Once Upon A Time (5) Before Midnight

by Cameron Dokey

  Please, I thought. Let me find a way to make my father’s pain, his grief, release their hold. Let me find a way to help love flourish Let me understand what it means to mourn.

  I knelt in the pumpkin patch until all my tears were spent, then returned to my bed and slept a dreamless sleep till morning.

  “Cendrillon.”

  There were hands on my shoulders, shaking me awake.

  “Cendrillon!”

  Swimming up through layers of sleep, I opened startled eyes. Amelie’s flushed face was hovering over mine.

  “You have to get up. You have to come and see,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked, as I struggled to sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where is she? Is she coming?” hissed a voice outside my door. I sat bolt upright then.

  “Is that Anastasia?”

  “Get dressed and be quick about it,” Amelie said. “We’ll wait for you downstairs. Don’t be long.”

  She dashed from my room. I tossed back the sheets and fumbled into my clothes. I pinned my braids up with trembling fingers, then raced downstairs.

  “What is it?” I asked when I reached the great hall. Amelie and Anastasia were standing, hands clasped tightly together, just inside the front door. Without a single word, Amelie grabbed my hand and the two of them tugged me outside.

  “Amelie, please, tell me what it is,” I begged. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Anastasia snapped, and I actually felt a trickle of relief at her tone. At least she was sounding like her usual self Hands still linked, we rounded the corner of the house. The early morning sun smiled down on the kitchen garden.

  “We just dont understand what it means, that’s all,” she went on. “And we want to, before we go and fetch Maman.”

  “Understand what what means?” I asked.

  “There,” Amelie said, pointing. “In the pumpkin patch.”

  I skidded to a stop. Together the three of us stood and stared. The pumpkins were no longer green, still working to ripen for it was only August. Instead, they glowed like the sun as it sinks into the sea, a hot and vivid orange. And growing up between the rows, taller than a tall mans head, their brown and golden faces already turning toward the sun, was something I knew quite well had not been there the night before.

  Sunflowers.

  They grew an inch a day, till they were as tall as the back of our tallest horse, and then the saplings in our orchards. Bluebirds came from miles around to flutter around the sunflowers’ brown and golden heads. Squirrels climbed up the stalks and sat upon them, turning them into stools and dinner plates all at the same time.

  My stepmother brought great armfuls of flowers into the house every day, till the very stones themselves seemed suffused with a golden glow. Each time she cut a plant down, another sprang up overnight to take its place. For the first time since they had arrived, I heard Anastasia laugh, saw my stepmother smile not just with her face, but with her eyes. In my heart, I felt a strange new plant take root: hope.

  My father had shed no tears, and on the grave of my mother not a plant would thrive. But I had wept, and with my tears I had brought something to life that had never been seen on the grounds of the great stone house before. I still could not quite see the way for it to happen, but, with the coming of the sunflowers, I began to believe that all might yet be well. Old Mathilde was right. Love was all around me. I simply had to find a way to make it thrive.

  “Well, I am off,” Amelies voice suddenly broke into my thoughts as she appeared at the kitchen door. She came into the room, took a basket Old Mathilde had woven from willow branches down from its hook, and setded it into the crook of one arm.

  “Where to today?” I inquired.

  Ever since the appearance of the sunflowers, Amelie had given up her fancy dresses entirely. She could have been mistaken for a servant just as easily as I had been. In her plain homespun dress, her sun hat firmly upon her head at her mother’s insistence, she had taken her explorations out of doors. With every layer of finery Amelie had shed, it seemed to me that a barrier between us had been shed as well. She did not quite treat me as an equal We had not come so far as that. But she did not quite treat me like I wasn’t, either.

  “I am going to the beach,” she said, giving the basket a little swing. “Raoul says there are stairs.”

  I made a face. “There are. Endless ones.”

  “No matter,” Amelie said cheerfully. “As long as they go both up and down.”

  She moved to the door that led outside and stepped through it.

  “Amelie,” I said. “May I ask you something?” She turned back, the bright morning sun behind her shadowing her face but glancing off her hair like a halo.

  “Of course you may, Cendrillon,” she replied.

  “What are you looking for?”

  I sensed, rather than saw, the way she made a face. “You have to promise not to tell me it’s impossible,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you what Old Mathilde would say if she heard you say that,” I replied. “She would say that nothing is truly impossible. Its all a matter of looking at things in just the right way.”

  “That’s it!” Amelie cried. “Though I suppose I should say it’s a matter of looking for things in just the right way.

  “I am looking for the thing that cannot be found by searching for it,” she said. “The thing Niccolo found, that made him wish to return. I am looking for a surprise.”

  TEN

  The weather stayed fine all through August, and then September arrived. And with it, though our days were no less pleasant, a certain sense of urgency took up residence in the great stone house. September is a changeable sort of month. One foot in summer and the other in autumn. And if autumn was coming, then winter would not be far behind. It didn’t take a fortune-teller to figure out that my stepmother and stepsisters were not looking forward to a winter in a stone house overlooking a cold gray sea.

  Anastasia didn’t laugh anymore. Instead, she became more exacting than ever, as if determined to make up for lost time. “Fetch me my slippers, Cendrillon. No not the yellow ones, you stupid girl” (Though these were the ones that matched her dress.) “The blue ones. Bring me my shawl Cant you see that I am cold?”

  For days on end, she kept me running to do her bidding so often I began to fear the soles of my shoes would wear out. Then, one morning, the very same one on which Amelie announced she had at long last finished her explorations at the beach and would spend her day in the peach orchard instead, Anastasia declared her desire to go riding.

  “Riding,” Raoul exclaimed in disgust when I went to the stable to bring him the news. He was pitching fresh hay into the horses’ stalls, spreading it with the tines of a pitchfork. “And my presence is requested, I suppose.”

  “Not by Anastasia,” I answered. “But by her mother. Its not unreasonable, Raoul. No high-born lady would ride without a groom, and Anastasia doesn’t know where she is going.”

  Raoul gave a snort. “That’s true enough, in more ways than one.” He spread a final forkful of hay. “Who does Chantal de Saint-Andre expect will do my work while I’m babysitting her daughter?”

  “I don’t imagine she thinks of it quite like that,” I said.

  This time, Raoul gave a sigh.

  “Amelie is not so bad,” he admitted, as he returned the pitchfork to its proper place. “If nothing else, she is comfortable with being quiet. But something tells me looking after Miss High-and-Mighty will be a different matter altogether.”

  “Don’t think of it as looking after her, then,” I suggested. “Think of it as looking after the horse.”

  Raoul laughed, then looped an arm around my shoulders. “An excellent suggestion,” he admitted, as he brushed his knuckles across the top of my head. “I will do my best to follow it.”

  “Cendrillon!” Anastasia’s imperious voice called. “Why can I never find you when I need you? Where are you? I’m ready to go.”

  Rao
ul rolled his eyes, but I could see the wariness that crept into their expression, the way his mouth thinned and tightened at the sound of Anastasia’s voice.

  “You could always try not saying much,” I suggested in a low voice. “It drives her crazy when she can’t get a rise out of me.” I stepped out of his hold. “I’m in the stable, Anastasia,” I called, lifting my voice.

  “Where else would you be?” Raoul murmured, but he went to fetch and saddle the horses.

  Anastasia was standing in the courtyard, her hands on her hips, wearing the riding habit I had spent most of the morning preparing to her satisfaction. Never, or so it seemed to me, had she looked more lovely. The fabric of the habit was a deep and lustrous blue. In her pale face, her blue eyes blazed like sapphires. She was tapping one booted foot upon the cobblestones with impatience.

  “I am ready to go,” she said again. “How long does it take that silly stable boy to saddle two horses?”

  “If you think he’s so silly, I wonder that you feel safe riding out with him,” I couldn’t quite resist saying, and saw the way she flushed.

  “Thank you for your concern,” she said tartly.

  She continued to tap her foot as the minutes went by, the tempo accelerating the longer we stood in the courtyard. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, shooting anxious glances toward the stable.

  She is nervous, I realized suddenly.

  Before I had time to consider what that might mean, Raoul appeared, leading two horses. One, the tall black he preferred now that he’d given the dappled gray to Niccolo, and a mare the color of honey Both were neatly saddled, their coats brushed to a glossy shine. He’d brushed his own hair, as well, I noticed.

  Anastasia’s color rose a little higher, but her voice stayed as sharp as always.

  “There you are. It’s about time.”

  For a fraction of a second, I thought Raoul would answer back. I could almost see him bite the inside of one cheek to hold in the smart reply. Then, in a move so unexpected both Anastasia and I blinked, he sketched a quick but perfectly acceptable bow.

  “I am at your service, lady” he said, as he straightened up. And then he smiled. Anastasia caught her breath with an audible sound. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’m ready to go whenever you are,” Raoul went on sweetly. “But perhaps you’ve changed your mind.”

  I bit the inside of my own cheek now, for it seemed to me I understood. He was going to drive Anastasia mad with kindness. Be so attentive she couldn’t possibly complain.

  I saw her give a little shake, as if snapping herself out of a dream. “Of course I haven’t changed my mind,” she said. “Help me to mount.”

  Without a backward glance, she began to march smartly toward the riding block, the small raised platform a lady might use to mount her horse more easily. I expected Raoul to bring the mare to her. He stayed right where he was. When she realized he wasn’t moving, Anastasia stopped and turned around. She put her hands on her hips and glared. His face expressionless, Raoul gazed back.

  He is daring her to come to him, I realized.

  At first it seemed she wouldn’t do it. Then, with a lift of her chin, Anastasia took up the challenge. She closed the distance between them with brisk, rapid steps. Raoul bent at the waist, and linked his hands together to form a stirrup. Anastasia placed the toe of her soft leather riding boot between his hands, rested one of her own hands on Raoul’s shoulder for balance.

  In the next moment, Raoul straightened, and, graceful as a bird, Anastasia went flying upward. She landed in the saddle in a flurry of dark blue skirts. She hooked one knee over the pommel on her lady’s riding saddle, gathered the reins into her gloved hands.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You are more than welcome.”

  I stared, not sure which of them had astonished me more. It was the first time I had heard Anastasia say thank you for anything. Raoul sounded polite as a lord. Then, as if to make absolutely certain it was clear who was in charge, Anastasia rapped her heels smartly against the mares sides, putting her in motion. Raoul had to step back quickly to avoid being stomped on.

  “I don’t like to be kept waiting,” Anastasia announced, even as Raoul was vaulting into his own saddle. “Do try to keep up.”

  They were gone the whole afternoon, as the weather changed, turning thick and sultry and still, a ring of clouds creeping in from the edges of the sky.

  “Thunderstorm weather,” Susanne announced with a click of her tongue. “You mark my words, there’ll be a storm before the night is out.”

  By late afternoon I was fractious and edgy, as if my clothes had suddenly grown too tight. Amelie came home from the peach orchard without her sun hat, her face flushed. Chantal lost her temper and gave her a scolding. Amelie went upstairs and did not come back down. After that, my stepmother took to pacing back and forth in the great hall, opening the front door as if she heard Anastasia returning, then closing it again on no one. I often swept the great hall at this time of day, and once a week I scrubbed the flagstones. But it was apparent I would get no work done on this particular afternoon.

  “Raoul would never let anything happen to her,” I finally volunteered, worn out by my stepmother’s pacing as if I had been doing it right alongside her. “He’s the best horseman in the county. And he knows every inch of de Brabant lands. He would never let Anastasia come to any harm.”

  Chantal de Saint-Andre started, as if shed forgotten I was there.

  “Gracious, Cendrillon,” she said. “You startled me. And it isn’t that I’m worried, it’s just . . .” She broke off, raising a hand to her forehead, as if to brush away unwelcome thoughts.

  “I am so edgy today. Everything about this place still feels so foreign and wild, and Anastasia can be so headstrong. She’s always been that way, ever since she was a child. But since we came here, I . . .” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “All day long, I have felt afraid without quite knowing why. I know it’s foolish but . . .”

  She broke off as we both heard the clatter of hooves. My stepmother was at the door almost before I could blink, flinging it open wide. She dashed out onto the steps, with me close behind her, just as Anastasia swept into the courtyard.

  Gone was the prim and proper maiden who had departed just that morning. In her place was a young woman with her emotions barely under control. Anastasia’s long, dark hair had come unbound to stream across her shoulders and down her back like an inky waterfall. Her eyes were enormous. The color in her cheeks was high. It was clear that something had happened, and that it had affected her deeply. The question was, what?

  She brought the mare to a quick and sudden stop just as Raoul cantered in behind her, his own face the match of the threatening thunderclouds overhead. He dismounted quickly, moved to where Anastasia sat, still as a marble statue on her horse.

  “Not you,” Anastasia said, her voice slightly breathless. “Go get someone else. I do not want you to touch me.”

  “My touch is no different than it was a few moments ago,” Raoul answered, his voice cracking with temper and something that ran deeper, a thing I could not quite identify. “Besides, there isn’t anyone else and you know it. Why must you always behave like a spoiled child?”

  Anastasia’s flushed cheeks paled. She pressed her lips together, looped her reins over the pommel, and leaned down. She braced herself on Raoul’s shoulders as he reached up and swept her from the saddle so swiftly that her long dark hair tumbled forward over her shoulder to stream across his own, obscuring both their faces for the time it took Raoul to set her on her feet. Then Anastasia stepped back, brushing her hair from her face with a fierce gesture.

  “Anastasia,” said her mother, as she moved down the steps. “Thank goodness you are home.”

  “Oh, Maman,” Anastasia said. She turned away from Raoul, but her long hair would not quite release its hold. It clung to his shirt, like a sweetheart not ready to be parted from him, Raoul turned away, lifting a hand to
brush it aside.

  “Maman” Anastasia said once more, and I heard the way her voice broke.

  “Heavens,” her mother exclaimed, as she reached her. “What is it, my child?”

  “Nothing, It is nothing,” Anastasia said fiercely. “I stayed too long in the sun, that’s all. And the weather today makes me feel so strange.”

  “It’s because there’s a storm coming,” her mother said. “It makes us all feel that way.” She put an arm around Anastasia’s waist, then pressed a hand to her forehead. “Gracious, you are burning up. Come into the house. We’ll get you out of these clothes.”

  “I want you to help me, Maman,” Anastasia said, her voice suddenly small and pleading like a child’s. “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t need anyone else. Not anyone.”

  “But of course I will help you,” her mother said. Without another word, she led Anastasia into the house.

  Raoul stood beside Anastasia’s horse, his eyes gazing straightforward at nothing. I came down the steps till I stood at his side.

  “Would you like me to help rub down the horses?” I asked.

  Raoul gave a start. “What?”

  “Would you like me to help with the horses?” I said once more, even as I saw something hot and furious flash into Raoul’s eyes. By way of answer, He took two steps, hauled me up against him, and pressed his lips to mine.

  Raoul’s lips felt just as his eyes looked, desperate, angry, wild. His arm around my waist felt like a band of solid iron. I felt the world do two entirely contradictory things at once. Explode wide open. Narrow down. I felt the way Raoul’s heart thundered in his chest, heard the echo of its rhythm in my own. And suddenly I understood the sound that it was making.

  No, my heart said, even as it pounded more furious than it ever had before. Not this. Not him. Not this. No. No. No.

  I made a sound, and Raoul let me go.

  We stood for a moment, staring at each other, while the wind explored the corners of the courtyard.

  “Oh, damn,” Raoul said suddenly. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I? I’m sorry, Cendrillon.”