Black Spring Read Online Free PDF Page B

exposed almost the whole of one of her full breasts. Her mouth was luscious, preternaturally red, the color of blood, but it expressed a willfulness that lent its frank sensuality some other, thrilling quality. Aside from her lips, her skin was deathly white. But it was her eyes that captured my fascinated attention. They were the violet eyes of a witch, and they blazed with unassuageable longing, a bottomless, reckless hunger, and they stared unseeingly straight into mine.
    In those first moments I don’t know whether I was more possessed by desire or terror. The imprint of that wild, beautiful face has never left my memory. I have seen — have even embraced — women more handsome, but never have I seen a face so passionate and yet, despite its utter abandon, so wholly itself.
    Then it was as if something focused in that spellbinding gaze, and with a clutch of horror I comprehended that the apparition in the mirror was looking back at me. Her expression changed with astounding swiftness: now those extraordinary eyes blazed with anger. I was not what she had hoped and longed for, and even in my fright, I confess I felt a little shock of disappointment. Her gaze locked on mine, and I could see that she was speaking, although I could not hear what she said. I involuntarily flung up my hand in a gesture of helplessness. When I did that, she recoiled; I almost heard her hiss, as if she were in pain. I realized that she must have seen the ring on my finger. I tried then to turn and run away but found that I could not move my legs: my feet refused to obey me, whether because of sheer terror or because of some bewitchment I do not know.
    In a moment she was close again to the surface of the mirror, as if it were a glass window that imprisoned her, and began to beat it frantically with her hands. When I saw this, complete panic took hold of me: I no longer knew what I was doing. I cried out, screaming at her to leave me alone, and hit out blindly at the mirror. The thing exploded in a shower of glass shards, some of which cut my face and hands. But I didn’t care: now I could move. I ran out of the room, slammed shut the door, and stood in the dark hallway, leaning against the wall, panting, trying to regain my breath.
    My host, perhaps awoken by my cries if he was not awake already — if indeed anyone could sleep at all in that infernal house — came running down the hallway in shirt and trousers. When he saw me standing by the door, his face darkened with fury, but I was at such a pitch I swear that even the Devil himself was beyond frightening me further.
    “What were you doing in that room?”
    The unexpectedness of his question pulled me up short.
    “Why, you bastard,” I answered furiously, “you put me there!”
    “Not I,” he said. “Not I. No one goes in that room.”
    “Then your filthy manservant did,” I said, holding my bloody hand close to my chest. “Out of malice or mischief, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have chosen to sleep there for a million gold pieces. I’m going home, where that bitch of hell can’t get at me. Even if I have to crawl there . . .”
    I stumbled down the stairs, but I had not gone halfway before Damek caught up with me and, grabbing my shoulder, swung me around to face him. “What bitch of hell?” he snarled at me. “What are you talking about?”
    I attempted to tear myself free of his grasp. “A nice trick, putting me in a haunted room!” I shouted. “I swear, you’re the Devil himself, and that woman . . .”
    “Who?” he said to me with passionate urgency. “What woman?”
    “That unholy witch in the mirror,” said I. I looked up and met his eyes: they were blazing as intensely as the woman’s in the mirror, though whether with longing or despair or rage or grief, or all of those at once, I couldn’t tell. We gazed wordlessly at each other for a few seconds, both suddenly still.
    “Tell me,” he said, his chest heaving. “Tell me what you mean.”
    All of a