“You need taking down a peg!” Henry says, furious.
I think I hear Elizabeth laugh. I feel reckless, drunk. Konrad and Analiese have stopped dancing and are staring at us in confusion and alarm.
“A fencing match, perhaps?” I shout at Henry.
“Excellent!” he hollers back. “But you fence alone, without your little winged friends.”
“Fine by me! To the armory!”
“You two, stop this!” says Konrad. “What’s gotten into you?”
But I scarcely hear him, and Henry and I stride angrily out into the hallway. The very walls pulse and flare their history as we pass, paintings and tapestries and colored plaster, as though reacting to our wild moods. We race each other down the great stairs and along the main corridor. Several times a new wall thrusts itself before us, or an unfamiliar passageway beckons, but each time I hold out my hand and shout, “I will pass!” and the familiar house materializes before me.
As if transported, we’re suddenly in the armory. My blood is up. With a puff of breath I dislodge the butterfly lingering on my finger and seize one foil, tossing the other to Henry.
He is much my inferior; it will not be a fair fight, but I don’t care, so eager am I to scourge that look of contempt from his face.
“Victor, stop this!” I hear my brother say again.
“If Henry wants to reconsider-”
“En garde!” Henry shouts.
“Whatever happened to our mild little Henry Clerval?” I ask in feigned amazement. “He’s become a fearless warrior!”
“Sirs, please,” Analiese protests. “We’re meant to be celebrating.”
I glance over at Elizabeth, surprised I’ve heard no objections from her, no cries of dismay, and am taken aback to see her watching, silent, her breast rapidly rising and falling, and in her face is the unmistakable look of animal excitement. I almost don’t recognize her.
It unnerves me enough that Henry strikes me against the chest with his bated foil.
“You see! Without the butterflies he’s nothing special!”
The very walls of the armory flash with all the weapons they’ve ever held-the maces and halberds and sabers-and all that cold hard steel ignites me.
“En garde!” I snarl, and strike him, in the chest. Then, before he can even parry, I strike him again, and again, the rules abandoned, my only goal now to humiliate him.
“Come on,” I say, knocking his parry out of my way. “Strike me!”
“These are not the rules of play!” he shouts.
“Then make your own!” I dare him, and stab him once more in the chest.
Enraged, he throws down his foil and punches me in the face, sending me staggering to one knee.
Slowly, furiously, I stand. He is waiting, his fists raised before his chin like a pugilist, eyes burning. He is a jacket filled with fury, and I’ve never seen him like this before. All I know is that I want to hit him. Butterflies flutter over my head, as if offering help, but I wave them away. In my mouth is a taste like venom.
Konrad’s voice is anguished. He is standing as close as he dares to us, one hand outstretched. “Henry, Victor! Enough!”
But his words are of no consequence-we are untouchable to him, like gods-and I come at Henry with a yell. He ducks and punches me in the ear. The pain has a sound, as piercing as a scream. Instinctively I clutch the side of my head, raising my arm to fend off another of his blows.
“I’ve been taking boxing lessons,” he says with a wicked smile, “and it turns out, I’m rather good at it.”
I try to strike him, but he nimbly steps back.
“But I had to work at it, Victor. It wasn’t just handed to me by little butterflies.”
He hits me in the shoulder, the stomach, my right flank, until I topple to the floor. I check my face for blood, but there is none.
“Behold how the mighty have fallen!” Henry cries out.
And as he smirks down at me, two winged spirits land on my shoulder, and a terrible power courses through me.
“I have worked too, Henry, and risked for what I have.”
He sees the butterflies, and all the swagger leaves him. “This isn’t fair!”
But I will not be humiliated, and I stride toward Henry, whose confidence crumbles even as he raises his fists. He strikes at me, but I smack away his hand as I would a bug, and with my right arm deliver a blow so powerful that his feet actually leave the ground. He flies backward and hits the floor.
Elizabeth rushes to his side. “Are you all right?” she asks, and in her voice is not just concern but also admiration. Has she mistaken him for the victor?
Henry raises himself on his elbows and glares at me. “You coward!” he bellows.
“Coward?” I exclaim.
I don’t know whether it’s the insult or the sight of Elizabeth kneeling at his side, but I am completely undone with rage. My head is pure noise-the mad discord of the piano still playing upstairs, the sound of rattling windowpanes, and, from deep beneath the chateau, an agonized moan that might as well be my own.
“I will not be called a coward!” I roar, and snatch up my rapier from the floor, yanking the guard from its tip.
I rush toward Henry. He sees me coming and tries to scramble up, but I put my foot upon his chest and point my sword at his throat. The fear in his face thrills me.
I am invincible here!
“Take it back!” I spit.
“I-will-not,” he returns through gritted teeth.
With a yell I draw back my rapier, ready to thrust deep.
“Victor!” screams Elizabeth, and I turn to see her with Henry’s rapier in her hand, unbated, aimed at my heart. “Put down your sword!”
“You wouldn’t strike me,” I say.
“Try me.”
I laugh and step back, lowering my weapon.
“Come now,” I say. “This was just play. If it got a bit rough, so what?”
Elizabeth won’t meet my eye, and I feel a keen sting of betrayal, and anger. How dare she try to congeal my power and satisfaction into something cold and shameful.
It takes me a moment to realize that the vibration in my pocket is the spirit clock. It seems as though a long time has passed.
“Our time’s up,” I say, holding the clock up for the others to see.
Our good-byes are subdued. I feel the tug of my talisman, urging me back to my bedchamber, where our bodies await. We hurry along the corridor to the grand staircase, the house strangely placid after its earlier shape- shifting riot. In my bedchamber I recline, my spirit body adjusting itself with supernatural certainty to its counterpart in the real world, and***
Returning, I rubbed at my face and neck, anticipating bruises, but there were none. When I stretched, there was no soreness in my ribs and stomach, either. Injuries in the spirit world, it seemed, did not cross over.
I glanced over at Henry and Elizabeth, and an uncomfortable silence stretched out as the three of us avoided one another’s eyes.
“It seems,” I said after a while, “that we got a little carried away.”
Henry scoffed.
“I’d just like to remind you, Henry Clerval, that you punched me in the face during a fencing match.”
“You told me to invent my own rules.”
“You two were both brutes,” Elizabeth murmured. “You especially, Victor.”
“And what about you?” I countered. “You had a sword pointed at my heart!”
“Only to stop you from killing Henry!”
“You didn’t really mean to stab me, did you?” Henry asked.
“Of course not,” I said, hoping my uncertainty didn’t stain my voice.
