Silver Hollow (8 page)
She was lifted up in the warmest, strongest embrace she’d known. Clearly this was not the decrepit older brother Amie had imagined. His laugh was young and he swept her off her feet with ease before setting her to rights again. Before she knew it she was ushered into the landing and held before him at arm’s length. Behind them, the castle
-
sized doors closed with a faint hiss.
Amie was struck in the moment her uncle studied her and she him. His black hair, darker than hers, was cropped short to avoid the curl and without the slightest hint of gray. Apart from the strange knee
-
length overcoat and Edwardian shirttail and breeches and boots, Uncle Henry, who was older than her father would have been, could pass easily for his mid-thirties.
H
is furrowed brow smoothed and
as though shaken from a trance, he said
, “Good Sidhe
,
you’re huge! Never did I dare hope to see those eyes again!” He shook his head, gray eyes gleaming with unshed tears. On bated breath he finished, “And yet here you stand
,
dear one…”
“Uncle Henry,” she said with a weary grin.
“Ah, forgive me, my dear. I forget the hour is late. You must be exhausted from your journey. Come, I had Rachel prepare your rooms.”
“Rooms?”
“Well
,
you didn’t expect to sleep in the stables, did you now?” He grabbed hold of a nearby candelabrum as they passed its oak perch and turned to hold out a proffered arm. “You did, eh? Well
,
I suppose the animals would welcome you.”
Amie stared blankly at him, too tired and emotionally strung out at this point to catch on.
With a roll of his eyes
which
eerily resembled her own favorite expression, he took another step back to meet her. Smiling, he said, “Come along, my dear. Forgive my shenanigans but I’m quite ready to forget my fears now you’re here. I’ve had my people watching over you for some time, and your way has not been without its dangers. Believe it or not, you’ll never be safer
than
you are under this roof.”
One by one the lights winked out behind them. This house was older than any plantation she had visited in the South, from its dark wood paneling and obscure tapestries to the occasional marble columns. With only Uncle Henry’s candlelight to
guide their way, she could only
see bits and pieces. Past
the luminous glow
circling round them everything was gray and shadowed. Gargoyles occasionally gaped at her amid stranger sculpted creatures etched in the rafters above. No other sound marred the mansion’s disconcerting silence, other than the shuffle of her Converse on carpet. Even Uncle Henry moved silently, lost to his thoughts, his dark gray eyes fixed ahead in concentration.
They could have walked for an hour or a minute. Time and
space felt strange here
,
like it had in the carriage, because after only a couple of twists and turns they had arrived. Her suite door was made of ash wood, with
a glass knocker bolted in
below the tarnished nameplate. She narrowed her eyes to read it but the letters jumbled together, flipped upside down and wiggled. Amie blamed the illusion on jetlag. Uncle Henry’s softer tone startled her thoughts.
“Here we are,” he said. “Everything has been made up. If you have need of anything, call for Rachel and she will see to it.” He paused only to light the candle stick beside her door post, and then looked over her one last time. His face filled with warmth, yet his luminous eyes were strained with faint sorrow. Henry looked at her as if to reassure himself of her existence, then smiled. “Good
night
,
Jessamiene,” he said before leaving the way they had come.
“Where are you going?” she called back, eyes darting either way down the empty passage. Besides a few freaky wardrobes and a dingy attic, this was not at all how she had envisioned Uncle Henry’s country estate. She had pictured something more akin to a bed
-
and
-
breakfast and a barn filled with animals, not a mansion
…
castle
…
thing.
Stiffening, he craned his neck, eyes wide as if startled by her voice, an unreadable expression on his face. Against the play of light and shadows he suddenly seemed much older. “Are you not tired
,
my dear?”
“Um…yeah
,
a little bit. But I only just—”
“Dear Jessamiene, you have journeyed far. And I have not slept a wink since I first received word of your coming. Believe me when I say a good night’s rest would do us both some good.” A slow, worn smile emphasized his point, the sort that
made
others want to share in whatever secret it h
eld
.
Amie found herself placated at once as she replied, “Okay, sounds good.”
“Then I shall bid thee good
night
,
my dear. Sweet pixies watch over the dusty moonlight of your dreams, Jessamiene.” He moved slowly, dark eyes burning brightly with the same joy he had shown her at the top of the stairs.
Amie bit her lip as she watched him shuffle away. She hadn’t heard those strange familiar words in over ten years. Henry’s slow smile, his deep voice…so much of him was too similar to her father for her to not miss him.
She turned the glass knob and without taking in her surroundings, fell face first on the canopy bed and went to sleep.
In her
dreams she had always been small
, smaller than she could remember in the waking world
. She
was
silent as the grave when she wanted to be. People were so used to her making a ruckus wherever she went, they forgot to notice if she came qu
ietly. So she chased the small b
rownie through the many long halls and hidden passages of the house.
Nature had made its home here long ago, grew in and around as if it intended on swallowing the house whole again. Flowers bloomed from vines wrapped around the many columns that supported its ground floor. Roots crisscrossed over the marble floors, but she was too quick to let them trip her.
“Can’t catch me!” the b
rownie cried out ahead of her with a tiny giggle.
Amie grinned and pressed herself to be faster, then paused outside the sunlit parlor. Voices came from within, both man and woman’s familiar to her as her own face. She knew it was rude to listen to the private matters of others. But the man’s visits were so rare she couldn’t help herself.
He pleaded, “Please don’t do this, Dameri. I’ve waited long enough and I’m weary of living alone. He grows more unstable every day. I can nay get through to him anymore. All he talks about is what’s out there and he’s already passed his title to her.”
The woman sighed and Amie watched her kiss the man on the lips. “He does listen to you, Iudicael, whether you believe or not. My love, this is only for a short while. You know how I long to return with you.”
Breaking from her hold
,
the man crossed the room and Amie ducked so he wouldn’t see her peeking from behind the doorway. “No! Dameri, I want to believe you. But it’s not so simple anymore
.
I’ve loved ye all my life. You chose me. Jessie needs to be with her father
.
”
“Iudicael—”
Amie gasped
in
disbelief and shock over what she had just learned. His eyes found her then, crossed the room to fixate on her own.
“Jessie
,
” he called, but she was already running, away from the man who was her father. His cry haunted her as she ran through the orchard and into the forest.
Amie
shivered
as she woke from
her
troubled sleep
.
Nothing but the too
-
realistic terror
could have
driven her from her much
-
needed sleep. She groaned and stretched and felt like she had slept in the same position all night. She made quite the lovely picture really
,
with drool on the side of her face, curls a bushy nest around her head. A foul stench filled her nose
which
could only be her own unwashed stink and made her twist to l
ie
flat on her back. At least the mattress was comfy enough she didn’t have a backache as well.
Dreams
w
ere funny things. Amie had heard some people thought of them as the fleshing out of one’s subconscious. In the past
they
were thought to be gateways into the future, windows to your inner desires. Nowadays the
ir
magic had been dumbed
down
to be synonymous with a bad stomachache or compilation of collected thoughts. Sort of took the mystery out of the whole affair.
Yet she had never had such
dreams
as
these. Mugged in an alley and brought back to life by a kooky Brit? Flying all the way to Northern England, riding the Hogwarts Express and traveling by carriage? A forest filled with strange lights and a strange manor and a very strange foreshadowing event that had set this whole plot bunny in motion?
Blinking past the haze of confusion, she stared hard at the green canopy hangings draped over her bed. And a symbol was set at its center, some kind of interweaving Celtic knot…
“Oh crap!” Amie sat upright in bed with a shout and took in her new surroundings.
She was wearing the same clothes she had left America in days before. Her chest ached where her father’s ring had imprinted against her scar
r
ed skin. A play
-
by
-
play of flashbacks flooded her mind. For some reason, Uncle Henry’s welcome at the door stayed with her longest.
Rushing to find the toilet
,
Amie first found two other doors on either side of the room locked and the need to upturn her stomach overpowered all reasonable thinking.
“Come on, don’t you people use toilets?” She froze, chilled
,
shook her head and murmured, “Surely they wouldn’t…” Amie had had her fair share of outhouses while on
the
AJSS ranch back home. Catching sight of a third door hidden in a nook the firelight didn’t reveal, she found it. All modern conveniences had been properly set into place here, even if they were a century behind the times and lit by a dozen of candles.
Once she got rid of an empty stomach, an overwhelming need to be clean gave her a new mission. She set to filling the giant claw
-
footed tub.
Before removing her clothes she reached for
her wristwatch and frowned. She had worn it every day since college, never being very good with time. Filing this detail away for later in her mind, she peeled away her dirty clo
t
hes.
The water was stubbornly cold no matter which small wheel she turned. Her body was still too tired to care, so tired she
barely
notice
d
the moment she sank into the tub the water instantly warmed and foamed. Eyes clamped shut
,
she tried to fight her way back to reality.
“Okay
,
Wentworth…”
S
he began to talk herself through the madness. “You’re perfectly capable of telling the difference between fact and fiction. Why shouldn’t Uncle Henry live in a castle? Plenty of people still live in their ancestral homes
,
don’t they?” Opening her eyes she giggled, the sound echoing against the rounded walls of her bath. “Yeah, right.”
The room did not look as gloomy as it had when she first entered it. Things had begun to take shape during the hour she pruned. The walls were carved and gleaming
,
as pearly as the inside of a hollow oyster shell. A single mirror and washstand
-
like sink stood on the opposite end beside the toilet. Painted against the shimmering stone from the edge of her bath to the ceiling was a silvery
-
gray ocean studded with pearls instead of bubbles. Fish were painted so realistically Amie wouldn’t have been surprised if they jumped from the wall and into her tub. Through a wall of seaweed, a shy mermaid dug through her hidden treasures. When Amie blinked she could have sworn the emerald eyes of the mermaid fixed on hers.
Shaking her head and once more blaming jetlag
,
she sank beneath the warm suds and sighed. After trying to hold her breath as long as it took to clear her head, Amie came up for air and found a round face peeking at her over the edge of the tub.
“Ah! What are you doing in here? You ever heard of privacy
?
” she shouted while the small woman beside her cowered in shame.
