CHAPTER ONE

Rosalie…

I watched as she stepped out of one of those new-fangled, fancy black cars and onto her birth soil for the first time. She looked just like her mother. Sadness swept over me but I held it at bay as her lovely violet eyes turned to me, cold and distant. The expression on her face showed that she was disgusted, but I didn't give two hoots what disgusted her. Whether it was the small cottage that stood behind me where she would have to live now for the next few months, or me standing there waiting for her. I didn't care because my granddaughter was finally home. And that was all that mattered.

She regarded me for a few moments from a distance and then spoke in a hesitant voice, her violet eyes showing doubt and uncertainty as she spoke, "Grand-mère?"

My eyebrows shot up, but I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised by the fact that she spoke perfectly accented French. After all, my Ana had been going to boarding school in France for several years now. My smile widened a little as I nodded, "Ouioui. Viens-dedans ma cherie!" I said, opening the door behind me and gesturing for her to follow me inside.

She hesitated, looking back at the car that was starting to disappear into the horizon wistfully, before giving a resigned sigh and trudging along behind me into the house. I tried to hide my amusement at her obvious reluctance at coming down to live with me, but I don't think I succeeded, judging by the cool stare she gave me as she walked past me into the house, suitcases in hand.

You see, my Ana didn't have too many options. Now that school was officially over, all her friends had gone home once and for all from their boarding school, this time not able to offer her shelter for the holidays. So my granddaughter had had little choice than to come live with her old grandmother in the Alps of Switzerland. She had no parents to go home to, after all.

"You had a pleasant journey here I hope?" I said, smiling at her. While we did look very similar, there were a few very marked differences. For instance, I was tall, around five foot eight, just like her, but my eyes were the colour of lavenders while hers were more a royal purple and my hair was white and tied in a stiff bun while her long tresses were midnight black and fell loosely about her.

"Yes I did, Grandmother." She said forcing a smile on her face, "But it was a very long drive and I'm really tired now. I think I'd just like to go to bed."

My heart fell, but I didn't let it show. 'What had you expected, Rosalie?' I berated myself, 'The little girl who used to rush at you with her arms wide open and a laugh on her lips? The girl who used to sit up in bed beside you, never running out of things to say?!'

The young woman before me was no longer the granddaughter I remembered. I sighed but kept my smile in place, "Of course, ma cherie, your room is up the stairs, first door on the right." Ana nodded, moving to the staircase and stopping for a moment, looking back at me. I felt my heart lift again but I was to be disappointed as she picked up her suitcase and disappeared up the stairs.

Analeigh…

Analeigh Stone looked bleakly around her room. It had a small four-poster bed tucked into a corner, a wooden cupboard pushed back against the wall where the ceiling of the room sloped down. There was a window open in the space beside the cupboard, allowing the cool evening air into the room. She had to admit, although it was the size of her bathroom back home, or what had been home anyway, it had a certain charm.

Ana had not wanted to come down and live with her grandmother in the middle of nowhere. And Luane, while a beautiful Swiss village, was most definitely the middle of nowhere. She was as far removed from her friends and everything that was normal in life as she had ever been. Dropping her suitcases on the floor she went over to the window, bending so that she didn't bump her head on the downward slope of the ceiling. The view was breathtaking, but Ana frowned. Before her stretched huge expanses of land, full of mountains, trees, she could even make out a lake, but not one human being. Nature was all that surrounded her. It was almost as if nobody lived up here apart from her and her grandmother.

"That might as well be the case." She muttered under her breath, exasperated. She once again thought back on the past two years of her life. Things had changed so much; she couldn't relate the girl she had been then, to the one she was now. It was like there were two different people in her, the old Analeigh and the new Analeigh. The old one had had parents. She had been full of joy, bursting with energy, unafraid to live, love and laugh. The new Ana was an orphan. She was reserved, never smiled unless it was an absolute necessity, and always kept an emotional distance from the people around her. Even those, who at one point she had loved with her whole heart. Her grandmother's crest-fallen face when she had told her she wanted to go straight to bed crossed her mind. She sighed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, remembering the scent of peppermint that had always hung from her grandmother tickling her nose.

"Grandmamma." Analeigh said softly, "Mamma." That's what she had called her when she was small. She used to squeal it as she ran down the stairs and into her grandmother's arms, letting the smell of peppermint envelope her. Ana opened her eyes, stunned that there were tears falling from them. She reached up to wipe one away and studied it, her violet eyes large and thoughtful.

'I could do it once more.' She thought to herself, 'I could go down and throw my arms around her and she'd let me have it back. The warmth, the security, the love.'

A few moments passed before Ana shook her head, wiping the tear from her hand onto her jeans; she couldn't have any of it back. She didn't have a right to have any of it back because her parents were no longer there to give it to her, and that was her fault. If she had listened to them and stayed at home that night, they would not have been in that car, and they would not have been hit by that petrol truck.

Analeigh let out a long, calming breath pushing the untoward thoughts from her mind. She focused her attention, instead on an odd looking mountain that rose from the dense cluster of trees not too far away from the house. The more she studied it, the less like a mountain it looked. Then she saw the turret. It looked like a…castle. Only its tallest tower was visible, and even that only the pale grey turret and a balcony below it. The rest of the pale grey tower disappeared into the trees. Even as Analeigh got used to the idea of a castle so close to her grandmother's cottage (It really wasn't that exceptional. After all, there were old ruined castles scattered all over Europe), a figure came out to stand on the castle's balcony. A man. He came to the edge of the balcony and was looking up to the mountains on her right, his left. He was tall, and his caramel gold hair glinted in the setting sun but that was about all she was able to make out apart from his midnight blue and gold robes. She frowned, because he lived in the castle, taking care of it, she presumed, did he have to dress up like they had back then? Was that how they attracted tourists? She had to admit, it was an interesting gimmick, but it obviously wasn't working too well since the town seemed completely deserted.

The man turned then, quite suddenly so that he was facing her. Even though he was standing so far away, almost a speck in the distance, Analeigh felt his gaze on her, and to her astonishment, she blushed! Annoyed, she moved away from the window for a moment before berating herself and going over to look outside once more. When she looked toward the castle, she saw that the man was gone. He had vanished. Ana's eyebrows drew together as she frowned. She would go to the castle tomorrow. She would go to the castle and find that man.

COPYRIGHT SANJANA BALARAMAN.