by Amy McNulty
Not that it mattered. I wasn’t allowed to leave the castle.
As soon as I slipped into the dress, the specters swooped into the room and took the dress I’d worn to the castle from the floor. I nearly screamed upon their sudden entrance.
The dress was given back to me later the same day, washed and folded.
For some reason, it felt like I had lost in a game I hadn’t intended to play.
***
When I woke up one morning, a surge of warmth hit my face. I lay in bed for a moment, picturing myself having risen from a nap on the hilltop where I’d often picnicked with Jurij. But I couldn’t feel grass and dirt beneath my fingers, only cold silken plush.
I remembered where I was. My eyes opened reluctantly.
A sunbeam trickled onto my bed from the window. It actually warmed me, and I felt a stirring in my heart. Cautiously, I sat up and then took the few steps over to the window. I peered out and my heart soared, if but for a brief moment. The snow had melted. A gentle haze permeated the horizon, but I could still make out the village below. Perhaps spring had finally come.
Before I could be summoned for breakfast, I dressed, this time in the worn-down dress that I often wore when I’d been carving. It had been cleaned before it was presented to me and was cleaned every time I wore it since, but I still imagined it carried the scent of sawdust.
I bypassed the untouched vanity and the white hairbrush I knew would be lying out for me. Although I didn’t brush my hair myself, the specters had started brushing it for me before meals. All the better reason to leave before they got there. Perhaps I would find a knife with which to chop it all off and leave them with nothing to make pretty.
Gently, I pushed the door open a crack. I sucked in my abdomen and squeezed through, quietly pushing the door shut behind me. No one was in the hallway, but I stood still for a moment anyway to see if anyone stirred. I knew from the “tour” that the lord’s chambers were located on the floor above mine, but I wouldn’t put it past the specters to be on guard. But no one came.
I slipped across the hallway to the staircase and took one step down at a time, cautiously peering through the banister for signs of the specters. There was no one.
I came upon the grand entryway and my heart skipped a beat. This was where I’d had my first encounter with the lord, more than a year prior. I could picture myself now, bathed in a moonbeam, following it to its source.
A sunbeam had replaced that moonbeam. The rays of dawn were peeking through the cracks in the door that led to the inner courtyard. I shuffled quietly over to it and peered through the space in the door as I had the first night I’d foolishly ventured to the castle. A garden. When I’d been shown the place on the “tour,” it was but a drab collection of stone and branches. Now, almost overnight, the sun had breathed life into the place.
Feeling suffocated inside, I grabbed hold of both handles on the wide double door and pulled. I stood still for a moment and closed my eyes. They couldn’t adjust to the brightness, and I felt blind, but the light that seeped in through my closed eyelids was enough to make my heart race and my mind come to life.
My thoughts flew instantly to the field of flowers that covered the hills near my home in the spring and how I’d run as a child, giggling with Jurij, Darwyn, and my other friends as we kicked up petals and rolled down the hills. I remembered looking up one day and seeing Elfriede sitting quietly atop the hill as she looked after us, careful not to disturb the passionate purple of the flowers that framed her peaceful little body. She weaved together lilies into a circlet for my hair, crowning me “the little elf queen.” She’d first named me that, taking a title from one of Mother’s stories, although I’m sure she didn’t remember. There was no mistaking the vivacity of those hilltop blossoms, flowers that could both robustly cushion a tribe of lively little adventurers and still yield to the gentle movements of a weaver girl’s fingers.
The garden in the castle featured only white roses on carefully manicured bright green bushes. Save for the large space immediately in front of the two large wooden doors that led back into the castle, the rose bushes linked together in an unbroken circle framing the entire garden. Cobblestones lined the rest of the garden ground, and there was sign of neither dirt nor grass.
It was no hilltop, but it would have to do.
I shivered. The winter air was retreating, but there was still a nip of cold in the spring morning. The closest thing I could find to a comfortable seat was on one of the two benches on either side of a stone table to the left of the entrance. I sat down on the bench that would give me a full view of the garden and stared again at the odd water fountain at the middle. Two streams of water still spurted from the eyes of the pointed-eared child, his arms outstretched towards the skies. My heart ached for his torment. He seemed to be reaching for something—and weeping because it would never be within his grasp. He and I, we shared much of the same feeling.
A tray with food appeared on the table before me.
I started. A specter stood next to me after dropping off the tray on the stone table, but I hadn’t noticed him enter. Despite my best efforts, my movements in the castle hadn’t gone unnoticed.
I felt ill.
But the specter soon retreated, leaving me alone in the garden. The empty feeling in my head and the rumbling in my stomach won out. I picked up the spoon on the tray and began eating. No one disturbed me. The sun rose ever farther over the horizon and the light made the water pouring from the child’s eyes sparkle a brilliant blue. It was the first meal I’d enjoyed since my stay began.
Whenever the sun was out over the next few weeks, I took my breakfasts and lunches in the garden. Even when it was overcast and a chill swept through the air, I went to the garden. Only rain disturbed my sanctuary. And dinner, for that was the one meal the lord ordered that I eat with him. He didn’t tell me that—we still didn’t speak—but the specters always appeared at dusk, their hands clenched tightly around my arms, and I was whisked away. I always knew it was coming shortly after they came to water the roses.
I began to feel. And that feeling, I was upset to find, was boredom. I almost wished for the books, the needles, and the paints again, if only to find some way to make each day pass by. But I didn’t want them enough to break my vow of silence. I hardly wanted them at all. Instead, I took to staring at the fountain or pulling out the petals of a rose one by one.
As if hearing my thoughts, the specters started bringing things again. Paper, quill, and ink. A board decorated with black-and-white squares and thirty-two odd-shaped figures made of bone set on top. I laughed one time when they brought me a flute. I didn’t touch it.
Once, they brought me a few blocks of wood and a set of gouges and chisels. I ached to pick up the items and numb my heart with them, but I refused to acknowledge the gift he got right. I didn’t touch them, I wouldn’t look at them, and they didn’t appear again.
Drawing wasn’t my strength, but I picked up the quill and ran it back and forth over the paper. I thought about writing a letter home, but I didn’t know whether I would be allowed to send it, nor if I could even begin to express my feelings at their betrayal. There was no way I could write a letter to Jurij, and even if I could, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I held the different bone figures in my palms, running my fingers across the cold, smooth surfaces. I liked the one with the multi-pointed crown the best. It reminded me of the elf queen.
One afternoon, the specters brought a letter.
I looked at it warily where it sat on the stone table, at first afraid and then enraged that it might contain a message from the lord. But I felt a stirring in my heart that I hadn’t known in ages as I looked at the script that wrote out my name: “Olivière, second daughter of Aubree and Gideon, Carvers.” It was Elfriede’s hand.
I turned it over and grew hot with fury to see the seal already broken.
I hope this letter finds you well. Jurij’s birthday is next month. Enclosed is our wedding invitation. I hope y
ou can come. His Lordship is welcome as well, if he would like.
I had to laugh at Elfriede’s attempts to act as if all was well. To her, perhaps it was. I was gone and out of her hair, after all.
My fingers ran over the embossed edges of the invitation. A wedding in the hills beyond our home in the first full month of spring. So it was only a month until the wedding now.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I wanted. At the very least, perhaps I could look out my bedroom window and watch the specks of people gathering in the hills that day. But what would be more painful, to watch or not to watch? To celebrate a sister’s happiness or to keep pretending that happiness didn’t exist for others because it never would again exist for me?
But a thought struck me. I didn’t want to watch—I wanted to go. Not just to see if I could sneak to the pool and test my theory. Not just because any freedom, even for just a day, was better than whatever this was. A wedding may not be the best opportunity to air a deep and terrible secret, but Elfriede and Father at the very least owed me an explanation.
I would just have to do my best to pretend the groom wasn’t the only person I knew who made life worth living.
But to go would be to open my mouth.
But would an order to let me go, even if just for the wedding, incite his anger? I knew that it would. I would just have to find some way to pretend that I had no power over him and to ask permission. Even if it meant locking my feelings away.
***
Every second at dinner, my heart threatened to jump out my skin. From time to time, I would open my mouth to speak, only to quickly grab the goblet or fork and stuff wine or food in to silence myself. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Still, it bothered me that he’d read the letter and still he didn’t say a word. He wasn’t the first to lapse into silence, but he wouldn’t be the first to speak.
I cleared my throat. The air felt like knives in my raw airways.
“I assume you read my sister’s invitation. The seal was broken.”
I hadn’t intended to start off so antagonistic, but I found the words and tone tumbling freely from my hibernated mouth. I stabbed at some meat and began chewing to cover some of my indignation.
A small cough came from behind the curtain, and a black glove reached for his goblet of wine. The goblet appeared again in view but remained cradled freely in one hand.
“Yes,” he spoke at last. “Her wedding is next week.”
The fork fell from my grip. “Next week? The letter says next month!”
“It is already the first full month of spring, Olivière.”
I bit down on my lip. Hard. If I hadn’t, I would have started screaming and said more than one thing I’d have regretted. Even if they would have satisfied me immensely before I later regretted them.
I grabbed my goblet from the table. After a large gulp of wine, I slammed it down.
“I would like to go.”
“You may not.”
My jaw dropped. Was the letter just to torture me, then? Why not just give it to me after it was over, and I had completely missed it? I tried to cover up my frustration by grabbing my napkin from my lap and wiping my face. At least the cover allowed my lips to turn freely into a sneer.
“And why not?” I asked.
The goblet disappeared behind the curtain for a while before reappearing, this time settling back on the table. The sip took far too long to be anything but intentional.
“You know why,” said the lord. A finger ran across the jagged edges of the crystal goblet. “Unless you intend to order me to let you go?”
I forced my mouth into a thin line before putting the napkin back on my lap. My eyes fell to the napkin, suddenly interested in seeing that I smoothed it just right.
“I thought not,” said the lord confidently.
“You may come with me,” I said quietly. “If you like.”
I didn’t know how I would speak to my friends and family alone if he were with me, but the distraction of the lord of the castle out among his people might provide enough cover for an opportunity or two.
The lord behind the curtain laughed. It may have been as close to a joyful laugh as he could muster, but I heard it laced with traces of ridicule and contempt.
“How very gracious of you!” he said. “But I am afraid the answer is still no.”
He stood up, his chair scraping backward. Some of the specters flew into motion, cleaning his dinnerware, putting on his veil and hat, and then settling against the wall as always.
“Good night, Olivière,” he said as he came around the edge of the curtain. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you.”
I stopped myself from saying something more explicit in response that would drip more venomously with that very same edge of disdain he displayed.
***
I tapped my fingers impatiently on the stone table as the specters cleared away my breakfast and brought out the board and figures. I snatched the white elf queen off of the board as soon as they set her there and started rubbing my hands over her smooth surface. If I rubbed hard enough, what would break first, the bone figure or my skin?
I could hardly see straight. The garden was spinning around me. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a way to get to the wedding that would leave my captor happy. The worst part was that I knew that was precisely why he tormented me with it in the first place. Because it was the first time in months that I felt anything more than boredom—and I felt powerless. And angry.
I began tapping the elf queen against the board in her vacated spot, watching the black elf queen, her mirror image, across the board in the same position. And then I was struck. Two queens. Two kings. Four … horses? Four castles. And other pieces I wasn’t sure I knew. But this was a game, obviously. A game meant for white and black. A game meant for two.
I jumped up from the bench and ran into the castle entryway, looking for any specter within reach. A dozen appeared from the shadows at the edges of the room and lined up before me.
***
“You seem a quick learner, Olivière. I have to admit myself surprised.”
I did my best to smile. However, I knew from experience that my best attempt to smile when a smile was unearned could send livestock running. Still, I had to try.
“Well,” I began, “I am when I actually want to learn something.”
Surely I could get away with unspoken contempt. He wouldn’t really have expected otherwise.
The figure in black sitting on the bench opposite me laughed. He began gathering the scattered pieces, dropping each one on its place on the board. Chess, he had told me, was his favorite game. But it was a bore since his servants always let him win.
I’d told him it would be my pleasure to make him lose. That had made him laugh, too.
“Are you ready then?” asked the lord.
I nodded.
The gloves gestured toward me. “Ladies first.”
My hand gripped the white velvet of my skirt, and I fought to keep a surge of heat from reaching my face. I’d told the specters to help me dress in one of the fine ball gowns before I asked them to tell their master what I wanted. They had even gone so far as to intertwine white ribbons and roses throughout my dark locks.
When the lord appeared in the garden to join me, he stopped, nearly lost his balance, and then stood straight again. He laughed, and I could almost picture the amused look on his face. The face I imagined was alarmingly like Lord Elric’s from my dream.
I was trying too hard. And I was ashamed to know that it fooled him not in the least.
I started with a pawn. The pawn, I’d learned, was practically powerlessness, a mere echo of the seven other identical pieces. It could only move forward, one slow step at a time, breaking its pattern to move diagonally only in the incredibly unlikely event that it was able to catch a more worthy piece off-guard and capture it. When there was enough action on the battlefield, the pawn might just get away with it. But to begin the game, the pawn
’s one-time ability of moving forward not one, but two spaces would have to be most I hoped for from the pathetic piece.
“So,” I began as my fingers left the ivory pawn in the middle of the empty battlefield. “Why only white roses?”
The lord commanded a bolder first move, guiding one of his black knights to leap over the unbroken chain of black pawns guarding his king.
“Do flowers interest you?” he asked curiously as his leather glove retreated to the fold of his arms.
I gripped another pawn tightly as I guided it two steps forward. The pawns could only hold on to such bravado when the battlefield seemed relatively clear, so there was no sense in wasting the weak figure’s unwarranted enthusiasm.
I shrugged. “Not really. But I like color.”
He moved a black pawn one space forward lazily, forfeiting its one-time chance to leap forward double that amount. “What flowers do you imagine should live in my garden?”
Annoyed by his smugness, I moved my white king forward one space to where a pawn had just been. “Violet lilies grow on the hilltop by my home.”
He didn’t remark on my emphasis. “And where should we plant the lilies?” he asked, sending a black pawn one step forward again.
“Perhaps around the fountain.” I took another white pawn and let it jump forward its first single space. “If pulling up some of the stones to allow the dirt in would be all right.”
“Perhaps,” he said casually, guiding a black bishop out on a long diagonal trek to the thrust of the battlefield and taking the life of one white pawn with no more guilt than a chicken devouring a worm.
“It would be a shame to lose any of the white roses,” I said, flicking another white pawn two steps forward. “Which is why I suggested adding new space for flowers.”
The lord nudged a black pawn forward two paces to match mine. “Perhaps we can pick some of the lilies for transplantation during the wedding. Is that what you would like me to say?”
