Entwined (7 page)

A
zalea stared at the wall. Her heart beat in her ears.

A magic passage! In their
room
! She tried to remember everything Lord Bradford had said about passages, those months ago. The King used them as storage rooms now, yes, but, well, magic was magic! Azalea wondered how large this room was. If it didn't have too many trunks or boxes about the sides, could it possibly be large enough to—

Azalea curled her toes in the soot, aching to leap in the air.

How had Lord Bradford said to open it? Rubbing silver on it. Well, that was fortunate! Azalea cast her eyes about for the silver teeth and found them sitting at the edge of the rug.

“Come along,” she said, in her nicest whisper. “I won't hurt you.”

The sugar teeth skittered away.

“You rotten little—” Azalea started to go after them, pulling Mother's handkerchief from her pocket to protect herself from the bite—and then stopped.

The silver glimmer of the handkerchief always caught her off guard. A light tingling sensation washed over her, and Azalea held up the piece of silver fabric, smiling. The King had given this to Mother years ago, embroidered with her initials and the color of the royal family. Though the fibers were soft and pliable, like linen, it was made of actual silver thread.

Stepping back into the hearth, Azalea touched the handkerchief to the
DE
mark. She paused, wholly unsure of what it would do. Even so, excitement tickled her fingers. She rubbed the handkerchief against the brick.

At first, nothing happened. Azalea's arm grew tired. Half a minute of rubbing, and just as she was about to give up, the mark grew warm. Then hot, then it burned through the handkerchief to her fingers. Azalea pulled away sharply.

The
DE
symbol glowed silver. Azalea gasped. The mortar around the bricks began to shine, spreading the molten silver light to the other bricks, so bright that Azalea shielded her eyes. The silver seeped across the wall to form a tall arch edged with glowing swirls and leaves.

The light burst.

It took several moments for Azalea to be able to see again. When she could, her breath was stolen. The fireplace wall had transformed to an arched doorway, edges glowing with ivied curls and leaves. A thin curtain of silver sheen billowed gently in the archway, gossamer drapery in a slight breeze.

A
tink tink tappety
startled Azalea, and she found the soot-covered sugar teeth at her feet. They leaped up and tugged on the hem of her skirt.

“Shh, go away,” Azalea whispered, casting a glance at her sisters' beds.

The teeth dropped to the ground, the metal squeaking. It almost sounded like a whimper.

“Oh,
now
you want to come?” said Azalea.

The teeth hopped around madly.

“Oh…very well. But you have to
behave
.” Azalea scooped them up into her pocket, and hesitated. She knew that all she would find was, perhaps, old furniture and books, but…still. Casting a glance back at the beds, and seeing the bedsheets stirring, Azalea threw hesitations aside, took a deep breath, and stepped into the glowing, glimmering silver.

It felt as though she had stepped into a silver waterfall, ice cold, washing over her head and shoulders. An inside-of-a-teapot smell suffocated her. Another step, and Azalea inhaled a breath of fresh air. Shivering, she shook away
the tendrils of twinkling light and rubbed her arms.

She stood on a small wooden landing, about the size of the fireplace. In front of her, stairs curved downward. Azalea swallowed, pressed her hand against the brick wall, and began to descend. The rickety wood creaked underneath her bare feet, and darkness enveloped her. Her hands shook as she felt her way about. She wished she had brought the lamp.

A hard, scuffing sound shattered the silence. Azalea cried out.

“Stop, stop,
stop
,” came a voice from above her. “Really, Az, you're as bad as Kale!”

Light filled the passage, and relief flooded through Azalea as Bramble emerged around the corner, holding Lily and grinning a wry, delighted grin.

With more thumphing and scuffing down the creaky stairs, all eleven of Azalea's sisters appeared around the bend, sleep in their feet, but mouths open and faces alight. Clover was the only one with enough sense to bring the lamp.

“The room burst with light,” said Bramble. “It was like waking to a sunrise—and we haven't seen that in months. Az…the fireplace wall—”

“I know,” said Azalea. “Can you believe it?”

The girls huddled closer to Azalea, and as they crowded about the lamp, she told them what Lord Bradford had
said about magic passages. She told them about the sugar teeth, escaped from the kitchen cabinet and caught in their room, and using the silver handkerchief to open the wall. The girls' eyes, already wide, grew wider with fascination.

“I should have woken you all,” said Azalea when she finished. “I was too eager to wait, I suppose. But I'm glad the passage stayed open for you. Is it still?”

“No,” said Eve. “It's solid now.”

“The mark is on this side, too,” said Bramble. “I suppose we'll give it a rub when we need to get out.” She shivered, looking at the brick around her. “I wouldn't want to be trapped in this place.”

“Where does it lead?” said Flora.

“I don't know.” Azalea peered into the darkness, into the curve of more stairs. “Probably it's just a storage room, but it might have bits of magic left to it, like the tower. Want to find out?”

“Yes!”

Clover handed Azalea the lamp, and Azalea led them down the stairs, holding it high. The staircase descended much farther than she expected, and only after several lengthy minutes did the passage lighten. They turned the next curve, revealing an archway below. A soft, silver light emanated from it. Azalea's brows furrowed. Bright moonlight? Indoors?

The girls stayed back as Azalea descended to the doorway. Hands quavering, she leaned against the edge and looked.

She stepped back, dumbfounded.

The scene washed over Azalea like a crystal symphony. A
forest
.

But nothing like the wood behind the palace! Every bough, branch, leaf, and ivied tendril looked as though it had been frosted in silver. It shimmered in the soft, misty light.

Azalea inhaled, catching the muted scent of a morning fog, with a touch of pine, and stepped through the doorway into the bright forest. Everything sparkled in bits, catching highlights in glisters as she moved. Even the path beneath her feet. She turned to a glass-spun tree on her left. Silver ornaments glowed among the delicate silver leaves—glimmering glass plums. Azalea touched one. Its edging glittered as it swayed. Next to the ornament, strings of pearls swathed each branch in swooping arcs.

“It's so beautiful,” whispered Flora. The girls had followed Azalea through the doorway, their voices hushed.

“Like winter, when the snow's just fallen,” Goldenrod whispered.

“Or…the Yuletide trees,” said Clover.

Azalea thought it looked a mix of all of them—the
gardens, the palace, and the Yuletide—all mixed into one and dipped in silver.

“Az, what is this place?” Bramble looked up, gaping. The tallest of the silver trees disappeared into a mist.

“I think it's the palace,” Azalea managed to say.

Bramble arched a thin red eyebrow, grinning. “Not
our
boot-blackened palace! No wonder we were never told about this passage—we'd never come back up!”

Bramble was right. Azalea touched a swath of ribbon and pearls, feeling the knobbly string between her fingers. She hadn't expected to find so much magic, and all beneath their room!

The girls slowly walked down the path; everything was quiet, muffled, as though in a snowfall. Every so often, Azalea reached out to touch a silver-white branch or a teardrop ornament, just to remind herself she wasn't dreaming.

Ahead, the silver branches of a large willow tree curtained the end of the path. Nearing it, they heard the tinkling of a music box playing faintly in the air. Quiet as it was, all the girls looked about them, eyebrows raised. When they drew closer, the timbre of the music changed. It became fuller, fleshing to a soft three-quarter-time orchestral melody. Azalea's feet itched to twirl.

“It's coming from beyond the willow,” Delphinium whispered.

Azalea stepped to the glistening silver leaves. She slipped her hand between the branches and parted them.

The girls gasped.

The path did not end. It rose into a dainty arched bridge, leading to the center of a silver-lilac pond. The water cast dancing white reflections all about the bridge.

And, at the end of the bridge, silver vines curling over white latticework and reaching to the top of its domed roof, stood a pavilion. Filled with
dancers
!

Ladies, dressed in bright silks and chiffons billowing with each step. They spun and twirled, their colorfully dressed partners taking their hands and sweeping them into the dance.

Azalea pulled away from the willow branches, and they fell back into place. Suddenly she was frightened. This was too much magic, magic Mother surely hadn't known about.

“Let's get out of here,” said Azalea. “We shouldn't be here.”

“What?” cried the girls.

“I beg your pardon,” said Bramble. “
We
shouldn't be here? What about
them
? Cutting about in
our
palace? Why weren't we jolly well invited?”

“Who are they?” Clover stammered.

“I don't know,” said Azalea. “But it doesn't feel right.” She suddenly wished they hadn't come.

“
I
want to get a closer look!” said Delphinium, and she pushed past Azalea, through the willow leaves before Azalea could even start to grab her back.

“Me, too!” cried Hollyhock.

Azalea grasped her arm, but Hollyhock writhed free and ran after Delphinium. In a rush, all the girls ran past Azalea, disappearing through the willow leaves. Panicked, Azalea dove through the silver after them, over the arched bridge.

To her relief, however, the girls didn't leap up the pure white stairs to the dance floor, but instead scampered into the bushes about the outside, making them rustle with a faint clinking sound. Azalea only had a moment of shock before Bramble burst from the silver leaves, grabbed Azalea about the waist, and yanked her in. In a whirl of silver Azalea found herself on her back in a patch of silver-spun rose bushes. A branch dug into her spine. The girls grinned down at her.

“Just like old times,” said Bramble, grinning and pulling Azalea partly up. “We'll call this one the Great Leftover D'Eathe Magic Scandal.”

“How about the Great We're Going To Get Caught Scandal?” Azalea whispered crossly.

“Oh,
do
stop whining,” said Delphinium as they nudged her to the edge of the pavilion among the foliage, abloom with silver roses and pearls. “Have
you ever seen such dancing in all your life?”

Kneeling up and peeking through the lattice, Azalea's temper dissolved. She inhaled the scene like a sugar dessert. The ladies wore dresses she only dreamed of, brocade and gold trim, with towering white plumed wigs. The gentlemen wore frilled cravats about their necks and brightly colored waistcoats. Nothing like the conservative, boring black suits of Eathesburian gentlemen.

“Are they real?” Eve whispered. “It feels almost…hollow.”

The girls ducked as a couple swished near the ledge. The lady's massive skirts should have caused a breeze, but Azalea felt nothing.

“Magic,” she whispered.

“Magic or not,” Delphinium whispered, “we really should have been invited to this. It's
our
palace, after all.”

Azalea felt a tug on her nightgown sleeve and found Ivy pointing with insistence to the dessert table at the far side of the pavilion. It had been set with iced buns, treacle tarts, candied plums, chocolate-dipped strawberries, linen napkins with lace at the edges. A dark-gloved hand plucked one of the napkins from the pile, and Azalea's heart stopped.

A gentleman stood there, by the table. He was dressed all in black. Not boring black, but
dashing
black. One so
smooth that stars would have gotten lost in it. He wore a costume of a long waistcoat and a sweeping cloak that brushed the edge of the marble.

It complemented his face, a specter of high cheekbones with hints of long dimples. His midnight hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and his eyes—even across the distance—blazed pure black. Azalea had never seen anyone so…beautiful.

While Azalea stared, the gentleman took the lacy napkin in his long fingers and ripped it in half. With ease, as though it was made of paper. He doubled up the pieces, halved them again, then again, until they were just tiny bits. Then he raised his hands to his lips, and blew.

The pieces fluttered, transforming into sparkling bits of snow, swirling over the dancers. The girls sighed in awe.

“Who is he?” whispered Flora and Goldenrod at the same time.

“No idea,” Azalea whispered. “But he's
real
.”

The gentleman's eyes swept over the scene and, in a fleeting moment, stopped on the lattice the girls peeked through. On
Azalea
.

Azalea's heart jumped in her throat, and she ducked into the bushes, pressing up against the side of the pavilion. She waited for her heartbeat to slow down enough that she could distinguish the beats from one
another, then dared another peek through the lattice.

This time, her eyes met black boots. She bit back a gasp and craned her neck.

The gentleman was leaning on the railing, looking into the distance. He hadn't seen them! Azalea covered Lily's tiny mouth as they all stared up at him, frozen.