Enchanted (8 page)

Sunday lifted her hair so that the girl could tie the ribbon around her neck. She was glad that she finally had something by which to remember this day, something she didn’t have to feel guilty about buying, though she secretly hoped the girl included its price when she reported back to the moneylender. Sunday touched the silken strand at her throat reverently. “I will treasure it always.”

“It matches your eyes.” The shopgirl bowed her head. Sunday politely returned the nod, and then ran to catch up with her siblings.

Panser was at the moneylender’s stall; upon seeing them, the apprentice went to fetch his master. Schmidt appeared at once, smiling and rubbing his belly like a cat just finishing his cream. Sunday held her breath, anticipating the bargaining they’d put off that morning. “I trust you’ve had enough time to confer with your colleagues,” she said bravely.

“Indeed I have.” Schmidt chuckled. “Indeed I have. You still have the purse?”

Sunday placed the velvet bag of chits on the counter. She and her brother and sister had hardly put a dent in their quantity, but Sunday now wondered how preciously the man would value each. She watched carefully as Schmidt counted out the number of chits, placing them in uneven stacks. He had not counted them out before giving her the bag, and she scolded herself for not having done so the minute she got them.

Schmidt snatched another bag from Panser, who was too busy exchanging smiles with Friday to pay attention. From it, Schmidt counted out one gold piece for every chit left on the table.

Sunday was confused. The gold on the counter could be melted down to make a ball easily three times the size of Sunday’s bauble. Ah ... he would finish and then subtract what they had spent, thought Sunday, but Schmidt did not. He slid the stacks of gold coins into the velvet bag and pulled the closing string taut.

“There you are, my dear. Panser has arranged a cart for you and your purchases.”

She tried to say nothing, but this was too much. “Sir, I think—”

Schmidt peered sternly at her over his thick glasses. “You’re not second-guessing me, are you, young woman?”

“No, sir.”

“Then take the bag and hie you home. Give my best to your fine parents.”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. The bag was almost too heavy to lift. “Thank you, sir.”

Panser led them to the cart where the spoils of their day’s labor waited. He helped Friday up onto the seat near the driver. Sunday and Trix climbed into the back with the bags and barrels.

The gold weighed so heavily in Sunday’s pocket that it pulled on the front of her dress. She adjusted her pinafore so that the bag would sit more comfortably in her lap. Had they really been so frugal in their shopping? Sunday might have dissuaded her sister from her brutal bargaining, but Friday had loved every moment of it, and Sunday never would have stood in the way of her sister’s enjoyment.

Stranger still was the ride back through the Wood, on the same road they had walked to get to the market. The path was clear now, as if there had never been a storm at all. Only one sizeable branch blocked their way home. The driver stopped the cart to remove it, dragging it into the brush past a pillarstone and a crooked tree.

Oh, Grumble. It would be such an easy thing to hop off the cart. There was still a good bit of daylight left. No one would miss her, or the coins in her pocket, as they were hardly expected. But Trix would want to go with her, for sure, and then Friday would be offended if she was not invited to follow.

Sunday turned to look up at her sister perched prettily on the high seat. Dear, good, sweet Friday, with a heart of purer gold than any bauble that man or fairy could produce. Lovely Friday, with her mahogany hair and her eyes like gray smoke and the patchwork skirts that surrounded her like a halo of love. Sunday had seen how Panser fawned over Friday. They all fawned over her. For all Sunday knew, she herself was the only girl Grumble remembered. And for all that he might love her, Sunday did not know him well enough to trust that he would still love her after meeting her beautiful sister.

Sunday fingered the silk ribbon around her neck, the only tangible memory she would have of this day, and she felt a familiar vileness course through her. She knew what she was. Ungrateful. Selfish. Jealous. Wicked. Evil. There was no hope for it.

Trix followed her gaze to the pillar and then back to meet Sunday’s eyes. He raised an eyebrow in question, and she shook her head. She did not want to share Grumble, even if it meant sacrificing another day in his company.

The driver finished with the limb and continued on the journey home. When he reined in at the front of the house, he offered to stay and unload the purchases. Friday batted her eyelashes. Sunday thanked him. Trix raced to the door, no doubt eager to tell their parents the fantastic story of an upset piecart and their newfound fortune.

“Mama! Papa! Wait until you...” Trix’s words drifted into nothing.

They stared at the stranger by Mama’s side. The woman was roughly a head taller than their mother but looked several years younger. Her very dark hair was pulled up into a loose bun, and the fire’s reflection flickered in her equally dark eyes. She wore a tidy wool skirt and a crisp linen shirt with lace and a small brooch at the collar.

Had she been a few years younger still, she would have been the spitting image of Wednesday.

Sunday had no desire to speak. She let her sour expression introduce her.

“Well, well,” said the woman. “It seems I have arrived just in time.” She walked up to Sunday, pulled the silk ribbon from around her throat in one clean snap, and tossed it into the fireplace.

Sunday watched her beautiful gift smolder in the flames. As it burned, the fire around it turned green. Bilious smoke rose from it to hover above the logs. The smoke folded itself into the image of a snake that hissed and spat at them before evaporating up the chimney. What was left of the ribbon fell into ash.

Sunday turned on the woman. “Who are you?”

“Of course you don’t recognize me, child. You were too young.” She took Sunday by the arms and kissed her reluctant cheeks. “I’m your Aunt Joy.”

I
T TOOK RUMBOLD
a while to realize that the fire had gone out. After months of greeting the dawn amidst the constant hum and bustle of Wood life, he felt a bit hollow and alone. Odd. He’d never imagined that he would miss anything from that enchanted otherlife. Here in the castle there was no buzz of insects, no hoot of owls about their nightly business, no rustling in the underbrush. No pale glow of moonlight fell from the heavens to light false paths in the darkness. The wind didn’t whisper across the surface of the water as it lapped against the sides of the well.

But there was whispering.

A fear from his childhood seized his heart with renewed vigor. The whispers had always lingered in and around his boyhood bedchamber in the witching hours, pestering him, filling his head with susurant syllables. If he stopped up his ears so he couldn’t hear their disembodied chatter, they would hunt him down at the dining table or in the receiving chamber. They had faded with time, or perhaps his memories of them had simply faded with age.

While a frog, he had learned to survive within the constant conversation of the Wood. There it had guided him, reassured him. Here, the whispers shook him to his core.

Instinct screamed at him to hide, to pull the sheets over his head and plug his ears. He pretended the strange sounds were simply servants murmuring down the hallway. They were not in the room with him, not mouthless cries from beyond the veil, not long-ago memories soaked in stone and built into the cold, confining walls around him. He told himself stories, imagining the words being spoken in Sunday’s sweet voice as the sun reflected off her golden hair and illuminated his soul. He concentrated on her sun-kissed skin, her lips like rose petals, her eyes like sapphires—

Alwaysss.

The drawn-out “s” caught his ear. Had he really heard the word? There had never been words in the whispers before, just an unintelligible mishmash of discordant sounds. Rumbold focused on extracting that one word from the noises in the ether. He was a man now, not a child. Instead of running from the whispers, he tried to listen for them. To them.

He honed in on a bass line: a low, syncopated thrumming like the beat of a heart. It could have been saying his name:
Rumbold. Rumbold.

A note above that was the sibilant whisper, the words finally coming together for him in a hushed phrase:
I will always be with you.

There was a sadness in the message, of lovers torn apart or family separated by time and grief. The lonely ache of it echoed inside him. As he embraced its discovery, he accidentally stumbled upon the next:
Kill me.

Rumbold’s shivers began again, and he regressed steadily into the fears of his youth. The whispers would no longer fade back into noise for him now. Each of the words was distinct in his mind, and together they haunted him with their grim harmony.

Rumbold. Rumbold. Rumbold.

I will always be with you.

Kill me.

Free me.

Over and over and over again ... For all that he had initially strained to hear it, the dissonance was now deafening. He leapt out of bed—stumbling on foreign legs—and felt his way to the fireplace. If the whispers were tied to the darkness, perhaps chasing the darkness away would quiet them.

He scrabbled about on the floor; clean-swept stone finally yielded to ash and soot. He blindly searched for logs, kindling, flint, and steel. Of course, once he had them he had no idea what to do with them. He had managed to stay alive in the Wood as a frog for months, but seeing to the needs of a human body was a very different thing.

Kill me.

Free me.

Try as he might, his meager sparks could not convince the wood to burn, so Rumbold pulled off one of his woolen bed-socks. On the third strike, the fibers caught and smoked. He laid the sock across the haphazard pile of logs, and finally they took up the blaze. The whispered words faded slightly, if only hidden under the crackling of the new fire. He peered back at his half-curtained mattress still shrouded in shadow.

There was a figure at the foot of his bed.

Rumbold could not make out the features of the humansized shape, nor did he want to. He piled more kindling on top of the logs, urging the hungry flames higher and brighter, as if by sheer force of will they could become the sun and sweep the room clear of shadows. He pulled his knees to his chest and buried his head in his hands, unwilling to look upon his unholy visitor.

The prince rocked back and forth, the heat of the fire harsh at his side and on his back. He imagined the light of the flames surrounding him, protecting him. If desire was enough to make something true, he would be fine.

***

Rumbold awoke on frozen stone to the hollow chirping of a bird with no tongue and to the vague memory of a hero’s sickbed long ago.

Breathe.

He took a slow, deep, more-aching-than-painful breath and attempted to harvest his memories one at a time. The desperate cold beneath him was from the unforgiving flagstones of the hearth; the chirping resolved itself into the stirring of a silver spoon in a porcelain bowl. There was the subtle wheeze of a dying fire and the courteous shuffle of Rollins’s shoes against the hard floor. The rest of the world was stone, soot, and blessed silence. There were no whispers in the daylight.

He dared not ask Rollins about the whispers in the darkness. There were surely enough questions as to the fragility of his mental state. He needed to appear sane, hale, and whole again.

He braved one open eyelid.

There was definitely some work to be done on behalf of his image of perfect health.

Much to Rollins’s credit, upon discovering his charge sprawled uncomfortably before the fire, lamentably missing one sock, his skin and bedclothes streaked with ash, the manservant had greeted him with a simple “Good morning, sire” and continued bustling about the steaming breakfast tray. When Rumbold finally worked himself into a sitting position, Rollins extended a hand. He helped the prince off the floor and into a chair at the small table. The velvet cushion felt like a cloud beneath stiff muscles and aching bones.

“The fetes have been announced, as you requested, sire, and the local moneylenders are being informed of your wishes even now.”

Reluctant to speak, Rumbold nodded his thanks. Before him were a large pitcher of water, a bowl of brown broth that smelled like fresh stew, and a small glass of goat’s milk. Postenchantment day one: no solid foods. Cook had remembered. The sight made him starving and sick at the same time.

There was a slight pressure on his shoulder. “Take your time, sire,” said Rollins. “I will prepare a bath.”

Rumbold covered Rollins’s hand with his own. “Meh...” Damnable words. “Ma faaathr.”

He felt the muscles in Rollins’s hand tense. “Your father bids you welcome on your most fortunate return. He will make time to receive you in his chambers tomorrow evening.” It was an emotionless recitation, meaning the declaration had been emotionless as well.

And there it was. Enchanted into some vile beast, missing for months, unexpectedly reappearing long before his anticipated return, and Rumbold was still not worthy enough for an unscheduled audience with his esteemed father. It was almost reassuring that so little had changed.

Rumbold waited until Rollins had slipped into the other room before lifting the heavy spoon with clumsy fingers. Sunlight winked at him from a jewel in the spoon’s gilt handle, and the prince wondered at the uselessness of decorating a utensil. His focus shifted to the room, its walls draped in sumptuous linens and spotted with solemn-faced portraits in thick frames. Somehow, he had to find a way to reembrace this fanciful life of waste and excess. He must remember that he was a prince. A prince covered in cinders. A prince her family would have nothing to do with.

Love and rage burned inside his chest, crawled under his skin. They begged for his voice, his tears, his fury. He quickly gulped down the contents of the spoon. The liquid scalded the back of his raw throat. His stomach rebelled. Spices filled his nostrils and made his eyes water, but he refused to choke.