The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (30 page)

“A masquerade?” There was a slight flicker of memory that probed the edges of her mind. For a brief moment she saw herself in a grand ball gown sweeping across the floor in the arms of a stately and regal man.

"For now, you just relax and let me take care of you. By the time I'm done, you'll hardly recognize yourself at all."

Meredith stifled the words on the end of her tongue. She already didn't recognize herself, but the soft tone and stroking fingers along the curve of her arm soothed her. For the time being, she let go of the unanswered questions that tore through her mind, and allowed the other woman to care for her.

Lunette slipped a silky robe over her body, and spun her around to tie the sash at her waist. "Come now and sit, while we transform you from this tired shell into the radiant beauty I know lies under your skin just waiting to be freed."

She led her to a soft chair, and the moment she sat down, another of the ladies moved in behind her and began to massage the weary muscles in her neck and shoulders. Lunette lifted a silver hairbrush to comb the tangles from her still-damp hair, and Meredith winced when the brush approached the hard knot pulsing on her head.

"I've got a salve in my kit that'll take care of that bump," Lunette said, her gentle finger brushing the surface of Meredith's skin.

Moments later, she worked a thick, oily medicine into the bump, and within seconds the throbbing pain began to abate. As it lifted, she felt herself relax even deeper while the horde of ladies waited on her hand and foot. A much desired sense of comfort emanated outward from her, and from time to time she could almost feel herself drifting away from the moment, but then Lunette’s sing-song command would draw her back in and she would open her eyes again, much against her will.

Lunette finished brushing her hair, while another buffed and shaped the ragged fingernails on Meredith's hands. She painted the nails pearly pink, and when Meredith held her hand up to inspect the color in the fading light from the window behind her, her nails shimmered magically.

“Such lovely hair," Lunette said, stepping back to admire the waves as they dried in the air. "I'll twist and plait it for you, and then we'll dress you.

Before Meredith could say so much as thank you, she felt the steady, certain hands of an expert separating sections of her damp flaxen hair. She gasped and bit her tongue with a curse as the Lunette's fingers moved over a second, throbbing goose-egg near the back her head.

“Steady on, lady. I’ll be gentle with you, but you have to stay still.”

Meredith ignored her instructions and reached back to touch the tender spot. “I wonder how I hit my head.”

"It's hard to say," Lunette took her hands gently inside her own and gave them a squeeze. “I shall be gentle with you, I promise.”

“Would that explain…could it explain why I have no memory of my life before I came to this place?”

Lunette was silent in the face of Meredith’s contemplation, but when Meredith lifted her eyes to mirror to gauge the weird-woman’s expression, she saw that Lunette was carefully consumed by her work. She had a hairpin tightly clamped between her strange, sharp lips so that even when she spoke it came out muffled and constricted.

“Some say there is really no life before this place, milady.”

“No…no life before this? Why that’s absurd.”

Meredith was about to protest that certainly she had come from somewhere and sometime—surely she had existed long before she had come to this place. Or hadn’t she? Her mind ached with the notion that she had simply been born of the water, birthed onto the banks of that hideous lake for the sole purpose of wedding some strange king she’d never known.

She trembled at the notion, but what could she do? There was no escaping now that she was there inside the castle. Those weird-faced girls were everywhere, attending to each facet of her preparation like mindless minions under a spell.

She swallowed, the anxiety rising inside of her like a flooded river, and then Lunette stepped back to admire her work.

“Surely, you will be the most lovely queen, milady.” There was a glisten of admiration in her black eyes as she gazed upon her future queen. "There is kindness in your eyes.

“Thank you.”

Meredith's smile was no more than a flash upon her lips as Lunette lifted her from the seat. A swarm of maids rushed in carrying a powder-blue gown decked in seed-pearls that glittered as the fabric billowed and swayed.

They helped her into the gown, and then wove pearled strands into the regal twists and braids of her shining hair.

Lunette finally spun her toward the mirror again, and stepped to the side so Meredith could admire the beauty looking back at her. She still did not recognize herself, and so she gasped a little at the sight before her.

Facing her in the mirror was a tender, but beautiful princess with wide, innocent eyes and dainty lips.

She wondered how old she was. If the painted lips she studied had ever known the kiss of a man.

“Lunette?” She looked to her left, upon that strange face that was barely even distracted from the task at hand. “When am I to be wed?”

“On the morrow,” Lunette reached in and took Meredith’s hand inside her own. She gave the fingers a squeeze and tilted her head in curious compassion. “Why you’re trembling like a little flower. There’s no need for you to be nervous, dear lady. What more could a pretty young princess such as yourself want, but to be a queen?”

She hadn’t even noticed she was shaking and in the wake of Lunette’s compliment Meredith’s half smile was meaningless against the throng of attendants.

There was something very strange and wrong about all of it, but not even Lunette seemed to notice that Meredith’s painfully confused expression seemed to be screaming out:
there is much to be discontent about when you have no idea who you are or where you’ve come from!

“There you go,” Lunette stepped back and looked Meredith over with a proud, yet crooked grin. “It is no small wonder he has chosen you as his bride. You are beyond lovely, and his highness will be the envy of the kingdom with you seated beside him on the throne.”

A warm rush of blood flushed Meredith’s cheeks and she looked away, toward the hoary flow of light streaming in through the western windows.

She paid no attention to the finishing touches they fussed over, and before she knew it she was being directed down a long, winding course of stairs. Beyond the dark, stained-glass windows they passed, she could see the refracted light of the setting sun, burned gold and red as blood as it streamed through that colored glass.

In the back of her mind, part of her screamed, "Make a break for it," the moment she saw the door she’d come through, but when the staircase ended, she was in a different part of the castle, warmed and generously lit by a row of sconces on each side of the hall.

A closed door loomed at the end of the hallway like a terrible shadow, but just underneath the crack in the door she could see light and the flickering of bodily movement on the other side.

“This is as far as I go, lady.” Lunette braced her arm and pushed her forward a little.

Meredith looked back at her in longing. Though she wasn’t sure why, she felt comfortable with the strange being that brought her in from the harsh outdoors and made her feel human again.

There was only the slightest throbbing reminder of her headache as she took several tentative steps toward the door. She paused to look back at Lunette who waved her forward.

Knowing she would never be able to go back now, Meredith approached the heavy doors and opened them into the ballroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Waiting on the other side of the door was a lively and colorful hall, music-filled and packed with a throng of even more strangely decorated and bizarre creatures than the ones that had attended to her needs upstairs.

All of them were gaily dressed for the event, and as Meredith looked horrified around the room at the twisted manner of faces that looked back at her, she vaguely remembered that Lunette had said it would be a masquerade and that quickly explained the bizarre stream of faces flitting about the ballroom.

She started to back out of the hall, realizing that she had no mask herself, but the doors closed her inside and she had no choice but to enter the room. It hummed with so much conversation and laughter that Meredith wondered if she hadn’t gone mad, and these were the voices in her own head chattering endlessly and laughing, so much laughing.

“Our lady of honor has arrived,” she heard a male voice call out, and several necks craned while their strange, masked faces turned her way.

The pounding sensation in her heart froze her in her tracks, but as all eyes scanned her with curiosity, she realized the only way to escape their prying stares would be to disappear into the crowd.

She tried to smile as she began to press her way through the bodies, but imagined that each time she made eye contact with someone the look she truly wore was far from pleasant.

“Relax.” She commanded under her breath. “Perhaps a bit of nourishment will help you remember why you’re here.”

And talking to herself aloud wasn’t a sign that she’d gone mad…

Pursing her lips tightly together, several of the guests greeted her as she passed by table after table, and it was impossible not to make eye contact as she drifted through the closely pressed bodies on the ballroom floor. Black and yellow orbs peered out at her from behind masks and hands reached up to stifle giggles and hide whispers of gossip and curiosity. Securely hidden behind their masks, they possessed an air of secrecy, and her own inability to hide her face made her feel naked and exposed.

Meredith scanned the room, which was decorated beautifully with strands of shining glass orbs wrapped in twines of lavender and yellow flowers, and she couldn't tell if the orbs actually shone with light of their own, or they simply reflected the glow of the fireplaces that warmed the room.

A second set of double doors loomed at the far end of the room, placed just before another set of double doors, there was one table more elegantly ornamented than the rest with two high-backed, empty chairs. Seated on each side of those empty chairs there was seated one attendant each.

Once more Meredith searched the room for some sign of the shadow-king she’d seen lurking at the top of the stairwell when she’d arrived. Perhaps one look into his eyes would remind her why she was here, and though she did not allow the prospect to excite her, there was a moment that the fairytale illusion of it all lifted her up onto an imaginary pedestal and allowed her to glide effortlessly through the crowded room toward that table.

She was the guest of honor, was to be queen of all the bodies dancing through that room.

Surely, that was something to feel at least a little giddy about.

“Lady.”

The two attendants rose and came toward her, one arriving on each side of her and holding out a hand. Both were very obviously male, and disguised by nothing more than simple, silver plated oval masks, but underneath their skin and faces seemed strange and peculiar, much like the ladies who had waited on her upstairs with Lunette.

“His majesty begs forgiveness, for he will not arrive until long after the feast has ended and the entertainment has begun.”

“Oh.” She looked between them like a startled doe at the end of a hunter's spear.

“He’s been detained,” the other explained before she even had the chance to inquire.

She swallowed slowly and nodded, “I see.”

“The king assigned my brother Flick and me to accommodate his lady’s every need in his absence,” the second attendant explained.

“And who are you?” Her curiosity drew her mouth into a bemused grin as the brothers each lowered an arm behind her and began to lead her toward the table they’d come from.

“Frick Drindle, at your service, my lady.” He bowed toward her with an exaggerated flair. “Won’t you dine with us?”

“I suppose I could,” she conceded gently.

"Come this way then, lady."

“When can we expect the king arrive?”

“Oh, it won’t be long at all,” Flick answered. “He was most aggrieved not to be able to meet with you here himself.”

“As am I to not have been met by him,” she admitted.

Frick stopped to pull out her chair while Flick helped her into her seat, and the two of them pushed her toward the table together. The brothers were seated, one on each side of her, and together they began to fill her plate with a strange assortment of delicious smelling foods. The aromas wafted up to meet her, urging her stomach toward hunger.

“I suspect you’re famished after so long and rigorous a journey,” Frick, or was it Flick, said. It was impossible to tell them apart, but she supposed it didn’t matter.

There was a brief flicker of a moment when a strange, but familiar voice called from the back of her mind…something about refusing food from the faerie world, and she regarded the layout before her. Who did that distant voice belong to?

“Not so famished as you might expect,” she explained, holding a tentative hand out to the plate.

“Oh, but you must eat,” Flick insisted, or perhaps it was really Frick after all. She really couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them at all, and the commotion of the room wasn’t making it any easier for her to focus.

“The cook will take great insult if the guest of honor does not have a taste of nearly every dish that he prepared in her honor.”

Meredith grimaced and swallowed nervously, the strange dishes not unappealing, but the nervousness inside her stomach making the very thought of food turn her nauseous.

“I suppose a small taste couldn’t hurt,” she said, reaching for her utensils and searching the colorful array of dishes they had loaded onto her plate. She spooned a bite of bread pudding into her mouth, reveling in the sweet, yet spicy conflict of flavor. She flaked off a piece of savory fish with her fork, and lifted it to breathe in the heady scent before testing a bite on the tip of her tongue.

Frick and Flick leaned in on both sides of her anticipating her delight with eager, watchful eyes.