I don't really have any notes, so just enjoy this happily on-time update!
Chapter 7
(Rose)
Rose wrings her hands, swallowing against the sudden urge to flee. She shifts from foot to foot, and glances back to see Fe resting her hind leg casually, the picture of nonchalance.
Smoothing away the wrinkles in her skirt, Rose meets Bashar's smile with a frown. "Did my father send you?" Rose asks the strange faerie before her.
Bashar screws up her face and swipes her tongue over her front teeth. "Of course not. Questionable character aside, your father is not the sort of person who believes in faeries, much less faerie godmothers."
Rose relaxes, her spine and legs loosening from their preparation for a sprint. Perhaps it's all right then. But faerie godmothers are supposed to be a mere bedtime story, and apparently not one she even remembers.
"Enough of that!" Bashar bursts, brushing her palms against each other as if brushing away the topic. "We've got to get you ready for that ball." Her ribbons pulsing with light, she zips around Rose, the happy flit of her scrutiny searing through Rose's caution.
Struggling to cling to sense, Rose protests in spite of the wild bloom of reckless hope stirring in her chest. "But faerie godmother," says Rose, "I don't want to go to the ball. I can't. Surely you know that." Rose steps away from the glowing ball of optimism, her father's threats echoing in her ears.
The faerie clicks her tongue and throws a bright blue ribbon around Rose, tugging until Rose's arms are pinned to her sides and her father's voice dissipates into the evening air. "Rose, you asked for my name. Do use it, else why did you bother asking for it?"
The ribbon is warm and unrelenting, pouring the promise of one night she can call her own deep into Rose's bones. Rose laughs, a breathy thing that tickles at her throat. "I'm sorry. But Bashar, I mean it. I'm not going."
Bashar waves away her words as if waving away a pesky little gnat. "Well of course you're going, silly goose! You can't miss the king, can you?"
Clinging still to one last vestige of logic, Rose protests for the final time. "My father –"
"Oh never mind him, I can help with that." Bashar flicks away the ribbon, but the warmth of a secret night of escape lingers. "Now come on, I need a pumpkin."
Rose stands perfectly still with scrunched up brows as Bashar swoops down from the How's ledge and speeds off toward the forest. "Pumpkin?" she repeats. A smile tugs at her chapped lips as her brows soften.
"Yes yes, a pumpkin! You do have those around here, don't you?" Bashar throws her left arm behind her, and quick as lightning one of her little light ribbons – a green one this time – wraps around Rose's wrist and tugs her gently off the ledge, guiding her to the ground as light as a whisper.
A laugh laden with a thousand dreams bubbles in Rose's throat. "Why do you need a pumpkin?"
Bashar soldiers on, flying faster as Rose's feet skim the ground beneath. "You simply must have a carriage, Rose. Your dress would be ruined otherwise. Oh! No, not that." Bashar stoops down to examine a pinecone, but quickly pulls back and continues on, her ribbon loosening around Rose's wrist. "You really don't have many pumpkins around these parts, do you?"
Rose's mouth flaps open, then closed. A pumpkin carriage?
But without Bashar's ribbon, her father's voice floats back into her mind and roots her to the spot, staring down at the forgotten pine cone.
"Bashar, wait!" Rose finally says, reaching out for the ribbon and tugging back with a good amount of force. Bashar stumbles, and whips around with a perturbed scowl.
"Come now Rose, I know better than anyone how much you want to go. No need to worry with your father, I've said I can take care of that." Bashar smiles, a luminous thing through her ribbons. "Trust me."
"But, but," Rose stutters, digging in her heels out of sheer stubbornness as Bashar turns to take off again. "People will find out one way or another. Someone else from Beruna is bound to recognize me. Gwen's going, for heaven's sake!"
Bashar, mercifully, stops again, the surprising picture of patience. "My dear, don't you think if I can make a carriage out of a pumpkin I can work a little magic and keep anyone from recognizing you?"
"Then why should I go, if I'm only going to see the king again?" Rose cries, allowing her self-preservation to push aside her hope. Why can't this whole ball to be over and done with so she can forget all about it?
A second ribbon tickles Rose's free hand, a gentle invitation. "He'll recognize you, don't you worry." Bashar glances back and Rose catches a glimpse of a wink. "Honestly, not a single pumpkin! And I refuse to stoop to using rocks for transportation. It's unseemly!" The moment Rose takes the ribbon, the faerie zips off again, searching for something she surely won't find.
"How can you manage all that?" Rose presses on, even as the ribbons tug her along ever faster. "That's impossible."
"Magic, Rose," Bashar snaps, almost impatient. "Goodness, you're quite stubborn, aren't you?" The warmth from the ribbons grows until the slight chill of the impending night is a distant memory.
The ribbon tugs on Rose's wrist a little harder. Rose stumbles, but the seductive hope builds in her chest again, pushing out the sadness there. Magic, of course! Didn't she follow a stag she didn't even know was real looking for a reason to believe?
"Oh to the devil with it, it'll have to be that blasted pinecone!" Bashar spins around and starts off back toward Rose, the ribbons guiding Rose to her side.
"I've never seen a pinecone carriage before," Rose offers. A pinecone carriage might do her well – it'll be simple, unexpected, and blend in with the woods when it's time to go.
Bashar brightens, her ribbons glowing more fiercely in the fading light of the setting sun. "Now's as good a time as any to see one, don't you think? I'll do my best to keep those awful prickly bits on the outside. We can't ruin your dress, now can we?"
Rose doesn't have any suitable dress, for of course Father didn't think to provide that sort of thing. She tells the faerie so, but Bashar just waves her concern away as if Rose really is the slowest learner in the world.
"You'll be well dressed, my dear. Never fear!" Bashar halts suddenly, stooping down with a small groan. "Ah, here we are. One, rather small but intact, pinecone. Ouch – oh oh!" The faerie yanks her wispy hand back, retreating back inside her ribbon shell. "Definitely have to dull those spikes."
"Here, shall I get it?" Rose starts to lean down, but another ribbon – a sea-foam teal – beats her to the small task.
"No no, I've got it now. Just a bit mean around the edges, that's all." And they're off again, but Rose actually makes an effort to keep up this time. Faerie godmother, of all the things…
Bashar takes her back to the plain, whereupon she sets the pinecone back on the ground and releases Rose from her welcome ribbon tethers. With one graceful flick and a strange uttering in a language Rose has never heard, the faerie snaps the ribbon and taps the pinecone straight on with it. At once, sparks fly from them both.
The pinecone begins to shake and Rose stares, transfixed and terrified to look away and miss something. Slowly it begins to grow, letting off sparks of gold and silver all the while. Now it's as tall as her knee – now her hip, now her shoulder. While Rose stands with her mouth agape for the fifth time this night, the pinecone bursts into a great silver and gold thing, with little flake-type designs on the side hearkening back to its humble beginnings. Nearly twice as tall as Rose herself, there now stands a carriage before her, glittering in the last fading light from the sun. A gasp tumbles from her mouth as happy tears prick at her eyes.
"Magic," Rose whispers, reaching out a hand toward the new carriage reverently. "You really are a faerie!" In hindsight, it's a ridiculously obvious statement, enough that Rose flushes from her silliness.
Bashar rolls her eyes, and yet with a grin. "That took you long enough. Honestly, Rose, it's as if you never listened to Isi's tales at all."
Laughing, Rose barely realizes that the stitch in her heart whenever Isi is brought up isn't there. "I listened, but I suppose I didn't quite believe in them until now."
"No need for that now, is there?" Bashar grins out from behind her light ribbons, and Rose can't help but return it. She covers her mouth with two hands and gapes openly at the kind of wondrous transformation Isi would have loved to witness herself.
"Now then, where has that horse of yours gone off to?" Bashar spins around twice before catching sight of Fe, still relaxed by the grass. "Ah, here we are. Fe!"
The horse snaps awake at once, ears perked and eyes bright. Rose can hardly believe her eyes as Fe trots up happily, as if she and Bashar are old friends. Fe never comes so easily for her. Perhaps it's a faerie specialty.
Another wave of a ribbon and more words in that unfamiliar language, and Fe's skittering over toward the carriage, silver sparks dancing off her coat. Then Rose is sure she's losing her mind, because there are two Fe's prancing into place in front of the carriage. No, four! Four elegant grey horses with reins and bridles in brilliant silver and gold, a beautiful echo back to the design of the carriage. One snorts from its newfound place, stray sparkles shooting from its nostrils.
"Perfect!" Bashar claps her hands in delight and bounces, while Rose can only laugh in disbelief.
"She – they – they're beautiful!" Rose sighs through her fingers. "How did you – oh yes, magic. I feel absolutely foolish for not believing now."
Bashar preens again, and spins once on a particularly long bounce. "That's not even everything! Have you seen any rabbits, perchance?"
"Rabbits?" What could the faerie have in store for rabbits?
"Footmen, of course!" Bashar declares, ribbons pulsing wildly around her form. "You need two." As luck would have it, Bashar catches sight of two rabbits on the far end of the meadow. Though they're too far away for Rose to see, the faerie's ribbon reaches out with ease and plucks them from the ground as she murmurs that language again, and as quickly as Fe became four Fe's two footmen with slightly too-large front teeth stand next to the carriage, one of them fumbling with a pocket watch and the other still twitching his nose.
"How fine you look," Rose murmurs, her smile threatening to burst off her face as she takes them in, all white tailed coats and buck teeth and small, bright little eyes and ears just a trifle too big.
"And now for the driver!" Bashar's next choice comes the quickest of them all. "Ah, that'll do!" This time, Bashar's ribbon taps a field mouse, and then the driver is perched on the seat with silver reins in hand, chittering dramatically that it's only a mouse and surely it can't be expected to drive a team of horses.
"Don't be silly," says Bashar. "I haven't got anyone else. You'll be just fine, Sir Mouse. Now Rose, it's your turn!"
"My turn?"
"You can't very well go in that, now can you?"
Rose looks down at her rather simple, rather ragged dress. It's perfectly all right for escapades in the woods, but it's no ball gown. She nods, her breath stilling as she waits to see what new magic Bashar will come up with. A gold gown? Silver? Both? Rose's spine shivers with warm anticipation, and she bites her lip on an absurd giggle.
All of a sudden, she gets the strangest idea. Surely Bashar has something else planned, but it flies from her lips anyway and as soon as it's spoken she doesn't want to take it back.
"Blue," Rose blurts, fiddling with a stray thread on her sleeve. "Can you make my dress blue?" Her voice falters, softening from determination to wistful remembrance. "It was Isi's favorite color."
Bashar softens too, and the very color Rose has requested dances across her outer ribbons. "Of course I can, my dear. I think she'd like that very much indeed."
Another flick of the ribbon, another incantation, and the tip reaches Rose's skirt. No silver or gold dances from the contact, but only blue. A deep, royal blue, with highlights of baby blue, sky blue, even a pale violet. The colors spread from that single point of contact, fanning out over the skirt with the gentleness of swan feathers. It dances up Rose's bodice, over her arms and over her shoulders. She holds her breath and tries not to blink; her skin tingles with warmth whenever the sparks touch it. On a mad impulse, Rose spins. Once, twice, thrice, and the whole while her skirt balloons out, ever fuller and ever covered in sparks and glitters.
Rose stills, looks down, and nearly faints. Robed in head to toe with shimmering blues, the gown is a vision. Unbidden, her eyes water. Isi would have loved this, even more than the carriage or the footmen or the mouse driver. Rose wishes for her aunt, because even if she abandoned her she still told her about magic and taught her what it meant to believe in something you thought you'd never see. And now Rose is seeing it.
"Magic is everywhere," Isi had said, with a smile Rose didn't quite understand at the time. "We only need the eyes for it."
"Thank you, Faerie Godmother," Rose whispers. Her hands ghost over the iridescent fabric that now swaths her. She's almost afraid to touch it, afraid it will all vanish if she makes the wrong move. Yet even if it did, just the memory of it would be enough.
Bashar smiles as radiant as the sun. "We can't forget your dancing shoes." Another wave, another murmur, and something soft but firm wraps around Rose's feet, raising her heels off the ground. They're the most wonderful things Rose has ever felt.
"There," Bashar says, clasping her hands in front of her mouth as her ribbons calm themselves at last. "I do believe you're ready."
"Bashar," Rose hurries to say, "thank you." She rushes up to the faerie – oh, the shoes are perfect, giving and supporting in exactly the right way so even running is comfortable – and flings her arms around the living proof that magic was real all along, that for all her faults Isi was right. "I couldn't have asked for better."
When Bashar returns the embrace, it's with her arms and her ribbons, so Rose is encased in pure light for breathtaking moments. Rose breathes in deeply, and she's flooded with the wild scent of daisies and morning dew and sunlight on new spring leaves.
Oh Isi, how I wish you could have seen this.
Bashar is the one to break the embrace, and it's in a hurry. "Now go, you can't be late!"
Rose will surely be very late anyway – the castle is nearly half a day's hard ride from here, a day for a carriage – but then she looks at the faerie's handiwork, remembers how Bashar turned one horse into four and made footmen and a driver from rabbits and a mouse.
Bashar hustles Rose toward the carriage. The skirt is much, much wider than Rose's shoulders, but so light and airy that it feels as if she's in her normal dress, perhaps in something even thinner. Rose has one foot on the silvery carriage step when she suddenly remembers why she didn't want to go in the first place.
"What's the matter?" Bashar asks. "Oh dear, have I forgotten something?"
"My father?" Rose prods, her hands breaking out in clammy nerves. The warm metal doorframe isn't enough to chase the chill away.
"Ah yes!" A final snap of the ribbon, one that just brushes against the top of Rose's head, and Bashar smiles anew. "There. Now no one but that king of yours will recognize you."
Rose blushes furiously as she climbs into the carriage and sits on a velvet cushion, arranging her skirts even though she doesn't quite know what she's doing. "He's not my king," she murmurs as she finally wrangles the wispy fabric fully inside the carriage. "We've only met once."
Bashar winks, a ribbon reaching out and tickling Rose's chin. "After tonight, twice."
Then the carriage door is closing and Rose's heart is racing already, as fast as a woodpecker's wings.
"Rose!" Bashar jumps back into view, eyes wide and voice a high-pitched squeak. "I almost forgot! All of this can only last until dawn. Magic can only do so much, you know. I'm terribly sorry, but you'll have to leave by midnight if you want the magic to get you home in time."
"Midnight?" Rose smiles, broader than before. She hasn't stopped smiling since that pinecone became her carriage. "That's more than enough. Thank you."
Bashar relaxes and floats back from the carriage, her light reflecting off its gleaming surface . "Then off you go." And with a wink, the faerie blinks out of sight, vanishing into the air as if she were never there. But Rose is sitting in the proof she was, and listening to it, and wearing it. Sir Mouse snaps the reins, and just like that the carriage is tearing across the land at speeds Rose never imagined were possible. She's going to make it, she just knows she will.
She's going to see him again.
(Caspian)
The king paces in his room, hands folded behind his back and formal shirt lying forgotten on the bed. With only an hour left before the ball, he's suddenly nervous. He's been pacing ever since the sky turned dark, and he's likely to continue pacing until he needs to leave for the ballroom. Scrubbing a hand over his face, Caspian strides to the windowsill and forces himself to sit, though his right foot refuses to stop its jittering.
What if she's here? What if she's not? Caspian clenches his hands tighter together and tries to breathe normally. He shouldn't be so nervous to see someone he's only met once before. She's just a girl from the forest.
No. She's the girl from the forest.
A smile comes to his lips unbidden, and it stays there as stubborn as anything even though the odd fluttering in Caspian's stomach quickens. Lion, he hopes she'll be here. Though there will be thousands attending tonight, Caspian is somehow sure he'll find her if she comes. He couldn't miss her for the world. He can't.
Caspian finally stills, staring at his formal overshirt with that smile still pulling at his lips.
She'll be here. He just knows it.
