Fantasyland 03 Fantastical (23 page)

So, every day, never missing one, I went to
the house with the blue door so Blanche could do whatever she
needed to do and I could look after her mother for a spell.

Her face broke into a smile and she
muttered, “No, thank the gods yet again, you never do. Bless you.
She’s upstairs, waiting for you.”

“Right, scurry on, you all!” I ordered,
rumpling the four year old’s hair as he passed by. Then Aggie and I
went into the house and I jogged up the wooden steps, circled the
railing and entered the room where the old woman sat in her rocker,
staring out at the sea but seeing, I knew, nothing. “Heya,
Clarabelle,” I called softly and her sightless eyes came to me, her
face wreathed in a genuine smile.

I was wrong. I didn’t just have Aggie and
Tor. Clarabelle, I was pretty certain, also liked me.

“Chirp!” Aggie chirped his greeting.

“Hullo, my princess. Hullo, Aggie,” she
called back, I moved into the room, grabbing the book as I passed
it. I dragged a chair toward her, bent to kiss the paper-thin skin
of her cheek then lifted my fingers for Aggie to hop onto.

He did, I transferred him to Clarabelle’s
offered hand then she brought him toward her and stroked him as I
sat.

“Do you want me to get right into it? We
left it at a good part last time,” I reminded her.

“If you want, Cora, my dear. Or, we can
chat. Are you well?” she replied.

“Very,” I somewhat lied.

There were things that were good (dinner at
night with Tor, bedtime, again with Tor, waking up when Tor was
there and sometimes I could lose myself in the fantasyland around
me) and other things that were bad.

“And our prince?” she asked.

“Um… worried about his brother, I think,” I
answered, having told her (although no one else knew and I swore
her to secrecy) about Rosa, Dash and the evil Minerva.

“I daresay, he would be,” she murmured, her
voice somehow strange, then her hand came out, searching, I
extended mine, she caught it and squeezed it gently. “You sure
you’re well?” she asked softly.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I outright lied.
“Happy,” I kind of lied. “Life is good.”

She squeezed again and let me go with an,
“If you say so, my dear.”

Hmm. It would seem I needed to be better
with my act, even, maybe especially with an old, blind lady.

“So, shall I start reading? Blanche will be
back with the kids before we know it, mayhem will ensue and you
won’t know if the pirate was able to cow the fair maiden to his
will.”

She smiled a gentle smile. “Well, I can’t
miss that.”

I opened the book to its marked page and
mumbled, “Certainly not.”

I heard her quiet chuckle and I reached out
a hand and squeezed her knee.

Aggie chirped a, “Read, Cora!” (he liked
this story too).

So I let my friend go and started to read
out loud.

The Only Thing I Needed

Tor’s hand tightened in mine. We’d just
walked in his front doors and I was pulling away.

“Where are you going?” he enquired.

“I have to do something,” I said quickly and
he stared down at me.

“What?”

“
Something!
” I cried, getting
desperate. Time was wasting.

He gave me an assessing look then he told me
something I already knew.

“Hurry, love, you don’t have much time.”

I nodded, got up on tiptoe, curled my
fingers around the back of his neck, pulled him down to me and
touched my lips to his.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered, let him go and
started to rush to the kitchens.

The fireworks were going to start at any
minute and Tor and I were going to watch them on our balcony, a
balcony that jutted out further than any of the others and a
balcony, incidentally, that anyone from anywhere in the village and
on the sea could see.

This filled me with dread, being somewhere
where everyone could see me with Tor (and they’d be watching).

But I had to admit that the day had been
pretty fantastic.

Boris was right. Bellebryn knew how to give
a party. The streets were filled with music. The businesses and
houses were decorated with colorful garlands and bunting. There
were puppet booths set up, giving free shows. Children dashed
around with faces made up with face paint and circling vibrant
streamers behind them. There were belly dancers, snake charmers and
men eating fire performing for coins all of whom seemed, by the
looks of them, to have come from faraway lands. The air was thick
with clashing aromas because there were stands selling everything
from roasted, honey-coated nuts to sausages on sticks to big,
steaming pans filled with paella to flamboyantly swirling
lollipops.

Around every wind of the cobbled street
(and, as was his duty during this huge street party thrown in his
honor, Tor strolled down and up (and down and up again) the entire
street, his hand in mine or his arm around my shoulders or waist),
people were dancing, swinging around and even I’d been swept into
the frolicking. Though I didn’t know the steps, I did the best I
could do, laughed at myself because, I had to admit, it was kind of
fun and I pretended the joyous looks thrown my way were real.

It was fabulous.

It would have been magnificent if I could
have really joined in and believed that Tor’s people loved me as
much as they pretended to or even a hint of how much they very
obviously loved him.

And now it was almost over, I was exhausted
and I hadn’t had time to present him with his cake. The fireworks
were the showstopper, ending the festivities at midnight. I had
fifteen minutes to give him his cake or he wouldn’t get it on his
birthday.

And he had to get it on his birthday.

I pulled up my skirts and I ran to the
kitchens, coming to a skidding halt by my cake (I had found all the
ingredients in the village,
including
the red food dye,
thank God).

It looked magnificent and someone had put
small, blue candles in it. I’d talked to Perdita days ago about
birthday candles and she’d informed me, looking confused but
humoring me, that they didn’t do birthday cakes here, but birthday
tarts
and they didn’t do candles but
sparklers.
I
gave in on the sparklers and even though some people used them in
my world, I was disappointed. I had wanted to give Tor a piece of
my world, which included, traditionally, candles.

And there they were. And next to the cake
was an oddly shaped, purple-wrapped package.

“Your grace,” I heard from my side and I
jumped when I saw Perdita as well as half a dozen of the cooks and
cooks-helpers standing behind her.

“Uh… heya, Perdita,” I replied, smiled and
tipped my head to the women around her. “Eunice, Daphne, Sabina,
Winnie, Pauline.”

I got a bunch of smiles and mumbled, “Your
graces,” in return.

Then I looked back to Perdita. “You found
candles.”

“Talked to Rocco, the candlemaker, had them
made special,” she told me and I blinked.

“You had them made?” I whispered.

“Seemed important to you, your grace,” she
whispered back and I blinked again, this time to blink away the
tears that sprung to my eyes.

I knew she was doing it thinking she was
avoiding my, then Tor’s, displeasure but that didn’t make me any
less happy that I could give Tor a real from-my-world birthday
cake, which was exactly what I wanted most to give him. I was so
happy that I dashed to her and gave her a big hug with a loud,
smacking kiss on her cheek.

Still holding her arms, I leaned back and
whispered, “Thank you.”

Her hands pried mine from her arms but held
them between us where she gave them a tight squeeze. “My pleasure,
your grace,” she whispered back.

I smiled at her and then cast my smile
around to the others before I raced back to the cake, saying, “And
thanks for letting me use the kitchens.”

“We were honored to have you with us,”
Eunice stated.

“Yes, it was fun!” Sabina put in and I
looked at her.

It
was
fun. I had pretended then,
too, when I was baking and they were cracking jokes and making an
effort to include me in their frivolity, that it was authentic. I
hadn’t cooked anything since I came to this world, except basting
the rabbit that first night with Tor. I forgot how much I loved to
do it. It was even better doing it for Tor. And even better,
pretending to enjoy it around people who were pretending to like
me. And, in a weird way, the whole thing worked.

“We’ll have to do it again,” I told Sabina,
reaching for the cake.

“Wait!” Daphne cried and the women rushed
forward as I stilled.

“This is for you,” Pauline said, picking up
the package and handing it to me.

“For me?” I asked, taking it and studying
her.

“Yes, for you,” Winnie stated.

“But, it’s not
my
birthday,” I told
them, moving my eyes to the package in my hand.

“No, but we thought…” Sabina started then
faltered.

Eunice picked it up from there. “We weren’t
very nice to you when you, erm… first got –”

“Just open it!” Daphne exclaimed and I
looked at her to see she was bouncing on her toes in
excitement.

“Okay,” I whispered, worried and wondering
what the package would hold, hoping it wasn’t poison.

I opened it and as the wrapping fell away I
saw I held an exquisitely carved, purple glass bottle in my
hand.

“Your scent,” Perdita stated and my body
jolted as my head snapped up.

“We asked Josephina, the perfume maker in
town, to create something just for you,” Pauline put in.

“No gardenia.” Winnie smiled.

I blinked at them. Then I opened the stopper
to the bottle, brought to my nose and sniffed.

The bottle wasn’t exquisite. The scent was.
Subtle and fresh, almost beachy but with a flowery essence.

It was sublime.

So sublime, no poison could smell like
that.

I looked around the faces.

Did they… could it be? Did they
like
me? As in,
genuinely?

“Do you all…
like
me?” I asked
quietly and got confused looks.

“But… of course!” Sabina cried.

“You’re sweet,” Daphne said.

“And funny,” Eunice added.

“And you saved a wild bird,” Pauline put
in.

“You make our prince happy,” Perdita stated
and my gaze locked on hers. “Blissfully so,” she finished.

My heart leaped.

“Do you think?” I whispered.

“Your grace, I’m sorry, but I took a swipe
of that icing and let me tell you, if he wasn’t blissful before,
which he was,” Winnie put in then grinned cheekily. “When he tastes
that, he will be!”

Holy crap! They liked me!

“God, I hope so,” I breathed and they all
laughed.

Yes! They liked me!

Then Perdita jumped and ordered, “You must
go. You don’t have long before the fireworks start.”

“Oh God!” I cried, set the bottle down and
mumbled, “I’ll come back for that.”

“We’ll take it to your rooms,” Eunice
offered, picking up the cake and handing it to me. “And we’ll take
the others away,” she said, I caught her meaning and my smile
trembled as my face got soft, then she cried, “Just go!”

Perdita slid a thin stick between my fingers
under the cake and said, “The candles are lit in your rooms. You
can use that stick to light your cake candles so you won’t get any
wax on your beautiful icing.”

I stared gratefully into her eyes and gave
myself a long moment to do it.

Then I whispered, “Thank you,” and she
smiled and that smile lit her whole face.

All of it.

Even her eyes.

Not fake.

She liked me!

They all did.

Hurrah!

I smiled at all of them and then rushed out
of the room, balancing the cake as I went thinking joyous thoughts
that maybe, just maybe, I was finally going to be
really
happy in this fairytale world.

About ten seconds later, however, I was
cursing how far away our rooms were (because, seriously, it was a
trek) when I made it there only to find the candles lit all around
the room but there was no Tor to be found.

I checked all the rooms (his bathroom, my
bathroom, his dressing room, my dressing room, his sitting room,
you get the picture), he wasn’t anywhere.

Shit!

Was I supposed to go somewhere else?

I stood by the bed and tried to think of
where I might have to go and it hit me that the balcony off his
study faced the city proper, not the sea like the one off our rooms
did. Maybe I was supposed to go there.

Holding the cake carefully, I lifted my
skirts in one hand and ran to his study as fast as I could without
dropping the cake.

When I got there, the double doors were
mostly closed, one open an inch. I turned and put my booty in it to
open it (I’d have to light the candles later, so much for my big
reveal, I didn’t have the time) and stopped dead when I heard
Algernon’s voice.

“I apologize for calling you out at this
hour but with her performance today…” he paused, “Well, as you
know, the men are talking. She’s not herself. So not herself, it’s
strange.”

And Tor’s answer made my entire body
lock.

“She says she’s from a different world.”

Uh…

What?

I
said
I was from a different
world?

He didn’t believe me?

I thought he’d come to believe me.

I heard Algernon’s sharp bark of surprised
laughter before he asked, “A different world?”

“Yes. A different world,” Tor replied.
“Gods, it’s unbelievable. She lives it and breathes it. She’s even
created words to go with it. She tells me extraordinary stories of
the make-believe architecture and fantastical gadgets they have in
her world.
” He paused and my dazed brain imagined him
shaking his handsome head in disgust at the same time it hazily
recalled the many nights over dinner or when we were in bed when
I’d tell him stories of my world and all the things in it when he
went on, “I must admit, it’s stunning how clever she is, how sharp
her mind. She’s astonishingly imaginative and she never forgets a
word of it. She has to be making it up as she goes along but every
lie she tells, she remembers and uses it again.”