I know from experience it is no good arguing with her. I slip from my gown and into the water she has prepared, squealing as it scalds my skin. I submit to her scrubbing, although in my opinion it takes an uncommonly long time. When Hazel brings my supper, I eat it so quickly I nearly choke once or twice and she scolds me roundly. Yet I am in bed a full hour before my usual time, and it is worth it. My nurse settles into her chair and I can see from the expression on her face that she will make good on her promise.
“Now,” Hazel says as I flop to get comfortable beneath the covers. “Where shall I begin?”
“I want to know if they grant wishes,” I say without hesitation.
Hazel is silent so long I turn to see if she has fallen asleep in her chair, as she sometimes does. But she is staring out the window, a strange look on her worn old face.
“They do grant wishes,” she answers at last. “One wish, it so happens. It must be claimed when a winter’s full moon shines down on the snow. On such a night, you must find one of the fey folk and grab hold of his hand before he vanishes. Then you must keep hold of it until he agrees to grant your wish.”
“Oh,” I sigh, sinking into my pillow. A curious smile plays at the corner of my mouth.
Hazel looks at me, her lips set in a grim line. “Even wishes are not always what we think they will be, Isidore. Even wishes may come with a price.”
I am quick to shrug off the twinge of discomfort her warning brings. Instead, I am ready with my next question. “Where do they live?”
Hazel favors me a reproachful smile. “Why, in the forest, love, as you well know.”
“Yes, but where in the forest?”
I know this part of the story, of course, but it has been long since I have heard it told and I ache to hear it again.
Hazel lays her finely wrinkled hand on top of mine. When she speaks, her voice is scarcely more than a whisper. “Their realm exists in a place between the shadows and the rays of the sun. Their kingdom is woven ‘round the trees, with invisible castles towering to the sky, piercing the clouds, unseen pathways winding outward. The entrance to their world is somewhere … everywhere. You never know when you may step over the threshold. It is unseen and unheard by most, for most are too busy to see or hear it. Most have not the heart to feel its very nearness. And though the fey realm lies alongside ours, it is as different from our world as the sun is from the moon.”
I am trembling as if my skin is not enough to hold me in and my excitement may break free at any moment. Thoughts tumble in my head as Hazel tucks the covers under my chin and her cool lips come down to kiss my forehead.
“One wish?” I ask as she snuffs the candles.
“Yes, my dear, only one. Or so the stories say.” A brief slash of grief is in her eyes again as she gazes at me. But I barely notice it.
The moment she is gone, I throw the covers over my head. Thoughts descend on me, clamoring for my attention. I do not know if my mother’s words were true. I do not know if the fey truly tread upon their own hearts. But when I looked at the slippers, I saw all that I have lost and more. I saw …
I try to force down the wild hope that rises in me, yet it comes anyway.
When I gazed at the fey slippers, I saw my own heart restored.
On the tail of this thought comes the surety that I must have a pair of those slippers for my own. I could not say what propels me into this madness, for even I must admit it certainly feels like madness. Perhaps it is this pining in me that has never yet been satisfied. Perhaps these slippers are the remedy at last.
My heart flutters like a bird in the cage of my breastbone. Thoughts reel through my head. It will be four months at least before snow can be expected. And of course that snow will need to fall on the night of a full moon. And on that night I will need fortune with me for a certainty if I am to find and hold the hand of one of the folk and have my wish granted.
Oh, it will be difficult. I do not try to convince myself otherwise. The chance of my winning this wish will be slight.
If I should win it, though …
The thought of having a pair of those slippers for myself should, by all rights, keep me up the night through. Instead it lulls me to sleep, gentle as a mother’s lullaby. It is as if this plan I have hatched, this dream I have birthed, is the fulfillment of my hope, an ending to my painful search for happiness. I sink into dreamless slumber, as blissful and deep as the sleep of a newborn child.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day I am deep in a book, sitting beneath the sweeping shade of the garden oak, when a servant comes to find me. Birds warble softly in the branches above as I watch him make his way across the lawn. He jostles along at a quick pace on legs as spindly as a scarecrow’s. It is a droll sight and I duck my head to hide my grin while he approaches.
When I am composed enough to look up, he is standing before me and panting like a bellows, a deathly pallor on his face. Observing him in such a state gives me a slight shock, but it is the torment in his eyes that freezes the blood in my veins.
“Joseph?” My book drops to the grass as I jump to my feet. Fear leaps in my belly. “What has happened? Is it Blessing?” I am instantly irked at the swift turn of my thoughts, but Joseph shakes his head.
“No, miss, it’s not your sister.” He puts a hand to his chest, attempting to catch his breath.
If it is not Blessing, it must be Hazel, I think, for my father and his wife are away from home today.
“What then?” I prod.
“It’s your parents,” Joseph begins, but makes it no further before his face crumples. He tries so hard to mask his tears and is so unsuccessful at it that I nearly laugh aloud. Nearly. Until I understand what he has just said.
My heart is already drumming like a death knell in my ears. I think it understands before the rest of me does. “They are dead.” My whisper is only a ghost of sound. “He—”
He is dead, my heart finishes as what was left of it splinters into infinite pieces.
Joseph nods, confirming my words, tears streaking his cheeks. I want to snatch out my hand and strike the sorrow off his face. How does he dare to cry those worthless tears when I am standing here as dry as an empty well?
The world tilts and sways as if I am a marionette bouncing on a string and my whole life is nothing more than a display, the mere backdrop for the forgery of the days I have wasted thus far. I think everything I have lived until now must have been only make-believe, and that this moment is the harsh, beautiful, undeniable truth.
The truth is that I loved him. The truth is that I forgave him long ago.
But the realization has come too late. It is a knife twisting in me.
“How?” I manage after an eternity has passed. My voice is as rusty as an old woman’s.
Joseph swallows and straightens his shoulders a bit, as if remembering to whom he speaks. “The carriage overturned some miles away, miss. Your father lived long enough to send for you. The messenger is still at the house, but—but he says there’s no purpose in your going. It was bad, and … and by now your father will be—”
Dead. Each time I think the word, sorrow gushes from my heart like blood pulsing from a fatal wound.
“But how?” I persist gruesomely, hardly knowing what I say. “Were they thrown from the carriage? Did they break every bone in their bodies? Were they crushed beneath the wheels, or trampled by the horses? How, Joseph? How?”
I am shouting, and the poor man gawks at me as if he has seen a ghost. Perhaps this is the very thing he sees, after all. How can I tell? I am certainly not myself. The wetness of tears is on my face, but I cannot think how they could be mine. I can hear a horrible rasping sound, a desolate weeping, but it cannot be me. I thought my heart too destroyed to weep. But now I think its very brokenness may cause me to weep the rest of my life.
In the hall, I speak with the messenger. I cannot bring myself to demand the details of my father’s death, as I asked Joseph. He gives a brief, stuttering account as I star
e at the shining top button of his coat. The bodies will be carried to the house. The physician has already been sent for. I nearly give a mad burst of laughter when he tells me this.
“You may tell the physician to go tend to the living.” Bile rises sharp in my throat. “We don’t want him here.”
Blessing and Hazel are nearby, weeping softly. I ignore them. Neither of them knows the truth, as I do. Neither of them understands. When the messenger leaves and the hall is silent, I turn on my heel away from them both.
“Izzy.” My sister’s voice is a raw wound.
It barely reaches me. I have already gathered my loneliness about me like a talisman. I have called out my anger like an army to protect me. I hold my heart close, pressing the broken pieces together in a frantic attempt to salvage them. Speaking, weeping, sharing this grief with her in this moment may destroy me. Blessing must see that I will not come to her because her lovely face distorts with tears and turns ugly for the first time since I have known her.
She does not know. She does not understand. How can she? She was not the daughter who broke his heart. She was not his daughter at all.
* * *
A strange hollowness grips me in the following days. I pray it will relinquish its iron hold when Father and his wife are laid to rest. Yet after their bodies have been buried and prayed for and wept over, the emptiness is still there. I think it has come to stay. It has already chiseled out a corner of my heart for its nest, seeped into my bones to mix with the marrow.
Hazel sings to me most nights and tells me all the old stories as my eyes stare at nothing. I know it is her way of pleading with me, of coaxing me from this shell she believes I am trapped within. What she cannot know is that I am helpless to come out of it. I would scream and rant if I thought it would help. But nothing can be the same now, and I cannot forget it was I who made it so. I begin to see Father’s face in my dreams, his dark eyes full of pleading sorrow. I remember, too, how I turned away from him time and again.
Days turn to weeks. One night Hazel alights at last upon a tale which spreads light into a small corner of my mourning. It is a tale of the fey folk and, as she tells it, my old nurse’s voice is as soft as the moonlight that streams across my pillow.
“There was once a young fey boy who loved a human girl,” it starts, and I begin already to sink into the warmth of this story. I let this one word, loved, spread its smooth balm through me as I have allowed nothing else to do for so long.
Hazel’s voice drones on and my eyelids begin to grow heavy as the tale comes to an end.
“She went to live with him in his country, in the fairy realm itself. She gave up everything for him, and when she arrived at her new home it was to discover he was none other than the fey prince himself. His royal cloak was made of fireflies, his crown woven with sunbeams. Though he was glorious, the girl knew she would not have cared if he had been the humblest of servants in the fey kingdom. Her love for him burned bright and forever. It made her the perfect princess of the fey, and they ruled together for age upon age.”
I hear the words of the story, but they are mere sound washing against my ears, for sleep holds me in his arms already. I give up the fight and allow his sweet, dark hands to pull me down.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Autumn is so slow to seep into the North country that I do not notice summer leaving until it is gone altogether. I am not sorry to see it go. It held only heartache for me.
I return to the wood, the only place I have ever felt truly at home in this land. My feet find the hidden pathways day after day, and each step I take puts a tiny piece of my heart back into place. Rich colors sing all around. The forest’s cloak is flushed with crimson and gold and green. I cannot help but reach out and touch it.
I run my hand along a low-hanging branch as I pass beneath its sweep. The leaf I pluck is whorled with color. Its surface is smooth beneath my fingertips. My lips curve upward. It is the first time I have smiled in an age.
Sadness chases it from my face in the next instant.
The sun sinks beneath the rim of the world, and the forest is hungry to soak in the last of its rosy glow. I grow still in these brief moments of in-between, and clasp my hands in something nearing reverence.
“Nothing dies as beautifully as autumn,” I breathe, arching my neck to gaze upward.
The leaves on every branch shiver as if acknowledging my words, then give up the last of their colors to the descending night. Sunlight snuffs out like a candle and in mere seconds I am left in the dark. I had forgotten this is the night of the new moon.
I close my eyes on the panic that rushes upon me, giving myself a moment to think. The house is west of the wood. At least, I think it is. And the sun has just set at my back. That is, if I have not turned slightly since then. I should not have ventured so far, so late. I square my shoulders, prepared to choose a direction and take my chances.
When I turn, my outstretched fingers meet solid warmth. It is the touch of another’s hand.
I give a little scream and jump back. The sapphire glow of a lantern makes a hazy sphere of light on the ground. A fey man is standing within it. He is beautiful as a forest night, and his dark gaze and sad smile are as warm as breath across my skin. For a single moment I think I have seen those eyes before, but the thought vanishes when I notice he has succeeded in capturing one of my hands within his own. I snatch it away before I know what I am doing, startled into blurting a bold question.
“Why do you stare at me that way?”
The young fey man is not bothered by it. He tilts his dark head to contemplate an answer. “You are beautiful, I think,” he says slowly. “I was merely pondering the irony of lovely eyes with such sorrowful thoughts behind them.”
I am not sure whether to be offended or embarrassed or glad that he has seen straight to my heart so easily. Settling for pride, I lift my chin a fraction and give a swift tug to my cloak.
“What do you know of my thoughts?” I mean for the words to sound haughty and am mortified when they come out sounding more like a plea.
“I know more of you than you think.”
I draw my brows together. His words are perplexing, yet something deep within me wakes at the sound of them. I shake my head to clear it.
“I am late for home,” I say by way of answer. “They will wonder where I am.”
I take a step and my foot catches on something invisible upon the ground. I lurch forward, unable to catch myself. But the fey man’s hand is already on my elbow, steadying me. In an instant, my head snaps up. His touch sends a shock through me. A muddle of memories collide in my mind.
I bend back to search the fey man’s face for anything familiar. After some moments he laughs, as if my sharp gaze is amusing, and merely guides me into the trees without another word. I must trust that he knows the way, for I have nothing but the circle of blue lantern light to guide me through the dark, one faltering step at a time.
At the edge of the garden he stops and withdraws his arm from mine. My pride slinks away and falls between the cracks in the ground, and I find I am on the edge of begging for his hand again. Everything about him is familiar, even the warmth of our arms twined together.
One corner of his mouth quirks upward and I remember, too late, that he can read my thoughts. This time I refuse to be ashamed. I force myself to hold his gaze. For all I know, years could be passing while we stare at one another. His eyes jar me. They seem to hold more than the world in them. In the end, it is my gaze that drops first.
“I am home,” I mumble, releasing him from any obligation he may feel to accompany me farther.
“Not your home, really,” is his rather surprising reply. When he sees my small frown, he smiles. “I know you live here,” he assures me. “But I think this place is not your true home.”
I nod slowly. “It isn’t. I was raised in the midlands, and came to the North but three years ago.” But then, the fey folk followed me here, so he must know this already.
His brows lower a moment, as if my answer is not what he expects. But he says no more. He takes one of my hands in his, his touch as light as cobweb, and bows over it. As he bows, he looks up beneath his lashes at me and flashes that fey smile which makes my breath catch. Then he melts into the wood as if he is more a part of it than its own shadows.
* * *
The sound is so soft I barely hear it. In an instant I am sitting up in bed, straight as a poker. With a hiss, the covers fall from me and the cool night air brushes my skin. Something moves across the room in the shadows near the door. My heart trips as I remember the time the fey woman visited me once before on just such a night as this.
With a light step, a figure emerges into the wash of moonlight, and I see it is no fey creature, but Blessing. Her long nightgown whispers against the floorboards. Her golden curls are so beautiful that the moonlight reaches greedy fingers to grasp at them and turns them pale as hoarfrost. She wastes no time getting straight to the heart of her visit.
“Isidore, let us be friends again.” The catch in her voice tells me she is choking on tears already.
I peer at her, too shocked to speak. Of all things, I did not expect this. She sees my hesitation and takes advantage of it. Quick as thought, she is at my bedside and my hand is within hers.
“Please. I am so alone, Iz, and I know you are, too.”
For a moment, hope pushes at the walls of my heart. It is no more than the green knot on a winter branch, the promise of what will one day be a leaf.
Without warning, disgust sweeps down on that hope and chases it straight into the jaws of bitterness. I watch as its tender shoot is snapped to nothing.
I fling her hand from me like it is poisoned. I want to forget, but I cannot. I want to put everything behind us and be the sisters we truly are, but it is beyond me. It is too late. Has this not been proven enough? Hatred swells, strong as a riptide in my breast, and it is all I can do to get the next words out. The force of the past three years is in them.
A Wish Made Of Glass Page 4
