Beneath Ceaseless Skies #12 Read online

  Fifteen minutes later, our door creaked open, and Reg, panting, smudged, and triumphant, wordlessly beckoned us out.

  Barefoot, we slipped past Nanny’s room. She was still singing, but her voice was hoarse, as though she had been at it for hours. Then we pattered down the steps single-file. Phylly was shivering, and I realized belatedly that I should have made her wear her robe and slippers.

  “How did you get in?” I asked Reg as we threaded through room after room of dark furniture.

  “I knocked on Cook’s window,” he said. “Told her I’d gotten carried away, pretending I was a pirate, and had climbed down off the roof after you two had gone to bed and couldn’t get back up.”

  “And she let you in?” Phylly’s eyes were wide with amazement.

  “Well, she did give me a proper scolding, but I asked her not to tell, and she said she wouldn’t, just this once,” Reg said. “She doesn’t like Nanny, you know. Says `that foreign woman’ is always sending meals back, saying they don’t `suit,’ so then Cook has to throw something else together at the last minute. Says she’s taken on `airs,’ since our parents went away, thinks she’s better than the other servants.”

  We entered the hall and were quiet then until we reached the orangery door and tried the knob.

  It was locked.

  I stared at it hopelessly, my hand cradled to my breast. Through the panes of glass in the door, I could see a faint glow on the other side of the trees, in front of the long bank of floor to ceiling windows.

  Phylly stood on her toes, peering through the glass. “Is she there?”

  “Stay here,” I whispered to them, then padded back down the dark hallway until I came to one of the small sitting rooms. On the mantel, I found a brass candleholder and carried it back with me.

  “Let me,” Reg said, immediately divining my intent.

  “No.” I motioned to the pair of them. “Stand well back.” I wrapped the brass in the hem of my nightgown and broke out the pane just above the knob, then reached through and released the latch. The door swung open, enveloping us with the redolent tang of oranges.

  Phylly squeezed through in front of me, heedless of the broken glass, and raced toward the outer bank of windows. At my side, Reg craned his head. “Can you see her?”

  Mindful of my bare feet, I stepped over the shards of glass and followed. The tiles were cool, but the air retained some of the sun’s heat from earlier in the day. I could hear Phylly talking in a low voice. Reg darted ahead through the carefully situated pots of trees.

  My afflicted hand trembled, as though it possessed a mind separate from my own and had business here. Phylly’s voice grew louder and I tacked toward it. I found Phylly and Reg standing together, staring up at someone as tall as any man I’d ever seen. I stopped well back surrounded still by orange trees and could not make myself go on.

  Reg looked over his shoulder. “That’s our sister,” he said, “Sophia.”

  The man had black eyes with no discernible iris and his hair was black too, limned with moonlight, though there was no moon tonight in our world. His teeth glittered in a strange, feral smile. “Sooo-phee-aa.” He stretched the word out, giving each syllable more than its due. “Come and let us take a look at you.”

  My feet obeyed, though my heart feared to do so. As I moved into his sphere, my senses swam, and then it seemed we stood in another place, not the orangery at all. Rich cinnamon-colored drapes hung from windows that looked out over a strange garden glittering in the light of a full moon. Out in that garden, banks of glimmering red blooms danced like living flame. The floor was layered with purple and black carpets worked in fanciful patterns, and I smelled the odor of something sharp and sweet, as though someone nearby were cooking.

  Phylly retreated to stand at my side. “Are you Mirnas?”

  “Be still, Phylly,” I said. Oddly, the floor beneath her feet was still the orangery’s white tile bordered in gold and blue, while I stood on carpet. I had somehow traveled farther than she in the few steps it had taken to get here.

  “You are a pretty pair, are you not, quite dear and tender.” The man cocked his immense head. “Yes, fledgling, I am Mirnas.”

  I could feel Reg behind me, watching. “How—do you come here?” I asked.

  “Actually, it is you who have come here,” he said. “Opening the doorway is a small knack, greatly assisted by the venom of the helpful strega.”

  “Where is the lady?” Phylly asked, looking around the strangely appointed room. “She was very pretty.”

  “Her name is Bella,” he said. “I’m afraid I was quite cross with her today. She may not feel like attending me tonight.”

  Phylly blinked solemnly. “Was she bad?”

  “That depends on how you look at it,” he said. “Often, good is bad, and bad is good. Strange, isn’t it?” He laughed, but it was a hollow, chilling sound.

  I took Phylly’s hand in mine, and it felt reassuringly warm, as though sunny Italy herself lived inside her skin. “We have to go now.”

  “So soon?” He dropped onto a low divan and stretched like a tomcat, all feline grace despite his height.

  “We’ll be missed,” I said and turned to go, but saw only a wall lined with chairs of some oddly fluted design, rather than the orangery.

  “Phylly,” I said in a strangled voice. “Do you see the trees?”

  She nodded, her hand limp in mine.

  “Then, you lead the way,” I said. “I’ll follow.”

  She stepped forward, through the furniture, disappearing into the wall. I tried to follow but was brought up short by its apparent solidity and lost hold of my sister’s hand.

  Phylly returned, gazing up at me apprehensively. Her hazel eyes widened. “Aren’t you coming?”

  My heart raced and my hand throbbed with that strange not-quite-pain. “All I can see is a wall.”

  Mirnas chuckled. I heard him rise from the divan, but I feared to turn around.

  Phylly took my hand again. “Don’t look,” she whispered and tugged me after her.

  “Nay, child, both of you, stay a while,” Mirnas said with cool amusement. “The night is still young, the moon very bright, and there is much I might teach you, since it seems poor Bella is determined to be indisposed.”

  I closed my eyes and plunged after Phylly, feeling the ghosts of wall and furniture like an unnerving itch as my body passed through them. When Phylly stopped, I opened my eyes again and found we stood among the dark glossy leaves of the orange trees. The breath rasped in and out of my chest as though we had been exerting ourselves and tears dampened my cheeks.

  I turned back to the bank of windows; the scene with Mirnas, his furniture and drapes and bizarre glowing garden, had disappeared.

  But there was also no sign of my brother.

  “Phylly—” My fingers tightened on my sister’s small hand so that I felt the bones give. “Where’s Reg?”

  She pulled away and didn’t answer.

  * * *

  After searching the orangery twice without finding any trace of Reg, we swept up the shards of broken glass. Afterwards, I locked Phylly back in our room, leaving the key in the lock just as Nanny had, and went outside to climb the trellis and retrace Reg’s journey across the roof back to our window. Mrs. Reece, the housekeeper, would find the side door unlocked in the morning. I only hoped she would attribute it to her own carelessness.

  The stars seemed to sing hard bright songs up there in the sky and I paused on the roof to stare up at them. Were they shining down on Reg wherever he was? Remembering the full moon, I shuddered. That was a different place, apparently with its own separate rules and geography.

  Phylly was in her bed when I climbed through the window, the covers pulled up to her chin, eyes staring at the ceiling. “Where is he?” she whispered as I closed the window behind me.

  “In that other place,” I said.

  She shifted over on her side, clutching the bedclothes. “Can we get him back?”

  �
��I don’t know.” I slipped back into my own bed, half-numb with cold and dread. The darkness seemed to vibrate and I could see the strange garden of flaming flowers behind my eyes as though their image had been seared into my brain.

  * * *

  When I closed my eyes, I thought I could not sleep, but Nanny woke me the next morning as though nothing untoward had happened, going on to Phylly, then stopping at Reg’s cot.

  “What’s this?” she said as I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “His bed hasn’t been slept in.” She turned back to us. “Where, pray tell, is your brother?”

  Phylly buried her face in her pillow and began to cry.

  I slipped out of bed and went to her, wrapping my arms around her shaking body.

  Nanny folded her hands, staring at us like a turtle who had just popped its head out of its shell and found something disagreeable. “I see.”

  Just exactly what she thought she saw, I do not know. Nothing of the truth could have been obvious from the scene before her.

  “See to your morning ablutions,” she said and left, slamming the door with a most ungenteel ferocity and locking us in again.

  We did not see her for several hours, and though the maid came round with our breakfast things, evidently the key was no longer in the lock. She was forced to leave the laden tray on the floor just outside.

  Phylly sat in her accustomed chair at the nursery table, gazing down at her hands, while I paced the circumference of the room, unable to remain still for any length of time. “She won’t find him,” my sister said in a small, stifled voice.

  “No,” I said, “she won’t. Would God that she could!”

  I tried to think about the scene last night, the last time I saw Reg. What had he been doing? Why hadn’t he come with us? But even the memory of that strange place seemed unreal and untrustworthy, distorted as though glimpsed underwater. None of it made any more sense than dreams ever did.

  The key rasped in the lock, then the nursery door opened. Nanny stood framed in the doorway, her gray hair untidy, gazing at us as though she’d discovered two serpents in our place. “Someone smashed the glass in the orangery door,” she said. “Cook reports Master Reginald was outside last night and begged leave of her around ten to be let back in.” Her mouth pursed in a most disagreeable fashion. “You will tell me at once what you know about this!”

  Phylly sobbed as I put one hand, my unmarked one, on her shoulder and squeezed. “We were up here, locked in, Nanny,” I said, my voice almost steady. “What could we know about it?”

  Her head craned to one side. “If you know you were locked in, then you must have tried the door!”

  “When Reg didn’t come back, we wanted to inform you,” I said, amazing myself with the ease of the lie tumbling from my lips. “But we couldn’t, since you’d locked us in.”

  “I see.”

  By the ramrod straightness of her back and the flush in her withered cheeks, it was apparent she did not believe me, and my marked hand began to throb again with that nameless sensation that was not-quite-pain. I thrust it into the pocket of my dress. I had put on ivory trimmed with rose ribbons for the day, as innocent a color as my wardrobe possessed.

  “What about you, Phyllida?” Nanny demanded. “What have you to say about this incident? Where has your brother gone?”

  Tears were streaming down Phylly’s cheeks. Nanny pulled her from the chair by one arm and made her look up into her furious face. “I’m sure he meant to come back, Nanny,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Reg wouldn’t vex you on purpose.”

  “I know what you are up to!” Nanny gave Phylly a little shake so that her head bobbed. “There’s nothing in the orangery to entertain such quarrelsome, indolent children as you three, so someone must have drawn you. Who was it?”

  For a heart-stopping second, I thought Phylly would blurt out the whole improbable story, then she hung her head and sobbed harder.

  “You don’t understand what you are playing with!” she said.

  I pulled my sister away from Nanny’s cruel grip, then folded her in my arms. “It’s all right,” I murmured into her dark curls. “He’ll come back. I know he will.”

  With an exclamation, Nanny seized my left hand and held it up close to her face, examining the strange concentric circles of glittering emerald beneath the skin. Her eyes finally raised to meet mine. “Foolish child, you will regret this, once you understand what you have done!” She thrust me away from her, as though the touch of my skin burned.

  “We’ll get him back, if you allow us to go to the orangery tonight,” I said, an odd coolness possessing me. “Then everything will be as it was. Our parents need never know about any of this.”

  The mention of her employers seemed to galvanize her. With a choked exclamation, she left us then, retreating to her own room where I heard the scrape of the key in the lock from within.

  I went out into the hallway to retrieve our breakfast tray with its cold toast and congealed porridge. “Shall we go down to Cook, Phylly?” I said, setting the tray on the nursery table. “I’m certain she’ll give us something warm, if we ask nicely.”

  She wiped at her cheeks with the back of one hand and nodded.

  * * *

  We did not see Nanny the rest of the day, but my hand made me restless, the mark demanding that I be in continual motion. I walked the gardens out in the thin winter light, which was further diminished that day by dark, low-hanging clouds. The scent was dry and dusty, and dead leaves skittered along the paths, propelled by a cruel north wind. Phylly trotted along beside me, her hands thrust into a little white muff she’d received from our parents by post the previous Christmas.

  We entered the orangery at various moments throughout the day, but it had remained stubbornly only what it seemed to be, a vast echoing room, filled with citrus trees in their pots placed in their precise patterns, the sun’s wan heat magnified by the glass windows. We wandered the tile enclosure, noting that the missing glass in the door had been temporarily replaced by a piece of wood.

  Nanny did not come to us for tea, or later for the evening meal. There was a plate provided for both her and Reg, and the two of us stared at them silently, fearing to speak aloud that which consumed our every thought.

  As the short day faded, I watched Nanny’s door, but she made no offer to interfere with us. I waited until ten, our usual time for entertaining ourselves down in the orangery, then motioned to Phylly to take my hand.

  She stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her pinafore, then laced her small fingers through mine. Her touch was cold.

  The door to the orangery was not locked this time, saving us the bother of breaking more glass. That was for the best as I would not have let anything stop this assignation, no matter how much damage I might have to accomplish.

  As usual, it was dark in amongst the oversized pots. The leaves rustled as we brushed against them, and I could hear our breathing accelerate. I put my arm around Phylly and we settled together on the cool tile, close to the windows where we had seen that other place both times before.

  We waited silently, though that might have made no difference, for all that we knew. An hour passed, then another until I despaired and considered retreating back upstairs to our beds.

  Phylly’s head sagged as she hummed to herself, then, finally, a faint blueness glimmered in the air midway between floor and ceiling. She gasped and I pulled her closer. The air of the orangery seemed to burn away, starting from that single point and radiating outward. A scene formed before us, a room in some other place, a palace perhaps. The furnishings and draperies were certainly rich enough.

  The woman, Bella, was there, seated on the striped divan, her black hair alive with blue highlights. She was dressed tonight in gold and wore earrings to match that dangled almost to her shapely shoulders. The bruise on her face was gone.

  And Reg sat beside her, wearing breeches of copper-colored satin that ended just below the knees and a floor-length white coat with silver buttons. A turban
covered his brown hair. His face was as pale as I’d ever seen it.

  Phylly lurched to her feet and I reeled with the sudden throb of my marked hand. “Reg!” she called and pulled free before I could stop her. “Are you all right? Nanny was ever so angry!”

  The woman looked up, then took Reg’s unresisting hand in hers. “See? I told you they would come again someday.”

  “I didn’t wish them to come,” he said in a disdainful voice very unlike our comradely brother.

  “Of course, you did,” she said. “NiÑas, come forward and kiss your brother.”

  Phylly emerged from the pots, her steps hesitant, as insubstantial as a bit of thistledown just before the wind whirls it aloft. “Does Reg have a different name now?”

  With a burst of blue, as though a door somewhere unimaginably faraway had opened, one of the two men we had seen previously appeared. He still sported the pointed beard, but now it was shot through with silver where before it had been uniformly black.

  “So, Bella,” he said, bracing his side with one hand as though it pained him. “They’ve come back. You should have called me.” An undercurrent of satisfaction permeated his tone and I shivered, despite the air’s lingering warmth there in the orangery.

  She bowed her head and I saw a thin line of dried blood along a cut on her jaw. “I was just about to call you, Mirnas,” she said lightly. Her fingers played over the striped silk. “They are funny little things, are they not? One has already met our clever strega.”

  “Has she, now?” Gazing back through the potted trees as though they concealed me not at all, Mirnas raised his chin and motioned to me with all the imperiousness of a foreign chieftain. “Come here, girl!”

  I stepped a bit closer, parting the leaves with one shoulder so that I stood half-revealed. “I am not a common servant,” I said. “It is not for you to summon me like one.”

  “A little queen, eh?” He laughed, but it was not a merry sound. “And just where do you think you are?”

  “I’m in my own home,” I said, “in the orangery my mother had built not long before the occasion of my birth. Where, sir, are you?”