4. Lope
4
Lope
Darkness awaits us in a day’s time,
And I will follow her within.
S ince the guards were commanded to keep Lady Ofelia in the house after nightfall, as soon as morning came, she expertly crafted our lie. She told the captain of the guard, Chevaleresse Beautemps, that the best way to ease her anxieties over her mother was to go into town and buy as many things as her heart desired. So she and I ended up with a wagon, two horses, and no questions.
She sat beside me on the driver’s bench, glancing over her shoulder at the manor, white as snow in the morning sun.
“If—when—when we find Mother, we’re going to stay there at Le Chateau. We’ll never see this place again,” Ofelia said.
It was true. This estate was my only home, besides an orphanage and a camp where knights like me were trained. The manor housed all my fondest memories. And the wall, my most horrid ones.
“Will you miss it there?” she asked me.
“No.” I flinched at the sound of my own voice; that I could so easily cast aside my old life, and that I could speak so harshly before Ofelia. But when I glanced at her, I found her watching me intently, her eyes alert and sunlit as they always seemed to be.
“This feels... like the beginning of something,” I murmured. “Like I’ve turned the page of a book and a new chapter is about to begin. I’ve never even seen beyond the nearest town before today.”
I searched the horizon, a sea of golden-green hills. We would follow the road north, where we’d eventually find the palace and whatever awaited us there. Possibility lay before me. A world where I could do anything, be anything. The kind of world I dreamed of. The kind of world I longed to write about. A world as ripe and delicious as a crisp apple, begging for me to pick it and taste it for myself.
My sweetest dreams looked so much like that morning. Ofelia was at my side. For just a moment, I wasn’t a knight. Only her dearest friend.
Now that I was alone, now that the sun shone boldly and I did not have to take on the mantle of a knight, I felt that I could breathe .
“May I drive?” Ofelia asked brightly, holding out her hands as she sat beside me on the driver’s bench.
“Oh—you don’t need to trouble yourself with that, my lady.”
Her eyes became little crescent moons. “I want to. And besides, I can just tell you want to write. You have that tiny smile creeping on the corner of your mouth, the one you get when you’re inspired.”
It was sweet and startling all at once to be known so well. My gaze whipped hastily from her back to the road, and I tried in vain to suppress that smile. I was her protector, not a poet.
She reached into the bag between us and procured my red leather notebook with the pencil tucked inside. For a split second, seeing her touch that journal made my heart jolt as I imagined her flipping through the moony love poems I’d already written for her.
“It’s just holding the reins, isn’t it?” With her free hand, she pointed at the road before us, straight and unending. “I can hold them for a half hour.” Ofelia batted her lashes at me like she was begging her mother for new books.
I relented and passed her the reins. She grinned and exchanged them for my notebook. Drawing the bloodred journal close to my chest felt like I was bringing my heart back to its home.
A smile dawned on my face as I took the pencil and looked up, not as a navigator but as an artist .
Beyond this was the world, all of it, bathed in golden sunlight, rolling hills of yellow rapeseed. I wanted to pluck the horizon and wear it like a cloak; or drink it like a flood of gold, to let my body, all of me, become so bright and beautiful .
I laughed. Poetry. Rushing toward me, words, words that I loved, came so easily in this brilliant light.
As fast as I could, I scribbled in my journal each beautiful, fleeting thought, and I realized, This is just the barest fraction of what could be .
More lay beyond. A palace. Cities. Other kingdoms. Valleys, mountains, caverns—oceans. Places I could see, places I could enjoy, not as a knight but just as a girl. Like Ofelia.
Ofelia, with her eyes bright as starlight.
As I touched the graphite pencil to the page, the words flowed from me like a burst dam.
And you! My daylight,
I cannot gather up the words I want to give to you.
I want to weave them into a crown
And softly place it on your brow.
Standing in your radiance,
Each word a kiss—
“Lope!”
Ofelia’s lilting voice struck me, and to my horror, I remembered that she was sitting right beside me on the driver’s bench. I slammed the notebook shut, my face aflame.
Enough , I chastised myself, you cannot protect her when you lose yourself like this .
My cheeks burned, my heart thrummed against my breast, and I hated it. Yes, without a heart, I’d be a sore poet, but with one... well. A tender heart was an easy target.
The sun gilded Ofelia’s curls as she turned toward me on the bench. “Have you found some inspiration?”
Ah. There was my heart again.
“Oh, um—a little bit. I’ve not written anything good yet.”
Ofelia smiled at the world shining before us. “I bet the palace will inspire you.” She squeezed her hands together like she was praying. “I cannot wait to see it. I hope it’s as magnificent as I’ve dreamed.” The light dimmed in her eyes somewhat as she added, “And—and Mother will be there, I know it. She’ll show us around. She’ll teach us the ways of the court.”
She took a shaky breath and pasted on a hopeful grin. “It sounds so splendid. Mother once said they change gowns at Le Chateau several times a day. And that for parties, all the courtiers dress in the same color, whatever the king chooses. She once told me about dancing at one of those balls with my father....”
The way she was staring so distantly out at the road, the way she wrapped herself in stories like a warm, soothing blanket—I could tell how worried she was for her mother. She kept her fear tucked aside, as I did. Yet I did so out of duty, as her knight. Why did she keep her heart guarded now?
“My lady?” I murmured.
She blinked rapidly, waking herself from her reverie. Her brown eyes flitted up my body and back down again, glimmering with mischief. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a gown.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “It—it has never been necessary.”
“It soon shall be necessary! When you’re at the palace with me, you’ll have to be dressed up as wonderfully as the rest of us.” She beamed. “You’ll have to wear your hair down like I do. Can I see it?”
My eyes grew wide. “My hair?”
“Yes,” she said. She tossed me the reins, leaving me scrambling to grasp them as she reached across the driver’s bench. She unwound the ribbon I’d kept my queue in. My hair tumbled down my shoulders, nearly to the small of my back. My whole body went hot as liquid metal. My breath sat tight in my chest. Her fingers softly combed through the knots and tangles, and I imagined her counting each and every silver hair. Instead, she said, “Oh, how beautiful!”
“It—it’s a mess. It gets in the way,” I muttered. “It’s best to keep it tied. It could get in my eyes in a fight—”
“There won’t be any fights at Le Chateau,” she said. As I stared ahead at the road, her fingers grazed across my scalp, and she tenderly swept my hair into three sections, winding them slowly into a plait over my shoulder. “Do you think it’s true? That there aren’t any Shadows there?”
Such a world would be better than any dream. Then again, I felt quite certain that I was in a dream right then, her soft rose perfume curling around me, flooding my senses. Chills danced down my neck as she swept her fingers through my hair.
“It—it couldn’t be,” I murmured. “There are Shadows everywhere.”
“Yes, but the palace isn’t like everywhere else.” Her fingers tenderly tied off the plait she had fashioned in my hair by securing the end with my ribbon. “Perfect.”
Her hands returned to her lap, and I felt something like homesickness at the absence of her touch.
“Thank you again,” said Ofelia softly. “I didn’t ask you to come because you are my knight but because you’re you . Leaving everything behind, going on this mission with me... it is a lot to ask. Especially given the danger. You’re my dearest friend. But what kind of friend am I to put you at risk?”
Some distant, logical part of myself understood that the two of us were close, that we were friendly—yet joy still spread like a hearth fire within me at her words. She enjoyed me. She preferred my company.
“I do not fear the Shadows,” I assured her. “I will gladly slay them. I’ll do whatever I can to protect you. As you said, not because I am your knight but because I—” Emotion made the words snag inside of my throat. “Because I could not bear it if you were in danger.”
“Thank you,” she said again. Her eyes, the bright color of amber in the sunlight, met with mine. “What about tonight? We—we should not risk traveling at dusk.”
Ofelia was right—as the Shadows grew more powerful, being out at night became a near death sentence. Yet it might be inevitable for us. I passed her back the reins to reach into my leather satchel. I unfolded a map for her, pointing to where we were. “We’ll reach a small town just before sunset,” I told her. “We can spend the night there. But when night falls and we have yet to return from our “shopping,” the other knights will doubtlessly assume we’re on our way to Le Chateau. They’ll pursue us and probably send us back to the manor as your mother ordered, if we’re caught.”
Ofelia bit her lip. “So to get to Mother first... we’ll have to travel by night.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately so, my lady.”
Across my body, like a king would wear a riband, I wore a leather belt with two sheathed knives. I removed one blade, sheath and all, and held it out to Lady Ofelia. She accepted the gift with a slight frown.
“I promise to keep you safe,” I told her softly. “I promise to kill as many as I can. But if something happens, I want you armed as well.”
Ofelia gazed down at the knife, her brow knitting with concentration. She carefully withdrew it from its sheath, watching the steel glimmer in the sun. “Perhaps I’m a fool. Risking so much when Mother could be fine.”
“You’re not a fool. You love her. You’d do anything for her.”
Her gaze met with mine, and in the silence, my own words seemed to echo back to me, seemed to turn a mirror toward me. The way she looked at me, like she understood something, like she saw something in me that I did not—it made me burn.
For her, I would gladly let myself turn to ash.