The Memory Keeper

Chapter 22

On the train, she was put in her own compartment. The mind weavers had taken her suit case to examine its contents, but they would not find anything near as interesting as her cabinets, unless they counted half a turkey cheese sandwich. Natalie was sure mind weavers in Cape Colette never engorged in such meager meals. She had wrinkled her nose upon her last visit when they placed turtle and seaweed stew in front of her.

They would not find her mother's letter, though. She kept it snug in her coat pocket, prepared for a fight if they tried to confiscate it.

Out the window, Natalie watched as Coldton slipped away behind its veil of fog. Flat roads swiveled past like snakes, and the lands beyond looked like jello in the train's speed as they clattered on into the hills. Mountains in the distance watched like pale faces in the snow.

What had Peter tried to tell her before she was taken away? His parents had painted a picture in her head, of Peter curled into a ball in his house, unable to think or see properly. She thought perhaps he would strangle her if she had tried to explain who she was.

At least she would reveal all of her lies and try to help Piper out of this mess she had created. She only hoped Peter would manage without her mind weaving for who knew how long?

When the spires of Cape Colette's castle rose like needles through mountains of glittering fabric four hours later, Natalie felt her heart start to hammer. Behind those icy walls swept the white robes of mind weavers, and Piper, who probably sat in a lonesome chambers, hand pressed to the snow-flecked pane of a window hundreds of feet above the ground.

The train moved through the blankets of snow, a lonesome platform waiting miles still from the castle. Hands of snow cascaded in all directions as Natalie Gorman stepped off the train, unable to distinguish the platform from the hills of snow all around. She hugged herself, suitcase at her feet, the hood of her coat pulled around her face. It was so windy and cold, it sucked the breath out of her. The mind weavers stood on either side of her while they waited. For what, she was not sure, until she could make out movement in the blistering veils of wind. As the shape closed the distance between them, she could see it was a carriage. It took her a few extra minutes to see the two horses that pulled it along, for both were as white and sparkling as the snow.

There was no gate around the castle, only a frozen moat. Nobody would dare try and waltz into the castle uninvited, because nobody ever came out this far. Flags with the mind weaver symbol flapped taut as bow strings, silent in the heavy winds. Natalie looked up at it, remembering the first time she had noticed the symbol. The pair of eyes, she had felt even then, was like an omen, that once she became a mind weaver, she would forever be watched.

The door was large and made of seedy glass. On the other side, Natalie shivered, colder inside than she was out in the bone-gripping winds. A long windowless corridor awaited her, and she was prodded gently in the back by her escorts.

At the end was a set of marble stairs that curled upward like a dragon's spine. The railing was like ice under her hand all the way to the open corridor, crystal and pearl glinting in the pillars in between open air on one side. Mist enclosed the mountains' bases and plummeted over the hills as though the castle floated in the clouds. If the circumstances did not rattle Natalie's chest so, she would have felt almost at ease, lost in the pink wintry sky.

Escorted to a vast open-walled room, pillars twined with blossoms the color of her hair, Colette stood. She wore a white dress with a red robe, which trailed to the marble floors, the center embedded with tile, depicting the mind weaver symbol. She turned her crystal gaze on Natalie and smiled.

A door on the other side of the room opened, and Golden pheasants from the rafters in the open ceiling above shifted in alarm. It took Natalie a moment to realize it was not their clawed feet on the rafters that made the scuffing noises, but the pheasants themselves.