Ella Enchanted

chapter 21

FATHER WAS open-mouthed in horror.

"It's so romantic, Sir P.," Mum Olga sighed, entwining her arm in his.

His face changed, and he chucked her gently under the chin. "If it pleases you, my dear, my life." He looked wondering. "My love."

Olive climbed over my feet, trumpeting, "A real fairy!" She pushed her way to Lucinda.

Well-wishers crowded around Father and Mum Olga, but few were so foolhardy as Olive. The fairy would soon be free to look about. I fled the room.

It was too cold to hide outdoors. I decided to venture upstairs.

The stair rail was an open spiral, perfect for sliding. I resisted a mad impulse to take a ride -- into Lucinda's arms, no doubt. I heard her voice and ran up the stairs.

On the landing I opened a door and stepped into a dark corridor. Closing the door behind me, I sank down and leaned against it with my legs stretched out on marble tiles.

Would Father be happier as a result of the gift? Had Lucinda finally given a present that would benefit its recipients? I tried to imagine their marriage.

Would love blind Father to Mum Olga's shortcomings?

There must have been footsteps, but I didn't hear them. The door opened behind me. I tumbled back and found myself staring up at -- Char!

"Are you well?" he asked anxiously, kneeling next to me.

I sat up and grabbed his sleeve, scrambling back into the hallway and pulling him with me. I shut the door behind us. "I'm fine."

"Good." He stood up.

I think he was grinning, but he may have been scowling. The corridor was too dim to tell. How would he explain my behavior? Why would he think I was hiding?

"I thought you were still patrolling the border. I didn't notice you at the wedding."

"We returned this morning. I arrived here just in time to watch you dash up the stairs." He paused, perhaps waiting for me to explain. I didn't, and he was too polite to ask.

"My father spent his boyhood here," he went on, "before the new palace was built. He says there's a secret passage somewhere. It's rumored to start in one of the rooms on this story."

"Where does it lead?"

"Supposedly to a tunnel under the moat. Father used to search for it."

"Shall we look?"

"Would you like to?" He sounded eager. "If you don't mind missing the ball."

"I'd love to miss the ball." I opened one of the doors in the corridor.

Light flooded in, and I saw that Char couldn't have been scowling. He was smiling so happily that he reminded me of Apple.

We were in a bedroom with an empty wardrobe and two large windows. We knocked on the walls, listening for a telltale hollow sound; we felt for hidden seams. We tested the floorboards, guessing at who might have used the passage and for what reasons.

"To warn Frell of danger," Char suggested.

"To escape a mad fairy."

"To flee punishment."

"To leave a boring cotillion."

"That was it," Char agreed.

But whatever the reason for flight, the means remained hidden. We investigated each room less thoroughly than the one before, until our search became a stroll. We moved along the corridor, opening doors and poking our heads in. If any feature seemed promising, we investigated further.

I thought of a silly explanation for my presence upstairs.

"You've guessed why I shut myself up here," I said.

"I have no idea." He opened a door. Nothing worth examining.

"To avoid temptation.".

"What temptation?" He grinned, anticipating a joke. He was used to me. I would have to labor to surprise him.

"Can't you guess?"

He shook his head.

"The temptation to slide down the stair rail, of course."

He laughed, surprised after all. "And why were you lying down?"

"I wasn't lying down. I was sitting."

"Pray tell why you were sitting."

"To pretend I was sliding down the stair rail."

He laughed again. "You should have done it. I would have caught you at the bottom."

The strains of an orchestra wafted up to us, a slow allemande.

The corridor we were in ended in a back stair, surrounded by doors that opened on more corridors, all more or less alike.

"If we're not careful, we'll go down this one again," Char said. "They're all the same."

"Hansel and Gretel had pebbles and bread crumbs to show them the way. We have nothing."

"We have more than they did. They were impoverished. There must be something...." He looked down at himself, then tugged at an ivory button on his doublet until it came off in his hand. A bit of striped silk undergarment peeked out I watched in amazement as he placed the button on the tiles a foot within the hallway we had just left. "That will mark our progress." He chuckled. "I'm destroying my dignity without sliding down anything."

After we investigated six corridors without finding the secret passage, and after all of Char's buttons were gone, we climbed the back staircase. It ended in an outdoor passage to a tower. We rushed across, facing into a bitter wind.

The tower room had once been an indoor garden, with small trees in wooden pots. I perched on a stone bench. It was chilly, but we were out of the wind.

"Do the king's gardeners come here?" I asked. "Are the trees dead?"

"I don't know." Char was staring at the bench. "Stand up."

I obeyed, of course. He pushed at the seat with his foot, and it moved. "This lifts off," he exclaimed.

"Probably only garden tools," I said, while we lifted it together.

I was right, but not entirely. We found a spade, a pail, and a small rake. And cobwebs, and evidence of mice, although how they got in and out I couldn't tell. And a leather apron. And two things more.

Char twitched the apron aside and found gloves and a pair of slippers. The gloves were stained and riddled with holes, but the slippers sparkled as though newly made. Char lifted them out carefully. "I think they're made of glass!

Here."

He meant for me to take them both, but I didn't understand. I only reached for one, and the other fell. In the moment before the crash, I mourned the loss of such a beautiful thing.

But there was no crash. The slipper didn't break. I picked it up and tapped on it. The sound was of a fingernail on glass.

"Try them on."

They fit exactly. I held my feet out for Char to see.

"Stand up."

"They'll crack for certain if I do." I could barely stay seated because of the command.

"Perhaps not."

I stood. I took a step. The slippers bent with me. I turned to Char in wonder.

Then I was aware again of the sounds of the orchestra far below. I took a gliding step. I twirled.

He bowed. "The young lady must not dance alone."

I had danced only at school with other pupils or our mistresses for partners.

He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering -- all at once.

Then we were off, Char naming each dance: a gavotte, a slow sarabande, a courante, an allemande.

We danced as long as the orchestra played. Once, between dances, he asked if I wanted to return to the celebration. "Won't they be looking for you?"

"Perhaps." Hattie and Olive would wonder where I was. Father and Mum Olga wouldn't care. But I couldn't go back. Lucinda might still be there. "Do you want to?"

"No. I only came to see you." He added, "To be sure you arrived home safely."

"Quite safely. Sir Stephan guarded me well, and the giants took excellent care of me. Did you catch more ogres?"

"szah, suSS fyng mOOng psySSahbuSS." ("Yes, and they were delicious.") I laughed. His accent was atrocious.

He shrugged ruefully. "They laughed too and never listened to me. Bertram was the best; they obeyed him half the time."

The music started again, a stately pavane. We could still talk while performing the steps.

"A fairy gave my father and my new mother an unusual gift." I described it.

"What do you think of such a present?"

"I shouldn't like to be under a spell to love someone."

Thinking of Father's scheme to marry me off, I said, "Sometimes people are forced into wedlock. If they must marry, perhaps it's better if they must love."

He frowned. "Do you think so? I don't."

I spoke without considering. "It doesn't matter for you. You can marry anyone."

"And you cannot?"

I blushed, furious with myself for almost giving the curse away. "I suppose I can," I muttered. "We're both too young to marry, in any case."

"Are we?" He grinned. "I'm older than you are."

"I am then," I said defiantly. "And the fairy's gift was horrid. I would hate to have to love someone."

"I agree. Love shouldn't be dictated."

"Nothing should be dictated!" An idiotic remark to a future king, but I was thinking of Lucinda.

He answered seriously. "As little as possible."

When the orchestra finished, we sat together on the bench and watched the sky darken slowly.

Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we were silent. He told me more about hunting for ogres. Then he said he was leaving again in two days to spend a year in the court of Ayortha.

"A year!" I knew that the future rulers of Ayortha and Kyrria always spent long periods in each other's courts. The practice had preserved peace for two hundred years. But why now?

He smiled at my dismay. "Father says it's time. I'll write to you. You shall know all my doings. Will you write to me in return?"

"Yes, but I'll have no doings, or few. I shall invent, and you'll have to decide what is real."

The noise of horses and carnage wheels reached us from below, signifying the end of the celebration. I went to a window and looked down. Father and Mum Olga were saying farewell to their guests while Hattie and Olive stood by.

Lucinda was at Mum Olga's side.

"The fairy's still here," I said. "Standing at the bride's side."

Char joined me. "Perhaps she means to monitor the effects of her gift."

"Would she? Do you think so?"

"I don't know." He saw my face. "I can tell her to go. She would hardly like a prince for an enemy."

"Don't!" A prince would trouble Lucinda not a whit, and a squirrel prince would trouble her even less. "Let's just watch."

After several more guests departed, Lucinda kissed Father and Mum Olga on the forehead. Then she raised her arms and lifted her head to the twilight sky.

For a terrifying moment I thought she saw me. But no, she just smiled her dazzling smile -- and vanished.

Char gasped.

I sighed, a long release.

"We'd better go down," I said. "Soon they'll look for me in earnest."

There was just enough light to see by. In a few minutes we stood on the landing above the hall.

"No one is here," Char said. "You need resist temptation no longer."

"Only if you slide too."

"I'll go first so I can catch you at the bottom." He flew down so incautiously that I suspected him of years of practice in his own castle.

It was my turn. The ride was a dream, longer and steeper than the rail at home. The hall rose to meet me, and Char was there. He caught me and spun me around.

"Again!" he cried.

We raced up. Behind me he said, "Wait till you try the banister at home."

His home! When would I do that?

"Here I go." He was off.

I followed. I was almost to the bottom when the door opened. I sailed into Char's arms observed by the stunned faces of Father and my new family.

Char couldn't see them and twirled me as before, until he got halfway round.

Then he set me gently on the floor and bowed at Father and Mum Olga, his buttonless doublet flapping. He was laughing so hard he couldn't speak.

Father grinned. Mum Olga smiled uncertainly. Olive wore her puzzled frown.

Hattie glowered.

I used their distraction to conceal the glass slippers in the folds of my skirt.

"Thank you for the honor of your presence," Father said, giving Char time to collect himself.

But not time enough. "You have..." Burst of laughter. "...my best wishes for your felicity..." Laughter. "which is assured...." Peals of laughter. "Forgive me.

I'm not laughing..." Laughter. "...at you. Please understand..." He trailed off.

Father chuckled. I laughed helplessly, holding the stair rail for support. I couldn't help it, although I knew Hattie would make me pay.