Under a Starlit Sky

by EM Castellan

  “Surely we could have done this at the palace,” Olympe said, breathless.

  I held up my lantern and paused to wait for her.

  “We needed somewhere quiet where we wouldn’t be disturbed,” I replied. “It won’t take long.”

  She caught up with me and cast dubious looks around her. “It’s so dark. Are we lost?”

  “We’re not.”

  “What if we run into a deer? Or a wolf?”

  I smiled, amused to witness the unflappable Comtesse de Soissons like a fish out of water. I linked arms with her in a reassuring manner and resumed our walk. “We won’t. And if we do, we’ll just cast a spell.”

  “But I thought you’d lost your magic,” Olympe replied. “Because of your illness. That’s the rumor anyway.”

  “I’m feeling better now.”

  This was true. I had been stronger in the past two days than in weeks. But I was also curious to attempt magic with someone other than Louis. After all, I had only his word that my magic had waned. The last time I had cast a spell, my body had weakened, not the power inside me. I hadn’t tried doing any enchantment since then, so I still wasn’t convinced anything was wrong with my magic. Tonight would be the best way to find out.

  “I’m missing the lottery for this,” Olympe muttered. “We better not be late for Molière’s new play. I heard it’s utterly scandalous. I don’t want to miss it. I can’t believe you convinced me this was a good idea.”

  She trudged alongside me, her skirts lifted up high so they wouldn’t snag on any branches.

  “Did I have to convince you?” I asked, keeping my tone light. “Admit it, you wanted to come. When was the last time you did magic?”

  “Last year,” she grumbled.

  It didn’t come as a surprise to me that the last occasion she’d performed a spell was when at the Crown Magicien’s side.

  “And whose fault is that?” she added, bitterness in her tone. “There are barely any Sources left at court, and the only magicien who wanted to give power to female magicians is now rotting in prison.”

  “The reason there are barely any Sources left at court is because of that magicien,” I reminded her, eager not to take the bait. I wouldn’t apologize for helping bringing down Fouquet. “Let’s stop here.”

  I led her into a small clearing, where an empty cart and piles of timber had been left behind by workers for the night. I set my lantern at the back of the cart and removed my silk gloves.

  “This is all very pagan.” Olympe surveyed the woods around us. “Two women performing magic in the heart of a forest at night.”

  I held out my hand. “Do you have it?”

  “I do.” She fished a folded piece of paper out of her dress pocket. “Although how stealing Lorraine’s lottery ticket is going to do anything—aside from ruining his chances at winning a prize—I can’t wait to hear.”

  “It bears his handwriting,” I replied.

  Olympe raised both eyebrows, a silent demand for an explanation.

  “I want us to perform a finding spell,” I said. “Lorraine has a journal. It’s not in his rooms, and he doesn’t keep it with him. I want to know where it is. I figured having something else bearing his handwriting would help.”

  A mischievous grin pulled at her lips. “Naughty. I like it.”

  I kept a straight face and let her assume my reasons for wanting the journal. “Can you do it or not?”

  “Yes.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “But what if we killed two birds with one stone? Find the journal and retrieve it?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know that spell.”

  “It’s an old enchantment,” she said. “Used by people to recover lost belongings. Not much use here when you have servants to look after your things but very convenient when you’re a hermit wizard or an overworked housewife. I’ll teach it to you.”

  The principles of the retrieving spell were the same as the finding one. Within moments, Olympe and I linked hands, Lorraine’s lottery ticket held between them. The palm of mine was both clammy and cold in the warm evening. Olympe lightly clasped my fingers.

  “Don’t fret. It’s just magic. You can do this.”

  I held her golden gaze, and here it was, the strange intimacy between a magician and their Source. That moment before a spell when both take a leap of faith and believe in what magic can do.

  I took in a deep breath to calm my fluttering heartbeat. “Ready?”

  “Whenever you are.” This time, her smile was easy and sincere.

  “Rapporte,” I said.

  Olympe drew my magic to her like a seamstress pulling a yarn off a piece of fabric. The motion was gentle and precise, and the familiar golden flecks first touched the paper in our hands, then spiraled up into the night air. I grasped onto them with my mind to follow as they bobbed along the soft wind and dispersed around Versailles, searching for their quarry.

  Soon the glittering particles reconvened in front of a palace window. In a dancing pattern, they went through the glass and carried on their luminous journey through all-too-familiar apartments. In Philippe’s bedroom, they alighted onto a desk, where a leather-bound journal lay, closed by a golden clasp. The enchantment molded itself around the journal and lifted it up.

  For a heartbeat it levitated there, wobbling slightly. Around it, the sparkling dots of my magic blinked in and out of existence, and somewhere in the forest, my body tensed.

  “Stay calm.” A whisper on the wind, like a kiss on my skin or a breath against my ear. “It’s your magic. You control it.”

  The tension coursing through my limbs eased, and the golden flecks stabilized. Their purpose clear once more, they rose higher, and the journal with them. Immaterial as starlight, they floated through the window and into the night. Dancing above the shadowy gardens and the forest trees, they glided back to us and deposited their precious cargo down onto the back of the cart. Then they dispersed into the air, and I opened my eyes.

  “Wow!” Olympe thrilled. “You are powerful. No wonder Louis wanted to keep you all to himself.”

  I gripped the side of the cart, bracing for dizziness or a fainting spell. But aside from some tightness in my lungs and shortness of breath, I felt … well.

  “I’m all right,” I said, almost to convince myself.

  “Happy to hear it,” Olympe said, her tone businesslike again. She put Lorraine’s ticket back in her pocket and grabbed the journal from the cart. “For a second there I thought I’d lost you, but when I spoke to you, you calmed down and everything went as planned.”

  “It was you?” I asked, still baffled by the experience. “The voice?”

  She paused to look at me. “Well, yes, who else would it be? Your magic is very strong, and it’s a bit difficult to control, but I’m a very good magicienne.” She shrugged off her boast with an unapologetic smile.

  My gaze landed on our prize in her hands. “May I see the journal?”

  “By all means.” She dropped it in my outstretched hand.

  “Thank you,” I said. “One day soon I’ll explain what it’s all about.”

  “Anytime,” she said. “I’m not very fond of Lorraine anyway.”

  Others might have pointed out that she wasn’t fond of anyone save a very few people, but I kept quiet, my mind whirling from memories of the successful spell to hopes for what proof Lorraine’s journal would provide.

  Olympe took the lantern off the cart. “So this was entertaining after all. Let’s do it again sometime.”

  Her tone was bright and playful, but a trace of seriousness lingered in her expression as she spoke. She meant what she said. She had missed performing magic, and she would do it again if I asked her. It had taken us a year, but we’d become allies after all.

  I caught her arm before she could step away.

  I now had proof my magic was as strong as ever, and a magicienne at my side willing to perform spells with me. This was the opportunity I had been waiting for.

  “Actually,” I sa
id. “There is another spell I’d like to try.”

  CHAPTER XII

  “Accurate prophecies are extremely rare, you know.” Olympe surveyed me, her hands on her hips and her mouth pressed into a doubtful pout.

  “I have reasons to believe this one,” I said.

  After all, the magicienne who had told it to me was the most celebrated seer in Paris, and the manner of the delivery had made it all the more convincing.

  “And you want to know who this prophecy is about?” Olympe replied. “But you say you heard it over a year ago and you don’t remember the exact words?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head, my hopes deflating in the face of her incredulity. She rolled her eyes in a sarcastic motion.

  “That’s going to be easy.”

  My face must have been a picture of disappointment, for she waved me over with a sigh. “Come and sit down, and tell me exactly what you can recall.”

  We sat at the back of the cart, and I recounted as much as I could of the old fortune-teller’s words. Olympe listened to me with an intent expression. When I was done with my description, she looked around her at the clearing.

  “Shame we don’t have playing cards,” she muttered, as if to herself. I opened my mouth to suggest returning to the palace for a deck, but her mind had already skipped to another idea. “She talked about the elements, you said? One queen like air, one like fire?”

  “Yes,” I replied, my hopes swelling again at the light in her golden gaze. “Another like water and the last one like a precious gem.”

  She stood up, her index finger held up like a signal for attention. “I think I have it. We don’t need the cards, or the exact words of the prophecy. We can use the four elements to symbolize the four maidens, and perform the spell the seer performed. This time, instead of her having the vision, we will.”

  I wasn’t certain I followed, but she sounded so confident that I sprang to my feet to help her retrieve the four elements. The first three were easy to gather: we had our lantern for the fire, our jewelry for the gem, and air all around us. The water took a couple of minutes to find, but luckily the workmen had left behind a half-filled bucket before leaving the clearing earlier.

  Olympe displayed one of her diamond earrings, the lantern, and the bucket at the back of the cart, and took my hand.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  My heart thudded against my ribs. After all these months, was I really going to walk out of this glade knowing who the four maidens were at last? Only one way to find out. I took in a deep breath.

  “Révèle,” I said.

  Just like the previous time, Olympe tugged at my magic in the gentlest of ways, and the golden flecks danced up in the air like fireflies.

  “A girl light as air,” the wind whispered. “Of having her heart broken she should beware…”

  The glittering particles of my magic gathered into a golden vision of a very familiar face: Louise, laughing and talking, yet no sound from her reached us. The apparition dissolved, and the sparks of magic twirled toward the lantern.

  “A girl like fire,” the light murmured. “The higher she rises, the harder she’ll fall, and she should be wary of her desires…”

  Again, the spell formed a shape in the air, and this time, Athénaïs’s mocking grin appeared before dispersing once more.

  They headed for the water, and a gurgling sound like a distant stream in the forest turned into a quiet voice.

  “A girl as constant as still water, but secrets and betrayals will undo her…”

  The silent face of Marie-Thérèse appeared, attentive as if she were listening to someone talking.

  At last the bright dots settled on Olympe’s earring, and a voice like tumbling stones echoed.

  “A girl like a diamond. She will shine the brightest, but the world won’t hold her light for long on earth.”

  At first the cluster of magic before us was so bright we couldn’t discern a face in the brilliant mass. I blinked, and my eyes adjusted to the final vision.

  Except it was like looking at a mirror, with my own face reflected, my expression both focused and slightly perplexed. As my puzzlement grew, so did the air of perplexity of my reflection.

  Then it hit me. The visions had shown all the girls where and as they were now, and it was doing the same for me. Which meant …

  I dropped Olympe’s hand with a gasp. The link between us broke, and the magic vaporized in the air. My pulse thundered in my ears, turning my heartbeat frantic and tightening my lungs.

  “Henriette!” Olympe gripped the sides of my face and forced me to meet her gaze. “You don’t know if it’s true, and if it is, you don’t know when it’ll happen. It might be years and years from now.”

  Her imperious tone helped prevent a full panic, but it wasn’t enough to calm me down altogether, and I pushed her away.

  “But I’m the one who dies!”

  Of the four maidens, I had imagined I could be the one with her heart broken, or maybe the one undone by scandals. But I had refused to believe I could be the fourth one. The one who didn’t survive.

  “You’re getting upset over nothing,” Olympe said, still remarkably composed and serious despite the situation. “Prophecies are warnings. They’re not set in stone. They’re told so people can change their course of action and alter their fate. That’s what the spell is for.”

  What she was saying made so much sense that it snapped me out of my frenzy. If magiciens’ predictions of death and doom always came to pass, they’d have all been burned at the stake long ago.

  “You mean it might never come true?” I asked, my voice small despite my slowing heart rate.

  Olympe picked up the lantern and her earring. “I’m saying you’re going to die, like all of us, at some point. But the prophecy isn’t a death sentence, and shouldn’t be interpreted as one.” She offered me her arm so I could guide her back. “Let’s return to the gardens before anyone notices our absence. The lottery must be almost over and the play about the start.”

  Lorraine’s journal and its secrets clutched against me, I led the way through the trees, my thoughts still in turmoil. If the prophecy was a warning, it meant I was in danger. A danger so great that it could cost me my life if I didn’t find a way to prevent it.

  My illness could be the source of my problems, but since I had been feeling better for the last couple of days, my mind went to the next most likely threat: Lorraine. I already suspected him of aggravating my symptoms. It wasn’t too far a jump to conclude he might be wishing for a more permanent way of getting rid of me.

  Thankfully, I now held the key to bringing him down before he could do me any further harm. Ahead, the light and noise of the finishing lottery grew amid the vegetation. My fears somewhat settled, I hid the journal under my skirts and waited for the night to be over—and for the opportunity to uncover Lorraine’s secrets at last.

  * * *

  I met with Armand in one of the groves the next morning.

  The king’s entertainment was reaching its finale, and the weather greeted the news with another warm day of clear skies. The multiple water jets of the large Enceladus Fountain lent a fresh mist to the atmosphere, as the statue of the fallen giant struggled under a pile of heavy rocks sent by the gods to bury him for his arrogance.

  Situated at the back of the gardens, the secluded grove was perfect for a chat away from prying eyes and curious ears at this time of day. I sat in the shade on a stone bench under the trellis colonnade, Lorraine’s journal and spell book in my lap. I had spent half the night combing through them, and my excitement at what I had found was hard to contain. The seer’s prophecy might foretell my demise, but at least I now had a weapon to take down the most direct threat to my life.

  Footsteps crunched in the gravel, and Armand emerged through a passage in the trimmed hedges, his green and lace outfit a nice match for the vegetation and the foaming waters of the grove.

  “Sorry I’m late, darling.” He sank onto the
bench next to me. “It’s a labyrinth out there, and all those groves look the same.”

  I gave him a pointed look for his poor excuse but dismissed the matter as more pressing ones clamored for my attention.

  “Did you hear the news?” Armand said, before I could speak. “The king and his mother had a major row last night after the play. She wants it banned.”

  It didn’t surprise me: Molière’s Tartuffe had proven as scandalous as advertised, an attack against bigots that many people chose to interpret as a charge against the Church. Louis had appeared pleased enough during the performance, but Anne d’Autriche had left before the end. Too occupied by my own problems, I had paid little attention to the show, and although this could be a setback for Molière, the playwright was still in charge of tonight’s last entertainment.

  “I’m sure it’ll be forgotten soon,” I said. “People at court move on very quickly. Tonight’s play is a comedy about love and marriage that will get everybody to agree again.”

  “You’re right,” Armand said. “This morning’s announcement certainly distracted everyone.”

  Hesitation made me pause. I had seen no one except my maids since waking up and had come straight here for our meeting. The courtiers I had passed in the hallways and garden alleys had all been in a flurry of excitement, but no more than usual at a court where something was always happening.

  “What announcement?”

  “That we’re staying,” Armand replied. “The king is moving the court to Versailles. Apparently the archives are on their way, and he’ll hold his first official council with his government here tomorrow.”

  Again, the news didn’t come as a surprise to me. Louis was following the plan he had set out a year ago, with each part falling into place with impressive accuracy like well-built marquetry.

  “But where will everyone live?” I asked.

  If hosting six hundred people for the party had been a challenge, how would thousands of courtiers find enough room to live in the same building?