Deciding as she watched, she hurried forward, leaving a single drop of blood still shining on the wrought iron gate.
Belladonna had not thought this rescue through. The night had turned biting cold, the moon was obscured, and the ground was as wild as the branches above. She had no coat, no lamp, and only thin slippers never meant to fight against reaching, tangling vines determined to trip her.
She had no idea how long she had been chasing the light in front of her. No matter how quickly she dashed, the light never seemed to grow closer. Once her wits started to return, she realized how very wrong this entire situation was. Stopping Bell called out to the light again. “Papa! Please Stop!”
If there was no answer, she was going to turn around and pray that she could find her way back to the house. “Bell?” The voice was soft, but it was clearly her father’s.
Starting forward again, she ran as best she could, trying to close the gap between them. Tree branches seemed to be reaching out to catch her, leaving scratches on her face as she whipped past them. Bell ignored their stinging slaps; she would not lose her father – he was the only person she had in this world. If she didn’t catch him, her father would be gone forever. He wouldn’t remember how to get home.
One of her slippers flew off, but she didn’t slow. Her lungs were burning, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take when the light stopped ahead. She didn’t stop, fearing her father might start moving again. Her feet pounding the ground matched her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. And then it was just her heart pounding.
In the near-total darkness, she hadn’t seen the edge of the deep ravine that cut through the forest. She sailed through the air before plunging into the icy black water below. Darkness and agony swallowed her whole.
Chapter Two
Sometimes, when Belladonna slipped into the deepest darkest part of unconsciousness, she dreamed of what had been. She relived her past all over again, hoping for a different ending.
The dream taking form today started with a recent memory. Sitting jovially at the kitchen table, Papa was having a rare good day. Stricken, he turned to Bell; he remembered why they lived at Flor Cottage and all she had done to get them there. He felt responsible and guilty for the life Bell now had to lead. The dream then shifted and became a collection of visions shuffled rapidly.
She had been the only one capable of going through all her father’s business documents, and her sisters had let her do all the work alone. Always a meticulous accountant and brilliant investor, Bell had realized several papers in that something was wrong with her father. It seemed that he had started losing his memory long before anyone realized. Business correspondences had become confusing, and she had found piles of letters he had meant to send and never had. Hiding all of this from his daughters hadn’t been difficult – for all of the girls’ lives, they had seen very little of their father. Papa had been busy with their mother when she had been alive, and once she had died, he threw himself into work. It had never been that he hadn’t loved them, it had just been that he didn’t know what to do with three young girls.
Poppy, her oldest sister, had married the moment she came of age. Belladonna and her sister Geranium had been left to the care of the nurses when their mother died, but often they would seek out Poppy for company. Looking back, Bell knew that her sister had resented being resigned to the position of mother to her younger sisters and had escaped the only way she knew how.
At sixteen, it’s difficult for any young lady to make a reasonable evaluation of a person’s character, and Poppy had been no different. Poppy’s husband had never struck Belladonna as mean spirited, just overly traditional and underly bright. Once married, Poppy had been whisked off to the other side of the country, where she escaped being a mother to her sisters and instead became a mother to an ever-growing brood of her own children. They had money and had all the pleasures money could buy, but Poppy went from a great scholar to a house runner. Her role was very defined, and she was wholly and utterly her husband’s property. She never seemed necessarily unhappy to Bell, but the few times Bell had seen her, her smile had been one filled more with tiredness than joy.
Geranium, her middle sister, had married the first acceptably rich man who had asked for her hand before the entire City found out about their family’s ruin. Bell had warned her not to make a rash decision, but Geranium had been too scared of losing her lifestyle to listen. She had paid for her vanity.
It made bile rise in Belladonna's throat to think of her poor sister’s fate. Two years older than Bell, Geranium had been beautiful and sought after by all the men in the Big City. She had reveled in being the most beautiful and most wanted. When she realized they no longer had any money, she had found the richest man as quickly as possible to marry to keep her lifestyle. Quite honestly, it hadn’t taken very long for a proposal to roll in, and they had been married several weeks before the scandal of their family’s fall broke.
Bell had never liked her sister’s husband. He had been nothing but charming to her, yet he always made her skin crawl. There was an emptiness in his eyes that only ever filled when he was angry. As Bell had packed up and sold her family’s entire past on her own, Geranium condescended to sit and watch. At first, she had visited often, bragging about how many gifts she had been given and how grateful she was that she didn’t have to give anything up. However, as the bruises speckling her pale flesh had grown in number, her visits became more infrequent until they stopped altogether.
Belladonna had tried to speak to her sister about the bruises, but Geranium had just brushed her off. When Bell and their father had moved to Flor Cottage, it didn’t take long for Geranium to stop responding to her letters.
Unfortunately, her sister’s fate was not that different than many other tragic marriages. But Bell didn’t want a marriage marked by violence, or a marriage that ate away at her being until she was a withered shell of herself. A marriage to a man like Roger would be both, no matter how handsome he was, and she would rather be a wrinkled old hermit than his wife.
Bell’s dream became hazy as the light filtered through her eyelids. A lingering unease from her dream still lay on her skin, thick and heavy. Every inch of her body ached more than it ever had before. She didn’t want to have to get up and walk the three miles to work - her feet felt like they were swollen twice their size, and she knew each step would be agony in her thin slippers.
She rolled over, pulling the soft comforter closer, unwilling to start her day. She hadn’t felt this comfortable since they’d moved to Flor Cottage; the wooden slats of her bed frame ate through the thin mattress every time she laid down, keeping her awake late into the night. Bell had been so used to the two-foot-thick mattress at their old house that for the first few months after the move, she used to rise in the morning wearing striped bruises.
Throwing her arm out to the side, she felt a luxurious bed. This was not her bed. Her bed fit her small frame with little room to spare. Her father had gotten the larger bed by the hearth. Bell had chosen the small loft bed, which was big enough for her to almost stretch all the way out.
Keeping her eyes firmly shut, Bell felt around her. This was not her bed, and she did not know where she was. Somehow, she had gotten into a stranger’s bed. She was confident that she was the only one reclining on the bed, which was little comfort in this confusing situation. Her fingers found soft pillows, cloud-like blankets, and more space than she would ever need. Bell had never prayed so hard that she was dreaming, but pains in her dreams never left her body feeling as beat as it did now.
She cracked one eye open and was immediately blinded by sunlight. “Damn,” she muttered as she threw a hand across her face. Bell removed her hand slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the light streaming in through the wall of windows across from her. The bed she was laying on was in the most luxurious and exorbitant room she had ever seen. Her parents' house in the Big City had been large and expensive, their wealth never questioned by high society, but thi
s room put their home to shame.
The bedroom she reposed in was easily the size of four Flor Cottages. Walls, a pale green, were accented by an intricate floral pattern. The bed could fit six grown men and was clothed in the soft colors of the flowers that seemed to grow from the walls themselves. Pale pinks, blues, purples, and oranges, which generally would have created a haphazard effect, instead created a soothing atmosphere. The floor to ceiling windows that took up the wall across from her bed had thick forest green drapes flecked through with golden threads. In fact, almost everything had golden flecks or accents. Looking at the condition of the room, Bell bet those accents were actual spun gold or golden paint. Intricately carved furniture in dark wood dotted the room, all with hand-carved flowers curling over bedposts or up nightstands. The combined effect made Belladonna feel like she was in a wild garden.
Now that she had awoken from her dreamy haze, she was absolutely and utterly confused. Lost as to what else to do, she decided to count the things she knew were true:
1) She arrived home the night before
2) When she arrived, Papa was gone
3) The bench outside was still warm, meaning her father had just left
4) When she called out for Papa a light in the forest appeared
5) She ran towards it
6) Once inside the forest, she had followed for…. She didn’t know how long. The darkness seemed to warp time itself.
7) She called after her father, he answered, and then… well, she ran off a cliff. And hit water. Very hard. She guessed had been knocked unconscious since she didn’t know how else she had gotten here.
And then… she had no idea. Being that she hadn’t drowned, someone must have been close enough to hear her fall and retrieve her from the icy water before she died. Whoever had done so must have brought her here, wherever here was.
Belladonna knew she was in trouble – deep trouble. She ought to be panicking, as she was a small woman at the mercy of someone with a lot of money. And a lot of money anywhere brought a lot of power. Yet she wasn’t – the air was thick and breathing it in seemed to calm her. Bell wasn’t afraid, but she was uneasy. She couldn’t quite place her finger on it, but something was wrong with this place.
Bell started struggling towards the edge of her bed; she felt like she was swimming through all the blankets, it took so long for her to reach the floor. Standing up caused every muscle and bone in her body to scream out in pain. If she hadn’t been braced against the high mattress, she would have fallen to the ground. Several long moments passed before her head stopped swimming, and her vision cleared enough to see she was wearing a white nightgown, albeit one that was several decades out of fashion. Startled, she glanced around, looking for her dress. She found it draped over a chair near the dressing table.
Stumbling across the thick carpets, Bell held up her clothing, staring in shock. It was dry and laundered, but it was unwearable. If the dozens of rips from her flight in the forest hadn’t caused enough damage, there were large brown spots that Bell was startled to realize were blood. There was a lot of blood – so much blood that she inspected her body for the first time. Only a deep gash crossed her palm, the rest of her baring no wounds large enough to have caused those types of bloodstains. Only light scratches covered her from her face down to her ankles.
She frowned, both from the realization that an unknown figure had undressed and then re-dressed her and because she had nothing to wear besides this thin nightgown. The itchy, destroyed dress hadn’t been a favorite, but it had been the only one she owned that was still somewhat presentable. Once, she and her sisters had owned closets full of the most stylish dresses, but she had sold everything when they moved, keeping only her two most serviceable. The first had long been claimed by housework and cut into rags, and the other she held in her hands.
“What the hell am I supposed to wear now,” Bell whispered to herself, sticking her finger through a rip in the bodice. To her right, there was a soft rustling. She jerked her head to the side, confused. It sounded like a soft breeze moving a curtain, but the windows were on her other side, and besides, the panes were closed, not letting in a single draft.
A cracked door she hadn’t noticed caught her eye, and inside she found the most massive closet she had ever seen. The emptiest, most massive closet she had ever seen. Lights flickered on as she walked into the room, illuminating the empty hangers. Glancing up, Bell couldn’t see any candles or gas lights. The cream-colored ceiling seemed to be emitting the soft glow from within.
Belladonna reached the back and found a single dress hanging. She fingered the soft fabric and sighed in pleasure; it was the most delicate clothing she had felt in several years. Nothing on it was roughhewn, and Bell was sure not a single patch would be found clumsily sewn onto this dress. She grabbed the shift and dress and left the closet. Her body was too sore to try to get into it without the help of a sturdy chair. Several long minutes and curses later, Bell stood fully clothed, albeit out of breath.
Dressed, Bell began to investigate the bedroom. The expansive windows drew her attention, and she moved to peer out. “Oh my,” she gasped. The windows looked out high above gardens more beautiful than those in her wildest fantasies. Paths wound in and out of overflowing flower beds; lawns the color of emeralds broke up the bright patches of flowers. Belladonna had never been a gardener, she killed any plant she ever touched, but she had loved the beauty of plants as much as her father did.
The windows seemed high up in whatever building she was in, and she had a view of all of the lawn, and then some. The grounds must have stretched out for at least a mile, but she couldn’t see any hints of the forest trees. Frowning, she realized that whoever had brought her here had to be strong because they not only fished her out of a cold, deep water, but they then carried her such a distance.
After taking in her fill of the astonishing view, she turned back to her room. There were two uninvestigated doors: one on the other side of the headboard and the other almost tucked behind a delicate screen. Choosing the latter, she opened the door to find the most elegant bathroom she had ever visited. Walking over to the tub, she stared in amazement. A grown man could lay down and stretch out in a tub this size. Hell, she figured she could swim laps in it if she wanted to. The room was tiled and sweet-smelling, an entire table in the corner stacked with exotic oils and soaps.
Next to it stood a rack of cloud-like towels. A glint of gold caught Belladonna’s eye. Approaching, she saw a large ornate key strung on a delicate chain nestled on the top towel. As if from a distance, Bell watched her fingers reach out and brush the glowing metal. It was warm to the touch. Trembling, she picked up the necklace and placed it around her neck. The thin chain draped over her collar bone, the key falling to rest below the line of her bodice. A sense of rightness enveloped her. She was meant to find the key as surely as she was meant to find the dress she was wearing.
Reluctantly she turned around and walked back into the bedroom. Bell’s muscles ached with the desire to soak their soreness out, but she was unwilling to make herself so vulnerable in a strange place.
She headed to the only other unexplored door and swung it open to find an opulent sitting room. The absolute wealth that must have gone into such a decorated space making her head spin. Papa had been extremely wealthy, but this type of wealth was only beholden to Kings and Queens.
Hesitant to touch anything and mar a surface with her fingerprints, she walked directly to the door. Fingers gripping the handle, Bell hesitated. The room seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for her to walk out. There was no turning back now. She knew enough about the old magic to recognize when she was surrounded by it. And she knew that once a spell had been started, it could not be stopped until it had run its course.
But she hadn’t found her father yet. She pushed open the door.
A vast hallway stretched out before her, floor to ceiling marble shimmering in the soft light.
Bell looked down at her bare, bruised
feet, and then at the icy stone before her. There had been no shoes in the closet, and the soft day slippers she had worn during her flight had been torn to shreds and lost along the way.
A soft shaft of sunlight shimmered in her peripheral, and she turned to look. A sturdy pair of boots sat next to the settee closest to her as if they had been patiently waiting for her to notice them. Belladonna knew those boots hadn’t been there just a moment ago. Glancing wearily around, she half expected to see a gremlin or Fae lurking in the corner, reading her mind and fulfilling her wishes. There was no one, only dappled sunlight.
Belladonna pulled on the boots and stepped out into the hall.
The longer she wandered the Palace, the more confused she became. With every turn she took, she became more and more lost within its’ labyrinth passages. Every moment that ticked by made her more uneasy. Magic weighed the air down, making every breath slightly thicker than any breath she’d had before. Silence wormed its way into her head. Back in the Big City, their huge house had never known silence. The rooms had echoed with her sisters' joy, or the maids endless cleaning and upkeep. The walls had been alive with the hum of life, the sounds that naturally filled the air when humanity gathered.
Rose Bound Magic Page 2
