Midnight in Everwood(67)
‘Do not trouble yourself with such thoughts,’ Pirlipata said. ‘Dellara has longed to provoke such a reaction in you; it is her way. She is a provocateur. Yet she has never disliked you. Quite the opposite, in fact, but she fears becoming close with the king’s “pets”. If she had not befriended you then it would have been easier for her to bear your death. Buried beneath her chest beats the warmest heart I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Big enough to bleed for you one day before she confronts you in anger the next, purely from the fear of losing you. There was once a woman she lost, many moontides ago now. She was strong and brave and beautiful. The kind of woman that sets the dawn itself aglow. Her heart was kind and caring and you could not help but love her. Though Dellara loved her most of all.’
‘What happened to her?’ Marietta asked in a whisper, afraid to know, more afraid not to, battling the insistent tug of sleep long enough to hear Pirlipata speak once more.
‘King Gelum murdered Amadea. And a part of Dellara died with her.’ Pirlipata’s sigh was soft against the night. ‘Her words are her armour, Marietta; do try to remember this. Beneath them is a grieving heart.’
Marietta stared up at the ceiling. It was painted in a likeness of the frozen sugar wall, though it lacked its opalescent quality. She missed the stars. She wasn’t sure how to respond to Pirlipata’s confidence and her thoughts were too slow to shape. When she glanced at Dellara, she saw that the woman’s eyelashes were wet. Marietta closed her own eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
Sleep came, fast and urgent, the night possessing her as one of its own.
Yet during the night, something roused her from her enchanted slumber. The figure of Drosselmeier was bending over her. She attempted to scream but she was unable, the charm rendering her helpless, her eyelids heavy and closing, closing against her will. When next she forced them open, he was not there. And Marietta couldn’t tell if her vision had been real or nothing but a concoction of shadow and imagination shaped into a fear, giving it life and presence.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The weeks blurred together in a sparkling haze of balls, rereading the diary that contained the outpouring of the captain’s heart, and the strict confinement that regimented Marietta’s days and would have dissolved her sanity had it not been for the twin pillars steadying it: Pirlipata and Dellara. On occasion, Marietta half-believed she was walking through a dream, her days too removed, too gossamer-fragile to hold any meaning, any reality to them. There were no books, no classes or, loath as she may be to attend them, social appointments to keep, and time began to drip from the hours, melting the nights into one pot of darkness. Yet when those nights were at their bleakest, those twin pillars stood firm and unyielding, the two women framing Marietta’s life into something which she could tolerate. Each day they discussed another chunk of their uncurling plan. And each night, she devoured the captain’s words.
With the string of balls ribboning on throughout Everwood’s long, dark winter, their suite was under constant notice. Dressmakers, shoemakers, confectioners all drizzled by at the king’s behest, frantic in their devotion to ensure that King Gelum’s ‘pets’ were clad in the finest gowns, the most fashionable accessories, enveloped in the sweetest scents and most bewitching of enchantments. To escape being overheard, the three of them refrained from speaking on the matter of their plan until the opportune moment to steal away presented itself. In the bathing pool, the rush of the peppermint-tinted waterfall foamed over the sound of their voices and there they lingered, until their fingertips puckered and their ideas were spent.
Those moments were fewer and further apart than Marietta would have liked. She did not know how long she had resided within the palace for. Both day and night were cloaked in darkness; and each time she attempted to count, she found she could not remember how many had passed. Night after night, she pirouetted through yet another ball, the throne room a-spin around her, the time hazy, in one sparkling gown after another.
Though her cage was soft and glittering, she refused to allow her sugared imprisonment to rot away her willpower. She would not sit inside it, glazed in meekness and obedience. She would rattle the bars and find her way home. Her days of living on someone else’s terms were short-lived. In the meantime, she dwelled on their current predicament: how might they enter the locked chamber concealed beneath the king’s throne? Between mulling it over, probing through the possibilities with Dellara and Pirlipata under the gurgle and froth of water, they planned how to play their parts.
And then there were the balls.
First came the Buttercream Ball, where the patissiers whipped up rows of petits fours, topped with extravagant swirls of buttercream in vanilla, chocolate, praline, pistachio and glossy frostberry. All the guests wore a frothery of tulle and gauze or sheaths and suits that might have been piped on, and some that were, in buttery pastels and creamy concoctions. The night rippled in scents, torn between sugared vanilla and the darkest of chocolates. It was the occasion on which Marietta had presumed to set eyes on the captain for the first time since their dance, yet hadn’t. He was nowhere to be found. A large envoy of guests from Mistpoint had been escorted to the palace via moose-drawn sleighs, for whom Marietta had been ordered to dance. The women wore grey-blue veils over their hair, silks that moved like river-water. Upon Marietta launching into a springing variation from Paquita, the Mistpointian women lowered their veils over their eyes. Dellara had attempted to use the distraction to pilfer the enchanted mechanism from the king’s jacket, but his faceless guards had remained too close, watchful due to the Mistpointians’ presence. Dellara later informed Marietta that they disproved of King Gelum and the reputation he was garnering over the land.