by Nina Clare
Beryl was calling my name, her face silvery-blue in the moonlight—she looked like a faery from another realm in my dreamy state.
“Come,” she said. “I know you would be most unhappy if I did not include you in this.”
I sat up and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “What is it?” I asked sleepily.
“Put your slippers and robe on,” Beryl said as she lit the candle by my bedside. “We must find a hidden world.”
Chapter Twenty
I rubbed my eyes to try to dispel the dreamy moonlight feeling, and followed Beryl into my sisters’ bedchamber. All twelve sleepers slept deeply from the effects of the physician’s draught, though the occasional sigh or moan escaped from someone as they dreamt sad dreams.
Beryl walked from bed to bed, examining the floor by the light of the candle.
“What are you looking for?” I asked quietly.
She pulled back the rugs around the beds, and traced the edges of certain flagstones with her foot. She stopped at Diamond’s bed, in the middle of the chamber, and beckoned me. Handing me the candle, she rolled aside the white fur rug from the foot of the bed, then pointed out the edges of the large flagstone beneath it—they were a different colour from the surrounding stones.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“A door.”
“In the ground?”
Beryl nodded. “There are some doors even the Dark Prince does not know about. The palace is very old, but it was built around a much older building before it—an ancient castle. At least three of the ancient doors still remain. But how to open this one?”
She pressed hard on the flagstone, all the way around its edges. I dropped to my knees to help her, pressing over every inch of it and spilling candle wax, but no part of it opened or moved in any way.
“Are you sure this is a door?” I sat back on my heels.
Beryl sat likewise, but she had her puzzling-out face on again.
“There was a song that told of the opening of the ancient doors. If only I could recall it. I was very young when I heard it sung.”
She stared into space, thinking hard. “If not the door itself, then what?” she mused.
She stood up and began pressing on Diamond’s carved wooden bedstead. It stretched tall to the vaulted ceiling of the chamber. Each of my sisters’ beds had designs skillfully carved into the posts and frames. Diamond’s depicted lily of the valley flowers and doves flying above. A white dove was inlaid with abalone shell in the centre of the foot of the bed. A shaft of moonlight coming through a chink in the window drapes rested on the dove just then, so that it glowed luminously.
“Hmm,” said Beryl. She crossed the chamber and pulled aside the heavy drapes at the window. Moonlight streamed in, reflected off the dove, and onto the uncovered flagstone, pooling it in blue-white light. Beryl pressed on the shell dove. The moonlit flagstone near my feet shook, then slowly sunk down into the surrounding floor.
I jumped back, holding my breath as the pale stone noiselessly revealed a square opening in the floor.
“Where does it lead?” I asked in an awed whisper. I held up the candle, but it did not reveal anything—all was darkness inside the opening.
“It is an ancient pathway to a place not visited in centuries. He has reused it for his own purposes. I don’t know what he has done, but it is a place made by faery power, so he could not have made something fearful. I would not have let you see it if I thought he had the power to corrupt it completely.”
“How could the bedstead open the door when the door is ancient but the bed is not?” I asked, still watching the slow movement of the flagstone in complete fascination.
“The moonlight is the key. Ancient doors do not work on hinges and locks.”
I felt such excitement bubbling within me—a doorway to somewhere few people had ever seen! Even if it were not literally a magical place, it would feel utterly magical to me. And to think it should have lain here, under the very flagstones we had walked upon and played on as children.
“What will it be like?” I whispered, watching as the flagstone continued to sink down.
“It is hard to say,” said Beryl. “It is not a concrete world. You will feel somewhat dreamlike when you are in it.” And suddenly Beryl stepped into the dark, square opening—and disappeared.
I looked after her in alarm, for I could see nothing—all was darkness. But I was certainly not going to be left behind! I put down the candle, gathered up my nightgown, and stepped into the blackness after her.
The moment I stepped into the opening, it ceased to be dark. I was walking down a flight of stone steps. Beryl was before me. The steps were narrow, so we walked in single file until we reached a pathway paved in an intricate mosaic of coloured stones. On either side of the pathway were trees. Trees with slender trunks and tapering branches stretching over our heads like candelabras, touching the tops of the trees on the other side to make a long, arched walkway the end of which could not be seen.
The trees glittered and shone. I reached out a hand to touch a willowy trunk; it was smooth and cool to the touch, not like the feel of tree bark at all. As I brushed against a low branch, there came a tinkling sound as the leaves moved against one another. The whole tree was a silvery colour.
“Silver trees,” I said to Beryl, who had also paused. She plucked a leaf, and it made a small cracking noise as she snapped its fine, silver stem. She put in her pocket, and we walked on.
The avenue went on and on. There was a timeless feeling to the place, so I could not say how long we walked or whether we went a short way or many miles. Suddenly, the light changed—it was no longer silver like starlight, but now gold, golden light emanating from the trees. I stopped and touched one.
“Gold trees,” I said to Beryl. She broke off another leaf. I peered between the tree trunks to see what lay beyond them, but there was only darkness.
We walked on—for how long I could not say. Once again, the light abruptly changed. Though it was a sudden change, there was no sense of surprise. All that was happening was, as Beryl had predicted, somewhat dreamlike.
The light had become brighter, sparkling; I stopped to look at the trees. They were now clear glass, and hanging from the branches were countless glassy berries faceted in perfect precision.
“Diamond trees,” I said as Beryl picked a berry. As she plucked it, the tree quivered and the diamond-tree tunnel sparkled and flashed. Beryl’s hands and face were covered in rainbows reflected by the innumerable prisms. I looked down at my own hands to see mine were too.
The diamond avenue ended in a sudden vista of an expanse of water. Before us stretched a lake—a still, quiet lake with not a ripple of movement upon its face. A lake of clear, shining crystal. A lake encircled by glittering diamond trees. In the heart of the lake stood an island, and upon the island stood a castle. A small castle, dark and silhouetted against the light of the diamond trees and the crystal water behind it. Steady lights glowed from arch-shaped windows.
“Are the princes in the castle?” I asked. My voice was so clear in the stillness.
Beryl cupped her hands around her mouth and called out in a compelling voice: “Awake! Awake! Come across the lake!” Her words echoed and rebounded off the trees with a sharp, musical resonance. When the echo stilled she called again, her voice a clarion call across the water.
There was movement on the island. I could see the forms of large swans sitting perfectly still on the island’s shore. The swans began slowly to move, coming towards us across the water, though it made no sound as they travelled across. There were no ripples, no waves, no splashes. As the first of the swans neared, I saw it was a boat. The swan-boat reached us and a young, fair-haired man with regular and handsome features looked up at us.
“Prince Andra!” I greeted him, remembering his face from Diamond’s ball.
He looked back at me with a mild, sedate expression. “Who are you?” he asked politely.
“I am Princess, youngest sister
of Diamond.”
The other boats came gliding noiselessly to the edge of the lake. Twelve swans out of which twelve princely faces looked. They were all there.
“Return here tomorrow,” Beryl told them. “I will bring your betrothed.” The princes nodded, their expressions distant. Beryl and I turned away to journey back through the avenues of trees.
When we stepped back into the bedchamber, I saw the light outside the window had changed. The moon was beginning to set. I was suddenly overwhelmed by tiredness and I let Beryl led me to my bed. I glanced over my shoulder at the door in the flagstones as I went, and saw that it was silently closing itself behind us.
Chapter Twenty-One
When I next opened my eyes, Rose was standing over me.
“I thought I should never wake you. Are you unwell, Princess?”
“What time is it?” I asked sleepily.
“It’s near midday.”
“It is?” For a moment, I could not think what had made me so tired. I had been dreaming. Such vivid dreams. Dreams of trees of silver and trees of gold, of leaves and berries made of diamonds and a beautiful crystal lake with majestic white swans sailing across it—such fantastic dreams. Then I recalled Beryl waking me in the night, the moonlight on the flagstone, the secret door. Was it all a dream?
I had to find Beryl.
I hurried to wash and dress, then found her in the jewel house.
“We are busy!” called out Lapido as I entered.
“I will be quiet.”
Beryl was polishing cabochons of lapis lazuli. She held the dop stick on which the stone had been sealed with wax, and she patiently rubbed it over and over in a leather-lined dish holding a paste of sand.
“I had such a dream!” I told her in a near whisper. “You were in it. Was it a dream, Beryl?”
Beryl put down the dop stick and rummaged under the folds of her work apron, searching for something in her pocket. She carefully took out a delicate silver leaf and placed it on the table. Then she brought out a leaf of parchment-thin beaten gold, and finally, a clear-faceted diamond the size and shape of a holly berry.
“So it was not a dream,” I breathed. “What a fantastical place! When we were there, it seemed perfectly reasonable there should be trees of silver and gold and diamonds.”
“It is the dream quality of the world. Nothing surprises you in a dream,” said Beryl.
“And the light came from the trees—there was no grass, no sky. There was no wind.”
“He can only make a static world. He cannot make life.”
“And tonight you will take my sisters there?”
Beryl nodded.
I picked up the diamond berry and held it up to the light.
“It’s not a real diamond,” Beryl said.
“It is not? It looks just like one.”
“Look through this.” She handed me her eyeglass. I peered through it at the berry. “Can you see tiny bubbles and swirls?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Diamonds do not have those. Glass does.”
I put the berry down and picked up the silver leaf, examining the fine veins etched into it.
“But this is silver?”
Beryl shook her head. “Copper, mixed with mercurium. I took it to the silversmith this morning.”
“And this?” I held up the golden leaf. “It looks just like gold.”
“Mercurium and brimstone,” said Beryl. “He has been practicing alchemy. Nothing he has made is real. All is counterfeit.”
***
All day, I bubbled inside with the happy thought of seeing my sisters reunited with their beloved princes. I was so excited, I felt I would burst with the wonderful secret I was carrying. It was so hard not to speak of it to them, but they would not have believed a word had I tried to tell them. They would have to see for themselves.
I could not get to sleep that evening. I heard the night watchman sound the bugle to announce the second watch. Shortly afterwards, Beryl appeared at my chamber door.
“You are awake,” she remarked as I jumped from my bed. “Put your slippers on. We will have to wake them up.”
It was not easy rousing twelve sleepers who were under the influence of the physician’s sedating draught. It took quite some time, and Beryl pocketed the bottle of sleep-inducing medicine, declaring they would not be needing it again after tonight.
“Wake up!” I said to each sister, shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake up! Beryl has found your prince.”
They were all bleary and confused, and full of questions. Beryl ordered them out of bed, and when they had gathered round, cloaked in their nightgowns, their slippers on their feet, she pressed upon the moonlit dove. The flagstone sank slowly down to reveal the black opening in the floor. My sisters gasped in astonishment—and then cried out in fear as Beryl stepped into the darkness and disappeared.
“Follow her, Diamond,” I urged, feeling it was right for her to lead the way as the eldest. She looked at me in bewilderment. “It is quite safe,” I promised. “He is down there! Andra is down there!”
She did not lose her look of bewilderment, but she did take a deep breath, step into the blackness, and disappear.
I gently pushed Almandine and Nel towards the door, assuring them all would be well and they would see their princes if they would only trust me.
One by one, my sisters stepped nervously through the door. I followed last.
We walked through the avenues of silver and gold, and we passed through the glittering tunnel of diamond trees where rainbows showered down upon us. At the bank of the crystal lake lay the twelve rowing boats shaped as swans. They were waiting for us at the water’s edge. My sisters and their princes spoke very little, for we were all in a dreamlike state. We climbed into the boats. Andra took Beryl and Diamond. I stepped into Malachite’s boat after Celestine.
We rowed across the soundless lake. I let my hand trail outside the boat—it felt something like water, but when I lifted out my hand I noticed it was not wet and there were no droplets on my fingers. We reached the island and walked languorously up to the castle, whose doors stood wide open. Torchlight shone from within. The castle was of a smooth, glassy stone, almost black in colour, streaked with blue and green and gold.
We passed through the arched doors into a circular chamber lit by torchlight. The torches did not flicker—their flames were still and steady, and their light was not as real firelight. It was more yellow, like brass.
Six young boys carried in trays laden with decanters. They set them on long, black, marble tables and served us from golden goblets. I tasted the wine. It had no flavor; it was as water, though its colour was a deep ruby red.
Music struck up. I looked up to see a gallery above us where viols and shawms and drums and pipes of all kinds were playing bright dance music—but there were no musicians. I felt overwhelmed by the desire to dance. The music seemed to command my feet to move, and I could not resist. I found it impossible to stand still or sit. I had to move round the circular floor tiled in concentric circles of black-and-white marble. My feet effortlessly moved through the patterns of dances.
My sisters and their princes danced as well. They did not speak, but danced in silence. Round and round they whirled, across the marble floor. My sisters’ soft kid slippers made no noise.
How long we danced for I could not say. There was no sensation of time. When the music ceased, we simply stopped dancing. We left the castle, rowed back across the lake, and said a polite farewell to the princes, who did not leave their boats. We walked and walked through the avenues, climbed the stairs to our chambers, and fell, exhausted, into our beds.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When I opened my eyes, I saw Rose standing at the foot of my bed.
“Princess, are you quite sure you are well? You have slept so late again.”
My sleepy mind struggled to recall the night before. Beryl had taken us down through the hidden door, that much I remembered clearly. My sisters dan
cing—I remembered that too, though not quite so clearly—but they were dancing, and they were dancing with their princes. I recalled snatches of details like fragments of a dream: wine in golden goblets, music—but were there really no musicians? A castle made of what looked like black opal.
“Your sisters have slept late as well.”
I yawned deeply and noisily, in a very un-princess-like manner. “We did not sleep many hours,” I told her.
“It must be all the grief and worry,” said Rose, preparing my clothes for me. “Does Mistress Beryl know any more about how to find the princes?”
How could I tell Rose about a mysterious door in the floor that opened by moonlight? Of trees of gold? And music that played by itself? She was still trying to understand all Jem had told her about the sorcerer in Uncle’s chambers. I was struggling to make sense of most of it myself, and feeling dazed with trying to reconcile what I had seen with what was regarded as rational and real. I did not have the strength just then to try and explain such things to an already-nervous Rose.
“I cannot say all Beryl knows or has done, Rose. But I do know she will make everything well. Including helping Jem.”
When I had breakfasted and dressed and all the ladies’ maids had left, I went in to my sisters.
“Oh, Princess! Did you have it too?” called out Chalcedony as soon as I entered the chamber.
“We have all had the same dream!” cried Sapphire.
“It is so extraordinary!” exclaimed Celestine.
“Did you dream it also?” pressed Heliodor. “For I am sure you were there.”
“What was it you dreamt?” I asked.
“It was the most wonderful dream,” said Sapphire, looking more like her real self than the pale wraith she had been for the past days. “We found our princes.”
“And we danced with them!” Cornelia said with a joyful laugh.
It was so good to see her laugh again.
“It was so real,” said Diamond.
“So vivid!” agreed Almandine.