Midnight's Song (37 page)

“Aurelian – it
appears to Emily there’s a magical creature standing in my bedroom
who’s just stolen her voice. Considering
you’re
the magical creature in this
scenario, I think it would be best if you let me take this,” I
explained, voluntarily stepping into his place.

“Emily…I’m sorry. I know
this is going to be a lot for you to take in – but bear with me,” I
slowly began. “This may not exactly be the best way to put
it…alright, there’s no good way to put this. You know all of the
fairy tales you loved reading as a child? The ones you said teach
us about finding the optimism and magic in real life?”

She nodded.

“…Let’s just say, this very well might
be one of them.”

Emily’s jaw dropped. She gave me a
blank stare and then glanced over at Aurelian. In the awkwardness
of the moment, he cordially bowed and introduced
himself.

“Prince Aurelian,
cordially at your service,” He ever-so-formally introduced himself.
Emily’s jaw was still on the floor. Seeing the blank look on her
voiceless face caused him to speak up again: “I hail from
the Night Kingdom –
just
to clarify.”

Emily slowly closed her
mouth and stood up straight. She nodded along, still in an
understandable amount of shock over it all. Emily glanced over at
me, then at Aurelian, and then back at me once again. As her
pointing finger apparently paired us together, I felt a good deal
of awkwardness and spoke up.

“Uh yeah…we we are.
Sort of.”
I stammered. “It’s just that our
situations are sort of…mutual right now! I mean we do like each
other, of course. But nothing is really set in stone right
now.”

“It’s not?” Aurelian
challenged. I looked over my shoulder and shot him a glare. We were
absolutely
not
going to start fighting again.

“Now that Emily is here and she knows
about you,” I calmly turned to Aurelian. “How about we ask her if
she can help us keep this a secret?”

“You can’t ask her, Elissa. Her voice
is gone.”

“Well then – why
don’t you give it back,
Prince
Charming
?” I explained to him slowly and
matter-of-factly with just a hint of sarcasm. “I’m sure she
understands by now what’s going on.” By now she was still shaking
her head, but I had to proceed if she was to get her voice back.
“And Aurelian, I’m sure she specifically
won’t
tell anyone when she gets it
back.”

“
Elissa, you don’t need to persuade me as if I’m mindless.
I’ll give her voice back to her as soon as I’m sure that she won’t
screech upon my returning it.”

I then turned to Emily and
calmly began persuading her.

“Now Emily…I know this is all a shock
to you, but it’s very important that you don’t tell anyone,” I
explained to her. “You’re my friend. I trust you. Do you promise
that you won’t say anything?”

Suddenly, the silent Emily nodded. It
was obvious that she was still in shock, but now she was beginning
to follow. Given, it was probably just because she didn’t want to
be muted for the rest of her life. But, her cooperation was at
least one step in the right direction. I glanced back at Aurelian
and gave him a pleading look.

“She’s not going to
say anything. Now give her voice back!” I exclaimed. He gave me a
slightly arrogant, pettily defeated look. He waved me along, urging
me to give her fair warning before he granted her the ability to
speak again. “Alright, Emily. Prince Aurelian is going to give your
voice back. But, I’m telling you this now as a good friend – when
he does, you had better not say anything. If you do…” I struggled
to search for an adequate answer, “your voice will be taken away
again, this time forever! So, do you understand? Do you promise
that you absolutely, positively
will
not
make a sound?”

Upon hearing my warnings, she hurried
to nod. She gave a rushed motion with her hands as to tell us that
she understood and we’d better hurry to get her speaking again.
When it was unanimously understood, I felt a wave of air drift
across the room and blow over Emily’s face and hair. She closed her
eyes and tried to force the air up her throat one last
time.

“Yes, Elissa. I promise,” she suddenly
whispered. As soon as she did, her eyes shot open and she covered
her mouth. It was back. She could speak again!

Over the next ten minutes,
the door remained barred and we slowly explained our predicament.
She tried to take it in wearing as much of a composed face as she
could, but I will admit that it was hard. Even though Aurelian was
attempting to be friendly, it was obvious that Emily didn’t want to
lose her voice again.

“I understand that there’s
probably not much that you can do beyond keep this a secret,” I
moved to explain. “But, if there’s any way you could help us it
could mean something very important. I’ll leave it at
that.”

“You know I think of you
as a sister, Elissa…but I don’t know about this.” She put a hand to
her face

“I understand that
this is difficult to grasp…especially now,” I quietly exclaimed,
squeezing her hands tightly. “But, if you help Aurelian, you’d have
the chance to do something that no one in our world has done
before. It could help more people than you know. It could
honestly
change
things!”

“I don’t know,” Emily soon hesitated.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you…I honestly do. I believe in this
more than you know – perhaps even more than I know myself. It’s
just…”

“It’s just what?” I pleaded. “Is it
anything other than the shock of this situation? Something I’ve
said or done? I know things have been different between us lately
–”

“No, Elissa…it’s not
that,” Emily interrupted. A look of hopelessness clouded her
momentarily silent expression. “As magnificently shocking as all of
this might be, there are other reasons that, that; this encounter
would put me in danger. I’m sorry I never told you. I couldn’t –
and I probably shouldn’t. But, I’ve done something very foolish
recently. That along with the Magistrate’s scrutiny probably puts
us in more danger than we would have been before. And
now…
this?
”

For a second she looked away from me,
and I felt like it was my duty to reach out to her. I settled my
hand on her shoulder, Aurelian silently watching her with eyes that
looked as if they were reaching into her hurting soul.

“Emily, please tell me. As I trust
that you’ll keep this a secret, you can trust that your secret will
stay here with me. And, Aurelian certainly won’t tell anyone.” I
softly whispered. “What is it that you’ve done?

The entire room fell deafeningly
silent. Perhaps Aurelian already had some sort of other-worldly
knowledge of what she was about to say, for he didn’t look
surprised in the least. She looked up at me and flashed me an
honest, confessing look. Everything about her demeanor changed. She
shifted from being the closed up box of a girl I’d known for the
last month and a half to becoming an open door. Her expression was
sober and truthful, telling me before she even said a word that
this was not a light matter.

“You know I was gone quite a lot last
month,” she began. “And in the months before that. It’s true – I
was missing. It was no one’s imagination. I was out sneaking
around.”

“Where?” I confusedly asked. “Where
could you have possibly gone?”

“Not far…not until recently,” she
replied. “The servants covered for me – because you know, it’s just
an unspoken rule that we don’t rat out our own.”

Her words were beginning to come in a
frantic jumble, arising from a true emotional mess. She struggled
to comprehend them all out loud without breaking down. As true as
the words were, I still could hardly gasp what she was telling
me.

“Wait – I don’t understand. What kind
of trouble is that? Every young girl sneaks out sometimes, servant
or not.”

“It’s not that I was
sneaking out for girlish reasons, Elissa…” she tearfully told me,
wiping the moisture from her eyes with her stained sleeve. “It was
dangerous because of
who
I was sneaking out with.”

“Oh, Emily…” I softly
murmured. “It was Jackoby, wasn’t it?”

“Yes – it was. Oh, Elissa! Only you
truly know…only you can truly ever know. We’re in love with each
other. We’ve been in love for a very long time.” She put her head
in her hands once again in utter distress. Now my heart dropped
too. I’d known it all along – but now I was being faced with it for
the first time. I let out a nervous laugh.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with
that. Just so long as you two weren’t seen and you haven’t been
suspected –”

“No, Elissa!” Emily exclaimed,
beginning to collect herself. “It goes much deeper than that. Our
love caused us to do something very foolish. Something that is even
more dangerous than simply being affectionate about each other
while working in the same household. But, we couldn’t help
ourselves. Our hearts blinded us.” She paused. “Remember when I was
gone the weekend of the ball?”

I stopped, almost
telepathically realizing what she was about to say. I knew the
truth before she even uttered it. She couldn’t have – she hadn’t.
My mind flashed back to all those months ago, when Jackoby flashed
Emily a strange glance and talked about “October.”
Was it really possible that they had actually
been planning…to run away together?

“Emily – you didn’t! Did
you?”

“Yes, Elissa. It’s
true. My name’s not Emily Berry anymore. It’s
Emily Nielsen.”

I fell back in
di
sbelief. How could she have pulled it
off? And how on earth could she have hidden it all this time? I
still didn’t fully comprehend it.

“You honestly mean that you, actually
–”

“Elissa, must I
spell it out for you? Jackoby and I ran away and
eloped.”

Now my jaw was the one
falling to the floor. I understood why she’d been so closed off, so
secretive all of this time. Obviously she’d jumped into it with
doubts and now she must have felt the reluctance growing. And now,
the tension was rising to its greatest height all around us. She
had much to fear if she was found to be in an “illegal” marriage of
this sort. It all lined up perfectly now. Still, knowing all of
this I couldn’t help but question it in the back of my
mind.

“Emily…if you eloped, why did you come
back?”

“Well, you see…Jackoby had
been begging me for months. We were going to run away to the Desert
Country, seeing that’s where all of the fugitives and runaways go.
I had many doubts about it all. I loved him, so I agreed to go
through with it anyway. After all was said and done, my doubts came
back again. I worried what was going to happen to my family with no
provider and I worried about what would happen to all of you when
it was discovered that we had deserted.”

“So…you came back?”

“Yes. I convinced him that we were
needed back at the manor. After much protesting, he agreed. We’ve
been trying to hide what happened ever since then. If anyone finds
out it could mean death for the both of us. That’s why you mustn’t
tell a single soul.”

“I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I
quietly told her. I flashed a slight smile through all of the
gloominess and childishly crossed my fingers over my
heart.

I could sense the pain in
her voice – she was truly aching. This wasn’t the fairy tale ending
she’d always imagined. As willing as she was to run away with her
Prince Charming, she had come to the disheartening conclusion that
this world was made to keep them apart. For just a second, I
understood how my own mother must have felt when she met my father.
In the silence, Aurelian suddenly spoke up.

“I hope you won’t mind my
interjecting,” he humbly told Emily. “But, do you both still truly
love each other?”

“What?” She spoke up confusedly,
clearly not expecting to be faced with providing such an answer.
Aurelian knelt down at her feet and softened.

“No matter what you’ve done or how
foolish you think it may have been, your love still matters.” He
said to her almost poetically. I think it caused both of us to
soften just a little bit more than we had before. She fell into
silence for a moment before speaking up again.

“Yes, we do.”

There was another momentary silence
before Emily spoke up again. I could tell that something was riding
on her conscience now. She had to help us. It was as if God himself
was reaching into her heart and telling her to remain open to the
unknown.

“I probably shouldn’t do this – but I
see now there’s no way to get around it. I don’t know exactly how
much I can do, but I will help you.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” I threw my
arms around her neck, not realizing that now I was being much
louder than I had intended.