“My
lord,” a voice said.
The Shadow King wearily
turned his head from where he had been staring over his balcony ledge into the
darkness. A woman with sleek, pinned
curls and a pure white brocaded dress was standing behind him, looking solemn.
“Aurelia,” he said.
Aurelia curtsied
gracefully, smooth and perfect.
“Is there anything you need
to tell me?” he asked, turning around and leaning his elbows on the banister of
the balcony rail. In the Shadow Kingdom,
every object was black as night, barely distinguishable from the solid void of
darkness that filled this world, so thick it was almost tangible. The only thing that betrayed the dark rail’s
form was the faint shading, a slightly darker black than the air, delineating
the underside from the polish of the smooth top.
“Come here, my king,” she
said, holding out a hand. In the vivid black pressing in on all sides, Aurelia,
like the other Goddesses, seemed to emit a faint ghostly light that shielded
her from the oozing darkness.
“What do you need?” he
said, tired.
“I can understand that you
are troubled,” she said softly, “and as your guardian, the prime Goddess, it is
my duty to ease you in times of need.”
“I’m fine.”
“Surely not.”
“Well, I am more or less
fine.”
Aurelia smiled. “Step away from that banister, my lord.”
The king moved away, which
sent his cloak fluttering behind him, and the banister dissolved into nothing.
It was always hard to think of the substantiality of the Shadow Kingdom, as
there seemed to be only one dimension and yet infinite dimensions at the same
time, and objects kept melting and appearing. Yet, he knew, if he had indeed
been leaning over the banister when it disappeared, he would not have fallen.
The “ground” would have risen to meet him. At the same time, what Aurelia was
standing on would not have risen. But they were still both standing on the same
level.
He had learned that is was
much easier to just accept this bizarre world.
Three years in this place, which he could not leave unless there was not
a drop of sunlight in the outside world, had taught him this much thus far.
Aurelia’s skirts eerily
made no sound in the sucking abyss as she stepped closer to him. “My lord,” she said gently. “What is wrong?”
He sighed and sat down on
the chair that had miraculously formed at his will, just behind him, and he cupped
his chin in his hands. “Honestly, I
don’t know, Aurelia,” he said, the timbre of his voice reverberating as the
only sound heard for miles. “I just
don’t quite feel—right. And it’s not the
usual kind of not right—not the kind that comes with living in this dark
place. Well—I—hm. It is difficult to say.”
“You still miss the
Sunlight Queen,” Aurelia said, her voice low.
“No!” The King sat bolt upright. “No, I don’t.”
“You know you do,” Aurelia
said. “I am the Goddess of compassion,
my king, as you know, and therefore I am very good at reading emotions. Yours are all in turmoil, aren’t they? Both
you and I know that you are still thinking of the Queen…how she would smile at
you and ask you to do something for her…but, alas, those days are over.” Here she sighed, and the faint glow around
her became more diminished, not quite as strong. “You know she is still crying over your fate,
my lord? She knows it seems harsh to
treat you as so…her most faithful servant…but she also knows she had no
choice. She cannot show kindness to you
now, after you broke the ancient magic that even she has no power over. They
were rules written long ago, many centuries before you appeared in the world.”
“You have seen the Sunlight
Queen?” he asked, alert.
Aurelia smiled bitterly. “I
have…ah….paid her a visit, if you will.”
“No doubt talking about me
behind my back,” the King said glumly, sitting back in his chair.
“Well—yes,” she admitted.
“I knew it!” The King sat forward, mischief in his
eyes. His silky cloak settled around
him. “What did she say? Was it anything good? Or was it bad?”
Aurelia hesitated. “Do you really wish to know?”
“It was bad, wasn’t it?” he
guessed, losing some of his fervor and slumping. He looked up.
“Well, tell me anyways. It’s
terrible without any news from the Light, no matter if it is good news or bad
news.”
Aurelia hesitated again as
she spoke, as if they took a lot of effort.
“She said…she said she couldn’t abide you. And that she…has judged and…and condemned you
to live here, forever in—in pain as a reminder of—what you did…not only to her,
but also to the kingdom; she has already left you to rest in her memories of
sunshine.”
The King was silent.
“My—my lord?” Aurelia asked
softly.
A breeze was conjured up
out of nothing, and it swirled through them, sweeping the King’s cloak onto his
left shoulder. Aurelia gently took the
silk in her hands, undid the knobbly knot, and let the cloak slide to the floor
with a whisper. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I was just—hoping,” he
said brokenly.
“Of course you were.” Aurelia gathered up the cloak and sized him
up. He looked so much more how he used
to without it; that sleek river of black over his shoulders. “You may want to rest a little, my lord. All your recent trips to the outside world
must have been—exhausting.”
“Indeed,” he said
emotionlessly, standing up, and the chair melted away, leaving nothing but
space. He leaned forward and the rail he
had been leaning on earlier was suddenly there, fully formed. Folding his arms upon it, he crossed his legs
and stared out into the sea of blackness.
Aurelia watched him with a
detached sort of sadness.
A knock sounded on the door
(which hadn’t been there before—yet more meddling of substance in the
dimensions of the Shadow Kingdom).
Aurelia brightened up a tad.
“What is it?” the King said
in a low voice in the direction of the door.
It opened and two of the
Goddesses spilled in; one in a perky butter-yellow dress and one in plain tawny
brown.
“Esmeralda. Larissa.” His voice was rather cold. “You have something to ask of me?”
Both of them curtsied. Esme was two inches shorter than her sister,
and Aurelia was the tallest out of the three in the room.
“My lord, if you’re so
dedicated to the Queen, honestly, you should just tell her,” Esme blurted out
as soon as she straightened.
“You know I can’t leave
this place.”
“You could send a letter,”
Esme suggested.
“Shush,” Larissa said
softly, kicking some tangible darkness onto Esme’s slipper.
“What good would that do,
exactly?” the King said. Aurelia,
sensing a stormcloud mood, quickly excused herself and left, seeming to just
fade away. “She has no patience for me. She can’t even—abide me anymore, and she—”
“We heard what the Queen
said; we were there,” Larissa interrupted, though quietly. She spoke in her soothing way, taking a
seat—yet another chair had formed, he realized—and she calmly comforted him. “You know the Queen better than anyone, my
lord. She says such things for a reason,
and that that point…well, she did know in her heart that she still wished you
were with her.”
“And yet she is a woman who
tricked me and then banished me.”
“Perhaps. The Queen is a decidedly clever yet foolish
person, and none of us can understand her motives.”
“Yes, that was exactly my
point.”
“But she has goodness in
her heart, I am sure,” Larissa said, still continuing in her gentle, sensible
way as Esme let her head fall to one side and smiled at him to encourage
him. “She let you keep us, did she not?”
“Well…I suppose,” he said
reluctantly.
“If I had to decide, I
would say that you are actually the one who has the most hardness in either of
your hearts. You have to let it go, my lord, and with it…you must also release
her. She cannot do anything for you
anymore.”
The King’s hands tightened
on the banister rail, so hard his knuckles were white in stark contrast to the
dark scenery. “I cannot. Not yet.”
“Then so be it,” Larissa
said simply, fingering the coarse mended fabric of her dress.
The King sighed. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Are you saying thank you
to me?” Esme asked brightly.
“Yes, you too.”
“Well, you’re welcome.”
“Would you like some hot
chocolate?” A black platter with
steaming mugs had appeared on Larissa’s lap.
“I’m afraid the chocolate is dark chocolate, black as everything else
here…”
Laughter.
Early that evening, before supper,
Wednesday started hanging up her new dresses in her section of the wardrobe. Mother had brought back an entire suitcase of
new dresses for the girls (which they oohed and aahed over) and even a few
suitcoats and sleeves for Father (which he looked at, stone-faced). Winter had spent almost the entire rest of
the day acting as Mother’s personal servant, running to get tea from the
kitchens, asking Mother how she felt, stoking up the fire and giving Mother
blankets, all the while smiling angelically.
(“Ah, Mrs. Bootlicker,” Willow had whispered to Wednesday when they witnessed
Winter mowing down everything in her way trying to get Mother some biscuits.
Wednesday snorted.) Willow had sat by the fire, laying out her new dresses,
feeling the soft cloth and comparing them to Wednesday’s and Winter’s. She’d traded one with Wednesday; a white one
with a lacy corset for a dappled green one.
As for Wednesday, she’d sat
deep in thought for a while, thinking how nice Mother was (and yet strict about
certain things—lessons, dressing properly, table etiquette, dancing form),
though if only she’d had eyes for her.
She thought about Mother’s reaction to how the girls had fawned over the
young gentlemen, and winced.
Then, to clear her mind,
she’d run around in the garden for half an hour, remembering to don a cloak and
to tie it tight. With the cold stinging
air that had freshened her senses instantly and the perfume of the early
daffodils, she knew it had been worth it, even though when she’d gotten back
the rest of her family had commented on how pale she was, and Mother had pointed
out that her hair was coming unpinned.
Presently she carefully
laid out on her bed one of the dresses Mother had bought for her, and smoothed
it out as the skirts billowed up in a cloud.
How had Mother found the money to buy these wonders? They were absolutely gorgeous. Even Wednesday’s
(which were smaller and not as showy, to not make her ill health even more of a
contrast) were the most beautiful things the girls had ever seen.
Wednesday gazed down at the
gauzy dress. It seemed something like the
Goddesses would wear—a soft blue thing, like water, with ruffles on the side,
and streaks of black that somehow made it seem like a bluebird’s down. The rest of her dresses were the same way—one
absolutely sweet white one with black trim, a light green with swoops of white
and yellow tassels, rose and lavender and honeysuckle.
Willow burst into the
girls’ bedroom as Wednesday was draping her new light green dress on a hanger
and hanging it in the pine wardrobe.
“Wednesday, are you coming
down for supper?” she asked, bouncing up and down.
“Supper already?” Wednesday
said, laying down the yellow dress she’d just picked up from her pile on her
bed. “But it’s not even past five yet.”
“Well, Mother’s had a big
trip, and I frankly can’t blame her for being hungry,” Willow said. “Anyway, pleasing Mother is a good idea. She says if she’s feeling up to it tomorrow,
in the morning she’ll take us riding! In
that meadow over the hill that you can see by the east wing—”
“Riding?” Wednesday sighed slightly. “Of all the silly…Willow, you know I’m not a
rider. I just fall off like a sack of
potatoes.”
“Yes, I know you’re a terrible rider,” Willow
said dismissively, waving this away with one hand. “My point is, the rest of us want to go
riding, too. Even Father will come if he
doesn’t have any business to tend to.
You know how busy he’ll be now that Mother’s back and isn’t in work—I
say he could use a break before he delves into everything he has to do.” Here she smiled slyly at Wednesday, and
Wednesday heaved a greater sigh.
Obviously Willow was not going to give this up.
“Well, all right. Just let me finish hanging up these dresses
first; I don’t want you to run up here after supper and flop down on my nice
new dresses.” Wednesday took up her yellow
dress again, fluffing out the skirts and smoothing down the crinolines, and
hung it neatly up in the wardrobe so it was bunched tightly against the others,
squeezed together to save space but making the skirts stick out at unusual
angles. “Honestly,
you are just so neat about everything, Wednesday,” Willow said, plopping down
on the bed where Wednesday had just removed a rosy dress. “Mine are still downstairs. I left them on the floor, on the big purple
rug by the fireplace.” She suddenly
gasped. “Surely nobody will accidentally
brush them a bit too close to the coals and they’ll…good heavens!” She leapt up from the bed with a vigorous
fervor and fled the room.
“This is why you should be
more careful, Willow,” Wednesday murmured in the empty room as she placidly
hung up another dress.
A bit later that evening,
supper was a very busy affair. From the
dining room windows, Wednesday could clearly see the sky, which had faded to
only mildly dark—a faint purple tinge at the corners of the heavens and a few
stained clouds of two swift dashes of an egg-beater, sharp against the light
sky. Storm clouds were gathered
anxiously at one side of the rectangle of glass, as if hesitant to show their
appearance, and upon inching forward came problems ordinarily found in a shy
lass—gently poking forward like a cautious little dove, the running
self-consciousness trickling its way into one’s soul, requiring a brave surge
that perhaps these clouds did not have—and so they backed up, wondering who had
noticed them, and peered through the swooping curtain-drapes at the window’s
corner and the glass, carefully observing with a strong will to not be noticed;
and the manner of them were curiously attracting Wednesday’s attention; a
mystic thing, perhaps though reason shows she had seen them because she herself
was much like those storm clouds—full of tears, yet shy to be shown.
Serrying around the
polished mahogany table—which, while nicked and perhaps not suitable in the
image of perfection, was rather charming—all of them were at their veriest
jauntiness, almost overly so, while Mother seemed completely at ease without
even a slight discomfort. Obviously she
had settled in, and cheerfully chattered away about her travels while the rest
of them sat bemused at her side; Willow folding and unfolding her napkin,
Winter saying “Yes, Mother” every few seconds and hanging enraptured to
Mother’s every word, Wednesday staring at the peculiarly shy storm clouds from
her seat (from which she could see the entire expanse of the sky through the
glass, save for the corners, which were covered by the pulled-back curtains),
and Father glancing nervously at the kitchen door, probably wondering why
supper was not here yet.
“Why, the times I had in
France,” Mother was saying as if announcing she had won the Nobel Peace
Prize—and here Winter echoed, “France?!” in a voice of wonder—“Well, they were
just corking.” She touched a finger to her cheek. “There was this one delightful French lady
who lived just under my floor, and after I had explained I was not a widow and
I was just on business—” And Winter
gasped with horror at the thought of Mother being a widow— “well, we became
excellent friends. Bernadette—that was
her name—she was such a sweet little thing, all pink and flowers and cheer. Cheerful disposition, with a smile that could
brighten the room—it’s no wonder her husband loves her so. Sometimes it was hard to get through a
conversation because her English was somewhat broken and she had a very, very
thick French accent—but, all I can say, it was—interesting. A new
experience.” Her face lit up, and she
shook her head ruefully, making those beautiful cinnamon curls bounce, coils of
thin coffee hair all wound up around her chin.
Then something caught her eye, and she turned, and everyone turned with
her. One of the maids was balancing part
of their supper, bowls and spoons stacked in one hand, a covered battered pot
with the other. The lid was sideways and
a ladle’s handle was poking out.
Winter leapt up and took
the bowls from the maid and spread them out—a clatter, and the spoons all
landed on their napkins. She then
snatched the large pot from the maid and set it with a clunk in the middle of
the table.
The maid looked surprised
but hurried back towards the kitchen without a word.
“This is supper?” Mother
asked, looking surprised. “Is
this…soup?”
“Not quite,” Father said
gaily. Before he could continue, the
maid returned with a stack of dainty glasses and a squat pot of what Wednesday
assumed was tea. She put them on the
table and left quietly, biting her lip.
“What’s that…scent?” Willow
said, inhaling deeply. Wednesday sniffed. Something smelled fresh and yet
elder, almost as if the sea had been added to their dining room, hold the salt.
“Ah,” said Father. He lifted the lid off the teapot, and a
ripple of easy sighs ran through the girls at the smell, as well as a cloud of
steam that drifted. “Esthetique…I asked for this to be made for you.” He took her hand. “After all…I do know how much you like the ocean[TS1] .”
“What is it made from?”
Mother asked, holding back her hair and peering inquisitively at the
translucent bronze of the tea. Small, wrinkly shapes mottled the bottom.
“It is callitrichaceae,”
Father said solemnly, pouring Mother a cup, and then one for each of the
girls. “Dicot aquatic herbs—I was
fortunate to buy some a few months ago.
You had already left at that time, my dear.”
“Oh, George,” Mother said,
teary-eyed. “You’re as romantic and
perfect as ever.”
“Please,” Willow said
distastefully as Mother and Father kissed rather exuberantly. “You haven’t even tried the actual tea yet!”
“It’s the gesture that
counts,” Winter said, kicking Willow in the foot (“Ouch!”) and watching Mother
and Father, her expression misty.
“Well, I honestly don’t care,”
Willow said petulantly, kicking Winter back (no response). She picked up her teacup and took a sip. “Though the tea is just deliciously light.”
Wednesday took a sip as
well, burning her tongue. It was.
Light and cleansing, leaving a fresh feeling across her palate.
Once Mother and Father
finally broke apart, the girls uncovered the large metal pot with interest,
revealing a slumgullion—potatoes cut in thick wedges, cubes of meat, pickled
vegetables; all swimming in a heavy porridge.
“Oh, again?” Willow said,
flopping back in her chair, sending her hair cascading around her
shoulders. “I thought it’d be a little
more spectacular, since it’s Mother’s day back.”
Father glared at her, but
not really angrily. “Willow, we’re not
on the rich side.”
“Still.” Willow frowned, then grabbed the ladle and
put some in her bowl. The glutinous
porridge adhered to the metal of the ladle and she shook it vigorously to get
it off. Bits of stew peppered Wednesday’s bowl, and she cast Willow an
exasperated glance, wrinkling her brow.
Willow did not see.
“It’s okay, my love,”
Mother said, and pecked Father’s cheek.
Her squeezed her hand gently in turn.
“I
love stew, no matter how simple.”
Time was a blur after
that. Everyone enjoyed their tea, and
exclaimed with how fine it was, and then passed the ladle around and took turns
shaking the slumgullion onto their plates. Winter commented on how rich[m2] it was, and there were smiles all around as
Mother started up another stream of chatter.
By this time her voice had become rather background to Wednesday, and after
giving New Year’s greetings all around, as Mother dived into recalling her
adventures/business trip in Paris, Wednesday missed the exordium because she
was too busy thinking of her own adventures at the New Year’s Festival and in
the resulting and extremely busy day that had ensued because of it.
Thinking of Castil
Seigfried—and his very unapompentic departure—made her feel funny on the
inside. He was sweet, feminine almost,
with his beautiful glossy black hair and his pretty blue eyes with the violet
at the rings and his capability to excuse anything. At the same time, she couldn’t picture a pair
of green eyes without an image of Cassius flashing in her mind—his
always-tousled cinnamon hair, rakish, sly and yet kind disposition, and
especially those eyes, like emerald jade, or peridot. Both of them seemed indescribably similar, as
if brothers, and at the same time she couldn’t imagine any two people who were
more different and had nothing to with each other.
She wished she had gotten
to know both of them better. It wasn’t
just that she was curious; she had a determination to understand these two
mysterious young gentlemen better, and the fact that she had known both of them
directly for less than twenty-four hours—a tiny taste of their
personalities—only made her want to understand more, as one does when one
samples something delicious, but only just enough to say, “How wonderful this
is!” and then burn to enjoy more, and ends up buying it.
She was confident she would
see Castil again—Winter had promised fervently that she would give him his
jacket back if it killed her. And
perhaps she’d see Cassius, too. After
all, that very morning, Willow had made the two other sisters promise to get
Cassius to marry her (and Wednesday scowled at the thought of Winter’s choking
magic of persuasion, which had forced her to agree to Willow’s terms—just
because Winter was curious about what had made Castil leave!), and they had no
choice but to follow through, since a promise could not be broken. It was one of the ancient laws of magic that
stretched way back to the flicker of creation, when magic had crept into this
world and some godly figure had attached the archaic laws. A solemn promise
could not be broken, lest disaster befall one. So (and the thought left a
bitter taste in her mouth that she could not wash out with her tea) she would
see Cassius when he and Willow were married. The thought did no wonders for her
attitude, and she found herself with a severe case of the mulligrubs, and
fading into the background while Mother cheerfully prattled on.
“Wednesday. Earth to
Wednesday!”
Willow was hissing in her
ear, kicking her shins lightly underneath the table, trying to talk without
being noticed. Wednesday blinked,
surfacing from her stupor, and looked at Willow. “What?” she murmured back, picking up her
spoon and digging in her bowl until she had a shovelful of beans and potatoes.
“After supper, do you think
we can play some parlor games in the library?” Willow asked as Wednesday tried
to fit her spoon of mush in her mouth.
“We haven’t played any in so long, what with Mother gone and Father busy
and Winter boring and you always sick. I’m the only one with any spirit…but now
that Mother’s back, don’t you think Father would agree to play?”
“Perhaps,” Wednesday said
shortly, swallowing her food, “as long as we’re not playing statues, or the
laughing game. I think that one’s just
ridiculous.”
“We could play spillikins,”
Willow offered. “It’s not so strange, and it does require thinking.”
“Perhaps.”
“Is that all you’re saying?
Perhaps?”
“Well, if you weren’t so
stubborn, then maybe—” Wednesday began.
“Girls?” Mother broke
in. “Is everything all right over
there?”
“Yes, we’re fine,” Willow
said dismissively. She smiled at Mother, her pretty little dimples
showing. “Mother, after supper, could we
go to the library, perhaps? Or maybe the piano room? And there we could play
some games.”
“The library is under
renovation by my hand,” Father said. “We
cannot play in there, unless you wish a book’s falling gracefully off the shelf
and onto your head.”
Wednesday and Winter
giggled behind their hands. Willow kept
smiling, though her dimples had vanished.
She wasn’t amused at Father’s funning.
“Well, I suppose,” Mother
said. “I was hoping to tell you a little
bit more about my business in Bellarine—”
“Naturally—” Willow said
hastily.
“Of course, Mother,” Winter
bulldozed over Willow’s voice. “We can
stay in the piano room, and you could tell us all about your trips in
Bellarine.” She clasped her hands
together, smiling. “I’m sure they’re
absolutely thrilling. And I could play a bit of piano to soothe us all,
especially such a rambunctious girl as Willow—”
She frowned discreetly at Willow, who scowled back. “And after some coffee, once you’re all done,
then we can play a little.”
“Oh, joy,” Willow
muttered. “Such a showoff.”
Winter kicked sideways,
giving Willow a warning.
“Sounds like you’ve planned
everything out, as usual,” Mother said, smiling at Winter and sipping her
tea. Wednesday rolled her eyes at her
sisters and helped herself to more stew.
It was rich and bursting with flavor, even though it was inexpensive and
thrown together.
Winter beamed.
After supper, still
clutching their dainty cups of the aquatic herbal tea, they gathered around in
the piano room, a large but relatively pointless room with rather scruffy
carpeting, a few old sofas, and two baby grand pianos positioned opposite each
other across the room. While Mother
seated herself gracefully on the sofa, with Father next to her, Winter took a
seat at the closest piano’s bench, and began flipping through her music. Willow, not to be outdone by her competitive
sister, immediately flounced to the other piano. Their eyes met, directly eye to eye, over the
shiny black surfaces.
“A duet, then,” Mother said
hesitantly, using a cheery voice, breaking the bridge of tension that was
arching between the two pianos.
Winter looked through her
book. “Come Away to the Skies,
Willow?”
“Mm,” Willow agreed primly,
flicking aside a page. She had her hands
ready, and, sitting on the couch, Wednesday could see both of them, positioned
carefully with their music in front.
The post-supper
entertainment was decidedly competitive, Wednesday decided. The rest of them watched, silent, while
Winter and Willow played back and forth, competing for dynamics, articulation,
tempo, matching each other. Then, after
the duet (“Bravo!” Mother said, clapping), there were solos, Winter better suited
to graceful, smooth, soft songs, while Willow dexterously let her fingers fly
across the keys in an allegro Prelude in E♭, not to mention many other fast, haunting songs
that made Wednesday gut curl and feel like she needed to stand up and run.
After much piano playing
(and rendering both Willow and Winter panting and pink), Mother finally
composed herself, and began to speak again of her trips, with the two other
girls crowding on both of her sides, listening with rapture and squealing with
delight whenever Mother said something funny, Father content, all of them
crowded cozily together on the sofa.
Despite being strict, Mother was a pleasant woman, and she spun her
story in her clever, enticing way; yet all her words filtered through Wednesday
brain and she could only hear them faintly.
It wasn’t that Wednesday was feeling weak or sick; she was just unable
to focus. An image of the garden sprang
to her mind, and she felt clogged, and that somewhere in her mind the thought
was crystal clear: the garden would clear it.
Wednesday excused herself,
much to the others’ surprise, and Mother stared at her questioningly but didn’t
raise a commotion as she quickly walked out of the piano room and down the
hall. From the doorway, a quick right
and she was in the gardens, the southwest section. The gardens were a sprawling, low-cut series
of untrimmed arbors overflowing with thin lime vines starting to sprout the
barest hint of leaves, from where she stood.
To her left was a hedge, which in early summer was full of soft blooming
lilacs and topiaries bursting with colors. Right now it was a bare, grim green,
but she was confident they would start to color soon enough. The southwest section was a rose section, but
as none of them had bloomed yet, all that there was for her to see was a
threadbare forest of thorny branches, jutting out a sickly green with brown
spines. Roses and leaves would soon
flourish on those same tangled branches, transforming them into beauties, but
currently there were still only thistles.
Lattices were placed, alternating with the hedges and arbors, and each
white espalier only had snake-like dead vines clinging, but by the time spring
arrived, morning glories would open and perfume the air.
She had been right. The cold hiemal temperature whipped her hair
about, snapping her to alertness in an instant, and she chided herself, not for
the first time, for not bringing a cloak.
It was still only the evening of the first day of January, and of course
the air would be cold. Frost lay in
spikes over the plants. The sun had
finally succumbed to the horizon line and was gone, and a soothing kind of
chilly darkness was enveloping the castle.
Even the timid storm clouds she had seen at supper were venturing out,
only faintly distinguishable from the dark of the sky. One of them had even dared to sidle in front
of the moon, cutting a pie slice sort of shape from its almost completely full
roundness. It was almost as if…as if no
light were coming through the heavens, despite the moon’s ghostly white glow.
Something peach-colored, a
color that didn’t match the solemnity of the brown and gray, managed to catch
her eye, and she turned. At the base of
one delicate rosebush, its arms gracefully positioned upwards, was a small bud
of a rose that was almost open.
Wednesday bent down at the knees to examine it more closely, not caring
that her hem was sweeping the dirt and her hair, which was coming unpinned yet
again, was falling over her face, and the wind would soon tangle it in the
rosebush’s arms if she didn’t step away.
The bud was a pretty little thing, nothing special exactly, but still cute and young. The hedge she was kneeling in front of
shadowed her entire form, and she felt almost as though she had melted into the
darkness.
There was a rustle from
somewhere decently near to her—not too close, and yet not too far away. Wednesday froze.
Another rustle, a bit
louder this time. Someone else, someone
besides her, was walking through the gardens.
Wednesday stood up, looking
around, and brushed her hair behind her—
Pain yanked her scalp. She stifled a yelp, whipping around to see if
anyone had grabbed her hair, but there was no one. She looked down and realized that the
rosebush was the culprit, clutching a coil innocently.
“You—” Wednesday gritted her teeth and bent down
again to disengage her hair from the thorn.
Meanwhile, the rustling was getting closer. Not in a menacing way, but just as though
someone were taking a stroll, not particularly caring what they bumped into,
such as trees, or bushes, or hedges, even.
Wednesday couldn’t imagine taking such a clumsy walk, though, and she
wondered if someone was drunk. It was a
possibility.
If someone were drunk, then
she needed to get out of here.
The wind gusted and
moaned. Just as Wednesday freed her
hair, another tendril became ensnared.
She glared at the rosebush, which was placidly waving in the breeze, and
started to tug the lock of auburn free. The steps were still approaching, still
at an absent-like pace.
They stopped.
Wednesday furiously jerked
at the hair and it tore free with a shock of pain through her head, and it left
a few long strands in the hands of the bush, which fluttered them
teasingly. Triumphant and still holding
the ends, Wednesday stood up—
—And found herself face to
face with a gentleman.
“Oh!” Wednesday backed up quickly, and her skirts,
blowing forward in the wind, caught in the rosebush again. She and the young man locked eyes over the
tall rose hedge arbor, and she started, recognizing that black silk cloak so
long that it brushed the floor, the hood over his head that cast shadows over
his face, the silver watch he was holding, letting it dangle by the chain from
his fingertip.
The Shadow King.
Wednesday yelp-screamed as
reality flashed in her mind. She tried
to run, but her skirts were still tangled in that one annoying rosebush, and
she stared up at him, caught. He stared back, as surprised as she was.
She couldn’t see his
face. His long hood covered everything
but his facial features, and the shadows seemed to just cover the rest of him,
obscuring it. Only the gleam of his eyes
was visible, but even those she couldn’t make out the color.
Time halted and they stared
at each other.
The pocket watch ticked.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tick.
“Oh…” Wednesday whispered.
Then time sped up again,
back to normal speed, and her mind screamed, He’s dangerous! Get away from him! Now!
Wednesday wrenched at her
skirts and they came free, and she fled. She dove through the topiaries and
bushes and ran.
Her shoes went clicka-click every time they hit the
ground, and the sound overwhelmed her ears as she sprinted, her feet taking her
to somewhere she knew not, and she half expected the King to give chase; hair
streaming in back of her, she was carried by her feet far away from that
section of the gardens, tearing off and panting, her breath a white cloud, breathing
so quickly the cloud was almost opaque, and her heart trilled in her chest and
almost shocked her with the force. Her
legs gave way several minutes later and she crumpled, landing hard upon the
dirt, her knees colliding with the ground—and she just fell over, letting her
head smack, her hair a waterfall and falling to the ground with her. She was curled up on the frozen ground, and
she felt icy, with a burning sensation, and yet her heart still shrieked and drumrolled,
tearing along like a train, out of control, and she gasped for air. Her eyes stared into the black sky straight
above, and she closed them, terrified that she would see the Shadow King
leaning over her.
He—he—the King! He was here! In the gardens!
Her eyes flew open. The Shadow King had been in their gardens!
She’d seen him! And yet—in the moment, when she’d seen—he had
been—shocked. And—unexpected—and—and—
Wednesday pressed her hands
to her head so hard her forearms hurt from the pressure. Oh—oh—oh! The fact
that he had been here—and maybe still was—that was—
Calm down, she thought, closing her eyes again. Calm.
Calm. Calm!
“It’s okay,” she whispered
aloud, tears starting to well in her eyes.
They rolled over her cheekbones and down towards her ears. “It’s okay.
He—he’s not here. He’s not going to hurt you—”
A thought occurred to her
and the color drained from her already-drawn face. What if he hadn’t left when
she’d run? What is he had come to—to hurt her family? What if he had come to
kill someone?
Wednesday sat up so abruptly
her vision dissolved into colorful stars for a moment. Once they had cleared, she looked around.
She was right next to a
pyramid-like structure with steps. Craning her neck and looking up, she saw the
top of the pyramid had a rope bridge precariously attached to it, swaying in
the wind.
Wednesday set her jaw. She had to see if the King was still
here. From up there, he would be
unlikely to see her because she was high up, and she would be able to see the
entire spread of the greenish-brown gardens. His smooth black form would stand
out. Even if she was afraid of heights, she had to know if he was still a
threat.
She started to climb up the
steps, wobbly.
The bridge pitched as she
neared it, and it seemed to be more and more flimsy as she watched. Her determination wavered. Was it really necessary to walk on
that…thing? She imagined scurrying on
the wooden boards, and it suddenly giving way, and shivered. Sometimes it was better not to consider the
possibilities.
Finally she was at the
pyramid’s top, and she eyed the rope sides and coarse planks of the bridge
suspiciously, dubiously. She placed a
tentative foot on the first plank, then put some weight on it.
The bridge held.
Wednesday hoisted herself
up onto the bridge and grasped the ropes, biting her lip to keep from crying
out as the entire thing swayed back and forth in the wind, and she felt as if
her stomach were rising up and trying to fit through her esophagus. Slowly, she inched along, trying not to look
down but at the same time trying to look to see if she could still see the
Shadow King. The bridge was holding
firm, not exactly what one would call steady, but not as fragile as it
appeared. Her confidence growing, she
moved along a bit quicker, and, after a deep breath, dared to look down.
It wasn’t as bad as she’d
thought. Like that morning Willow had
dragged her out onto the bridge to witness the magical sunrise, from her point
on the rope bridge she could see the mass of the northwest and southwest
gardens, and even some bits of the central maze. The bridge was a narrow path in front of her,
and she could see, to her left, that swoop of the bridge, and another to her
right. As the bridge had been designed,
all four of the pieces of the bridge would meet in a sort of X shape in the
center, directly over the heart of the maze.
The air was freezing cold,
and she rubbed her arms, wishing it were more like summer. She daintily moved along the length of the
bridge, warily eyeing the shadowy grays and greens below, trying to catch sight
of a black-clothed figure. She saw
nothing but trees and arbors, and the occasional yellow splotch of a row of
early-blooming daffodils. Wind blew through her hair, tangling it, and she
absently tied it up and pinned the entire thing into one large blob on her
head. She could fix it later.
A thin fog started to
settle, and drops coalesced on her skin.
She grimaced and brushed them away, peering through the mist as she
continued to smoothly slide along the length of the bridge. The wind was starting to die down, and it
wasn’t nearly as wobbly anymore. She was almost at the center, where all four
bridges met. Was he not here anymore?
She looked down and saw
herself, with a strange trill of fear, or maybe exhilaration, now over the green
hedges of the maze, which in summer were in bloom with brilliant flowers. Even
though the fog was settling in, she could already see the X at which the
bridges connected in a cross.
Perhaps he had gone. That was the best-case scenario, Wednesday
thought, relieved, as she reached the center.
She now had four paths she could take; the one straight ahead, two that
were perpendicular, and the one she had just come from. She hadn’t seen the King the entire way.
Looking up at the moon,
which was now not only half-covered with clouds but also with wisps of fog, she
remembered that when she had eavesdropped on Aurelia and the King, Aurelia had
mentioned a curse, and that he had to be careful. Wednesday wondered what that curse was. Surely it was not that he couldn’t interact
with human beings, since he and Wednesday had met face-to-face hardly half an
hour ago. What could it be, then? If it wasn’t something that restricted him
from being with people, surely he would come into the human world more often—it
had to be depressing in the Shadow Kingdom, all black. Well, all black was what the history books
said.
The
fog was now as thick as the stew they had had for supper, and Wednesday could
hardly see the ropes that were the bridge’s handholds.
“I suppose he left,”
Wednesday said to herself, aloud, and she was thankful.
“So you were looking for
me, my lady?”
The roguishly amused voice
behind her was dulcet and as smooth as velvet. Wednesday whirled around.
Standing casually behind
her…was the Shadow King.
***
Wednesday tried to scream, but her throat constricted. It was
too hard.
“Honestly,” he said. His voice was soothing as honey. “I was just taking a walk. It’s nothing to be
afraid of.” The fog and the shadows made
it harder to see him than ever. “When
you’re me, it’s not easy to have down time.”
Wednesday whimpered.
“Don’t be so scared,” he
said kindly. His trailing silk cloak
whispered on the boards behind him, sometimes flowing into the thin spaces
between the strung planks.
“I…” Wednesday felt faint, as if she’d danced a
hundred polkas. She took a deep,
shuddering breath, and tried to find the rope railing behind her to steady
herself. But she was in the crossroads
of the bridge, and there was nothing but space.
She grabbed at the rope on the sides and felt its presence steadying,
somehow.
He started forward, but
Wednesday yelped.
“Don’t come near!”
The King stopped. She wished she could see his face, his
expression, to see if he was trying to be helpful or menacing.
“All right,” he said
finally. “I’ll stay put.”
“Only…” Wednesday struggled with her speech, since
the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears was so loud she couldn’t think. “What are you doing here?”
“Here?” His voice was so blasted nice. And so young, too, by the sounds of it. “Taking a walk, of course. Just to clear my head. Unless you mean up here on the bridge, of
course, which would be because I was wondering if you could point me the way
out, since I’m lost. But, ah! From up here you can see everything, and I don’t
need directions, eh?” He laughed
quietly. “Also, I thought I’d given you
quite a scare—”
“You did!” Wednesday
blurted out, her heart still trying to leap out of her mouth.
“So I thought I’d come up
and apologize.” There was a glint of
white in the shadows of his face, and she supposed that he had smiled. “This is a strange place to be, is it
not?” He took in her hair, which was no
doubt a mess of pinned, unpinned, and sloppily re-pinned auburn coils; her pale
face; her frightened green eyes; her dress, which was torn at the hem, with her
bare arms covered in goosepimples.
“Um…yes.” Wednesday started to back away, slowly,
trying not to be noticed.
He clicked open his silver
pocketwatch, closed it again, and kept clicking it, seemingly absently. “You may want to go inside, my lady. I’m sure you’re frozen to the bones.”
“I can’t. Yet.” It was hard to explain. Wednesday felt as if that now, now that she
was starting to calm down, if she returned to that stuffy piano room with
Mother’s voice taking up all the space and her sisters squeezing round her, she
would end up running back out again.
“Then perhaps you should
warm up?” He put his watch away and offered
her a black teacup (which Wednesday knew for sure hadn’t been in his hand a
second before) with steam rising from the top, and Wednesday cautiously looked
in it. The beverage was as black as
coffee, as well as the same color of the cup and saucer.
“Is this safe to drink?”
she asked dubiously, trying not to sound rude.
“It should be. Unless
you’re allergic to hot chocolate.”
“This is hot chocolate?”
Wednesday said, frowning into her cup.
It was black, too black, and didn’t smell sweet.
“Dark chocolate,” he
said. Suddenly, he too also had a
steaming cup, which he took a quick sip from before adding hastily, “Sorry, I
don’t usually drink it with sugar.” And
then, magically it seemed, he had a small black jar, which he handed to
her.
Please don’t let his sugar be black as well, Wednesday prayed,
grim.
The sugar was indeed black,
though it was transparent, like regular sugar. A quick taste confirmed that it
was just as sweet and harmless as real sugar, and Wednesday, still dubious,
shook a pinch or two into her cup.
“Sorry,” she said, looking
up, “I don’t suppose you have anything to stir—?”
He was already handing a
small black metal spoon to her, not even looking as he took another sip from
his own cup. Wednesday stirred her
quietly. Clink, clink. He had already
known. But how?
“Sorry, I’m not a good conversation
starter,” he said suddenly. It was
strange, being so close to him, drinking hot chocolate—well, possibly hot
chocolate—with him, and yet she couldn’t even see his face as his cloak pooled
around him. A bit creepy, actually.
“Er—that is—all right,”
Wednesday stammered. She lifted her
spoon from the hot chocolate—which was strangely thin—and took a deep
drink. It was delicious, definitely
chocolate, with the taste of sugar melting over her tongue—and yet there was
something different. It must have been
the bittersweet dark chocolate flavor. The
chocolate warmed her instantly, and she stopped shivering.
“This is good,” she said,
smiling tentatively over the rim of her cup. She was unsure what to do with her
spoon, but as the thought crossed her mind, she felt a fizzy sensation in her
palm, looked down, and realized it’d dissolved in her hand.
“Good heavens,” she said
softly.
The Shadow King drank the
rest of his hot chocolate and heaved a deep sigh as he set the empty cup down
on his saucer. “Some things are nice
about the Shadows,” he said, a hint of a smile in his voice. Then it turned sorrowful. “And some things are not.”
“What’s it like, over
there?” Wednesday said, hoping to engage him in conversation in fear that if
she waited idly, he would get an urge or kill her or something.
“It’s hard to think about
it,” he admitted. He seemed so…human.
Nothing like the strange, unearthly descriptions in her and her sisters’
textbooks or fantasies. “Not just
because it really isn’t a happy place, but also because…” He sighed gently. “Well, it’s hard to understand how it works.
That’s how I can sort of…manipulate and create things subconsciously. Like this.”
“Like—?” Wednesday suddenly noticed the wrapped candy
stick that had appeared in his hand.
Unlike most of his possessions, this was not black, but white with
orange stripes that followed the contours of the stick. “That wasn’t there before, was it?” She also realized, with a start, that his
empty teacup was gone. “How do you do that?”
“It’s complicated,” he said
simply, pressing the stick into her hands. “Harder to create things in this
world, but not everything has to be black here. In the Shadows, everything is
black, and it’s just hard to see any dimension because it’s so dark…and…and
there seem to be dimensions that don’t exist here.” He hesitated.
“Ah, well, even I don’t understand it. Some things will be mysteries
forever.”
Wednesday finished her
chocolate. “I suppose they will,” she
said lamely, unsure if she should comfort him or not.
At
that moment, that clock tower rumbled, chiming nine. Both Wednesday and the King started, and
Wednesday said, “It’s just the clock tower.
Chimes the hour every day.”
“Is
that not a bother while trying to sleep?” the King asked, sounding skeptical.
“I
honestly don’t know,” Wednesday said, shrugging. “Both my sister have said that I sleep like a
rock. Or a pig. Or a tree. It really doesn’t matter; I just sleep really
soundly. I’ve never been bothered by the
peals after I’ve fallen asleep. Perhaps the tower doesn’t chime after ten? No,
but that wouldn’t make sense because I heard it at the ball,” she muttered,
more to herself than him now. Then she
looked up. “Sorry for my mumbling.”
He waved it away and clicked
open his pocketwatch again, and Wednesday realized that it was not black. “If everything you have in the Shadows is
black, what about your watch?” she inquired as politely as possible, gesturing
at it with her head.
He glanced down in
surprise, as if he hadn’t noticed he was playing with it. “My watch?
Oh. It was…a gift.”
“A gift,” Wednesday
echoed. An absurd picture popped into
her head with the notion of this phrase, and she imagined a bizarre pitch-black
room with vague-formed people giving birthday presents to the King. Somehow it didn’t seem quite right, but she
didn’t want to prod.
“I’ll be late if I don’t
hurry,” he said, clicking it shut and tucking it away. “I still must apologize for giving you such a
scare.” Here he sank into a deep,
graceful bow, and upon straightening snapped his silk cloak out behind him—for
it had been curling about him and dripping through the bridge cracks—and
smiled, his white teeth flashing in the moonlight. “Good night, my lady.”
In an instant he was
gone. Wednesday hadn’t even realized
that he’d left for a few seconds, and, when bringing it to mind, she couldn’t
quite remember how he had
disappeared. It wasn’t as though he’d
vaporized, had he?
She was still trying to
untangle her thoughts about his leave when she let her head droop downwards,
and saw that unlike her spoon, her empty teacup and saucer were both still
clasped in her hands. They hadn’t
disappeared. A thin, gritty ring of
chocolate sand encircled the bottom, and with a shock, she saw words imprinted
clearly in the empty center circle, on the bottom of the teacup, barely
distinguishable in the fine black porcelain.
It’s yours, the imprint read.
“Rise and shine, missy,” Willow’s voice said bossily[TS3] .
Wednesday brushed auburn
tendrils off her face. The simple motion
of her arm made her feel nauseous, and she felt creaky and rusty, the way she
always did after a sleep. She was lying on her back with her pillow sideways,
her covers falling off the side of her bed, and the curtains were pulled aside
so bright, pretty light filtered through.
Unfortunately, that same
bright, pretty light was flashing right in her eyes. Wednesday winced and moved her head sideways.
Willow was sitting on her own
separate bed, and Wednesday could hear water running in the bathroom, so Winter
was probably washing up. Willow was
already dressed, pretty in one of the casual dresses Mother had just given to
her the previous day; dark green with little frills. It contrasted well with her fiery golden-red
hair, giving her a festive, Christmassy look.
Her hair was still unpinned, and she looked feisty, beaming down at
Wednesday with an almost sly look.
“My goodness, you still sleep like a corpse,” Willow said,
tugging a red-clogged hairbrush through her long, wispy hair.
“Corpses don’t sleep,”
Wednesday said, her voice a little slurred and hitched. Waking up was always the worst for her, since
her body had been still and limp for an entire night. In fact, recently, she’d been spending an
awful lot of time in bed, and it didn’t do any wonders for her temper.
She pushed herself up and
winced as her elbows twinged, and she almost heard the creaking noise of
unoiled joints as she sat up with difficulty, feeling dry and sickly as usual,
but much better than she had on the evening of the New Year’s Festival.
She’d returned last night
after hot chocolate with the Shadow King, and her family had still been
arranged cozily in the piano room, with Mother still blathering about her
travels and making cheery, bubbly comments that bounced around in Wednesday
skull, with nothing registering. After
five times of Mother asking her a question and she not responding in the
slightest, Father suggested gently that she head on to bed, assuring her that
it was late. Wednesday had protested only mildly faintly, but Father had
insisted (and so had Willow, insisting rather that Wednesday was quiet and
unremarkable as a vase in the corner of a room, and therefore creeping her
out), and, after pressing a hot cup of water into Wednesday’s hands, he’d
shooed her up to bed. None of them had
noticed Wednesday still firmly clasping the teacup and saucer, keeping that
hand half hidden in her skirts. After
reaching the bedroom, she’d safely stowed it in her drawer, and then undressed,
cleaned, put on her nightgown, and fallen asleep before even ten minutes had
passed, completely exhausted from her fright in the evening with the Shadow
King.
She’d dreamt about him that
night.
She had been running
through a forest, trees with sinewy black trunks and ominous silver leaves
leering down at her, with something vague and dark that Wednesday couldn’t
quite recall chasing her down, and then suddenly the King in his eerie black
cloak had appeared, shadowed as usual, and he had teleported her to the Shadow
Kingdom, a vast black place with soupy, roiling haze. From there he proceeded
to lower his hood, and at the precise moment he was uncovered, she’d woken up.
“So, guess what,
Wednesday,” Willow said with the air of someone holding back excitement,
tossing her hairbrush aside and started to pin up her hair.
Wednesday, now fully
sitting up, took a swig of medicine from her bottle. There was no denying that
it had soured—and inexplicably so—and she frowned at the sticky label on the
side to check for expiration. It was set for February. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me
anyway,” she said, quietly replacing the bottle back to its former place on the
bureau.
“Mother’s taking us riding
today,” Willow singsonged, drifting to the vanity so she could pin her hair
correctly.
“It’s going to be
absolutely dreamy,” Winter said, exiting the bathroom. She was wearing an immaculate riding outfit
of stiff, starched black, with her pretty strawberry and blonde hair neatly
pinned up against her head. Her matching
feathered hat was tucker under her arm.
Willow whistled, scooting
over so Winter could have a quick peek in the mirror before pushing her out of
the way. “Where did you get that
beauty?”
“Mother,” Winter said
simply. She eyed Willow’s green one, and
frowned. “Why do you get the green one? This
black one makes me feel like I’m in mourning.”
“I have a white one, but
it’s an older one,” Wednesday said, finally mustering the strength to drag
herself out of bed. Her legs almost gave
way when they touched the floor, but she inhaled deeply and steadied
herself. It was just walking, after
all. “You can borrow it if you like, but
it’s not as fashionable as yours.”
“Yours will be too small,”
Winter said cuttingly, fluffing up the stiff petticoat of her riding dress.
“Anyhow, it might be dirty…you know, Mother said she saw bringing some of her
friends along…some of her gentlemen friends, that is.” She blushed faintly. “You know that she wants me to get acquainted
quickly, being an older girl now and all…”
Willow stuffed her last pin
into place as Wednesday headed for the bathroom. “Maybe that’s for the best, Winter,” she said
before she ducked into the bathroom. “I
hope you find a gentleman you like.”
Winter muttered something
but just shook her head.
A fresh vase of small roses
sat in the bathroom. None of them were
larger than tightly closed buds, and Wednesday sighed. If only spring would come sooner! Then the roses would be in full bloom,
beautiful in their spreading colors and furled petals, delicate centers and a
most delicious scent, and they could have rich, full roses every day. A flower that was completely open was rare
these days. New Year’s had definitely qualified
as a rare occasion.
After cleaning herself up,
and then putting on her riding habit, Wednesday returned to the bedroom,
looking into the vanity, and sighed as she studied her reflection. The white outfit was chiffon, with bits of
somewhat frayed lace, but it was still a nice white color and the hat didn’t
have any of the fake flowers or ribbons coming off. The stark white betrayed her bright auburn
hair against her deathly pale face all the more, and she gently rubbed a
forefinger over her eyelashes, wishing they were longer like Willow’s. A tiny ringlet of ginger-brown was untucked,
and she poked it up behind her ear, hoping it wouldn’t blow out while she was
riding.
Wednesday was not a fan of
riding. Ponies were pretty, but she
hated the snuffly straw smell, and ever since one horse had stepped on her foot
(thankfully she had been wearing hard shiny boots that day), she hadn’t liked
their hooves, either. The whole rocking
sensation as they cantered did not improve the feeling of her stomach-churning
at all.
Still, perhaps if she
wasn’t feeling well, she could just stay with Mother (and the gentlemen guests,
she reminded herself) and watch Willow and Winter ride.
The girls trooped
downstairs at half past eight. This was
a bit of a mistake on their part, as Father was picky about timeliness (which,
oddly enough, was not a habit shared by the usually more-strict Mother), and he
sat at the dining room table, eating his corn muffins and sausage with a grim
face. Mother was coaxing him that it was
holiday break—a half-truth—and that the girls weren’t to blame.
They quietly sat, knowing
that they were not to blurt anything out to Father, and as Winter and Willow
silently bickered over the corn muffins and butter, Wednesday helped herself to
a boiled egg and ate.
“It looks like all of you
are dressed and ready to go,” Mother said crisply, with a smile. “Right after breakfast we’ll set out and meet
some of the gentlemen at the tailor’s, and then we can head to the field. The gentlemen are here on…business. I thought
it would be a perfect chance for you girls to have fun and for me to finish
some things at the same time.”
Winter dropped her
half-spread corn muffin on her plate with dismay. “You’re still
working, Mother? I thought you were done and taking a leave.”
“Some things are never
completed on time,” Mother said pleasantly, spreading orange marmalade over a
slice of scratchy bread.
“Where are we going for
riding?” Willow said around her crumbly muffin.
“It’s winter. There can’t be any
good fields.”
“I daresay it’ll take a
while to get there,” Father said suddenly.
“You girls mind your mother, now.”
Winter dropped her muffin
again. “You are…not coming?” she asked.
“No.” Father calmly speared an egg and ate it, not
looking at them. “With your mother
taking a bit of a leave, and having not much work, I am carrying it
temporarily. She will resume in a few
months, but for now, I am handling paperwork inside. You girls are free to play.”
Wednesday looked at him
seriously. Father had never been good at
handling stress. His hair was graying a
bit at the temples and his eyes had more lines around them than she
remembered. Even the notion of stress
was making him stressed. She shook her
head slightly and sighed.
“Sorry?” Father said.
“What?” Wednesday was
confused.
“Did you say something?” he
inquired, in his calm, impassive way.
“No,” Wednesday said, still
confused. He must’ve heard her sigh and
thought she had said something. She cut
her bread into little squares and drizzled honey over them, avoiding his eyes.
There was a strange sort of
silence, in which Willow glanced around as if she were unsure if it was out of
tension or awkwardness.
“Well, I’m done,” she said,
standing up and smoothing down her riding habit. She primly took her plate to the sink and
dumped it in, then came and sat back down.
“Why is the mood so frigid? I feel as if there’s something I missed out
on.”
“It’s nothing,” Wednesday
said, looking away from Willow’s face.
Seeing Father’s green’s stare, it reminded her of Cassius’s eyes
catching her at the festival, and she clenched her teeth to keep a blush from
rising to her face.
“If you say so,” Willow
said indifferently, trying to arrange her hat on her head backwards. Winter
rolled her eyes and jammed it on Willow’s head the right way before returning
her attention to her breakfast.
Wednesday focused on Mother
instead, who had gray eyes—which was a strange mix with cinnamon hair but was
from her wild ethical heritage—and noticed that Mother had been more subdued
that usual that morning. Mother was a
rule-follower, but bubbly and always cheerful at that, and today her pretty
face was more shadowed than it had been yesterday.
“Is something bothering
you, Mother?” she asked quietly.
Mother smiled rather
wearily. “Such efforts do affect one
eventually, Wednesday. My aumildar is
being most difficult—”
“Rotter,” Winter muttered
under her breath.
“And therefore…well, I
suppose you could say I am now showing the strain. All the hard work from the past years is
catching up to me and taking its toll.”
She brightened a bit. “That’s why
we’re going riding—so we can all loosen up a bit.”
“I don’t think they need
it, Esthetique,” Father said affectionately.
“They’ve just been to a festival, after all.”
Mother narrowed her eyes at
him. “Don’t think that I don’t know the
peculiar events following that festival.”
Her gaze flickered in Wednesday’s direction, and Wednesday guiltily
remembered falling on top of Castil.
“If you insist,” Father
said airily, finishing his food.
“Well, I do insist,” Mother
said. “The girls haven’t seen me in
over…oh, I don’t even remember how long ago it was. And even then I had no time to spend with
them. They’re already almost ready to be
married, George—especially you, Winter—and doesn’t it seem proper that they
recognize their own mother better before they leave our household?
“That reminds me,” she
continued, pushing aside her plate and fixing all the girls with a slate-gray
stare. “I wanted to tell you—you had
better marry rich, girls. So pretty—that
shouldn’t go to waste. And coming from
this household…though minor in the grand scheme of the monarchy, we are a royal
family. Maybe it doesn’t seem important
to you, but as a young woman, each of you should marry richer than our family. It’s only proper, and it will bring prosperity
to our house. It’s never too late to
gain more money,” she added thoughtfully, her business mind kicking in.
“We know, Mother,” Willow said plaintively. “I’ve already found someone I like.”
“You aren’t of age yet;
hush.”
“I think…” Winter hesitated. “I think I have actually found someone that
I…will consider marrying.” She spoke the
words with great effort, as if it pained her to admit that she was good enough
to be married to mere man.
“Ooh, who is it?” Willow
teased.
“You wouldn’t know him,”
Winter said loftily. She turned back to
Mother, who was watching her with admiration and encouragement. Father sat beside her, stony, and Wednesday
could almost hear the gears turning in his brain as he tried to work out when
Winter had seen someone she enjoyed. “I
saw him at the festival…and he is rich, of course,” she added hastily as Mother
opened her mouth to say something. “He’s
a lord. I talked to him a bit…not much,
of course…”
“His name?” Mother
inquired, eyebrows raised.
Winter opened her mouth,
then closed it, face hot. The entire family was hanging on to her every
word—Mother intrigued, Father impassive, Willow excited, and Wednesday
bewildered at this sudden turn of events.
Winter pushed another bite
of muffin into her mouth.
“What, you aren’t going to
tell us?” Willow demanded, slamming her hands on the table, and Mother
admonished,
“Willow!”
Winter shrugged, eyes
down. “He’s my business.”
“Winter,” Mother said
tersely, “I need to speak to you about some—things tonight when we come back.”
Father’s perplex became
more pronounced to the point of being a frown.
“You are leaving now?” he
said. “Without an answer?”
Mother merely smiled and
gently pushed Willow towards the doors, then tugged Wednesday and Winter to
their feet and shooed them out also.
Wednesday glanced back, and
saw that Father was staring at them in disbelief, before Mother, with finality,
closed the door on him.
It wasn’t Wednesday’s business to poke around in Winter’s love life, but as
Mother urged them into the scarlet carriage and had the carriage man lash the
horses, she couldn’t help but wonder who it was.
At sixteen, Winter was
reaching the height of her marrying age, and she was also becoming prettier and
prettier every passing day—which was preposterous, seeing that she was about as
beautiful as a girl could get. Whoever
she had in mind was in luck.
Willow nagged at
Winter. It was obvious that Willow loved
gossip and these playful stories in which she could dreamily spin tales about
what Winter’s children would look like, or how bossy Winter would be as a
mother. After various mixed methods of
begging, teasing, threatening, ignoring, arguing, indifference, bribing, and
guilting (all of which produced absolutely nothing for her efforts), Willow
lapsed into a sulky silence, before declaring for unknown reasons that Winter
was jealous and assuming an all-knowing air that made Wednesday want to thump
her.
Mother peeked out of the
curtained windows, sighing gently every so often and seeming lost in her own
thoughts.
Wednesday arranged her hat,
trying to avoid Willow and Winter. This
was near impossible, considering that all of them were together in the
carriage, but the seats were roomy and Wednesday scooted as far away from them
as she could.
Mother signaled to the
driver to pull up for a moment in front of the tailor’s, and Wednesday
curiously poked her head out of the small square window, interested to see the
gentlemen Mother was discussing business with.
Winter and Willow stopped their silent staring contest and scrambled to
the other window; Willow claimed it first and Winter shared Wednesday’s window
with her.
The tailor shop was a
homey, chunky sort of wobbly brick building with an old-fashioned charm, and it
was located centrally in town, therefore being a popular place to meet with
other people. The actual tailor, who was
a pleasant older woman with an equally pleasant chatter, often sent guests who
were waiting for others into the back, where a sort of inn’s lobby-like place
was set up. Wednesday knew because once
she had waited for Willow there, and it was nice and smelled of leather and
starched linen.
Mother stepped out of the
carriage, smoothed down her dress, and directed the girls to stay inside before
heading up to the door and knocking. The
tailor’s assistant opened it almost instantly.
There was a trading of words that none of the girls could hear, and then
Mother graciously moved inside.
“Look, there’s a carriage
parked behind ours,” Willow murmured.
Wednesday craned her neck to the right and saw that a modest carriage
was indeed sitting there a few ways away, vacant.
“It doesn’t look like it’s
someone important’s,” Winter muttered.
Wednesday privately agreed. The
carriage wasn’t as grand-looking as their own, and it seemed a little rickety
and crooked. Yet it was fairly
large. Wednesday figured it must be
rented, a large one to hold all the gentlemen Mother was dealing with, and she
smiled faintly. The tottering rented
carriage had its charm.
A few minutes later, Mother
exited the tailor’s, this time with a short line of solemn-looking gentlemen
following her. In a flurry, the girls
withdrew their heads from the windows in embarrassment, and yanked the curtains
closed before any of the gentlemen were close enough to see distinct faces.
“Ha, we were just spying,”
Willow whispered excitedly as the sound of feet on the ground drew closer, and
the girls knew the gentlemen had reached the carriages.
“Is that something to be
proud of?” Winter hissed, red in the face, but still trying to peek out a
sliver of window still visible at the corner of her drifting curtain.
“…and have a safe
trip.” That was Mother’s voice. There was a polite murmuring of men’s voices,
and the clicking of a carriage door opening, and a sharp snap of it closing a few moments later
after the gentlemen had presumably all filed in.
A second later, the door of
the girls’ carriage unlatched and Mother smoothly climbed in, taking a delicate
seat.
“What happened, Mother?”
Willow said in an excited but convincing imitation of
someone who had not been peeking out the carriage windows.
“They are ready; their
carriage is following ours. As soon as
we reach the field, they will start up discussion of business with me.” Mother was cool as a spring breeze.
“What are they discussing
with you?” Willow pestered.
“We are currently trying to
strike a deal to gain enough money to repair some of the shabbier bits of the
castle,” Mother said. “Father may have
told you that we are renovating?”
Wednesday recalled Father
telling her this, some time after the festival; when exactly, she wasn’t quite
sure. An image of her sitting in bed,
meekly sipping hot water, sprung to mind—ah.
He had said this when he came to talk to her after she had fallen on Castil. Who you
don’t like, she reminded herself automatically. This, of course, made matters worse, as now
she could only think of him.
“Anyhow,” said Mother as
the carriage lurched, then started moving again, “it is none of your
concern. You can take your pick of
ponies when we reach the pasture, hm, girls?”
“Yes…”
The rest of the ride was a
rather solemn, quiet one. Willow peered
out of the curtains, looking back and trying to catch a glimpse of the
trundling, awkwardly large carriage tailing them, but apparently she hadn’t
found anything worth discussing, for she simply sighed, folding her lace gloves
in her lap, and stopped looking.
Wednesday didn’t feel bold enough to stick her head out the window and ogle
the carriage behind, so she accepted Willow’s semblance of disappointment and
hoped Willow wasn’t just pretending she hadn’t seen anything.
It had possibly been a good
but quite silent half an hour’s time before Wednesday dared to poke the
fluttering curtains aside and merely glance out—but as she had expected, there
was nothing interesting. On her side was
a park, with a pretty little lake that was currently a pale, icy blue and birch
trees that ordinarily would be leafy but were bare, their naked arms shivering
in the gentle whisper of a wind. Very
few people were out and about, and Wednesday sighed, watching the landscape
swiftly pass by, but not really looking anymore.
She remembered the last
time she had gone riding. It had been a
spring from over two years ago, a pleasant breezy day with the long grass of
the pasture blowing sideways in the zephyr, and the horses’ long manes and
tails undulated while they, unconcerned, sniffed the girls’ hair. The ride had been nice enough, with the gentle
gusts and the soft, sweet meadow smell of fresh earth, but the pony had had a
mind of its own, and it cantered in a most carefree manner across the field,
and promptly stopped following Wednesday’s tugs and yanks on its mane, and soon
had lost itself in a nearby neighboring forest.
And then Wednesday had become seriously scared, and had cried and begged
the confused pony to go back, but it wouldn’t budge and shied away when she
tried pulling it.
Her sisters had found her
in good time, for they had seen her pony galloping across the grass before it’d
disappeared. Still, it had taken her an hour to get over the event, even though
Winter and Willow had rolled their eyes and left her in their room.
The memory wasn’t exactly
something Wednesday wanted to be reminded of.
Still, she had higher hopes for this ride, especially now that she was
older and had more sensibility about these kinds of things. She paused, wondering what had happened to
that pony, and sighed gently. Perhaps,
if she had a good mind and a sharp sense, she would be able to enjoy this time
round.
“You know,” Willow said,
startling Wednesday out of her stupor—and Winter, who had previously been
staring at the window curtains in deep thought, also jolted awake out of her
half-daze and looked at Willow with rapt attention. “I think that…when I’m of age…” And at this time she directed her words at
Mother, who watched her with a still and mild kind of vacant coolness. “I don’t think I’ll…need to wait. As soon as I’m of age—and who knows when
that’ll be—well, I…”
Willow blushed. A sinking feeling crept down Wednesday’s
chest, and she knew what was coming next.
“I think,” Willow continued, trying to control her stammer, “I already
know who I want to marry.”
Mother twisted her gloves
in her lap, as if trying to maintain her composure by taking it out.
“And…” Willow hesitated. “With your permission—and his and his
family’s of course—would that be…er…possible?”
Winter gazed at Willow, her
face a mask. Willow glanced at her for a
moment, blushed beet red, and stared fiercely at Mother.
“Wednesday and Winter
agreed with me, earlier, yesterday morning,” Willow added quickly. Wednesday started to protest, but she
remembered, bitterly so, that it had been true; that morning, she recalled, had
been the day Castil Seigfried had made them porridge for breakfast, and Willow
had licked the spoon—and the resulting questioning of Willow that had followed
required the two other sisters to promise Willow’s hand to Cassius, with Winter
using her persuasive magic to force Wednesday to agree to Willow’s terms. Winter had seemed completely oblivious that
Wednesday had mixed feelings about Cassius, and apparently she had nothing
going for him whatsoever, since she’d immediately gave her word to Willow about
Cassius’s marriage.
Mother pursed her
lips. “It is…unusual,” she said after a
moment. “But not unheard of, I’m
sure. We may be able to arrange
something like what you’ve asked if we know a bit more about the gentleman you
desire.”
“His name is Cassius
Wickerworth,” Willow supplied helpfully.
Mother arched an eyebrow,
smiling thinly. “And?”
“Er…he’s a thread spinner,”
Willow added thoughtfully. “But he’s
very eloquent, and a very good dancer!” she snapped as Mother looked
incredulous.
“What is his position?”
Mother asked. “Does he play the piano?
The organ? The violin?”
“Of course!” Willow bristled. A moment passed and she paused. “Well, actually, I don’t know. I’m sure he does, though, since he’s so good
at everything—I just don’t know where he gets all his talent from! Here I am practicing away every day, and
someone like him, who has to work, is even better—now that’s admirable, I
say.” She lifted her chin, pink blooming
in her cheeks.
Wednesday groaned
inwardly. Why did Willow have to blather
off to Mother about Cassius? That
was…awful. Now she was sure he would
never spare her a glance—especially with someone like Willow in his
vision. She wondered if, at this very
moment, Cassius was thinking of Willow.
And then the picture was hard to bear, and she wondered instead if
Castil was thinking of herself.
Mother stroked her gloves
absently. “Perhaps,” she said softly,
deep in thought. “Perhaps.”
Winter went back to staring
at the curtains.
Wednesday watched, bored,
as Willow lapsed into a solemn but also somewhat pleading silence, and when
Willow made no further attempts to ask Mother about Cassius, she eventually
turned her attention away.
She wasn’t sure how much
later, but somehow she managed to drift off to sleep.
“I love wildflowers,” Wednesday said, standing ankle-deep in the swaying green
reeds and inhaling deeply. The perfume
of the delicate, bouncy sprigs filled her lungs, and the clear air filled her
lungs, cleansing them, and her hair streamed behind her, for some reason
unpinned.
“I knew you’d like it,
Wednesday,” Desdemona said behind her, beaming.
Wednesday turned around, a
look of bliss on her face. “I can’t
believe you’ve gone to such lengths to create some place as beautiful as
this. You’ve done so much…it makes me
feel inadequate.”
Desdemona smiled
knowingly. “Well, I must confess—it’s
not just for you; I love flowers and ponds as well. You know how I am—solitary, always hiding—”
“In short, like me?”
Wednesday offered.
“Yes,” Desdemona
agreed.
Wednesday’s older cousin was
just as slight as she was, with a kind of unearthly beauty. Her honey-blonde hair was long and drifty and
beautiful, strands flowing in the wind, falling in gentle curves around her
delicate face, with her hair pulled back, though not bothering to be pinned. Her skin was pale, but not a sickly kind of
pale like Wednesday’s—instead, a beautiful, pristine pale, like porcelain. Desdemona was wearing the dress in which
Wednesday had seen her last—a gorgeous gossamer creation, with many layers all
pinned up at the hip—as well as a sparkly purple shawl and a thin circlet
tilting sideways on her head. At
fifteen, Desdemona looked younger, and from a distance, with her pretty waist
and beautiful form, one would think she was as lovely as Willow. The one thing that shattered Desdemona was
her eyes—pretty but fatefully two-tone: one dark blue, cobalt night; the other,
a pale amber that was somehow distant, as if a faint reflection. Most people avoided her because those eyes
would scare them, and consequently Desdemona was always given a wide berth, and
nobody knew that she was sweet and harmless, and by all means just as human as any
of the Fontana family.
Desdemona’s hair
streamed. Like Wednesday’s, it was
unpinned. She moved closer to
Wednesday. “I wish…I wish I didn’t have
these eyes,” she said mournfully, but not with a bitter tone.
Wednesday smiled
sadly. “Most people just don’t recognize
you for who you are, Des.” She looked
straight into those clear two-tone eyes, which she had long lost her fear
of. “You’re just as gorgeous as
Willow—even more beautiful, actually, since you have that purity and poise that
Willow lacks.”
Des squeezed her arm
gently. “Those are comforting words, Wednesday.
I know that you yourself have doubts about your self-image.”
Wednesday sat down in the
grass and hugged her bare feet, her hair sweeping forward and draping over
them. In front of her, the spread of
Desdemona’s family’s back fields lay, a vast plain of waving green grasses
dotted with wildflower blossoms and reeds and cattails that ringed small ponds
that were fractured with constant ripples as the long stalks bent and brushed
the water’s surface. “I try not to think
about it,” she said in a low voice, shrugging.
“You never know. One day I might
suddenly break free of the strange illness that always holds me, and I’ll be
more beautiful than Willow!”
Des plopped down next to
her. “You’re so upbeat, Wednesday. I don’t know how you do it. I suppose I’m just selfish, always wallowing
in my self-pity. It tends to curdle that
way, when you only have a sister who’s engaged and no one else to toughen you
up.”
Wednesday shrugged
again. “If you want to think about it
that way. Winter and Willow don’t
exactly use torture devices on me, you know.”
Des cracked a smile.
“So when’s Lei’Anne getting
married to Mr. Gildrane?” Wednesday said coaxingly. “I haven’t heard any news about them for
months. In fact, where is Lei’Anne right
now? My dear cousin Lei’Anne, getting married soon, and all of a sudden, when I
come over just for a day or two, she’s gone.”
Laughing, Des seemed to be
more at ease. “Lei’Anne isn’t getting
married for a while. They still haven’t
confirmed anything of the date or anything of the sorts, actually. At this snail rate, she and our favorite
Gilbert Gerdrane won’t be married until Lei’Anne’s, oh, twenty-five or so.”
Wednesday laughed. “Twenty-five?
Lei’Anne’s out of her mind.”
“Ah, well, she never was
quite right in the head,” Des said seriously, and the two of the doubled over
laughing, the hems of the dresses tickling each other’s legs in the
breeze.
Once their laughter had
subsided, Des regained her composure.
“So—yes, er, yes, they’re—getting married, but right now they’re still
only engaged,” she said, fighting for a straight face. “Right now, Lei’Anne’s out, and of course Mr.
Gerdrane went with her—oh, I just have to call him Gilbert, saying Gerdrane is
even stranger than his first name,” she blurted out, and Wednesday started
laughing again so hard she almost choked.
“Um, yes, well, naturally Gilbert went with her. Where, I don’t
know—” And as Wednesday looked a little
concerned, Des immediately reassured her.
“Oh, it’s just me who doesn’t know, Father and Mother know,
obviously. I didn’t really care as to
where Lei’Anne is tromping around, she frankly goes too many places for me to
remember. I could create a logbook, if
you like,” she offered with a straight face, before she couldn’t hold back her
broad grin any longer, and Wednesday responded to it with enthusiasm, fighting
so hard to hold onto even a little bit of composure so hard her cheeks hurt
with the effort.
“Where are your mother and
father, then?” Wednesday asked. Her own
family wasn’t too familiar with Desdemona’s, as her father George and Des’s
father Jerry hadn’t been close.
“Oh, well, Mother’s
inside,” Des said, using a very modest voice, “making potato soup.”
“You had to dismiss your
cook?” Wednesday asked, startled.
“No, no, nothing like
that!” Des said immediately, and Wednesday saw a blush rising to her
cheeks—Des’s family was rather poor, of a slightly lower class than
Wednesday’s, but the thought of sinking that low was offensive to her. “No—Father’s just been in a rather—bad mood
lately, having to organize everything with Lei’Anne’s marriage with Lei’Anne
not even paying attention—and Mother—just his favorite dish—”
It was clear that Des was
flustered at the idea, and Wednesday immediately felt a pang of guilt: how
could she have accused Des’s family of having to dismiss their cook? The thought was very low-class indeed, much
lower than the level Des’s family was at.
“Sorry,” Wednesday said
abruptly, and Des cut off her anxious rambling.
“Ah, well…” Des hesitated, tugging at the hem of her
dress as it floated on the wind around her ankles. Both girls were barefoot. She bashfully ducked her head. “Things happen.”
Wednesday wasn’t sure what
she meant by that, but she was glad
Des wasn’t holding anything against her.
While their families weren’t frequent with each other, she and Des were best
friends—or cousins, rather—and it was very rarely they argued. Like any self-respecting pair, they would
argue, of course, but the occasions on which this happened were so infrequent
that around each other, both girls would usually forget how to argue, as they
were so agreeable with each other.
“Well…” Wednesday was unsure how to continue their
once-pleasant conversation, and the silence felt exposed, barer than
usual.
Des stood up. Her eyes were a little steely, and the pale
amber one had a distinctly inhuman look in it.
“Wednesday,” she said, “do take a turn through the thicket with me.”
Wednesday knew what the
thicket was. Des’s family of Fontanas
had a small glade in back, farther than the reedy pools and springy flower
fields, and it was pretty, if not a little eerie and unearthly. She clumsily scrambled to her feet and
followed as Des turned without another word and started to briskly walk towards
the copse.
Once they reached the
clumpy underbrush with strings of pale vines and blooming, unnatural flowers,
Des took off at a light run, hair a swift blonde river coursing on the carrying
air, her skirts flattened against her legs by the wind. Wednesday started to run after her, feet
sinking into the mossier grass and then onto pine needles littering the floor
as Des disappeared into the undergrowth.
Wednesday tried to keep up, but Des’s hair kept flitting in and out of
view around tumbled thistles and crumbly branches with clinging lichen, and eventually,
after a few minutes of attempting to keep track of where her cousin was, she
couldn’t follow Des’s path at all.
Wednesday shaded her eyes
from the sun filtering in palmy strips through the leaning, soft fronds that
sheltered most of the thicket, and she leaned against a sturdy old maple while
she caught her breath. Des was nowhere
to be seen, and she couldn’t hear Des’s footsteps either over the whispering
wind. Vainly, she tried to scale a tree
but achieved only gaining four feet’s height before the biting rough bark hurt
her hands and she slid down, plucking her skirts free from the peeling outer
layer of the pine.
The wind hissed through
Wednesday’s hair, and she solemnly gazed around. The murmurs of the breeze began to mutate
into a eldritch, ghostly sort of low hum, and as she looked around frantically,
her surroundings began to morph, the light bending and the shadowy weeds and
plants changing shape, curving together to form a new place—above her, the
towering fronds thickened with slithering noises and blocked out more of the
gentle, protective light; staring down at her with weeping, tragic faces,
waving in the howling gusts that were building up; they pressed together to
form an impossibly high wall, surrounding her on every side and trapping
her—the trees were skeletal and stared at her with gaping eyeholes, and every
gleam was one blade of a million swords that had once been reeds—the wind was
shrieking, a tortured sound, and beneath it was an beastly chanting of horrible
creatures that she knew not—she flinched and shielded her face as something
went hurtling past her—a wave of shadows with ghastly faces were bearing down,
swallowing everything up in a snap—Wednesday screamed as the jaws opened wide
and tossed her like a rag doll; there was a flash where she glimpsed a figure,
a black silk river over his shoulders—
“Wednesday! Wednesday? Wake up, please!”
Wednesday blinked, her eyes
snapping open. Mother, Willow, and
Winter were all peering down, their faces shadowed as Wednesday blinked quickly
in the light, trying to clear her vision.
“Wednesday? What’s wrong?”
Mother asked.
“I—” Wednesday was confused. A moment ago she’d been in the thicket…oh, it
had been a dream, she realized. Another
thought occurred to her; that it had been ridiculous that she had not noticed
it had been a dream before, and the idea of her being so boneheaded that she
didn’t even know the difference between reality and a dream—or a nightmare,
really, she reflected—made her wince inwardly.
She’d never really been with Desdemona, and she’d never gotten lost in
that thicket, and the woods had not come alive and eaten her. “I—it was just—just a bad dream,” she
stammered. “I fell asleep.”
Willow slouched back onto
the seat, hugging a cushion. “You gave
us all heart attacks, Wednesday!” She glared. “Thrashing about and then suddenly screaming
like a tea kettle—what exactly were you dreaming about? You never have been a violent sleeper.”
Wednesday paused, digesting
this.
It was true—her sleep had
always been silent, her breaths not even making any noise, and she would stay
in one position, rock still, for the entire length of her slumber. She remembered the dream she’d had this
morning, walking through the silvery forest, and the Shadow King lowering his
hood. Then, this dream: she’d seen, for
just a moment, a figure in a silk black cloak.
It was the second dream/nightmare she’d had of the King in a single
day.
“I don’t know,” she said
truthfully. “I suppose—I suppose it was
just a particularly bad dream, then.”
She shuddered, thinking of the ghastly leering thorns and plants, and
the monstrous shadow beast that had gobbled everything up, and the low,
foreign-tongued chanting. It truly had been a particularly bad dream; she
wasn’t lying about that.
The others went back to
sitting quietly, only occasionally shooting Wednesday quizzical looks. She pressed her palms to her no doubt flaming
cheeks, trying to hide her embarrassment of being frightened by a mere dream
spun by her own mind. She patiently
stared into space as the carriage bumped and jostled over stones and dirt,
gently tumbling them all.
Willow seemed to be bored
to tears. Her lips were pursed tightly,
and the longer they waited in terse silence, the more tightly pursed they
became. Finally, she couldn’t seem to
hold herself in any longer. “How much
more time until we get to the fields?” she blurted out.
“Just a short while
longer,” Mother said, who was reading a thin book titled “Striking Impossible Deals Under Pressure: A Manipulative Guide”. She didn’t even look up and turned a page
while continuing, “Perhaps fifteen minutes?”
Willow groaned, raising a
hand to her head, and fell over backwards onto Wednesday’s lap. Wednesday ignored the soft weight of Willow’s
head crushing her hat and the dainty waves of roan hair curling over her dress,
resisting the urge to yank on Willow’s hair, hard.
“Buck up, Willow, it’s not
the end of the world,” Winter said impatiently, snapping her fingers in front
of Willow’s face.
“I hate boredom,” Willow
complained petulantly. “I should’ve
brought a book, like Mother—but I hate reading.
And you can’t draw or practice piano or dance in a carriage!” The last word was
emphasized with scorn, and Wednesday closed her eyes and gritted her
teeth. Willow was driving them all up
the wall—a scowl settling on Winter’s face, Mother’s lips pressed thinly as she
stubbornly read, and Wednesday on the verge of telling Willow to shut up—but
Willow didn’t care.
“Well, you could sleep,”
Wednesday said, pushing Willow’s head off her lap, “just don’t sleep on
me. I’m tired enough of you without your
head on my knees—they’re getting numb.
Why is your head so heavy? It’s like you carry rocks in there, honestly.”
“Because I’m smart, so I
have a big brain, and therefore it’s heavy,” Willow retorted smartly, sitting
up. Her hair was all flung to one side
and her hat sideways, and she busily untied the ribbon and started to comb
through her hair with her fingers.
Wednesday rolled her eyes
and turned away, leaning her elbow on the window ledge and resting her jaw on
her arm, staring at the curtains and the little tiny bit of outside she could
see, rolling by. Willow was a pain,
which was why Wednesday normally disliked Willow the most—but at times, such as
when Winter had an insult storm, Winter could be the menace. They both had their ups and downs, Wednesday
thought glumly, and stared without really seeing.
The dream-nightmare had
been quite disorienting to her, and the fact that she’d acted out of the
ordinary made it no better. The
transformed thicket had been frightening and garish, the air noisome with the
thick, musty scents as shadows overwhelmed the teeth-baring plants. It had started out a pleasant dream, being in
the fields behind Des’s house and talking together, they way they usually did,
Wednesday thought, and she was unsure why her mind had turned to such frightful
events. Most of the dream had been true,
from what she could remember. The last
time she had seen Desdemona had been half a year ago, at Lei’Anne and Gilbert
Gerdrane’s engagement celebration.
Jerry Fontana and Cheri
Wallace were Desdemona and Lei’Anne’s parents, and Jerry was Father’s cousin,
meaning that Desdemona and Lei’Anne were cousins with Wednesday and her own
sisters. Lei’Anne was seventeen, and had
just been engaged to Gilbert Gerdrane.
Wednesday didn’t know much about Lei’Anne’s fiancé, but Des had told her
that Lei’Anne and Mr. Gerdrane—or Gilbert, rather, as they preferred to called
him, because of his unfortunately silly-sounding surname—had known each other
for a fair amount of time before they had been engaged. Desdemona was two years
younger than Lei’Anne, and while the two were on quite good terms with each
other, Lei’Anne didn’t spend much time at home, and therefore she and Des
didn’t talk together, or really do anything together.
When Wednesday and her
family had gone to the engagement party, if not a little hesitantly, she and
Des had been excited to see each other again, as they were best friends. The two of them would disappear into the sprawling
fields in back of Des’s family’s country home farther down south, laughing
together and running through the cheery grass, dipping their toes in the
shallow natural pools. It had been a nice visit, as far as Wednesday could
recall—for she didn’t remember the details of the actual party, only her time
spent with Des. Upon departure, they had
sadly said good-bye, promising to visit again as soon as their parents would
let them.
Des was the clearest
non-immediate family member in Wednesday’s mind. She knew, of course, that Lei’Anne was Des’s
sister, and who their parents were. She
also knew, a little more vaguely, Father’s sister Elizabeth Fontana, and she
also knew that she had some other cousins, too, traveling down the family line
from Charles Fontana, Wednesday’s great-grandfather, who with his wife Mary
Zübelle had had four children, one of which was Wednesday’s grandfather George
Fontana. Wednesday’s own father was
George the Second.
One of Charles Fontana’s
children was Anna Fontana, who married Gordon Ebenezer (or someone of a name
that was similar—Wednesday wasn’t sure if she’d had the name correct) and had
Reyna Ebenezer, who in turn married Damien Corell and had four children, all of
whom were Wednesday’s cousins. It was a
hard family tree to keep straight, even though a tapestry depicting the
generations including Wednesday’s generation was hanging right in the
foyer. Not only did she have Lei’Anne
and Des as cousins, but there were also Anna, Lance, Brielle, and Luka
Corell. She didn’t even have the
thinking capacity to extend to her aunts and uncles, grandfathers, grandmother,
and into the greats, and she probably had some great-aunts, second or third
removed cousins, and great step-fathers in there as well.
She’d seen the Corells at the
engagement party. If Father wasn’t
familiar with Jerry Fontana, then he was on bad terms with Damien Corell, the
father of Anna, Lance, Brielle, and Luka.
Wednesday hardly knew the four siblings that were her somewhat-distant
cousins, only knowing that Anna was the eldest, down to Luka, the youngest—but
she wasn’t sure of their ages, or their personalities, or anything about them
in particular. Every time there was an
invite to an event in which the Corells would be attending, Father would say
no, quickly. Wednesday could only guess
that he and Damien Corell weren’t exactly best buddies.
Still, she was curious
about her four relatively unknown cousins, and hoped that they would visit
soon, now that Mother was back. Mother
loved parties and fun, and Wednesday couldn’t see her turning down an
invitation just because the Corells were there.
As if she had been
listening in on Wednesday’s thoughts, Mother suddenly snapped her book shut,
demanding all three girls’ attention.
“Girls,” she said, “I can’t believe I forgot—you do know that your grand-aunt Lady Anna Fontana’s birthday is this
month, the twenty-sixth of January?”
Willow frowned from where
she’d been tying the ribbon on her hat into a dainty bow under her chin. “Who’s Grand-Aunt Anna Fontana?”
“That’s what I was
wondering,” Winter muttered, “but a few years ago.” She raised her voice, addressing Mother. “Isn’t she the lady who married this German
Ebenezer gentleman and their family line trickles down to the Corells?”
“Who are the Corells?”
Willow said, acting stupid.
Mother gave her a little
frown, and nodded at Winter. “Yes. We will be going to your grand-aunt Anna’s
birthday celebration—she will be turning sixty-six, I believe…”
“How do you remember all of
this?” Willow muttered under her breath; she was often cranky when bored.
“And so,” Mother continued,
ignoring Willow, “your cousins the Corells will be there…and I believe your
other cousins, Desdemona and Lei’Anne, will also be there.”
The girls perked up. While Wednesday and Des spent time together,
Willow and Winter absolutely adored Lei’Anne, who acted much older than she
really was but had a good-natured, motherly air.
“Will Lei’Anne be there,
since she’s getting married to Mr. Gerdrane soon?” Winter asked, stiffly ignoring
Willow and Wednesday silent giggles at the sound of Gilbert Gerdrane’s last
name.
“I believe so,” Mother
said, now rummaging through her bag, “though it hasn’t been confirmed—say, have
any of you seen the invitation?”
“No,” they all said together.
“Well, never mind that,
then,” said Mother, pushing her purse onto the seat beside her. “The point is, it will be a more grown-up
celebration, as it’s for your grand-aunt and not for youngsters like you—and I
expect you all to be mature and know your limits, and to take care of
yourselves? We’ll be going to the
Corells’s house, and they are a fine family; I expect you to dress smartly, and
to be nice to everyone, especially the Corells.
While I know you three have not gotten to know them very well yet, it’s
all the more that you play nice, and this is an excellent opportunity to
recognize them.” She looked seriously at
them, gray eyes solemn, and though a touch of a dimple and smile were across
her face, they could tell Mother wasn’t playing. “I expect you to know all of their names, at
least—” Willow groaned audibly and
Winter kicked her boot. “Not to mention
their ages, and how their family is doing.
As to who else will be there—well, I had it written down, but I seem to
have lost it.” Mother looked
flustered. “Anyhow, I know at least that
your grandfather George will be there, his wife Lucia, Anna Fontana and her
husband Gordon Ebenezer, their daughter Reyna, her husband Damien Corell, and their four children—Anna, Lance,
Brielle, and Luka, I believe. There are
probably a few others that you won’t know—oh, and of course Desdemona,
Lei’Anne, Jerry, and his wife Cheri will be there, also.”
Wednesday head was reeling
from the names. She’d lost Mother after
“grandfather George.” Apparently, her
sisters felt the same way; Willow closed her eyes hard and gritted her teeth,
and Winter had a look on her face that was part fear, part elation, and part
violent shock.
“Say,” said Willow. “Say, if I ended up not liking one of my
newly introduced cousins—”
“You will,” Mother said firmly.
“But let’s just say I
didn’t,” Willow pressed. “As in, not at
all. Would it be every so out of the
ordinary that a very large vase, perhaps, fell off the stairs onto one of them—or
maybe, though the Lord forbid this ever happen, one of their drinks was
switched with wine or brandy…”
Mother frowned at her. Willow was grinning, playing dumb.
“I’d say that I, for one,
wouldn’t be fooled,” Mother said finally, knowing Willow was just playing. She leaned over and kissed Willow’s forehead,
her dimples showing.
Wednesday stared out the
window, smiling inwardly.
The riding field was nice, Wednesday thought, but nothing like the picturesque
fields behind Des’s house in her dream.
After maybe ten more
minutes’ riding along in the carriage, which bumped more and more as the ride
continued as the roads became less smooth, they had stopped, and the carriage
man had pronounced them arrived at the field which Mother had expected for the
girls to ride on.
Wednesday pushed aside the
curtain, looking at the field. She
supposed it wasn’t easy to keep a field green, no matter how faint of a green,
in January, and that by winter standards the field was very well kept, but she
couldn’t help remembering the sprawl of the pretty waving flower-speckled
grasses in the dream, and in her chest there was a sense of anticlimax.
She glanced back from where
her head was barely protruding from the rectangle that was the window and saw
the rickety, awkwardly large carriage that held all the business gentlemen
pulling up behind them, slowing down with the faint creaking of its bouncy
wheels. The horse tossed its head and
looked back at Wednesday. She quickly
pulled her head back into the carriage.
“This is the field?” Willow
asked, gazing out of the other window.
She sounded excited, but controlled.
“How come I don’t see anyone? Or any horses?”
“We passed the stables with
the owner already; we’ll have to walk back a bit to reach your precious
ponies,” Mother said, smiling. “It’s
hardly a few paces, though—all right, out, now all of you, and go and have
fun. If you get out and turn around,
you’ll see the little wooden stables, and there should be a gentleman and his
wife there, preparing the horses.”
Willow scrambled out;
hurriedly tightening the bow of her hat under her chin, Winter quickly spilled
out after her. Mother smiled at
Wednesday, and she reluctantly opened the door and stepped out, smoothing down
her skirts as they crumpled over the threshold of the carriage as she got down,
and blinked in the bright light, taking in the little field.
It was more a pasture-ish
thing than a real field, Wednesday realized, taking in the neat little fences,
and the short trimmed grass. Through the
faint green of the mostly yellower meadow, she could see spots of dry earth,
pale from frost, and Wednesday shivered slightly at the cold. Though it was warm for a January, the chill
still settled into her bones and stayed there.
Willow was already taking
off towards the little house-like structure that Mother must’ve meant. Winter glanced at Wednesday, and the two of
them ran after Willow, skirts flattening against their legs in the breeze.
As it turned out, the
owners of the stables were very nice people, a middle-aged couple with children,
all of whom had already left to begin their families. Willow and Winter looked through the rows and
rows of well-behaved, groomed ponies blinking at them from their neat stalls
while the stable owners stood back and let them choose their own horses. Wednesday shyly averted her eyes every time
she passed the couple, and wondered if there was a gentle horse who would fit
her personality.
“Hey—hey, Wednesday, come
here!”
Wednesday looked up from
where she’d been stroking a small tan pony’s forelock. Willow was gesticulating for her to come
over, and she crossed the break in the rows of stalls and came to stand by
Willow, trying to not breath in the thick horsey scent that made her nose
wrinkle.
“What?” she said.
“Don’t you think this horse
would be great for you?” Willow said brightly, tossing back her head to clear
the strands of hair falling in her face.
She smiled at the ginger horse in the stall, who was quietly watching
them without a sound.
“I don’t know,” Wednesday
said cautiously. “Have you decided on a
horse yet, Willow?”
“I’m looking for a big
one,” she said, sounding a tad disappointed, “but I haven’t found one that
suits my fancy yet. I think tan coats on
my ride flatter me, hm?”
“I saw a tan horse back
there,” Wednesday said, motioning to the far end of the stable, where Winter
was wandering, “and he might be big enough for what you’re looking for—but they
probably don’t have very large horses, you know that Willow, right?” she added
anxiously as Willow stared down the wooden planks with fierce
determination.
“Well, naturally,” Willow
said, without really comprehending what Wednesday had just said, and she
started down the aisle.
Wednesday turned her
attention back to the creamy horse Willow had recommended for her, who nuzzled
her hand contentedly. She pulled back;
its lips were soft and a bit damp. The horse looked down at her with large dark
eyes and flicked its tail back and forth, pressing against the side of its
wooden booth. Maybe Willow was right,
Wednesday thought, and she unlatched the lock on the front of the stall and
crammed her hat on her head.
edhcf
Wednesday followed Willow’s lead at a light canter, the stiff cold breeze blowing her hat back on her head so precariously she felt as though it would fall off any second. In front of her, Willow’s horse galloped forward, Willow’s hair bouncing with each hoof beat, riding habit bunched at a square angle on either side.The cream pony followed Wednesday’s lead excellently; a gentle thing with an understanding of her frailty, it kept its footfalls smooth as possible while keeping the ride enjoyable, and for one of the first times she’d ever gone riding, Wednesday felt content. The sound of the horse’s hooves seemed to echo as it hit the cold ground and sprang off lightly; it was as if riding in a boat, bobbing and sweeping along, slightly rocking, and Wednesday could almost imagine breathing in the salty air of the sea as the breeze, conjured by the speed of her horse, stung her nose and throat with the cold.
Willow turned, and her horse skittered sideways for a moment on the frozen dirt before curving around in an almost crescent manner; Wednesday copied her and led the creamy pony in an arc, and it responded to her thoughts, bounding with sprightly steps, and Wednesday broke away from Willow’s path and spotted a gleam of black up to the right; Winter was riding at a fast, straight gallop—Wednesday urged the horse after her. There was a quick scramble over a large rock that was half-embedded in the dirt, and they cantered around as one as Wednesday caught up to her eldest sister and they matched each other step for step, with the wind whipping their cheeks rosy with cold, and their throats cold and scratchy; and yet Wednesday didn’t find it unpleasant as her faithful, lovely steed turned in perfect unison with Winter’s, and the two girls, side by side, rode in a race track, with Wednesday on the outside, in a wider turn, and Winter neatly clipping her bend at every opportunity. They rode in a dizzying pace, and Wednesday felt fresh as she had never been before, feeling a shrill fluttering in her chest mixed with excitement and exhilaration.
Winter made a sharp cut to
the left, and Wednesday didn’t turn in time; instead, she let her movement
carry her in an arc to the right and she peeled away from Winter, free riding
against the wind. A slight tug on the
reins, and her horse galloped in a large circle, and Wednesday caught a glimpse
of a cluster of people gathered at the far edge of the field—Mother dealing
with the gentlemen.
Everything is perfect, Wednesday thought. It was true.
At that moment in time, if she could have frozen the second, everything
was perfect—beautiful scenery, open heart, joy rushing through her ablaze. She couldn’t have thought of anything
more…idyllic.
Well, except for maybe
Cassius. Or Castil.
Wednesday loosened her grip
for a second, her mind suddenly reeling with the idea of her two angelic
gentlemen, and at that moment a blur darted across her path. She barely had time to register the blur of
auburn hair before her horse whinnied, kicking its front legs up, jolting back
in a startle as Willow drove straight past them, and as it bucked, the reins
were flung from Wednesday’s loose grip, and she was tossed through the air.
Wednesday watched sourly as Willow and Cassius danced alone on the ballroom
floor.
It was nauseating, she
decided, seeing the two of them entwined perfectly into one another, gazing
into each others’ eyes, that perfect touch of a smile that graced both their
lips. Her own lips went thin as she
stared angrily at Willow for stealing Cassius away, and though it was
undoubtedly odd that a thirteen-year old as she herself was completely
preoccupied with wondering if he liked her or not, she couldn’t help it.
Willow’s hair was streaming
behind her. She danced with easy grace,
Cassius matching her perfectly, and as they drew closer, Wednesday could see
the clear emotion in their eyes. She
didn’t like it one bit.
A minor chord on the piano
struck the air, sending a harsh jerk of pain through her skull.
Wednesday opened her eyes,
confused.
She was lying half on her
back, half on her side, curled up slightly.
The ground was flat-packed dirt with dribbles of crackly frost, and an
infinite sky was a zone of blue ahead. Faces were looking down at her with partial
concern, partial mild annoyance.
Her head throbbed and
pulsed, and she felt as if her ears and the inside of her head were both hot as
a furnace.
“Thrown off a horse, now
weren’t you?” Winter said drily, but sounding somewhat relieved at Wednesday’s
revival.
Wednesday groaned and massaged
her head. There was a splintery pain in
her knees and a few spots on her side that suggested the cream-colored horse
had bucked her off and she had landed hard.
“Why am I always the one who gets injuries?”
“Because you’re dumb and
can’t handle a thing,” Willow said, grabbing Wednesday’s elbow and hauling her
to her feet. “Get up now; that cold is
going to seep into your bones and stay there permanently.”
Stars were bursting in her
vision. She wobbled, and Willow seemed
to realize that Wednesday probably needed a bit more time after being launched
off a moving animal to recover before she could walk properly. Winter held onto Wednesday shoulder so she
wouldn’t topple over.
“Where’s Mother?” Wednesday
murmured vaguely, to none of them in particular.
“She’s going to get the
carriage man,” Winter said. “You fell
off, and Mother and all the others saw, and she was terrified, so she ran to
get the carriage and possible some piping hot tea, and she says that we’re going
home as fast as possible.”
“You messed it up for us,”
Willow said, cranky and childish.
Wednesday decided not to
point out that Willow was the one that had startled her horse and made her fall
off, seeing how grumpy Willow was. She
could be so puerile, only thinking of her own pleasantries and wishes, not
giving a rat’s fart about anything else.
Instead, she clutched at her sisters as they helped her slowly and
crookedly to reach as close to the edge of the field as they dared. None of the gentlemen were in sight; it
looked as though they had all run over the hill bend with Mother to do as much
as they could for Wednesday. She felt a
rush of gratitude. The horses were also
gone from the field, and she suspected, as she heard soft clattering from the
stables, that the owners were struggling to put the horses away.
Guilt trickled through
her. She always messed things up.
“You have a lot to answer
to when we get back, missy,” Willow said as they stopped, waiting for Mother
and the carriage and the gentlemen.
Breezes ripple through their hair, and Wednesday hadn’t even realized
until that moment that her hat was squashed sideways, dropping down to the back
of her head. “We only got in ten minutes
of riding for that long wait we had…and now we have to ride it back…”
Wednesday tuned her out.
“Therefore,” Winter
supplied helpfully when Willow paused, “you need to be quiet, Willow, and stop
being so annoying. Honestly, I’ve never
seen someone who whines as much as you do.”
“And I have never seen as
much of a boot-licker as you are,” Willow quipped in response. Wednesday’s head was buzzing, and the pulsing
was getting louder. The girls’ voices were, at the same time, getting fainter
and fainter as she listened. Her
consciousness was seeping away, and the last thing she remembered was Willow’s
voice uttering callow words, “As I was saying, we’re going home, but this isn’t
over, I hope. I’ll have to get Mother to
take us again another time.”
