Chapter 16 Magical Masquerade
Magical Masquerade
When I was six years old, Robin gifted me a palette of colors. They were enchanted to create any shades I could dream up. I loved it. I started staying up late just to paint; I would stack canvases all through my room.
But then my studies intensified. Robin never explicitly told me not to have hobbies, or to focus only on school, but every top mark I brought to her was met with so much pride.
Every painting I made… was met with something less enthusiastic, even though she was the one who gave me the tools to begin with.
So, over time, my brush and paints saw less and less use, until they were tucked away altogether beneath my bed. Unthought of until this journey.
I think about myself at that age now. About how my imagination felt limitless. Over the years, with the stress and expectations, I gradually built walls around it, fencing in my thoughts, constricting my creativity, until finally, I thought of wants and dreams as silly.
As I take the first few steps down this speckled path, I close my eyes and, one by one, I confront all those walls built up from the voice in my head that cared only about success.
Painting is a waste of time.
No it isn’t. It helps me understand the world. It makes me happy.
It’s a distraction from the things that matter.
This matters to me. Which makes it important.
You’re not even that good. Other people are better.
Not everything in life is a competition.
Your mother would be so disappointed.
No she wouldn’t. Now I know that for certain.
She was an artist, like me.
And maybe that’s why Robin looked so sad, seeing my paintings. Not because my time was being wasted… but because seeing me create art reminded her of her dearest friend.
Slowly, those walls within me start to crack, and my shoulders—they sag in relief. I didn’t realize all the weight I was carrying, of the expectations of my world… and also, of myself.
Why have I held myself to such an impossible standard?
Why did I think that if I wasn’t perfect, Robin wouldn’t love me?
Her reaction after Boxing Day made it clear that wasn’t true.
Maybe if I understood that, I would have done more things for the sake of loving them and not for the impossible pursuit of perfection.
I take a steadying breath and try to go back to that innocent, unburdened mindset of being young enough to not understand the reality of responsibilities, and work, and life, and Fates. The time I had a direct line to my heart. To my soul.
I open my eyes. I’m only a few feet down the path.
Trees frame each side, waiting like an audience, rustling gently in the pine-swept breeze. The creatures who will be my ticket into the ball lurk in the shadows somewhere beyond.
Let the world be your palette.
I don’t exactly know how these gloves work, but I can take a guess. If my fingers are the brushes… now I just need colors.
I venture a little ways off the path, back into the forest. I don’t know if this will work, but before I can doubt myself, I press a pine needle between my fingers and watch a drop of brilliant green color leach out of it, as if nature has released a tear.
It seeps into one of my gloved fingers and glows, the hue contained, ready to use.
My face breaks into a grin. My eyes widen in wonder.
Excitement bubbles up inside me, and I look around, searching for more colors.
I spot a piece of honeycomb sitting beneath a buzzing beehive. Fear creeps in, but I press my second gloved finger to it, taking a spot of gold. Nearby sits a single crimson flower, its petals bleeding with apple-ripe color. I press my third finger against it.
I siphon navy from the blueberries growing on a bush in a vibrant bouquet. Pink from wild roses. Brown from bark. Black from the night sky itself. I choose ten colors altogether, until each of my fingers is covered in a different shade, contained by the fabric of these enchanted gloves.
Then, when I have everything I need, I step back onto the path.
I’ve been walking along the tree line, and, in my efforts to get all the shades I need, I’ve gone nearly halfway down the trail.
I can see the outline of the manor growing sharper against the night sky.
A few revelers are approaching the gates, dressed in an array of twinkling silk and glowing gossamer, all riding different creatures.
I squint at the woods and can’t be certain if I’m imagining the faint light of eyes staring back at me. Watching. Waiting.
Nerves confetti through my chest, but I swallow them down. I’ve never tried this before… but that only means I don’t know just how good I could be.
I shrug off the cape of shame and embarrassment and worry that we all seem to be gifted at some point in our lives. I settle into that fearlessness I once knew as a child, one that I was reminded of in Anyland.
I can be anything. I can do anything.
I step forward. Then I begin.
First things first: I use the pink color I found from the wild roses… and I press it to the skirt of the gown.
In a magnificent ripple, the silver becomes pink.
Instantly, I feel more myself. A chill trips through my veins, and it’s almost like I feel my mother here with me.
I lift my chin just as she did in that clearing. I know each design of my mother’s that I’ve ever worn like the back of my hand, and I take tiny pieces of patterns from my favorite outfits as I paint.
I use the violet from a patch of violas to create a ribbon around my waist. I use buttercup yellow to form a lace hem on the bottom of my dress, just like the one on my favorite skirt back home.
I use the green to make bracelets that mirror the same chain of my necklace.
I add tiny charms, made of different symbols from nature, a nod to this land—an acorn, a leaf, even a spider.
I use apple-red to create a row of pearled buttons down my back.
And as my hands rise and dip, as I form shapes from my memories, using every color at my fingertips, the forest seems to fade away. The night chill lessens. The eyes upon me vanish.
It’s just me and these smears of color, and my racing imagination, and my mother’s influence, my fingers rushing to keep up.
Now that the lid of my creativity has been opened, ideas are spilling out in a wondrous wave.
I twirl around, painting my dress into existence, adding to the base the spiders made, until it’s a tapestry of my mother’s creativity intertwined with mine.
I… created it.
Something rises within me. It’s… pride.
I’m proud of myself.
I was so consumed by my focus, by my excitement, painting as I advanced along the path, that I don’t even notice that I’m nearly to the gates—
And I don’t yet have a creature.
Two guards in crisp midnight-blue suits turn to face me. One crosses his arms over his star-shaped buttons. His face is grim. I can tell without even asking that he’s not going to let me through. He opens his mouth to turn me away.
Before he can say a word, however, a hoof steps onto the path, right between me and the guard.
It belongs to…
A pegasus.
My breath catches. I remember what Posey said, about their existence. She was right. They are real.
The pegasus is twice as large as a normal horse and has a sparkling gold coat. Gleaming wings arc outward from its long back. It bows its head at me.
It… chose me.
I bow back, tentatively, not sure if I’m doing any of this right.
Well, don’t just stand there, a voice sounds in my mind, just like with the spiders. The pegasus’s voice is a deep, ancient baritone. The masquerade is about to begin.
And just like that, golden magic twirls around me, lifting me off my feet and onto the pegasus’s back. His own magic.
The gold brushes my cheeks as something forms around my eyes. A mask. I reach up and trace its shape. It seems to mimic his wings.
He looks over his shoulder at me, wearing a matching mask. Say. Do you think you could decorate my horn? I quite liked your work on your dress.
“Of—of course.” I reach over with a gloved hand, brow furrowed… and the paint spills from my fingertips as I illustrate festive bells and ornaments, right on his horn.
Perfect, the pegasus says, as if he can somehow see it through my own eyes.
I grimace. It’s not. I smudged a few places. The color isn’t quite right.
Perfectly imperfect, he corrects, and I didn’t know there was such a thing. I like the sound of it, though.
With a nod of thanks, he takes us a step forward. The guard’s eyes pass over us both. For a simmering second, I wait in trepidation.
But then he turns and nods at the other guard.
And we’re through the gates, into the courtyard.
“I’ve never been to a masquerade before,” I tell the pegasus as he leads us through the interior courtyard and toward the towering front doors of the manor.
The closer we get, the more I can hear the party within—violins stringing elegant music, conversation reaching a fever pitch, glasses clinking.
Through the large arched windows, I see shadows of guests, all in magnificent suits and dresses and masks, each enchanted with magic from creatures who stand beside them.
Pity, the pegasus says. But you’re in good company—I haven’t been to one of these in centuries.
I blink. No—I must have heard that wrong.
I’m hundreds of years old. I know. I don’t look a day over a century.
I look down at the pegasus with newfound curiosity. “Hundreds? Really?”
He scoffs. We live to be thousands of years old. I’m still young.
Wow. I can’t imagine living such a long life. Having time to do everything. But after hundreds of years, this pegasus still seems excited by the idea of attending this celebration. I can almost feel it radiating off him.
He hasn’t attended a masquerade in hundreds of years. Why now? Why… did he choose me?
He can hear my thoughts, and he responds. When you were painting… your eyes closed, your heart open… it reminded me of when I used to play the harp.
I wonder how that’s possible.
My hooves are very skilled, he snaps, hearing the surprise in my mind.