Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(57)

But who was Elisabeth, entire? Who was the woman who had been given every opportunity and had failed to seize upon them? Who was the sister who had used her brother’s pain as an excuse to run away from her problems? Who was the composer who sat before her instrument every night, unable to write? Could I find out who she was here, in the dilapidated ruins of Snovin Hall? As the successor to a secret line of uncanny women?

“Is this why you brought me here?” I asked. “To—to make me your heir?” The idea was preposterous. And yet . . .

The Countess smiled, but her eyes were sad. “You have the right of it,” she said. “I thought that . . . that when my Adelaide died, it was the end of the world.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, only an infinite sorrow. “A mother’s grief does feel like the end of the world, it is true, but without another to carry on the legacy, the balance between worlds would fall apart.”

Adelaide. Her daughter. Suddenly, I wondered just whose clothes it was I was wearing. I had put them on this morning without a second thought, merely grateful to shed the filthy, travel-stained dress I had worn for nearly a week straight. The gown and shawl I wore felt itchy, clinging, uncomfortable, as though I were wearing someone else’s skin. I was wearing the trappings of a dead girl’s fortune, shouldering the burden of her mother’s expectations and dreams. I stood up, unable to bear another moment in the presence of my deceitful, duplicitous hosts.

“I must go,” I said abruptly.

“My dear, I know it’s a lot to take in—” the Countess began, but I cut her off.

“You told me I was your guest,” I interrupted. “And as your guest, I would like very much to not be here. In this room. In this house. I need—I need air. I—I—I—” My words tripped over lips, running ahead of the scream not far behind. “And . . . unless you were lying and I am, in fact, your prisoner, I beg your leave. I must—I must go.” My hands were shaking. Why couldn’t my hands stop shaking?

“Of course, Fr?ulein,” the Count said before his wife could interject. “Our house and our estate are yours to wander.”

“But Otto,” she protested. “The Hunt, the unholy host? We brought her here to keep her safe.”

“If she isn’t safe at Snovin, then she isn’t safe anywhere,” the Count said shortly. “Here,” he said gently, turning to me. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, withdrew his fob, unclipped the chain, and placed it in my hand. “Take this.”

“Your watch?” I asked, bewildered. My restlessness was going to burst from my eyeballs in a rush of blood and fury if I did not leave within the next instant, Wild Hunt or no.

“A compass.” The Count opened the fob, showing a beautiful compass with a golden needle spinning slowly round and round and round. “And a rather significant piece of iron, in fact. A small measure of protection against the unholy host, but moreover, it is your way back. Should you get lost at Snovin, the compass will always point you here.” He pointed to the ground beneath his feet. “To this very room. It was built over a large lodestone, so the needle will always point here. To home.”

Home. For better or for worse, this was home now. It would be home forever, if the Procházkas had their way. But I would not dwell on that. Could not. One day at a time. One step at a time. As long as those steps took me away from the Countess, her history, and her hopes.

“Thank you,” I whispered to the Count. “I shall keep it safe.”

He nodded. “You are dismissed, Fr?ulein.”

I fled.


*

I threw opened the glass doors of the morning room and ran onto the veranda. The snow from the previous night had mostly melted with the sun, but a light dusting remained, sugaring the tops of dead weeds and grasses with a pale, white frost. I did not know where to turn. If I had been back at the inn, I would have run to the Goblin Grove. But here, in an unfamiliar house on unfamiliar terrain in an unfamiliar country, I was lost. In more ways than one.

The grounds would have been well-manicured in summer perhaps, but now everything was a tangle of overgrown brambles, vines, and early flowers that may have tried to bloom in a thaw—all withered, desiccated, dead. In the distance, on the edges of the estate, pine trees marched in orderly fashion around the perimeter—uniform, straight, and, tall. Beyond this ring of perfectly groomed trees rose the tops of undulating forest hills. To the left, the weak morning sun glinted off the glass roofs of a greenhouse, and to the right, a bright carpet of scarlet. I squinted. It looked like a field of wildflowers. Of . . . poppies? It seemed impossible in a clime this high in the hills and too early besides, for the blooms did not blossom until summer.

But late-winter poppies were one of the least impossible things I had discovered today.

A soft breeze gently whistled about the estate, bringing with it unquiet whispers. I held the Count’s compass in both hands. It was surprisingly heavy for such a small object, as though it contained magnitudes more than it revealed. I watched the needle spin aimlessly around its face, almost like watching the hands of a clock chart the hours in quarter time. As I moved farther away from the house and toward the wilds outside, the needle steadied, an arrow pointing straight behind me toward the lodestone in Snovin Hall. Where North might have been on an ordinary compass, a poppy was painted in beautiful detail. On the other side, an exquisite miniature of the melusine as seen on the Procházka crest where South would have been. The melusine put me in mind of the Lorelei in the Underground lake, her fishtail trailing in blue-green waters. Straight ahead of me, a path cut through the pine trees, disappearing into a trail up the hill.