The Magic Circle, Katherine Neville [parable of the sower read online .TXT] 📗

given no choice in the matter? Was this horrid opportunist, who’d tricked his way into my mother’s bed, now to be in control of my education, my life, my family’s property? Aghast, I suddenly realized that when my mother died, I would no longer have any family. A rage struck me, that dark, despairing rage that can perhaps only be so deeply felt by children, who are completely impotent over their own destiny.

I was about to dash from the room in tears when a hand touched me lightly on the shoulder. I expected my stepfather, who’d been behind me only moments before. Instead, there stood the most astonishing creature, regarding me through eyes of a deep, clear green, with mercurial fire burning in their depths—the eyes of a wild animal. Her face, framed by an unbound mane of dark hair, seemed the sort found in paintings of Ondines, creatures arisen from the sparkling magical realms of the sea. She was absolutely ravishing. And despite my youth, I was well prepared to be ravished by her, having forgotten all about Hieronymus Behn, my future, my despair—even my dying mother lying on the bed.

She spoke in a strange foreign-sounding accent, and a voice so musical that it seemed rich with hidden bells. “So this is our little English lord Stirling?” She smiled at me. “I’m Pandora, your mother’s friend and companion.”

Was it only my imagination that she’d stressed the word “mother’s”? She didn’t look old enough to be her companion—perhaps she meant paid companion—but she’d also said friend, hadn’t she? When Hieronymus came forward to address her, Pandora slipped past him as if she hadn’t noticed, and went instead to the bed where my mother lay.

Plucking little Zoe like a loose pillow from the counterpane, she casually tossed the child over one shoulder. Zoe twisted her head to look at me upside down, and she raised one eyebrow in wise judgment, as if we shared an interesting secret.

“Frau Hermione,” Pandora said to my mother, “if I were a fairy here at your bedside, and I said that you could make three wishes before you died—one wish on behalf of each of your children—what would your wishes be?”

There was whispering amongst the servants—no doubt shocked, as I was, at the cavalier manner in which this new arrival had brushed aside the master of the household and was treating the mistress’s impending death and last wishes almost as a parlor game.

But far more surprising was the change in my mother. Color infused that deathlike pallor, flushing her cheeks with a rosy glow. As she and Pandora locked eyes, a beatific smile lit her face. Though I shall always swear that neither woman spoke a single word, it seemed that a communication passed between them. After a long moment, Mother nodded. When she closed her eyes, she was still smiling.

Pandora, with Zoe swinging from her shoulder like a fur neckpiece, turned toward the rest of us. “As you children know, it’s bad luck to cast wishes abroad on the winds: it breaks the spell,” she announced. “So I’ll tell each of you in secret your mother’s wish.”

Perhaps Pandora was a fairy or sorceress, as she seemed. She slid Zoe from her shoulder onto the bed and tugged the starchy hair ribbons, shaking her head. “My poor girl, you’ve been trussed and trimmed like a Christmas goose,” she told Zoe. And as if she knew of our earlier conversation outside in the hallway, she pulled the stiff ribbons from Zoe’s hair while whispering Mother’s wish into her ear. Then she said, “Now you can go and give your mother a kiss, and thank her for your wish.”

Zoe scrambled across the bed and did as bidden.

Then Pandora went to Earnest, whispered to him likewise, and the same procedure was followed.

I found it hard to believe that, where I was concerned, there’d be much more to say in the wish department. How could my mother make a wish for me when she’d just admitted that, behind my back, I’d been sold like chattel to Hieronymus Behn, who’d waste no time demolishing my future hopes as thoroughly as he’d done to my present and my past?

Maybe it was my imagination that my stepfather, who was still standing near me, stiffened as Pandora approached us in her rustling grey silk gown. For the first time since she’d entered the room, she not only seemed to take notice of him, she looked him directly in the eye, but with an expression I couldn’t fathom.

Putting her hand on my shoulder again, she leaned to my ear so her cheek brushed mine. I could smell the warm aroma of her skin and I tingled with the same excitement as before. But her next words, spoken with great insistence, made my blood run cold.

“You must show no reaction to anything—you must go along with whatever I say,” she whispered urgently. “We’re all in great danger because of your presence here—you most of all. I cannot explain until I can get you outside this house filled with spies and lies and pain. I will try to arrange this for tomorrow, understood?”

Danger? What sort of danger? I understood nothing, but I nodded my head to show I would make no reaction. Pandora pressed my shoulder firmly and went back to the bed, taking Mother’s hand as she addressed the servants.

“Frau Behn is happy to see her children together at last,” Pandora informed them. “But even so brief a visit has taken her strength. We must leave her to rest now.”

But before the servants had filed out, Pandora called to my stepfather across the room, “Herr Behn, your wife would also like you to have the carriage prepared first thing in the morning, so I may take the children for an outing around Vienna together before Lafcadio returns to his school.”

My stepfather’s eyes flickered for a moment as he stood beside me, halfway between the bed and the door. He seemed to hesitate before bowing his head