DEAREST

PART 2: FAITHLESS HERO, Ch. 8

8

The castle is so big that it takes me some time to find Odette. Walking through the corridors, galleries, halls and towers, I can't help but be left with a strange feeling after the conversation with Lady Irene. This feeling is almost oppressive, and I can't get rid of it.

This is where Odette grew up. My Master is a beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman with long black hair, tanned skin with a soft golden glow, and a haughty attitude in her eyes that doesn't match the rest of her more rounded and fresh features, resembling the somewhat inhuman coldness of a doll. She fits perfectly in this castle, with her beautiful dresses that are reminiscent of another age, and that would leave little girls lovers of the princesses with their mouths open. A toy doll living in a toy castle.

There's a miniature of the castle inside a glass case located in what appears to be a mere double-height decorative room with gleaming wooden floor. In complete concentration, a maid is cleaning some of the small and old pieces that decorate it, and when she sees me, she looks me up and down, recognizing the uniform. She stops what she does when she sees me, and stands still with her eyes down, waiting for orders.

My eyes rest on the model of the castle and, as I approach the glass case, I point it out with my finger.

"Where's Lady Odette room?"

"She just passed through this room, sir," she says, and then turns to the archway at the other end of this room. "This door leads to her room and... and to the main tower."

When I leave the room by the exit arch that the maid has pointed out to me, I don't even bother to correct her. It's not the first time that I'm mistaken for a man, so I'm more or less used to it. It's nobody's fault. I wear the version of the uniform wore conventionally by men who serve the Einsiedel family. I didn't choose it to fake something else: the female version, albeit provided with protective details even better than this uniform, is simply not so practical, but now I think it is something that Odette would wear without struggling. That's because it was designed for someone like her, someone in a position of command, not submission.

Then, after the arch, there are two options: her bedroom and the main tower. The arch that I just passed leads to a corridor that bifurcates left and right. I don't know where's which, so I venture to the right and, after walking for a few minutes, the sophisticated decorations disappear, the air becomes colder, lighter, but stronger.

I see a simple wooden door, with the handle broken. It's the simplest wooden door I've seen in this castle until now, and when I open it, the strong wind hits me in the face and pushes me back a bit. It's the current of wind expelled from the tower top. When I open the door, I find a narrow and steep spiral staircase made of stone, only illuminated by the natural light that descends from the outside.

While I'm climbing the stairs to the top, I think that, if I felt angry, overwhelmed or simply discouraged, a tower is probably not a place I would go. Not me. Even thinking about the word "tower" is enough to make me shiver and make me sweat a little. But, of course, a castle is a place where you're destined to find this type of architectural piece. And it's also the place where you'll find melancholic princesses who might feel too smothered inside a bedroom.

When I reach the observation platform, a pale glow blinds me for a second before I catch the image. There are two things that I see, merged into a complete image: the first is the landscape that surrounds the castle. Forests, forests and more forests, on top of rocks, cliffs and mountains. It's pale, heartbreaking from this height, but puzzlingly beautiful. The second thing I see is Odette, sitting with her back towards me in the gap between two battlements in this observation deck.