Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(85)

“At first I was afraid of her, but when I explained about the Greve, and told her my plan, she came inside. We had tea. It was supposed to be a curse, she said, for a terrible man that someone should have killed sooner. You know the rest of that story. She modified the cloak so I could take it off and put it back on as often as I liked. Despite what everyone thinks, for the past five years, I assure you I have not been raping and eating young women.”

“What, not even the one who carved that awful wooden eyesore?”

Justus gestured to his failure.

“I have other plans for her. But with the first four girls to come to me, I told each of them they were unfit to be eaten, and exiled them to higher education, apprenticeships, or suitable marriages in other countries. None of them know my secret—they cannot, or they might betray me to the common people.”

? 259 ?

? Castle of Masks ?

“The people wouldn’t kill you if they knew,” Justus protested, shaking his head. “You could tell them.”

“It’s not about being killed,” Pia said. There was diamond in her voice, hard and sharp. “It’s about saving their sacrifices. They were so willing to let go of us instead of banding together and killing the Greve. Well, let them, then! If they can do without those women, so they shall, and I will continue to find better use for them elsewhere.”

Justus wanted to argue with Pia; he wanted to defend the people of his village. But he remembered when he asked about hunting the Greve, how people told him to be quiet or he’d get himself killed and the rest of them in trouble.

“Of a girl called Gudrun . . . ” Justus said, trailing off hopefully.

“She’s in China, studying under a master painter.”

Justus’s soul flickered and burned like a lamp coming to life. “She’s my sister.”

“You look alike, though of course she’s prettier. In that dress, I thought I might have a hard time marrying you off.”

“And now?” Justus gestured at his clothes, spares from Valfrid. The shirt and trousers were both drab and black and had to be rolled up, but at least they wouldn’t trip him in snow.

“Despite your sassy mouth and clumsiness, I don’t think it will be so difficult after all. Would you like to see my notes on you?”

Intrigued, Justus nodded, and Pia rose, cupping her gleg in two hands as she strode down the hall. Justus followed her through the chilly corridor, his mug in one hand, the other guarding against his slipping waistband.

They paused at the locked door through which Pia had disappeared the other night. She let Justus through with a set of clanking iron keys.

Brilliant sunlight stabbed through the windows of Pia’s workroom, illuminating a museum of shrines. Each isolated table held collections of scribbled notes, copied pages from books with underlined passages, and even a few rudimentary drawings. The ceiling arched away into darkness but for cathedral-like skylights of stained green glass.

? 260 ?

? Cory Skerry ?

Pia invited Justus to look closer with a swooping gesture of one arm. He skimmed the notes, looking for something he recognized.

He hadn’t learned enough to read well yet, but he could tell not all the words were in Swedish. Justus stopped at the fourth shrine and ran his fingers over an ink drawing of a rabbit in some reeds, carelessly scrawled on a scrap of paper. Gudrun’s daisy-shaped signature curled around the rabbit’s visible paw. Some of the letters here were scribbled in strange characters nothing like those he’d learned from Valfrid.

Gudrun was still gone, as much as if she’d been devoured. Justus wasn’t sure where China was, but he knew what lay between: bandits and pirates, desert, sea, and jungle. His fists clenched, and he thought about telling Pia what he thought of her stealing his sister.

Her cool fingers slid over one of his fists, gentle pressure coaxing his hand open. “Her mentor says she most enjoys painting the birds, and that she makes their tails too long and refuses to change it. One is to arrive for my private collection sometime later this year. You may have it.”

Justus swallowed. “I don’t want her to be gone, even if she’s alive.”

Pia nodded. “I also dislike it when my guests leave. Yours is next,”

she added, indicating the next table.

Justus glanced at it. His collection was smaller than the others, and had many observations crossed out and re-written. Most of it was incomprehensible, but here and there he spotted words he knew.