9

Events of the day left her emotionally exhausted. So much has happened. In the course of one day she managed to get exited, alarmed, frightened, disgusted; than she had a chance to feel heroic, stupid, than she was fascinated, compassionate, disappointed, than frightened again. And after that, she felt… disturbed, and exited again, in a different way, and unexplainably happy. More then anything, she now felt closer to her mysterious master than ever before. In the course of this day, he has shown her some sides of himself that she would never have guessed existed. There was warmth, and genuine kindness, and openness, and vulnerability – as well as cruelty and coldness, which seemed very much at odds with the rest of him. Or perhaps the good things were at odds with the bad ones? She was confused – she didn't know what to think of him. And she didn't know what to think of herself, and her inexplicable reaction to the two occasions when they touched. She felt… happy when she touched him, there in the woods, and then later, in the library, when she held his hand expressing her gratitude for his very generous gift.

He knew that she loves books – when did he noticed that, she wondered?

His hand was warm and soft and it trembled when she touched it.

She felt strangely… powerful when she felt that shaking. But than she went back to her 'room', and on the way had to remind herself of her servile position in relation to him.

Yet, when she entered her cell, she found it transformed. Where once there was a mat of straw, there was a bed now. Where once there was a jar of water, now stood a vanity table with brushes and a hand-mirror and some scents.

One the coverlet of the bed a new dress was spread. It was a simple working dress, blue in color, very unpretentious, but it was pretty, and the fabric was soft, and she felt disproportionally touched by the fact that it was there. He must have noticed that her yellow dress was getting ruined – why, he did a lot of damage himself when he dug her into the ground. He must have felt guilty, and decided to compensate her.

He must have cared for her to give her a present.

Oh, she was so confused. She didn't know what to think of him anymore – in the course of the day he seemed to be sort of… transformed. She wondered if it had anything to do with her, whenever she said or did something to effect the change. She didn't know what to think of herself, and her mixed reactions to him.

With a sigh, she undressed, gratefully casting the soiled and spoiled yellow silk dress on the floor. Thank God she wouldn't have to put that on anymore. She climbed into bed, which was very soft and comfortable, and anticipated a peaceful night. Surely after such a tiring day she would sleep like a baby.

She didn't. All night she kept fidgeting in her bed, falling into slumber, then coming out of it again, dreaming of him, scary and sad, menacing and touching, cold and open, always changing, never simple and understandable. She kept thinking of him, sleeping or awake. She kept feeling his touch. She kept hearing his malicious giggle. She kept seeing his weird eyes filled with tenderness. She felt the warmth of his hand, yet she also felt the cold breath of the wind from the unknown terrain her life has become when she linked it with his.

She woke up earlier than usually – she just couldn't stay in bed any longer. She wasn't tired anymore, but she didn't feel fully rested, either – she was strangely alert, as if in some suspended state, expectant, thought she had no idea was she was actually expecting. The practical side of her told her that the best cure for her strange condition was work, so she went to the kitchen to make a fire and prepare tea for him. When everything was ready, she looked at the clock and realized he wouldn't need his tea, for he wouldn't be up yet – he was not a lark; he never rose early, perhaps because he usually worked late at night.

It was amazing how things connected with him had already become customary to her. He 'never' woke early; he 'usually' worked late… She has been here for three days, for goodness sake, why did she feel that she has been here forever? And why was that feeling agreeable to her?

She shook her head – she was in no condition to think straight, not now. Suddenly she realized she had some free time on her hands, and this unexpected freedom left her baffled. It seemed that she already acquired a habit of building her life around her duties and around her master. Yet now she had a chance to be her own mistress, again, even if for just a couple of hours, and she was not sure what she'd do. Giving it some thought, she decided that she would employ that time by having a look around the castle. It was so vast; there were some corridors and rooms she never entered yet. There were many, many things hidden here – well, until yesterday she didn't even know there was a library in the castle. There were many things here, and perhaps some of them would lead her to discover more about her master. She was still so, so curious about him – the more she learned, it seemed, the more enigmatic he became.

Feeling very adventurous, she decided to explore the first floor of the castle – she was more or less familiar with the ground floor already, as the majority of the rooms he used (and that she, therefore, had to clean) were there. Now she ignored the hall, the dining room and the living room, and went up the wide staircase, still rather dusty – she didn't have time to clean it properly yet.

The atmosphere in the corridor upstairs was gloomy. The ceiling was unnaturally high, like in the nave of a cathedral. Walls were decorated with obscure tapestries, so dark and dusty it was impossible to discern their subjects. There were cobwebs hiding in the peaks of narrow arch-shaped niches lining the walls. Suits of armor loomed from dark corners like ghosts. There was not a single window in the whole corridor, and not many doors either. Her steps echoed in the deserted dusk of the place. She wondered at this strange passage, seemingly leading nowhere, and shivered at the cold that seemed to hang here permanently. An uneasy thought crossed her mind: she embarked on this journey around the castle hoping to discover something new about her master. Well, if this corridor was anything to go by, there were things about her master she'd much rather left undiscovered. Seized with sudden apprehension, remembering all the fairy tales about curious maidens that went one door too far in their desire to learn about dark masters of dark castles, she almost resolved to turn back, when something caught her eye. It was a narrow stripe of light crossing the dusty stone-flagged floor. It came from the door on the right-hand side of the corridor. That door was slightly ajar.

Guided by curiosity, silently praying that there would be no dead bodies of previous wives, or some such things, behind this door, she walked on and peered through the crack.

After the gloom of the corridor, the room looked almost disappointingly normal. It had high ceiling, decorated with gilded carvings, and walls lined with dully-red fabric. It had a window and, unusual though it seemed in the castle where all the curtains were always tightly drawn, this window was not curtained at all – the frame was filled with stained glass, and the sun passing through colored pieces cast pretty shadows on the carpeted floor. Moreover, the window was opened – not widely, just a crack, yet the air in the room was fresh, and not with the heart-sinking chill, as in the corridor, but with crispy freshness of the winter morning.

It was a lovely room, and one she would never expect to find in the Dark Castle at all.

She opened the door wider, wanting to have a closer look at things, yet barely walked in when she stopped short, stifling a frightened gasp. It was her master's chamber, and he was in it. Among the things she could not see from the threshold was a bed – a huge one, with velvet canopy and gilded headstand.

Her master was lying on the bed, face down.

He was completely naked. There were no blankets, and no nightdress; he just slept there, his face half-buried in the pillow, his body entirely opened for view. His clothes were scattered on the floor in total disorder.

She blushed, deeply.

She had seen naked men before – her father's castle was a rough place, especially in the time of war, and his knights and troopers didn't much care for modesty as they went about washing, fell asleep drunk and woke later to shag the serving-maids. She has seen men, burly and muscular military folk, parading their unsavory flesh around the castle, and, as any teenage girl, she was curious. Every time she saw them, she thought: I am going to marry one of them one day; I might as well have a general idea of what to expect.

Yes, she had seen naked men before. But He was something different altogether. She wasn't even sure the word 'man' should be used to describe him.

He was green. Truly, wholesomely green. She felt stupid to be surprised at that – she saw his face, she saw his hands, yet she somehow never assumed he was actually green, all over.

He was very thin – brittle, almost. His spine peaked as a fishbone, or like a mountain ridge, his ribs where countable, his shoulder blades protruding.

His skin glittered with golden sparks in the cold winter sunlight.

Posed like that, with arms spread, one leg straightened, other half-bent, he looked exactly like a lizard resting on the wall. She glanced furtively closer and was relieved to find that he didn't have a tail. There were impossibly touching gentle dips on the small of his back.

His mossy hair was rumpled, but she could see his face in profile – the long nose, the sensitive lips, the long eyelashes.

She knew she shouldn't stare, that she shouldn't be in the room at all. Yet she couldn't take her eyes off him.

He was so different – so unlike anything, anybody – any body – she has seen before. So different from other people; so different from her. He was really, truly inhuman – he was from different species. When she looked at him like that, it was impossible to believe that he could talk and think as men do, that he felt warm to the touch. She had to remind herself that his skin was warm; as he lay there she was sure that if she touched him he'd feel cold, as a snake. Touch him? She'd never dare to do that again. She was overwhelmed with realization of their total alienation. It wasn't fear – there was nothing to fear in this reposed figure. She just felt that these two types of… flesh, hers and his, could never, never come into contact, never be reconciled.

Yet, she realized with horrified surprise, she wanted to touch him.

He was so delicate. The bony spine, the thin limbs, the golden glow of his skin – he looked so fragile, so perfectly shaped – it was impossible not to admire him, as one would admire a wild thing in a menagerie.

He was beautiful. He was scary. He was completely from a different time and space. He looked like some heraldic beast.

She wondered what place could have bourn him, what force could have shaped him – she couldn't think of any natural way such a creature could have come into being.

And than, for the first time since they've met, she thought of magic. She knew he was a wizard, of course, a dark wizard, and she sort of assumed his looks were part of his… occupation, a costume donned to look the part. Yet now she thought – what if he does not only create magic, what if he himself was created by magic? What if there was a force that changed him, endowing him with his power, and shaping his appearance to manifest the magic that flowed through him?

She stared at the bizarre creature that was her master, looked at his reptilian skin and clawed hands, she remembered his filmy eyes, and the strangely human look that sometimes entered them, hinting at the man he probably was once, the man she saw so clearly when she embraced him in the forest, and she thought: 'It couldn't have been good, this magic that changed him. It must have been a curse'.

A strange chill came over her at this thought. It was as if the deserted wilderness of her dreams had emerged, briefly, in reality, and polluted this bright and beautiful morning with grey, doomed bleakness.

He sighed, there on the bed, and made as if to turn over, slowly waking up, shading his eyes with his hand, but shameless otherwise, oblivious of the relaxed nakedness of his slumber.

She barely stopped herself from squeaking, and fled the room.

She ran all the way down to her cozy kitchen, not caring if he heard her steps as she run. Her cheeks were hot, her breathing was troubled, and she wished she could forget what she saw and what she thought.

She blushed to think she'd have to face him, soon.

She heard him up and moving, upstairs – now that she knew where his room was, she was acutely aware of him being there. She heard his steps. She imagined she heard water splashing as he took his bath. Thinking of his inhumanly shaped lizard body standing erect in the bath, of his green and gilded skin glistening in the sunlight as the water run down his limbs and his back, as he splashed himself from the bucket, she blushed again.

She tried to distract herself with making tea.

When he came down half an hour later, looking fresh and dapper in his tight pants and narrow waistcoat and frilled shirt, and unusually cheerful, she didn't dare to look him in the eye. He didn't seem to mind – it seemed that his good mood had nothing to do with her. But then again, why should it?

He smiled at her as she served tea, studiously avoiding his eyes. The pattern of the carpet suddenly held an amazing interest for her.

He must have had some sixth sense about her uneasiness – he didn't sit down at the head of the table, as was his custom, but moved around the room restlessly, as in a kind of dance, always getting near her. She could have sworn he was teasing her, subtly. When he finally approached the tea tray, he picked the cup she chipped on the first morning, and very gently tapped it with one of his talons. It made a lovely clinking sound.

She blushed again.

His issued one of his indescribable giggles, and actually clapped his hands.

'This new dress suits you uncommonly well', he said.

She had to lift her eyes, then – to look at him, to say 'thank you'.

'The color matches your eyes', he added as an afterthought. As if he has not given her the dress; as if the whole thing surprised him.

He was obviously enjoying himself. He looked like an incredibly mischievous child. He looked like an imp. And suddenly, watching him in his unreasonably gleeful mood, she forgot all her misgivings and all her fantasies of chilly darkness. She found him immensely likable.

Perhaps his cheerful mood was infectious. She felt like clapping her hands, too. Or blushing again. Or both.

Feeling she was just one step away from making a fool of herself, she escaped hastily, mumbling something about housework, and sat in the kitchen for a while, brooding at her strange reactions to him, wondering at the sheer impossibility of the man. What happened to the snappy monster that ordered her around and glared at her? Where did this playful tease come from? How soon will his nasty mood return? And how was she supposed to reconcile these different sides of him in her mind?

Oh, why was she so confused about him?

Back there in the room where she left him she heard the gentle smooth rattle of his spinning wheel, and his laughter – soft and somehow dreamy.