"Your rooms — the vacant ones — are that way, dear," Madame Bella said, and covered a yawn, which triggered a similar yawn from Elena. "The two suites are identical, mirror-images, so I know you'll be comfortable. Good night."
And with that, she passed through the right-hand doorway, leaving Elena to follow Robin on her own. So she did, and once again, as soon as she left the chamber, the candles in the sconces on the wall behind her went out of their own accord.
I really do have the most remarkable imagination.
The first room was a sitting-room, and Elena very nearly stopped right there, for it was fitted on two sides, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. And they were all full. She stopped dead, and stared hungrily, only vaguely aware that there were other furnishings here.
"Mistress?" came Robin's plaintive call from the next room.
I'm dreaming, she reminded herself. These books aren't real. And for a moment, she felt her eyes burn and her throat close, and the dream didn't seem quite so amusing anymore....
"Mistress?" Robin called again, and she sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, and hurried on to the next room.
If Madame Klovis could have seen this room, she would have turned a rainbow of colors with envy.
To begin with, it was carpeted with quite the most beautiful rug that Elena had ever seen, the sort of thing that many people would put on a wall, not a floor. It looked like a meadow of the deepest green, dotted with flowers, and was softer underfoot than kitten-fur. The furnishings were of that same old-fashioned style of the rest of the house, but not even Madame Klovis would have discarded these in favor of the newer styles, for they were carved so beautifully that every piece was a masterwork of art. The twin wardrobes were made to look like castles covered with vines so realistic that Elena half imagined that they had grown there instead of being carved. The dressing-table resembled the stump of a giant tree, supported by carved, sinuous, bare roots. The chair beside it was made in the form of a little throne of vines cradling a moss-green velvet cushion, and the divan beneath the window matched it. There were tapestries on the walls portraying a magical forest full of fantastic animals and birds, flowers such as she had never seen. The bed, curtained in heavy green velvet embroidered with thousands of flowers, with a counterpane to match, could have slept four comfortably. So perfectly was it appointed that the headboard had a candle sconce built into it at the right height for reading in bed, and there was a bookshelf already full of books beneath it.
Robin stood anxiously in the middle of the room, her bundle at his feet. "Would you like me to unpack for you, Mistress?" he asked, as if he wasn't entirely certain just how one did unpack.
"Oh, heavens no, Robin, thank you," she told him quickly. "I'm quite used to waiting on myself."
"Very well, Mistress," he replied, sounding relieved. "There's a nightdress beneath your pillow. Good night, Mistress."
And before she could reply, he had whisked himself out, so quickly, he might have actually vanished.
A nightdress beneath my pillow! This dream really was extraordinarily detailed! She set her bundle aside, and turned down the covers, revealing three magnificent goosedown pillows, encased in snowy white linen. And beneath the center one, there was, indeed, a nightdress, such as she had not worn since she was a child.
Madame Klovis would have died of envy on the spot.
It was made of pale green silk, tied at the neck and wrists with silken ribbons in a slightly deeper hue, and bordered at all hems with lace three inches deep, made of silk thread as fine as cobwebs. When Elena pulled off her coarse, workaday clothing and slipped it on over her head, it caressed her skin like a soft sigh, and felt so light and ethereal it was as if she was wearing nothing at all.
She folded up her clothing and set it on the chair — even if this was a dream, she was not going to start being untidy! — then climbed into the enormous bed. She sank into the feather mattress with a sigh, as the candles in the rest of the room, saving only the one in the sconce in the headboard, went out of their own accord.
She reached at random for a book, and got something called The Natural I Historie of the Lives of Curious Beastes, which sounded impossibly dull. But —
This is my dream. If I decide the book is going to be interesting, it will be!
And so it was. The first "Beaste" in the book was the Unicorn, which evidently led a much more complicated life than she had ever imagined. For a start, it was only male Unicorns who were attracted to virgin maidens; females were only drawn to virgin, chaste men, which, the author observed, were more difficult to come by. "So it is of no usse, to even attempt the capture of the femalee of the species," he concluded.
He then went on to the courtship rituals of these shy creatures, and it was at that point that Elena found she was having a great deal of difficulty in keeping her eyes open.
She had never fallen asleep in her own dream before — nevertheless, although she had no real idea of what would happen, she was not going to fall asleep now. She was going to enjoy every moment of this until she was forced out of the experience by waking up. So she fought the impulse, then the need to put down the book, to close her eyes, fought it even though the words on the page stopped making sense, though her lids drooped until she could not even see the page, and until the book dropped from her numbing fingers and her last conscious thought was that the candle in the sconce above her head had just gone out of its own accord.
Chapter 5
"G ood morning, Mistress!"
The cheerful voice startled her awake, and even if it had not, the ruthless pulling aside of the curtains at the windows to let in a flood of sunshine surely would have.
Elena sat straight up in bed. A real bed. The same real, luxurious bed she had dreamed that she had climbed into last night. And she was in the same, gorgeous, glorious room that she had imagined in her dream.
Except that she was awake, very much awake, and she was still here. Those were her clothes folded up on the chair, which a little brown woman who probably stood no higher than her waist — whose ears, she could see, were rather pointed — was picking up, unfolding, and tsking over. She was dressed in a miniature, muted version of Madame Bella's eccentric costume.
She must be a Brownie, like the two old men last night. Which meant that they, too, were real.
"Oh, Mistress, these'll never do, these garments of yours," the Faerie woman said firmly, and with, perhaps, just a touch of disdain. "Maybe for working in the garden after rain, but not for every day. Not for an Apprentice."
She had not been in her position a day, and already she was making mistakes, it seemed. This wasn't a very auspicious start. And last night, Madame Bella hadn't said a word about clothing.
"But I'm afraid they're the best I have — " Elena said, weakly. "I'm terribly sorry, but my stepmother — I'll wear whatever you like — "
The Faerie woman interrupted her, with a wave of her hand. She didn't seem annoyed; relieved, perhaps, that Elena had volunteered to wear what she chose. "Oh, not to worry, not to worry. You won't need the whole turn-out for weeks and weeks yet, and Robin will have it all tailored up for you by then." The little woman bustled about the room, unpacking Elena's few things and folding them away in a chest. "Till then, I expect some of Madame's things will do. You're much of a size." She opened one of the two wardrobes and began pulling clothing out.
Remembering Madame's rather — flamboyant — style of yesterday, Elena wondered if she ought to say something. Not that Madame Bella's clothing wasn't good but —
But fortunately, it seemed, the little woman's taste was a good bit quieter than Madame's. Out came a fine white linen shift and petticoat, a white blouse liberally trimmed at the cuffs with lace, a black twill skirt piped in green, and a black vest embroidered in green and purple, and a sash to match. Still far more colorful than anything Elena had worn in years, but by no means as eye-popping an ensemble as Madame's.
No corset, so there wasn't any
need for help with dressing; and just as well, as Elena would really rather do without a corset if she could. Before the old woman could make a move to serve as a body-servant, Elena quickly climbed out of bed and put the clothing on, feeling an unaccustomed urge to giggle with nervousness. It wasn't that she was shy about disrobing in front of a stranger — years living among the rest of the servants had cured her of any such illusions of modesty. No, it was the giddy and dizzying rush of realizing that this was real.
It wasn't a dream — it wasn't a dream. She was the Apprentice to a Fairy Godmother. She was living in a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside, waited on by Faerie Folk.
I am going to learn magic. Magic! How incredible could this be? Here she was, with Faerie Folk all around her, and she was going to learn magic herself!
The old woman — much less wrinkled, and much more apple-cheeked than the old men, Elena noted — surveyed her with hands on her hips when Elena had finished dressing. "You'll do," she said brusquely. "Those colors suit you. Foot."
"Excuse me?" Elena replied, now utterly bewildered.
"Your foot, girl, show me your foot!" the old woman repeated, and with absolute confusion, Elena lifted her skirt and held up one of her feet.
The old woman seized it in a hand as hard as horn, and looked it over, muttering to herself. Then she let go, to Elena's relief, and bustled over to another chest.
From there she took a pair of soft slippers of the sort that tightened with ribbons to fit, and handed them to Elena. "Barefoot only in the garden, Mistress," she said, in a tone that warned that there would be no arguing with her. "Shod elsewise. People come here, Mistress. You must be a credit to the Godmother as her Apprentice. People have to respect you, as they respect her."
Meekly, Elena took the shoes, and the stockings that the Brownie woman handed to her, and put them on. The shoes were of a leather that was as soft as velvet, and she was terribly afraid that she would have them ruined within an hour.
Still, if this was what was proper —
The Brownies were known for strict adherence to the truth. Rose — for surely this must be Rose, who did the "cleaning" — would not tell her to do something that was not correct. Very well. If these were the shoes that were right, then she would wear them.
It's all true.
"Right then, Mistress. Come along." The little woman opened the door and stood there, beckoning. "Time to break your fast and start on your work. You've a lot to learn, and you're a bit late coming to it."
"Are you Rose?" Elena asked, as the little woman made impatient shooing motions with both hands, as if Elena was a giant chicken.
"That would be me. Come along, then. Madame doesn't stand on ceremony at breakfast and luncheon, unless there's guests; we all eat in the kitchen, and I'm to show you the way." An odd little sniff showed Elena that Rose did not precisely approve of Madame Bella's informality with the staff. Poor Hob! She must lead him a merry dance! I wonder if all Brownie women are like this? Rose had all the hauteur of Madame Klovis's oh-so-supe-rior lady's maid, packed into a package half the size of the human.
Out they went, with Elena glancing at all the books waiting for her in her sitting room with longing, down the stairs, and out towards the back of the cottage, at least so far as Elena could tell. First they passed a little dining-room, then a pantry, then a milk-room with pans of milk already set out for the cream to rise, and at last came to the kitchen. This was a fine, well-appointed room, complete even to a sink with a hand-pump, bake-ovens built to either side of the fireplace, and plenty of pothooks for kettles and a spit with a clockwork turner. And there was a very modern stove, as well, which set into a much larger hearth, one that could have once roasted an ox whole. Its presence surprised Elena. The cook in the Klovis household had often lamented that they had no such thing, and had described one in detail, though Elena had never actually seen one.
The kitchen had an immaculately scrubbed flagstone floor and whitewashed brick walls, two big, sunny windows with real glass in them, and it smelled deliciously of baking bread. There were two tables there as well, a large worktable in the middle, which would have been low for a human, but was waist-high to the Brownie, and under one of the two windows, a table with benches beside it. Madame Bella was already there, dressed much as she had been yesterday, except that the predominating hue in her wardrobe was red today. Robin was at the stove, and besides baking bread, Elena smelled porridge, eggs, and frying ham. He turned at her entrance, nodded at Rose, and asked, "Did you sleep well, Mistress? What would you care to eat?"
"Very well, thank you, Robin," she replied, carefully. "And I'm not particular, anything at all will suit me."
"Come sit here, Elena," Madame Bella said, waving at a stool beside her. "I trust your rooms suit you? Ah, I see by your face that they do."
Before Elena could even get properly seated, Robin had bustled over with porridge for her. There was already cream and sugar on the table and Elena helped herself to both, with a sense of giddy freedom, for other than when she had eaten porridge with her neighbors, all she'd had for years was the scrapings from the kettle, seasoned with a little salt. She had not even finished pouring the cream over her breakfast, when Robin returned with a plate of eggs and fried ham. This was a feast!
"Now, today, my dear, I will need to prepare you for your position," Madame was saying as she dug into her breakfast. "In fact, we'll begin now. A wineglass, please, Robin, and something to take the taste away afterwards."
Robin brought two glasses, one empty, the other half full of something that sparkled darkly in the sunlight. "Ah, blackberry cordial, just the thing," Madame Bella said with approval. She reached for a tiny decanter that was already on the table and poured a few drops into the empty glass. "Now, you toss that right down, and never mind the taste, just get it all down and follow it with the cordial."
Elena looked askance at the glass, but did as she was told. It wasn't as if there was anything to fear, after all. Firstly, Madame Bella was a good magician, and secondly, why in heaven's name would she bring Elena here just to poison her? But the liquid in it was black and oily-looking, and seemed to warn that it was not going to be nice.
She picked up the glass, took a deep breath, and tossed it all back.
And nearly choked.
It was worse that she could ever have imagined. Horribly bitter and fiery at the same time, it was so powerful and so awful that her eyes filled with tears and she had to struggle not to spit it all out. She groped with one hand, and Madame put the other glass into it, which she took and quickly downed the contents of.
The cordial managed to wash away the awful taste, and she shook her head as she put the glass down and wiped her eyes with a napkin. " What was that?" she choked.
"Dragon's blood, undiluted," Madame said, apologetically. "Fresh, or relatively so; I got it yesterday before I went to fetch you. Now you'll be able to understand the languages of the birds and beasts."
Dragon's blood? Real dragon's blood? There seemed no reason to doubt it, and Elena nearly choked all over again. She reminded herself how often she had eaten things like blood sausage, and tried not to feel too sick.
Perhaps some porridge — She took a mouthful before she asked her next question.
"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, hoarsely, feeling as if she must be missing something that should have been terribly obvious.
"Because the birds and the beasts are everywhere, and often have a great deal to tell you," Madame replied. "You'll see. At any rate, this was best taken care of first, as the rest of the spells are a bit more complex. But first, Elena, do finish your breakfast. It's going to be a busy day, and it has just begun."
The morning began with a tour of Madame Bella's "cottage," which was quite as large inside as Elena's old home had been. The difference was that very few of these rooms were devoted to show, especially on the ground floor. There was no formal dining room, and what Elena had taken for a drawing room was, in fact, a
second library, the first already being crammed so full of books that they had spilled over into this room, where they were in a fair way to take over. Elena felt her eyes going round with astonishment at the sheer number of books. The only spots on the walls that were not covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books were where the windows and doors were let into them, and where the fireplace, mantel, and chimney were let into the wall. There were hessian curtains on these windows, old, faded rugs on the floor, and the only furniture in either room were more low bookcases surrounding a desk and a chair.
"Genealogies, histories, and tales. Also some spell-books, but most of what a Godmother does is about what is appropriate to the moment, is impelled and powered by The Tradition and the magic that The Tradition has accreted around the hero or heroine, and doesn't require the same preparation as a Witch's or Wizard's spells." Bella looked around the walls with what seemed to Elena like weary satisfaction, and Elena noticed that there was a book lying open on the desk, with pen and ink beside it. "What you do need to know is who is related to whom — absolutely necessary to trace missing heirs and potential usurpers. You need to know your enemies; you'll find them in those books, like as not, and potential enemies for the future as well. And you should be familiar with every tale that any Godmother has ever been involved with. In your turn, you are expected to write up every Tradition Line that you steer — you can read and write, I hope?" Suddenly Bella looked very anxious, and Elena was pleased to be able to reassure her. "Ah, good. Well, that will be one of the spells that you will have to perform; once you finish writing a tale, there will be an identical book in the library of every other Godmother and Warding Wizard, and those White Witches and Wizards who are powerful enough to have libraries like ours will also have a copy." She shook her head. "And this, of course, is why I no longer have a drawing room. I thought about performing the spell to add a room, but I never got around to it. That will be your duty, I expect. I can't see how many more books can be added without spilling into some other room — and Lily would be most vexed if that happened."
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