The Gates of Sleep Read Free Page B

contact.”
    “But—” Alanna felt her throat closing
again, and Elizabeth held up her hand.
    “I have not finished. I further modified this curse;
should Arachne manage to awaken it, Marina will
not
die.”
Elizabeth sighed, wearily. “But there, my knowledge fails me. I told you
that curses are difficult; this one took the power and twisted it away from me.
I can only tell you that the curse will not kill outright. I cannot tell you
what it
will
do…”
    Alanna watched a hundred dire thoughts pass behind
Elizabeth’s eyes. There were so many things that were
worse
than
death—and many that were only a little better. What if the curse struck
Mari blind, or deaf, or mindless? What if it made a cripple of her?
    Then Elizabeth gathered herself and nodded briskly. “Never
mind. We must see that it does not come to that. Alanna, we must hide her.”
    “Hide her?” Hugh said, from behind her. “By
my faith, Elizabeth, that is no bad notion! Like—like the infant Arthur,
we can send her away where Arachne can’t find her!”
    “Take her?” Alanna clutched the infant closer,
her voice rising. “You’d take her away from me?”
    “Alanna, we can’t hide her if you go with her,”
Hugh pointed out, his own arms tightening around her. “But where? That’s
the question.”
    Hot tears spilled from Alanna’s eyes, as the others
discussed her baby’s fate, heedless of her breaking heart. They were
taking her away, her Marina, her little Mari—
    She heard them in a haze of grief, as if from a great
distance, as her friends, her husband, decided among them to send Marina away,
away, off with Sebastian and Thomas and Margherita, practically into the wilds
of Cornwall. It was Hugh’s allusion to Arthur that had decided them.
Arachne knew nothing of them; if she had known of Hugh’s childhood
schoolmates, she hadn’t recognized the playfellows that had been in the
artists of now.
    Elizabeth tried to comfort her. “It’s only
until she’s of age, darling,” her friend said, patting her
shoulders as the tears flowed and she shook with sobs. “When she’s
eighteen, she’ll come back to you!”
    Eighteen years. An eternity. An age, in which she would
never see Marina’s first step, hear her first word, see her grow…
    Alanna wept. Wept as they bundled Marina up in a
baby-basket and carried her away, leaving behind the little dresses that Alanna
had embroidered during the months of her confinement, the toys, even the
cradle. She wept as her friends smuggled the child into their cart, as if she
was nothing more than a few apples or a bottle of cider.
    She wept as they drove away, her husband’s arms
around her, her best friend standing at her side. She wept and would not be
consoled; for she had lost her heart, and something told her she would never
see her child again.
     

Chapter One
    BIRDS twittered in the rose bushes outside the
old-fashioned diamond-paned windows. The windows, swung open on their ancient
iron hinges, let in sunshine, a floating dandelion seed and a breath of mown
grass, even if Marina wasn’t in position to see the view into the
farmyard. The sunshine gilded an oblong on the worn wooden floor. Behind her,
somewhere out in the yard, chickens clucked and muttered, and two of Aunt
Margherita’s cats had a half-minute spat. Marina’s arm was starting
to go numb.
    The unenlightened might think that posing as an artist’s
model was easy, because “all” one had to do was sit, stand, or
recline in one position.
The unenlightened ought to try it some time,
she thought. It took the same sort of simultaneous concentration and relaxation
that magic did—concentration, to make sure that there wasn’t a bit
of movement, and relaxation, to ensure that muscles didn’t lock up. If
the pose was a standing one, then it wasn’t long before feet and legs
were aching; if sitting or reclining, it was a certainty that
some
part of the body would fall asleep, with the resulting
pins—and—needles agony