4. Chapter 4
4
BEATRICE
I waited years for my next taste of magic, but in our derelict castle, time was never wasted. I attended a local grade school, and after much begging, Papa allowed me piano and singing lessons. He personally took me to church each week, and both modeled and taught me responsible property management, masonry and carpentry, kindness, patience, and genuine faith. Auntie taught me how to keep house, cook, sew, appreciate the humor in life, and persevere. I never saw her use magic, and we never spoke of it since Papa objected, but it fairly hovered in the air when she was near. Her presence constantly assured me that my memories of Faraway Castle were not imaginary.
I spent a few years at a boarding school in Auvers and seldom saw my grandaunt during that time, but Papa frequently came to visit me. As soon as possible I added job training to my accelerated academic program and acquired both a teaching accreditation and a childcare license at age fifteen. I was tall and serious-minded even then, and most people mistook me for eighteen or older. My goal in life was to help people in practical ways.
But then the King of Bilbao, a neighboring country, selected me out of all applicants to be the nanny and live-in companion to his motherless only child. Papa and Auntie Bella nearly burst with pride.
I nearly hyperventilated.
Me, nanny to a nine-year-old princess? I worried that she might not respect an inexperienced nanny only six years older than she was, but everyone else seemed to believe I could handle the challenge, so I ignored my sense of inadequacy and accepted the position.
Well, my instinct proved correct. A few weeks after taking charge of that angelically beautiful, spoiled-rotten, broken-hearted, and downright evil princess, I was ready to scream like a toddler and rip out hair by the roots. Hers or mine—either would do. The one ray of hope on my horizon was that “Eddi”—aka Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Edurne Zuri, spent four weeks every summer at Faraway Castle Resort.
That first time, King Koldo accompanied us to the resort—we flew to Adelboden on his private jet and transferred to one of several waiting limousines—and he stayed over the first night to make sure his angel princess would be safe under the supervision of this questionable new nanny. Eddi clung to him and wept piteously when he and his royal retinue prepared to leave the next morning—the child was impossibly beautiful even with red, puffy eyes and features contorted with self-pity and woe.
But as soon as the cart carrying His Majesty back to the car park vanished around a curve, she turned to fix her dark eyes on me and let a malicious smile creep over her features. I was doomed.
Two days later, I ran from the stables up the path between a horse pasture and the football pitch at the base of Faraway Castle’s hillside gardens, and through the nearest garden gate. Once it slammed shut behind me, I propped my hands on my knees, huffed out my frustration, and sucked in long draughts of free air. My liberty would last all of—I checked my wind-up wristwatch—fifty-five minutes. Then I must escort the tiny tyrant to her next activity. As if she didn’t know the way better than I did.
On the bright side, nearly an hour stretched before me with no insults to shrug off or machinations to thwart. Today was the first of Princess Eddi’s daily private riding lessons. Her instructor, a cute dwarf who looked younger than me (I never told any of the dwarves that I could see through the glamours they wore to appear human, but I think they knew) had kindly informed me that I did not need to stick around, and that he would gladly escort Her Royal Highness to her first group activity of the day. I dared to follow his advice about taking the hour off, but I didn’t dare let him take over my escort job. Eddi would be sure to inform her father of my dereliction of duty.
I lost track of how many gardens I passed through while climbing staircases. There may have been more gardens than should fit . . . Never mind. They were beautiful. The colors and perfumes of trees and flowers, the music of birds, insects, and running water, and the delicious fresh air blended to soothe my soul. Everything was exactly how I remembered it from that long-ago visit with Auntie Bella, back in the good old days . . .
Eddi and I had a lot in common, really. We’d both lost our mothers, and we both had loving yet largely absent fathers. Unlike the princess, I’d been a happy child. But then, Eddi remembered her mother and missed her terribly. Which was worse, I wondered, to have a mother and suffer the pain of her loss, or to have no memory of a mother’s love at all? Papa did his best as a father, and Auntie Bella tried to fill in my mother-love gaps when she was around, but it could never be the same.
When I reached the rose garden, other guests were strolling along its paths, perched on benches, or even seated on the velvety lawn. I casually brushed one hand along the tall box hedges, keeping my eyes peeled for a cinder sprite. I’d never told a soul, not even Auntie Bella, about my adventures that day more than half my lifetime ago. Sometimes I knew it had really happened. Other times, I believed I must have dreamed it all.
But magic was undeniable at Faraway Castle, and it welcomed me every single moment. When I was little, I’d never noticed that computers and cellphones didn’t work at the resort. Eddi complained about it, but I enjoyed the change: people here actually talked to each other. Well, except me. As a nanny I was pretty much invisible to other humans.
My free hour was quickly passing with no sign of an arbor gate covered with roses. I longed to see a cinder sprite. Starfire had led me from this garden into Othniel’s. Had he opened a magical gate to me? Where was Othniel’s garden?
After so many years, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d dreamed the whole adventure . . .
“Starfire?” I called softly, peering into the hedges. “Can you hear me?”
All at once, a magic I vividly remembered surrounded me, its presence so dreamlike that time seemed to stop. “Starfire isn’t here today.”
The deep voice was just as kind as I’d remembered. And as unearthly, but I didn’t care about that. Warmth and excitement filled my face and heart. “H-hello,” I managed to squeak. “I knew I didn’t imagine you!”
“It’s good to see you again.”
My mind whirling, I blurted, “I still can’t see you. What’s your name?”
“Here at Faraway Castle, I am called the Gamekeeper.”
I had heard of the Gamekeeper. Maybe from Auntie? I knew he was particularly important, even essential to the resort. Now I realized that it was the Gamekeeper’s magic underlying everything around me.
“Thank you for remembering me, Beatrice.” He spoke gently, yet his voice reverberated with power. Good power, but almost overwhelming.
My heart pounded. “Sometimes I’ve worried that I dreamed up you and Starfire and Comet and their babies and Othniel,” I babbled. “But if you’re real, all the rest must have been real too.”
“It was.”
I swallowed hard, tingling with excitement. “Do you think I might be able to get back into that other garden?” I paused uncertainly, then blurted, “It’s been eight years. I’ve been waiting more than half my life!”
“Will you walk with me and tell me what you remember about your adventure?”
My chest felt tight with disappointment. He’d avoided my question, and in my experience, that meant “no.” Even so, I welcomed the chance to talk about my magical adventure to someone who wouldn’t tell me it was imaginary. Someone who believed me. Even if he was invisible, he felt real, and I knew when he fell into step beside me as I resumed walking alongside the hedge.
I told him everything I remembered about that long-ago day, from following Starfire to meeting Bo, the water monster. But somehow, when I put my treasured memories into words, they didn’t sound quite real anymore.
I looked up at where I thought the Gamekeeper’s face might be and heaved a quivering sigh. “As you know, I can’t get back into that garden, and I haven’t seen a cinder sprite since then. Do you believe me? Or was it all just a dream?”
“Certainly, I believe you.”
Something in his voice revived my confidence and hope. “Really? Do you know where Othniel is?”
“I cannot say.”
He sounded genuinely regretful, and my hope withered. “Will you disappear too?”
“Yes, but whenever you call me during your visit, I will come if I am able. And . . . I’ll see what I can do about cinder sprites.”
Just like that, he was gone.
But I had a feeling my life was about to get much better.
Arabella
“We did it!” I danced a little jig on the cold rock floor. “She’ll be here for three full weeks, and she’s already spoken with you-know-who!”
“I do hope you haven’t forgotten whose idea this was.”
“Considering your frequent reminders, forgetting that detail would require a powerful spell to achieve.”
But Pukai deflated me with one question: “Now, how do you plan to keep tabs on Beatrice while training your little apprentice?”
Wincing at the direct hit, I shifted into my ugly-hag disguise. “I’ll manage. Since Beatrice doesn’t know I’m spying on her, and Ellie thinks I’m gathering herbs or treating sick peasants whenever I leave my cottage—which reminds me that I do need to collect a few weeds before I return—it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
At this point I must confess that during Beatrice’s boarding-school years, I’d spent much of my time at my old haunts in the mountains around Faraway Castle, resuming my fictitious identities as either Arabella the lowly burva -level hedge witch (I prefer Wise Old Woman) or Arabella the fairy godmother. Partly because Pukai had needed me near, but also because of the terrified golden-haired child I’d found near my hedge-witch home. Of course, I’d taken her in, poor little waif. Ellie remembered her given name but little else. Her clothing, although shredded, revealed wealth, and when none of the guests at Faraway Castle reported a missing child, I suspected foul play.
I prefer to avoid attention, so I’d decided to keep Ellie safe, tell her she had a natural talent, and instruct her in some basic tenets of magic for a time. Why? Because a child packed with at least caroven-level power who has no idea how to use or restrain it is straight-up dangerous. To my great relief, royal or not, she also was, and is to this day, a sweet, honest, well-mannered young lady. She did her best to please me, excelled at her lessons, and was remarkably self-sufficient for her age. I figured that someday her memory would return, and her story would unfold.
And since Beatrice was unaware of my presence near Faraway Castle that summer, I could pop in and check on her by taking some unremarkable form—a guest, a brownie, a gardener, or even a bird.
“Trust me,” I assured Pukai, “without your help I’d be even crazier than I am now. Together, we stand a good chance of finding our way to a happy ending for all.”
“A happy ending,” Pukai echoed. “Unlikely. My family seems cursed.” She gazed toward the waterfall shielding the cave’s entrance, but I recognized her expression and winced. It was thoughtless of me to speak of happy endings in her presence, since she’d lost her beloved third husband a few years earlier, and her youngest daughter still mourned him. Pukai’s sister, too, had suffered heartbreak and remained trapped in human form, but I had more trouble pitying her. She had a truly sour personality.
It helped that all four of Pukai’s gorgeous daughters would be around most of the summer, although they frequently caused chaos, luring male guests with their siren voices. Pukai did her best to limit the girls’ fun, which got out of hand now and then. More than once, a male guest had wrecked an expensive ski boat while trying to reach the island. But such minor troubles gave Pukai something to occupy her mind.
And hopefully our endeavors to encourage a friendship between Beatrice and the Gamekeeper would also be a healthy distraction for my oldest and dearest frenemy.