Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  “Nonsense. Of course you will.” Carlotta moved her mouth to his ear and when she spoke next her words were a honey-laden caress: “Go awaken her. Show her eternity. You know it is what we all long to see.”

  Heath’s muscles tensed with hatred. “Never.”

  But Carlotta had begun to sing again. Her voice filled his ears and the room hummed till the tiles shook out of their cement and rattled like castanets. He was half aware of Carlotta’s fingers stroking his palm again, of the fabric of her skirts tangling around his feet as she wove in front and behind. Then, with a rending sound, the worlds divided and Heath awoke, startled, on the steps of an old stone church.

  The year was 1897 and this time, his internship paid in blood.

  V.

  The Mission

  By the afternoon of the second day, Maria had almost forgotten what life was like in modernity. Not forgotten entirely, because that would mean forgetting about Toms and latte art and her collection of leather-bound Shakespeare, but those things had faded like a dream. At first Maria had been concerned with getting back to modernity. The longer she stayed, however, the less certain she became that returning to her former life was what she wanted. Maybe she should not try to find her modern life again. Here, she was treated like a princess because she was a princess. The servants—most of them—respected her. She had a bedroom larger than her L.A. apartment and a sitting room attached to it. Damask walls, four-poster curtained bed, wardrobe stuffed to the gills with fine dresses and real jewels. And—best of all, she had slept. Ioan held her in suspicion, certainly, but her parents knew the truth. They would never believe a limpet-like man full of petty jealousy. No, Maria had little to vex her in this new life as part of the royal family.

  In the next day or two, she would meet her cousin and the adopted heir-to-the-throne, Ferdinand, when he returned from a diplomatic mission. Queen Elisabeth’s favorite lady, Elena, had been very kind to Maria. Why, Maria had even watched King Carol and Ioan play a game of chess together after breakfast and had almost enjoyed it. She had family here. A world that not only wanted her, but possibly needed her.

  Even if that were not true—if she inflated her importance to a country she’d barely heard about until two weeks ago—Maria enjoyed knowing more than everyone else for once. The satisfaction lay within when she walked through the unfinished castle like a demi-goddess, knowing what was to come. It felt like the old photos of Disneyland—the ones with Walt Disney smiling beside a fresh hole in the ground where the Carousel would eventually be. All the promises of what was to come, none of the proof. But she’d seen the future—been there—and found pleasure in watching the palace in its toddling stage.

  Guilt niggled at Maria anytime she entertained the idea of trying to find a way home. Her mother, the queen, loved her desperately. It would be like committing murder, she thought, to strip away a daughter again from the woman.

  Yes, were it not for the fact that being permanently away from Heath felt like being stabbed in the gut, Maria thought she would be content to stay here forever.

  “Ferdinand will arrive this afternoon,” Queen Elisabeth said as the two walked arm and arm in the Moorish room. “He cannot wait to see you, I am sure.”

  Maria lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “He is your cousin, Maria. Karl and I adopted him after…” Elisabeth squeezed Maria’s arm to her side. “He has grown to be a handsome man. Very charming. Talented, well-traveled… married to Queen Victoria of England’s granddaughter. The Princess Marie of Edinburgh. Rather overawed by your father, they say.”

  “Gosh, I wonder why?”

  A laugh flashed in Elisabeth’s blue eyes. “Marie is Crown Princess and quite popular… though there is some…” the queen’s color mounted. “Some scandal attached to her at this moment.”

  “Will Ferdinand be any good as a king?” Maria asked.

  Elisabeth looked at her seriously. “I think he… I do not know. But when you love a person, does it matter?”

  “You’re talking about my father?”

  Her face crumpled into a sad smile. “I am talking about many people. We love them. We do not always see them as useful, but essential nevertheless. I loved Karl when I married him. I respect and understand him now. Which must we really count as love?”

  They paced a moment among the low furniture, thinking this over. At least, Maria thought it over. She became weary of pacing the heavy scarlet room, but to sit also seemed tedious.

  “Could we go outside for a while?”

  Elisabeth brightened. “I could summon the horses for a ride.”

  “I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”

  “This, then,” said the Queen with a smile, “I will take you in the carriage to town.”

  Maria found the offer of touring Sinaia in a phaeton attractive. But the family had agreed last night not to spread the news of her return until a plausible explanation could be formulated. It would not do to have the entire world hear of the magic. Would she be reintroduced as the Princess Maria or an adopted duchess or lady?

  “If we go into town won’t the people begin to wonder who I am?”

  “Oh, that.” Elisabeth patted her hand. “We’ll say you are a cousin visiting from Germany. No one will think a thing of it.”

  Mother and daughter wound through the working men and construction mess. Elisabeth spoke to the people on her way and Maria, entirely at a loss as to what was particularly said, watched their faces brighten and their pace increase. They wanted to please her because she tried to please them, an attractive arrangement. Maria saw what it meant to them to live under an understanding queen.

  By the monastery walls an open carriage waited, all tooled leather and eager horseflesh. Maria joined the queen inside, less gracefully but quite as anxious as the horses to be off.

  Down, down, down the mountainside the driver took them, past elegant buildings and shabby ones, marketplaces and barking dogs. A light, chilly breeze lifted Maria’s hat but it was firmly attached to her chignon with a heavy cow’s horn pin and at no risk of flying off.

  How funny the peasant women looked with layers and layers up top, bundled against an imaginary chill, bare legs poking out like sticks from short, faded skirts. And the peasant men too with their beetling eyebrows and square, raspy chins. Here wheedled a gypsy, there minced a gentlewoman and her two daughters. An artist sketched against that post, and there, climbing down from a horse-drawn omnibus with a frown upon his face was—

  “HEATH?” Scarcely thinking, Maria scrambled down from the carriage, grateful in her heedless way that they had not been going above a crawl through the cobbled town. At her shout through the otherwise dignified square, activity suspended. Everyone, including the queen, watched as Maria pelted through the crowd and flung herself into Heath’s arms. She grabbed his shirt in her hands and buried her nose against his chest, breathing in the clean, modern smell of her intern: his solidness, his realness.

  “Gosh, Maria.” He clutched her to himself and rocked side to side, squashing her nose against his shirt buttons.

  She twisted the back of his shirt in tight, sweaty fists and rubbed her face in his shoulder. When she’d finished reminding herself of his peculiar blend of cologne, new leather, and Barbasol shaving cream, she pulled away. How beautiful to cling to someone familiar, of her own place and time. And heart.

  “I have never been happier to see anyone in my whole life.” She touched Heath’s face with her palm, stroking his smooth skin. “You’re real and you’re here and you can tell these people I’m not crazy!”

  Something about him was off. Unrelenting. That was the word for Heath’s stiffness under her hand. Being that he was the sort of person who liked his dignity, Maria realized that this was the least of all dignified ways in which she could have greeted him. She let go, straightened, and brushed her bangs out of her eyes with a shy grin.

  “So… welcome to the past.”

  Heath’s brown eyes raked her over with
an expression like relief. “You look… like a gentlewoman.”

  She glanced down at her dark blue bustled and corseted dress and fingered the fichu of lace cascading at her throat. “Yeah. A lot less comfy than a Henley and jeans. Gosh, I miss my Toms.”

  Heath did not quite smile but looked at her kindly and gripped her shoulder. “I’m really glad you’re safe.”

  Maria looked around the marketplace. “Well, I’m kind of the princess and they tend to guard that sort of thing. Did you know that’s who I am?”

  “That you’re the princess? I… yeah. Someone told me.”

  Joy licked at Maria’s heart like a candle flame. “Oh, then someone else from my world knows about this? When it happened, you know, I was a little worried I would be lost forever. I mean, it isn’t every day someone actually time-travels. They’ll probably want to study me or something.”

  A thought lippity-lipped through her contentment. “Uh-oh. Will they stick me with needles? Would it be that kind of study? Because I would not be all about that.”

  Heath gripped her arm. “Look, Maria. There’s a whole lot going on that I don’t understand… but we need to talk.”

  The livid intensity of his eyes knocked away from her tongue all ready remarks.

  “Okay Can you… just come this way.” Maria wrapped her forefinger around Heath’s pinky and tugged him toward the carriage.

  “Mother, may I introduce Heath Fischer to you?”

  The queen nodded to him and extended her hand, which Heath took and kissed. As she watched, Maria smiled. His immaculate poise did have its place. She didn’t feel remotely like being annoyed with how easily he handled meeting a European dignitary. And now that he was here, they could stay. Together.

  “Is Mr. Fischer an acquaintance of special importance?” the queen inquired behind her gloved hand as Heath helped Maria into the carriage.

  Maria didn’t try to dissolve the silly grin which slid across her face. “He was my intern. Intern? Oh, well… the film company I worked for assigned him to be… I guess my assistant.”

  Her mother smiled. “Charming.”

  “Yes, he is a little bit charming, isn’t he?” Maria folded her hands in her lap and sighed happily. This day was going so well. Of course her brain ached to know how Heath had followed her, but she was so very glad he did that it trivialized her curiosity.

  “I assume you would rather return to the house than continue on with our outing?” asked the queen.

  “If you don’t mind terribly much.”

  “I do not mind,” said the queen. “I will simply ask the stables to saddle Pasha for me. I will go riding with Margot and Elena.”

  “Her ladies-in-waiting,” Maria translated for Heath, who had fallen silent again.

  After some small difficulty in turning the phaeton around in the busy street, the driver took them back through the construction. Maria recognized bluff, solid Cristian at work among the other men. She hailed him as they passed. Recognizing her, he stood straighter and waved. A handsome Romani. A kind, honest man.

  “Who’s that?” Heath asked.

  Maria blinked at the suspicion in his tone. “Just Cristian. He helped me get into the palace. You can’t just walk up and say, ‘Hello, I don’t know who I am but I disappeared in your bookcase here,’ you know.”

  “Yeah. Bet not.”

  “He’s a real solid guy, Heath. He took good care of me.”

  “Mr. Fischer,” Elisabeth began, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you have a very noble face. I should like to draw it at some point.”

  Heath’s eyes crinkled. “My face is at your disposal, Your Majesty.”

  “Good.” She laughed and clapped her hands like a girl. “This whole business is so mysterious but such good fun.”

  They drew up to the palace courtyard and were helped from the carriage by a liveried servant. Maria twined her fingers in and out of each other as she waited for Heath to dismount, waited as the queen ordered her horse saddled, waited as the horse came and the queen made small talk with Heath, waited as the servants disbanded and she and Heath were finally alone.

  Maria came to him again and linked her arm through his. “Let’s walk about for a moment.”

  Heath had his head tipped back, viewing the murals. “‘Walk about for a moment?’ What has this place done to your vocabulary, Itty?”

  She sobered. “Itty… that’s what they call me here, too. Apparently that was what they always called me.” Reality ensnared her lighter mood. “Heath, how did I get here?”

  He told her then, all the difficult, loathsome truth and though she’d heard most of it, by the end of his recitation, Maria felt leaden-hearted. She sat on the marble edge of one of the terraces between two dog statues and rubbed her forehead. Heath sank beside her.

  “I can’t understand why I don’t have a single memory from my childhood,” Maria admitted.

  “Do people usually remember things from when they were three?” Heath’s tone lacked blood. Maria noticed the dark circles under his eyes. He looked positively ghoulish.

  She dared to smooth his hair away from his hot temples with gentle fingertips. “Look, why don’t you go inside and take a rest? I’ll take you to the guest quarters. I don’t actually know where they are yet, but Ioan can tell me. He’s very helpful, once you get past the fact that he looks like a famished vampire.”

  “And who’s Ioan?” Heath growled.

  “You can sometimes act super jealous,” Maria chided. She patted her intern’s very good hair, then froze. “Wait… are you jealous?” He couldn’t possibly be because if he was jealous, that meant he wished other people wouldn’t have what he wanted to have himself which would be— “Heath Fischer! Are you in love with me?”

  Heath stood and filled the space in front of her with his firmness. “Maria Wied. Are you crazy?”

  She thought she knew what that question meant, but then again, she had never been the best at social nuances and translating the unspoken.

  “I am crazy… for you?” She hadn’t meant for the end of the sentence to bend itself into a question mark like that. She ducked her chin and felt even the tips of her ears turn coral.

  Heath only looked at her with a face that said she’d done all right and nodded toward the house. “A rest would be fantastic, actually.”

  “Okay. So you promise you won’t murder Ioan?”

  It had to be her imagination that he prickled like a human hedgehog at that joke. “I have no intention of doing any such thing, princess.”

  Maria took his arm and hugged it close to her side. She had to trot to keep up with each of his long strides, but she didn’t care. Heath was back. He’d know what to do. He was never out of the right answers. Plus, he loved her.

  Heath closed the door of his lush bedroom as Maria and the cadaverous fellow exited, and shoved shaky fingers through his hair. Already, he felt Carlotta’s curse at work. Heath spread out his options like cards. Where was his ace? There had to be a way out of this that did not including returning The Spindle to Carlotta or killing Maria.

  They could just stay here, back in time. He would refuse to kill Maria and Carlotta wouldn’t have to know.

  Heath considered it for a while. It had its attractions as well as two key problems: Carlotta would know and she could send someone else through to kill both of them. Besides, they weren’t two normal humans deciding at random to live in a different era. Maria was royalty. Heath had listened to Carlotta’s informative, faux-English tour of Peles Castle. He knew the king and queen had adopted a nephew as heir and that said nephew had married one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters.

  This was high-octane roulette they dabbled in. Depose the heir-apparent and his British monarch bride and what sort of mayhem would break loose? Heath wasn’t sure if Maria could even legally inherit the throne, but she would be expected to marry influentially, and how might that change history? What position would Romania then hold in relation to the rest of Europe? If Maria married s
ome foreign prince (Heath would rather die than watch that happen), how might that affect the course of time? Would Russia absorb them as it had so often threatened to do? In 1897 there were two world wars still to come—if he and Maria shifted the political climate even the slightest degree, would the Kaiser applaud? Would Adolf Hitler kiss their cheeks and call them angels? And what of all the million other things such a choice would change? History had had its deadly moments. Perhaps by staying they could change the course of the world to avoid such an end. Perhaps by staying they would set off such a series of explosions as would destroy the world before the modern era had opportunity to arrive.

  The questions had a ravishingly simple answer: they could not stay.

  Second option, then: they could both return to modernity and deal with Carlotta on that side. The Spindle was in Maria’s possession, Heath assumed. Could they conduct the magic themselves to pass through the bookcase again? Did one person have to stay behind to make the magic? Heath shied from it with the sense of a horse smelling sulphur. Maria could do it, possibly, but he had no faith. No faith in magic, no faith in his ability to conduct magic. And Maria’s return—or death—and the return of the book of sorcery were the primary targets of Heath’s indenture.

  Suddenly dizzy, Heath lowered himself to the floor. Absently, he picked at the crimson threads in the carpet beneath him. His stomach roiled. All the blood in his fingertips buzzed with an uncommon chill. The illness had strengthened since coming through the monastery at Cotroceni and Heath feared it. Twice, as he’d spoken with Maria, murder had flickered through his mind; when she hugged him and formed her softness against his unyielding figure, he thought how easy it would be to put a knife through her. Then, when she’d asked him if he loved her—in that moment when all reason melted and ‘yes’ was pounding through his core—something dark and livid whispered that he could easily drown her in the fountain near which they sat. And this time, there would be no witnesses.