by Erica Ridley
Nothing.
She was alone on the dais. Alone in the castle. In the world. Tears pricked her eyes. Ninny. She’d meant to hold him… to make the most of every last second together. To tell him…
She jerked to her feet. She felt her way out of the sitting room and into the main corridor. Even without an hourglass, she could see it was long past midnight. The sky already bled with dawn. The sun would be fully risen within the hour. And she would be forced to go on living. Forever.
She opened the door to her bedchamber. Despite not having straightened a thing the day before, her bed was perfectly made. The pots, emptied. The water in the basin, fresh. The soiled tunics from the previous day spotless, and properly stored in their wardrobe.
Just as they were every morning.
Her throat swelled with anger. She slammed the door. What had she expected? That the curse would be broken? That Lance might have simply abandoned her for a more comfortable bed? She was not that naive. Hadn’t been, for a very long time.
And yet… she had so hoped…
She made her way to the kitchen. If he were here, if he were still alive, he would be in the kitchen. But he was not. The scullery was as empty as the rest of the castle. Which only left one place to find him.
The great tree in the solar.
She hesitated before pointing her feet in that direction. Could she do it? Could she stand to see the tree with its hundreds of figurines, every one of which had once been alive, just like her? Could she stand to see one more painted puppet dangling from its boughs? This time, a black-clad adventurer with a kind heart and a wicked smile? Nay. She could not. By Zeus, she could not.
She turned down the corridor anyway.
It took every ounce of her courage to traverse the final passageway to the solar. Every single visit was as painful as the first time. Her twentieth birthday. And everyone she’d ever known, everyone she’d ever loved… nothing more than hollow figures upon a tree.
Heart pounding, she pushed open the wooden door.
The solar was wide and empty, save for a single evergreen on the opposite side of the chamber. From here, one could discern the presence of tiny baubles decorating the giant tree.
Invisible to the naked eye was the breaking of her heart every time she espied her parents reduced to nothing more than paint and plaster. Her maids. Her friends. The troubadours. A dozen hapless adventurers who would never make the trek back home.
And now Lance.
She shoved one foot in front of the other, forcing herself across the chamber. She could not touch him. But she had to see.
When she reached the tree, she slowed to let her gaze settle upon each of the visible figurines, as was her habit. Every time she entered the solar, even if only to pay her respects to her parents, she took the time to mentally greet each of the figurines by name, and send up a quick prayer for their souls. ’Twas the least they deserved.
The evergreen was twice as tall as Marigold herself, and its boughs stretched wide. The tree had not been present in the castle the night of the celebrations. It had simply appeared in the solar the following morning, and been a permanent fixture ever since.
Explorers and serfs and noblemen were scattered upon the boughs in a haphazard fashion, with no relevance to age or status or to each other. Every time she entered the solar, the figures were in different locations, forcing her to hunt if she wanted a glimpse of her mother’s tiny painted face. Sometimes she had to circle three times before everyone was accounted for.
“Well met, Mama,” she whispered as she slowly circled the tree. “Good morrow, Papa… Milkmaids… Sir knight… Good spinner.”
When the first pass failed to reveal a third of the figures, she dropped to her knees to search the inner boughs for missing faces. There were her cousins’ wolf pups… Princess Heidi of Bohemia… Chaz of New Brunswick…
A hand clamped down on her shoulder.
Marigold screamed and collapsed backward.
“Good Lord, woman.” Lance squinted down at her. “Are you going to make that horrible noise every time we meet?”
Her heart was beating much too fast to answer.
“Love the tree,” he said, sounding impressed. “I didn’t know decking the halls was even a thing in medieval times. The decorations are amazing. What’ve you got here? A squirrel ornament? That’s a little weird, don’t you think? The others are cool, though. The court jester is great. I like all of them. They look so… real.” He reached toward the branches.
“Do not touch!” she managed to gasp out before he could make contact.
He nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets. “No worries. My grandma gets like that, too. Won’t let anyone near her Mayan skull collection. Your ornaments are awesome, though. Seriously. Oh, look at the little king. And over there’s some kind of shepherd. And this guy’s got…” He trailed off. The resulting silence was damning.
Marigold closed her eyes. She knew what must come next.
“He’s got a top hat.” Lance’s voice had lost all of its easiness. Where once he spoke to her with tenderness, his every syllable was now hard with mistrust. “How could your tree have an ornament of a dude in a top hat? He looks like he walked out of a Dickens novel. And this guy… What is he, a gangster? He’s carrying a tommy gun. How could you possibly get your hands on an Al Capone ornament?” He spun to face her, his eyes hard. “I thought we were trapped in here. Either Amazon delivers to Castle Cavanaugh, or you lied when you said there was no way out.”
Marigold pushed to her feet, but made no move toward him. This was obviously not the moment for a reconciliatory hug.
“We are trapped in here. So are they.” She met his eyes, but could not keep his gaze. She gestured toward the tree instead. “The ones you call medieval… Those are my friends and family. The servants, the revelers, the local peasants who were on the castle grounds for one reason or another when the curse was spoken.”
“And Mr. Top Hat?” Lance gestured at the tree. “What about him? Did his time machine land here just in time for the abracadabra?”
Marigold glanced away. “Baron Westinghouse arrived in 1860. He’d stumbled upon the legend during his scholarly studies, and with the ease of the modern rail system, he thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be a lark to go on holiday at Castle Cavanaugh?’ and set about at once to see if he could.”
“But he’s an ornament,” Lance insisted, his voice rising to a panic pitch. “Why is he an ornament?”
She bowed her head. “The curse makes my birthday begin anew each midnight. Every morn, I awaken alone. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught within the castle at the witching hour vanishes where they stand. On the morrow, a new figurine appears upon the tree.”
He gaped at her in shock and outrage. “You thought I’d be dead?”
“I thought you’d be a figurine,” she hedged. “But you’re alive! ’Tis wonderful!”
“No thanks to you! What the hell happened? You ‘forgot’ to mention the possibility of me disappearing at midnight? Slipped your mind, did it?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t believe it a ‘possibility.’ I believed it to be fact. No one has ever survived for a second day.”
His lip curled in disgust. “You’re not helping yourself, Princess. If you knew my days were numbered, why wouldn’t you speak up? You didn’t think it’d be information I might want to know?”
“I didn’t deem it necessary to know,” she admitted. “Nothing would have changed.”
He stepped away, repulsed. “Who the hell gave you the right to determine what other people should and shouldn’t know about their own lives?”
“What purpose would it serve?” Her hands shook as her voice rose. “Who are you to judge? Can you not fathom what happened whene’er I did share the happy tidings? The wretched traveler spends the last hours of his life in utter torment. Some have gone stark mad at the idea. One even killed himself well ahead of midnight in a fevered attempt to dive through the ice by any means possibl
e. Believe you me. No man has ever been thankful for the news.”
“That still doesn’t give you the right to withhold it. And now what? I’m alive until this midnight, due to a glitch in the Matrix?”
“I don’t know why you’re still alive.” She bit her lip. “I assumed no one could survive until the curse had been—”
He tore off out of the chamber and down the corridor.
She followed right on his heels.
They skidded to a stop at the threshold to the great hall. The exterior of the castle was still a solid block of ice. The door, no less impassable than before. The curse was as strong as ever.
The sun continued its rise above the horizon, bathing the crystalline roof with pinks and yellows. Rather than warm her, the sight of another sunny morning deadened her soul. The inescapability of her prison enveloped her in a disappointment so thick and so deep as to almost swallow her whole. She slumped against an interior wall, preferring the darkness of stone over the false glitter of ice.
Lance walked past her, toward the front door.
She could barely stand to look at him. Not because she would ever wish him away—the sight of him still alive was a bigger miracle than she deserved—but because she now suspected he was right. The curse held true. Whatever luck had allowed him to live through the night was unlikely to hold. Neither of them were any better off than they had been the day before.
And this time, he knew it.
He stopped short a few feet from the corner and jumped back, as if he’d espied a serpent preparing to strike.
She rushed forward. “What is it?”
“My lightsaber.”
“Your what?”
“The fire sword.” He pointed at the gray cylinder upon the ground. “It’s not broken.”
“Aye, it oughtn’t be.”
He stared at her in confusion. “Why wouldn’t it be? I broke it yesterday.”
“Exactly. Today is yesterday again.” She smiled sourly. “Happy birthday to me.”
“But what does that mean? How could yesterday not have happened? It did happen! I remember everything. I wasn’t even here at this time yesterday morning.”
“I told you. The castle resets at midnight. Everything but the tree reverts to the same condition it was at that time the day before. That’s why I haven’t aged. If I cut my hair, I wake up with long locks anew. If I accidentally injure myself, I awake with nary a wound.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then lifted his shoulder experimentally. His eyes widened in surprise. “It’s not broken? My broken shoulder isn’t broken anymore and I didn’t even notice?”
“Sometimes ’tis hard to notice the absence of things,” she said softly. “And sometimes ’tis impossible not to miss them.”
Lance spun away from her. He retrieved his leather over-tunic and his harness from the empty torch hook by the door. His frown deepened. He shoved his hand in one of the pouches and pulled out the candy bar from the day before.
“It’s another Snickers bar,” he said in consternation. “Or maybe it’s the same Snickers bar, all over again. But where are the Slim Jims? They existed at this time yesterday morning, and they’re not here.”
She considered it. “You’re certain you carried them within the castle walls?”
“Oh. No. I ate them after I climbed up the cliff. So, I guess that makes sense. But what were you going to do with my stuff after I was gone? Do you have a stockpile of tommy guns and assorted men’s clothing hidden away somewhere?”
She shook her head. “Nothing has ever been left over before. Anything visitors are not touching at midnight disappears. ’Tis why the figurines have no overtunics or satchels. Your items would have vanished as well.”
“That’s… creepy.” He fished his smartphone out of his trouser pocket. “Seventy percent battery, not a hundred. I guess that’s because it would’ve lost power as I was hiking and climbing. Battery life would’ve been around seventy by the time I hit the castle battlement.” He whirled toward the door and peered through the ice in search of something out there in the unblemished snow. “Oh, great, there’s a crow perched on my grappling hook. That’s a sunny omen. Everyone knows—Wait. Shouldn’t the grappling hook have disappeared? Or magicked itself back onto my utility belt?”
She shook her head. “Outside the castle walls, life continues. There was once a nest of sparrows on the roof o’er the solar, perfectly visible through the ice. ’Tis only myself who can neither leave nor change.”
He kicked the door. “I want to be out with the crows and the sparrows. I may be facing certain death either way, what with the bounty on my head and all, but at least out there I understand the rules of the game. In here, I can’t even defend myself.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’ve a bounty on your head? But wherefore?”
His smile was wry. “Money. Why else? That’s why I came here in the first place. I’d heard the legend of the Golden Bloom of Eternal Youth, which at the time I thought was a thing, not a person. According to myth, the Golden Bloom belonged to no man, which meant it was ripe for the plucking.” His face twisted. “Basically, everything about that story was a lie.”
Her spine straightened. “’Tis not so. In troth, I belong to no man.”
“Princess, I couldn’t pluck you out of here with an army of ninjas and a steamroller. You’re also trickier to pawn for cash. Not that it matters anymore. Nothing does.” He hung his harness and outer-tunic back on the torch hook and slumped against the exterior wall. For the first time since his arrival, he looked defeated.
Marigold’s heart clenched. Although she and despondency were bedfellows, she hated to see such hopelessness upon Lance’s face. Now more than ever. He had declared yesterday to be about her, and had succeeded wonderfully. She would dedicate this day to him. Especially if it was the last one they would ever have. Second chances should never be squandered. She took a deep breath.
“I am sorry I did not inform you of the whole curse,” she said quietly.
He looked beaten. “Nah, it’s cool. I forgive you. The gods may have given me an extra day, but you’re right. There’s nothing to do differently. Stuck is stuck.”
Seeing him look so defeated was torture. Yesterday, when he’d promised to save them both, she had chided him for making oaths he could not keep. Today, she would do anything for the return of that confidence.
“Come. Let us break our fast. And then I will show you my favorite chamber in all the keep.” She held out her hand. “’Tis where I guard the treasure.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I like treasure. I also like breakfast. You don’t happen to have a waffle iron anywhere, do you?”
“Aye, but I’ve no idea how to use it. However, I have become frightfully adept at removing fresh bread from the ovens.”
He slanted her a sideways glance. “You have an actual waffle iron? A real one?”
“Several of them. All castles have many mouths to feed. Unfortunately for us, however, today is not waffle day.”
He smiled. “What day is it?”
“Bread and stew day. At least, for the servants. By noontime there would have been feasting for the revelers, once fresh meat and vegetables were delivered, but at midnight the only cookery underway in the kitchen produced the items you have already seen.”
He stopped walking. “Bread and stew? The same thirty loaves and giant soup kettle from yesterday?”
She nodded. “The very same.”
His jaw dropped. To say he was appalled would have been putting it mildly. “You’ve seriously eaten bread and stew for every meal of every day for six hundred years?”
“Perhaps you will now forgive me for resorting to violence upon sampling your candy bar.”
“‘Forgive’ you? I think we should eat it for breakfast.” He pulled the candy from his pocket, opened the wrapper, and handed it over. “Here. You get first bite.”
She tried to make sure her bite was less than half of the candy bar. He let
her eat the whole thing.
“You’re basically a one-woman Groundhog Day,” he said with a bemused expression.
She stopped chewing. “What’s a groundhog?”
He shook his head. “I just can’t wrap my head around living the same day over and over for centuries. Twice in a row would be hard enough for me. I’m a thrill-seeker. Always on the hunt for adventure. Sometimes I forget what my own apartment looks like because I spend too many months on the road. Or at sea. Or climbing mountains. Or hiking jungles.”
“And I cannot wrap my head around that,” she said, parroting his strange idiom. “But I want to know what jungles are. I miss long walks and horseback riding. I would love to see the sea. If I ever do get out of this castle, I never wish to be confined within four walls again.”
Which was ironic, considering she was leading him to the smallest, most confined four-wall chamber in the entire keep. And yet, the library—or her treasure trove, as she liked to think of it—was the one place she could go to escape. That feat, more than the intrinsic value of the artifacts contained within, was what made the hidden cove so precious.
When they reached the garderobe where they had first met, she showed him the loose cornerstone that opened the swinging doorway into the secret chamber. She lit one of the library’s torches in the embers of the fire, and used its flame to light the others.
He stood amongst the endless rows of manuscripts as if in awe. She couldn’t repress a proud smile. He was as astonished as she could have hoped.
He leaned over one of the many tables of open manuscripts. He reached out, then froze with his fingers mere inches from the parchment. “May I touch it?”
“You can set fire to it, if you like. ’Twill all return on the morrow.”
“Oh, right.” But still, he lifted each page with care and gentleness. “These are illuminated manuscripts, aren’t they? They’re absolutely incredible. The calligraphy… The playful artwork along the margins, and the intricate decorations around the first letter… Is this real gold leaf? Are we seriously in a room full of mint-condition illuminated manuscripts covered in gold leaf?”
She grinned back at him. “If we escape the curse, they’re yours. I’ve already read them.”