Midnight's Song (43 page)

“Wren darling, I
have had many moments alone with you. Now I wish to speak alone for
a time with my dearest Elissa,” she expressed to my amazement. Wren
nodded in agreement with her mother’s wish. She got up and began to
herd the crowd from the room, but Grandmamma quickly displayed an
untold amount of strength as she
grabbed
her hand to stop her. “Wren,
you are such a precious daughter of mine. Never give up your kind
nature or free spirit. I love you.”

Tears came down
Wren’s face as she said it. Now I was certain about what this
meant. Though, it didn’t seem right! If this was a last goodbye –
how could Grandmamma suddenly have the strength to smile…to
speak…to
grasp a hand?
It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t question it. Soon all of
the other souls had left the room, and for the first time in quite
a while it was just the two of us.

“Grandmamma,” I softly murmured,
feeling myself begin to sob.

“Child, don’t cry,” she soothed. “I
wanted to tell you something. I cannot tell you if you’re in
tears.”

In reverence of the event which was
knocking on our door, I fell silent and collected myself. I used my
sleeve to wipe the tears from my still half-awake face and
swallowed all of the rest that I had been ready to cry up.
Grandmamma told me to come closer, and then when I slouched she
begged that I sit with posture. I did everything I was told,
savoring every moment as if it was the absolute last.

“Now…I must tell you something,”
Grandmamma told me. “I know much more about what has gone on than
you know. Not just in the recent, but in the past as well. It is
today that God has given me the strength to tell you, which is why
I know that today is my last.”

“Don’t say that Grandmamma! You are
gaining strength, see? You could become well –”

“Oh, hush! I am an
old woman. My bones are breaking, my joints aching…my lungs
practically invalid for all but this moment! My time is approaching
and you mustn’t argue! I’ve lived a long time as the matriarch of
this family, and now it is time that I passed that on to
you
.”

At her last word, I shuddered. My mind
whirled as I remembered what the Magistrate had told me. I
remembered all of the danger I was in, past and present. The title
of heiress wasn’t mine. It was Beeti’s!

“No,” I stammered. “Beeti will inherit
the Estate. I will not take it!”

“Elissa! You mustn’t say that. That is
not what I meant. I know what the Magistrate has threatened you. Do
not worry – for all will be well with you in the end.” She told me,
my eyes bugging out of my head with each passing word. How on earth
could she have known? Now I was questioning whether or not this was
honestly my grandmother speaking.

“How could you possibly know what went
on between us?” I asked, completely stunned.

“Elissa…I am close
to death. I see many things that those in their youth cannot. In my
years of living I have also been given a special promise…a
gift.
In my youth God
revealed something to me that I must now tell you. I made an oath
that I would not tell a soul of it until I was positive that I had
seen his promise begin to be fulfilled.”

“Gift?” I meekly echoed in
confusion.

“It is a spiritual
gift, Elissa. It is part of who I am, and one of its fruits is a
part of who you are as well. The gift I have been given has been
strengthened with age, as will yours. Only, you are destined to do
so many great things with it that it will go on
forever.
”

“Grandmamma, I don’t understand
–”

“If only you
listened with your heart, then you would!” She hastily interrupted.
“My gift is
wisdom.
Yours is
strength.
It is a strength that comes with stubbornness and
devotion, one of the most endearing gifts of all.” Grandmamma used
what little strength she had to lift her bony hand and use it to
softly brush my cheek. “The Magistrate will not be able to harm any
of the goodness inside of you. He will try, but he will not
succeed. Because
you are destined
to
defeat
him.”

Now I was at a loss for words. Was my
grandmother truly telling me something groundbreaking, or was she
just senile? I wanted to question it openly, but I hesitated. All I
could do now was dwindle in the silence. After a few moments,
Grandmamma said something else that completely caught me off
guard.

“Your prince, he is here. I can see
that he is waiting for you.”

At that moment, my
heart stopped. Unless, someone had broken our sacred truce, there
was no way that she could have known. But, I could feel something
in my spirit that told me that Grandmamma’s knowledge came from
something much deeper than I could comprehend. She could
see
him somewhere-
truly
see
him!
The tears began to come down my cheeks uncontrollably
now.

“Grandmamma, how could you know?” I
sobbed, “How?”

“It was revealed to me long ago that
our worlds would come together again, and now what was promised is
coming true. But, after I am gone you mustn’t haste. Do what you
must do. Darkness will not cease its attempts to blind you, so
always be wary. You have good inside of you which will surely
defeat it.”

After that, there was a period of
complete silence. I could suddenly see Grandmamma’s wakeful
strength and alertness begin to fade from what it had been just
moments ago. It was as if she had said what she needed to say, and
now her time here was done. Her eyes became dazed, her skin even
more pale than it had been. After a few minutes, she spoke up
again. Only this time, it was a weak, breathy kind of
speech.

“It’s time,” she
said, her eyes now wide open and gazing. “I see it – I see
the
Plateau of the Unknown
approaching. I see my mother…my daughter…I see
the
Christ.”

“No, no! Please, not yet! At least
tell me what you know will happen –” I shook, realizing the
uncontrollable thing which was happening before my eyes.

I called out to her over and over
again, but it was no use. After her final word, the air crept out
of her lungs and she was gone. I broke down and wept. The only
woman who had still loved me, sheltered me, encouraged and
protected me was gone. At the moment it felt as if I had lost my
mother all over again, but in a different way. It was a terrible,
empty feeling. After a few minutes of wet sobbing, I got up and
cracked the door open to the hallway.

Everyone had been standing there in
silent suspense, and when they saw my face they rushed back into
the room in a frantic chaos. I took my nimble frame once again and
wove the opposite way through the crowd, silently and tearfully
making my way back into my room where I slammed the door behind me
and locked it shut. I fell onto my knees on the floor beside my
bed, kneeling as if I was once again a small child saying her
nighttime prayers. Almost involuntarily, my head fell onto the
mattress and I wept. Not more than a few seconds in I felt a gentle
warmth touch my shoulders.

“It’s time,” a familiar voice softly
but soberly whispered.

Before I even turned my head, I knew
who it was. I took his hand and stood up. As bitter as I could have
been, I remembered what I said and what I had promised. I also
remembered – painfully – what Grandmamma had just warned me. I had
to do as I promised. If things would happen as it was said they
would, I had to go with him. I had nothing to lose, yet at the same
time I had absolutely everything to lose. Quickly, I gave him a
tearful nod and agreed.

“Alright,” I meekly said. “I will go
with you now.”

“Good. You have an hour to ready
yourself. I will be watching you from a distance for the time just
in case you come across danger before I might be with you,” he
instructed. “Ready your things, and bring a warm cloak. Then, I
will meet you in the maze of windows.”

“Wait,” I quizzed him. “Why should we
meet there? I thought we were going to go to the Desert
Country?”

My question caused him to quiet, maybe
even shudder. He looked me in the eyes with the utmost graveness
before he began to speak again.

“A journey to the Desert Country is
risky. It is long and tiresome because it would come at human
hands. And even if it seems beyond the reach of your pursuers, they
might still find you,” he explained.

“But you told Emily to take me
there!”

“Elissa, I only
wanted you to go there as a last resort…if I was somehow unable to
protect you anymore…I’m sorry that I failed to make it clear – but
in order to ensure your safety I must take us to a place where
we
both
might not
be reached by our pursuers,” he told me.

I quieted in uncertainty. He didn’t
need to say anymore – I understood what he was saying. Once again,
I felt as if he was proceeding to step over my judgment. At the
same time, in the shock of the last few minutes I didn’t think that
I could argue over this. If we were going to flee together, I knew
that this was the moment. I couldn’t run from it anymore. I thought
that fighting with this would be cowardly, that refusing to go
along with him one more second would mean that I was running from
the truth. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t that I wanted to run.

Perhaps it was that I didn’t want to
forfeit the battle that had just begun.

At the moment, I only nodded and
agreed to meet him within two hours time at most. I resolved to let
Emily know somehow, and amidst the chaos in the other hallway I was
able to remove her long enough to tell her what had happened. She
quickly helped ready me for my descent, having been prepared for
this moment ever since last night. Although, she was still entirely
anxious over it as death seems to take everyone by
surprise.

“Here miss, you need your
cape. The prince said you would need it,” Emily told me. In her
hands she held a blue velvet cape, draping it over my head as our
last action before leaving.

As she did it, I
found a small moment of happiness as I was reminded of the color.
It was
blue.
In
all of those precious, misunderstood moments that I’d first met him
– I was always wearing blue. Perhaps today the color might bring me
some sort of luck. As much of a skeptic as I still tried to be, I
knew that now I needed as much luck as I could
get.

While Emily and I prepared for my
journey away from here, this death was Beeti’s signal to begin
carrying out her plan. She secretly watched me, scanning the
hallways for that hour until she saw that I was gone. The moment
that Emily and I discreetly began our descent, Beeti came by my
room and tested it to make sure I was vacant. When she saw that I
was, she hurried to find seclusion in the dark room beside the
staircase.

There she sat down with her candle,
going over the same series of enchantments that she had before. The
mirror-like portal appeared for her in the air, giving her a means
to alert the Magistrate to send Winston. A true sign of the nature
of the darkness which they were serving, it seemed that the
Magistrate had already begun to put this plan into motion
beforehand.

“I have already sent my nephew to the
Estate,” the darkness spoke through the mirror. “He will arrive six
hours from now to ‘console’ you. Seduce him. You understand what
must be done after that.”

At that moment, the
Magistrate – or whatever possessed him – began releasing a sort of
magic into the room. Beeti stood up and was surrounded by it. The
magic turned into a cloud, one that was at first as black as a
roaring thunderhead. It engulfed her entire being and temporarily
stopped time as it metamorphose itself into a deceitfully golden,
sparkling aurora. When it dissipated, the only traces left of the
cloud was a mound of sparkling black dust.

The Magistrate
looked at Beeti triumphantly. He presented Beeti with an actual
mirror, to which she saw herself reflected in a way that caused
utter amazement. She studied her reflection over and over again,
touching her new youthful face in awe. She opened her mouth and was
also astounded by the sound of her new voice. The resemblance was
absolutely uncanny…so much so that at first Beeti had to revisit
the space behind herself just to make sure that I wasn’t standing
right behind her. Oh, this magic had worked alright – and now Beeti
looked and sounded just like
me
.

Now bearing
my
face, the Magistrate
bid Beeti goodbye and sent her to do her duty. She smirked,
clutching the poison in her apron pocket eagerly as she awaited the
victory which would come in a few hours time. Just to test this
magic one last time – to make sure that it wasn’t simply a figment
of her mind – she went into the busy corridor outside of
Grandmamma’s room and appeared to the servants in what she hoped to
be my form.