AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And then a door opened, and the distant soft beat of waves reached my ears.
I opened my eyes again and traced the sound with my steps, found a long diagonal corridor at the corner of the hall, and caught a flash of gold near the end. I passed more rooms, enormous dining halls with enough settings for feasts, gaming dens with cards still resting on the tables, little parlors with papered walls and delicate cabinets. Finally, at the end of the corridor I reached the open door, pausing at the threshold to take in the first room to make any kind of sense since I'd left the bedroom. And yet somehow less too.
It was meant to be a library, walls high and lined with shelves and trinkets. But there was a small round table in the center with a single chair and a single place setting. A desk sat to the right side of the room, an open book on its surface and a still steaming cup of tea waiting. At the left end of the room was a fireplace surrounded by a couch and pair of armchairs. The one at the far end was twisted toward the fire and had a blanket draped over the arm. Opposite me, broad windows and a large door opened onto a terrace that overlooked a wide, empty horizon, a line of gray traced across the bottom, the sound of waves still far, but closer here.
It was a room for a single occupant. A single dinner setting, a single cup of tea, a single chair used of a set. A solitary gryphon standing alone on a stone terrace, overlooking a sea that should not have existed in the middle of the woods in Wales.
All at once, I knew Asterion was gone from this castle. A soft pang struck me at the same moment as a whisper of relief. He'd touched me, fed me at last, and then vanished. I craved more, but it was also almost proof of my freedom—of his too.
The gryphon turned, strolling back to the open door, and paused briefly as he caught sight of me.
"Asterion left to retrieve the Red Wolf," Laszlo announced to me as he entered the room. He moved to his desk, to his cup of tea, as if there were no more to say or for me to wonder about.
But there was the sound of waves in the heart of the woods.
"Where does this room exist?" I asked.
Asterion had left me with a stranger, but I knew better than to think he would do so lightly. He trusted this King of Clouds, this gryphon. And while Laszlo watched me with a bright golden stare through a pair of spectacles I doubt he needed, it was the brush of curiosity rather than the glare of intent.
"It's Hywel's dreaming." Which said nothing, really. I glanced at him, and his head tipped. "This is not just my home. Hywel sleeps below the castle. He dreams. Those dreams seep into the stone."
"And if I stepped onto the terrace?" I asked, wondering what Hywel was, and where he slept. It was a pretty, sloping name, with a breathy 'h' that led to a falling 'oh-well.' Old Welsh, I thought.
"You would smell the sea, see it. If you leapt from the edge, you would crash onto the rocks."
My steps were slow, leading to the terrace, brine on the air, the sharp tang in my nose. "And if I walked out front of the castle and around the lawn?"
"You would be surrounded by the forest of Gwydir."
An unexpected smile curled my lips, a sudden laugh rising from my chest. My eyes did not sting, but my vision blurred.Magic. Real magic—the wild kind that'd already started fading and dying away even when I was just a girl, the stories myths and legends were made of.
I glanced around the room and wondered at the books on the shelves, the trinkets. How old was this castle? How old was the collection tucked away here?
I was still smiling when I looked back to the gryphon and found him staring openly in return, expression locked away but not predatory.
"Does he dream of card games?" I asked.
"Losing Lodam and Karnöffel," Laszlo said. Outside, the clouds burst apart, allowing sunlight to cut through and glint off the delicate feathers that framed his temples and jaw.
I laughed again, my hands clapping together. "I haven't played Karnöffel since…" I caught my breath, my chest tightening, and shook my head. "So long. And the nook upstairs with the instruments?"
Laszlo was quiet, and watchful and he dipped his head slowly. "Sometimes of balls. The shadows you'll see, they are his dreamers. At a feast, they will crowd the halls and there will be a roar of conversation, but not many words to make out. He obliges the castle by maintaining enough to take care of cleaning."
"And of baths and meals?" I wondered.
Laszlo shrugged. "If you've bathed and been fed, then yes, the dreamers have found you. There are many who are quite independent. But most only come and go as his thoughts turn."
Where is he? What is he?I wondered again.
But Laszlo was turning his face down to the open book, lifting the teacup from the saucer and taking a sip. He had dark talons at the ends of his fingers, and he had to hold the painted porcelain carefully.
"If you need something, think of it, look away. It might be there when you look back," he murmured, more to the book than to me.
I stared at the gryphon for a silent moment before realizing I'd been dismissed, or at least that he had no intention of carrying on further conversation. He turned a page of his book and I stepped back, hesitating between turning to the door and the terrace.
"May I…explore?"
Laszlo looked up from the page, the heavy black of his pupils devouring the yellow iris as he stared at me. Behind his head, his full, fan-like tail feathers waved at me flirtatiously. "Asterion tells me you are free to do as you please."
