Midnight's Song (15 page)

“I suppose that you’re
alright then. Just, don’t run off unaccompanied again! You are
excused to your chambers.”

I left the kitchen
and maneuvered through the back ways of the servants’ hallways back
to my room. The entire way, although I was quite happy that I’d
actually found a way to snap at Beeti; I simply couldn’t fathom
that she hadn’t seen the boy who had been standing
right there.
Exactly why
I was so consumed with this one question I do not know; but I
simply couldn’t bear it.

“Maybe he’s just fast…” I
muttered out loud. It was the only concretely logical explanation
that I had for this.

My mind whirled at
the possibilities as I twisted my key into the lock and entered
into my room. The party was already over, and I decided that I
would watch the guests leave from my balcony; perhaps in hopes of
seeing this mystery boy exit with the rest of the crowd. For some
reason, I
still
couldn’t put it from my mind. Our meeting had felt
painfully
incomplete, and I just couldn’t
bear the thought of being unable to find him
again.

I looked down and
searched through the sea of heads getting into their carriages
beside the towering fountain in the driveway below. People went
back and forth across the drive, a few apparently drunk. I scanned
as thoroughly as I could in the darkness, but I still couldn’t see
him anyway. It was truly a dead end – I mean, why would I see him?
I hadn’t even
seen
his face to begin with! In one final attempt, I looked to the
place where we had stood in the garden…but I fell back in heartache
and confusion when I saw that he wasn’t there
either.

And so, I entailed my encounter to no
one – beginning to wonder myself whether it had all been real or
was just some grief-spurred hallucination.

A week and a half later, I
still wondered about the things that this mysterious person had
told me. Now curiosity had been piqued – perhaps at a dangerous
time. For, at the same time; things were intensifying with the
Magistrate and his witch hunt. And all the while, I wondered about
this queen…who she could have been, and where she fit into the
history of the foreign man’s country. I couldn’t put the thought of
the young foreigner from my mind, my curiosity becoming a hungry
monster that could never find satisfaction.

“And in conclusion,
it is Saint Marie-Katherine for whom your islands are named after;
the first queen of our land and noble wife of the first
Magistrate.” Monica huffed over me a few days later; laboring to
sing the artificial praises of the textbook that she was reading
aloud from before she quickly slammed it shut. “Now then, that’s
over. Let us move on to our next lesson of the day…the story of
Jezebel
.
”

Monica let out a long, breathy sigh as
she begun to read aloud the story of the evil temptress and how she
met her demise. I had heard it so many times that it really didn’t
seem to matter anymore. I tuned her out, my mind truly elsewhere.
My mind drifted back to that place – that so very mysterious place
– that it had been going back and forth from for nearly a week now.
I couldn’t stop thinking of the mysterious young man in the garden,
his intriguing but little known nature. I could remember so much
about him, but what was his name?

“Elissa!” Monica
suddenly shouted, beating her ruler down on my desk and sucking me
out of my dream world. “Please pay attention! Do you not understand
what this kind of behavior has done to you? This is your future
and
mine
now!”
Her look read complete desperation. She quickly heaved back, closed
her eyes and quieted. “I’m sorry, Elissa. But please; pay
attention. The nuns from the abbey are coming to observe you
today!”

I could tell
Monica’s reluctance of this new curriculum from the start. But,
there was nothing either of us could do about it. Grandmamma
demanded that we become more pious once again. The end result was
that all of my other subjects were scrapped in place of Saint and
Magisterial Church History. Ironically, none of my required reading
had anything to do with faith. The name of Christ hadn’t been
used
once.

It was all simply about the glory of
our great and wonderful Magistrate.

“I’m sorry Dr. Blackwood. It won’t
happen again,” I reluctantly apologized.

“Don’t be,” Monica
huffed in reply. She detested this just as much as I did. “Elissa,
I have to tell you something before the nuns get here. It’s
important that you know this…but tell
no
one
that I have said it.” She suddenly
grabbed me by the wrists. “I have to show you
something.”

I got up and followed her a few steps
to her grand, wooden desk in the center of the room. She picked up
that model – the one of the solar system that I had been fiddling
with on the first day – and motioned for me to touch one the small
ball that represented our moon.

“We live in a big universe, Elissa.
There are things about it that we still don’t understand…and there
are certain things that have been hidden about it. Things that
we’re not allowed to know.”

“What do you mean when you say that
we’re not ‘allowed’ to?” I questioned as I traced the sun with my
pinky.

“There are parts of
history that lead many to believe that there are other worlds out
there…not just life on other planets, but realms beyond our own.
There’s even evidence that there were other worlds that once were
connected to ours. History gives us only small fragments of what
happened…because the first Magistrate wanted it to be
completely
erased.”

Monica spoke quietly, but with much
conviction. I looked to her perplexedly.

“
Erased?”
I whispered in return. She
nodded.

“You know about the Great War. I
believe…because I have studied many ideas…that the Great War is
really a remnant of something much bigger that occurred within the
universe. You know the stories that come from your people, don’t
you?

“The lower-class
people of society have always passed down stories about monsters,
princes, princesses, slaying beasts and dragons. Those stories are
not unlike those of other cultures. From what I have studied, those
might very well be part of something much bigger. It is evidence
that may connect the war to having been caused…or at least somehow
interfered with by beings that visited the earth from
another world.”

I felt myself jolt for a second.
Monica was a woman of science – yet her words sounded more like
ones coming from one of the folk tales of those considered
uncultured and uneducated!

“You
really
believe that?” I
asked skeptically. “That sounds like it fits in more closely with
the fairy tales that I know than with reality.”

“But don’t you see?
The very fact that so many cultures around the globe tell the same
story is evidence that
something
must have happened. If it happened, then
there
must
be a
logical explanation! That would mean that it’s not just a fairy
tale anymore, Elissa – it’s
science!
” I could see the passion
and conviction conveyed through her eyes in full. It caused me to
step back. She continued, but now she spoke in a hushed tone. “All
this time…I’ve wanted to teach you science. But, I haven’t been
able to…not because I didn’t want to…but because I wasn’t
allowed
to.”

“What – why?” I interjected, a wave of
confusion suddenly overcoming me.

“The truth is that
the Magistrate believes most science outside of what
he
approves of to be a
danger to the role of the Church. All of the research I’ve done…all
of the theories I’ve seen and came up with…it’s all been in total
secrecy.” Monica then looked to me with a graveness that I’d never
seen in her before. “The Magistrate thinks that science is in
conflict with faith, but it’s really
not.
The only conflict that it has
is with his reign.”

My mind was now
whirling. 15 minutes ago, Monica was teaching me Saint History out
of a Magistrate-approved textbook. Now, although she was entirely
left-brained; she was talking to me about secret theories that
sounded more like pseudoscience! And now she was speaking almost as
if she was one of the
rebels.
Whatever Monica Blackwood was – my mind still
whirled at the reason why she must have been saying all of this to
me at once.

“Why…why are you telling me all of
this at once? If this is your secret, then why tell me?” I
stumbled. Monica drew back, now visibly upset.

“It’s important that I tell you this
now while I can. The nuns aren’t coming to observe you for no
reason, Elissa. Your family has decided that my area of expertise
isn’t what you need right now. Today is our last lesson
together.”

It wasn’t something I had ever
expected to feel in this situation – but my heart suddenly dropped.
How could she just leave like this? Who could possibly replace her?
“But…who will be my teacher?” I meekly asked.

A parade of footsteps coming from down
the hallway was my answer. As soon as their clamoring reached
Monica’s ears she swiftly pushed the model out of sight and urged
me to sit up in my seat.

“It’s the nuns!” She whispered
frantically. “Hurry, open this on your desk! Act as if you’ve been
immersed in it for hours!”

She handed me a copy of
one of my required reading hardbacks. It was a genealogy book of
all the characters of the bible and the names of their famous
descendants. She quickly cracked it open in front of me and thumbed
to the page with the lineage of the wretched Queen Jezebel. The
footsteps seemed to be gathering steam now, and as they approached
Monica made sure to grab her own textbook and prop it open. Almost
within the same second, a cheery but timid-looking woman cloaked in
black popped her head in through the door. Two others followed
behind her.

“Ah – Sister Marie-Katherine! Welcome!
We were just in the middle of one of our daily lessons!” Monica
smiled, looking up from her book as if she’d truly been teaching
from it at that very moment. “Won’t you please come in?”

Sister
Marie-Katherine smiled and gave her a quiet nod.
Ironic, isn’t it?
I
thought,
the nun that’s been assigned to
me is named for my own islands!
My
defenses up, I wondered if this could have been some emotional
weapon that someone else had contrived. Truthfully, it wasn’t; but
my mind still hadn’t stopped spinning from Monica’s first
announcement.

The nun came to me, smiled and patted
my hand sweetly. She looked down at the page that my book had been
turned to and lit – not with any kind of bubbliness – but with a
look of discernment and knowledge. “You are learning about Jezebel
today, are you?”

“Um…yes….uh, I am.” I quietly
answered, not quite realizing what page the book had actually been
turned to.

“She was a wretched woman. Don’t
strive to be like her. Probably the most hated name in the entire
realm to this day!” Marie-Katherine bluntly warned. She then looked
to Monica softly. “Dr. Blackwood, we know this field well. If you
please, we can take the rest of her lesson from here.”

“Sister Marie-Katherine, with all due
respect…I might be well rooted in science, but I can teach a
biblical history lesson.” Dr. Blackwood quickly replied.

“I’m sorry, but the
Lady of the House insists
upon it.”
Silence fell on Dr. Blackwood and I. Her solemn appearance said it
all – and the words came and hit us both now as if they were etched
in stone. This was no observation. This was an invasion. They
weren’t moving in tomorrow – they were taking it over
today
.

The next thing I knew, the
nuns actually began shooing her out. They obviously weren’t going
to let her finish this one last lesson with me. There must have
been 100 things going on at that moment that I couldn’t see or
understand! Why was I the person that she’d chosen to entrust these
theories with before she left?

I don’t know how
Monica could have seen that question looming inside of me. Somehow,
she did. Before she left the door, Dr. Blackwood gave me a clear
answer. When the nuns turned their backs Monica faced me and
mouthed these words to me:
Because you’re
made for more than this.
Then, she was
gone. Just like a mist in the wind, Monica had vanished from my
life. She’d left her secrets with me, and I prayed that one day I
would see her again.

“Elissa! Where are you?” A
voice called to me, rustling through the bushes of the hedge maze
later that month.

I had come here
almost every day in hopes of finding an answer to exactly what had
happened on that crisp February night. It seemed that although the
world around me was intensifying in its accusations, I still only
had questions as to what really went on. And all of the
while,
strange things
had begun happening all around the manor. I could feel a
constantly eerie, looming presence all around me. But, I didn’t
seek an explanation. Doing so during the Magistrate’s tirade would
be much too dangerous. I looked over my shoulder deep in my
thoughts, seeing the beautiful but hidden Sister Marie-Katherine
pop her cloaked head out from the bushes.