Laura Schlitz - Splendors and Glooms

She gazed out the window. Her eyes took in the fresh-fallen snow, the floating stars, the immense white saucer of the lake. The lake . . . With shaking hands, Clara gathered snow from the window ledge. She found the clasp that opened the locket and released the fire opal.

The gemstone fell onto the mound of snow. Clara caught her breath. She had never seen anything as beautiful as the flaming jewel against the white crystals. The play of color mesmerized her: blood red and grass green and peacock blue. . . .

The sound of a moan shattered her reverie. “Please,” sobbed Cassandra. “I want it back. Give it back.” The witch was crying openmouthed, like a child; her mouth and her chin were slick with mucus. Clara shuddered. She clapped the jewel between two handfuls of snow and clasped it against her breast. She turned her back on the witch, passed through the double doors, and started down the grand staircase —

Grisini was watching her.

He stood at the foot of the stairs, clinging to the newel post for support. There was a lamp there, and the dim light made the blood on his cheeks look black instead of red.

“Clara!” he said in a happy whisper. “Little Clara! You have the phoenix-stone, haven’t you, mia piccina ?” He beckoned, his fingers spinning like the spokes of a wheel. “From this night on, we will share the stone’s magic, you and I! The stone will be yours, and you will be mine! Vieni qua, madamina! Come, my little puppet!”

Puppet. Clara froze. Then her mind pitched forward, frantically reviewing her choices. The front door was at the foot of the stairs, but Grisini could creep up behind her while she wrestled with the lock. If she fled back upstairs, she ran the risk of leading him to Parsefall. For a fraction of a second, she considered surrendering the fire opal: why shouldn’t Grisini suffer the stone’s curse? Then she imagined what he might do, given its magical powers, and she steeled herself to outwit him.

She looked down the staircase. The darkest part was halfway down, equidistant from the lamps at the top and the bottom. Clara crept downward, seeking the privacy of the shadows. With one hand she broke the chain of her birthday locket. Then she shrieked, “Take it!” and hurled the locket at Grisini.

There was a metallic clang as it struck the tiles. Grisini fell to his hands and knees, searching. Clara darted down the staircase and dodged past him. She sprinted into the Great Hall, passing the high windows that overlooked the lake. The lake, thought Clara as she crossed the threshold into the music room. When she reached the library, she heard Grisini utter a bellow of rage: he’d found her birthday locket and discovered that it was a decoy. Clara screamed, too. She wanted to rouse the household — but there was no time to wait for help to come to her. She must get out of the house and onto the lake.

Grisini was closer now. The darkness between them was stifling and rank, polluted by his presence. Clara found the servants’ staircase and scuttled down the narrow stairs as fast as she could. The cellars were pitch-dark, and she lost her way. At last she blundered into the kitchen and lifted the latch of the back door.

It was strangely light in the snowy garden. The sky was not dark but a weird pinkish color, like wine diluted with ashes and water. The trees were sharply black against the sky. Clara bent down and scooped up more snow. The kitchen door slammed. She leaped forward, running downhill. She lost her footing but jumped to her feet and dashed forward onto the lake.

The ice was solid. Clara slipped and slid, venturing farther and farther from the shore. Her fingers were numb around the dripping snowball. She heard the sound of Grisini’s feet scuffling through the snow and turned to see where he was.

He paused at the lakeshore. After the slightest of hesitations, he stepped out onto the ice and trotted toward her. His hands were thrust out, ready to hook his dirty claws under her skin. Clara thought how long Parsefall had lived in the shadow of this man. She felt a great swelling of love and rage, and her fear was as nothing. As long as Grisini chased her, she would run. If he caught her, she would fight. She would die before she let him have the stone. Her hands tightened around the ball of ice, and she pressed it against her heart.

The glassy shell of the opal cracked. Clara felt it: a tingling flash, the sensation of a bubble bursting against her fingers. Her hair stood on end. At the same instant, she heard a deep and hollow sound, like the vibration of a huge drum. The ice beneath her feet began to shake. Cacophony: a low booming, a nasal creaking, a series of snapping noises like gunshots. Clara opened her hands. The fragments of the fire opal looked like bits of sucked candy.

Grisini screamed. He swayed back and forth like a falling tree, his arms flailing. The ice beneath him shattered and gave way. There was a loud splash. Clara started forward. The ice groaned. She looked down and saw the cracks around her feet: crooked and angular, like the skeleton of a tree in winter. Dark water oozed up between them. Clara’s slippers were wet. The water that would drown her was lapping at her feet.

“Lie down!” The voice was Lizzie Rose’s. “Lie down flat! We’ll help you!”

Clara lowered herself onto her knees and stretched out on her stomach. The ice ceased to groan beneath her weight. But her sense of relief, though acute, was short-lived. Now that she was lying still, she felt the cold keenly. Her legs trembled, and she curled her toes and arched her back, trying to make herself smaller. Her teeth chattered. She hugged herself and squeezed her thighs together.

There was a faint creaking to her left. Clara twisted her head. Before her, walking barefoot over the starlit ice, was an angel. It wore a white robe and crept toward her with a queer mincing gait. Clara’s blood ran cold. Was it Death, coming for her? Had she drowned or frozen without knowing it?

But the angel was wingless and had no halo. It made its way over the ice in an oddly haphazard manner, zigzagging around the larger cracks. And the white robe wasn’t a robe but a nightshirt — and all at once Clara’s face broke out in a smile of wonder, because surely this was the angel of her twin.

She raised herself up a little. Now that he had come, she remembered him with perfect clarity. She had not seen him for seven years, but she remembered how he looked in his nightshirt. Every morning he left his bed to creep into hers, and the two of them played together before their nurse was awake. They made caves of their blankets and pretended to be bears. She remembered how his cheeks broadened when he giggled and how his eyes curled up at the outer edges. Her brother, her own dear twin, had come to comfort her while she lay dying —

But no: Charles Augustus had dark hair, like her own. Charles Augustus was a solid little boy, whereas the boy in the nightshirt was spindly and light haired and carried a coil of rope over his shoulder.

“P-Parsefall,” croaked Clara.

He halted, checking his balance. The ice squeaked and he got down on his belly, skittering toward her like some skillful insect. “I got a rope,” he told her. “Lizzie Rose uses it to tie up her bloody ’orrible dog. She thought I’d better bring it ’cos I’m lighter’n her.”

“Thank you,” Clara said with absurd formality. She stretched out her arms, and he uncoiled the rope and lashed it like a whip, so that the end was within reach. “Is Grisini —?”

“Drownded,” answered Parsefall. He was shivering as hard as she was, but he didn’t seem a bit sorry that his former master was dead. “Bleedin’ cold, ain’t it? Don’t move yet. I’m goin’ to get back where the ice is thicker, and then I’ll pull you.”