have a better look at you. You're a very pretty maiden."

"I cannot, madam. I am bound to continue my work."

"Can you not spare a moment, mistress, to draw me a little water from your well before I travel on?"

When I saw how aged she truly was, I felt ashamed of myself for being suspicious. That was not my nature now. I was a free woman, after all.

After I had drawn her all the water she liked, she appeared much refreshed and grew animated. She wanted dearly to show me some of the trinkets from her cart. I could think of no reason to refuse her.

She examined my long, black hair with zeal. "You have no ornaments," she protested.

"I have no need for them, madam," I said with a rueful smile. "I have no sweetheart, and I have no prospects amid my present company."

"None?" she asked, her eyes penetrating mine. The gypsies were known for intuiting things one did not want to reveal.

Memories of the prince washed over me. I thought of how I had gone to him in rags, and still he had found me lovely. My mannerisms and kind words had been my only ornaments.

"There is someone you loved once," the old bohemian said, "who has vanished from your life without a trace. But I foresee that he will come into your life again. You must prepare yourself, my sweet."

"That's impossible," I said, but I could not conceal how her words arrested me.

Before I could protest, she slipped a black comb into my hair, a pretty thing I had admired covertly as she turned it over and over in her hands, an ornament inlaid with mother of pearl and brilliant gems. "Madam, I have nothing with which to pay you."

"This is a gift in return for your generosity. Your pure water has restored me, and I thank you."

I stared after her as she left, the bells on her cart tinkling merrily. I went to the mirror to look at my hair with the pretty comb, and I wondered if the gypsy's words were true. Would I really see my beloved again?

There was no hiding my new trinket from Edritch's keen eyes, and I soon found myself explaining the old woman's visit to the dwarves. They were more alarmed than I had expected. None of them had seen this woman, or any gypsy, in their territory before. Gypsies did not normally attempt to sell to dwarves, since the race was more interested in gold itself than its material offerings.

"They must know that a human lives here now," I rationalized, and even as I said it, I felt a sense of foreboding, because if word had reached Drummondi that a lone woman was living with dwarves, my hiding place was in jeopardy. Indeed, after the gypsy's visit, I was less comfortable in the cottage, and I lived with a sense of fear.

I saw the old gypsy again a few weeks later. I heard the trundle of her cart's wheels and went to meet her with water this time. She seemed even older and more withered than before. This time, I wanted not trinkets, but information.

"Madam," I said, "I have not seen this lover as you promised."

"In good time, my dear. He will come for you in time."

"From where will he come?" I asked.

"He will come for you from the North."

This caused me to shiver, because the Prince was from a Northern territory.

"He will come for you on a white horse. He will carry you back to his castle."

I gasped. "Castle. You speak as though my lover is royal."

"I cannot say but what I see. Now, my dear, I have a gift for you."

She reached into a trunk and withdrew a black embroidered corset. I regarded the item with surprise. I knew it was suited for a princess, but such beautiful things I had never worn. I had dressed in rags all of my life.

"I can give you nothing in return," I protested.

"I will tell you a secret. The water from your well has a special life-giving property. It nourishes the body and restores the soul to right. I would give a dozen of those corsets for another dipper's full from your well."

I obliged her with another dipper's full and accepted the gift she offered. The old woman helped me lace the corset properly, since I knew nothing of such things. It was very tight and restricted my breathing. The comb in my hair was uncomfortable, too. The tines pricked my scalp and sometimes gave me a headache. But I could see that these things made me more beautiful, as I wished to look for my secret prince when we met again one day.

When the old woman left, a flame of hope in my heart burned more brightly, even though I knew I should have no reason at all to hope.

Now I began to dream of how my prince would come to me. Word would reach him of how I had run away from the castle. He would learn of my stepmother's bad deed. He would take me to his home, where I would be safe. I would no longer have to hide my identity or feel frightened. Thoughts of his love were like the sun emerging from behind a cloud. I gave many of my afternoons over to these fantasies.

The dwarves saw that I was discontent, and that there was nothing they could really do for me. But one evening they held a grand little party for me, with only the eight of us in attendance. Edritch played an old organ which had been in disuse for a number of years. I danced with all of them, and we told stories around the fire. I told them about my childhood at the castle, my happy days in the forest, and how I had met the prince.

The dwarves grew sad when I told them the old woman's prediction that he would come for me on a white horse. But they knew that our arrangement could be only a temporal one. It gave our following time together a special significance.

A few weeks later, I saw the old gypsy again. She was more debilitated than before. I realized that she must be ill, and that was why she sought the life-giving water from our well. I hastily brought it to her again. She was too weak and tired to speak for a while, and we sat together near the stream till she had recovered her breath.

Then she withdrew an apple from her pocket. "This is not an ordinary apple," she said. "It was given to me by my leader to rid my body of its afflictions. In return for your kindness, I will give you one-half of this apple. Though your youthful body has no need for healing, it will keep you from being worn down by the hard work you do each day. Your hands and face will remain soft and fresh when your lover comes for you."

I refused the apple, for the lady had need of the entire fruit. She laughed and told me that a bite of the apple was sufficient to heal her. She convinced me very persuasively till I took a bite. I intended to give her the rest of my half, but when I tasted of the sweet fruit, a lethargy fell over me.

I lay back on the mossy banks and grew aware of the sound of the rushing water, the birds in the trees. All of my senses were heightened. My skin flushed. The world around me felt as though it were spinning. I turned on my side to look for the old woman, but I found myself alone.

I began to grow afraid that the magical fruit had a bad effect on those whose bodies were not diseased. My body grew clammy and quivering. I crawled on my hands and knees toward the dwarves' cottage, but my strength left me in the dooryard, and I expired there with the hens pecking around me in the grass.

Labels: excerpt, Snow White

Out of the darkness of my disturbed slumber, into light I hurtled as I became aware of a bustle in the house. My eyes flew wide, and of course at first, I knew not where I lay, nor how I came to be in this place. Relentlessly my memories rushed on me and I relived all the terrors of the previous day.

My heart wrung within my breast anew as I considered my stepmother's betrayal, and the fugitive life I had begun the previous day when the huntsman had released me into the woods alone.

I had never before awakened with such pressing grief and regrets, but my disillusionment was quickly replaced with raw terror as I realized my encounter with strangers was imminent. To what extent they might hold me accountable for my intrusion, or betray my identity to my enemy, I did not know, and I was entirely powerless.

I was just rising from my bed when I heard them pounding up the stairs. I told myself they were only children, and yet I knew my assumption false as soon as I beheld them, all seven. Not children, but small, wizened men. My head spun as I realized I was much farther from my home kingdom than I had thought. These was the dwarves described by Drummondi nomads, the existence of which had oft been decried by my noble peers.

They had quite sensibly already ascertained that their home had been breached, and that the enemy was in wait for them upstairs, and arrived at the top of the stairs ready to do war.

I stared at them, a thousand questions rushing my mind as I strove, above all else, to protect my life by my own wits, a skill I had not exercised often within the castle walls.

"Gentlemen," I said cautiously, "I mean you no harm. I am a mere woman. I sought protection in your home because I have none of my own. I am prepared to leave quietly if you will allow it."

This deflated the worst of the tension. "Woman," the eldest said, sizing me up with an intelligence that I must admit charmed me as I considered the workings of this different species, "you do not have the look of a savvy traveler. Your dress and shoes suggest you have not been without a home for very long."

I leaned across the bed and leveled with him. "I was turned out of my home by my stepmother, who hates me."

Nothing could have sounded more believable issuing from my lips that the bitter truth. The understanding on their faces convinced me that they were not so different from me after all, and that these things were not unheard of.

Encouraged, I related my country of origin, which shocked them. They asked me if I had any idea how far from my home I had traveled during the night. Then, one of the dwarves insisted I stay for breakfast. He seemed much moved by my plight, and the others followed him in like sympathy.

I extricated myself from the bedclothes and righted the beds before following them downstairs and discovered anew the house that had seemed abandoned the previous day.

Because I did not wish to be of any further trouble, and because an idea was starting to form in my mind, I said, "You must allow me to make breakfast for you, as repayment for the board I have taken in your house."

The dwarves were surprised, pleased and curious. All, especially the eldest, were starting to sense I was something of an anomaly, noble and yet servile. My clothes were raw and my hands roughened, but my speech left an impression of education and refinement. I let them think while I did what I did best, and that was to keep house and re-establish order. I let my mind work as quickly as my fingers as I cleaned the stove and set a pot to boil, then inventoried the cupboard and set the usable goods from the spoiled. I would have to accentuate my core truth with some lies if I was to preserve my true identity. If word reached the Queen that I lived still, she would come for me, and she would not be likely to show mercy to my protectors.

I prepared the most graceful breakfast possible on a fresh tablecloth. The youngest of the dwarves, nearly a boy, gathered flowers for the table, which pleased me as I sought to set a stage which would impress.

"This is very good," the eldest, whose name was Edritch, commented empirically.

Ansolm and Dieter, the other two who had shown a personal interest in me, agreed in a savory aspect. I wondered, as I watched them, if it would be best to broach the subject of my employment directly or lead them to the suggestion themselves.

Edritch, however, was still considering my situation. "Being far from home with little prospect, I suppose you are looking for a position."

I met his gaze over my chipped tea cup. "I am not without prospect, yet, sir. I suppose there are other homes like yours looking to hire out."

"I find it curious, mistress, that you have not asked what we do during the night, nor how we sustain ourselves, isolated in the woods as we are."

"I have little notion of your customs, sir, and would not presume where my inquiry is not wanted. But, suppose you tell me, after all?"

He watched me keenly. "We mine from the richest cave in the known world, and we assume sole control. We do our work under the cover of night, so that others will not find our cave, and sleep during the day. We are in constant fear of being discovered by a rival company. I see an opportunity for your assistance, not merely as housekeeper, but to keep watch during the day while we sleep. We may even be able to make arrangements together so that it is safe for us to mine during the day."

I shrugged to indicate their business was not of greater interest to me than to secure my own safety.

"If you agree to the arrangement, Dieter will remain with you during the day to introduce you to our suppliers and tradesmen. He is for the time being in charge of maintaining our accounts, but he is growing old enough to join us in the mines, and because we are in need of another hand, we may propose to you a further advance as accountant."

I was not sure at first if Edritch was serious. I had never been useful for anything more than sweeping floors and gathering flowers in the woods. I studied the froth in my tea to avoid revealing my bubbling excitement.

I looked at Edritch. "I'm sure we may begin a trial immediately. If the situation proves unfruitful for either of us, we can of course discontinue with one another at any time." I concealed not only my hopes, but my vulnerability, for I knew in my heart this was to be my only prospect.

Thus began the first day in a new and unexpected twist of my life, as I went into a service for which I would be paid handsomely.

Labels: excerpt, Snow White

My days with Oskar passed quickly. At first we remained reserved. I felt sometimes that Gauvain’s spirit was with us still. I looked in the mirror and sometimes fancied I saw him there, looking back at me with condemning eyes. I knew all was not well. My happiness was not without bitterness.

But still I gave myself completely over to my passionate love. I dined with him. We walked to familiar places, hand in hand. We recalled the merriment we had shared as children, here and there. Our innocence was not lost, but somehow found in one another’s eyes as for days we had a thousand things to do that we should have been doing for the past several years we had been denied one another.

He became not just my lover, but the other half of my soul.

I did not look to the end of summer any more than to the end of my life. I felt that they were the same. Life without this man would be my life no longer. To love—and be loved. I knew as I held him close that I had a precious gift many who lived to be a hundred might never possess—and I felt this must be some eminent Power’s balance in the universe, to gift me with love when I had so little life. I would gladly—a thousand times, yes—have taken this summer of love, even if the life before and after it must be so poor and mirthless.

We had to hide. We thought we were fooling everyone. At first we were so careful, but our very natures insisted that we take more and more risks to be present in the relationship we so desired. There were the servants with which to contend. It might be that the older servants might get a bit above themselves and be obliged to report my doings to the master on his return. I looked after this, but only for a time. I forgot about Gauvain and all the reasons I should keep away from Oskar. I forgot how I would hurt at the end of this thing.

One night, my maid—Gervaise—saw us together, and the next morning she wept over my things as she was folding them and putting them in my drawers. I watched her apathetically from my bed, a teacup perched nimbly on my fingers, a satisfied smile on my lips. This girl could do nothing to me.

“Fraulein… the Markgraf.”

I merely looked at her with the resentment I had harbored for years. I could be cruel to those that were weaker than myself. I was so weak in body, but so strong in spirit. I could not tolerate sniveling women. I wanted to crush her—even if I could scarcely move across the rooms at times without her assistance.

With a jerk of the wrist, I retrieved my slate and wrote, I am going to die.

Gervaise began to cry all the harder. Then, I threw the slate at her head, and she tottered clumsily from the room, slamming the door behind her.

It was that day I received my first correspondence from Gauvain. “My dear girl, I have been doing a lot of thinking about our family now that I am away from home. We have never spoken openly of the unfortunate circumstances that brought Oskar to the burg and drove him away from it, but all involved in the scandal are deceased, and there is no reason to carry this injustice to a second generation. I would not presume to tell you that which you already know—only to plead your tolerance of a unique family. Oskar is our half-brother. His mother was our father’s lover. Our mother ordered him away long ago. Should he continue now to work as a servant in our vineyard, or should he live with us as the family he deserves to be? There is only you and me now—and I know you are very fond of him. However, the decision rests with you. There is your future, and your potential embarrassment, to consider.”

His letter fluttered from my nerveless fingers as I moved slowly to the window. I wanted to burn my brother’s loving missive whose words were like poison. I didn’t want to see—didn’t want to think—

I deserve this, I thought fiercely. I deserve Oskar. He is mine.

Then Oskar came to me, and I requested that we go together to the summerhouse as we had in our early days. My strength failed me, as it had more and more as of late, and he was required to carry me. I rested my head against his and closed my eyes as the dappled sunlight and shadows fell across my face. I inhaled the scent of wild honeysuckle that grew around the abandoned summerhouse.

I thought no more of Gauvain’s letter. I devoted myself once more to my love. My frail form reminded me that we loved on borrowed time in more ways than one.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

I moved ahead of the huntsman in the woods with my flower-press dangling behind me by a strap. I was not cheerful as on our previous outings. I could not look at the huntsman, who had served as my outdoor companion for much of my life. I was frightened of him.

When his shadow fell over me, my heart nearly stopped. My very bones melted and I thought I would fall down with fear. If he intended to kill me, there was nothing I might do to stop him.

When I stumbled, he took me and led me into a darkened cave. He looked anxiously behind and around himself, seemingly terrified.

"My princess," he said, "what I must tell you will fill you with grief, but it is better that you are aware of the truth. Your stepmother the Queen hates you truly. She has ordered me to kill you today and return to her with your heart. I am committed to preserve you, my princess. Therefore, you must hide in this cave until well after nightfall. Where you must go, truly I know not, but if you would choose life, it falls upon you to forage in the wilderness."

He laid before me rations of food, water and small weaponry, whereby I might sustain myself. I looked at him with horror in my eyes, but I postponed my grief until I was alone. He bade me farewell tenderly and held me, then left me to pick with nerveless fingers through the rations he had left.

I bit into an apple heartily even as my tears fell. I was abandoned, without a home. I had never been in the woods at night, or anywhere else, except my room and sometimes the refectory. I heard the din of cicadas outside of the cave and knew that it was evening. The hours slipped past quickly as I contemplated my life alone.

I crawled to the mouth of the cave and saw that the moon was high. I knew that this was the best time for me to make my way as far away from the castle as I could.

I wandered past familiar places I had visited with the huntsman on happier days, assured of my direction, till my surroundings became less and less familiar. I knew I must pass the boundaries of my kingdom in order to secure my safety. It would be nearly impossible for the Queen to harm me there.

However, I did not bargain for the stretch of wilderness that lay between myself and safety. The huntsman had not spoken lightly of foraging in the wilderness. I would have to catch my own food once my supplies ran out, and I did not relish the thought.

My fear drove me on and I wandered all night long at a steady pace I could maintain with infrequent rests. In the darkness, I thought of those I would never see again. My beloved servants in the castle, my stepmother, who hated me more than I had ever dreamed possible, and the handsome youth, whose name I did not know, and likely never would.

My heart was saddened indeed, my spirits lower than they had ever been before. I did not want to rest. My exertions were a thing of which to think, and so I continued until dawn.

There was some excitement in traveling this way and becoming intimate with all the motions of the earth from dark till dawn, when normally I slept. I was aware now as the sun rose of a deep pain behind my eyes, and I wondered how much longer I could continue before I would fall down senseless.

When I thought I could not move another step, I found a clearing with a little house. For a horrible moment I thought I had traveled in a circle and was back in my own village. However my dazed eyes quickly took in the scale: the roof, the door, the windows, were much too small, even at this distance, to belong to an ordinary house. It was like a house built for children.

I moved forward cautiously. There was no sign of life in the yard or the windows. I peered inside, about to jump out of my skin at the slightest movement. I began to suspect that the dwelling was abandoned.

The door gave easily at my push. I found myself looking into a dusty room filled with cobwebs and tumbled furniture. My suspicions that the home was abandoned became even stronger.

Normally I would not have done this thing, but I was dazed with exhaustion and desperate for any cover where I could sleep safely. I bolted the door behind me and made my way quietly through the little house. The top of my head nearly grazed the ceiling.

I crouched and nearly crawled up the staircase to find a bedroom spanning the entire upper story. There I saw seven little beds, as though for children. I peered dazedly into the gloom, not trusting my eyes. I was too tired to make much sense out of anything.

Sluggishly I schooled my limbs to push the beds together, so that I might lie across them and sleep as I so desperately wanted to do.

An orphanage, I thought as I slipped immediately into an uncomfortable, distorted sleep filled with all manner of wicked and vexing dreams.

Labels: excerpt, Snow White

The next afternoon Gauvain called me to his parlor. His looks were grave and dreadful, as though he hadn’t eaten or slept in a day. I, in turn, felt radiantly alive. The sun which spilled unremittingly from the windows seemed to envelop my frame and pour light out of me. I had been transformed by my love into a new being. I wanted to share my joy with my beloved brother—convince him of my total happiness—but something within me warned me to keep my head.

I had almost forgotten about the doctor’s death sentence till I looked in Gauvain’s eyes again and saw the sorrow writ there. “My darling,” he said and came upon me. He wept over my hands, then pressed me close. I surrendered patiently to his embrace, feeling none of the grief he expressed. He looked into my eyes. “What can I tell you, angelic one? How can I…? Yesterday, I thought you heard… because you ran away.”

I turned away from him. I would look like a fool to agree to the doctor’s pronouncement, with the happiness on my face. I nodded my head slowly. I gestured toward the door, where I had eavesdropped.

“Then it is as I thought. Oriente… I have poor tidings to bear. I wonder if it will break me more than you.” This last, an aside. “I must go away for a while. I know not how long. In the event of your sickness, I cannot bear to part from you, knowing not how you will be when I return. But, my darling, I am determined that you should have the best of everything. We have struggled along badly for a while… but with your illness… are nearly broken.” His voice faded to almost nothing with shame—shame for something far beyond his control.

I turned back to him, the shining happiness blighted from my face, and took his hand.

“I am going to Baden Baden to hire a consultant for the vineyards. We need an overseer, and more groundskeepers. Within a year… or two… we should turn a profit, or at least have something to borrow against.”

I nodded encouragingly.

He seemed relieved at my agreement. I know he thought he was my only lifeline, and that his absence would break me. He called for a servant and spoke to her in low tones. “In the meantime, I have made arrangements for Oskar to look after you. When you were children, you were very fond of each other, and I know you remember, as does everyone in the castle, the violence of your grief when he was parted from you. It seems right, therefore, that Oskar become a brother to you in my absence. As…” In a much lower tone he continued, “he is, in truth.”

Quickly I turned away from Gauvain and stepped to the window. There was nothing he might have said to me that would shock me more. Nothing would control the scarlet flush of guilt upon my cheek, or the panic on my face.

“Oriente… do you care for him still? Does my pronouncement disturb you?”

I turned to him, my smile determined, and pressed his hands with my own in affection. I did all I could to convince him of my approbation.

Just then Oskar entered the room. He was hot and dusty from the vineyards, his clothes disordered, his hair clinging to his temples. I looked at him across the room with unreserved affection. He did not look at me. I could not guess what he thought—if he was pleased or not by Gauvain’s request.

Now I know he must have felt deeply guilty at his deceit, aware that in continuing one relationship, he was severing the other forever.

Gauvain left us shortly, with numerous arrangements of his own to make that morning. He was leaving quite soon for Baden Baden.

Oskar came across the room to me in long strides, took my hands in his. With relief I melted against him and he kissed my forehead. “My darling,” he whispered. “Gauvain told me everything. Last night, you learned. How bold you were to bear it and come to me with no indication.”

I wished that I could tell him how little it mattered to me when I was in his arms, but I looked at him, and I think he knew.

“This summer is our very own. I will love you more than any person was ever loved and leave you with no desire to glance beyond into the abyss. You are mine, Oriente. Now—mine in truth.”

His passionate kiss broke through the last of my shame and reservation. I wrapped my arms around him, and we were only just parted when Gauvain entered the room again.

“You have conversed. Will this arrangement prove to both your satisfactions?”

“I will do my very best for her, my lord,” Oskar said.

Gauvain left the room in visible relief.

I was still overtaken with the enormity of the situation. The memory of my loving brother’s smile stabbed my very heart. He would never have knowingly tolerated my love for Oskar, yet he had arranged a situation that would protract our tenderness to its utmost.

“Your brother tells me that you play the pianoforte,” Oskar said, “every afternoon before tea. I would be obliged if you would play for me thus. I have arrangements of my own today that will detain me, nearly till then.”

When Oskar left me, he took a little of the light with it. I only felt bitterness about my situation when I was alone. I took my sheet music to the pianoforte and practiced with a new fever. I had never had much incentive to be good—but my first performance for my lover was something different.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

I was a happy child. I loved my father and stepmother. I cherished tales of my mother. My father told me I was her image exactly, matching her snow-white skin, dead-black hair and red lips. When my father died, my stepmother and I grieved. I made myself necessary to her, for it did not seem like she was capable of taking care of herself.

Even as she became dependent on me, she made a slave of me. She loved solitude so much that she dismissed all of the servants, and it fell to me to wait on her. My beautiful gowns turned to rags, and I no longer looked like a princess. I looked like a servant.

My stepmother, the Queen, grew strange, and the rapport once between us was broken as she no longer confided her thoughts to me. Still I loved and served her faithfully, even as I became starved of the familial love which once had enriched my life.

My one solace was the handsome young man I saw when I drew water from the well. He came around the castle on his horse, and I believed he looked for me. I took care not to gaze on him, but I could not hide the radiant happiness I felt when I glimpsed his face.

The Queen became, if possible, even more pale and grave. It seemed like all the light of life had left her face. It had been whispered at Court that she ought to marry again, and that there was a noble that she favored, but she never revealed any of this to me, and I dismissed Court gossip from my mind.

Her sole confidante was her mirror. I heard her crooning to her reflection on more than one occasion. At first I had grown cold with terror, certain that the Queen had lost her sanity, but she bore no other signs of a crazed mind, and eventually I became used to this peculiarity.

One evening as I stepped toward her room I heard her low timbre on the other side of the door. "It is said that little Snow White is the fairest maiden in the land. If this is so, then she must not live. I will tell you what you must do. Take Snow White to the woods and slay her. Bring her heart back to me in this box."

At these words of betrayal I became nearly senseless with fear and grief. I knew I must run away, but I did not know where, or how. The huntsman came to me the next day and told me that he was going deep into the woods to hunt a particular animal. He knew I liked to go with him there, for I could pluck the rarest and most beautiful flowers.

Labels: excerpt, Snow White

We met this way for a while. I did not give Gauvain the slightest indication of how I spent my afternoons. I had long been accustomed to my freedom, and he did not think to question it now. Oskar took care to avoid me on any other occasion than our meeting at the summerhouse.

Our friendship was innocent; yet I feared Gauvain would disapprove and take him from me, as our mother once had.

When I was not with Oskar, I kept my daily piano-practice and occasional meetings with tutors and the doctor. He noted my improvement, told Gauvain I was getting exercise, and that I ought to keep my present routine. Gauvain was gratified, and I was elated—I knew he would not keep me from wandering wherever I would. I felt deeply that I deceived my brother, and should he learn the true nature of my wanderings in the wood, he would be smote, and the bond between us disengaged forever.

One morning tucked beneath my breakfast plate was a letter from Oskar, which changed the nature of feelings between us for good.

I still bear the much-read letter and copy as he wrote,

“Dearest Oriente,

“When we are not together, you bear for me equal beauty and fascination. I find myself unable to reconcile the affection I now hold for you with the matchless friendship we once shared. You were once my companion—now you occupy my entire heart—the sole living being that I love. If you share none of my feelings—which surely by now you must have guessed—you will find my declaration repugnant. Far better that it be borne in the silence of a letter.

“If you meet with me once more, you will hear it again, expounded upon more persuasively, if not more gracefully, with the adoration of my eye and tenderness of my touch. Now you know that every sentiment I bore you was visited with this passion. You must tell me whether my friendship be false or true to your own. If we do not feel the same, we should meet no more.

“With all of my heart,

Oskar.”

I was frightened by his letter. I knew my own passion for him. I never anticipated he would match it—perhaps surmount it. To love him at arm’s length was not alarming to my conscience, but to have the object of my devotion as my own was almost unconjurable. I almost feared him—knowing when I saw him all his passion would be writ upon his face.

I sensed I opened a door, and moved into another room—in darkness, without benefit of knowing what lie within.

The doctor was delayed from his scheduled visit that morning, and I was forced to remain in the house for him that afternoon. I pressed Oskar’s letter to my agonized heart and gazed out the window unseeing—knowing, at the very moment, he must be waiting for me in the summerhouse. My absence would smite him, and yet, how could I visit him with this fear?

Finally the doctor arrived and studied me at length. His pronouncement was not as enthusiastic as I expected. While my strength and color were good, there were sounds that the infestation in my lungs still held—and my breath was weakening.

The shadow that had hung over me in childhood yet returned. I felt wild. He wanted to see me again—soon. He went to the next room to speak with Gauvain and I crept to the door, listened attentively.

“Her lung disease is worsening. The diverse things in the air which once promised health may be her undoing. She weakens, and I fear she will relapse to her former state. You must know that others who have fallen back in such a way have never risen more.”

I was stricken by his words. I did not stay to hear Gauvain’s reply. I fled from the hateful doctor. I flung open the porch doors and breathed fresh air. How could natural things murder me?

It was now twilight—long, long past my meeting-hour with Oskar. I flung a hood over my head and hurried from the burg, as though pursued.

The summer air was warm and balmy. Insects clattered and whirred in the high grass as I crept into the woods. I was aware of every sight and smell; my senses heightened with my emotions, I noticed the slant of the fast-vanishing sun, felt dew and sticky pods clinging to my stockings.

I approached the summerhouse, my breath held. I saw Oskar’s dusky head lean against a pillar.

He gave no indication of hearing my approach. I stepped in the doorway, pushing the hood from my spilling hair. He looked up, saw me in the near-darkness.

I crouched near him and pressed his hand to my tumultuous breast. Tears spilled from my eyes; I caressed his face, his hair, willing him to understand that I reciprocated his every sentiment.

He gathered me close in the enveloping darkness. His face was clouded with urgency and fear. I shook my head, willing him to forget my evident sorrow. I held him and indulged myself in loving him unreservedly.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

I was only beginning to understand the attributes on which I, imperfect and unworthy creature, had been bestowed.

All who saw me swore I was perfect loveliness. Gauvain, now my champion, claimed my beauty to be remarkable and I, bewildered as I was mute and disabled, could only accept the compliments and fealty with bewilderment.

It was not till I saw Oskar once more that I loved. Then I looked into the mirror with changed eyes, anxious to please his gaze.

He came to the castle looking for work. My brother assigned him to the winery. The old winemaster needed replacement and was anxious to confer his trade while he still retained strength.

Oskar worked intently. There was a hard, near cruel determination in his face that affected me keenly. I little knew the same determination was writ on my features time to time, and derived from the same paternal source.

Days passed, and he never came near the house. Could it be that he had forgotten me?

I contrived to make myself known to him.

There was a summerhouse I liked to visit when the weather was warm. In these days my illness was in remission and I no longer had need for a wheelchair. I walked as often as I could to retain my strength and managed quite admirably with a cane.

The summerhouse was long abandoned, but had captured my fancy in the past year, which was wont to prey on all things morbid and melancholy.

Oskar worked in the field all day beneath the blazing sun; I cast him a look as I made my way languorously toward the woods. He stopped what he did to meet my gaze. My look was reserved, yet my face grew hot when he looked upon me. I knew at once that he remembered me.

The look of startled joy writ on his features induced in me an answering rapture. He knew me—he might even share a small part of the anxiety in my breast which had not settled since his return. I had just opened a Pandora’s box and was afraid of the unfamiliar sentiments that drifted unfettered.

I moved quickly to my accustomed summerhouse, unable to tamp down the blaze of joy writ across my face. He had looked fondly on me. I could think of nothing else as I settled the mantle from my shoulders and arrayed myself on the moldering boards to view nature.

Footsteps on the forest path brought me to awareness. I felt it was a miracle which had induced Oskar to leave his work and follow me here. I stared at him with blazing eyes. Suddenly I was very afraid—but mingled with fear was an excitement that shook me with its violence.

He took my hands. “Oriente, dear—“ He kissed my face.

I stared at him, tears dropping unheeded to our clasped hands. Unable to plague him with the questions foremost in my mind, I merely watched him tenderly.

“You wonder why I am returned—I would not dwell on such depressing stuff for all the world. Let me look at you. I never dreamed you would grow so beautiful.”

His unguarded tongue embarrassed me, and my face grew hot.

I had always felt doubt that Oskar’s ardor could equal mine. In our childhood, I needed him in ways he would never need me. I was disabled, limited, speechless—scarcely a fit companion for one so energetic and imaginative as himself. I believed that his friendship for me, founded in kindness, must dissipate without underlying passion of its own.

Whether or not there was truth in my assumption, I understood now we were on equal footing. Something existed between us which made words needless—and we were no longer children who needed to run.

He told me odd, disjointed stories of where he had been and what he had seen when he had been away. His mother was now dead. His eyes told me, when his words did not, that he had known little happiness since leaving the burg. I did not understand on what terms he now remained, but I believed it was for good, and my joy was boundless.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

I was faced with a mask of death, and I did not cower from it. I did not shun it: instead death became a companion for me, an instigator, for with each breath I took I was compelled to grasp more and more of life.

My former perspective fell away. Others thought I was changed, but I felt for the first time as though I commanded myself.

I discarded all conventions and rules. I would do what I wanted to do.

I have always had a secret love for wickedness, which perhaps lends credibility to the wrongful acts I have knowingly committed. Yet in the face of death I cannot say any repentance for them. My outcome would be the same; I would still lay slowly dying whether or no I had ventured to these lonely but alluring precipices.

When I was very young, there was a boy who was called upon to push my chair. Any reluctance a boy would feel to be at the disposal of one of the sex who, at his age, must have seemed alien and repulsive, was concealed in a face full of Christian love and duty.

He made me forget my misfortunes. He offered me friendship and I took it, and in my loneliness I insisted on having all of him, and he gave it to me. Oskar became my playmate, my solace, and despite my infirmities he made me feel as though I reciprocated all of the glorious felicity he bestowed on me.

Certain facts I always knew: that Oskar's mother was a servant who lived in a secluded cottage on the estate, that my mother disliked her. Without warning or commotion which might be expected to precede such an act, my mother removed Oskar and his mother from the premises.

I learned only through the whispers of servants he was gone: we were removed from one another at the time of the decision, never to say even a farewell.

My indignation was paramount. That the being who offered me every happiness I possessed should be removed from me on account of some reasoning I sensed innately was evil, impacted my character dreadfully. I was unmanageable to all, at first on hope that it would compel my boy's return and then, when I lost hope, I was even evil.

The next to push my chair was a young, pretty servant named Gervaise. Her replacement I could not accept: I devised all manner of torment to defer her. She expected and thwarted me easily, making me aware of my deficiencies so that I despised her.

My mother drifted from me, and I never stopped hating her till her death, when my hatred dissipated into a sterile, unreasoning pain nothing would ever lift.

My brother Gauvain relieved Gervaise of her duties eventually. He sensed my unabsolvable loneliness and tried to be to me as my Oskar was: but it could never be.

It was not till much later I learned the things which had contrived to Oskar's and his mother's dismissal. As I mentioned, I have no deference for the conventions of this society, and it did not matter to me if my feelings or actions were unacceptable.

It was soon after my father's death that Oskar returned to the estate. I was nineteen at that time.

Labels: excerpt, The Soul of the Rose

Through this city I wander. The cold is pitiless, wind blowing right through me. It only makes me feel the more invisible.

There is no beauty that meets my gaze, and I am accustomed to looking down always, or squinting against the dead leaves in the wind.

This is a place where it is always winter. The sky is gray, the chill tolerable, but never pleasant. I have grown so used to it, that it is as though weather has ceased to exist. Snow, rain and sun are weather. This gray chill is a void.

I feel so lonely that I think I am losing my mind. When I am around others, I behave disgracefully. I am so pleasant and winning as to attract their distrust, yet I cannot help this desire to connect to someone else. But every day that I am alone, it becomes clearer to me that I never will have anyone.

Once there was someone for me, someone I believed would be with me forever, but I cannot think on him long.

I must keep moving, or I will freeze through and through, body and soul.

As I gaze at the doorway he's there, a mirage, and I don't believe what I am seeing.

"Dresden." He says my name with meaning, as though it is a prayer.

"Gabriel." For a moment I am unable to say more. I stare stupidly at him. "Please, come inside." I have managed to unlock the door and push it open with a trembling hand.

He takes my grocery bags and motions me inside. It's so familiar, because it has happened before. My throat is dry and aching. I don't understand why it ever had to stop, or why he is here again.

He's looking after me. He helps me put away the groceries. I put a kettle of hot water on the stove, and with trembling hands put two cups on the counter. I dare a glance at him, and when he says nothing, I open a tin and spoon tea into a ceramic pot.

I don't think this is what most women do when they see their ex-lovers again. Briefly the words of Diana Ross's, "I Will Survive," float through my mind:

"Go on now, go walk out the door
Just turn around now
You're not welcome anymore."

I certainly make a mockery of female power with my hospitality, I think to myself with a trace of amusement. But what else can I do? I'm still not sure if I will be able to live without Gabriel. I must survive in my own way.

I gaze at his bowed head across the warmly-lit kitchen. He is looking at his hands. I can't even guess how he feels. Is he guilty? Remorseful? Unhappy? He meets my gaze suddenly, and I see all of that, and more, in his eyes.

Good grief, we hadn't that much time together. Perhaps it meant more to me than it did to him. That is what I have told myself time and again. He had never mentioned marrying me. But marriage isn't something that really exists in this world anymore. It is a social institution, and society is no longer.

While we gaze at each other, the tea kettle starts to hiss. I take it off before it whistles. I always do this: not because I'm impatient, but because I have nothing better to do.

I make tea, we sit and drink, and still he says nothing.

When he finishes his cup, I look alert, because I know now he's going to say whatever he came to say.

"It took some time, but I finally found some transportation. I have everything in place for you to leave Drommende."

It wasn't what I expected to hear, and I don't much care for the authoritative note in his voice, either. "I don't have any travel plans."

"You're getting out of here. It's dangerous. You're the only human left now."

"The only human left." I look at him. "What about you?"

"If you know what's good for you, you'll pack up and leave while you have a chance."

"Why should I want to leave?"

"Your life is in danger."

"No one knows I'm here, except you. I go days without seeing another soul." Sometimes I'm not even sure I exist.

"I can't explain more," he says grimly. "I went to a lot of trouble for you, Dresden. Get your bags. I'll see you in the truck myself." He takes my keys and I jerk them away from him.

"How dare you? You can't tell me what to do. I've waited here for you, for months." There's a sob in my voice, but I don't care. "If I go to... wherever you tell me... are you going, too?"

"No. I don't intend that we should ever see each other again."

"Get out of here." I fling the keys at his head and he ducks, looking surprised. "Just go away. Don't ever come back."

I realize why I'm so angry. I really thought from the moment he showed up that he would reconcile with me. I'm ashamed of myself. I can feel the heat rising in my face.

He looks at me with tenderness, despite my outburst. "Don't you know everything I do is for you?" he asks. "Every thought. Every motive." His voice drops to a whisper. "For Dresden."

What a line. I lift my hands to my face. "Please, just go away," I whisper.

I feel his hands over mine. How did he come so close? I didn't hear his footsteps on the floor. "I'm going," he said. In the wake of his touch I feel a laceration, and gasp.

I open my eyes and look at my wrists and there's marks on them, as though I've been clawed by an animal.

Gabriel is no longer in the room.

Labels: excerpt

The next morning Gisele felt slightly dazed. It was early, and everyone seemed to be hiding. No one had brought her her breakfast. Luckily she was no longer under lock and key and could find food herself.

When she stepped out into the hallway, she was struck by its stillness. No other patients moved. There wasn’t a sound.

Gisele felt slightly dizzy, queasy, but she moved hastily down the hallway. When she would have descended the staircase, she changed her mind and ascended it instead. She went where she usually had no mind to go-- to the prior’s quarters. She passed the prior’s office and it was empty. Beyond that the hall was dark, and the rooms it opened to were uninhabited.

Gisele checked all of them as she went, urgent on a sudden prowl, struck by queasy suspicion, fear. The hall went on and on. She tripped and saw a broken doll lying on the floor.

Tenderly she picked it up and turned it over, brushing its dirty costume, flicking at dirt on its cracked face. Still holding the doll, she moved toward noises at the end of the corridor.

She went hot and cold, clutched the doll like an innocent child. Her limbs felt leaden as she moved toward the dark, empty room.

The bed squeaked, the voice groaned. The darkness of the room swam before her eyes, then parted to a stream of light illuminating a pillow, mattress, two bodies.

Gisele’s eyes flooded in green as she watched them couple, one head gray, the other’s fire-red.

Fire-red. She squeezed the doll and turned away, then broke into a run down the hallway.

She found Eden in the kitchen, paring potatoes. Her slim fingers were red and swollen. Gisele took her hand and dragged her, startled, into the pantry, then held her close.

She pulled down Eden’s wimple and touched her hair, smooth and black as it was. She breathed heavily in relief and pressed her face to Eden’s hair.

Eden’s blue eyes were wide, staring. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.

Tears constricted Gisele’s voice, and she said nothing, only stroked Eden’s hair. The doll still dangled from her hand. Finally, she said. “Promise me you’ll come tonight.”

“You know I will.”

“You’ll stay with me. I’ll never let him have you.”

Eden squeezed her eyes closed. “Oh, Gisele.”

Labels: Absinthe, excerpt

The girl sat on the side of the cot, her lips pressed to a small moue. She had a round, pale face and large blue eyes. Her black hair was center-parted and neatly combed behind her wimple.

When she didn't answer or move, Gisele stopped struggling. "Who are you?" she asked finally, meeting the girl's beautiful eyes.

She smile gently. "My name is Eden," she said. "I've come to give you some food, Gisele. You've been unconscious for two days. You've lost a lot of blood and will be weak for a long time to come." Lightly she pressed her hand over Gisele's which lay bandaged and still on the cot. "Why did you do what you did?" she asked in a slow, pained voice. Her eyes were so large and innocent that Gisele began to wonder if she had ever encountered a patient who had attempted suicide.

Gisele met her blue gaze unflinchingly. "Because I wanted to be with him," she said in a tight, emotionless voice. "I will be with him. I will find a way."

Eden shook her head wonderingly.

"Why don't you have a nun name?" Gisele asked.

"I'm only a novice," Eden said. "When I have taken my vows, I will be Sister Eden." She smiled gently and patted Gisele's hand and, illogically, Gisele felt reassured by the girl. Her voice was light and soothing, and she seemed so different from everything Gisele had experienced in the past weeks, that she took comfort in her. Eden became her name in that quiet silence, as Gisele mused on her comforting tone and touch.

"Was he killed in the war?" Eden asked.

"Of course," Gisele said dully. "How else? He didn't want to go. I didn't want him to. I hate this country, this world. I want to die." Her voice rose in volume and she pounded her fists on the cot as well as she could, since they were strapped down. She felt a quiver of pain in her left wrist as she did so and realized that the wound was still raw.

"You can't take your own life, Gisele," Eden said, pressing her hands together before her chest, fingertips up. As she did so, she resembled a Madonna icon to Gisele's dazed vision. "It's a sin. Be still, Gisele, be calm. In the coming weeks, you will find a reason to live, if you let the spirit into your life."

Labels: Absinthe, excerpt

As she sat in her room, contemplating the new turn of her life, her thoughts turned to Anton, and his unnerving resemblance to the figment in her dreams. She felt inexplicably drawn to him, as though he were the answer to a puzzle she had worked over in her mind all of her life.

She noticed him standing on the balcony, high above her head. Madeleine put her hands to her head, feeling a sudden sense of disorientation. She wanted to shout up to him, to demand the answers from him. But he would think her only mad. Perhaps he was only just there! Perhaps he had not gone there to watch her struggle with her disturbing visions.

Did she imagine that he was some sort of sorcerer, and that he had conjured those visions to torment her in her sleep? It could not be! He was not a magician, only a man.

But all of this changed for her on the day she met Barbara.

Madeleine turned from him in the garden. "I did not know... about Barbara," she said merely.

"Didn't you?" he asked. "What of it?"

"You are to marry her!" Her voice reverberated in the stillness. "You led me to believe..." Madeleine turned on him in fury.

Anton continued to look at her coolly. "You do not know the half of it," he said.

At his cool tone, Madeleine felt even more angry. "Don't touch me again," she said merely, and walked from him.

His hands came to either side of her head, and she found herself lodged against the cool stone. No, she thought, this must not happen. But she felt powerless to stop the passion between them. She did not protest as his mouth met hers. He tightened his hold on her as spray blew up in the wind and dampened their faces and clothes.

Madeleine pushed him away.

"You are so proud!" he said.

"Too proud, you might say, to become involved with someone like yourself.

*

Now that Madeleine knew the truth, everything was different. Anton had wanted her to learn the truth! He had deliberately provoked her dreams, tried in every way he knew to make her realize the truth, without seeming to do so. Why? Madeleine wanted to demand.

She could not understand why he would torture her in such a way. Then it came to her that perhaps he saw her as a means to escape his relationship to Barbara, who was clearly viperous and would make him miserable all of his life. Barbara! How she would hate Madeleine, perhaps, if she knew the truth!

Madeleine stifled a small cry of dismay. How could she have involved herself with Anton in such a way? Why was she so powerless to fight the passion she felt for him? What he had done to her was so wrong!

But Madeleine had once been Anton's betrothed. Luther had decreed it so. Did Anton think things would change if it was known that Madeleine had once been Gisela Weisse, the girl that Anton would marry, however unwillingly? It was a mad plot. Madeleine could not suspect it even of Anton. But in many ways, she felt as afraid of Anton as she did of Luther, who had once imprisoned and abused her.

Barbara presented herself in the parlor, her pixie-like face surrounded by clusters of brown curls. She was impish-looking at first, but another glance yielded notice of a darker implication behind her playful jibes.

Hildegarde hated her. She pouted every time that Barbara entered the room, and she railed against the way Barbara patronized her, acting almost motherly. Hildegarde acted as though she were caught in a web, flailing everytime Barbara drew her into her embrace.

Madeleine found Barbara particularly repulsive. Barbara was the one who was qualified to receive Anton's embraces. And how she gloried in them! Perhaps once she had found them boring, but now that she had a rival! Everytime she had the opportunity, she kissed Anton on the cheek, or pressed his hand in a proper but intimate manner. His face seemed to be made of granite each time Barbara touched him.

Madeleine could not help but think how mobile his mouth had been when he had kissed her... How their passion had known no boundaries when she had first come to Heidelburg. But all of that was done now! Anton had only been using her, using her passion, perhaps, to play into his plan. Did he really think when she learned her identity that she would be truly willing to marry him?

Someone at the castle wished to harm her! And she could not be sure that it was not Anton! How could she approach Luther with him and reveal the truth about her past? She would not do it! She could not stay in this house a moment longer.

*

They were in the greenhouse, the three of them. How curiously warm it was! Madeleine thought of how the glass trapped the warmth of the sun within the greenhouse, causing it to be warming than the world outside of it.

"How beautiful you look," Anton said to Madeleine in a low voice as they paused in a corner.

She stared at him, shocked by his boldness. She communicated her feelings with her eyes, but he only smiled. He touched one hand to the folds of her gown, quite removed from herself as they were by the stiff crinoline, but it still seemed an intimacy as she watched him work the pale blue material thoughtfully between his fingers.

"My father has bought this for you," he said, his brows lifting.

The material was too expensive for a governess's salary. That was his implication.

Madeleine's heart quailed as she remembered how she had admired it in Mannheim, and Luther had sent it to her in short order. She should not have accepted it! But she should not have thought much of it if Anton had not brought it in such a sinister light with so few words. Luther had bought the gown for her! Luther was spending an inordinate amount of time with her!

But it was Anton who was taking liberties or was at least attempting to do so.

"I'll have done with your implications!" Madeleine said, too loudly, and elicted Barbara's notice.

Her brow creased delicately in concern as she looked from one to the other, and went to them, her ruffles sussurating in the close space against the ends of tables and low shelves. "It is a beautiful gown, Madeleine," she said with a smile to Madeleine which was too kind, then looked to Anton with an expression of mild rebuke. "Have you embarrassed her?" she demanded of him. "It is too unkind of you. Madeleine looks lovely today, and the wonders she has worked with Hildegarde would justify Luther's purchase of a dozen such lovely gowns. It is fitting she be justly rewarded for her miracles."

Barbara drew Madeleine from Anton and smiled at her confidingly. "You must have heard by now what an incorrigible child Hildegarde was before you came to the castle! How undisciplined! How immature! If I may say so, Miss Kerrin, despite your own breeding, you have turned our Hildegarde into a proper lady."

Hildegarde's reaction, Madeleine thought, would have been anything but ladylike had she heard Barbara's provoking words.

As it was, Anton raised a brow in annoyance. "My dear," he said, "you exaggerate to the extreme, and flatter Miss Kerrin to no end. Have done with her. Look at the violets you have come to see, and we will be done with this."

Barbara went quickly to the violets and studied them, the flowers she so loved, which seemed to Madeleine, more so now that she knew Barbara liked them, sinister flowers, which grew in darkness, apparently delicate like Barbara, but thriving in black, rotted soil beneath forest leaves.

"What did you care to see, Miss Kerrin?" Anton asked, bringing a quick blush to Madeleine's cheeks at his direct look. As though he could guess her unkind thoughts!

"The venus fly trap," she said immediately. "Lord von Heidel told me of it, and I must confess my reluctance to believe its existence!"

"Ah," he said. "Three have died which Father brought from South America, but one is still alive. It is the hardiest of them, but I do not know if it will survive the winter."

"How strange it is to think of a carnivorous plant as delicate!" Madeleine remarked as she went to him, and again she was reminded of Barbara, and had to stop herself from more uncharitable thoughts about her.

But the venus fly trap was fascinating in its own right. It was not a lovely plant, but it was delicate, smaller than Barbara's violets, and a pale, sickly green which testified that it might not last the cold German winter.

"I am shocked that you would be so inclined toward such an appalling plant," Anton commented. "It really brings out the worst in people. Soon you will be catching a fly to give it."

"I should not do that!" Madeleine objected. "It is an appalling plant, but an honest one too! It makes no pretentions about its intents. The tendrils without each leaf do resemble a row of teeth. How fascinating. I have only seen these in books."

"I should have taken it to the conservatory long ago to salvage it were I not disgusted by it," Anton commented drily.

Madeleine picked up the small pot immediately. "Then you must allow me to nurture it!" she said. "It is such a fascinating specimen that I cannot allow it to die. And it will catch far more flies in the conservatory, when they blow in from the kitchen, then it will here."

Anton smiled ruefully at her. "How well you love unloveable things!" He caught her gaze, and Madeleine felt something meaningful pass between them. As before, it was as though Barbara were no longer in the room. But perhaps he was so immoral, that he did not care where he looked at another woman, or how openly he flirted with her.

Madeleine turned from him quickly.

Labels: excerpt, Winter Light

"Oh, Roger..." Margaret pressed one hand to her bosom. "I'm so sorry..."

"Don't." His voice was sharp, his expression forbidding. "Don't say anything like that to me about the matter. I'm very happy for Katherine."

She reached out to touch his hand, feeling sad at the stabbing pain in his eyes. "Then I am too, of course," she said.

A commotion from down the hall made them both look up. The children were running toward them with energetic cries, trailed by a tall, dark-haired man. For a moment, as Margaret met his stern gray eyes, she almost didn't recognize him. The expression on his face chilled her. She jerked her hand away from Roger's and stood quickly.

"Drew!" Roger moved toward him quickly. He shook his hand and clapped him on the back. "What a pleasure! It's been too long since I've seen you, old chap."

"Roger." Drew's lips upturned in a terse smile and he shook his old friend's hand firmly. Then he turned his hard stare back to Margaret. "Who is this girl?"

Margaret stood quickly, looking at him with astonishment.

Roger chuckled with surprise. "Why, Drew, don't you recognize our old friend, Margaret?" he asked. "She looks after your brothers and sisters now, of course."

"Of course," he said, striding toward her on legs that seemed impossibly long. "How do you do, Margaret?"

"Very well, Drew." She felt hot color creep to her face and looked away from him quickly, uncomfortable at his stare. How handsome he was! He had only grown more so in the years he had been away at college. But there was something quite different about his face now. It was no longer boyish, but quite stern. His gray eyes were hard as stones.

"We were just about to have lunch, Drew," Roger said. "Please join us."

The three of them sat. The children had taken advantage of the commotion and were eating sloppily, allowing mustard and dressing to slip from their sandwiches onto the table and onto their clothes.

Margaret had been so disturbed by Drew's sudden appearance that she had not noticed them. Now she rose quickly and went to them, lifting a napkin and wiping Duncan's dirty face. "Use your napkins!" she commanded sharply. "And sit straight in your chairs. Lean over your plates. Where are your manners, children?"

Drew's eyes followed Margaret's movements, and his gaze lingered on her as Roger spoke to him. "You're home far sooner than we expected," he said. "Was your train early?"

"I took a different train," he said, his gaze flint-hard. "I didn't want a fuss made over my return. I came early to avoid any whoo-doo." He made an absent wave with his hand.

Margaret returned to her seat once the children were behaving properly. She realized with discomfiture that she was as nervous as she had been around Drew eight years ago. Her hand trembled as she poured tea for all of them.

Drew's eyes were trained on her face. "What are you still doing here, Margaret?" he asked. "I thought you would go off to school."

Her face colored. Surely he must know that she was too poor to attend finishing school. Calmly she set the teapot down and picked up the cream. "When my father died, I became an orphan. I had no money. I have been working since I was twenty." She managed to return his gaze directly.

He looked her over thoughtfully. "Here?" he asked.

"I have had other jobs. Mr. Russell has employed me to look after the children in light of your mother's illness. I have had sufficient training in grade school to teach the children," she said quickly, feeling defensive under his gaze.

His black, slender brows rose on his pale face at her words. "Of course," he said with surprise. "You were always a very intelligent girl." His brows developed a crook and his lips twisted. "If not a little willful. I hope that you have grown past taking dares. It can get you into trouble."

Margaret smiled at him mockingly over her tea cup. "I am not above a dare," she said.

He leaned closer to her. "Really?" he asked. "I might impose one on you. Challenge how much courage you really have."

She leaned forward. "I think you will find that I am not easily bested. You will have to use your imagination."

"I have quite an imagination." He leaned closer still, his gray eyes sparking with the first life she had seen since he had come through the door. "I fear my capacity for imagination might shock you."

Roger cleared his throat, startled Margaret from the intriguing depths of Drew's gaze. She looked at Roger, feeling a little dizzy.

Labels: excerpt

This is so embarrassing: I wrote it when I was sixteen. I don't imagine it would be of entertainment to anyone but myself. The prelude is a poem I wrote myself, too, unfortunately.


Ah, fickle love!
You cannot decide, can you?!
Can you?!
Thrust me aside and look upon me no more
Or kiss me again


Even through the near-impermeable walls the storm raged, and as I leaned in an arcade in relief I felt the shudder of thunder. I shivered, and it was then that I realized the cloak I wore was warm, heated with a touch alien to my own, and I shuddered again, in horror, and wrenched it from my shoulders, holding it gingerly in one hand.

The walls which surrounded me were unfamiliar, hazy, and seemed even more foreign still as steam rose from an arched, open window and filled the room with curling threads of vapor. There was silence but for the steady roar out of doors.

I was not aware that I was in near-darkness until a sudden, alarming orange flame shot up from the wall opposite me. My breath lodged in my throat until I realized I was looking at a vast marble fireplace, thick with dust and web.

As my fascinated eyes stared the flame enlarged and separated, and the room was suddenly filled with a strange, warm glow.

How? I asked myself, but only for a moment, for I was shocked once more at the whisper which I might have heard.

Could have heard.

If only the rain would not pound so loudly...

The self-originated fire crackled merrily and invited me to kneel before it, and I closed my eyes in relief as the warmth permeated my damp, shivering body.

"Listen to me listen to me..."

I looked around and rose, the doctor's cloak slipping through my fingers. My heartbeat was audible.

"Listen to me listen to me listen to me..."

Was I hearing a voice? I blinked, and looked around again. The vapor seemed to cover the floor, and was beginning to reach my feet. I watched it until it curled around my ankles.

"Eloise..."

"Who's there?" I cried loudly, and my own voice was childlike, thin.

The flames crackled before my eyes in a mesmerizing glow. Were they coming closer to me, or I to them?

Then I was aware of the stone beneath me, and I was seated before the fire again.

"Eloise..."

Yes, it was the fire. I was certain of it. It spoke to me in a rich, dark voice.

"Yes; I'm listening."

"Eloise...you are the chosen and the cursed. Marry, and bear children, and you will carry on a legacy of evil and madness."

"What nonsense is this?" I scoffed at the flames.

A sharp crack, like an impatient throat clearing itself. "Your dreams are to fall in love and be wed, are they not?"

"Yes; what business is it of yours?"

"You are mad, Eloise."

"I am entirely coherent."

"Your children will be mad as well, Eloise. Countless generations will suffer from your afflictions if you carry out your selfish plans."

"My plans are normal," I said, confused and disappointed and a little angry. "I am a woman, or will be one day, and I deserve to be able to have children! And, anyway, I don't know why you are concerned. I shall never fall in love here, after all. My dreams will probably never come true, but I refuse to surrender my pleasant wishes."

Was the glow lessening? Was the fire dying?

"Stay away from the beds of men."

I frowned. "What?"

The fire was dying, and I was distressed.

"You shan't understand it now. Just remember my words; heed my warning. Your virginity is the future's salvation."

My eyes widened considerably. "Why...what a dramatic and strange thing to say! My maidenhood is not your concern, and your statement reeks of histronics!"

I was on my feet, and I was glaring angrily into a cold, empty fireplace. Feeling a little dizzy, I staggered backward and gingerly touched my forehead. The mist which had poured so freely from the windowsill had vanished, and a faint but steady rain fell upon Otranto.

Unconsciously I drew the doctor's cloak about me, a frightened feeling stirring within me. I had not liked the fire's words. Was there something the matter with me? Without warning, I suddenly felt trapped in a chasm of uncertainty.

I did not know what was real anymore; I was wandering through the castle's halls, and I saw smokelike images rise around me, beckon to me, and for the first time I was frightened of them, for I did not know what they were, who they were. Or if they were truly there.

Drawing back from the translucent white hands I hurried through the passages, tears of distress coming to my eyes. I continued on, giving in to the icy tears which clung to my lashes and cheeks, and biting my lip to keep from sobbing aloud.

God, I was so afraid. I did not know what was the matter with me.

And then there was Isabel, looking out of a window into the bleak, wet air. Relief filled me as I halted in the doorway, and I watched her.

I made no sound, but nevertheless, without warning she turned to me, and her relief echoed mine.

"Eloise," she chided in a breaking voice. "Dear, I did not know what had happened to you. I..."

I rushed into Isabel's familiar arms and a sob escaped my throat. "Help me, I whispered into her shoulder, scented with lavender. "I need to know what is real."



Isabel allowed me to remove my shoes in order to pace the deliciously cool, wet grass. I lingered behind her as she steadily trod to the ruined cathedral, not once looking back to make sure I followed. She knew I would not run away this time.

The sun looked sleepy as he moved from the cover of the last of the green-grey clouds. The light he bestowed was gentle and hesitant.

The closer we came to the cathedral the more my heart began to pound. Isabel seemed so certain of herself, ahead. She knew precisely where she was going. How well did she know my sanctuary?

I plucked idly at my freshly-washed gown, a mournful black silk, but relieved with lace at the elbows. I looked ahead again, and saw that we were coming closer to a garden beside the church, a garden of tombs. I was fascinated and frightened, and I stopped at the gate, clutching onto the damp iron balustrade in desperation.

Immediately Isabel turned around. "Come here." It was not softened with a plea, or hardened with a telling edge, but a single, collected statement.

I obeyed her, though inwardly I recoiled.

The graves were covered in a tangled mass of weeds and wildflowers, and the stones were covered in ivy; they were crumbling. Isabel made her way through the cemetery, looking around, halting before a pair of graves at the far edge, motioning for me to join her.

I felt faint; I knew I was going to see something I did not wish to. My own voice mocked me with my urgent question, "What is real?"

Perhaps I said it aloud, because Isabel said slowly and softly, "This is real."

And I moved beside Isabel and I saw the gravestones, framed in masses of ivy and morning glory.

The one nearest to me said "Horatio L'Agassi; birth unknown; death November 15, 1584."

The other read, merely, "Beth Dela Mer."

Oh, I had seen the graves before. I had seen them long ago, long before I even knew what death was. I had read the names and I had spoken aloud, spoken to my unseen neighbors in earnest. And I had brought them flowers.

And I had created my friends, Horatio and Beth, from the depths of my mind.

Labels: excerpt

When she was a girl she had gone there once, wading amidst waist-high weeds and picking through the brambles to get to the old cottage. She remembered it somehow. She had found a key in a drawer in an old dresser box in the spare room and had speculated endlessly about what it might open. It was the size and shape of a key which might fit into a door.

One day when Kate had been riding with her father she had seen the old cottage and had asked him about it. It's abandoned, he had told her. It was hard now to recall his voice because he had been dead for so many years. She had developed the idea that the key she had found must open the old cottage. It was on her father's property but it had not been inhabited for years. None of the servants seemed to know anything about it.

Kate had gone to the cottage at dusk, when her parents were occupied with preparing dinner and finishing up household tasks. She had opened the door with the key she had found and had entered the small building.

She remembered the effect the place had had on her senses. As she had stepped over the threshold she felt a sudden chill, perhaps because she had not expected to see the place kept, or to see anything inside it but old junk. She looked around, round-eyed, at a fine green velvet sofa, a polished mahogany table, and in the corner, a gold candleabra. The well-dressed room smelled of fine musk perfume.

The dim light streaming through the window revealed a bronze statue seated on a polished cherry pedestal. It was so unlike anything she had seen that she stared at it with fascination. As she moved closer she could make out the shape of it in the dim light. It was in the likeness of a gorilla, posed intimidatingly, with a threatening expression. Kate felt further unnerved in the cottage but she didn’t leave.

She became aware that bubbles were floating around her in the air. Turning she watched them, and realized they were issuing from the bronze gorilla’s mouth. She moved closer to the statue to study the phenomenon, but her gaze became caught by her reflection in the bubble.

It appeared to be her reflection at first, but as she stared she could see other images, the face of a man, tall, with dark hair. He held a woman in his arms and kissed her. Kate stared in astonishment.

She turned to another bubble and saw the image in it, a tall slim woman with skirts lifting, stumbling over rocks in the darkness. Her fine blue dress was torn and her long red hair was loose and tangled. Kate watched as she slipped, then clung to the rocks. Her mouth opened as though to cry out, but Kate heard no sounds except the chirping of birds in the rafters.

The sound of it jerked her to attention, and she looked back at the room. She saw the sofa, now covered with a white dust-cloth and several years’ worth of dust, and the table too covered with a cloth. The candleabra was tarnished and the white wax candles had melted and crumbled to bits.

Kate brought her arms close, rubbing at the sudden chills that came over her as she realized nothing was as she had first seen it. The bronze gorilla had disappeared.

Frightened, she backed out of the cottage and locked the door, then turned, intending to hurry back toward the house. Along the way the key fell out of her pocket. It landed somewhere in the high grass and she searched for it frantically. She was more concerned with returning home than finding the key, and she gave up her search after several moments.

The experience had printed itself on her mind. The man standing before her, a vagrant, brought it all back to her as he gestured toward the place. Kate was standing with him on the porch. It was dusk, like it had been that night years ago. She looked back at him, studying him. She was unable to make out his features in the shadows.

“The old place has been locked up for years of course,” she said. “You will have to make it presentable. The key has been lost. We will have to remove the door and install a new one.”

“I can do that,” he said, in a voice she low she could not really trace an inflection. “There’s no door. It looks as though someone broke into the place a while ago.”

Kate nodded. “Perhaps. I don’t know. I haven’t attended to it.”

Nicole stepped onto the porch, looking from Kate to the vagrant with curiosity. The stranger met her inquiring gaze levelly. Kate turned, then cast the vagrant an apologetic look. “Excuse us for a moment.”

In the parlor she faced her cousin. “Kate,” Nicole said, her brow knitted with unease, “who is that?”

“He’s looking for work. He wants to stay in the old cottage. He will do tasks around the house.”

Nicole looked appalled. “No,” she said, “we can’t have some stranger stay on our property. There’s only me and you living here, two women.”

“He doesn’t want money. He only wants to live in the cottage. You won’t notice him.”

Nicole looked discontent. “We don’t know him. We don’t know anything about him. I won’t feel secure living here, with him around.”

Kate knew that even though she owned the deed to the house she still ought to take her cousin’s feelings into account. Everything Nicole said was true and she was right to feel as she did. It was Kate who was behaving unnaturally. She had been on her guard until the vagrant had mentioned staying at the cottage, and then her memories of it had tumbled back.

For some reason she wanted him to stay there. She was afraid to enter the cottage but she wanted to see what it would be like for someone else. Even though the vagrant was completely mysterious Kate did not feel threatened by him.

“He will probably not stay long,” Kate said. “Likely enough a few nights and then he will be gone. I know the sort. I don’t want to turn him away. It’s just not in me to do that.”

Nicole was dumbfounded and her eyes still expressed protest but Kate pretended not to see. “I’m going back to speak with him,” she said, and went back to the porch.

The stranger was gone. Kate’s heart skipped a beat. She had expected him to remain, had expected that something would come of him but he must have heard her conversation with Nicole. She felt a trace of pity for him.

It was almost winter, which in Texas didn’t mean blizzards, but a hard freeze could be miserable or detrimental to someone who didn’t have shelter. She went to the far end of the porch, feeling strangely bereft, then she saw him.

He was moving toward the cottage.

Kate gave a swift intake of breath then stepped from the porch and followed him.

In the dusk she felt a curious sense of returning to herself, wading through the waist high grass toward the tree-shrouded, vine-covered cottage on the hillside.

The vagrant had already entered the cottage.

Kate followed him, pausing in the doorway.

He turned, and she felt curious as his dark eyes met hers. In the dimness his face was barely visible but his features appealed to her. She found herself moving toward him. She accepted his outstretched hand.

In the darkness part of her cried out against the behavior, against the illogical feeling which swept her. Dreamlike she looked around the room. It looked as it had for that brief moment long ago. The sofa was clad in green velvet. The mahogany furnishings glowed in the dim light. The brone gorilla stooped on its pedestal against one wall and spouted bubbles which floated on the cool air.

A breeze swept Kate’s face as she looked at the vagrant. Strands of hair covered her cheek, which he reached to brush aside. His eyes narrowed and his dark head neared hers, his high, arched brows furrowed with some unnamed emotion.

A sudden pain jerked her to awareness and Kate buckled to her knees. She grasped her ankle and he was beside her. He smelled of earth, smoke and hay, perhaps testifying to the places where he had slept. As Kate landed on the floor she became aware of the powder-fine dust, the dead dry leaves. He wasn’t looking at her with the same expression she had imagined, and the furniture was covered in dust cloths. There were no bubbles or bronze statue.

Kate gave a cry of pain as she moved her ankle. He touched it gingerly. “Easy,” he said, and for the first time she really heard the timbre of his voice. It was deep, and gentle. “You tripped over something in the doorway.”

Kate jerked her head back toward the door, then saw a loose board coming up. There were boards coming up everywhere. There were also cracks in the walls, and probably leaks in the roof.

She had imagined her encounter with him as well. He had crossed the room to reach her as she had stepped over the threshold, then tripped and fallen.

Kate felt foolish, afraid and slightly mad.

She wanted to say something to ground them in reality. “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” she said.

His eyes darkened slightly. Was he angry? When he spoke he sounded resigned. “When I approached the house I didn’t know there were only women. I’m sorry. You might have told me.” He was almost as aware of propriety as Nicole, Kate thought with faint amazement. It wasn’t something she had expected a vagrant to say.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, truly wanting to know. The question hung in the air like dust. He didn’t answer or meet her eyes.

He rose to his feet, leaving her crouched on the floor.

“You want to live here,” she said. It wasn’t a question this time.

He still avoided her eyes. “I can use the work,” he said, “but I’m not going to beg you. If you’re going to tell me no, then do it, so I can look somewhere else for a job.”

“You can stay here,” Kate said. She realized she was still sitting on the floor, had made no move to get up because she had felt so disoriented, and felt foolish. She stumbled quickly to her feet. “What do you know how to do?”

“I’ll clean up your yard. I can clean out the barn. Maybe you and your sister can get cows or chickens.”

“She’s my cousin,” Kate said, then felt sorry she had volunteered the information. Maybe the less he knew about them the better. “We don’t know anything about animals. You can clean out the barn if you want. The house needs to be re-shingled. Know anything about that?”

“I can do that,” he said, meeting her gaze evenly.

“That’s good. This cottage doesn’t suffice as payment. I’ll give you some money. We can work it out later. For the time being I’m going back to the house. It’s late.”

He didn’t argue. He seemed to be waiting for her to leave as she turned and stepped out of the cottage, then crossed the field. She could feel his eyes on her back.


She couldn’t sleep that night.

Kate was awakened by the sound of scraping on the roof. Her eyes flew wide as she listened avidly to the unfamiliar sound. She got out of bed and dressed quickly, then entered the kitchen. Nicole was standing in the middle of the room holding a cup of coffee. She wore the same discontented expression Kate had seen last night.

"What is he doing up there?" Nicole hissed to her.
The previous evening's events rushed back to her. Her eyes widened as she remembered the vagrant. She didn't even know his name. "I gave him work to do," Kate said. "He's taking the shingles off the roof. If this doesn't work then I'll tell him to go. That's all there is to it."

Nicole gave her a doubtful look. "This is so unlike you," she said. "We don't know anything about this man."

Kate felt weary at the prospect of more of the previous evening's argument. "I will talk to him this afternoon," Kate said. "I want to know his name, and where he's come from."

"Do you think he will tell you that much? From the look of him he wants nothing to do with us, really."

Kate realized it was true. He probably wanted to tell them nothing about his past, but that made it seem all the more pertinent that she know at least the basic facts about him.

She went outside and crossed her arms, watching him on the roof. His sleeves were rolled up and his hair was mussed from the strong wind that blew over the house. "Do you want breakfast?" Kate shouted to him.

He turned at the sound of her voice, and his eyes narrowed. He crept to the edge of the roof and knelt down to her.

Kate smiled more pleasantly and moved closer. "Good morning," she said. "Nicole has scrambled some eggs, and there are biscuits. I can bring you something if you would like."

Though they were separated by an expanse of several feet Kate still felt his proximity. His face was clearly visible in the sunlight and Kate studied it momentarily, admiring what she saw. His hair swept in a black mass over his high, pale brow, framing green eyes which appeared to be looking her over.

"Thank you," he said, and Kate felt a slight, inexplicable relief at his agreement. It seemed somehow a step closer to speaking with him about his past.

Labels: excerpt

Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

*
The Siren
Prologue

The mermaids moved along the shore in pale silence. It was early evening and their bodies shone white in the dimness. They were unclothed and their long hair hung around their faces in all colors: black, shades of brown and red, and gold. Their legs wobbled as they walked over the sand, hand-in-hand.

One mermaid's eyes met her sister's and she smiled a secret smile. "Our other sister lives there," she whispered, gesturing to a small clapboard house on the hillside, surrounded by high weeds and rocks. Lights shone from within.

"I know," the black-haired one responded, "but the question is, how will we reach her? She has ignored our call for weeks."

The brown-haired mermaid's brows furrowed. "Her will is strong, but she cannot resist us forever. All of us must return to the sea whether or not we wish it. It is a part of our nature and it is stronger than death. Our lost ones will return to us."

The black-haired girl nodded, reassured. Her green eyes scanned the house anxiously. She hated to be parted from her loved ones. Nothing could separate them really, not love, not death. Though there were hundreds of them they were all one.

"Come," the brown-haired mermaid whispered. "Our time grows short here. We must return to the sea." They turned and walked together back to the water. Their other sisters were pale shadows on the shore, bowing as the waves washed over their thin, unsteady legs and drew them back into the water's embrace.

Labels: excerpt

A re-telling of Snow White, submitted to Gothic Writers, Inc. poetry contest

I dreamed of darkness and dreamed of you
in my snow-bound sleep
Awakened with a kiss my eyes flew wide,
my lips red as blood warmed by your touch.

You stole me away to a place
where the wind in the trees
moaned like the restless dead,
where spiders plotted my death in the dooryard
Where loved bloomed wildly,
a rose with plucking thorns

You surrounded me with the shadow of your love
till all I could see was darkness, and I dreamed.

Labels: excerpt

"You must let me go," she said. She pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders and shivered, looking at him longingly. The man she loved had lost his mind.

"I cannot do that," he growled through the glass, his features contorted. She knew he felt as cold and dreadful as she did. They both believed that Hildegarde was dead. Anton was certain that Madeleine would be next, and she knew his suspicions were justified.

She touched the glass as though to reach the features of his face. His face was more beast-like than ever to her now. It was harsh and angry. He would be easy to push over the edge. He was on the edge of sanity now.

"Then come to me. Don't leave me here alone. Please." She shivered.

"If my presence in the main house is missed for long then the murderer may grow suspicious. Your presence here must not be detected."

"If you leave me I will scream."

His eyebrows shot upward. "Don't do that. If you scream I will gag and bind you before I go."

She bit her lower lip with frustration. Anton had lost his mind. She was sure he would never want to inflict pain and cruelty on her, but he was doing that. "Tell me when you will return," she said.

"I will return at night. It will be safer for us to be together under the cover of darkness."

She felt relief at his words and stepped away from the window. He secured the lock, leaving her in her glass-enclosed prison. Frost covered the panes, partially obscuring her vision of the balcony and the courtyard below.

She felt despair as she stood in the center of the room, feeling utterly alone. She looked at the glass panes, wondered if she dared shatter them. Her beloved Anton had lost his mind and she must help him. He was in danger as long as he was in the castle.

Labels: excerpt, Winter Light

In a high, dilapidated tower she waited, as old as time. Her long pale hair was spread around her on the pillow, glimmering like dark gold in the moonlight. She wore an old gown which was tattered and stained with age, though the hands which lay on the bed, encircled in tattered ruffles, were pale and slender, clearly the hands of a young woman.

He stared at her with a sense of obsession, his green eyes narrowed. I will have you, beauty, he thought. You are mine in life or in death.

Labels: excerpt

It took a second glance to see that the queen's tastes in art were debauched. In the scenes naked nymphs were straddled by eager Pans, and powerful centaurs made love to helpless maidens, horseflesh against the bodies of the women. The queen was known for her sexual appetite, and everything about her attested to it, including her attire, which clung to her body and accentuated her full breasts and hips.

She moved to him with the swift grace of a cat, her black silk skirts smoothing silently over her legs. She lifted his dagger to his throat and raised her black brows as she spoke. "If you do not do as I say, then I will take your brothers and sisters from your home. I will kill them, roast them, and serve them for my court's pleasure for dinner. I will weave your sisters' beautiful hair into a shawl and set your brothers' teeth in gold in my crown. They will glow like pearls in my hair." She smiled evenly, displaying long, even white teeth like those of a panther.

*
He stopped and dismounted abruptly, then went to her and pulled her from the horse. Jennie gave a startled cry at the angry look on his face. "That was foolish of you," he chided. "You could have been hurt. Were you trying to escape me?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed, then began to laugh. "Escape you? Yes! I want to escape you and my damnable stepmother and everything about this land. I want to disappear into the woods and never return. I want to live with the sprites and dryads and sing and dance merrily all the days of my life."

He released her abruptly. "You are mad," he growled.

Labels: excerpt