Chapter 14 The Trial of Talent
The Trial of Talent
The next morning Demelza awoke to Ursula throwing open her door and shouting:
“Found her, Talvi! She slept through breakfast!”
Demelza’s eyes shot open. For one glorious moment, she imagined that she was back in her nest and snuggled into a pile amongst her sisters. And then the day’s events flew back to her.
“Are you quite all right?” asked Ursula from the doorway. “If you slept through breakfast I bet I could find you—goodness, where did you get that?”
Ursula walked into the room and picked up the prince’s orange pastry sitting on the little table beside the fire. Ursula was wearing a dark-blue gown sewn with flowering brambles and wild berries. With her golden hair arranged in a pile atop her head, the effect was striking.
“I … I saved it from the welcome tent yesterday,” said Demelza. “I must’ve grabbed the last one.”
Ursula closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and then sighed. “Is that milled cave wheat? Goodness, it smells delicious. I wonder if I might—”
“Ursula!” said Talvi, appearing beside her in the doorway. “Didn’t you just say Demelza had no breakfast?”
Ursula moped back to the door. “I was only asking … must you punish me for that? You sound like my mother.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Talvi.
“My mother is half the reason I entered this competition,” said Ursula.
“And the other half?” asked Demelza, pocketing away this bit of information.
“The food,” said Ursula, grinning.
“Demelza, everyone has started to line up. Do you, um, do you need anything? Can I help you with your costume for the talent trial?”
Demelza pointed at a peg on the bathing door, upon which her ragged dress of rushes hung.
Despite looking utterly bedraggled, it was bespelled against dirt, and merely flicking water at it caused the rushes to shake off any impurities and gleam as if they were freshly cut.
Which was not to say that it was beautiful … but at least it was clean.
“That’s all I have,” said Demelza. “My belongings were misplaced, though I have sent for them.”
She really needed to figure out how to get more clothing.
If her sisters were here they would have draped her in their own dresses.
But she was alone. And even if she wanted to ask them for help, she had no way of reaching them.
Each sister possessed a stone from Hush Manor.
Whenever they placed a letter beneath the stone, it appeared in their parents’ breakfast room.
Demelza wondered what their parents had told them …
if they’d told them anything at all. Or did her sisters imagine that she was still at home?
Still toiling in the library and waiting for her wings?
Demelza threw back the covers. Talvi yelped and covered her face with her hands.
“Your sleeping garments also went amiss?” she asked.
“I hate wearing clothes to sleep,” said Demelza.
“I agree!” shouted Ursula from somewhere in the adjoining sitting room. “If I must be caged in a dress all day, then let me be free at night!”
Talvi shook her head. The Aatos Mountain girl was wearing a simple but lovely gown that looked as if someone had sheared off part of a blizzard.
The dress was long-sleeved and spangled with snow.
The hem might have been considered scandalously short, but that was because of its partial translucence.
Mid-thigh, the dress unraveled into snowfall.
“Well then, I shall leave you to your morning ablutions. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel abandoned,” said Talvi.
“Thank you,” said Demelza, and she meant it.
Before Talvi closed the door, she frowned at the mantelpiece.
“I would ask why in the world you brought that of all things, but I’m a little scared to know,” she said, laughing as she shut the door.
Demelza followed her gaze. The fire mantel held very little.
There were some tomes of poetry bookended by large pieces of agate.
A few candles. A vase of dried flowers. And there, tucked between the vase and a candelabra, was an eyeball with a bright-red pupil.
Was it decor of some kind? It certainly seemed … odd.
Just then, a gong sounded from far below and all thoughts of the eyeball vanished as Demelza rushed to get ready.
Demelza figured that they would be led back to the wintry lake, but once all the contestants had gathered in the main hall and the door of the mushroom tower opened, it was not the grounds of Rathe Castle that greeted them but an underground cavern.
“Form a line, please!” said the fox-faced attendant from yesterday.
Demelza rushed to the back of the room, which was just as well considering the number of flying elbows and yelps of “Watch the hair!” as the contestants fought for prime placement.
The Lady Edmea, Demelza noticed, did not participate in the fray.
She sat at the end of the dining table, drinking her tea.
For all her reputation in the sartorial world, she was dressed rather plainly in a gown the color of an eggshell.
When she finally stood, Demelza noticed the exquisite craftsmanship of the hemline and sleeves, the invisible seams of the bodice.
As Edmea passed Demelza, her eyes flicked over her dress of rushes.
She raised an eyebrow and kept walking until she made her way to the front, where one of her inner circle—the Aatos girl with closely cropped hair—had saved her the first spot.
The girl had done so at great duress, it seemed, for when she moved to grant Edmea her place, Demelza noticed she was sporting a black eye from another contestant.
In front of Demelza stood Talvi and Ursula. Ursula tugged at her hair, muttering, “Did I label the roasted dusk seeds properly? Or did I get them mixed with the container of Glimmerian floating pepper … oh dear…”
Talvi appeared calm. Demelza was willing to bet Talvi rarely lost her composure.
As they entered the caverns, the light from the main dining room vanished, replaced with an eerie glow.
Along the uneven walls, slow-moving beetles the size of Demelza’s head crawled up and down.
Glass lanterns had been affixed to their jeweled carapaces, giving the light an iridescent and underwater quality.
It was cool and damp, but not uncomfortably so.
While many of the contestants were murmuring to themselves or going through the complicated motions of a dance or whatever it was that their talent performance demanded, the only thing that twitched about Talvi were her hands.
“You look as if you’re writing,” said Demelza.
“Is it that obvious?” asked Talvi, wide-eyed.
“Just a guess,” said Demelza.
“I think I’m always writing … though whether it’s any good, I have no idea,” said Talvi, laughing.
“What do you like to write?”
Talvi made a face. “Romances, mostly. Do you read romance?”
“No,” said Demelza, before quickly adding: “But not because I don’t wish to! I don’t think there were any romance books in the library.”
Actually there had been quite a few, but Araminta had thrown them out. She didn’t want her daughters getting any ideas about love, which was a shockingly different approach from Prava’s. When he found out Araminta had forbidden romantic tomes, he had sat them all down for a family meeting.
“Romance and love and the intimacy between willing bodies is a beautiful thing! Nothing to be ashamed of, my dears. Read what you like and ask whatever you wish!”
However, Prava’s approach of “You can talk to me about anything!” was just as bad as their mother’s tight-lipped silence.
If not worse. Out of solidarity with his daughters, Prava insisted on taking a monthly draught that gave him stomach pain, fatigue and moodiness to better understand their female anatomical plights and avoid raising children who would later “wrestle with demons of shame.”
“I think I’d prefer the demons of shame,” muttered Demelza.
“What?” asked Talvi.
“Nothing,” said Demelza. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you decide to come here?”
Talvi’s smile turned dreamy. “Inspiration? I think? I don’t know, really … I saw the invitation and all of a sudden, it was all I could dream about. I’ve never been anywhere and while I love my mothers, they have very different notions of what I should do with my life.”
“I understand that completely,” said Demelza.
“Everyone in the Mountains is a scholar. They study, translate, observe. They speak to the clouds, the rain, the snow. But I don’t think they dream …
or if they do, they consider it merely a hobby, not as a way to live …
whereas I can’t imagine any other way of living,” said Talvi quietly.
“I don’t expect to make it through all three rounds, let alone this one, but if I must go back to my mothers’ home and find some area of study, then I wish to fill up my well for dreams. Do you know what I mean? ”
“I…” Demelza started to speak and then trailed off.
No, she thought. She had no understanding of making space for dreams. With every step, her life painfully crystallized.
The other contestants had made space to cultivate talents, but Demelza had never made space for such a thing.
She and her sisters had been raised to fulfill Prava’s ambitions.
What would follow, they had been promised, was a paradise of power.
No one had asked her if that’s what she wanted.
Did Demelza even like what she had studied?
Or was she simply good at it and in pursuit of praise?
Prava had called her gifted in the study of history and languages, but Demelza wasn’t sure if she had ever approached her studies with the same dreamy joy that Talvi felt when she spoke of writing romances.
Talvi touched her arm. “Are you all right, Demelza?”
“What even is a Demelza? If one is simply raised as an instrument in service of another person, then are they even a person?”
“Uh … I’m not certain I follow…”