Chapter 79 #2
I look up only when an arm slides around my shoulder and brings me to my feet. The king places a firm hand over mine. He has a pulse, steady as any human’s. But his will go on until the end of the world, and possibly beyond even that.
‘What is it… you ask us for?’
‘Let Sander come back with me. We haven’t seen each other in a decade.
I’m sure that’s barely the blink of an eye to you, but it has been such a long time for me.
I don’t want to bring trouble into his life, or yours, but if you give him back his freedom, let him make his own decisions, choose who he wants to be with, then… a better way will become clear.’
It’s the best I can do on the spot.
To my astonishment, the king actually seems to consider it.
Still holding my hand, he turns to his wife.
Neither of them moves, but a wordless exchange takes place nonetheless.
The queen takes my other hand, examining the differences between my cold, holly-scratched skin and hers, rosewater-fragrant.
‘We… cannot give you… what you ask.’
I should have known that was coming. That the answer couldn’t be anything else. From the dark recesses of my mind, Prokofiev’s icy funeral music for Juliet begins to play.
‘But… there is… another way.’
The music stops. I try not to let my breath get away from me. Try not to read too much into the fact that the king and queen of this fairy realm are taking the time to hear my case and negotiate with me, a nobody human, in my own language.
The queen looks more like a human woman now. Like a mother who wants only what’s best for her son.
‘The prince… broke our trust… when he crossed into… your mortal world. This… we cannot forgive. Out of necessity… we hide ourselves… from your kind… but our realm is… a place of truth. We… cannot speak… untruths. It is… not in our nature. The truth of your… love… for each other… is clear. It would be… cruel… to deny him of you… so we propose… that you live out your days… here, in the Silver Realm.’
‘Here? Me?’
The king beckons Glen over with his other hand and rests it on his shoulder.
Glen doesn’t seem to know where to look, clearly still reeling from this clash of worlds and species.
‘We welcome… select mortals… into our realm. Glen Nettlegreen was… born to mortals, but he… does not age as one. We have… exempted him… from the ruthlessness of time.’
‘You would be… welcome here… Trix,’ the queen says. She looks me up and down. ‘Restore… the years.’
My mouth is dry, my head light. ‘Restore…?’
‘You were injured,’ she says in the direction of my knees. ‘We can… reverse this. Make you young once more. Dance again… free from pain… like you used to… in the ballet.’
I can’t tell if the clearing has fallen completely silent, or if my ears are full of white noise. I’m grateful for their hands, the only things keeping me upright.
Glen retreats behind the king, who looks on me warmly.
For all his resemblance to Ashton’s Oberon, there is nothing mercurial about him.
He and the queen are making me feel more at home than I’ve ever felt in the human world, where I was always out of alignment even as I followed the script, out of step even as audiences applauded.
I think, hazily, of what I would leave behind. A byline in the arts section that pays my bills; the same flat I’ve lived in for fifteen years, books and music collecting dust; my parents, Fiona, Charlie, Jamie, Carolyn, Armand, Layla, Freddie.
I’ll miss them. But if I stay here, the memory of my name and face will disappear from theirs, quietly, easily. No one the wiser; no one harmed. They have each other. They’ll be fine without me.
If I’d come out on the other side of the grove alone, my border crossing a failure, I could have borne that. Could have kept looking for happiness in other places. But I’m not alone anymore. I lost my soulmate once. Never again.
‘Yes,’ I say, looking from the king to the queen, as certain about this as I was when I accepted my first contract from Nick. ‘Yes. I will stay.’
They release my hands, and raise their own up to the crowd, who clap without making a sound. Their jubilance makes the leaves whirl on the flagstones, turning from green to brown on the wind. Gems of frost rise in the air like rain, backwards. Light and shadow shift places.
Whatever magic they need for this is already underway. I feel it in my blood: a rush of cold air. Quicksilver.
My hands have changed. Gone is the scar on my thumb where I caught it on the oven. Gone are the dark spots from years of neglecting to wear suncream. My face feels soft, yet taut. My hair falls past my shoulders the way it used to, glossy brown. I feel… taller.
I’m wearing pointe shoes. Silver-white pointe shoes, perfectly moulded and ribboned around my feet, as if they’ve leapt onto me.
It occurs to me, too late, to look over my shoulder at Sander.
He’s trying to wrestle his way out of someone’s grip. I recognise him, his face clear in my memory at last: the other man outside the Dance Hall.
I try to get down off my pointes, but I can’t move.
The fairy’s eyes are fixed squarely on Sander, who is screaming at me soundlessly, over and over: IT’S A TRAP.
I bourrée backwards from him, not of my own free will.
I reach for him, but all my screams are silent, too. Odette, reaching for Siegfried in vain, helpless against the sorcerer who cursed her.
I hear music. A full orchestra. Prokofiev. But also Adam, and Stravinsky. Massenet, Minkus, Chopin. Mendelssohn, Delibes, Hérold, Liszt. Rachmaninoff. L?venskiold. Above all, Tchaikovsky. Wonderful, unceasing Tchaikovsky.