by Lisa DeSelm
As for the saboteur, Laszlo seems satisfied that I am being watched by an assassin. He doesn’t realize I don’t fear her, so I cower when she draws near and he’s in the room, playing into his misconception. While she is under his spell I don’t seem to be able to affect her at all, to command her as I did the wooden soldiers, but I still talk to her when we are left alone, appreciating the company. She mostly stalks around or hovers like a black fly over Prima and me. Sometimes she returns to her cage, where she seems to be resting.
With my heart heavy and my hands smarting, I return to work on Prima. With each stroke of my chisel and blade, my despair grows. My father and Emmitt are gone, Fonso has been hurt. Bran’s been tossed in the Keep. Laszlo von Eidle will not stop until he has every last thing of mine he wants in his collection.
When the tailor is brought in the next day, I can barely look Benito in the eyes, knowing his son was sent to a cell because of me. But he seems glad to see me, ever kind and gracious despite the deepening wrinkles around his eyes and new strands of white dusting his black hair. He shies away from the saboteur crouching in the corner, trying to keep his focus only on the marionette on the table.
“In all my years working with your father,” the tailor remarks, his sharp eyes taking in the proud arch of the princess’s head, the dip at her throat, the sturdy limbs and capable hands, “I’ve never seen a piece like this, Pirouette. Magnificent!”
I flush. This is high praise from another master, from a man I respect as much as I did my own father.
“You truly are a puppetmaster in your own right, Piro.”
“Thank you, tailor.”
“Yes,” quips Laszlo, a little too brightly. “Isn’t our little Pirouette a marvel?”
Ignoring the sickly sweet way Laszlo jabbers about me to the tailor, as though I were a coin plucked from the gutter, I change the subject. I hope he soon tires of maker talk and will scuttle back to his own rooms.
When the Margrave isn’t in here, I think he’s sifting through the vast tomes in his library like a fiend, trying to uncover anything else he can about the blue moon and its power. I suspect he is eating and sleeping even less, for he has grown increasingly pallid.
Tailor Soren lays the box with the gown on the table, gently pulling back the tissue. I am astonished. In the few days that have passed since he received his commission, I can’t comprehend how he constructed such a dress. The bodice is a pure, creamy white, edged with gold piping, and is a near match to the Lady Cosima’s. It’s sleeveless, just as I requested, knowing it would be too dangerous to pull narrow sleeves over newly sculpted hands. The waist gathers high, just below the bust where the gown descends in a riotous waterfall of ivory and gold, each layer of the skirt interlaid with intricate swirls of flowers and leaves stitched in gold threads. It is perfection. Just the dress for a bride of nobility.
The tailor and I lift her torso from the table and carefully fit the top over her head and maneuver each limb into place, ever so slowly. Tailor Soren talks me through the process of dressing her quietly and calmly, with a needle and thread pursed in his lips, whipping out his small scissors to snip an errant thread here or tuck a seam in line there.
It takes us quite a while, with Laszlo looking on anxiously, interjecting such helpful advice as: “Watch her arm there, Pirouette, you’re going to break it clean off!” and “Do be cautious, tailor, she mustn’t be so sewn into that thing!” He’s nearly out of breath during the whole process, though the tailor and I are doing all the work.
The tailor remains unfazed by Laszlo’s blather and somehow, together, we manage to get Prima fully dressed, elegant hose, pretty shoes, and all. I suspect that working with six children constantly on hand at The Golden Needle has sharpened his ability to focus on his work in the face of constant distraction.
I step back, looking the princess over from head to toe. The Margrave is too excited now; I see no chance of him leaving me alone with Benito, not even for a moment. With less than four days remaining, I still must refine and polish Prima’s face, add some color to her skin and lips, and attach her hair. Right now, her scalp is smooth as an egg, and I have plans to create a special cap to which I’ll sew swathes of horsehair to create a wig of dark locks. But even now, without her hair or any warmth to her skin, she is still lovely in a simple, unadorned way.
Laszlo stands with arms crossed. “It is the very dress for a princess,” he says gravely. “Well done, Tailor Soren.” As he swoops about, fingering the fabric and straightening her skirt within an inch of its life, he continues. “Such a shame you had to build this without the help of your son. I assume he is enjoying his time in the Keep?”
The tailor holds his tongue, quietly packing up his things.
“Thankfully, your little stitching shop doesn’t depend on your apprentice’s assistance. You are the finest tailor around. I’ve checked.”
Just as the tailor is about to join the guards who will escort him out, Tailor Soren stops, as though remembering something. Quickly he comes back into the gallery and tucks a small fabric envelope into my hands.
“A sewing kit, Piro. Just in case you need to do any last-minute alterations to the gown. I trust your fingers have enough skill with needle and thread to do them.” His dark eyes spark, reminding me of Bran’s.
I nod, and take it, watching helplessly as the tailor is hustled from the room, nearly like he is a prisoner himself. Laszlo follows, pausing for a long look back at me.
“Don’t get any ideas about visiting the tailor’s son in the Keep, Pirouette Leiter. You have a task to finish and until it’s complete you shall remain here. Now, seeing as my bride is still hairless …” He raises his pale eyebrows to indicate I should get on with it before slamming the door shut behind him.
My anger at him burns hot and slow. At the princess’s side, observing her frozen loveliness, I realize I know exactly what gift she should have from Bran, the final addition to make her complete. I must act quickly, so Laszlo won’t see.
Picking up a carving knife, I pull back the bodice of Prima’s new gown and expose the pale swell of wood where her heart will be. With a steadying breath, I plunge the knife in deep.
During the final days leading up to the blue moon, I work at a frenzied pace, stitching segments of long, silky strands of hair to the spiderweb-style cap I wrought together. The horse hair I receive from Wolfspire Hall’s stable hand is black as midnight. Though Laszlo initially wanted golden, I managed to convince him that dark hair, like his mother’s, would best match the princess’s coloring and regal features. It helped that there’s a serious shortage of golden horse hair in the village.
Once I secure the hair to her scalp and glue the cap in place, I play coiffeur and trim the ends, winding it high on her head and using the tailor’s handy little sewing kit to stitch tiny pearls into the coils.
I spend hours with my sanding tools, smoothing and refining the features of her face and preparing the surface for paint all while thinking of Bran in the belly of the Keep far below, and my friends struggling in the village.
When I’m left alone for a few hours each night and should be sleeping, I continue work on the secret compartment I’ve built in place of Prima’s heart. I carve it just deep enough and round enough, to fit the watch Bran made for me, the one thing from him that I brought to Wolfspire Hall. Tucking the blue velvet ribbon around the edges, I rub my thumb over the “P” embellishing the case. My breath catches at the scrolling pattern of leaves and flowers engraved on the case. The tailor wove the same pattern into Prima’s dress, in golden threads.
I smile at the match, knowing it’s fate at work. Nestling the watch in its new refuge, I carefully replace the wooden panel I made to conceal it. It isn’t quite as clever as my father’s puzzle boxes and their false layers, but it will do. When I finish gluing the panel into place I sand the surface yet again, until the faint echoes of my handiwork disappear seamlessly into the wood’s grain.
I feel satisfied, placing my e
ar to her chest, content that the faint ticking will continue until the blue moon or some other force bids it to stop. Thanks to Bran, she will have a steadfast heart. And from Tiffin and Nan, hands with the strength of iron. From Fonso, eyes that will see things as they truly are. From the tailor, a gown to set off her beauty and conceal whatever she might wish to keep hidden.
And from me?
“Well,” I whisper, as I pick up a brush to add some final touches of color to her lips and cheeks, “I give you the gift of being just as you are meant to be. Yours is not the face that Laszlo sketched, nor is it one that I merely dreamed up. Yours is the face I saw in the wood. You are what was already there, growing at its core, unfolding in its heart. You and I, I’ve learned, can’t be anything other than what we are. It’s both a blessing and a curse, this ancestry of wood.”
Prima’s subtle voice coming from the wood is always eager. “Soon,” she hums under my fingers. “My time is soon.”
The nearly full moon strides high above the dome of the conservatory, casting a pewter luster through the windows. Tomorrow it will undergo a transformation of its own, becoming blue and brazen. Laszlo’s marionettes light up in its beams, even the saboteur resting in her corner. The air fills with many voices, a series of desperate cries; I cannot normally hear a marionette’s voice unless it’s one I’ve made, but for a moment I hear them all.
“Wake me!”
“No, me!”
“I am more deserving than she!”
“I am the oldest of us all—I should be the next to live!”
I close my eyes against the onslaught, knowing they watch us, me and Prima and the saboteur, with greedy gazes and longing stares. The Margrave has already chosen among them who will live and who shall remain forever asleep, dreaming in wood. I don’t even want to think about what some of them would be like, coming to life instead of Prima. The black witch, the gruesome clown. It would be a nightmare.
“Will you really awaken?” I whisper to the princess. “Or is this all just a hearth tale? One where the exhausted puppetmaster finally meets her untimely end?”
“Soon.”
Spent, I lay my head down at the worktable. My father’s words resound in my mind, in tandem with the muffled ticking of the princess’s new heart: A maker will always prevail. A maker will always prevail. A maker will always prevail.…
I fear its truth and my failure in equal measure.
CHAPTER 27
THE DAWN OF THE BLUE MOON IS A STRANGE ONE. I WAKE TO one of Laszlo’s heavy stares. He has joined me in the gallery, dressed in what I assume is his wedding finery: a jacket of cream, layered over a white shirt and fitted trousers, everything awash in reams of gold braid. He perfectly matches his princess, except for the dark slash of crimson across his chest. It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s added many of his father’s own adornments and medals to the sash.
“Today is the day,” he says brightly, while I rub the sleep from my eyes. “Nil volentibus arduum, apprentice,” he reminds me. “Nothing is impossible and the moon is almost ready, I can feel it!”
“She is ready, at least,” I say tiredly, motioning to where the princess lies complete on the table.
For I’ve done it.
No—we have done it. The makers and I, combining our skills and strength, have constructed the most beautiful, lifelike figurine our part of the world has ever known. I am sure of it. Her eyes glow green and her skin is smooth and soft to the touch. Her hands wait, open, ready to be grasped. Her lean, muscled arms and legs rest now, but they can, I imagine, wield a sword or ride a horse with ease.
“She is everything I imagined,” Laszlo says softly. “Everything a Margrave should have.”
I clear my throat to disguise the sarcastic laugh that threatens. She’s nothing like the creature he imagined and sketched for me, and yet somehow he is too blind to see it, too blind to remember. Perhaps it’s because I conveniently lost those sketches. Or maybe the power within the wood convinced him all on its own, I don’t know.
“The wedding banns have already been called. My marriage to Ulrika Desdemonia will take place immediately upon her arrival.”
“But, my lord,” I say, startled, “that will be in the middle of the night. Shouldn’t we allow her some time to adjust? To see that she’s safely through from one form to the next? It might be a difficult transition—”
“By the dawn of tomorrow, I want to be married and to show her off to the rest of the territory as my bride.”
“But you said the people will want a wedding, something to look forward to? After all they’ve been through?”
“The commoners can go hang! The clodding lot of them are rebellious, vile, and can’t be trusted. They’re always plotting! They’ve tried to turn the king against me! So we will marry tonight, after she awakens. What better thing to come to life for, than to become an instant bride, an immediate Margravina? She’ll never want for anything!”
Except a few moments’ peace.
“You are to go and bathe yourself; make yourself presentable for her,” Laszlo says, looking me over with distaste. I know I have glue in my hair and paint on my cheeks. My dress is rumpled, my apron dirty, and my hands are in a ghastly state. “Rest a bit, if you must, for you will be unshackled only to perform the blue moon ceremony tonight,” he says begrudgingly. “I will stay here and keep my bride company.”
I look to the saboteur’s cage; it’s empty. She’s been sent away again. So I shuffle off to my closet of a room, where someone has already hauled up a tub of water and left a meager sliver of soap. I scrub myself from head to toe, using up every bit of the soap trying get off as much paint, glue, and resin as possible while in my chains. Then, I put on the only other clean dress I have from home. I brush my short hair, knowing it will dry quickly, and lie down on the bed.
If Laszlo will be spending all day at Prima’s side, I don’t think I can stomach joining him. I’ll stay in here. I need time to think.
I don’t know what the blue moon will bring for Prima and I; we may be trapped here at Wolfspire Hall the rest of our days. But I cannot allow Bran to rot. The thought of Bran never recovering from the Keep, like Papa, breaks my heart. Can I at least help him escape, even if I can’t help myself?
When the guard knocks and leaves my luncheon tray, I am forced to rise and eat. After drinking some tea, my thoughts clear. Tea will do that for you. To my knowledge, neither Laszlo nor anyone else is wise to our scheme and Marco has kept mum about the whole thing. I reach for the remaining few precious francs I siphoned off from paying the tailor to place some below the teacup’s downturned shell so that Marco will have money to bribe the guards managing the food stores.
A new thought arrives, like a chisel driving through the soft wood of my brain: the tailor’s sewing kit. I still have it in my dirty apron. I dip into the cloth envelope and pull out two needles pinned in some wool, a wee pair of scissors, some white buttons, and a tool I haven’t yet needed: a miniature seam ripper, the size of my little finger. Just the tool you could use to pick a lock, with its sharp end curved like a fish hook.
With my heart in my throat, knowing the Margrave is on the other side of my door, now always slightly ajar from the intrusion of my long chain, I snip a piece of thread from a tiny spool in the kit. Quickly I bind the seam ripper to the small hidden stack of coins. On a scrap of paper, I scratch out a quick note to Marco, hoping my few words will make sense, and that he might be willing to risk using these francs to bribe a guard at the Keep. Or to take the risk and deliver the seam ripper to Bran himself. I realize I am putting a lot of faith in a man I have never met, but he has come through for me thus far.
Let’s hope your cousin is still up for it, Fonso.
I fold my note into a discrete square, placing it just below the coins and seam ripper. I set my empty teacup upside down on top of the whole lot, praying it remains undisturbed until Marco’s hands reach for the dishes. Bran’s fate rests in the hands of the kitchen porter and the
shelter of a teacup.
When the guard comes for the tray, I hold my breath as he carries it away, the empty dishes rattling past both me and Laszlo out into the depths of Wolfspire Hall.
When the dinner tray comes, I find I have no appetite. The worry of waiting for the moon to rise is more than enough to fill my belly. I check under the fresh teacup on the tray to see if there is any sign from the kitchen porter that my message has been received, but there’s nothing.
Laszlo spends the day pacing around the worktable, talking to himself, the princess, and the other marionettes. I try to stay quiet and well out of his way. I tidy and pack up my most prized tools brought over from Curio, hoping against hope that one way or another my time in the gallery is nearly at an end.
As night draws close, Laszlo has my shackle unlocked and insists I help him carry the princess out to the conservatory. He has a special table prepared, and while I think it looks like a funeral pyre, I keep quiet; he is so proud of it. He had thin hazel switches cut and woven into a bed, interlaced with willows and greenery. Among the greenery he placed flowers, late-blooming white lobelias and fall lilies. Together we lay Prima upon the springy bed, and we wait. The trees growing up through the conservatory floor hum anxiously. They know the blue moon is on the rise, and what a special occasion it is.
“Be warned, young one, be wary,” they trill.
Looking up through the glass-domed ceiling, Laszlo’s anxious eyes watch the sky. So far, the moon is just a pale, light-blue glass eye in the heavens. We must wait until it is directly overhead and shines with the bold silver-blue of the rarest of all moons.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” he says, pacing around the conservatory, tugging at a branch here, pulling a dead leaf from a plant there.
He’s forbade anyone but me to join him in the inner sanctum of the glass enclosure, but I know plenty of guards are posted just outside the gallery doors. I caught their curious glances earlier as they peered in. I wonder what they think of their Margrave and his strange obsession. He doesn’t want anyone else to see us use the blue moon’s spell; besides his fear of giving anyone else magical knowledge, if things go wrong, I understand I alone am to be blamed.