Candle in the Attic Window Part 13

What you will not find unbelievable is that, though my love for Uncle Adolf persists, I simply cannot marry Vladimir. To begin with, he eats like a swine and looks like one. His manners are atrocious; his hygiene is questionable; and ever since our betrothal, he has inflicted any number of unwanted physical visitations upon my person when Uncle isn't watching, a.s.serting his immediate ownership of that which has merely been promised. Since Vladimir came, I have been subjected to abuses that no ordinary serving-girl would allow, much less a lady.

Iryna, I would gladly submit to this if I thought that my future were foremost in Uncle Adolf's thoughts, but I know this is not so. Various fragments of conversation that I have chanced to overhear have revealed that Uncle hopes to benefit from certain friendships and a.s.sociations of Vladimir, after his term as Governor is ended. I should have seen it. I am not his daughter, after all. And what is the life of one girl where the promises of wealth and comfort are concerned?

Having learned Uncle's true motives, I knew I must make a decision soon. I spent the better part of a day locked away in my rooms, praying for guidance; alas, nothing came of it. I fear I have spent my life amused and distracted; now that decisive action had become necessary, I found myself paralyzed.

It was Yevgenia, my maid, who forced me out of my helpless state. She came to me with a brilliant new escape, only, we were to make this egress together. She laid out trousers, shirt and st.u.r.dy boots for me and, just before midnight, she spirited me out of the castle.

Yevgenia has been at Baranof Castle forever, it seems, having served governors for almost as long as Alaska has been part of the Empire. She has seen much, and knows a great many things about this island, most of which had held for me no fascination at all. As I discovered, she was privy to secrets I couldn't have imagined.

I had seen the local savages before, of course, though I had naturally always kept my distance; they often came into Novoarkhangelsk to sell their pelts. It is my understanding that there are similar tribes practically everywhere on the continent! I cannot imagine the nuisance they must pose the Americans, French and Spanish. I should have gladly kept away from them my entire life, but it was not to be.

Yevgenia and I left the town behind and soon found ourselves thrashing through the most vulgar, brush-infested woods. I was glad of my trousers, though when I had first put them on, I thought them quite scandalous; how snug they were at the hips, Iryna! We went on forever, old Yevgenia practically dragging me at times. I was perspiring in a most uncomely way. Just when I had had my fill and was about to insist on our retreat, Yevgenia stopped and pointed.

Ahead of us was a dilapidated house a shanty, really, with a small fire blazing nearby. Sitting in the doorway, in a battered wooden chair, was one of the savages! The 'Koloshi', we call them, though I understand they call themselves the 'Lingit' or 'Tlingit', or some similar gibberish. This particular Koloshi had taken note of us, staring in our direction without blinking, like a lunatic.

Yevgenia bade me remain and went to the man, engaging him in whispered conversation, occasionally gesturing in my direction. He nodded slowly, once, and held out his hand. Yevgenia withdrew a small sack from her pocket and emptied into the savage's palm several gold coins, no doubt liberated from my personal funds.

My maid motioned me forward. As I approached the fire, I got a proper look at the savage. Iryna, he must have been older than Moses! Beneath his ragged clothing, his skin clung to his bones like wet silk and the lines etched into his brown face looked like the veins in an autumn leaf. His eyes, still unblinking, were black pits.

Yevgenia explained that he was what might be called a 'shaman'. He had been here since before the Russians came, and he would tell me my destiny, so that I might determine the proper course of action.

When he spoke, his voice was faint from age, but unwavering: "You are the blue lady." My surprise was twofold: that he spoke pa.s.sable Russian and that he knew Uncle Adolf's pet name for me, especially because, for the first time in years, I was wearing no blue. My borrowed men's clothing lacked that shade completely. Yevgenia swore before G.o.d that she had not told him and I believed her.

"You are bound to two men. One rope you grasp willingly. It stretches into the sea. One rope has been tied to you by another. Its end bears a great weight." He can only have meant Pavel and Vladimir, Iryna. Are shivers running down your spine as you read?

"All that you see around you was once our country. The Russians have it and, though there has been conflict, we are content to live under your law. For now, it is profitable for us. But hear me. This land is still Tlingit. The land obeys Tlingit law and no Emperor can change that.

"For the Tlingit, there is the light and the dark. The water and the earth. The ocean that gives food and the forest that gives danger. The soft, wet cold of the outside, which causes sickness, and the st.u.r.dy, dry warmth of the inside, which protects from sickness. All things are two.

"You and your sailor are one. This I see. And, being one, you are two.

"You can never truly leave this island. And the sailor can never truly remain. He can come, but always, he will be drawn away again. You may go, but never far and never for long."

He rose from his chair, doused the fire with water from a rusted bucket, and retired to his shanty, shutting the door behind him.

Yevgenia and I walked back to the castle in silence. She held my hand the entire way.

What do you make of this, Iryna? If the savage was able to guess at my ident.i.ty and my situation, was he also right about my future? Must Pavel and I be apart forever?

I wish I might talk about this with Pavel. He is intelligent and logical, and would know what to do. Alas, I will not see him until after I am to be married to Vladimir.

I must think. Perhaps, I might find the answer myself, as I have some months to consider the problem. I shall make certain you are informed, my dear.

Love, Olga *

From: Olga Feodorovna, Novoarkhangelsk, Alaska To: Iryna Dvorkin, Saint Petersburg, Russia March 18, 1844 Dear Iryna, I am a married woman. What choice did I have? I do so wish you could have come, but I would not wish that terrible voyage on anyone.

Uncle Adolf is happy. He gave an immense banquet afterward. Everywhere I looked, his friends and a.s.sociates indulged their appet.i.tes, both for free victuals and for lewd conversation. Vladimir ignored me save for the occasional leer, though I sat at his right hand.

As the desserts were brought out, Yevgenia crept in and whispered to me that Pavel's ship had been observed entering our harbour. Curiously, it was not flying the colours of the Empire, but rather, displayed a standard of brilliant blue. Pavel has returned for me.

I have dispatched Yevgenia to locate Pavel and tell him all that has transpired, including the sore truth that that he is mere hours too late. If he will still see me, she will bring him to my rooms. We have much to discuss, certainly.

I am in my rooms now, Iryna, finishing this letter to you, so that I can entrust it to Yevgenia when she comes. It is hard to say when I might be able to write again and so, I had to inform you of all that has happened today. You have always been so kind and understanding.

Now I hear two sets of footsteps in the corridor outside. My Pavel is coming. I believe I know what I must do.

Love, Olga *

From: Adolf Karlovich Etolin, Governor, Russian American Company To: Count Sergey Petrovich Volkov, Saint Petersburg, Russia March 21, 1844 My dearest Count Volkov, How is life in the State Council? I surely envy you the excitement and intrigue of life at Emperor Nicholas' court!

I had happily antic.i.p.ated reporting to you the joyous occasion of my niece Olga's marriage to the gentleman Vladimir t.i.tov, whom I believe you know. I am afraid that, instead, I must relay a great tragedy.

Though Olga and Vladimir did indeed wed three days ago, misfortune reared its head on their very wedding night. While Vladimir and the rest of our guests celebrated in my great hall, Olga was in her chambers, consorting with a sailor of her acquaintance; the maid admitted to arranging this shameful tryst and it was she who interrupted the serving of the wine with a hysterical account of her discovery.

Both were dead, you see. My little Olga had wrested the sailor's sabre from him, thrust it through his heart, and then done likewise to herself. It was a horrid scene that chills me yet; Olga was slumped across the mariner's body with the sabre protruding from her chest. I have no idea of the nature of the dispute between them, though he cannot have reacted well to the news of her marriage. Her motive, regrettably, must remain a mystery, though she had previously harboured an infatuation with the man. It could be said that they finished their lives together after a fashion, as she once wished, but obviously, humour, even black humour, has no place in these circ.u.mstances.

As for my own duties, you may report to the Emperor, with all confidence, that his interests in Alaska are being well attended to. We have been living in peace alongside the Koloshi for some time, and that cooperation has led to an unprecedented harvest of seal and otter pelts, whose shipment to Russia is being expedited even as I write this. Though I know I risk my good name by speaking with such optimism, I daresay it will not be long before the Russian American Company shows an actual profit!

Yours, Adolf Etolin.

Desmond Warzel's curiosity about the Blue Lady of Baranof Castle was stymied by the near-absence of concrete details concerning her legend; he has now graciously rectified this historical oversight. In the past year, his stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Redstone Science Fiction and Shelter of Daylight, and more tales are forthcoming in several anthologies. He lives in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The Snow Man.

By E. Catherine Tobler.

I loved but those I love are gone; Had friends my early friends are fled:

How cheerless feels the heart alone,

When all its former hopes are dead!

Though gay companions o'er the bowl

Dispel awhile the sense of ill'

Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,

The heart the heart is lonely still.

- "I Would I Were a Careless Child", Lord Byron The dream was always the same, except when it wasn't.

The season was cold, fog stretching low across every hill and meadow, tucked into the valleys and over the rooftops, and no wind did rise to stir it. Even the sails of the old windmill stood still. Should something move in the gloaming, it would seem odd indeed, for no one ventured out into such weather and the air was, all about us, still.

He would take me by the hand his own not gloved, fingers twining warm and firm about mine and lead me through the fog, up the hillock with its dew-wet gra.s.ses (faded to amber with the coming of autumn), and into the meadow beyond. The gate would unlatch, the sheep unseen, and we would make our slow and steady way toward the windmill, which rose in dark relief within the clouded air. The bare oak and apple trees made a fringe behind the old mill, only half there in the gloom; he pulled me through thorn bushes which caught at my skirts and tried to hold me back.

Inside the mill, he would lead me up and up and up to the top room, beyond all the gears and strange mechanisms that made this building-machine work. He would draw me to his side with a whisper and then dance me across the old wood floor. That flooring made a music beneath our feet every so often, depending how we stepped. I was conscious of it only for a moment and then there was only the warmth of his arm around me and the soft clouds of fog that began to intrude into the room.

The walls were rough slats and smelled of old corn, and they splintered under my fingers as he pressed me backward into them. I dug my fingers into the old wood, thinking to shatter the entire windmill under my force. Much as I tried, it never came to pa.s.s. But his mouth did pa.s.s across my own, his breath mingled with mine. He had lips as would any human man, lips that tasted of wintergreen oil, but his eyes were far gone and so, too, his nose and yet, in the dream, this did not bother me. It simply was. His hands were no longer those of a man, either, but skeletal. Long, pale bones stroked over my cheek, my hair, and curled around my throat. I thought I should scream, yet the touch was warm, rousing, and I leaned into it. Even when he bade me not to, even when he told me only I could stop him.

I didn't wish to.

I first saw the man on the rocks near sunset. He stood on one of the highest outcroppings of jagged cliff stone, his face toward the churning lake. The tails of his greatcoat whipped in the wind, snapped at the gathering mists like bird wings, while the wet rope of his hair lashed against his cheek. He reached up with a gloved hand to tuck the sodden mess into his coat collar.

The wind threw more rain against the windowpane, beginning to freeze into flakes of snowlit ginger by the remote sunset. I wondered why anyone would venture out on such a dismal night. I pressed a hand against the gla.s.s and could hardly tolerate the cold that slid into me. The man seemed small under my palm, as though I might wrap him in my fingers and thaw him. At the least, I could take him a mug of cider, but when I lowered my hand and looked again to the rocks, he was gone. A thin layer of snow dusted the ground, snow that was not disturbed by a single footprint.

"... gone and lost your mind. Turned 17 and it's just gone."

I turned away from the chilled window, to free the golden velvet curtains from their loops. Wrangling their considerable weight across the windows helped close out the frigid night from Aunt's house. Once done, I turned to look at my sister. Across the room and bundled before the crackling fire, Louisa clucked her tongue at me. Like an old woman might, though she was all of 15, black hair smoothed into a shining cap that my own hair could not manage. Louisa looked like a b.u.t.terfly tangled in its own coc.o.o.n, with With my sketchbook across her knees!

"There was someone out there," I murmured.

"I meant this." Louisa jabbed a finger into the sketch she had exposed.

I lunged for the book, grasping it by the corner to pull it out of Louisa's lap. She didn't try to keep the book and I closed it against my chest, upset that the man outside had distracted me. No one was allowed to see these drawings. No one.

"It looks like the cliff without the house," Louisa said, turning the small tie that bound her hair. "Tangled thorn bushes, shadowed skeleton men caught inside ... Why do you draw such awful things?"

Because I dream them, I would have said, if I wanted to gift Louisa with the truth. Being that I didn't for she would simply brush my answer to the side, again I shrugged. Still, I couldn't stop my heart from lurching into a frantic rhythm. A shadowed skeleton man, not in the black thornbushes of my mind, but on the snowy rocks, pressed beneath my palm for the merest of moments. I could feel all the ice that covered him melting in my palm, running down my lifeline, over the pad of flesh near my thumb, down into the shallow loveline where it would greedily overflow.

The book made a gentle protest as I closed it, its binding groaning under the slight motion. It was an old book, a gift from Grandmother. She claimed it had been her own as a girl my age, though she had never used it. And now? Now, it was seeing use, with a fresh set of pencils from my mother, who came into the room just then, offering Louisa and me cider. Louisa took hers, but I was content to let mine sit, hugging my sketchbook against my chest, looking to those ugly velvet curtains.

"Making lists, then?" our mother asked, and settled onto the couch, which Aunt had always claimed was host to the cream of the celebrity crop. Why any of them had ever come here was beyond me: this small town, with its ancient windmill, and roads in need of decent service. Perhaps people came here to escape the modern world, but I laughed at that idea. No one came here to escape, but maybe to get lost.

"Aunt kept a green-striped scarf, didn't she?" I asked, before Louisa could reply to Mother's question.

Mother's nose wrinkled, but soon enough, her frown turned to a laugh. "Why would you want that old thing?"

I shrugged, for how could I explain that such an item would be perfect for the man upon the rocks? "Just a keepsake," I said, and that was when Louisa launched into how strange I'd become since we had arrived. Aunt's house was clearly haunted and the spirits were sinking down into my bones, taking me over, turning me into someone I was not. I said nothing, but slapped Louisa lightly on the head before I left the room, climbing the old staircase up and up and up to the small corner room that had always been mine.

Aunt had never married, though she could tell you one tragic tale after another about the men she had loved. Oh, certainly, she wished to wed (a dozen times, if you believed her), but the men she loved always seemed to flee onward to something else, leaving her behind, a memory, a ghost, although she was a living girl until two weeks ago.

Without a family of her own, Aunt made us her family, treating Louisa and me as her own daughters, which, at first, made our mother p.r.i.c.kle and scowl, for we were her daughters, not those of her sister. Aunt snapped during one argument they had faces heated to scarlet as they screamed, making me and Louisa wonder, as we crouched under the kitchen table, if such a sound might indeed break the kitchen windows. When the gla.s.s did shatter, oh, the four of us simply gaped. We looked all afternoon for the stone that someone had surely hurled, but there was no stone, no brick, nothing physical that might have caused the pane to break. Only those terrible screams.

Aunt snapped, yes. Said, of course she knew we were not her daughters, but where was the harm in giving us a place of our own, a place to run to should we need, a place to dream? And when she cried, tears running down her hot cheeks, our own mother also snapped, gathering her older sister close to hug, and rock, and wipe her cheeks clean. So, this house and its countless rooms were dear to us. Though even Aunt had fled, going to that great unknown, I still felt her here. Felt her in every shadow as a warm hand, guiding me along.

My room was cold, however, the very windows beginning to ice up in the corners. I shivered and bent to the vent in the floor, finding it tightly shut. The little lever did not move until I cursed at it. Even then it moved with a squeal, as though I'd stuck a knife into a living creature. It even seemed to wriggle under my fingers. I pulled my hand back quickly, wiping my fingers on my jeans. Disgusting.

I straightened and set my sketchbook upon the desk that ran under the windows, windows which looked out onto the lake. The storm was deepening now, the moisture in the air and that in the lake combining to throw snow every whichway. At the dark flicker at the edge of the window, I leaned forward, pressing a hand against the chilled pane. The shadow skimmed the lakesh.o.r.e, seeming like a bird in flight, but there were no wings ... only arms wrapped in a dark great coat. The tails snapped in the rising wind. It was him out on the lake!

The window creaked beneath my hand, so loudly that I looked down. My hand had made a foggy impression upon the gla.s.s and condensation ran downward, warm enough to melt the hint of ice that had begun in the corners. But there was a strange shadow pressed against my hand, only the creaking gla.s.s between. I stared at it for the longest time, trying to fathom what it was, and then I realized, it was another hand.

Another hand, and it had no warmth, for where my hand left an imprint of fog, this hand left a deeper imprint of ice and snow. My head came up sharply, so sharply that it hit the edge of the lamp on the desk. But the light was unlit and, through the window, I saw him, the man at the lakesh.o.r.e, the man upon the rocks. The man crouched upon the roof just outside my window how many times I snuck out via that little ledge, I could not tell you, but in the summer, there were sweet vines to help me find my way safely down and pressed his shadowed hand to the gla.s.s. He had no eyes nor even a face, I suppose for with the swirling snow, he seemed only the impression of a man.

"Madchen."

He only whispered my name, but it came clear to me, through the very window. His breath, if it were his breath and not simply a random puff from the storm, swirled against the window and reached me, smelling of wintergreen oil. Sharp and strong and dark, like the planks of the old windmill.

"Come to me."

I screamed and jerked my hand back from the gla.s.s. In that moment, he dissolved, like a snowflake upon a tongue. There and then gone. I was left to wonder if he had been there at all, or if perhaps Aunt's house was laughing at me, turning shadows into whatever it would.

"What on earth is wrong with you?"

Louisa's voice came from the doorway and I turned to look at her with eyes that must have been wide, because she came forward with a look of concern. She even reached for me, taking up my hands. Her mouth fell open in a soft O.

"You're like ice! Did you check your vent?" She squeezed my hands and crossed the room to check it. "Mine keeps closing on its own something to tell the handyman about, I'd guess ... yeah, yours is open and there is warm air. Madchen "

I shoved my hands into my pockets, forcing a smile for my sister. "Just a long day and I I miss Aunt, don't you? This place is different without her. She's here and yet, she's not." It was a good cover because it was entirely true. My strange behaviour could easily be blamed on missing our aunt, and Louisa trusting, sweet Louisa nodded.

"I do feel her here, but she's still gone. I think they call that a paradox?" She shrugged and then reverted to her 15-year-old self. "Dunno I'm not thinking about words until I'm back in school. Storm's getting worse; Internet is down. I may not survive the night!" With that, she stomped out of my room and toward her own, as though she hadn't just shown me concern a moment before.

I closed the door behind her and looked to the window, thinking to see nothing, but there on the other side of the gla.s.s was the clear outline of a hand in ice.

Aunt's house was something of a legend in the city. It was not uncommon for tourists to drive past, snapping photographs, or to even stop and take more detailed shots. Aunt had once found a man prostrate in her vegetable garden (on top of her very kale, she would tell you!), for that, he claimed, gave him the best angle on capturing the uppermost tower room of the build. "The build." Oh, those words were poison to Aunt. It was not a mere structure; it was her home, she informed people, and quite often called the local police to come retrieve those who took to poking around.

It was not only that it was a spectacular build, mind you; it was that the house had established a history all its own. People claimed it was haunted (We had counted no ghosts) and that chains could be heard all hours of the night (Not one clink), and that sometimes, if you were very still, it would snow in the middle of the living room (That only happened once; I believe I was nine). Candlecliff was well-known for miles and miles; some famous photographer had even won an award for a photograph of the house, a photograph at which I now stared, for Aunt had received the first print.

The photograph hung in the uppermost hallway, which the photographer had taken as an insult, believing Aunt wanted to hide the image away. But no, Aunt had a.s.sured the woman, it wasn't to hide it, but to allow the photograph to receive the best light it could. The lower floors were too dark, but upstairs, in this hall, there was a clever little window of leaded gla.s.s, which allowed just enough light in to illuminate the photograph as though it were in a gallery. Still, the photographer's mood could not be a.s.suaged and she had never spoken to Aunt again or come to her house. (So she claimed, for seven years later, I would have sworn that very photographer was crouched in the cornfield next door, camera in hand.) This photograph was much like my own drawings, I came to realize as I looked at it the morning following the strange incident with the hand upon the window. Candlecliff had been captured in black-and-white, the house standing in stark contrast to the pale sky. Brambles and bushes tangled around the house, looking rather bonelike in certain instances. Though I was certain it was my imagination, I would have sworn there was a skeletal man amid them, holding a hand up as if to ward off the camera's magic.

It made sense to me, then, I decided as I walked back to my bedroom. I had seen the photograph too many times to count and those images had imprinted themselves on my young mind. I had simply sketched the photograph, hadn't I, pulling these strange images from it, rather than my own mind? It was comforting to believe that, if only for a little while. When I reached my room, I found the green-striped scarf resting on the foot of my bed. Louisa's footsteps thundered down the wood stairs.