Midsummer Night

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  He smiled and leaned against the railing beside her, glancing heavenward. They stayed like that for a few breaths before he added, “The performance went well.”

  She hugged herself. “I would have loved to have seen it.”

  Letting out a long breath through his nose, the magician drummed his fingers on the railing. “Aster, we need to talk.”

  The seriousness of his voice put a fright in her, and looking at his dark eyes, her pulse hammered.

  He averted his gaze to the shadowed gardens. “A clever attempt, but I’m afraid I’m very familiar with Drummond’s work.”

  There were no spells large enough to hide the flush that consumed her like a wildfire. She stepped back from him and covered her face with both hands. “Oh God above.”

  “I don’t think you fooled Him either.” There was a lightness to the joke, but Aster wilted under it, wishing she could seep through the balcony floor and puddle in a corner down below.

  He let her stew there, not demeaning her or accusing her, just allowing her humiliation to fester like a fever for who knows how long. Hands still over her face, she confessed, “Drummond was so careful ...”

  “He was. He’s very talented, which is why I took him on in the first place. But I know his style. I also know your figure. He failed to disguise that.”

  Aster dropped her hands. Mortification consumed her by the second. “I-I’m so sorry, Master Dereng. I only meant to ... I didn’t think it any harm if I stopped at the ball for only a moment. I shouldn’t have done it! It’s not Drummond’s fault. I bullied him into it. He was so stressed for the performance he didn’t have the energy to withstand me—”

  Celtin laughed. “Oh, I believe it.” He put both hands on the railing, then pulled away from it. Slipped one hand into his pocket before changing his mind and letting it run along the chain of his pocket watch instead. “What I wish to clarify” —he met her gaze—“is that I hope your endeavor means I would not be mistaken in our mutual ... feelings.”

  She felt as though she’d swallowed a mouthful of snow. “M-Mutual?”

  He ran a hand back through his hair. “I have ... been in a difficult predicament this past year. Because of our situation, that is. I did not want to put you in an impossible place.” His expression softened. “I would not want you to accept me because I am your employer and have power over you. Yet I did not want to make your work life challenging were you to refuse.”

  Aster gaped. Certainly she was mishearing things. The music below was louder than she realized and she was mishearing things.

  Mutual? Accept him?

  “I’ve been trying to find a way around it. I wasn’t sure, you understand. Drummond aside, you tend to be, well, kind to everyone. But when I saw you downstairs, disguised and approaching me ...” He dropped his hand and balled it into a fist. “Do let me know if I’m being utterly ridiculous, Aster. If I am, I’ll make the excuse that I’ve drunk too much and we’ll go on tomorrow as though this never happened.”

  Speech failed her. She stared at him, his beautiful face, his earnest eyes, listening to him as though everything he’d said moved through molasses. It took her too long to hear his words. Too long to understand them.

  An awkward chuckle passed his lips. He stepped back. “Perhaps I will have a drink.”

  She shook herself. “I ... no, Celtin. I mean—” She was so flustered, so hot and so cold, she could barely think straight. “That is ... I’m a little backwater, you know. I’m not sure I understand?”

  His lip quirked. “You are hardly backwater, Aster.”

  “But if you could be plain.”

  He chuckled. “Now, you know I am very bad at that.” But he closed the distance between them and took her hands in his own. In a voice just above a whisper, he asked, “Tell me why you came to the ball.”

  She warmed under his gaze. “Just to ...”

  She hoped he’d cut in and say something, but he didn’t. And so her fever brightened.

  Ashamed, she averted her eyes. “I overheard you talking to Mr. Trundon. About finding ... a wife at the ball. And I didn’t want you to—”

  To her embarrassment, her voice thinned. She swallowed against a sore lump and finished, “I didn’t want you to find one. Not one of ... them.”

  “And yet dolling yourself up like one of them was supposed to earn my regard?” He lifted a hand and brushed a stray hair behind her ear. Her skin burned where he touched it. She dared to meet his eyes.

  “But you said ...” She took a deep breath. “I had already earned it ...?”

  He smiled, so soft and reverent, so lovely. “Indeed.”

  She could cry. She did, a little—she had to blink to clear her vision. She released his hands and poked him in the chest. When confusion graced his features, she said, “I’m making sure you’re not an illusion. It would be just like Drummond to play a trick on me.”

  Lifting a hand, he placed a knuckle beneath her chin. “I assure you, I am very much real.”

  His eyes—there was something in his eyes Aster had never seen before, not toward her or anyone else. Like magic, but of a different kind. He was warm and smelled like sage and lemon and his breath tickled her nose as he drew closer.

  In that moment Aster remembered her courage, the courage that had paid off after all, and standing on her toes, she met his lips and shivered at the contact. Her heart erupted and heat flashed through her, making her feel very much like those fireworks that had gotten Drummond in trouble. But she was not the only one taking courage, for Celtin curved his hand around the back of her head and pulled her closer, taking her lips between his, and Aster could have died for the bliss of it.

  Dearest Drummond,

  You were right; the Tower of Pisa is not nearly as large as that painting makes it appear to be. But it is still quite a sight! Another century and it will be kissing the cobblestones. That’s what the locals say, at least.

  Rome is an amazing place and I’m almost sorry you’re not here to enjoy it. But good news! You’ll have extra time to copy over those books. Celtin and I have decided to stay another month. You could call it a honey-many-moons, perhaps? But of course I’m joking. We’re only extending a week! (Yes, I do think I’m quite funny.)

  Today we’re to Florence where we’re meeting up with Celtin’s sister. My sister-in-law! Not six weeks ago I didn’t think I’d ever have one. How the time flies! I hope she likes me. I’ve none of your spells to trick her into doing so.

  All right, Celtin just left the room. So I’ll rush to tell you he thinks you’ll be ready to test in six months. SIX MONTHS! So forget the copies and get ready! Of course I’ll help you when I get back. I’ll sleuth what I can to give you a head start. It’s the least I can do to repay you.

  Best Wishes!

  Aster Dereng

  P.S. My cousin Alisse—you remember her, yes?—would make a wonderful assistant. I know you’ll be needing one, and since I can no longer fill the position ...

  Check out Charlie N. Holmberg’s next book!

  Visit Charlie’s Amazon author page:

  Charlie N. Holmberg is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Paper Magician series, which Publishers Weekly called a “promising debut.” Short-Listed for the 2015 ALA Fantasy Reading List for The Paper Magician, she is also the author of Followed by Frost, The Fifth Doll, and Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet. Charlie is a board member for the Deep Magic ezine of science fiction and fantasy. She is represented by Marlene Stringer at the Stringer Literary Agency. Visit Charlie online: www.CharlieNHolmberg.com

  “Walk with me,” the ghost whispered as it flickered and reflected the moonlight. “Let me touch your hair and hold your upturned hand. Let me rest my arm over your shoulders as I light the path before us and stretch your shadow to its limits behind us. And then let us dance.”

  Grace

  “I found a ghost!” Grace’s sister, Annabelle announced at dinnertime. Since Annabelle had barely celebrated her sixth birthday, the news crea
ted far less alarm in the three other members of the family than it might have otherwise if it had come from an older, more reliable source.

  The announcement elicited little more than a murmuring comment from their mother—who usually enjoyed Annabelle’s tales.

  Even Grace, who often indulged her young sister by pretending to believe the ludicrous things the child conjured from her imaginings, maintained her focus on her brother as he recounted his experiences working for the cobbler in the neighboring village of Easton. He explained in detail the way the leather had to be worked and shaped and cut in order to make a sturdy yet pliable pair of shoes.

  Not that Grace cared at all how shoes were made, but she’d missed her brother during the many months he’d been away learning his trade. Being that they were barely a year apart and they’d had twenty-three years to get used to one another, being without him had created a hole in her, and she determined to fill it with as much of his presence as possible before he had to return to the cobbler’s shop.

  Grace felt selfish for wanting to ignore her sister for a moment. Annabelle had been born three months after their father had died. She’d come into the world at a time when Grace should’ve been marrying and rearing children of her own.

  Their mother’s pregnancy had been a surprise to them all since their parents were not young people. Their father should never have left their mother in such a fragile pregnancy. The delivery almost killed her and left her crippled. If only he’d sent Shem to do the hunt in his place.

  But he hadn’t sent Shem. He’d gone himself and never returned. With their father passed on, Grace and Shem adjusted their own lives in an effort to prolong the lives of their mother and newborn sister. And then Shem left to learn his trade because he could no longer put off the business of being a man. The task of caring for their family fell to Grace, and she’d felt the loneliness in her duty. A woman of twenty-three years should’ve had a husband to help her.

  But who wanted a wife who came with such complications as a dependent mother and small sister?

  “It was a really real ghost!” Annabelle insisted when she realized no one believed her.

  “Shh! Annabelle! You can tell us about your baby ghost later,” Grace said.

  “But my ghost isn’t a baby. It’s a man ghost. A man like Shem.”

  “You say you saw a ghost, Anna-belly?” Shem asked, his mouth curving up into a wry grin, likely realizing he’d bored the little girl with the details of his work. “Was it terribly frightening?”

  Annabelle frowned and swept back the stray strands of nearly white blonde hair that never seemed to stay in her braids no matter how tightly Grace wound them together. “No,” she said. “It was bothersome and in my way when I tried to feed the hens. I told him he shouldn’t be in our feed shed. But he didn’t care that I told him to shoo away. He only looked and looked at me with great big, pale eyes.” She held her fingers up around her eyes as if the action could make her own blue eyes larger.

  Grace and Shem shared a look over their sister’s head. “A man in the feed shed?” Grace asked, her heightened voice proving how much such news alarmed her.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing but a fairy story,” their mother said.

  Grace closed her eyes, took a breath, and counted to three before responding. Her mother had been as absentminded and as irresponsible as Annabelle since their father had gone.

  Grace worked in the village most days teaching the magistrate’s children their letters and numbers so that her sister and mother had food on the table and clothes on their backs. Was it so much to hope that her mother keep a clear head for even the smallest things such as a strange man in their feed shed?

  “Mother,” Grace started to say, but Shem interrupted.

  “What did your ghost look like, Anna-belly?” he asked.

  Annabelle shook her head, making the acorn shells Grace had looped at the end of her braids click together. “His hair was white, as if the moon had kissed his head. And his face was mist.”

  “You missed his face?” Grace asked.

  “No!” The child was clearly tired of explaining herself. “I saw through his face, like the mist at the waterfall.”

  “You can’t see through faces, darling,” Grace said, trying to remain calm over the fact that a man had taken shelter in their feed shed. At least Shem had come home for a few days so she didn’t have to face this alone.

  “I know!” Annabelle slapped her tiny palm on the table. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! That’s why he’s a ghost!”

  “Want to check the shed now?” Shem asked Grace.

  “If we plan on sleeping soundly tonight, definitely now.” They both stood, and Grace grabbed her mother’s walking staff.

  “You’re both overreacting,” her mother said while remaining seated at the tiny wooden table. “It’s a fairy story.”

  “It’s not a fairy story!” Annabelle insisted, looking cross with her mother as well.

  Grace and Shem ignored their mother and sister, took a lantern, and went outside. A few feet away from the door, Shem pointed at Grace and then made motions that indicated he’d open the door while she stormed inside with the walking staff. Grace narrowed her eyes, shook her head, and motioned that she’d open the door. They stood still, neither of them budging until Grace tucked the walking staff into the crook of her arm. She made a fist over her open palm. Shem readied himself with his own fist over palm. They bounced their fists on their palms twice before making their choices. Shem chose scissors. Grace chose paper.

  She lost. Sometimes she felt certain Shem cheated somehow, though she knew there was no way to cheat. With a sigh, she gripped the walking staff in both her hands and gave Shem a sharp nod.

  He yanked the door open, and Grace leaped inside with a yell. She frowned at the space between the shelves lined with preserves and grains. Frowned because anywhere a man could fit remained empty.

  Grace turned, half expecting that the whole situation was a big joke and she’d find Shem laughing at how silly she’d looked flying into the room with her teeth bared. But Shem wasn’t laughing. He lifted the lantern higher, and his own face frowned.

  “Do you think Annabelle’s telling tall tales, fairy stories, like Mother said?” he asked.

  Grace shook her head. “She seemed sincere, but if someone was here, they’re gone now.”

  Satisfied, they closed it up again and made their way back to the house.

  “Will you be all right on your own tomorrow?” he asked before they entered the house.

  “We’ll be fine. Honestly, Shem. I’m a full-grown woman. If I can’t keep the other women of our household safe, then what good am I?”

  He laughed. “All right. If you’re sure.” He entered the house and called to Annabelle that they’d vanquished the ghost.

  Grace’s foot hovered in the air just above the stone step of the front door. The hairs on her neck rose, and her skin prickled with the knowledge that someone watched her. Someone stood behind her. If she turned, she felt certain she would see.

  She didn’t turn.

  She didn’t want to see.

  Grace would not believe in ghosts.

  Arell

  He’d tried to speak to them. To communicate. To demand answers. To get their attention.

  But they didn’t hear him. They didn’t see him. They didn’t even acknowledge him. So Arell went from attempting communication to watching to see what they did. He’d watched them from the moment the man and woman walked out of the house right up until the woman shut the door on him, cutting off the light from their lantern and the glow of the lamps and fire inside.

  The sliver of light that smuggled its way out between the cracks in the shutters was not enough to shake the incredible cold that made him feel like a pail of milk left out in a metal bucket during the harshest of winter nights. His veins were nothing but ice, his breath little more than frost.

  But the cold wasn’t the worst thing that had been done to him.r />
  The worst was that Arell didn’t know where he was. He didn’t remember how he’d come to the shambles of a farm in which he stood. One moment, he’d been making the rounds on his night watch at the king’s palace, and the next, he stood blinking in bright morning light in a part of the land that didn’t look in any way familiar. The palace stood on the firm foundation of rock atop the tallest of five hills, where it kept watch over its people in the valleys and along the surrounding hills. Arell had been walking the walls, his boots clapping against the stone.

  And then he wasn’t.

  Something had happened. Something had dragged him to the farmlands so far from his home in the palace that he could not see the hills that should have been in plain view no matter where he stood in the city.

  But what?

  What had happened to alter everything he knew? Arell closed his eyes to try to think, to recreate the last moment he remembered. He took slow, even breaths and focused on the last fragmented memory. Odd how the memory was more sound than anything else. His boot heels clacking against the stone. The flap of a bat wing. The breeze lifting the rustling leaves down at the ground. And another sound.

  His mind felt as though a thick fog shrouded his every thought past the moment he’d turned to the foreign noise. All he remembered after that was finding himself in a shed full of tools, animal feed, and small barrels containing water.

  He growled, snapped his eyes open, and turned back to the house where the man and woman had gone. If he could ascertain his location, he could make his way back to wherever it was that he’d lost himself.

  He’d tried asking the child earlier, but she’d sniffed at him as though he was something to be scraped from the bottom of a boot. She’d made no indication that she’d heard his question, and the only words he’d received from her were demands for him to move out of her way. The child was certainly determined and hadn’t seemed at all afraid of a man on her property.