Midnight's Song (63 page)

Winston had insisted that we take a
walk in the garden that day in order to discuss wedding plans.
Although I still hadn’t consented to a wedding, I decided to go
along with him anyway. It all went fine at first, but Winston
decided to surprise me with an unexpected turn in the path that
caused unpleasant memories to surface from the most painful reaches
of my heart. There’s no way that he could have known what happened
there…yet I still resented him for it.

Of all of the places
he could have brought me, he brought me to the
cherry blossom trees.

“…And I believe that the Gellman’s
have expressed interest in attending,” Winston proudly announced to
me, unaware of my sinking heart as we walked underneath the pink
canopy that I had found love under long ago.

A small blossom fell from the treetops
and settled on my shoulder as if it was a delicate snowflake. The
sight was so familiar that I nearly started to cry. I held it in,
but I still pulled back from Winston in an emotional frenzy at the
thought. Although I was clearly miserable now, Winston carried on
with his talk about the wedding guests and reception dishes without
paying any mind to me. It caused my dread to turn to anger and my
anger into a realization about my destiny that opened my mouth and
thrust a message aloud.

“I can’t do this, Winston!” I suddenly
snapped at him, jerking my arm away.

“You can’t do what?” Winston
confusedly shot back at me.

“I
can’t…do…
this!”
I
repeated. “Ever since I became the heiress, all you’ve done is
cling to me. I’m sick of it!”

“Of course I have, darling,” he told
me in a way that was mushily affectionate and arrogant at the same
time. “Now that you’re the head of this estate, our castes aren’t
so different. I can finally have you without the fear of losing
much of my inheritance.”

I pulled away from
him all at once, utterly disgusted. His inheritance? This entire
tribulation had been about money? Obviously, Winston still took a
liking to me – but, I had always known in that he must have had
other motives. I had known it, yet in this tender moment I didn’t
expect the first explanation out of him to be as shallow as
that.
Now, I was
appalled.

“So, that’s what this has been about?”
I asked him, jaw dropped and shoulders high in
suspicion.

“It’s not difficult to see,” Winston
remarked, the annoyance evident in his tone. “You needed me before,
but now that the stars have aligned and the time is right, we can
finally enjoy each other!”

I
needed
him before?
Really? Sometimes I questioned what planet Winston had been born
on, but never as much as I questioned it now. Even in this reality,
Winston’s actions never saved me. They never helped me or even
offered me comfort of any kind. If anything, they had endangered
and bombarded me beyond compare. It was easy for me to see, yet
Winston remained oblivious to it.

He continued to
prance around with the prideful belief that he had been my savior
even though he’d never really helped me at all. Winston continued
to act as though my size and gender meant that he could take credit
for my achievements, and I was utterly sick of it. I had gotten
here because of
my
strength. If I had ever needed anyone before – I certainly
didn’t need Winston now. Winston simply couldn’t see that. It was
time to
make
him
understand.

“If you truly loved
me as my mother loved my father, your love for me wouldn’t change
based on my caste. If you truly loved me, it wouldn’t matter if I
was a 3
^rd
Caste or a 10
^th
Caste!” I sternly told Winston, watching his
expression immediately change to one of offense and
disbelief.

“But, I do love you, Elissa! Your
caste doesn’t matter to me, it’s just…”

“It’s just the treatment that comes
with it,” I interrupted, finishing for him. Now, Winston was
fumbling without defense.

“Maybe so. But, I still don’t
understand what this has to do with our wedding, Elissa! I love you
and that is that. Why question it?”

“
Our wedding
,” I echoed again,
attempting to keep myself from fuming. “That’s just it, Winston!
You think that you love me, but you don’t seem to understand what
true love even looks like. First of all, you’ve thrown all of these
marriage proposals at me as if you were going to carry them out
whether I approved or not. If you truly cared for my opinion, you’d
stop insisting things that I’ve protested
against!”

“I care for your opinions –” Winston
stammered. “I only wanted to give us the grandest of
weddings…”

“Again with your
talk of the wedding,” I sighed again. “Why can’t you understand
what I’m trying to tell you? And, if it’s worth anything else – I
want you to understand that I’ve never
needed
you. Why do you insist that I
ever did?”

“Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be,
Elissa?” Winston exclaimed, finally beginning to understand my
angst. “A bride needs her husband. A bride relies on her husband
and satisfies him. When we marry, you’ll need me just as much.
Besides that, you’re still small and vulnerable…” he stopped for a
moment, taking notice of the clear change in height that I’d
experienced after my return. “Even if your past adventures seem to
have…changed you.”

I closed my
ever-changing eyes, feeling the ache of my broken heart. It was
broken, yet it was stronger than this. I was sick of this! I’d been
brought to my wits end with suitors believing that I was simply a
baby-maker with a bank strapped to my back! I knew that I was much
more than that. I was a strong soul – someone ready to
soar
.

“No, Winston. You’re
wrong. You know what? This has gone on long enough! Winston, there
will be
no
wedding.”

“Wait – you’re simply calling it off?”
Winston reveled, flabbergasted.

“How can you call
off what hasn’t been planned?” I wittily replied. “I will marry
when I’m ready to marry, and I will marry who
I
want
to
marry! That person won’t think that I need him. He’ll simply want
me as I am!” I paused for a moment, searching my heart and mind for
the last words: “The one who holds my heart will also have to hold
my fire. If he’s willing to hold that – or at least try to learn –
he’s strong enough to hold me.”

You might think that my story ends
here, but it doesn’t. My experiences left me changed in more ways
than I could ever forget – ways that were both physical and
spiritual. For three years after my experience, I searched for
Aurelian with ceaseless but secret instance. I tried to carry on
with my life and move on as he’d told me to, yet I couldn’t. It
wasn’t a kind of immature desperation – it was this overwhelming
burden that I carried every day that caused me to feel like
Aurelian and I had parted prematurely.

My soul constantly gnawed away at me,
bringing me memories of the true love that we shared and the
mysterious experiences that brought us together and caused us to
part. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the entire ordeal
changed me, opened my eyes and forced me to live as if I wasn’t
blind anymore. I moved through life for the next few years as
someone who was happy and successful with my life, friends, and
fortune. Though, regardless of what happiness the world tried to
bring me – I could never fully be satisfied.

The only other living being who would
understand a glimmer of how I felt was Emily. Emily and I would
keep the secret of our strange adventure the most precious one in
our hearts. She’d never understand what happened completely, but
she would still believe in it like nothing else. She couldn’t be
blind anymore, either.

For three years afterward,
Emily and I would secretly look for a way to get back to the Night
Kingdom. Even though it seemed to be in vain, we’d never give up.
We’d descend into the cellars to look for the house of mirrors, but
all we’d find would be a small room filled with cobwebs and broken
glass. We’d also look for that mysterious book in hopes that it
might hold another clue to solving our mystery. Though, that seemed
to be missing, too.

It had seemingly
disappeared off of the face of the earth. It didn’t lurk on any
high shelf or unused piece of furniture. It didn’t exist under any
beds or in any old cellars. There wasn’t even a record of it in the
library itself! Even after using my money to scale the country, it
was as if the book
never
existed
. It was as if all of the physical
remnants of the journey had vanished from this world so that my
encounter with the unknown would only seem to be a distant dream.
Still, I never gave up.

There was a void in my heart that
would never be filled, not until the day that Aurelian and I would
be together again. Even though I knew that the chances were slim, I
never forgot that Aurelian hadn’t sent me home through the last
portal. There was always the ever-present awareness I had that
maybe – just maybe – a door the Night Kingdom was still out there.
There was also a small hope I had that perhaps one day…that last
door might somehow open for me.

On a simple day in mid-July about four
years later, my search came to an end.

It had seemed an ordinary day at the
Estate. The servants were busy preparing to entertain guests that
would flock to my estate from far-off provinces by nightfall. Wren
was off honeymooning with her new husband on the coast, so the
oversight of what floral arrangements went where and which foods
should go on the menu fell on me.

Believe-it-or-not, the job was
actually quite tiring. In lieu of it all, I felt an unexpected urge
to go into my room and relax between my duties. The moment that I
opened the door, I immediately took notice of an object on my
bedside table that hadn’t been there before. As I neared it, I
realized that the peculiar object was a note. I picked it up in my
hands and held it up to the light, seeing that it was sealed with a
regal-looking crest while my name was printed on the front of it in
swirling cursive letters. I broke the seal to reveal its
contents.

As soon as I read what it contained, I
dropped the note on the floor and smiled.

What it said isn’t
important – but the message it gave me was clear.
It was time.
I dropped
everything in my life as joyfully and willingly as I could. There
was no luxury, adorer, or celebration that I would hold onto in
place of this. This was what I’d been waiting for, the thing for
which I’d been longing for years. I would drop everything for this
– and I was.

Almost if it destiny
itself was calling, I looked over and saw that another peculiar
object had appeared in my room. This time, it was lying on my bed.
I quickly reached out and grabbed it before running my fingers over
it in disbelief. It couldn’t be…yet it was. It was my
blue cape.
It was the
same blue cape that I had worn on the day of my departure with the
prince. I tied it around me in delight, twirling around in a
childlike kind of dance.

My glance was
suddenly drawn to the sight of my bedroom mirror. I inched closer
to it, slowly reaching forward to touch the glass. When my hand
moved across its surface, I knew that the mirror wasn’t made of
glass anymore. The surface felt as cool and inviting as
water
bubbling up from a
spring. That was when I knew what this was. The joy I felt was
inexplicable. Yes, the last door to the unknown was still out
there.

It was still out
there, and now it was opening for
me
.

I only thought of hesitating. Even
that single, quiet thought wasn’t enough to really make me do it.
No, I wasn’t going to question this. If this was the thing that I
thought it was…I had nothing to lose. In the next breath, I closed
my eyes and began to reach through. Before I could decide
otherwise, my feet had already taken themselves and carefully
walked through. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that I was
standing in the same familiar ballroom that I had departed from
four years ago.

My feet began to act again. I ran as
if I was fleeing from a wildfire, without any regard to whatever
obstacles might be in my path. It was nearly instinctual. In less
than a minute I had pushed my way out of the ballroom and into one
of the main hallways of the castle.

I could hardly remember where I was
going, yet I didn’t need to. My heart knew where it needed to go. I
was going wherever my soul would take me. Just as the soul always
will, it took me back to the place that housed the thing I’d been
searching for. My arms shoved the two, massive doors open and my
feet came to a halt. I was standing in the throne room, glancing at
a figure that was turned from me in shock. He had sensed I was
here, but he never once believed it could be true.