The Starlight Slippers

by Susan Maupin Schmid

  A Footman set a bowl of pale green soup before me.

  “Such a fashionable color for soup,” the lady said.

  I picked up my spoon.

  Ninety jiggled around my knees. I’d asked to be someone the Princess would listen to. And obviously, she respected Madame Zerlina’s opinion. But the Princess had a mind of her own. I couldn’t save her from the slippers by scaring her—or tempting her with something fancier. Still, there had to be some way to keep her out of those shoes!

  But what?

  “You must really like it,” the lady said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I glanced down at my empty bowl. I hadn’t tasted a bite.

  I ended up remaining for the entire affair. Between the eager lady on my right and the lavender-coated gentleman on my left, I’d been shoveled full of food and forced to converse. All the while I kept glancing over my shoulder, praying that Madame Zerlina wouldn’t appear and expose me as a phony.

  It was only after the last plate had been cleared away that I was able to steal off. I was stuffed. So after I returned Ninety to the closet, I waddled to the Girls’ dormitory to rest before my evening’s adventure.

  A gloss of sunshine coated the room. The beds were made. The vases freshened with new daisies from the greenhouses. The floors swept. The rugs beaten. And I had it all to myself. I went to stretch out on my eiderdown, when I found a row of buttons on my pillow. A big blue button, four small diamond buttons, and the enameled button from the watercolor floral.

  Bonbon!

  I scooped the buttons up and stashed them in my pocket. I’d have to get them put back before Marci noticed they were missing. One diamond button was worth more than her year’s salary. She’d baste me into a shroud if she thought I’d taken them!

  I plopped down on my rug and yanked my crate out from under my bed. I’d give that mouse miss a piece of my mind!

  The crate was empty.

  Where did those mice disappear to?

  I pushed the crate back under the bed and lay on top of my covers. The next thing I knew, the white dormitory walls were drowning in a rose-gold sunset. I sat up and stretched. I’d missed supper, but I wasn’t hungry. I combed my hair, retied my ribbon, and made sure the key was in my pocket.

  Then, whistling, I set off on my next jaunt. On my way, I passed Marci’s desk, put the buttons back where they belonged, and eyed the glimmering opals on the starlight slippers.

  “I’m watching you,” I told them, just in case they were listening. The starlight opals sparkled with a bluer gleam.

  If they hadn’t heard me, the magic had. Satisfied, I opened the closet door.

  The dresses stirred in the evening breeze from the open window. Lyric sang on his perch.

  “I need to go to Lady Kaye’s room,” I told them. “Who wants to come?”

  Forty flared its sapphire taffeta skirt my way. I helped it off the hanger and stepped into its crisp folds. The taffeta made a crinkly sound as it rustled around me. In the mirror, Aster, Lady Kaye’s maid, glowered at me. I grinned back.

  “This is great,” I told Forty.

  I started for the door and then stopped.

  “Pardon me,” I said.

  I hiked up Forty’s skirt, dug the key out of my apron pocket, and tucked it in the sash around the dress’s waist.

  “All set,” I said. “See you later, Lyric.”

  The canary trilled at me, but I was already turning the doorknob. Dulcie stood on the other side of the door, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Good evening, Darling,” she said.

  “Dulcie,” I said before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be Darling. “Er, little girl, shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”

  Dulcie laughed so hard she slapped her thigh.

  “You should see your face!” she cried, laughing harder. “You look like you swallowed a lice-infested prune!”

  “Now see here, young lady,” I said, wagging a finger in her face. “Don’t make me speak to Mrs. Pepperwhistle about you.”

  “You won’t,” she said, wiping away tears. “You like me too much, Darling.”

  Exasperated and desperate to get rid of her, I tried again.

  “I don’t know who this Darling person is, but—”

  “I’ve been following you,” she said. “I know all about those dresses.”

  At that, I grabbed her by her skinny little arm and hauled her into the closet.

  “Dulcie, this isn’t funny,” I said. “You could get us both in serious trouble.”

  “You never get caught,” she said. “And if you take me with you—” She pantomimed locking her lips and tossing away the key.

  “So that’s how it is,” I said.

  She nodded, lips clamped shut.

  “Do you know that they send blackmailers to prison?” I asked.

  “Sure, but what do they do to Girls who take dresses that don’t belong to them?” she shot back, unsealing her mouth.

  What could I do?

  I warned her not to say anything to anyone we saw, threatened her with dire consequences if she got me in trouble, and took her with me.

  At this time of evening, the castle sat bathed in sunset colors, breathless and waiting for dinner to end and the halls to spill over with people. I hustled Dulcie along to the west wing as fast as her feet could fly. Aster was probably in the Upper-servants’ lounge, since the Baroness would be dining with the Princess. But I didn’t know if the private servants lingered over tea and conversation, as the Under-servants did in the kitchens. Gillian was almost finished with her book, and she’d want the key again as soon as she was.

  I didn’t intend to wait one more day to get my hands on the armoire.

  The peach-colored corridor by the Baroness’s room glowed in dark salmon shadows. Dulcie ran her finger along the frieze of mice as she skipped beside me. When she hit the missing patches, she yelped.

  “There’s holes here,” she said.

  “The plasterers probably haven’t gotten around to fixing them yet,” I told her with an oh-so-casual shrug. “Wedding stuff.”

  She looked dissatisfied with that explanation, but I pulled her along to the Baroness’s door.

  Which is when I reached my first big complication.

  How could I, Darling Wray Fortune, Heiress, find my long-lost and all-important inheritance with a nine-year-old busybody poking her nose into my armoire?

  I had to improvise on the spot.

  “Dulcie,” I said in the sort of whisper you save for really big secrets, “I need your help.”

  “What do you need?” she asked, all wide-eyed and sweet.

  Pushing down the weaselly-rat feeling that nibbled at my conscience, I said, “I need you to stay here in the hall.” She blinked. I plunged on, “Right here by this door. And be my lookout. Can you do that? It might be dangerous. If anyone comes, you need to knock twice on the door—and then have a hysterical fainting fit. Okay?”

  “Should I fall down on the floor after I’m done screaming?” she asked.

  “Sure, but only if someone comes,” I said.

  She planted herself by the door, in the same rigid posture adopted by the Princess’s own Guards.

  “I’ll be quick,” I said, patting her on the head, and slipped inside the Baroness’s rooms.

  The armoire waited in the purple-edged shadows of the darkening pink bedroom. The painted swan on the top glistened a pale shade of lavender. I knelt down and slipped the key in the top lock. Nothing. This had to be it! I knew it. It had belonged to Lady Amber; where better to have hidden an inheritance?

  I took a deep breath and tried the next drawer. One by one, I jiggled the key in each lock until I reached the last one.

  Forty trembled around me. I braced myself. This was it! This was the keyhole!
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  I slipped the key into the lock and turned.

  The key stuck fast. Gritting my teeth, I jangled the key as hard as I could. The key refused to budge, but the drawer flew open. Shocked, I yanked the key free and stared in the drawer.

  Yellowing handkerchiefs sat atop a pile of objects in the drawer. I drew them out. Faded hair ribbons. An ebony brush with a broken handle. A wad of musty letters tied together with gold cord. And a small, flat leather case.

  A jewel case?

  I picked it up and it flopped open. Inside was a miniature portrait of an old man with thick white hair, a white beard, and startlingly aquamarine eyes. He was handsome, with chiseled features and an air of nobility about him. He radiated authority; if he’d been an Upper-servant, he’d have ruled the castle. But at the same time, I couldn’t imagine this person serving anyone. He looked more kingly than King Richard did in his portrait hanging in the throne room.

  MAGNIFICENT WRAY, a tiny brass plate read.

  “Where’d you hide it?” I asked him. But of course the portrait didn’t answer.

  Boiling with frustration, I set it down and went back over the drawers, tweaking each handle. None of them were locked. And all of them were filled with assorted bits of junk and several pieces of jewelry: dangly pearl earrings, a pearl-and-ruby brooch, and an onyx ring, among others. But nothing that screamed inheritance.

  I stuck it all back in the armoire—except for the portrait. The more I stared into that face, the more it commanded my attention. This was my ancestor, the great architect, the man who had designed the castle. The one who’d poured into it all the magic he’d created from the siphoned virtues of the Wrays. I caressed the leather backing and felt a faint stirring of magic.

  I wanted to tuck the portrait into my pocket. I knew I shouldn’t, but he was my ancestor, not Lady Kaye’s. And she’d give it to me if she knew she had it.

  But she didn’t. And she hadn’t said I could have it either.

  Then I remembered what she’d said in the green room: People used to write secrets on the backs of paintings. Secrets like the location of family heirlooms.

  I flipped the case over. Nothing. And then I noticed a piece of paper peeking out of the bottom edge. I pulled the paper out. Magnificent Wray had written on it. Darling, it said, just as if he were speaking to me.

  A nearby wall rumbled. Startled, I stashed the paper in my apron pocket under Forty’s skirt. A piece of the wall slid away. Roger fell out onto the carpet, dropping a burlap sack and scattering a coiled rope, chalk, folded papers, and several unlit candles.

  “Uh!” he said, scrabbling for the wall’s edge.

  I tossed the case back into the drawer and shut it. Then I stood up and shook out Forty’s skirts. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Um, um…,” he babbled, his freckles white with fear.

  “It’s me—Darling,” I told him. “Not Aster.” I resisted the urge to giggle.

  “Why’d you scare me like that?” he demanded. “Jumping at me from behind walls? In a disguise, no less?”

  “What do you mean, jumping at you? I was here first. I have important key business to attend to,” I said, planting my fist on my hip. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for the library,” he said, scooping up his stuff and shoving it into his sack.

  “Without your maps?”

  “I’ve retraced some of my steps,” Roger continued. “I figured I’d work on the upstairs first. The cellars can wait.”

  “Huh,” I said, not wanting to seem too pleased. “Well, this is Lady Kaye’s bedroom, so you’re way off.”

  He scowled.

  “Thanks for trying,” I said. “Really. But Gillian got Lady Kaye to write her a note saying she could read the books. She’s been snooping around in there already.”

  “You might have told me that,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I replied. “We’ve all been so busy.”

  He took off his cap and dusted it on his pants. “I found something really special. Come see,” he said, and held out his hand.

  It was such an un-Roger-like thing to do that I took it.

  And he pulled me through the wall.

  My brother, Noble, yawned, bored. He’d never had the interest in Father’s pursuits that I had. I leaned so far forward, clutching my fur muff in my gloved hands despite the heat from the nearby furnace, that the goldsmith scolded me.

  “Stand back, Lady DeVere,” he said, beads of perspiration on his brow. “It’s a deadly beauty.”

  “So is she,” Noble said, laughing at his own joke.

  I smoothed the fur on my muff, ignoring him.

  “Will it hold them?” I asked Father.

  “Mere metal?” he said, raising his bushy white eyebrows. “Bosh. No. It’s not the gold; it’s what I’ll pour into the collar that counts.”

  “You can’t pour anything into solid gold, sir,” the goldsmith said, wrenching off his gloves as if ridding himself of the whole business.

  “You can’t,” Father said, his aquamarine eyes gleaming. “I can.”

  I shivered, knowing what he meant. I could feel the magic dancing in his fingertips. Humming in the air. I was filled with dread.

  Before he’d first squeezed magic out of nowhere, I’d been happier. More certain of myself. But since then it was as if someone had combed through my soul, and tiny fibers of it had been teased out. I felt thinner, somehow. Less.

  Noble laughed at him. “The Great Magnificent One,” he said. “Always good for a little excitement.” He sounded jolly, but his eyes were cold.

  Roger collected the lamp he’d stashed and led me up stair after dusty stair until my head swam.

  “We have to be almost to the roof,” I said, stopping to catch my breath.

  “We are,” Roger said. “We’re so high up that the dragons can hear us breathe.”

  “Really?” My heart thudded against my chest.

  Roger laughed at my discomfort. “Nah, they’re asleep, remember?”

  “Sure,” I said, knowing that they weren’t asleep. Not really. Underneath their hardened stone exterior, they were awake and aware. And watching. “What were you going to show me?”

  “This way,” he said. “Cleaning out the stable attic, I found stuff, great stuff. Nothing that would interest you, but it gave me an idea.”

  I bit my lip, resisting the urge to point out that he wouldn’t have been cleaning the stable attic if it weren’t for me.

  Around the next corner, under the massive wooden beams holding up the roof, was an alcove crisscrossed with chains. Heavy padlocks attached the chains to enormous bolts set in the stone walls. Behind the chains sat an iron-bound wooden door. A brass lock glimmered under the heavy brass doorknob.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Look real close,” Roger told me, holding his lamp out.

  I ducked my head under the chains and squinted.

  A starburst circled the brass keyhole.

  “That could be it,” Roger said.

  I dug the key out of my pocket and leaned as far forward as the chains would allow. But I was still inches short of the lock.

  “Oof,” I said, falling back. “I can’t reach it!”

  “Whoever chained this up saw to it that nobody would reach that door.” Roger’s grin split his freckles. His brown eyes glowed. “Which makes me wonder what’s behind it.”

  I studied the door as if the wood, iron, and brass contained some hint as to its purpose.

  “Know what I think?” Roger asked.

  “What?”

  “It’s a workshop.” He bumped my shoulder. “That Magnificent guy’s secret workshop.”

  “Who puts a secret workshop in the attic?” I said. “I’d put one in the cellar.”

  “The
cellars are full of folks doin’ some kind of work,” he replied. “How would you keep that secret? Up here is perfect. Where else can you go in this castle that nobody else goes?”

  I chewed my lower lip, thinking. Roger was right; this was the perfect hiding spot. If the starlight slippers had originally held magic, like Magnificent Wray’s letter suggested, then he’d discovered it before the castle was built. So this wasn’t the place where he’d done that. But once the dragons were collared and the castle completed, he’d have wanted some place to explore his discoveries where he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  This had to be it.

  And if Lady Amber had told all she knew in her little book, he’d kept his room secret even from her.

  “Magnificent Wray burned most of his papers the night before he died,” I said. “But what if he only destroyed what was in his house? What if there’s more in there?”

  Roger tugged on the chains.

  “These are solid; you’d have to pick those padlocks to get at that door.”

  “Can you?” I exclaimed. A burning desire to try that lock bubbled in my veins.

  “Nope,” Roger said. “But maybe I can talk to the blacksmiths.”

  “Oh,” I breathed, “when?”

  “Darling.” Roger rolled his eyes. “Asking about breaking into padlocks is the sort of thing that gets guys into trouble. I have to wait for the right chance.”

  “Oh. Sure.” My excitement dimmed. Who knew when that would be? “I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

  I took another look at the door, imagining all the thrilling possibilities behind it. Secret workrooms. Hidden notebooks. Vials of…magic waiting to be poured out? A shiver traveled down my spine.

  “Thanks for finding this,” I said. “It’s really great.”

  A blush stole over Roger’s face. He scuffed his boot against the floor.

  “I figured that if you got an inheritance coming, you should get it,” he said with a shrug.

  I felt bubbly inside. He did like me.

  I punched him in the shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Rog,” I told him. “A bit freckly…”