Midnight's Song (9 page)

Before I could get too far
out of the yard, I heard a chorus of singing and laughter coming
from across the way. I stopped and let their chorus resonate inside
of me. I knew this song, I realized! I knew it very well.
Enchanted, I crept toward a metal gate that overlooked a small but
lively door at the bottom of some narrow stairs. The windows of the
room were lit and the door itself could hardly enclose the ruckus
going on inside. With each step I took, their symphony only became
louder:

“
In folly he thought he
came, only to bring her rain

But the love was within
wrapped up in the skin

That she’d see to be him
all the same”

I came up to the iron bar and twisted
my fingers around it longingly. My mind flew back to the scenes
around our communal fires when we would sing this song as small
children. Those old fishermen’s wives would take the smallest of us
on their knees and whisper to us the most forbidden of stories.
They were forbidden not because they were dark or evil – but
because each of us knew that they were far too otherworldly to
belong to our people. My heart thumped as I remembered my mother
telling me the story of a mythical prince who hid among the humans
to find his betrothed.

“
And he came to her after watching
over her during the long night; realizing that their lives would
never be the same and asking for her hand.”
I remembered my mother telling me the story. I remembered how
she would stop in the middle of it to softly trace my forehead and
kiss the tip of my nose.

“
Mama, finish your story! Finish the story!”
I pleaded as she tickled my tummy.
“
What happens to the
princess?”

“
Well my beautiful Elissa,”
she would
tell me lovingly. “
This is where the story
ends. You will simply have to find out what happens when you become
the princess yourself!”
Then, she would
cocoon the bedcovers around my body and kiss me
goodnight.

I cracked the gate and
made my way down the steps toward the commotion. I found myself
standing at a ramshackle wooden door that was literally pulsing at
the velocity of the music and dancing behind it. Lacking all
discretion, I opened the door and stepped inside.

At first glance, the
room inside was stirring with people that were drinking and
laughing merrily. Each person wore a labor uniform.
Ah,
I realized,
this is the servants’ quarters.
I blended in quite well wearing my similar, plain
attire. No one seeming to notice my presence, I retracted to the
corner and soaked in the scene. These people were closer to my true
caste than anyone here. It gave me a temporary sense of
home.

“Have ya seen Lady Beeti
today?” A stout woman remarked over a glass of cheap wine. She
lounged in a wooden chair, propping her swollen feet on the table.
The servant next to her nodded in agreement.

“Aye. She’s has been
stirrin’ up quite a lot lately.” The other agreed. A third servant
hovered over them, older and plumper than the others.

“The woman simply can’t stand the idea
of holding her own. She believes she may have very well met her
match in this new one.” She remarked.

“I don’t think that we
should worry about the young one bein’ a match!” the stout woman
expressed. “This girl is stronger than the rest. She’s one of us ya
know. Probably raised with the same principles and with the same
stories that we were.”

I held my breath.
These people were talking about
me.

“You mean like
the
monsters of old?
” Her plump friend jovially replied. The two that were
sitting down clanked their glasses together and smiled as they took
a sip.

“Those old
creatures, my Mum talked about em’ for days on end!
‘
They’re comin’ for us!’
She would always say. ‘
They could be walkin’ with ye this very moment for all I
know!’”
The second servant laughed in
reply.

Their conversation
quieted and I scanned the room, still unnoticed by those around me.
The door opposite of the one I had come in swung open. Immediately,
I caught a glimpse of a familiar face.
Two
familiar faces, actually. A
handsome, dark-complexioned boy came in and stood alongside a
pleasant-faced blonde. I hushed myself as I realized the identities
of the two. It was Emily Berry, my 11
^th
caste maid – and Jackoby
Nielsen; a servant whose place was one caste beneath
hers.

Neither of them touched or
even said very much; but I could see in those few moments that they
both looked to each other with a certain yearning in their eyes. It
was also obvious that they wanted to be at least somewhat
alone.

So, slowly – I began
backing away. I took one step, then another – hopefully in an
attempt to make it back out the door unnoticed. But, apparently I
had backed away too far; as I ended up falling backwards onto a
stack of chairs and a broom in the corner and toppling onto the
floor.

When it was over, I was
fine. Every eye wandered up from where it was and looked at me. I
stood there, motionlessly waiting to be yelled at. A few opened
their mouths as if to scold; but everyone suddenly quieted when
they realized who I was. Emily quickly looked toward me in shock,
leaving Jackoby’s side and grasping me by the wrist before she
whisked me into the hallway outside.

“What are you doing here?” She
whispered to me in distress.

“I was….I was just looking around is
all,” I meekly replied.

The look of distress on her face
didn’t lessen in the least. Her hands remained tightly around my
wrists. Had I really done something that terrible? I bit my lower
lip tightly, nervously gnawing until I began to taste my own
blood.

“How much did you see of
Jackoby and I?” She frantically questioned.

I gave her a mixed look.
Why did it matter what I had seen? What was the danger here? Then I
realized what she was actually getting at. Emily didn’t care that I
had been in the servant’s quarters – she was worried that I was
going to tell someone that I had seen her with another servant. It
didn’t take long to do the math. Emily was a caste above Jackoby,
and she worked in the same home. She would face severe consequences
if anyone so much as breathed the notion that she and another
worker were in love!

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” I
whispered in return. Whatever was going on between them; her secret
was safe with me. Emily quickly fell at ease.

“Well then,” she told me,
relieved. “Let me sneak you to your room. I don’t think any of the
Ladies would take well to knowing either one of us had been seen
together in the servants’ quarters.”

I nodded in silent
agreement. I surely didn’t want Emily to get in trouble by any
means either; so we quickly scampered away. On our way out, she led
me up several hidden walkways and stairwells that seemed to be for
the servants exclusively. They certainly weren’t as lavish as those
meant for the Devereauxs – that was for sure. But, they were vast
and cavernous.

Though I was now shrouded by the
protection of being in a place where a Devereaux would not dare go;
Emily still took care – and perhaps even pleasure – in showing me
through the most secret of the passages. As she smuggled me back to
my room in this way; I found myself getting a grander “tour,” of
the manor than Wren could ever have given me.

“You wouldn’t
believe how far these passages go,” Emily told me in a whisper,
guiding me through a dreary hallway by candlelight. “The Devereaux
Manor is hundreds of years old. There used to be tunnels – even
living spaces for the servants and workers – that spanned for miles
underground. Some say that the tunnels are still there,” she
explained. A clever smile rolled across her expression. “Some even
say that the deepest parts of the tunnels contain doors to another
world
.”

I grinned. We’d both grown up with the
same stories. Whether they were true or not, it pleased me to know
that the others had shared in them the same way. Hearing them again
and again like this gave me a strange taste of home.

We neared a door that led back into
the main hallway. Emily quickly pulled a key from her apron and
motioned for me to follow behind. My room was in the next hallway,
she said, but there was no door leading straight from here to
there. Beeti’s chambers were the first we’d have to pass, so it was
imperative we got by without making a sound. At first, we crept
through the hall without a single hitch. But, once we reached the
end of the hallway Beeti’s doorknob began to noisily
twist.

“
RUN!”
Emily mouthed, taking my hand
and bolting. We could hear thudding far behind us, Beeti’s shrill
voice muttering unmentionable words and sounds. Before she could
even spot us, we found the door to my room. Emily quickly jabbed
the key into the lock, turned it and shoved me through the door. We
leaned against it breathlessly, waiting for the grumbling woman to
leave.

Beeti paced around the hallway for a
few seconds, mumbling a few curses and speculative words. Then, she
left. Emily and I looked at each other in triumph. We’d been too
quick for her prying eyes, too crafty to be spotted. If Beeti was
going to accuse us of something, she certainly couldn’t now! We had
actually done it – it seemed – we had outsmarted the perfumed
monster that came preying from her chambers.

After a minute or
two in silence, Emily and I exchanged glances and fell into intense
laughter. I couldn’t believe it! For the first time in so many
months, I was
genuinely
laughing. It’d be so long since I’d felt such
joy. I fell on my bed in hysterics, reliving the last few moments
of our adventure.

“Did you hear her grumbling?” I
laughed, “She sounded like an angry rhinoceros!”

“Oh I know!” Emily exclaimed, falling
against the wall herself, “Elissa, you know how to make me feel
like a young girl,” she then quieted. The moment suddenly took on a
more sober tone. “Like the young girl I could’ve never
been.”

There was a long pause. I could see
her pain. I understood it.

“How old are you?” I
suddenly spoke up in curiosity.

“I’m 19, but almost 20 now.” She
softly replied.

In that moment, she
suddenly realized what she was doing – I suppose – because she
picked herself up and carried on as if she felt she needed to shove
the last few emotional moments we had shared into a bottle. She
seemed to be disappointed now – even embarrassed. Emily hovered
over my bed, throwing a nightgown at me in an attempt to
compensate. “You should get dressed now, milady. I apologize for
being too personal. It’s not my place.”

I gave her a strange
look. “You don’t need to.” I told her. “You’re of the
11
^th
,
and I of the 10
^th
. We grew up with the same
values and stories. We’re the same
.”

“Stories,” she sighed, a smile
creeping across the corner of her lips. “I know those. They are
what give us hope when the mortal world only gives us bitter
change. I can’t help but feel like they mean something more. Is
that how you feel, Elissa?”

“As a child I loved them
very much,” I began, searching for the words to say. “But I will
admit that I am a skeptical person. I believe them mostly to be
fairy tales.”

“Oh, but Elissa!
That is the very nature of these tales! The magic of fairy tales
seems improbable – but so does love and life. The magic of a tale
is something that you can’t see, but you know is there. It teaches
us to have
faith
in the
real
magic of life. It teaches us to stand up and face the things
that we
don’t
understand so that one day we
do!
”

Emily was convinced of a
faith and love stronger than my largest doubt. Her conviction
brought me back to the communal fires in my village, filled with
their fish tales. I remembered how perplexed I was by them;
especially the ones about the monsters “in human skin.” Even the
scariest parts of the stories intrigued me. I was always curious
about them, even now.

“Emily, what do you believe about
those tales…the ones about the ‘monsters,’ that hide among us? The
ones that disguise themselves in human skin?”

She looked to me for a moment, pausing
before her next breath. She knew what I was speaking of, and she
knew it well.

“I don’t know what I
believe about them,” she began. “Mum used to tell me that they
weren’t truly monsters…but they were
guardians
of the people. From
another place…another world. She always warned me that they could
come back…to be ready. I still don’t know if I believe it. I know
it helped me learn to believe in what I cannot see myself…” She
trailed off when she felt her voice work into a weak tremble. “I
truly miss her.”