Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales) (26 page)

Presently Jaap de Witt glided in to greet him.

“What did he look like?” Stevie put in. “I want details.”

“A neat, upright man with a pointed beard, greyish complexion, narrow eyes. Aged about sixty. He carried himself like a priest on the lookout for heretics. I see him vividly, because his was the last face I saw for three hundred years.”

To that, Stevie said nothing.

“He was flattered by my sincere interest in his work, not to mention the chance of a free research assistant, and he invited me into his laboratory. As soon as we entered, I saw Helena. His wife.”

“Oh,” said Stevie. “Oh dear.”

Mist sipped his drink, trying to push away memories away in the vain hope they’d become mere words, not burning emotions.

He described the musty, chemical smell of the laboratory, with its molasses walls and black-and-white tiled floor, benches arrayed with instruments, shelves stacked with bottles of chemicals, poisons, floating animal fetuses. Amid this surreal space, Helena was outlined by a red-gold aura from the fire. The fine downy hairs on her neck were filaments of flame. He took in the neat outline of her bodice and long skirts; the perfect shape of her head clasped by shining golden hair, her sharp profile and her cool, intelligent eyes. Her creamy skin glowed as she turned towards him with a soft smile.

A single look. Both were lost.

“She was many years younger than him,” Mist went on. “It was a common situation among humans: a girl from a poor family, married off to a rich merchant in search of a young pretty wife. She had no choice. She considered it her duty to obey her parents.”

“Who cared nothing about her happiness, obviously,” said Stevie.

“I’m sure that wasn’t the case. They had different values. Helena had dignity, a quality of gracious acceptance. She wanted to support her family, because she loved them. She wasn’t a woman that any husband would dare to bully. And de Witt treated her with respect, as far as I could tell. Theirs was a working partnership. He loved her in his way, or was certainly proud to possess her. It was his third marriage and he was childless, so all his hopes rested with her. However…”

Stevie was watching him with a cool expression that reminded him of Helena. He anticipated a dry remark about an ill-considered affair. She only waited for him to go on.

“Once we saw each other, if was as if her husband ceased to exist. Not that we could do anything about it. I was almost never alone with her. We were never more intimate than a stolen kiss—the sweetest moment ever tasted—but this bond was always there, burning between us, while her husband continued, utterly oblivious to it.” He sighed. “It was torment. Torment. I don’t know what we thought could happen … A few weeks of study, then I’d be gone and we’d be nothing more than a sweet memory to each other. That aside, I had the matter of the Felixatus lens.”

Helena’s eyes had opened as wide as her husband’s as he unwrapped the heavy crystal from its silk. They thought it must be a jewel from the ancient world, created from an unknown mineral. “I worked with them for a few months,” Mist went on. “We made lenses from molten glass and built instruments. Every new project was an experiment. It was quickly obvious that Helena was the true scientist of the pair. No one said this aloud, since de Witt must be the acknowledged genius. Helena had the ideas and he took the credit, but she never protested. We’d just smile at each other behind his back.

“Those few weeks were magical. Agonizing paradise. I don’t know how long I would have stayed, or if one night we’d have run away together. No, she wouldn’t risk her family’s fate with a reckless love affair. Perhaps the pleasure lay in imagining what
might
be.

“Then Rufus tracked me down. With his usual charm he insinuated himself into the household, and laughed at my private pleas for him to leave. He saw immediately the feelings between Helena and me, a perfect lever for blackmail and torment. Unfortunately, de Witt fell under his spell. I wouldn’t make promises about wondrous discoveries, but Rufus had no such scruples. He promised de Witt the Earth. A cure for every plague, incredible inventions that would ensure his fame for eternity. I watched de Witt growing excited and greedy and frightened, all at once. He was beginning to lose his mind … similar to what I suspect happened to Daniel.”

Stevie raised her head, frowning. “Rufus drove them mad, for the hell of it? Daniel as well as Jaap de Witt?”

“The thing is that de Witt was already afraid that other scientists would mock his inventions, or worse, that the Church might condemn him. Amsterdam was fairly liberal, but he was still a believer. Certain religious doctrines insisted it was heresy to magnify the stars, or the microscopic parts of insects.”

“My god. It’s hard to imagine the struggle scientists had, when they could be burned at the stake for suggesting that the Earth goes round the sun,” Stevie put in. “Unbelievable. D’you know, people are still arguing about evolution to this day? To think they were risking their lives, just by
looking
at the world.”

“Almost every investigation into the fabric of nature brought unwelcome attention from that quarter. Even though Amsterdam was more tolerant than many cities, de Witt was nervous. I don’t blame it all on Rufus, but he didn’t help. He threw the household into disarray, flirted blatantly with Helena, trying to take her from me—and did so right in front of her husband. De Witt was a very controlled man, but you could see him tightening like a spring.

“Meanwhile, we made a makeshift telescope to see what the Felixatus lens might show. De Witt was the first to look through it. The only one, actually. He turned as grey as iron, and then he smashed the telescope to pieces with his bare hands.

“It took Helena awhile to coax out of him what he’d seen. Another world, he said. The stars were all wrong. There were things
inside
the lens. Living things, specks of light that must be tiny demons. It followed that Rufus and I had brought him something devilish, and that perhaps we too were demons or witches of some kind.”

Mist rubbed his eyes. The memory of the end still made his breath quicken with dread. “What happened to the lens?” said Stevie.

“Oh, it was undamaged. I think Rufus took it. He’s always been pleased by snatching things from me, as if we were still squabbling children. Well, there was a leaden atmosphere the next day. Naively I thought we could smooth things over. But Rufus remained as provocative as ever and eventually Jaap de Witt blew up. I never knew such a stone-cold man could erupt with such violence, literally turning scarlet like a volcano.”

“You have to watch the quiet ones,” Stevie murmured.

“He accused Rufus of an affair with Helena. Rufus was shaken, but also gleeful, because he lived for melodrama. He answered that de Witt should be looking at me, not at him.

“Our silence declared us guilty. We were both paralyzed, Helena and I, and de Witt had a huge knife in his hand—some kind of kitchen knife the size of a small sword. There was chaos and shouting. I felt the blade go into me. Then I saw it go into Helena as I tried to protect her. She bled to death in my arms. It took seconds. De Witt stabbed me again, in the throat this time, and I followed her.”

Stevie made an incoherent sound, struck wordless by horror.

“To Rufus, this was all great sport,” Mist went on. “That’s what he does; walks into a peaceful domain and destroys it. He sees people’s weakness, or happiness, and snatches it away. He didn’t mean for me to die, because what sport am I to him, dead? However, since he rarely thinks five minutes into the future, it didn’t occur to him that the upright Jaap de Witt would seize a weapon and stab his own wife in the stomach and then, as she bled in my arms, kill me too.”

“Oh my god,” Stevie said very softly. “What happened to you after that?”

“It’s hard to describe. My soul-essence was severed from my body … A long time later I was in a kind of forest lit by dim blue starlight. I felt as if a thousand years had passed, as if I’d always been here. It wasn’t unpleasant. I felt peaceful for a long while, but then I remembered … Helena. And all that had passed between Rufus and me.

“I came to a pool in a wood. All I had to do was touch the water and I would begin to spiral outwards again, towards a new life. But I didn’t. I turned away from the Mirror Pool and drifted away. I decided to remain elemental until I finally dissolved into the Spiral itself. However, the Spiral seemed to have other plans. Or my
fylgia
. I don’t know.”

“Your
fylgia
?”

“The shadow twin of our soul-essence. It exists in the Spiral and anchors us there.”

“Like the subconscious?”

“In a way.” He looked at the cloudy cat on her pillow, a
fylgia
if he’d ever seen one. “Are you sure you don’t know this already?”

“Why would I?”

“The gap in your life before you were fifteen?”

“No. Ghastly childhood trauma or a neurological condition—move along, nothing to see here. Don’t spin this web of weirdness around me.”

“Too late. I think you’re already part of it, Stevie.”

“But we’re talking about you. What happened next?”

“You know the rest. I drifted back to consciousness as a human named Adam, who had stern parents and wonderful sisters. I survived the First World War, only to be snatched by Rufus and driven mad all over again.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “About Helena, and everything. You’ve been through hell.”

“I don’t want pity. I’m just glad to have found a friend to tell,” he said softly, pushing the Felixatus disk under his pillow. “Talking of unconsciousness, we should get some sleep. Did you realize it’s past midnight?”

“Too late to get another room.”

“I don’t mind, if you don’t? Two beds, plenty of space. And it goes without saying, you get first turn in the bathroom.”

“Thanks.” She began to rise, then asked, “By the way, what happened to Jaap de Witt?”

“Oh. According to Rufus—and I checked the historical records—he was arrested for murder, declared insane, spent the rest of his days as he awaited execution babbling about demons and other worlds. That’s why I think that Aetherials … although we are not demons or devils or vampires … are still too often poisonous to humans.”

*   *   *

Stevie lay on her back, trying to sleep and failing. The darkness was gemmed with tiny red and green lights on the smoke alarm, heating unit, bedside clock. Had she thought that she and Mist would end up in bed together? Had she even wanted it? It wouldn’t be the best idea, when you were upset, confused and slightly drunk.

The subject of their conversation, anyway, had dampened any such urges.

Yet it would have been so easy.

They were both alone, with a shared experience of being tipped into the world from nowhere. Mist seemed gentle, trustworthy, more than happy in her company … and all too attractive. His face and hair and strong, lean body demanded to be touched. Was the feeling mutual? He certainly looked at her a lot. His gaze didn’t feel intrusive, only warm and sad. And he didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her when she was shivering, or upset … at the slightest excuse, in fact. Still, he’d made no moves towards seduction. Either that showed a respectful, chivalrous streak, or it meant he wasn’t interested in anything beyond friendship.

Which was fine. It was difficult to feel passionate when you were jobless, homeless, gutted. She knew it could happen that you met someone and slid into each other’s embrace because the mutual pull was irresistible. Perhaps it could have happened with Mist …

But now she saw that he was still in love with Helena.

One look and we were lost. Smiling behind her husband’s back. It was agonizing paradise. A stolen kiss, the sweetest moment ever tasted. Torment, torment.

Warmth faded inside her, extinguished by a tiny snowfall of realism. She had to be practical. His sweetness was illusory; the truth was that they barely knew each other.

Her love life since Daniel had been a halfhearted mess. A few times, she’d been on dates with men who seemed perfectly nice, as fresh and open to possibility as any sixteen-year-old … only for him to spend the entire evening moaning about his ex-wife and custody of the children, or rhapsodizing about football. She lacked the patience to pretend that this was not an instant turnoff.

Then, when she brushed them off, they’d be puzzled and complain she was cold.

No one came without baggage. Mist did not have baggage so much as a fleet of long-haul trucks. By contrast she was traveling light. Weightless. No past of significance, not even a family to complain of.

She turned on her side—facing away from him—and found a tiny face looking straight into hers. The astral cat lay on the pillow beside her, swishing its tail. Stevie lay looking into its eyes. Its body shifted like faint, glowing fog, but this was the first time she’d seen it so clearly.

She heard Fin saying,
“The silver pard is a manifestation of the Otherworld.”

So what are you trying to tell me?
she thought, and realized she was already asleep, sliding into dreams of glistening green water …

Stevie woke abruptly.

The room felt wrong. There was no light at all, only a blue-blackness that seemed to swirl violently like a gale. She heard the sounds of a struggle. Shuffling footsteps, grunts and cries, a heavy object crashing to the floor. She felt movement all around her, yet she couldn’t see a thing.

“Mist?” she called out.

It had to be a nightmare, but she couldn’t wake up.

She curled against the headboard as pressures whirled around her. Like strong winds, they stopped her breath. She felt the entire room tipping. Again she caught the metallic stink she’d noticed in Frances’s house, and when she’d been attacked in the museum.

Stevie got up, reasoning that if she was on her feet she might be able to see, or at least defend herself. The whole space was turning inside out like a twisting doughnut with no end or beginning. It kept turning and turning, and there was nothing to fight.

A solid force that felt like a body colliding with hers slammed into her, sending her reeling against the bed. Now she saw the diffuse outlines of the room, but no sign of Mist. She caught glimpses of shadow, flashes of light. When she half-closed her eyes, the flashes resolved into two dim figures in frantic struggle.