Wonders of the Invisible World

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  So he said, tearing the bread and cheese apart and giving her half, “Then feast with me.”

  “You are kind, young soldier,” she said in her high wavery voice, and bit into her scanty supper as if it might vanish before she could finish it. After she had swallowed her last bite and searched for crumbs, she spoke again. “What is your name?”

  “Val,” he answered.

  “A good name for a soldier. Did you win the battle?”

  Val shrugged. “So they say. I could not see, from where I stood, that winning was much better than losing.”

  “And now what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. My younger brother has married and taken care of the family farm and our parents while I have been fighting. I will find my way back and show them that I’m still alive, and then find something to do in the world. After all, someone with nothing has nothing to lose.”

  “You have a fair and honest face,” the old woman said. “That’s something.” Her pale eyes caught moonlight and glinted, so suddenly and strangely, that he started. “How would you like to be king?”

  He swallowed a laugh along with a lump of bread. “Better than being a beggar.”

  “Then follow this road through the forest. It will take you into the next kingdom, where the king and queen there are desperate for help. They have twelve beautiful daughters—”

  “Twelve!”

  “None of them will marry; they will laugh at every suitor. The king locks them in their room every night; and every morning he finds them sleeping so soundly, they will not wake until noon, and at the foot of every bed, a pair of satin shoes so worn with dancing, they must be thrown away. But no one knows how the princesses get out of the room, or where they go to dance. The king has promised his kingdom and a daughter to any man who can solve this mystery.”

  “Any man,” Val repeated, and felt a touch of wonder in his heart, where before there had been nothing. “Even me.”

  “Even you. But you must be careful. The king is half mad with worry and fear for his daughters. He will kill any man who fails, even princes who might one day marry his daughters.”

  The young soldier pondered that. “Well,” he said softly. “I have faced death before. No one ever offered to make me king if I survived.” He stood up. “There’s moon enough to see by, tonight. Where is the road to that kingdom?”

  “Under your feet,” she answered, and there it was, washed with light and winding among the trees. Val stared at the old woman; her face rippled into a thousand wrinkles as she smiled.

  “Two things. One: Drink nothing that the princesses give you. And two”—she touched the dusty cloak at his back—“this will make you invisible when you follow them at night. It pays,” she added, as he slid his pack strap over his shoulder, “to be kind to crones.”

  “So I hope,” he breathed, and stepped onto the moonlit road, wondering if he would find death at its end, or love.

  Death, he thought instantly, when he met the father of the twelve princesses. The king, wearing black velvet and silver mail, was tall and gaunt, with long, iron-gray hair and a lean, furrowed face. His eyes were black and terrible with frustration and despair. He wore a sword so long and heavy, it would have dragged on the ground at Val’s side. He kept one hand always on it; Val wondered if he used it to slay the princes who failed him.

  But he spoke to the young soldier with courtesy. Val found himself soaking in a fragrant bath while a barber cut his hair. Then he dressed in fine, elegant clothes, though he refused, for no reasons he gave, to part with his torn, dusty cloak. He sat down to a meal so wondrously cooked that he could scarcely name what he ate. When night fell, the king took him to the princesses’ bedchamber.

  The doors to the long chamber opened to such color, such rich wood and fabric, such movement of slender, jeweled hands and glowing hair, and bright, curious eyes, so many sweet, laughing voices, that Val froze on the threshold, mute with astonishment that any place so lovely and full of grace could exist in the world he knew. “My daughters,” the king said as they floated toward him, breasting the air like swans in their lacy, flowing nightgowns. “The queen named them after flowers. Aster, Bluet, Columbine, Delphinium, Eglantine, Fleur, Gardenia, Heather, Iris, Jonquil, Lily, and Mignonette. She could not find an appropriate flower for K.”

  “Kumquat,” one with long, golden hair giggled behind her hands.

  “Knotweed,” another said with an explosion of laughter into her nearest sister’s shoulder. Then they were all silent, their eyes of amber, emerald, sapphire, unblinking and wide, watching Val like a circle of cats, he thought, watching a sparrow.

  He said, scarcely hearing himself, while his own eyes were charmed from face to face, “There are folk names for flowers, sometimes, that queens may not know. Kestrel’s Eye, farmers call a kind of sunflower, for its smallness and the color of its center.”

  “Kestrel,” a princess with a mass of dark, curly hair and golden eyes repeated. Her beauty held more dignity and assurance than her sisters’; her eyes, smiling at the handsome young stranger, seemed full of secrets. “A pretty word. You might have been Kestrel, then, Lily, and Mignonette would have been you, if our mother had known.”

  She was the oldest, Val guessed, and was proved right when the youngest protested, “But, Aster, I am Mignonette; I do not want to be Lily.”

  “Don’t worry, goose, you may stay yourself.” She yawned, then, and stepped forward to kiss their grim father. “How tired I am, suddenly! I could sleep for a month!”

  “I wish you all would,” the king murmured, bending as one by one they brushed his face with kisses. They only laughed at him and vanished behind the hangings of lace and gauze around their beds; they were as silent then as if they had already begun to dream.

  The king showed Val a small room at the end of the bedchamber, where he could pretend to sleep as he waited for the princesses to reveal the mystery of their dancing. “Many men have come here,” the king said, “seeking to win my kingdom, thinking it a trifling matter to outwit my daughters and take my crown. They are all dead, now, even the jesting, lighthearted princes. My daughters show no mercy, and neither do I. But if you fail, I will be sorry.”

  Val bowed his head. “So will I,” he answered. “How strange it seems that yesterday I had nothing to lose, and today I have everything. Except love.”

  “That alone drives me mad,” the king said harshly. “They can love no one. Nothing. They laugh at the young men I put to death. As if they are spellbound....” He turned, begging rather than warning as he closed the door. “Do not fail.”

  Val sat down on the bed, which was the first he had seen in many months, and the last he dared sleep in. He had just pulled off his boots when the door opened, and the eldest, Aster, appeared, carrying a cup of wine. She handed it to Val. “We always share a cup with guests, for friendship’s sake. My father forgot to tell us your name.”

  “My name is Val. Thank you for the wine.” He pretended to take a sip while he wondered blankly how to pretend to finish the cup under her watchful eyes.

  “A proper name for a prince.”

  “I suppose it is, but I am a soldier, returning home after battle.”

  Her brows rose. “And you stopped here, to try for a crown on your way. You should have kept going. There is nothing for you here but what you escaped in battle.”

  He smiled, holding her eyes, while he poured the wine into a boot standing at his knee. “There are better memories here,” he said, and tilted the cup against his mouth as if he were draining it dry.

  He stretched out on the bed when Aster left, and did not move when he heard the door open again. “Look at him,” one of them mocked. “Sleeping as if he were already dead.”

  “I put a stronger potion into the wine,” another answered. “His eyes were far too clear.”

  Then he heard laughter in the princesses’ bedchamber, and the sound of cupboards, chests, and cases being opened. He waited, watching them while he pretended t
o snore. They dressed themselves in bright silks, and lace and creamy velvet gowns; they tied the ribbons of new satin dancing slippers around their ankles. They took rings and earrings and strands of pearls out of their jewel cases, and they spun one another’s hair into amazing confections threaded with ribbons. Val had thought them beautiful before; now they seemed enchanted, exquisite, unreal, as if he had drunk the wine and were dreaming them. He was so entranced, he forgot to snore. Aster came to look sharply at him through the open door, but another sister only laughed.

  “He sleeps so deeply, he has forgotten how to breathe.”

  Aster went to a bed in the middle of the chamber. She knocked three times on the carved headboard, and the entire bed abruptly disappeared, leaving a dark, oblong hole in the floor. Like a grave, Val thought, feeling his heart beat at the strangeness of it. In a long, graceful line, beginning with A and ending with M, the princesses descended into the earth.

  The wet pool of wine at the bottom of one boot cleared Val’s amazed thoughts a little as he pulled them on; he remembered to fling his worn cloak over his shoulders before he left. He glanced into one of the many mirrors in the bedchamber as he hurried after Mignonette. There is no soldier, the mirror told him. The room is empty.

  Fearing that the hole in the earth might close behind the princesses, he followed too closely. His first step down the broad, winding steps caught the hem of Mignonette’s gown.

  She said, startled, “Who is there? Aster, Lily, someone pulled at my dress.”

  All their faces looked back toward Val, a lovely, silent chain of princesses stretching down the steps. Aster turned away first, picking up her own silks. “Don’t be a goose, Mignonette; you caught your skirt on a splinter.”

  “The steps are marble,” Mignonette muttered. “And I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

  But no one answered her. Val saw a shining ahead, like a thousand touches of starlight. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the princesses began to walk down a wide road lined with trees. The leaves on the trees were moonlight, it seemed to Val; they were silver fire. They were silver, he realized finally, with such wonder that he could scarcely breathe. He reached up to touch such beauty, and then, beginning to think again, he broke off a twig bearing four or five leaves to show to the king.

  The tree gave a splintering crack as if a branch had fallen; Mignonette whirled again. “What is that noise?” she cried. “You all must have heard it!”

  Val held his breath. Her sisters glanced indifferently around them. “It was the wind,” one said. “It was fireworks from the dance,” another offered.

  “It sounded,” Aster said lightly, “like a heart breaking.”

  They turned then onto another broad, tree-lined road. Val closed his eyes and opened them again, but what he saw did not change: All the leaves on these trees were made of gold. Like tears of gold they glowed and shimmered and melted down the branches; they flowed into Val’s outstretched hand. Again he broke the slenderest of twigs; again the tree made a sound as if it had been split by lightning.

  “Another broken heart,” Aster said after Mignonette had screamed and complained, and her sisters had bade her to stop fussing so, they would never get to the dance. Only Val heard her whisper, as she trudged after them, “I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

  On the third road he broke off a cluster of leaves made of diamonds. They burned of white fire in the moonlight, a light so pure and cold, it hurt his eyes. Mignonette stamped her foot and wailed at the sound the tree made, but her sisters, impatient now, only hurried toward the lake at the end of the road. Only Aster slowed to walk with her. Her voice was as calm as ever as she spoke to Mignonette, but she searched the diamond-studded dark behind them now and then, as if she sensed their invisible follower.

  “I have a bad feeling about tonight,” Mignonette said stubbornly.

  Aster only answered, “We are almost there. One more night and we will never have to leave again.”

  On the shore of the lake, twelve boats waited for them. Out of each boat rose a shadowy figure to take the hand of the princess who came to him and help her into the boat. Val paused almost too long, trying to see the faces of the richly dressed men who were pushing the boats into the water. He whispered, suddenly sick at heart, “I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

  He realized then that the boats were floating away from him. He stepped hastily into the last one; it rocked a little until he caught his balance. Mignonette, whose boat he had the misfortune to enter, promptly raised her voice, calling to her sisters, “I think someone got into the boat with me!”

  Her sisters’ laughter fell as airily as windblown petals around them; even the man who rowed her smiled. “Don’t fret, my Mignonette. I could row a dozen invisible guests across the water.” His mouth did not move, Val saw, when he spoke. His eyes were closed. And yet he rowed steadily and straight toward the brightly lit castle on the other side of the lake. Torches burned on all its towers and walls; its casements opened wide; candlelight and music spilled from them. Val, his heart hammering, his hands as cold as if he waited for the beginning of a battle, did not dare move until Mignonette left the boat. The man, pulling it ashore, commented puzzledly, “It does seem heavier than usual.”

  “You see!” Mignonette began. But he only put his arm around her as she stepped ashore, and kissed her with his mouth that never moved.

  “Never mind, my smallest love,” he said. “Tomorrow you will have nothing to fear ever again.”

  Val, following them into the castle, saw the light from the torches at the gate fall over their faces. He stopped abruptly, his bones turned to iron, and his blood turned to ice at what he saw. “This,” he heard himself whisper, “is the worst thing that could be.”

  Still, he forced himself into the castle, to watch the dance.

  In the vast hall where the music played, the walls glowed with rare, polished wood. Traceries of gold leaf outlined the carvings on the ceiling. Candles in gold and silver and diamond holders stood everywhere, illumining the princesses’ enchanting, sparkling faces. They began to dance at once, smiling into the faces of their princes, who may once have been handsome but who, to Val’s unenchanted eyes, had been dead a day too long. Their lips were grim, motionless gashes in their bloodless faces; their eyes never opened. The room was crowded with watchers, all holding empty wine cups and tapping a foot to the music. The music, fierce and merciless, never let the dancers rest; it sent them breathless and spinning around the floor. Ribbons came undone, hems tore, pearls broke and scattered everywhere. Still, the princesses danced, their smiles never wavering at the faces of the dead who danced with them. Their satin slippers grew soiled and scuffed; the thin fabric wore through, until their bare feet blistered against the gleaming floor. Still, they danced, driven by blind musicians who had no reason to rest; they had left their lives elsewhere.

  “What a celebration there will be tomorrow night!” Val heard many times as he waited. “The wedding of twelve princesses, and a dance that will never end!”

  As the lake grew gray with dawn, the music finally stopped. In silence, drooping with exhaustion in their boats, the princesses were returned to the far shore, where they kissed the frozen faces of their princes and bade them farewell until tomorrow. Val walked ahead of them this time so that he could reach his bed and pretend to sleep before they came back. He kept pace with Aster. She looked a wilted flower, he thought; her eyes seemed troubled, now, but by what she could not imagine. She stumbled a little, on pebbles or the bright, sharp metal of fallen leaves, wincing where her shoes had worn through to her bare feet. He wanted to take her hand, help her walk, comfort her, but he guessed that, in such a place, he could be less alive to her than the dead.

  When he saw the stairs, he paused to take off his boots so that he could run up without being heard. As he passed Aster, a boot tilted in his hand, spilling a little red wine on the steps. He saw Aster’s eyes widen at it, her step falter. But she did not speak t
o her sisters. Nor did she say anything when, moments later, she found him sleeping in his bed. Another sister said tiredly, “At least he’ll die before we wake. And then no one will have to die for us again.”

  He waited until they were all hidden in their beds, and nothing moved in the room but morning light. Then he rose, and crept out, with his boots in one hand and the magical leaves in the other, to speak to the king.

  The king was pacing outside his daughters’ bedchamber; he had not slept that night, either. His hand tightening and loosening and tightening again on his great sword, he gazed wordlessly at Val out of his lightless eyes until Val spoke.

  “They go down to the underworld,” Val said. “They dance with the dead.” He showed the king the three sprays of leaves, silver, gold and diamond, that could only have come from such an enchanted place. His hand trembled with weariness and horror; so did his voice. “Tomorrow night, they will wed their dead princes, and you will never see them again.”

  The king, with a shout of rage and grief, tore the leaves from Val’s hand and flung open the bedchamber doors. Exhausted, astonished faces appeared from between the hangings in every bed. The king showed them the leaves; sunlight flared from them, turned gold and silver and diamond into fire. “What are these?” he demanded. “Where are they from? You tell me, daughters. Tell me where to go get them. And then I will know where to go to find you.”

  They stared at the leaves. Little by little, as if before they had only dreamed themselves awake, their faces came alive to terror and confusion. From beneath their beds came the sound of a great, splintering crack, as if a tree had been struck by lightning, or a heart had broken.

  Mignonette was the first to burst into tears. “No, it isn’t real,” she sobbed. “It was a dream! You can’t have taken those leaves from a dream!”