I did not stay to save his life. I stayed to save mine. Because I have no heart if his ceases to beat. No life without his. His death would have destroyed me, reduced me to a ruin of whoever I was before. I would have been a shell for the rest of my days.
I remember similar sentiments were expressed in Tromeo and Lessida, when they both realised the other was safe, but far beyond their reach. They admit -separately to themselves and not to each other- that this will do. That they can continue to live so long as the other one does. It will be enough.
This is why it's Thorn's favourite book. It is why Thorn let me go. He told himself that it would be enough, that I was alive and happy. He did not know that I would not be happy without him.
And Tromeo and Lessida find their way back to each other. Despite everything, despite years, despite wasted decades, they are reunited. They come back to one another.
I need to go back to Thorn. I just need to wait until the next solstice, pray that it opens in the same place. I don't even know what I will say to him-
A sharp pain burns in my chest, so sudden and so strong that I cry out, clutching the bedpost to steady myself. Hope murmurs in her sleep, but doesn't wake.
As soon as it started, it is over.
What was that?
I clutch the little fairy mirror, as if I can fall right through the glass and reach him. Be all right, I pray, I am here. I will come back soon...
Knowing that sleep is not coming easy tonight, I light a candle, conscious of not disturbing Hope, and begin to write.
Dear Thorn,
I cannot stop thinking about how I left, and how I long to take back the way we ended things. I worry about you. I think of you constantly. I miss you, like one misses a part of their heart. It feels impossible that I can live without you.
I should be mad at you. Your deceptions cut me deeply, but your absence cuts me worse. I think I understand, why you did what you did. You did not trust that I would stay with you anyway. I did not give you reason to trust me, and for that I am the most sorry. I never told you quite so plainly what you meant to me, even though I felt it so keenly it should have poured out of me.
You are my everything. Please stay safe, until I can see you again.
All my love,
Rose
I fold the letter, take it to the window, and burn it with my candle. The blackened wisps float away on the breeze. Let them reach him, like my words reached Honour. Let him know that I am coming home.
I dream that I am inside the Mirror of Moments, watching Thorn. He sits in front of the ruined Mirror of Truth, a dozen Ophelias, Ariels and Margarets reflected in the shards.
“I am truly sorry,” he says.
“There’s no need to be sorry,” says Margaret, her voice softer than I have ever heard it. “It couldn’t be helped. You tried.”
“Couldn’t be helped?” the fury in Ariel’s voice is palpable. “You should not have let her go!”
“I had to. I should have tried to long ago. It was selfish of me to keep her here.”
“I do not think she minded,” Ophelia squeaks.
“She was happy to leave.”
“That is not want I saw,” Ariel persists. “I saw you practically throw her out! Didn’t even let us say goodbye-”
“You would have stopped her.”
“I would have told her the truth! Do you think she would have left if she knew why you hadn't let her go-”
“She might have done.”
The fairies go quiet. “Oh, my dear boy,” says Margaret softly, and a hundred hands reach out to towards him. “You actually still fear that, don't you? Even after everything?”
“If she stayed,” replies Thorn tautly, “it would not have been for the right reasons.”
“I don't know,” adds Ophelia hopefully. “She was very reluctant to go, even after you told her that you were keeping her here. I am sure she’ll be back, if... if you can wait.”
Thorn shakes his head. “I watched her reunite with her family. She will not return. This is as it should be.”
“This is not as it should be!” Ariel hisses venomously. “How could you just- she should be here! You need her and she-”
“Ariel, calm down. There’s nothing to be done now.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks. A dozen tears slide into shards. “I just... I really liked her, and I like here, and I like the idea of having a body again, and I like you. This isn’t fair!”
“We’re still here,” says Ophelia hopefully. “For now, at least. It isn't over yet."
Thorn moans quietly. Is he hurt? He looks like he is. “Yes, it is.”
In the reflections, I see a dozen hands reach out to touch his shoulder, a dozen faces almost as sad as his. The reflections flicker, dim like firelight.
“You... might...”
“Ariel?”
The reflections are fading.
“No-”
"It's... right... here... still... won't... leave..."
"Margaret! Ophelia!"
Then they are gone, and he is alone once more. I call out to him, bang against the glass. For a second, I fancy he has heard me. His ears turn in my direction.
Say my name. Say it.
“Rose,” he whispers. “I know I am only imagining you, but will you stay, regardless?”
I will stay with you forever.
Thorn sits alone in the hall of mirrors, looking up at the covered glass. It hums, as if alive.
“You can come now, Moya,” he says. “There is nothing left for you to destroy now.”
Chapter Thirty: The Emptiness Inside
Every mealtime when we came together, I would sit with my family, watch them talk and laugh and talk and laugh with them, but in the way a puppeteer moves a puppet. I was frightfully, inexplicably, impossibly lonely. I could not understand it. I had never been lonely in my life before I left home. I liked solitude. I liked stillness and quiet. I liked the way the rest of the world could melt away whenever I dreamed.
But the world was more present than ever. I couldn't make it stop or stand still, and I had lost the ability to take pleasure in the things I once loved to do.
I wanted to cry out. I wanted to tell anyone that would listen, that I felt lost and filled with sorrow, but I could not. I could not hurt them, and they would not have understood.
Thorn would.
Not a thing I had kept from him, not a thought or secret. Was this simply because there had been no one else around? No. No, I had never been one to divulge thoughts easily, not before.
Life before Thorn.
I look around the room of my childhood. I was happy here, wondrously happy. These walls contain the scars of my life, but a haze surrounds them. Life before Thorn does not seem to exist.
Not a thing had I kept from him.
There was one thing. And, in the end, it was the only thing that mattered.
The next day, I declare my intention of going for a walk. As I expect, this declaration is met with stony looks and pale faces. I am getting ready for an argument when Nanny says, “Well, you can't stay inside forever!” and turns to my father to have a discussion about mentioning my return off-handedly to the neighbours.
Freedom looks like I've stabbed him.
Beau pulls at my elbow. “Can we come?” he asks.
I want so desperately for a few minutes to myself, but it is hard to refuse that little face. I agree readily, which appeases Freedom somewhat. He insists he come as well, but walks several feet behind us the entire way. The dogs are better conversationalists.
We are gone for several hours. Beau keeps us entertained by spouting off all the new names he's learnt for things. Hope fills me in on the latest stories I might have missed. I, however, am unusually silent. When I walked with them before, I would fill their heads with fairy tales, but this is now a forbidden word amongst us.
The walk back takes us within distance of the meadow. Beau wanders on ahead, chasing a toad I think, whilst I pause, my eyes
fixated on the bank of green beyond the stream. A touch of fog, thin as frost, brushes the damp grass. Somewhere, behind, between, close by- Thorn is. He is there, and I am here, and the space between us might as well be an ocean.
“That's where it is, isn't it?” Hope stops at my shoulder. “The gateway that took you. Across the stream.”
“Yes,” I reply, not knowing what else she expects me to say.
“Did you miss us, while you were gone?”
I turn to face her. How can she ask me that? “I thought about you almost every single day.”
“So why are you thinking of going back?”
I startle. Hope is fourteen. When I left, she was more of a bookworm than I was. She detested parties, abhorred crowds, hated looking people in the eye. When did she become so observant? Her expression is as clear as glass, the pain, the fear, the disappointment, honesty and clarity. I cannot lie to her.
“I love you, you know that, right?”
She nods, although she looks a little surprised. “I assumed so. You don't say it much.”
“No,” I admit, “I suppose I don't. But I think it all the time, and more than ever when I was away. But there is this beautiful thing about families. Even when we're apart, we're still as close as ever. Our families are a part of us.”
“Like Mama,” she says. “How she's still with us, even though she's not.”
“Yes,” I say, even though I have not felt that way, not until recently. “The point is, Hope, family is easy to carry around. If we're lucky, we meet other people in life who become a part of us too. But... they are not so easily carted around. The bonds between us are just as strong, but when we are apart, those stretched bonds begin to hurt, and we feel like we will break if we cannot return to them.” I point out towards the meadow. “Somewhere out there, somebody is waiting for me to return, hurting just as much as I am now.”
“How do you know?”
“I'm sorry?”
“How do you know that they feel the same way?”
How do I know? Thorn has always been more open with his feelings than I have, but he has never expressed himself explicitly... and yet, he has. In every word and gesture he has cast in my direction, for almost every day. I know him better than I know myself.
I put my arm around Hope, ask her to keep my secret, and feel a little better for sharing it.
When we return, Nanny greets us at the back door, her face white and taut. For a second, panic floods me. Papa's been taken ill. Honour is having the baby. Something is wrong, something awful-
“You have a visitor, dear,” she says uneasily, and steps away to reveal James Saintclair standing in the kitchen.
Nanny quickly steers the others away, and I am left alone with him.
This is one reunion I have not been looking forward to. I have not been fair to James. He has never acknowledged it, perhaps is even unaware of it, but I did not treat him as I should have done. I knew he liked me, I kissed him knowing that, and I never discouraged his affections even when I knew I did not feel the same. I knew I would never love him, and that was safer. He could never hurt me. That was wrong of me, but I didn't know better.
I know so much more than I did then.
“Er, hello,” he says, awkwardly stepping towards me with a slightly dazzled look of stark bewilderment. “I... I heard you were back. They're saying... well, it's a strange tale-”
“That is is,” I nod.
“You're... you're all right, though?”
A fondness stirs within me. He has always been so kind. No wonder he was one of the few I considered a friend. No wonder he was easy to play pretend with.
“I'm fine,” I reply, taking a seat. “It was not a difficult place to be trapped in.”
“I'm... I'm glad,” he says. He moves towards a stool, but doesn't sit. He wrings his fingers. “I'm glad that you weren't scared, that you were safe. Your family missed you terribly.”
I notice he does not include himself in his number, and something in my face must show it.
“I... I missed you too,” he says quickly. “Although...”
“James?”
He looks down at his palms, wiping them together, tapping his fingers against the table. His eyes look everywhere but at me.
“I... I told Delphine Bardot that I would marry her,” he spits out eventually.
“Delly?” I don't think I've ever seen them together, and it takes my mind a little time to imagine it. But the more time I spend on the image, the more I see it clearly. Delly, polite, sweet, lovely Delly from the bakery. They will make a splendid couple. “Well, well done Delly! Well done you.”
James stops trembling. His eyes stop darting about. “You aren't... you aren't put out? I know that there was never a formal arrangement between us, but-”
“No, James, not at all. I am delighted for you both.”
He breathes a sigh of relief. “I would have waited,” he adds, more out of politeness, I think. “If I'd known-” then he stops himself, stiffens. “No,” he continues. “I think, once I spoke to her -once I knew her- that I might have been stolen from your affections even if you were right by my side. That sounds awful, I know, and I'm terribly sorry Rose-”
“You love her.”
James' face breaks into the first real smile I've seen in a long time. “Yes,” he says proudly. “A great deal.”
“We would never have made a good match,” I tell him.
“No,” agrees James, “I don't think we would have been precisely miserable together, but-”
“We would not have been entirely happy, either.”
“Exactly.”
At last, he comes towards me, holding out his arms. He squeezes my hands and places the lightest kiss on my cheek. “It really is good to see you, Rose,” he says, beaming. He pats my hand, says his farewell, and departs for Delly's. It is easy to wish him well.
That evening, after everyone else has gone to bed, I stay up with my father, staring into the fire as he thumbs through his newspaper. I sit on the hearth with the dogs, near his feet, the position I occupied as a child.
“Papa...” I start. “Do... do you ever regret marrying Mama?”
Papa folds down his newspaper and stares at me incredulously. “Why on earth would you ask that?”
“Because I know just how much it hurt you when she died.”
“It did,” he says, a whole lot of emotion tied up in those two words. “But she left behind five precious jewels, that helped plug up the wound.”
“But... what if you didn't have us?” I probe. “What if you'd married her, and she'd died within the year? If there were no children? Nothing to remember her by? Would you have regretted it then?”
“No.” He says. How can he speak so simply?
“No? But you wouldn't have had anyone-”
“I would have had her,” he continues. “And I would have taken a day with her over a lifetime with anyone else. And we had more than a day. We had years. If I have to live another ten, twenty, thirty years without her... it would still have been worth it.”
My throat feels very tight. Papa reaches out, touches my hand.
“There are so many awful things in this world, my dear. And yes, death is one of them. But love is the only thing that makes any of the darkness worthwhile.”
I rest my head against his knee so that he cannot see my tears.
“Why do you ask this now, Rosebud? Afraid you've missed your chance with Mr Saintclair?” he strokes my hair. Silence drifts by. He knows that that is not the reason. “If there ever was such a fellow, that you felt such a way for... that you felt you had to be with, no matter what... you should know that whatever makes you happy, will make me happy.”
For a long time, I cannot speak. It is only after the candles are nearly all burnt out that find my voice again, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.
“Thank you, Papa.”
I climb up the stairs and pick up Mama's book. I understand what she wrote, what she said to me the day
she died. Don't be afraid. Live fearlessly.
I have not been living fearlessly. I have been living in fear, terrified at the thought of letting anyone get close for the fear they would be taken from me.
Did Mama know this? Is that what she meant, when she spoke to me that last time? Had she known, all along, the path my life was to take? The Mirrors could not see the future, but perhaps... perhaps Mama could. Perhaps that was her power all along.
I wonder if I have one, too.
I turn to the hand mirror, tiny blackened little glass that it is. I wonder if Thorn is watching me through his. I wish I could see him, so badly.
“Thorn,” I whisper, “I want to come home to you. I'm not afraid any more. I'm not afraid of anything apart from never seeing you again. Let me come back. Let me find a way to you.”
For the merest of seconds, I swear I can see Thorn in the glass, looking back at me in utter disbelief, but after the moment has passed, I know I must have imagined it. Thorn has never been so thin. Am I already forgetting what he looks like?
Soon, my dearest. Soon.
Chapter Thirty-One: The Return
My heart feels heavy when I wake the next morning. Heavy and tight and painful. I dreamt of Thorn again, Thorn sitting in my room with Bramble at his feet, looking gaunt and grey. A plate of untouched food at his side. Was he ill?
Some of your dreams are just dreams... some a little more than that.
The castle is still trying to speak to me, and I am listening. I have to go back, I have to go back now.
Straight after breakfast, I march over to Honour's with very little but a casual word to the rest of my family. People stare at me as I walk by, turning to gossip with their companions. No one is brave enough to speak to me.
Charles is the perfect picture of politeness when I arrive at his front door, but even he watches me cautiously, as if he expects me to disappear into smoke. Honour has to dismiss him with claims that he is making her nervous, which is not good for the baby.
The minute he is gone, I unload my bag. It is full of every fairytale volume I could find, and the mirror.
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