Straying From the Path (5 page)

During the day, I see the faces of a thousand children, and I don’t see them anymore. I look for the stories, for the wishes hiding behind their eyes. When Paige—the small plump woman with the big eyes who wears a white wig and draws in wrinkles around her eyes so she can play the fairy godmother—waves her wand and asks the children to make a wish, what do they imagine, and is it something I can see? What will the tiara show me?

A family with children gets off the streets in time for Christmas.

An overlooked youngest daughter gets the lead in the school play.

A battered woman presses charges.

I move through my days like a ghost. No matter how many women and girls I see through the tiara, there are always more. The scenes never slow, never stop. I think if I do this enough, if I work hard enough, I’ll make all the wishes come true.

It’s bound to happen, sooner or later, that I see someone I recognize. Someone I know, at least a little.

The scene is a hospital bed. On the table beside the bed is a picture of a deathly sick little girl in a wheelchair. Beside her kneels a beautiful Cinderella in a blue satin gown, holding her hand, smiling brilliantly for the camera. That isn’t me, I tell myself. That’s a character. In the bed lies Abby, a ventilator protruding from her mouth and taped in place, a dozen wires trailing from her body. A monitor beeps, very slowly. Beside the bed sits her aunt, Christine, leaning her elbows on the mattress beside the wasted body, her hands clasped and head bowed in prayer.

Christine is making a wish:
Please God, take me instead.

I grab the tiara off my head so quickly it tangles in my hair. Heart racing, I throw it on the floor, stare at it. A dryness makes my eyes hurt.

Afraid to touch it, I leave it on the floor for a week, giving it wide berth as I move around the apartment in the course of my day. My muscles ache with fear, even as some small sense tells me that the wish hasn’t been granted.

It can’t be granted. It’s a terrible wish. Unless it isn’t. If she’s willing to make that wish, if I have the power to grant it, who am I to deny it?

I haven’t been to an audition in months. Audrey’s stopped asking if I want to go to dinner. Barry, who sometimes plays Prince Charming opposite me, has stopped asking me what’s wrong after I tell him nothing a dozen times. His smile turns fake, and he stops talking to me at all. I only notice as a vague observation.

I only ever feel real when I’m Cinderella. But I still can’t touch the tiara on my apartment floor. I wait for the letter telling me Abby has died. It doesn’t come.

I wish . . .

And I realize how long it’s been since I’ve even done that. I used to have lots of wishes. But I never see myself in the tiara.

For the first time in ages, I sneak into the park after closing and go to the wishing well.

Leaning on the stone wall, my chin bends almost to my chest, and my shoulders slump with the weight of the world.

“I don’t know what to do.” I whisper, but even then my voice echoes. The stone carries it down to the thin layer of water pooling on the concrete at the bottom. The nights are getting cooler. I shiver. I should bring my coat, if I’m going to come out here. I should go back, go home. But what’s the point? I’d see that thing on my floor. I don’t want to see it ever again.

What else do I have? I take stock: what else can I ever do in this world that would measure up to what I’ve accomplished waving my magic wand, making wishes come true?

“What’s wrong?”

I look behind me, assuming someone has snuck up, emerging from shadows. Security, maybe. If I get caught, I’ll be fired. But no one’s there.

“I’m right here.”

The voice comes from the well. Androgynous, a soft contralto, echoing then dissipating. If I hadn’t been sitting right in this spot, I might not have heard it at all.

“Oh my God,” I murmur.

The wishing well chuckles. “Don’t sound so shocked.”

“But—” I close my eyes, shake my head. The well. Talking to me. That’s it, I’m crazy.

“I know who you are. What you’ve been doing. You aren’t really surprised at all.”

It’s right, of course. “If you know all that, then you know what’s wrong.”

“Yes,” it says. It might even sound a little sad.

I lean forward. “You know where it came from, don’t you? You know who gave it to me.”

“Yes.”

“I want to give it back. I have to give it back, find whoever gave it to me, wherever it came from, and give it back.” I grip the wall, urgency firing my nerves. I can solve the mystery. I can be free. “Tell me where that thing came from.”

It remains silent for so long, I start to think I’ve imagined it. The well doesn’t speak, it’s my own addled mind.

Then it says, “It came from me.”

I stare into the shadowed space. “You?”

“It’s the same magic, after all. Granting wishes.”

“Then I’ll bring it back, I’ll throw it in—”

“Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It came from me, but it can’t come back. I didn’t give it to you.”

“Then who did?” My voice is taut, nearly hysterical.

“The girl who left it in your locker.”

It speaks in riddles. Of course it does. “I don’t understand.”

“The tiara came from me, but it’s been handed down ever since, for more than fifty years now. From girl to girl to girl. From Cinderellas to Snow Whites to Sleeping Beauties and back again.”

“But why? Why did it come to me? There’s a dozen other girls who play Cinderella.”

“But you believe.”

I come to the wishing well. Been doing it all along. I’m marked.

“Then . . . then I have to pass it along, if I don’t want it any more.”

However enigmatic the well is, it seems kind. A voice whispering through a cave on a breeze. “Yes. The wishes aren’t free, Maddie. Each one takes a little bit of you with it. You were never meant to sacrifice yourself for so long. I can even tell you who comes here to make wishes, who you can give it to next. Then you can replenish what you’ve given away.”

“How?”

“You have to remember your own dreams.”

So. Time to write a note, tie it to the tiara, and hide it in a locker. Find the person who believes like I do, who sneaks into the park at night to make wishes at the well. Pass the burden on to her. And when she puts the tiara on her head, will she see Abby’s aunt praying by the hospital bed, wishing away her own life? Will the next girl grant that wish?

“What’s your dream, Maddie?” the well breathes. A chill air rises from it.

I stare vacantly at the stones on the wall, concrete painted with fake lichens. “I don’t remember.”

“It’s not so hard to give the power up,” it says, sounding frustrated now. “Sara, who plays Snow White in the parades. Choose her.”

And while I wait, frozen, unable to decide, maybe Abby will die, taking the decision out of my hands. Then we, those of us still living, can all be miserable.

“It’s very cruel,” I say, “To grant someone power, then make sure it kills them.”

“But that’s the way of fairy tales.”

I push myself away from the wall. Travel the cobbled path around the castle, run from the sound of rustling leaves, and flee the park.

Can the princess who wears the tiara ever see herself?

I stand in front of my bathroom mirror and put it on.

The scene has changed, but only a little. Abby looks worse, if that’s possible. Her skin has a yellow cast to it, as if internal organs are in the process of failing. More tubes, more wires, more drip bags are attached to her. Her aunt Christine sits back in her chair, hugging a thick cardigan around her. Abby’s mother leans on the bedside, clinging to the girl’s hand.

The wish is still out there. I see it there, in the mirror in front of me.
Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .

I touch the tiara, preparing to take it off again, knowing the well is right. This isn’t my decision to make. The tiara has spoken. But I don’t have to be the one to see it happen. Let Sara do that.

But I don’t take it off. Blinking, I can bring myself into focus. I study the image: a twenty-one-year-old college dropout with shadowed eyes and gaunt cheeks. I look like one of those girls who starves herself to be thin enough for Hollywood auditions. I haven’t realized I haven’t been eating. Short hair, bleached blond. Pale skin. A crown on my head, its gemstone sparkling. A princess in the midst of her worst challenge, before the happily ever after finds her.

But I can’t see that road before me anymore. I can’t see how my story ends. I only know three things, the fairy tale three: I don’t want Abby to die. I don’t want Christine to die. This power I wear on my head has to be good for something.

I close my eyes and see the hospital room. I hear Christine, wishing in her mind,
Take me instead.

Granting a wish takes a piece of me, that was what the wishing well said. What do I have to give to grant a wish that saves a life? I look in the mirror again, see myself in the room, and think, with all the power of my life,
No, take me.

Abby opens her eyes, and her gaze meets mine, sees me, just before I fall, and the world spins away.

He emerged suddenly from behind a potted shrub. Taking Madeline’s hand, he shouldered her bewildered former partner out of the way and turned her toward the hall where couples gathered for the next figure.

“Ned, fancy meeting you here.” Madeline deftly shifted so that her voluminous skirts were not trod upon.

“Fancy? You’re pleased to see me then?” he said, smiling his insufferably ironic smile.

“Amused is more accurate. You always amuse me.”

“How long has it been? Two, three hundred years? That volta in Florence, wasn’t it?”

“Si, signor. But only two weeks subjective.”

“Ah, yes.” He leaned close, to converse without being overheard. “I’ve been meaning to ask you: have you noticed anything strange on your last few expeditions?”

“Strange?”

“Any doorways you expected to be there not opening. Anyone following you and the like?”

“Just you, Ned.”

He chuckled flatly.

The orchestra’s strings played the opening strains of a Mozart piece. She curtseyed—low enough to allure, but not so low as to unnecessarily expose décolletage. Give a hint, not the secret. Lower the gaze for a demure moment only. Smile, tempt. Ned bowed, a gesture as practiced as hers. Clothed in white silk stockings and velvet breeches, one leg straightened as the other leg stepped back. He made a precise turn of his hand and never broke eye contact.

They raised their arms—their hands never quite touched—and began to dance. Elegant steps made graceful turns, a leisurely pace allowed her to study him. He wore dark green velvet trimmed with white and gold, sea spray of lace at the cuffs and collar. He wore a young man’s short wig powdered to perfection.

“I know why you’re here,” he said, when they stepped close enough for conversation. “You’re after Lady Petulant’s diamond brooch.”

“That would be telling.”

“I’ll bet you I take it first.”

“I’ll make that bet.”

“And whoever wins—”

Opening her fan with a jerk of her wrist, she looked over her shoulder. “Gets the diamond brooch.”

The figure of the dance wheeled her away and gave her to another partner, an old man whose wig was slipping over one ear. She curtseyed, kept one eye on Lady Petulant, holding court over a tray of bonbons and a rat-like lap dog, and the other on Ned.

With a few measures of dancing, a charge of power crept into Madeline’s bones, enough energy to take her anywhere: London 1590. New York 1950. There was power in dancing.

The song drew to a close. Madeline begged off the next, fanning herself and complaining of the heat. Drifting off in a rustle of satin, she moved to the empty chair near Lady Petulant.

“Is this seat taken?”

“Not at all,” the lady said. The diamond, large as a walnut, glittered against the peach-colored satin of her bodice.

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“Quite.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Madeline engaged in harmless conversation, insinuating herself into Lady Petulant’s good graces. The lady was a widow, rich but no longer young. White powder caked the wrinkles of her face. Her fortune was entailed, bestowed upon her heirs and not a second husband, so no suitors paid her court. She was starved for attention.

So when Madeline stopped to chat with her, she was cheerful. When Ned appeared and gave greeting, she was ecstatic.

“I do believe I’ve found the ideal treat for your little dear,” he said, kneeling before her and offering a bite-sized pastry to the dog.

“Why, how thoughtful! Isn’t he a thoughtful gentleman, Frufru darling? Say thank you.” She lifted the creature’s paw and shook it at Ned. “You are too kind!”

Madeline glared at Ned, who winked back.

A servant passed with a silver tray of sweets. When he bowed to offer her one, she took the whole tray. “Marzipan, Lady Petulant?” she said, presenting the tray.

“No thank you, dear. Sticks to my teeth dreadfully.”

“Sherry, Lady Petulant?” Ned put forward a crystal glass which he’d got from God knew where.

“Thank you, that would be lovely.” Lady Petulant took the glass and sipped.

“I’m very sorry, Miss Madeline, but I don’t seem to have an extra glass to offer you.”

“That’s quite all right, sir. I’ve always found sherry to be rather too sweet. Unpalatable, really.”

“Is that so?”

“Hm.” She fanned.

And so it went, until the orchestra roused them with another chord. Lady Petulant gestured a gloved hand toward the open floor.

“You young people should dance. You make such a fine couple.”

“Pardon me?” Ned said.

Madeline fanned faster. “I couldn’t, really.”

“Nonsense. You two obviously know each other quite well. It would please me to watch you dance.”

Madeline’s gaze met Ned’s. She stared in silence, her wit failing her. She didn’t need another dance this evening, and she most certainly did not want to dance with him again.

Giving a little smile that supplanted the stricken look in his eyes, he stood and offered his hand. “I’m game. My lady?”

He’d thought of a plan, obviously. And if he drew her away from Lady Petulant—she would not give up that ground.

The tray of marzipan sat at the very edge of the table between their chairs. As she prepared to stand, she lifted her hand from the arm of her chair, gave her fan a downward flick—and the tray flipped. Miniature daisies and roses shaped in marzipan flew around them. Madeline shrieked, Lady Petulant gasped, the dog barked. Ned took a step back.

A ruckus of servants descended on them. As Madeline turned to avoid them, the dog jumped from Lady Petulant’s lap—for a brief moment, its neck seemed to grow to a foot long—and bit Madeline’s wrist. A spot of red welled through her white glove.

“Ow!” This shriek was genuine.

“Frufru!” Lady Petulant collected the creature and hugged it to her breast. “How very naughty of you, Frufru darling. My dear, are you all right?”

She rubbed her wrist. The blood stain didn’t grow any larger. It was just a scratch. It didn’t even hurt. “I’m—I—” Then again, if she played this right . . .

“I—oh my, I do believe I feel faint.” She put her hand to her neck and willed her face to blush. “Oh!”

She fell on Lady Petulant. With any luck, she crushed Frufru beneath her petticoats. Servants convulsed in a single panicked unit, onlookers gasped, even Ned was there, murmuring and patting her cheek with a cool hand.

Lady Petulant wailed that the poor girl was about to die on top of her. Pressed up against the good lady, Madeline took the opportunity to reach for the brooch. She could slip it off and no one would notice—

The brooch was already gone.

She did not have to feign a stunned limpness when a pair of gallant gentlemen lifted her and carried her to a chaise near a window. Ned was nowhere to be seen. Vials of smelling salts were thrust at her, lavender water sprinkled at her. Someone was wrapping her wrist—still gloved—in a bandage, and someone who looked like a doctor—good God, was the man wielding a razor?—approached.

She shoved away her devoted caretakers and tore off the bandage. “Please, give me air! I’ve recovered my senses. No, really, I have. If-you-please, sir!”

As if nothing had happened, she stood, straightened her bodice over her corset, smoothed her skirts, and opened her fan with a snap.

“I thank you for your attention, but I am quite recovered. Goodbye.”

She marched off in search of Ned.

He was waiting for her toward the back of the hall, a fox’s sly grin on his face. Before she came too close, he turned his cupped hand, showing her a walnut-sized diamond that flashed against the green velvet of his coat.

Turning, he stepped sideways behind the same potted fern where he had ambushed her.

He disappeared utterly.

“Damn him!” Her skirts rustled when she stamped her foot.

Ignoring concerned onlookers and Lady Petulant’s cries after her welfare, she cut across the hall to the glass doors opening to the courtyard behind the hall, and across the courtyard to a hideously baroque statue of Cupid trailing roses off its limbs. She stopped and took a breath, trying to regain her composure. No good brooding now. It was over and done. There would be other times and places to get back at him. Stepping through required calm.

A handful of doorways collected here in this hidden corner of the garden. One led to an alley in Prague 1600; tilting her head one way, she could just make out a dirty cobbled street and the bricks of a Renaissance façade. Another led to a space under a pier in Key West 1931. Yet another led home.

She danced for this moment; this moment existed because she danced.

Behind the statue Madeline turned her head, narrowed her eyes a certain practiced way, and the world shifted. Just a bit. She put out her hand to touch the crack that formed a line in the air. Confirming its existence, she stepped sideways and through the doorway, back to her room.

Her room: sealed in the back of a warehouse, it had no windows or doors. In it, she stored the plunder taken from a thousand years of history—what plunder she could carry, at least: Austrian crystal, Chinese porcelain, Aztec gold, and a walk-in closet filled with costumes spanning millennia.

She dropped her fan, pulled the pins out of her wig, unfastened her dress and unhooked her corset. Now that she could breathe, she paced and fumed at Ned properly.

She really ought to go someplace with a beach next time. Hawaii 1980, perhaps. Definitely someplace without corsets. Someplace like—

The band played Glenn Miller from a gymnasium stage with a USO banner draped overhead. There must have been a couple hundred G.I.s drinking punch, crowding along the walls, or dancing with a couple hundred local girls wearing bright dresses and big grins. Madeline only had to wait a moment before a G.I. in dress greens swept her up and spun her into the mob.

Of all periods of history, of all forms of dance, this was her favorite. Such exuberance, such abandon in a generation that saw the world change before its eyes. No ultra-precise curtseys and bows here.

Her soldier lifted her, she kicked her feet to the air and he brought her down, swung her to one side, to the other, and set her on the floor at last to Lindy hop and catch her breath. Her red skirt caught around her knees, and sweat matted her hair to her forehead.

Her partner was a good looking kid, probably nineteen or twenty, clean-faced and bright-eyed. Stuck in time, stuck with his fate—a ditch in France, most likely. Like a lamb to slaughter. It was like dancing a minuet in Paris in 1789, staring at a young nobleman’s neck and thinking, you poor chump.

She could try to warn him, but it wouldn’t change anything.

The kid swung her out, released her and she spun. The world went by in a haze and miraculously she didn’t collide with anyone.

When a hand grabbed hers, she stopped and found herself pulled into an embrace. Arm in arm, body to body, with Ned. Wearing green again. Arrogant as ever, he’d put captain bars on his uniform. He held her close, his hand pressed against the small of her back, and two-stepped her in place, hemmed in by the crowd. She couldn’t break away.

“Dance with me, honey. I ship out tomorrow and may be dead next week.”

“Not likely, Ned. Are you following me?”

“Now how would I manage that? I don’t even know when you live. So, what are you here for, the war bonds cash box?”

“Maybe I just like the music.”

As they fell into a rhythm, she relaxed in his grip. A dance was a dance after all, and if nothing else he was a good dancer.

“I didn’t thank you for helping me with Lady Petulant. Great distraction. We should be a team. We both have to dance to do what we do—it’s a perfect match.”

“I work alone.”

“You might think about it.”

“No. I tried working with someone once. His catalyst for stepping through was fighting. He liked to loot battlefields. All our times dancing ended in brawls.”

“What happened to him?”

“Somme 1916. He stayed a bit too long at that one.”

“Ah. I met a woman once whose catalyst was biting the heads off rats.”

“You’re joking! How on earth did she figure that out?”

“One shudders to think.”

The song ended, a slow one began, and a hundred couples locked together.

“So, how did you find me?” she asked.

“I know where you like to go.”

She frowned and looked aside, across his shoulder to a young couple clinging desperately to one another as they swayed in place.

“Tell me Ned, what were you before you learned to step through? Were you always a thief?”

“Yes. A highwayman and a rogue from the start. You?”

“I was a good girl.”

“So what changed?”

“The cops can’t catch me when I step through.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. If you were a good girl, why do you use stepping through to rob widows, and not to do good? Don’t tell me you’ve never tried changing anything. Find a door to the Ford Theater and take John Wilkes Booth’s gun.”

“It never works. You know that.”

“But history doesn’t notice when an old woman’s diamond disappears. So—what do you use the money you steal for? Do you give it to the war effort? The Red Cross? The Catholic Church? Do you have a poor family stashed away somewhere that you play fairy godmother to?”

She tried to pull away, but the beat of the music and the steps of the dance carried her on.

The song changed to something relentless and manic. She tried to break out of his grasp, to spin and hop like everyone else was doing, but he tightened his grip and kept her cheek to cheek.

“You don’t do any of those things,” she said.

“How do you know?”

He was right, of course. She only had his word for it when he said he was a rogue.

“What are you trying to say?”

He brought his lips close to her ear and purred. “You were never a good girl, Madeline.”

She slapped him, a nice crack across the cheek. He seemed genuinely stunned—he stopped cold in the middle of the dance and touched his face. A few bystanders laughed. Madeline turned, shoving her way off the dance floor, dodging feet and elbows.