The Sweet Far Thing - Page 70/257

“You’re here at last! Ladies! Ladies, our fine party can begin!”

After the magic has joined us in blissful communion, we own the night. The party spills out of the castle into the blue-tinged forest. Laughing, we play hide-and-seek behind the fir trees and the berry bushes, running merrily across the tangled vines that crisscross the frosty ground. Ann begins to sing. Her voice is lovely but here in the realms it achieves a freedom it does not have in our world. She sings without apology, and the song is like wine, loosening our cares.

Bessie and the other factory girls cheer wildly for her—not with the polite, tempered applause of drawing rooms but with the boisterous, joyful whoops of the music hall. Bessie, Mae, and Mercy have clouded themselves in a glamour of gowns, jewels, and fancy shoes. They’ve never owned such finery before, and it does not matter that it is borrowed by magic; they believe, and the believing changes everything. We’ve the right to dream, and that, I suppose, is the magic’s greatest power: the notion that we can pick possibility from the trees like ripe fruit. We are filled with hope. Alive with transformation. We can become.

“Am I a lady, then?” Mae asks, strutting in her new blue silks.

Bessie shoves her affectionately. “The Queen of Bloody Sheba!” She laughs hard and loud.

Mae shoves her back, a bit less gently. “’Oo are you, then? Prince Albert?”

“Oi!” Mercy chides. “Enuf! It’s a happy occasion, ain’t it?”

Felicity and Pip perform a comical waltz, pretending they are a Mr. Deadly Dull and a Miss Ninny Pants. In a ridiculously stuffy voice, Felicity prattles on about fox hunting—“The fox should be grateful to face our guns, for they are the finest guns in all of society trained on his lowly form. How lucky indeed!”—whilst Pippa bats her lashes and says only, “Why, Mr. Deadly Dull, if you say it’s so, it must be so, for I’m sure I have no opinions of my own upon the subject!” It is rather like Punch and Judy come to life and we laugh till tears fall. Yet for all their silliness, they move beautifully. With exquisite grace, they anticipate each other’s steps, sweeping round and round, Pip’s gems winking in the dust.

Pippa prances about, grabbing each of us in turn for a dance. She sings a merry bit of doggerel. “Oh, I’ve a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore…”

This makes Felicity laugh. “Oh, Pip!”

It’s all the encouragement Pippa needs. Still singing, she pulls Fee into yet another dance. “And if my love won’t be my love, then I will live no more…”

Indeed, Pip is charming at the moment; she’s irresistible. I’ve not always liked her. She can annoy and delight in equal measure. But she saved these girls from a terrible fate. She saved them from the Winterlands, and she means to look after them. The old Pip would never have been able to look beyond her own troubles to help someone else, and that must count for something.

When at last we are exhausted, we sprawl on the cool forest floor. The fir trees stand guard. The jagged-leaved bushes offer a handful of tiny hard berries, no bigger than new peas. It smells like cloves and oranges and musk. Felicity lays her head in Pip’s lap and Pip braids her hair into long, loose plaits. Bessie Timmons eyes them miserably. It is hard to be replaced in Pippa’s affections.

Sparkling lights appear on the thick boughs of a fir.

“What’s that?” Mae rushes to the tree and the lights fly away to another tree branch.

We follow them. Upon closer inspection, I see that they are not lights at all, but small fairylike creatures. They flit from branch to branch, and the tree swirls with movement.

“You have magic,” they call. “We can feel it.”

“Yes, what of it?” Felicity says, challenging them.

Two of the tiny creatures land on my palm. Their skin is as green as new grass. It glistens as if dew-kissed. They’ve hair like spun gold; it hangs in waves that tumble down their iridescent backs.

“You’re the one—the one who holds the magic,” they whisper, breaking into ecstatic smiles. “You’re beautiful,” they whisper sweetly. “Gift us with your magic.”

Ann has come up behind me. “Oooh, may I see?” She leans close and one of the fairies spits in her face.

“Go away. You are not our beautiful one. Not our magical one.”

“Stop that at once,” I say.

Ann wipes the spit from her cheek. Her skin glistens where it has been. “I have magic, too.”

“You ought to crush them with it,” Felicity says.