Page 32 of Disenchanted
“Goodness! Your parents were excessively generous when they christened you.”
“Every time I am obliged to sign a document, I wish they had been a bit more frugal.”
His tone was solemn, but when I glanced up at him, I caught a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Was it possible the commander had a sense of humor after all? What a day of astonishing revelations this was turning out to be. He smiled at me, a genuine smile, not his usual quirk of the lips. I smiled in return, and we rode onward in silence, but it was not an uncomfortable one. The commander was not the sort of person given to idle chatter and neither was I.
He kept his horse to a very sedate pace. I wondered if this was to prolong his time with me. I was aware Crushington liked me, but I could not be vain enough to imagine he would dawdle just to hold me close, not a man so devoted to the pursuit of hisduties. Most likely he lingered because the Bottoms were still hazy and the lanes rough and full of ruts. He would not want to risk Loyal stumbling and straining a fetlock.
Whatever his reason, our slow progress suited me. I was not eager to reach home. My one consolation for selling my mother’s earrings had been imagining my family’s jubilation when I announced we could all go to the ball. How deliriously happy Imelda, Amy and Netta would be! Now I dreaded their reaction when I had to tell them I had only acquired enough money for two tickets. My stepsisters were too young and inexperienced to navigate the royal court without a chaperone and I certainly did not feel qualified to act in that role. The elite society of the Heights had once been Imelda’s world, so she must have one of the tickets. I had never had any desire to attend the ball, so Em would have to decide which of her daughters to take.
Netta was the oldest and she had the sylphlike loveliness that was the current fashion. Amy was only sixteen, short and buxom. But she was much livelier than Netta and far more comfortable meeting strangers. What a difficult choice for a mother to make.
But I knew my tenderhearted stepmother too well. Imelda would never be able to choose between her girls. She would turn helplessly to me, and I would be the one obliged to decide. So, which one of my sister’s dreams would I have to shatter? Netta’s or Amy’s?
I sagged against Commander Crushington. With the prospect of such an impossible decision looming before me, I felt weighted down by a sense of failure. I should have pressed Master Fugitate much harder, not only for more money, but for more information about my father.
When I was young, my parents were simply that— my mother and father. It never occurred to me that they might have had lives beyond me, their own memories, their own histories,perhaps even their own secrets. By the time I had grown mature enough to ask questions, it had been far too late.
I did know that my mother, Cecily, had been the only child of the royal forest warder. Her position in society had not been as high as Imelda’s as the daughter of a knight, but my mother would have been considered of a better class than the trade people of Midtown. I believed my father had been the only son of a prosperous wine merchant. How my parents had ever chanced to meet and fall in love, I had no idea.
I had only been six years old when my mother died, but I had many warm memories of her. Although I had had twelve more years to become acquainted with my father, he was a shadow man to me, the quiet recluse who had haunted the library. My best memories of him were those times I snuggled on his lap while he read to me and my mother. Even then my recollections centered more on all those wonderful stories and not the man himself.
The blow to my head seemed to have jarred something loose in my brain. I suddenly recalled where I had learned the fairy word for jewels. My father had taught me to call my mother’s emeralds “twinkles.” This recollection was succeeded by one more startling and vivid.
It must have been days after my mother’s funeral. I was too young to understand the final nature of death. Mal’s grandmother had told me my mother had traveled to some beautiful kingdom high among the stars where she would be well and happy and watch over me forever. I did not believe it. How could my mama be happy so far away from me?
I trailed after my father demanding that he climb up to the stars and fetch my mother home right now. I must have driven the poor man to distraction, consumed as he was by his own grief. He engaged a nanny to look after me. I could not recall her name only that she had been a dour, unsmiling woman. Shehad insisted I start acting like a big girl and accept my loss. My mother was never coming back.
I had kicked her in the shins, and she retaliated with a sharp smack. My father had heard and seen it all and he was furious. How could I have forgotten that? It was the one time in my life I could ever recall him losing his temper. He had dismissed the nanny, roaring at her to leave his house. She had been so frightened of him, she had run. My father’s anger had evaporated as he realized he was left to cope with a hysterical, sobbing child. He scooped me up in his arms, seeking to comfort me in the only way he knew how.
The twisting lanes of Misty Bottoms, the ambling movement of the horse, the creak of the leather saddle, even the feel of the commander’s arms around me faded before the blur of memory.
I was back in the library, curled up on my father’s lap, shuddering from the last of my sobs. My father’s voice was a soothing drone as he read to me the final chapter ofThe Quaint Customs and Ways of the Fey Folk.
“And it came to pass that King Zanthypod had to depart from the High Forest for he had become a gleaner and the fey would no longer have him for their king.”
“What’s a gleaner, Papa?” I asked.
My father kept on reading as though he had not heard me. I placed my hand upon his bristly unshaven cheek, obliging him to look at me as I repeated my question.
“What is a gleaner?”
My father’s brow furrowed. It was usually my mother who answered my questions, reducing difficult words into terms a child could understand. He expelled a deep breath as he struggled to explain.
“A gleaner is a fairy who is an outcast, a stranger to his people because he becomes obsessed, greedy to acquire the things humans value, like furniture, fancy clothes and china. That isanathema to the fairy way of life… er, they don’t like it and so they wanted their king to go away.”
I frowned as I turned this over in my mind. “So why didn’t the king just stop doing it?”
“I don’t think he could help it. Grief can make a fairy behave in a way he knows he shouldn’t, but he cannot seem to stop himself because his heart hurts too much.” My father paused to swallow. “Fairies only turn into gleaners when something really bad happens to them or they lose someone they loved very much.”
“Like their mama?” I quavered.
“Yes.”
My lower lip wobbled. “But I don’t want to become a gleaner, Papa.”
“You won’t,” my father said, gathering me closer. “You are not a fairy, Ella. You are a wise little girl.”
“Magnificently wise?”
