Chapter Eleven #3
Heat rose in Elswyth’s cheeks as the crowd turned to look at her.
“Oh—no, Miss Forscythe, I couldn’t possibly—”
Miss Forscythe stepped forward and took her hands. “Oh please, please, Elswyth, if I don’t have any entertainment, then the party is ruined. You must have something prepared, anything at all…”
Elswyth clenched her jaw. She couldn’t refuse Venus; the woman was her bridge to Persephone’s social circle. If she wanted to find out what happened to her sister, she had no choice but to perform the part of socially graceful debutante—and perform it well.
“I suppose I have been working on a tableau vivant, but it’s not ready. I should surely embarrass myself.”
Venus heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh no, that would be wonderful. Really, we want to see it.” Venus turned to the crowd and spoke. “Don’t we want to see Miss Elderwood’s tableau vivant?”
The crowd hooted and clinked their glasses. Percival looked worried but gave her a reassuring smile.
“Splendid, splendid, so it’s settled then. Can I get you anything? I think we may have some instruments upstairs or—”
“No,” Elswyth said. “Just some water, please. Perhaps food.”
“Right away,” Venus said. She squealed with glee and then hurriedly began urging her guests to sit.
Elswyth swallowed before making her way to the fireplace at the center of the sitting area.
She turned to face the crowd, which looked at her expectantly.
Percival lowered himself noisily onto the same chaise as Lord and Lady Forscythe, who leaned uneasily away from him.
Florian sat with Venus, that crooked smile on his face, blue eyes shining beneath his spectacles.
Elswyth fought a sudden surge of jealousy.
A servant brought her a tray of finger sandwiches and a tall glass of water, which she sipped from and then set aside.
“I shall need a volunteer,” Elswyth said. She tried to cast her voice confidently across the room. “A gentleman, preferably.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Elswyth let her eyes fall on Lord Forrester, but he was busy whispering to Venus. No one offered themselves, and for an awkward moment, Elswyth stood alone at the front of the room.
Percival looked over his shoulder, then to her, and began to stand. She fixed him with a stare and subtly shook her head. It would look desperate if her chaperone was the only one to answer the call. Percival frowned and relaxed back on the chaise.
Another moment passed in excruciating silence. Someone cleared their throat.
“I’ll do it,” came a voice from the back of the crowd.
Elswyth turned to see Silas Blackthorn standing from his leather chair, a small smirk on his face.
The crowd whispered as Silas, who had been lurking on the edges of the party, came to the center.
“Of course, only if that is amenable to the lady.”
Elswyth tried to hide her disappointment, casting a glance at Lord Forrester again. He only smiled. Next to him, Venus looked between Silas and Elswyth, her expression unreadable.
“Of course, Sir Silas. If you would please kneel.”
“What exactly have I volunteered for? It’s rather early in the season for a proposal.”
A laugh from the crowd. That was good—Silas was at least amusing, and Mrs. Rose had insisted the performance be as entertaining as possible. Performing with a shameless rake like Blackthorn might work to her advantage.
“I promise, I have no aims upon your hand, Sir Silas. Now kneel like a good boy, won’t you?”
Silas grinned, then arched his eyebrows in an expression of mock arousal.
He turned to the crowd and smiled, a single dimple forming.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. The crowd laughed again.
Silas knelt smoothly and looked up at her, hair falling away from his face.
Her eyes lingered on his, then on his lips and on his strong hands where they rested upon his knee.
Then she turned to the crowd and cleared her throat.
“In ages past, in the time before man, all the Earth was ruled by the wild gods of old,” she said. She projected her voice across the room, keeping her chin high, enunciating each word. She pushed her nerves down and away, trying not to let her anxiety show on her face.
“In this time, in the land of Thessaly, there lived a forest nymph more beautiful than any other: Daphne.”
Elswyth poured vitae into her scalp. From it, vines sprouted, falling quickly about her shoulders like hair.
She summoned multicolored flowers from each vine, a cascading tapestry of pink and violet and white.
The vines dropped over her shoulders, down her chest, to her waist. A crown of larger flowers grew from her head, followed by white birch branches, creating a tiara of living wood.
And from her bare skin, she concentrated a thin layer of cuticle, which turned the skin from pale white to green.
The crowd gasped. She did her best not to smile. It was important, Mrs. Rose had said, to maintain the dignity of a performer.
“Daphne was the daughter of a great eldren lord, a god of root and rot they called the Prince of Leaves. She wished for nothing except her freedom, to run in the forests and the fields, to feel the sun on her petals, to play with the river nymphs and the wind spirits, to dance with the dryads who were her sisters.”
Elswyth acted the part of the dryad, trying to seem free-spirited. She was not a natural performer, certainly, but she had practiced with Mrs. Rose, and the reassurance of a well-practiced skill crowded out her nerves.
“But one day, as Daphne bathed in the forest pool beneath the mountain where she lived, she caught the eye of the god Apollo, riding his fiery chariot across the sky.”
Elswyth turned to Silas. He looked up at her with those dark eyes, a serious expression on his face.
Then she reached down and placed her hands around his temples, feeling her fingers lace through his silken hair.
There was some murmuring at what might be perceived as an expression of familiarity between a man and an unwed woman.
But soon the audience saw what Elswyth was doing.
Elderwood branches sprouted from her hands, forming a wreath around Silas’s head.
She packed the elderwood with as much vitae as she could spare, and the branches began to glow, casting white light into the room.
More gasps from the crowd; she would admit freely that it was an impressive feat of floromancy. Elderwood was nearly impossible to fabricate.
The crown finished growing, and Elswyth let go, pruning it from her wrists. It nestled perfectly amid Silas’s dark hair, casting an eerie glow over his brow and cheekbones, making his countenance almost skull-like in the gloom.
“Apollo, god of light and fire, of technology and progress, saw this wild thing and knew that he must tame her. He fell deeply in love with Daphne and, overcome with his longing, came back the next morning to find her bathing in the pool. He tried to seduce her with his beauty, but Daphne had no interest in love and refused him. Overcome by anger—for gods are not used to being rejected—Apollo tried to force himself upon the nymph.”
Elswyth turned to Silas, and with a stern expression, wagged her finger like a disappointed mother. “Tut-tut, Apollo,” she said.
This drew another laugh from the crowd. Silas turned to them and shrugged sheepishly.
“But Daphne escaped. She ran through the forest while Apollo gave chase, maddened with lust. Daphne outran him for seven days and seven nights, but on the eighth morning, she could run no more. For he was an immortal god, and she was merely a spirit of the forest, soft as a summer bloom. So when she came to the top of the mountain and could go no farther, she yelled into the valley below for the help of her eldren father, that she might escape Apollo and remain a maiden forever.”
At this moment, Elswyth struck a dramatic pose. She reached her fingers to the sky, as though beseeching a god, and turned away from Silas, pretending to flee. She turned her foot out and upward, placing it just before his face.
“Come now, Apollo. You are supposed to be mad with lust for me. Be a dear and act your part. If you must, you may touch my ankle.”
The crowd laughed again, and Silas made a mischievous expression.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said. He took Elswyth’s ankle in his hand, and she could feel the firm grip, the rough skin of his fingers on her leg. She suppressed a shiver.
Now in the final pose for her tableau vivant, Elswyth looked up and away, appearing to flee from Silas with his iridescent crown, and continued speaking.
“The Prince of Leaves heard his daughter’s plea and, taking pity on her, did all he could. He reached out with his eldren magic, took hold of her, and Daphne began to change. First, her hands turned to branches…”
Elswyth summoned laurel branches from her fingers, still reaching high. Her other hand pushed backward as if to ward Apollo away. The crowd murmured again.
“And her feet turned to roots, holding her fast to the mountainside…”
Elswyth sprouted tree roots from her ankles, which quickly spread over her shoes and crawled across the floor.
“And her soft skin turned to hard bark, protecting her once and for all against the touch of the lustful god.”
This was the hardest part. Elswyth sucked in a breath and pushed vitae into every corner of her exposed skin. The soft green coloring slowly turned brown, hardening into a thin crust of bark.
She pushed more vitae into the branches of her fingers, which grew and spread until they were a small canopy.
The flowers in her hair fell away, replaced by laurel leaves, and more branches grew from her forearms and shoulders and head.
Finally, she stood transformed, half woman and half tree.
She looked back at Silas, who stared up at her with what she thought, hopefully, was a look of awe.
The audience began to applaud. Elswyth breathed for a few moments, holding the tree pose, fighting the lightheadedness.
It had taken nearly all of her vitae, and she could feel herself draining, her eyes fluttering, as though she were about to faint.
If she pushed any further, she would surely fall into unconsciousness.
Luckily, the roots around her feet kept her upright—all part of the trick.
Slowly, she began absorbing the plants. They seemed to grow in reverse, leaves shrinking into buds, branches shortening into stems, and roots trickling backward.
As they absorbed back into her body, some of their vitae came back to her, and the pain of withering began to fade.
Once she was sure she wouldn’t faint, she started to speak once more.
“And so, finally free of Apollo’s clutches, Daphne lived out the rest of her days atop the mountain, becoming the world’s first laurel tree.
But Apollo did not forget his love for her and forevermore wore a crown of laurel branches.
That is why, to this day, we bestow a crown of laurels upon our victors. ”
The bark on her skin retreated, as did her ivy-hair. Finally, she stood unadorned in front of the crowd. They erupted into applause. She gracefully deflected their attention to Silas, gesturing for him to stand. He bowed, and Elswyth curtsied alongside him.
She wove a wreath of laurels from her fingertips and gestured for Silas to bow.
He obliged, and she placed it over his glowing crown of elderwood, which had begun to dim from lack of vitae.
His eyes shone from underneath the crown, briefly meeting hers, lost between locks of dark hair like a tiger peering through tall grass.
She thought of putting her hands through that hair again, how it had felt to touch his skin—and then pulled away, heart suddenly racing.
Surely it was only the exertion from the tableau vivant. Surely it was only the nerves.
Elswyth turned to the crowd and curtsied once more.
She rose to a standing ovation. A sea of unfamiliar faces smiled at her.
She couldn’t remember a time where anyone had applauded her, shown such bare-faced approval, and a blush threatened at her cheeks.
There was Percival, smiling so broadly that his face had gone red.
There was Lord Forrester, grinning crookedly, applauding.
And Venus Forscythe, clapping louder than all the rest, perfect teeth shining in the candlelight.