Page 9 of Disenchanted
Stretching my arm out, I was able to snag the volume of Queen Anthea from the bottom shelf. I would scoot back carefully until I was hiding behind my father’s chair, smug and triumphant, the book clutched in my arms.
I settled against the back of the chair, positioning myself so a flicker of light from the candle fell across the pages, just enough for me to read. It was difficult at first, but I was familiar enough with the story, I could figure out the harder words. But the more passages that I mastered, a strange thing began to happen. What had begun as an act of defiance became a labor of love as I learned the true magic of words and claimed them for my own.
Night after night I would return to the library and sneak another book to read behind the chair. I had soon devoured all the volumes that I could reach without drawing my father’s notice. I would have been obliged to start reading the same books over again but for my father’s habit of constantly rearranging his shelves. Just as I would finish the last story on the lowest shelf, a new collection would appear within my grasp.
I enjoyed my career as a nocturnal book brigand for a long time. But eventually the day came when I grew older and more rebellious. Then I would simply march into the library and pluck a volume from the shelf. My father would glance up from his book, but I would just glare at him in defiance, challenging him to say something.
He never did. He would just give me an odd, sad kind of look and return to his reading.
I have often suspected since then my father had been perfectly aware of my stealthy nighttime raids on his library and did not mind. But if that was true, why had he never acknowledged my presence or invited me to come out from behind the chair? I wished I had asked him, but it was far too late for that now. It was also too late to tell him I was sorry that the last words I ever spoke to him were angry ones.
When I was seventeen, I had begun stealing away for trysts with a young man my stepmother had considered highly unsuitable. She had complained to my father who had roused himself from his books enough to summon me to the library. Imelda had been concerned for my reputation. My father, forbidding me to see the boy again, warned me about ending up with a broken heart.
What would you know about my heart? I shouted at him. All that matters to you is your library and your books!
That was so like the accusation that Amy had hurled at me, it gave me a twinge and I was quick to thrust the painful memory aside. I could not afford to spend the rest of the afternoon indulging in maudlin recollections. Marketing needed to be done, if our supper tonight was to consist of anything besides turnip stew.
I levered myself off the stool and headed up to my bedchamber. All was mercifully quiet on the second floor. I surmised that my stepsisters were either napping or had retreated to the garden to await their mother’s return. Imelda was off visiting her good friend Madam Dearling, the wife of a prosperous silk merchant. I did not particularly like the Dearling woman. I thought she was a simpering creature who enjoyed nothing more than crowing about her neighbors’ misfortunes, but I was glad that Imelda had finally found a friend of sorts.
After her husband’s fall from grace, all of Imelda’s former acquaintances from the Heights deserted her. Imelda’spatronizing airs had not found favor among the simpler ladies of Midtown. Even as a child, I had been able to perceive that Imelda’s pride concealed a deep unhappiness and loneliness. I certainly did not begrudge her friendship with the unpleasant Madam Dearling. In fact, I hoped Imelda had a good long visit. It would give me more time to muster my defenses before she returned to harangue me about the ball.
I quickly stripped out of my sooty clothes and bathed in the cool water at the washstand. Rummaging in my wardrobe, I selected a clean chemise, petticoat and simple gown and shrugged into them.
My bedchamber had changed little from the days of my childhood. The same silk hangings embroidered with unicorns draped in tentlike fashion over my four-poster bed. Once a vivid sky blue, the silk had faded to a shade of mist, but even when these draperies became tattered shreds, I did not know if I could bear to take them down because my mother had fashioned them for me.
My old dollhouse still stood in the corner by the window. It was once an impressive two-story structure, four feet high. But the paint was chipped, and shingles knocked off the roof from the time Mal besieged it with his toy cannon during the Battle of Upton Castle. Whatever miniature furniture and dolls had survived the siege, I gave to Netta and Amy long ago. For many years, I had used the dollhouse as a bookshelf, my much-worn biography of Queen Anthea having pride of place in the upper bedchamber.
The hinged roof opened to reveal the attic and that was where I stored my treasure box. I kept the key to it hidden beneath a segment of loose carpet in the miniature parlor. Not the best hiding place, considering how easily Amy was able to find it. Even if I had kept the key on a chain around my neck, it would not have mattered because my stepsister was adept at pickinglocks with a hairpin, a circumstance that was entirely my own fault. Mal taught me this skill when we were children, and I passed this knowledge along to both Netta and Amy. I was not always the best influence on my little stepsisters.
Fetching the key, I unlocked the treasure box to restore my mother’s emeralds to their velvet pouch. I had always called this small chest my treasure box although the earrings were the only thing of monetary value. Everything else was nothing but baubles and keepsakes such as the fake gold bracelet Mal won for me at a traveling fair.
Nor was it a repository of secrets… except for one. Delving into the bottom of the box, I unearthed my mother’s handkerchief. As I unwrapped the folds of linen, I was relieved to discover what I had left tucked inside undisturbed, although even if Amy had come across this object, she would never have understood the significance of it. It was a pick that minstrels used to strum their lutes. Made of ivory, the pick was shaped like a teardrop, which, considering the pain its owner had inflicted upon me, was rather appropriate.
As I cradled the ivory pick in the palm of my hand, I was flooded with bittersweet memories of a youth with golden hair and a golden voice, with eyes of a deep cerulean blue capable of both tenderness and treachery. He called himself Harper and that was the only name I ever knew him by— this young man my stepmother and father had warned me about and were right to do so.
I folded the ivory pick carefully back inside the handkerchief and returned it to the bottom of the box. I no longer kept the pick for any sentimental reasons or as a memento, only as a grim reminder of a lesson harshly learned. Never give your heart to a strolling minstrel for inevitably he will wander off and leave it discarded along the wayside.
three
It was deep in the afternoon when I finally left the house, my marketing basket hooked over my arm. The rhododendron bushes had started to overtake the path and brushed up against my skirts, dislodging a snow of soft pink petals in my wake.
Our house was very like most homes in Midtown; two stories with a bay front window, a pitched shingle roof and gables adorned with icing latticework (although ours needed a fresh coat of paint). While most of the other houses in the neighborhood were fronted by tidy gardens, ours had become more of a wilderness since I seldom had time to attend the weeding.
Besides the rhododendrons’ encroachment upon the walkway, the day lilies had also run riot, the ivy had commenced a tender assault upon the picket fence and the roses had gone completely insane, threatening to crowd out the meek little violets. This abundance of roses was a source of great vexation to our nearest neighbor, Mrs. Biddlesworth. She prided herself on being the best gardener in Midtown, but no matter how carefully she nursed her rosebushes, she had difficulty getting them to thrive.
I told her it was because she fussed with them too much. Roses do not like to be touched. That is why they have thorns. I felt a peculiar kinship with these flowers so perhaps that was the reason my roses grew in such abundance. Mrs. Biddlesworth suspected that I had bewitched them. I was surprised she had never tried to lodge a complaint with the authorities, accusing me of practicing magic without a license.
As I made my way to the gate, Mrs. Biddlesworth was out in her garden as usual, sprinkling water on her tidy borders of alyssum. I called out cheerfully, “Good afternoon, Mrs. B.”
She stopped watering to glare at me, her moon face framed beneath a straw bonnet. Instead of returning my greeting, she pointed at something beyond me and demanded, “And just what is that supposed to be?”
I followed the direction of her accusing finger and realized she was gesturing at a particularly tall weed growing in the corner of the yard near the fence. This weed had a heavy stalk, the thickness of a small sapling with broad, flat leaves. I had tried to uproot it many times, but it always grew back. I finally gave up and glued a pot around its base so that it would appear as though it was something I had meant to grow. I even gave it a name.
“Oh, that’s just Frank,” I told Mrs. Biddlesworth. “Its proper name is… um… Frankincense herbarium. It’s a very rare plant.”
Mrs. Biddlesworth came closer to the fence that divided our properties. She leaned forward to squint suspiciously at Frank with her small birdlike eyes.
“Wherever did you acquire such a thing?” she asked.
