Midnight in Everwood

by M. A. Kuzniar

  And what started as a whisper became a roar. Red for the blood we’ll spill in the streets, red for the rebellion.

  Scarlet ribbons snowed down as hordes of people stormed down the staircase. Each server that had been a continuous, demanded, nameless presence, each of the sugarers and pâtissiers and chocolatiers that had devoted hours into crafting the king’s whims, each forgotten maid and cleaner. Anyone who had faded into one anonymous background that kept the palace functioning was rushing down the spiral. Clanging pans and brooms and serving trays, they raised their voices, uniting in a deafening chant of revolution.

  Legat pulled Marietta out of their path. Claren gripped his sword hilt, his uncertainty growing.

  Below, the faceless guards let loose a war cry. The first ranks of palace staff met the guards in a collision that resonated across the ice.

  ‘You must leave, now,’ Legat told Marietta. ‘Claren, see her safely back to her suite.’ He bent to kiss her cheek. ‘I presume you have a plan,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘Do not delay, make your escape at once.’

  ‘But will you—’

  Legat’s eyes were molten fire, burning a path straight to her heart. ‘Do not concern yourself with me; this is what I have been awaiting. Leave while you can and do not look back. And Marietta? It is in the stars that we shall meet again.’

  Marietta watched the captain depart with a heavy, aching heart.

  Claren escorted Marietta to her suite door. A single faceless guard remained on watch.

  ‘Do take care, Claren,’ she said, surprising them both and squeezing his hand. ‘Only you can know what is in your heart. Choose wisely.’

  ‘Marietta?’ Pirlipata asked softly as the door opened.

  Marietta entered to the two women stood before her. ‘It has begun. The red rebellion,’ she said.

  Dellara wore all black. Form-fitting black pin-striped trousers, black bustier and a black military-style jacket. At her side, Pirlipata blazed like a glorious sunset in her crimson armour, broadsword in hand. They were a pair of avenging angels, made carnate.

  ‘Get changed and take what you want, provided you can carry it,’ Dellara said. ‘We must leave at once.’

  Marietta located the ballet dress she had worn on first discovering Everwood. It seemed simpler now, more modest than the extravagant pieces of art she’d become accustomed to. Stranger still, it smelt musty. A reminder of the time she’d spent away from her world. The notion of returning felt odd. Before she could ponder the reason, Dellara appeared at her side, wrinkling her nose at her dress and insisting she wear a vanilla and marzipan-scented petticoat, lustrous with magic, beneath it. Marietta added a velvet cloak for warmth, in deep claret in celebration of the red rebellion. She added a little pointed scarlet hat, reminiscent of a bonnet de la Liberté, for luck. Finally, she laced up her ivory satin pointe shoes, battered from the stories they’d danced through.

  ‘Will those suffice for the Endless Forest?’ Pirlipata asked.

  ‘Not for long but I wish to leave Everwood as I entered it,’ Marietta said.

  ‘Then it is time to make your wish come true.’ Dellara held up the golden key.

  ‘One moment.’ Pirlipata ripped her golden clothes out of her armoire and knocked on the door. The faceless guard opened it. Before he could react, she tossed the clothes out into the hollow centre of the palace. They floated down in a glittering rain of riches.

  ‘A rightful ending,’ Dellara said, watching with Marietta.

  ‘No, a fresh life.’ Pirlipata gestured at the hands that reached out to grab the sparkling dresses. ‘Each gown shall feed a family for a moontide.’

  ‘Inside.’ The faceless guard made to grab Pirlipata. Marietta’s heart stuttered. But Pirlipata spun around deftly and unsheathed her broadsword, cleaving him in two. Dellara, hand on wand, halted. Pirlipata’s sword had revealed the guard’s core of wood and machinery, gleaming metalwork where organs should have rested.

  ‘They were never human,’ Marietta said. ‘No wonder they possessed such brutish strength.’ It brought to mind Drosselmeier’s mechanical set of soldiers he had gifted Frederick.

  ‘And unwavering loyalty to King Gelum,’ Pirlipata added grimly.

  The three women looked down at the wild, bloodthirsty fray. Marietta felt lost; she had neither the necessary magic nor training with which to survive a battle. All those times her father had instructed she study this strategic campaign or that warfare of old, she had never once imagined the resulting carnage that would have ensued. Seeing, hearing and smelling it was a vastly different affair and she wondered how anyone could ever find intelligence in the machinations of bloodshed.

  With a crash that echoed to the heavens, the throne room doors slammed open. A wave of Everwoodians clad in scarlet poured in. Robess led the charge, her sword held high. ‘To the rebellion!’

  Marietta searched for Legat amid the throne room, painted in violence. It was to no avail.

  ‘Come, Marietta,’ Pirlipata said. ‘It is time.’

  Marietta gave her a terse nod. She took a deep breath in an attempt to steady her nerves. This was what she had sought since the king had entrapped her, to claw her way free from him. From this world that Drosselmeier had trapped her within. She yearned to set sight on Frederick and her ballet studio. Besides which, there were things that needed to be said. Other freedoms to chart.

  ‘No longer shall we be caged in ice, beholden to a king’s wrath,’ Pirlipata said. ‘Cut us free, Dellara.’

  Dellara reached a hand to Pirlipata who held it, extending her other hand to Marietta. Three women interlinked as one chain.

  ‘This key shall take us wherever we so desire. We must all keep our thoughts on Everwood for the magic to transport us directly into the town,’ Dellara warned them, holding the key before her. It was slim and golden with mice tails curling together to form an ornate handle. Dellara pushed it forward into an invisible seam in the air and twisted.

  Nothing came to pass. Marietta frowned, her grip slackening. ‘Perhaps—’

  ‘Hold on,’ Dellara shouted. A faint wind whirled past Marietta’s ears, gossamer-fine and seductive, whispering of other lands, other worlds, of all the places she might see and adore.

  ‘Keep your thoughts on Everwood,’ Dellara repeated, more urgently.

  Marietta filled her head with visions of the picture-perfect little town, shining cosily under dark skies and wrapped in a blanket of snow. Something tugged at her stomach and in the next breath, the three of them were whisked off their feet and into the time-rippling space between worlds.

  When they had stopped twisting through the fabric of space and time, Marietta opened her eyes once more.

  The crisp scent of snow and fir and frozen sugar welcomed them. Everwood stood in the valley before them, hemmed in by ice cliffs and frozen waterfalls, where starlight dripped from above. The velvet sky swam in endless constellations that Marietta found she could put names to now. Liketh’s Lantern, the Great Moose, the Goblin’s Smile. She might be a lost girl, far from home, but for the first time in her life, she felt the night air on her face with a sense of deep freedom. Being free of all constraints, societal or physical, was a particularly delicious feeling.

  Act Two

  But Godfather Drosselmeier, with a strange smile, took little Marie onto his lap, and said in a softer tone than he was ever heard to speak in before: ‘Ah, dear Marie, more power is given to you than to me, or to the rest of us. You, like Pirlipat, were born a princess, for you reign in a bright and beautiful kingdom. But you will suffer if you take the part of the poor misshapen Nutcracker, for the Mouse King watches for him at every hole and corner.’

  —E.T.A. HOFFMANN, THE NUTCRACKER

  Chapter Forty-One

  Everwood was set a-glittering with celebration.

  ‘Between one event or another, I had almost forgotten what a darling little place this is,’ Marietta said, drinking it in.

  Dellara slowed the moose to a casual trot. They ha
d purloined a moose-drawn sleigh, abandoned by faceless guards, standing beside the ice-bridge to which the golden key had transported them. Now they were journeying through Everwood in it, knowing it would whisk them away to the Endless Forest faster and in more comfort than if they’d taken the route on foot. First, they would bid farewell to Marietta, then Pirlipata would take it east, home to Crackatuck.

  A pair of men with twirled white beards and forest-green pointed hats played a jangling melody on brass instruments. Nearby a group of children were chanting: The ice prison has fallen!

  ‘Why, would you look at that.’ Pirlipata smiled. ‘It seems this rebellion was fated to win back the heart of the kingdom.’

  ‘Queen Altina’s star will shine brighter tonight; she will be glad to see peace and goodwill restored in her kingdom,’ Dellara said. ‘The air is thick with the most powerful magic tonight.’ Marietta glanced at her and she added, ‘Hope.’

  As they made their way through the town, scarlet ribbon-curls littered the marzipan cobblestones. People danced and skated through the streets, clinking together tall goblets of molten chocolate. Vendors sold fairy cakes; tiny cakes crowned with a glittering sugar fairy. Red sparkles shot out from their tiny chocolate wands, dusting everyone with twinkling flecks. Dellara guided the sleigh past gingerbread chalets with sloping roofs and candy-cane buildings with whipped-cream roofs, collecting bits and pieces of the parade of festivities until their sleigh shimmered as brightly as one of Dellara’s gowns.

  Then the moose tugged them onward and across a smaller snow bridge to the great fir forest beyond. The sleigh runners cut fresh tracks through the pristine snow, sweeping them out further into the forest, the noise of the celebration falling away, leaving them in silence. It was hard to forage for words when they all knew what was to come. Marietta pulled the blanket higher over the three of them, sharing the front bench in the sleigh. The forest air was freezing after they’d been indulged with the warming enchantments swirling about the palace.

  The firs grew thicker, crowding together in an effort to blot the starlight. Large lanterns affixed to the sleigh illuminated their way, creating puddles of blackness where their reach ended. Soon it grew difficult to navigate the sleigh through the trees.

  ‘I am not a practised hand at this,’ Dellara admitted after a while, bringing the moose to a stop. ‘From here we go on foot.’ She leapt from the sleigh and set about unharnessing the moose. ‘It seems we’re not the only ones who have found our freedom tonight,’ she murmured to the great, placid animals.

  Marietta exited the sleigh with trepidation, recalling the shadows that had stalked her through the forest on her arrival. How they had crept down her throat, constricting her chest corset-tight, disorientating her as if she’d been set upon by malignant spirits attempting to lead her astray. But she was not the same woman she had been then.

  Pirlipata kept a hand on her sword hilt as they walked deeper into the forest.

  Snow crunching beneath their feet, breaths crystallising, they soon lost sight of the sleigh. Mist slithered between the trunks and Marietta eyed it but the shadows kept their distance. This time, she did not hear the whispers. This time, she heard something else instead.

  Dellara stilled. ‘What was that?’ Her hand vanished beneath her cloak, reappearing with her wand.

  Marietta halted, listening to the voices wending through the forest. It sounded as if several persons were headed in their direction. Pirlipata eased her sword from its hilt, holding it before her as they grew closer.

  The forest came alive with the sound of marching.

  ‘The king must be making his own exit tonight,’ Pirlipata said grimly. ‘He must have fled before the rebellion took the palace.’

  Dellara pointed her wand before her. ‘I shall eliminate him and his guards until there is nothing left for the stars to claim.’

  Marietta felt helpless. In such a situation she was a liability. Her nerves swelled as the sound of marching swelled, filling the forest before it eerily vanished. She braced herself for what was to come, Dellara and Pirlipata standing before her as she was the sole woman without a weapon.

  Yet it was behind her that King Gelum stepped out of the firs.

  Faceless guards began to materialise one by one, vultures clad in livery, appearing between the silent trees. Until the king’s entire contingent of guards formed a ring around the three women.

  Dellara shoved Marietta aside as King Gelum stared at her. ‘To think you believed I had not known of your transgressions.’ A film had descended over the king’s eyes as if he were surveying them through a thin layer of ice, hard and impervious. As conscience-deprived as his frozen heart.

  Marietta’s pulse skittered with fear. Suddenly she felt silly for ever believing they could escape the king’s clutches, flee his sugar-rotted palace and dance with freedom.

  Dellara’s eyes were a solid wall of black, one hand clenching her wand as she slowly raised it.

  Tension hardened and swords pointed. Faceless guards circled Dellara, their wariness plain to see. She emitted a guttural snarl, reminding them all she was cut from a fiercer world, held a power as ancient as starlight.

  ‘No, I was aware,’ the king said. ‘You and the captain ought to have known the extent of my reach. It is not just the Crackatians I hold in the palm of my hand.’

  Pirlipata drew herself up to her full height, her anger a tangible blaze. ‘You shall never hold Crackatuck,’ she said, ignoring the guards surrounding her.

  King Gelum’s smile was warped. Cruel. ‘I know, too, of why you acquiesced to wed me. Yet it is of no matter; I shall obtain your vow if I have to carve it from you myself. This shall not be the first rebellion I have quashed. Everwood has never known such a powerful king as I. With all the military might and riches at my disposal, I shall reclaim my kingdom before winter has ended its reign.’

  ‘What riches?’ Pirlipata asked. ‘Everwood has never suffered such an economic deficit since you murdered your way onto the throne. Toying with the economy, funnelling ever higher taxes into your extravagant affairs. Citizens can no longer afford the imported water from Mistpoint or the ever-rising prices of melting charms and are succumbing to the mineral sickness in droves. Children are dying. Your rule has been a long dark winter but the sun is finally rising. Even your soldiers have deserted you in favour of the rebellion.’ She raised her broadsword.

  King Gelum suddenly wrenched Marietta away from Dellara and Pirlipata. A blade she hadn’t known he’d carried was pressed against her throat. ‘I can slit her throat faster than you can draw that wand,’ he growled at Dellara. ‘Throw it down.’ His blade sliced deeper and Marietta stifled a gasp. Blood slid down her neck in a slick path. ‘You too, my little princess,’ he told Pirlipata.

  Pirlipata laid her sword on the forest floor.

  ‘No,’ Marietta whispered as she was restrained.

  Still Dellara refused to yield. Her eyes a seething tangle of shadows, she held her wand and raised the tip. The point of the king’s blade pierced deeper, coaxing another flood of bloody tears from Marietta’s throat. Gritting her teeth, she arched her back against the king in an evasion of his knife. He the Von Rothbart to her Odette, their pas de deux a dance of bloodlust.

  Dellara relinquished her wand. She was the last to be seized and when she fell to her knees, something deep within Marietta guttered and died.

  King Gelum’s blade inched deeper. Marietta’s last breath withered. She knew he would kill her and she longed to close her eyes against it yet the notion of her last sight being an all-consuming blackness before she slid into the great unknown was one which she could not abide. She kept them open and locked on Dellara and Pirlipata. Watched their anger swell and spill over into helplessness. She stifled a sob.

  ‘That palace belongs to me. Everwood belongs to me. Soon the entirety of Celesta shall be ushered under my rule, too.’ King Gelum’s voice was tinged with madness, his breath cool on Marietta’s ear. He had murdered the last obs
tacles to his throne in an icy rage. It seemed she was to be next. Her death ushering in a new age of his rule.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Pinned against the king at dagger-point, Marietta couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t contemplate what to do. Panic welled, deep and limitless.

  With a crunch of snow, three figures burst from the forest, entering the fray.

  Marietta’s eyes immediately fell on Legat. She had not thought she would ever see him again. Her heart splintered; was this what he had meant by it being in the stars for them to meet again? For him to witness her death? What unspeakable cruelty that she could not reach out to him, to feel his touch one last time. Flanked by Claren and Fin, he slowed, taking measure of the situation at once.

  ‘Ah, look who has come to join us!’ King Gelum’s grasp tightened on Marietta. She stifled a wince. ‘If you resist surrender, her blood shall be on your hands,’ he said.

  Legat laid his sword down. His face pale as snow, his eyes trained on Marietta. At the blade on her throat. ‘If you do not release her, I vow to spend forevermore hunting you. Until winter has melted away and I am but a speck of light in the skies of a night-time.’

  King Gelum’s laugh echoed through Marietta. ‘It gladdens my heart that you shall witness her death. A fitting end to a traitorous tale.’

  Guards seized Legat, forcing him down onto his knees before the king. Claren and Fin were secured alongside him.

  Marietta drew the ragged scraps of her courage around her like a shield. This was but a game of chess. A game of wills and control and power. And King Gelum may have been the king but kings were the weakest piece on the board. Nothing more than a figurehead. One that craved power. He had demanded Marietta dance at his command, captured Pirlipata when she’d rejected him and taken Dellara as punishment for demonstrating a power greater than his. King Gelum had murdered, tortured and bribed his path to the palace, utilising fear and pain as tools with which he might command authority. Yet he lacked respect or deference. Marietta looked at the king, who was waiting for her to be shadowed in fear, to break and shatter under his will.