Ash & Bramble (20 page)

W
HEN
I
WAKE UP,
L
ADY
F
AYE IS THERE.

She is sitting in a straight-backed chair beside the hearth; she is splendid in a ball gown—ice blue, of course—and a necklace of diamonds as big as knucklebones. She glimmers with a cold light as if lit from within. If I was a blot next to my stepsisters, I am a mere smudge next to her.

I groan and sit up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Somehow I knew you would come here tonight,” I say.

“It does have a certain . . . shall we say . . . inevitability about it?” she answers. Then she gives me an almost benevolent look. “You've been having an awfully bad time, haven't you, Penelope? Isn't there anything I can do for you?”

It is a tiny kindness, and certainly one with other motives, but it makes a lump of sadness rise in my throat so that I can't
speak. I shake my head. I will not ask her for anything.

“Mmm.” She pulls something out of a pocket in her skirt and slips it onto her finger. It glints in the dim light of the fire.

It is a silver thimble, the twin of my missing thimble, the thimble that Shoe stole from me. As I stare, she taps it against her pearly-white teeth, thinking. “In some ways you are very like your mother,” she says unexpectedly.

“My mother?” I manage to croak. I have no memory of my mother, apart from the painting of her in the long gallery at the top of the house.

“Oh yes. And you are not at all like her in other ways.” She is silent for a moment. “Sometimes I miss her, you know. Her whole purpose was to thwart me, but we were good friends at one time, your mother and I.”

“I suppose my purpose is to thwart you too,” I say, but I really have no idea what she is talking about.

Lady Faye smiles, and now the smile has an edge. “You can be a bit of a trial, my dear,” she says condescendingly, “but you're not exactly a challenge.” She waves her hand, changing the subject; the thimble gleams on her finger. “Now. On your feet. The clock struck ten while you were asleep. It is time to get you ready for the ball.”

I stay where I am in the cinders. “I don't want to go to the ball,” I say.

“Yes,” she says, almost gently. “You do.”

The wheels groan into motion. I can almost feel the house shaking as they turn. I really am caught up in it, something
much bigger than I am. I am only one person, and I cannot resist the pull. I am so tired of not knowing who I am. So tired of resisting. Tonight—just for tonight—I will let it sweep me away.

Because I
do
want to go to the ball. I want to find my tea shop man and see him smile at me and then dance with him until midnight, and then I want—well, I don't know what I want, but it's anything but staying here to be slapped and scorned and locked up in a freezing attic.

I hold out for another lurching turn of the wheel, and then I give in. “All right.” I get to my feet. “Send me to the ball if you have to.”

“Such grace!” Lady Faye snipes, but she is clearly pleased. “But I suppose that is part of your appeal, isn't it?” She gets to her feet too, and shakes out her skirts. “We must hurry. We shall go to my house for your transformation, and then you shall make your entrance. Come along!”

A
T HER HOUSE
Lady Faye brings me to a dressing room of gold and blue, glimmering with candlelight, as exquisite as a jewel box. She seems excited, her movements brisk. “Out of that foul dress, my dear,” she orders. A clap of her hands, and a troop of mouse-like maids clad in light-blue uniforms scurries into the room. In a twinkling I am bathed and dried, standing naked and perfumed in the center of the room. The maids hurry out the door with their eyes lowered.

Lady Faye paces around me. The thimble is on her finger
again. She examines me from head to toe.

I raise my chin and keep still under her critical gaze.

“You'll have to wear gloves to cover your hands,” she says. I look down at my hands, and yes, they are reddened and chapped from scrubbing pots and kitchen floors and grates, and it's not something any lotion can fix. Also there's the livid scar on my wrist from the wound I don't remember getting.

She touches my shoulder with the thimble. It is bitterly cold against my skin. She drags the thimble along my collarbone as if she is measuring me, and it leaves a trail of ice behind it. I control a shiver. Then she reaches out and taps the thimble against my cheekbone, right where the bruise is worst.

“This I cannot fix,” she murmurs. “Stupid woman, leaving bruises where they can be seen.”

I blink.

“Your stepmother,” Lady Faye explains. “Instead of striking your face, she should have had you whipped where the marks wouldn't show.” She gives a delicate shrug. “But she is a crude, intemperate woman.”

Her words leave me colder than the thimble's touch.

“You will have to be masked,” Lady Faye decides. Her voice turns satisfied. “Yes, that will do. The Mysterious Stranger arrives late at the ball. All turn to watch her enter. It will be perfect.” She paces around me again, muttering, and her measuring gaze darts up and down my body. The air tightens and tingles; the walls close in around us. All but
two of the candles flicker out; shadows crouch at the edges of the room.

I find that I am gasping for breath as if I've been running. Every inch of my bare skin prickles with excitement.

“The flame, I think,” Lady Faye murmurs. “Oh, you will burn brightly tonight, my dear.” Her hand swoops up. In the dim room, her thimble throbs with an icy glow. Around she paces, and the cold touch of the thimble slashes across my shoulders, between my breasts, down the long length of my legs.

“Close your eyes,” she hisses, and sweeps around me again. The thimble flares with a brilliant light, and I clench my eyes shut. She rests the thimble against my bruised face, pressing it against my cheekbone.

“Do not move,” Lady Faye whispers, and I can hear the tension in her voice.

I take a dragging breath, and then there is no air at all in the room. My eyes pop open, but see only darkness.

All at once I am hit by a blow that strikes my entire body at once as if I am a fly trapped between two closing hands. Freezing silk slithers against my skin. I give an undignified squeak, and then the pressure goes away and I am left wavering at the center of the room, trying to find my balance.

Lady Faye is panting. With shaking hands, she lights a few candles.

As the room brightens I steady myself, then realize that I have something covering my face; I can see a mask at the
edges of my vision. I look down, and I'm not naked any longer.

Moving with less grace than usual, Lady Faye goes to a corner and drags out a mirror covered with a velvet cloth; she pulls the cloth away and lets it fall to the ground.

“Look,” she orders.

I step closer to see myself in the mirror.

She said
flame
, and that is what I am. The dress is deceptively simple, a plain bodice that leaves my shoulders bare and then flares into a swirling skirt. But every stitch of it is exquisite, and is fitted to the lines of my body with such perfection that I appear tall, proud, graceful.

And the color. At the hem is the faintest hint of ashy gray, but the rest is flowing silk the color of living flame. I burn against the shadowed walls of the dressing room. I turn and the skirt swirls with vermilion and gold and the brilliant crimson of glowing embers. The air shimmers around me as if with the heat of fire.

The heels of the shoes are impossibly high, but they fit so well that they make my feet forget the weariness of an endless day of work and long to dance all night. They are aflame with hints of ruby and fire opal—and the rest is as clear as glass.

Around my neck are more fire opals, each burning with its own flame. My gloves are of gray silk fastened with tiny fire-opal buttons. And I wear a mask of gray silk that covers my bruises and makes my face beautiful and mysterious at once.

I become aware that Lady Faye is standing at my shoulder regarding my reflection. She gives me a smug smile. “You are transformed, Penelope.”

I have to admit that I am. It is just a dress, I tell myself. It's just jewels and gloves and well-made shoes. But it feels like more than that. It feels like power.

“You are ready,” she goes on. She gives me one last approving look. “Come along. It is time to go to the ball.”

T
HE
M
ISSUS HAS USED HER CONNECTIONS IN THE CITY TO
find black trousers for Shoe and a dark gray sweater and a black knitted cap to cover his light-colored hair, all for blending into the shadows of the night. In a small pack he has candles, rope, a hooded black cloak, and the boots he made for Pin. In his pocket he has the thimble.

Three times Natters has described where he'll find the boat and reminded him to be extra careful when they get to the last part of the path where the spray from the waterfall makes the rocks particularly slippery.

“I'll be careful,” Shoe promises. “You're sure you'll both be all right? You won't get into trouble for helping me?”

“We'll weather it,” the Missus assures him.

“You're just a runaway servant,” Natters adds. “We had
no idea what you were up to.”

And finally it is time to go.

They stand in the darkened shop; Natters has his arm over the Missus's shoulder, and she leans into him. “Be careful, lad,” Natters says.

“I will,” Shoe says. “I'll send word somehow. I mean, if you don't hear from me, you'll know . . .”

“Best not to speak of that,” Natters says gruffly.

Suddenly Shoe feels desperately sad to be leaving them, this old, lonely couple who have shown him nothing but kindness. “Thank you,” he says, his voice rough, and then the Missus is pulling his head down for a kiss and Natters is giving him a hug, and they push him out of the shop into the darkened street, and he hears the lock click closed behind him.

Shoe takes a deep breath, settling himself. He has a plan for getting Pin out, and the time to start it is now.

The streets of the lower city are busier than usual at this time of night. He keeps to the side streets and the shadows, and nobody gives him any trouble.

As he approaches the upper city a thick white fog rises, and soon he is surrounded, the fog opening up before him and swirling closed behind him. There are people on the streets here, too, and he hears drunken singing and running feet, and once a shrill scream that freezes him in his tracks until it turns into a shriek of laughter. The curfew must be suspended because of the prince's ball. And everywhere is the
fog. One of the arched bridges over the river is free of it, and as he crests it he looks back and has a view of the entire city laid out below him, and beyond it the depthless black that is the surrounding forest. The fog is flowing over the walls of the city, filling the streets, muffling the buildings. It smells of the wind in the pine trees and of ferns and rain; it is as if the forest has invaded the city for the night. It is a kind of promise, the fog, that Story does not see all. This is a fog for hiding and sneaking in, for two people to find their way to a boat waiting for them at the bottom of a waterfall.

Shoe reaches the other side of the bridge, plunging into the fog again, hurrying with quiet footsteps until he reaches his destination.

Earlier he'd left a message for Spanner with the teasing boy at the tavern, and he finds the ratcatcher right where he expects to, in a clump of bushes at the edge of the park across the street from the huge house where Pen is living.

“Spanner,” he whispers.

“Greetings, Yer Lor'ship,” he hears, and the fog swirls aside and he sees the ratcatcher's twitchy long nose and gap-toothed grin.

“Are they all gone?” Shoe asks.

“Aye, and your girl Pin is gone, too,” Spanner answers.

Pin gone? He was expecting to find her here, left behind while her stepmother and stepsisters are away at the fancy ball.

“Not to worry,” Spanner says, tapping his nose. “I followed.
And then I came back to tell you, right?”

He is interrupted by the first boom of the clock striking. The sound of it is so loud as it rolls out from the castle, Shoe finds his shoulders hunching. It's far louder here than in the lower city. He glances up and sees, a few streets over, the pale, broad face of the clock looming above the fog. The bells toll their number and at last the echoes fade away. Eleven o'clock. It's getting late.

Spanner is cleaning out his ear with a finger. “Noisy, that,” he comments. “Right, Shoe, as I were saying. There were watchers here earlier, footmen, like, but they've gone away. Then the girl Pin came out the door with . . .” He lowers his voice. “Well, you know who. With her.”

Shoe feels a shiver of worry. The wheels of Story are turning and the Godmother has Pin under her eye. He'll have to be quick and clever to get her out. But he's got the thimble and Pin's boots in his pack. His plan could still work.

“Off they go to another house,” Spanner goes on. “I waits a bit to see if they'll come out again, and they do, don't they? Only your Pin is dressed as a lady as fine as can be, and they both get into a carriage the color of a pumpkin, and off they go.” He points toward the castle. “To the ball.”

“Pin is at the prince's ball?” Shoe repeats blankly. This was not part of the plan.

“That's what I'm saying,” Spanner says.

“All right,” Shoe mutters, turning over the possibilities in his mind. He could come back and try another night, but
something about this night feels wound tensely tight, the gears about to click into place so the wheels can turn and bear away all before them—but not turning yet. If he waits, he knows it'll be too late.

“Yer going up there?” Spanner asks, nodding toward the castle.

“I am,” Shoe says. “You should go back to the lower city.” As the old ratcatcher turns away, Shoe grabs his shoulder. “And be careful. Tell
them that knows
to keep their heads down. It could be bad.”

“Be careful yourself, Shoe,” Spanner says with a nod, and disappears into the fog.