Midnight in Everwood

by M. A. Kuzniar

  Marietta felt her cheeks bloom even as relief flooded her.

  Dellara arched an eyebrow at her furious blush. ‘Oh darling, if you keep that up, you won’t survive long in this world. Though it has to be said some of the courtiers do enjoy laying siege to innocence.’

  Marietta struggled to stand up. ‘I cannot stay here, I cannot be his prisoner. I must find a way back to my own world.’ Panic squeezed her chest tighter than a corset. ‘How did the king force me to dance? I had not thought he held magic, too.’

  Pirlipata held her back with a look of deep sadness.

  Dellara stood up. ‘Not all enchantments are delightful. Some are steeped in dark magic. Like this palace – there’s no way out. It may as well be a fortress, with enchantment stacked upon enchantment forbidding your escape. King Gelum holds not a speck of his own magic but the palace is bidden to act on his every whim and desire. The sooner you accept your new life, the easier you will find it.’ She picked up a blanket and spread it over Marietta. ‘Now sleep. You must heal.’

  Marietta heard hushed voices as she regained consciousness, and was unsure how long she had drifted in and out of sleep.

  ‘You ought to try at the very least,’ Dellara was urging Pirlipata. ‘You cannot afford to lose hope; if your hopes are vanquished then he has defeated you.’ She fell silent upon noticing Marietta’s re-entry to the world of the living.

  Marietta was wary at once. Their looks mirrored each other’s suspicion. Pirlipata’s was infused with sadness, Dellara’s with fire. ‘There is no need to confide in me,’ Marietta said, finding a glass of water sat beside her and drinking deeply.

  ‘We are due a visit from our dressmaker. On occasion, if she happens to be in a more pliable mood, she will deign to deliver a note for us,’ Dellara said at last, speaking fast and hushed as a winter’s gale. As if by forcing the words out quicker they would not be overheard by prying ears. ‘I’ve been attempting to convince Pirlipata to send word to her family to inform them of her captivity.’

  Marietta set her glass down. ‘How can your family be unaware of your captivity?’ she asked. ‘Are you not a princess?’

  Pirlipata lowered her eyes. ‘They believe I have been wed to King Gelum.’ She plucked at the sequins on her dress. They scurried away from her fingernails, a sparkling migration across the golden sheath she wore. ‘He delights in the ruse he devised. It is why I am forbidden to dress in any shade other than gold, the traditional bridal colour in my home of Crackatuck. Gold for joy, for our magnificent sunsets that draw tourists from all corners of Celesta and beam from our oldest university’s turrets. And when my parents sent letters, requesting a visit—’ Her voice wisped away.

  ‘He commands us to participate in the charade,’ Dellara finished for her. ‘She was forced to write a response blaming her newfound duties as Queen of Everwood for why she was unable to entertain them for a visit presently.’

  ‘At first I defied him. I attempted to pass my mother an encoded message, signalling the true state of affairs in this palace, but King Gelum found out. He notices everything. It’s a preternatural gift of his. And I am not the only one who has suffered at his hands.’ Pirlipata swallowed, her voice cracking with emotion, and dread pooled in Marietta’s stomach, unsure she was prepared to hear more. As she witnessed a look of sadness from Pirlipata towards Dellara, Marietta noticed for the first time silver scars filigreed across Dellara’s arms and legs. They crept up beneath the fabric of her dress in a lattice of pain etched into her skin. Marietta was nauseous at the thought of what Dellara must have suffered to gain them. She chided herself for being so wrapped up in her own cloud of indulgence and childish fantasies during her first few days in the palace that she had been oblivious to the truth in front of her.

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ Dellara told Pirlipata. ‘My scars do not define me,’ she added to Marietta. ‘I am more than my body.’

  Marietta’s attention whirligigged. It halted on something Dellara had mentioned earlier. ‘Why might the dressmaker not be inclined to aid you?’

  ‘No one would wish to become the king’s latest acquisition.’ Dellara’s refrain from contempt was palpable.

  ‘We cannot fault her for that,’ Pirlipata said.

  ‘So it is possible she might aid us?’ Marietta drew the thought out.

  Dellara’s refrain melted into incredulity. ‘Are you snow-blind?’

  ‘Of course,’ Pirlipata told Marietta, placing a hand on Dellara’s arm. ‘Though I am not convinced I could ask that of her. If she were to be caught and bear the consequences of my actions, well, that is not a price I am willing to pay.’

  ‘I understand. Though it signifies the presence of people within the palace who might be sympathetic to our plight—’ Marietta forged ahead in a flurry of fresh ideas ‘—which means we might escape King Gelum’s clutches. We merely need to seek out trustworthy allies to help us slip through the enchantments and—’

  ‘No.’ Sparks seeped from Dellara’s fingertips. ‘It’s far too dangerous. Someone would inevitably betray us to secure the king’s favour and his wrath would end us.’

  Marietta spoke once more. ‘Supposing the king—’

  ‘King Gelum holds a veritable battalion of spies in his employ,’ Dellara interrupted Marietta again. ‘For this precise reason. He is known as the Great Betrayer and once you have sunk to those glacial depths, you expect others to betray you. It’s too great a risk and the subsequent devastation would be untold. The king is a cruel man, Marietta, do not tempt him into unleashing that cruelty on you. Nothing is worth the loss of your life,’ she said quietly. Shadows laced over the entirety of her irises, submerging her pupils.

  It took effort for Marietta to subdue her reaction. ‘What of your magic? I presume, like the king, you are in possession of certain abilities.’ Pirlipata glanced away and Marietta hoped she hadn’t committed an otherworldly faux-pas. Nevertheless, she stiffened her spine and marched on to her point. ‘Are you capable of shattering the enchantments that keep us incarcerated in this palace?’

  Dellara continued to stare at Marietta, her black eyes swirling. ‘I possess some magic,’ she said, ‘though not sufficient to break the bounds of the Grand Confectioner’s enchantments; those are cast deep, penetrating the very material this world is crafted from, and cannot be manipulated. It’s impossible to find the like in the Veil of Enchantments, nor Sugar Alley. But I hold enough magic of my own to be capable.’

  The dregs of Marietta’s hopes rose, a sole star in a dark night.

  ‘If my wand hadn’t been taken from me,’ Dellara finished. Her eyes faded to dusk.

  ‘King Gelum has it hidden under lock and key in some forgotten crevice of the palace,’ Pirlipata told Marietta, keeping a watchful eye on Dellara. ‘That is how she came to be captured, the loss of her wand ensured her vulnerability.’

  ‘Why did he wish to capture you?’ Marietta asked, watching the shadows in Dellara’s eyes recede.

  She rolled them. ‘He was threatened by my power.’

  Marietta suffered a moment of respect for her. ‘Forgive me for inquiring but I cannot help but be curious if I am to reside here with you both,’ she said politely, covering her desire to learn the king’s motivations. If he was to be her opponent then she must study him intimately. Learn his strengths, weaknesses. What he desired and feared, his secrets and shame. Not for nothing had she pored over Sun Tzu’s words in her history lessons some years ago.

  ‘Then I shall share my story with you,’ Pirlipata said. ‘It is long and painful and I shall only speak it once.’

  ‘I would be honoured to hear it.’ Marietta waited for her to begin.

  ‘There has never been war in Celesta. We are unlike those great worlds that span vast continents and landmasses, where distant wars might never beat their drums upon your own shoreline. Celesta is a small world, its three kingdoms nestled close and much entwined. When tensions grow taut, they are resolved, not easily so, but to mount an attack would be to
cut into ice only to have it shatter beneath you. It was during a diplomatic visit that King Gelum latched onto me. He believed that possessing me would lend him a certain cachet. A credibility to his role as king that was taken, not earnt.’ Pirlipata’s words grew rigid with anger. Hard and powerful and vengeful. ‘When he declared that we were to be wed, he failed to take into account the possibility of my refusal. I was travelling home along the Thieves Road with my beloved cousin and favourite attendant when his soldiers ambushed us. They had been sent ahead to hide amongst the firs and bide their time. They seized us and slit our attendants’ throats. Their bodies were left to the beasts in the forest, but the king ordered them reclaimed. He wanted me to witness his power. To fear him. I had to endure their decomposing bodies on display in the throne room as a warning to both me and anyone residing in the palace what we would invoke upon ourselves if one word of our fates was whispered to Crackatuck. I have remained here ever since. But I shall never be his. I am my own master, king and hero.’ The golden sequins on her dress blazed in liquid sunshine, their beam transmuting Pirlipata from princess to goddess.

  When they faded back to gold, Marietta retained the warm glow of their inspiration. ‘Thank you for sharing,’ she told Pirlipata. ‘Ladies, I do believe it is time the three of us forged an alliance,’ she said. ‘I have heeded your words, Dellara, that nothing is worth the loss of our lives, yet is not living them here, entrapped in this palace, beholden to a cruel king, an equal loss? Do we not owe it to ourselves to reclaim our rightful positions, rulers of our own destinies? With our combined skillset, I am certain we have the means with which to shape the perfect plan to achieve this.’ Dellara’s scars and her own sharp pain gave Marietta pause but she was determined not to be too blinded by fear to fight for herself. She would not live out the remainder of her days locked in this suite, this palace. Everwood might be spun from sugar and enchantments but it was rotten to the core. ‘What do you say?’

  Dellara tilted her head to one side, considering. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Marietta repeated. She’d mistaken their first, tentative confidences as the beginning tendrils of friendship, reaching out to include her in the bond between the two women. She hadn’t known she’d even yearned for that until now. Dellara and Pirlipata were woven together in a friendship deep and elaborate, wrought over time and pain. Marietta couldn’t pirouette in and be granted a small piece of that in days. She was just lonely and had been lonely for longer than she’d realised; dancing had filled her days and soul but it had cost her friendship.

  ‘No,’ Dellara said again. ‘Oddly, I don’t possess the slightest desire for you to have us all executed.’ She sauntered off to an amethyst chaise longue perched beside the thick sugar wall, the backdrop a soft lilac glow framing her spiky midnight suit. She plucked a small bottle from a golden tray and began painting stars on her feet.

  Marietta was affronted by the dismissal. She felt wild, ravaged by a fever dream of hope.

  Pirlipata rested a hand on her arm. ‘Try not to let her bother you; she always behaves in such a manner with new people. It takes time for Dellara to trust. And time is all you have now that you’re in this palace.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That evening, Marietta was forbidden to dine but forced to witness Dellara and Pirlipata’s silent feast. Faceless guards flanked them, monitoring each twitch of their fingers, each look they traded. Marietta had attempted to remain in the bathing room, idling in the steam, but the guards had dragged her out to sit with them as dinner was served. It seemed King Gelum intended Marietta to become acquainted with hunger before she declined to dance for him again. Her stomach tilted at the creamy wild mushroom soup Pirlipata was eating, casting an apologetic glance at Marietta. At the chocolate hazelnut meringue tart Dellara was indulging in, maintaining shadowed eye contact with the guards. When the huge tray was cleared away, the scent of the feast lingered. Marietta could almost taste the chocolate. She drank a surplus of cool water directly from the tap, plying her stomach with water to forgive the lack of dinner. A headache mounted an attack with a vengeance and her wounded feet bit at her with fiery teeth. Eventually she struggled into a pale imitation of sleep, a thin veil draped over her consciousness.

  Upon awakening, the punishment continued. Faceless guards stood over her, monitoring her as she envied the breakfast fruit, buttery golden pastries and pot of rich drinking chocolate that Dellara and Pirlipata shared. She considered bluffing the king, refusing to dance for him, wondering if he truly was prepared to lose his latest entertainment, but his summons never materialised.

  ‘Food is always linked with power,’ she overheard Pirlipata saying darkly. It prompted an unbidden memory of Victoria mentioning words to that effect when her suffragist mother had undertaken a hunger strike in prison. At the time Marietta had not paid it much heed, had been far too preoccupied with dancing Myrtha in their production of Giselle, devouring Victor Hugo’s Fantômes as one of the original inspirations for the romantic ballet that had debuted in the Salle Le Peletier. Now she twinged with guilt as she watched lunch, and then her second missed dinner, pass her by like the ghost-maidens. It was a ghastly affair. Unthinkable that women should suffer so for their voice to be taken into account. Frederick had been right: she was not as well aware of her own privilege as she ought to have been.

  In a bid for distraction, Marietta retreated to the bathing pool. Though she didn’t bathe for fear of disturbing her bandages, it was cathartic to dip her fingers in the churning bubbles, the toffee-scented steam clouding around her. Pirlipata walked through the gauzy drapes and swam lengths in the pool. Afterward, she lay in the bubbles and spoke with ease to Marietta. On their families and friends and the passions that fuelled them. Marietta attempted to distil into words her love of ballet and the hold it had on her life, explaining, ‘Sometimes I feel as if the desire to dance might consume me. It nestles deep in my bones, a compelling force. I dance until the world falls away and nothing else exists save myself, in that moment, all-encompassing and all too precious. The truth of it is that it is a part of me and to take it from me would mean cleaving me apart, condemning me to live a half-life.’ She ought to have woven Aurora’s tale upon the stage, the culmination of years spent under Madame Belinskaya’s tutelage, instead of being lured into serving as entertainment for a cruel king. That loss cut deep.

  Pirlipata had listened and understood before confiding in her that she missed climbing the rocks and mountains that ringed Crackatuck more than she missed her family. ‘Though they are not aware of my captivity, they have never once questioned my wedding King Gelum in some secret ceremony they were not privy to, nor have they seemed concerned with my lack of contact since our correspondence about their intended visit.’

  ‘One of the soldiers informed me that Crackatuck looks to the future,’ Marietta mused.

  ‘Yes. History is valued in Mistpoint, where they live their lives entwined with their islands of ancient weather-worn ruins, infused with their ancestors’ memories. In Crackatuck, we look forward. Our universities are greatly admired as we have always prized knowledge and culture above all. And that,’ Pirlipata added softly, ‘will be King Gelum’s eventual downfall.’

  ‘How so?’ Marietta listened closer.

  Pirlipata spared a glance at the drapes, thin and bright as moonlight, susurrating in the steam. ‘He fears culture and art and what it may wreak upon his rule. Crackatuck have always held the majority of Celesta’s printing presses, yet the few that remained in Everwood were ordered to be destroyed. Books have been forbidden here since the king caught the first taste of rebellion stirring up his people.’ The drapes fluttered open for a moment, affording a glimpse of the suite and the door opening. Pirlipata fell silent at once. A single server was escorted in by faceless guards, deposited a silver tray heaped with dishes and departed. The guards remained. Pirlipata did not speak on the matter again but Marietta’s intrigue remained piqued.

  Over the following days, Pirlipata and
Dellara flitted in and out of the suite at the king’s command, dripping in glamour, clad in enchanted gowns that set the air around them a-glittering, while Marietta languished in a bitter concoction of defiance and regret. Her thoughts became sticky-slow as if her head had been filled with treacle and moving began to necessitate a great effort. She was consumed with imagining biting into moist chocolate cakes, polishing off entire vats of thick, comforting casseroles, tureens of soup, delicate pies submerged in heavy sauces, and heaps of bread, fluffy and crusty all at once. When she closed her eyes to rest a moment, she dreamt of garden picnics with Frederick and their nanny, of the honey sandwiches and lemon tarts they’d gorged themselves on, filling their mouths with sunshine. When they were older, they’d continued the tradition; though Nanny had since departed the earth and they were far too old for such trivialities, they’d picnicked in the name of nostalgia, the bottle of Frederick’s purloined vintage Taittinger their sole concession in adapting the menu.

  Marietta opened her eyes one evening to Pirlipata peering at her with concern, gold threaded through her cloud of hair, golden butterflies dancing up the crescent moon-curve of her ears. ‘We cannot miss tonight’s frivolities but we shall find a way to bring you some sustenance,’ she said and Marietta spent the length of the ball dreaming in flavours and textures. She was greeted some time later with an anguished Pirlipata bearing a welted cheek and Dellara’s bloodied nose along with the news, ‘I am so sorry, Marietta; we were searched at the door.’

  Curiously, her hunger abated. Some dim, near-forgotten part of her was aware that her faculties were impaired, yet the urge to care was fleeting and, in one misted moment, lost. Time blurred, her tenuous grasp on days trickling away into sleep. She dreamt of wraiths of mist feasting on a forest. Of ice-flecked seas, of winters that devoured all. Of eyes that froze her skin until she became a creature of frost, her hair a spill of snowflakes, her heart encased in sugar-spun glass. In the distance, a wolf howled. Drosselmeier materialised to gaze down at her, reaching out to twine his fingers through her hair. She fled through her fogged memories, hunted by tooth and claw, mice dancing along at her feet; her heart beat too fiercely in its glass case and she shattered from the inside out. Waking with a start, she searched the corners of the suite for Drosselmeier.