'Fine. You're a toad, after all. Perhaps you're too stupid to understand me.'
Griezell's throat swelled, forming a huge goiter. With its broad mouth slightly parted, the toad emitted a horrid, reverberant rasp-long, deep, and hoarse. It reminded Marguerite of a death rattle, or of an old man clearing phlegm from his lungs.
'That's enough,' she snapped in disgust. 'You probably do understand, and I wouldn't be surprised if Zosia understands you in turn. So you can tell her I am not amused.'
Marguerite returned the poker to its place, then — ;cked up the toad with arms stiffly outstretched. The spaniel-sized creature hissed and paddled, and if it had wanted to, it could have wriggled from her arms or drawn blood with its claws. But the toad had bowed; to her authority, at least for now. She carried Griezell-bub toward the door. Then she remembered the click of the key-Donskoy had locked her in.
Griezell made another goiter and rasped, this time breaking the hoarse sound into short, staccato rattles. Like laughter. Marguerite gasped and dropped the toad at once. Griezell hissed, then shambled toward one of the tapestries flanking the fireplace. With twenty hounds and a frightened fox looking on, the toad disappeared into the wall. Marguerite wondered whether the little black beast had the fabled ability to teleport-moving from one place to another without actually traversing the space between. Either that, or it had become insubstantial, a specter. Unless. .
Marguerite heard the faint sound of stone scraping against stone. She cautiously stepped toward the tapestry, half-expecting some kind of trap to be sprung. The cloth wavered softly, teasing her, then settled.
She stared at the wall. Every sinew in her suddenly reawakened, tense with excitement. If her guess was correct, the wall had opened to permit Griezell's passage. There was a secret door, just like the one in Zosia's garden. Then she recalled how the old woman had spoken a word to shift that portal, a magical command. If such a thing were required here, Marguerite was tost. But it couldn't be; Griezeltbub did not speak, did he? And the toad had gone through.
'Griezell.' She shook her head. Did she really think it would answer?
Marguerite picked up a piece of kindling from the stack beside the hearth, then put the end of the stick to the tapestry, poking the belly of a hound. Nothing happened. She poked again, then walked to the side of the heavy fabric, lifting the edge. Behind it lay the wall, firm and stony, seemingly impenetrable. Seemingly, she repeated to herself.
A faint scrabbling and hissing drifted out from the cover of the tapestry.
'Griezellbub,' she repeated. 'Show me how.'
Her answer came-the scrabbling again, so soft she might have imagined it.
Marguerite went to the edge of the tapestry and slipped into the black sliver of space behind it, sliding flat along the wall until she came to the place where she thought Qriezell had disappeared. The heavy cloth pressed against her back. It smelled musty and blocked the light completely, making her nose burn, her eyes blind. She ran her hands over the wallT searching for some kind of tatch. There was none. She continued to probe, stretching high, then low, covering every spot she could reach. After several minutes, the weight and the sour stench of the tapestry became unbearable; she imagined herself pressed flat like a flower in an old book, slowly dying between its mildewed pages. Gasping, she slipped out from beneath the shroud and returned to the room. Mold and clotted strands of cobwebs clung to her head like a newborn's caul. She went to the basin and rinsed her face, pulling the worst of the dregs from her hair. Then she returned to the wall and stared at it. The creatures in the scene stared back.
She heard another muffled hiss, impatient and sharp.
To follow a toad, must I be one? she thought. She crouched at the base of the tapestry, which hovered just above the floor. Here, the sound of Griezell's hissing became acute. She lifted the bottom of the rank silk. Blocks of gray stone confronted her.
Something glistened in the candlelight-a tiny pool at the base of a stone. It was as if the rock were weeping, or perhaps drooling. She pressed hard on the surface of this block. It gave way, and an opening appeared, barely an arm's length high, equally narrow. Beyond lay the black, snakelike throat of a tunnel. Griezell's insistent little hiss echoed in the darkness. Marguerite stared in, hesitating. The door slid shut, narrowly missing her head.
Heart drumming, half with fear and half with anticipation, she rose and swiftly retrieved a candle from the table, fitting it with a guard against drafts. Then she retrieved a second candle, unlit, and slipped it into her garter. She looked around the room. Will I need a third? she wondered. After all, she mustn't be caught in the dark. But if either candle blew out in a gust, she would have no way to relight it. No time to hesitate, she told herself. No time. Griezell might not wait.
Armed with the small fire, she opened the passage again and crawled inside, pushing the candle ahead of her as she went. Her progress was slow and discomforting. She yanked the skirt of her gown up toward the neck and tucked it into the bodice so her knees were free. Her woolen hose tore on the stones. After the third bend in the tunnel, she saw a wall looming ahead. Griezell huddled at the base. The creature turned to face her, flashing a row of sharp tittle teeth, dripping with drool. Then it pushed at a stone, triggering another door, and went on.
The door closed before Marguerite could reach it. At the base of the wati lay a little puddle of Griezelt's saliva to mark the spot. She pressed upon the stone's cool surface, and a door opened in the same fashion as the last. Marguerite emerged in the space beyond. She stood slowly, ignoring the complaint of her cramped limbs. Her skirts escaped from her bodice and dropped to the floor.
She found herself in a chamber shaped like her own, but it was smaller and ruined, her room's stillborn twin. The crumbling hearth pitted the opposite wail like a black, empty wound. Tattered, filthy sheets clung to the modest furnishings. The bed stood completely naked, stripped of the mattress, curtains gone from the spires. The rope supports had been gnawed or rotted and now hung limply to the floor. In the outer wail rose a tall, thin window, bare of giass, The broken shutter hung crazily askew. A sliver of moonlight pushed past it, cutting a white path across the floor. In its glow lay a heap of leaves and dirty rags. Something wiggled inside it. Marguerite thrust her candle forth like a weapon. A mouse squealed on the mound, then scurried away, abandoning a nest of writhing pink babies, hairless and blind.
Qriezell sat beside the chamber door, hissing impatiently. The creature was right; this was only part of the journey, not a fitting end. As if to confirm her conclusion, a cold, wet breeze slunk in through the open window. She shivered, then strode to the door and yanked. It gave way noisily, and the toad and the woman went out together.
[n the hall outside, Marguerite paused to listen, afraid she might have alerted someone to her escape. But no footsteps came. The castle was quiet. She heard onfy a few distant creaks, the moaning of old wood.
A wave of excitement washed over her. Moments ago she had been a prisoner, powerless and small. The rest of the castle had loomed all around, taunting her with its forbidden mass. Now she had mastered one of its secret arteries-a passage that Donskoy would never show her, even if he fulfilled his promise of a castle tour. And Yetena or Zosia-would they too have kept her ignorant of this escape? It didn't matter. Soon, she mused, she would discover more of the castle on her own. In this way, she might eventually come to possess it-not by right, of course, but in spirit. While her husband and the others slept, she could stroll the keep as its haughty mistress instead of its simpering captive.
Marguerite took a moment to orient herself. Her own room, she thought, was somewhere to the left. Griezell hissed again and hobbled off to the right, then disappeared around a turn in the passage.
Marguerite hesitated, wary of following a creature most likely Zosia's familiar, and her confidence ebbed. Still, in the wake of her bravado there remained a bit of courage. And, even stronger, her curiosity. Marguerite hurried after her bumpy black guide, one hand lifting her skirt to keep from tripping, the other firmly clutching the candle.
The toad traveled remarkably fast. It moved at the edge of her sight or just beyond, a teasing shape along the wall. They came to a tower stair and descended its winding path. Cold gusts poured through a series of arrow slits in the exterior wall. Marguerite turned her back to them and held the candle low, wishing she had thought to bring a shawl. The red gown left her shoulders and the top of her spine exposed. Further, its layered skirt was awkward and noisy, swishing as she walked. But there had been no time to don anything else.
Marguerite followed Griezell turn after turn down the stairs, descending until she grew dizzy. She stopped suddenly, as a torch, blazing somewhere below, hurled Griezell's silhouette against the wall. The shadow looked immense and looming, a horrible hunchbacked monster. Just as quickly, it shrank and disappeared. Marguerite walked after it. When she passed the torch, she saw that the flame was actually quite weak; soon it would burn
