by Nina Clare
Beryl awoke me. I got up, put on my slippers, pulled a wrap over my nightgown, and went to help rouse my sisters. Diamond was already awake.
“I think I remember how to open the door,” she told me in a hushed voice. I squeezed her hand in delight. “Is the young man asleep?” she whispered.
I tiptoed across the chamber and peeked around the curtain. His candle had burned down low. He was sprawled out on the bed, one arm flung across his head. The decanter of wine on the table was empty, and he was snoring softly.
“Fast asleep,” I told her as I tiptoed back and joined Beryl’s efforts to wake my sisters.
When we were all stood round the pale flagstone, Diamond reached out her hand to the shell dove on her bedstead. She hesitated, her hand hovering like a second pale dove in midair, and then she pressed down resolutely. The flagstone quivered and began to slowly drop away.
Diamond led the way down the steps, through the paved avenues, and down to the crystal lake where the princes waited in their swan boats.
“Why did you not come these past nights?” Andra asked as he helped me into the boat after Diamond.
“Because of the moon,” I answered.
He did not question me further. In the dreamlike world, such an explanation made perfect sense.
As I danced I noticed for the first time that I was wearing my nightgown. How had I not noticed before? I must still be awakening by degrees. I must remember to put on a gown next time, I thought to myself. The new, self-conscious feeling stayed with me throughout the night.
When the dancing ceased and Diamond and I stepped out of Andra’s boat and onto the lakeshore, Diamond turned back to him. “Come with me. Come away from here.”
“I cannot,” he said simply.
“Why?”
His eyes clouded over with confusion. “I do not know,” he said, shaking his fair head. “Something stops me from leaving. I don’t know what it is. I am . . . bound here somehow . . .”
He sat down and took up the oars. Diamond looked upset. They both did. I took her hand and gently pulled her away.
As we passed through the last avenue of silver trees, I saw Celestine stop and pluck a silver leaf from a tree. We climbed wearily up the steps to our bedchamber and sank into our beds as the door in the floor closed over behind us.
The young prince had already left our chamber when we awoke next day.
“Oh, Princess!” exclaimed Rose when she waited on me with breakfast. “The king is furious—your slippers are worn through this morning again, and the prince cannot say whether or not he knows where you went.”
“Poor man,” I said. “Is he frightened?” I was thinking of the threat of execution he was under.
“He does not appear so.” She poured water into a washbasin. “He told the servant who took him down this morning he slept like a baby. Those were his words. He said he couldn’t remember when he last slept so well, and that he felt so refreshed this morning he’s quite sure he’ll have no trouble staying awake tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The second night of the prince’s quest came to pass. Once again, Old Han’s wife brought him to our chamber by candlelight. Once again, Diamond carried in to him the tray of wine. Once again, he fell asleep before the moonlight fell upon the white dove.
Diamond, Beryl, and I woke everyone. But Celestine was already awake. She sat up in bed, holding the silver leaf she had picked from the tree the previous night.
“I remember!” she said. “I remember picking this leaf. I remember the silver trees.”
I hugged her in delight. Two sisters awakened. Ten more to wait for—and then the enchantment would be broken!
Diamond noticed I had put on a day gown.
“Oh! We have been dancing in our nightgowns all this time!” she said in a loud whisper. “How did we not realise before?”
“We were not awake enough to see,” I said.
She hurried away into the dressing chamber to put on a gown. Celestine did likewise, and one by one, at Diamond’s urging, all my sisters sleepily dressed.
***
The next morning, Rose informed me the prince was as cheerful as he had been the previous day, despite his failure. What was it Beryl had given him to drink that not only gave him sound, unbreakable slumber, but a carefree happiness on rising? And why was the prince not fearing for his life, knowing failure meant his death?
I put all these questions to Beryl. She told me that what was in the irresistible wine was none of my business, and that the Lord High Chancellor, in his wisdom, had not included in the proclamation Uncle’s edict regarding execution. He was determined to see the kingdom saved by a successful suitor, and to have declared such a decree would surely have repelled all rational men.
The third night passed. The third morning arrived, and when we woke, we found that the prince had gone. Two servant girls had been sent to my little chamber to clean away all traces of him—his rumpled bedding, his boot scuffmarks on my floor, his wine stains on my table. How I hoped there would be no more such princes! But I hoped in vain, for I soon learned that another was expected that very day.
He was brought in by candlelight as well. We looked away as he entered, not wishing to catch his eye. It felt so wrong to have a stranger in our bedchambers—a violation. Such a thing would have been unthinkable a short time ago.
Diamond took the tray of wine to him, and we retired to bed.
When the moon had climbed high enough, Beryl and I arose. I peered in at the prince. He lay sprawled on the fresh linen. Another pair of dirty boots lay on the floor, another pile of outer garments was flung across my chair and desk, another dark red wine stain marked my table.
***
The days and nights passed in a repetitive pattern. For three successive nights, our unwelcome guests slept while we danced. They did not speak to us since they were forbidden to approach us. On the third morning they disappeared, and another took their place.
Diamond and Celestine were now my allies in trying to awaken our sisters to the underground world. Sometimes I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition in one of my sisters’ eyes as we talked, but it was not until the second new moon had passed that Amethyst picked up her lute for the first time since the loss of Prince Tom. She picked out a melody—a tune I had heard before. It was one of the melodies we danced to in the underground castle.
Amethyst had remembered.
Three sisters awakened.
Nine remained.
Autumn deepened. On the day the white geese left the palace lake for their migratory journey, Chalcedony, watching them from the window of our chamber, remembered boats shaped like swans gliding across a crystal lake.
And she awakened.
The trees turned gold and scarlet and flame orange. We grew pale and dark shadows ringed our eyes. But as Heliodor walked through the avenues of trees lining the pleasure gardens of the palace one day, she stood still beneath a tree of golden leaves. She looked up as one fluttered down onto her outstretched hand.
And she awoke.
The last of the leaves rustled to the ground and the north wind whistled round the palace walls day and night. Some nights the sky was too thick with cloud for moonlight to pierce through. But when the storms passed away and a wintry stillness settled with a fall of early snow, Nel, watching the sun sparkle on the icicles about the window frame and absorbing the quietness of the snowy morning suddenly recalled a lake of great stillness lit by the refractions of glittering diamonds.
And she awakened.
***
So many princes had come and gone through the passing of the months that I could not remember all their faces and names. They were like dreams that came with the night watches. They simply vanished away in the morning light, leaving fading, fragmented memories behind.
Fair-headed youths, dark-bearded men, red-whiskered nobles. Tall princes, short princes, men who strode in and out of our chambers on long, strong legs with cloaks like flying banners.
Timid youths who scurried in and out and made no sound. All of them, weak and strong, young and old, succumbed to the butler’s finest wines—with Beryl’s added faery spice. All were hurried out of the kingdom on the morning following the third night, having failed in their quest. And meanwhile, Rose informed me, the kingdom’s residents languished, hungry and cold, vowing they would not endure another winter under Uncle’s reign. If no suitor had solved the mystery and received the crown before the next harvest, their plan was to storm the palace and depose Uncle by force.
And not one overlord opposed their scheme.
***
All day, it had snowed. At night, the waxing moon shone down upon the settled snow. Sapphire and Almandine were already awake when Beryl and I entered the chamber. They were sitting on a window seat, wrapped in furs to keep out the chill. As they gazed out on the silvery-white landscape of the world of snow and moonlight, they remembered the silver light of the underground world—the silver trees, the glint of glasslike diamonds, the white-reflected light of the crystal lake.
And they awoke.
Eight sisters awakened.
Four remained.
From out of the melting snow that marked winter’s end, snowdrops appeared as white and delicate as our pale, nocturnal faces. But Opal, walking in the grounds, bent to examine the white flowers thrusting out of the crystallised snow, and recalled the silent lifting of oars as they pushed through the surface of the crystal lake.
And she awakened.
Now there were ten of us to encourage one another through these last difficult days. Three sisters remained.
The questing princes appeared at sunset and departed with sunrise. They drank the wine. They slept while we danced. They disappeared like morning dew.
***
Spring arrived. We continued to sleep the mornings away, not hearing the dawn chorus of birds anymore, never walking on dew-laden ground now and so unable to observe the delicate patterns of frost on the new leaves. We lived half lives, resting by day to come awake at night in a world of secrets and unnatural lights and textures, where music played without musicians and we danced and danced till we could dance no more.
We led a strange existence, and we grew weary with it. The enchantment had overtaken us, binding us to it as silken threads in a piece of weaving. We were now tied as tightly as the princes to the ancient, underground land.
The sun grew stronger with the passing weeks. The birds paired up, flitting past our windows with twigs in their beaks. Peridot picked up her drawing materials for the first time since the day of the princes’ disappearance. She thoughtfully traced out a picture of an avenue of trees. Trees with slender, reflective trunks like glass; trees with leaves like finest, fragile crystal; trees hung with clusters of berries like Lapido’s faceted diamonds; trees with branches arching overhead like an endless vista of chandeliers. Cornelia took up her picture when she had finished and examined it. A light of recognition dawned in her blue eyes.
They had both awakened.
Only Emerald remained. She continued to resist all our efforts to rouse her memory. We all waited on her, watching, hoping, trying to find some way to open the door of her remembrance and belief. We ached with longing for the enchantment to end—for us all.
I often thought of Prince Oglio that spring. He had said he would return for me the following spring or summer. It was now the first day of May. He could come anytime. My courage sank at the thought. Perhaps Uncle would stop him from claiming my hand unless he too tried to solve the mystery. When I thought of him slurping up Beryl’s wine like a sow and I imagined his curlicue shoes tossed carelessly on my bedchamber floor, my weary heart sank also.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The arrivals of unwelcome princes had diminished when the snows came. A slow-but-ebbing trickle of questers had passed through our chambers in early and mid-spring, but they ceased to come at all after mid-May. And still Emerald had not awakened.
There was a feeling of stillness in the air one would not expect in late spring, when the world was at its busiest. New lambs were in the fields, new flowers appeared each morning, sap rose up in the trees, bees busied around the hives—and yet the stillness persisted. It was as if all life near the palace had taken a deep breath that it had not yet exhaled. It was the strangest feeling, as though something were about to happen, much like the unnatural calm in the air before the storms of the last winter had come.
We sat as pale marble statues, too weary to do anything, too languid even to talk much. We listened to the stillness and we waited, though for what we did not know.
“Another one’s arrived,” Rose told me when she brought my cleaned and mended gowns to me that morning.
“Another prince?”
“I think so, though he doesn’t look like a prince.”
“What does he look like?”
“When he came to the palace gates, they sent him to the servants’ door.”
“He is a servant?”
“I think he’s a soldier. Said he’d come on a ship from Borgonia. There’s been fighting there—a big battle in the fields, they say.”
“But Uncle said only princes could try for Diamond’s hand.”
“Perhaps there aren’t any more princes left who haven’t tried. The king must have agreed to let commoners try too.”
“I cannot believe it!” I said. “How could Uncle let Diamond marry a commoner? How could a soldier be permitted to become king? How could any commoner become king? Next it could be an illiterate farmer, or . . . a sooty blacksmith, or a . . . trapper smelling of dead animals! It could be anyone!”
“If all those princes couldn’t solve the mystery,” said Rose, “then there’s not much chance of this one doing it either.”
“No,” I agreed. But I was still disturbed at the thought.
“The servants are forever badgering me about the mystery,” said Rose as she folded up my gowns. “I’m glad I don’t know the answer, because I think they would have worried it out of me by now.”
“I hope it will not go on for much longer,” I said wearily. “Then everything will be revealed and there will be no more mysteries.”
My sisters were as offended as I was when they heard a common soldier would be permitted to enter our chambers that night.
If only Emerald would awaken!
“You must not try and force her,” Beryl had warned us. “Emerald has to wake of her own accord; it can be very dangerous to force an awakening, especially when matters of the heart are involved.”
That evening the sun set in a strangely yellow sky that held violet clouds and an aquamarine tinge near the horizon. Then the clouds dissolved and the evening star shone bright. One by one, the stars began to appear.
“Venus is very close to the moon tonight,” noted Almandine as she peered through her spyglass. “I have never seen it so close and so bright before.”
The rattle of the key in our chamber door sounded, and we hurried to the fireplace at the farthest end of the chamber.
Old Han’s wife shuffled in with her candle. The flame flickered, close to extinction, as her frail hand shook under the weight of the pewter candlestick. We looked away from the man she was leading in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance over to us as he passed through. He had the form of a young man and he had a beard—I could not tell any more in the shadowy light. Old Han’s wife shuffled out again with her usual look of pity for us as she closed the door.
Diamond took up the tray of wine Beryl had prepared and carried it in.
We retired to our beds. I heard the clink of the decanter. I heard the soldier tossing and turning on the bed. In time, I heard him snoring. But I did not hear the sound of his boots thudding to the floor.
Perhaps soldiers are used to sleeping in their boots, I thought.
When the moonlight fell upon the white dove, we rose and dressed. Diamond peeked around the curtain of the antechamber.
“Sleeping like a baby,” she whispered, “
just like all the others.”
She did not need to tell us he was sleeping, for we could hear his snoring above the crackle of the fire and the rustle of our skirts, above the soft patter of our slippered footsteps on the flagstone floor and our whispered conversation.
Nel rolled the rug away and Diamond pressed on the dove. The flagstone shook and dropped slowly away. I waited for my sisters to pass, one by one, through the door. When the last one had descended, I remained alone with Beryl. I hesitated, feeling again the strange stillness in the air I had felt all day. It was like a presence. Something was waiting; something was holding its breath in expectation.
The sound of the soldier’s snoring had ceased.
“Go,” said Beryl softly.
I stepped down through the door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I hurried down the steps after Celestine. When I had almost reached the bottom of the stairway, I felt something tug at my hem. I gave a startled exclamation and looked behind me, expecting to see Beryl near enough to have caught my gown, but she was not close by.
“What is the matter?” Celestine called back over her shoulder.
“Something pulled on my dress.”
“You must have caught it underfoot.”
We were passing through the avenue of silver trees when I heard a sharp crack close behind me. I stopped and turned, again expecting to see Beryl close behind, but she was still some distance away.
“Did you hear that?” I called to Celestine, lifting up my gown to catch her up.
“Hear what?”
“A noise—a cracking sound.”
“Perhaps it was the sound of the drums striking up, ready for our dancing,” said Celestine. She was glowing like a white lily in the silvery light, glowing with happiness at the prospect of seeing Malachite very soon.
I let Celestine walk on while I turned back to look at the trees we had just passed. A small branch did indeed have a branch snapped off. That would account for the cracking noise.