Beneath Ceaseless Skies #12 Read online

  Issue #12 • Mar. 12, 2009

  “The Orangery,” by K.D. Wentworth

  “Unrest,” by Grace Seybold

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE ORANGERY

  by K.D. Wentworth

  The orangery was steamy, even in January, and on cloudless nights, drawn by something we could not name, my younger brother and sister and I would study the stars through the vast glass panes. The leaves of the orange trees were black lace against the night sky as we wove through them. It was close between the terra-cotta pots, which had been painted two different shades of green to mimic the inner and outer sides of an olive leaf, and we played our games fiercely, silently, afraid we’d be commanded back to bed if Nanny Roentage heard us.

  The woman, who had been old even when our parents were children, retired early each evening, after tucking us sternly in, then sat nodding before the tiny fire in her grate to drink hot toddies. Once we were certain she was so occupied, we would rise from our beds, like dryads freed from their trees, and creep down the stairs, then through the sepulchral house into the orangery which we had claimed for ourselves.

  By all reports, the narrow white addition to Marbury House had been built for Mother, upon the occasion of her marriage to our father, but she had since abandoned it for the green and gold hills of sun-drenched Italy, having found both England and parenthood not the least to her liking, once she’d birthed three lusty babes within five years.

  Father had made it quite clear that he’d never been interested in parenthood in the first place, his distaste for it inversely proportional to his enthusiasm for the act which brought it to be.

  As for us—Reg, Phyllida, and me, Sophia—early on we had found them not to our liking as well, so the current estrangement would have been an equitable arrangement if it had not been presided over by Nanny Roentage.

  She was an odd character, barely my height, though I was not yet full grown, with antiquated notions of child-raising and a faint underlying accent that betrayed her origin in some unnamed foreign clime. She had odd habits, little idiosyncracies of pronunciation and personal hygiene, which we found risible.

  The daytime was her province, filled with a rigid progression of lessons, baths, hair combing, constitutionals out on the grounds, and endless attempts to amend our sadly lacking deportment.

  The nights, though, were ours, when we threaded between the orangery’s huge pots and breathed in the rich citrus of the trees, longing always for exotic far-off lands.

  It was seven year old Phylly who first noted the flash of red and gold brocade. Reg and I were fabricating some silly game of Knights and Kings, arguing over where we would locate our “castle,” when she gasped and pointed a shaking finger. She had always been an excitable child, perhaps because she was the youngest and therefore the least touched by our emotionally distant parents. Her hair fell in dark-brown ringlets, difficult to tame, her spirit likewise.

  She was sitting on the floor, humming an odd little tune she had learnt from Nanny, then her head jerked up. “A man!” she said. “There, before the windows!”

  “Oh, come off it, Phylly,” Reg said crossly. He was ten. And, though he had a sensitive, mobile face, he was already filled with the typical male authority of our age. “It’s freezing out there.”

  But then I saw it too, a sweep of red and gold, as though something quite thin and almost invisible had suddenly turned, so that I glimpsed it full on. And it was within the orangery, only a few feet away, not safely outside. “No,” I said, my heart hammering. “There, don’t you see?”

  Reg looked then, and I could tell by his sharp intake of breath that he saw it too. “Bloody hell!” he said in the vernacular he had been lately acquiring from the grounds staff.

  A man stood before us, his pointed beard gleaming with oil. He was clad in red and gold brocaded robes and was dragging a woman by her long black hair. Tiny yellow flowers were braided into her locks, and her arms, very white and round in the dimness, flailed as tears streamed down her elegant face. She wore an elaborate gown of pale green silk cut low across the bosom. She was not young, but neither was she old.

  “Let her go!” Phylly cried and lurched to her feet. I snatched her thin, childish body back and fenced her in with my arms. “No, Phylly, be quiet!” I didn’t know why, but I was desperately afraid for this phantasm to hear us. Reg was staring, on his hands and knees, his mouth agape in the most ill-bred fashion.

  Several more men appeared, also dressed richly in long robes of some foreign cut, one in maroon, the other in deep midnight blue, though neither so grand as the first. A moon-faced boy in servant’s drab stood behind them. They seemed to speak to one another, but we heard not a sound.

  And all the time the woman wailed silently, imprisoned securely by the man’s grip on her heavy black fall of hair.

  “Are they ghosts?” Phylly whispered against my cheek.

  “No,” I found myself saying. Icy perspiration glued my nightdress to my back. “No one like that can ever have lived in Surrey, much less this house, and the orangery was only built a few years ago. I don’t see how it could be haunted already.”

  The images flickered then, like a reflection on the water, and disappeared.

  “No!” Freeing herself from my grasp, Phylly ran to the space before the windows. “Make them come back!” She knelt to pick up a crushed yellow flower that was like nothing ever grown at Marbury House, even in season.

  * * *

  None of us slept well that night, after we retreated to our beds, and Nanny, though not the sharpest of observers, made note of our slack-jawed inattention the next day.

  “Bed early for you three,” she said, when Phylly burst into tears over Reg’s teasing and I had failed to produce the correct answer in my tiresome geography lesson three times over.

  We made no protest, which was cause for suspicion in and of itself. Her withered lips pursed as she studied us across the nursery table, but she said no more, perhaps enjoying our inability to speak up for ourselves for once, since we were normally so lively.

  That night, we waited until we heard her singing that same odd tune softly off-key to herself, a sure sign the toddy had done its work. The minimal staff of servants currently in residence had of course retreated to their rooms at the first opportunity, doing whatever it was servants liked to do on their own time.

  Flanked by my brother and sister, I opened the orangery door and was enveloped in warm sweet-scented air. Even at this season, when there was no fruit, the trees exuded fragrant oils that brought to mind visions of more temperate lands. Phylly, crackling with excitement, clutched my hand.

  “Do you see anything?” I whispered to Reg.

  “You mean do I see anyone?” he whispered back.

  “Do you think he hurt her?” Phylly asked, her voice clear and unhushed.

  “The woman?” Reg turned to look at her. “Of course he did. She probably said something stupid, so he had to teach her a lesson.”

  “No, she didn’t!” Without warning, Phylly was on the edge of tears, and I saw that she had brought the faded yellow flower she’d rescued the night before.

  “Be quiet, both of you!” I crouched behind a pot and waited.

  “Oh, they won’t be able to hear us,” Reg said with maddening practicality, “or we should have heard them last night.” He hunkered down between the trees, and Phylly settled beside him, examining the flower’s petals and humming under her breath.

  A figure stirred then in the shadows, limned from behind by a blue-tinted light. It was the woman again, but alone this time, weeping, her gleaming bl
ack hair disheveled and bare of flowers. She wore a mauve gown tonight, cut in quite a different fashion, and wrung her hands in distress.

  Phylly darted forward. “Don’t cry.”

  The woman looked down, and her tear-stained face changed, as though she saw her.

  I stood up. “Phylly!”

  Reg ran to take his little sister’s hand, an uncommon move for him, then stared mutely up at the apparition.

  A strain of music began from somewhere, very faint. I swallowed hard. Was that Nanny, descending the stairs to see what all the noise was about? “Both of you, come away from there!” I said in a low urgent voice.

  The woman smiled, and I realized she had a bruise on her cheek. She wiped at her tears with the back of one hand. “Niños,” she said, “how have you come here?”

  A foreign accent flavored her words, as exotic as the fruit of orangery in its season.

  “This is our house,” Phylly said with the fearlessness of the very young. Her cheeks flushed. “We should be asking how you have come here.”

  “Mirnas is in a fearful temper tonight,” the woman said, glancing over her shoulder. The planes of her face were sharp but elegantly sculpted. “His mark pains him more and more with each passing day. Best you go back to where you came from.”

  The music grew louder, skirling with strange harmonies that wove in and out of each other, and I knew then it couldn’t be Nanny, though I did not recognize the instruments. I emerged from the artificial forest to stand behind my brother and sister. An elegant divan covered in striped cream and blue silk was faintly visible out of the corner of my eye. I crossed my arms over my chest as though I could protect myself. “Where is this?” I asked, my heart thudding.

  She smiled sadly. “No place you ever want to go, little one. Return home and travel like this no more.”

  “But we aren’t traveling,” Reg said, his brow wrinkled. “You are.”

  “That’s what I thought when I first came here,” she said. “I wasn’t much older than you.” She smiled at me. “Thirteen?”

  “Twelve and a half,” I said, feeling more afraid than I ever had in my life.

  A small creature slithered from under the divan. It possessed the shape of a snake, but its elongated head was that of a bird, and its body was covered in jewel-toned green feathers instead of scales. I stumbled back.

  Phylly gave a shriek of excitement and picked it up, nuzzling the lithe body against her cheek. “Oh, I want it!”

  I stared in horror. “Put that down!”

  “What is it?” Reg said, his brown eyes unnaturally wide.

  “It is a strega,” the woman said. “They are a rare breed, even here in this dark place. Be very careful with it.”

  Trembling, I prized the beast from Phylly’s small white hand and knelt to release it back on the floor. In spite of the foreign furniture, it was the same floor as that of our orangery, tiny white tiles bordered with blue and gold.

  The strega wrapped its tail around my left wrist and would not let go. Its touch was soft and cool, and it smelled oddly astringent, like just-pressed olives. “Peace, caro,” the woman said, bending over my wrist, her dark eyes on the creature. Her voice was soft. “This small one does not understand.”

  Its mouth opened in a hiss and its feathers rose in a ruff behind its head. Within its throat, I saw concentric rows of glimmering green, as though it had swallowed emeralds. Then it struck, fastening upon my hand. Oddly, I felt no pain, but rather a flooding warmth that rocketed through my veins.

  The woman took it then, easing its coils from around my wrist. Her tongue clucked as her long black hair fell over her face, and she held the writhing strega up to peer into its tiny glittering eyes. “Badly done, caro, badly done! You have not wrought well this night.” Her body flickered like lightening, then we were alone.

  Phylly and Reg stared at me. “Are you all right?” my brother whispered, for once, appearing less than his years, rather than more.

  “I—don’t know,” I said. I sat down hard. The ceramic tiles were chill beneath my spread fingers. Outside, the stars gleamed down on us, bleak and bright.

  Phylly took my bitten hand and turned it up. Three concentric green welts were apparent, and the warmth cascading through my body had transmuted to something else, a sort of burning. The scent of oranges was strong as I cradled the hand to my breast and wept, aching for something I could not name.

  * * *

  I concealed my hand the next day in the folds of my skirt so that Nanny, always a bit fragile in the morning from her libations of the night before, did not notice. Reg and Phylly were unnaturally subdued and prone to give me searching glances from their seats in the schoolroom, but at length we got through our morning lessons, and, since the afternoon was fine, though very cold, were sent out to walk in Marbury’s vast gardens.

  “Does it hurt?” Reg asked in a low voice as we turned down a cobbled path with no attendants in sight.

  “It feels—strange,” I said, having no words for the feelings my wound engendered. I pulled my afflicted hand out of my pocket and we all stared at the concentric green welts.

  Phylly seized my hand so that she could kiss it, not at all in character for my small, fey sister. Her lips were quick and dry. “Maybe she’ll tell us more tonight,” she said in a husky whisper.

  I realized then there was no question that we would return to the orangery, no doubt among the three of us that we would see the woman again.

  When we returned to the schoolroom, Nanny was gazing at us with disapproval, as though she had walked behind us the whole way and heard every word. “Wicked children,” she said. “I know what you’ve been up to!”

  We hung our heads, not daring to look her in the eye.

  “You’ve been in the orangery!” She seized my chin and pulled my face up. “Hallings saw you in there last night. Admit it!”

  “Just to smell the trees,” I said, my heart beating wildly against my ribs. “The sun brings out their scent, and it’s so lovely—at this time of year.”

  Her fingers tightened painfully. “You have no leave to go in there, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Nanny.” My throat constricted, and I almost could not get the words out. “I’m sorry.”

  Reg bit his lip. “Sorry, Nanny.”

  Tears were running down Phylly’s suddenly pale cheeks.

  “Those are valuable trees!” She thrust me away so that I reeled in my seat. “What your parents would say if any of them were damaged, I can’t even begin to imagine!” Her eyes, with their odd foreign cant, were chill, and radiated more than a hint of fear.

  “We were—careful,” I said.

  “You’re not to go in there—ever again!” She straightened her back. “Do you understand?”

  The welts on my hand throbbed, and I concealed it beneath my unafflicted one as we nodded, each in turn when she held our gaze.

  * * *

  That night, the nursery door was locked; Nanny did not trust us to keep our promise. As we would not, had we any choice, but it was sobering to realize Nanny was cognizant of that. She understood so little else about us.

  Reg gave the knob one last desperate turn, then slid to the floor, his back against the solid oak. “We can’t get out,” he said, his eyes glazed in the dimness of the night-nursery.

  “The lady will go away, won’t she?” Phylly looked from him to me, her body pitifully thin in her flannel nightdress. “She’ll come, but we won’t be there, and then we’ll never see her again.”

  I clutched my hand to my breast. It was filled with a strange thrilling, not pain, exactly, but a sensation akin to that of a limb in which the circulation has been cut off and is now beginning to return. It felt as though I must move, must translate myself at once to that other place we had glimpsed down in the orangery.

  I put my palms on the door, reaching with senses I couldn’t even name for what lay on the other side. Urgency beat at me, threaded with need. “I have to get out,” I said with
quiet desperation. “They won’t wait!”

  “Who won’t—the lady?” Phylly said.

  Unable to answer, I threw myself on my cot and curled up, knees to forehead. The sensation of need was already past enduring. I didn’t know how I would go on bearing it night after night, since Nanny would never again leave us unguarded. I was certain of that.

  “We could climb out the window,” Reg said. He padded over to the icy pane and looked out. “Then down the roof to the corner where there is a lattice for the roses. I’ve done it before—well, once.”

  “But then we would be locked outside,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “We’d have no way to get back in.”

  Then I thought I heard the music from the night before, wild and oriental, as though it carried all the way from the orangery on the other side of the house. I started up from my bed, heart pounding.

  “Your hand!” Phylly darted forward to take my wrist and gaze down at the back of my hand. The three circular welts, one inside the other, were outlined in green fire in the dimness. She shivered. “Does it hurt?”

  I pulled free of her, cradling it against my breast, rocking on my knees. I was damp with perspiration, and the ache within was like the need for air when one was suffocating, or the need for food when one was starved. I didn’t know what it was I craved, only that I might die of it, were the need not satisfied.

  “Both of you, stay here,” Reg suddenly ordered, as though we had a choice in the matter. He was very pale under his shock of dark brown hair. “I’ll come back for you.” With a heave of his young shoulders, he threw open the nursery window, inundating us with frigid night air, then disappeared out onto the roof.

  I knelt in front of it, welcoming the coolness on my feverish skin. Phylly pulled blankets off my cot, draping one around my shoulders, which I immediately shrugged off.

  The stars glittered down, hard and uncaring, as they were most nights when the weather was fine. I studied their diamond facets above the dark plain of the rooftop, wondering if our parents gave them any thought over in drowsy Italy.