Once Upon A Time (5) Before Midnight

by Cameron Dokey

  “I can see it clear as day, Rilla,” Raoul said, and I took no offense at the sting in his voice, I knew all too well that it was not for me.

  “Will they try to land here, do you think?”

  Raoul shook his head. “We are not important enough a place, and our shore has too many rocks. They will make for the capitol, the court, and go farther down the coast.”

  “I wish all this would stop,” I exclaimed fiercely, the words out of my mouth in the exact same moment I thought them. “I wish that I could find a way to stop it.”

  This is the third most powerful kind of wish there is: the one you make unbidden, not to your heart, but from it. Only knowing what it is you wish for as you hear own voice, proclaiming it aloud.

  No sooner did I finish speaking than I felt the wind shift, blowing straight into my face, tickling the long braids I wore tucked up beneath my sun hat, then tugging at them hard enough to make the hat fly back. With a quick, hard jerk, the leather chin strap pulled tight against my throat.

  “So do I,” Raoul said softly.

  At his words, the air went perfectly still. Raoul and I stood together, hardly daring to breathe. Then, ever so slowly, the wind began to shift again. Its force became strong, picking up until my skirts streamed straight out to the left, flapping against my legs. Below us, the surface of the water was covered with whitecaps. Galleons and hulks alike bucked like unbroken horses.

  “The wind is blowing backward,” Raoul said, his voice strange.

  “It can’t do that,” I answered. “It never blows in that direction off our coast, not even when it storms.”

  “I know it,” Raoul said. “But it’s blowing in that direction now. We wished to find a way to make the fighting stop, and now the wind is blowing backward. We did that. Did we do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I think we should get out of the wind. It has an unhealthy sound.”

  “Old Mathilde will know what to do,” Raoul said.

  Hand in hand, pumpkins and weeds both forgotten, we turned, and raced for the great stone house.

  FOUR

  By the time Raoul and I reached the house, Mathilde was gathering each and every living thing and shooing it inside. The rabbits were put into their hutches, the chickens onto their nests, the dogs summoned from the courtyard. Being out in such a wind could do strange things to living beings, Old Mathilde called over its unnatural voice. The wind blowing backward can make you forget yourself.

  Once we were all safely indoors, I worked with Old Mathilde and Susanne, who ran the kitchen, to make a fine dinner of chowder and cornbread from the last of our fresh ears of corn. All the rest had already been dried, in preparation for the winter. By the time the meal was ready, the sun was setting. We gathered around the great trestle table in the kitchen for supper—all but Raoul, who took his out to the stables, announcing his intention to stay with the horses until the wind died down.

  As if to make up for the fact that he was not always comfortable with people, Raoul was good with animals of all kinds. Perhaps because it had been a horse which had carried him to us in the first place, he loved the horses best of all.

  Well into the night the wind blew, until I longed to stuff cotton into my ears to shut out the sound. None of us went to bed. Instead, we stayed in the kitchen, our chairs arranged in a semicircle around the kitchen fire. Old Mathilde worked on her knitting, her needles flashing in the light of the coals. Susanne polished the silver, as if there might yet come a day when someone would arrive who would want to use it. Her daughter, Charlotte, darned socks. Joseph and Robert, the father and son who helped with the orchards and grounds, mended rope. I sorted seeds for next year’s planting, wondering what might actually come up.

  The clocks struck ten, and then eleven, and still we heard the winds voice. As the hands of the clock inched up toward midnight, a great tension seemed to fill the kitchen, causing all the air to back up inside our lungs. Midnight is an important hour in general, but it was considered particularly significant in our house. But it was only as the clock actually began to count up to midnight, one, two, three, four, that I remembered what the voice of the wind blowing in the wrong direction had pushed to the back of my mind.

  When the clocks finished striking twelve, it would be my birthday, and I would learn whether what I wished had come true or not.

  Seven, the clocks chimed on their way to midnight. Eight. Nine. Ten. And suddenly, I was praying with all my might, with all my heart. Please, I thought. Let the wind stop. Don’t let it blow backward on the day of my birth.

  Eleven, the clocks sang throughout the house. And then, in the heartbeat between that chime and the next, the wind died down.

  Old Mathilde lifted her head; the hands on her knitting needles paused. Susanne placed the final piece of silver back into its chest with a soft chink of metal. It is just before midnight, I thought.

  Twelve, the clocks struck. And, in that very moment, the wind returned, passing over us in its usual direction, making A sound like a lullaby.

  “Oh, but I am tired,” Susanne said, as she gave a great stretch. One by one, the others said their good nights and departed. Within a very few moments, old Mathilde and I were left: alone.

  “I should go and get Raoul,” I said.

  Old Mathilde began to bundle up her knitting. “Raoul is fine. He sleeps in the stable half the time anyway. But you may go and get him, if you like. That way, you can both go together.”

  “How did you . . .” I began, but at precisely that instant, Raoul burst through the kitchen door. In one hand, he held the lantern he had taken out to the stable.

  “Why are you still just standing there?” he asked. “Are we going or not?”

  By way of answer, I dashed across the kitchen and, before Raoul quite realized what I intended, I threw my arms around him, burrowing my face into the column of his throat, holding on for dear life. I felt the way his pulse beat against my cheek, the way his free arm, the one that wasn’t busy with the lantern, came up to press me close. We stood together for several seconds, just like that.

  We look so different, Raoul and I, but in our hearts, we are so very much alike. The same impatience for what we desire dances through our veins. The same need to have our questions answered, our wishes granted. To understand, to know.

  And so Raoul had known what I would want to do, now that the wind was running in its proper direction and the clocks had finished striking twelve. He had known that I would never be able to wait until the sun came up to discover if my birthday wish had been granted after so long. More than this, he had given me the greatest gift he could have bestowed. With one short walk from the stable to the house, he had set his own disappointment aside.

  Raoul knew already that his wish had not been granted. He knew no more about who he truly was now than he had a year ago, or than he had on the day my father had first brought him home. But still, he had come to find me, knowing I would want to visit my mother’s grave, even in the middle of the night.

  During the long hours we had waited in the kitchen, the moon had risen. The cobblestones of the courtyard gleamed like mother of pearl; the great stone house shimmered like an opal in the moon-glow. The three of us went across the front, then around the corner and along the side opposite the kitchen garden. At last we reached the end of the house and the beginning of the stone wall, just higher than a tall mans head, that marked the boundaries of my mother’s garden. Above our heads, surrounding the moon like a handful of scattered sentinels, the stars burned fierce and blue.

  “I am afraid,” I said suddenly.

  “There is no need to be afraid, my Cendrillon,” Old Mathilde replied. “Either what you wish for has come true, or it has not. If it hasn’t, you must simply try again. Some things must be wished for many times before they come to us.”

  “Happy birthday, Raoul,” I said, as he pushed the gate open.

  “And to you, little Cendrillon.”

  “I’m not little,” I said. �
��And I bet I can still beat you in a foot race.”

  And with that, we were off and running. I knew every inch of my mother’s garden, even in the dark. The rose bushes, espaliered along its walls, the stands of lilies that bloomed in late summer, the daffodils in the spring, the surprise of autumn crocus. A carpet of chamomile was springy underfoot. There was mint, pungent and sweet. Oregano, brusque and spicy. In the very center of the garden stretched my mother’s grave. The limbs of the blasted tree still raised stiffly above it, a silent testimony to my father’s rage and grief. Nobody, not even Old Mathilde, had ever been able to bring themselves to cut it down.

  Please, I thought, as I raced forward. Please was my word of choice that night. Please let what I wish for come true. I reached the edge of the grave, skidded to a stop. A split second later, the light from Raouls lantern shone down upon the oblong of my mother’s grave. I fell to my knees beside it, just as my father had done.

  “No,” I cried out. “No, no, no!”

  The vines I had planted were still there, and so were the gorgeous orange pumpkins. But now the vines were withered, as if a killing frost had wrapped its icy fingers around them. The pumpkins were split open. Inside, their flesh was black, the pale white seeds gleaming like fragments of bone. From the moment they had come up, all the while that they had grown, their beautiful outsides had all been concealing the very same thing: Inside, they were festering and rotten.

  “I can’t do it, I won’t ever be able to do it, will I?” I sobbed, “He hates me too much. What can grow amid so much hate?”

  “Just one thing,” Old Mathilde answered quietly, “Only love.”

  “Love!” I cried. I flung myself forward then, onto the grave, digging my fingers deep into the flesh of the nearest pumpkin. I brought my hands back up, dripping and disgusting. A great stench filled the air, one of unwholesome things kept in the dark too long.

  “This,” I said, as I flung the first handful from me with all my might. I scooped up more, flung it away, in a desperate frenzy now, “This and this. This is what my father thinks of me. It has nothing to do with love.”

  “All the more reason that what you wish should, then,” Old Mathilde said, and now she knelt down beside me to take my hands in hers, horrible as they were. I jerked back, but she held on tight. “There are two things in the world you must never give up on, my Cendrillon. And those two things are yourself and love.”

  “Who said anything about giving up?” I said, as I finally managed to snatch my hands away. “I’m not giving up. “I’m just tired of wishing for what I can never have, that’s all.”

  “Then wish for something else,” Raoul said without heat.

  “You make it sound so simple when you know its not,” I said, the words bitter in my mouth. “But since you request it, then this is what I wish. I wish for a mother to love me, a mother for me to love. And perhaps some sisters into the bargain. Two would be a nice number. That way, perhaps there will be a chance that one of them might actually like me.”

  “For heavens sake, Rilla,” Raoul exclaimed. “You know you’re not supposed to speak a birthday wish aloud.”

  “What difference does it make?” I flung back. “It’s not going to come true anyhow.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Raoul said. “Now come inside and get cleaned up. You smell disgusting.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “For that, you can help me up.”

  Raoul reached down and pulled me to my feet. But when I expected him to let go, he held on. “I am sorry, Rilla,” he said. “You see why I think hope is such a tricky thing?”

  “I do,” I nodded.

  “Come,” Old Mathilde said. “I am an old woman, my bones ache, and there will still be chores in the morning. Let us go back inside.”

  After the others had gone to bed, I stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing my hands till they were red and raw. But the scent of my father’s hate could not be washed entirely away. It clung to my skin, a faint rotten smell. At last, I gave up. I climbed the stairs to my room, curled up in bed, and pressed my face against the windowpane, gazing out at the stars.

  One wish, I thought. That is all I want Why is that so very much to ask?

  And now I had thrown my birthday wish away. Even worse, I had thrown it away in anger. You are your father’s daughter, after all, Cendrillon, I thought. Tonight, you’ve proved you’re no better than he is.

  Like him, I had chosen anger over love.

  I began to weep, then, great, hot tears. I hate to weep, even when I know I have good cause. It makes me feel like I have failed, as my wish had failed that night.

  At last, I put my head upon my pillow and cried myself to sleep, an act I had never performed before. Not even on the night that I was born.

  FIVE

  But in the morning, it was not just chores as usuaL For in the morning, there was a soldier at the kitchen door.

  Susanne had just finished the daily ritual of setting the mornings bread to rise. Now, she and Old Mathilde were bustling about together, setting out ingredients for two birthday cakes. I wasn’t sure how much stomach I would have for mine. In spite of the fact that I had wept myself into an exhausted sleep, I had not slept well. It seemed to me that my dreams were filled with the cries of desperate men. I had been up at the suns first light.

  “Would you like me to gather eggs?” I offered now. Usually, this was among my least favorite of the daily chores. I could never rid myself of the notion that the hens resent the way we snatch their eggs. Raoul tells me I’m being ridiculous, of course—which irritates me because I know he’s right.

  “That would be helpful. Thank you, Rilla,” Old Mathilde replied. We had not spoken of the events of last night, but I saw the way she looked at me with careful, thoughtful eyes. Not surprisingly, I found this irritating too. All in all, not one of my better mornings, birthday or otherwise.

  I took the egg basket down from its hook, tucked it into the crook of my arm.

  “Make sure you bundle up,” Susanne advised. “Its cold out this morning. You mark my words, we’ll have a hard frost before the week is out.”

  I took my shawl down from its peg, wrapped it around my head and across my chest, then tucked the ends into the waistband of my apron as I reached for the kitchen door. I pulled it open, then faltered backward with a startled yelp. I was staring straight down the length of a sword into a pair of startled, desperate eyes.

  Old Mathilde was beside me in a flash. In one hand, she held the longest of the fireplace pokers. I heard a bang from across the courtyard, realized it was the sudden slam of the stable door. And then, over the soldier’s shoulder, I saw Raoul running toward me, full tilt. Above his head, he swung a leather lead, making it sing like a whip.

  “Raoul, be careful,” I shouted, just as the soldier heard the sound himself and began to spin around. I’dont know whether he lost his footing, or whether the legs that had carried him this far now abruptly refused to hold him any longer. But, in the next minute, before Raoul could even reach him, the soldier went down. Toppling over like a storm-felled tree, his head striking, hard, against the cobblestones. Raoul skidded to a stop even as Old Mathilde thrust the fireplace poker into my arms, then elbowed me aside to hurry down the two steps from the kitchen to the courtyard. She knelt beside the stranger, placed her fingers against his neck.

  “He lives,” she said shortly. “Help me get him into the house.”

  “Wait a minute,” Raoul exclaimed. “You’re going to take him in?”

  “I took you in,” Old Mathilde replied.

  “But—,” Raoul began.

  Old Mathilde straightened up, and looked Raoul right in the eye. “If we treat him like an enemy, that’s all he’ll ever be,” she said. She turned around to look at me in the open kitchen door, where I still stood, hesitating. The expression in her eyes made up my mind. I set the poker aside, put aside the egg basket, and walked down the steps to join her.

  “For pity’s sake,
Rilla.” Raoul protested.

  “For pity’s sake,” I said. “That’s absolutely right. We wished for the fighting to stop, Raoul. You wished it just as hard as I did.” I knelt at the soldiers feet, saw, with horror, that his boots were cut to ribbons, his feet bleeding and torn. “This is our chance to do something more than wish. Now come and help us get him into the house.”

  Raoul swore then, a thing he almost never does. But even as he did so, he was moving toward Old Mathilde and me, scooting her aside to slip his hands beneath the soldier’s shoulders and so take the heaviest part of the body himself.

  “I really hope youre right about this,” he said. “On three.” He counted out, and when he hit the number three, the three of us lifted the soldier from the cobblestones. By the time we made it up the kitchen stairs, Susanne had dragged the cot out and placed it near the fire. We settled the soldier onto it. Then Raoul and I stepped back as Old Mathilde set about discovering the full extent of his injuries.

  “Go ahead and fetch those eggs, Cendrillon,” she instructed. “You go along with her, Raoul.”

  “Even if we did the right thing,” Raoul murmured, as we made our way to the henhouse, “I reserve the right to say I told you so if anything goes wrong.”

  The soldier ran a fever for a solid week, after which time he was so weak he could hardly hold up his head. His hands had been as torn and bloody as his feet. His clothing had been icy and soaked, as if he had been tossed into the sea, thrown ashore, then been so desperate to get away from the water he had not even bothered to look for a path, but simply climbed straight up the cliff to reach our kitchen door.

  Old Mathilde, Susanne, and I took turns caring for him, changing the dressings on his wounded hands and feet, keeping an eye on him while he slept, ladling chicken broth down his throat when he awoke. The he announced he feared he was sprouting feathers was the day we knew he would recover. That was the day he graduated from the cot to a chair.