“Keep it,” she says. “You can give it back when you come see me.”
13
I don’t sleep, and as soon as daylight touches the sky, I leave Cinderella’s tomb. Following the rising sun, I cut through the woods, stumbling along in boots that are two sizes too big. The main road is visible through the trees after a while, but I don’t take it. I stay in the shadowy confines of the tree line until the road is clear at the junction that leads into the heart of Lille.
I hesitate as I think of the girl. Constance. If I go now to meet her, my parents will be left wondering what happened. The king will send his men to the house, I’m sure of it, but what will they say? Will they admit that I slipped through their fingers? I can’t leave my parents wondering if I’m dead or alive. I keep the hood of the cloak up as I cut across the main road and make my way home.
When I arrive on my street, a trio of palace guards are storming out of my house. They mount their horses as I sink low, pressing my back into a garden wall. They ride past, raining bits of earth and pebbles down on me. As the sounds of the horses fade, I scramble to my feet and dart around to our rear entrance. The door is locked. I rap gently on the glass until my mother’s tear-soaked face appears. She flings it open and pulls me inside, cupping her hand over my mouth. My father appears in the doorway, and his eyes grow wide. He glances back over his shoulder.
“Hurry up with that tea, woman,” a gruff voice calls from the front room.
My mother goes to the stove where a kettle sits steaming. My father motions for me to move away from the doorway. He walks to the front room.
“I’m going out to the front garden to pull down the lines,” my father says.
“That’s woman’s work,” the other man says.
“It is,” my father replies. “But my wife is getting your tea.”
The man huffs. The front door opens, and a moment later my father cries out.
“Sophia!”
The man in the front room clambers to his feet and out the door. “Where is she?” he barks.
“I saw her! There!”
The man’s boots pound the ground as he runs in whatever direction my father has pointed to.
My mother wraps her arms around me as my father sweeps over in a silent rage.
“They came looking for you,” he says through gritted teeth. “They have guards posted at the end of our street.”
My mother steps aside. I’ve never seen him so angry.
“Is it true you assaulted one of the suitors and fled on foot?” my mother asks.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I say.
“How could you put us in this position?” my father asks.
“What about the position you’ve put me in?” I can’t believe that they are making it seem like this is my fault.
“We put you in a position to succeed in finding a good match. You could have wooed the king himself. You would have been chosen by someone.” My father rubs his forehead, squeezing his eyes closed.
“You don’t even know what happened up there! It was worse than anything I could have imagined. Some of those men were older than Grandpa, and some of them were looking for two girls at a time.”
My mother looks as if she’s going to be sick. “It’s disgusting, Morgan,” my mother says to my father. I’m struck silent. She so rarely expresses any doubt about the king’s laws or the ball itself.
“You have broken the law,” my father says. “Do you care for nothing except your own selfish desires?”
The words strike me like an open hand. I stagger backward into a chair at the kitchen table; a dizzying torrent of utter despair washes over me. My father hasn’t even bothered to ask me if I am okay.
“You put us in a terrible position, Sophia. We can’t defend you. The palace may think we’re complicit.” He glances at my mother and then back to me. “You can’t be here when the guards return.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” I ask, bewildered. I look at my mother, who hangs her head.
“You’ve given me no choice.” My father’s eyes are wild and searching. He slumps down, and my mother puts her arm around his waist. “Your friends probably found suitors. You come home dirty, disheveled, and wanted by the palace guards.”
“The king humiliated Liv in front of everyone, tossed her aside like a piece of garbage, and you’re worried about my dirty clothes?”
“Her family is not one of means, Sophia,” says my father. “They tried their hardest to make sure she was prepared, but they failed her. I did not want that for you. I have worked hard to make sure you were ready and now … now you’ll be a forfeit.”
My mother shakes uncontrollably. She rushes to me and holds me close. “No! I will not allow it!” She clings to me, digging her fingers into my back.
“There are no other options, Eve.”
“I’m not going back to the palace,” I say. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want, but I will not be a prisoner to the king.”
My father stands firm, and I watch him. This man who I adore so very much has turned into someone I don’t want to know. His words crush me. I walk to the back door in a haze.
“Wait,” my mother says, rushing to block the door. “Please, we can hide her. We can make her apologize to the king. We can—”
“She has to go, Eve.”
The pain of this is too much. I begin to weep as my mother screams at my father. “Morgan, stop this! Stop it this instant! This is our child. She needs us to—”
“To what?” my father snaps. “To continue to break the law? To continue to defy the king? Her best chance is escape.” He flings the back door open wide. A gust of cold air stings my face. “Go. Get as far away from here as you can.”
I look into his eyes. The tears stream down my face, but I keep the urge to scream and sob bottled up.
“I can’t protect you here,” he says. “Neither can your mother. You have to go, or we will all be dead.”
“And if I leave it will just be me who ends up dead?” He doesn’t answer, and I am again taken aback. He knows this. He’s willing to let this happen. “You can’t keep me safe because you’re too afraid to stand up to the king.”
My words hurt him. His eyes brim with tears. He blinks them away. “Please, go while you still can, before the guards return. This is the best chance for all of us. Your mother and I can avoid suspicion if I tell the guards that you never made it home.”
I want to scream, to shake them and tell them to open their eyes, to see how wrong this is. I step out onto the stoop. The door closes and locks behind me. My mother’s cries ring out inside the house, and my father’s muffled voice tries to calm her as she screams my name.
I walk to the street, tears streaming down my face and an anger growing in the pit of my stomach, so hot it courses through me like a raging fire.
I stay close to the buildings to avoid the patrols and lamplighters. Behind closed doors, I imagine some girls are feeling the keen sting of rejection, while others celebrate their matches, none of them knowing what the future will bring.
Even as my head swims with my father’s words, I can only think of my friends. Liv and I will be outcasts, and while I don’t know what has become of Luke, whatever happened is my fault. He wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.
I pull the cloak in around me, and the lavender scent envelops me, reminding me of the girl from the crypt. Five miles west. That’s where I need to go. It is the only place I can think of.
There is only one road leading west that extends right up to the city’s border. As I make my way there, the rumble of carriages and horses puts me on edge. The king’s men are searching for me, but how many of them could pick me out of a crowd?
The farther away from town I get, the fewer people there are. After a while I am alone, and all I can think of are my parents, of Erin, of what has happened.
On the road behind me, there is the chatter of men’s voices, and I quickly take cover in a small grove of trees just
off the road, pressing myself against a tree and trying not to breathe. Their voices carry as they stop at the edge of a steep embankment across from me.
“Are we sure she was at the ball?” one of them asks.
“Her parents said she was, but she’s too old,” says another. “Look at her hair. It’s white as a sheet.”
I peer around the tree. Guards. They are all looking down at the embankment.
“She’s seventeen. That’s what her mother said. Described her clothing and everything. It’s a shame, sending her to the ball dressed like that.”
One of them nods. “Well, we’ll need a cart. And one of us should go back to the house to make sure her father doesn’t come down here.”
They all turn and ride back up the road. I stand still until they are out of sight, and I can no longer hear their witless banter. My heart crashes wildly in my chest as I walk toward the embankment. Something deep inside compels me to look.
The steep slope leads down into a ditch where a few inches of water have gathered. Lying there is a person. My breath catches. I recognize her dress. Eyes that once sparkled with laughter and a mouth that once whispered silly jokes are open wide, caught in a scream. I cup my hand over my mouth to stifle the nausea. My dear Liv.
I have never seen a dead body. I don’t know what it should look like, but what I see seems foreign. Liv’s hair, once brown, is now white as snow. Her skin is shriveled and ashen gray. Her arms are drawn up in front of her, her hands rigid, fingers curled into claws.
I stagger back, and my stomach turns over. Collapsing on the road, I feel the muscles under my tongue seize as I vomit. Nothing but a foul-smelling liquid comes up. I refuse to believe it. She can’t be dead. Not my Liv.
Men’s voices sound again in the distance, and I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, stumbling into the trees, where I slide down onto the ground and cry. Noiseless and aching, I double over and clutch my cloak, pressing my face into it as the rumbling of wheels sounds on the road behind me.
I watch as the guards return on foot, pulling a small wagon with an open top. They situate themselves along the road, and together, they pull Liv’s body up the embankment, placing her atop the wagon’s bed. I am going to vomit again.
“Do we have a blanket?” one of them asks.
“Oh, you’re worried about her decency?” another asks.
“No, I just don’t want to see her ugly face. It’s terrifying.” He pretends to shake with fright, and they all laugh. “I’d have offed myself, too, with a face like that.”
One of the guards, an older man, steps forward. “Cover her and shut your mouth. This is someone’s child.”
The younger guard doesn’t look moved, but he quiets himself and covers Liv’s body with a blanket. They pull away and head back toward town.
I sit in the shadowy grove of oak trees, put my head in my hands, and weep. I can’t see through the torrent of tears. I gasp for air and cry out. Lying down in the dirt, I press my face against the ground. I want to crawl into the earth, to disappear, anything that will make me forget about what I’ve seen.
14
The sharp refraction of the sun through the branches above me stings my blinking eyes. I’d fallen asleep as visions of Liv tumbled through my head. The cold wetness of the ground soaked into my clothes, chilling me to the bone. The tears rise again, and I angrily push them away. My body aches as a heaviness settles in my chest. I stumble out of the trees, my legs like lead working against me.
The sun is low in the sky, and darkness is descending. I’m not even halfway to the place where Constance said I should meet her. I hope she will still be there. I hope it’s not too late to find her, now that there is nowhere else I can go. I push forward in a daze. Over my shoulder, the sound of horses and people talking startles me. I scurry down the embankment and press myself into the dirt to avoid being seen when the carts come barreling past. When the sound moves off, I carefully stand and look down the road. A cart full of heavily armed palace guards disappears in the distance.
Liv’s face stays in my mind as I walk. I can’t help but feel as if I’ve failed her. When Luke told me he would claim me to give us a way out, I thought I could bring Liv and Erin along. I thought we could save each other. Her absence resounds in every breath I take. The weight of her loss crushes me.
Her parents must be in agony. The thought brings a new kind of sorrow.
As the sun sinks lower and lower, I’m exhausted and unable to keep track of the minutes as they tick by; the distant bell tolling is my only clue as to how much time has passed. The road from town is paved with stones for much of the way before it turns to dirt. The farther I walk, the less there is to see. Trees sprawl out in every direction, their leaves yellowing. Even they know winter is coming.
As the sun dips below the horizon, I come to a place where the road splits off into two distinct forks. The left path is covered by dirt and gravel, pressed flat by carriage traffic. The right path looks as if it hasn’t been traveled on in years. Overgrown weeds push in from all sides, and the ground is littered with large stones nearly as high as my waist.
“Decisions, decisions,” says a voice.
I stagger back, tripping over my own feet and falling hard onto my side. From the embankment on the opposite side of the road emerges a familiar face.
Constance.
“You scared the hell out of me!” I scream, stumbling to my feet and trying to keep my heart from pounding out of my chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” she says, smiling.
“How did you know I’d come?”
“I didn’t. But I hoped you would.” Her red hair, which she wears in a long braid down her back, looks like twisted flames in the orange haze of the setting sun. Walking closer, I see a constellation of freckles across the bridge of her nose and planes of her cheeks that I hadn’t noticed before. Her smile quickly fades as she looks me over. “Are you all right?”
I fumble with my words while recounting the horror of that morning’s events. I can barely bring myself to speak Liv’s name aloud.
Constance sighs, and her shoulders slump down. “I’m so sorry. Truly I am.” She walks over to me and slips her arm around my waist, propping me up as my legs threaten to give way.
“The way she looked,” I say, wiping away the tears. “Something was wrong.”
Constance’s body stiffens. “The way she looked?”
I struggle to find the words to describe what I saw. “Her hair was white, like snow, where it had been brown before. All her color drained away, and her skin was wrinkled and gray.”
“Come with me,” she says.
I look around. The road is empty. No houses, no buildings. The watchtowers loom in the distance, and beyond them, the great expanse of forest known as the White Wood. “Come with you where?”
“Are you always so suspicious?” she asks.
“Are you always so vague and mysterious?” I ask in return.
“I try to be,” she says, smiling gently. I allow her to lead me toward the head of the path that is completely overrun. We make our way through the trees and underbrush, before we come to a towering wrought-iron gate. Its ten-foot bars are festooned with vines and bougainvillea, whose incandescent pink blooms are shriveled and falling to pieces in the late-autumn air.
We go through the gate and up a long twisting drive lined with ancient overgrown oak trees, each of their branches draped with curtains of moss, their knotty trunks as wide across as the broad side of a carriage. The setting sun illuminates the hazy outlines of the velvety red and orange petals of the poppies that grow wild and abundant, their black seedy centers dotting the landscape like a million pinpricks.
“Shouldn’t they be dead by now?” I ask, looking out over the flowers that color the otherwise brown and dying landscape.
Constance gazes at the poppies. “I hadn’t really thought of that, but I think you’re right.”
We round a bend, and a large house c
omes into view. One wing has collapsed, and vines have overtaken almost all the rest of the visible sides. Boarded windows line the lower floor while the ones above are open to the elements. The paint, which might have been white at one point, is cracked and peeled, and the front door is half off its hinges.
“Do you know what this place is?” Constance asks.
“Should I?” I glance up at the house. We are miles from town, and unlike the eastern border, which is the most fortified because beyond it are the Forbidden Lands, the far western side of Lille is largely abandoned. It’s not butting up against a great expanse of territory that leads straight to the place where the potential new kings of Lille are born and raised.
“Cinderella lived here with her family. This is where it all began.”
I look at the house again. It’s identical to the illustrations in my copy of Cinderella’s story. “I thought it was on the other side of the Gray Lake in the south of Lille? And didn’t it burn down in a fire?”
Constance shakes her head. “Lies. It’s always been here. It’s not much to look at anymore, I’m afraid,” she says, a ring of sadness in her voice.
She helps me up the front steps, and we go inside. As we stand in the entryway, I care less about how it looks and more about whether it’s even fit to stand. There’s a large hole directly over the foyer. Leaves and debris litter the cracked marble floor, and a wide staircase with broken and missing steps leads up to the second level. The banister has fallen off and lies in pieces on the floor.
Constance sees me eyeing the stairs. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to go up there.”
I follow Constance into a room just off the main hallway, my legs still knocking together. It is a small parlor with a fire already burning in the hearth. Some tattered furniture is scattered about, but it’s dry and warm, and a pile of neatly folded blankets sits in the corner. It looks like Constance has made camp here for several nights.
She gives me a large basket with a tall handle. I flip open the lid and almost faint from pure excitement. Inside are grapes, a small wheel of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a small carafe of milk closed with a cork stopper.
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