The Thirteenth Tale

The staircase led to a gallery that must once have run the entire width of the entrance hall. To one side there was only a jagged edge of floorboards and a drop to the stone floor below. The other side was almost complete. The vestiges of a handrail along the gallery, and then a corridor. A ceiling, stained but intact; a floor; doors even. It was the first part of the house I had seen that appeared to have escaped the general destruction. It looked like somewhere you could live.

I took a few quick pictures and then, testing each new board beneath my feet before shifting my weight, moved warily into the corridor. The handle of the first door opened onto a sheer drop, branches and blue sky. No walls, no ceiling, no floor, just fresh outdoors air.

I pulled the door closed again and edged along the corridor, determined not to be unnerved by the dangers of the place. Watching my feet all the time, I came to the second door.

I turned the handle and let the door swing open.

There was movement!

My sister!

Almost I took a step toward her.

Almost.

Then I realized. A mirror. Shadowy with dirt and tarnished with dark spots that looked like ink.

I looked down to the floor I had been about to step onto. There were no boards, only a drop of twenty feet onto hard stone flags.

I knew now what I had seen, yet still my heart continued its frenzy. I raised my eyes again, and there she was. A white-faced waif with dark eyes, a hazy, uncertain figure trembling inside the old frame.

She had seen me. She stood, hand raised toward me longingly, as though all I had to do was step forward to take it. And would it not be the simplest solution, all told, to do that and at last rejoin her?

How long did I stand there, watching her wait for me?

'No,' I whispered, but still her arm beckoned me. 'I'm sorry.' Her arm slowly fell. Then she raised a camera and took a photograph of me. I was sorry for her. Pictures through glass never come out. I know.

I've tried.

I stood with my hand on the handle of the third door. The rule of three, Miss Winter had said. But I wasn't in the mood for her story anymore. Her dangerous house with its indoor rain and trick mirror had lost its interest for me.

I would go. To take photographs of the church? Not even that. I would go to the village store. I would telephone a taxi. Go to the station and from there home.

All this I would do, in a minute. For the time being, I wanted to stay like this, head leaning against the door, fingers on the handle, indifferent to whatever was beyond, and waiting for the tears to pass and my heart to calm itself.

I waited. Then, beneath my fingers, the handle to the third room began to turn of its own accord.

THE FRIENDLY GIANT

I ran. I jumped over the holes in the floorboards, leaped down the stairs three at a time, lost my footing and lunged at the handrail for support. I grasped at a handful of ivy, stumbled, saved myself and lurched forward again. The library? No. The other way. Through an archway. Branches of elder and buddleia caught at my clothes, and I half fell several times as my feet scrabbled through the detritus of the broken house.

At last, inevitably, I crashed to the ground, and a wild cry escaped my lips.

'Oh dear, oh dear. Did I startle you? Oh dear.'

I stared back through the archway.

Leaning over the gallery landing was not the skeleton or monster of my imaginings, but a giant. He moved smoothly down the stairs, stepped daintily and unconcernedly through the debris on the floor and came to stand over me with an expression of the utmost concern on his face.

'Oh my goodness.' He must have been six-foot-four or -five, and was broad, so broad that the house seemed to shrink around him. 'I never meant… You see, I only thought… Because you'd been there some time, and… But that doesn't matter now, because the thing is, my dear, are you hurt?'

I felt reduced to the size of a child. But for all his great dimensions, this man, too, had something of a child about him. Too plump for wrinkles, he had a round, cherubic face, and a halo of silver-blond curls sat neatly around his balding head. His eyes were round like the frames of his spectacles. They were kind and had a blue transparency.

I must have been looking dazed, and pale, too, perhaps. He knelt by my side and took my wrist. 'My, my, that was quite a tumble you took. If only I'd… I should never have… Pulse a bit high. Hmm.' My shin was stinging. I reached to investigate a tear in the knee of my trousers, and my fingers came away bloodied. 'Dear, oh dear. It's the leg, is it? Is it broken? Can you move it?' I wriggled my foot, and the man's face was a picture of relief.

'Thank goodness. I should never have forgiven myself. Now, you stay there while I… I'll just get the… Back in a minute.' And off he went. His feet danced delicately in and out of the jagged edges of wood, then skipped swiftly up the stairs, while the upper half of his body sailed serenely above, as if unconnected to the elaborate footwork going on below.

I took a deep breath and waited.

'I've put the kettle on,' he announced as he returned. It was a proper first-aid kit he had with him, white with a red cross on it, and he took out an antiseptic lotion and some gauze.

'I always said, someone will get hurt in that old place one of these days. I've had the kit for years. Better safe than sorry, eh? Oh dear, oh dear!' He winced with empathy as he pressed the stinging pad against my cut shin. 'Let's be brave, shall we?'

'Do you have electricity here?' I asked. I was feeling bewildered.

'Electricity? But it's a ruin.' He stared at me, astonished by my question, as though I might have suffered a concussion in the fall and lost my reason.

'It's just that I thought you said you'd put the kettle on.'

'Oh, I see! No! I have a camping stove. I used to have a Thermos flask, but'-he turned his nose up-'tea from a Thermos is not very nice, is it? Now, does it sting very badly?'

'Only a bit.' 'Good girl. Quite a tumble that was. Now tea-lemon and sugar all right? No milk, I'm afraid. No fridge.' 'Lemon will be lovely.' 'Right. Well, let's make you comfortable. The rain has stopped, so tea outdoors?' He went to the grand old double door at the front of the house and unlatched it. With a creak smaller than one expected, the doors swung open, and I began to get to my feet.

'Don't move!'

The giant danced back toward me, bent down and picked me up. I felt myself being raised into the air and carried smoothly outside. He sat me sideways on the back of one of the black cats I had admired an hour earlier.

'You wait there, and when I come back, you and I will have a lovely tea!' and he went back into the house. His huge back glided up the stairs and disappeared into the entrance of the corridor and the third room.

'Comfy?' I nodded. 'Marvelous.' He smiled as though it were indeed marvelous. 'Now, let us introduce ourselves. My name is Love. Aurelius Alphonse Love.

Do call me Aurelius.' He looked at me expectantly. 'Margaret Lea.' 'Margaret.' He beamed. 'Splendid. Quite splendid. Now, eat.' Between the ears of the big black cat he had unfolded a napkin, corner by corner. Inside was a dark and sticky slice of cake, cut generously. I bit into it. It was the perfect cake for a cold day: spiced with ginger, sweet but hot. The stranger strained the tea into dainty china cups. He offered me a bowl of sugar lumps, then took a blue velvet pouch from his breast pocket, which he opened. Resting on the velvet was a silver spoon with an elongated A in the form of a stylized angel ornamenting the handle. I took it, stirred my tea and passed it back to him.

While I ate and drank, my host sat on the second cat, which took on an unexpected kittenish appearance