Finding Heathcliff

Seven

Since the day when Astrid found the strange book, she began spending yet more of her free time hiding in one of the window seats of the library, reading and rereading the ancient text.

She refused to join Orion on the trips to Starling which she used to treasure before, she even renounced a couple of evenings spent with her fiancé in the gardens, or in one of their chambers, that used to be the highlights of her days.

The Book of Angels changed her in many ways. Every time she caught a glimpse of her face in a mirror now, Astrid couldn't ignore her likeness to the angels from the paintings of the old world, only surviving in the photographs which she found printed on her book's yellowed pages. Her thoughts had become muddled with many new words and theories which she couldn't stop thinking about even when she was surrounded by people. Her hair, which she used to loathe because it was too bright, Astrid now wished to be all white-blond like the strand of platinum she was forced to hide. Like the hair of the mysterious man, who she started to believe was an angel...

Silly Astrid, she scolded herself yet again, he wasn't an angel. Angels were pure and virtuous beings, with a pair of magnificent, white, dove-like wings. The barefooted man dressed in black, surrounded by the dark mist resembling the smoke of burning incense had hardly looked or behaved like an angel should, he had nearly killed her! More likely he was... a fallen angel, a demon, an evil spirit. Maybe she was an angel, a wingless angel... Maybe her parents had been angels, she wished they had...

Why had no one ever told her anything that really mattered about her parents, anything that would make them feel like real people, and not just more names out of a history book? Astrid only knew that they couldn't have a child for a few years after they got married. Then her mother, Queen Venus, became pregnant and her father, King Sirius died two months before Astrid was born. His wife didn't survive him for a long time, she died several months after having given birth to her only daughter. Uncle Arcturus, her father's brother, was appointed as regent then.

The princess shook her head to banish those thoughts, and her eyes, which had been staring blindly at the glass panes in front of her, fell on the book lying in her lap again. What if all that she had read about was true? What if angels and demons, heaven and hell, had really existed... what if they still lived...?

Astrid closed the book, shut her eyes and moved her head from one shoulder to the other slowly in an attempt to stretch the muscles of her neck and back, cold and rigid after hours of sitting in the western window seat of the library. Rendered invisible to her world by the thick curtains, she felt almost free here, she mused, letting her eyes stroll to the countryside stretching beyond the window.

She could hear the distant roar of the river Comete rushing towards Starling in the darkening depths under the castle, the sound stifled into a murmur by the thick patchwork of glass panes reminding her of the otherworldly man precipitating towards the waterfall... Astrid shook her head again, impatient with herself, to banish that memory, and focused on the beauty of the world surrounding the castle.

The bare bright rock it was built on, covered by lush gardens and vast parks within its walls, became a steep rock wall as it descended towards the village sitting huddled to the castle hill on a bleak plane, its houses made of the same bright rock as the castle itself. Then, in the distance, far beyond Starling, the barren plane became a forest that not even Orion had ever crossed, and she knew from her tutors that those countless trees farther away gave way to fields and meadows sprinkled with towns and villages, and then, finally, to moors ending in beaches surrounded by the sea. Astrid had never seen the country she was supposed to rule one day but she learned to care about the land and the people through the words of her tutors. Hers was the world that knew what it meant to suffer, people whose lives were nowhere near as comfortable as her own. Why her uncle never tried hard enough to change it...

"Astrid!" A voice calling her name reached her from the door of the library which she had not heard opening, scattering her thoughts.

Heart drumming in her ears-- she didn't want Arabella or any of her uncle's servants to know about her book-- Astrid forced her brain to recognise the voice.

"Astrid?" The voice tried again.

Orion, it's just Orion, she realised finally, letting the breath she had been holding out on a sigh. She reached to the heavy curtains behind her back, separating them, smiling at her soon-to-be husband.

"Orion," she said, stretching her arms towards him.

Smiling back, he rushed towards her, his body filling the void between her outstretched arms in a heartbeat. She tilted her face up, waiting for a kiss he delivered immediately, then pressed her head against his chest, revelling in the sensation of his fingers sinking in the sea of her golden curls as he said, "Your uncle sent me to find you, he wants to talk to you."

She looked up at him, her blue eyes full of questions and confusion-- her uncle had never sent anyone to find her so he could talk to her-- and he added, "I think it's about the trial."

Nodding silently-- This was to be expected after all!-- she let him pull her to her feet, hide her book, with only one reproachful look, hastily under the pillows she had been sitting on, and followed him out of the library, to her uncle's part of the castle.

"Don't be afraid, Astrid. I'll come with you wherever they send you."

She nodded silently, feeling grateful to have Orion at her side. He knew her better than anyone else, he didn't even mind the streak of platinum in her hair he had discovered recently... Astrid felt a smile tugging at the corners of her lips and a blush flood her cheeks at the memory of that evening as she observed his profile while he led her down a long corridor, and knew that he knew what she was thinking about when his lips twitched in response to her look.

He didn't believe in love, surely he did not feel for her what Heathcliff felt for Cathy, but he cared about her and would stay by her side, and be true to her in good times and in bad.

Astrid hoped so with all her heart. She had no one else.