A WISH MADE
OF GLASS
ASHLEE WILLIS
Copyright © 2015 by Ashlee Willis Published by Dewdrop Books
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the author.
Print ISBN: 978-0692474594
Author is represented by the literary agency of Books & Such Literary Management
www.booksandsuch.com
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by A.E. de Silva
To the Prince of Peace, the healer of every broken heart.
PROLOGUE
When I was a child, I danced with the fey folk.
I met with them many times in a glade at the heart of the wood near my home. I can well remember the way my feet spun, my hair a dark cloud swirling round my face. My laughter twined between the notes of their music as if the two belonged together, and I would dance until I was breathless and spent.
A lithe fey girl would take my hand and laugh as I tried to mimic the steps to the dance. A woman strummed her fingers across the strings of her instrument, nodding in time to the music, a small smile upon her lips. A man tapped his feet, standing near the edge of the trees, while he played a rippling tune on his flute.
And each girl and woman wore slippers as delicate as spun sugar, as clear and beautiful as glass. When their feet flew across the ground in an intricate jig, light spilled gently from those slippers like pent-up joy that could no longer be contained.
With my father away at war and my mother ill at home, the fey were my joy. More than that, they were my kin. Their friendship was like a wave washing over me, or like the wind coursing through my hair. Their love for me was both fierce and gentle.
“I’ve heard that they carry their hearts within their shoes, the fey,” Mother told me once, on a day she felt briefly stronger. “Their dreams, their aspirations, their very breath and life.”
I gasped with childish fascination. “But why?” We were walking hand in hand across the sunny lawn. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, yes.” Mother winked at me. “Very dangerous, indeed. They must tread carefully. Oh, so carefully! For every step they take, every leap or stumble or turn of a dance, they are treading upon their own hearts.”
I was silent some moments, caught up in the idea of such a thing. I could scarcely fathom the fear and courage it would take to live in such a way.
“And the men?” I asked, frowning. “They don’t wear glass slippers.” I remembered the feet of the young boy who I had danced with only the night before. Truly, I knew his feet well, for my eyes had been sharp upon them to learn the steps of the dance. They had been clad only in supple doeskin boots.
But my mother said, “The men are no different, Izzy. Perhaps their hearts aren’t as obvious as the womenfolk’s, but they are there nonetheless. Where do you think they are?”
I scrunched my face a moment, thinking hard, then my eyes widened. “On the soles of their shoes. That’s where the glass is.”
Mother pulled me down to sit with her on a bench beneath the willow. “Exactly right,” she said. “They tread upon their own hearts as well, even if most can’t see it.” She gave a weary sigh and closed her eyes. I leaned my head on her shoulder and we sat in silence for some minutes.
“I’m glad we don’t have to do that,” I said resolutely at last.
“Do what, darling?” Mother’s eyes were slow to open, as if she woke from a dream.
“Walk every day upon our own hearts.”
“Oh.” Mother shifted to look into my face. “Yes. It is a dangerous game, being the possessor of your own heart.” With the back of her fingers, she gave my cheek a brief caress. I was shocked to see that her eyes brimmed with wet sadness.
“What is it?” I asked, instantly worried. “Are you missing Father? He’ll come home, you know. The war will soon be over.”
“I’m well, Isidore,” she answered, giving me a tight hug. “Don’t fret. I’m well.”
Three days later, my mother died.
I was eleven years old. Old enough to see grief baring its teeth at me, but young enough that I could not understand how to protect myself from it. For weeks I stoppered my heart, shelved it and pushed it aside. I refused to visit the fey folk. When I thought of their dancing feet and smiling faces at all it was with a rush of hot anger. Such happiness was only a sham. Such joy must surely be no more than a dream.
Thus my mother’s death brought another death in its wake, for my belief in the fey folk died, too. She had been the only one to believe the wild tales I brought home of sun-spackled, laughter-filled frolics in the wood. She had believed in the folk as surely as I had. But something in me was broken now she was gone, and it had been that part of me which had loved the woodland dances and those who danced with me there.
I could not decide how much of the sadness I felt was for my mother’s death and how much was mourning for the kin of my heart. The fey.
Weeks passed and at last I ventured to their glade. But it was only to find nothing at all. Not simply an empty place, but a place full of its emptiness, a silent void screaming sorrow in my face. I gazed at the mossy ground where my feet had once been so nimble. Those feet were good for nothing now, save perhaps a funeral march. The trees sighed heartbreak around me as if they too felt the absence of the folk. In truth, the whole forest had grown cold without them.
But then, I told myself, the fey had never been real. They had only been a beautiful dream, cruelly taken and crushed beneath my heartbreak. Believing this, I turned to a world which felt bleak as death. I was desolate and alone.
In the end it was Father who coaxed my heart out from hiding.
He came home from the wars once and for good, determined to bring me to life, set upon making me happy. And he did. He gentled my broken heart as if it were a wild animal, he spoke softly to it until it learned to trust him. And like that, he won me.
Though the fey folk left a gaping wound in my heart, and though my mother’s death left me hollow and dry, I quickly learned to pour everything into my father and to draw my hope from him. The fey danced from my mind like wisps of fancy, or clouds on the wind. Soon they were gone altogether.
I did not know Father well. He had been away for the better part of my childhood. But now he was here to stay and I did not think to begrudge him a moment of the time we had been apart. Just as he began to make my happiness his chief concern, I too made his happiness my priority.
My mother had been the softer part of me, the whimsy and the dreams and the sweetness of childhood. But those things were gone now, and I was changed. Father led me into the dazzling light of day. I was awake and would dream no more. That is how I wanted it to be. That was the only way I knew how to put aside the sorrow that otherwise might have drowned me.
I was happy thus for nearly three years.
Then my father took a wife.
CHAPTER ONE
My knuckles dimple as I gather my full skirts and offer Father a pretty curtsy. I am breathless from running down the stairs to greet him, although, in truth, my breathlessness is mostly from my plumpness, which is the effect of too many sweets these past three years. My old maid Hazel, who has been with me since Mother’s death, calls it baby fat, but that is only her love for me speaking. I know better.
But in this moment
I do not care one way or another.
“Father.” I can barely keep myself from rushing into his arms. He has been gone these past few weeks on business. I am fourteen and am supposed to know nothing of these things, but I have ears and eyes and I know our estate is in dire need of funds.
“Isidore, my love. What are you doing standing there, when you should be here in my arms?” The familiar deep voice booms at me and the white smile flashes beneath his mustache. In another moment, I am embracing him. I feel the warmth of his kiss on my head.
I pull back more quickly than I intend. There is something wrong. I can sense it. “What is it?” I ask, pulling my brows together.
Father laughs. “My, what a face. Nothing is wrong. In fact, everything will be right at last.”
My face brightens. “Are our money troubles over, then?” As soon as I see Father’s slight frown, I know I should not have said this. Still, I am eager to know the answer.
“I don’t know where you got such a notion,” Father answers in a clipped voice. “Certainly not from me. No, Izzy, my news is of a different kind entirely, and has nothing at all to do with something as tedious as money.” He pulls a face at me and I giggle. Taking my hand, he leads me to a chair near the window.
“You sit, too, Father,” I say, but he shakes his head. His heels clack together on the marble floor, something he does only when he is nervous. My heart gives a tiny flutter of fear.
“You are to have a new mother, Iz.” Father blurts the words as if he cannot wait to be rid of them. He cannot know they are the same as a knife in my heart.
“But,” I manage to gasp, “I have a mother already.”
Father turns sharply at the desperate sound of my voice and kneels before me. “Izzy, please,” he says. I have never heard such a whine in his voice before. I want to draw back from it. “Please try to understand. I will love no one as I did your mother. This marriage … it is necessary, Izzy.”
My head is spinning. Necessary? I am young, yes, but when I think of marriage it is accompanied by thoughts of love and respect, even kisses and embraces. Necessity has no place in marriage. Does it?
And this is when I understand.
“You mean she has money.” My voice is flat, though tears are hot just behind my eyes. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”
Father’s face tells me all I need to know. His dark eyes swim with a mixture of indignation that I have discovered the truth so quickly, and with sadness that this has come to pass.
He only says, “We will get through this together, Iz, you and I. We will.” He gives my hand a squeeze, but I slide it from his grasp. I cannot help it. “My wife is a kind woman, you’ll see.”
I freeze. “Your wife?”
Father’s head is bowed over my hand so I cannot see his face, but his shoulders droop like a man defeated. If the soldiers in his company had ever see him thus just before a battle, they would never have plucked the bravery to march at all.
“Do you mean,” I continue, nearly choking on the words, “that you are married already?”
Father’s whole body changes as he makes the decision to forego excuses or explanations and simply own up to the truth. I must grant him a begrudging respect for that, at least.
“Yes, I am married, Iz.” He rises from his knees. His gaze is direct, though troubled. “If that causes you pain, I am sorry for it from my heart. But …” He struggles to find the words and ends by using the same ones he has said to me already. “… it was necessary.”
But I am far away already. The words he says mean only one thing to me. He has taken back the gift he gave, the only thing that sustained me through this darkness. Himself.
I am not sure I can forgive him for it.
* * *
Hazel is sewing by the hearth when I stumble into my bedroom. I am breathing heavily from climbing the three flights of steps to my chamber. I cross in front of the mirror, ignoring the image mimicking my every movement. I know, without looking, what I would see there. A thicker middle, fuller arms, rounder cheeks than any of the other girls I know. I tug angrily at the high collar of my dress and go to stand at the open window where a breeze is blowing.
“What is it, love?” My old nurse’s chair scrapes on the floor. In another moment, her bony arms are around my shoulders, her bristled gray hair rough against my cheek.
She clucks and soothes while I tell her everything. And as my story spills out, so at last do the tears.
“Now, now, my darling girl, don’t you worry about your father. A man needs a wife and a girl needs a mother. I can’t put it simpler than that. It seems to me that your father’s marriage fixes both of those problems, doesn’t it?”
I turn on her like a ferocious animal. “I don’t need another mother.”
She is unruffled by my tone and only reaches to smooth the hair which sticks to my tear-stained face. She has known me too long and too well to take my anger amiss.
“No one can take your mother’s place. Of course not. How silly of you to even suspect it’s possible,” she says. “Only remember the fey folk and how they sustained you when you needed them. They’ll do it again, I’m certain.”
I bridle at her words. It has been a long while since I have given a thought to the fey. “You can’t comfort me with fairy stories,” I huff, pulling from my nurse’s touch.
“Fairy stories! Well, I like that.” Hazel snicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Don’t dare to tell me you can’t remember the fey folk singing in the night, just at the time you missed your mother most?”
A memory wriggles for attention at the edge of my mind, but I quickly shut it out. “I don’t remember any such thing,” I say as I cross my arms. But my anger has lost its steam and Hazel knows it. She draws me to the bed and makes me sit beside her.
“It was just after I came to your father’s household, a night soon after your mother died. Your father was not yet home from the war. You lay on your bed, weary from weeping. I went to draw the curtains, and down on the lawn near the edge of the trees they stood. The fey folk. They sang a lament that would break a heart made of stone. Well, it certainly made these old eyes cry, though they don’t often do so easily.” She touches one of her withered cheeks as though the ghost of her tears is still there. “The fey prince himself was there leading the rest of them with dark, solemn steps. I could have sworn his eyes were on the window where I stood. I could feel the heat of them, even from such a distance.” She glances sideways at me. “O’course you didn’t see the folk, lying on your bed as you were. I know you heard them, though, for you grew still as death and your dark eyes were so bright I thought they had turned to burning coals. You didn’t move even a finger, yet your whole body changed when you heard their music, as if you had let go of a small piece of your sorrow.” Hazel pauses and her hand slides over to cover mine. “You understood they were singing for you, my girl. You knew they heard your broken heart weeping, and that they had come to bring you comfort.”
My chest is tight enough to burst. I do not remember this story, but its truth rings through me like a gong and leaves me trembling to my toes.
Hazel nods. It is clear she believes her words have consoled me. “Well, the fey folk will be with you even in the North.” She sighs, and her next words are so quiet I think she must be speaking to herself. “They are faithful, even if we are not.”
For one wild moment, I ache to believe her. Her words are fire and I am only a fluttering moth. It takes everything in me not to propel myself straight into their warmth.
Perhaps I should visit the glade once more, come sundown. The thought is unbidden, and it makes my heart leap like a hare frightened from its hiding place. Might I see them again, even after these years of silence? I imagine their faces and their bright, smiling eyes. I nearly hear their music which, after all this time, is still mixed in with my blood and marrow.
My shoulders stiffen as I remind myself that I am a child no more, but a girl who has put fairy st
ories aside and replaced them with graver things. No, I will not visit the glade. I will never visit it again.
Yet that night, in the dark of my room, a memory comes tapping at the door of my mind. Perhaps it is no memory at all, but only an imagining of something that never was. Either way, I do the unthinkable. I let it in.
The fey jig danced that night had been uncommonly swift and complex. I had already talked and laughed and played games the night through. What happened next was inevitable, I suppose. My young feet entangled themselves together trying to find the quick beat of the song, and I tumbled into the brush at the edge of the glade. Dancers eddied around me. None of them had noticed the small human child at their feet. In the chaos of noise and laughter, a hand reached to lift me. Its touch was gentle as mist, but I could never have mistaken the steely strength in it, too.
Angry tears ran down my round cheeks. My knee was bleeding. Worse, so was my pride. I only just had time to glimpse glinting eyes and the curve of a smiling mouth as I was whisked to my feet and tucked beneath the arm of the one who had lifted me. There I stayed until my eyes drooped closed into deep, childish exhaustion. I had awoken in my own bed the next morning, never having seen my rescuer’s face.
As soon as this memory floods through me, I know that is just what it is. A memory. A truth. Not an imagined story. The fey folk were there, living in the wood as surely as I am lying in my bed. Now they are gone, just as Mother is gone. Now they are silent, just as my heart is silent.
For all the sorrow these thoughts should bring me, I cannot help but remember the touch of the hand that lifted me and comforted me when I had fallen in the dance, sweet as any father would have done. I hold my own hand up before my face in the dusky light of my room, as if I might be able to discern the mark left there from the fey touch. I clench my fingers into a fist and hold them tight against my heart beneath the covers.
Unaccountably, I feel my lips turn up into a faint smile.
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