Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  “Concentrate,” she muttered. “Heath?”

  Graceful and self possessed even in plastic booties, the intern hefted his eyebrows. “What’s up?”

  “I wondered…”

  “Quit bogging down the tour, Itty. You heard the woman: ‘please come.’” He smiled. “I don’t know if you care but I’d rather not wrestle a language barrier to the floor. Today we are nice Americans. Let’s just play obedient peasant, okay?”

  That peculiar feeling slipped over her of being Heath’s understudy rather than the reverse, but she didn’t mind. There were a thousand things worse than feeling subservient to Heath Fischer.

  Trailing the tour group, Maria and Heath passed through the doorway of a new room.

  “King Carrrrrrol’s wife, Queen Eleeeeeesabeth, spent much time in this room,” the tour guide trilled and beckoned to the book-lined walls. “For a queen she is reading so much.”

  Maria tipped her head back, gawking at the collection. Heath’s quiet, satisfied laughter brought her chin down and her mouth closed. The wonder, however, remained. Never before had she experienced a room spinning with so many delights. Books everywhere from ceiling to floor; more books than she’d ever seen collected in a private library. Books in muted pastel colors or masculine leather binding. Where the sun touched them, gilt embellishments winked, turning plain cloth-bound volumes into royal treasures. Books caged neatly behind gingerbread-house glass, or living and breathing in the silence of the open room.

  The familiar escapism of reading began to solace her. Peles Castle: so far removed from the stress of design block and L.A.’s non-reading populace, it almost seemed a hallucination.

  It was not the palace she belonged to, it was this library. Maria gripped her intern’s arm. “I want it all.”

  A short laugh. “Yeah. Bet you do.”

  The foreign guide stepped to one side. “In the king’s library were t’ousands of books. In languages Romanian, Russian, German, English…”

  Maria, feeling the weight of knowing only English, turned a full circle. “We’re definitely casting this library in our film.”

  “Then I know you’ll want a photo.” Heath raised her camera and squinted through the viewfinder.

  Like he would know how to work a manual focus. Maria swiped at the camera. Heath pulled it out of reach with a quick, lopsided smile.”

  “Ah-ah. I’m the one with the badge,” he said.

  She released him. “I can’t believe I paid twenty lei for your blurry little pictures.”

  Heath grinned. “Give me your tablet and I’ll impress you.”

  “That’s an expensive camera dragged through customs specifically for this purpose. I only work with quality photos.”

  “And I work only with touch-screens,” he boomed.

  The tour guide’s and other guests’ voices dwindled. All notice centered on the pleasantly arguing Americans grappling with a Nikon.

  Maria blushed and shoved Heath in the ribs with the side of her arm. “Try not to let your hands shake.”

  “Ex-cuse me.” The woman guide wedged herself between them and stole back the tour group’s attention with a pointed cough.

  “In this room,” she said, lilting on the middle word, “was built secret staircase from library to royal bedroom. This way King Carrrrrrol could move about palace without seeing visitors. Can anyone tell me where is hidden the door?”

  The crowd shuffled a few stepped closer to inspect the books. Maria turned to a shelf. A yellow-bound volume caught her eye. Fairytales, they looked like. And what could be a better place to conceal a secret passage than behind a book of fairytales?

  She tapped the glass in front of the books. “Here?”

  A giggle or two leaked out from some German students in the corner. The guide acknowledged them with a caramel-colored flicker of a gaze.

  “The king’s study is on the opposite side of that wall, which is four inches thick.” She sing-songed the word ‘side’ and descended further from the note with each word.

  For the second time in five minutes, Maria blushed. Heath bent close again, his nearness overwhelming her.

  “Gotta give it to you, Itty,” he murmured. “You’ve got a brain for mystery; few people would think to look for a staircase in a four-inch-thick wall. Should’ve consulted you for building-plans.”

  Disgruntled, Maria tucked her tablet under her left arm and made for the windows toward the right side of the room.

  “Can anyone tell me where is secret staircase?” the guide repeated. “I will buy an ice-cream cone for the person who tells me first. After hours.” Sing-song. The cadence of her voice would have annoyed Maria if it hadn’t felt peculiarly relaxing.

  Heath pointed to a set of books papered in light blue, right-hand wall. “These?”

  The guide beamed at him. “Dah. Behind those books is the lever to open the secret door. I will make a joke: meet me for ice-cream later. After five o’clock.” Sing-song, sing-song, sing.

  Of course Heath would find it. Heath, who could walk in plastic booties without crinkling. A feeling almost like sleep settled at the back of Maria’s eyes. She yawned, touching off a responsive yawn from an elderly gentleman to her left.

  The guide narrowed her eyes again: her version of a smile. “Not yet,” Sing-song. “Sleep is for Royal Bedroom. Next is music hall. Please come.”

  But she didn’t want to leave this room that made her feel drowsy for the first time in what seemed like years. The tour floated off and Maria stayed behind. She wanted to see the fairytale book again. Curious, Maria slid the palm of her hand over the door-frame through which they’d entered the library. Yeah, four inches. No space for a staircase, even if it had been her idea, and therefore obviously a good one. She dragged her fingers lightly across the bookcase. Where had that yellow book gone? Ah, here it was: The Spindle. What a pretty name. The case thrummed. Strange. But at the same time caution raised its head, Maria’s drowsiness increased.

  “Hey, Maria.”

  She was conscious, without actually seeing, that Heath had poked his head back into the room and wanted her.

  But the glass casing hummed beneath her hand, its beauty physically drawing her near: hundreds of unfamiliar stories in unfamiliar languages, made friends by their livery of leather and cloth and goldleaf. If only there was no barrier between her and the books. If only she could touch them—just touch their spines and run her fingers across a page or two—the glass—how strong could it be? Would they even have an alarm system?

  “Birthday girl?”

  Heath, at least, remembered it was her birthday.

  “Hush.” Her voice grated in her own ears. Silence, sing-song silence. The proper language for this temple of books. Silence and an hour with the cases thrown open. Was it too much to desire?

  Heath pinched her arm. “Hey, Itty.”

  The glass hummed stronger, a dizzying sensation coursing from her fingers and palm straight to her heart. In the foggy background stood Heath, bull-horning his way into her life, as usual. But the books: the only thing in this castle not reminding her of looming work deadlines. The only thing that could bring peace and rest.

  Blessed rest.

  She had to touch just one. Maria rattled the case but it was locked, of course. She growled and shook the glass, beating it with frustrated, wild hands. She didn’t even want all the books. Just the yellow Spindle. A bedtime story and then she could sleep.

  Heath snapped his fingers near her ear. “Hey. Hey! What are you trying to do? Break it?”

  “Yes.” Maria balled-up her fist.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I need to sleep.” Without a twinge of guilt, without a shard of hesitation Maria sent her hand through the bookcase.

  The case shattered in utter silence. Glass spangled the carpet. Glass caught in her blue plastic booties and her nut-brown hair. Glass sliced her hands and her scarlet blood rained down on the beautiful yellow Spindle. At this point, two things happened
. Strange but familiar, in the way all fateful things can be.

  First, an incense-laden wind freshened in her face from the books within.

  Second, Heath vanished from her sight. The books were suddenly separated by a yawning, arrow-shaped doorway leading to—oh, wouldn’t they feel silly for not believing her—to a staircase.

  She plucked The Spindle off the shelf and tucked it under her arm on top of her tablet. Her blouse brushed a fresh wound to her knuckles and she hissed, re-positioning the pretty yellow book.

  The Spindle. What a haunting, perfectly beautiful name. She hoped the blood would wash off its binding. A shame to spill her blood on The Spindle. And on her birthday, too.

  How Heath would laugh.

  “You little minx!” Heath’s voice came at her blurry and warped as the staircase sharpened in view.

  What did he want from her? For her to leave this rush of triumph and the spindle-book beneath her arm? Come fully back to her senses and finish the tour? Because Heath, the first man she’d dared to fall for, wished it? Oh no. She was right about the staircase and dizzy with the fact. What else might she be right about that she hadn’t yet thought to wonder? Worlds within worlds fought their way into her consciousness. Begged her to explore them.

  Suddenly, Heath grabbed her arm. The first time he’d touched her (pulling her from the path of an oncoming Uber in L.A.) a thrill had shot up her arm, straight to her jaw and murmured there. Those were the exact words written in the margin lines of her meeting notes—she’d memorized them. But now she flicked him away, waspish, and did not want him.

  Leave me be, she meant to say, but it never came out. With a dazed laugh that seemed to belong not exactly to herself, Maria stepped into the stairway and the world she knew vanished.

  II.

  The Staircase

  All the light had fled, which disconcerted her.

  The wooliness too, but she welcomed a bit of clarity.

  Maria stood within the wall and sniffed. Must. Old books. A comforting smell to someone who rummaged in other peoples’ castaway histories for fun. Within the odors of age-damp paper, cracked binding, and fading ink and incense lurked something deliciously golden and autumnal in scent: apples. Maria peeled off those awful plastic booties and scuffed her Toms against the floor. Rough-hewn stone, not wood or marble like the rest of the castle’s interior. Had she left Peles Castle, then? Maria tapped the flashlight icon on her tablet screen and lit up the narrow passage in which she stood. Behind, where she’d burst through the bookcase, the wall was smooth and plastered white over the stone. She felt with her fingers for a secret door, but the passage stood solid as honesty. Not Peles. Someplace different. Forward, then.

  Maria stooped slightly to keep from bumping her head against the roof of the stairwell—there might be spiders—and descended the staircase with hopeful caution. After twenty-six steps, Maria’s forgetfulness of her claustrophobia failed.

  Don’t panic, Itty. Don’t you dare panic. She forced several calm breaths. See, that’s air. That’s oxygen. You’re fine. It loomed behind her memories, though, older than nightmare: a great blackness—layers of it—blotting out light, just as if she’d been put in a heavy, narrow box. It was a heavy, narrow box—layers of boxes. That was the dream—memory. Whatever.

  Maria wished for Heath’s hand to hold, even though she’d never, in eighty-million years, be brave enough to grab it. Still, it would be something to have company in this sealed-up stairwell.

  No, girl, it would mean even less air for you. Quit freaking out. You would not want Heath here.

  If there was no way out in front, and no way out behind, what was left? Up?

  “Okay… okay.”

  Maria tiptoed and pressed the slates above her head at the very bottom of the stairs. To her complete surprise, the stone shifted. She pressed a little harder, squeaked when a small avalanche of dust and daddy-long-legs fell out, and finished heaving the stone aside. Above her head glared a square a bit darker than her present darkness, just large enough to wrench herself through if she could manage to pull up that high. She dropped The Spindle and her tablet, leaving the flashlight on. In a burst of ambition, Maria tried to haul herself into the space. In three seconds, her arms gave way.

  “Curse you, gogosi,” she growled, thinking guiltily of the fifth pillow of sweet, fried dough she had snuck that morning when Heath was speaking with the hotel proprietor at breakfast. It wasn’t exactly her fault the exchange rate made apple strudel and gogosi and every other mouth-watering pastry under the Romanian flag a matter of fifty cents or less. Maria tried for a pull up once more before giving up. She’d never get out of here by upper arm strength. The passage measured only just wider than the hole—how glad Maria felt that she had no company at this moment.

  Grunting, straining, and muttering a few choice terms to the silent space around, Maria braced arms and legs on either side of the narrow passage and shimmied up the wall. With more effort than prowess, she managed to work her head and shoulders into the darkness above, but could come no higher. Another roof pressed against her scalp.

  No. Maria’s throat ached with sudden tears. Below, The Spindle’s cover glowed an eerie shade of green, or maybe it was the color cast off from her tablet’s LED light. There had to be a way around this. Panting, shrinking from the touch of the unknown, Maria felt in all directions around her. Three hand spans to the left, three to the right, then smooth, slick walls. In front and behind, she could not feel the end of the darkness. And that suffocating roof above, more than ever like the lid to that box in her night terrors. She knocked against it with her knuckles and because it felt less solid than the stone purgatory below, Maria opted to continue. Eyes squeezed shut, body tensed and shuddering with the effort, Maria shifted herself at an angle up and out of the hole and into the black box. Panicked, Maria sensed the lid of this awful little hell inches from her face—her breath hit it and flooded back into her nose and mouth. She choked and held her breath.

  Suffocation was better than knowing the awful confinement of this tiny place. Here, there seemed barely enough space for her body. Maria crossed her arms over her chest to keep from feeling the walls of this strange, horizontal passage, but it touched her anyway; her head, her feet.

  At least if I die here, she thought, I’m already in a grave. Ghoulish, the truth kick boxed Maria in her gut:

  This was no passage.

  This was no escape.

  This was a coffin.

  “I frustrate myself with my own insipidness. I paint, I play, I write, I charm. But not well enough. Not well enough to make him notice or love me. We are married only in word, I fear. I, who swore from my girlhood to marry for love or not at all. Royal children inherit an invisible crown and he wears that crown at all times, even to bed. I cannot get near him. How easily the self-promises of youth fade, lulled to sleep by the careworn hands of experience.”

  Queen Elisabeth blotted the inked page, shut the pearled clasp of her tooled leather journal, and, feeling expressed if not better, pressed the buzzer on the wall behind her desk. Perhaps she’d publish those words under the name “Carmen Sylva” as she did all the others she liked the public to think entirely fictional. A jarring buzzer summoned one of the servants.

  The girl bobbed upon entry to the music parlor. “Your Highness?”

  “Has His Majesty returned from his hunt?”

  “No, Highness.”

  “You will remember to alert me when he does return?”

  “Yes, Highness.”

  The Queen remained at her desk, toying with her pen after the girl’s exit. She looked to the several excellent paintings on the walls, to the dark wainscoting, the marble cornices and expensive draperies. Castula Peles, their summer home, was halfway complete after years of construction. For this she ought to have been thankful. So many years of tradesmen and craftsmen, dust and bother. Enduring life in Bucharest when they both wanted nothing more than to be here in the glacier-like freshness of the Carp
athian mountains. Short summer visits to Germany to visit relatives while the heaviest work was completed. Trips here, to see how the work got on or—if the work was at a lull—to stay for a few weeks and imagine the grandeur of the modern wonder. Now here they were: the King and Queen of Romania in a palace soon to have its own cinema and central vacuuming system, not to mention heating and cooling. And were they happy?

  After a fashion, she supposed they were.

  Light footsteps. “Your Highness? King Carol has returned.”

  The queen glanced up and arranged a smile. “Thank you, Mariana.”

  The girl curtsied and dropped away as her queen wove through the library, office, weapons room, solarium, down the red-carpeted staircase, through the foyer, through the latticed wood doors, out to the courtyard. Her husband was dismounting just now from his horse, handsome as any one of the men depicted in the merry, brightly-colored murals above him. He handed the reins to a stable hand and drank from the fountain before turning to her.

  “Karl.” The queen greeted him with a polite smile. It would be for him to kiss her or not. “I trust your hunt was successful?”

  Today, as usual, he gave no kiss. Instead, a curated smile and a gloved hand to her spine, guiding her with him out the arch and onto the beautiful piazzas.

  “The Fox lives to run another day, I fear,” he spoke. “Pleasant morning?”

  Her heart throbbed. “Mmm. Quite uneventful.”

  They paused at one of the newer statues. Karl fingered the cherub’s wings with an abstracted expression. Elisabeth squinted at the view in the distance as if some new mountain had sprung up in Sinaia. In truth, she couldn’t bear the hope of waiting for a loving smile from her husband. They did not come often but they came sometimes, and it hurt to wait for them. The long portions of time between stretched the walls of her heart past bearing.

  “Your little club meeting tonight?” he asked at length.

  Elisabeth nettled under her husband’s casual treatment of her renowned musical soirees, but she knew him well enough to understand he did not care whether she was, or was not pleased.