Judith stepped forward and raised her hands, open and empty, in a sort of conciliatory gesture. The effect was ruined, however, by the blackened, shriveled skin of her arms and fingers. The flesh beneath her skin seemed to have shrunken away so that only bones remained, mere skeletal hands wrapped in dead, mummified leather.
“I’ve gotten over Petra as well, you see,” she said, looking sadly down at her own hands. “She’s turned on me, poisoned me. She leeches the life right out of me. But perhaps it’s for the best. Sometimes we have to sever the relationships that formed us. Sometimes that’s the only path to forging new and better relationships.”
She stepped forward again, bringing her face closer to James. He backed up another unsteady, clumsy step, and felt his back thud against one of the boathouse’s support pilings.
The blackness of Judith’s hands and arms began to creep up her neck beneath the cowl. It cast veins of deathly purple around her mouth and eyes, sapped the color from her vibrant cheeks. Her eyes dulled, faded, darkened to inky black orbs.
“You’re a wise young man to stay away from Petra,” she said, and her voice was changing as well. It buzzed in her throat, as if she was full of wasps. “Despite what you may think, I loved her as well. But love can turn on us. It can be the sharpest dagger of all. Love can be either the blade that destroys us…” she raised her hands again, showing the decay in her spindly, ghastly fingers, “or the weapon that empowers us to do… what we must!” She was bare inches from him as she spat this last, rasping the words as the blackness claimed her entire face, sinking her cheeks and eyes, pulling her lips back from her teeth and gums in a grimace of deathly hate.
“Stay away from her, James,” she rasped, writhing as if the words were like broken glass in her throat. “You cannot stop Petra. You cannot win her. If you try, all that you love will die. And still she will prevail! She must prevail!”
And then, horribly, a hoarse scream of pain and rage ripped from Judith’s throat, forcing her head back, her chin up, so that her cowl fell away, releasing her hair. It was white, as dry as cobweb, flowing like seaweed into the suddenly rushing air.
“James?”
A hand gripped his shoulder and he jerked away from it, batted at the fingers as if from the clutch of death itself. Wind whipped through his hair, icy and flecked with mist, howling beneath the boathouse and shrieking in its drainpipes. He boggled and flailed and nearly collapsed to the hard ice in shock.
But suddenly there was no Judith. The Lady of the Lake was gone—if she had ever really been there at all. Millie stood with her hand still raised, frowning at James in surprised consternation.
He gasped deeply, drawing the cold air into his lungs as if he hadn’t breathed in minutes. The noise of the gusting wind rattled the windows above. Millie had to raise her voice to be heard over it.
“Are you all right?” Her eyes were wide and startled in the dimness.
James tried to nod, to collect himself. “I… I just thought I saw… something. Out on the ice.”
Millie considered this, glancing out over the flat expanse of the frozen bay. There was nothing but blowing ghosts of snow and moon-glow to be seen.
“We should go in,” she said, bringing her gaze back to James with some concern. “Feels like a storm is coming in. Blake will take one of the snowmobiles back tonight. He and a friend will collect the other one tomorrow.”
James nodded, as if the parking status of the snowmobiles had been of some nagging concern to him. In truth, he barely heard Millie’s words. In his mind, all he heard was Judith’s hoarse shriek in the howl of the wind. All he saw was the creeping purple-black emaciation of her hands and face.
All that you love will die…!
And suddenly he knew: it was not death or flame that was shriveling Judith’s heretofore perfect skin. It was the scorch of a kind of existential frostbite. Without Petra’s connection to root Judith in reality, she was slowly succumbing to the absolute zero of the waiting, hungry void from which she had come. But if so, why would she wish James to stay away from Petra, to assure that she, Petra, succeeded in her mission to leave this reality forever?
A shiver that had nothing to do with cold shook James from head to toe.
Millie took his hand.
Five minutes later, she kissed him outside of his bedroom on the second floor. He barely felt it. His lips were numb. The air around both of them was still a wreath of cold.
Twenty minutes later, James lay in the enormous bed staring up at the dark ceiling.
Outside, the wind wailed and moaned, hiding the voice of chaos and madness that seemed to surge constantly beneath it. James tried to tune it out, even pulled a pillow up over his head, but could not seem to drown out that keening, pained howl.
It was a voice that only he, unfortunately, seemed doomed to hear.
13. – The triumvirate revisited
James slept in late the next morning, missing breakfast, so that by the time he came blearily to the table in search of tea everyone else was already gone for the morning, apparently on a final Christmas Eve shopping trip to Sartori Alley. The glare outside the broad windows was so bright with new snow that it was painful to look at. Cold light filled the dining room and reflected from the glossy wood of the table so that James had to squint as he plopped to a seat. To his embarrassment, he was waited on by Blake, who was once more dressed in his formal tails and white shirt, his hair combed severely and gleaming black.
“I trust Sir had a restful night,” he commented perfunctorily as he poured hot water into James’ cup.
James couldn’t bring himself to answer or even to make eye contact. Blake, for his part, seemed to enjoy James’ discomfiture.
“Toast, Sir?” he asked brightly.
“Sure,” James answered dully, watching the steam rise from his steeping cup.
“Jam, Sir?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Honey, Sir?”
“No.”
“Butter, Sir?”
“No. Wait. Yes.”
“Straight or diagonal sliced, Sir?”
James finally turned and looked up at Blake where he stood nearby. “Tell the house elf who makes it that she can draw and quarter it for all I care. And while you’re at it, feel free to take it down a notch, why don’t you.”
It was like kicking a statue. Blake didn’t blink, merely smiled his small, insincere smile. “Very good, Sir. I shall have that for you in just a jiffy.”
When the toast came, it was diagonally sliced, perfectly buttered, sitting on a China plate without a single crumb visible, and decorated with a twist of orange and a sprig of parsley.
“I hope this is to Sir’s satisfaction,” Blake said, with just a trace of courteous doubt.