by S R Nulton
“Who?” I was compelled to ask. I didn’t know if we could save her from her fate, but we could take steps to protect the king’s next target.
She smiled at me, but the expression was belied by the anguish in her eyes and the silent tears tracing the curve of her cheek. “A merchant’s daughter, Nolana. Her sister just got married and propelled the family to my husband’s notice. They live on the edge of the great forest. He doesn’t think I know, but I know all my sisters, even the ones to come.” A gong rang somewhere in the castle and Caillte gasped in pain. She doubled over, holding her head and shaking it rapidly. “No, no, no! They are calling him back and pushing the darkness closer! Ah!” The bell rang again, louder this time.
“Quickly, where is the mirror,” Reese demanded, gripping her shoulders. “If I can fix it, its hold on you will be broken and you can escape.”
She shook her head. “If I do, he will hunt me down and discover that his daughter is still alive. I can’t let him get her.”
“Then fake it,” I told her. “Stay here, put on makeup to hide physical changes and act wacky until you can plan your escape.”
The bell rang again and was accompanied by a pounding on the door. Queen Caillte looked at the door, eyes wide with fear and finally nodded. “I switched it out with another and made them look like the same. The one you want is in the parlor where we met. Once it’s fixed, leave immediately. My husband will be back within the hour and when he arrives, he will do anything to keep the Spinner from that mirror. And he will take your assistant for a quick boost. I’ve seen him do it before. Now go!”
The pounding on the door had grown in volume until it nearly overwhelmed those thrice cursed bells. “Your majesty!” called Bekins in a muffled tone. “Open the door!”
The queen ignored her butler’s distress. Instead, she grabbed my arm and hauled me over toward one of the portraits. “Through here. It will get you to the main hall,” she said, sliding a portion of the wall away to reveal a dark passage. “I’ll hold them off. It shouldn’t be hard; I can feel my sanity slipping as I speak.” Her smile was heartbreaking as it slowly morphed from self-conscious to completely mad.
We nodded to her and Reese pulled me through the door before closing it tightly. As soon as our entrance was disguised once more, he pulled me down the secret passage as quickly as he could. I suddenly had more respect for all those damsels in distress I’d always read about that seem to go about life flailing like a fish out of water. It is not easy to move quickly while being dragged. In the dark. On an uneven surface. Frankly, I’m surprised more of them didn’t end up bloody from the experience.
There was a loud bang from the direction of the gallery just before we found the exit. Reese popped the door open to the sound of the queen screaming, “Mary lost her silver bells! Mary lost her cockleshells! Mary lost her little bear! Mary doesn’t want to share!” And then something that sounded vaguely like, “Uncle, mother, father!”
“Come on; the coast is clear,” my husband whispered as he led me to the front parlor, re-immersing me in the overwhelmingly unsettled feelings I’d had the day before. Not the depression spell, but close enough to confuse the two. “I’ll make this as quick as possible. You keep an eye on the door and warn me if someone comes.”
I nodded and stationed myself behind the door, using the space near the frame to watch the hall. There were plenty of people running around, but none I recognized and all of them headed for the queen. Oh, and every single one of them was male. Our theory had proved out, at least part of it. There were no other women to be found in the castle.
Meanwhile I could hear the queen yelling again. Either that or she sang very poorly. At least she had a bit of a rhythm to it at first.
“Live in the box, live in a tree. Pickle a fox, pickle the Brie. Fey rings round with roses make all fall on their noses and livers long to be free!” She giggled and her voice grew closer. Bekins was leading her down the hall to her rooms, the servants following and looking resigned to her madness.
Just as they passed the parlor, I heard Bekins. “Where did the guests go, your majesty? They were in the gallery with you, weren’t they?” The voice was cajoling on the surface, but it strained around the edges. He was worried and angry. Not only that, but the glimpse I caught of his face revealed thinly veiled derision. There wasn’t a drop of doubt left in my mind. Bekins hated the queen even more than he did me.
Caillte, for her part seemed to be messing with the man by leaning against him and mumbling into his shirt before turning to shout directly in his ear. “Little rabbits don’t like to be held! They wanted to jump about. We opened a window and they went hunting for lettuces. They’re soporific, you know.” She yawned. “I want lettuces and sun for lunch. I need my beauty sleep.”
“When the king returns, he will wish to speak with you, your majesty.” You could hear the man grinding his teeth as he tried to lead the blond further away.
She just planted her feet and blinked at him with big innocent eyes. “But he doesn’t like lettuce. Only glowworms can appreciate living with hair like mine. No, no. I must have some silver bells with my soup. It will match my dress!” And then she smiled. I saw her resemblance to the king’s first wife immediately. The same light lived in both of them.
Bekins continued to draw her down the hall. Eventually, their voices disappeared into the depths of the castle and the rest of the staff chatted in the entry. There was nothing left to see as far as they knew. There was plenty for me to look at though as the men parading through the hall. They all looked different, from heights to builds, hair color to facial features. Still, there was one thing that they all had in common: not one of them looked at their queen with anything less than absolute hatred.
Before I could turn away, Bekins was back and his pale face was bright red.
“Here!” he shouted, stabbing his finger at the ground. The men dutifully fell into a line before him, albeit a little crooked. “The queen is resting, but we must find her guests before they can escape. Not to mention, the master will be here in the next hour or so…” He ran a hand through his thinning hair and growled. “Just what we need. Half of you prepare for the master, the other half check the castle and grounds for our guests. They have to be here somewhere and they need to be found now!”
With that, Bekins stalked off back the way he came and the men began to argue amongst themselves. Eventually, the chef and a few others moved further into the castle while the rest exited through the front door.
When they left, I returned to Reese’s side, watching for a moment as he worked on the mirror using a type of magic that I had never seen before.
I was not extremely well versed with magic. I’d never been particularly talented that way growing up and magicians are fairly sparse in general. What I did know was Reese’s style was nothing like what I had been around. It lacked the herby scent that my aunt’s had. Nor was it the burnt toast flavor of my mother’s or the bitter almonds of my grandmother’s. There was no fur or musk, like Wolf’s. None of the wood smoke and summer warmed pine needles of Maleficent’s.
Instead, it reminded me of autumn winds and spring rains, summer heat with the sound of falling snow. His magic was complex and beautiful; it was full of life and yet left none of the manic feelings that I would have expected in such a situation. It made me wonder just who it was that I had been married to.
Shaking my head I moved back to the door, not wanting to distract him or be caught unawares. I hadn’t even realized that I sensed magic to that extent. Before that moment, I would have sworn that you couldn’t possibly explain the differences between magics with words. Realizing that I could smell and taste the nuances made a lot of things clear, one of which was my need to avoid my grandmother. Her magic tasted like cyanide. She was everything deadly disguised with an almost palatable taste.
Thinking about it, all of them made some sense. Mother was always a bit on the weak side and very bad at her magic, like burnt toast. The wolf tasted
of fur and musk because, well, Wolf. Mallie was more complex because she was Fey. It was also why she reminded me of the warmth and spice of the forest itself. My husband was just one giant conundrum, though.
Reese cleared his throat and gestured me over to the now whole mirror. I shook my head to clear it before stepping toward the glass. The crack that had been there when I first saw it was completely gone now. The odd feeling from before was gone as well. No more vertigo!
“You need to finish breaking your curse and then we can go. I’ve already cast a spell on the mirror to stop it from being broken like that again,” he told me before growling. “The break was deliberate. Someone used magic to alter the mirror’s function to the point that it became visibly damaged. No wonder the queen seems bonkers. The mirror was driving her insane, just like we thought! I’m amazed that she lasted this long with that kind of influence on her.”
“That would make sense,” I whispered. “She would have to be a very strong individual to break through the madness in order to give us so many clues. I’m betting that she has strong protective instincts that are triggered by other women being in the same danger she is from her husband.”
Reese let loose a few inventive curses aimed at the man. Most were in a completely unknown language, but the sentiment was clear. Eventually he calmed down enough to continue. “I wish I could do more to help, but we need to finish up and get out of here quickly,” he told me. I nodded as he moved to take up my former position guarding the door.
Meanwhile, I took a deep breath and reached into my pocket. It took almost no time for me to pull out all of the spell ingredients that Maleficent had prepared for me. Putting them together took a little longer. She had told me that none of the ingredients could be touching until just before performing the spell. Luckily, they were all pre-measured and ready to mix.
After emptying the packets into my hands, I crushed them into a powder and blew the herbs at the mirror, whispering the words the Fey woman had given me. The surface of the mirror rippled gently before a light appeared and struck me in the face. I tasted cinnamon and heard the crunch of toast being torn in two as I blinked away the sudden spots in my vision. A quick glance at Reese told me that the sound and light hadn’t carried any further than my own head. That made me breath a little easier. For a minute I was afraid that the flash would have been seen outside the room and drawn attention to our position.
Well, that was easy. It must have been weakened by Mallie’s suppression spell. Either that, or the mirror is a lot stronger than I thought.
One more quick chant and all the spell ingredients disappeared into the mirror, leaving the room completely empty of any evidence that we had been there. Now we just had to escape the evil lair of the serial killer king. What fun.
“Come on, little gem. Time to act like the rabbits we are and hop out the window to find some lettuces.” He winked at me before lifting me over the sill and placing me firmly in the flowerbed beneath. As soon as I was out of the way, Reese followed and then waved his hand and the window shut and locked itself once more.
Less than a minute later, he had me all but jumping to keep up with his haphazard path through the lawn. It meandered past the flowers and orchards and into the kitchen garden, specifically to the lettuces. And there, at the end of the rows of lettuce was an ivy-covered door, barely visible through the vines.
The sound of horse hooves on the gravel drive snapped us out of our reverie. Reese and I ran as quietly as possible to the end of the row and through the door. He shut it silently behind us and we turned around to continue our escape only to stop in surprise.
Chapter 10: Spirally Logic
“Where are we?” I asked Reese and it wasn’t an idle question.
Typically, walking through a door has a predictable result. For instance, opening a door at the back of the kitchen reliably led to the kitchen garden. It had been that way my entire life. Over the last few days, though, my relationship with doors had drastically changed. Instead of exiting the garden into an east facing forest full of oak trees, we were suddenly surrounded by pines and looking westward. Not only that, but the temperature had dropped and the mountains were suddenly much closer. Only now, they were behind us.
In less than three days I’d been through four doors that just didn’t quite make sense. Okay, only three-and-a-half doors. The door to Merriweather’s was technically a mirror. Still, between an invisible door in a thorn patch, Merriweather’s front door leaving us in a random place in the forest, and the garden door transporting us across a mountain range turning us to face the wrong direction, I was starting to worry the next portal I stepped through would land me in the middle of the ocean!
“I think… we’re back in Alenia,” Reese said slowly. “It looks like we were placed just on the other side of one of the mountain passes, but I’m not sure which one.”
I nodded and turned to look for the garden door, but it was gone. “Any clue how we got here?” He shook his head and continued to scan the area, so I chose not to push it. He was wearing his serious face again. “What about where we need to go next?”
That got Reese’s attention. “You didn’t ask the mirror?”
My cheeks heated and I suddenly found my feet incredibly interesting. “No. I forgot. Plus, we were in a bit of a rush.” I sighed and leaned against the nearest tree. “So I guess that you didn’t either?” He shook his head again. “Fabulous,” I muttered.
The long dress I wore was suddenly abhorrent to me. I unbuttoned the front clasp and pulled it off, feeling it shift back into the coat and hunter’s clothes that I’d put on only a couple days before. My aunt’s impossible, never ending bag was still hanging against my hip, full of things I knew and understood. Things that felt like home. I was beginning to really miss my little cottage at the edge of the woods.
While Reese set about releasing his enchanted coat, I opened the bag and began to rummage around for something to drink. It took a minute to rifle around and I had to pull out the silly hat that Merriweather had given me, but I found the canteen underneath it.
“The hat,” Reese breathed as he saw what I was holding. He rushed to my side and grabbed it out of my hands.
“Yes, the hat. We’ve already talked about it. What about it?”
“We can use the hat to find the seer! It’s magic is perfect for this!” He snatched it from me and shoved it onto my head. “Alright, now we just need to activate it.”
I blinked at him. “Activate it? What does that mean?”
“You know: activate. Use the magic words or think the right thoughts. Sometimes it requires certain herbs… I know you know how to activate a spell. You used some earlier today. So go ahead.”
It might possibly be the stupidest thing I had ever heard my husband say.
“I know what ‘activate’ means. I know that most people assume I’m an idiot but I’m pretty sure that I have proven my intelligence by this point, so let’s start there and assume that I wasn’t looking for a definition.” He stared at me with his brows furrowed. And people think I’m the dense one. Slowly I asked, “What do I need to do to activate it? Is this a multiple choice question or fill in the blank?”
He took a few steps back and turned to the left. “Well,” Reese began, clearing his throat. “I figured that Merriweather had told you how.”
That had me stumped. All I could do for a moment was stare at him. “When? You were in the room the whole time. At what point could he have spoken to me that you wouldn’t have heard it as well?” The glare I gave him could melt iron.
Reese just shrugged, his cheekbones tinged just the slightest bit red. It might have been the first truly honest reaction I’d ever seen from him. “I assumed it was in some sort of code. He kept talking in circles and half truths, about thinking spherically or something.”
“Spirally,” I muttered, half to myself, still watching him. Merriweather had put a lot of emphasis on thinking outside linear patterns. Maybe that was the key to activatin
g the hat. Instead of approaching it in a straightforward way, I needed to come at it from an angle.
Biting my lip, I paced from one tree to another, muttering quietly to myself. Finally, sighing, I turned to Reese and warned, “I’m going to try something completely crazy and utterly ridiculous. If you laugh, I may very well murder you in your sleep. Or tell everyone that you are convinced that I’m the princess of the long lost kingdom of Brenlew. Although, I’m sure they would love to have you as a prince. You would be a magnificent ruler.”
Reese’s eyes crinkled slightly as he held back a smile, blush still present. “Brenlew, the home of the forest lords and river gods? The impossibly beautiful shores full of people who gave birth to the Fey and taught dwarves to carve stone? Perish the thought.”
I rolled my eyes before taking a deep breath. Holding my hands up, hat still firmly in my left, and I called out, “Oh-yay, oh-yay! Be silent before the great hat of the almighty sparkle horses!” A snort from the other side of the clearing, nearly interrupting me. I valiantly ignored it and kept going. “The low priestess of March day will now perform the unknown ceremony of the doves!” And then I danced. Badly. Very, very badly.
My arms flailed, bringing to mind a flock of flamingos in a tornado. I threw my legs out, sometimes only just avoiding throwing them out in a medical sense, and hopped from one foot to another, leaping off tree roots and tripping on shadows. At one point, I worked in a solid kick to Reese’s shin when he contracted the giggles. Nasty disease. It must be beaten out before it becomes contagious. As the dance progressed, I included the most appropriate song I could think of.
