Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  “Carlotta?”

  The gypsy dropped her hand and turned with a golden smile to the security guard. “Nelu.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asked in Romanian.

  She shrugged, tossing a hand to the broken glass behind. “A clumsy guest put his elbow through the case.”

  “Ahhhh. American, probably?”

  “Probably. Would you clean up this mess? Just have your men replace the glass panel. And Nelu?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me know if there is any incident. I do not,” she affirmed, “expect an incident, but one likes to be certain.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Carlotta drifted her golden magic over the room and departed. As vividly furious—and ill—as she was, the discipline of twenty-three years calmed her to reason. That second American—that Heath Fischer. He would reappear before this was through, she knew. He obviously wanted to get the princess back from wherever she’d gone, mistakenly assuming it was as easy as demanding Maria to reverse her steps. But Carlotta knew better. It was more complicated than that. The reversal of time-magic required blood to feed on. They had killed a priest at Cotroceni to affect the magic of bringing the princess forward. Of course when it came down to it, Carlotta and this Heath Fischer wanted the same thing: to hurry Maria back to the twenty-first century. Perhaps there was a way to coordinate. She wanted to be certain with her own vicious brand of certainty that she thought this through before pursuing any definite action, but a shard of insanity came to rest in her imagination and burned like a coal.

  The American. The handsome one. He might do.

  Outside, Carlotta slipped into her BMW and drove through the small village of Sinaia, winding down the mountain and away to her home with its wrought-iron gates, turrets, and lacquered tiles and its opulence. She parked under cover inside the courtyard.

  “Daniel?” she called.

  A young boy—very pale for a gypsy—scuttled off the front porch and came to her. She ruffled his hair and put away her golden magic for a time. His hand fit son-like into her own.

  “What has Tamara made for dinner?” Carlotta asked.

  “Sarmali.”

  “Mmm. Did you go to school?”

  Daniel scuffed his toes in the clean white gravel of the courtyard and looked off to the rosebeds. Carlotta sighed and chucked under his chin.

  “Daniel, you know you must attend school.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” She pulled him along.

  “Because why?”

  “You are a gypsy.”

  “I don’t look like a gypsy.”

  That was what Ioan had said, all those years ago.

  Carlotta swung his hand. “You know what they think of us.”

  Daniel’s dark eyes searched her face mischievously. “What? That we cannot learn?”

  “That we are too shiftless to want to learn. I know that is not true. And so do you.”

  “Maybe I do not want to learn.”

  Carlotta’s voice dipped to the coaxing tone—one which she seldom employed. “You want to learn to make magic, don’t you? Like your ancestors?”

  His black eyes riveted on hers. “I want that.”

  “Mmmmm. Good,” she hummed, and pushed open the heavy, gilded door. “Then you know what you must do. Apply yourself to the normal studies. Learn them well enough to get into the mathematics and science high school.”

  “And then you will teach me, Lady Carlotta?” Daniel asked, all eager eyes and feather-like hair. So much like Ioan’s.

  “Just so.” She kissed Daniel’s smooth, white cheek. “Tell Tamara we should eat at seven-thirty. I am going to bathe.”

  As Carlotta mounted the winding staircase, she held the image of Daniel’s intensely intelligent face in mind. It was the eleven-year-old version of his great-grandfather’s Ioan’s face and she had never loved a face so well. She passed into her bedroom, pulled the shutters closed, and slipped out of the awful guide’s uniform that felt as rough and uncouth as a cocoon must feel to a Viceroy butterfly. She drew a bath and shook into the coils of steam the most exotic and precious of her spices. With one slender hand, Carlotta stirred the brew, then dipped one foot in to test the water. At the heat of it, her breath caught in her teeth, but in a moment she had lowered herself into the copper tub. Carlotta removed the pins from her wealth of braids, shook the hair loose, and glared at the world from behind glossy curtains as decadent as her home.

  “Ioan,” she murmured. “I know you are there.”

  The steam bent this way, then that, but as firmly as she knew Ioan was there, she also knew he was not. Her fault, of course.

  “I did not leave him,” she announced to the empty bathroom with its blue and gold tiles. “He chose to stay.”

  The echoes did not believe her. They said so, hissing it in coiled steam and heavy fragrance.

  Someone had had to make the magic while she passed between the worlds with the young princess. It so happened Ioan had been a loyal subject and given his maleficent lady the benefit of that loyalty. The steam and scent of the spices wove a web of memory for Carlotta and she watched again their final moments together.

  Ioan spreading his clever hands across the pages of The Spindle. Beautiful, white-fingered hands. Catching a certain phrase in the spell. Reading it again to be sure he had it right. His eyes pleading with her.

  Inside his voice, his heart had splintered: “You must be the one to go.”

  “If I leave, they might know it is you,” she said. She did not offer to stay, but Ioan would not have expected her to. She was the Lady Carlotta, after all. It was not her duty to sacrifice anything.

  “They won’t know I had a thing to do with it,” Ioan said, smiling a smile full of brokenness. “I don’t look like a gypsy.”

  This was true. The king and queen knew her magic well. They would not suspect a mortal man with skin the shade of the stars; the king’s own secretary and a man who had never been known to speak with anyone under the rank of a baron.

  “The princess is not dead?” Ioan asked, and the luminous white of his face and his hands seemed to flicker for a moment.

  Carlotta had motioned to the child, as corpse-like as any child could be. “She will wake in a century.”

  “A new century?” Even in that moment, Ioan’s admiration for her cunning shone out, sullenly, like a shuttered lantern.

  “That is what I intend.”

  “I will stay and make the magic.” He pushed against her feeble, half protest. “I am aware of the cost. I know you will not return for me.” He put the book into her arms.

  “Ioan…”

  “What?” A brittle laugh broke from him. “You will not. You do not feel for me all I feel for you.”

  Before she could prevent it, Ioan came at her, pressed a hard, desperate kiss to her red mouth. Then, avoiding her with his eyes, his waxen lips murmured the spell, witching she and the dead child away.

  His, the first of the souls spent to soothe her jealousy.

  And not the last.

  But she would not think of that now.

  Maria.

  She would think of Maria.

  She would think of The Spindle, and the probable cost of rearranging history.

  O Doamne, the cost.

  Maria gripped the edge of the wagon as it teetered up the last mountain curve. They lurched to a halt in the cupped hand of the monastery cobbles. The cargo of assorted passengers the toothless farmer had taken this far dropped their coin in his leather palm and climbed down. She had only one ban left after discovering these antiquated Romanians would not accept the colorful, laminated lei she had brought in abundance. Out of desperation, she had traded her Toms for an ensemble resembling more a feed sack tied with a woolen scarf than anything recognizable as fashion, and a pair of ugly leather clogs. The trade had hurt her worse than she’d thought it would. Those glorious Toms—formed exactly to the shape of her foot—gone to an old, sewage-scented woman who app
eared to be growing a beard of all things!

  Maria clambered off the wagon. Her panic stopped swelling and made space under her breastbone for a sliver of relief. The monastery at the foot of the noble drive looked the same as it had a few hours earlier—hours earlier, or a century later? How everything spun about—Maria had an urge to bend down and kiss these stones as well, but she had had enough kneeling for one day.

  Without hesitation, Maria made for the palace. The oddness of knowing her way began to press into her, for it was clear to her that Peles was not entirely finished being built at the moment. Workmen and carts crammed the road which led to the castle. Here a long-eared, sad-eyed donkey looking as if doomsday drew nigh, there a random knot of sheep and a lanky shepherd. No stables or garages yet. Definitely no gift shops or vendors selling sheep’s fleeces and roasted corncobs and painted wooden toys or boomerangs which refused to come back to those those who threw them. Maria knew more of the palace than the palace knew of itself. The idea enchanted her and for one fleeting moment, she forgot her terror.

  It came back twofold when a stocky worker leading a team of domestic buffalo approached, speaking Romanian. He waved to her and asked something.

  “Nu stiu.” Maria shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The buffalo and driver paused directly before her. “Are you English, then?”

  The dark eyes and swarthy skin of the man looked Romani, but his words confused Maria.

  She blinked. “Are… are you?”

  “No, but I lived in England for some time while studying architecture. My name is Cristian.”

  “Oh, God bless your socks off, sir.”

  His eyebrows twisted good-humoredly. “That’s an odd greeting, even for your country.”

  Maria laughed louder than warranted. “I can’t even.”

  “Can’t even… what, exactly?”

  “Handle this.”

  The man shifted his weight. “You are a strange woman. This isn’t the general costume of American ladies, either. Where is your escort?”

  “He’s… late.” She frowned at the thought of Heath. The missing-him took on a ghastly shape. “Very late.”

  A hundred-and-some-odd years late.

  Cristian removed his cap and scratched his head. “Well, then, I suppose I ought to extend the customary gallantry. Are you staying in the village? Do you need help finding anyone?”

  “I…” Maria paused and considered the man, marking his honest looks and general bon homie. He had a meat-and-potatoes air, as her dad would say. And if so, he must be an okay choice for confidante. “How good are you at believing impossible things?”

  At the end of her story the gypsy mopped his forehead and whistled. “That is a terrifyingly odd story.”

  Maria rubbed her eyes. “Do you even partly belief it? I mean, I know it’s far-fetched but… I really need an ally.”

  “One thing lends you credence, if you won’t think me too ungentlemanly to say so: you are almost as odd as your story.” The darkness in his eyes twinkled. “And I suppose I would rather believe you honest than insane.”

  Maria punched his arm as she would Heath’s. “Oh, just stop already.”

  His smile dropped and he took a better hold on the lines of his team, which had stood there shifting their weight from one hoof to the other for the last twenty minutes.

  “What do you plan to do?” Cristian inquired.

  “I plan nothing. Heath is the planner.”

  “Your escort?”

  She thought of Heath in that light—as her dashing protector, companion, her favorite—and smiled as she nodded. “He’s a smart one. He’d know what to do.”

  “But he isn’t here,” Cristian pointed out. “I can tell you’re not a great one for facts but I only state the case so that we may view our options.”

  Maria patted the lead buffalo’s horns and squinted at the peaceful green forest arched over the road. “I guess I hoped someone would be able to decide that for me. Like… maybe someone will know what the heck is going on and rescue me. I mean, I’m not even from Romania. I didn’t mean to punch out the glass in the library. I certainly didn’t mean to come back in time a full century. I just… wanted to sleep.”

  Cristian untied and then knotted the leads. “You say you stepped through a bookcase in this castle… from the future?”

  “Yeah. Well, I came through a staircase behind the bookcase at any rate.”

  “And you came up through a series of… of coffins into the cathedral. At Cotroceni?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “It’s very odd,” Cristian said.

  Maria’s laugh snapped out bitter with frustration. “Yes, well, I think we’ve established that.”

  Cristian’s face crinkled into a disbelieving smile. “You know, in wives’ tale they’d say you’d been bewitched by a fairy into destroying that case and coming through.”

  “Right, and fairies just wander through modern Europe witching away decent people. Makes sense.”

  His eyes held that teasing light Maria had come to know so well in Heath. “I only observe,” he said.

  “Do you have anything helpful to suggest or should I just try my luck with the king?”

  Cristian looked down the road a ways where he doubtless had a warm dinner and good beer waiting, and rolled his eyes. “My wife would never forgive me if I left a member of her sex to face such a conundrum on her own. Hai, Marius!”

  So hailing a Romanian workman in passing, Cristian handed off the team of buffalo and offered Maria his arm. She took it, ignoring the curious looks the other man scattered their way, and walked toward the palace. As they went, Cristian proved to be an informative guide.

  “We’re a rather modern and cosmopolitan bunch,” he said. “The queen is, of course, of German extraction. We have Poles and Czechs, Italians and Germans, Romanians, and Englishmen working on Peles. And the queen can speak to each man in his home tongue.”

  “Really?”

  “Perhaps not every man, but Her Majesty is proficient in several languages, they say.” Cristian continued to mention the many points of interest until, by the time they had reached the pale stone terraces outside the palace, Maria had grown calm again.

  “Do you have access to the royal family?” she asked. “Because that would be awesome.”

  Cristian shook his head. “No commoner has direct access to the king. But as a foreman I am acquainted with the king’s dismal-looking secretary. For the sake of your sweet face I will pose the matter to him and see what can be arranged on your behalf by that shroud-faced archangel.”

  And so it was that Maria found herself sitting in a white marble room built off a hall like a rare cell of quiet in a beehive. Just as she had been out of place in her modern clothes in Bucharest, here she felt the judgment of the deadly pale young man sitting across from her. His black, serious suit set off distinct, finely-carved features. Maria was not sure she had ever seen a handsomer, albeit emptier face.

  His eyes flickered annoyance as they watched Cristian, rounding off his explanation:

  “And so, Ioan, we throw yourselves upon your mercy.”

  Ioan now cast his fathomless eyes over Maria’s face. She didn’t like the searching in them or the manner in which his slender fingers rested so quietly in his lap. They were intelligent fingers, accustomed to action. They should not have been so still.

  “I find your testimony to believe almost… impossible.”

  His English was not perfect, but pretty good, Maria thought. Better than the golden-eyed guide’s had been. She lifted her chin and smiled prettily at the white-lipped man.

  “It is almost impossible to believe. And if I came here wanting to pull a fast one on your king and queen, I would have chosen a more plausible story.”

  Ioan’s white lips bent as tallow into a facsimile of a smile. “If by “fast one” you are meaning a trick, then yes, you would do well to be making a better story.”

 
The depth of silence beat like a heart.

  “So you believe me?”

  A strangled, frustrated sigh eased out of Ioan. “Would you swear on your life it is so?”

  “The realest parts of my life.”

  If she’d been forced to swear on anything less, Maria would have worried Ioan would still refuse to believe her. But the dark and colorless secretary moved his too-still hands in sudden affability. Cristian’s stance relaxed.

  “Your lady will be needing a change of clothing if she is to see their Majesties,” Ioan said. “I promise nothing. Their Majesties will likely not be wanting to speak with her at all.”

  He walked to the wall and pressed a buzzer. After a moment, a starched-looking maid pattered into the room.

  “Flora.” Ioan jerked his head toward Maria. “American,” he said.

  The maid arched her eyebrows. “Dah?”

  “Dah.” Ioan spoke something more in Romanian and not gently, but not roughly either, delivered Maria into her care.

  Just like that, she was someone else’s problem just as she had been the monk’s, and then Cristian’s and, for a half-second, Ioan’s. Would she become the queen’s problem in the end, or was the maid to take her to some later-to-be-renovated dungeon and leave her to rot till the modern era? But they would have sent a man for that, not this tinder-faced maid.

  Maria bade Cristian farewell and promised to see him again. He bowed to her, shook Ioan’s hand, and departed.

  Maria, outwardly submissive, followed the maid up several staircases to the upper capacity of the house and, once wedged into a hot attic room, found herself ordered in no uncertain terms to strip down to the bare minimums.

  “Do you speak English?” Maria asked.