Chapter 20 #2
She nodded. Of an accord, they remained under the invisibility robe as they progressed cautiously together.
At one point, Bonnibelle the tour guide appeared in the distance, looking very stern as she emerged from the Staff Only section.
Nigel’s heart leapt, but she turned the opposite way and stomped off out of sight.
Luna breathed out a sigh. “Something about that woman unnerves me!” she said. “What do you think, Mr. Grimm?”
“Terrifying,” he answered with vim.
Luna giggled. And it was too adorable for words. If he could make her giggle like that every day for the rest of his life, it would be a life well spent.
Nigel pulled himself together with an effort. “Shall we continue?”
She nodded. They shuffled back into motion, their footsteps scuffing along the ancient stone floor.
They made it to the turret stairs without mishap.
Here they could not continue as they were, for the stairway was much too narrow.
“You should keep the robe on,” Nigel said, reluctantly slipping out from under the silken folds and out of the half-circle of her embrace.
“I’ll go first and make certain it’s clear up top. ”
Luna’s voice appeared from the seemingly empty air beside him. “What if you’re spotted?”
“I’ll pretend to be lost and searching for you.” He nodded in what he hoped was her general direction. “Don’t worry. I can play the bumbling idiot if necessary.”
Feeling strangely bereft without her pressed to his side, Nigel climbed the turret stairs, listening to her soft footsteps behind him.
He looked back once, but it was uncanny to see absolutely nothing, not even the faintest shimmer of magic.
Old Yorik Balthazar’s robe was quite a spectacular piece of spellwork.
At the top of the stairs, he peered out to make certain there was no one else up on the so-called Lover’s Tower.
All was clear, and he beckoned. Luna slipped out of the robe as she stepped into the open air beside him.
As she did so, the silk shivered back into full view and appeared like nothing more than a very ornate dressing gown.
Luna draped it over her arm and looked around.
Then, with a little “Oh!” of delight, she sprang to the viewing rail.
Nigel followed after. Ballycastle did indeed look quite spectacular under the glow of sunset.
It was a different city from the one they’d observed only a few short hours ago.
But his gaze wasn’t really drawn to the stunning vista of orange light on shimmering rooftops and distant monuments.
He enjoyed the much nearer pleasure of watching Luna’s face.
Her expression was strangely sad, he thought.
Sad and . . . longing, somehow. He wondered why. And wished he had a right to inquire.
She turned to him after a little while, brushing a strand of windblown hair back from her cheek. “Where do you think the star will appear?”
Nigel blinked and looked away, embarrassed to be caught staring. “Directly overhead,” he said, pointing upward. “That would be my guess.”
She tipped back her face, holding her hat on with one hand. “We’ll get cricks in our necks!”
“We could lie down,” he suggested. “In the middle there. That would be the best view, and if the star is real, we’ll be sure to see it.”
Luna nodded and relinquished the robe when he reached for it.
First setting aside the empty carpet bag, Nigel spread the robe out like a blanket, then motioned for her to sit.
She settled down in the middle of the silk, reclined onto her back, hands folded across her stomach, her pretty ankles neatly crossed.
Nigel took his place beside her, with his legs sticking out beyond the edge of the robe.
Their heads were fairly close, but angled so that each watched a slightly different portion of sky.
Luna shivered suddenly. Despite the lovely Fool’s Spring weather, the temperature was dropping back into wintry chill now that the sun was setting. “A bit nippy for stargazing,” she said.
Nigel grunted. But he was in no hurry to leave.
“I used to go stargazing with Auntie Apolonia, you know,” Luna continued after a little silence.
“The rooftop of the back shed was relatively flat, and we’d climb up there on summer evenings and lie back to watch the sunset and all the stars coming out, one by one.
Auntie Aurora thought stargazing might be heathen behavior, and Auntie Arabella was much too timid to dare the ladder.
But Auntie Apolonia was an avid astrological enthusiast. She taught me all the constellations. ”
A small smile tilted the edge of Nigel’s mouth. He felt he’d come to know Luna’s aunties rather well over these last few months and half-suspected if he were to bump into them randomly on some street, he would recognize them in a heartbeat. “Did you have a favorite constellation?” he asked.
“Oh, I always like Thalira the Warrior! We had an old book of Plymian poems, and there was one about her I dearly loved. ‘In armor adorned with the scars of her fight, she stands unyielding, a symbol of light.’ It felt right, somehow, that she’d made the heavens her immortality.
I always liked to imagine that one day I would leave Tealeaf Cottage and set out on adventures like Thalira.
” Luna sighed and wriggled her booted feet.
“I suppose I am on an adventure now. But it’s not quite what I’d imagined. ”
Hearing the sadness in her voice, Nigel fought the temptation to reach out and take her hand, to give her fingers an encouraging squeeze. But her hands were still both clasped rather tightly over her stomach, and he didn’t think it would do to pry one away.
After another silence, he asked softly, “If we do see this miraculous shooting star, what will you wish for?”
“Oh, but we can’t wish, remember?” Luna said at once. “It’s only for lovers.”
Nigel’s throat thickened, and it was this alone that stopped him from saying something incredibly stupid. Something along the lines of, “Well, we could fix that problem in about two minutes, if you’ll allow me to roll over and demonstrate how I really feel about you.”
Instead he said, “Erm, but if you could?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She blustered out a breath through her lips.
“Some part of me wishes more than anything to go home. To see the aunties. To get back to life the way it was before this stupid heptagram.” So saying, she lifted up her hands, flashing her wrist very briefly from under the cuff of her sleeve.
When she lowered her hands again, they lay on either side of her.
Nigel was suddenly, intensely aware that her pinky finger was no more than an inch or two from his.
He could feel its shivering presence, like a prickling magical field.
“I miss the aunties so badly sometimes,” Luna continued softly, “my chest feels like it will crack in two. But I would also miss . . .” She swallowed.
“I would miss Garden. And the stupid begonias and their dramatics. And the tiger lilies and the snapdragons and the double-delight. I’d miss Bryony and all her advice, both good and bad.
I’d miss the Silly Young Things and their many little woes. I’d miss . . . I’d miss . . .”
Sensing where her hesitancy was coming from, Nigel supplied in a bitter voice, “Ward the Wardsman?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered shortly, without expansion. After a moment, she added, “So many things. Even Mrs. Boggs, if you’ll believe it! She’s been part of this grand and ridiculous adventure of Leaving Home and Growing Up and Discovering Myself.”
Nigel licked his dry lips. She hadn’t mentioned him in her list. And that should hurt, only there was something in the way she didn’t mention him. Though perhaps he was just deluding himself on that score. He did have a history of delusion, after all.
Luna suddenly covered her face with her hands and gave her head a little shake.
“I don’t know!” she said, sounding oddly distressed considering the hypothetical nature of the question.
Then she laughed. “I suppose I ought to simply wish to have the heptagram mark undone. But that doesn’t sound very romantic, does it? ”
The word romantic lingered in the silence which followed, spoken into the dropping temperature of that gold-splashed evening.
Pure and shining and shimmering. Nigel found he had to remind himself to do something as crude as breathing.
It felt too base, too earthy of a necessity in this suddenly otherworldly sort of existence.
Finally, Luna’s hands dropped to her sides once more. “What about you, Mr. Grimm?” she asked, her voice directed at the cloudless sky in which the first faint stars were beginning to appear in the high, purpling dimness. “What would you wish for if . . . if we were lovers?”
For a long moment, he could not move. Could not think, could not act.
Because he could not say what he truly felt.
So, rather than speech, he simply turned his head and looked at her.
Looked at her lovely profile, faced determinedly forward.
Looked at the pink staining her cheeks, still just visible in the fading light.
Looked at the way her lips parted as she released a long, slow breath that did not come out quite steadily.
He looked at her. And he said nothing.
But the truth of his heart sang out like a symphony: If we were lovers, I would have nothing left to wish for to the end of my days.
And, for the first time, he suspected she heard it. Suspected she knew.