Midnight's Song (22 page)

I let out a breath of
uncertainty and looked down the row of servants until I was able to
see Emily and Jackoby standing side-by-side. Though their
expressions were stoic and dignified, I knew there had been
something going on underneath it all for quite some time. And now,
I felt like it was going to reach its height. If scandal was
something we were to stay away from, I wasn’t sure how we were
going to fare.

If Winston was going to be counting
the days, I supposed that I needed to be counting mine. So I did –
each and every day I counted as one less day I’d have to prepare to
meet the Magistrate.

Stella saw my growing
tension as a weakness to pounce on. She came to me one day nearly a
month later – on a day that just so happened to be the one on which
I was feeling so plagued with my fears that I believed I would
truly burst.

“Cousin Elissa,” she told me
completely out of the blue that day. “I wanted to have some time
here with you for a moment to…apologize.”

At her last word I
almost gasped. What on earth was this?
Her
demeanor was strangely bright and sweet, a complete contrast to her
usual silent and sour nature. And…she was
apologizing?
I was taken aback,
wondering what could possibly going on to cause such a random but
abrupt apology for all of the pain and sourness Stella had
afflicted on me. Had she been drugged? Converted? Replaced with a
clone? These all seemed to be reasonable answers.

“Stella? Are you alright?” I quizzed
in utter uncertainty.

“Yes, Elissa. I’m
fine,” Stella assured. “I know it doesn’t seem like me – but I’ve
just felt so…
terrible.
And I’m no good at showing my emotions if I can help it – so
I’ve been hiding it for a very long time. But, you’ve been living
with us for nearly a year now. For a while I was quite jealous of
you…but I want to make that all water under the bridge now. I am
genuinely sorry.”

She took my hand,
and I still couldn’t believe it. Nearly 12 months of my life, all
gone,
just like that.
Even if she claimed to be bad with emotions, I still reveled
at the fact that although she was proclaiming a new identity today
just yesterday she had been muttering insults about me to herself
at the breakfast table.

“Are you being serious?” I again
doubted.

“Yes, Elissa! I’m
honest!” Stella exclaimed. I could see something in her eyes
screaming an undecipherable message – a look that was quite odd,
but resembled one of guilt. If it wasn’t, her ploy was certainly
convincing. “I really want to start over with you. You’re the
cousin – the sister I never knew I had! So please, allow me to make
it up to you…let me
show
you
.”

“I don’t know…”I muttered in
reply.

“Elissa, just hush!” Stella suddenly
interrupted. Now she flashed a bright, eager smile in my direction.
“If you don’t want to believe me, at least let me prove it to you
by showing you how sorry I really am!”

This wouldn’t end unless I agreed to
whatever this was, I was sure. And besides, maybe this actually was
Stella becoming painfully nice. Perhaps it was reality that she had
a change of heart in this. It also might have been a very
temporarily change of heart, I realized, so I needed to enjoy this
while I could.

“Alright, alright!” I sighed, tiresome
over her incessant pleading. “What is it that you’re planning on
doing?”

“Well,” she smiled, “right now it’s
mid-September. Your birthday is coming up soon, and it will also
mark nearly a year since you came to live with us! What better way
to mark the occasion than a party?”

“Well...” I blushed, “I suppose that
does sound fun. What sort of party?”

“A masquerade!”

She said it almost as if she was
shouted. I though, am not fond of masquerades. They’ve always stood
as bitter reminders of the real masquerades I’ve had to endure on a
daily basis. Besides, I wasn’t one for flamboyancy; and that was a
key ingredient in the word that wealthy people flouncing around in
sparkly costumes usually exemplified. Reluctant already, my
discomfort was growing. I bit my lower lip, hoping that Stella
would be reasonable when I disagreed.

“Must it be?” Reluctant already, it
was apparent that my discomfort was growing. Stella’s expression
changed, and I could see she was clearly trying to find something
to tell me that would affirm that it absolutely had to be a
masquerade.

“Um…yes! It must be!” She exclaimed.
“It’s a…family tradition! Yes, a family tradition!”

“But…I thought you said it was for my
birthday?”

“Oh, it will be! It’s just…your
birthday is in October, and that’s when we hold our annual costume
ball. We do it every year in honor of All Hallows’ Eve. Your
birthday falls extremely close…and with all of the chaos in the
country now, Grandmamma would probably want to keep our
celebrations on the same date. Why not celebrate it a bit early?
That way everyone wins!”

“All Hallows’ Eve?” I recounted in
confusion. “I thought that celebrating that was against the law!
You honestly think that the Magistrate would overlook something he
has declared is in association with witchcraft?”

“Oh, calm down Elissa!” Stella told me
nonchalantly. “It’s only that way for the peasants. Let them
celebrate it, and they’d surely turn it into a pagan ceremony. The
Magistrate knows that we upper-class folk understand that it’s all
just play.”

Now my stomach was
churning with nausea. Seemingly “born again” or not, Stella’s
arrogance was abhorrent. The ignorance of the Magistrate was
beginning to irk me more than ever now…and in less than a month and
a half I would have to
meet
him
. And all just so that I could kiss up
to him for their sake! But, I tried to forget it. He wasn’t a
pleasant person, but this was life now. The more I thought about
it, the more stressed I became; and the more evident it was to
everyone else that I was suffering.

“I suppose I will.”

“Excellent!” Stella
cried, “This will be good for you, ole’ Lissie!
”

I stopped. Now she was being way too
chipper, and it was actually really grating. Something just didn’t
feel right about this; but I kept it to myself. Stella quickly
jumped up and wrapped her arms around my neck in an eager hug. Even
after all of that, her behavior was still overwhelmingly
foreign.

“Um…thanks,” I quickly stammered, not
knowing what to do to get her off of me at that moment. She
released me from her grasp and told me something with a strange,
artificial tinge before she left.

“No,
thank you
.
”

After we parted ways
to resume the trivial parts of our daily lives, I found myself
filled with an odd, artificial happiness about it all. I was glad
to have been “invited” to this gala so to speak; yet I still
couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the task at hand. That night, I
found myself sitting on my bed alone, simply thinking. Winston’s
warning about “
avoiding scandal,”
and, “
not stepping out
of line,”
resounded across my every
thought tonight, even though he had left over a month
ago.

As unlike myself as it might have
been, after dinner that night I went to my room to find that my bed
sheets were still made up and my bedclothes hadn’t been put out. I
will admit that I was becoming a bit of a dependent snob on Emily’s
waiting – but the fact that I would have to do it all myself wasn’t
the thing that bothered me. No, it was something else that reminded
me yet again of Winston’s grave words.

Not only was my
entire room untouched, but now Emily was nowhere to be
found.
She was a dedicated friend and
worker, so I knew it wasn’t like her. Then again, she’d gone
missing for small moments here and there all throughout the last
couple of months. Inside, I knew that she was hiding something, and
I had a good idea of what it might have been; but I had no idea
how
big
this
secret actually was.

I shuddered. If we
needed to avoid scandal, I wasn’t sure how we were going to do it.
Secrets were a dangerous thing – I realized – and now my eyes were
beginning to open. Between Stella’s superficial apology, Emily’s
strange absences, Winston’s intentions, my nightmares and even the
concealing of my real name
– I could see
that my family had quite a lot of them. There were bound to be
more. Whether I wanted to know them or not; I was sure that in
time, I was going to find them out.

“So, as we wrap up
today we can certainly conclude that the meaning of this teaching
is, at its very core; human belief.” Sister Marie-Katherine
explained at the end of my lesson that day. “Jesus taught that the
littlest part of faith can spring up into something strong enough
to move an entire mountain. Many things can start as something as
meager as the tiny mustard seed. Perhaps it is a truth, an idea, or
just simple
curiosity.
All it takes is a single seed of faith or knowledge to cause
the truth to take root in your heart.”

I listened as
attentively as I could, but today my stomach was in knots. After
Winston’s departure, I had been experiencing stress from every
single aspect of my life. My lessons had become more rigorous and
now tomorrow was the day of the Autumn Ball. On top of that, after
today Sister Marie-Katherine would be taking a two week leave.
Unlike most people, I could tell that Sister Marie-Katherine
actually
believed
in me. With my presentation so close and the family fortune
practically riding on my shoulders; the thought of having her leave
made me feel like throwing up. I guess she could read the nausea
all over my face, because in the next moment she unexpectedly made
me an offer.

“You know…I won’t be back for a time,
and there’s actually something that I’ve been wanting to show you
at the convent. Perhaps you’d be willing to come with me on a short
outing?” She asked me, but at first I hesitated.

“Um…Sister?” I piped up, “Are you sure
that there is time? I mean, the celebration is tomorrow and
all.”

“Well…there’s time if you come with me
now. I won’t be here until after I take my holiday, so today is the
only day I could take you.” She cracked into a smile. “You are a
bright and curious girl. The Church has a library that I know you
will enjoy!”

For a moment I pondered
the notion, but I couldn’t help but smile. It had been such a long
time since I’d been able to get my hands on a good book! After
nearly a year of having my reading limited to Holy books,
textbooks, and the lyrics in church hymnals, the idea actually
seemed quite refreshing. At the same time, books were sparse back
in the Isles. With the exception of the rather plush one I’d found
in the funeral home last year; libraries were
nonexistent.

“I’ve never actually been to a real
library…” I trailed off. “There aren’t many where I come
from.”

“Well, then maybe it’s time that you
discover one of the best!” The Sister beamed. The apprehension
still loomed over me, but I broke through just enough of it to set
myself free.

“I think that…I think that sounds like
a wonderful idea.” I softly told her. An even bigger smile rolled
across the Sister’s expression.

“Excellent! You should go and get
ready, and in the mean time I shall phone Lady Abilene and ask her
permission to take you. Meet me in the main corridor in 20
minutes!”

After a brief exchange and a friendly
nod, I left to get ready in my room. In a few minutes time,
Grandmamma granted us a blessing

“The church library is
over 220 years old,” Marie-Katherine explained as she led me
through the vast marble hallways of the church. Light trickled in
through the colorful stained glass windows and created rainbows of
light on our skin. We walked through the colorful maze to a sliding
wooden door. “This is it.”

We both stepped through,
and I held my breath at the spectacle of books. There were
thousands of them! Every wall of the enormous room had at least
fifty shelves all of the way to the top. Each shelf was jam-packed
with so many books that it was a wonder nothing was
collapsing.

“You were right,” I exclaimed in
astonishment. “This would take years to sift through.”

“We had a priest about 50
years ago who made it his goal to memorize the title of every book
in here.”

“Did he?”

“He’s still working on
it.” She laughed in reply. “It’s so old that the Magistrate
declared it a church relic, so now even he can’t touch it! No one
knows exactly where the first additions of the collection come
from. The oldest ones are actually in folklore.”

“You have a section for
folklore?” I asked in surprise. “Isn’t that the opposite of what
the church teaches?”