Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister

As the first uncontrollable madness fell from me I was able to think clearly again, to relish her in ways which the urgency of my need for her would not have allowed. I realized she was cold, her lips pale as petals, her breath a thin, freezing draught against my face as I held her.

‘Poor love, are you ill? You’re so cold.’

Her answer was inaudible, icy against my cheek.

‘Let me warm you.’ My arms were around her, her forehead nestling in the hollow of my throat. Her hair was slightly damp, her breathing feverish and too rapid. I drew a blanket around us both, shivering in the aftermath of passion as I reached for my chloral bottle on its chain about my neck and shook out ten grains. Swallowing five myself, I gave Marta what was left, watching as she grimaced at the taste, her parted lips drawn down in an oddly childish expression which made me smile.

‘There, you’ll see,’ I told her gently. ‘I’ll soon make you warm. Just close your eyes. Shh. Close your eyes and sleep.’

I felt her flinch against me and I flushed with tenderness; she was so young, after all, so vulnerable in spite of her apparent self-control. I allowed my hands to move softly through the tangled web of her hair.

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered, as much for my own reassurance as hers. ‘It’s all right now. It’s all over. Now we’re together, my love, we can both rest easily. Try to rest.’

And, for a time, we did, as the light dimmed and dimmed and finally went out. And for a while, God slept too…

Maybe I dozed; difficult to remember in the haze of impressions. I floated in jasmine and chloral, my mind adrift, and when I awoke I realized that though I was quite warm beneath my blanket, Marta was not with me. I sat up, squinting against the light which filtered in from behind the curtains-the candle had long since burned out. Dimly I could distinguish details of the room, the richness of lace and velvet frozen to silver ash in the moonlight, the vials and bottles on the dressing-table twinkling like icicles against the dark wood.

‘Marta?’

Silence. The room waited. Something moved by the cold hearth; I twisted round, my heart pounding…Nothing. Just a loose piece of soot in the chimney. The fireplace grinned toothily from its brass fireguard.

I was suddenly sure that I was alone in the house. Panic-stricken, I leaped to my feet, the blanket trailing from my shoulders, and cried her name in a voice of rising hysteria. ‘Marta!’

Something clutched at my leg, something cold. I cried out in loathing and pulled away from the bed; the thing held fast and I felt dry, brittle scales against my skin. ‘Ma-ar…aah!’ I twisted violently while pulling at the thing with my frozen fingers…I heard the heavy crack of tearing fabric, felt shredded lace in my trembling hands and began to laugh sickly: my legs had become entangled in the folds of a gown which had been lying on the bed and now lay on the floor in a heap of dismembered petticoats, the sequinned bodice torn fairly in half.

I muttered to myself in derision: ‘Dress. Fighting a dress,’ but I was shocked at the way my voice trembled. Closing my eyes in sudden nausea, I listened as my heartbeat slowed back to normal in time to the ticking of my left eyelid. After a time I was able to open my eyes again and, forcing myself to think rationally, I went to the fire to try and light it. Marta would be back soon, I told myself. In a moment she would come through the door…and even if she didn’t, there was no reason to think that this room-this room , for God’s sake-might want something of me, as my mother’s room had seemed to want so many years ago…and want what? A sacrifice, perhaps? A confession?

Ridiculous! It wasn’t even the same room.

And yet there was something in the silence, something almost gloating. I fumbled in the fireplace, fighting the urge to look back over my shoulder at the door. For an instant the room flared with red light as I struck a match. Then it flickered and died. I cursed. Again. Again. At last I managed to coax the flame into flickering life; the paper caught, then the wood. I looked round as giant shadows bloomed on the walls, then stood with my back to the hearth, feeling the tentative heat of the new flames with a sense of victory.

‘Nothing like a fire,’ I muttered softly. ‘Nothing like…’ The words turned to paper in my throat.

‘Marta?’ For a moment I almost said ‘Mother’. She was sitting on the bed with one foot curled under her body, her head slightly to one side, watching me expressionlessly. She was wearing Mother’s wrap. No, she must have found my present, opened it and put it on to please me. Perhaps she had been waiting for me to notice her all the time.

‘Marta.’ I forced my voice into its normal range and tried a smile. ‘Lovely.’ I swallowed. ‘Quite lovely.’ She tilted her head coquettishly, slipping her face into shadow. ‘Your present,’ I explained.

‘Present,’ she whispered.

‘Indeed,’ I said more jovially. ‘As soon as I saw it I thought of you.’ That wasn’t quite true, of course, but I thought she would like me to say so. ‘And you do look very lovely.’

She nodded reflectively, quite as if she knew.

‘Almost time for your present now,’ she said.

‘Once upon a time…’ Her breath was cold against my throat, her fingers tracing tiny circles against my bare back as she whispered in the dark. I could feel silk and peach lace beneath my moist palms and a scent of jasmine, heavy and soporific, rose from her feverish skin along with a darker, sharper scent…A sudden image of wolves passed through my torpid mind.

‘Once upon a time there lived a King and Queen who had one son.’

I closed my eyes and sank into the blissful half-light of the jade underworld. Her voice was a scattering of random bubbles at my feet; her touch a cool current from the deep.

‘The Prince loved both his parents, but his mother had his heart-he never left her side. The Prince had everything he could wish for…but for one thing. In the castle there was a single room in which he was not allowed entry, a room which was always locked, and the key was kept safe in his mother’s pocket. As the years went by the Prince began to think more and more about the secret room, and longed to see what was inside. Then one day, when both his parents were absent, the Prince happened to pass that secret door and found it ajar. Impelled by curiosity he pushed it open and went in.’

The air was dark with jasmine; Marta, I know.

‘The room was gold, but the Prince had all the riches he could ever want. The room was scarlet and purple and emerald, but the Prince had damasks and velvets by the bale with which to clothe himself.’

Oh Marta, reaper of my dreams, child of my innermost dark…I saw her story-which was also mine; I saw the secret chamber and my fourteen-year-old self at the door with the reflections of a million gems in my black eyes.

‘The room was scented with the essence of a thousand flowers; but the Prince lived in a garden where winter never came. There was nothing here to merit such secrecy, he thought.’

Scheherazade spread her long white fingers, the palms of her hands like scarlet orbs in the firelight.

‘And still, the Prince could not bring himself to leave. A great curiosity gnawed him as, almost idly, he searched through chests and wardrobes until suddenly he came upon a small and very plain wooden casket which he had never seen before.’

My heart began to beat faster, my temples tightening painfully.

‘Why keep this ugly old casket, thought the Prince in surprise, when everything else in the palace is so rich and fair? And he opened the box and looked inside.’

She paused-I saw the glimmer of her crimson smile-and I realized at that moment that she knew the Mystery, had always known it. Here was the woman who could lead me beyond the doomed posturings of sin and flesh: she understood my yearning, my hopeless regret. This was her ‘present’: this revelation.