Chapter 13: 13 – Diana

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Fresh air on Diana’s face roused her.

She was lying, appropriately enough, on an old-fashioned fainting couch with one raised end and a partial back. A brisk breeze tickled her skin; she turned her head, and found that one end of the room was open to the terrace, supported by two pillars dividing the space.

The loggia. That was outside not far away. Clean air and safety.

Hands were stripping her sturdy low boot off her injured ankle, and exploring it by touch.

“Hm, not so bad, just twisted. I can fix this up in no time.”

“Who...” Diana struggled to sit up.

The woman on one knee beside the couch was green.

Well, mostly green. A rich, living shade that made her think of her mother’s garden. What passed for hair, though, was a cascade of varied flowering tendrils. Her simple halter top and what looked like casual shorts were both pale yellow and white.

The green woman gave her a gentle smile. “Just relax. I’m going to wrap your ankle with something that will heal it for you. You won’t want to be wandering around the house tonight in pain and with limitations on your ability to walk. Jake’s very sweet and thoughtful but I doubt you’d want him carrying you everywhere all night.” She got up and walked away, over to a long stone counter built along the inner wall; a shelf above it held a considerable collection of jars and bottles and bowls and other things not as easily identifiable. The outer wall, which was largely windows, had a double row of shelves along its full length, and they were heavy with potted plants. In between were several polished wooden chairs and tables.

“What... who are you?” Diana heard her voice climbing.

“That’s Thalia,” Sally said patiently, from a chair nearby. “She takes care of everything medical in the house.”

“I think I just want to leave now. I’m certain that there’s something wrong with this house. Toxic hallucinogenic mold, or gas, or chemicals or... or something. I need to get out to the road.”

“That’s a problem,” Sally said. “It’s Hallowe’en night. There’s no way to leave the estate and get back to your own world until sunrise. I mean, you could leave the property, but you wouldn’t be anywhere you’d want to be.”

“What?”

“That’s just how it works. But I told you, you’re in zero danger. At sunrise, you’ll meet the Mistress, and you can go back to your normal life, safe and sound. You won’t even have any bad memories of being here, because you’ll forget it all.”

“Don’t put any faith in your camera, either,” Thalia added, returning with a bowl of something that sloshed. She dropped to one knee again, and began to wrap something around Diana’s injured ankle. “They don’t tend to record very well here.”

“What do you mean, forget?” Diana said. “I really don’t think I’m going to forget any of this!”

“Maybe you won’t,” Sally said diplomatically. “You can just stay in the library until sunrise if you want. I can make sure that no one else comes in.”

Diana looked down. Whatever Thalia was applying to her ankle, it was wet and green, like long strips of leaves. The ache was fading rapidly.

“And you’ll be able to walk back there on your own,” Thalia said, straightening. “Give that a few minutes, and your ankle will be good as ever.”

Diana looked around the room.

The walls weren’t papered, but then, the loggia was somewhat more exposed to damp and temperature variation than other rooms. Instead, the walls were painted in a beautiful pseudo-classical style with arches and green fields beyond. The floor was tiled in a pattern with black and amber marble. Heavy brocade drapes of warm cream and amber had been drawn back to expose the windows and open end.

The whole space was beautiful, in a way she’d only ever seen in person in museums and heritage sites trying to freeze time in a snapshot. A real living version of a great house, on the other hand...

“Do I have to?” she asked.

“Do you have to do what?” Sally asked.

“Stay just in the library.”

“Oh! Oh, definitely not. I was just suggesting that as your least-stressful option. No one in the family will harm you, but that doesn’t mean that spending a night roaming around the house is necessarily an easy or comfortable experience. Things, um, tend to happen. And they can be unsettling for some humans, even if there’s no actual danger.”

“So I could go look around? Is the rest of the house like this? Not just abandoned and decaying, but actually in use, the way it should be?”

“Yes,” Thalia said. “The whole house.”

“Even if I forget it, I really want to see that.” Sally had to be wrong about that, right? And Thalia was excessively negative about the success of cameras?

Thalia shrugged. “Okay. You can probably walk around at this point. Leave the wrapping on, it’ll just crumble off when it’s completely done its work. Not that there’s any hurry. Sunrise is a long time off. If you get overwhelmed, just go back to the library. I suggest that you try to react to the unexpected in a way other than fainting, however. Keep that up and you’ll eventually get tired of various family members bringing you back here so you can wake up on my couch. We are not the strangest sights you’ll come across in this house.”

“If I’m ready, I’ll be okay,” Diana said. For the sake of exploring this house in this condition, it would be worth it.

What if it really was a hallucination caused by something in the house? Something that was killing her? She had a daughter who needed her alive.

This felt awfully real.

She got up and walked to the open end of the loggia, where she could look out past the terrace.

The grassy lawn was immaculately mowed, and bordered with well-kept versions of the hedges and trellises she’d seen on her earlier explorations.

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The sky looked... wrong.

For one thing, there were two moons up there, one of the normal size and colour, but there was a second one, much larger and copper-coloured like a harvest moon.

And whatever she’d just seen fly past the latter, it was not a bird or a bat. Not with that tail.

“You really don’t want to go out there,” Sally said worriedly. “It’s safe for you here but not outside the estate, and even if you can stay out of trouble, it would be easy to get lost.”

It could be a hallucination. Her best chance of survival might be to walk out of here, despite what she could see, letting logic rule over her senses.

But she wasn’t taking that chance.

“Right,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I think I’m going to just follow that advice and stay in the house for the night, and hope like hell that I’m still alive in the morning.”

“That’s the one thing that isn’t in question,” Thalia said. “Enjoy your explorations.”

Diana looked down at herself, and sighed. “Too bad I’m not better-dressed for the atmosphere.”

Sally giggled. “You have a map of the house, right?”

“Yes.”

“Go directly above the library. We have someone who will be more than happy to help you with that. Turn left in the games room instead of going straight back to the library, and there’s a stairway right across the corridor. You’ll be almost there.”

“Uh... thank you. For everything. Um, the big guy too, wherever he went.” Her ankle held her weight with no discomfort at all. She pulled her boot back on, gathered up her bag, and stood up.

“You’re welcome,” Sally said. “Good luck.”

She thought she heard, just before she stepped into the corridor, Sally’s worried voice say, “I hope she’s more resilient than she’s looked so far, or she’s in for a terrible night.”

She found the stairs easily, and at the top, stepped into a wider bit of corridor that held a pair of walnut chairs with burgundy and wheat-gold upholstery and a matching occasional table bearing a crystalline flowering potted plant that might be spectacular glasswork but she wasn’t sure.

Directly over the library was... that way.

The door was ajar, about halfway open. Diana tapped on it cautiously. “Hello?”

“Not a voice I know,” said a clear male voice from within, thoughtfully. “So you must be our guest. Wonderful! Someone new! Do come in, please!”

Diana pushed open the door.

The room within was, on her floorplan, marked as a guest room—quite likely the one for the most high-status female guest, since it had its own large dressing room along with the standard private bath and closet, and it was the closest to the two master rooms with their shared morning room.

She saw no proper bed, just a brass daybed against one wall, half-buried in cushions in bewildering colours and patterns. Near it was a vanity table with several drawers, a large oval mirror, and an upholstered bench, the top mostly devoid of objects.

Otherwise, it looked more like a dressmaker’s workroom, with folded lengths of fabric stacked on shelves, and no less than three long work tables strewn with scissors, pincushions, tape measures, more fabric, and other things she couldn’t even begin to name. There was a dressmaker’s dummy, currently with a half-completed jacket of some kind on it. The room was pleasantly bright, with windows on either end. Folding doors, pale birch inlaid with a design of a swan pond in woods of other colours, showed where the dressing room was.

She thought she was braced for the room’s resident. She wasn’t, really.

At first she thought there was a mannequin in the room, but then realized it was walking towards her.

It looked, roughly, like a fairly attractive but unremarkable man of moderate height and a build leaning generally but not emphatically towards slim. It wore fitted pants of burgundy-and-charcoal brocade, low-heeled narrow black boots that laced to mid-calf, and a shirt of some lightweight burgundy fabric that shaded to black at the very edges of the dramatic elbow-length angel-wing sleeves and the low ruffle-edged neck. Beneath that, she could see only what looked like fine white matte porcelain: hands, arms, a hairless head, a face with the lips highlighted dull pinkish-brown and the eyes painted with black lines and bright blue irises.

Diana heard herself squeak as she fell back a step.

The strange figure stopped, and made a tsking sound. “I’m sure you ran into someone downstairs who told you Mistress’ rules.”

“Y-yes.”

“No one in the house will break Hallowe’en rules. The consequences are too high. You can stop shaking now. Are you wandering or did you come in here on purpose?”

It felt a bit silly and shallow, now. “Um... I was talking to Sally about wandering around the house, and said I wished I was dressed better to fit into the setting. She suggested I come up here.” Why had she done that, anyway? Well, she had nowhere else in particular to go.

The ceramic figure did have facial expressions, and they were quite clear. That statement elicited a broad smile. “Oh, yes, I can certainly help with that. Hm, let me take a look at you... I’m sure I have colours that will work beautifully with that lovely dark sienna skin, maybe the navy blue, it’s a very rich shade, no, that one needs a corset and you won’t be familiar with that which would make it uncomfortable for the night. A tea gown is less formal but still fabulous and far more comfortable. I have one in deep warm salmon with gorgeous ivory lace... Just let me get your size. Give me your hand? I’m not going to hurt you.”

Diana noticed that her hand was less than entirely steady as she extended it.

The ceramic figure closed a hand over hers. She expected it to be cold and hard; it was cooler than normal human flesh, certainly, but not actually cold, and there was some flex and yield there, though again, less than normal.

The ceramic figure’s outline shifted—and the burgundy clothes shifted to match. It now looked much more female. Rather familiar, in fact, and strongly reminiscent of what she saw in mirrors.

“I’m Cosmo, by the way. Have a seat, there’s a chair right there. I’ll just find that dress and be right back so you can see how it looks on your exact build, and then we can decide whether the colour works for you or I should keep looking.” Cosmo strode towards the dressing room doors. “Then we can consider accessories and such. Relax. You’re in the right place.”

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