Metro Winds

5.

The tower lay three hills further on from the hut, which had become a palace from the inside out, so that we only saw its true magnificence when we were departing. Madame Torquemada’s hair had reddened again, and she rode elegantly side-saddle on a beautiful horse, white as sugar, which had taken a liking to the policeman and kept nibbling his ear. Once, it nipped him, drawing blood, but he only mopped it with his handkerchief, saying the love of a horse was a terrible thing. The witch laughed a good deal at that, for some obscure reason. She had offered us horses to ride as well, but I had never ridden and the policeman said he needed to walk off his dinner of the previous night.

So we walked alongside the slow, high-stepping horse, the policeman keeping a light hold of my arm, though he no longer needed it.

‘I was wondering,’ I said, when we stopped beside a stream to let the horse drink, ‘why Mama was so afraid to have me come here if you meant me no harm.’

‘There are two parts to the answer,’ said the witch queen. ‘First, being a princess, Charledine did not ask herself what I meant to do with the child. She assumed the worst without even deciding what the worse would be. She was unable to imagine that I might have some less wicked purpose for the child than a mother who was prepared to give it up in order to ensure love at first sight. The second part to the answer is that of course I mean harm. Is not the bestowing of a world the greatest harm I could do to your sister? For I will be giving her pomp and ceremony and back-breaking, heart-wrenching, endless responsibility for all who dwell here, for all the princes and princesses who will see her as a witch just as they see me as a witch, and misjudge and malign and fear her. Indeed, you ought to wish she will fail her final test. It would be a kinder fate to be eaten by a dragon.’ She glanced up at the sun and nodded. ‘Let us make haste now, for we must reach the tower before he does.’

‘He?’ I echoed.

‘The prince,’ said the witch.

Less than an hour later, we came to the green slope facing the tower. The witch dismounted and commanded Griselda, who was travelling with us in a little trap pulled by a doe-eyed donkey, to climb down. I stood looking at the tower, which was a narrow grey tube of stone rising high to a needle-point shingled roof. There was no door and only a single window under the eave of the roof. Looking at the window, I thought I saw a flash of gold.

‘Rose,’ I murmured, and drew breath to shout, but the witch laid a hand on my arm.

‘She will not hear you,’ said a deep scratchy voice. I turned to find the great shaggy black bear I had seen with the witch. Godred apologised for his failure to return the previous night, saying things had taken longer than expected. I would have been frightened, but Godred had such a mild eye and a gentle manner that it was impossible to fear him. Besides all else, there was a good deal of grey about his muzzle and ears that made me realise he was quite old.

Madame Torquemada came to stand beside the bear, shading her eyes to look at the tower window, now where I saw clearly a white hand on the sill, and a skein of golden hair. ‘The princess looks for her prince. And here he comes,’ said the witch. She turned around. I turned too, and was stunned to see Silk hurrying across the hillside. His usual immaculate attire was shredded and his face scratched and bleeding. He carried a short sword in one hand and a mirror in the other, and, to my astonishment, my stepfather came stumbling along beside him, leaning on his arm.

‘Well, that is unexpected,’ murmured the witch.

‘Silk is not a prince,’ I said.

‘Not yet, but he has done better than any of the others, considering he came from the other world. And bringing the old man is very unexpected. Indeed, it makes me think he might even be worthy of her. Most young men can think only of possessing the princess. All of their sense and morality is contained within that quest, but not so this one. Of course he started out to rescue a child, but I made sure he learned she is no longer a child, for he must make his choices in the face of the knowledge that he is seeking a princess.’

‘What has happened to him?’ I asked.

The witch gave me a sharp-toothed, knowing smile that seemed to sneer at the secret fantasies I had once had of Silk. ‘He looks a bit the worse for wear because of the tests. Godred said he did quite well. Just goes to show scholars are adaptable and intelligence serves as well as brawn,’ said Madame Torquemada, looking with teasing fondness at the bear, who nodded sagely.

‘He passed the last test only because of the old man’s blindness,’ said Godred.

‘He sees her,’ said the policeman as Silk ran past us, oblivious. His eyes were wild and passionate, but he stopped to help the older man when he stumbled. Then they were at the foot of the incline and he began to shout up to Rose.

‘They always do that,’ sighed Madame Torquemada. ‘Why do they never imagine I might be close enough to hear and come gnashing my teeth to murder the pair of them?’

‘She must have told him to be quiet,’ said the policeman, for now Silk had ceased shouting and was trying to climb the tower.

‘It’s glass, of course,’ murmured the witch.

Something was flung from the tower, a long golden rope of what looked like hair, that ran all the way down to Silk. He gave his sword to my stepfather and began to climb it.

‘But Rose does not have so much hair!’ I cried.

‘Not when you saw her. She would have been, what? Eight or so then? But time here runs differently than in your world. After all, she would hardly have been a fitting prize for a prince if she was a little girl with no bosom to bury his face in. A bosom is essential to a prince. But that is the beauty of her coming to me bosomless, as it were, for it meant I had more time to train her and influence her. And of course to encourage her to grow her hair. I never spent so much time with the other princesses. Such is the sweetness of her nature that it was impossible not to love her and hope for her more than I hoped for all the others.’ Madame Torquemada spoke without taking her eyes from the tower, riveted as the rest of us to Silk, slowly scaling the golden rope. ‘It is hair woven with silk thread. She always had a way with the enchanted silkworms, but I am afraid her skills at weaving are never going to be more than merely adequate. Still, you can’t have everything. The main thing is that it will hold his weight. Such a disappointment if he plummets to his death now.’

Silk had managed to get himself halfway up the tower, and the rope was holding firm. I told myself that it would have given way by now if it was going to. But even if the rope held, Silk was clearly growing tired and I knew the rope must be burning and blistering his soft scholar’s hands.

‘That is the worst bit,’ murmured Godred, and I noticed Madame Torquemada rest a hand on his neck.

‘He’s up,’ said the policeman. ‘But he left his sword on the ground and you can bet he will regret that.’

Madame Torquemada gave him a wicked look. Then she turned into a raven. One minute she was a striking, red-haired woman, and the next she was a gleaming black bird with blood-red eyes, launching itself into the air. I closed my mouth with difficulty.

‘I always hate it when she does that,’ grumbled Godred.

‘It is disconcerting,’ said the policeman.

‘There she goes,’ said Godred, as the raven swooped down through the window into the chamber.

‘What will happen?’ I asked the bear.

‘It depends, but mostly it is about choices. And about sacrifice. And love, of course. Right now you can be sure that the young man can hardly think for drinking in the beauty of the princess, and she can hardly breathe for admiring his courage. It is all desperation and wonder.’ Godred had been speaking more to himself than us and suddenly I had a revelation.

‘Godred . . . are you . . . were you a prince?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’ He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I completed the three tasks that allowed me to reach the tower, and I climbed it, though I did not forget my sword. Still, you can manage without it, I think. I figured out later how it could be done. This one is clever and he might think of it. The important thing is that he remembered the mirror.’

‘The queen is being the witch now?’ I guessed.

‘The wicked witch,’ specified Godred, tiny black eyes twinkling.

‘But won’t Rose recognise her as the one who trained her to be a princess?’

‘To be honest, the queen looked rather like Griselda when your sister lived with her. Except she had a hump and a squint. I thought she was overdoing it having both, but she always likes to see if a princess will be repelled by ugliness. Yet she was not training your sister to be a princess, you see, she was training Rose to be good and clever and wise and strong and compassionate and tricky. She was training her to be a queen, just in case she passed the tests.’

‘And she can’t be a queen until she . . . what? Defeats the wicked witch?’

‘That is how it seems,’ said Godred. ‘But the true test is what she will choose after the prince destroys the wicked witch. There is a final test for the prince too, of course.’

‘I wish we could see.’

‘We will. That is why we are waiting here. This is The Hill of True Love Declared.’

There was the sound of an explosion and we turned to see purple smoke puff from the tower, and several black feathers spiral down. A good deal of time passed suspensefully and then Silk was climbing down the golden rope and a young woman was climbing after him. I gaped, for it was clear that Rose was almost my age and no longer a little girl. As the couple reached the ground and embraced one another passionately, I saw that Rose had indeed inherited my mother’s blazing, indomitable beauty.

‘She is very lovely,’ murmured the policeman thoughtfully.

This gave me a pang, but now they were coming up the hill towards my stepfather, none of them showing any sign of seeing us. They pulled poor Ernst to his feet and Rose embraced him and he wept and kissed her and laughed aloud. Then they came further up the slope and I saw how Silk gazed over the older man’s head at Rose in astonished wonder. At the top of the hill, where the rest of us stood unnoticed, they stopped to let the older man rest and Rose and Silk drew a little apart. I took a step towards them.

‘The strange thing is that I have been happy here,’ said Rose. ‘I learned so much about the forest and the animals, and about magic and herbs from my mother.’

‘She was not your real mother,’ said Silk.

Rose sighed. ‘My real mother. It was hard to know she never loved me, but she never treated me ill, and there was always Willow. But I did not know what it was to be loved by a mother until old Agathe took me in. I think, in truth, that mothering is a thing you do rather than a thing you are. A woman may have a child, but that does not make her a mother.’

‘You will be a true mother,’ Silk said, and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her so passionately that my insides felt hot and molten. Then suddenly Silk fell back with a groan, and clutched his head. ‘I forgot. The curse!’

‘Perhaps it will not work,’ said Rose.

‘Somehow I think it will turn out to be very efficient,’ Silk said with a little of the cool sense of humour that had made me nervous of him.

But Rose embraced him impulsively, and they kissed again. This kiss went on for a long time and there was more longing in it than passion.

‘That’s the best bit,’ murmured Godred.

‘I don’t really understand what is going on,’ I whispered, though clearly they could no more hear us than see us.

‘The wicked witch cursed the princess to be a beast and the prince threw himself in the way. The curse is legendary and the only way to escape it is for him to go back where he came from,’ Godred explained obligingly. ‘If he was from this land, the prince would have to go back to his own kingdom and never leave it. The princess can go with him, but in order to do so, she must give up all of her powers. But the princess knows that in defeating the witch queen, she is supposed to take her place, and she cannot do that if she goes back with the prince to his own land. To have her prince, she must abandon all the people and creatures who have helped her and have come to count on her.’ I was about to protest that Rose didn’t have any powers, but of course she had been here long enough to learn a great number of things.

The kiss ended and the lovers gazed at one another.

‘Here it comes,’ said Godred, as the raven landed on his shoulder, unnoticed by the lovers.

Silk became a cat.

‘I knew it,’ croaked the raven. ‘I knew there had to be cat in him, for him to have been so cool and clever.’

Rose was on her knees now, and weeping, and the cat was winding about her and butting its neat head against her forehead.

‘You saved my life,’ said Silk the cat.

‘And you saved mine, but look what it has cost you. Oh Silk.’

‘We can go back. If we hurry, we can get there before the way closes. Then I will be myself again and we can be married.’

‘But . . .’ Rose stopped, and I saw her realising all the things that Godred had said. ‘I . . . promised to rule in her place. To be wise and good and . . . to be queen here.’

‘You made the promise under duress,’ said Silk. ‘You didn’t mean it.’

‘I did mean it,’ said Rose. ‘Because without a queen this place will diminish. All the beauty and wonder that leaks out from it to enliven all the worlds would be lost. It can’t be left to die for the sake of a love between two people, no matter how wonderful.’ Her expression was anguished.

‘I can’t stay and be a beast,’ Silk said.

Now it was Rose’s turn to plead. ‘It would not be all of the time. If you stay, we will be lovers when you are a man and friends and confidants when you are a beast.’

‘I can’t,’ said Silk with finality, and then he turned his green eyes on her and said, ‘What of your father? He can’t stay here. And what of your sister? She thinks you are dead these many months. She sits in her window seat and looks endlessly at the park, and what will she do when it vanishes and takes her stepfather as well as her sister and mother, all swallowed up by mystery?’

‘Clever cat,’ hissed the raven.

Rose was silent for a long moment, and her face was white, but at last she shook her head and said, ‘You must lead my father back and give Willow a message from me. She must know that I have never forgotten her and that I will always love her and think of her, and wish her happiness.’

‘You have made up your mind?’ asked the cat, coldly now.

Rose wept, but her voice was steady. ‘I must stay. It is the right thing to do and I cannot do the wrong thing, not even for love, for how should love survive in the aftermath? Can’t you understand?’

There was a long silence. Then the cat lost its rigidity. It sighed and came to wind about her, putting its small nose against hers. ‘Of course I understand. But I . . . I cannot be an animal, Rose.

Not when neither of us knows how much time I would be a man and how much a beast.’

‘No,’ Rose said, brushing away her tears. ‘Of course you can’t stay like this. Oh, this is such a cruel ending. I waited so long for you.’

‘And I spent my life in reading books, dreaming of a world that was better than the one I inhabited. Sweeter and stronger and more pure. A world that wanted courage and daring and intelligence, a world of wonder. And here it is, but I never imagined that to remain in it I must become Puss in Boots.’

She gave a weepy laugh and cuddled the cat to her. Then she rose with Silk in her arms and taking hold of her father’s arm she said, ‘We have to go, before the gate closes.’

‘A pity,’ said the raven and became Madame Torquemada, clad in gleaming black, her hair a blaze of red fire. ‘Well, at least he was kind in saying no. He did not blame her for her choice. He was truthful about his own reasons and this parting had sweetness enough in it to comfort them both in the days to come.’

‘She to be a queen without love, then?’ asked the policeman. ‘That is a sad ending.’

The witch shrugged. ‘Sometimes endings are sad, though I do not think Rose will live without love. There is too much of it in her not to draw it to her, and this is a world full of princes and heroes. But the cat man was her first love and there is only one of those,’ said the queen. ‘And now, I must see about my own ending.’ She smiled at Godred, then she looked at me as if she had heard the questions surging in my mind. ‘Princess Rose made a queen’s choice when she decided to stay, for she understood that love cannot last if wrong is done in its name, that sometimes the cost of love is too great. But she cannot become Queen Rose until I am gone, for there can only be one queen here. Now let us make haste, for our lovers believe the gate will close at dusk and we must try to live up to their expectations. In truth, the gate will not close until I choose, but it will be best if your sister sees it close so that she will know the way is ever barred between her and her cat man. And all must be done before I abdicate and make your sister queen.’

We travelled back across the green hills and up into the snowy peaks, then Madame Torquemada summoned up a sled drawn by a pair of reindeer with bright yellow eyes and twelve enormous golden tines each.

‘An ending should always have a flourish, I think,’ she said as she climbed into the seat.

It was a thrilling ride that took us a different and much longer way than we had walked, and we saw many wonders. Once the queen indicated a distant spire and said this was the Palace of the Moon, where my sister would live. I realised, then, that this journey by sleigh was a gift from her to me, a way of showing me what my sister’s life would be.

‘This could have been yours to rule,’ said the policeman.

‘It is enchanting here, but I think that things have a way of working out as they were meant to. Rose will make a wonderful queen. I am only sorry that Silk did not choose to stay. I wonder if I would have had the courage to stay, too, if the man I loved had to go. Rose was always a better person than me.’

The old queen gave me a flashing look. ‘I think you would have surprised yourself, though in truth, you are something more complicated than a princess and I suspect you will have an interesting life back there in that other world, for it is no less complex than this one, and no less magical, in its own way.’

Time passed. We stopped to eat at an inn amidst trees with leaves of silver and gold and bronze, where jovial dwarves served us green wine and a badger sang a song, but I was wondering about time.

‘I have made the way long enough that Rose and her prince might have a little time to love before they part,’ said the queen, who had been growing gradually older as the long day unfolded.

‘Liar! Romantic!’ cackled Griselda who now seemed less servant than crotchety old aunt to the queen. ‘You hope he will change his mind!’

The witch queen pretended not to hear.

When we set off again, it was only a little while before we saw ahead of us the line of ghost trees that marked the border of the world where I had been born. And there was Rose, alone alongside one of the ghost trees, gazing across at our apartment. There was no sign of Silk or my stepfather, and I realised they must already have gone into the house. I saw her straighten her back slowly, and then she moved away through the trees. I watched until she was out of sight.

‘Do not fear for your sister. Her life will be full and good and she will be much loved and revered here. Your world would have had little use for one whose goodness was so pure. I wish her prince had stayed, but it is better that he went than stayed and blamed her for it. And he would blame her, for he proved at the last to be more a creature of thought than feeling. I should have guessed it from the cat he became, for there is always a bit of them that remains aloof.’

‘I don’t really understand how Silk came into it,’ I said, drying my eyes.

‘Young men are often a good deal more than they seem to princesses and even to queens,’ said the witch. ‘He loved the goodness and sweetness of your sister before she became a woman, and there was a yearning in him that the world did not satisfy. Not for adventure or power or even for a princess, but for wonder. Then your letter summoned him home.’ She smiled, and it was exactly the same smile that the velvet song walker had given to me, a smile of respect and familiarity. ‘You showed all your faerie blood in writing that letter, for no words could have pierced him more deeply.’

‘My words?’ I echoed.

In answer she looked expectantly at me, and I remembered. I had written asking Silk to come home to stop his brother selling the apartment and putting my stepfather into an institution. I had told him that, although I knew it to be utterly irrational, I could not shake the idea that Rose might one day return, and should there not be someone who loved her waiting to greet her? ‘Was not the greatest proof of love fidelity, even against all rationality?’

The witch laughed. ‘He had given up on finding Rose, even though his heart told him she was not dead. But your words brought him back in all haste, and he found your stepfather weeping over the letter you had left him. Silk was galvanised and he decided he must follow you. Your stepfather insisted on coming too, and for a time it was truly the blind leading the blind. Well, you know the rest and my weariness grows heavy. I must go and prepare myself. Griselda will help me and then I will lay my head in Godred’s lap, and sleep. Fare you well, Willow. Do not let your mind or your heart limit you.’

She touched the lead reindeer and it and the other reindeer vanished along with the sleigh, leaving only the little trap and mule that Griselda had ridden in from the hut to the tower. The witch hobbled away arm in arm with Griselda, but the bear remained.

‘You were her prince, weren’t you?’ I asked him gently.

He smiled. ‘I am her prince. Unlike your sister’s prince, I thought her worthy of any sacrifice. And in the end, it was no sacrifice at all.’

‘Did you never regret being a bear?’ I asked.

He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I am only a bear some of the time, and mostly by my own choosing, though there were times in my long life as consort to my queen when the beast in me caused the transformation at a time I did not wish it. Once I was a bear for a hundred years. I could be a man now, but somehow, at the end of it all, it is comforting to take this form. She could be a beautiful young woman if she chose, but it comforts her to allow herself to be old and bent and wrinkled.’

There was the sound of running footsteps and we turned to see Griselda returning, but transformed into a plump pretty girl with bouncing brown ringlets. I would not have known her save that she was bursting out of the dress she had worn before. Ignoring us, she ran to the soft grey mule that had pulled her trap, and when she stroked it, it became a stocky, beaming young man in rich clothes and golden boots. The pair embraced and ran off without a second look.

The bear shook his head. ‘She always did like happy endings and it was a nice way to reward Griselda. After all this time, Prince Peter might have learned a little humility.’ He sighed. ‘I must go to her now, for we have a final journey to make together. And you had better go, unless you mean to stay, for the gateway will soon be closed.’

He gave a bearish bow and lumbered off.

I looked at the policeman, who said soberly, ‘If you stayed there is bound to be a prince for you.’

‘You heard the witch,’ I answered. ‘I am too complicated to be a proper princess.’ He offered me his arm, and as we walked towards the ghost trees, I found myself wondering what beast lay inside him. A lone wolf, perhaps, something grey and reserved and very clever.

We stepped back into the real world where it was now a hot moonless night, and the policeman stopped and turned to look down at me. It was very dark but there was a faint luminescence from the ghost trees that let me see his expression. ‘I never loved any woman because I wanted mystery and I thought love must be the end of mystery. But now it seems to me that love is a land in which things might be very different from the way they had seemed at first sight, and full of the unexpected. Not so much mysteries as paradoxes within which all the mysteries and contradictions between a man and woman may be contained. The right man and the right complicated woman.’

I opened my mouth to say that I was not a woman, and then I realised I was wrong. I smiled up at him, and said, ‘Inspector Grey, remember the part that Godred said was the best bit of the story?’

He nodded, eyes glimmering. ‘My name is Alasdair,’ he said, and he kissed me for a long, lovely time.

Then it began to rain very hard. I gasped and as we turned to run across to the house, I thought I saw someone running past me. I stopped, squinting and blinking, and turned in time to see a cat, leaping into the dissolving park.