The Autumn Castle (13 page)

After the first hour, Mayfridh’s incantation made no sense anymore. It bounced past her ears like abstract background noise.
Perspiration soaked the front of her dress, her hair dripped and clung to her face, and her eyes stung. Mayfridh kept her
gaze fixed on the large square mirror in front of her, the reflection of Jude captured and still within it.

This kind of magic was the hardest. To penetrate another’s thoughts and feelings was nearly impossible to do with the little
magic meted out to her by Hexebart, and required clear focus and unwavering attention. The deep complexities of being always
obscured clear pathways to knowledge; to read a person was akin to trying to distill the Bible into one sentence. Still, she
persisted. If she couldn’t have Jude, she could at least attempt to know what she was denied.

With her eyes fixed on his, she found that glimmers of understanding were starting to form. Jude loved to paint. It was the
only time he felt truly disconnected from the petty sorrows of reality. She breathed and focused, trying to explore more deeply.
Jude sometimes despaired about the future. She tried to follow that thread farther. Was his despair to do with Christine?
But the thread ran out, sent her colliding with another. Jude was filled with compassion, almost to a fault. He cared too
deeply about the suffering of others, which made him vulnerable and helpless at times.

“But does he love Christine?” she said, dropping the incantation for a moment to try to direct her exploration.

Oh, yes, he loved Christine, but there was something half-empty about this love. He felt sadness for her, and hope for . .
. something. What was it? She pushed further, resumed the incantation. Did he love Christine?

Clunk.

Like a window dropping into its frame. Mayfridh found herself shut out, reeling back along the threads she had explored and
out of her trance. Jude’s image dissolved and disappeared, leaving her staring at her own reflection, pale and wild-eyed and
bathed in sweat.

A thrill of hope and mystery seized her. An obstruction of that magnitude, one that could undo her spell and propel her backward
so fast, meant only one thing.

Jude had a secret.

—from the Memoirs of Mandy Z.

T
his morning, I experimented with my Wife. I was visited by insomnia: my brain was too full and too heavy on the pillow. I
arose in the black before dawn, crept up the stairs to my sculpture room, and sat gazing at her in the gently lifting dark
for a long time.

My intention has always been that the Bone Wife will be more than a sculpture. When she is finished, she will be able to wash
my clothes, and make my bed, and clean my shoes, and so on. I have no magical ability myself, but I have a secret, tucked
away amongst the bones, which has imbued the whole sculpture with enchantment. At my command, the bones will move. But it’s
not as simple as it sounds. Yes, they shake. Yes, they jump. Yes, they twitch. It’s up to me to make them shake and jump and
twitch in harmony.

My Bone Wife has the finest ankles and the most exquisite knees. I refine them constantly, making the joints more agile and
flexible. This morning, as the first weak rays of sunlight crept into my room, I worked some more on the joints of her toes.
Then I stood back and told her to walk.

She shook. She jumped. She twitched. The bones clacked and clattered on the floor.

“Walk!” I said.

Clack. Clatter.

“Walk!”

Her right knee jerked up, opened out. Her foot came back down, her weight settling onto it. Then her left knee. Up, out, down,
settle. Then her right knee again and I started to laugh, but I laughed too soon, for then she pitched forward and clacked
and clattered to the ground. A shining chip of bone sailed through the air and scratched my cheek. A fraction higher and it
might have cut my eye. Perhaps my Bone Wife doesn’t like being told to walk. It wouldn’t surprise me if faeries were as cantankerous
dead as they are alive.

Now, to continue with my memoir.

After I had finished school, my parents tried to send me to university. I refused to go. I knew that I wanted to spend my
life drawing and sculpting and seeking out faeries to kill and bone. I told my father that I wanted to travel and see great
works of art. They agreed that I could do this for two years, but then I must study at university—something useful, like law
or business—or they would cut me out of my inheritance. So I packed my bags and my books, and I strung my carved faery bone
around my neck for luck, and took off into the wide world.

I wanted to go to the place where I would find the most faeries, so I chose Ireland. I know now that, although Ireland is
famous for its faeries, it is not because they boast the highest population. It is simply because Irish faeries are irritatingly
conspicuous egomaniacs. They groundlessly believe their race—the Sidhe—to be the supreme race of all faeries. They love to
read stories of themselves in the books that humans produce, and often come to the Real World to perform activities they hope
will make them famous. Despite this, their Shadowland grows less and less populous every year. They are a dying race. You
may be surprised to know that the largest population of faeries is in the United States of America. The faeries there prefer
the Real World to their own world, and run about in it without ever giving away the truth about who they are. In fact, I suspect
a number of famous actors and performers are faeries; rather too high profile for me to hunt them safely (though you can credit
me with a couple of unsolved hitchhiker disappearances in that great nation).

However, as a young man I thought Ireland was the place to be, and so that is where I went.

I found myself in a village on the Antrim coast, passing the hours working with marble. I have always preferred the discovery
and drawing-out involved in carving and chiseling sculpture, rather than the molding and shaping used with clay or other soft
substances. I like to force my will on stone and bone. I began to produce small sculptures—models of the birds and animals
I saw daily—reveling in the challenges of creating something that looked soft and pliable from something so hard and rigid.
I grew adept very quickly, and by summer I was selling my sculptures as souvenirs at a local bookshop. Still, months had passed
and I had seen no faeries. I began to wonder if my two earlier experiences were the kind of rare luck that is never repeated,
and whether I would live the rest of my life, traveling as far as the sky was sky, never to see another faery. While the thought
disappointed me, I took great consolation in my art. I could truly be happy while sculpting.

And then, a story began to circulate around the pubs and shops, a story in which I took great interest.

Sorcha O’Faolain, youngest daughter of the O’Faolains who ran the Merry Myrtle, was seventeen and very pregnant. Her boyfriend,
Conla, had run off to Dublin and abandoned her. Over the past few months, I had watched the poor girl serving me my dinner
and drinks every night in the pub. As she grew bigger and bigger, her face grew sadder and sadder. I saw her parents exercise
their sharp tongues on her. I saw her wandering alone and friendless in the village, her shoulders falling lower each day
under the burden of the rest of her life.

The story goes that one day she woke up with a desire to walk, to walk fast and far, just to
move.
A rush of energy had gripped her and to sit still was to feel as though she might explode. So she walked. She walked down
the path and out the gate, and up the road, and over the fields of ragged grass, and to the cliffs, and right to the water’s
edge, and up the stony beach for miles, one foot in front of the other, feeling her heart and her lungs and her muscles move.

Then the first wave of pain hit. Starting in her back, spreading up under her like a giant crooked hand. The child was coming.

She took herself back up the cliff path, but just a few steps onto the grass she knew she could go no farther. A biting sea
wind had risen, and she took shelter in the roofless remains of an empty stone cottage nearby. She lay down on the old floor
and cried and cried for her poor child, and her poor self.

“I will take care of you, Sorcha.”

She looked up and saw a beautiful woman, with sharp features and long pale hair, standing over her.

“Who are you?” Sorcha asked.

“I am Duana of the Sidhe. I will take care of you.”

And right there, under the wide sky and rotted roof beams, the faery helped deliver Sorcha’s baby, administering faery medicine
and faery magic in equal measure, and wrapping the child in a strip torn from her glowing faery dress. Then she disappeared,
and Sorcha walked back to the village with her babe—a little girl she named Duana—in her arms.

The next morning when she went to look for the scrap of faery fabric, to show her friends, it had disappeared.

Now, this story spread quickly through the village, and Sorcha O’Faolain was considered by some to be one of the chosen few
with a faery guardian, and by some to be a barefaced liar. Only I knew the truth: Sorcha O’Faolain was simply in the right
place at the right time to take advantage of an Irish faery’s narcissism. Duana of the Sidhe knew such an act would make her
famous. All I had to do was visit the same place and take the same advantage.

I called in on Sorcha, asked her as many questions as I could without arousing suspicion, then packed my rucksack with weapons
and tools and headed out of the village.

Of course, I could hardly pretend that I was a heavily pregnant woman. I had to feign some terrible distress. I found my way
to the ruined cottage, taking photographs like a tourist. When I was inside and away from the sun and the eyes of others,
I pretended to trip. I cried out, thumped the ground hard, pricked my palm on my knife and smeared the blood over my forehead.
Then I lay, very still, and waited.

One’s senses grow curiously sharp when one is waiting. I heard every sound around me: the scurryings and skitterings of seagulls
in the roof, the crackle and breath of the most fragile breeze, the faraway beat and suck of the sea. And I heard her coming.
I heard a gathering of air that hadn’t been there before, a ringing underlying everything else, white and hot and strange.
I knew she was nearby.

I moaned. “Help me,” I said.

“I will take care of you, Immanuel,” she said.

She approached, her footsteps delicate on the moss and stone. Her toes came into my view, dainty and pale and ringed with
jewels. I must have twitched, the excitement overcoming me, because the toes paused, hesitant, then began to pull back.

I had no time to lose. In a flash I grabbed her by the toe. She screamed and tried to pull away. I seized her ankle with an
iron grip. Still she screamed. By now I was on my knees, the faery caught in my right hand. She was small and fragile, as
Irish faeries are, with sharp eyes and nose and mouth. Oh, I could smell her, the foul smell of the foulest of all races,
and my other hand shot out and pulled her down, pinned her by her throat and her knees, and her scream gurgled and died but
I didn’t let go, because faeries are tricksters and her head would have to be detached from her body before I’d really believe
she was dead.

When I had killed her, I took her down to the stony sea to bone her. It was very messy, much messier than I had anticipated,
but I let the sea wash the blood and flesh away, and I returned home many hours later with a sack full of faery bones and
an idea to start a grand sculpture.

You must understand: my Bone Wife does not look like a skeleton. I cut the bones and shave the bones and glue the bones together.
I make a solid block of gleaming material, and then I begin to carve, saving my offcuts to be glued and polished and used
later. It is a remarkable material to work with and one of the rarest, which explains in part why I am still only halfway
finished with that sculpture nearly thirty years later. I do not consider myself unlucky though. The secret, diffused through
all the bones and making them enchanted, was my greatest stroke of luck. Only one material bears such enchantment.

Royal
faery bones.

Mayfridh decided that she liked traffic. She liked the rhythms of its currents, liked the ponderous metal dance of its turns
and the hectic weaving of its flow. She even liked the noise. Sometimes Ewigkreis was so silent that she could believe herself
completely alone in the universe, but here, in a big city in the Real World, she felt a sense of belonging, of never-alone-ness.
She was so busy watching the traffic that she almost walked out in front of it. At the crossing of Unter- den-Linden and Friedrichstrasse,
a young woman grabbed her by the shoulder just as she was about to step in front of a van.

“Oh!” Mayfridh cried.

The young woman said something to her in German, but Mayfridh didn’t notice. She was staring at the woman’s hair. It was brilliant
blue.

“Your hair is beautiful,” Mayfridh breathed.