Midnight in Everwood

by M. A. Kuzniar

  ‘Come, I shall escort you back to the palace. The king will be wanting to know where his dancer is.’ He guided her to the door then hesitated.

  ‘Then we shall concoct a story on how you rescued me from a band of dastardly rebellers.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Your secret is safe with me, captain.’

  His eyes lingered on hers. ‘Call me Legat.’

  ‘After you have spent the past few moontides referring to me as a mere wanderer? I think I may prefer calling you captain,’ she said with a flicker of a smile. An arched brow.

  His answering smile set something deep within him aglow. It danced straight through her.

  ‘Whatever strikes your desire, Marietta.’

  An endless winter’s night reigned over Everwood. King Gelum’s envoy of sleighs had already poured across the ice bridge and back to the palace, leaving Marietta and the captain riding in a lone sleigh. The streets had emptied and Marietta felt as if they were the sole inhabitants of the world.

  The paths were lit with globes of frozen ice that flickered with enchantments, lighting the way through the snow-coated valley. When the marzipan-cobbled path curved, the captain followed it, driving a team of miniature reindeer that pulled the small sleigh. Marietta inhaled the scent of firs, snow and sugar, glancing up at the sky. It was silvered with stars. Which belonged to Pirlipata’s armoured princesses? She hadn’t thought to ask. She was unused to unfamiliar skies and so very far away from home.

  ‘It must be difficult to be away from your mother in such dangerous times. You must wish you were closer so you might protect her,’ Marietta said.

  ‘I do. I look to her as if she were one of the great stars shining down on us, illuminating my path.’ The captain’s voice slunk lower, more honest. ‘I spend every day compensating for my role in preventing the last orchestrated attack on King Gelum’s rule. If I had not saved his life—’

  ‘You were so young,’ Marietta said softly. ‘You could not have known.’

  His look at her was pierced with anguish. ‘Yet it led to his fear of an uprising. It was the moment in which he banned printing presses from Everwood, hoping a lack of education, of organisation, would thwart future rebellions. And it has worked thus far.’

  Marietta’s heart hurt for him. ‘Until now. You will succeed this time, I know it.’

  ‘And what of you? I’m curious to learn more about from where you hail.’ Captain Legat glanced at her, his bronze hair gleaming in the light of the lantern suspended above the sleigh. Marietta’s stomach twisted and she glanced down. ‘Do you miss it?’ he asked.

  ‘There are aspects that I miss.’ A series of unwanted images flashed through her mind’s eye. Drosselmeier’s chipped-ice stare, seeking her out across a dark theatre, his fingers creeping into her hair, his breath hot against her neck. ‘I miss my ballet studio and my brother dearly. And though your food and drinking chocolate are simply marvellous, I oft find myself desperate for a cup of coffee.’

  The captain gave her a curious look. ‘What kind of beverage is coffee? I have never heard mention of such a thing.’

  Marietta laughed. ‘It is a bitter, strong drink that people imbibe to render them more alert. Rather useful in the mornings, I find, though I have a habit of drowning it in milk and sugar to flavour it more to my liking.’

  His smile was faint, fleeting. ‘I do not pretend to understand how you are feeling.’ He swallowed. ‘If only I could turn this sleigh around. Return you to your world.’ His face betrayed a stifled wildness. In that flash, Marietta saw him as somewhat akin to herself; a caged bird.

  She laid a hand on his arm. ‘I understand,’ she said quietly. ‘You have responsibilities here that necessitate you filling your obligations to the king. Lest you draw attention to others that need you more than I. Besides, my fate is now aligned with that of Pirlipata and Dellara; I could not forsake them now. You spoke honestly of your own unwitting role in circumnavigating an old uprising. Well, I too regret the mistakes I have made in the past. I was a selfish, vain creature, ignorant to the world around me. I still have much to learn but I am hopeful that I shall be wiser in the future. If I ever return home.’

  ‘It’s in the stars that you shall dance in your own world once more.’ The captain laid a gloved hand atop hers. She felt its warmth, a beam of sunlight cutting through the harshest winter. ‘Of that I have no doubt. Many wanderers, lost souls, find themselves in Everwood for a spell; most return home.’ He hesitated then. ‘Some time ago you informed me that you were far from safe in your own world. I must confess, I have often dwelled on that since. Is that what led you here?’

  Once, Marietta would never have considered telling him her story. She had kept herself locked away as tightly as she was in the frozen palace, hesitant to share even the smallest morsel of herself with others apart from Frederick. But Dellara and Pirlipata had shown her another path. One of companionship and finding strength in each other. So, she began to speak of Drosselmeier, the truth bleeding from her lips.

  The captain’s hand fell to his sword hilt. ‘Do you wish me to—’ He stopped and cleared his throat.

  Marietta’s hand still lingered on his arm. ‘No. I will not have anyone else fight my battles for me. I shall seek a way to defeat him myself and it will taste all the sweeter for it. Besides, we come from different worlds, lest you forget.’ Her smile was wry.

  After a beat, Captain Legat inclined his head. ‘You are more than capable of doing so. I understand it cannot have been easy to share that with me but I am honoured and grateful to have been taken into your confidence. In fact—’ He handed her a battered notebook from his breast pocket. ‘Since you are already in possession of my deepest secret,’ he said roughly, ‘what is one more?’

  She took it curiously, made to open the cover when the captain shook his head. ‘Do keep it hidden.’

  She secreted it under her cloak.

  As their sleigh rushed through the illuminated night and towards the frozen sugar palace, Marietta wished the world would still, just for a moment.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘Where, perchance, has my dancer wandered off to?’ King Gelum asked.

  Marietta stiffened. Dread pooled in her stomach, heavy as clotted cream. She had been observing tonight’s feast in the throne room alongside Dellara in an attempt to keep her eyes averted from Captain Legat’s, whose gaze she kept inadvertently meeting. They had not conversed since the events that had transpired a few days ago, since their intimate sleigh ride back to the palace with his most dangerous secret in her possession. An inchoate awareness that she had penetrated his armour. And he hers.

  King Gelum had accepted their tale of events yet was reluctant to allow her a moment’s respite on each occasion she was within his presence. She ached to sit, her feet blistered and sore, her muscles tiring.

  A trade delegation from another world had arrived less than an hour earlier, stepping directly into the throne room by means of tiny golden keys which cut an entrance through magic Marietta could not decipher. Dellara had informed her that they were rare and valuable beyond measure. The guests were now ensconced in a celebratory dinner that the king was presiding over. Seated on low cushions, they dined from the backs of silvery sugar swans, their backs heaped high with delicacies from Sugar Alley.

  Marietta stepped forward. A woman in a raspberry-pink gown tittered and whispered to the man sat beside her. Marietta suppressed a smile at the golden birdcage perched atop her head, replete with miniature songbirds fluttering about her pinned curls. Bright yellow, each one was a ray of sunshine distilled into feathers and song.

  King Gelum pointed to a stretch of opaque floor that ran alongside half of the diners. ‘I command you dance for the Bellinnese.’

  Despite a flicker of temptation at the notion of publicly refusing the king, Marietta acquiesced as the musicians picked up their instruments in a hurry and began to play. Closing her eyes, feeling the music unfurl, she danced. Attempted to conjure the vision of weightlessness
that Anna Pavlova and all the greats of ballet conveyed. To transform into an ephemeral creature of silk and gossamer, carried by the wind. Yet, having been commanded to dance, she failed to summon the passion slumbering in her bones. Her ankle buckled during a pirouette and Marietta fell.

  The Bellinnese fell silent. Several called short tunes to their birds, which returned to perch on fingers and curls of hair, their baleful eyes swivelling moons. Marietta chanced a glance at King Gelum. Though his expression maintained an immaculate calmness, his thin lips had paled and clamped together, conveying his distaste.

  She rose to her feet, disregarding the sidled looks, the whispers unspooling behind hands, the concern on Pirlipata’s face, seated at the king’s side. The music floated on, clambering up to a sweet harmony. Yet as Marietta resumed her variation, she suffered the acute anxiety known to dancers; something was wrong. One of her ankles pinched, lending a jaggedness to her motions, turning them unwieldy. She sprang up into a restrained jump and it gave out. She toppled down onto one of the sugar swans. Its delicate neck snapped, its head falling and shattering like ice.

  ‘You are making a spectacle of yourself,’ the king hissed and someone trilled a laugh. King Gelum’s eyes, limned with sapphire paint in a resemblance of birdwings, cut her a look brimming with promised pain. ‘Get up.’

  Marietta arose with great difficulty. A sigh of disgust rippled through the diners. She glanced down; the broken sugar swan had sliced her left calf. Blood trickled down her leg. Worse, when she stood on both feet, her right ankle was unsteady, unable to sustain her weight.

  The king’s lip recoiled. ‘I order you to dance.’

  ‘I cannot, I’ve turned my ankle,’ Marietta whispered. When she raised her eyes, she caught Captain Legat’s look. Caution scored through it.

  The king’s silver suit sparked with lightning, illuminating him in an incandescent bolt of fury, his voice a clap of thunder. ‘I order you to dance.’

  Marietta lifted her chin high and began to dance a series of slow balancés on flat feet, ignoring her protesting ankle. She was out of step with the music, a broken doll cast aside. The king tracked her. His eyes were hungry, straying to her bleeding leg. When he trailed a finger over his mouth, his tongue darting out to lick his lips, she swallowed back the bile creeping up the back of her throat. She wished she might dare to throw that shrinking powder on him that the market woman had gifted her. See him small and insignificant, able to quash with a simple step. Yet she feared his faceless guards would tear her limb from limb if she dared attempt it. She drew a ragged breath and danced through her pain.

  ‘If you continue to force her to dance, you’ll break her and she’ll never dance again. Is that what you wish?’ a smooth voice asked. Dellara appeared at Marietta’s side, hands clamped on her hips, her eyes inked over. Her skirt was a tangle of fluttering scraps of material in a deep plum that echoed her hair.

  ‘I do not recall summoning you, fairy,’ the king said, shifting his attention back to Marietta.

  ‘I don’t recall needing to be summoned.’

  The king whipped to his feet, another lightning bolt shooting down his suit, his rage a palpable force. The diners seated nearest him edged away, sending a flurry of birds whirling up in a cloud of sapphire feathers and shrill tunes. Marietta backed away, stumbling on her ankle. Several Bellinnese women opened the doors of their gilded birdcages and whistled for the birds’ return.

  ‘Pretty,’ Dellara said to the lightning bolt. ‘Though you must be aware what the gossipmongers spread around the palace about your overcompensation.’ Her look was ripe with meaning.

  King Gelum strolled over to her. He reached out, taking her face in one hand, wrenching it up, forcing her to meet his winged eyes. Fear cut through Marietta, rendering her immobile. A whisper passed between the king and Dellara, hushed as wings in the night. King Gelum’s suit ignited in a blaze of glory as he released Dellara and exited the throne room by means of a small door cut into the wall behind the throne. A cotillion of faceless guards leapt forward and seized Dellara. Marietta clamped a hand over her mouth, swallowing a cry. Dellara was dragged through the door after the king, her small stature overpowered with a frightening show of force.

  The Bellinnese gathered themselves and fled in a twittering. As the throne room roared with chaos, Pirlipata materialised before her. She seemed to sense in which direction her thoughts lay. ‘There is nothing you hold in your power to help her now; interfering would merely cause you to share her fate and render her bravery futile. We must leave now.’

  Marietta closed her eyes. A faint scream ricocheted from the hidden room. It ripped through her. ‘This is too much to bear.’

  ‘Bear it for Dellara; she will need us.’ Pirlipata grasped Marietta’s arm and supported her as they walked towards the staircase. The faceless guards allowed their departure, their heads slowly turning to watch their path as Marietta limped past. Another scream tore out and her step faltered.

  Pirlipata held her steady.

  Her focus had been too wavering to count the doors but Marietta knew they must be drawing closer to their suite; they were at the approximate height for it. As they continued to ascend, the frozen sugar peak glowed above, its pale frosted blue holding all the palace secrets within its whipped confection. Servers scurried past, steaming trays resting on their fingertips, their eyes gliding past Marietta and Pirlipata. Crafters plodded by, too immersed in deep discussion of sugar-work to pay attention to another victim of their king. Two women exchanged kisses and syrup-sweet promises in an open door before one stepped back inside, releasing the other to the night, her teal gown puddling behind as she swept past Marietta.

  Once they reached the suite, their pair of guards locked them inside.

  Marietta set to bandaging her leg as Pirlipata sank onto a cushion. Her golden sheath dress was tarnished.

  ‘I am responsible,’ Marietta said. ‘If I had not fallen—’

  ‘You must not allow yourself to think in such a manner. I understand well how you feel; Dellara has diverted many of my own punishments onto herself, yet she refuses to be dissuaded. No good shall come of torturing yourself with what might have been.’

  Some hours later, a pair of faceless guards crashed through the door. Marietta and Pirlipata rose from their vigil. Dellara was a slumped figure, held between the guards. They threw her down on a chaise longue and marched out. Marietta suffered an overwhelming urge to claw the blank masks from their faces, to force them to confront the cruelties they were complicit in. When it occurred to her that she felt differently towards the captain, who was responsible for waging a secret rebellion yet refused to aid them lest it derail his grander mission at play, her rage swelled. How had she considered that a tolerable excuse? Why had he not saved Dellara? She rushed to Pirlipata’s side. The princess had propped Dellara’s head up on a small cushion and was smoothing the hair back from her pale brow.

  ‘Where has he hurt her? We must stem the flow at once,’ Marietta said, watching her purple-shaded gown bleed into murderous crimson.

  ‘That is but her enchantment. Dellara’s gowns always sense when she is feeling particularly wrathful.’ Pirlipata rolled up one of Dellara’s gauzy sleeves, revealing blistered, bloodied marks that carried the imprint of fine chains. Marietta hissed between her teeth.

  Dellara’s eyes snapped open. ‘You.’ She extended a midnight-painted nail at Marietta. Her fingers were dipped in the colours she’d painted before the feast; inky violets, deep sapphires and glossy blacks, as if she’d dragged them through the night sky.

  ‘You should not have interceded on my behalf,’ Marietta whispered, unable to tear her eyes from Dellara’s wounds. ‘There was no need for you to do that.’

  ‘Couldn’t bear losing another.’ Dellara drifted out of consciousness.

  Pirlipata ran into the bathing chamber and emerged with a heap of towels and a basin of fresh water. Marietta rolled up Dellara’s sleeves and they bathed her wounds before administeri
ng soothing balms and wrapping them out of sight in clean bandages. Dellara moaned, her eyelids fluttering.

  Marietta rested a hand against her forehead. ‘She feels feverish.’ She exchanged a look with Pirlipata, who frowned and soaked a towel in water, wrung it out and pressed it to Dellara’s head.

  ‘The shock must have tumbled her into an ice fever,’ Pirlipata told her. ‘We must keep her hydrated. In this instance, we are fortunate to remain within the palace with its plentiful supply of water. The ice fever shall prise a deathly toll from Everwood this winter with their deficit of melting charms or imported clean water.’

  Marietta nodded, unable to forget the faces of children condemned to a slow death by way of the mineral sickness, families unable to afford the steep price of the ever-dwindling supply of melting charms, overtaxed to allow for King Gelum’s endless balls and feasts even as they thirsted. With each glance at Dellara, guilt stained her.

  Pirlipata pressed her hand. ‘Take heart, Dellara is too fierce for a fever to end her. She’d be mortified at the very thought.’ They shared a quiet smile and it occurred to Marietta that these women had become dear to her over the past few months she’d been imprisoned with them. She had never had the pleasure of female friendships. And now their fates were entwined, bound together with blood and pain, and a loyalty that ran deeper than either.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Over the days that followed, Marietta and Pirlipata took turns tending to Dellara, who hadn’t yet regained her lucidity. So accustomed to the woman’s spiked words, it pained Marietta to see her tossing and turning, occasionally crying out, her voice soft and vulnerable. When a summons to the captain’s study materialised, she marched into his cabin, overbrimming with feeling as if she belonged to the ranks of the Erinyes, those ancient Greek goddesses of retribution and vengeance.

  ‘Dellara requires medicine. An ice fever has taken root after your king was allowed to maul her. With all the wondrous magic residing at your fingertips in this world, there must be something you can do for her.’