Heartless (35 page)

39

Princess Una of Parumvir and Prince Aethelbald of Farthestshore were married beside the sea. Una, much to Nurse’s disgust, refused to wear the ornate, many-layered gown designed especially for her by the Parumvir fashion experts. She chose instead a simple gown of white without ornaments or jewels, and rather than a crown, she wore flowers in her hair.

To salve their wounded dignity, those selfsame tailors pounced upon the Prince of Parumvir, and Felix – as he’d suspected would be his fate – was stuffed into the stiffest, most choking of lace collars, complete with little jewels dripping along the edges, a set of sleeves so puffy and slashed with scarlet silk that he thought he might tip over if they weren’t perfectly balanced out by yet more dangling jewels, and a pair of shoes that curled at the toes. He nearly fainted several times during the ceremony for lack of breath.

But to his relief, no one noticed Felix in the grandeur of the company present. Sir Oeric and Sir Imoo stood to one side of Prince Aethelbald, Sir Oeric huge and craggy as a mountain, Sir Imoo black as night with starlike eyes. Beyond them Felix saw a host of other people, some of whom disappeared in certain light, only to reappear momentarily in all their shining strangeness. Felix thought he glimpsed a black-bearded king no taller than a rabbit, who stood beside a queen of equal height with hair so long and so golden that it looked like a river of liquid gold. At one moment, he could have sworn he saw a girl in green sitting on the back of a giant frog; then a moment later he believed he saw a boy no older than five leading a white lion on a leash like a puppy. Felix glimpsed also a man with a swan’s head, a flame-orange tiger, a woman with cat’s eyes, and many, many more.

Except, when he blinked, he didn’t see anyone but the Prince and his two knights and all the gathered people of Parumvir dressed in brilliant colors. He pulled at the tight collar around his neck and wished to heaven some horrible disease would take all the fashion experts of Parumvir and prevent them from ever designing anything again.

“There you are!” a voice whispered fiercely in the middle of the ceremony. Felix took a surreptitious glance over his shoulder toward the nonexistent crowd beyond the Prince, and saw a young woman with a dark face and darker hair and slightly crooked teeth. He thought for one moment that she spoke to him, but realized the next that she was scowling down at his feet. He followed her gaze to where Monster sat, tail curled primly about his paws, one ear cocked back as the woman spoke.

“Where have you
been
all these years, wretched beast?” the woman said, edging closer.

The cat turned his other ear back, twitched the end of his tail, then bolted off into the crowd, vanishing from Felix’s sight.

Felix turned to look at the young woman again, but she was gone. Fidel, standing beside his son, nudged Felix in the ribs, and the boy quickly faced forward once more, trying to focus his attention on the ceremony. He thought perhaps he knew that woman from somewhere, sometime. From long ago perhaps, or maybe from a dream?

At last the ceremony was complete. As Aethelbald took his bride in his arms, many voices rose into the air, flying from the sea and from the wind and from all around, a thousand voices as beautiful and wild as starlight and moonlight. And they sang:

“Beyond the final water falling,

The Songs of Spheres recalling,

When the sun descends behind the twilit sky,

Won’t you follow me?”

Felix, standing beside his father, looked out to the sea and almost, but not quite, saw the Faerie beings he knew swam among the waves. Their voices pricked his memory again with some lingering impression of . . . of what? A promise and a kind smile and a silver pitcher of clear water. Strange images of high mountains and shafts of light through green leaves, of a woman clothed in lavender and green. It was all too strange, and he shook these thoughts away with a frown. Perhaps he’d think of them again tomorrow.

Una, as she stood back from her husband’s embrace, looked out to the ocean and for the first time saw the Faerie beings in the water, their hair glowing like fire. The sea unicorns raised their heads from the foam and gleamed like so many suns as they sang.

“Do they sing for you?” she asked her husband.

“They rejoice with me,” Aethelbald said, tucking her hand through his arm. “For you are mine now. Forever.”

She smiled into his eyes, and the light of the song filled her to overflowing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I cannot thank my mother, Jill Stengl, enough for the hours of critiques and brainstorming sessions she put into helping me polish this story into the best it could be. You, Mummy, went above and beyond the call of duty.

Thanks to Erin Hodge, Esther Shaver, Paula Pruden-Macha, and Edward Schmidt, all of whom read this book at different drafts and gave me honest opinions. What a blessing it is to have such friends!

So much thanks to Kim Vogel Sawyer, Jill Eileen Smith, and Elizabeth Goddard for giving this young writer a boost when she needed it.

Thank you to the rest of you who read it for fun: Peter, Tom, Jim, Ben, Abbey, Debbie, Laura, Hannah, April . . . If I’ve forgotten one of you, please consider your name inserted here with gratitude. All of you were great encouragements.

And I can’t forget to mention my agent, Rachel Zurakowski, who believed in me and this story from the beginning. You are a superhero, Rachel.

The team at Bethany House Publishers has been fantastic through every step of this process. This has been a wonderful experience that I will never forget. Thanks to all of you!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Elisabeth Stengl makes her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she enjoys her profession as an art teacher, giving private lessons from her personal studio and teaching group classes at the Apex Learning Center. She studied illustration at Grace College and English literature at Campbell University.
Heartless
is her debut novel.