Page 22 of Now Comes the Mist

I look into the open grave and see a great drawing room with a roaring fire, handsome furniture, and silk drapes at the windows, through whicha light snow is falling. A dog dozes near the hearth, where another table is set for tea, though the pot smells only of bland chamomile. A servant enters the room. “All is ready, my lady,” she says, looking up out of the grave at me.

“Jump with me,” Arthur repeats. “I’ll take care of you.”

But I am suddenly, desperately afraid of falling. I look around in a panic, and once again I see between the neat paths of the conservatory that there is a hidden walkway covered with brambles. I try to pull away, preferring the thorns to the fall, but Arthur begins to cry. His sadness is unbearable, and so I let him tug me into the grave, expecting us to land before a warm and inviting hearth. But the drawing room is gone, and all that awaits us is a cold dirt floor.

I claw at the sides of the grave, terror-stricken. “I did not want this. I do not want to be here, not even with you. Let me out, Arthur!”

“Don’t go,” he pleads. “Stay with me.”

I am as frightened as I was angry earlier. Every clod of dirt I dislodge flies back into place as though I had never moved it. It is impossible to climb out of this grave.I will not see the brambles anymore, I think, grief tearing at my lungs.I will never drink Papa’s tea again.

“Stay with me,” Arthur says, and this time, it sounds more like a command.

A shadow falls over the grave. Through a curtain of mist emerges a powerful hand with a red gem shining upon the smallest finger. “I am here,” says a voice I know, a low baritone with shades of an accent I cannot place—French, perhaps, or German. Memories flood my mind: a broad frame, a face hidden by night, a kiss that promised me everything I have been denied. And a vow spoken on another evening, in another dream:I will find you again.

“It’s you,” I say with wonder. A familiar longing pierces my heart, like a hunger for that which I cannot name and have no words to describe. It has haunted me in every dream in which I wander through the mist, endlessly searching. I sense that this stranger’s long white hand holds all the answers. “Have you come for me?”

“Don’t go,” Arthur says at my elbow.

I turn and scream at what I see. Arthur is gone. In his place is something shaped like him but made entirely of writhing green vines as thick as my arm. They slither and twist and undulate like hellish snakes, each one pocked with gaping, seeping black holes full of tiny little teeth.

“Stay here,” the nightmarish mouths command me.

I seize the stranger’s hand, and in one powerful movement, he lifts me from the grave and away from the monster. And suddenly, we are no longer in the conservatory but a sprawling ballroom full of mist, dark but for the starlight filtering through the windows. Vases of dead roses surround us, and a waltz plays, hypnotic and seductive, though the room is empty.

The stranger takes me in his arms. Again, I detect no warmth or smell, only a feeling of dangerous, all-encompassing cold. “Dance with me, Lucy,” he murmurs, lips against my ear, and we waltz across the gleaming floor. I feel his hand on my waist and hear his breathing just above my head, yet when I look into the wall of mirrors behind us, I am dancing alone.

I gaze up at him, but his face is hidden in shadow. “You saved me.”

“You took my hand,” he replies.

“Where have you been?” I ask longingly. Time is often a twisted tangle in my dreams, but tonight I am certain that it has been months since our dreamed kiss in the statue garden, when I ran through the brambles to find him. I had forgotten until this very moment.

“I have been preoccupied,” he says, amused, spinning me around so that my back is pressed against his front. He wraps his arms around me, and his lips find my ear again, sending tingles of pleasure down my neck. “I will not refuse you anything. Not like them.”

I close my eyes and lean back, and Ibelievehim. He would never recoil or turn me away as Jack has, as Quincey has. As Arthur has. Arthur, to whom I called with my heart in my hands. Arthur, whose rejection hurts me most of all.

“Lucy, look at me,” the man says.

I turn my head over my shoulder and his lips are there, his head tilted down to kiss me. Our mouths dance and his hands study the geography of my body, exploring curves and valleys, but too slowly for my taste. Greedily, I seize one of them and try to place it where I want it.

He removes it with a soft laugh. “Patience. Everything you want, I will give you in time.”

“When?” I plead.

He drops a cold kiss upon my neck. “Very soon. Wait for me.”

And then I wake up.

The man is gone, and my maid stands before me, her face drawn with worry in the light of the candle she holds. “At last!” she cries, relieved. “Miss Lucy, I have been trying to rouse you.”

“Harriet.” I blink the sleep from my eyes. We are in the ballroom of my mother’s house, but there are no dead roses, no hypnotic music from invisible violins. There is not even starlight, for the drapes are closed against the night. “How long have I been out of bed?”

“I don’t know, miss. I woke up an hour ago, came down for a cup of tea, and found you in here by yourself.” She shivers. “You were dancing all alone.”

“An hour? I was dancing all that time?” I ask, stunned.

“Perhaps longer. I saw that the door was open, and there you were in your nightdress, waltzing in the dark. I thought you were a ghost at first.” She gives an embarrassed laugh.

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