In The Coils Of The Snake (5 page)

“What
a lucky thing for you not to be stuck so long in that bor
ing hallway,” she noted. “I’ll see you later
then.” The young goblin’s
unhappy expression
as he walked off indicated that he viewed this last statement as a threat.

Miranda’s goal was
the balcony overlooking the lake valley on
the
other side of those stately windows. This valley came closest to
the
world that Miranda had left behind. Hollow Lake, in which she
had splashed and played as a little girl, was a
large oval body of
water several
miles across. Beneath it lived the goblins, in simple vil
lages and farms, raising the crops and animals
that fed them and the dwarves. The shores of the lake were like mountains
hemming them in, the impassable boundaries of their deep round valley. The
waters
of the lake were the only sky
that most of them ever saw, a trembling
firmament of shifting cobalt
twilight by day, and a bland and featureless velvet blackness by night.

Miranda stood with
her hand on the cold stone of the window frame, taking in the view across the
round valley. Here, birds flew,
although
they took care not to fly too high, or they would find them
selves swimming instead. Here, plants grew,
although no trees could
survive. And here, if nowhere else in the
kingdom, the sun shone—after a fashion.

This
valley was a dim and murky place, the sunlight reaching it
through
the filter of deep water. Only when the sun stood straight overhead did the
water become more translucent. For just a little
while, the aquamarine gloom lightened. The difference wasn’t dra
matic,
but she had already come to treasure it. More than anything else that she had
lost, Miranda missed the sun.

But today, she found
to her dismay that the balcony was occu
pied.
Marak’s widow, Kate, was already there. Miranda felt shy and
reserved in
the presence of the dignified woman. She knew that Catspaw thought the world of
his mother.

“Hello, Miranda,”
said Kate. “I’m glad to see you.” Miranda greeted her politely in
return and sat down a little distance away. Now, here was a perfect King’s
Wife, she thought, a bit overawed.
Kate
worked constantly for her people, and everyone adored her. She
was
graceful and formal without seeming in the least snobbish. Miranda reflected
unhappily that Catspaw’s mother probably never gave selfish orders to her door
guards.

“I love to come
here,” Kate volunteered. “It’s the only place in the whole kingdom
where one can see a real horizon. I hope you
won’t
mind sharing it with me sometimes. My new balcony faces the
gardens.”

Of
course, remembered Miranda: Marak’s widow had just
moved
out of the royal rooms. She instantly felt worried and guilty about her own
impending possession of them. Perhaps this impor
tant woman resented that. Miranda murmured something civil, and
silence descended once again, but now she felt
obliged to break it.

“I
come here to see the sunlight,” she confessed. “I like to see the
valley brighten up at this time of day, but it looks as if today must be
cloudy.” The remarks were harmless enough, but her
longing showed on her face, and now Kate looked as if she were the one feeling
guilty.

“I’m
so sorry,” she answered. “I hate it that you can’t go outside.
Catspaw
says that it’s too dangerous to allow every King’s Wife to go outside the way I
do, but maybe he will make an exception now and then. I’ll ask him to let you
go outside with us on the next fullmoon night.”

After
her ghastly experience in the blackness of the Kings’
crypt, Miranda could think of few things worse. “Please
don’t!” she
exclaimed
in horror. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” she amended,
blushing deeply, “but I wouldn’t like to be outside
at night. I’m
afraid of the dark.”

“Oh.” The
lovely woman stared at her, quite surprised. “Please excuse me for a
moment,” she said and left the balcony.

Miranda reflected in
consternation on how rude she must have sounded. Up until then, she had hidden
her phobia quite well. Now
her future mother-in-law
might use this information to torment her,
just as her own mother had.
She could hear Til’s voice in her mind, elegant and scornful:
Really,
darling, what a stupid thing to say.

Then
Kate was back, sitting down close beside her and clasping
a
bracelet around Miranda’s wrist. ‘A dwarf made this for me,” she
explained. “It lights up if you’re ever in the dark. I remember how
dark it seemed when I first came here and how
glad I was to have it
with me. I’d like you to have it now.”

Miranda studied the
triple rope of diamonds, completely won over by the unexpected kindness. “Thank
you,” she said. ‘And I’m
sorry,”
she added sincerely, “that you had to move out of your rooms.”

“Oh, I don’t
mind,” said Kate lightly. ‘All that gaudy decoration! That sort of display
has never been to my taste.” She gazed
placidly
over the valley while Miranda studied her out of the corner
of her eye.
Did she feel as betrayed as Miranda did about Marak’s abandonment of them? He
hadn’t even spoken a word to her before climbing into his tomb.

“Doesn’t
it make you angry sometimes that he just walked away?”
she
ventured.

The
beautiful woman turned toward her. Deep in those blue eyes,
there
was a preoccupied look, as if she weren’t really paying attention.
She seemed to be
listening for certain footsteps, or the sound of a familiar voice. In a flash,
Miranda understood why Marak’s widow
was
handling her loss so well. Kate undoubtedly knew that her hus
band was
dead — but part of her was still waiting for him.

“That who
walked away, dear?” asked Kate mildly. Miranda didn’t have the heart to
answer.

• • •

A few days later,
the girl sat with Catspaw in his library. While the busy goblin King recorded
the day’s decisions, writing left-handed
because
of his awkward paw, she ran her eyes over the closely packed
shelves, scanning the long sets of matched
volumes. She was bored
with her
inactivity and annoyed at her own boredom, and she wasn’t
feeling particularly gracious. But that didn’t
matter; she would have
the right
smile ready for her royal fiance when he looked up at her.

With a slight frown,
the goblin King took her hand and exam fined the jewelry she wore. Among his
own gifts, he spied Kate’s bracelet and touched it with a finger.

“Mother tells
me you’re afraid of the dark,” he said. “I hadn’t known.”

Miranda
was taken aback by the revelation and felt anxious
about
what it might mean.

“Did something here
cause it?” he asked.

“No, it started
when I was young,” she answered reluctantly. Then she realized he had
noticed her hesitation.

“How?” he
demanded, and she decided that she had better tell him the truth.

“One
day Mother was scolding me, and I told her I was glad that
I
was going away when I grew up. There were lots of things we
couldn’t say because of the magic, but there were
still things that we
could say.

“Mother always
hated to hear that sort of thing — I don’t know why; as much as she disliked me,
you’d think she would have been glad, too. This time, she glared at me and
said, ‘You’ll go away, all
right. You’ll be
locked up forever in the dark. Let’s try it out and see
how you like it.’

“She dragged me
downstairs to the cellar and shut me into a
room.
Not one ray of light came in. Then she stood outside and
talked to me
while I screamed and pounded on the door. ‘There are
things in the dark that can’t come out in the day,’ she told me. ‘You’re
cursed. You’ll never escape.’”

“She
could say that because it was a lie,” growled Catspaw.
“The
magic only blocked her from speaking the truth about the kingdom. It’s
unfortunate that Til is part of my family; I can’t take
goblin revenge. All the same, I don’t see why her life should be going
so
well. I’ll have to give the matter some thought.”

“I’m
sure she didn’t keep me there very long,” Miranda told him,
oddly uncomfortable over the calm threat. “Papa let
me out. He was
yelling at Mother,
just as upset as I was. He was probably afraid of
what Marak would do. But Mother was very cool about it. I remember
she laughed at him. She said, ‘Maybe now she’ll
want to stay with me.’

“She
was right, too. I was afraid to see the sun go down, terrified
all
night, and the nurse wouldn’t let me keep a candle. I crept out of
bed and huddled in a patch of moonlight, thinking
about how
Marak always visited after
dark. The next time he came, I didn’t run
to greet him, and I cried when
he walked into the room. It sounds
silly,
time different but it was the first time I noticed how different he was from
everyone
else.”

“What did he
do?” asked Catspaw with interest. “Did he work any spells?”

“I don’t think
so,” she answered. “He was just himself. He held me on his lap, and
he talked to me.” Her voice wavered because of the lump that had formed in
her throat. She stopped abruptly and
studied
the diamond bracelet. Sometimes it still hurt terribly to
think of him.

Catspaw
leaned toward her as she glanced up and held her gaze
with
his own. “My spells keep the lamps lit, Miranda,” he said quietly. “I
won’t ever leave you in the dark.”

Miranda
was touched by his consideration. She hadn’t imagined
the
goblin King like this. She saw her royal suitor as someone to charm and
impress, but she hadn’t realized that she would have to
trust him. Maybe he wouldn’t always seem like such a stranger, she
thought
with relief. She remembered Marak’s last talk with her:
Catspaw will be all
that to you.

“That night
when I was frightened, Marak told me about my future,” she recalled. “It
was the first time that he said I would be a King’s Wife.”

“Then
I remember that night as well,” said Marak Catspaw.
“It’s one of the only times I saw Father worried. I
was up late, study
ing political
economy or some such thing, when he came into my
room. ‘You’ve got to marry that girl,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I
just
promised her that you would.”’

Miranda felt
startled. “I thought he knew my future,” she pro
tested. “He sounded so sure of it. I thought
he could see it in my face.”

Catspaw
smiled. “He was just being a King,” he said. “Kings
are
never supposed to seem uncertain. I don’t see anything about your future in
your face. I only see the character from the Door Spell.”

“You can see
that?” wondered Miranda, rubbing her forehead. “I didn’t know it left
a mark.”

“
It’s gold, and it shines a little,” said the
goblin, tracing over the
script character with his fingertip. “I
think it looks attractive.”

Miranda pondered
that, unsure how she felt about displaying a
symbol
that she herself couldn’t see. She wondered how many other
goblins could
read it, and whether it really was attractive. Catspaw continued to study her,
hesitating over something. If Kings weren’t supposed to seem uncertain, he was
breaking his own rule.

Then he leaned down
and kissed her.

It
was a nice kiss, Miranda decided. It made her feel appreciated,
and she felt affectionate in return. For once, the smile
that she gave her fiance wasn’t a charming mask but an expression of honest
feel
ing instead.

The goblin seemed to
have enjoyed the kiss, too. He looked
excited
and resolute. “Only two more months until our wedding,”
he
remarked. “Then I’ll erase this” — he touched the Door symbol — “and
write the King’s Wife character there.”