Shocked, Marie-Josèphe scooted backwards. Safe beyond the fountain’s rim, she gazed down at the sea monster.
Be calm, she said to herself. It cannot have understood that you are hungry. It brought you a fish, as Hercules might bring you a mouse.
The sea monster sang a few notes.
“Thank you,” Marie-Josèphe said, speaking to the sea monster as she would speak to her cat. “You may eat it now.”
“Fishhhh.” The sea monster popped the piece of fish into its mouth. A bit of the tail stuck out between her lips. She crunched it and swallowed, and the translucent fin disappeared.
Marie-Josèphe petted her good-bye. The sea monster grasped her wrist. Gently, firmly, the sea monster sang and drew Marie-Josèphe closer to the water.
“Let go,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Sea monster —” She twisted her hand, but the sea monster’s claws pinioned her. The creature sang again, loud and insistent. She pulled Marie-Josèphe’s hand beneath the water. “Let — me — go — !” Scared, she tugged her hand from the sea monster’s grip, careless of the sharp claws.
The sea monster freed her. She fell back, clambered to her feet, and scrambled away.
The sea monster gazed after her with only her eyes above water. The creature continued to sing, but the song vibrated strangely through the water and the stone, and trembled against the wooden platform like a primitive drumbeat. Marie-Josèphe felt more than heard it. She shivered, clanged the cage door shut and locked, snatched up the lantern, and hurried from the tent.
“Good night, Mlle de la Croix. Your monster is well-fed, I hope.”
“I hope so,” she said shortly, barely acknowledging his bow. She trudged up the Green Carpet, past the masses of dewy potted flowers, toward silent fountains. She was not used to being frightened by animals; her fear distressed her. Her wrist ached from the sea monster’s grip. Yet the creature had freed her when it could have clawed her arm to shreds and scars.
The sea monster’s song followed her, discordant and eerie. She shivered. The statues loomed, white ghosts, and their shadows spread black pools through the darkness. Marie-Josèphe’s happiness and pride dissolved into the sea monster’s fierce music.
“Yves — ?” Her brother stood pale as the marble, pale as death, bleeding from his hands and forehead. He stood in a pool of blood. She saw him as clearly as if the music were light. And then she did not see him at all.
The music stopped.
“Yves? Where are you?”
Marie-Josèphe’s tears blurred the bright chateau windows, the torches’ flames. She dashed the back of her hand against her eyes and raised her skirts above her ankles and fled.
She rushed through the chateau, tears streaming down her face, her shoes wet with dew. She had enough presence of mind to use the back stairs, hoping no one would see her.
I must stop, she thought frantically, I must stop crying, I must walk instead of run, I must sweep along with the hem of my skirt brushing the floor, so no one will see me and say, She’s just a peasant, hiking her skirts up around her knees.
She ran up the stairs to the attic, choking back her sobs, her breath ragged. She threw open the door to Yves’ dressing room. A single candle lit it. Yves buttoned his cassock, while a servant in the King’s livery stood impatiently nearby.
Marie-Josèphe flung herself into her brother’s arms.
“Sister, what’s wrong?” He held her, comforting her with his strength.
“I thought you were dead, I thought — I saw —”
“Dead?” he said. “Of course I’m not dead.” He smiled. “I’m not even asleep, much as I’d like to be. What’s frightened you so?”
“Your worship,” the servant said.
“Hush, I’ll be along.”
Yves hugged her again, solid and dependable. He found a handkerchief and wiped the tear stains from her cheeks, as if she were a child who had stubbed her toe.
“I thought...” The visions that had spun around her in the darkness of the garden vanished in the candlelight of his room. “I was feeding the sea monster...”
“In the dark? No wonder you were frightened. You shouldn’t go into the gardens alone at night. Take Odelette with you.”
“Yes, you’re right, it must have been the dark,” Marie-Josèphe said, all the time thinking, How strange, I never feared the dark before.
“Please, your worship —”
“Don’t call me that!” Yves said to the servant. “I’m coming.”
“Where are you going?” Marie-Josèphe asked.
“To His Majesty. To the sea monster.”
oOo
The Fountain luminesced, filling the tent with an eerie glow like fox-fire. Triton’s trumpet shone, and the hooves of the dawn horses, and their muzzles, as if they galloped on cold fire and breathed it from their nostrils.