Wonders of the Invisible World (34 page)

“He sleeps so deeply, he has forgotten how to breathe.”

Aster went to a bed in the middle of the chamber. She knocked three times on the carved headboard, and the entire bed abruptly disappeared, leaving a dark, oblong hole in the floor. Like a grave, Val thought, feeling his heart beat at the strangeness of it. In a long, graceful line, beginning with A and ending with M, the princesses descended into the earth.

The wet pool of wine at the bottom of one boot cleared Val’s amazed thoughts a little as he pulled them on; he remembered to fling his worn cloak over his shoulders before he left. He glanced into one of the many mirrors in the bedchamber as he hurried after Mignonette.
There is no soldier,
the mirror told him.
The room is empty.

Fearing that the hole in the earth might close behind the princesses, he followed too closely. His first step down the broad, winding steps caught the hem of Mignonette’s gown.

She said, startled, “Who is there? Aster, Lily, someone pulled at my dress.”

All their faces looked back toward Val, a lovely, silent chain of princesses stretching down the steps. Aster turned away first, picking up her own silks. “Don’t be a goose, Mignonette; you caught your skirt on a splinter.”

“The steps are marble,” Mignonette muttered. “And I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

But no one answered her. Val saw a shining ahead, like a thousand touches of starlight. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the princesses began to walk down a wide road lined with trees. The leaves on the trees were moonlight, it seemed to Val; they were silver fire. They were silver, he realized finally, with such wonder that he could scarcely breathe. He reached up to touch such beauty, and then, beginning to think again, he broke off a twig bearing four or five leaves to show to the king.

The tree gave a splintering crack as if a branch had fallen; Mignonette whirled again. “What is that noise?” she cried. “You all must have heard it!”

Val held his breath. Her sisters glanced indifferently around them. “It was the wind,” one said. “It was fireworks from the dance,” another offered.

“It sounded,” Aster said lightly, “like a heart breaking.”

They turned then onto another broad, tree-lined road. Val closed his eyes and opened them again, but what he saw did not change: All the leaves on these trees were made of gold. Like tears of gold they glowed and shimmered and melted down the branches; they flowed into Val’s outstretched hand. Again he broke the slenderest of twigs; again the tree made a sound as if it had been split by lightning.

“Another broken heart,” Aster said after Mignonette had screamed and complained, and her sisters had bade her to stop fussing so, they would never get to the dance. Only Val heard her whisper, as she trudged after them, “I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

On the third road he broke off a cluster of leaves made of diamonds. They burned of white fire in the moonlight, a light so pure and cold, it hurt his eyes. Mignonette stamped her foot and wailed at the sound the tree made, but her sisters, impatient now, only hurried toward the lake at the end of the road. Only Aster slowed to walk with her. Her voice was as calm as ever as she spoke to Mignonette, but she searched the diamond-studded dark behind them now and then, as if she sensed their invisible follower.

“I have a bad feeling about tonight,” Mignonette said stubbornly.

Aster only answered, “We are almost there. One more night and we will never have to leave again.”

On the shore of the lake, twelve boats waited for them. Out of each boat rose a shadowy figure to take the hand of the princess who came to him and help her into the boat. Val paused almost too long, trying to see the faces of the richly dressed men who were pushing the boats into the water. He whispered, suddenly sick at heart, “I have a bad feeling about tonight.”

He realized then that the boats were floating away from him. He stepped hastily into the last one; it rocked a little until he caught his balance. Mignonette, whose boat he had the misfortune to enter, promptly raised her voice, calling to her sisters, “I think someone got into the boat with me!”

Her sisters’ laughter fell as airily as windblown petals around them; even the man who rowed her smiled. “Don’t fret, my Mignonette. I could row a dozen invisible guests across the water.” His mouth did not move, Val saw, when he spoke. His eyes were closed. And yet he rowed steadily and straight toward the brightly lit castle on the other side of the lake. Torches burned on all its towers and walls; its casements opened wide; candlelight and music spilled from them. Val, his heart hammering, his hands as cold as if he waited for the beginning of a battle, did not dare move until Mignonette left the boat. The man, pulling it ashore, commented puzzledly, “It does seem heavier than usual.”

“You see!” Mignonette began. But he only put his arm around her as she stepped ashore, and kissed her with his mouth that never moved.

“Never mind, my smallest love,” he said. “Tomorrow you will have nothing to fear ever again.”

Val, following them into the castle, saw the light from the torches at the gate fall over their faces. He stopped abruptly, his bones turned to iron, and his blood turned to ice at what he saw. “This,” he heard himself whisper, “is the worst thing that could be.”

Still, he forced himself into the castle, to watch the dance.

In the vast hall where the music played, the walls glowed with rare, polished wood. Traceries of gold leaf outlined the carvings on the ceiling. Candles in gold and silver and diamond holders stood everywhere, illumining the princesses’ enchanting, sparkling faces. They began to dance at once, smiling into the faces of their princes, who may once have been handsome but who, to Val’s unenchanted eyes, had been dead a day too long. Their lips were grim, motionless gashes in their bloodless faces; their eyes never opened. The room was crowded with watchers, all holding empty wine cups and tapping a foot to the music. The music, fierce and merciless, never let the dancers rest; it sent them breathless and spinning around the floor. Ribbons came undone, hems tore, pearls broke and scattered everywhere. Still, the princesses danced, their smiles never wavering at the faces of the dead who danced with them. Their satin slippers grew soiled and scuffed; the thin fabric wore through, until their bare feet blistered against the gleaming floor. Still, they danced, driven by blind musicians who had no reason to rest; they had left their lives elsewhere.

“What a celebration there will be tomorrow night!” Val heard many times as he waited. “The wedding of twelve princesses, and a dance that will never end!”

As the lake grew gray with dawn, the music finally stopped. In silence, drooping with exhaustion in their boats, the princesses were returned to the far shore, where they kissed the frozen faces of their princes and bade them farewell until tomorrow. Val walked ahead of them this time so that he could reach his bed and pretend to sleep before they came back. He kept pace with Aster. She looked a wilted flower, he thought; her eyes seemed troubled, now, but by what she could not imagine. She stumbled a little, on pebbles or the bright, sharp metal of fallen leaves, wincing where her shoes had worn through to her bare feet. He wanted to take her hand, help her walk, comfort her, but he guessed that, in such a place, he could be less alive to her than the dead.

When he saw the stairs, he paused to take off his boots so that he could run up without being heard. As he passed Aster, a boot tilted in his hand, spilling a little red wine on the steps. He saw Aster’s eyes widen at it, her step falter. But she did not speak to her sisters. Nor did she say anything when, moments later, she found him sleeping in his bed. Another sister said tiredly, “At least he’ll die before we wake. And then no one will have to die for us again.”

He waited until they were all hidden in their beds, and nothing moved in the room but morning light. Then he rose, and crept out, with his boots in one hand and the magical leaves in the other, to speak to the king.

The king was pacing outside his daughters’ bedchamber; he had not slept that night, either. His hand tightening and loosening and tightening again on his great sword, he gazed wordlessly at Val out of his lightless eyes until Val spoke.

“They go down to the underworld,” Val said. “They dance with the dead.” He showed the king the three sprays of leaves, silver, gold and diamond, that could only have come from such an enchanted place. His hand trembled with weariness and horror; so did his voice. “Tomorrow night, they will wed their dead princes, and you will never see them again.”

The king, with a shout of rage and grief, tore the leaves from Val’s hand and flung open the bedchamber doors. Exhausted, astonished faces appeared from between the hangings in every bed. The king showed them the leaves; sunlight flared from them, turned gold and silver and diamond into fire. “What are these?” he demanded. “Where are they from? You tell me, daughters. Tell me where to go get them. And then I will know where to go to find you.”

They stared at the leaves. Little by little, as if before they had only dreamed themselves awake, their faces came alive to terror and confusion. From beneath their beds came the sound of a great, splintering crack, as if a tree had been struck by lightning, or a heart had broken.

Mignonette was the first to burst into tears. “No, it isn’t real,” she sobbed. “It was a dream! You can’t have taken those leaves from a dream!”

“Val followed you,” the king said while all around him his daughters wept as if their hearts had broken. “He brought these back with him to show me.”

“How could it have been real?” Aster whispered, shivering in her bed while tears slipped down her face. “We were—we pledged ourselves in marriage to—we danced with—”

“Dead princes,” Val said. She stared at him, her face as white as alabaster.

“Which dead princes?” she asked him. “The ones our father killed because of us?”

“I don’t know,” he answered gently, though he shuddered, too, at the thought.

She closed her eyes against a nightmare. “You might have died, too, Val, if you had not kept watch.”

“I knew someone followed us,” Mignonette sobbed to her sisters. “I tried to tell you. And you would not believe me!”

“You were all enchanted,” Val said.

Aster opened her eyes again, looked at him. “Did I know you were there?” she wondered softly. “Or did I only wish it?”

There was another sound, the clang of the king’s great sword as he drew it from the scabbard and flung it to the floor. Then he took the crown from his head and held it out to Val. “Take my kingdom,” he said with great relief. “You have broken the spell over my house, and over me. I no longer want to rule; there are too many innocent dead among my memories.”

“Well,” Val said uncertainly, turning the crown, which looked too big for him, over in his hands. “There are worse things that could be.”

He lifted his eyes, looked at Aster, for comfort, and for friendship. She smiled a little, through her tears, and he saw that she agreed with him: There were worse things that could be than what he had: a kingdom and a choice of flowers from A to M.

U
ndine

All my sisters caught mortals that way. I have more sisters than I can count, and they’ve all had more husbands than they can count. It’s easy, they told me. And when you get tired of them you just let them go. Sometimes they find their way back to their world, where they sit around a lot with a gaffed look in their eyes, their mouths loosing words slowly like bubbles drifting away. Other times they just die in our world. They don’t float like mortals anymore. They sink down, lie among the water weeds and stones at the bottom, their skin turning pearly over time, tiny snails clustering in their hair.

Easy. When it was time for my first, my sisters showed me how to find my way. In our deep, cool, opalescent pools, our reedy, light-stained waters, time passes so slowly you hardly notice it. Things rarely ever change. Even the enormous, jewel-winged dragonflies that dart among the reeds have been there longer than I have. To catch humans, I have to rise up into their time, pull them down into ours. It takes practice, which is why so many of them die.

“But don’t worry,” my sisters told me blithely. “You’ll get the hang of it. When you bring the first one home alive, we’ll throw a party.”

I had to choose a patch of sunlight in my water and swim up through it, up and up in the light until it blinded me, while I kept a vision of mortals in my mind. What mortals I knew were mostly my sisters’ husbands and some mossy-haired, frog-eyed women who had accidentally fallen in love with my snarky water-kelpie cousins as they cavorted among the water lilies in human and horse disguises. But, my sisters assured me, as I moved from our time into theirs my hunger—and my loneliness—would grow. I would be happy to see the human face at the end of my journey. I should not expect to be in the same water there, but it would not be hard at all, they promised, for me to find my way back. I had only to wish and swim.