• “There shall be a gala for your sixteenth birthday,” the queen informed Aislynn a month before the fact. New everything was needed, from the sheer silk stockings lining her legs midway up her thighs to the boning holding in her waist to the ribbons and combs adorning her hair. And everything in between.

    Bolts of fabric were paraded through the queen’s antechamber, some piled on various benches and tables or on the floor near the princess’s stockinged feet. She stood on a low stool in naught but a pale gold chemise, her stays and her stockings, staring at her reflection in the watery glass. It was a full length affair which usually hung an inch off the floor in her mother’s closet. The queen had had it brought out for the occasion of finding the material for the perfect gown for the princess’s gala.

    Aislynn tried to find herself somewhere within the drapery of pinks and violets, beneath the curls piled on her head, above the small mountain of shoes vying for her attention. She recognized a flash of emeralds as her eyes, but they seemed as far away as the scent of salt and the leopard pacing his cage, a world hidden behind a curtain of ivy. Oh, why couldn’t this be the dream?

    “Yes, I think this,” the queen finally declared as the sun descended beyond the palace. She stood back and admired to drape of the pink brocade with its rose pattern against her daughter’s complexion.

    Aislynn moved a limb, shuffling the fabric about. Bathed in fire’s golden light, she recognized the hew. Her memory added a coppery tint to her mother’s mirror, the sun settled atop a wick and half an ivory-colored candle. The blush that had painted her cheeks now spread down her limbs and pooled on the floor, earning her mother’s adoring approval.

    “I don’t like pink,” Aislynn said.

    The queen’s head jerked upward. “What?” she demanded. “You have other pink gowns.”

    The girl bunched the light brocade in her hands. Do I? How many gowns must I have to not remember others of such a color? “Well, don’t you think I should have something new for this gala?”

    The queen took the material from her and handed it off to a waiting maid. Her lips were drawn tight in thought as she sorted through silks and brocades strewn about the room, already seen and rejected. She murmured words that floated no farther than her lips as colors rose and fell, shoes clattered sole over heel, ribbons arced and sighed to the ground.

    A footman entered and lit the many oil lamps set about, making sure the flames were safely caged in glass apart from the folds of future ball gowns. He drew the thick velvet curtains over the only large window, bowed from the waist, and left on silent feet.

    Aislynn’s eyes lost the memory of copper in their sight as light spilled from every corner of the room. Still feeling lost and exposed in her mother’s vast chamber, she cast about for something—anything—familiar. The unique features of each maid melted into one expression of distant, helpful watchfulness; the furniture was covered in material and ready-made garments but for one table with cold tea and cakes; she could hear Sookie, her guinea pig, beneath her stool, snoring. At last, her eyes alighted on her gown, the one she had been wearing when the queen’s summons had come, draped over a tall, throne-like wooden chair.

    Aislynn stepped from the cushioned stool and crossed to the chair. She had worn the lavender gown once or twice before, she remembered. She ignored the rustle and shuffle behind her in the wider room, instead tracing the fat periwinkle stars woven into the purple brocade. She smoothed over a fold. Near her foot, something hit the ground with a thud. Aislynn looked down and saw her pocket.

    Inside she always kept proof that her dreams were real: the little folding knife her only friend had given her, the heavy gold comb studded with rubies, a scrap of cloth-of-gold with bits of blue and green and red clinging to the gold like disembodied petals pressed to an herbology text.

    She slipped the scrap of fragile material from her pocket and advanced toward her mother. “Something like this.”

    The queen turned, looked at the bit of cloth in her daughter’s hands. A frown etched a line between her brows. “Where did you get this, Aislynn?”

    “Oh, I found it wandering about.”

    The queen looked sharply at the princess’s face. “You should not wander alone, Aislynn.”

    Aislynn bent and scooped Sookie, her pet guinea pig, into her arms. “Oh, I don’t. It’s only that I’m not always noticed.”

    The queen’s gaze went over Aislynn’s shoulder to scrutinize the walls beyond. The princess ducked her head to look at the ancient scrap in her hands. She had a vision in her head. She was to have a new gown for her birthday, and a gown she would have. It would echo the splendor of her dream-chamber. She would bring her two worlds together. “It can’t be that difficult. You have thread-of-gold embroidered on your ruff. This is very old. We wouldn’t have to put the flowers over top the gold, they could be in the gold, like the other patterns you’ve shown me. That would be a gown worth remembering, wouldn’t it, Mother?”

    She looked up at her mothers face. For a moment the queen looked apprehensive, her blue eyes narrow, but a moment only. She glanced over her shoulder and snapped her fingers. “The ivory silk,” she demanded. A maid scurried across the room, hoops swaying as she angled about the piles. The queen fingered a length of the milky fabric, then nodded. “Indeed, daughter, yours shall be quite the gown.”

    As the gala drew nearer, the princess found her adventures frustrated. She fell into bed at night exhausted and did not hear Nurse’s snores that usually woke her and sent her slipping through shadowed corridors to her secret tower. She tried to slip into the cool, secret world of the ivy and found a gardener or maid or footman’s hand on her shoulder, calling her back into the gilded world of the palace. The wisteria that used to signal a portal to the wider world of magic and tides and tigers now presented a brick wall caging her in crinoline and lace. When days had thus passed, she sent Sookie with a message tied to her collar. She alone seemed still able to pass beyond the garden’s eyes. Aislynn rose each morning wondering if her previous life had been but a dream, and now she had at last woke to find herself alone and confused. She took to keeping the folding knife up her sleeve so that she could pull it easily out, run her fingertips over the smooth wood and promise herself that Brendan was real. She read the response on Sookie’s collar and reminded herself that the world did not end with wisteria and stone.

    * * *
    The princess’s gala was filled with the golden light of fire, the gleaming of gems, like eyes of fantastical beasts glittering in the night’s dark. She sat at the high table, beside her mother. The queen—not to be outdone even by her daughter in whose name the celebration was held—had left the palace to find the best craftsmen, first for the cloth-of-gold, then to demand that her own green, floral brocade be made something just as subtly unique. Three women were selected to adorn her gown with beads in shades of pinks and reds and greens and white. With each tiny movement, the shift of her arm or an indrawn breath, the roses and leaves woven into her gown glistened as though coated with dew.

    Soups smelling of paprika and thyme and mint, fish with tall fins like a dragon’s and weapons for noses, birds with their bright feathers rearranged about them, roasted pigs—whole, with feet and tusks still thrusting from their snouts—and salads with honey dressing graced all of the tables within the king’s magnificent hall.

    Conversation was minimal. Jugglers and rhapsodes and magicians performed as the fantastic meal was consumed. The clatter of gold against porcelain and teeth joined the occasional bout of laughter or applause as percussion to the festival’s music. Every so often the queen leaned over and whispered something, pulled a soft-spoken comment out of her daughter’s placid mouth. The king didn’t venture as much. A prince with browsapparan the color of polished copper, the prince she was contracted to marry, sat beside the king. He had spared barely a glance from his steel-colored eyes for his future queen, even as they were introduced. He spoke in hushed tones with the king as each exotic course passed across the table on the hands of footmen in subdued livery.

    The ball proper began only once the higher nobles present for the feast had preceded the royal family into the cavernous throne room. One by one, the higher noble families were announced and they paid their respects in deep bows and sweeping curtsies to the king and queen and presented their gifts to the princess. Aislynn did her best to shape the mask her face had become into something resembling delighted surprise as gaily wrapped package after gaily wrapped package was given to her.

    As the last of the high nobles retreated from the wine-dark carpet leading to the royal dais, the six individual orchestral groups scattered about the room finished their individual melodies and began the initial chords of a pavane. The sounds echoing through the marble chamber, so chaotic and echoing a moment before, seemed to melt into each other and somehow form into something new—the sound surrounding Aislynn was now one sound, as soothing as honey melted in steaming lemon-water.

    The queen stood, the arcs on her crown rising proudly above her gold-embroidered ruff, the gems hanging from her tightly laced bodice tingling, and clapped her hands in a quick succession. “Let the dancing begin,” she announced in her clear, alto voice.

    Only the high nobles—dukes and marquises and earls and those viscounts of appropriate age to whom a higher title was a natural expectation, with their lady equivalents—stood to dance. The common rich stood in a ring about the dancers, caught in their dreams of some day, some how, being part of the glittering, revolving few who took to the tiled floor. The lesser nobles—the remaining viscounts, barons, baronets, knights, and squires—began and continued their round of obeisances and gift-giving.

    Aislynn sat, stiff in her newly completed throne, watching all through overwhelmed eyes. Her face was painted until her skin was the color of swans’ feathers but for the ruby stain on her lips and the pink along her cheekbones—such a hated faux expression made the princess wish to weep, if only she were able, caged in such a falsehood—and the amethyst and coal framing her eyes. Her long golden hair had been braided and adorned with pearls, mimicking the trim on her gown. She had coiled it into a simple coif with her own raspberry-stained fingertips, and anchored it with the three-pronged, ruby studded comb. She felt she was wearing the weight of a mine; she heartily wished that she had never revealed the scrap of cloth-of-gold to her mother in a fit of rebelliousness. It swayed stiffly over her hoops, not even the creamy underskirt fluttered as she walked. She took frequent, shallow breaths as she smiled her obligatory smiles of obligatory gratitude; her chest felt caged despite the open ruff—her first—revealing her well-formed roundness to all present. The heavy gold and pearls around her throat pressed her collarbones downward, weighing her lungs where her gown did not.

    She lost count of all the gifts of rings and necklaces and perfumes and tapestries and painted fans. She lost count of her own nods and murmurs of indifferent thanks. The words felt like sand in her mouth, sliding out to slither to the floor and be washed away by the eager courtiers kneeling beneath her. Her eyes—the only part of herself that still felt her own—searched the crowd. No familiar brown gaze laughed over at her above a brocade and velvet doublet; with so many present and scrutinizing her, she had not the comfort of the wooden handled knife in her palm to remind her of reality. She nodded and smiled and murmured the unfelt words.

    When the last squire had bowed, hand clasped with his beady-eyed wife, the king stood. “The Volta!” he declared. He held out his left hand and the queen placed her delicate, jeweled one in it as she rose. As soon as the royal couple had descended the two steps of the dais, the bewigged, copper-browed prince appeared at Aislynn’s side, hand held out, palm and fingers spread flat.

    Her mouth parted, neither words that would slink off to drown in the oven of other voices nor moan that would masquerade as a cello note flowed past. She rose and placed her hand in his. It was cool and the grip strong as his fingers twined about hers. He led her to a position near the middle of the room. Shadows of whispers surrounded them when even the musicians’ horns and strings were silent. Her heels clicked on the floor, the woven gold of her cloth rasped against the marble. Candlelight echoed off the chandeliers, one hundred massive arrangements of crystal hanging from a ceiling painted with ribbons of night and day, stinging Aislynn’s eyes.

    The prince spun her to a stop with a flourish and Aislynn sucked in a quick gasp. Her hoops tried to continue spinning; they lifted and swung about when she did not follow, revealing silk stockings and matching shoes with pearls sewn on and jeweled heels. Aislynn pondered the red-haired prince’s expression of contented superiority for a moment, but something a brilliant red like blood drew her attention away. She looked over the prince’s shoulder, but the music had begun and he took her hand, moving her in the beginning steps of the dance.

    The first time he put his strong, cold grip around her waist and lifted her she saw it again. Blood red over ivory and gold. The gown was not of the tight and crinolined variety; rather, the yards and yards of soft material draped dramatically against the woman’s slender figure. Hair the color of milky chocolate framed and tumbled about a slender, high-cheekboned face the color of honey-cream. The prince set her on the floor, took her hand and pulled her into the next set. The strangely gowned woman was gone.

    There was a pause in the dance. He held her hands high above her head and she found herself looking, not up at the steely-eyed prince, but into a pair of brown eyes. They were not laughing now. Her gown seemed to close in on her. The prince spun her about, sending her skirts bobbing like a rose petal falling through the air. Any who wished could now see the princess’s slender ankles and hope they would carry her through the remainder of the dance.
    She swung upward once more and she saw the slender, exotic face again, glancing at her from the corner of a smoky eye, moving away through the crowd.

    Aislynn looked as she was set down, but the woman was gone. Brendan was gone. Her gown seemed to shrink, the laces tightening, compressing ribs futilely trying to expand. She felt she stumbled through the dance, tugged along like a loose-limbed doll, but whatever invisible puppeteer that orchestrated the ball did not allow her feet to stumble. They knew the steps, they had no emerald eyes to see friends and strangers in the crowd. They had no memory to wish for sleep or waking—whichever this was not.

    Her curtsy was deep and proper when the music ended. The prince said not a word as she rose and he led her to the one long table for champagne, served in long crystal shoots like snapdragons. Her head nodded to the admiration of nobility, gentry, and rich commoner who tossed compliments her way for her excellent dancing technique, for her grace of movement. She saw the angle of a jaw, the back of a dark head with neatly cropped brown hair, and wondered. She could not be sure, and she could not make anything save the slide of her eyes reach toward him.

    The next dance waited until the royal family was once more seated on their respective thrones. The red-haired, steely-eyed prince released her hand with an exactly appropriate bow and returned to her father’s side, his dark wig still perfectly settled. He spoke nothing to me, she realized. Does he not know how?

    One of her ladies approached from the side and offered her a tin of delicate chocolates, each with a flower of spun sugar carefully pasted on top. She took one with a delicate purple flower, careful not to let the delicacy touch the fragile lace of her fingerless glove. Raising it to her lips, she licked the flower off and felt it dissolve in her mouth, the taste of sugar nearly blinding her tongue to the subtle taste of lavender. She slipped the rest of the chocolate between her teeth as she looked up.

    An arm raised revealed the lack of sides to the blood red gown; ivory and gold shone through. The extra length of a gold snakelike belt swayed against a long thigh. Dark hair rippled in spiraling strands down the back, gleaming as she turned. With a final look backwards, the woman left through a glass-paneled door into the gardens.

    Aislynn felt the room contract, the space between her and the woman shrink when she turned her head. Her eyes seemed to wear holes straight through Aislynn. Cool eyes the same shade as smoke escaping a newly blown-out candle with flecks of something darker filled her vision. Their stare, the realigning of her jaw, the pressing of her lips all gave the impression of intensity. But why?

    As the woman stepped beyond the glass, Aislynn watched moonlight blur and filter into pale and blue and violet around the woman. She turned then, a smile on her face, backed a step, and disappeared. The moonlight returned to mingle with the golden glow of fire on the garden-ringed patio of the royal court. Aislynn blinked, but nothing remained of the red-clad woman; not her intense gray eyes, not a strand of hair, or a golden bead from her belt’s tassel.

    The queen said something and Aislynn turned her head, having to see her mother’s mouth form the words to comprehend the strange, staccato sounds she made. “At other balls you may dance. This is your birthday gala; they are here to dance for you. Your wedding. Let your wistful feet wait until then; you shall dance plenty at your wedding.”

    She was saved having to respond as the queen finished the last of a sugar-coated cake and held her hand out for a napkin.

    What could a wedding be like? Aislynn wondered. She tried to picture herself as she was now, gowned in her best and painted until she was the porcelain face the kingdom wished to see, standing before the same prince who had placed unfeeling hands on her waist and whirled her through the air, uncaring whether her thighs where her garters held up her stockings were displayed to the world. She imagined the jewels her mother would weigh down her hair with, the diadem her head would have to carry proudly. She imagined the smell of roses, cut and crushed and trapped within the chapel’s walls as she stood with the prince and the priest, the king and queen watching from behind the altar. She had no imagination to conjure the neighboring king and queen beside her own parents. She had no desire to imagine the vows as the priest would recite them. But her response, the only word she would be required to utter throughout the entire ceremony echoed through her mind until she could feel it against her skin, could hear it in her own voice blending with the musicians’ round. “Yae.” And then, out of the chapel, they would come here. The nobles, high and low, would come and bow and give gifts and congratulations. They would slink away, considering the best way to win favor. She would dance. The prince—her husband—would place his hands on her waist and hoist her above him and she would fly, still strapped to his arms, until the heels of her slippers clattered to the floor and she was spun once more. But then she would also be left in a line with dukes and squires, in circles with marchionesses and baronesses to find her way through the waves of dances until the long, silver trumpets sounded and the last sliver of sun disappeared beyond the river.

    She could not imagine what would happen next—she had no comparison. So instead she imagined what she could. The gathering would be as huge, as grand, as artificial. She would remain only searching eyes behind a mask of liquid moon and bloodied lips. Her feet would dance on without her, and her eyes would see—what? What would appear at her wedding like the woman had at her gala? Would the woman herself return? Would she stare and smile at her as she had just now? Would she know what it meant then? And what of Brendan, she realized. How could they be friends, even dream-friends, once she was married? Would she have any friends at all once she belonged to the wordless prince?

    “Wedding?” she managed to ask. She unfurled her ivory and lace fan, using the movement to caress the wooden handle in her sleeve. It was there; it was real. “When is the wedding? Soon?”

    The queen leaned back toward her and smiled with lips the same honey-red shade as her hair. “Such an event takes time to plan, even though we arranged the papers at your birth. Three months after your next birthday, when the flowers are in their best bloom of summer, you shall marry Prince Rann. You must wait that long for your husband, dearest.” She smiled and nodded to a couple who paused to bend their knees and their necks. “Such things always take time when two courts are involved. It is settled now, however, and you shall help me plan the wedding so that when you are queen you shall know how to arrange such events to your king’s pleasure.”

    Not a friend, Aislynn realized. Someone to be pleased and impressed and maintain his ideals. Sookie alone with her lingering ability to slip between the veils of true and dream would she retain of friends and dreams and laughter.

    * * *
    The days subsequent to the gala left the princess feeling morose and slightly ill. She felt as though she were walking through a cloud, that she existed on the far side of some invisible veil that kept sounds and emotions one giant leap away from her. She had to reach, stretching as far as she could to so much as brush her fingertips against them, and she did not often try. Rather, she stared at them hovering so distant from her as her ladies led her from farewelling the prince to a tea to another luncheon with the queen to a gathering of high Ladies and gossip. Clarity followed, scampering along behind her muted senses as she walked about the sprawling castle.

    The comfort of shadows remained equally elusive and far more tantalizing. Her gaze caressed the darkened portals of retreat and longing reared its head and nipped her heart, proving her only steadfast feeling. It alone had not abandoned her to frolic in some distant other world with the rest of her perceptions.

    She sipped her tea and stroked her harp and made all the appropriate noises. Nurse was taken away and replaced with a proper lady-maid who combed her hair and arranged it, pulled her stay-strings tight, ordered her—their—breakfast, and followed her everywhere she went. She did not snore. She did not seek her own canopied bed built into the corner of Aislynn’s room until Aislynn had already dosed off. The youngest daughter of a long standing but financially unstable marquis, she was ever so grateful for the opportunity and she never stopped twittering.

    Aislynn began feigning tiredness earlier and earlier in the evenings, eager to escape the words falling from her maid’s mouth and tripping over themselves with the force of an avalanche. So each night she sat aside her sketching and her watercolors a few minutes earlier than the precious evening, thus forcing the lady to do the same with her beading and embroidery, until one night Aislynn retired to her bed not sleepy in the least. She lay with her eyes closed, watching colors fade and blend into one another against the black backdrop that was her eyelids. Eventually she heard the lady crawl into her bed and snuff the last candle. Aislynn opened her eyes, but remained curled on her side, Sookie snuggled into a loose ball at the crook of her waist. She reached down one hand and lightly brushed the stiff hair against the guinea pig’s jaw.

    Sookie woke with a vague squeak and crawled up to demand attention at face level. “Shhh,” Aislynn cautioned her pet softly. She ran her fingers through the rodent’s fur, soothing her.

    “My lady? Princess, did you say something?”

    Avril’s voice was soft, soft enough that she might not be sure she had actually heard anything. Aislynn clenched her eyes tight until vibrant oranges and purples swarmed her vision. She held Sookie still and said nothing. Her heart pounded in her chest, longing wrapping its scaly form about her lungs and heart once more. She did not dare move enough to grip the folded knife beneath her pillow, was too frightened of discovery to risk thievery of the moment at the hands of a meddlesome marquis’s daughter.

    Avril said nothing further, and Aislynn heard her settle back beneath her covers. She waited, petting Sookie and counting her breaths for the sound of sleep. After five hundred and twenty-four breaths, the invisible cloud-veil parted and daring returned to her. She gathered Sookie to her bosom and slid from her silk sheets to the thickly carpeted floor. Her slippers were already waiting for her feet; they suffered the soft carpet for but a moment. She took her evening’s silk-wool shawl from the chair and swung it around her shoulders, anchoring it with the same hand that held Sookie.

    “My lady, where are you going?”

    Aislynn’s back went rigid. So many years Nurse had slept through her almost nightly excursions. Never once had the guards or night maids seen her as she wandered about the palace. She turned to face Avril, seeing the curiosity in every line in the girl’s face, the starched ruffle about her nightcap highlighting her plainness without costume. She clutched her heavy velvet dressing gown before her.

    “To the gardens. Go back to sleep, Avril. I shall return shortly; there is no reason that you should lose sleep because my feet are restless.”

    “Nonsense, Princess. You should not go alone.”

    She hugged Sookie tighter. “There is nowhere in this palace that I might be alone, Avril. I shall not get lost from here to the gardens. There are guards and watchers at every turn.”

    “Exactly. It would not be proper for a young princess to wander about alone with only men’s eyes to see her.” Avril was already wrapped in her dressing gown, the nightcap abandoned on the dressing table; her arm was linked through Aislynn’s and they were walking out the door.

    Aislynn had no time to protest.

    “My eldest sister used to wander the gardens at night,” Avril said. “She used to say that a rose in full bloom cut beneath the moon brought good luck, and every day there was a new rose in a slender vase on the table. I always tried to stay awake to go with her, but I never could. This will be almost the same! Why, we can gather roses for the queen and other ladies.”

    She tried to steer Aislynn toward the main gardens, but the princess moved toward a different turn. Avril tugged her toward the larger corridor and Aislynn stopped. The mist surrounding her vision and clouding her ears seemed gone. She felt her old habits calling her like a lodestone calls north. “I am not going to those gardens. Go if you wish and gather roses. I wish to see other gardens in the quiet of night.”

    The passages and turns had never felt so long to Aislynn as she led Avril through to the proper door outside.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen these gardens, Princess. I don’t think I’ve ever been to this part of the palace. How long has it been open?”

    “Since we were children. The garden is this way.”

    Avril finally let her arm go once they were within the falls of plants. Lilac bushes marked the entrance into the mazelike garden. Stiff rosebushes grew nearly as high as their heads, lining the pathways of smooth steppingstones. Alcoves of blooming trees and bushes and bulbs emerged every few feet. The half-full moon in the center of the sky cast shadows that were blacker than the sky of not long and bulky.

    Avril cooed and exclaimed at every plant they passed. Aislynn paused every now and then to bury her nose in a rose and pray for patience. She cuddled Sookie beneath her chin and waited. When Avril turned her back for the third time to examine a guelder rose surrounded by lilies and snapdragons, Aislynn was finally able to back around one corner and then take another and another until she was sure Avril was thwarted, at least for a moment. A moment was all she wanted.

    She took the appropriate paths past foxglove and dahlias and angel’s trumpets until she was up against the limestone wall of the palace. A lone figure stood half slumped against it, beside a boarded up window.

    “You’ve become a princess,” he said as she drew close.

    She gave over a squirming Sookie, savoring the slight contact of a brush of her fingers against Brendan’s. “Have I?”

    He took the pet and cradled it like an infant, tickling its belly. “You outshone even the queen.”

    She thought of the gala, of the expression she had just glimpsed in his eyes. She recognized it now as sorrow. “I don’t want to be a princess any more.”

    Brendan let Sookie scamper to the ground. In the distance, they both heard Aislynn’s name being called. The princess put her back against the wall and crossed her arms.

    “You did want to before?”

    She looked over at him, studying his familiar features in the white light. The moon cast stronger shadows on his face than fire did, she noted. His face seemed harsher, more chiseled as though he were a statue in her father’s gallery come to life. “I didn’t know what it was before.”

    He turned so that his shoulder leaned against the wall and he faced her, blocking the moon. Shadow suited his face even more than fire. The lines softened and his eyes darkened. “Some of us don’t have a choice, Lynn. I could do something great and earn at least a knighthood from your father.”

    “Don’t you dare, Brendan!” She pressed her hand against his mouth, her brows scrunching above her eyes. “I don’t think I could bear seeing you bow before me and present some useless gift to try and win my favor.”

    “I could,” he said through her fingers. “But you cannot step down. You must be the princess and then you will be queen.”

    “Princess? Why, I think I have taken a wrong turn! Why, these are lovely honeysuckles! Where are you my lady, you absolutely must see these!”

    “Then I have to go. You heard; I absolutely must see the honeysuckles and sailor’s pipe you told me to have the gardener put around the alyssum last year.”

    But Brendan held on to her hand. “I would be proud to serve such a princess,” he said. Then he fell to one knee and bowed his head over her hand. “It would be an honor to bow to you before all and sundry.”

    “Princess?” The voice was too close now.

    Aislynn felt the walls of one dream shattering and crumbling to lay the foundation of another she was not sure she wanted. His fingers—stronger than the prince’s, warmer than the prince’s—gripped hers slightly before letting her go. “Run along, little princess, before your lady there dies of fright for losing you or dies of wonder at the sight of flowers in a garden.”

    He handed her up Sookie, and after gifting the rodent with a final pat, he swung Aislynn about and swatted the back of her thigh. “Go on,” he whispered.

    She stumbled forward a step or two, trying to register the shock that vibrated through her body. No one had ever touched her in such a way. He had lifted her onto a horse, even held her about her thighs to reach an apple once, but never swatted her. She was about to turn and glare, perhaps stick out her tongue, when Avril appeared in the opening before her.

    “Why, here you are, Princess! I have found you at last. What is back here than took you away from me?”

    “There was,” what was there? She cuddled Sookie beneath her chin. “Bluebells. Along the wall. I wanted to see them in the dark. Come, I am tired now. I have walked sufficiently for this night. Let us return.”

    Before Avril could contradict, Aislynn pulled her back into the maze and away from the tower and her dream-friend. Next time she would have to make sure Avril was asleep before she came out; she had a few things to say to her nighttime companion that called for security. Besides, the densely real body next to hers as she made her way back through the corridors and hallways back to her chambers was wrong and intrusive on moments that had once been ephemeral and precious.

    * * *
    The day the queen sought Aislynn out to begin wedding preparations, she decided to thwart the shackles Lady Avril represented. She had seen Brendan in the light of day twice since seeing him in the light of the moon. Once, when her mother had put on a parade down the king’s road through the city. A duchess had leaned over and complimented a shop as they passed, and the queen had had the carriage stop. The entire entourage had alighted to investigate the merchants who had earned such praise from the duchess, best friend to the queen.

    The inside was spacious with lavish displays of raw gems and metals along side finished pieces of excellent craftsmanship. Wired caps of various metals with inlayed gemstones, brooches with drooping strings of pearls or carved beads, necklaces of wide, geometrical links or pendants on thick or thin chains, rings and earrings, all were on display. Tables and baskets were covered and obscured in swaths of silks and velvets, the arrangements on top of them chosen to be enhanced by the dramatic color of the cloth. Aislynn breathed in the scent of cinnamon and apples, feeling her eyes wake and peer around. She felt as though she had entered a new world, one there were no words for. It was exotic and spicy. It was a private delight stumbled upon while at her mother’s side.

    The proprietor had bowed and graciously received the queen and her entourage, providing seats and wine for their comfort. When Aislynn had looked up to smile in thanks at the aging man, she glimpsed a movement in a shadowy corner. Brendan hesitated in the doorway, then backed quietly out—though not without a smile and a nod for the princess. She sat stunned, watching him retreat farther into darkness.

    Her mother demanded answers from their gracious host, the strength in her words lashing at Aislynn’s daydream. She remembered the wine—a golden goblet, half filled—and sipped at it. Impressed by the merchant, the queen ordered a detailed brooch set on the spot, specifically desiring strings of pearls and gold beads carved in the likeness of roses. Amethysts would form the main bulk of the pins.

    Aislynn handed off her wine to one of her mother’s friends and gestured to Lady Avril. Not waiting to watch the other woman stand and follow, Aislynn began a slow procession about the shop. She admired the jewelry and headdresses, her ears closed to Avril’s constant exclamations. Near the back, where the shadows just barely brushed the hem of her skirts, Aislynn discovered the sticks. Some were wood, some were onyx and jade, others were of metal, and all were strung with beads and gems, some drooping, others in ornate constructions like single-pronged combs. She fingered through them, curious as to why they were so nearly hidden away near the back door. She reached for one, a red jade stick with four strands of drooping copper beads and emeralds.

    “Why, how lovely!”

    Aislynn’s fingers slid away, the strands falling from her fingertips and sliding back in among others of similar design and arrangement.

    “Why, I’ve never seen anything like them!”

    Aislynn closed her eyes and brought her hand back to clutch its partner at her waist. Avril’s words battered into her head when the only sounds she wished to hear were the soothing melodies of human silence.

    “The princess is welcome to any of the treasures within these walls.” His voice was slow and had a slight accent she had never heard before. She turned toward him with a smile on her lips.

    “Do you wish for something?” the queen asked, gesturing about the room. “You may have it if you do.”

    Aislynn’s gaze slid to her mother, then around the store. She could not meet the merchant’s brown eyes again; she knew what they looked like twenty years ago, she knew what they looked like in firelight, in moonlight, in shadow. She turned. On an octagonal table was arranged a case of slashed black velvet; gem-toned silks peeked through around the metallic bands of rings. She took up the one in the center. Gold with a long amethyst in the center, seed pearls on either side. It would compliment her present gown of green-patterned violet brocade well.
    “This,” she said, extending the ring to the proprietor. He smiled and slid the ring onto her middle finger.

    The queen nodded. “Apply to the king’s steward for payment,” she said, holding out a gold seal hung on red ribbon with its tassel swinging beneath it. “You will also receive an initial payment for the brooches, the remainder when the piece is completed.”

    The man bowed. “Of course, Majesty. Such is the way of business. I shall strive to make the piece worthy of your eyes.”

    The queen nodded and led the group of ladies back out into the sunlight. “A profitable stop, to be sure,” she said as they arranged themselves once more in the massive carriage.

    “Carved roses, and vines around the amethysts? Highness, you have given the man quite the challenge.”

    “Ah, but Elaine, you recommended him. If he proves competent, I may have further use for him.”

    The ladies all laughed as the team of six white horses pulled the coach along the street.

    * * *
    The next time she had seen Brendan was in the courtyard of the palace. The court of high and low nobles had adjourned to the yard to enjoy one among the last of summer’s long days, and a party grew out of it. Musicians settled themselves against the walls and trees, strumming and humming, fingers dancing over holes in bronze, silver, and wooden instruments. A few performers of tricks and talents arrived and were displaying themselves through the outskirts of the noble gathering.

    Slowly, anyone coming and going from the palace joined in, mingling among the performers and gossiping with peers and acquaintances. Cook sent footmen with trays loaded for the royal family and their express company; food peddlers arrived with wagons filled with pasties and barrels full of mead.

    Aislynn and her own group of six or so younger ladies—daughters of high lords all—moved through the crowd. As a group, they dared stray closer the common ranks, where alone none would have ventured. Here ribbons of gay colors were ornamentation. Their fabrics were still fine, but they lacked the glittering jewels that adorned the gowns Aislynn was used to seeing every day. But they smiled and waved their ribbons through the air, laughed and sang. Their exuberance was like fresh air sweeping through a chamber boarded up for the winter. Aislynn couldn’t help but smile back.

    “Look, Princess, there he is.” A lady touched her shoulder and gestured. “My father has agreed to his suit, and we’re to marry come spring. Isn’t it wonderful? Is he not handsome?”

    Aislynn looked to the man in question, the son of a knight. Tall and graceful, he showed promise of following in his father’s footsteps for a title. She remembered her mother mentioning as much some two or three days prior over a private luncheon. She had nodded over the match, saying that an earl’s third daughter could do far worse.
    “Indeed,” Aislynn replied. “He is as fine of figure as any man here.”

    The ladies all giggled. The noise was akin to Avril’s constant chatter. The princess sighed and began walking once more. She let conversation flow about her, let her own words fall without too much consciousness of what they meant. Such ladies’ chatter rarely meant anything.

    She saw him purchasing something from a vender claiming to have beef and mutton pasties, fresh baked not five minute’s walk away. She joined the ladies’ giggles for a moment when Brendan bit into his snack and juice leaked down his chin. It took both fingers and tongue to hastily clean the mess descending toward his slashed jerkin. The green velvet looked well on him, as did the white silk beneath and molding his legs.

    He smiled and gave a small salute when he saw her laughing at him. She took a step toward him, but a juggler followed by two ladies dancing got in her way. By the time they were gone, so was Brendan. Normality settled about her shoulders like a bearskin cloak, effectively blocking out everything else. Her ladies continued to spew words that were second cousins thrice removed from chickadee chirps, she continued to lead them—only this time back into the safer waters of their own circles—until the queen signaled an end to the evening and retired to dress for dinner.

    Aislynn cast one last, lonely look about the courtyard before she turned to follow her mother inside. In the farthest corners the commoners were cheering their sovereigns, black figures in the darkening sky. Closer, within the range of the tall torches footmen had set up and lit the nobles all bowed as the royal family retreated with their chosen ladies and dinner guests. Aislynn looked, but she did not see Brendan again.