The Thirteenth Princess (13 page)

I glanced at Milek to see if he was tempted by the food, but he was staring out at the dance floor. I followed his gaze to the form of my sister Aurelia, dressed in deepest blue velvet that matched her starry eyes. Her hair was piled atop her head, escaping in delicate wisps
that framed her lovely face to great advantage. From this distance, you could not see the lack of sleep and food that drew her skin tight across her cheekbones and shadowed her eyes. She twirled in the arms of her soldier, his uniform putting Milek's shabby one to shame with its rows upon rows of medals, its sashes and saber. I looked at Milek again, ready with a wry comparison, but he was enrapt.

“What shall we do?” Breckin whispered. “Should we step out, let them know we are here?”

Brought back to himself, Milek shook his head slowly. “I don't think so,” he said. “I think we must just watch.”

“But we have already done that!” I cried. “What good will it do just to watch?”

Milek put his finger over his lips to hush me, and reluctantly I moved back into the hallway to watch and wait.

The evening progressed in exactly the same way as the previous one, only this time we did not make the mistake of trying to dance to the music. We explained to Milek what had happened when we did. He was fascinated by everything and looked and listened avidly, as if he were memorizing it all. He even stepped into the ballroom once or twice, with his cloak wrapped around him; the dancers took no heed of him at all. When at
last the cock crowed and the orchestra disappeared, we prepared to rush back to the dumbwaiter. We had decided that we could let the princesses go up before we did, since, because it was not Sunday, I did not have to be abed to fool them when they returned, and it was good we did. No matter how Milek and Breckin pulled, they could not raise the dumbwaiter with the three of us inside, so Milek stepped out and helped us rise to the kitchen. We then sent the dumbwaiter back down, and he pulled himself up to our level.

When Milek jumped out, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. “I was afraid—,” I began, then stopped.

“What?” Breckin asked.

“I was afraid the dumbwaiter would not go back down after you and I got out,” I admitted. He and Milek looked at me blankly, and then an expression of horror came onto their faces.

“Left down there, under the lake,” Breckin said hoarsely.

I interrupted hurriedly. “But it didn't happen. We needn't worry.”

Milek laughed. “I'm very glad I didn't think of that beforehand.
That
might have taken away my nerve.”

“You'd best get back to your post,” I advised him. “It's nearly dawn, and the household will be stirring.”

He nodded. “Zita, can you be in your sisters' room this afternoon? Say, at about two o'clock?” he asked.

I clasped my hands together. “Oh, do you have an idea? Has your heart told you what to do?” I asked, excited.

Milek laughed. “I don't know if it's my heart telling me. I think more likely it's my head. But yes, I do have an idea. And it involves speaking with Aurelia. Can you open the door for me at two o'clock?”

“Yes!” I cried. “I will force my way in if I have to.”

“No,” he cautioned me. “Don't make a scene. We need to be quiet.”

“I don't know that she'll speak to you,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked. “Does she not speak to commoners?”

“Oh, it's not that,” I said. “She has a great sympathy and feeling for commoners. But she has not been speaking. None of them has. They are too tired. And they do not speak to men at all. Babette believes it is part of the enchantment.”

“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “She does not have to speak—not right away, anyway. She just needs to listen.”

I was desperate to hear more, but Milek refused to tell. He took his leave from us, and Breckin snuck out to return to the stables while I walked wearily up the
stairs to my room and collapsed onto my bed.

I woke a few hours later to the sounds of the housemaids cleaning outside my door. Quickly I looked outside to see if I could judge the time from the slant of the sun, but there was no sun this day. The lowering clouds looked snow-filled. I dressed quickly and ran down to the kitchen. The clock there read one fifteen, and I apologized to Cook for neglecting both the breakfast and the lunch preparation.

Cook sighed and ruffled my already disheveled hair. “No need, little Zita,” she said sadly. “No one is eating but the servants and the king. We have not much work to do these days.”

“Have you something for me to bring up to the princesses?” I asked innocently.

“I thought you were not allowed up there,” Cook said.

“I believe they have decided it does not much matter now,” I said sadly. I could play Cook like a pianoforte.

Cook pulled me to her, and I was pressed in a hug against her warm, yeast-scented bosom. “Poor Zita!” she soothed me. “Yes, you shall bring them their broth. Do try to get them to take a few sips, at least. Perhaps they'll do it for you.”

Shortly after, I carried a covered tureen on a tray up the stairs to my sisters' room. Outside the door, Milek
drowsed in his chair, but I did not so much as look at him as I passed by. I knocked sharply, and Nurse opened the door.

“Zita! What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see my sisters, Nurse,” I pleaded. “I've brought them some healing broth.”

“Dearie, you know I can't let you in. Your father has left me strict instructions.” Her brow creased with sympathy. “Here, my love. Hand me the broth.”

I was panicked. I had to get in. I had to open the door and make sure Aurelia listened to Milek. Without warning, and with little effort, I burst into wild tears. I could hear Milek turn in his chair to look at me, and I remembered his warning:
Don't make a scene.
But what else could I do?

“Oh, dearie, dearie, come here. Put that tray down,” Nurse instructed me, pulling me into the room and taking the tray from me. “Just come in and calm down. Dry your poor eyes. Say hello. Then you must leave.”

I entered the room. I had not been within for many days, and now everything was changed. There was a deathly hush, broken only by the breathing of the twelve girls as they lay in their featherbeds, arms resting at their sides atop the coverlets. The air was stuffy and warm and smoky from the fire, and the room was dim, for the heavy drapes had been pulled across the
windows, and little light leaked around their edges. I walked between the beds, reaching out to touch each sister's limp hand: Aurelia, Alanna, Ariadne, Althea, Adena, and Asenka down one row; Amina, Alima, Akila, Allegra, Asmita, and Anisa up the other. As I walked, I whispered low, “Don't be afraid. We will help you. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.” I do not know whether they heard me; they did not open their eyes or move their heads or even squeeze my hand.

When I got to Anisa's bed and the door, I stopped, pulled out a handkerchief, and dramatically wiped my eyes and blew my nose. At the same time, I reached out with my other hand and turned the lock on the door so that it was unlocked. The noise of my nose-blowing covered up the click of the lock turning. I did not know whether Nurse would check the door when she left the room. It was a chance I had to take.

I left the room, hurrying past Milek again without looking at him. As I went, though, I hissed, “Wait until Nurse leaves,” hoping desperately that whatever watched me did not listen as well.

I must admit that I was desperate to find out what Milek planned to do. I imagined him bursting into the room, sword drawn, and challenging the magician who had entrapped my sisters. I paced up and down the stairs all afternoon, hoping that at any minute Nurse would
leave. It wasn't until darkness had fallen that I finally saw her heading down to the kitchen, carrying the tray with the soup tureen. It looked as heavy as when I had brought it up. The princesses had not eaten a thing.

I ran down to the kitchen myself and hurried into the pantry. I had never used the dumbwaiter during the day before, and I knew it was a danger, but I had to know what Milek was going to do. Taking precautions that no one was near and no magical eyes were on me, I climbed on board and hoisted myself up to the bedroom closet. Then I tiptoed out and made my way down the silent rows of beds until I got to Aurelia's, near the door. I perched on the side of the bed. Aurelia gave no sign that she knew I was there, but I picked up her hand and held it, willing life and liveliness back into her. Then I heard the bedroom door click open.

I held my breath, waiting for Milek to enter, but he did not. Instead I heard his voice from the other side of the door.

“Princess Aurelia, can you hear me?”

Of course there was no answer.

“Princess Aurelia, I do not wish to disturb you or to offend you,” Milek's low, gentle voice went on. “But I have had the most remarkable dream, and I wanted to tell it to you. It was a beautiful and a terrifying dream, and you were in it. Will you listen?”

Again, there was no answer, and Aurelia's hand lay lifeless in mine.

“In my dream,” Milek said, “we were beneath the lake. I know that seems impossible, and in fact it was impossible, but it was a dream, was it not? So anything could happen.

“You and your sisters walked quickly along a straight path, lined with trees. You were all so very lovely. You wore a dress of midnight-blue velvet, embroidered with moonflowers along the bottom. Your earrings and necklace were sapphires, the color of your eyes. The path we walked was no ordinary path. The trees that lined it were made of silver, and the sound they created when they hit against one another in the breeze was of wind chimes.”

Milek's voice had become melodious, almost a singsong. I closed my eyes, and it was as though I were there again, beneath the lake, only now I had the time to look about me and see the extraordinary things that I'd had to race past. As he described them, I could see it all: A plumed bird sat in one of the golden trees, and its multicolored tail feathers hung down nearly to the ground. The diamond leaves caught the mysterious light that came onto the path and the reflection of the princesses' deep-colored gowns to create rainbow prisms. In the moat below the drawbridge to the castle, enormous
fish broke the surface of the water, and their mouths made the shapes of words that could not be heard. The mythical beasts in the tapestries that lined the halls of the castle moved when looked at from an angle. And the princes who danced without stopping in the ballroom cast no shadows as they spun about the floor.

“The most beautiful thing I have ever seen was you, Princess Aurelia, that night in my dream,” Milek said. “You stepped up to me on the dance floor, and I took you in my arms, and though it was a dream you felt real and substantial to me. You danced with such lightness, like a feather, or an angel, and your golden hair brushed my neck.”

I froze as, in my hand, I felt Aurelia's fingers stir.

“We twirled about the floor for what must have been hours, but it felt like no time at all had passed. I wanted to hold you forever. I would gladly have danced with you until I died. But in my dream, the cock crowed, and I had to drop your hand and go.”

Aurelia closed her fingers around my hand, as if it were her dance partner's hand and she did not want the dance to end.

“I left, and my last sight of you was your beautiful face, your sad eyes, as you picked up your skirts and hurried away. I wept for hours. I weep still. I feel that I have lost the only thing worth having.” In Milek's voice,
I could hear the weeping that he described.

There was silence then, and I opened my eyes and stole a look at Aurelia. To my shock, her eyes were open wide and swimming with tears.

“Speak to him!” I urged her, though I did not know why. But she shook her head, and the tears ran down her white cheeks.

“It's all right,” I soothed her. I did not know what had just happened, but it seemed to me that it was something important. Nobody had been able to bring my sisters out of their trancelike sleep for days. I looked around me and saw that each girl's eyes were open. Even as I watched, they began to drowse again, and in a few minutes all were asleep once more. Aurelia was the last to drop off, and I could see a silent plea in her face as she faded.

“Stay awake!” I begged her. It was no use; the enchantment was too strong. But they had wakened, and I knew now that they could be wakened. And perhaps, perhaps, perhaps this meant that they could be saved.

I
went through the rest of day feeling, for the first time in as long as I could remember, as if something good might happen. I smiled as I did my work, and Cook and Nurse and the others smiled back at me. When I imagined my sisters asleep upstairs, I pictured their sleep as lighter, less oppressive, and I knew it was true.

Breckin, Milek, and I had made no arrangements to meet that night, but at midnight we were all together in the pantry, and again we followed my sisters to their dance, waited for them, and followed them back. This time I tried to pay attention to what I passed, and the
next day, when Milek again described his “dream” to Aurelia, I could well remember the strange squirrel-like animal that leaped from golden tree to golden tree and the Turkish delight that jiggled in its silver serving dish as the dancers twirled past the groaning sideboard. I remembered Aurelia's beautiful yellow silk gown, embroidered with lavender flowers and green leaves, and her lavender satin shoes as they peeked out from beneath her skirts. I remembered the songs the musicians played, songs I had never heard before, that made my heart swell and my knees feel weak with their sweetness. Again Aurelia's eyes and the eyes of the others were open at the end of the telling, again she squeezed my hand and wept, and again she could not speak and soon drifted back to sleep. But she had been awake longer.

That afternoon I snuck out to the stables and found Breckin there, grooming a horse with long, steady strokes. The mare whinnied gently as I approached, and Breckin straightened from his task, smiling.

“Did he tell his dream again?” Breckin asked, and I nodded. “With good results?”

“I think so,” I said. “They were awake a little longer. Still, if this is to work the way we're doing it, it will take weeks. Isn't there a shortcut of some sort?”

Breckin shook his head. “Milek isn't even really sure
of what he is doing,” he told me. “Telling the dream was just an idea that came to him—he doesn't know what it will accomplish.”

I stamped my foot, frustrated, and the mare stamped back. It made me laugh. I took the currying brush from Breckin and brushed for a little while, losing myself in the regular motion and the warmth of the horse's skin against my side as I leaned into her.

Finally I said, “I'm just worried that if we take too long, the enchanter or whoever it is will become aware. Already we are watched. It's only luck that we haven't been discovered yet.”

“Luck?” Breckin cried out, startling the horse, who whinnied. “It's skill, my dear. We are apprentice witches, and soon we shall surpass our mistress. Nobody can discover us.” With that, he attempted to become a broom in a tangle of brooms and brushes, but I was watching him as he did it, so it didn't really work.

“Idiot,” I scoffed. “Just don't get too sure of yourself.”

Breckin laughed, a little shamefaced. “I guess I'd better not,” he admitted. “Don't you, either. And I'll see you tonight.”

That night, trying to stay awake, I looked through the book of poetry Father had given me, reading the lines aloud. As I progressed through the volume, I found that the poems grew darker, from love to longing to
loss, and the feelings they expressed more desperate. There were poems about lost love and love betrayed, false lovers and lovers who never told of their love. The language was beautiful and heartbreaking.

And then I came to a verse that made my heart stop. It was about love so strong that it caused madness. I read:

I read the lines over and over, trying to understand them and trying to figure out why they frightened me so. The
seething
, the
tempest's roar
—this described the wildness of my fevered dash toward the castle under the lake as the path rolled up behind me.
The mad shadows
made me think of the ghostly figures of my sisters, dancing and dancing without measure. But the
rages
, the
punishment born from pleasure
—when I read those words, I pictured my father, his mouth drawn down, his anger and his anguish. And I wondered again: could my father be doing this terrible thing to my sisters? He had banned magic, but who was to say he could not create a spell himself? Perhaps to him, it was a fitting punishment
for my sisters, who lived while my mother had died. Oh, was it possible that he was completely mad? I shivered with horror at my own imagination. No, it was I who was mad even to think such a thing! I slapped the book shut and threw it beneath my bed.

I closed my eyes, trying to forget the haunting words. Before long, my sleepless nights caught up with me, and without meaning to, I drifted off. When I awoke it was late. I could hear the clock striking. Was it eleven or twelve? I couldn't be late! I leaped up as the clock struck
three, four,
and out of my room—
five, six
—stumbling down the stairs into the kitchen—
seven, eight, nine, ten.
As I dashed into the pantry I saw the dumbwaiter already beginning to descend, and I jumped inside, smashing my head and landing with a grunt on somebody within as the clock struck:
eleven, twelve.

“Well,” came Breckin's voice from very nearby. “Better late than never, I suppose.”

“Sorry,” I said, straightening up and trying to rearrange my skirts. “I fell asleep. These late nights…” I heard Milek laugh in the darkness, and then we landed with a thump. I tumbled out of the dumbwaiter and started hurrying down the path, but something stopped me in my tracks.

Eyes. Eyes on me.

I turned to Breckin and Milek in horror. When Milek
saw that I had halted, he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. We couldn't stop. We didn't know what would happen if the path rolled up to us, if the wall of water reached us. We ran.

I tried to explain. “I didn't think to hide from the watcher,” I panted. “I was half asleep. I just forgot. There's no excuse. Oh, what will happen now?”

No one answered. I had no breath to keep talking.

When at last we were inside the castle, I bent over, gasping. When I could speak again, I said to Milek, “Cover us all with your cloak. Perhaps he—they—won't see us then. Perhaps we can fool them somehow.”

“I think it is too late for that,” Milek said, and I knew he was right. We had been seen, and it was my fault. We were beneath the lake in an enchanted castle that could not really exist, and whoever had created the enchantment—Father? Chiara?—knew we were there.

I couldn't tell if it was my nerves or a real change, but there was a charge to the air in the ballroom this night. The music seemed faster, the dancers whirled with more abandon. It was exhausting just to watch them. As the hours ticked by, I grew more and more anxious, and I could tell that Breckin and even Milek did as well. Breckin became very twitchy and could not sit still, while Milek was so motionless that he might have been carved of stone. He did not take his eyes off Aurelia all night,
and he clasped his hands together so tightly that I could see the skin marked with the imprints of his nails.

At last the waiting proved too much. Milek stood, and I held my breath as he stepped out on the dance floor and made his way through the couples to Aurelia and her prince. He tapped the prince on the shoulder, the universal signal for cutting in. Instead of turning and relinquishing his partner, the prince seemed not to feel the touch. Aurelia looked up, though, and her face changed from the entranced, expressionless visage I had always seen as she danced. A light dawned in her eyes as Milek reached out toward her again, and at that moment the rooster crowed. The orchestra dispersed and the princes made their bows as they had every night I'd watched, and then the cock crowed again, and this
cock-a-doodle-doo
was a hundred times louder than the first. Then again it crowed, louder still. My sisters froze, and the princes stopped in their tracks. The walls of the castle seemed to shake as the rooster's call came again and again, louder and louder. I clapped my hands over my ears and turned panicked eyes to Breckin.

“We must go,” Breckin said. “Let's get your sisters.” He walked out onto the dance floor toward his brother without hesitation. At first my sisters did not seem to see us. They stood stock-still, looking at the princes, and I looked to see what they stared at.

It was the most peculiar thing. The faces of the men wavered, as if I were looking into a mirror whose glass was uneven. As hard as I tried, I could not make out their features. As soon as I could tell the color of one prince's eyes, his mouth went out of focus, and by the time I figured out that feature, the eyes were gone. And the faces grew less and less distinguishable, until finally they had just the hint of eyes and nose and mouth and chin. As each prince became less distinct, less real, Milek, standing beside Aurelia, seemed stronger and more defined. I watched in bewilderment as the figures began to waver and shimmer, and before long the very forms of the princes were watery and unfocused. And then they were gone—just gone.

My sisters began to wail and keen, their voices barely audible above the crowing of the cock. Their faces were terrible to see, wracked with sorrow and despair, and I thought that the disappearance of the princes must somehow be the most awful, fearful thing in the world for them. My heart ached, and I stretched my arms out to Anisa, who had crumpled, weeping, to her knees.

There was a sudden loud
crash
, and abruptly the sound of the rooster stopped. Milek pointed upward, and we saw a crack had appeared in the ceiling of the ballroom. Stone and plaster rained down around us. I winced as pebbly pieces hit my head and shoulders.

“Let's go, now!” Milek shouted. He ran to Aurelia and pulled her toward the door. For a moment she resisted him, but she was exhausted and weak, and reluctantly she allowed herself to be led. The others were accustomed to following her, so we herded them to the door and out into the hall. Huge cracks lined the hallway, and we could see the walls beginning to disintegrate.

“Run!” I cried, imagining us crushed by the falling debris, buried under the wreckage of the castle and the water of the lake. We moved as quickly as we could, though my sisters looked back and hesitated at nearly every step. The torches in the hall extinguished themselves, and then even the exhausted princesses ran, in pitch darkness now, careening into walls and tripping over piles of rubble that cascaded from the ceiling and walls. I remembered my light-stick and pulled it from my pocket, concentrating with all my might. The feeble light I produced was enough to keep us from plunging into the crevasse that suddenly opened beneath our feet as the floor cracked apart. Milek pulled Aurelia over the widening crack, and Breckin and I forced the others to leap over it, their skirts swirling around their legs.

Then we reached the drawbridge, and it did not descend for us as it always had in the past. Milek dropped Aurelia's hand, pulled out his sword, and swung hard at the chains that held the bridge. I could not see how
a sword could cut through the iron chains, but it did, slicing them as if they were butter, and the bridge fell open with a huge
thump
.

We started across, and we could see that on the other side, beneath the diamond trees, the earth seemed to heave and wriggle. When he got there, Milek ran on, but Breckin and my sisters stopped, and I, bringing up the rear, took an instant to figure out why. The wriggling was not the earth, nor its grasses. It was snakes: the ground was covered in snakes. They hissed and reared up, they rattled their tails and spat. To pass, we would have to walk on them, to crush them beneath our feet, to be bitten and poisoned and surely killed.

“No,” Breckin said hoarsely, backing away. The drawbridge shook as the castle fell behind us, piece by piece, and I looked over the edge. Beneath us the water boiled with movement, and I could see the heads of water rats as they swam below, waiting. Their naked pink tails waved above the water, and their horrid snouts poked up, opening and closing, showing razor-sharp little teeth. My knees turned liquid, and I thought I would faint as the bridge swung and rattled beneath me.

“Get off the bridge,” I cried shrilly to my sisters, who had pulled up behind me. “There are rats in the moat! Get off!”

Milek had stopped a little ways off and was watching
us. I could barely see his face in the dimness, puzzled and afraid. His lips moved, but I could make out no sound. I felt frozen, powerless to move. Snakes ahead—Breckin's worst fear. Rats below—my worst fear. This could not be happening. It could not!

I said those words again to myself—
It could not. It could not
—and suddenly they made sense to me. The princes had disappeared. They had not been real. The drawbridge chains had melted through. They had not been real. The snakes might not be real, nor the rats. None of this could be happening. None of it was real. I took a deep breath and felt my strength return.

“Hold on to my shoulder,” I said to Breckin, taking his hand and placing it there. “Follow me. Look at the light-stick. Don't look down.” Then I turned to my sisters, who stood huddled together, trembling, and repeated my words. “Look at my light. Don't look down.” I began to walk forward, off the bridge. At my first step onto the ground, I could not help picturing my foot in its leather boot lowering onto the snakes. But I did not look down, and I felt only solid ground beneath my foot. There was nothing coiling itself around my ankle, no sharp fangs piercing my leg. I took another step forward, and another, concentrating on keeping my light strong. I could feel Breckin's hand clamped on my shoulder so hard it hurt, but it helped me to stay
focused. I hoped that behind him my sisters followed, hands on one another's shoulders, but I dared not look back to check. Forward I moved through the diamond forest, trying to make out Milek's face in the gloom ahead. I could hear Breckin breathing heavily behind me, and I tried to match my steps to his breath.