Keeping Secrets
Winter Solstice. A celebration of the sun coming to a standstill.
A reminder of how little this place changed.
At long last the servants came to clear the tables, bundling up cloths so soaked with wine and blood that the stains ran together.
I was on the verge of losing my mind, paranoid that entire years had passed in London while I had been stuck at this infernal feast, surrounded by gossiping tongues, frosted spiderwebs, and candlelit tree hollows.
Until I found the means and courage to break with this place entirely, I would be trapped, returning to the same conversations with the same faces.
How different it was at the BCBC, which shed dancers as often as it gained new ones.
The expectation that I, too, would someday retire was not one upon which I liked to dwell.
I was determined to stay with the company for as long as I could without raising suspicion.
The temptation to use my glamour was strong.
But what a terrible thing that would be, to make an entire community of dancers, fans, and critics forget.
To paint over their reality with a new one: here I am, a new recruit to the corps once again.
That level of spellcasting was beyond me, in any case.
I would have to live another mortal century before I built up the reserves of power equal to such a task.
My father, my mother, and my uncle were the only ones capable of it.
Not that the thought would enter their heads.
None of them had crossed paths with a mortal since the reign of Louis XIV.
As soon as I felt sure that no mistle thrushes or fieldfares were watching from their frosted perches, I surreptitiously checked my pocket watch beneath the table.
Three days had elapsed in London. I sighed, relieved yet frustrated that my sense of time – which I had taken such pains to hone – could slacken so easily.
Glen tapped me on the shoulder, taking longer to gather my cutlery than necessary. Careful.
I slipped the watch back into my pocket.
The fact that the foxglove wine had been spirited away did not deter my father from demanding more. My mother stayed his arm.
Beloved, we should pause our revelry for the exchange of certain gifts.
She set her sights on me. I stood, shaking sleep and stillness from my feet. Across the banquet hall, another chair scraped against the flagstones.
Cressida Mulberry was adorned in diamonds, from the band woven through her long, ice-blonde hair to the toes of her slippers.
She glided towards me with knifepoint steps, a bundle the rich, dark colour of her namesake in her arms. For one terrible moment I thought she was cradling a newborn.
My breath turned shallow at the idea of another mortal infant stolen from its crib.
Then she unfurled it, and I sighed: a cloak.
I bowed to her, then turned to Glen at my elbow. He passed me the gift I was to give in kind, something I knew she would like.
Sure enough, she clapped her hands, teeth gleaming, before she collected herself and assumed a demure position. I glanced at my father, who turned his palm up.
By all means, put it on her yourself.
I lifted the heavy plait from her neck and clasped her gift at the back.
I had not anticipated, when first I thought of it, that a necklace of bones would clack so loudly.
The finger bones at the nape thickened into ribs, culminating in an orbital bone.
The hole where an eye had once rested was large enough for Cressida to hold up to her own eye like a monocle.
My smile was empty, but I had to wear it, as if I were the one who had gathered and cleaned the bones myself.
I had not even been able to ask Glen to do it, though his purpose was to do whatever I found too odious.
Instead, I had paid a lonely hedgehog with a thousand days of fresh worms to retrieve the bones, including the work of nudging them onto a thread with its snout.
Hedgehogs were slow, but trustworthy. Good at going about their business undetected.
They always kept themselves to themselves.
Thus, I never had to find out which unfortunate mortal trespassers from long-ago nights had perished on the wrong side of our borders, and no one would have reason to believe that the gift was anything other than my own handiwork.
Cressida’s smile widened when my mother nodded that she had permission to touch me – to tie the cloak and brush it down the lines of my back. At least she had not given me a bottle of young widows’ tears, or a shell that relayed the screams of those lost at sea.
She wagged her pale finger between the two of us. Now we match.
My father, who had bullied someone into topping up his foxglove wine at last, rose from the table and encouraged the rest of the court to follow suit.
A celebration long overdue, he gestured.
But how splendid to exchange these gifts on Winter Solstice: the prelude to spring, and new life.
He tipped his wine towards Cressida’s wide hips, spilling a dark trail of it down his hand.
Then he lifted his jaw approvingly in my direction. To you, my son, and your future bride.
Birds sang all around us, their chorus echoing through the log hollows. My heart felt as if it had escaped my body and was now beating somewhere back in London.
I thought of the many attempts others had made in the male dressing room, season in, season out, to determine if I was “seeing” anyone.
All I had ever deigned to say was “no”. It should not have been possible for me to say that.
It should have been a lie. But I was not “seeing” Cressida.
I went out of my way to avoid her. Even on occasions such as this, I saw past her.
She was immaterial to me. I did not long to run my hand through her hair, or gaze into her eyes.
She had nothing to do with my life in the realm which everyone in the banquet hall knew only as the Restless Lands. The mortal world. My true life.
What, then, was this guilt pulling at my throat?
I had known this engagement would progress, ever since rumours began to swirl that a match had been arranged for me. That was when I had decided to cross the border. I had thought that would be enough. That these events were mine to control.
The only way I could continue to smile at Cressida was by avoiding Glen’s eye. By remembering that all was not lost yet. We still had our escape. Our watches. Our secret corridor between worlds.