Shades of Grey

The castle looks dirty surrounded by sparkling white snowflakes, as grey as the sand buried under snow. The sky is a white flurry; the sea frosted as though covered with sugar crystals, crests frozen before the waves break.

If she hadn’t been standing close to the fireplace indoors moments before, soaking up the heat from the bright flames, she would be shivering with cold. She wears no shoes or hat, no scarf or gloves or coat, only her white gown and the ribbons that are a permanent embellishment on her attire.

It is so rare she is allowed out in broad daylight, but no shadows of people move about in the flurry, everyone has escaped to their houses or offices, or their friends’ houses or crowded cafes to wait out the storm. It is the pinnacle of Austrian winter, and far harsher than many can remember. Though the castle is seen by few, for their attention is diverted from the shape looming out of the mist on the innocuous grey beach. It simply fades into the background, to the extent in which it may be a trick of the light out of the corner of one’s eye.

Despite her best efforts, she cannot say the same about herself.

She has diverted others’ attention before, though she has never been able to divert her fathers’, but the blend so well into the landscape that she is a part of it, unnoticeable, would take a skill she does not possess. Indeed, a skill she does not believe her father possesses, either.

She enjoys the occasion, despite the warmth that is slowly dissipating into the air like smoke. She focuses on the water, the feel of it beneath the ice, and wonders if she could separate it from the salt through the ice; how much time it would take, how much effort, down to the second and the amount of respite she would require after. She decides it would depend on the thickness of the ice.

She stands on the seashore, digging her toes into grey sand and ice crystals. Plumes of white clouds billow from her mouth, snow laces her hair like a net of white.

The hem of her gown is moving, lace floating up and down in ripples. She steps back slowly, her gown trailing over the snow. It takes a moment for her to spot the bird against the snow, as its feathers are just as sparkling and white, but it is nestled in the cold, flapping and cooing with the cold.

She stand in momentary shock that a dove would be out in the snow in Austrian winter, even more that it would find the castle on the beach, never sighted by any person or creature outside the white marble residence. She bends down to scoop it up out of the snow.

The dove coos with fear, and as it warms it begins to flap its wings. She waits, patiently, for it to calm, coercing it to trust her. Strangely, her fathers’ skill would be useful here, as he has always been able to earn others’ trust with a wave of his hand and a piercing gaze, but he is not fond of doves. They are too pretty, he declares, too showy and frivolous, as opposed to the ravens he has raised her to keep in his study, dark with watchful eyes, always learning and thinking.

She holds the dove in her cupped hands, focusing on passing her warmth to its shivering body. The snow on its feathers begin to melt, sparkling like dew.

It would be a very bad idea, she thinks, to bring it home. Her father would only cast it out into the snow, or it would become a test she is incapable of passing, at the expense of the bird.

She narrows her eyes at the dove, as though squinting through its feathers and into its rapidly beating heart. Her eyes soften, as though she sees through the bird, into some cosmos in the snow before her.

Slowly an inky blackness, beginning at its beak and ending at its tail feathers, bleeds over the dove. Where it is still changing in hue, its feathers are grey, like that of a newborn sparrow.

When she carries the dove inside, black as night, it is silent. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay