Chapter 12 All Along
All Along
Norah was walking from her bedroom to the little balcony for breakfast the next morning when she heard a crash.
It had come from the direction of the little library that also served as the royal family’s private parlor.
She paused in the hall, not sure whether she ought to investigate or not. It wasn’t her palace after all, but–
Lady Freya emerged from the library at the end of the hall, her shoulders slumped and her eyes downcast. Norah waited for her, but Lady Freya seemed so distracted that she nearly ran into Norah before realizing she was there.
“What happened?” Norah asked, glancing anxiously back at the library.
“Oh.” Lady Freya shook her head. “Um, it seems Phillip has forgotten how to play his violin.”
Norah stared at her, sure she hadn’t heard correctly.
He had forgotten?
But then it occurred to her. At one point, he had forgotten particular words. Then he had forgotten how to speak. Then, how to write.
And now, he had forgotten how to play.
Norah hurried toward the library. But when she stepped inside, she paused.
On the ground beside a little wooden table, which now had a gash in its side, lay the remnants of what had been Phillip’s beloved instrument–his voice, in a way.
It had been smashed into hundreds of pieces all over the ground.
Phillip wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was pacing the room, running his hands distractedly–almost frantically–through his hair as he did. Gone was the look of peace that Norah had grown so accustomed to seeing on his face. Instead, he wore anger, resentment, and distress like a coat.
“Phillip?” Norah asked, her voice shaking slightly.
Phillip, like his sister, seemed so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t seem to have noticed that she was there. Only when she called his name did he raise his head to look at her.
Rather than smiling, however, or looking sheepish as she expected him to do, his expression darkened, and he turned away from her and toward the window, where he crossed his arms.
She stared at him for a long moment, and her initial reaction was to feel somewhat hurt. She hadn’t taken his ability to play the instrument. She hadn’t destroyed it in a fit of anger. In fact, she–
Something crunched under her feet, and she looked down to find a sheet of music that had fallen on the ground. Carefully, so as not to tear it, she picked it up and read the words.
It was a lullaby.
Norah read the words, then looked at him again, her heart filling with a familiar ache, the one that she knew all too well came from a place of helplessness. And she was reminded of something her mother had told her when she was quite young.
Sometimes we can’t heal them. She had gestured to the room full of their patients. Sometimes we can. But either way, we need to listen. We have to let them know that they’re not alone.
Norah couldn’t fix this. Not yet, at least. But maybe this…
Maybe this was a way for her to go deeper.
Because to fall in love with this man, she would have to know him.
To really know him. And the pain he was suffering in silence now was where she would have to be if she was going to meet him properly.
The crash of the violin had been a desperate cry for help, a way to silence the void that was threatening to swallow him.
The question she had to ask herself now, though, was whether she could follow him. Tarts and songs and dancing on the beach were pretty things, but love–real love–would mean accompanying him into the dark and holding his hand whether she could heal him or not.
Love might even mean losing him as he lost himself.
Was she ready for that? Or had she lost too much already?
Norah looked back down at the music sheet again. She had said she would try. And Norah never did anything halfway.
Stepping over the splintered pieces of the instrument, she went to stand at his side. She still didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what he wanted her to say. So she took a breath, and instead of speaking, took his hand.
And though it took him a long moment, his fingers finally tightened around hers as well.
There were no games that day, nor were there any adventures or laughs at the supper table.
But after Phillip had taken her hand that morning, he had hardly let go.
Everywhere that he went, she had gone as well.
And that night as she was getting ready for bed, Norah spoke of the day aloud to Nanny as she often did before she fell asleep.
“It makes me wonder,” she said as she stood on her bedroom balcony, “how often he smiles when he wants to cry.”
Nanny didn’t answer her, of course. But the wind whispered through the leaves of the trees that surrounded her balcony, and that made Norah feel less alone.
“He would be a good king,” she went on after a moment.
“And even…” She paused and swallowed, her throat suddenly thick.
“Even if it means the end of my dreams, I want to help him. He deserves it. And so do his people. And somehow, for some reason, I’m the only one who can give it to him.
Why is that? Why am I the only one who can help? ”
As she spoke, she realized that she was no longer speaking to Nanny, but rather, to the Maker.
“I’m not strong or clever or skilled with diplomacy,” she went on. “But for some reason, you’ve given me a task I can’t possibly be sure of finishing. And I just… I wish I knew why.”
How many years had she dreamed of leaving this place and never looking back? And yet, just when it seemed she might be on the cusp of finding a way to escape, she was being reeled back in. Simply because no one else could do what was being asked of her.
Almost as if it had been designed that way.
But maybe… maybe that’s what Nanny had been trying to tell her all along.