Page 11 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
I walk around the flowerbed until the rosebush’s leafy stems shield me from the house and its windows. I don’t dare sit down, lest the dirt soil my uniform. I’m wearing a sky-blue dress, white apron, white stockings, and patent-leather shoes—the outfit Master Drosselmeyer insists on for all his maids.
I always change back into a plain homespun dress before returning home, because if Mam and Pap saw how short my skirt is and how much of my breasts the neckline shows, they’d make me leave Master Drosselmeyer’s employ. And I can’t do that. I can’t go back to being the stand-in mother to all my younger siblings. Much as I love them, I won’t do it. The girl from the neighboring farm should be enough help for Mam. Dorothy is a kind sort, if clumsy, and she’ll do right by the little ones.
I got to have something that’s forme.
As I stand beside the rosebush, it seems to arch over me, bending down a little. I don’t sense evil from it, just caution.
Setting down my basket and clippers, I lift both hands. “I’m unarmed, see? I won’t be taking any flowers from you.”
The serrated leaves rustle, scraping against each other.
I take the little book from my pocket and squint at the strange letters on the cover.
“Tama Olc?” I say aloud.
The rosebush shivers softly.
“Tama Olc,” I repeat. These aren’t words I know. Not that I’m much good at reading. Never went to school. Maybe it’s another language.
Shrugging, I open the book and turn the pages slowly. My excitement fades, disappointment taking over.
“There are no pictures,” I mutter. “What good is a book without any pictures?”
After flipping through the rest of the pages and finding only close-set script I can’t decipher, I close the book.
“Tama Olc.” I speak its title a third time, meditatively. “What can that mean?”
A breeze hisses through the rosebush, stirring its blossoms and leaves into a frenzy. But when I glance around, none of the other bushes in the vicinity are moving.
A sharp leaf rakes across the back of my hand and I yelp, moving away from the rosebush. The toothed edge of the leaf glitters scarlet.
A trickle of blood runs down my fingers, onto the corner of the book.
I stare from the rosebush to the book and back again. Something about the tiny tome unsettles this strange, unnatural plant. Maybe their origins are similar. Maybe—
A cracking, snapping noise startles me, and I spin around. Beyond the next flowerbed is a hedge, and in that hedge a hole has opened—a festering, thorny, black wound in the bushes, like rot on a fencepost, creeping slowly outward. Is the hedge diseased? What kind of disease could spread so fast?
I slip the book back into my pocket as I approach the opening. Its lowest point is at the level of my waist and its highest point lies just above my head. As I stare into the dark hole, I can see a shape inside.
A man’s chest and shoulders, the parts you might see if he were looking out of an oval mirror hung on a wall.
He’s dressed in a pale suit, a sharp contrast to his brown skin. His throat bulges with a pronounced Adam’s apple. And above his crisply carved jaw and smooth lips, he has the nose and ears of a brown rabbit.
I startle back before I realize the rabbit part is just a mask.
But what is a masked rabbit-man doing inside the hedge in Master Drosselmeyer’s garden?
I’m about to voice that very question when the shape of the man disappears, leaving only the festering, rotted hole in the hedge.
Spinning on my heel, I snatch up my basket and clippers, and I race for the house.
Everyone is hustling and hurrying about, since Master Drosselmeyer is having important guests for dinner, and the housekeeper barely listens to my story. Master Drosselmeyer himself breezes past me as I’m speaking, carrying a large box toward his showroom. He casts a sharp look my way, but he doesn’t pause.
“You’ve cut your hand, and you’ve got blood on your apron,” exclaims the housekeeper. “And this on a day when we have guests coming? And now you’re seeing men with rabbit’s heads in hedges? Gods have mercy, what’ll be next? Have you been eating mushrooms? Sampling the gardener’s ale?”
“No,” I reply. “Please, just send someone to check the garden. We want everyone to be safe, don’t we? It wouldn’t do to have some robber spoil the party tonight. What if the man’s a spy, come to steal the master’s ideas? What if he’s poisoning the hedges, the plants?”
Finally, the housekeeper agrees to send a stable-boy out to check the hedge. He comes back later, shaking his head, claiming to have seen nothing amiss.
