Elizabeth and Zenobia

by Jessica Miller

  ‘But you don’t believe it?’

  She looked at me closely. ‘Do you believe it?’

  ‘I know it doesn’t sound believable.’ In another room, the chimes of a clock started and I raised my voice over it. ‘But I believe it.’

  Zenobia looked down at the blue-flowered eiderdown.

  How could I make her believe, as I did? I tried to think, but the chiming of the clock in my ears made it impossible to concentrate.

  I sat up straight. The clock! It was midnight. I fumbled for The Plant Kingdom by Dr Henry Murmur and shoved it into Zenobia’s hands. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘see for yourself.’

  She opened the book. ‘Parsley and other Petrosilinums,’ she read doubtfully.

  The twelfth chime sounded.

  ‘Turn the page,’ I urged.

  Zenobia flicked to the next page. Her mouth made a neat ‘o’ when she saw that it was covered in green, looping letters.

  The little girl was happy to find herself in the Plant Kingdom. The King and Queen loved the little girl very well and she loved them back. The King and Queen loved the little girl so well, they decided she should be crowned Princess: that she should be theirs and stay with them forever. There was only one problem. Instead of roots, the little girl had two small, pale feet. Without roots that reached down into the earth, the little girl would never be able to grow in the Plant Kingdom as she should. So the King and Queen spoke with their Council of Gardeners and it was decided. The little girl would have roots grafted onto her legs where her feet now stood. And when the grafting was done she would be crowned Princess.

  And she would stay in the Plant Kingdom as Princess, forever and ever and ever.

  My stomach twisted. Tourmaline was in terrible danger.

  I leapt out of bed. ‘Quickly,’ I hissed to Zenobia, but Zenobia was already putting a new candle into the silver holder.

  We hurried to the nursery in a wobbling pool of candlelight.

  I found Tourmaline in the wallpaper, half-hidden by the curtain. I held up the photograph so Zenobia could see the resemblance.

  ‘Exactly the same,’ she breathed. ‘Or they would be, if it weren’t for that freckle. It’s on the right cheek here in the photograph but on the left cheek in the wallpaper. And she still has both her feet.’

  I shone the candle over Tourmaline’s feet. One was bare, one was wearing a red shoe.

  ‘She hasn’t been grafted, then,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Zenobia. ‘Not yet.’

  We came back from the nursery. While the night stretched into morning, we sat wrapped in blankets and whispered about Tourmaline. Our talk came back, always, to the same two questions: how had Tourmaline got into the Plant Kingdom? And how could we get her out, before it was too late?

  After a time, Zenobia’s eyelids started to droop and her head nodded heavily. She was soon asleep.

  But I stayed wide awake, and thin early morning light was starting through the window.

  I closed the door on Zenobia and walked through the sleeping house, through its empty rooms and down its empty corridors, until I was outside in the misty garden.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but it felt good to walk. Walking settled my confused thoughts.

  I went past the dead, dry flowerbeds, and the sundial and the overgrown hedge maze. It made me nervous, even being near the maze, and I walked as far away from it as I could.

  I went up the steep hill and looked at the fields that spread out below it. I walked down through the fields and over the stone fences that lay between them, gathering speed, until I came into Witheringe Green.

  I wondered if I should turn back but my feet were running down the narrow streets, past the haberdashers and the seed shop. When I came to the stone church, my head caught up with where my feet were taking me.

  I was going to the cemetery.

  Tourmaline, said the headstone, aged seven years. Beloved daughter of Edward and Lydia. Adored sister of Henry.

  My legs felt suddenly tired. I sat down on the grave and leaned my head against the cool stone.

  If Tourmaline was grafted, she would stay in the Plant Kingdom forever. Father had been haunted all these years by her disappearance. And now I would be haunted by her, too—unless there was some way of rescuing her. But it seemed impossible. I didn’t even know how Tourmaline had found her way into the Plant Kingdom in the first place, much less if there were any way of getting her out again.

  My head was full of worries and, like storm clouds, those worries were growing bigger and darker. I couldn’t think. I could hardly breathe.

  I felt the corners of my eyes start to prick with tears.

  Then I remembered what Miss Clemency had told me: When you fill your mind up with words—beautiful words, stirring words—those words drive away your worries.

  I began to recite ‘The Lady of Shalott’ as best as I could remember.

  On either side the river lie

  Long fields of barley and of rye,

  It did make me feel better, if only a little.

  I stumbled over some of the words, and some lines I forgot altogether. But I kept going, verse after verse, until I came to my very favourite part:

  Out flew the web and floated wide;

  The mirror crack’d from side to side;

  ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

  The Lady of Shalott

  I stopped. ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side.’

  Of course!

  I sprang to my feet.

  In the blue guest bedroom, Zenobia mumbled the names of deadly nightshades in her sleep. ‘Mandragora,’ she said into her pillow. ‘Datura… Atropa Belladonna…’

  I shook her roughly awake.

  ‘Mmpf?’ She lifted her tousled head.

  ‘I think I know how Tourmaline was taken into the Plant Kingdom,’ I said.

  Zenobia sat up straight. ‘You do?’

  ‘Well—no,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know. But I had an idea. And if there’s any chance that I’m right, then we might somehow save Tourmaline from being—’

  From being grafted, I meant to say, but the word was so terrible it stuck in my throat.

  ‘What’s your idea, then?’ Zenobia rubbed her eyes.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ I told her, and I tossed her one of her ragged black dresses. ‘Here, get dressed!’

  I rushed downstairs and crossed through the front room, dragging Zenobia behind me.

  ‘The silver pool,’ I said, as I pushed aside the floral tapestry that covered the entrance to the East Wing. ‘The pool that the Queen looked through into the nursery. The pool that she made with her tears. I told you about it last night, remember?’

  ‘Oh, I remember. It struck me as poetic, in a melancholy sort of way.’

  I took the dusty stairs two at a time with Zenobia close behind me. I raced down the corridor lined with portraits. Then, with my hand on the nursery doorknob, I stopped.

  ‘What if the Queen’s silver pool is the mirror?’ I said.

  ‘You think,’ Zenobia said, ‘that Tourmaline went into the Plant Kingdom through the mirror?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And you think that, through the mirror, we might be able to get her out again?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘I hope so,’ I said, and I opened the door.

  In the nursery, I pulled the mirror away from the wall and peered behind it.

  I don’t know what I had expected to find there, but I didn’t expect that it would only be more wallpaper. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just—nothing.’

  Tourmaline was in the same part of the wall, near the curtain, where she had been last night. Zenobia knelt there now.

  ‘Bring me that photograph, Elizabeth,’ she demanded.

  I handed it to her and she held photograph-Tourmaline up next to wallpaper-Tourmaline. She studied the two side by side for a long time.

  At last, she said, ‘Elizabeth, I do believe you’re right. Tourmaline came to the Plant Kingdom
through the mirror. Do you see here?’

  She pointed at the photograph. I peered at the place her finger pointed.

  ‘It’s just a freckle,’ I said.

  ‘Not just a freckle,’ said Zenobia. ‘In the photograph, the freckle appears on Tourmaline’s left cheek. Here in the wallpaper, it appears on her right cheek.’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I burst out. How was Zenobia’s talk about freckles bringing us closer to saving Tourmaline?

  ‘Don’t you remember, Elizabeth? What’s leftwise in real life shows rightwise in a mirror. Tourmaline is leftwise in the photograph and rightwise in the wallpaper. She must have come through the mirror.’ Zenobia grinned. ‘How uncommonly—and I do mean uncommonly—brilliant of you to have worked it all out.’

  I didn’t understand what Zenobia had to grin about. What use was it knowing how Tourmaline had got into the Plant Kingdom if we couldn’t get her out again?

  ‘Ah,’ said Zenobia craftily, ‘but perhaps we do know a way to get her out again.’

  She stood up and walked to the mirror. She steadied its frame and blew directly onto its glass. The mirror’s surface misted with her breath.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I began, but she held up her hand to silence me. She stretched out her index finger and carefully began to write.

  Across the mirror, in letters back to front, Zenobia wrote: Tourmaline, are you there? Please talk with us.

  Zenobia turned around and smiled at me. ‘Occasionally—only very occasionally, mind—Miss Clemency imparts knowledge of some use.’

  I glanced at the place half behind the curtain where wallpaper Tourmaline had stood. She was gone.

  We watched the mirror.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing happened for such a long time that I started to feel desperate. Perhaps Tourmaline hadn’t seen our mirror message. Perhaps—it turned my insides cold to think about it—her grafting had already begun.

  But then—

  ‘Look,’ said Zenobia in a low voice and she pointed. I followed her finger, not entirely sure what I was looking at.

  ‘The mirror,’ she said. ‘It’s not reflecting anymore.’

  She was right. My own reflection was gone. The mirror’s glass rippled, like a pool of water.

  I stretched out a hand but stopped short of touching the glass. I turned to Zenobia. ‘Should I?’

  ‘We both will,’ she said. She took my hand in hers. We reached together into the mirror. Our hands plunged through the surface into liquid. I pulled away quickly. The water was freezing cold and my hand came away covered in a thin layer of greenish slime.

  Far away, at what seemed to be the bottom of the pool, a figure appeared. Her outline came to us wobbly and quavering through the water, but I could make out the wild hair, the striped dress.

  ‘Tourmaline,’ I breathed.

  ‘You should speak up.’ Tourmaline’s voice dribbled through the water. ‘I can’t hear you well at all.’

  ‘Tourmaline,’ I cupped my hands and brought my mouth as close as I could to the mirror’s liquid surface. ‘I need to tell you something.’

  ‘You’ll have to make it quick,’ she said. ‘My coronation is starting in only a few minutes.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ I said. ‘You can’t be Princess Tourmaline.’

  ‘Who are you?’ rippled the voice. ‘And what do you mean, I can’t be Princess?’

  ‘I’m Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘and this is Zenobia. And we’re—’

  I stopped. The truth was, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to explain who we were to Tourmaline.

  ‘Visitors,’ Zenobia supplied. ‘We’re visitors at Witheringe House.’

  ‘And we’re sorry to tell you,’ I added, ‘but no, you can’t be Princess. You simply can’t. Because if you do become Princess, you’ll have to stay in the Plant Kingdom forever. And you’ve already been away such a long time.’

  ‘It hasn’t been long,’ came the far-away voice. ‘And I’ll be back before dinner, or I’ll be in all sorts of trouble from Father. And I don’t plan to miss Henry’s birthday. It’s tomorrow. I have his present all wrapped. Do you want to know what it is?’

  ‘Tourmaline, please listen—’

  ‘But I’ll only tell you if you can keep a secret. Can you?’

  ‘It’s very important Tourmaline—’

  ‘It’s a microscope! He’s going to be very pleased. And so he should—it’s a very good present. Perhaps I’ll get one like it when I turn ten.’

  Zenobia and I exchanged glances. ‘She thinks she’s been there no more than a day,’ Zenobia muttered from the side of her mouth.

  ‘Well,’ demanded Tourmaline, ‘do you think it’s a good present or not?’

  This time Zenobia put her mouth up to the mirror. ‘It’s an excellent present. And don’t you want to be sure you can give it to him? It’s getting late,’ she lied. ‘It will be Henry’s birthday before you know it.’

  ‘But I can’t miss my coronation,’ she replied. ‘An orchestra of cicadas is going to play and whole flocks of birds are singing. And I’m to wear a dress made out of butterfly wings and garlands of moon-flowers and glass-flowers and all kinds of other flowers that I never saw in the gardens at Witheringe House. I’m going to look quite wonderful—except for my shoe, of course.’

  Tourmaline dabbled her feet in the pool. One wore a red shoe. The other was muddy and bare.

  ‘Do you see?’ she asked. ‘I’ve lost my shoe. I think I’ll look ever so silly, all dressed up with only one shoe on. The King says there’s no need to worry about shoes—he says my feet will be taken care of. But I would like to have both shoes, just the same.’

  I looked at Zenobia helplessly. How could we convince Tourmaline of the danger she was in?

  ‘There’s no need to convince her,’ said Zenobia, reading my thoughts, and she reached her hand into my pocket and pulled out the small red shoe.

  ‘I have your other shoe, Tourmaline,’ Zenobia said and she held it in front of the mirror. ‘Why don’t you come and get it?’

  ‘I don’t think I should,’ said Tourmaline, doubtful.

  ‘But you will look much better with both your red shoes,’ coaxed Zenobia.

  ‘I suppose, if I’m quick about it no one need notice,’ said Tourmaline. She looked around her. Then she took a breath and dived into the silver pool.

  She swam closer and closer to us. Her dress filled up like a balloon, and her hair fanned out around her. Bubbles streamed out of her mouth.

  She reached out her hand.

  Zenobia held the shoe out. But just as Tourmaline came within reach of it, Zenobia thrust her other hand through the mirror and wrapped it around Tourmaline’s wrist.

  Tourmaline jerked back but Zenobia held fast. I reached elbow-deep into the mirror and took hold of Tourmaline’s arm.

  Together, Zenobia and I were far stronger than Tourmaline. We pulled her almost to the edge of the mirror.

  But then the water started to pull her back. Pondweed wound in ropes around her arms and legs. The plants in the wallpaper strained and pulled too, sucking her back into the Plant Kingdom.

  I dug my heels into the floor, and Zenobia wrapped her free arm around my waist. And we pulled Tourmaline through the mirror. Just her hand at first, all dripping with water and silt and pondweed, but then the rest of her, too, in a spill of freezing water.

  There was a splintering noise and a flash—was it lightning?—of green crackled light, and somewhere, in the splintering and the crackling, the three of us tumbled onto the floor.

  10

  THE BROKEN MIRROR

  I lay, eyes closed and head spinning, on the floor. I put my hand to my face, to my hair, to my dress. I was, to my surprise, bone dry. I sat up carefully. Tourmaline lay on the floor beside me. I reached out to touch her.

  She felt warm.

  She felt real.

  She was real.

  Happiness floated through me. We had done it. We
had rescued Tourmaline from the Plant Kingdom and now she was here—really here—with us.

  Zenobia pulled herself up from the floor. She blinked heavily.

  ‘Seven years’ bad luck.’ She grinned, pointing to the shards of mirror scattered around us. The empty mirror frame dangled crooked on the wall. Zenobia examined the mirror fragments and picked up one that was especially sharp and curved.

  ‘A piece of genuine misfortune,’ she said, holding the glass up to the light and admiring it. ‘I shall keep it about me as a charm.’

  ‘Charms are supposed to be good luck,’ I said. ‘Four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, that type of thing.’

  Zenobia rolled her eyes. ‘Elizabeth, sometimes you can be so unimaginative. Good luck is terribly cliché. Bad luck is far more exciting.’

  Tourmaline started to stir. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The first thing she saw was her red shoe. She smiled widely and pushed her foot into it.

  ‘There,’ she wiggled her foot proudly. ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

  Then she saw the mirror shards. Her smile wobbled.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no! The mirror wasn’t supposed to break!’

  On hands and knees she tried to put the mirror back together, but it had shattered into too many pieces.

  ‘If the mirror’s broken,’ she said, ‘I can’t get back to the Plant Kingdom—and it’s almost time for my coronation! I was going to wear a dress of butterfly wings! I was going to hear the cicada orchestra play!’

  She let the pieces of mirror she held fall from her hands. She looked so disappointed, I felt almost sorry for her.

  ‘I was going to be a princess,’ she said sadly.

  ‘You were going to have your feet cut off and tree roots tied onto your stumps,’ muttered Zenobia.

  Tourmaline looked directly at Zenobia. ‘What did you say?’ she asked.

  Zenobia started. After all, she wasn’t accustomed to anyone other than me being able to see her. But she recovered quickly. ‘I said,’ she snapped, ‘you were going to—’

  I interrupted quickly. ‘What Zenobia means,’ I said, ‘is that you were in grave danger, Tourmaline, as long as you were in the Plant Kingdom.’