Entwined(10)

CHAPTER 4




Azalea dreamed that night of drowning in torrents of hair, and woke up with hair on her face. She vaguely remembered allowing Jessamine and Kale and Ivy onto her bed when they cried the night before, but she couldn’t remember Hollyhock, Flora, Goldenrod, Eve, Delphinium, and even Clover and Bramble coming for comfort. Yet they were all piled together, and those who hadn’t fit on the bed slept on the rug next to it, or propped on the mattress.

The girls slowly awoke for the day, washing their faces, brushing their hair, more out of habit than anything. They shared a crowded third-floor room on the north side of the palace, square, with six beds and window seats about the sides, and a massive fireplace at the end. It smelled of powder, flowers, and old wood. A lot of maneuvering and tripping took place when they readied. Today, however, when they opened their trunks to dress, they were surprised. The trunks were empty.

“Perhaps they’re being washed,” said Flora as Azalea swept down the hall in her nightgown, the girls padding after. “It could be laundry day.”

“Oh, yes, the maids are washing them,” said Goldenrod, Flora’s twin. The nine-year-old twins reminded Azalea of a pair of dainty sparrows, both timid and eager at the same time.

“They don’t wash all our dresses at once,” said Azalea. “Something’s afoot. Mrs. Graybe!”

Azalea rounded the corner to the mezzanine and made to go downstairs, when she spotted Fairweller in the entrance hall below.

“Oh!” said Azalea. Fairweller’s eyes caught her, and he turned his head away to the door. Azalea ducked back into the safety of the hall, blushing furiously.

“Minister,” she called out. “Have you seen Mrs. Graybe?”

“Forget Mrs. Graybe!” said Delphinium, running to the banister railing. Being only twelve, she did not care if Fairweller saw her in her nightgown or not. “Where are our dresses? We haven’t a stitch to wear!”

“They are in the kitchen. Drying, I believe,” said Fairweller.

Azalea inched her way so she could see a sliver of the entrance hall below. Fairweller kept his head down, focusing on pulling on his black gloves. He had a rosy bruise on his face.

“We were right, then!” said Flora. “They were being washed.”

“They were being dyed,” said Fairweller. “For mourning. Good day.”

Fairweller left before the girls could ask him any more questions. Instead, after the door had slammed, the girls turned to Azalea, their faces puzzled.

“Morning?” said Flora.

“Oh,” said Azalea. She had forgotten about this part of a person’s death: the isolation, the clocks, the clothes, the rules, the entire year of it—and the silence. Now, it came back, a heavy weight. She exhaled slowly. “Mourning.”



Delphinium screamed when they found their dresses, hanging from lines in the kitchen like black shadows. Every stitch of cloth they owned had been dyed unrecognizable.

“It’s just a color,” said Azalea soothingly as Delphinium cried over her favorite rose-colored dress, now black. “It’s all right.” She helped unpin the dry dresses and laid them neatly on the servants’ table, a pile for each girl. Some were still in the large washtub, billowing night in black dye.

Azalea had the girls dress right there in the kitchen, over bowls of hot porridge. And while they dressed, Azalea told them everything she knew about mourning.

She told them about how balls and promenades and courting weren’t allowed, and how they were to keep inside, not even allowed out to the gardens. She told them that the windows would be draped for a year and that they would have to get used to wearing black for a year, too. And she told them about the clocks, how they would be stopped at the time of the person’s death, and that music wasn’t allowed, either.

It took a while. When she had finished, the girls all looked like miserable, drooping black blossoms.

“Is d-dancing allowed?” Clover stammered.

Azalea bit her lip and turned her head away.

“Oooh!” Delphinium lifted a dainty hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and fell back onto the wood floor. Thum-thump thump.

She lay on the floor, unmoving.

“Oh, get up, Delphi,” said Bramble. “When people really faint, they bang their heads up on the floor. It’s very unromantic.”

“A year!” Delphinium cried. “We’re not allowed to dance for a year! I’ll die without dancing!”

“M-Mother would let us dance,” Ivy peeped.

At the mention of Mother, the girls’ composure, frayed already, fell apart, and Azalea found herself in the midst of sobbing girls.

Azalea wanted to sob, too. She hated this feeling, one of dancing a step she did not know, confused, bumbling over her dance slippers to get it right. It happened so rarely—she knew every dance—that fumbling through the movement frightened her.

This was a thousand times worse. The palace, known for its tall, mullioned windows that dappled light through the halls, would be muffled with drapery, turning day into pitch-black. They would be kept inside, trapped in a cage like those peeping birds at the wire-and-bottle shop on Hampton Street, and only allowed out on Royal Business…which would not be often. If Mother were here—

Azalea’s throat grew tight, and her chin trembled. She hated herself for it. Mother would have known what to do. Biting her lip to keep from crying, Azalea pulled out Mother’s handkerchief. Silver shone in the light, followed by that peculiar tingling sensation. Azalea’s throat untightened, and she was able, almost, to smile. There was something to that handkerchief. Azalea did not know what.