Phoenix and Ashes (55 page)

Alison
had elected to wear the strangest costume of all, so far as Eleanor was
concerned—and it gave her the most peculiar and uneasy feeling when she
saw it. Alison’s costume was a hooded, black velvet gown, something like
a monk’s robe, but lined in scarlet satin. There was something
embroidered on it in black silk—not a discernable pattern, more like
symbols of some sort, but the black-on-black of the silk made it nearly
impossible to tell
what
it was. Around her waist she wore a very odd
belt, for all the world like a hangman’s rope, but made of silk. A
floor-length, black veil, edged in jet beads, went over everything, and an odd
tiara of stars held the veil in place.

When
Howse asked, timidly, who Alison was portraying, Alison had just smiled, and
said, lightly, “The Queen of the Night, of course. From Mozart’s
opera
The Magic Flute
. I doubt anyone else will think of it, and
there’s value in novelty.”

At
least the costume didn’t require any special wigs or hairstyles, nor did
it require a full hour to put on. Even if she did look like Lady Death…

Though
it did make Eleanor wonder, was this Alison’s ritual robe? Some people
liked to wear such things, although they weren’t necessary, and
didn’t contribute any to the efficacy of a spell, unless the wearer had
put spells or protections into the robes before she put them on.

If
so, Eleanor could hardly imagine the cheek to wear such a thing to a fancy-dress
ball.

When
the three of them finally sailed out the door, it was a distinct relief. They
were motored away by Alison’s escort, Warrick Locke, who himself was
costumed as some sort of wizard. When they were safely in the automobile, Howse
closed the door behind them.

“I
have a headache,” she declared, staring at Eleanor. “I am going to
wait in Madame’s room.”

Eleanor
shrugged. “I think that would be a good idea,” she said, in a
neutral voice. “They won’t be back for hours, and you’ll need
to be ready when they return.”

She,
of course, knew exactly what Howse was going to do. She was going to nap on
Alison’s bed—much more comfortable than her own. Since this was
exactly what Eleanor wanted her to do, she simply waited until she
couldn’t hear any more movement overhead, then went to the kitchen and
knelt beside the hearthstone.

The
flames of the fire flared up as she breathed the first words of her spell, and
a half dozen Salamanders burst out of the heart of the fire to slither up her
arms and entwine themselves around her neck.

Slowly,
carefully, Eleanor insinuated herself into the complex weave of the binding
spell. With a word here, and a tweak there, she stretched it, rearranged it,
suggested to it that its territory was not merely this house and grounds, but
the entire county. She felt the spell respond, sluggishly, but by no means as
slowly as it had the first time she had done this.
Make this your boundary
until midnight
, she suggested to it.

With
a shake, like a reluctant dog, the spell grumbled, stretched, and settled into
its new configurations. With a final word to hold the new shape in place, she
came out of her half-trance, and got to her feet with a feeling of distinct
triumph. A spell, properly speaking, was a
process
and not a
thing
—but
the ones that Alison had set on her certainly felt like things—things
with lives of their own, and rudimentary personalities. Unpleasant
personalities, but that was only to be expected.

She
cocked an ear to the rooms overhead, and heard nothing. Eagerness took over,
and unwilling to wait another moment, she slipped the latch of the kitchen door
and closed it behind herself, then flew out of the garden gate and down the
street to Sarah’s cottage.

Other
than a couple of men entering the Broom pub, there wasn’t anyone else
about. However much excitement the ball had generated in the Robinson
household, for the rest of the village this were no differences between tonight
and any other Saturday. Which was just as well, since the last thing she wanted
was a lot of coming and going that might disturb Miss Howse’s slumber.

Feeling
excitement and anticipation rising in her and threatening to boil over, she ran
for all she was worth. She had not dared, until this moment, truly to believe
that she was going to be able to
do
this. So many things in her life
had been taken or thwarted that she had been afraid to put too much hope into
this moment—

—this
moment when she would live, for a few hours, the life she
should
have
had. When she would be herself, Miss Eleanor Robinson, not Ellie the
maid-of-all-work, with nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of drudgery in
the house that should have been hers.

She
managed to control herself when she reached Sarah’s door, enough so that
she paused, caught her breath, and after a preliminary tap and the expected
response of “Come!” she opened the door quite demurely.

Only
to gasp with shock, surprise, and delight at the vision that met her widening
eyes.

“Like
it, do you?” Sarah asked, a twinkle in her eyes and a pardonably smug expression
on her face. “Not a bad job, if I do say so myself. And I do!”

Arrayed
on an improvised dressmaker’s-form made of a broomstick and a stuffed
sack, was every little girl’s dream of a fairy dress, the sort of thing
that bedazzled young eyes believe in when they see the Fairy Princess at the
Christmas pantomime. Only this gown was real, and not cheap muslin and
machine-lace.

It
had been a sort of ivory the last time Eleanor saw it—now it was a soft
rose pink. “How did you change the color?” she stammered.

Sarah
rubbed the side of her nose, and looked suitably smug. “Do you know,
there’s an old spell in my grimoire that does just that? Temporary, of
course, but temporary is all you need, and after I took some thought about it,
it seemed to me that a fairy princess was a better costume choice than Princess
Victoria. The wings I made; you know what I always tell you—it’s
easier to change what’s there than make new. I expect there won’t
be another fairy princess in the lot; those girls have forgotten magic by now,
and think they’re too old for fairies. You’ll look nothing like
yourself.”

Little
bouquets of rosebuds ornamented the skirt, here and there, and a garland of
them ran from the right shoulder to the left hip. A pair of tiny, pink gauze
wings sprang from the shoulders in the back. Waiting on the table was a wreath
of rosebuds to wear in her hair, and a pair of pink silk opera gloves to cover
her work-roughened hands. The left, of course, had only three fingers.

“What
am I going to do for shoes?” she asked, suddenly, aware that her clumsy
and well-worn walking shoes would ruin the entire effect of this exquisite
gown. “And stockings—”

“Ah,
that’s where a little more magic and illusion come in,” Sarah
replied, with a sly wink. “Strip to your shift, my girl. I have some work
to do yet.”

Sarah
was as good as her word. A handful of rose-petals pressed against each shoe, a
breath of magic and a muttered charm—and the square-toed, worn brown
leather was magically transmuted to a pair of the most delicate silk slippers
Eleanor had ever seen, with pink stockings that matched the gown taking the
place of the much-darned cotton stockings she had been wearing. She
couldn’t see any flaw in the illusion, though if she closed her eyes she
knew very well she was still wearing her old stockings and shoes. Which was not
at all a bad thing; they might be worn nearly to bits, but they were
comfortable, which was more than could be said of most fashionable shoes.

With
that transformation complete, the dressing began, though it didn’t take
more than a fraction of the time it had taken to dress her stepsisters.
Petticoats and gown went on over her old underclothing; Sarah re-attached the
garland of roses, and then, with practiced fingers, put up her hair and pinned
the wreath to it. She pulled on the gloves—and it was done.

“Well!
If I were a little girl or a young man, I would be half in love with
you!” Sarah exclaimed, as she shed her skirt and apron to don a pair of
antique breeches and a rusty woolen uniform coat. She brushed her hands over
herself from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and Eleanor felt
another breath of power flit by her—

And
in Sarah’s place was a solemn faced, gray-haired man, in rose-red livery
sporting more braid and gold buttons than any general could boast.
“There’s your invitation,” said Sarah’s voice, coming
from the man’s mouth—a distinctly disorienting proposition.
“He” pointed at the mantelpiece, where the precious envelope was
held securely between two jam-jars full of water and rosebuds. “You get
that invitation, take a look in the mirror in the corner there to make sure I
haven’t forgotten anything, while I get your ‘carriage,’
milady. And don’t forget. Midnight is as late as you can go, because that’s
the longest I can hold the illusions.”

A
careful check of as much of herself as she could see in Sarah’s tiny
mirror that hung over her washstand seemed to indicate that Sarah had been her
usual efficient self. There was nothing to strike a false note, and Eleanor
began to feel quite shivery with anticipation when she heard the sound of a
horse’s hooves and a low whistle just outside Sarah’s door. She
seized the invitation and hurried outside.

She
hesitated a moment at the door itself, since she was wider than the doorway
now, but the wide skirt wasn’t as difficult to maneuver as she had feared
it would be. She got through without even catching the lace on her flounces.

And
there, to her absolutely astonished gaze, was the sort of open carriage
that—according to the pictures she had seen—the King used on state
occasions, only a bit smaller. In the light coming from the two little lamps on
either side of the driver’s box, she could tell that it was rose-red in color,
with gilded ornamentation. “Sarah” sat on the driver’s box,
and expertly handled the reins of the snow-white horse that was harnessed to
this confection by rose-red and gilded traces.

“It’s
an old pony-cart and plow-horse I borrowed from a friend.”

“Sarah”
said, laughing at Eleanor’s expression. “Be careful getting in;
it’s nowhere near as padded as it looks to be.”

She
was careful getting in, feeling the old, worn wood under the glove on her hand
where her eyes told her there was bright gilding and slick paint. The lines of
the carriage conformed to the shape of the old pony-cart beneath the
illusion—she knew from her studies that the less a magician had to
create
,
the better an illusion was, and here was the proof of that.

“Sarah”
chirruped to the horse, who moved out with brisk dignity. Eleanor kept her
hands tightly folded in her lap with her hands atop the precious invitation.
She wished it weren’t dark. She really felt like a fairy princess. She
wished that she could see, and yes, be seen. In this guise, she would be like a
sort of pantomime character herself, and it would have been a great deal of fun
to act that way.

But
no one came out of or went into the pub or the inn as they passed, and no
little face peered down out of a bedroom window to gape in surprise. Probably
Sarah was using a little more magic to make sure no one saw
them—understandable, if disappointing.

What
would I have thought as a little girl, if I had looked out a window and seen a
fairy princess passing by in her carriage
?
I’d have believed in
fairies so firmly that nothing could have dissuaded me. Perhaps, then, it was
just as well—because little girls now were facing the loss of fathers,
brothers, uncles, and were in dire need of magic that she could not supply. To
send one looking for a fairy to conjure back her lost papa or brother would
have been intolerably cruel
.

The
horse broke into a trot once they were out of the village; where an old horse
got that kind of energy, Eleanor couldn’t guess. More magic? Or was the
old fellow just feeling frisky in the cool of the evening? Whichever it was,
the carriage rattled merrily down the road to Longacre Park, and in a much
shorter time than Eleanor would have guessed, it turned in through the huge
wrought-iron gates and rolled onto a smooth graveled driveway.

The
manor loomed up at the top of a shallow rise ahead of them, all lit up for the
grand occasion, with lanterns set out along the staircase to light the way up.
Eleanor felt her stomach clench as she gazed up at the enormous structure,
feeling suddenly altogether out of her class. How on earth did the Fenyxes keep
that enormous barn of a building up? Did they have an army of servants? Was all
of that truly just to support two people, Reggie and his mother?

You
have every right to be here
, she told herself sternly, as the carriage
drew nearer and nearer to the broad double staircases leading down to the
drive, each one curving down from the side.
You have an invitation, and
what’s more, you have more right to be here than Alison and her brats
.

By
repeating this to herself, over and over, by the time they reached the bottom
of the staircases, she had some of her composure back.

Or
at least, the illusion of composure.

There
was a liveried footman—or foot-
boy
would probably be more
accurate—waiting beneath the twin lamps at the foot of the stairs. He
didn’t even blink when Sarah brought the carriage to a halt, even though
most guests were arriving by motorcar. He simply waited while Sarah got down,
opened the carriage door, and handed her out; then he took Eleanor’s hand
and directed her to the bottom of the stairs, as if he had been doing this sort
of thing all his life.