The Restless Girls

by Jessie Burton

  ‘I’m starving,’ said Ariosta, her eye on the teetering trestle table.

  ‘Then you shall eat,’ said the lioness. ‘You’ve done so well to get here, it’s the least we can do.’ She grinned indulgently. ‘We’re a bit off the beaten track, so take your table and the waiters will be with you.’

  The girls did as she said, and the lioness clicked her claws. A toucan flew over, depositing a perfect jam doughnut on Ariosta’s plate. In fact, all the waiters were toucans, flying from girl to girl with menus in their beaks.

  ‘Try that doughnut for starters,’ said the lioness. ‘Then take your fill.’

  Ariosta took a bite, and rolled her eyes in amazement. ‘Unf. This is the best jam doughnut I’ve ever tasted.’

  The girls ordered from the toucan waiters, who obligingly flew hither and thither, fetching lamb chops and chicken legs, squishy cheeses and hot buttered toast, sausage and mash, glasses of champagne, strawberries dipped in chocolate, and cups of smoky black tea that seemed to contain within it all the spices of the world.

  ‘How do you like the place so far?’ the lioness asked Frida.

  Frida sat back in her chair, holding a glass of elderflower champagne as she surveyed the inside of the tree palace: the dance floor, the glittering chandelier, her sisters’ delighted, happy faces at the food and music surrounding them. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but it’s just like the forests of silver, gold and diamonds.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that this tree palace seems to have been waiting for us particularly.’

  The lioness nodded. ‘Tree palaces are a bit like that.’

  ‘It feels like home,’ said Frida.

  The lioness shook her large head, her whiskers glinting in the lights. ‘Oh, no. The tree palace isn’t your home. You mustn’t think it is.’

  ‘But it’s so much nicer than what we’ve got upstairs!’

  ‘Well. It does belong to you, Frida, but it isn’t your home. There’s a difference. You mustn’t forget that.’ She pinned Frida with a thoughtful look. ‘You girls can’t stay here, you know.’

  ‘But why ever not? We were in the book of necessary guests!’

  The lioness smiled. ‘Exactly, Frida. You’re guests. And good guests always leave in the end – however much we might want them to stay. But you must never forget your way here. Palaces like this won’t survive without guests like you.’

  The lioness was almost talking in riddles. Frida tried to understand, but before she could find out anything more, Saleem had strutted over to the table. ‘Do take your fill, my ladies,’ he said. ‘But leave some time for dancing. Princess Frida, will you do me the honour?’

  ‘Dancing?’ said Frida. She felt inexplicably sad after her conversation with the lioness. ‘Oh, I don’t dance. I can’t.’

  Saleem readjusted his waistcoat. ‘You can’t dance? Don’t believe it for a minute.’

  ‘None of us has ever really danced before.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Oh, well, there were the courtly dances we were taught as little girls: a step here, a heel there.’ Frida looked over to the dance floor. ‘But shimmying and stomping like those bears? Never.’

  Saleem extended his wing, and it flashed iridescent in the light. ‘So brave to come here, but she won’t dance! Fear not, Princess Frida! I will take the utmost care of you. Michel the monkey is playing a solo on the saxophone and it is not something I care to miss.’

  ‘Oh, go on, Frida,’ said Polina. ‘You need to let your hair down. You’ve looked after us so well. Go and have some fun.’

  ‘She’s right!’ said the others. ‘Please, Frida. Please dance with Saleem!’

  Only for her sisters did she accept Saleem’s invitation, but it was a dance that stayed inside her feet for the rest of Frida’s life.

  As soon as the peacock and the princess took to the floor, it was clear that Saleem was an excellent dancer – wings neat, toes tidy, feathers adding the flair.

  But it wasn’t that.

  It was the freedom Frida had talked of but never known for herself, until now, until the endless music and movement, round in circles, hand in wing – sometimes on her own, her feet moving and stamping, arms in the air, body jumping and swirling, whirling and twirling, in and out of the multicoloured lights. She felt as if her feet were flying on Saleem’s wings, as if every soul on that dance floor with her – her eleven sisters, the lioness too, even a couple of the toucan waiters – had truly understood what it meant to be alive. And Frida said to herself, What more could I ask from life than a monkey playing the sax, a stomach full of doughnuts, my sisters close and a dance floor made for us inside the roots of a gigantic tree?

  But in that moment, the lioness came up and whispered hot breath into Frida’s ear: ‘Even necessary guests must leave, my dear – and nothing in this palace comes for free.’

  Five

  King Alberto’s Second Bad Decision

  It was the best time the sisters had ever known. Every night, their father would lock them in with his heavy iron key, and after the palace had fallen quiet, they would take it in turns to push open the secret door behind their mother’s portrait,

  and down they would go,

  all five hundred and three steps of the dark staircase,

  across the lagoon,

  through the three beauteous forests,

  until finally they reached their tree palace, where the lioness would greet them at the arch, Saleem would show them to their regular table, and the toucan waiters would attend to their every happiness.

  Whatever the girls had dreamed of eating, that exact dish was always on the menu. Baked beans on toast, spaghetti with clams, fresh fish fingers in buttery buns? No matter what they’d been dreaming about on the way there, the lioness’s kitchen was ready. She would sit with them, and they would talk to her about their dreams for the future, or they would tell silly jokes, and she would tell them stories about princesses locked in rooms. And then the girls would dance in rapture to the jazz music until they could barely feel their feet, and their shoes were worn through.

  And every morning in the upstairs palace, King Alberto would unlock their bedroom door to find his twelve lovely daughters fast asleep in their rows of beds. All the king had ever wanted was for his girls to go to sleep, because he believed that only in their dreams could they be safe. (That, and they were easier to manage than when they were awake.) As he watched them snoring, he was delighted that they were finally so obedient.

  The girls hated their daytime hours doing nothing. But although the king and his advisers continued to deny them any tasks or pleasures, the existence of their tree palace made everything bearable. The sisters knew that, come the night, they would have a chance once more to feel free.

  They would whisper about new dance steps, what tiara might look best with their pyjamas. Ariosta looked forward to a swim in the lagoon. Delilah had discovered that the forests contained other plants for her to examine. Emelia always kept her eyes peeled for the little golden fox, but I am sad to say she never saw him again. Instead, she busied herself making sure the jazz musicians had sleek fur and clean claws, in order to play their instruments to the best of their abilities. Chessa, who had been promised an invitation by the lioness to sing onstage with the band, would practise in her mind which numbers she was going to perform.

  In short, the girls started to feel alive. They were in possession of the most brilliant secret, and they hid it so very well that neither King Alberto nor any of his advisers had the faintest clue.

  ‘It feels like home!’ Bellina declared happily one breaking dawn, all of them sinking gratefully (but not particularly gracefully) into their beds after a night of dancing.

  But Frida was worried. She’d never been able to put out of her mind what the lioness had told her on their first visit. The lioness had said that the tree palace belonged to the princesses, but they could never call it home. Was that because someone was going to steal it from the
m? Why was she so insistent on reminding Frida that they must leave the tree palace, when it seemed expressly designed for them? And if nothing in the tree palace came for free, what was the price they were going to have to pay for spending so much time there?

  She almost felt anger at the lioness – for showing them such a wonderful place and making them feel as if it was theirs, only to suggest they couldn’t stay. They’d explained to her how miserable their life upstairs had become! It wasn’t as if the lioness was unaware of their horrid situation.

  Frida sighed to herself. Her mother’s death had taught her well that the world doesn’t always skip along to your wishes. But then again, wisdom didn’t always make this fact any easier to accept.

  So one night, after coming back up the staircase at dawn, closing the secret door quietly, adjusting her mother’s portrait and making sure every princess was accounted for, Frida said they should make a pact. ‘We must swear to each other that we will protect this tree palace,’ she said, kicking off her worn-out shoes and rubbing the balls of her feet.

  ‘But why? We’re not going to tell anyone,’ said Ariosta, snuggling under her duvet.

  ‘Of course we’re not. But that might not stop Father’s advisers – or Father himself – from asking questions.’

  ‘Father’s none the wiser,’ said Flora. ‘We’ve been doing this for weeks!’

  Frida frowned like a military general. ‘True, but we cannot be complacent. What would we do if we could never dance in the tree palace again? If we were trapped in this bedroom without even the promise of the music down below to cheer us up?’

  ‘Imagine never seeing the lioness again!’ said Delilah.

  ‘Or Saleem,’ said Mariella.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Vita, burying her face in her pillow. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Frida. ‘We must plan. We found the tree palace together, and if anything happens we will defend it together. Whatever it takes, we’ll do it. Agreed?’ She put her hand out.

  ‘Agreed,’ said the eleven others, without hesitation, piling their hands on top of Frida’s.

  But as it happened, there was just one tiny detail the girls hadn’t thought through. Not even clever Frida.

  It caught them out, as you might say, royally.

  ⋇

  One morning, King Alberto opened their bedroom door as usual. And, as usual, his daughters’ twelve pairs of shoes were lined up neatly against the wall. Except this time (why this time? Who knows – kings are unreliable characters) he bent down and lifted one shoe in order to admire the craftsmanship.

  The king was in for a shock.

  He stood there in the soft morning light, shaking his grey head as his girls slumbered away. ‘These are not the shoes of a princess,’ he said to himself. ‘They’re completely ruined!’

  And he was right. The sole of this particular shoe – belonging, in this case, to Polina – was utterly destroyed. The king reached down and picked up another shoe, then another and another – until he’d turned all twenty-four shoes upside down.

  All of them had more holes than a fine Swiss cheese.

  He tiptoed away and ordered the royal shoemaker to make the girls some better ones.

  ‘But I never stop making shoes for your daughters, Your Majesty,’ said the shoemaker.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said King Alberto.

  The shoemaker gestured mournfully towards his dwindling leather supplies. ‘I’ve made more pairs of shoes for them than my wife makes me hot dinners.’

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ King Alberto asked himself, for the shoemaker was a talented man and had been making sturdy footwear since the king was a boy.

  The next morning, the king opened the girls’ bedroom door and discovered that the shoes he’d ordered for his daughters but one day previously were again worn through.

  He sent for even more shoes. And yet again, the morning after their delivery, whilst his daughters slept unawares, he found that every shoe was ruined.

  King Alberto hated not knowing answers generally, but this particular mystery enraged him. You’d think a king had bigger fish to fry, but no! He summoned each daughter, one by one, and asked them to explain the reason behind the unending pairs of holey shoes. The girls were frightened, but Frida had prepared them for disaster. Remembering the pact they had made to each other, the princesses held their nerve.

  ‘The guard dogs bite them,’ said Frida.

  ‘I walk a great deal,’ said Polina.

  ‘I stood on a nail,’ said Lorna.

  ‘The shoemaker’s no good,’ said Ariosta.

  ‘My feet get hot, so I let the air in,’ said Chessa.

  ‘I find mice in them,’ said Bellina. ‘We need to get a palace cat.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ laughed Vita. ‘I scuff my feet all day.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Mariella, with a shrug.

  ‘I ripped them on a tree root in the garden,’ said Delilah.

  ‘I held them too long over a candle when I was warming them up,’ said Flora.

  ‘They’re my favourite pair, so I’ve worn them through,’ said Emelia.

  ‘Maybe they’re supposed to have holes?’ said Agnes, staring at the floor.

  King Alberto was sure they weren’t telling the truth. He felt it in his royal gut. His daughters had such innocent faces, but it was too bizarre that they were going through so many pairs of shoes at such a rapid rate! The shoemaker, who had made thousands of pairs of shoes and whose fingers were worn to the bone, begged for early retirement. The king dismissed him, and raged that his daughters were out of control.

  ‘They’re just shoes, Your Majesty!’ his advisers pleaded with him, knowing that there were much more important things to be worrying about, like gathering the harvests, and the uprisings in the west of the kingdom.

  The king couldn’t agree. They weren’t just shoes. They were his daughters’ shoes, and they had holes in them when they shouldn’t. It felt like his girls were going somewhere beyond his reach, and he didn’t like it.

  One morning, he summoned Frida to his throne.

  Frida came, feeling a nervousness in her stomach which she tried to push away. As usual, the black drapes were up, but Frida could just make out the dust gathering in small grey balls around the legs of her father’s ornate throne. Really, someone should do a spring clean in here, she thought.

  Her father’s advisers were huddled in the corner like a group of worried penguins, the candlelight throwing their shadows into grotesque shapes. She sighed, thinking about the beautiful multicoloured lights of the tree palace, the fluttering wings of the toucan waiters, how pleased the lioness always was to see the princesses and how they danced and danced with Saleem –

  ‘So, my girl,’ the king said, interrupting her daydream. ‘Are you going to tell me your secret?’

  Frida flicked her eyes towards the king. Something in her father’s voice chilled her. The memories of the previous night’s dancing melted like ice under a flame.

  ‘My secret?’ she echoed.

  ‘Come on, Frida. You’re slyer than a fox. You’re the eldest. You’re the ringleader. You should be setting an example. I’ve asked you why your shoes are worn out and not one of you has told me the truth. Why are your sisters all so disobedient?’

  Frida thought about her younger sisters. They were so much happier since the discovery of the tree palace: it made their life in this upstairs mausoleum tolerable. She thought of the pact she’d asked them to make. In a way, her father was right. She was responsible. She had been the one to find the door behind the painting, after all. She had been the first to shake the lioness’s paw. She had been the one who encouraged her sisters to lie. ‘Father,’ she replied, ‘They are not disobedient. They are loyal and true.’

  ‘True to what?’ asked her father. ‘To whom?’

  Frida remained silent.

  ‘You are the most disobedient of all,’ he said. ‘Just like your mother.’

 
; Frida closed her eyes. ‘I beg you, Father, attend to your kingship.’

  ‘Outrageous cheek! I will know your secret,’ Alberto raged, ‘and you will tell me or face the consequence!’

  Frida took a deep breath. The consequence. She knew silence was no longer an option, that she must speak and suffer. ‘Father,’ she said quietly, ‘it is not your secret to know.’

  At this, the king leapt out of his throne, the hair on the top of his head quivering. The advisers rushed forward, worried that he might trip on his robes. ‘Get out!’ he screamed at his daughter. ‘But don’t think this is the end. I’ll get the truth out of you if it’s the last thing I do!’

  For the first time in her life, Frida was truly frightened. Suddenly, the lioness’s voice filled her ears: Nothing in this palace comes for free.

  She looked at her father’s advisers, who did nothing to help her, and she stumbled away, running through the gloom of the corridors to find her sisters. You think I’m slyer than a fox? she thought, her mind racing. She remembered the golden fox that Emelia had saved, down in the darkness. Well, Father, she thought. And you too, lioness. You haven’t seen anything yet.

  By the time Frida returned to the bedroom, she had composed herself.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Vita, looking nervous.

  ‘Nothing he hasn’t said already,’ said Frida, smiling. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll go down to the tree palace tonight and have a marvellous time. Although – listen, my darlings. Look after the soles of your shoes. Less dancing, if possible.’

  She was met with a chorus of protest.

  ‘I know, I know. But we need to be even cleverer than we already are.’

  Frida never wanted to be the one to tell her sisters to dance less. But what could she do? Their father was so suspicious, so dangerous! His face in anger these days was redder than a lobster. She feared that their time in the tree palace was running out, but she wasn’t going to let her sisters worry too. She racked her brains to think of some way to put King Alberto off the scent, whilst ensuring her sisters could still go to the tree palace. Yet all the time, the lioness’s words went round in her head: Even necessary guests must leave.