Wednesdays in the Tower

by Jessica Day George

  “But the griffins might be real,” Celie protested.

  “My dear princess, they most certainly are not.”

  Celie gave up, but she carefully copied the rest of the poem and took it with her. She wanted to read it aloud to Rufus, to teach him about his noble heritage. She also wanted to show it to Bran. She tried to take the book as well, but Master Humphries had taken it from the oldest section of the Castle library and promised to return it directly after lessons. Celie had to make do with copying down the title and author of the book, and hoping that Bran would be able to find it himself.

  She made the long journey back to her bedroom, wondering if the Castle would send her a snack as well as Rufus.

  “Rufus,” she called as she opened her bedroom door. “Rufus! I have something to read to you!”

  There was no answer. Rufus was gone.

  Chapter

  8

  Celie looked in the wardrobe and under the bed, but she knew that Rufus wasn’t there. He would have come when she called if he could hear her, he always did. She tossed the parchment with the poem on it onto her bed and hurried back out of the room.

  A quick glance told her that he wasn’t in the main hall. There were members of the court milling around there as usual, and guards posted at the front door. Someone would have seen Rufus as soon as he set a foot in that direction, and the resulting hue and cry would have brought the entire Castle running.

  Instead she raced down the corridor in the opposite direction. At the end of the corridor was a long flight of steps, the same one that she had come down to bring the newly hatched Rufus to her bedchambers. The steps were steep and narrow, the stone slick. She didn’t think Rufus could have made it up them, not without being seen by a maid or a courtier.

  Celie walked back along the corridor, heart racing. She tried listening at Bran’s door, but her breathing was too loud for her to hear through the heavy oak. Bran always locked his door anyway, and Rufus couldn’t undo a lock. With a sick feeling, she remembered pulling her own door closed, but not locking it when she left for her lessons that morning. Since Bran had put the spell on her door, she had been overconfident that no one would go in. She had never thought that Rufus would find a way to get out.

  Her heart pounding even harder, she went across the corridor to Lilah’s door. She turned the latch and it opened; Lilah never locked her door. Celie stepped inside, holding her breath.

  Lilah’s room was beautiful: everything neatly in place, furniture gleaming with polish, and pillows plumped. Lilah had hung long silk scarves and sashes from a rack in the corner like a captive rainbow, and the windows were thrown open to show the stunning view of a landscape that did not exist. It was like a living painting that the Castle had provided just for Lilah.

  Celie let out her breath. “Rufus?” she called softly.

  Lilah’s room was empty. Celie’s heart calmed down, and she started to turn away. Then something gold on the floor caught her eye. She thought at first that it was a belt or sash that had fallen off the bed; then it moved, and she realized that it was Rufus’s tail. She hurried around the side of the bed and found him crouched over one of Lilah’s brand-new dancing slippers, gnawing away.

  “Bad boy! Bad boy! Drop it!”

  Celie shook her finger at him, and saw a look of distinct guilt in the griffin’s eyes. Even so, she had to pull the mangled slipper out of his beak. It was in pieces, the beads hanging by threads or scattered over the floor, the silk lining in shreds, and the leather scored and torn.

  “No, no, no,” she scolded him in a whisper. “If Lilah asks, we think Niro did it,” Celie told him conspiratorially. She felt guilty, but she could hardly confess to Lilah and take the blame herself. After all, she wasn’t prone to eating people’s shoes, and Lilah would never believe her. “Now, come on!”

  When Rufus seemed reluctant to follow, Celie grabbed hold of his long tail and threatened to haul him backward.

  His tail was very long and dragged on the ground, looking almost like it had been tacked on. Bran said this was evidence that Rufus still had a great deal of growing to do, especially since his paws were also enormous when compared to his lanky body. He was now as tall as Celie’s hip and weighed almost as much as she did, but he still moved like he wasn’t sure how to coordinate his four legs, and his wings were constantly getting caught on things.

  Getting Rufus back to Celie’s room was not going to be easy.

  Celie peeked out of Lilah’s door with Rufus hidden behind her skirts, then closed the door quickly as a maid went by. Once she had counted to twenty, she opened the door and looked again. The corridor was empty. Celie got a firm grip on Rufus’s tail and dragged him out of Lilah’s room. She shut the door so quickly that she nearly closed it on Rufus’s rump, and then she hustled him down the corridor.

  She reached the door to her own room just as she heard heavy footsteps and men’s voices coming from the main hall. She shoved Rufus inside, leaping in after him and slamming the door. Sweat was sticking her curly hair to her forehead.

  “You are a very bad griffin,” she told him again, panting.

  Someone knocked on her door, and Celie let out a small scream and nearly fell over Rufus. She managed to get a grip on herself and bundled Rufus into her water closet before answering the knock, still panting and sweating but without a griffin scrabbling at her skirts.

  “Celie!” Queen Celina was clearly startled by her youngest child’s appearance. “Are you all right?”

  “I just … the Castle changed and I couldn’t get to the schoolroom … and then on my way back … I had to use the water closet …”

  “Oh, I see,” Queen Celina said, her expression clearing. “Well, if you’re … freshened up … after your lessons, I want you to come with me.”

  Celie could hear a scrabbling sound coming from her water closet.

  “Why?” She edged toward the door of her room, hoping to press her mother back into the corridor as casually as she could. “Is something the matter?” she asked in a loud voice, to try to cover Rufus’s noise.

  “Not at all, but you’ve seen the room full of fabrics?” The queen was smiling now and didn’t even wait for Celie’s nod. “Of course you have: you had to go through it to get to the schoolroom! Well, Bran has looked it all over and said that it’s quite safe. I’ve called in the seamstresses, and we’ll have our new gowns made from these goods. Some of the things are spoiled, but most of it is still in perfect condition, and there are some lovely silks.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s go, then,” Celie said loudly. She continued to back her mother out of the room as a loud scrabbling noise came from the water closet.

  “What was that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Celie said. She sidled around her mother and grabbed the door latch. “Shall we?”

  “Oh, yes,” the queen said, though she did throw a puzzled look at Celie’s water-closet door. “Perhaps someone ought to—”

  “I think that noise is coming from the corridor,” Celie said. “Must have been one of the maids passing by.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief when her mother finally came out of her room. Celie made a pretense of having her sleeve catch on the latch in order to lock her door without her mother noticing. Feeling sweat still trickling down her back, she turned around to follow the queen and let out another little scream. Lilah was standing directly in front of her, holding out a ruined dancing slipper.

  “When I find out who—or what—did this, I will make new slippers out of their hide,” Lilah said in a dangerous voice.

  Chapter

  9

  When the holiday feasting hall appeared, Celie began to worry about the Castle.

  Normally it appeared during the winter holidays, coming into being at sunset and disappearing again at dawn. They would feast and sing and dance among beautiful decorations that were provided and changed every year, and then the Castle would take it all back. But the Tuesday after the roomful of fabric had ap
peared, the arch into the holiday dining hall stretched open and stayed that way.

  Since the king was hearing petitions and Ma’am Housekeeper was on the far side of the Castle overseeing the counting and sorting of some linens, a maid showed up at Celie’s door to ask for help. None of the maids wanted to set foot in the holiday feasting hall for fear it would disappear again with them inside it, she explained, and they wanted someone that the Castle respected to have a look.

  “I’ll come right away,” Celie said loudly.

  She hurried out of her room, pushing the maid ahead of her, and locked the door. When the maid had knocked, Celie had shoved Rufus under her bed, and she could hear him squawking and trying to work his way out from beneath the trailing bedclothes. She was a little annoyed that the spell Bran had put on her door hadn’t worked on the maid, or on her mother a few days before, and now she worried that the spell only worked on maids coming to clean.

  When she got to the archway that led to the holiday dining hall, however, she did stop to feel flattered for a moment. There were several maids gathered there, and they all brightened when they saw Celie coming. One of them nodded as though to say that Celie was just the right person to take care of things.

  “Has my father been told?” she asked, though she guessed the answer.

  “No, Your Highness,” the maid who had fetched her said. “We didn’t want to disturb him during court.”

  “If someone would please fetch the Royal Wizard,” Celie said.

  “Wizard’s in the Armor Gallery, Highness,” one of the maids said. “And we en’t supposed to bother him, either. ’Specially when he’s lookin’ at them things.”

  Celie pursed her lips. She pointed to the maid who had come to her room. “Go into the throne room and signal to Prince Rolf. He can leave the petitions easily, and if there’s need for my father to come, he can get him.”

  The girl nodded and hurried across the main hall to the double doors of the throne room. Celie steeled herself to step through the archway, hoping, as the maids had, that it wouldn’t whisk her away somewhere.

  She could of course see into the room, which looked musty and disused. The long feasting table was shoved against one wall, and there were a number of large crates in the middle of the room. It had never occurred to her before, but there were no windows, and naturally there were no candles lit inside. The room was cavernous and gloomy, and there was dust on everything, even though it was barely two months past the holidays.

  The maids were all watching her anxiously. Celie straightened her spine. The Castle had never removed a room with someone in it; it certainly would not start with her. Not while she was raising Rufus for it. She took a step forward.

  “What in the name of— Isn’t that the holiday feasting hall?”

  Pogue Parry’s voice carried across the main hall.

  “Cel! What are you doing?” Rolf chimed in a moment later.

  Celie turned and saw her brother coming out of the throne room with the maid in tow, and Pogue hurrying across the stone floor, hair windblown and cheeks ruddy from being outside.

  “Today’s new room is the holiday feasting hall,” Celie said, feeling strangely relieved. “But it’s all gloomy and boxed up. I was just going inside to see what is in those crates.”

  “Excellent, and very strange,” Rolf said. He took her arm. “Let’s go together, shall we?” He looked at the maids, his eyes glinting. “Anyone else coming?”

  “I’m coming,” Pogue said. He put a large hand on Celie’s shoulder. “No one else needs to come,” Pogue said quietly to the maid hovering nearby.

  The three of them took deep breaths and then stepped through the archway together. They stopped just inside the feasting hall. Nothing happened.

  “It’s safe,” Rolf said sharply over his shoulder to the maids.

  “Don’t be rude,” Celie whispered.

  “I am not pleased that they got you to take the risk for them,” he retorted. “You’re not to be the official Castle poison taster, as it were.”

  “It’s fine,” Celie said. She slipped out of Rolf and Pogue’s grip and went to the first of the crates. Pogue followed, and together they got the lid off. Inside, nestled in straw, were the golden baubles that had hung from the ceiling at the winter feasts. In another crate they found silk streamers carefully wound around spools, and so on. Each crate contained a treasure trove of beautiful things that had been used to make the holiday feasting hall appear magical. But now, packed away like this, they all seemed tawdry and faded.

  “Why is this happening?” Celie wanted to know.

  “You know what I want to know?” Rolf asked in a hushed voice. The other two looked at him. “I want to know who it is that puts up these decorations every year, then takes them down and packs them away.”

  Celie looked at him blankly. “The Castle does it,” she said finally.

  “The Castle would just leave it all up, wouldn’t it?” Rolf argued. “It’s people who would bother to pack all these things in straw.”

  A weird, queasy feeling was growing in Celie’s middle. She thought about the dusty rooms, the faded tapestries. She’d always thought that the new rooms came to entertain the Glower family and the other people who lived in the Castle. When the holiday feasting hall wasn’t in Sleyne, where was it? Were there people feasting on the golden plates every other day of the year? She looked at the crates and the stacked chairs with growing horror.

  “What has happened?” Bran swept into the room, looking even more wizardly than usual in formal robes and a round hat. He stopped short. “It’s the holiday feasting hall,” he said in a hushed voice. He locked gazes with Pogue. “This isn’t good,” he said.

  The sick feeling in Celie’s middle grew even worse. What was happening to her Castle?

  Chapter

  10

  How serious is it?” King Glower asked.

  The family, plus Lulath and Pogue, were sitting around the table in the winter dining hall. They’d just finished dinner, and Bran had asked to address them all. Celie had hurriedly sketched the newest changes to the Castle and had copies made that afternoon, which she was passing around.

  “Well,” Bran hedged. “There are a lot of factors to consider, and we’re still gathering information.”

  He tried to put on his mysterious wizard voice to make it seem like he wasn’t concerned, but none of the family was fooled. That was the trouble with being both the Royal Wizard and a member of the Glower family, Celie thought.

  Bran continued. “But the truth of the matter is … we just don’t know.”

  Everyone blinked at him.

  Celie, who was just behind Pogue, stopped in her tracks. Pogue froze, too, with his hand up for the map she was giving him. After a moment she remembered herself and gave him the parchment before hurrying to take her place beside Rolf once more.

  “What has surprised me since I was old enough to care,” Bran continued, “is that in all the years the Castle has been sitting in this valley, almost nothing has been written about it.

  “We know the original name of every King Glower, but little to nothing about their lives, and certainly nothing about their dealings with the Castle, other than legends and rumors. There are no maps of the Castle but Celie’s, no record of the rooms that have come and gone. The only clues are small mentions here and there in journals or histories, notes about having lunch in the new solar, or holding court in the round tower, that seem to indicate there are rooms that are no longer here.”

  “We’ve all seen rooms come and go,” King Glower said, but the uneasiness in his voice belied his casual words. “It’s the nature of the Castle.”

  “Of course,” Bran said. “But what worries me, other than the lack of information on the Castle—which is strange enough—is that in the last few months the nature of the Castle has changed. We can’t vouch for the Castle’s behavior prior to, say, fifty years ago, but we can say that within those fifty years, this is the longest the Castle
has gone without removing a room.”

  “How long has it been?” Queen Celina asked, frowning. She tapped her fingers on the table as if counting.

  “Two months,” Celie said.

  Bran nodded. “The last rooms to disappear were the guest rooms used for the winter holidays,” he reported. “According to Ma’am Housekeeper, the guest rooms used by Uncle Rupert and Aunt Zelda disappeared the morning after they left for Sleyne City. The maids cleaned them the evening before, put dust covers on the furniture, and the next morning they were gone. Just like they always are.”

  Celie knew that she couldn’t tell them about the hatching tower, which came and went depending on whether she was alone, but she raised her hand as she slid back into her seat. When everyone looked at her, she pointed out that the nursery was gone.

  “Actually,” Bran said, “it’s still here. It’s behind the schoolroom; it’s just hard to get to.”

  Celie made a face. She hadn’t known that.

  “For several months after the unpleasantness last summer with Prince Khelsh,” Queen Celina said, “I noticed that the Castle was a great deal more responsive. But that seems to have changed again.” Her brows drew together in a frown.

  “It’s true,” King Glower said. “I definitely felt that it was listening to me. It moved things around when Ma’am Housekeeper or I asked. But not only are the odd little rooms and corridors building up, but they seem to be much more … inconvenient than before.”

  “That room full of fabric isn’t inconvenient,” Lilah interrupted. “It’s fantastic.”

  “But it’s essentially bisecting the Castle,” Pogue argued. “And from the way it’s situated, I’m expecting two more rooms and possibly another corridor to join it, making what’s now the central part of the Castle into two distinct sections.”

  Everyone looked at Pogue in surprise, and his brown cheeks turned pink. Lilah gave him a skeptical look, but the king’s expression was thoughtful.