Garden Princess (11 page)

The dressing table looked promising. What a mess it was! Piles of jewelry — bracelets and brooches, earrings and necklaces, tossed together as if they were junk. Adela lifted a golden belt. It was heavy enough to be real gold; the gemstones studding its length looked real, too. And here was the very diamond necklace Marguerite had worn yesterday. Adela picked it up, feeling the weight of the stones in her hand. She wondered if everything on the dressing table was stolen. Was that why Hortensia held her garden parties? So she could add to her jewelry collection? If so, she had been at it a long time. Adela thought of all the flowers in the garden — hundreds of them. How could it be that nobody knew what Hortensia was doing? “Somebody needs to stop her,” she murmured.

She had been talking to herself all day; now, however, she had someone to talk
to
— her own reflection, looking back at her from the mirror above the dressing table. But there was something strange about the reflection. Adela stared, putting her hand up to her hair. The girl in the mirror did the same. But where Adela’s hand touched the tangled remains of Marguerite’s careful hairdressing, the hand in the mirror touched a beautiful arrangement of curls. Adela looked down at her dress. Not only was it torn, but it was also filthy. Which was what happened when you wore a dress that was too small and tried to sleep in it on the ground. She looked up again to confirm that the girl in the mirror was wearing the same blue dress. Except that the dress in the mirror was clean and fresh. Not only that, but the gown also fit perfectly; nobody could ever say the girl in the mirror was too large for it. In fact, it seemed to Adela that the girl in the mirror was rather slender. She leaned forward, wondering if the girl’s face wasn’t different as well. Her lips seemed more full, her eyebrows more arched, her eyelashes longer, her nose straighter . . . In a word, the girl in the mirror was beautiful.

Adela set the diamond necklace down and picked up an enameled bracelet. So did the girl in the mirror. Adela dropped the bracelet. So did the girl. “I suppose it’s a magic mirror,” said Adela. “It makes you look more beautiful than you really are. But I can’t see why Hortensia needs a mirror like that.”

She turned her head, trying to see her profile. “Try not to frown, dear,” Cecile was always telling her. “You have a rather weak chin, and frowning doesn’t suit you, especially in profile.” Now Adela frowned, and it seemed to her that her reflection looked quite pretty. She tried smiling and found that her reflection was dazzling. Then she remembered how Marguerite had looked at Garth — sideways, shy yet flirtatious, her head slightly lowered so she could show off her eyelashes. Adela tried looking at herself like that, smiling as if she had a secret to share, and her reflection was so lovely that she could have admired it forever.

Instead she closed her eyes and shook her head. “What am I doing?” she wondered aloud.

She opened her eyes. The girl in the mirror was still as pretty as ever. “I’ve got to get out of here,” Adela told her. Naturally, the girl in the mirror said the same thing, but she said it so beautifully that Adela found herself staring at her again.

“Stop it,” Adela admonished herself.

She averted her eyes, and it was in doing so that she saw it — exactly what she needed to see and exactly when she needed to see it: a silver key on a silver chain, hanging over a corner of the frame of the mirror. It felt like magic, finding it like that.

She took the key down. It wasn’t very large. The palace gates at home had a big iron key. You needed two hands to turn it. But this little key was the only one Adela had found. “It must be the right one!” she said.

The girl in the mirror looked as if she agreed. Her beautiful eyes sparkled with excitement, and for a moment, Adela felt as if the girl were on her side, as if she wanted her to escape, to stop Hortensia. It was as if the girl were saying,
You were meant to find that key. You were meant to be a hero.
And then the temptation to stare came over Adela again. She could do nothing but gaze at the loveliness of the girl in the mirror. Everyone who looked at that girl would love her. How could they not?

Adela frowned. So did the girl in the mirror, looking even more fetching.

“You’re not me,” said Adela. The girl in the mirror said the same thing, only she looked sad as she said it.

And, of course, beautiful.

“I have to go,” said Adela. She reached out with her calloused, sunburned hand as if to touch the porcelain white hand of the girl on the other side of the glass. Then she turned away.

Just outside the window on the other side of the room was an oak tree. Adela opened the window, hitched up her skirt, and pulled herself up onto the sill. The tree grew so close to the house that she had no trouble swinging over to the nearest bough. She reached back to close the window, then climbed into a sanctuary of shadowy green. She could hear the searchers calling for her —“Come on out, Princess! We won’t hurt you!”— but she couldn’t see them, and that was all to the good. “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me,” she told herself as she settled into a fork of the tree. She would wait until dark to make her escape. And then . . .

Adela’s hand closed around the silver key. “I’ll tell Father what’s happened,” she murmured, “and we’ll put an end to it.”

How she or her father would do that, she had no idea. But that was how she felt. As if she were destined not only to escape from Hortensia but to defeat her as well. As if she were exactly what Hortensia had called her. Not ugly. Not mad. But
dangerous.

It was late when Krazo returned from delivering Hortensia’s letters. He expected to find the usual party going on inside the house: music and laughter pouring out of windows opened to the night air. Instead, he had a surprise.

The windows were open, but Krazo couldn’t hear any music. And when he landed on the sill of a window outside the banquet hall, he saw that the men seated around the table looked gloomy rather than merry. They were picking at their food, casting nervous glances at one another and at Hortensia, who sat alone at the head of the table, looking sour and silent. When one of the men reached for a pitcher as if to fill her wineglass, she glowered at him.

What was going on? Did it have something to do with the princess? Krazo had been thinking about her all day, wondering if Hortensia had found her yet, hoping that she hadn’t. An impossible hope! Now he wondered if the princess had cried when Hortensia had found her, and for some reason, a catch came into his throat. He shook his head as if to rid himself of even the thought of her crying. He turned from the window and was about to take off for his nest when he saw someone move on the far side of the lawn. A girl was standing at the front gate.

Heart pounding, he launched himself into the air. He flew across the lawn and landed on the grass behind the princess.

She whirled around. “You!” She glared at him and turned away. Her hands were fumbling with the lock on the gate. “Go away!” she said over her shoulder.

There was not much to like in her voice at the moment, but Krazo hardly cared. Just to see her, when he had thought he would never see her again, made him feel as if he had been borne up by a draft of air. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“None of your business! Leave me alone!”

Was she angry? Krazo had seen Hortensia get angry before — all teeth and snarls, like a wolf. But there were no teeth, no snarls, no wolf inside the princess.

He hopped closer, trying to see what she was doing. She had something in her hand — something made of silver. She was trying to turn the silver thing in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn.

“It’s no good!” said the princess. She moaned, laying her head against the gate, and it occurred to Krazo that she might cry again.

He was of half a mind to retreat to a safe distance, but the silver thing, now dangling from her fingers, caught his attention. He stared at it, then hopped closer, unable to believe his eyes. “Where did you get that?”

The princess lifted her head.

He stretched his neck toward the key. “Where did you get it?” he asked.

“It’s only a key. I found it in the house. I thought it might open the gate.”

Not a gate but a box, thought Krazo. A silver box with treasure inside.

“I should have known it would be too small,” said the princess. “I suppose
you
want it!”

He did. He wanted the treasure.

“You can have it,” said the princess, dropping the key on the ground. “It’s no good to me. She’ll find me soon, and . . .” But she didn’t finish her sentence, and Krazo saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

Don’t cry, he thought.

The princess wiped her eyes, but more tears came to fill them up.

Krazo remembered his dream — the woman crying in the room. He knew that if he could only give the woman the treasure, she would stop crying. The treasure would fix everything. It would make her happy.

“Don’t cry!” he begged the princess. And when she wiped her eyes again, he said, “Can you dig a hole?”

Adela was certain she had misunderstood the magpie. “A hole? Why would I want to dig a hole?” she said.

“Treasure!”

“What treasure?”

“In the box.”

“A box with treasure inside it?”

“In the ground.” The magpie picked up the silver key with its foot, holding it toward her. “Locked,” it said.

Was that what the key was for? A box of treasure, buried in the ground? Adela felt the tears coming again.

“Don’t cry! We’re rich!” said the magpie.

Which made her laugh. As laughter went, it was of the bitter sort, but it was better than crying. “I don’t want to be rich,” she told the magpie. “I want to get away.”

She had been so sure the key would open the gate — as if she were the hero in a story, certain to triumph because she deserved to.

“There is a shovel,” said the magpie. “There!”

Adela looked in the direction it wagged its head. Garth’s wheelbarrow was sitting beside the fountain in front of the house. She had noticed it earlier; if she hadn’t already known that Garth wasn’t his usual self, the fact that he had left his tools outside all night would have been a clue that something wasn’t right. “Yes, I see the shovel,” she told the magpie. “Only, I don’t suppose you can understand this, but Hortensia is looking for me. She’s going to turn me into a petunia or something if I don’t get away from here. I don’t have time to help you dig for buried treasure.” And I don’t trust you, she thought.

“Please help,” said the magpie.

Please help.
Something about these words made Adela waver. They made her think of King Ival. The enchanted animals that helped him usually did so because he had helped them first. The magpie could very well be enchanted. If she helped it dig up some treasure, would it help her escape?

Don’t be so gullible, Adela told herself. You’re not King Ival. And this isn’t a particularly helpful magpie. It’s only being greedy. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling curious. “How do you know there’s buried treasure?” she asked.

“I saw it.”

“Where? When?”

She listened as the magpie explained in its halting, croaking voice. Apparently it had seen Hortensia look inside a box. It had seen Hortensia lock the box with the very same key Adela had found, then bury the box in the garden in the middle of the night.

“But you didn’t see what was in the box,” said Adela.

“No,” the magpie acknowledged.

“Then I don’t understand how you know it’s treasure.”

“What else?”

“It could have been anything! Besides, if it were treasure, why should Hortensia keep it buried in the garden? Why not keep it with the rest of her things? I saw what was in her bedroom. What could be more valuable than that?”

“More treasure,” said the magpie. “Better treasure.”

Adela was skeptical. If Hortensia was as fond of treasure as she seemed — so fond that she orchestrated these garden parties in order to enchant her guests and steal their jewelry — would she really bury her best treasure? Wouldn’t she want to display it?

But if the box didn’t contain treasure, then what
had
she buried? What did she need to keep hidden? And from whom?