+++

This is the end.

Of yet another serial.

I’ll be back in January with my long-awaited Trek analogue. Unless I change my mind again. Always feels like I’m not ready for it, even though I have 27 chapters written already.

Hope you enjoyed all the Romanian dialogue and purple tinted pics.

+++

Beyond the castle,

the snow on the slope was not quite as deep as it had been before, and the sky wasn’t at its darkest, possibly due to the faint purple veins stretching out from the ramparts, yet the aura was still implacably Arctic.

Defying the cold, Daniella sweated a little as she walked down towards the forest, but it didn’t matter, it would only taint the shirt underneath, not the dress.

As she passed between the first set of trees, the darkness tightened and that dogged kanji materialised in her head, something inside assuming this would be the moment the switch flipped and the castle called her back,

yet nothing happened

the switch dinnee flip

and Daniella kept on going

feeling her way through the gaps between the trees and over the snow-smudged rocks, ignoring the occasional branch swatting her face

thinking of the castle

remembering the prince’s manic mask

Juliana’s Romanian lessons

the water line in her bath

the candles

+++

Despite vowing to speak only Romanian, the Prince sat at the dinner table surrounded by roast chickens and proselytised in his usual brand of fairly fluent, fairly academic English.

He’d jumped a little when he saw her come down the stairs in the cardinal red dress, asking if Juliana had prepared it, but as soon as she was sat next to him at the table, his pulse resumed its usual adagio pace.

And then he started talking, some of it in Japanese, which was barely understandable, but one thing kept being repeated over and over: sit by the fire, sit by the fire with me, all night, Daniella, we can study Japanese together. His reasoning: if she could make it all the way through to morning then she would be ready for Satan.

Daniella said a lot of da and nu but mostly gave up trying to answer and instead focused on eating one of the chickens.

It wasn’t as dry as the previous food, and the skin was crispy and tanned, and she wondered if the prince had actually found a cookbook from somewhere before seeing a new woman enter the hall, a flickering purple insect stuck in her neck.

‘Replacement already?’

‘Da, food doesn’t make itself.’

‘Have you forgotten yesterday, what you said?’

‘Perhaps I have. What of it?’

‘Incredible.’

‘Intreaga lume. Etapă. Etc.’

‘You couldn’t even last one day.’

The Prince took his goblet and drank some wine. ‘Glib is not a costume you wear well.’

‘I wasn’t being glib.’

‘There is food, eat it. Unless you prefer straw from the dungeon?’

+++

…piercing wind, like it was running through a pipe directly into her ear and-

She shot up out of the chair

put out a hand

steadied herself against the chair arm.

What

wind noise

how

what time is it?

She blinked and looked around, telling herself that her eyes were truth tellers, it was the same castle as before, everything filtering back scattershot really had happened.

Wait, the candles…

They were still lit, but not as many as earlier…which meant…either they’d been blown out by the wind…the strangely warm wind…or someone had come along and smothered them. And left the others burning. Why?

She sat back down to think about it, slouching a little, her eyes instantly fatigued again. Mentally slapping herself in the face, she concentrated on the flames flickering at the top of the fireplace, then swerved quickly left onto the three paintings she was positive hadn’t been there earlier. No, more than positive, she was certain of it, they were all far too colourful and frenzied to miss, especially the middle one, which seemed to be depicting a kind of nudist festival…with the whitest of white people…some of them curled up in open-door spheres while others mingled with gangs of apparently sapient wildlife.

Had someone come in and put them up while she’d been asleep?

Had they not seen her?

+++

It turned out Arbel only had a vague idea where the castle was, or potentially was, so they scanned the street they were walking along for random locals to ask. It was a back road, quite empty, but, after a hundred, two hundred metres, a young, librarian-looking Romanian guy appeared, eyes fixed to the pavement. Daniella got to him first, said the word castle and then asked if he knew where it was.

‘Da, I know the castle,’ he said, looking up, switching on. ‘This way, up this road, I show you.’

‘Great, thanks.’

‘No problem, it’s not out of my way.’

‘Your English is pretty good.’

The guy straightened up, proud. ‘Yes, I study five years.’

‘With books or people?’

‘No people there now, it’s too dark.’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘Castle is this way, be careful, maybe some bears.’

‘Bears?’

‘Not really bears, but be careful, maybe bears.’

‘You mean, there are bears?’

He fiddled with his glasses, attempting to make them straight. ‘Maybe bears. There are some people before, they disappear. Really, they are killed by bears. This is what people think.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Many people don’t say it now. Long time, no one has really disappeared.’

‘Are they near the castle?’

‘It is very far.’

‘The bears…are they near the castle?’

‘Maybe bears, I don’t know. Be careful.’

Daniella glanced at Arbel with the slightest of frustration, but it was enough. He coughed and asked the Romanian if the castle was the one the prince used to live at.

‘Prince? I don’t know.’

‘I think we might be looking for a different one.’