 
Cygnet Czarinas

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens

Text copyright© 2016 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

July – and it was _snowing_ in London.

Sandy had never seen anything like it. Had never _heard_ of anything like it.

No, she _had_ seen snow like this, _had_ heard of it: but that was only in paintings or tales of the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée by the Russian winter.

Naturally, being unprepared for such an abrupt and unexpected change in the weather, she wasn't dressed for it. Her clothes weren't as ridiculously delicate as most women wore these days, with their ridiculously wide skirts, their bustles – being a painter, Sandy had to be more circumspect, more _Bohemian_ as some would have it, in her choice of clothes – and yet the cold wind was still cutting her to the bone.

Reaching up, she brought the lapels of her jacket together around her neck; yet it made little difference, for the freezing gusts wormed their way into any gaps in her clothing. It was a wind so cold it painfully constricted her chest, her throat, taking her breath away even as it froze her mouth and eyes almost stiffly firm. Worse still, her long skirt was rapidly soaking up the snow on the ground, becoming heavier and colder with every step she took.

And how dangerous were those steps! Thankfully, she wore a decent pair of boots beneath that long, drenched skirt, rather than the dainty little things ladies were supposed to prefer: even so, she precariously slipped on the snow every now and again.

The abrupt evaporation of heat from everywhere about her body staggered her, weakened her. Suddenly, she could hardly walk, fruitlessly struggling for both air and the necessary warmth to keep her muscles supple and responsive.

There was no one else out on the street to help her, despite it being early evening. But she was passing an impressively large white house that was ablaze with light, the sounds of music and laughter seeping out through the larger windows of the ground floor.

Grasping hold of the wrought iron railings fronting the house (thank goodness she _had_ adopted the fashion for wearing gloves! In this cold, bare flesh would have simply frozen to the metal), Sandy used them as a support as she turned into the drive. She similarly used the tops of the low, neatly cut hedges flanking the path to stop herself from falling as she stumbled towards the door.

A narrow porch gave her some respite from the agonising bite of the freezing wind. Even so, she could hardly raise her hand and arm high enough to reach the door's brass knocker, hardly muster the strength to force it down hard enough to be heard over the music still coming from inside.

Fortunately, the door had been improperly closed after the arrival of the last guest: and so as Sandy leant exhaustedly against it, it swung open – and she fell inside the doorway, lying half in, half out of the welcoming warmth of the hallway.

*

Although she was still partially lying within the snow, the relative warmth of the hallway helped Sandy slowly revive and recover at least a modicum of strength.

Still a little dazed, a little confused, she rose unsteadily to her feet. She was surprised that she was still on her own, that no one had come to the door: even if no one had heard her knocking, surely a servant passing through the hallway from room to room might have discovered her?

The hallway was as large as many an artisan's cottage, an area of ornate chairs and half-tables set against the walls, the latter decorated with large vases of elaborately arranged flowers. Doors led off from either side, while a graceful oak staircase wound its way up to other floors.

Although the hallway itself was deathly quiet, muffled music and laughter came from beyond an immense pair of closed, heavily ornamented doors to her right. Sandy began to hesitantly step farther into the hallway, raising her head and politely calling out, hoping to explain her intrusion to anyone on another, quieter floor who might have seen or heard her cumbersome entrance.

'Hello?'

As she called out, the immense doors to her side violently swung open with a thud and an immediate raising of the volume of the music and chatter. A handsome young couple excitedly barged through the doors, almost as if caught still dancing around the floor.

The pair drew to an instant halt, their chuckling and giggling fading away as they gawped in surprise at this bedraggled young woman standing just ahead of them.

It wasn't just Sandy's relatively drab, snow-soaked clothes that made them stare. It was the fact that Sandy too was staring open mouthed, her eyes wide with awe, even a near state of bliss.

She wasn't staring directly at the couple – despite the man's resplendent uniform, the young girl's richly embroidered gown – for they were effectively dwarfed within the entrancing scene framed by the soaring doorway.

A vast and wildly coloured ballroom stretched seemingly endlessly beyond them, lit by countless candles, the light and rainbow tones infinitely reflected by glittering chandeliers and towering mirrors.

Naturally, Sandy wasn't impressed by grand living, by the preposterous world inhabited by the wealthy.

And yet the scene before her not only had a sense of an entry into heaven about it, but also somehow promised a tantalising glimpse of an otherworld reality, the otherwise imaginary realms that her elder brother and his friends were attempting to capture within their paintings; the world of myths, of Arthur's chivalric kingdom.

The colours here were exactly the same bright and sparkling shades as those they were trying to bring to life in their paintings, the mingling of mediaeval pageantry with the untouched, pure tints of an uncorrupted nature.

And yes, burgeoning green stems and clumps of the brightest of berries curled everywhere about the delicately plummeting chandeliers, the impressively ascending ceiling, as if the room had benefited from Nature's own input into its design and creation.

Most amazingly of all, however, was an ethereal light, a glossy, silvery moon-like glow emanating from the very centre of the ballroom, such that it enveloped the young couple as if bathing them in angelic haloes.

Sandy felt drawn to, even hypnotised, by that bewitching light, caught up in an irresistible attraction. She started walking towards it unconsciously, perfectly unaware of the way the bemused couple had to briefly part to allow her to pass between them.

Similarly, the couples on the dancefloor had to whirl to a halt to avoid colliding into her as she walked, still fully in her daze, across the brightly polished wood towards that glistening, entrancing glow.

The music faded, instrument by instrument, many dying out with a pained wail.

The glow was coming from an elegantly draped bier, positioned within the very centre of the vast ballroom.

And the closer Sandy drew towards it, the _more_ she was drawn to it.

For upon that bier there lay the most beautiful young girl Sandy had even seen, laid out as if eternally asleep or – more likely – to eternal rest.

And the glow of the nether realms was emanating from her, from her vast wings of the purest white swan feathers.

*

# Chapter 2

'An angel?' Sandy breathed, unable to believe she was actually seeing this, believing instead that she must be dreaming, perhaps in a feverish stupor brought on by that freakishly unbelievable cold.

The girl looked too wondrously perfect, her skin too gloriously pink and fresh, for her to be dead. The wings were also delicately exact, too purely accurate to be copies, too perfectly exquisite to be false constructs of man.

Around the body, even scattered across it, such that they caught amongst the feathers of the wings, there lay a large number of gaily painted cards; cards portraying exploding suns, priestesses, moons and knights, conjuring up to Sandy an idea at first that they might be a tarot pack. But there were far too many, while they were of a design she had never come across before.

Around Sandy herself, the gaily dressed dancers who had come to a halt and now clustered curiously about her seemed perplexed by her statement. She could have accidentally stumbled into a fairy kingdom, going by the way they closely observed her as if she were the one who seemed exotically different to them.

'No, she's not an angel: not in the way I presume you mean, at least.'

One of the older men attending the dance had drawn close by her, his voice accented, there being an eastern European angular hardness to it.

The man sported a fashionably wide moustache, the hair as mistletoe-white as what little remained on his crown, and setting off the leafy bright green of his uniform. He briefly despondently stared down at the swan-like princess laid out upon the bier, yet when he lifted his eyes towards Sandy once more, they possessed their own particular hardness: a questioning glare that demanded answers from Sandy regarding reasons for her presence here.

'Please: you _must_ leave,' he sternly insisted, reaching out to take her arm by the elbow, an undoubted sign that he would forcibly evict her if she attempted to resist.

Sandy was abruptly embarrassed, glancing everywhere about with shame. She hadn't been invited in here, of course: she had no right to intrude upon what seemed to be some form of wake for a beautiful young girl who had recently passed away.

'I'm sorry, really sorry!' Sandy blurted out ashamedly. 'I...I don't know what came over me!'

Even as she tried to explain why she had so rudely interrupted the dance, she recognised that this was true: she hadn't meant to so inconsiderately walk in amongst them, neither announced nor invited. She had been overcome by some form of daze, some type of enchantment even, that had briefly left her completely unaware of her actions or intent.

She sadly turned away from the bier, her eyes lingering for as long as possible upon the poor girl's remarkable beauty. The angelic wings still seemed so incredibly real, so implausibly realistic, to Sandy; yet quite obviously they were nothing but some odd, customary form of preparing the deceased for her forthcoming journey, there to help her wing her way heavenward.

'How...how did she...pass away?' Sandy asked the man as he gently yet nevertheless insistently led her back across the dancefloor between the parting couples.

Again, she realised she was being unfairly discourteous to ask such a personal question of the man: and yet internally, her thoughts were screaming at her that she had to know, that politeness didn't matter at the present moment.

Thankfully, the man appeared in no way upset by her request for more information, his expression and tone more one of surprise rather than irritation.

'Pass away?' he repeated, perhaps even a little bewildered or at least confused by Sandy's terminology. 'No: the young czarina _sleeps_.'

Now it was Sandy's turn to be left uncertain by the man's choice of words; was 'sleep' just one more euphemism for death?

Fortunately, the man recognised the reason for Sandy's puzzled, disconcerted frown.

'She's not _dead_ , thankfully,' he said as they drew closer to the ballroom's immense doors, his gaze once again despondent. 'But she _sleeps_ endlessly, as _if_ dead to the world.'

As soon as they had passed through the doorway, the double doors softly closed behind them, the music immediately starting up once again.

'An illness?' Sandy asked, once again admonishing herself for her unthinking inquisitiveness.

At first the old man shook his head sadly, but as he spoke his eyes narrowed with barely controlled fury.

'An _enchantment,'_ he fumed, indicating that their conversation had come to an abrupt end with a wave to a waiting servant to show Sandy out.

*

Out in the snow once more, Sandy should, perhaps, have suffered badly from the intense cold as she had before.

Yet now, curiously, it hardly seemed to affect her.

Her mind was a whirl. Not one portion of it, however, was aware of the cold: indeed, she remained wholly indifferent to the weather.

She had walked into a scene that could have been directly lifted from a painting created by her brother's group of friends!

It had possessed a sense of being an offshoot or a portion of a world previously and yet falsely thought to be mythical; a sense, even, of an insight into a magical realm.

For this, of course, had been no mythical world, no world, even, of a long-distant past: it existed here and now, in London!

Sandy felt an urgency to get back to her brother's studio as soon as she could, wishing she had her pastels and paper with her, eager to make a studied portrait at least of the young girl's stunning face: the scene itself had been unforgettable, but faces can unconsciously change when we rely on nothing but our wholly inadequate memories to conjure them up before us once more.

She was so inspired by what she had just witnessed that she remained completely unaware when the weather abruptly changed for the better – such that by the time she was back home in Cheyne Walk, there wasn't a single sign that she had walked though those viciously freezing squalls of snow.

*

It was her very first painting to be accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy.

It wasn't, of course, a pure rendering of the scene she had witnessed.

No one had believed her when she had described her experience in the ballroom, not even her brother Frederick.

Gabriel had laughed; ' _Every_ Russian exiled to London seems to be a princess or a queen: they're more common than our dukes and earls – and we have more than enough of _them_!'

Even Mary, Frederick's common-law wife, expressed her doubts, if a little more kindly, pointing out that there hadn't been any snow in London since early January.

Naturally, it didn't help that Sandy couldn't recall the journey she had taken after leaving this mysterious house she claimed to have visited. No one seemed to be able to name a house bearing even the remotest similarities to the one she recalled visiting, such that as the months passed, she diligently poured the memories of her experience out into her painting rather than to her increasingly dubious circle of acquaintances.

And so, too (although she felt guilty of some form of betrayal), Sandy accepted the advice of her friends (or, rather, her brother's friends: they were all, like him, almost twenty years older than her after all!) that her work would be more acceptable as a rendering of the unrecognised, selfless love of Arthurian romance, of Tennyson's _Idylls of The Kings_.

Of _Enid_.

*

# Chapter 3

The Object of Infatuation

All about the court – and in particular within its many crooks and crannies – worryingly pervasive whispers about Lancelot, about Guinevere, are circulating.

An infatuation, some call it.

Naturally, there's no proof presented to back up these scandalous rumours.

So many courtiers dismiss it as just that; idle, yet ultimately dangerous, gossip.

Others, however, regard it as being undoubtedly true; one more sign of the slow yet irrevocable deterioration of morality within the court, perhaps even throughout the whole kingdom.

A spreading infestation that, once set in motion, will eventually consume everyone.

Sir Geraint is one of those people who believe this state of affairs is already endemic. And as such, he fears for his own marriage to the beautiful Enid.

Isn't Enid, after all, one of the queen's closest friends and advisors?

How much does she know about what is really going on?

Is she aiding the queen in her indiscretions, her treachery?

Does she gain amusement from all this?

Wouldn't that be just like her, to be infatuated with bringing those who love each other together as one?

And will she follow suit, taking her own lover?

Has she _already_ taken one: one from amongst the many admirers of her beauty, wit and elegance?

*

Even on abandoning court and returning to his own, far off lands, Sir Geraint's heated imaginings continue to plague him.

Enid tries to make light of their leaving of the court. Yet Sir Geraint isn't one to be fooled by her trickery; he has no doubts that she regrets this move, having been forced to leave her lover behind at the palace.

Now he's the one infatuated: besotted with his own wild imaginings, enamoured with the sweet pain of his own envious meanderings – granting his jealousies a life of their own as he conjures up irresistibly handsome paramours and secretive, blissful liaisons.

Now he's the axis about which rumours revolve: not one of them good or flattering. At best, it's said that he's given up chivalry for love, becoming less of a man because of it.

He stays so long at Enid's side, doting on her like some lovesick loon, that he no longer attends the tilts or tournaments, neglecting even his duties as a ruler. Forgetful of his glory and his name, Geraint's reputation suffers, his own people secretly scoffing his forfeiture of knightly prowess.

Naturally, Enid hears whispers of these rumours.

Naturally, too, she realises that she's regarded as the ultimate cause of her husband's fall from grace.

It's unbearably distressing for her to hear that her husband has become such an object of ridicule.

Should she tell him? she wonders.

No: it would hurt him considerably to learn that he has lost his hard-won reputation.

And so Enid has to take that gnawing pain into herself, unable to divulge her agonising secret, letting it instead tear at her insides more brutally than any instrument of torture.

*

While her husband sleeps contentedly on a night, oblivious to the truth, Enid's sleep suffers.

Whenever she lets her eyes close, she isn't blessed by an enveloping, comforting darkness but, rather, is cursed to wander a darker court of chortling, sneering courtiers.

She lies awake, searching for a solution to her dilemma, berating herself for keeping secrets from her husband.

And Geraint awakes and overhears the last words of her lament: and hearing only the barest fragment of a great and hidden truth, he hears it instead only as something false, believing he is hearing her confession to her unfaithfulness.

For the object of her infatuation is quite obviously a knight she believes superior to him.

*

He _is_ a great warrior! he shouts angrily as he rises from their bed.

And they will both set out on a quest that very morning, so that he may prove it to her.

Yet he forces poor miserable Enid to ride before him, on a wizened old horse and wearing nothing but her oldest, most shabby dress. Indeed, it is so torn and tattered that her skin shines through as white as a swan's, as pure as the soul: which, after all, is the meaning of the name Enid.

Geraint further orders that she must never speak, never object, no matter what provocation she suffers. For now the object of his infatuation has become purely that: an object to be brought under his control.

Riding in this odd fashion insisted upon by Geraint, they naturally attract the attention of knights who feel he doesn't deserve such a beautiful wife.

Each time, however, Enid rides back and informs her husband that he is in danger.

Each time, Geraint defeats the attacking knight.

Each time, too, he accuses Enid of disobeying his command not to speak.

Rather than being thankful for her loyalty towards him, he only accuses her of encouraging these would-be suitors.

Eventually, as they travel through the most lawless and bleak of lands, Geraint slips and falls unconscious from his horse, the wounds he has received in his many battles having finally overcome him.

Enid sits by his side, weeping and refusing to eat or drink, hoping that he is still alive despite all evidence to the contrary. Indeed, a passing earl tells a frantically disbelieving Enid that Geraint is undoubtedly as good as dead, offering her a new and rewarding life as his mistress.

The more Enid refuses the earl's blandishments, the more he increases his offers of wealth and good living; until, recognising at last that Enid is resigned to staying with and nursing her ailing husband, the earl resorts to dragging a wailing Enid off with him.

Geraint wakes as he did before, that fateful morning when he awoke and misheard his dear wife's anxious cares. Thankfully, this time he can't misinterpret her fears for him; and so, rising up, he strikes and chases off the malevolent earl.

And, at last, he begs forgiveness for ever doubting the long-suffering Enid.

*

Of course, many would be incapable of forgiving Geraint for his ridiculously unfair treatment of the fair Enid.

Fortunately for Geraint, Enid's infatuation is of a kind far different to his own; for her aim is to bring those who love each other together as one.

And with such an object in mind, the infatuated are not wholly beyond redemption.

*

# Chapter 4

In Sandy's painting of _Enid_ the sleeping czarina becomes Tennyson's _The Dying Swan_ : for, of course, she had mutely suffered her husband's torments after he'd misunderstood the dying words of her lament.

The cards scattered about her, a true pack of tarot, relate the tale's past, its present, its future. There are marigolds too, for the despair and grief brought on by the cruelty and coldness of jealously, for the hard work that goes into winning affection.

Although the painting was displayed with notices saying it was not for sale, Sandy was discreetly informed that enquires were nevertheless being made by someone who wished to remain nameless. The offer was substantial by any standards, but particularly for a painter of Sandy's relatively low-standing.

It was an offer she should have gratefully accepted, of course: although she earned more money than most ladies of her status, and wasn't in any way dependent upon Frederick's charity, she was far from being wealthy. The increasingly ridiculous prices being proffered for her painting – the more she refused to part with it, the higher the amounts soared – would be more than enough to provide her with a comfortable few years, perhaps even the beginnings of a life as a professional painter.

Her friends were astounded by her reticence to sell her painting: as Frederick pointed out with an amused chuckle, it was hardly likely that this secretive would-be purchaser would pay such an amazing sum only to mistreat it, or hide it away in some dark cellar forever.

Sandy, however, wasn't so sure: although she had to admit she couldn't understand why she might believe such a ridiculous thing, just as she couldn't really encapsulate any sound reason for her refusal to sell.

Eventually, Sandy was informed by her brother that she had a visitor, an old man apologetically insistent that – against all propriety – he must see her on her own.

Frederick gave her a curious smile as he added, 'An old man with an accent: Russian, I presume.'

*

Today, of course, the elderly Russian wasn't wearing his uniform.

As soon as Frederick showed him into the room, Sandy recognised him immediately.

Recalling his furious expression as he had finally ejected Sandy from the ballroom, she briefly wondered if she should greet him curtly; yet she immediately dismissed this thought as being nothing but childish nonsense. He had appeared to be more angry with himself rather than Sandy, perhaps because he believed he had revealed more about his czarina than he had intended.

Their greetings were courteous, although the Russian appeared eager to bring their discussion around to the matter of the painting as soon as respectfully possible.

'The czarina has informed me that I should allow you to name your price–'

'The czarina? There is _another_ czarina?'

Sandy naturally berated herself for her rude interruption, but she had neither being expecting nor had prepared for this new disclosure.

The elderly Russian shook his head, his expression one of mild surprise that Sandy could think such an outlandish thing.

'No, just the czarina you yourself–'

'She has _awoken_?'

Sandy was startled, elated: she almost leapt with excitement.

The Russian shook his head dismissively once more.

'She sleeps _endlessly_ ,' he said, reiterating the observation he had made on the night Sandy had first come across the sleeping czarina.

'But if she _sleeps_ ...' Sandy began uncertainly, 'then how is it _possible_ that she has _informed_ you?'

The man shrugged uncomfortably as he hesitated before resignedly sighing, 'She knew you would ask this.'

Sandy answered him with nothing but quizzically raised eyebrows: he still hadn't explained how the sleeping czarina could inform him of _anything_ , let alone of things only she would know.

Even now, however, he didn't seemed prepared to give her a direct answer to her question. He stood up straighter, more resolutely.

'She also knows the price you will ask for your painting: and she has granted me the authority to acquiesce to your demand.'

'My price?'

Sandy failed to see how the czarina could possibly know what price she would ask for. She hadn't determined even the barest notion of any price she thought reasonable for a painting that somehow meant so much to her. Indeed, she still remained unsure that she wanted to let her painting go.

And then, abruptly, she _did_ know what her price would be.

'I wish to ask the czarina a question: _that_ is my price for the painting!'

The old man smiled; and nodded, acquiescing to her demand.

*

# Chapter 5

On the express orders of the czarina, Sandy was shown into the room where her painting would be displayed, to ensure it met with her approval.

It was a room that stood just off the hall, directly opposite the ballroom.

This surprised Sandy, for she had feared her painting would be fated to be hidden away somewhere, veiling forever a rendering of a rite that many wished to remain secret.

It was a room, too, of judiciously polished oak panelling; of raised windows that suffused everything with light, without endangering unstable pigments through unforgivably allowing the sun's more direct rays to penetrate.

It was so perfect, it could have been specifically built for the display of paintings.

Its only imperfection, ironically, was its most perfect attribute.

For the room already had a painting.

One the like of which Sandy had never seen before.

Oh, of course, she had seen icons before: but never, ever, an icon like _this_.

No matter how hard she stared at it, Sandy couldn't determine if it was absorbing more light than it should be, or if it were actually emanating all that light. Either way, a luminosity hung about the painting, much as light hangs in an eerie glow around a stained glass window.

Naturally, the icon was formed mainly of gold leaf, the colours apparently painted upon it, such that greens, reds and blues shone as if emeralds, rubies, sapphires. Naturally, too, as with many icons, it portrayed the Mother of God embracing the Christ Child; a child who could really be of any age, for he is the one granting the painting's observer a blessing.

Mary's hooded cloak was of white and gold, however, when Sandy felt sure they tended to be blue.

But then, it wasn't a cloak after all, but the woman's hair, the fairest of hair: which meant, surely, that this wasn't – _couldn't_ be – an icon of Mary and the Christ child. Indeed, she saw now that this 'Mary' also held up in one hand what could either be a golden apple or her hair wound into a ball of thread. Even the child, on closer inspection, appeared to be woven, though Sandy couldn't be sure if this was just an effect of the painting's style or not.

And within that child there was a heart or a flame of weeping blood red.

Yes; it seemed to weep, to sparkle, as the glistening of running blood changes, the fluctuating reflection of light revealing otherwise undetectable movement.

Moreover, Sandy sensed that there was an almost umbilical cord of mutual attraction running between herself and the painting, as if it were actually drawing her inside its–

No!

That _wasn't_ true.

Far from utilising perspective to fool your eye into accepting the picture as a representation of life, fooling you into imagining you were stepping into the picture, the perspective here – what little there was of it – was all _wrong_!

It was crude, badly observed – for far from disappearing into a vanishing point lying beyond the rear of the painting (as any decent painter was instructed to aim to accomplish!), the perspective here was completely and unnaturally reversed: the vanishing point, the whole focus of the painting, came together at a point lying _before_ the paining.

A point lying directly within the midst of her own heart.

It was a perspective that fooled you into believing you were a part of the painting.

As Sandy now reverently contemplated the details of the icon, wondering how she herself could capture these effects within her own paintings, the old man entered the room behind her.

Hearing him enter, she spun around.

'Once you've decided that the room is to your satisfaction,' the man declared, 'you can make your way through to the main room. The czarina believes that you will wish to see how questions are asked of her, and by what manner she answers.'

Sandy agreed: the room fully met with her approval. And yes, of course, she would like to see how a sleeping princess replied to any question asked of her.

'Then I should warn you,' the Russian replied grimly, 'that I fear what you witness has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of a God that you have doubtless become accustomed to worshipping.'

*

Perhaps the old man's curious declaration was some crude attempt to dissuade her from approaching the czarina once again, Sandy thought.

Far from deterring her, however, this made her more intrigued than ever.

Surely, he wasn't referring to some kind of demonic rite?

Sandy was well aware that séances were all the rage, that some people had used its popularity as an excuse to dabble in darker arts. But her father had ensured she had received a good education, one that opened rather than closed her mind to the innumerable opportunities presented by our life here on Earth.

One of Frederick's many and widely learned associates had told her that the whole idea of their being this 'Satan' character was all down to wild misinterpretations of the bible, which never actually mentions him.

Nehushtan was the healing serpent Moses had raised in the desert, the Hebrew for serpent being 'nahash' and rooted in the letters Nun, Het and Shin, meaning 'to guess': and from this, we intolerably inherited this 'Satan', a word that means 'adversary'.

And so, it was her guess that nothing ill could befall her by attending the sleeping czarina.

As before, the czarina was laid out in great splendour in the middle of the ballroom. Today, however, there was no music, no dancing.

The people gathered around her, too, appeared to Sandy to be of a more serious nature than those who had attended the ball. Or, rather, they were those who had stood around the edges of the dancefloor, discussing more serious matters, as they were now, their expressions grim.

The exception was the very same couple who had so excitedly burst upon her as she had struggled to her feet in the hall. Even these two, however, were today more muted and restrained in their displays of love for each other, restricting themselves to whispered asides and giggles, or deft, tender touches.

The sleeping czarina herself, of course, appeared no different than she had looked that very first time Sandy had seen her.

Perfectly beautiful

Perfectly motionless.

Perfectly and purely white, apart from the remarkable freshness of her skin, the mingling blonde and light auburn of her flowing hair.

What the man had said about her being asleep, not dead, had to be true then: for although Sandy had been so inspired she had completed her painting relatively swiftly, while its exhibition had been no more than a matter of a few months, all combined that was still almost a year – easily long enough for any corpse to have begun to deteriorate.

This was no corpse.

This was angelic.

An angelic scene that wasn't despoiled this time by the scattered tarot-like cards.

The cards, it seemed, had been placed in stacks upon what could have been some kind of elaborate, multi-layered wedding cake positioned at the czarina's feet.

Far from being a cake, however, this was some incredibly bejewelled ornament, a towering pillar of multiple layers edged with lines of precious gems. Each layer was also marked off into multiple squares, like game boards, only here the pieces were the stacks of cards.

One of a number of elegantly attired attendants standing just a little way off from the prone czarina looked towards the couple. With nothing more than the stately lowering of his gaze and the crooking of a finger, he indicated that they should draw closer towards the bier. Following his instructions they moved closer, nervously clutching hands and exchanging amused yet anxious glances.

They stared down into the face of the sleeping czarina as fearful mourners would look down for the last time on the face of a recently departed loved one. They both smiled sickly as the young man hesitantly asked the czarina their question.

The question, naturally, was in Russian.

And yet Sandy flattered herself that the couple's behaviour had at least given her an inkling of what that question might be.

They either sought permission to marry, or reassurance that they were compatible.

It seemed to Sandy that it was a rather mundane query to ask of someone as apparently magical as the sleeping czarina, akin to wasting an opportunity to gain wisdom by asking a foolish question of the Greek oracle.

Then again, wasn't she being too hard on this young couple?

Didn't she herself almost endlessly pine over how loveless her own life was? Wouldn't she, too, wish that she made the perfect marriage?

Moreover, she felt sure that the elderly Russian had deliberately brought her into the presence of the czarina at a point when all the truly serious questions had already been asked of her: he wouldn't want her to witness important affairs of state, after all. (If, indeed, the sleeping czarina was capable of answering the more complicated questions. Yet Sandy felt that she must be, otherwise why would all these dignified statesmen and ladies be gathered about her?)

No doubt the elderly Russian similarly wished that the question she would ask of the czarina would be as equally innocent as the young couple's.

The great hall was abruptly no longer generally silent: everyone was whispering excitedly, hurriedly.

Then it dawned on Sandy that, actually, not even one of those standing about her was speaking. Indeed, the mouths of everyone around her were, if anything, grimly set.

The voices simply hovered in the air, suffusing them all.

The feathers of the swan's wings were frenziedly fluttering, as if caught in a strong breeze: and yet it was the feathers themselves that were creating the gentle gusts whipping around the ballroom.

More remarkably still, they also seemed responsible for the hushed, excited whispers.

The effect was strangely mesmerising, Sandy's eyelids feeling suddenly heavier, hard to keep raised.

She was drifting off to sleep.

She couldn't stop herself from succumbing to the hypnotic effects of the now gentle, soothing voices, to the tender caresses of the rippling breezes.

*

# Chapter 6

Naturally, Sandy couldn't be sure exactly how long she'd been asleep, yet she presumed it couldn't have been long.

She was still standing, for one thing, rather than having fallen to the floor as she slept.

Around her, people were gently shrugging their shoulders or slowly lifting bowed heads as they too awoke from their brief sleep. It seemed to Sandy that everyone had drifted off, including the elderly Russian who had brought her into the ballroom, for he too was rapidly blinking his eyes, as though struggling even more than anyone else to fully wake up.

Sandy inhaled deeply, briefly imagining that even the czarina herself had woken up; for she had moved, or at least her wings had slipped off slightly to each side, revealing the young girl's heavily bejewelled chest.

But unfortunately the czarina still slept on.

One of the brightly coloured cards was positioned directly above her heart. Her hands also lay slightly across her chest, but not symmetrically as Sandy might have supposed: rather, one was lower than the other, which was also farther across her chest, the index fingers on both protruding such that they each pointed to a different jewel.

The couple gawped in wide-eyed exhilaration at the card and the pointing hands. They both eagerly spoke at the same time, a single word each, but a different word in each case.

They swapped embarrassed glances, more tightly grasped each other's hand; then both spoke together once more, but this time in agreement.

Sandy briefly wondered if the wings had been moved aside by some of the attendants standing around the bier as she and the others had slept: but then, as the couple spoke this second time, the card lying upon the czarina's heart appeared to rapidly dissolve, to vanish. The wings, too, rose back into their original positions, completely cloaking the czarina, as if cocooning her within the very purest shroud.

The couple turned towards the cake-like pillar, where an attendant was already removing a single card from one of its many layers. Without even glancing at this card, let alone offering some form of interpretation of its meaning as Sandy had expected, the attendant handed it to the couple, the young man graciously allowing what could be his future bride to take it.

With yet another eager tightening of their hands, another sharing of happy grins, the couple trotted off across the dancefloor as if about to elatedly launch into an excitable waltz.

Sandy was bemused by their happy acceptance of nothing more than some form of tarot card, and one apparently chosen at random at that.

How could such a thing produce any worthwhile answer to the couple's questions and needs?

Glancing once more at the pillar of layered boards and innumerable cards, she noticed that the level the card had been chosen from was edged on one side with rubies, on the other with amethysts. Every layer was edged differently, some with emeralds and rubies, or sapphires and pearls; there _was_ another layer featuring both amethysts and rubies, but here they edged different sides.

The czarina had been pointing with her right hand to a line of rubies on her dress, a line of amethysts with her left. Moreover, she had pointed to a ruby about the midpoint of the line, whereas the amethyst she'd indicated was nearer to the line's end: and, similarly, the attendant had taken the card from a square on the board that lay more or less half way down the ruby-edged side of the board, and towards the end of the line of amethysts.

'Excuse me...?'

The elderly Russian who had escorted her into the ballroom was standing alongside her, indicating with a slight nod of his head that one of the attendants was inviting her to draw alongside the sleeping czarina.

Sandy stepped closer and, looking down at this remarkably beautiful girl, had to resist the urge to reach out and tenderly caress that flawless skin.

'Why do you sleep?' she asked concernedly.

Around her there were gasps and expressions of horror, as if this were a question that must never be asked.

Only the elderly man seemed resigned to her query; no doubt, Sandy thought, the czarina had already warned him that this would be the question she would ask.

Even if Sandy had wanted to withdraw the question, it was now too late: everyone was dropping off to sleep.

*

# Chapter 7

'It's beautiful,' Frederick announced as he admired the intense colouring of the card, its rainbow-like tones swirling around in the air as he made even the slightest twirl of his hand, 'and like nothing I've ever seen before.'

Indeed, as Gabriel had observed, to call it a card was to do it an injustice; for rather than being a construct of paper, it was made of an incredibly light and transparent substance that none of them could identify, the nearest equivalent they could think of being the very finest vellum, or even some form of communion wafer – 'or frozen mist,' Mary added with an uncertain, embarrassed light-heartedness.

As such, the card shone like a miniature stained glass window, the colours brought into being by the refracted light suffusing it in the most marvellous glow.

The image, too, left everyone bemused: a garden at night, with a naked lady bathing in a fountain, a salmon twirling about her feet.

Depending on the way the card was viewed, she could even be bathing in the light of the stars, for the Milky Way flowed completely across the night sky like a glistening river – one that frustratingly changed in the way it glittered with even the slightest movement of a hand, eye, or any nearby light. Within that light, there were what appeared to Sandy to be seven flying swans, but Frederick insisted they must be doves: 'They're in the formation of the Pleiades: the seven sisters Zeus transformed into birds, so they could flee Orion the hunter.'

Gabriel reluctantly agreed, pointing out that, just like the constellation, one of the seven was much fainter than the rest, 'only six of them now being visible to the naked eye.'

'It's tarot-like, definitely – and yet not _exactly_ like any I know of,' Mary admitted a little dispiritedly, for she had always seen herself as a highly-knowledgeable expert on such matters.

Sandy had taken the card from the sleeping czarina's breast; she had almost moaned in surprise as she had felt the movement and warmth of the girl's beating heart lying just below her fingers.

Nevertheless, she had suffered a pang of disappointment when she had taken her first glimpse of the card, despite its remarkable nature, its otherworldly gorgeousness.

She had no idea what it might possibly mean.

She had hoped that, somehow, having witnessed the excitement of the young couple, that its meaning would be inherently obvious to her.

But...it was just a card.

It didn't provide an answer to her question: it didn't seem to grant an answer to any question.

'Ah, clearly esoteric!' a highly-amused Gabriel had chuckled when Sandy had returned from the Russian house and handed the card to him.

'And no one offered you _any_ interpretation of its meaning?' Mary asked now, clearly puzzled by its imagery.

'And you didn't _ask_ , naturally?' Frederick said, observing her knowingly with lowered eyes.

Sandy shook her head in answer to both questions.

'I got the distinct impression that you were supposed to just accept the card, then leave,' she explained, recalling how the young couple hadn't appeared in anyway bewildered or disappointed by the card they had been given.

'So...why take the card from the heart,' Gabriel asked with a quizzical stare, 'rather than from this pillar-thing, like this young couple you told us about?'

'I just felt – well, as you put it just there, Gabriel; it was from the _heart_!'

As soon as she said this, Sandy sensed there was some truth behind her statement, even though it hadn't been a reason she had considered before. Hadn't the young girl chosen differently to her young man at first?

'Yes, yes; it was decision taken _from_ the heart,' she added surprisingly hurriedly, as if by saying it she actually made it so. 'Rather, too, than from the head: through _reason_.'

'Hence, then, why it makes so little sense to us now,' Frederick scoffed, staring intently at the card once more, this time as he scratched at its surface. 'This isn't paint or ink: unless, somehow, it's _inside_ this thin film of whatever it is!'

Sandy took the card from him, spinning it curiously in her hand, realising for the first time that the image was indeed perfectly clear on both sides.

Why hadn't she noticed that before?

She slowed her more rapid twirling of the card, staring so incredulously at it that it couldn't escape the attention of her friends.

'What's wrong?' Frederick asked. 'What have you seen now?'

'The image, Frederick: it _can't_ be printed on the inside!' Sandy exclaimed in surprise, holding the card closer to him as she continued to turn it back and forth. 'Because no matter which way you look at it, the picture's not _reversed_ : it's _exactly_ the same.'

*

Alone in her room, Sandy curiously studied the card once more.

Why had no one noticed before that the image appeared on both sides, that it remained unchanged no matter which side you were looking at?

But then, it didn't really remain _completely_ unchanged, did it?

There was that curious effect caused by the angle of the light either striking or passing through the card, causing the Milky Way in particular to shine in a number of differing ways – rapidly waxing and waning as if it were an actual event captured within this strangely diaphanous substance. The faint, seventh 'dove' also glowed brighter than the rest when the card was barely illuminated.

This was happening now: and when Sandy glanced about herself, she was surprised to see that it had grown darker in her room, much more so than it had been only a moment before.

There was little light coming in through the window, the scene beyond the glass being one of a gathering storm, the sky rapidly greying, the overshadowing clouds gloomy in their drenched darkness. The air prickled with the static electricity that also precludes a fierce storm.

The large French windows gracing Sandy's room opened up onto the house's secluded rear garden, one of trailing vines, roses, and clematis hanging from the close-set walls and wrought iron arches. The moon adorned it all with her silvery glow, soaking up the colours of the blooms, granting them instead an ethereal, mercurial glimmer, a milky pool of stems and flowers rippling in the breeze.

The _moon_?

It was too early for the moon to have risen.

It was too late in the month for it to be a fully bright moon, one that could create this silvery-watered scene.

Sandy stepped closer towards the glass doors, peering higher up into the sky in the hope of seeing what might be causing this ghostly glow.

It wasn't the moon, of course.

Yet even more bizarrely, it was the Milky Way, flowing across what was indeed a night sky like a mystically sparkling river.

Recognising what she was seeing, Sandy held up the card, positioning it so that the band of stars on the card exactly overlaid the real Milky Way.

The seven swans were now soaring, it seemed, across the sky.

As if refracted, perhaps even focused, the glow from the stars shining through the card now bathed her in their wraith-like shimmer. Suffused in this silvery, mystical milk, Sandy sensed the nakedness of the bathing woman being projected over her. It was an image perfectly matching her own form, lying directly over her own torso, her own limbs, even the raised arm, granting her another sense of an earlier, more innocent era of life that strangely appealed to her.

She could, indeed, have been _truly_ naked.

She _should_ , indeed, be truly naked.

And then she _was_ , indeed, truly naked.

*

# Chapter 8

The glass doors leading out to the garden opened up before her.

An electrically crackling breeze swam everywhere about her naked flesh, somehow whispering, beckoning her to step forward. It caressed her, kissed her, clutched and pulled.

She didn't wish to resist. She stepped through the doors, out into the starlit garden.

A garden of marigolds, roses, jasmine, hibiscus, and columbine.

A garden enveloped in what could be milky water, the stars now outshone by a fully bright moon. It dominated what could only be described now as a night sky, like a vast hole within that darkness, a portal into another world.

And beneath it all, Sandy was as pure as Eve in Eden, wearing nothing but her own glorious fleece of tumbling hair.

The card she had been holding had dissolved, becoming just another part of the flowing, silvery light that hung everywhere about her like a dewy mist. Where the dew touched the lawn, transforming into tear-like droplets, it sprang into life as a carpet of carnations. Yet through those carnations, there swum crayfish and salmon, the mist now more like tingling water as it caressingly trickled all over Sandy's naked flesh.

She felt herself rising, her whole body light and buoyant within this mystical water.

She rose upwards, heading towards the glittering moon.

*

No; it wasn't a moon she was rising up towards, Sandy realised.

She was bubbling up through flowing water towards the brightly lit surface of a vast, circular lake.

The closer she rose towards that surface, the less of it she could see, such that it stretched off seemingly endlessly in every direction but one: for she was thankfully rising up towards a section of that lake – no, that great _sea_ , that vast _ocean_ – where an island rose from the waters, a towering white mountain looming over everything.

When she at last broke the surface, she wasn't gasping for breath as she might have feared: even so, she was glad to see that she had indeed surfaced by the island's coastline. Beyond a bright beach, there lay a paradisiacal scene of trees and bushes decked with bright blooms.

The light suffusing it all was ethereal in its silvery glow, for it came purely from the constellations of stars, particularly the Milky Way; all of them far more glorious and glittering than Sandy had ever seen them, as if they had rushed down towards Earth and now hovered only a mile or two above her.

More startling still, it was a constellation of the cross that lay directly above her, its upper section slightly crooked but ending in a blazing star that all others revolved around, as if it formed the very centre of the universe – as if the cross itself was the pole about which everything turned.

As she stared at this amazing sight, it dawned on her that the movement of the other constellations was far more complicated than she had first supposed – for they also twirled around in other ways, the whole effect reminding Sandy of a childhood experience when she had swung out in a vast circle on the end of a rope swing, her own twirling adding to the sense of strangeness as she stared up towards the thick knot holding her to the branch,

In contrast to all this movement, the water of the immense ocean was almost motionless, as bright and reflective as the most expensive mirror.

Just along the shore, a small flock of swans was swooping into land: five of them, rather than the seven she might have been given to expect from the image inscribed upon the card.

As they came to land on the very edges of water, with not even one of them raising a disruptive ripple, each swan shed and threw off what appeared to Sandy to be a fine dewy mist, or perhaps the filmiest of veils: and in that instant, the swans transformed into young girls, as innocently naked as on the day when they first came into the world.

And one of those girls, Sandy was sure, was the czarina.

*

# Chapter 9

The girls played on the edges of the sea as children would play; laughing as they ran through the waters, mischievously splashing each other.

Sandy was treading water, remembering the phenomenal depth that lay beneath her. Yet as she stretched out a leg and a foot only slightly, she realised that there was now a soft bed of sand and fine pebbles there. Letting her other foot down, finding that that too stood upon firm ground, she began to slowly make her way through the water towards the excitedly playing girls.

Or rather, she saw as she drew closer, towards four girls and a young man, the smallest amongst them being an exceptionally beautiful boy.

The czarina glanced her way. She saw Sandy approaching; but far from being shocked, let alone horrified, she smiled.

She turned away from the others and started striding out towards Sandy, raising a hand in greeting.

'You're here at last!' she cried out elatedly. 'I thought you'd _never_ come!'

*

Unembarrassed by the nakedness of either of them, the czarina threw her arms around Sandy, embracing her as warmly as if she were a long lost sister.

Taken by surprise, sandy didn't have time to ask any questions before the czarina stated happily, 'You wonder why I sleep?'

Of course, that was indeed the very question she had asked the sleeping czarina; 'Why do you sleep?'

It was the asking of that question that had resulted in her receiving the card and, ultimately, the reason why she was now standing here, naked, in this mystical lake.

'As you can see,' the czarina added brightly, stepping back a little and opening her arms wide to indicate the glorious surroundings, 'I'm _not_ asleep _here_.'

But where _was_ here? Sandy wondered, glancing up once again towards the cross of stars, pinioned to and slowly revolving about that single, central star.

There were other reasonably bright stars to either side of the cross, the horizontal beam now appearing to her as wings: Hermes' winged caduceus, that's what it now looked like to her.

She had to restrain a self-admonishing laugh as she realised it was the constellation of Cygnus, the swan; a swan whose long, slender neck was pointing back towards Earth.

Of course!

She hadn't recognised it because she had never seen it take such a central position.

'It's how the stars appeared a thousand years before your time.'

The czarina, having seen Sandy glancing skywards, was now also looking up at the stars.

'Or rather, from _Earth_ , it would have appeared more like this...'

With nothing more than an airily wave of a hand, the czarina caused the stars above them to shift, such that the upended swan now spun about its own tail star; but now so did every other star, the strangely disconcerting twirling around multiple axes abruptly stilled.

'And thousands of years in the future,' the czarina continued, 'it will eventually appear like this once more, when the tail of the swan becomes the North Star yet again.'

'The North Star _changes_? But I thought it was a _fixed_ star; used by the captains of ours ships to navigate.'

'Over a cycle of around twenty seven thousand years – Svarog's Period – the stars lying on the rim of Celestial Heaven – Svarog's Circle, or Svarga – take their turn to become the North Star.'

With another airy wave of a hand, the czarina set the revolving stars into an even swifter movement, the swan that had originally appeared to be striking directly away from the central star now taking on a circular flight as the star at the tip of its wing became the North Star. Then, as another star took up that central position, the swan dipped away slightly, until it was circling this new North Star in a way that Sandy recognised from her own views of the night sky.

'Svarog?' Sandy asked in a dazed awe, her original reason for coming to this magical place temporarily forgotten.

'His name means "shining", a god of the universe, the spirit, and the highest heaven; and who inscribed his laws on the White-inflammable Stone, Alatyr.'

With a deft twist of that previously airily waved hand, the czarina produced a feather as if from nowhere, as if from the very silvery light reflecting off the lake surface.

'From my sister!' she exclaimed brightly, handing the feather to Sandy with a beaming smile.

'Your sister?' Sandy repeated curiously, peering over the czarina's shoulder to look once again at the girls and the boy gleefully playing at the shore's edge.

Without another word, with nothing but another cheery smile, the czarina spun around, swimming with amazing speed and agility back towards the shore.

'No, wait!' Sandy vainly cried after her, trying to catch up yet finding she moved awkwardly and slovenly through the restricting waters. 'I still don't understand...'

A slight breeze coming off the shore suddenly rippled the previously stilled waters, and threatened to snatch the feather from her fingers. She grasped the feather's stem harder, not wishing to lose it.

When she looked back towards the swiftly moving czarina, she was surprised to see how far the distance had grown between them. The breeze, despite its weakness, had picked at and lifted up the veils that had been cast aside onto the sands, seemingly granting them a life of their own.

The veils fluttered out across the waters, already swan-like in their glisteningly white forms as they draped themselves around the girls and the boy. The point of transformation was imperceptible: they weren't girls and a boy anymore – they were swans, rushing across the water, rising effortlessly and gracefully into the air.

With a last shattering of the lake's silvered surface, the czarina herself, the last to rise from the waters, elegantly lifted herself up on those gloriously expansive wings, swooping across the shallow waves as smoothly as any goddess. Rapidly ascending with only the very briefest fluttering of wings, she and the other swans soared into the surrounding darkness until, at last, they vanished with a final star-like sparkle of a resplendently perfect white.

Even as she watched them rise so fluidly into the darkness, Sandy refused to give up her frustratingly inadequate chase: she hadn't asked the czarina any one of so many questions she could have asked!

She rushed up onto the beach, glad to be free of the cloying, restricting waters. She glanced urgently about herself, hoping – despite recognising what a foolish hope it was – that a magical veil was similarly waiting for her to don.

Naturally, there was no such veil lying there.

Recalling that she was still holding the feather the czarina had given her, Sandy stared at it curiously, wondering if _this_ was supposed to grant her some magical way of flying after the vanished swans. She twirled it in her fingers, even ashamedly wafted it a little, guffawing at her own ridiculousness.

She forlornly looked out over the immense, apparently endless lake stretching out before her.

If she couldn't fly away from here, how was she supposed to get home?

*

# Chapter 10

She had come up from the very bottom of the lake; she realised that, of course.

But she had been travelling upwards from that lakebed for what had seemed to her to be quite a long time. Far longer, at least, than she could be expected to hold her breath.

On her way here, she hadn't had any problems breathing while being so long underwater; would that also be the case now, when she attempted to reverse her direction of travel?

She plunged back into the waters of the lake, her feet coming down again and again on its sandy bottom.

Was there a point where it all just came to an abrupt end, some sort of sill, a shelf coming to a sudden, sharp drop? Would it be like launching herself off a submerged cliff, an almost endless precipice?

Glancing back over her shoulder at the coastline, she thought she must have surely reached that point by now: she hadn't been _this_ far out from the beach when she had surfaced!

Taking a deep breath, clamping her lips tightly shut as she placed the feather's stem in her mouth, she slipped beneath the lake's surface; and suddenly, there was nothing under her feet but apparently impossibly deep waters.

*

The farther away the waters stretched, the darker they became.

She couldn't see where the bed lay.

And yet, as if she were actually looking up into an otherwise starless night sky, there was a glittering white glow, unknowably far off.

Just as you couldn't hope to judge the distance to a sparkling star, it wouldn't be possible to work out how far she would have to swim to get within touching distance of that brightly coruscating speck.

She headed down towards it anyway: hoping it was something small, hoping that would mean it was relatively closer than if it were something huge.

Her chest ached with the pain of working muscles with nothing but the stale air reserved within her lungs. Bizarrely, she sensed her chest was close to exploding, the agony was so intense.

She wondered if she should risk opening her mouth, taking a breath; perhaps, just like when she had made her ascent, she would find she didn't need to hold her breath after all

She didn't dare take the risk; she feared she would suck in nothing but cold water. That she would drown and die.

The glow had grown a little larger, a sign no doubt that it wasn't something lying so far away that it would be entirely unapproachable. Even so, it obviously lay way beyond any point where her own limited capabilities would take her.

She had to give up trying to reach it before it was too late, before her air ran out and she ended up gulping lungful's of water as she struggled for breath: she kicked urgently upwards, sending herself rushing back up towards the surface in a sheen of overly excited bubbles.

As she rose up towards the glittering surface, both her mind and her lungs were screaming at her that she'd left it too late, that she wasn't going to make it. Unable to hold her breath any longer, with a gasp she opened her mouth, the trapped but already used air bubbling out all around her.

Instinctively, she breathed in, her body fighting to replenish what it has lost, what it needs so urgently: and equally instinctively panicked when cold, agonisingly hard water rushed up her nose and down into her lungs.

*

# Chapter 11

Fortunately, yet another instinct for survival kicked in: with a frantic flailing of her legs, Sandy brutally propelled herself upwards. Being closer to the lake's upper layers than she had realised, there wasn't far to go before she broke through the silvered surface, her whole body racked with a bout of harsh coughing and spluttering as she fought to drag air into her lungs.

Exhausted, she collapsed on her back in a partial daze, gratefully letting the gently supporting waters take her, comfort her. The lake's surface was no longer completely stilled, there now being a steady rippling of waves, all heading towards the shore.

Sandy's limp body rode on these waves until, at the point where they lapped with satisfied whispers against the beach, they set her down on the sands. She was still dazed, still partially choking on what remained of the waters lying in her throat and lungs.

She saw and was aware only of a cold darkness.

No; there was a white light, lying far, far below.

She struck out for it, swimming down through that darkness.

_Swimming_?

How was she _swimming_ again?

It didn't matter; what _did_ matter was that she had to get closer to that white light, to see what it was that was drawing her closer and closer towards it.

Her lungs were bursting once again, her cheeks bulging as she fought against the urge to open her mouth.

Near the edges of her vision, she caught the white glow of the swan feather she held between her lips.

She _mustn't_ let it go _this_ time.

She swam on, farther than she had managed last time.

The glow of purest white lying directly ahead of her wasn't, as she had hoped, the Earth she had left behind when she had first set off on this bizarre journey. It came from what seemed to be a curved stone, a slightly toppled grave stone perhaps – only this stone appeared to her to rise up without end into the surrounding darkness of the farthest reaches of the lake. Similarly, she couldn't see where it was grounded, for it vanished into the even deeper, more solid black of the lake's bottom.

As before, however, she was reaching a point where her entire body was shrieking out for air. Her lips briefly opened, the air bubbling out as it had the first time; but she managed to clamp her mouth shut, to resist the instinctive urge to breathe in through her nose.

Even so, she felt a pang of anguish as she saw that she had released the feather, which was now swiftly rising like a whirling white star with the ascending bubbles. She urgently reached out for it, internally sighing with relief as she managed to grasp its stem before it swam completely out of her reach.

But she was still dangerously short of air.

There was no oxygen getting to her muscles, to her brain.

She sensed a dizziness coming on: and then the thick blackness of the lake seemed to suddenly swim inside her.

*

Sandy spluttered agonisingly as the very last of the water cascaded out of her slackly gawping mouth.

She was lying on her front, her face half buried in soft grass.

Grass?

It was even _dry_ grass!

Groggily, she moved her head slightly, looking down at herself.

She was dry too.

And she wasn't naked anymore, but once again garbed in her many-layered dress.

From her odd position low on the ground, with only one eye granting her a relatively clear view (the innumerable blades of grass blocking off most of her already limited vision), she saw a few odd items around her – a badly worn and stained statue of Aphrodite, a thinly gravelled path – and she realised with a sigh of relief that she was back in the garden.

Had she knocked herself out? she wondered.

Or simply fainted?

No: there was the pool of water, the water she'd just ejected from her mouth.

Besides, she could feel something clasped between her fingers; the _feather_!

Still a little dazed from her experience, she could only get a glimpse of the feather through a mix of lifting her head up a little and bringing the hand closer to her face.

She grimaced in weary disappointment.

It _wasn't_ a feather.

It was the card.

Wait!

Yes, it _was_ a card; but one that was _completely_ different to the one she had previously held in her hand.

*

# Chapter 12

At first glance, the new card appeared to portray an unnaturally elliptical moon.

And yet it wasn't the moon at all: it was, rather, more an illustration of her recent experience.

For the silvered oval was the lake's surface, seen when looking up from below. As if to substantiate Sandy's observation, the night sky hanging above the mercurial lake was dominated by a perfectly upright Cygnus, its tail the North Star, its elongated neck gracefully pointing back towards Earth.

An actual swan was swooping down from that otherwise dark sky, its goal a throne placed upon a towering white stone whose base was rooted in the lake's dark bed. On that stone, too, there were inscriptions, but in a language – even a style of lettering – that Sandy didn't recognise.

Frederick might know, she thought: or at least, know someone amongst his wide array of friends who might have some idea of what the inscriptions meant.

Their paintings and poetry were based on ancient legends, on the esoteric knowledge being uncovered everyday by Europe and America's most eminent archaeologists, philosophers, and bibliologists.

But – how would she explain how she had obtained this new card?

She didn't want to have to explain to Frederick _anything_ about her odd, recent journey.

As her elder brother – her _much_ older brother – he would undoubtedly see it as his role to protect her from delving into what might be some form of dark art. And that, of course, was he if he believed her, rather than assuming she must be on the verge of some form of hysteria.

She could say she had obtained this new card from the czarina, in the same way that she had received the last one: but, of course, she had had no time to make any new visit.

Besides, it was well known amongst Frederick's friends that no one had yet managed to work out exactly where this Russian house stood: even when Sandy had last visited the house, it had been the elderly Russian who had accompanied her within the heavily draped carriage sent to meet her and bring her back to Frederick's. Similarly, the elderly Russian had organised the picking up and delivery of Sandy's painting to the house.

Even so, despite only having the crudest idea of where the house must lie (at a late point in their journey to the house, she had overheard the distinctively thunderous, echoing crash of hooves and wheels that could only be the crossing of a wide bridge) she decided she must try and visit the house once more.

It would give her both a reason for possessing a new card and an opportunity to ask the elderly Russian for a translation of the card's unusual calligraphy – and, as an extra bonus, allow her to see the exotically enigmatic czarina once more.

*

The hansom cab driver thought it was an odd request: to ride over three of the Thame's bridges, while the lady remained cloistered inside the cab with curtains drawn.

It was the third bridge that created the sounds Sandy had been wanting to hear – that echoing thunder of suspended iron. As soon as she had found her bridge, she dismissed the cab, realising she would have more chance of finding the house if she spent her time walking around the maze of streets she found herself set down amongst.

Besides, as she had listened inside the darkened cab for familiar sounds, she had noticed that the card she held in her hands had changed ever so slightly, the cross of Cygnus revolving slightly around its central point, as if it were a compass needle.

Was the card attempting to help her find the house?

It seemed so.

As she walked along the streets, the cross still spun, still kept its tail star locked on one particular destination it seemed to be guiding Sandy towards. Like this, however, it seemed less like a tail star and more like a star grasped in the beak of a smaller bird, such as a dove or a falcon: is this why, Sandy wondered, many of the earlier gods had been portrayed as hawks, a hawk that would have appeared to the men below as a mystical bird flying up towards the universe's very centre?

The milky mistiness of the card seemed more pronounced here, suddenly lacking any sense of weight or true substantiality. It could have been a strip of fog, a veil made of the finest spider webs.

Snowflakes fell upon it, melted, seemed to soak into its very being.

Snow?

In July?

*

# Chapter 13

Of course; it had been almost a year since Sandy had first come across the Russian house.

So why should she be surprised that it was suddenly snowing in London, in July?

As before, the snow began to fall thickly and hard, driven by a harsh, freezing wind. Once again, Sandy hadn't dressed in preparation for such an odd squall of weather; the material of her dress was too thin, the frilly silk surrounding her neck inadequate when it came to preventing the gusts penetrating her clothes and rippling coldly across her flesh.

She staunchly forced herself on, lowering her face against the wind and taking a tight hold of her bonnet. Far from regarding the snowstorm as a problem, she saw it rather as proof that she was drawing closer to her goal.

Through the veiling whirl of crisply icy flakes, everything about her appeared indistinct, everything merging, with no clean lines of substance, of being. Amongst it all, houses were simply slightly darker shapes, yet even these were diffused, like shadows shredded by the hurriedly swirling snow.

A glow of gold shone through it all, the burning amber of brightly illuminated windows.

It was the Russian house, with its array of large, ballroom windows.

And as before, as it had been exactly a year ago, a grand dance was in progress.

*

As before, too, the house's slim porch gave her a welcome degree of cover from the rapidly swirling snow.

Sandy knocked on the door, wondering if it would be already open: it wasn't, so she hoped that this time her knocking would be heard.

As she knocked, she realised with a start that she didn't know the elderly Russian's name; she didn't know whom to ask for if a maid or servant answered the door.

Why, in all the meetings she had had with the gent, had she never enquired after his name?

Why had Frederick shown him into the house without requesting a name?

Before she could work out any answer to these questions, the door opened.

And fortunately, her knocking had been answered by the very man she wanted to see.

'The czarina said you would be calling,' he said, moving aside and, with a gracious wave of a hand, inviting Sandy to step inside.

*

Sandy was shown into the room containing the paintings rather than towards the ballroom. Many painters might have stopped to admire their own painting, but Sandy's eyes were drawn instead towards the glittering icon, which seemed to grace the room with its own light.

It sparkled with colours she hadn't noticed on her first visit here, renditions of flowers that shone as if they were brightly coloured jewels.

Mary's tears were falling and blossoming into carnations, while a blood-red rose was growing by her son's feet. There were marigolds too, the gold of Mary, and a pink hibiscus, so delicately beautiful, just as its life appears short until it blooms again. Above everything there hovered the dove of the Holy Spirt, bringing the seven gifts of a star-pointed columbine.

'The czarina says you already have a new card,' the Russian declared rather bluntly, his eyes lowered inquisitively beneath a frowning brow.

Her card!

With a gasp of horror, Sandy abruptly realised she no longer held her card.

*

# Chapter 14

'I must have dropped it! Out by the door!'

Whirling around, hiking up her voluminous skirt so that its bottom edges cleared the floor, Sandy made as if to rush outside; only for the elderly Russian to bring her to a sudden halt with a miserable shake of his head.

'No, you _won't_ have dropped it,' he firmly assured her. 'Whatever purpose the card needed to serve has now obviously been fulfilled.'

Sandy paused, unintentionally glowering at the man in puzzlement.

Surely the card was supposed to do more than lead her back here!

'But...what has it done for me?' she asked disappointedly.

The Russian shrugged his shoulders.

'That is for you to know, not me,' he replied. 'It may not seem so at the moment, but it must have altered your perception of _something_ important to you.'

Sandy paused once again while she considered this.

'The _stone_ ...' she began uncertainly, recalling her confusion on first studying the card.

'Stone?' the man repeated, waiting for her to continue, to divulge more information.

'A stone, yes: it was on the card, but inscribed with letters I didn't recognise.'

The man smiled in a way he probably used to calm a petulant child.

'If you don't have it with you, then...'

'It wasn't Russian; they were letters I've never seen the like of before,' Sandy admitted.

The man nodded sagely, as if he regarded this as making perfect sense.

'An older language, obviously,' he stated assuredly. 'Even if you still had the card, I doubt that anyone would be able to offer you a reliable translation: much as even the most learned man in England would be troubled to decipher earlier inscriptions of the people originally inhabiting this land.'

Sandy sadly nodded in agreement.

'The czarina said–'

Her eyes abruptly widened in horror as it dawned on her that she had once again spoken to this poor man without making any attempt to determine his name.

'Oh, I'm _ever_ so sorry,' she blurted out, 'it's _ever_ so rude of me: I've never thought to enquire of your name, sir! Please accept my apologies!'

The man nodded and even slightly bowed in acceptance of her apology.

'My name serves no real importance,' he answered modestly, 'so I too am at fault as I've made no real attempt to disclose it: but as you ask, my name is General Elias Tatishchev.'

Of course, as she wasn't in any way familiar with Russian ideals of etiquette, Sandy still remained unsure as to how she should address him. Thankfully, the general must have noticed the frown of confusion that briefly flitted across her face, for he continued:

'Most people simply refer to me as General.'

Although he delivered it in a more or less helpful tone, he also said it with a sigh, leaving Sandy wondering if this was a sign of his exasperation with her or if it signified that he wasn't wholly happy with this term of address.

'Now,' he added quickly, standing up taller with a pulling in of his stomach as if he wanted to return to more serious matters, 'you were saying, "The _czarina_ said"?'

'Oh, yes, yes: sorry – the czarina said it was the Alatyr stone. On the card, I mean: she said it was the Alatyr stone.'

'The _czarina_ said?' the general repeated yet again, but far more suspiciously this time, as if he found it hard to believe that the czarina would have spoken to Sandy.

He also frowned doubtfully, his stare probing and questioning.

Sandy was more confused than ever: didn't anyone else ever visit the czarina in this strange world where the card had led her?

'I mean...' Seeking to appease the general, Sandy was briefly lost for words, 'I mean I _sensed_ it was this Alatyr stone: the one created by your god Svarog, on which he set out his laws.'

'Svarog is far from being _my_ god, young lady,' the general replied sternly, apparently appalled by Sandy's unintentional accusation. ' _However_ ,' he continued in a calmer, more resigned mood, 'such a stone _does_ exist within our creation _myths_ ; though it is _created_ by the very first god Rod – whose name actually means birth, origin – who _also_ creates Svarog.'

'Then this Svarog has nothing to do with this stone?'

Sandy grimaced, unable to fathom why the czarina might have misinformed her.

The general once again let out a resigned, exasperated sigh.

'Like many creation _legends_ ,' he began, emphasising the word to draw attention to the fact that he didn't believe a word of the tale he was about to relate, 'ours starts with an egg containing the first god; an egg that breaks with the birth of love, or Lada, the Ziva Swan of life, birth, and fertilising waters. The shining Svarog, the sky and the heavens, are released; but so also is the shadow of darkness and death, the Great Ocean on which the Black Swan of grievances swims. It is into these dark waters that the Alatyr stone – formed from the churning of the milk of the stars – tumbles, the Black Swan attempting to swallow it all until Svarog caused the stone to grow and grow. From the handful of grains the Black Swan managed to retain in its beak, Svarog created Moist Mother Earth on the Great Ocean's surface; while the stone itself continued to grow until it reached up into the Hall of the Heavenly Swan of the Circle of Svarog, where the Ziva Swan is the Guardian Makosh, or Fate.'

Sandy's brow furrowed as she quickly mulled all this over.

'Then...this stone is the _Milky Way_? That's what it sounds like: the milky stars, the way it rises from darkness into the heavens, curving around the Earth.'

Then why, she wondered had the card shown the stone with inscriptions?

'So what is it I'm supposed to _find_?' she mumbled disquietly to herself.

' _Find_?' The general observed her as curiously as he would a child who he believed hadn't been listening properly. 'It's a _legend_ , no different to the ancient Egyptian belief in the Great Cackler – or the Chinese, and their Magpie Bridge; linking the Weaver Princess with the King's Herdsman across the starry river of the Milky Way.'

Sandy thought it odd that he seemed so dismissive of such tales when he regularly accepted mystical cards from an apparently endlessly sleeping czarina.

'Could I...' she began uncertainly, 'could I _see_ her again?' adding hurriedly, when she detected the general's irritation, 'I _won't_ ask the czarina _another_ question!'

*

Inside the ballroom, the scene could have been a mingling of the two previous occasions when Sandy had been here.

Everyone was elaborately dressed, a mix of uniforms and exotic gowns. Yet as on the second time Sandy had entered the ballroom, everyone was nervously clustered around the sleeping czarina, rather than still displaying the exhilaration of rudely interrupted dancers.

Precisely as before, however, the glittering light of chandeliers reflected in immense mirrors was almost heavenly entrancing in its brightness. And yet the most vibrant glow of all emanated purely from the ballroom's very centre, where the czarina lay sleeping upon her raised bier.

Naturally, the general had sighed exasperatedly when Sandy had rudely asked to see the czarina once more. Yet he had resignedly stood aside, indicating that she was free to make her way towards the ballroom.

'That's what the czarina said you would ask for,' he'd mumbled a touch irritably.

Which card had told him that? Sandy wondered as she drew closer towards the sleeping czarina, who once again had brightly coloured cards mixed in amongst the otherwise gloriously white feathers of her magnificent wings.

The sleeping czarina, as Sandy had expected, looked resplendently beautiful.

What she hadn't expected, however, was that the sleeping girl wasn't the czarina.

It was an entirely different girl.

*

# Chapter 15

Not one person amongst the many dancers had seemed to notice that the sleeping girl was no longer the czarina Sandy had first seen lying here.

Of course, it could simply be that they _did_ notice, yet saw no need to bring the matter to her attention, let alone explain it; yet when she stared back in puzzlement at the general who had followed her into the ballroom, he returned nothing but his own puzzled expression, one querying her bewilderment.

It seemed to Sandy, then, that everyone here believed this to be their czarina. That there had been no change in how she looked, as far as they were concerned.

Bewildered by this, Sandy looked once more at the sleeping girl. Observing her more closely and carefully this time, Sandy noticed features about her that were familiar after all.

She _had_ seen this girl before.

She had seen her on the shore of the lake, along with the czarina.

The girl was the czarina's _sister_.

*

What had the czarina said, when she had handed Sandy the white feather?

This is from my sister?

Wasn't that it, or at least words to that effect?

If so, that also meant she'd already had a card from this new sleeping czarina.

A card she had failed to understand.

A card she had already lost.

Which was a shame in so many ways, of course; because now she was standing here alongside the sleeping swan princess, Sandy wished for all the world that she could ask another question. That she could receive another card.

How do I wake you?

What is the meaning of the white stone?

Noticing the sudden silence that had fallen about her, apart from a series of hushed, irate exclamations, Sandy briefly worried that she had unintentionally spoken her questions out loud: but then she saw that, as she had witnessed once before, the silence that had fallen across the mute courtiers and dancers was overlaid with the excited flurry of feathers, the elated murmurs that drifted through the air on winds generated by the gently rippling wings.

She wondered who had asked the sleeping czarina a question: she hadn't seen anyone draw close, hadn't heard anyone speaking directly to the girl.

But, as before, the hypnotic whispers were lulling her into a delicious sleep.

*

' _Another_ card!' Frederick exclaimed with a mix of amusement and surprise as he studied the card Sandy handed him.

He frowned in bemusement as he took in the image of a girl swinging gaily around a maypole. She was spinning over dark waters, for the maypole rose out of what could be the middle of this dark lake.

Sandy was briefly tempted to explain that the young girl twirling around on the end of the stretched garland reminded her of the way she used to swing out in a great loop on the end of the rope they used to attach to a large tree in their garden. It reminded her too, of course, of the strangely whirling stars she had looked up at when she had appeared within the magical lake.

'The maypole's something to do with Cygnus,' Mary pointed out, leaning over the back of Frederick's chair and indicating the wings attached to either side of the pole, the bright sparkles that reflected the positions of the stars within the constellation.

Sandy had naturally been surprised when she had woken up from the trance in the ballroom to find that the general was indicating with a smile that the card that had appeared on the czarina's breast was hers. She was even more surprised that he appeared more resigned than angry that Sandy had somehow managed to ask the czarina a question.

Of course, when she had looked at the card, Sandy still remained at a loss to explain what it might mean. She had headed off home in a daze similar to the one she had been in the first time she had visited the house, the ferocious squalls of swirling, veiling snow refusing to weaken in any way until she reached the river, at which point the icy gusts had vanished as completely as if they had been nothing but figments of her imagination.

'A swan?' Frederick said, giving a puzzled pout as he studied the positions of the stars more closely. 'It's a _hawk_ , surely: if the very top of the pole is its beak.'

Far from disagreeing with him, Mary nodded in agreement.

'The early gods were seen as being falcons; the shamans would have winged sticks to aid them in their ascent into the heavens.'

Frederick handed the card back to Sandy.

'One to go with your other one then,' he said with a mischievous grin. 'Perhaps we won't understand what they mean until you have a full pack.'

'Oh, er...I seem to have mislaid the first card,' Sandy mumbled apologetically.

She didn't like lying to her brother and his friends, but what choice did she have? If she made any attempt to explain how she had lost it, they would think her mad. And of course, for very similar reasons she hadn't been able to explain that this was actually a third card.

'Frederic – Frederic _Leighton_ , I mean – might be able to help explain the card's symbolism,' Mary offered helpfully, referring to another one of their wide group of artistic friends. 'Symbols usually have some legendary base after all.'

As soon as she was on her own once more, Sandy quickly sketched out the images she could recall seeing on the two missing cards. She also carefully copied the third card, presuming that this too might similarly disappear one day.

The top of the pole, she noted as she more closely observed it, featured a small, descending white swan, its long neck blending into the pole itself. The pole, in fact, could be the light cast by the uppermost star, which shone like a full moon. This 'moon' nestled in the embrace of the opened wings, giving her the impression of the horned moon and solar disc she had seen surmounting actual maypoles.

The pole formed by the beam of light was either reflected in the dark waters below, or the pole itself continued to plunge deeply into the black depths. There was a swan here too, at the very base of the pole, one striving upwards, its feathers black or at least darkened by the waters.

The girl was lightly tripping over the surface of the lake, implying perhaps that the rippling waves were more substantial than normal waters. Then again, Sandy realised, it could be either because the garland was adequately supporting her, or the sky itself was more substantial than she had first presumed, for even this rippled slightly, as if it too were a fluid, formed of whiter rather than dark waters.

As the days passed, she would stare at the card and the copies of its siblings, attempting again and again to interpret their message. On visits to the British Library, she would access every book she could on ancient legends and religions, hoping she would come across some small detail that would help her begin to piece the meaning of the cards together.

The Russian house seemed to have vanished once more: naturally, she caught a carriage out to where she had the last time she had visited, but whenever she set off walking, she failed to recognise any landmarks that would help her find the house. She faced exactly the same problem whenever she tried to retrace her steps after leaving the house in the snowstorm, for the rapidly swirling flakes had obviously confused her, the streets remaining utterly unrecognisable to her.

To alleviate her growing frustration, she poured all her energies into another painting, one that reflected her sense that things were going astray, increasingly becoming more rather than less mystifying.

What had happened to the first czarina? Why had her already delicate life being so brutally cut short?

And why, of course, did no one seem to notice, let alone care?

Why, too, did this new czarina also suffer this endless sleep?

Her painting had a sense of the funereal about it, with the darkness of a blue cloak and hat, the sharp contrast of the girl's white face appearing like a bright moon glittering in a night sky. There were beads of funereal jet too, of blackest amber, along with the short lived hibiscus, its flowering pink the painful love she felt for these poor, suffering, eternally sleeping girls.

Love can cause its own suffering, its own great sense of loss.

Why did she mourn these poor sleeping czarinas?

Why did she feel _responsible_?

*

# Chapter 16

The Opening of the Heart of the Moon

On a night, any shepherd on his own out in the hills will carefully watch the phases of the moon.

When she is young and frivolous, temptingly waxing to fullness.

When she is complete and glorious, the brightest queen of all.

When she is apparently waning yet wise, preparing to reappear again after little more than three days, plump once more with the vibrancy of youth.

She keeps the lonely shepherd company, lighting his way for him whenever she is able.

But she also forewarns him of potential dangers, for it is no myth that many creatures fall to uncontrollably baying at her imperious visage.

She controls (it is claimed by many) even the rise and fall of the greatest oceans: and so who are we to say she has no effect upon the blood or sap flowing through the narrow channels of any living body?

The shepherd Endymion, son of Aethlius, proved no exception when it came to tracking the moon's languidly serene course across the night sky. And yet he himself was an exception to the more usual shepherd for, Aethlius being a son of Zeus, Endymion was graced with an unrivalled beauty.

Perhaps, too, it was this venerable linage that granted the fair Endymion an insight denied any other mortal shepherd: for he saw the moon stripped of her veils of purest white swan feathers, saw her as she most truly was – the gloriously beautiful goddess Selene.

She rode through the darkness as a blaze of the purest white light in her chariot drawn by long-maned steeds. Upon her head, she wore her crown of the fully bright sphere. Around her neck she wore her shining cloak of swan feathers, which rose up around her as a glowing crescent, perhaps even as wondrously coruscating wings.

It was a glittering gorgeousness that enamoured and entranced even the higher gods: so how could a mere mortal like poor Endymion not be bewitched? The emanated light of beauty spun out from her, cascaded down into his eyes, penetrated so deeply into his heart, opening up that heart to her as an oyster shell must eventually release its glorious pearl.

Stunned, dazed, poor Endymion was unable to think clearly anymore, drunk on what he had witnessed, what he had just experienced. He retired to his rough bed still suffering that delirium, his covering nothing but the filmiest fleece, hoping the sleep would help him recover from his undoubted foolishness.

Naturally, the Queen of the Night remained entirely unaware of the opening of Endymion's heart to her: not that she would have cared one jot even if she had known.

She continued, uninterrupted, on her course across the night sky, gazing imperiously down upon the earth, her rays dispassionately falling upon all sleeping mortals.

Tonight, however, the slightest smattering of those descending rays were reflected back to her in a way she had never experienced before, their mercurial sheen transformed into purest gold.

Was it a trick of the gods? (For the gods had tried many times to trick her into lying with them.)

It was a golden fleece, strewn out across the ground directly beneath her. A fleece of tumbling golden hair.

Handing the reins of her chariot to her brother Helios the sun, Selene slipped down towards the sleeping Endymion.

The fleece covering him, she saw, was fleece completely different to any other she had ever seen.

It was the sleeper's own hair that sparkled like streams of flowing gold.

His flesh, too, glowed with a glorious sheen, highlighting every curve and depression of a body as pure and perfect as Adam's had been in Eden.

The light of beauty spun out from him, whirled up into her eyes, penetrated deeply into a point lying directly within the midst of her heart.

And the heart of the Queen of the Night, that most glorious of pearls, fell open.

*

What is the life of a man compared to the life of the moon?

Nothing.

A man's life is fleeting.

His delicate beauty even briefer.

At best, I man may flatter himself that he lives on through his seed.

In this, the love of Selene and Endymion proved no exception.

He lived on (if you believe in such things) through their son Narkissos, a youth so beautiful he could fall in love with no one but his own reflection.

As we have already seen, however, Endymion was an exception to the more usual shepherd; for he was the son of Aethlius, son of Zeus.

It is said by some that Zeus himself offered Endymion the chance to remain ageless, even to avoid death – yet only by slipping into an endless slumber. And so Endymion chose this, for he couldn't bear to think of Selene having to witness his ageing, the loss of his beauty, her love changing to loathing as he himself changed.

It is said by others, however, that there was no choice at all involved, a furious Zeus inflicting his punishment on the lovers who, after all, had brought about an unequal split between night and day.

Whatever the truth of it, even now Endymion's heavenly bride continues to slip down from the night sky to lie with him, to envelop him with her kisses as he sleeps endlessly.

So open up your heart to Endymion who, in his endless sleep, forever remains unaware that his otherwise fleeting beauty has been preserved.

And open up your heart, too, to the immortal goddess Selene: for now she is all too aware that when you open your heart, you also open yourself up to the unimaginable hurt of mourning a loved one who has slipped into an ageless slumber.

*

# Chapter 17

Sandy should have been pleased with the praise lauded on her _Portrait of a Girl with a Blue Cloak_.

Outwardly, she seemed to gladly accept the acclaim, yet inwardly she remained plagued by her failure to understand why she had been granted the third card.

She had hoped that at some point, as had happened previously, some aspect of magic would intrude upon her life, granting her access to the magical lake or another meeting with the sleeping czarina.

But nothing like that had happened to her.

Rather, both the card and the sketches she had made, placing them all on the mantelpiece, taunted her whenever she glanced their way.

From her own researches and comments made by her brother's friends, from things half heard, half remembered, she gathered that the very early Egyptians had – like Frederick – seen the upended Cygnus as a falcon. For them, however, it was also a winged serpent, creatures grasping within their mouths (or beak) the North Star around which everything revolved. And so their very first falcon-headed god, Seker – crowned with the horned and full moon, and aided by the fiery Uraeus snakes – was charged with taking the pharaoh through the underworld on his winged serpent boat.

Not that her gathering of such information seemed to help Sandy in any way other than making her task seem all the more impossible.

None of it appeared to tally with her own experiences of the lake and the swan maidens she had seen bathing there.

She had begun to wonder, indeed, if the card was simply instructing her to return home, to visit once again the garden and the rope swing she had swung from so many times as a child. It was an experience that bore many similarities to the child swinging on the end of the garlanded maypole after all.

Naturally, she couldn't see how such a journey would help her: but neither could she see any other way of attempting to decipher the card's elusive meaning.

What was the point of a card that, far from providing answers, just raised evermore questions?

*

Whatever a pharaoh's journey across the underworld river entailed, Sandy mused, it couldn't be a worse experience than strolling along the riverbank of the Thames.

These days, it was always full of foul waste, sometimes even sewage.

The stench was horrendous. Its colour unimaginably terrible. Fortunately, the slight wind was blowing the very worst of the evil smells away from her, along with any of the flakes of dried crust that would otherwise fleck her parasol with the most dreadful stains. Even so, she held her parasol so that it would take the worst of any sudden, unexpected blowback: better that her parasol suffered this indignity, rather than letting any airborne flakes blemish her perfectly white summer garb.

Normally, she would avoid the riverbank as much as possible, but today she had decided to make another attempt at finding the Russian house. In the hope that it might aid her in her search, she had brought the card along with her.

The gods themselves laughed at her stupidity, at her nerve for calling on either their – or at least some other form of – miraculous intervention.

The laughter rippled around her, with no obvious source: no one else was foolish enough to take a stroll along the embankment.

It was a childlike laughter, raucous in parts, girlish giggles in others.

Angels, then (cupids?); _not_ gods.

As she continued to walk on, however, it became clearer to Sandy that the laughter was coming from somewhere slightly ahead and off to her left, on the other side to where the river lay. There was a slight dip in the land there, she recalled, where a sunken tributary snaked its way into the Thames, its course still lined with hardly anything more than rough pebble beaches and the most basically constructed timber banks.

An ancient wooden loading jib rocked precariously from side to side, the rope crudely knotted around the extended arm creaking ominously as it wildly twirled, whatever load it was supporting unseen, too low down and therefore hidden by the river's raised sides.

Drawing closer, Sandy recognised the laughter as being that of real children, their heads of dirtily tangled hair being the first things that began to pop up one by one into her view. The squeals of excitement abruptly increased as, with an even more violent jolting of the rocking jib, a young girl was suddenly launched out into space on the lower end of the rope.

The girl shrieked, a mingling of terror and joy.

And Sandy gasped; for she couldn't fail to recognise the similarity of the card's image and the girl swirling out over the dark waters.

*

# Chapter 18

The girl clung on fearfully to the rope, even though the majority of her weight was obviously being supported by the large, lower knot she was seated astride.

She twirled on the end of the rope. She also spun around in a great circle, spinning around a broken mooring post much as the earth whirls around the sun.

Every time she swung back towards the shingle beach, the other girls would gleefully send her spinning out over the waters once more with a hard, well-practised push.

The girl squealed half-heartedly for mercy.

Sandy reached into her small purse, where she kept the card. Naturally, there were a great many differences between the two scenes, but Sandy felt she should compare one with the other in the hope of spotting more similarities.

The card had changed slightly.

From the waters, some form of red seaweed was sprouting, like bloodied hands attempting to grasp at the feet of the twirling girl.

An unexpected gust of wind snatched at the card, deftly tweaked it out from between a surprised Sandy's fingers – and whirled it up into the air. It twirled, glittered like a white feather; _became_ a feather.

It swirled, it spun, rising up towards the raucously creaking jib, the protesting wood, the shrieking, pained rope.

The old rope was beginning to rapidly fray.

The rotten wood was swiftly splintering.

No!

A horrified Sandy immediately realised what was about to happen.

'Stop! Stop swinging her!' she yelled at the other girls as loudly as she could as she rushed down towards the beach.

Too late.

With a crack of wood, the snap of the last threads of rope, and a terrified shriek, the girl briefly twirled off into space – then she plunged and disappeared into the patiently waiting dark waters.

*

The girl didn't reappear.

Her friends seemed too scared to rush in to rescue her.

'The _currents_ , miss!' they cried out to Sandy as they saw she intended to rush into the filthy water. 'The currents already _have_ her!'

*

Sandy's vast white dress bloomed around her like an enormous lily as she hurriedly waded into the dark waters.

As she glanced about herself, Sandy forlornly realised the hopelessness of her position, for the water was as dark as the coal dust and oil that regularly washed up on the pebble beaches.

She could never hope to see anyone or anything in this water, even if the poor girl hadn't been taken away by the fierce currents she could already feel tugging powerfully at her feet. The waters gripped her hard about her ankles, like the eagerly tightening fingers, the flexible wrists, of water sprites.

There was a sudden, fiercer pull on her thighs: and with a vicious jerk, she was dragged under.

The spreading dress was too wide, too buoyant, to fully succumb to the pull of the undercurrents; but with the snapping of restraining straps, Sandy was ripped free of it all. She swiftly plunged lower and lower into the thickening darkness, her previously bright white, flimsy underclothes flailing around her like rapidly blackening wings.

As she uncontrollably slipped ever deeper into the darkness, her fear, her need for a fresh gulp of air, all rapidly increased, a painful rush of blood pounding hard in Sandy's ears. It was a panicked, quickening heartbeat, one flushing all reason from her brain.

The powerful fluxes drew her down into depths any competently reasoning mind would realise must be impossible, the current of snaking black waters sucking her ever deeper into its belly. Amongst that vast, apparently endless darkness, Sandy couldn't see anything, could only feel the pummelling of the vibrant streams, hear the heavy pounding of the heart.

Then, suddenly, there was a flicker of light, a sense of another presence.

_The girl! It has to be the girl!_ Sandy's addled mind managed to wail at her.

The stream of flowing waters she was held captive within abruptly bucked, throwing her clear of its hold. Short of breath, dazed by the lack of oxygen to her brain, Sandy recognised that she had to strike out for the surface immediately: and yet it also abruptly dawned on her that she couldn't leave the girl down here to drown.

With a sharp kick of her legs, a jerking pull of her arms, Sandy headed down towards the serenely floating girl.

*

# Chapter 19

The drumming of Sandy's beating heart was louder than ever.

Her lungs were close to bursting.

The girl, by comparison, appeared perfectly blissful.

Perfectly motionless, and floating in an upright position, she appeared to be entangled amongst the snaking red threads of a rust toned seaweed. Her eyes were closed, a sign perhaps that the poor girl was already dead.

Or simply _asleep_.

For it wasn't the girl that Sandy was swimming towards.

It was the sleeping czarina.

*

The entrapping seaweed was far less fragile than Sandy had expected or had hoped it would be.

She tried to tear the czarina free of its hold, but it wasn't working.

In desperation, she gave the czarina a shrug, in the hope of waking her up.

The czarina's eyes remained firmly, blissfully closed.

If she couldn't be woken, Sandy suddenly wondered, was it wise to break the clinging strings of seaweed? If she wasn't capable of swimming for the surface, wouldn't the czarina be simply dragged off ever deeper into the darkness?

Naturally, Sandy couldn't bear the thought that the czarina might be completely carried off. But then again, what sort of life was it for the czarina to be helplessly suspended here?

The seaweed rippled around them both, like bloody veins flowing through the water. They pulsated and surged along with the heavy beating of Sandy's heart, the direction that her love would take now being the defining factor of the czarina's precarious position.

To keep her held here, relatively safe, alive but asleep and blissfully unaware of her condition?

Or to free her, to let her go: with Sandy taking on the risk of suffering the heartbreak of losing her completely?

Sandy wondered if the czarina required a breath of air to revive her. She hugged the czarina tightly as she urgently locked mouths with her, breathing out, trying to force air into the poor girl's lungs.

The czarina's eyes flicked open, blazes of bright blue within the darkness.

She smiled sleepily as Sandy drew back a little from her.

She gave a kick of her legs, a lazy shrug of her arms: and the entangling strands fell away, releasing her.

*

The czarina gracefully rose up through the darkness, as if flying away from Sandy.

Sandy gave a kick of her own legs to follow after the czarina: but there was no energy, no power, left in them. Her motions were weak, ineffectual.

Rather than beginning to rise back to the surface, she was dropping deeper into the darkness, having apparently lost all buoyancy.

She struggled fearfully, all her limbs flailing uselessly for purchase on the frustratingly fluid darkness.

She needed air!

Her eyes bulged with panic. Her cheeks exploded as she let out the stale, overused air in her lungs.

She tried to gulp in a fresh supply of air; only to painfully flood her lungs with nothing but hard water.

She panicked, thrashed around, realising she was about to die, that there was little she could do about it.

The czarina was now high above her, a glittering white star in the darkness.

Sandy's fruitless thrashing at last came to an end.

She even managed a thankful smile as she slipped deeper into the dark waters of death.

*

# Chapter 20

The hands that had clutched at her earlier, dragging her down into the waters, were now gripping her with equal ferocity about her arms, her waist.

They were pulling her up, not down.

Dragging her up and out of ferociously clinging mud.

Her dress, previously so white, was filthy at its farthermost edges, ruined. It continued for the most part to splay out around her, pure and pristine. Yet it had also been partially deeply trodden into the filth, the tracks left by two darkly clad men who were struggling to wrench her free of the river's hold.

The men gasped with the strain, swore at the ridiculousness of it all.

She herself spluttered and coughed up what felt like the last dregs of mud from her mouth.

'The girl!' she announced worriedly, trying to glance everywhere about herself as the men continued to haul her to safety. 'And the other girls – are they all safe?'

There was no point asking after the czarina, she realised forlornly: all that had been nothing but some odd daydream, a misfiring of her reasoning brought on by her lack of air and near-death experience.

There was a slight pause in the movement of the men as Sandy sensed them stopping to look for any signs of the children she'd asked after.

'There aren't any girls or boys here, Miss Sandys.'

Surprised by the fact that one of her rescuers knew her name, Sandy looked up at the man who had spoken.

It was Frederic Leighton: one of her brother's friends.

'They must have run away,' Sandy persisted. 'They _were_ here: I _saw_ them!'

'We didn't see any as we drove up,' Frederic answered, drawing her attention to his carriage standing motionless upon the river bank. Its door were thrown wide open, as if Frederic had hurriedly, almost carelessly leapt out in his urgency to save her.

'But they were...'

Sandy looked around, hoping to see some proof or indication that the children had been here, that the girl who had slipped into the water was safe.

And yet, when she glanced up at the protruding jib, the one the girl had supposedly fallen from, she saw that there were no signs that a rope swing had ever been tied around it.

*

As Frederic helped Sandy into his carriage, ignoring the filth she was bringing with her and spreading around the otherwise gloriously maintained upholstery, the other man – whom Sandy now assumed must be Frederic's driver – ran around the back to bring out a variety of rugs and blankets from the locker. As Sandy gratefully accepted these blankets, draping them around her filthy dress, she realised for the first time that her upper body was completely dry, not drenched as she might have supposed.

She _hadn't_ been underwater after all.

'What were you doing in there, Miss Sandys?' Frederic asked politely as his driver urged the carriage's horses into motion. 'Had you tripped? Had you got too close to the river's sides?'

'I...yes, yes: I _must_ have done,' Sandy lied, recognising any explanation she attempted to make would only confuse Frederic. 'I can't _remember_ exactly: the _shock_ , I suppose.'

Frederic nodded, accepting this.

The carriage's windows were fully open in the forlorn hope that the evil smells emanating from their filthily caked clothing might be dispersed. Sandy worried that the smartly dressed people they were passing must be wondering where the particularly pungent stench was coming from.

How embarrassing for Frederic if they realised his carriage was to blame!

'I'm sorry for putting you in this unfortunate situation, Mr Leighton,' Sandy said with a flush of shame. 'And, naturally, I'm _incredibly_ grateful that you sought to and successfully rescued me from my own folly!'

Frederic grinned.

'How could I resist offering help to a beautiful swan caught in the mud?'

' _Swan_?'

Sandy was both shocked and yet suddenly supremely hopeful: had Frederic seen the czarina after all?

'Why, _yourself_ of course, Miss Sandys,' Frederic replied with yet another charming smile. 'With your perfectly white dress spread around you, I could have _sworn_ I'd seen a truly glorious swan floating upon the river.'

*

# Chapter 21

Sandy stayed seated within the patiently waiting carriage while a muddy Frederic knocked upon the door of her brother's house. When her brother opened the door to Frederic's knocking, he momentarily looked surprised at the bedraggled state of his friend, then managed to appear even more shocked when he glanced Sandy's way.

Obviously, Frederic was making a valiant attempt to explain Sandy's unfortunate condition for, with a concerned grimace, her brother rushed over to the side of the carriage, wincing a little as he caught the stench strongly emanating from its confined interior.

'Sandy, are you–'

His expression of anxiety abruptly changed to one of laughter when he saw that, despite her miserable frown and condition, she was in all other ways perfectly healthy and safe.

'It's nothing to _laugh_ at, Frederick!' Sandy responded petulantly.

'Ah, but I think even _you'll_ agree you're wrong about _that_!' Frederick replied mysteriously with a mischievous smirk.

As they had talked, Sandy was glad to see that Mr Leighton had managed to alert the rest of her brother's household to her condition. The housekeeper and maid were already dashing her way with fresh, clean blankets.

'I'm glad that _you_ can see the humour of my pitiful situation, dear brother!' Sandy sarcastically snapped.

'But you have a _visitor_! A visitor from _Russia_!'

'The general?' Sandy asked, abruptly brightening and almost leaping up out of her seat in her excitement. 'He's _here_?'

Although Frederick shook his head, his mischievous grin never left his face.

'No, no: not the _general_ , I'm afraid!'

'Then who?' Sandy asked, unable to hide either her disappointment or her impatience with Frederick's childish determination to tease her by prolonging his answer. ' _Who_ is it, Frederick?'

'Your beautiful sleeping czarina, of course! But I must say, she doesn't seem in any way asleep to _me_!'

*

# Chapter 22

Sandy had indeed laughed with joy and pleasant surprise when she had heard that the czarina was not only awake at last, but was actually waiting inside their morning room and was eager to meet up with her.

'Give her some tea, or whatever it is czarinas prefer to drink!' she had declared elatedly to Frederick as, virtually pushing him aside, she had jumped out of the carriage and rushed up towards the house without a care of anyone seeing the distressed state she was in.

'I'll change as quickly as I can,' she added, avoiding the morning room and heading off towards her own room, skilfully using her cocoon of blankets to ensure she wasn't spreading the filth of the river everywhere she went. 'I can't let her see me like _this_!'

*

With her flowing gown of pure white feathers, the seated czarina emanated an even greater sense of imperiousness than when she had been laid out upon her bier.

She politely rose to her feet as, at last, a freshly dressed and cleaned (after the quickest and coldest of baths!) Sandy entered the morning room. The czarina's moves were graceful, flowing, even as she reached into her gown and somehow brought forth from it a small, wrapped parcel which she handed to Sandy. The package may not have been large, yet it was still hard to work out how it could have been securely held in place amongst the folds of the czarina's elegant dress.

'It may appear presumptuous of me, I know,' the czarina said, 'but I'm sure my sisters and brother would wish you to have to this as a sign of our gratitude that you have managed to wake us all.'

She smiled graciously as she tenderly placed the package in Sandy's hands, her eyes glistening as beautifully as those of the czarina Sandy had encountered earlier within the river's dark depths. However this czarina, Sandy noticed, differed from the first – the one she had embraced while bathing within the mystical lake – in that she had a slightly darker tone to her hair and complexion.

Frederick certainly appeared entranced by her, his eyes never leaving her as she so gracefully gave Sandy a brief yet lusciously warm embrace. Mary didn't seem to mind his obvious bewitchment, as she too appeared to have been charmed by this tall, slim czarina whose every move seemed soothingly hypnotic in its fluidity.

'Woke you?' Sandy couldn't understand what the czarina could mean. 'B...but I don't see how I...'

'This shows that the world isn't as we think it is,' the czarina said, indicating the package held within Sandy's hands, 'and yet it is the world that reveals everything to us.'

What else did the czarina say after that?

A great deal, Sandy was sure: for didn't she stay quite a while, displaying her talent at the piano, talking of her passion for embroidery?

Frederick didn't quite remember the afternoon passing in exactly the same way that Sandy recalled it – and Mary had her own version of events too. Similarly, neither of them could agree on how or when the czarina had arrived at the house, or how she had announced herself to them.

They could recall only that they had talked pleasantly over tea, over cake: but what that conversation entailed, neither could say for sure.

The czarina's leaving was as mysterious as her arrival, with no one being able to say with any certainty how she had left them, or even if a carriage had arrived to pick her up.

Her name was Tatiana; that was one of the few things they could recall her disclosing to them.

Everything else – well, that was cloudy, indistinct.

The one thing about her visit that wasn't in anyway intangible, of course, was the package she had left for Sandy.

All three of them agreed that Sandy should open it, in the hope that the purpose of the czarina's visit might be suddenly be made so much clearer.

The wrapping was of glittering gold and dark blue paper, incredibly expensive and beautiful, but otherwise nothing unusual.

The small box inside was once again decorated with a finish similar to lapis lazuli, as if it were a dark sky scattered with shimmering stars.

Opening the box, Sandy was confronted by an interior of softly cushioning velvet of the kind customarily used to protect precious pieces of jewellery.

Within the velvet's cocooning embrace, however, there lay nothing but a simple stone: one that wasn't even white, one that bore nothing approaching any type of inscription.

It was a gift, in other words, that left everyone in the room more puzzled than ever.

*

# Chapter 23

Sandy was every bit as bemused by the gift the czarina had left her as she was by the cards that had previously taunted her with their unfathomability.

Of course, she no longer held any of the three cards given to her: all that remained now were the copies she herself had made

At least, she now had some understanding of the third card, the one of the girl twirling on the end of the maypole garland.

Somehow, it had led her to jumping into the river.

Somehow, jumping into the river had led to the waking up of Tatiana, her sisters, and her brother.

And that had led to Sandy being presented with this most curious gift of all.

Curious, because it seemed all so unremarkable.

A stone, perhaps vaguely heart shaped, but in all other respects it could be any other stone you could pick up off the street.

As she had done many times before, Sandy twirled it through her fingers, examining it closely. She held it up to the light flooding in through the window, in the hope she might pick up some faint image inscribed upon the stone that had been missed.

Staring intently at the stone, spinning it slowly so as to catch the light at differing angles, Sandy flattered herself that she was beginning at last to detect the very faintest of lines: traces that, even more remarkably, appeared to be thickening, spreading, burgeoning.

The threads began to branch out across her hand: and so it was with a strange mingling of profound relief and disappointment that Sandy realised the eerie tracing didn't really exist at all, other than within the dappling of the light coming in through the window.

The pane had frosted over, a veil of flowering ice, a paisley feathering of sparkling water crystals. The light passing through this most gorgeous of nature's lacing spun through the air, throwing its elaborate tracery over everything it touched, setting it all rippling, flowing, moving.

The embroidery of crackling ice rushed across the sill, the walls, the table: the stone held between Sandy's suddenly freezing fingers.

With a shrieking crunch, the stone heart split perfectly in two. It fell open, the two halves dropping onto the small wall table situated beneath the window.

The split stone revealed the fossil that had lain hidden within its heart.

A fossil of a fragilely winged insect.

Sandy stared curiously at the two stone fragments, one with a raised image, the other with what could have been its indented mould.

It was like no insect that she had ever seen before.

It only had four, rather prominent limbs.

Two legs: two arms.

And a strangely large head.

The head of what could be a young, incredibly minute girl

It wasn't an insect after all.

It was the perfectly, delicately rendered fossil of a fairy.

*

The intensity of the cold seeping in through the window made even the air seem ready to crackle, to snap.

And so yes, now the very air itself, like that transparent pane, began to crystallise, to burst into an endlessly repeating feathering.

The crystallisation spreading across the fossil was even more pronounced, the ice sprouting into what could have been a thick, white fur, glistening like the frozen dew-coated trees we wake up to on winter mornings. And yet it sparkled, too, with the blue, silvery glow of ice illuminated on a night with nothing save the moon's rays.

Then it all abruptly began to melt, to swirl into the indented image, glittering still, only now flickering orange and yellow as if containing a vibrant flame.

The frosty weather lying beyond the window pane had vanished, replaced almost miraculously with a low yet wondrously bright spring sun. The icy decorations writhed, shrunk, the patterns now swirling up into the air as delicate vaporous swirls.

And rising amongst them, her wings as immaculately diaphanous as those whirls of transmuted air, was the fairy.

*

# Chapter 24

The fairy hovered in the air, her rapidly vibrating wings as silent as a drifting dandelion seed.

She was aware of Sandy's presence. Aware, too, that Sandy could see here; for she gave her a friendly wave, a warm grin.

Then she whirled in the air, and rushed hurriedly towards the now only slightly frosted window pane.

'No!' Sandy screamed out in horror, vainly reaching out in the hope of preventing the unknowing fairy violently colliding into the transparent glass.

She was too late.

But far from crashing into the glass pane, the fairy swooped through it as if it wasn't there, using what could well have been a minute doorway formed by what was left of the crusting of ice.

As soon as the fairy had passed through the magical portal, the decorative whirls forming the porchway melted, like the most perfectly white roses dissolving, running away into nothing.

Everywhere, now, the embroidering of ice was rippling, flowing away. Where it sparkled most now was no longer a slivery blue but, rather, a golden hue, a fiery orange, or blossoming yellow.

The low spring sun had become one of high summer, its glorious rays caught as a fragmentary star in the pane's lower corner.

The seasons had changed, had vanished, so ridiculously quickly, Sandy realised: had the fairy really flown through the window just a few seconds ago, or was it an event now lying months in her past?

Although fearing she would be too late to catch any further glimpses of the fairy, Sandy dashed for the door leading out into the street. She wasn't dressed in a manner that many would declare as decent wear for the town, but she couldn't let this remarkable creature just fly out of her life as abruptly as it had become a part of it.

As she stepped out into the street, she was gratified to be rewarded with an almost imperceptible flickering of ever-changing rainbow hues, a burst of sparkling colours swiftly flowing through the labyrinthine branches of the trees lining the street.

It _had_ to be the fairy!

Sandy followed the glittering light, as one would follow a wandering star at night, her eyes never leaving it, her pace rushed for fear that she would drop too far behind and lose all sight of it. As such, there were a number of times when she almost carelessly blundered into other people out on the street, or only narrowly avoided being run over by a passing carriage.

Her focus was purely on following the glittering light she felt sure must be the fairy.

Sandy worried that it was a light that appeared to be waning, until she realised with a sigh of relief that the light itself was after all undiminished – that it was, rather, the background that was increasingly sparkling with an equivalent intensity, as the trees and even the walls of the houses took on a silvery, glistening coating of ice.

Icy flakes began to fall around her, swirling into ever fiercer squalls.

Now, at last, Sandy knew for sure where she was being led.

*

The general invited her into the house with a gracious smile.

This time, there was no impatient wait within the room of paintings (although this time, ironically, Sandy would have been interested to see if the Russians had been the secret purchasers of her last painting). She was allowed to progress straight through to the ballroom, where the dancing was at its most vigorous, its most joyful.

There was no longer any bier lying in the dancefloor's centre.

And yet the glorious light that had so entranced Sandy on her first visit here was still present. Now, however, it moved excitedly about the ballroom, suffusing everyone and everything nearby in its coruscating glow.

Even amongst the excited swirl of innumerable dancers, the czarina's whirling veil of swan feathers meant she was instantly recognisable: and this was despite the fact that, once again, Sandy found herself facing a completely different girl.

*

# Chapter 25

The czarina was so enraptured by the elated whirl of dancing that, at first, she failed to notice Sandy's approach.

No one seemed surprised that the czarina was now not only awake but also taking part in the dancing with all the gaiety of a child, regularly swapping partners rather than restricting her enjoyment to any norms of decorum.

It was only when the approaching Sandy was almost upon her that the czarina turned and smiled in greeting.

'Thank you so much for attending my leaving party!' the czarina exclaimed joyfully, reaching out a hand to take hold of Sandy's and pull her into the whirl of the dance. 'You will dance with me, won't you? I do so _love_ dancing!'

Sandy was given little choice about joining the dance: the czarina had expertly brought her into the midst of the swirling throng, the glow of the veil cascading round them both as if it were a soft fall of brightly glistening snow.

'Leaving?' a bewildered Sandy asked curiously, as she almost unconsciously joined in with the flowing moves of the dance. 'Why are you leaving now that you're at _last_ awake?'

'Because, because...' the czarina trilled teasingly as they twirled together around the dancefloor. 'Because there is still _so_ much more for you to accomplish: and so I must entrust my most _precious_ possession to you!'

The whirling of their dancing was now impossibly, miraculously rushed. The feathers from the veil were fluttering free, rising up into the air like uncountable, endlessly glittering stars, like an infinite number of flashing snowflakes.

And as the glimmering feathers rose up and away from her, the czarina gradually lost her ethereal glow, her beauty undiminished but the all-suffusing sense of magic that hung about her dispersing, deserting her.

'While it's held in your trust,' the czarina continued, seeing that a puzzled Sandy required further explanation, 'I can't advise my people here: and so I'll return to Russia for a while, to see what it's like in this age.'

Sandy could easily have imagined that the czarina had already departed for Russia, whisking her dancing partners along with her, for the swirling feathers now fell around them like thick flurries of snow. Even the czarina was disappearing from view in the blur of rapidly falling feathers.

The feathers were cold, as cold as ice. As they landed on Sandy, on her dress, they melted, like icy flakes.

They were no longer feathers, they were a swirling storm of snow.

In her hand she was no longer holding the czarina's fingers but, instead, a card.

*

The ballroom, together with its dancers, had vanished.

Sandy was outside in the thickly falling snow once more, as if she had never, ever really visited the house.

As if she were still attempting to follow the glittering spark that had been the fairy.

But there was no longer any glittering fairy to chase after.

However, in her hand she held the card: a card that appeared to be drawing into it every flake falling about her.

The flakes rushed into the card, more and more of them disappearing into it without a trace.

With a last final surge, a last elegant whirl of massed flakes, the snowstorm abruptly ceased.

And Sandy was standing once most on a regular London street on a typically midsummer's day.

*

There had been no bier lying at the centre of the ballroom, as there had been on all Sandy's previous visits.

And yet now, pictured upon the card Sandy held within her hand, there was a bier of the most elaborate kind; one of the glass-topped caskets whole populations respectfully trooped past to pay their respects to a fallen king.

Far from displaying a corpse, however, the glass casket contained what could have been its sculptured headstone, a wondrously carved angel cocooned within her own stilled wings.

As before, her brother Frederick and his friends observed the card with bemusement, finding the meaning of its imagery every bit as elusive as any of the other cards. Once again, Sandy found she had no choice but to lie about how she had come by the new card, claiming that it had simply appeared within her room one morning, a possible replacement for the shattered stone that had now somehow completely vanished.

No one was aware of the swift disappearance of the seasons that Sandy had experienced. Indeed, stranger still, whenever they spoke of the past months, there was no indication that Sandy hadn't been a normal part of their lives.

Strangest of all, Sandy was shocked to discover that she had already begun work on her next painting, _The Beautiful Wallflower_ : a portrait of a girl once possessing an otherworld beauty who has now accepted a more earthly existence – a picture of carnations, of _incarnation_ , of a goddess made flesh, her amber necklace one of beads of solidified sunlight.

*

# Chapter 26

A Misplaced Trust

At a point where the borders of the Thrice Ten Kingdoms are supposed to meet, there actually lies another land, one called Labudledian, or the Virgin Land of Swans. Being a country so small it is virtually indistinguishable from the other countries surrounding it, you won't be surprised to hear that it consists mainly of a large lake, Rosamore, or Dewlake, the source of its waters apparently being nothing but Selene's tears.

Naturally, then, the waters of this lake possess magical qualities. No matter how beautiful a woman is, she emerges after bathing in the water more gorgeous than ever.

Unfortunately, this lake is so cut off from civilisation that few people are aware of its existence, let alone its wondrous effects. And so when the smith and hunter Wayland came upon it purely by chance, he naturally didn't know anything of its magical powers.

He had been gone from home for well over six months, tracking down wolves and bears to collect their pelts. Of course, he also hunted smaller game for his food, and so when he had seen a flock of ducks flying too high to bring down with an arrow, yet obviously swooping lower towards a hidden lake, he had followed their course and arrived at the very edges of Rosamore.

As he looked out across the great expanse of water from his hideaway amongst the bushes, he heard another fluttering of wings pass directly over him, a louder beating this time, of vaster, more powerful wings.

A small flock of swans, seven of them, gracefully alighted upon the lake's almost motionless waters.

Notching an arrow to his bow string, he sighted upon one of the smallest and prettiest swans; then almost let that arrow fall from his grip as he gawped in amazement. The swan had transformed into the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

The other swans, too, had changed into gorgeous young women, completely naked now that they held in their hands diaphanous veils. They casually cast the veils towards the beach, letting a breeze catch and take their magical guises towards the golden sands.

The veils drifted languidly in the air just above the slightly rippling waves of the lake, briefly taking on for themselves the image of graciously hovering swans. Then they fluttered lightly towards the ground, resting upon the sands like sparkling pools of spilt milk.

And from his hiding place, Wayland watched, entranced – fearing that he might even be bewitched.

*

Who were these delightful girls, who sang with all the sensuousness and allure of sirens, yet took on the forms of swans, not beasts?

Unfortunately, there are variations in the relating of their history, their birth.

The one believed by many to be the most believable concerns Zeus and Leda, Queen of Sparta.

It's nonsense, of course: but whereas the truth of the matter is known only to a chosen few (and therefore, bizarrely, is presumed by many to have no real base in truth), Greek myth is so well known and admired that using it as basis for our tale will have to suffice for the moment.

Leda had been granted the power of shape-shifting, her favourite form being that of a mare, her second that of a swan. Now Zeus appropriated these powers for himself, appearing before her as another swan, the result being two eggs; the god-like Polydeuces and Helen of Troy being born of one, and the mortals Castor and Clytemnestra from the other.

Not surprisingly, the people of Sparta (who, surely, must be given the benefit of any doubt, possessing as they do first-hand knowledge of this affair, and worshiping in particular the twins Castor and Polydeuces) beg to differ on a certain detail of this tale.

For them, you see, Helen is indeed born in this way, such that she herself becomes a swan maiden. And indeed, the girls of Sparta would celebrate this fact by crowning trees with garlands and embroiled veils and naming them Helen Trees.

So is it any wonder that the nymphs cavorting at the edges of the lake possess an exceptional beauty?

They are the children of the most beautiful woman in history!

*

Whatever the truth (for the swan maidens, of course, are trusted to keep the secret of their birth secret), I'm sure you will trust me when I say the girls being secretly observed by the hunter Wayland were the most beautiful and entrancing women he had ever seen.

One in particular had caught his attention (some say she was called the Princess Maria, although Wayland would come to know her as Allwise): perhaps because she was the one he had first seen transform from elegant swan into graceful woman; perhaps because it was her veil that had drifted closest of all towards him as he had watched them from his hideaway amongst the thick bushes.

The veil was gossamer thin, itself like a sheen of fine flesh, of milky substance.

What, he thought, if that veil were to blow away in a malicious breeze?

Would she then have to remain here, unable to fly away?

Shouldn't he keep it in safe keeping for her?

Stealthily, utilising all his skills as a hunter, he silently moved forward from his covering of bushes. He grabbed the very edges of the veil, pulling it towards him as he once again slipped back into the concealing undergrowth.

He crammed the veil into a casket, which he erroneously believed would keep it safe and untouchable.

Then he placed the casket in the pack he carried upon his back.

*

It had already been late evening when Wayland had begun his tracking of the ducks he had intended to transform into his supper.

The moon, along with the very brightest of stars, had already been faintly visible in the darkening sky. Now, as the sun finally slipped away beyond the horizon, the sky completely darkened but for its snowflake-like glistening of stars.

The lake wasn't dark in anyway, however, but glittered with a patina of sliver, as if the moon had graced it with her own garments, as if the lake itself emanated its own mystical, milky light.

All night long, the beautiful nymphs played, and laughed, and sang.

Wayland never slept, not wishing to miss even a moment of this wondrous entertainment.

Unfortunately, having her own affairs to attend to, the moon eventually began to slip away, just as her brother the sun had done earlier. And so now her sibling was slowly rising once again to take her place.

Seeing that their time at the lake was coming to an end, with a few final giggles and splashes of the water the young girls rushed through the waves lapping at the shore, searching out their veils that had been blown towards the sands.

But of course, there were now only six veils: six veils for seven swan maidens.

The youngest amongst the girls soon realised that it was hers that had somehow gone missing.

'I thought it was here,' she insisted unsurely, glancing uncertainly about her, 'I must have misplaced it!'

Of course, she searched everywhere for it, her sisters helping her to look. But Wayland, being a clever hunter, had already moved deeper into the undergrowth, undetectable to anyone but the most suspicious of searchers: for naturally, all the swan maidens were all blessed with the most trusting of natures, failing to even consider that anyone might have stolen and hidden the veil.

'It had been put in my trust too!' the poor young girl wept, mourning the loss of her precious veil as she forlornly sat down upon the sands, 'and it seems I was completely unworthy of that trust!'

For, at last, the dawn couldn't be held back from ascending any longer: and so the poor girl's six sisters had no choice but to sadly call out to her that they would have to leave.

Donning their own veils, they became swans once more – and languidly, miserably, rose into the sky, abandoning their unfortunate sibling to her fate, trusting that fortune would smile kindly upon her.

Naturally, the abandoned sister felt even more despondent than her swiftly disappearing siblings, flooded as she was by a complete sense of hopelessness. Slumping despairingly to her knees, she dejectedly watched the rinsing sun, realising she had little alternative but to place her wellbeing in the trust of the gods.

She jumped, her heart stirring with fright, when a large, rugged man with a copper beard seemed to appear out of nowhere as he stepped out from the veiling undergrowth.

She was naked, and all alone!

She ran for and nervously hid behind a large white stone protruding up from the beach. She knew, of course, that the man had already seen her, but she wanted to at least hide her nakedness from him.

'I mean you no harm,' the man insisted, trying not to startle her any further as he slowly took off his cloak and steadily drew closer and closer towards her, 'please _trust_ me.'

He reached out with a hand, offering her his cloak.

He grinned sympathetically: and so, recognising she had little choice but to trust him, she accepted the kindly proffered cloak with a wan smile.

*

The life of a hunter living alone in the wilderness is an arduous one that few people would find acceptable – and so for a beautiful girl whose life had previously revolved around magic, it would of course be intolerable.

Recognising this, Wayland immediately broke camp, and headed for home.

After all, he had acquired a prize beyond all imagining. A prize he trusted would delight his mother.

He was bringing back a wife.

Naturally, at this point the poor girl failed to realise that Wayland had already set out her future for her. Maybe if she had been aware of his intentions she wouldn't have placed herself within his care so trustingly. Just as she wouldn't have trusted him if she'd knon that he was the one responsible for the disappearance of her precious veil.

As it was, however, she placed herself completely in his hands, trusting him to take care of her in this unfamiliar wilderness, this unknown world.

She wasn't even sure how time worked here. Instinctively, though, she recognised that it must work differently to how it did in her own world.

Her sisters wouldn't be returning to the lake tonight; not in the tonight of _this_ world. Time progressed so much more slowly on this lower level of life.

Wayland couldn't fail to see the misery etched upon her face: it aged her slightly, even detracted from her otherwise otherworldly beauty.

He tried to make her feel more cheerful about the situation she had ended up in by shaving off the immense beard he'd grown while living out in the wilderness, revealing the surprisingly young and even handsome man who had lain hidden beneath it. He also provided her with anything she desired, including the best and cleanest of his own clothes, and the tastiest titbits of anything he hunted and cooked.

Even so, by the time Wayland had reached his home, the harsh living and weather had naturally taken its toll on the young girl, such that his mother thought of her as being pretty enough, if not the ravishing beauty her son seemed to think he'd brought back with him. She trusted that the young girl's looks would undoubtedly improve, however, once everyone had settled down to the far more comfortable life offered by their home.

'If only she'd smile,' Wayland's mother thought to herself: 'A young girl surely couldn't _always_ be so miserable!'

Still, her son insisted that he would marry this unhappy little wallflower of a girl. And more surprisingly still, this sad young girl, who didn't seem at all suited to this way of life, accepted Wayland's offer of marriage, trusting him implicitly when he assured her that he would do everything in his power to make her happy once again.

(Now at this point, it's only fair that any storyteller admits the tale could head off in at least two slightly different directions: indeed, in the original tales of Wayland, there is no mention of a mother, for he lives with his two brothers, who similarly entrap a Swan-May each for seven years. Yet I prefer the version of events related below, for it thankfully remains free of any children who might end up being abandoned.)

Of course, Wayland's mother had kept the wondrously white dress that she herself had been married in, carefully storing it away so that it now emerged from its protective sheets as immaculate as ever.

' _Every_ girl shines in her wedding dress!' she told herself elatedly, 'and _this_ is the finest dress anyone in the village has _ever_ worn!'

And yet, when the poor girl wore it, it hung off her as if it were nothing but the very lowliest of smocks. Far from shining out, this pitiful girl seemed to be trying to disappear into her surroundings.

'Something _else_ ; trust me, it just needs something _else_!' Wayland's mother declared brightly, rushing off to urgently search her home for anything that might enhance the sorry young girl's derisible appearance.

But there was nothing suitable in her sewing basket.

There was nothing in her linen cupboard.

There was nothing in her wardrobe.

In desperation, Wayland's mother even searched the shed where the hunting gear was stored.

And there, amongst all her son's clutter, she found and opened his back pack.

And in his back pack, she discovered and opened the casket.

And in this casket (within which the veil was neither safe nor untouchable), Wayland's mother surprisingly found just what she was looking for: the most exquisitely fine veil she had ever seen.

'Of course!' she announced gleefully. 'Trust Wayland to have already ensured his bride-to-be would have a beautiful wedding veil!'

Excitedly dashing back to the sorrowfully waiting girl, Wayland's mother breathlessly presented the delicate veil before her.

'See,' she announced proudly, 'Wayland has been keeping this beautiful wedding veil in trust for you!'

Naturally, the poor girl immediately recognised the veil.

Gratefully reaching out for it, her face blossomed into a gracious smile.

Even as she touched the veil, enough of the cares of the world fell away from her to reveal her remarkable prettiness.

As she draped the veil about her, she instantly glowed with its smooth purity, its incomparable beauty.

She shone with the radiance of angels, the gloriousness of an immortal goddess.

The veil rose about her like immense, powerful wings.

'I trust you will forgive me,' she said to Wayland's pitifully startled mother, 'but my trust in your son was obviously a mistake.'

And with a surge of her wings, she flew out of the door: and poor Wayland never saw either her or the magical lake of precious dew again.

*

# Chapter 27

A crusting of morning dew made each blade of the garden's grass sparkle like slivers of the moon.

The mist swirling just a few inches above it all gave the whole scene an air of the ethereal, of at the very least an otherworld, a mystical lake.

Sandy stepped out bared and barefoot into that whirling pool, wishing that, as once before, it would help transport her to another, better realm.

Of course, no such thing happened.

These things cannot be rushed, cannot be forced.

We must bide our time; we must be patient.

Sandy turned back towards the house, her movement setting the ankle-high mist whirling, forming into playful whirlpools, eddying ripples.

These rushed out before her, racing towards the steps, the beckoning and still open French windows, curling up the stone slabs, slipping silently along the bared floorboards: wafts entwining as weft and warp, as twist and transformation, the most delicate of embroideries coming together on life's very own loom.

This material of mist – of mist itself formed from the sun's warming of sparkling dew, of the tears of the moon – flowed everywhere about the room, seeking out the card, discovering it patiently waiting where Sandy had left it on her dresser top. Now the misty lace sought out unsealed seams, the most minuscule of spaces that always lie unseen to the naked eye – then suddenly it was seeping into and through these microscopic gaps, joyously whirling into the casket's interior, wrapping itself like a silken cocoon around the sleeping angel.

The transformation complete, the transparent lid of the casket sprung open.

And within the casket there lay a veil of the finest materials, the most diaphanous of lace that even the minutest spider might envy: waiting for Sandy to pull free and don.

*

Naturally, Sandy couldn't fail to notice the changes the card had undergone.

What had once been beautifully rendered in two dimensions now existed in three.

A casket that had been closed, and impossible to open, now lay with its glass lid lying slightly to one side.

Seeing the angel wrapped within its veiling cocoon, Sandy of course wondered what kind of butterfly-like liquefaction and transmutation might have taken place inside.

Tentatively, she took a corner of the veil within her fingers, fearful that pulling on it might be the wrong thing to do.

Yet she didn't need to pull any harder upon the veil.

The veil was so incredibly weightless it began to rush free of its own accord.

There was no weight to it at all. No weight of any stone angel or any other thing that might be contained within it.

The veil continued to whirl up into the air as effortlessly as if Sandy had disturbed nothing but the mist it had originally been formed from. Now, however, the veil had garnered a delicious coating of the purest feathers, the whitest and purest that Sandy had ever seen, as if they were more soul than physically substantial.

It was so fine that, even emanating from that small casket, it opened up into a full veil, one easily embracing the whole of Sandy's naked form as it at last began to fall lightly about her.

Once gracing Sandy's amber flesh, the veil sparkled like a mingling of captured moonbeams and sunlight.

And the most gorgeous of swan's wings began to spring from her virtually bared back.

*

# Chapter 28

There was no longer any room rising about her, confining her.

There was no longer any house, any garden.

Any street.

Any city of London.

Above Sandy there now lay nothing but a darkness graced by the sparkling of endless stars and planets.

Below her, nothing but an even darker sea.

Rising up from the dark waters, rising up apparently endlessly into the dark heavens, was a towering, looming stone of the most gleaming white.

As Sandy flew across the abyss towards the towering stone, it grew larger in her vision the closer she drew towards it, such that it became a mountain, an island in possession of its own inlets, its own beaches.

Yet somehow she knew she wasn't here to land by its shorelines, to bathe in the waves lapping gently against the sands.

She began to rise, to catch the prevailing currents of warm, elevating air, to coil up around the ever ascending stone.

The stone that, after all, seemed to literally rise endlessly, to literally have no end.

*

It is written that the island of Buyan lies in the very centre of a Great Ocean that can only be crossed by the living with the help of magical serpents.

It is also written that at the very peak of this white hot burning stone, there is a great palace, containing the great throne of the Wise Maiden; and that this is the Hall of the Heavenly Swan of the Circle of Svarog.

The whole of creation spins around the head and feet of this beautiful maiden, for it is, after all, from her locks and her spindle that everything is continually created.

Seeing all this through the great windows that opened up onto the hall, Sandy couldn't discern if the lady was herself a swan, or partially a swan, or if she held a swan in her lap: the glow emanating from the throne being too strong to allow anything but an unsatisfactorily veiled vision of her.

There was, however, a swan at her feet. And it was this swan that abruptly seemed aware of Sandy's presence, glancing up towards the window, rising curiously from the floor. Yet as the swan rose to her feet she became a girl, albeit one that could have been deftly woven from the maiden's white hair; although Sandy couldn't be sure if this was just an effect of the sparkling bright glow suffusing everything around her.

And within that child there was a heart or a flame of weeping blood red.

The child looked up towards Sandy, their eyes latching onto each other, locking: and Sandy instantly recognised that look, those eyes, the person lying behind them.

They were her own eyes, Sandy instinctively sensed.

Somehow this girl was _her_.

This girl was the _real_ Sandy.

*

# Chapter 29

It was a leap of consciousness that naturally took Sandy by surprise.

Her hitherto effortless flight faltered, her wings flailed uselessly, finding nothing capable of supporting them.

It _couldn't_ be possible!

It made _no_ sense!

Her instinct _had_ to be _wrong_!

There was an abrupt flurry of wings, the fluttering of a vast number of immaculately white feathers; but it wasn't the beating of Sandy's wings, for she remained too shocked to respond even to the realisation that she was falling. As she plummeted down the face of the blanched mountain, she was surrounded by a whirl of countless doves, a flowing river of purest white.

They could have been so so many stars.

They could have been so so many flakes of snow.

They could have been so so many flashes taking place within her brain, fruitlessly attempting to warn her that she was about to plunge into the dark Waters of Death.

*

She struck the surface of the dark waters so hard that the veil she had been entrusted with was instantly stripped from her, immediately transforming back into nothing but the misty dew it had been formed from.

She penetrated the upper layers of the dark waters so hard that her body was shattered by the violence of it all, a liquefaction of all that was flesh, all that was bone, all that was physical.

She plunged so hard into the lower levels of the dark waters that she sank deeper and deeper.

And yet she retained the presence of mind to keep a firm grasp of the corner of the now hazy veil.

She couldn't let it go: it had been entrusted to her.

*

In the dark waters, the veil swirled as immaterially as a stream of grey smoke attempting to flow away from her.

And yet within the gloom, the whirling veil was the brightest thing there, like the grey band of the Milky Way amongst the darkness of the heavens.

Sandy didn't need to pull any harder upon the veil than she had already done for, supported by thickened waters that made her virtually weightless, she was the one now being pulled along by the veil in its urge to rush free of the dark ocean.

It was seeking out unsealed seams, those most minuscule of spaces that always lie unseen to the naked eye; and so the veil seeped through the otherwise unfathomable darkness, through the waters that wished to continue to wash away at an already fluidly reformable Sandy.

The swirling, eddying ripples of the insubstantial veil rushed out before her, racing towards where the first rays of a bright light made the darkness a similar grey to itself, towards a beckoning yet unknowing half-life, half-death that joyously whirled in the upper reaches of the hall's interior; an entwining, wafting smoke curling down towards the inhalers of so many elegantly wielded cigarettes.

And before it appeared to completely disperse, the veil graciously encased Sandy in a silken cocoon, one substantial enough to preserve her modesty as she found herself standing within the crowded ballroom of the Russian house.

*

# Chapter 30

'Hah, I see you've safely returned my sister's soul: thank you!'

The glow that the veil had so instinctively headed towards came from the young girl standing directly before Sandy.

She wasn't, of course, the girl Sandy had seen upon the top of the towering white mountain. (For Sandy still firmly believed that the girl she had seen there was – in some strange, unfathomable way – a manifestation of herself.)

She struck Sandy as being a younger sister of the swan maidens she had already come across. A more playfully mischievous, uncontrollable sister, for like everyone else around her she was happily and ostentatiously smoking a cigarette. In the crook of her other arm she held a small dog, one that Sandy believed was of a Japanese breed.

The girl's eyes weren't on Sandy but on the very last vestiges of the departing veil, for her own glow illuminated it, separating it from the rest of the duller smoke.

'Her _soul_?'

Of course, Sandy was surprised to hear that the veil was regarded as being in some way a soul. She was even more shocked when it dawned on her that such a precious artefact had been entrusted to her.

'Yes: why else do you think you're still here, alive and talking to me?' the girl replied matter-of-factly – adding with equal bluntness, when she noticed Sandy's disapproving observation of the cigarette, 'My father taught me; he thought it amusing.'

Like an expertly practised magician, she deftly twirled the cigarette through her fingers, transforming it into a glistening feather.

'The Waters of Death knit together a broken body,' she said, returning to the point she had been making, 'but life is only restored through the Waters of Life.'

With another deft twirl of her fingers, she transformed the feather into a gleaming white card.

'Choose a card – any card,' she said with an impish chuckle as she handed the card to Sandy. 'The only question we have time for is; is this card yours?'

*

The knight's armour was of finest aurichalcum, one formed of previously molten amber, and glowing and electrically crackling as if forged from the sun itself.

Even so, he was sorely pressed, his shield already shattered by the relentlessly ferocious attacks of unsurmountable odds. The shields device was of seven white swans, but only the central swan remained unsullied by the blows of axe, hammer, and mace, the strike of swords, arrows, and lances.

Sandy couldn't help but wonder if her acceptance of the card signalled that her visit to the Russian house had come to an end, that she would now have to spend the next few months attempting to interpret its meaning.

The girl grinned cheekily at her, as if she had read Sandy's thoughts and found her disappointment amusing.

'Don't worry,' she said kindly, reaching out to take Sandy's hand, expertly leading her through the crowded ballroom towards the doors, 'I could say it's time for things to move much quicker: because there's no time to waste.'

'And yet,' she continued with a joyous laugh, an excited and urgent skipping of her feet, 'it's really because time is running short.'

*

Although the girl's cryptic comment caused Sandy to frown in confusion, she also sighed in relief when, instead of being shown to the house's front door, she was led across the hall towards the room containing the icon and paintings.

As well as _Enid_ , which Sandy was naturally expecting to be on display in here, there was also her _Portrait of a Girl with a Blue Cloak_ , along with her _The Beautiful Wallflower_ : yet this came as no surprise to her either, for she had always presumed that the 'secret purchaser' of these paintings had been the Russian house.

There was, however, another large painting gracing the walls, one she recognised as being painted in her style, yet could only be by some other artist: _A Lady Holding a Rose._ She couldn't be sure why, but Sandy also understood it to be a study of Elaine, the Lady of Asholt, a subject she had covered herself in a much earlier painting, _Elaine_.

The girl in the painting was innocently waiting, 'sub-rosa', for a love that wouldn't be returned, for a lover who would leave her waiting in this Moon Garden of jasmine, of lovers' secret meetings, and romantic whispers under the stars.

*

# Chapter 31

Worshiping at The Reliquary of The Heart

Like many castles, Astolat boasts a particularly high tower, one that effortlessly looms over all the others.

And as long as she remains confined within the very highest room of this tower, Elaine the Fair is completely cut off from the rest of the world around her.

She rarely, even, stands by the window, to look out over the glorious meadows stretching out on all sides from the castle.

Instead, she endlessly sits before a battered shield, polishing it over and over again until it shines more brilliantly than any mirror.

Within this mirror-like surface, Elaine sees way beyond the confines of the tower, way beyond, even, the confines of her father's extensive lands.

She sees right to very edges of Arthur's kingdom.

She sees the valiant knight fighting against odds that anyone else would find insurmountable.

She sees the chivalrous knight sparing the lives of the defenders of a captured castle.

She sees the handsome knight swearing to protect a lady and her lands from the unwelcome attentions of an evil earl.

She sees everything she loves about this knight, for like an icon (or maybe even like an idol) this shield grants her images of the man she has grown to adore and worship.

All these images are brought to life before her as she carefully cleans the shield's innumerable dents and scratches, each one lovingly caressed, as if she were tending the wounds and scars he must have also received in his many battles: each one revealing that his heroic tales are true, when they could so easily have been lies or at least exaggerations.

And so what does that say of his protestations of love?

While he had talked, entertaining her with his tales of valour, he had begun to be increasingly more open with her (although, of course, he had continued to keep his identity secret, for he had vowed to attend the tournament as an unknown knight).

His love, he had told her, was for the fairest lady he had ever seen: and yet he was unworthy of her, and so his love for her must forever remain secret and undisclosed.

Indeed, he continued, this lady was so beautiful that he would far rather stay by her side than attend the tournament he was heading for.

But the prize offered was the most fabulous ruby, one that glowed like a resplendent heart: and he would prove his love for his lady by winning this glittering heart for her.

'But surely no lady would expect your own sacrifice as proof that you worship her!' a horrified Elaine had gasped, thinking of how the unbeatable Lancelot had already won all the other eight jewels that King Arthur had presented as prizes at his yearly tournaments.

'Ah, but it has already been declared that this time _everyone_ will have a fair chance of winning this fabulous jewel,' the knight had reassured her, 'for Lancelot won't be appearing at the tournament as he would normally.'

And so, borrowing an old shield of Elaine's father's to complete his disguise, the knight had set off for the tournament: wearing her favour of red with pearls, even though he had never honoured any other woman in this way before.

*

As Elaine covered the shield in the protective embroidery she had made for it, the mirrored surface flashed silver, green and blue, reflecting the image of a mounted knight riding slowly down the slight hill leading towards the castle's gateway.

She rushed towards the window, her heart no doubt redder and glowing more brightly than any fabulous jewel: but the knight, although every bit as expensively armoured as her own love, carried an easily recognisable shield, for it bore the device of Sir Gawain.

Elaine's father welcomed Sir Gawain as warmly as he would any knight from King Arthur's court: even the mysterious knight, when he had arrived unexpectedly at the castle, had been made welcome, his garb and manner being quite obviously that of a well-respected knight of the court.

Sir Gawain had news of the tournament, the mysterious knight having beaten anyone set against him. Before he had collected his prize of the jewel, however, he had been carried from the field badly wounded.

Sir Gawain had noticed that the knight had worn the favour of Elaine the White, and that his companion was Sir Lavaine, Elaine's brother; and so he wished to leave the priceless ruby here for the knight to collect when he had recovered.

The ruby glowed as fearfully as if it had been the knight's own heart torn bloodily from his body. Just as Elaine had witnessed every detail of the knight's victories as she had tended to his shield, now she saw every sickening wound he had received in the lines of light erupting from this gem without price.

Even as Gawain left the castle, Elaine and her older brother Sir Torre mounted up and set off to look for the wounded knight. Riding urgently back along the route towards the tournament, taking only the barest rest and constantly asking after their brother and any sightings of a sorely wounded knight, they eventually found him lying close to death in an old hermit's cell: for despite the holy man's skills and Sir Lavaine's concern, the wound had unavoidably become badly infected.

But of course, Elaine would rather die herself than see this valorous knight die.

Forgoing sleep, eating little, and taking little notice or care of her own wellbeing, Elaine at last provided the dying knight with the constant attention he required, with all its attendant relentless cleaning and replacement of soured dressings.

These, after all, were real wounds she was washing and tending to, not the ones she had imagined as she had made a shrine of his shield. How much more care would she put into practice here, as opposed to the chapel dedicated to her love for him?

Like him, she hovered between the realms of the living and the dead: for how else was she supposed to bring him back from the edge of death?

Many people speak of the miraculous powers of the Waters of Life: but many, too, proclaim that anyone mortally injured must first be bound and knitted together by the application of the Waters of Death, for it is only these that can begin to heal a sourly wounded body.

Little by little, the knight began to recover, until he was well enough to return to Astolat with Elaine and her brothers. Here, within the more comfortable confines of the castle, his recovery became even quicker, such that the knight had soon reached a point where he felt well enough to ride unaided

Preparing to leave Astolat, he thanked Elaine, offering to pay for her services.

He regarded her as dearly as he would a close friend or even a sister, he told her, taking away with him the glistening, well-cared for shield.

And naturally, he also left with the glowing ruby heart.

*

Once again, poor Elaine remains sleepless.

She hardly eats.

She thinks little of taking care of herself, of her own wellbeing.

She is dying, everyone soon realises, of a heart that has been shattered.

She who was once called Elaine the Fair, Elaine the White – for her nature and beauty were as pure as the soul, as white as a swan's (which, after all, in the old language is the meaning of the name _Eala_ ine) – can now only be described as Elaine the Black.

When she finally passes away, her heartbroken father and brothers follow her last instructions.

They place a white lily in her pale hands. They lie out her lifeless body within a small, black-samite draped swan boat.

They set the boat adrift, letting it flow downriver towards Camelot, pulled by a black swan.

At a window Elaine passes beneath, there briefly glows a fabulously blood red jewel, redder than any glistening heart. It flies from the perfectly white hand that holds it, that disdainfully tosses it aside, declaring it nothing but a sign of Lancelot's unfaithfulness.

Queen Guinevere has heard how he won the jewel wearing the favours of another lady, the blood red and white tears of Elaine of Astolat.

The ruby lands upon Elaine the Black's breast, shattering the light in its rare beauty; resting there now as if it were a glistening heart, torn bloodily from her very body.

*

# Chapter 32

'One of my favourites; your best so far,' the girl announced, admiring the picture, the wistful longing of _A Lady Holding a Rose._

The dog she carefully cradled in her arms similarly curiously observed the looming picture, its eyes full of sparkling intelligence, as if it too fully understood the meaning behind the tale.

The knight had been unknown to Elaine, a mystery to her: and yet she had worshipped him, to the extent that her life would be empty without him, her death preferable to living without his love.

'It's not one of mine I'm afraid,' Sandy admitted a little reluctantly, for she too admired its subject, its quality. 'It's a similar style, even a scene I might well have wished to create...'

Her voice faded, her sense of uncertainty increasing as she studied the picture; for she bizarrely began to feel sure that it might actually be one of her paintings after all.

But that, of course, was impossible.

'Oh, it's _undoubtedly_ one of your paintings,' the girl informed Sandy assuredly.

Sandy shook her head doubtfully.

'It _can't_ be, I've...'

She paused yet again.

She _had_ painted this!

She could _remember_ painting it!

But _when_?

Just a few _months_ ago!

But... _how_ was such a thing possible?

She couldn't be sure of that; and yet she _could_ be sure that she had painted this somehow, somewhere, some _time_.

'It's _not_ possible!' she insisted uncertainly.

'And yet; _here_ it is!'

The girl grinned happily.

'How could that be _possible_?' the czarina asked with a pursing of her lips, a mischievous glittering of her eyes.

'Only...only if I was away _longer_ than I thought,' Sandy replied edgily, unsure herself where her thought process was taking her. 'And I was _there_ ...but also _here_?'

The girl nodded in happy agreement.

'The Waters of Death complete their work in their own time, not mine, and least of all yours; although you too are now obviously not completely constricted by time's course.'

She drew Sandy's attention back to the painting with a wry frown.

Yes, yes: Sandy _could_ recall painting this now.

The research into her subject matter.

The drawing of the cartoon.

The mixing of the paints.

The placement of the brush on canvas, the strokes that flowed so naturally, so unrestrained, from her supple fingers.

Part of her here, painting this wistful Elaine.

Part of her elsewhere, facing death.

Being _saved_ from death.

'With these paintings, aren't you in some way living in someone else's past?' the girl asked her curiously. 'So,' she continued before Sandy could answer, 'if it had been intended that you live sometime in the future, but it turned out that wasn't entirely possible – then wouldn't you take the opportunity to live in some _other_ time?'

Sandy grimaced as she attempted to make sense of this. Before she had any chance to ascertain its meaning, however, there was flurry of fur as the previously docile dog unexpectedly leapt up out of the girl's arms.

Leaping down to the floor, the dog landed athletically on its soft paws, skittering only slightly on the polished tiles as it half spun around, darting off at surprising speed towards a partially opened door.

With an uncharacteristically startled cry of dismay, the girl rushed after the dog, throwing the door open wider as she disappeared into the darkness lying beyond it.

Sandy instinctively followed after them, finding herself rapidly descending steep steps leading into the virtually solid blackness of a poorly lit basement.

The basement was full of angry shouting, of terrified wailing; and the abruptly sharp cracks of guns.

*

Within the thick darkness of the cellar, Sandy came across a scene of chaos.

There were a number of highly agitated men with guns, soldiers maybe, who were shouting menacingly in a language she took to be Russian.

Before them, but trapped against the far wall, were the four girls, the smallest amongst them holding her dog close to her chest. There was also a boy there, probably the one Sandy had seen earlier by the shores of the lake, and an older woman crouching in their midst.

The surrounding men were obviously threatening them all; yet although petrified, the children and the woman were tending as best as they could to a fallen man with blood pouring from his wounds.

On the floor around them there were at least three other wounded or dead adults.

The woman was admonishing the men, perhaps pleading with them for mercy – yet they were in a rage, an uncontrollable frenzy, that meant they couldn't be dissuaded from their task.

They raised their guns again, fired again, and again, all at close range.

Even so, even as their mother died, the children clung on to life.

And so the men advanced on them, resorting to the axe, the clubbing of gun stocks, and the bayonet.

*

# Chapter 33

Sandy cried out, rushed forwards in the hope of somehow helping the children.

But no one was even aware she was there.

She couldn't pull any of the men back, for her hands simply passed uselessly through them.

She couldn't watch it all any longer.

She closed her eyes, tightly: bringing on a complete darkness.

Then a complete silence too.

When she tentatively opened her eyes, she was back in the room of paintings.

There was another painting there now: no, there was the faint presence of a painting.

One that she will paint in the near future.

One that will only later really grace this wall.

A picture of _Undine_. The water nymph who had no soul.

Why would she paint _that_?

What of the girls, the boy?

They had _their_ souls, it seemed.

Hadn't the girl – Anastasia, _that_ was her name – said that her sister (Maria, her sister's name was _Maria_ ) had entrusted her soul to her, to Sandy?

Olga. That was the name of the eldest sister.

Alexis: that was the boy.

And, of course, she already knew of Tatiana.

Then there was their mother, the Czarina Alexander.

And their father, the Czar Nicholas the Second.

Sandy was aware of their names too.

She was also aware that, incredibly, all this was to take place sometime in the future.

When there would be a revolution in Russia.

And the Czar and all his family would be overthrown; and murdered.

How did Sandy _know_ all this?

Of that, she couldn't be sure.

She was _there_ : she really _was_ there – not just _now_ , as an observer of a future event.

She felt entirely certain that she had somehow also been there at the actual scene, the very moment in the future when it will all take place.

And yet _no_ one had seemed to be aware of her presence.

Realising that she was still holding the card, she glanced at it once more, hoping it might provide the beginnings of an answer to what was happening to her; but the card had changed – it was a whole new image.

*

The new image featured the looming white mountain, seen from its base.

The girl formed from what could be an embroidery of the finest lace was also there, looking for all the world like a lost soul, a heart that could be a burning flame blazing inside her.

She could have been made of the delicate gauze used to make the mantle for a gas lamp.

She was glancing up towards the very top of the mountain, to where five swans (portrayed here as small as doves) swooped gracefully around it: but was that because she was looking back, having descend to its base, or because she was contemplating the arduous journey upwards that she must make?

This was the girl, of course, that Sandy had sensed had a connection to her: the girl whom, she had briefly decided, might be the _real_ her.

Impossible!

Ridiculous!

There was another detail hidden within the image, one so small and seemingly unimportant that Sandy might have missed it: sections of the mountain's white stone were glowing, as if this was also partially aflame. And as pieces fell away to strike the ground, they sprouted to become bared men, naked women.

She began to form in her mind further details of her own painting.

The flower she would feature would be the columbine, its name rooted in the Latin for dove, its star-like shape a representation of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirt; and therefore regarded as a protection against evil.

*

# Chapter 34

Sandy walked from the gallery out into the hall, noticing in her passing that the front door was open, revealing the harsh flurries of snow surging just beyond the porch.

It was the time of changes within the Russian house.

It was as if, as on that first day when she had first arrived here, she had just stepped from the swirling snow into the hall.

When she had passed through here only moments before with Anastasia, the door had also been open, she recalled: yet it had not been snowing then.

To the Celts, columbine represented a portal to another world, a world of dreams and visions.

And wasn't she living in another world now?

Yes, there was still the world of her dear brother Frederick – of Mary, of Gabriel, of Leighton – which she also seemed to inhabit; and yet _this_ was her world now, this other world unaffected by time – or at least, affected by time in ways that the normal world wasn't.

She stepped into the ballroom, where the dance was in full, overly-excited flow.

From its very centre, there arose an hypnotic ethereal glow, an otherworldly light, a glossy, silvery moon-like blaze.

The bier, for some reason, had returned.

*

The dancing couples had to whirl to a halt to avoid colliding into Sandy as she confidently strode across the brightly polished dancefloor.

Instrument by instrument, the music faded away to a pained wail.

It wouldn't be one of the girls laid out upon the bier, Sandy realised.

It would be Alexis, the boy.

Like a severely wounded Lancelot, he had been laid out upon his bed as if hovering between life and death.

And yet he had suffered no obvious wounds.

A haemophiliac: yes, that was it.

Alexis only had to suffer the slightest of wounds and his bleeding would be more or less unstoppable, incurable.

He suffered the wounds of a future not yet played out. That was his role to play.

Seeing Sandy approach, Alexis rose up from the elegantly draped bier to take up a relatively comfortable seating position.

'Welcome, dear sister,' he said with a smile, offering her his hand in greeting.

'Sister?' Sandy replied, puzzled.

And yet now she instinctively knew that, back within the gallery, her painting – her portrait of _Undine_ – was complete.

*

# Chapter 35

The Soul Obsession

They came out of the Forest of The Rusalki, much to the amazement of the fisherman and his wife.

The fisherman's beautiful daughter, Undine, was even more enthralled by their appearance: she had always been warned by her parents that she should never enter the forest. (Naturally, it was an instruction she would have undoubtedly rebelled against if it hadn't been common knowledge throughout the village that evil spirits lived in the trees and pools.)

Besides, she had never before seen a knight and his squire, even though she had obviously heard of their existence.

The two men were obviously exhausted by their journey through the forest. They asked if they could stay awhile at the fisherman's home, offering to pay him well for their lodging.

As the two ravenous men settled down to the evening meal prepared by the fisherman's wife, an excited Undine rudely and mischievously asked the knight what it was like in the forest: only for her father to immediately forbid that there should be any such talk, for it was well known that it wasn't wise to talk of angry spirits at night.

Affronted and upset by her father's admonishment in front of this handsome knight, a peeved Undine rushed from the table – running out into the night, out into the darkened Forest of The Rusalki.

Everyone called out after her; but their voices were lost in the howls of a swiftly growing wind and an increasingly heavy rain. And so when she failed to return, they all forlornly realised they would have to follow after her into the forest.

The knight, Sir Grace, hadn't liked this forest even throughout the day – but on a night, of course, it was even more eerie and intimidating.

The birds in the trees called out like infants crying for their mothers: but then, wasn't it said that each one was actually a lost spirit of either a drowned or suffocated child, or a young wife who had died in childbirth – at the very least, someone who had never experienced motherly love? The spirits dwelling deep down in the pools and lakes were even worse, their soft endearments dragging even the wariest traveller into their cold embrace.

In the swiftly worsening storm, travelling through this dreadful forest of spirits was even more dangerous than ever. The rain was now so heavy that it was almost like wading through a turbulent river, while the trees were lashing at Sir Grace more fiercely than any number of human foes.

He began to fear that he would ever find such a delicately beautiful creature like Undine alive in this chaotic landscape. Yet, unable to admit he might have failed, he heedlessly plunged through the whirling forest, now more obsessed than ever with bringing her home safely.

Through the angry drumming of the rain ferociously pummelling the leaves and ground, he caught the whispers of calls for help – fearful murmurs that thankfully led him to a leafy riverside bower, where Undine had taken shelter against the storm.

Joyfully, Sir Grace took her up into his arms: and realised with a start that he was in love with this elfinly beautiful girl.

*

It was indeed fortunate that Sir Grace had found Undine and taken her back to the safety of her parent's house: for, rather than abating, the vehemence of the storm abruptly increased, until it was raging so furiously that the whole village was soon cut off from the rest of the world by encircling floods.

Not, of course, that Sir Grace minded being held up from returning to his old life.

He enjoyed the chance to be able to spend more time with the gloriously wonderful Undine.

She listened wide-eyed and enraptured as he related his adventures within the forest, particularly now she herself had also experienced the terror instilled by the innumerable wayward spirits inhabiting the woodlands.

The wailing birds she had heard were the Navki, 'the embodiment of death', who endlessly comb the woods in their fruitless search for their mothers or babies, jealously attacking women close to the time of childbirth. They have just seven years to find a willing soul to take pity on them; for if they fail, they become the Rusalki, spinners of fate who live at the bottom of ponds, or under the turbulence of rapids, and hang their embroidered _rusniki_ from the trees on any nearby bank.

Regulators of the moon and the seasons, it is the Rusalki who determine who dies and who's reborn, who prospers, who marries, and who will be barren; therefore the wise young woman wishing to have a child should strew the trees with her own ribbons and woven cloth as an offering. Similarly, the magical waters of these secret wells can cure all ills, even bring about enlightenment.

But if the mood takes them, the Rusalki may also appear as beautiful maidens who cast neither reflection nor shadow, while their tumbling hair veils the fact they have no backs, for otherwise their insides would be plainly on view. And meeting these irresistible girls, with their bewitching songs – their voices so amazingly beautiful that those who hear them forget everything they know, and want nothing more ever again – a poor man can find himself entranced, willingly, even joyfully, drawn down into the Rusalka's watery boudoir, from where he will never return.

Listening to Sir Grace's tales (for that, of course, is all they really were), Undine was relieved that he had come safely through the Forest of The Rusalki without succumbing to such a dreadful fate. But then, he was also relieved that Undine hadn't suffered an equally terrible fate after her own inadvisable disappearance into the forest.

'But I'd heard only good things of what we call the Sirins,' Undine said in an attempt to reassure Sir Grace that she had never felt threatened, 'that they will later be transformed into Archangels in Paradise, for they bring world harmony, eternal joy and heavenly happiness. It is only _happy_ people who ever hear their bewitching songs, which is like God's word entering the soul; while few are lucky enough to catch sight of them, for they are as elusive as human happiness.'

Sir Grace was completely entranced by Undine's delightful innocence, her trusting nature. They would be married, they decided, as soon as the floodwaters had receded enough for them to fetch a priest to the village.

But then, as if by magic, a priest who had lost his way in his boat upon the swirling waters fetched upon their island, seeking refuge there.

It was the perfect opportunity, everyone agreed.

The joyful couple would be married that night.

*

It was as the wedding procession made its way up to the chapel, where the priest waited alone for them, that a farmer appeared before the knight's squire, his face full of foreboding.

The real daughter of the fisherman and his wife had been kidnapped as soon as she had been born, the farmer morosely told the squire; kidnapped by Kühleborn, the Prince of the Water Spirits. Undine is Kühleborn's creation, and therefore has no soul.

Appalled and fearful for the wellbeing of his master, the squire urgently looked towards the front of the procession, where Sir Grace and Undine were already nearing the chapel's door. He glanced back, looking for the farmer once more, realising he would need the man to relate his tale to his master; but the farmer had disappeared into the slowly winding procession of villagers following on behind the happy couple, vanishing as completely as if he had never really existed.

As Sir Grace and his bride-to-be passed through the chapel's doors, the squire realised with a heavy heart that it was too late to put a stop to their marriage. He had no choice but to hope that the farmer was mistaken – a naively superstitious peasant, propagating nothing but ill-founded rumours and gossip – determining instead that he would keep a close eye on his new mistress.

If she was indeed a mischievous little water sprite who had cleverly entrapped his master, then surely she would soon unintentionally reveal that she lacked a soul.

*

Almost as soon as the marriage of Sir Grace and Undine was happily concluded, the raging storm began to calm, the squalls blowing themselves farther afield to plague some other unfortunate area. With the abrupt ceasing of the torrents of rain, the surrounding land at last began to recover, the burst banks of the rivers re-establishing themselves once more and at last directing the floodwaters off towards the sea.

The squire watched all this with foreboding, while Sir Grace observed this apparently miraculous intervention with a bliss almost approaching ecstasy, seeing it all as a blessing on his marriage: for he could now return to his own lands with his beautiful new bride.

As they travelled, Undine did indeed gradually reveal her true nature, but in no way reflecting the untamed creature the squire had feared; rather, she blossomed into the finest lady he had ever come across, someone who was kind and considerate to everyone they met on their journey. She even displayed genuine affection for him, too, her conversation surprisingly delightful and full of good humour, while towards Sir Grace she was both attentive and deeply loving.

If that idiot farmer had been even remotely right, the squire silently scoffed one night as Undine tenderly fed their horses, then at some point his wonderful mistress had acquired a soul.

*

The real test for Undine's remarkable improvement, of course, would come when she was introduced to ladies of high standing, of noble birth.

This was to come far earlier than anyone might have originally expected, and be the most arduous trial of all; for Sir Grace decided to pay his respects to his own lord the duke as they made their way through his lands. Even as they entered the busy courtyard of the palace, where the duke's courtiers gathered around a chuckling fountain, they were immediately approached by the elegantly majestic Beregina, the duke's daughter.

Surprising them all, Beregina was instantly entranced by the grace and beauty of Undine. Linking arms with her as if they were dear sisters, Beregina took Undine aside, insisting that the young girl tell her everything there was to know about her.

Poor, innocent Undine: she wasn't to know, of course, that it had been the haughty Beregina who had sent Sir Grace and his squire out on their fool's errand to the Forest of The Rusalki as a means of proving his love for her. So as soon as Undine unwittingly revealed that she and Sir Grace were married, Beregina's love was instantly transformed into hate.

'You've married the daughter of poor _fisherfolk_?' Beregina imperiously sneered at Sir Grace as, letting Undine's arm hang limp, she irately strode over towards him.

For yes, poor, innocent Undine had also naively informed Beregina of her lowly upbringing in the village.

Overhearing Beregina's contemptuous insult and observing its effect on the distraught Undine, a count from Naples gallantly stepped forward, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

'Yet _I'd_ heard,' he declared assuredly, 'that it is the Lady Beregina herself who is the _real_ child of fisherfolk: for it's claimed in my lands that Prince Kühleborn kidnapped her and entrusted her to the duke.'

Naturally, everyone who heard this inflammatory accusation was aghast at the man's impertinence. Beregina in particular, of course, was outraged.

'Is _this_ the necklace of a fisherman's daughter?' she stormed, lifting up for all to see the string of sparkling jewels draped around her neck.

It was indeed the most remarkable of necklaces, one made of the richest gems of every colour: and everyone knew Beregina had worn it since she had been the tiniest baby, with some people even making the ridiculous claim that she might have been born wearing it.

Undeterred, the count insolently stepped forward to lift up a number of the glistening stones in his own hand.

He had the ecstatic look of the priest about him, thought Sir Grace, but his squire would disagree with him, seeing in this discourteous count the ruddiness of the farmer who had spoken to him on the island.

Within the count's palm, the jewels began to shiver, to become fluid; trickling through his fingers, as if the gems were nothing more than frozen water that had now warmed in the heat of his hand.

Within the wondrously coloured streams, the sparkling, refracted light cast out images of past events.

The sapphire blue was the lake from which Kühleborn himself arose, a prince formed of the waters, flowing swiftly and silently towards the fisherfolk's home.

The ruby red was the blood of the new-born babe, ignored ever so briefly as the fisherman tends to his exhausted wife.

The amber yellow was the flash as Kühleborn snatched up the child, slipping her beneath his cloak of moss.

The emerald green was the sprite slipped into the babe's place, the glitter of diamond the magic transforming her skin into the milky white of a human's.

And as the necklace dissolved within the count's grip, Beregina crumpled in a faint to the floor.

*

Sir Grace was the first to rush to the dazed Beregina's side, but Undine was only a short step behind.

'I'll fetch some water–'

Beregina's eyes flickered open once more, blazing with hate and perhaps terror as Undine attempted to help her.

She shrugged back from Undine fearfully.

'At least I don't have _demons_ for parents!' she snapped.

She clung onto Sir Grace, as if seeking safety in his arms.

' _What_ have you brought amongst us?' she demanded angrily.

Aware of the flaming fear in Beregina's eyes, Sir Grace stretched out a powerful arm to hold Undine back, to _push_ her back.

'You've done enough,' he snarled with barely controlled anger at Undine. 'You fooled me – _entranced_ me – into a false marriage: a trick to prevent me marrying Beregina!'

Undine was horrified by her husband's furious accusation.

'No no, please,' she pleaded tearfully, 'I _swear_ I didn't use magic–'

Whether it was true or not that she had or hadn't used magic, magic was now definitely taking place around her.

Just as the priceless jewels of the necklace had dissolved into nothing but stained streams of sparkling water, now the count himself was quivering, liquefying, vanishing as completely as if he had never really existed as he flowed into another form: Kühleborn, Prince of the Water Spirits.

'Are those who benefit from a soul morally superior to the _supposedly_ soulless spirits who live in my waters?' he asked sternly, his voice crackling like a river rippling over stones. ' _That_ is what I wanted to discover!'

His disapproving grimace at Beregina served as his sign that he had his answer.

He reached out towards Undine, grasping a hand in his as he cast over her the feathered veil he had kept hidden from her: and like him, she was instantly transformed into a glorious swan that rushed into the air, swirled around the court – and vanished into the pool at the base of the fountain.

*

Despite the fountain's pool being remarkably shallow, there was no sign of either Kühleborn or Undine.

They had thankfully returned to the watery depths where they belonged, Beregina declared with satisfaction, lovingly taking Sir Grace's hand in hers.

'Which means Sir Grace has also thankfully been released from his demonic entrapment!' she added brightly.

It was the perfect opportunity, everyone agreed.

The joyful couple would be married that week.

*

Sir Grace lay in his bed, drenched in the fears and anxieties he constantly sweated out whenever he tried to sleep.

Despite this, at some point he must have at last thankfully fallen asleep, for he sensed he was being lifted up by the wings of swans, and carried out across the lands, across a great, endless ocean.

The swans sang, a song he took to be a foreboding of death.

As a storm gathered, as the sea became darker, endlessly black, an equally darkened swan took him down into the whirling waters.

A light glowed white and pure deep down in the blackness.

Undine.

Her tears were white, as milkily perfect as pearls. Flowing upwards, past him, reaching for the surface.

Through the angry drumming of the ferociously pummelling water, he caught the whispers of calls for help; but they were his own calls of obsession, drowned out until they were only whispers.

*

It was during the marriage celebration itself, at midnight, that every light in the palace was abruptly snuffed out.

No candle or brand would light again. Every wick, every piece of kindling, was soaked, as if they had been left out in a heavy rain.

In the darkness, people wept with fear, reached for their swords, their daggers.

In the courtyard, the previously darkened pool surrounding the fountain glittered, mercurial in its brightness, as the moon cast her silvery veil into its waters.

And as the moon can draw up the waters of even the great ocean, she now drew up the deeper, darker waters lying hidden beneath the pool, moulding them, reshaping them.

Undine rose from the waters draped in the milky veil, silent, but assured in her purpose.

*

Her tears were priceless pearls, left behind her in a stream tracking her course through the darkened palace.

She wept, it is said, as if weeping out her very soul.

She moved as if through flowing waters, unhindered by the lack of light, the useless flailing of the blinded people cavorting around her.

Despite the brightness of her veil, only Sir Grace could see her.

He fell onto his knees before her.

Bending low, she kissed him.

And all around the blissful couple, the irresistible waves of the great, dark ocean struck, taking everything and everyone else with them.

*

# Chapter 36

The girl was her _soul_.

The girl on the card: the girl Sandy had seen on the very top of the mountain, of Alatyr _._

How was that possible?

She was _alive_ ; surely she had a _soul_!

But no; she _hadn't_ , not really.

She didn't possess her own swan veil, like her sisters, her brother.

Yes, she saw now that these five children were somehow her siblings: there were _five_ swans on her card, and yet there had been _seven_ on the knight's shield, _six_ of whom had been killed.

She _was_ a sister, a sister unborn at the time, murdered within her mother's womb; that was why she had witnessed their deaths, their later acquisition of another form of soul – the swan veils, which granted them another level of life, a life in another, earlier time.

Then why was she seemingly _really_ alive here, while her sisters, her brother, had required her to wake them from what could have been an endless slumber?

They all had a picture, a portrait of a kind, each one painted by her:

Olga had _Enid_.

Tatiana's was _The Portrait of a Girl with a Blue Cloak._

Maria' _s The Beautiful Wallflower._

Anastasia, _A Lady Holding a Rose._

And Alexis now had _Undine_.

Yes, this all had _something_ to do with the paintings. (Although she couldn't be quite sure what that _something_ was!)

So which was _her_ painting?

The _icon_!

Of course, _her_ painting was the _icon_ – which she had somehow felt attracted to right from the very start!

*

Standing in front of the glorious icon, Sandy sensed once again, as she had on that unforgettable occasion when had first seen it, that there was an almost umbilical cord of mutual attraction running between herself and the painting.

It drew her in, that strangely reversed use of perspective. The light, too, seemed to emanate _from_ the picture, a light suffusing everything else that drew closer towards it.

It wasn't, of course, a picture of the Mother of God embracing the Christ Child.

She had already seen, had witnessed for herself, the real subjects of this particular icon.

The Ziva Swan Maiden, Lada – Love. And the child, the child with its heart of burning flame.

_Her_ soul: yes, she was sure now that the child was connected in some important way to her, for her own heart burned as she wholly accepted this as being true, undeniable.

But then, where did an icon end, where was its vanishing point, but deep within the heart of its observer?

It wasn't a reflection of life; it was a gateway into another world, another realm of pure contemplation.

Her heart burned like a white hot stone, upon which all secrets are inscribed, revealing the Seven Stages of Love, of Lada.

Attraction.

Infatuation.

The Opening of The Heart.

Trust.

Worship.

Obsession.

And, finally, the Death of The Self

*

# Chapter 37

The swirl of creation spun around the head and feet of the beautiful Swan Maiden, all of it emanating from the weaving of her lustrous hair, all of it given life and fertilised by the dew she let spill across the heavens.

By her side, there happily crouched the young girl, her flaming heart beating with joy, her eyes alive with hope.

Sandy was no longer holding a card, a card revealing how everyone was formed from the white stone: she was now holding a white swan feather.

'When the lives of your siblings were so unfairly cut short,' Lada explained in answer to Sandy's unspoken question, 'you came to me for help; for, as yet unborn, you weren't yet entirely a part of life, and so remained capable of talking to me.'

She glanced down tenderly at the girl, who returned her warmly loving smile.

'I have seven souls,' she continued, looking towards Sandy once more, 'and so I had six that I could use to grant you all another form of life.'

'Then why is my life _different_ to theirs? Why was I born in an earlier age?'

Sandy sensed that she had no real need to ask the question, yet she unfortunately couldn't fully control a surge of irritation.

'My spiritual love could only grant them a heavenly happiness: to be awakened to an earthly existence, however, they had to be made aware of the Seven Stages of Love inscribed upon all living hearts – and as you were the only one who hadn't taken part in the life originally prepared for you, you accepted that this must be your role.'

She once again exchanged loving smiles with the child; with Sandy's soul.

A soulless existence?

Is that my fate? Sandy wondered forlornly.

'She's here, _safe_ with me: a _shared_ soul,' Lada answered, adding with a hint of apology, 'You have a life to live: and Death, as you will hear, is something that even I do not treat lightly.'

*

# Chapter 38

The Death of Death

On the shore of the Great Ocean, girls who are both women and birds sing and dance whenever they emerge in the spring to bring life-giving moisture to the fields.

Some call these beautiful creatures nymphs, or Bereginy (meaning 'shore'), Rusalki or Rozhanitsy ('birth, origin'), goddesses of fate of whom the most famous is Makosh, the Ziva Swan of life, offspring and fertilising waters.

As they joyfully played and sang by the water's edge, a passing god fell in love with one of them, a nymph called Roz. And although Roz tried to hide her nakedness (for her feathered veil had been left upon the shore) by hiding behind a large white stone, the god threw a golden apple into the air that, bursting from the sky as a lightning bolt, struck the stone so fiercely that it was soon instantly aflame.

Within that flame there burned an image of a man, and so Roz called upon the god Svarog to help her bring this man into life as Dazhdbog, or 'Giving God': for although he was only partially a god, it was a state that was thereby not entirely unattainable for him.

And as he threw parts of that white hot stone over his shoulder, Svarog himself called upon the help of the goddess Lada, saying that wherever a white stone landed, a human should appear.

*

While riding high in the sky, Dazhdbog came across another rider, Zlatogorka, or 'Bitter Gold': and despite her being a daughter of Viy of the Underworld, and therefore an aspect of death itself, they were married. And while out riding together, they discovered a strange tomb, inscribed with a legend:

'There will lie here the one who is destined to stay here by the will of Makosh.'

Dazhdbog found the casket too small for him, but for Zlatogorka it was just the right size, even when the cover was slipped back into place.

But now the cover couldn't be moved by either of them, no matter how hard they tried to push it aside.

Dazhdbog headed for the realm of Zlatogorka's father, seeking help, his journey taking him to a grand palace in which beautiful music played on golden strings and a beautiful dark-haired young woman greeted him with the most delicious of drinks.

The Drink of Forgetfulness.

And he stayed in this darkness of forgetfulness the whole winter, marrying this beautiful girl called Morena.

*

The Goddess of Winter could indeed be beautiful, when dressed in her finest garlands.

But as his mother Roz presented him with her wedding present – a blue handkerchief that transformed into a lake when waved – she warned him that Morena was also the old crone of cold, hunger, and death; a sorceress associated with witches and other demonic creatures, despite being Ziva Swan's sister.

So when Kashchej, son of Viy, pointed out that she had made a bad marriage – for Dazhdbog, after all, was only the son of a Rusalka, and therefore only partially a god (for they weren't to know, of course, that Dazhdbog's death lay safe and untouchable within her casket) – she decided she would rid herself of him. While Dazhdbog was in a daze of forgetfulness, Morena and Kashchej threw him into a deep well leading to the Underworld. Then transforming into a great black bird, Morena disappeared with Kashchej.

When Dazhdbog finally awoke, he would have been endlessly trapped within the darkness if his horse hadn't come on the call of his whistle and, dropping her long tail down the well, helped him climb out. Yet when he found Morena once again, he foolishly believed her when she insisted Kashchej had forced himself upon her.

More foolishly still, he gratefully accepted yet another of her poisonous drinks.

This time he woke up nailed to a mountainside.

*

This time, it was the Ziva Swan who came across the crucified Dazhdbog.

Fortunately, she could take him away to be healed in Yriy, where the birds fly to and souls go after death.

No one could kill Morena and stop her bringing pain to the world: nor could Kashchej be killed, Makosh the Ziva Swan informed him – for the children of Viy were themselves death, while Morena was the Maiden of Death.

'It can't be true that Rod made the world this way!' Dazhdbog insisted.

As Makosh considered this, considering the _whole_ of fate, she twirled her golden apple on a silver plate, such that all was revealed to her.

The Death he was looking for, she informed him morosely, is hidden in the Egg.

The Egg is in the Black Swan.

The Black Swan is in the Hare: and so the Black swan will fly off if you kill the Hare.

The Hare is in the Casket: and so the Hare will rear away if you don't take care as you open the Casket.

The Casket is one similar to her own, Makosh added: although hers naturally contained Seven Souls.

So hearing this, Dazhdbog left to go looking for Death.

*

Aided by Makosh, Dazhdbog opened the casket, releasing his soul, his own death.

She caught for him the Gold Hare of the Moon (who even now, when the moon is full, can be seen on its surface mixing the elixir of immortality): and so Dazhdbog found himself on a shore overlooking the dark yet silvery Great Ocean.

Here he himself became a great bird, flying out across the Ocean all others need the winged serpent boat to safely traverse.

He caught the Black Swan, its feathers spreading and falling as Grievances, its bones tumbling into the dark Waters of Death, where the Black Swan was reformed once more.

Dazhdbog found his Egg, its fragile shell containing Death.

But as he was about to break into the Egg, he heard a warning.

From the broken Egg, a Celestial Fire will rage.

And this raging Celestial Fire will take everything and everyone with it.

For this will be the end of the World.

_This_ will be the Death of Death.

And so the Egg remains unbroken for now.

*

# Chapter 39

Norwich was so much quieter than London.

Sandy had returned to the town of her birth.

Her _soulless_ birth.

No: that wasn't fair.

She had a soul, a soul seated in grace next to Lada, sharing in her endless love.

And yet she despaired that, unlike her sisters, her brother, she couldn't fly off as a swan to the shores of the Great Ocean.

They were now Omninascent, forever being reborn everywhere.

Whenever a concerned Leighton visited her, he could never understand her ever pervading sense of sadness; and she could never, ever, of course, adequately explain it.

She would, however, make _some_ attempt.

She would write down her own tale, for him to read and take as the truth or not.

*

It was of course extremely late when Sandy, at last finishing her tale, laid her white quill to rest.

When she looked out across her secluded garden, its innumerable stars of jasmine sparkled in the misty, silvery light of the moon. It was a garden naturally graced with marigolds, roses, hibiscus, and columbine; yet they all shone not with their usual bright colours but with a milky, mercurial glimmer.

As the glass doors leading out to the garden opened, an electrically crackling breeze swam everywhere about her. The lawn stretching out before her no longer appeared to be of grass but, rather, could have been a dewy pool of milk strewn water.

As it usually did, the swan landed elegantly upon these waters, its transformation into a beautiful girl all part of the same graciously flowing movement.

By the time Olga stepped into the room, she was fully formed, her manner of dress as simple and modest as she preferred. Her smile was sincere and kind as, after she and Sandy had warmly embraced, she announced with all the thoughtful sensitivity she was loved for, 'It is time, sister.'

*

Behind Olga, five more swans were gracefully coming in to land upon the pool of purest moonlight.

Only one of them transformed as they landed however; becoming in a matter of seconds the girl of the flaming heart.

The girl who was Sandy's own soul.

She had brought with her one of Lada's Golden Apples. With the most demure of smiles, she handed the apple to Sandy, their hands touching, mingling and becoming as one.

'Open for me the door of flesh,' Sandy instinctively intoned as the glow of eternal youth shone about her, 'and let the child lead me out into the light and freedom.'

Her brother and sisters who had remained out on the pool were already taking to the air once more. Olga followed, her transformation into a swan smooth and effortless, her soaring into the sky elegant and graceful.

And now, at last, Sandy could follow them.

She didn't wish to resist. She stepped through the doors, out into the starlit garden.

Suffused in this silvery, mystical milk, she sensed her nakedness, that she was wearing nothing but her own glorious fleece of tumbling hair, as pure as Eve in Eden.

She felt herself rising, her whole body as light and buoyant as if she were bathing within mystical waters.

She rose upwards, heading towards the glittering moon; a vast hole within the darkness, a portal into another world.

*

# Chapter 40

Epilogue

Leighton was mystified by what appeared to be Emma's (he had always preferred to call Sandy by her birth name) sudden and unexpected death.

It had taken him a while to painstakingly gather together the many pages of a bizarre tale that he had found fluttering around her garden like so many elusive white feathers, every sheet attempting to swirl away from him in even the lightest breeze.

It was a glorious garden of jasmine, of white roses, a Moon Garden where they had met many times before.

To ensure even a partial understanding of its meaning, his painting would naturally have to refer to _Greek_ myths: for they, after all, were the myths most people were fully familiar with.

_Nemea_ : daughter of Selene, and one of the Crenaiai, the Naiad nymphs of wells and fountains.

He portrayed her innocent and naked, but for the very finest of white veils.

And yet within his _Crenaia, the Nymph of the Dargle_ , there would be a hidden detail, one so small and seemingly unimportant that many might miss it.

Above her heart, almost concealed amongst the folds of veil – the very merest hint of a pure white swan feather.

*

End

Link to Frederic Leighton's  Crenaia, the Nymph of the Dargle

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens

