The Glass Castle (7 page)

She was not often at a loss for words, but this crown hushed her.

How many nights—curled in bed beside her mother while rain beat against the windows—had she described exactly this piece?

The crown was set in gold with dozens of elaborate gold stems topped with diamonds that caught the candlelight and danced in their opulence. Avery thought it looked like a cake topped with candles, but why anyone would ever put candles on a cake, she had no idea. This was the stuff of dreams—the crown every girl imagined when playing princess on summer days. Avery herself had pretended to wear a crown exactly like this when she played in her castle tree house in the woods. How many times had she closed her eyes and imagined the weight of it on her head?

“This will become Angelina’s on her wedding day,” Kate said.

“How are you even allowed to touch it?”

Kate laughed. “It’s my job. Go ahead, try it on.”

Avery shook her head, knowing better than to think the daughter of a peasant had any business trying on the crown of a queen. But before she could refuse, Kate placed it on her head.

Avery nearly fainted.

She stepped before the mirror and remembered what her mother had always told her. “Avery, girl, you can be anything God wants you to be. Even the queen if that is His plan.”

She had always known her mother was just trying to encourage her the way mothers do. She hadn’t actually believed the words.

“It’s heavy,” Avery said.

Kate nodded. “As are the pressures that come with the crown. Angelina will spend the rest of her life fearing the assassin’s blade or the enemy’s cup.”

But Avery didn’t hear any of this. Instead, she turned this way and that, admiring her look from every angle. It was impossible, she decided, to look bad in a crown like this.

Kate and Avery sat and talked all afternoon, tucked away where they wouldn’t be heard. When they finally stood to go downstairs for supper, Kate said, “Don’t leave the castle until it’s your only choice, okay? Being here may be what you were born to do.”

Avery nodded, but as she did, she felt bad for making a promise she could not keep. She wouldn’t stay one moment longer than she needed to. She only stayed now with the hope that she might find Henry or at least keep him safe.

She trusted that she would find her brother or that her father would find her before a week had passed. This hope kept her from doing anything too irrational.

The inner voice that so often got Avery into trouble whispered to her now. It told her to disappear from supper with a match.

As usual, she was prepared to do something she might regret.

Chapter 11

Midnight Foray

Avery waited until everyone in the bunk room fell asleep.

The last thing the children did each night before bed was blow out the candles throughout their side of the castle, the trails of smoke long and thin and wobbly as the warm scent of day’s end followed them all to bed.

It was eerily quiet now.

Barefoot in her white nightgown, she crossed the cold marble floor, resolve growing with each step to find the answer to a question that had gnawed at her since she’d learned where she was.

She slid a candle from the stand by the door and lit it with the match she had taken from the dining room at supper. She walked down the long hallway to the stairwell, checking to be sure no one was following. What she was about to do would break the rules, and though she did not know whose rules they were or who would punish her if she was caught, she was sure the penalty would be swift and severe.

Yet she needed to know the truth.

She made her way all the way up to the sewing room, but she hadn’t come to see the dress.

Kate’s warning from the first night rang in her ears:
“We’re not allowed to look outside.”

But Avery didn’t care. She moved to the heavily draped window, pausing only briefly before pushing the curtain aside.

Right now Avery cared about only one thing: she needed to know what she could see when she looked outside.

The entire village lay before her like a collection of dollhouse pieces, the houses on the other side of the Salt Sea glowing with warm, golden light while the chimneys produced tiny puffs of smoke. Water inlets snaked through the village like blue veins beneath paper-thin skin.

Though she had never seen the castle before, she wondered—this high off the ground—if she might find anything she recognized. She felt like she was sitting in the clouds.

From the top of the castle, she searched for Murphey’s Flower Store and her father’s shop—Godfrey’s. She also looked for the grocer and the butcher and the masonry, but she couldn’t spot them anywhere.

Of course not. Home is so far away.

And then the thought crossed her mind that she had adamantly refused to consider since her first night in the castle. Was it possible that her father, too, was missing—that her entire family was in danger? All this time, Avery had assumed her father was worried about her and Henry. But maybe he didn’t even know they were missing. Maybe he was waiting for Avery to search for him.

Could there be truth to what Tuck had said?
“You’re sure your father is still alive?”

She swatted the question away.

“He and Henry are fine,” she said aloud. “They are
fine
.”

Avery let the drape fall back into place and was heading back to the door when she caught sight of a silhouette on the stairs, heard a rustle that was definitely human. She blew out the candle and dove beneath the wedding dress.

All was quiet, and she wondered if it had been a scout on the stairs. She hoped he hadn’t seen her looking out the window. What consequences might there be?

Then, suddenly, two sets of footsteps approached on the marble floor.

“In ’ere you will see the dress. I only ’ope it meets your expectations.”

The old woman!

The room filled with light, and a single pair of heels clicked in a lazy circle around the mannequin. Avery held her breath.

“It needs more pearls,” came the whine that made Avery’s blood run cold. She could have reached out and touched Angelina from where she crouched. “And more diamonds. When I enter the Great Hall, I want to be the brightest thing in the room.”

If they moved the dress for any reason, she was a dead girl.

“Yes, ma’am,” the old woman said. The dress swayed all around Avery as Angelina tugged at the material.

A third voice added, “Would you like to try it on?”

Avery stiffened. The third voice belonged to Kate.

Kate? How could it be?

“I’ve seen enough,” Angelina snapped. “Now fix it.”

Avery waited what seemed a lifetime until she was certain the three were gone before she crawled out and stood, waiting until her legs stopped shaking enough so she could walk back down to her bed.

Where she expected to find Kate’s bed empty, instead Kate was fast asleep, snoring lightly.

Time had no meaning in the castle.

Avery began marking her days using the ivory hairpins she borrowed from Kate. Each morning she added one to the edge of her pillow. Today brought the total to six.

Six days more than I ever expected to spend in a real castle.

Six days more than I ever wanted to spend away from home.

Kate brought her a second dress, this one a deep blue with gold hand-stitching, trimmed at the neck with dozens of stunning pearls.

“How do we get to wear dresses like this?” Avery asked over breakfast.

“Thankfully for us, Angelina has a weakness for new gowns and she refuses to wear anything publicly more than once. If she has made an appearance in a dress, she tosses it.”

“So how do you get them?”

“The scouts collect them and bring them to the sewing room. We alter them, sometimes making multiple dresses from each one.”

Kate was refusing to look her in the eye.

“Did you leave your bed last night?” Avery asked.

“No, but you did,” Kate said with a wry smile.

Chapter 12

If You Can’t Stand the Heat

The girls in the bakery needed help.

With all of the preparations for the wedding under way, they made a formal plea at breakfast for anyone who was able to come. Avery decided she would do what she could, even if that meant just gathering staples for the girls who knew what they were doing. That was better than feeling useless.

She considered helping the cooks, preparing meals for the king, and using the scraps to make meals for the kids. But the king liked to eat steamed dumplings, mincemeat pies, or duck gizzards, and Avery preferred the smell of baked goods to anything that had recently been alive.

She was pleasantly surprised that the bakery girls welcomed her.

They seemed to have the cheerful memory of a gnat.

She was given a tour of the pantry and was led to a small door on the far wall of the kitchen. “It’s a dumbwaiter!” one of the girls announced, opening the door with a flourish.

Five pairs of eyes peered inside, their excitement palpable.

Talking enthusiastically over each other, the girls explained that this magical box was controlled by a thick rope on a pulley guided by rails so food could be delivered to all parts of the castle.

The girls were soon buzzing with activity, collecting bowls, spoons, and ingredients for their stations and chatting happily.

Avery distinctly heard the word
election
.

She had heard whispering at breakfast about a mysterious vote and wondered what it was all about. Everyone seemed pleased about it, but she would be as embarrassed admitting she knew nothing about it as she would be revealing her confusion about baking. She didn’t want to ruin this second chance with the girls in the kitchen. They were being so kind.

So she didn’t ask any questions.

“Do you need help?” one of the girls asked.

Avery should have admitted she needed as much help as a drowning cat, but with everyone in the room seeming to listen to how she would respond, she smiled and said, “No, thank you. I’m doing fine.”

Her strategy was simple. She would copy the girl next to her.