Once Upon An Eclipse

*Like the title?! I'm going to post chapters here because I'm procrastinating my homework. *

There’s something about rain in New York on late afternoons. When the sky turns dark enough where the sun could have already gone to sleep and let the moon perform the task of giving light to the innocent people below. The drops fall onto my windowpane, slanted because of wind, and create a melodic beat to the already sweet, poetic words found on the page before me: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. If love affairs as truly mesmerizing, captivating, and defying as this exist—I would sell my soul to become the heroine in one.
“Soleil!” my mother’s carefree voice rings out, interrupting Romeo’s desperate attempts to woe Juliette. “Soleil?” she enters the parlor room draped in fine silks and jewels and pearls. It’s over the top for the tea she has just returned from but my mother is an extreme woman. She chooses to either coat herself in finery or walk around barefoot in bloomers and a man’s top coat. Instantly, she smiles and sits next to me on the large fainting couch. Her soft hands push a stray strand of blonde hair of my face as she rips my eyes away from the book. “Look at you, such a little book worm!”
“Romeo and Juliette,” I say, smiling.
“Of course it is,” she laughs, “Always a romance with you!” my mother sighs and takes the book from me, as I have already begun reading again. “Come now, it’s time to get ready.”
A mix of elation and dread slips through my blood, “Now?”
“Yes. Now.” I say nothing and fiddle with my fingers. “Darling, you’ll be fine. It’s just some silly ball.”
“My first ball, Mama.”
“Therefore, they have no preconceived notions about you that you must live up to! This will be the best ball, my dear.”
“Mama, still…”
“Soleil Aymond!” My Aunt Maude, in a great glob of marron wool, comes storming through the door. Her face is red but not a gray hair on her head or thread on her dress is askew. “Your father asked me to personally make sure that you look absolutely perfect tonight. Do not disgrace him.”
I reply a shallow, “Yes, Aunt Maude,” and swiftly stand, trying to keep my spine straight and shoulders thrust behind me while I hang my head in shame. It stretches a muscle in the back of my neck that has grown strong from this specific position of graceful disgrace.
She marches me up the grand staircase of our ridiculously immodest mansion. The carpet that that cushions the hard, cherry wood steps is imported from Persia and is more intricately designed than a DaVinci painting. I’ve stared down ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬at it like this enough to recognize each small flaw of its threading, each worn out color and greatest triumph.
We walk down the long, all too dark corridor once we have reached our complete ascent and seem to have caught a handful of faceless, nameless maids on our journey like flypaper in late August. They tug my hair and begin pulling me out of my day dress before we even reached my bedchamber. It is enthralling to be the center of everyone’s attention—like I am the sun and they are the dull planets swirling around only to compliment my beauty.
Aunt Maude stays a fair distance behind once I sit on the plush vanity chair to be painted like a doll. God knows I need it. I can’t help thinking I might be her puppet, like Pinocchio—I briefly wonder how long my nose will be by the end of the night.
“Goodness, Soleil. I don’t know how two people as handsome as your parents could make a daughter as hideous as you.” I agree with her, but don’t say anything; I’m too ashamed, “Get to work on her,” she commands to those servants in a harsh tone—the only tone she possesses when I am around.
And that is when it truly begins.
It starts with a crushed up herbal mix the shade of my skin that has the consistency of baking powder and water when it’s mixed to smooth perfection. They smear it over the gaping canyon in my cheek and let it dry. Then they scrape off the excess with a blade like how men shave, it tingles and hurts at the same time. Then comes the cream that drains my face of all its unladylike color, next powder to make sure it all stays during the long night. Rouge gives my cheeks and lips a pink flare of girlishness. They then glitter my eyelids with a shimmery shadow. The kohl is added last generously. All the while they’ve been pulling and prodding my hair.
They’re wordless. Like angels sent by that Greek goddess, Aphrodite, they make me beautiful. Something I could never be on my own. My eyes are like the color of the Central Park grass in some streaks, but German chocolate in others, all speckled with gold—hazel is the word for it. My hair is the sun’s rays and is swept up to mimic a Gibson Girl’s.
It’s funny how different I look.
Like a porcelain doll. A beautiful doll like I used to own when I was young. Like a prize, like a statue, like a girl someone could fall in love with—a girl someone could marry. A good doll. A precious one. Not one dropped carelessly on the floor—leaving an awful crack in her right cheek. A scar that not even the best toymaker can fix. And it wasn’t the little girl’s fault—the little girl who loved the doll and called it her baby. It was some evil man who believed in money like God and Jesus Christ. Who dropped the doll with a grin and gave it back so much less stunning than before at a price double what anyone but the girl wanted to pay. Of course, the doll came back, no one wanted to see the girl cry. But it is no longer a porcelain doll without assistance. It’s a rag toy. Worth nothing until the day its skin can be painted like how it used to be again.
“It’s rude to stare, Soleil. Even at your own reflection,” Aunt Maude scolds. I quickly look away and blush, making me look particularly sweet.
“Yes. It is vain, I know.”
That was my favorite part. Now it is time for Aunt Maude’s. I walk over to my large bed and hold onto one of the posts. Most of the maids are shoed away. I try to keep as much breath in my lungs as humanly possibly while Aunt Maude tries to violently push as much breath out as humanly possible by tightening my corset to the point of no return. It is the latest fashion, of course, but even though they claim it does less damage than in the past, it hurts just as much. She finishes—a satisfied smile is on her face at seeing me writhe in pain.
“It will hurt more if you keep squiggling,” she says blatantly as she leaves, handing me over completely to the maids now that her job is done. They swarm me even more, pulling on my gown and adding jewels. She doesn’t look back and I don’t want her to. I’m used to her aloofly arrogant behavior.
Her love for me is quiet undying and unconditional, isn’t it?

The night is a cool one, though it is hot in the carriage with my mother, father, and Aunt. My black mink fur shawl doesn’t do much good either. No one speaks, no one smiles except my mother who stares blithely out the window, watching the streets of New York go by like a child. I’m too nervous to say anything—this is my debut ball. Of course it’s not really my debut ball—it’s Mary Abbot, Belle Hayworth, Ruby Morgan, Katharine Bradford, Charlotte Rothchild, and Essie Worthington’s as well—held at Miss Bradford’s home.
“Don’t disappoint me, Soleil,” Father says in his gruff voice. He looks at me accusingly—it’s a look of ice so cold it brings water to my eyes. The angles of his face, the position of his body—he’s so ashamed to call me his daughter. I hate myself for it. I hate him for it.
“Yes, Father,” a white lie of a smile spreads across my cheeks painfully.
Mother sighs and laughs, “Goodness, Charles. She’s a girl—not a race horse you have money on.” My mother is wonderful in that way—she has a certain aura that compliments mine so perfectly, I can’t imagine anyone but her raising me. Not a single woman on this earth other than she could have forced my father into paying that ransom.
Father chuckles to himself at my expense. I am his horse. And he has a ridiculously large sum of dollars on my finding a decent husband and not making our family name synonymous with disaster.
The carriage finally stops and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Our faceless coachman opens the door in a most respectable way. He first helps my mother down, who gaily thanks him. Next my father rejects assistance and steps down on his good leg first, then softly sets down the bad one and resists the urge to limp as he usually does but takes my mother’s arm, skillfully using his silver cane embellished beautifully with snakes and roses and Latin words I don’t understand. Aunt Maude exits uneventfully. Then it is my turn.
I smooth my dress down, even though it is perfect already. It’s tailored precisely to every curve of my body and made in Paris. The gown is of peach-blossom colored silk that makes my skin glow. The front, as well as the train, is trimmed with a wide silk fringe the same color as the dress, mixed in is black chenille fringe like shadows on a summer day. The sides are ornamented with black Spanish lace, drawn together with long loops and the ends of a pink satin ribbon; this lace extends up the side of my body, but does not cover my back which is left scandalously and fashionably bare. The bodice is low and square, back and front; but high on my shoulders, and is trimmed with a full ruching of narrow Spanish lace, caught together with ties of pink satin. The front and back of the bodice are filled in with light pink tulle ruchings. I wear a cameo of coordinating color on a thick black velvet chocker that bears Aphrodite’s profile around my neck. As well as a flower made of Spanish lace and pearls in my hair and long white gloves on my slender arms.
My posture relaxes for a moment, my shoulders slumping forward and back against the soft velveteen of the carriage seats. Breath becomes scarce in my lungs as corsets hate this position. I recompose myself, take a deep breath, and let Mr. Gadhia help me down from the tall step. I have dived head first into the snake pit.

“Soleil, how can you have less than half of your dance card full? We worked so hard to make you look presentable and look! Hardly a single appropriate bachelor wants your dance. This is simply unacceptable, you must do better next time,” Aunt Maude scolds.
I imagine myself rolling my eyes and saying something clever like, “Oh, Maudie, don’t you know it’s you who the gentlemen are trying to avoid? Surely you must be aware that I’ve been sneaking off and snogging each boy I come across when your back has been turned?” But I’m much too terrified by Father’s slap and am much more interested in another matter to be that girl for the time being. The kohl and powder have gone to my head.
“Did Mr. Gaston request a dance, by chance?” I ask nonchalantly, trying to hide my pounding heart by fanning myself in the nearly empty lady’s parlor room. Mother wanted to sneak in here to add more rouge to my lips. Aunt Maude wanted to yell at me in private.
Aunt Maude doesn’t look up from scrutinizing the list over and over, as if she wanted to commit it to memory. She lets out a sharp laugh, “Ha! No man in town is as admired as he is. He’s everyone’s favorite bachelor. Who do you think you are?”
My heart falls down to the floor of pink, floral carpet like a dropped petal, “Oh. Yes, it was foolish of me to think he’d want a dance.”
“Maude, I’ll escort Soleil from here,” Mother finally intervenes, “I’m sure you have much catching up to do with the Abbots.”
She leaves the smoky room without protest, other than to grumble about how sought after she was as a young debutante—and she had been—before her husband drunk himself to death and left her with nothing but bad debts hidden behind a good name. Not even a child to speak of. The two other ladies in the room begin to whisper about Aunt Maude’s incredibly unfashionable dress with a bright yellow bustle and mutton arms.
My mother’s face is just as I would imagine a friend’s to be in expectance of a scandalous secret—if I had any of either of those. “So... Howard Gaston?”
My face flushes, “There's no man in town half as manly,” is my reluctant, yet truthful, response.
“Oh! He’s perfect! A pure paragon!” she squeals like a young girl.
“Mother!”
“My… What a young man, that Mr. Gaston...”
“Mother.”
“I can assure you, no one’s been like Gaston in a very long time.”
“Mother…”
“Yes, yes. I shall stop now, if you insist.”
“Yes, I do insist.”
“Well, Gaston is the best. And compared to him the rest are all drips of sorts.”
I sigh and completely give up, already having been completely humiliated and mildly repulsed at my mother’s interest in my interest, “Well then. I’m going to go start my dances, if you choose to join me I shall not look silly wandering around the ballroom by myself, but you must stop speaking of Mr. Howard Gaston.”
“It would be my honor. And on that honor, I swear not to say a single word in relation to him.” She smiles sweetly and leads me out into the large and elaborate ballroom.
The ceiling is two stories high, making me feel so small in contrast. Mosaic tiles create designs of flowers and oceans and epic scenes from our universal favorite book, the bible, on the floor. Palm trees I have only seen before in beautifully illustrated stories dot the room—mementos of our incredible wealth and power. I can’t tell if it is the women in the room or the walls themselves, but everything glitters when you catch it in the most perfect angle of the gorgeous crystal chandelier’s light. The balconies from the second floor are made of ivory and the Corinthian columns of marble. It’s overwhelming how exquisitely planned out the room is—a glorious chaos of all different shades of beauty that twirl together to make an experience so grand, it shouldn’t exist to begin with.
“The Bradford’s certainly have spared no expense, haven’t they?” I whisper behind the shade of my black Spanish lace and silk fan.
“Oh darling, no one ever does. It’s simply different in each home.”
To my complete dismay, Aunt Maude has wriggled her way back through the crowd to further pester me. Somehow she already knows what my mother and I are discussing, “You can tell they’re relatively new money. No class, just show,” she scoffs.
“I think it’s lovely.”
“Soleil, when will you learn to keep your ghastly little mouth shut when no one asks for your opinion—because it really doesn’t matter,” she snaps as brashly as a piranha. I choose to blame her exemplary cruelness tonight on the champagne and overwhelmingly great number of people.
I do as told and say no more.
I feel like Briar Rose in that fairytale my German nanny loved to tell me when I was young. It’s like I have been asleep for years and have only now been awakened to a world of elegance and beauty. Of course, as of now, there are no princes involved. I glimmer of hope dashes through me that maybe there will be.
Aunt Maude seems to read my thoughts, “Your first dance is with Mr. Archie Sputher. What an awful name. My goodness. Why would they name their only son that? I suppose their money makes up for it. He’ll do,” I’m not sure if she’s talking to herself or me, but my attention has been driven elsewhere.
Howard Gaston glides through the ballroom, one of the first to take the floor for a dance with his lovely partner, Miss Belle Hayworth. I suppose one might think they complement each other quite nicely—both with dark hair and equally dark eyes, he built like a Spartan, she like a butterfly. They look so perfect—it sends a dull pain across my chest in wave. I’d like to believe he and I would look equally harmonious, but I know it’s not true.
Each summer of my life I’ve spent in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s a common place for us to vacation, and the Gastons are one of the many New York royalties that holiday there. When I was young, before Aunt Maude came to live with us and before the scar made its horrid impression on my skin, I dashed around grassy lawns and beaches filled with an infinite amount of sand spreading under my bare feet. I played with the other young ones and pretended to be a fairy and a princess and a goddess. And for that short amount of time, I was. Hundreds of afternoons he would be the hero saving me from certain doom or the elf who would need to kiss me to break the spell set over the enchanted woods. He was my prince then and I refuse to believe that anyone else could ever fill that position now.
Miss Belle Hayworth didn’t play with us.
“Miss Aymond? Miss Soleil?” I’m yanked out of the world of my fantasies by a rather obnoxiously loud voice containing a well-hidden lisp. It takes most of my might, but I wrench my eyes away from Howard. Archie stands in front of me.
His hair has so much gel in it, it looks almost brown and not its usual dusty blonde coloring. He’s around three fourths of a foot taller than I and I have been known to be rather lengthy. His pale complexion is dotted with blemishes of blood red and those watery blue eyes don’t seem to be looking at me, rather at the air around me.
We seem to be an evenly matched pair.
“Miss Soleil would you care to dance?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you,” I reply distantly, as now I am caught up in times long since passed and can’t seem to pull myself into the full reality of the moment.
Archie offers his hand. I accept it, at once becoming thankful for my gloves, which prevent skin to skin contact with his hands which I know are too damp and nails which I know are too long. However, this doesn’t avert me from hating how close he is and how his hand is positioned on my back, sinking down slowly into a region which is no longer appropriate.
We dance in silence for a while. Then he asks with hot, rancid breath, “A very nice setting, isn’t it?” A drop of frothy spit flies from his mouth and lands on the sleeve of my dress, I try very hard not to squeal in disgust, wipe it off, and storm off only after stomping on his large and clumsy feet.
Instead, “Yes indeed. Such an excellent music selection,” is what develops.
“I prefer minstrelsy music.”
I want to slap this man—minstrel shows are nothing but vulgar groups of men making fun of others for sport simply because they’re different. It’s common trash.
“Oh. It certainly is… entertaining.”
“Yes, they’re a good time. Very rousing.”
“Indeed.”
“I know it’s not very proper,” That’s the least of my concerns with it, “but it’s so completely hysterical, I can’t seem to stay away. In one song, a Negro is smoked like tobacco and then accidently put out in another Negro’s eyes! Perhaps I’ll take you sometime.”
That sounds absolutely horrific, “That sounds absolutely delightful.” I pray the song will come to a swift end, but I hear more and more about this awful, racist entertainment. It sounds like my father would enjoy it—maybe even Aunt Maude on her good days. However my hatred for horrid things like this sparked from my mother’s teachings of equality and cultural appreciation—she really would have slapped Mr. Sputher.
The next hour passes with dances with the Misters William Beaumont, John Tisdale, Andrew Radcliff, Fredrick Sinclair, and Clarence Hatherford, the Duke of Richmondton. None of them as memorably horrid as Archie Sputher, but none that even winked at enticement. Fredrick Sinclair made me smile genuinely, but it might have been a jitter from the glasses of champagne I’ve been drinking with my mother when no one’s name fills my card.
Supper is served next, much later than we would normally eat, of course, to make sure an early exit is out of the question. The Bradford’s oversized dining room that finds a seat for all three hundred and four people is furnished with the best mahogany table and chairs money can buy. As well as the best china. And the best paintings. And the best gourmet dishes. It’s all simply the best.
The six of us new debutantes sit clustered relatively close to the head of the table. It is carefully laid out so there is a promising bachelor to one side, a young lady across, and our chaperones on the other side—in my case, Fredrick Sinclair, Belle Hayworth, and Aunt Maude.
Howard sits next to Belle.
By our third course, the main course, everyone has been served enough wine and champagne to laugh freely, though we never loosen the strings of high society like loosening the strings of corsets—we’d all like to, but it’s not appropriate until we’re all alone.
“Howard, how has your hunting season been this year?” Mr. Fredrick questions.
“Quite well. The woods around Albany are full of deer this time of year,” he replies in mock modesty.
Mrs. Potts, Belle’s plump old governess who is serving as chaperone, asks girlishly, “Mr. Gaston, how do you manage to have such exceptional structure?”
Howard laughs a deep laugh that comes out in airy spurts, “Well, when I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large.” We wait for the punch line, “And now that I am grown, I eat five dozen eggs so I’m roughly the size of a barge!”
The laughter that follows reminds me of hyenas in the Central Park Menagerie.
“No, but, truly, genetics are in my favor.”
“Yes, your mother and father do make a fine match,” Aunt Maude compliments.
“Not to be vain, but I’d have to agree.” He reaches across the table with his long arms and pours himself another glass of vodka. He then flags down a waiter, “I’d like an orange and something to juice it with.” The waiter gives a suspicious look. “Now.” He leaves at once. “Juicing an orange is like deciphering poetry—you can’t have someone do it for you.”
We laugh again. His wittiness enchanting us.
“Do you like poetry, Mr. Gaston?” I ask hopefully. The waiter comes back with the requested materials. Howard cuts the orange in half and beings to squeeze all the life from it.
“Well, yes, I do. I like to write it as well.”
My heart flutters like a butterfly in spring.
“A poet? How spectacular!” Mrs. Potts declares.
Howard takes a sip of his orange juice vodka and bit of pulp gathers in his facial hair which is not yet long enough to be a mustache and not smooth enough to be a clean shave. “Yes. I’d say it’s a passion.”
The five of us exclaim in different tones how wonderful that is.
“And you, Mr. Sinclair? What holds your heart?” inquires Mrs. Potts.
“The lovely lady Operetta—my one true love.”
“An actor as well as a poet! Even more delightful! We’re in good company tonight.”
Mr. Howard exclaims, “As am I, young Fredrick! Perhaps you’ll be my understudy someday!” Our mirth follows, but something in his tone makes me disbelieve he was joking. I note the fact that Mr. Sinclair is only a simple year younger than Mr. Gaston.
“Singing, dancing, playing musical instruments? That interests you?” Fredrick asks.
“Of course! The guitar is simply fantastic!”
Fredrick seems more dismal than he was a moment ago. His tan face is smooth and speckled with a few large freckles, now slightly flushed. He takes a swig of whiskey. Howard sits aloofly smug across from him.
“What about you, Miss Soleil? What do you think your biggest contribution to society is?” Mr. Sinclair asks me.
I giggle and take a sip of wine before answering, “I’m not really sure.
“Of course you are! Don’t be modest!” Fredrick encourages with a smile—he has the same dark hair and eyes as Howard in a shorter package.
“I like to read?” I offer for approval.
“Oh, I doubt any girl in New York could read more than our Belle,” Mrs. Potts laughs.
Disapproved. Something snaps in me and I feel instantly more uncomfortable. There can’t be two girls who love the adventure and romance that comes in a novel?
“Well then, I like to imagine,” decisively I say.
“Imagine?” Fredrick asks skeptically.
“Yes, like daydreaming. Imagining far off places and pretending trees can talk or walk. Things like that,” my voice is sure but their faces aren’t.
“What she means is she wants to travel some day,” Aunt Maude corrects in a panicked tone. Of course, this is true, but not what I meant.
“Yes, but making something extraordinary out of something extra-ordinary I think is the biggest contribution I have to offer. Like Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.” My palms are sweating and I look around, confused and hoping I didn’t do something wrong.
She laughs and sends a piercing look to me, “I think Miss Soleil might have had too much wine.” The others laugh and instantly all begin talking at me all at once as if I was a murderer on trial. “You need to learn your limits, my dear,” Aunt Maude whispers in the most piercing tone. She’s not talking about wine. I feel like I’m drowning. Drowning in the fact that Howard is staring at Belle like a doll he’d like to own, drowning in Fredrick looking that way at me, in Aunt Maude’s confinement and cruelty, drowning in everything. I feel faint.
Someone taps their spoon against a crystal champagne flute with a circular seal on the bottom of the bud of a beautiful rose about to be bitten off by a horrid serpent framed by words I’m not close enough to make out. I find it odd all the champagne flutes and wine glasses and teacups and glasses in general bear this design on their bottoms. Either way, it is signaling that it is time for everyone to settle down. Mr. Bradford stands at the head of the table, grinning gaily at his daughter, then his wife, then all of us.
He begins his speech, “I do not know what I did to deserve such a wonderful daughter and such a wonderful family and such wonderful friends.”
Sure he does—his father and his grandfather and his great grandfather and many more before that have all been filthy rich.
“However, I can say that I am truly blessed to be in such a glorious place tonight celebrating the coming-out of six lovely young ladies. I remember when they were all rough blocks of marble, desperate to be sculpted and now here they are as beautiful statues. And now I have the great honor to present our newest members of society: Miss Belle Hayworth, Miss Charlotte Rothchild, Miss Mary Abbot, Miss Essie Worthington, Miss Soleil Aymond, Miss Ruby Morgan, and my own daughter, Miss Katharine Bradford.”After he says each of our names, we rise and curtsy and the table applauds politely. Then we sit again and give the next girl her chance to shine.
Mr. Bradford pronounces my name So-lee-el.
And I’m drowning in that too.

After everything is said and done, I awake in my bed, mouth like a sticky, dry desert and head like a carpenter’s shop—pounding. The dream that caused me such fitful sleep was that of a storm on the high sea, tossing me, pushing me, drowning me.
I’m even drowning in my own sleep.
It’s dark. I’m dizzy and tired. I stumble to the floor, night gown clinging to my skin. My hair is a long, messy braid hanging down my left shoulder. I need water—and I don’t care that kohl I forgot to wash off is smeared under my eyes and I look sort of ghostly—I’m going to get it.
I become more awake with each step I take in the dark, having forgotten a candle. The floor creaks under me and all the paintings of my ancestors long since dead seem to watch me, disapprovingly, as always. It’s a cold April. I wish for a fire. But I only need to find the kitchen. My home is a maze, the labyrinth in which I am Theseus, sailing blind without the help of Princess Ariadne. I’ve never been in a great large number of rooms and certainly never had to stumble around in the dark trying to find the kitchen.
One door opened, another closed. I’m lost.
My mouth has begun to salivate again and I’ve given up. It’s not worth it. I open one door I thought would lead me back to the main corridor and then up the stairs to my bedroom.
Instead, I rudely open the door on a man a little older than I, reading by candlelight a book whose title I can’t make out. I draw back instantly and rub the kohl smudges away off my skin and make sure the scar is still hidden under layers of goop in panic. He stumbles to his feet quickly, pushing the book to the side.
“Miss Soleil!” he exclaims. His accent is a mix of English, American, and something else I can’t decipher. Now that he is closer to me, I realize he’s Mr. Gadhia, our coachman. I never knew how young he is or how his long, messy hair is a midnight sky and skin coffee with just the perfect amount of cream (which is too much, according to Aunt Maude) and eyes sweet, sweet tea. I’ve never really looked at him before.
“Mr. Gadhia! I’m so sorry!” I exclaim. “I’m lost.” My eyes are wide as I slam the door. I appear to have been holding my breath. I release. I recover. I still want water.
My nice, warm bed beckons to me. The cool water beckons to me. But something else is beckoning to me as well—it has to be three in the morning, why is Mr. Gadhia still awake? That book has to be simply entrancing.
The thirst I possess for water and sleep seems miniscule next to my thirst for literature. I know it’s wrong. He is in his shirt sleeves and trousers, and I am in my night gown. This is simply scandalous. His only job is to serve me, not to talk to me about books. My only job is to find a suitable husband, not to talk about books with a servant. This is wrong.
I softly knock and turn the door handle.
“Pardon, but what are you reading?” I ask timidly, waiting for him to yell at me. He’s on his small, unmade bed again, looking up at me. He stands up and walks to the doorway.
He shows me the cover, “Uh, it’s called, The Moonstone. It’s by William Collins,” Then adds, “Miss.”
“The Moonstone… I don’t believe I’ve heard of it. If you don’t mind me asking, what is it about?”
His lips twitch into something that is either a smile or a sneer. It quickly fades. Mr. Gadhia ushers me deeper into the scandalous hole I’m digging for myself. I follow.
He sits on the bed and I believe he expects me to do the same.
I could leave now. I could run away and be nothing more than a curious lover of books. I could go to balls exactly like the one I just came from every Saturday evening of my life. I could always be drowning. I think of Aunt Maude and my father and Mr. Bradford pronouncing my name wrong. Their rejection, their hatred.
The bed is softer than what I had thought it would be.
“Miss Soleil?” Mr. Gadhia asks, “What are you doing down here?”
“I was looking for the kitchen. I really was lost.”
He laughs. It’s a nice sound, “You’re in the cellar.”
“You sleep in the cellar?”
“It’s better than the stables.”
My brow furrows, “And you used to sleep there?”
“The cellar is somewhat of a privilege.”
“That’s not right. You shouldn’t have to freeze down here.”
“Your father puts that expression ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to good use, Miss Soleil.”
That reminds me of myself. I don’t say this; rather I decide I don’t like him calling me “Miss Soleil” when we’re all alone in his bedchamber. I say to use only my first name.
He decides he doesn’t like me calling him “Mr. Gadhia” when we’re all alone in his bedchamber. He says his first name is Chander.
“So this book—what is it about? The moon?”
Chander laughs again, “No, but I see how you might think that. It’s a detective story. A mystery. There’s a large gem that is stolen and the story is about figuring out who stole it.”
“And this is what keeps you up at all hours of the night?”
“But there’s more. It’s a romance.”
“Really?” I ask, suddenly my attention has been drawn.
“Yes. And there are jewels and suicide and Hindu priests and gods and so much more. It’s a very good book.” He opens to a page about the Hindu priests who protect the statue of Somnath.
“I should like to know a Hindu. The gods and rituals are so fascinating.” I trace my fingers over the words “brilliance” and “moon”.
I feel Chander’s gaze turn to me, “Would you really?”
“Yes,” I smile and look back.
“I’m Hindu.”
“Really? But you’re not… Not Indian.”
“I’m half Indian.” His skin only looks tanned—not that deep reddish brown I’ve heard they have.
“Half? How does one become half Indian?”
“My father was some bastard Irishman.” I’m instantly scandalized by his choice of words, but there’s something about it that makes me feel more human, like I’m more alive than I ever have been. He notices the shocked look on my face, “Sorry Miss.”
“No… That’s all right. And your mother? Where is she?”
“Dead. But she lived in Bombay, she had five other children—my half siblings. After she passed, I took care of them for as long as I could, but we ran out of money fast and that’s how I ended up here after living a couple years in London. I send half of my pay back to help them.” He pauses, “I don’t think you want to hear my whole life story.”
He’s less than I—I’ve been taught that my whole life. Not only is he poor, but he’s Indian. I still believe the words that come out of my mouth, “No, you’re more interesting than anyone I’ve talked to in a long time. Tell me more.”
Chander laughs, “You’re not like the other stuck-up girls you go to balls with, are you Soleil?”
Instantly my hand flies to my cheek, then I realize he isn’t talking about a marking on my skin. I blush. “I suppose not.” Well-brought up, good, normal girls wouldn’t dare to do this. Why am I feeling so rebellious all of a sudden?
“You should go back to bed.”
“I don’t want to.”
“All right, Miss Soleil. I’m your humble servant and therefore here to serve you at any and all times. What is it you do want?” Chander says with a debonair smile that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Except it’s warm and inviting. No one’s ever spoken to me like that before.
“I want to know about India. And Hinduism. And the world. Have you been to other places besides here and there and London? I’ve never been outside New England. Do you read often? Have you ever seen an elephant or a tiger in the wild?”
After I say this, I wonder if he knows how dangerous it is for him to be telling me things like this, to be talking to me, to have me in his room in the middle of the night. It’s unheard of. I realize he would be sent to prison and I would be considered a whore if anyone knew. Am I a whore for this? Is he really a criminal? I’m scared now. But I don’t feel like a whore and he’s too sweet to be a criminal. Still, I don’t want to be even more of a disgrace than I already am. I don’t want to be caught.
I want to hear his stories more.
Chander’s smile fills the room like the moon on a dark night. I like his smile, “There are elephants everywhere in Bombay. We ride them in the streets and carry things on their backs,” I can’t tell if he’s joking or not but I don’t ask for fear of looking foolish. “And tigers, I only saw one once. Can’t say I’d like to see one again.” He notices my interested eyes, “They’re beautiful, wild, and above all—dangerous. It was just after my mother had died and I took my siblings to look for work outside the city. There were rumors that a tiger was around the area, but we never thought we’d actually see her. Chameli, my oldest sister, saw it first and told me. I was young and stupid and decided I was going to be the one to shoot it. In the end I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The idea of stealing something’s life away from it—it repulsed me. She simply walked off and didn’t pay anyone any mind. Later I found out that one of her cubs had been taken to a zoo and she had been looking for it.”
“Really? Chander, that’s so exciting! Now Hinduism. It’s so much more exotic than Christianity.”
“Are you putting down your own religion, Soleil?”
“I never said I was Christian nor did I say anything against it.”
“I drive you to your Protestant church every Sunday morning, you can’t say you’re not Christian.”
“I know I’m supposed to be… But there’s something about having someone talk at you and tell you what happened even though they weren’t there that makes me feel trapped. Like I’m…”
“Drowning?”
“Yes.” I pause. “I want to believe in something, but it’s hard to believe in something when you don’t have a choice but to believe. My mother doesn’t believe. She says she wants to just die when she gets old and not have to worry about the other things and that Darwin was right.”
Chander is quiet for a moment then says, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s challenging to have no choice in anything.”
“You chose to talk to me. I’d say that’s a victory, no matter how small.”
I smile, “Enough about me. Tell me about your religion.”
“I say we should start with you.” Chander begins, “Your name means sun. Surya is the sun god. Just like my name means moon and Chandra is the moon god. Surya and Chandra are two of hundreds of other gods who personify aspects of the supreme god—Brahman. Then, there are two other important gods: Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahman created the universe and everything in it. Vishnu preserves all of it and makes sure everything runs smoothly. Shiva destroys the parts of the universe when they have run their course so that it can be turned into something new.”
It’s fascinating. He talks and talks and I never once become bored or think what he says is petty. Every small detail I soak into my mind. Completely confusing and completely magical. Like a fairy’s curse. Like my romance novels. I love it. I imagine all these mythical things at a ball in dresses like the ones I wear and my life seems so silly. Christianity seems so simple, so absurdly simple.
Chander is telling me about karma when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer and the colorful images of gods and goddesses are already swirling through my mind.
“You need to go to sleep now,” he sighs. I nod and sit up—I wasn’t even aware that I was lying down. Before I can walk the three feet to the door, he interrupts me, “Soleil, just promise me you won’t tell anyone about this. We’ve broken a lot of rules.”
“I promise.”
“And, Soleil, don’t act any different around me now.”
“I promise. May I come back tomorrow night?”
He smiles, “Perhaps.” He explains how to get upstairs and back down again for tomorrow.
“Goodnight, Chander,” I yawn. “And thank you.”
“Of course. Goodnight.”
I walk the miles and miles of cold floor to get back to my room like a beam of moonlight. The bed is exceedingly comfortable when I collapse in it. The last thing I notice before my head is filled with dreams of Surya and Chandra and Brahman and Vishnu and Shiva is the moon, a shining sliver, waxing outside my window.

I sit with my spine like a light post and shoulders like a receding tide—straight, tossed back. It’s a little too early in the year for a tea party—but the Worthington’s were desperate to throw one on the first full day of their daughter’s season and none of us will miss out on something as important as a tea.
I’m covered in white lace down to my wrists and up my neck. Pink silk ribbons are around my waist and in my hair. I look too sweet to have had such a seditious night.
It’s exceedingly rude to yawn past ten in the morning, but it’s two thirty and I can’t seem to stop myself. Aunt Maude sends me piercing looks which I ignore as I sip my tea from a golden cup decorated with images of roses and snakes and pretty words of an ancient language, too gleefully entranced in the events of my night. I survive on less than three hours of sleep, I survive on pure joy—I’ve never felt this giddy before—must be something about my small bit of freedom, something about a god or the moon.
“Yes, well, I simply do not know what we’re going to do about Soleil. She has her heart set on going to Newport, but I say she should stay in the city,” Aunt Maude gossips right in front of me. Her voice is seemingly innocent, but I feel the ice below. I imagine her as a snowman with an orange carrot nose and beady coal eyes—the resemblance is shocking.
The new Mrs. Worthington (a simply gorgeous girl of twenty-four married to a man over twice her age simply to benefit from the income of the household) smiles, “Well, you know girls. They’re always aloofly involved with their own world.”
We’ve been seated at the main table, a high honor I’m not appreciating. Essie talks with Katharine Bradford beside her, completely ignoring me. Of course I want to be accepted, but I’m not really in the mood now. I take my mental word choice back: I don’t want to be accepted by them, I want to be them—with beautiful, big eyes and smooth, flawless skin and a perfectly feminine attitude.
“Where are the gentlemen?” Essie asks, turning to her step-mother. “I thought Andrew Radcliff might like to see a new dress…” she trails off, her sparkly brown eyes threatening tears.
“Don’t worry, darling. They’re off smoking in the parlor. Talking business and all that nonsense we women wouldn’t understand,” everyone laughs, but only because they believe it is true, “They’ll be joining us soon for dancing.”
Essie smiles, satisfied, and turns back to Katharine. They start a conversation about the latest styles of gloves and fans and god knows what else that I would love to talk about with them because I am just as entranced by all the glamour as they. However my opinion of things doesn’t matter.
The men come marching through in a parade of cigar smoke and the scents of whiskey and aftershave. The ladies look up, beaming at the prospects of our princes. They stand behind their women. My father is not present—he chooses not to come to things like this, he doesn’t like to watch me fail him.
The unmarried men who came without their mothers stand clumped in a corner, continuing the conversations they were having before, I assume. Howard Gaston is among them. He seems skinnier then he was last night. I know this is not possible. It must be the lighting.
Mr. Worthington’s voice booms over the chatter, “Friends! Please join us on the floor for a dance or two! That is, if you can manage to turn your attention away from your glasses.” We laugh because we think we have to, not actual humor.
Then it becomes a competition between us ladies to see which gentlemen will pick us. We’re prize hogs; I feel it on the back of my neck where the blonde hairs too short to have been swept up into the common knot stand on end, I feel it in the pulse on my wrist, covered by dainty white gloves and in the heart held captive by my breast, escaping with a pounding through the white dress trimmed with pink that my mother hates and Aunt Maude can stand and I love. I feel it. I can’t tell if I enjoy it.
To Essie’s dismay, Andrew Radcliff turns to Katharine and offers his hand. Katharine accepts and Essie grows red. I hate to love that horrible shade on her normally snow white skin. Serves her right.
Howard Gaston offers his hand to Essie instead.
How am I so invisible?
She takes it but glances over his shoulder to watch Andrew. I see her sigh and I know what she’s thinking, “Someday, my prince will come.” Howard is looking over her shoulder to watch Belle. I see him sigh and I know he’s thinking, “Just watch, I’m going to make Belle my wife.”
I’m still wondering why I’m invisible.
Aunt Maude decides I probably won’t be chosen for a dance already and whispers to me harshly, “I told you that the emerald dress was more flattering! You should have worn that one!” I look down, not wanting to listen to her.
She begins to snap at me for ignoring her when a timid, “Excuse me,” echoes from behind us. I turn. Fredrick Sinclair. “Would you dance with me, Miss Soleil?” He’s trying hard to look calm and suave. I accept. Now he’s trying even harder since he’s forcing down a smile.
His hands look coarser than any other man’s. I don’t comment for sake of rudeness. He doesn’t begin to say anything as he awkwardly tries to find the correct position to hold me for the dance. It’s rather cute.
It seems as though I will have to move this conversation along as he stays silent for too long, “Mr. Sinclair, what was your opinion of the ball last night. Did you have a nice time?”
Fredrick can’t fight the grin any longer, “Yes. I particularly enjoyed dinner with you. And dancing. You’re a beautiful dancer.”
This makes me smile in turn, even though I know it’s not true, “Oh. That’s very kind.”
“Please tell me more about yourself. I’d very much like to know you.”
“What is a lady supposed to say in response to that question? I don’t know how to answer you, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Fredrick,” he corrects, “Well, what’s your favorite color?”
I giggle, “Pink or violet.”
“I like violet. And green. I love green as well.”
“We have so much in common, Fredrick,” I tease.
“Yes it seems we do, Miss Soleil.” His dark eyes are filled with something I can’t name. It’s something I’ve only seen once or twice before, and never directed at me. I don’t know how to reciprocate it. I ask about his theatre work.
Fredrick and I dance together for most of the afternoon. There are times when he asks to dance with another girl and is rejected and comes back to me, since no one else asks for my hand. There are also times when I am left to the specific type of hell that sipping tea with Aunt Maude is.
When we’re comfortably in the carriage and on our way back to our red brick mansion home, Mother leans over and says, “He’s in love with you.”
I know I shouldn’t believe her, but I do. Fredrick is completely smitten.

“Imagine you’re a prince in a kingdom of your own and you can do whatever you choose because everyone in the kingdom is asleep. What would you do?” I ask, sitting in princess pose on the messy quilts of Chanders’ bed. It’s so very unladylike, yet I don’t care.
“I’d kiss the princess so the kingdom could awake again,” he smiles and looks like he’s about to say something else, but then seems to be satisfied with his answer.
“You’ve heard that fairytale before?”
“Of course. My siblings love it when I send stories back to them.” Chander pauses, then begins again, “I would ask you what you would do, but you would be the princess.”
I laugh, “No, I’d be the nameless lady in waiting you hear nothing about.”
“And I’m the nameless coachman.” He stops for a moment, “You know everything of me and I know nothing of you,” Chander laughs. We’ve been talking for hours and not once have I felt even slightly compelled to mention a ball or a new dress or gossip. His eyes are dark, but they sparkle in the candlelight like tiny dancers—twirling, changing, laughing. His eyes are always laughing, even when his face is not.
I spin the blonde braid around my finger—once, twice, thrice—thinking of what to say. I realize there’s nothing I can’t say. So much different from my life outside of this small little room that I wish took up half the world. Out there, there is nothing I can say.
“I know it’s my obligation to love the sun, since it’s my namesake, but there’s something about the harshness of it that I can’t seem to stand.”
“So Miss Sun hates the sun?”
“It’s just so cruel. It points out each flaw, each insecurity, each minor scandal that no one else even cared to investigate when the moon was out.”
“Perhaps. But the world needs the balance,” Chander begins. He takes my hands, at first I’m startled. It dissolves when I feel how refreshingly cool his palms are on my hot ones. The heel aligns with mine, our fingertips spread against each other’s. I’ve often been chastised for having such large, unladylike hands, but they look so perfectly white and small now. I love the way it looks. “I’m going to push against your palms, push back at the same force.” It’s firm but not too much so, I follow suit. He takes our hands and moves them in a circle. “See? Perfect harmony. This is like the sun and the moon. You are the sun. I am the moon. Now if the moon burns any brighter…” he adds too much force at once and I’m pushed back a little. I laugh and play his game, this time shoving him. He laughs too. “You don’t realize it, but the sun and the moon are perfect how they are. The sun has to be bright so the moon will have something to chase after. And the moon has to be dim so the sun will know that she can’t burn too brightly or else he’ll slip away.”
We’re silent for a moment, uncomfortable. Instantly my mind is flooding with regret that I let him take my hands. I let myself get too comfortable, and in turn, he has become much more comfortable than even I imagined would take place. I should leave.
Quickly, I change the subject. I turn the attention away from myself. “Who is your favorite god?”
He considers this for a moment, “Lord Shiva.”
“But he’s so… He’s the destroyer.”
“He’s the rebirth of everything. And the god of every good quality a human should possess.” Chander smiles at me as if he knows something I don’t, which he does, however the look still bothers me.
Chander has a strong jaw and a statuesque face with eyes like dark maple syrup lined with long, thick lashes I wish I had. His hair is like the midnight sky—overgrown and messy, just like the stars I imagine I’ll see in India when I go there someday. The smile that always seems to be across his face is made of pinkish lips that are two perfect lines, a half-moon.
He’s handsome.
I hate myself for thinking this. I hate him for it being true.
I’m not supposed to think he’s attractive in anyway. So why do I think so?
“Please tell me a story about him,” I lean my back against the wall and close my eyes, pretending to be on a beach somewhere far, far away where it doesn’t matter if Chander’s a prince or a beggar, a suitable Englishman or an Indian. He can tell me stories for days and I can ask him questions and become enchanted like under a fairy’s spell and no one can tell me I’m wrong for it.
“I’ll tell you the one about how he met his second wife, Parvati, the goddess of love,” he begins. His voice sounds so perfect, “The world was a very dark place back then. Demons from the netherworld had forced the gods out of their celestial homes. Unfortunately, Shiva was not there to defend them for he was grieving at the death of his first wife and had turned is his back on the world and all its pleasures. He lived in a dark cave and spent his days in mediation. His spiritual powers had become great, but Shiva was no longer concerned with the problems of the gods and would not help them.
Desperate for a solution, the gods consulted the mother goddess, Shakti, who claimed that only a son of Shiva could win the war against the demons. Then she agreed to take another form and draw Shiva out of his cave to get him to father a warrior who would banish the demons. Shakti was reborn and was given the name Parvati.
Even when she was young, Parvati was in love with Shiva. She would visit his cave each day to bring him fruit and to sweep the floor of the cave and decorate it with flowers to win his affection. But Shiva refused her efforts because of the darkness of her skin. But Parvati was determined. She decided to go into the mountains and become just as powerful as Shiva, thinking this would win his love.
Living in the forest with nothing to eat and no one to help her, she completely mastered her physical needs. Soon she was able to match Shiva’s massive powers by creating incredible energy in her yoga meditations—enough energy to attract the attention of the supreme deity, Braham. Braham took pity on Parvati and asked what she wanted. Ashamed of her dark skin, she told him she wanted golden skin. He granted her wish and Parvati’s new skin glowed golden like the sun,” Chander stopped here to clear his throat, his voice faltering at the word “sun”.
“When Shiva saw her and realized how beautiful and powerful she had become, he was unable to resist her. The two were married by the gods and spent their honeymoon on the mountaintop that was the center of the universe.
Parvati kept her promise to the gods. She sent them part of Shiva’s aura which was in turn given to the river goddess Ganga who cooled it in her icy waters until it formed a seed. The seed was planted in the forest floor where it grew into the war god Skanda. He soon took command, defeated the demons, and restored the heavens to the gods.
But Parvati longed for a child of her own. Shiva didn’t want to be bothered with children so he spitefully gave her a scrap of cloth and told her to make a doll and cuddle it instead. She, hurt by his remark, ran to a nearby cave to meditate. Grasping the cloth to her breast, Parvati’s tears dropped on it and the cloth grew into the form of Ganesha, her son.
She assigned her newly created son to guard over her cave and to keep out all strangers. In the meantime, Shiva began to regret his rude actions and came to apologize. Ganesha didn’t recognize him and blocked his way. Shiva grew furious and beheaded Ganesha. When Parvati found out her grief was so immense that Shiva promised to find Ganesha another head. However, Shiva could only find an elephant’s head. Thus, Ganesha was reborn as half human, half elephant. He became the Keeper of the Threshold and the God of Good Fortune, an obstacle to all that is undesirable.
Shiva’s marriage with Parvati eventually inspired him to accept pleasure into his life and soon became the patron of the arts. Parvati also awakened Shiva’s concern for the world by asking his opinion about important issues. As he spoke, Shiva revealed learning that he had gathered in his meditations, ensuring that the energy created by his somberness was channeled for the good of all mankind.”
Chander finishes, I open my eyes. The world I imagined isn’t so different then this little cellar bedroom of a world I’m in now.
“I like Parvati.” My comment isn’t very intellectual, but it’s all I seem to have any idea about now.
“You remind me of her.”
“And why is that?”
“You’re strong and beautiful like she is.”
My face turns into a bright red apple, ripe for the picking. “Thank you. That’s too kind. And most likely untrue.”
He laughs, “They teach you to say that when you’re complimented, don’t they?”
“Who’s they?” I ask, irritation budding under my skin.
“Your Aunt, your father, everybody,” Chander, now suddenly serious, continues, “I see how they treat you, Soleil. They’re awful. They treat you worse than they treat me.”
“You don’t know that, Chander,” I reply harshly.
“Yes I do! You’re strong and they try to beat it out of you so you can become just another soulless, wealthy bride in Manhattan. Soleil, you’re more than that. You’re more than them. How can you not know that?” He moves toward me, almost threateningly. “I know you’re not like them.”
I back away, losing my temper. “You don’t know me and I don’t know you and we are not having this conversation.”
“Why do you try so hard to be something you’re not? Why do you want to be like them?” he’s beginning to yell back.
“You need to remember your place, Chander!” I say and slam the door as I leave.

It’s bright out. Too bright. Like the world has lost all capability of showing the moon. The sun has taken over. Eternal, blinding brightness. I don’t feel bright. I don’t know how many days have passed, one or one thousand. I miss something I barely had. Two nights with Chander and now I view everything differently. I can’t turn back. But I’m sure he doesn’t want me there with him. He makes no eye contact with me when I see him for those fleeting seconds when he takes my gloved hand for proper support. The sun has taken over the moon. I hate everything except him and he hates me.
“Miss Soleil? I’m sorry, would you like to go home? You don’t seem very gleeful today,” Fredrick Sinclair says, stopping us as we walk around central park.
He carries my white, lacy parasol for me, so if he stops, I must as well to save my dainty complexion. It’s a terrible trick they like to play on us debutantes. He also has taken my arm hostage within his own. Fredrick called on me this afternoon for a walk in Central Park. Aunt Maude is chaperoning two feet behind. I’ve given up trying to fight her—too malnourished of culture. I’m drowning once again, and I don’t even feel compelled to try to find the surface any longer.
“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry. What were you saying?” I begin to walk, but Fredrick stays where he is.
“Nothing…”
I don’t find Fredrick handsome anymore. Chander is so much more exotic and captivating.
“Miss Soleil, I want to work for your affection. I’d like to win you over because of me and not an obligation.”
I wonder if Chander has finished reading The Moonstone yet.
“I know a lady as lovely as yourself will take other dances, but please know that I would be most delighted if you would save one or two for me.”
I wonder what Chander’s siblings’ names are and if they would like rock candy for Christmas.
“Your presence is so esteemed to me.”
I wonder if they celebrate Christmas.
“Now that I have finished my speech, let’s continue our walk.”
Most likely not.
We stroll in silence for a while, I don’t feel the need to say anything and I suppose he doesn’t either.
The sun is still too bright, I look up to the sky and pretend I can fly there and dim the sun like turning out a gas lamp.
“Oh. Hello Miss Soleil, Mr. Fredrick.” I look back to eye level. Mr. Howard Gaston and Miss Belle Hayworth.
Something’s changed. Howard looks skinny as a bare, baby tree in winter and just as ugly as Archie Sputher—maybe even more so. His skin that looks sickly in whitish tan green is covered in small blemishes and he is walking awkwardly like he wishes he knew how to do it just right.
I realize his talk is cheap, he’s no better than anyone else. Howard just plays his cards right to build up an image he thinks he can keep up. If everyone who’s not blindly in love with him like I used to be sees him like I do now, how does he think everyone loves him and would love to be him? I can’t even stand to see his smug face.
“Ah! Fancy seeing you here! It’s such a wonderful day for a breath of air,” Fredrick replies.
“Yes, indeed it is. Right Belle?” She gives him a large fake grin, hiding her irritation but stays silent.
“Why don’t you walk with us for a while? The more the merrier,” Fredrick exclaims, I see the protest in Belle’s eyes and I know it’s in mine too. Neither of us have the authority to say a word about it though. We’re cows to be shown and slaughtered.
“Of course,” Howard agrees in his voice that is too deep like a grumbling train, sure to take me away to some place I’d rather not be. Mrs. Potts finds Aunt Maude and they begin a conversation about balls or cotillions or fashion or something along those lines.
Howard takes a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, he takes one and then offers another to Fredrick.
“Oh blast it all!” He exclaims, feeling around in his pockets for something. “Have you got a lighter, by chance, Freddy?”
Fredrick nods and hands him a golden one with a pretty little design of a snake about to attack the bud of a long and beautiful rose; words in a language I can’t place surround it. It seems very familiar, but I can’t seem to place it, just like the words.
They both light their cigarettes and begin to make small talk.
“How is your rugby season going? Well, I assume,” Fredrick asks.
“Not as I’d hoped. It’s hard to gain support when the ladies hate it so.”
“Well, you can ask Tom, Dick, or Stanley and they’ll tell you whose team they’d prefer to be on. You know how awful their team is.” They chuckle for a moment and I have the urge to laugh too. No one I know would want to play rugby with Howard—he’s simply awful at it.
Howard smiles, showing off his incredibly cooked teeth, “Yes, that’s true. I’m especially good at expectorating at the other team.”
They laugh again, a little more heartily this time.
What an ego this man has.
“How do you like cricket? Something you’re interested in?” Fredrick asks.
“It’s not really my cup of tea. However, I did go to London last year and saw a tournament. It was a rousing group among the wealthy, lots of fun, but in the poor seats—I cannot believe how many Indians there are in London. It was outrageous! Every third person was a scum!”
My jaw drops a little and I stop walking for a moment in shock. How could he be so positively primeval? I want to slap him.
I hate him. I really do.
And not just for blatantly ignoring me completely when it was so obvious I was saving dances for him, for being an awful human being as well.
“Is there something wrong, Miss Soleil?” Fredrick questions.
“No. I simply remembered I have nothing to wear to an upcoming ball, that’s all,” I answer quickly, showing I’m fine through gritted teeth.
“You know women, always thinking about unimportant things like that,” Howard chuckles.
And a sexist. How wonderful to be in the company of such a man.
“But no matter. I’m more worried about finding a suitable wife than my rugby games.” He talks like Belle and I are invisible.
“It seems like you have a lovely girl right here.”
“Don’t I? Right from the moment when I met her—saw her—I said she’s gorgeous and I fell. Here in town there’s only she who’s as beautiful as me.” He laughs but he’s not joking. Belle looks like a ghost.
“Will we be hearing wedding bells soon?”
“If all goes according to plan, right Belle? Nothing’s official.”
She gives that same fake smile to substitute for agreement.
“Spectacular! Now what about hunting? I haven’t been very diligent about that hobby.”
“It is quite out of the way, but it’s always worth it when you know that you have enough power to snatch something’s life right out from under it.”
The men continue chatting. My attention wanders.
I’m drowning.
I glance to Belle. She looks like she’s drowning too, but her eyes are hopeless and drained of all their once beautiful sparkle. I hope my eyes never look like that. I’m sick and tired of all the water we’ve been submerged in, born into. I’m getting out again, I need that sweet smelling air that I can breathe in deeply without a corset.
I need Chander.

My knock on the door is soft and timid like a child’s. I feel like a child.
The seconds pass in the most excruciating way before Chander opens the door. I realize I haven’t been breathing and let out a sigh when he does. He doesn’t open it all the way and stands in the space between the door and the frame, menacingly beautiful. My heart pumps faster and my stomach turns and knots.
“What do you want?” he asks sternly. I love seeing him, but he looks angrier than I’ve ever known him to be.
“I’m sorry,” I say desperately. “You were right. You were completely right. And I’m a stubborn, spoiled brat who has been incredibly foolish to think that you would just do as I ordered because I’m your superior. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I’m your superior. I’m so sorry. I’m stupid.” I’ve begun to speak much too swiftly. I stop myself and look to him for approval.
Chander opens the door to let me in. I sit on the always unmade bed and wait for him to sit next to me. He doesn’t. He stands in front of me, looking me straight on in the eyes. My god he’s tall.
“I’m tired of chasing after something unattainable, Soleil. I don’t think you should come down here anymore.”
“No!” I panic. This is a nightmare, it has to be. “I need you. I’m drowning out there! Please!”
“Soleil—“
“I have a scar,” I blurt because I see him pulling away and I know it’s wrong on so many various scales to say something like this to someone like him or anyone at all and he shouldn’t need to know something like that but I’m not going to sit and watch him pull away from me because I’m too scared to let him teach me about the sun and the moon and what would I do without his laughing brown eyes and his stories of India and Hinduism now that I have this one little bit of freedom, what would I do without it? But why did I have to say that?
“What?” he asks, startled. I’m startled by my own words too and my face is an awful shade of red.
“A scar. On my right cheek. You can’t see it. The maids cover it with powder and such. I don’t like to look at it, so they wash off the powder in the morning and quickly reapply more.”
Chander doesn’t say anything. His eyes are not laughing, they look harder than I’ve ever seen them, scrutinizing my face. He doesn’t ask to wipe away the goop on my cheek with the sleeve of his shirt. He just does it. My breath is held. I wait for him to call me a monster and throw me out of his room. I feel naked, like a new bride who knows nothing of her husband.
“Soleil, tell me one thing honestly.” He doesn’t move his eyes from the scar. The silence he takes as a yes, “Who did this to you?”
“I was kidnapped and held for ransom when I was nine,” my voice is shaky, I’m scared. “They gave this to me as a souvenir.”
My mind slows it down and it happens fast. Or perhaps it speeds it up and it happens slowly, but Chander sits and pulls me in close to him. He whispers in my ear as I close my eyes, “She looked so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her, so he stooped down and gave her a kiss. The moment he kissed her she opened her eyes and awoke, and smiled upon him,” He recites the fairytale lyrics like he’s been saving them all his life. Chander continues with his own made-up words, “She said, ‘You are the moon, I am the sun. And no person nor no spell nor no god could keep us apart. I love you’.”
I repeat the words back as he says them again, this time in a language I don’t know that I can only assume is Hindi. It’s enchanting.
He kisses that scar I hate so much like it’s a trophy, not a terror. Like I am his Briar Rose and he’s rescuing me from eternal slumber. And I am and I was and I will be—I’ll tell him I love him as many times as he’ll want to hear it.

I wake the next morning in a room that is not my own. It takes me a moment to remember where I am, but when I do the urge to get up is completely gone. I’m too blissfully happy to even wiggle my toes.
I’ve never understood what it’s like to feel loved before.
Now I know.
Chander snores quietly, I smile because it sounds so cute and sync my breathing to his. It’s steady and strong yet soft. I’ve never noticed how beautiful breath is.
I’m warm. And not the kind like when you’re wearing four layers of various petticoats in the middle of July. The kind that comes from the core and falls from your being like the sun’s rays. And Chander’s radiating cool shooting stars. And I feel like a goddess and a princess and a sun.
All of these things are his—all the things I am are his.
“Chander,” I whisper softly and shake him. “Chander, wake up.”
He clutches me tighter to his chest and falls into an even deeper sleep.
“No,” I laugh even though I’m trying to be stern. I pull away. “Please wake up. Chander, we fell asleep, I have to go back.”
He opens his eyes, perfect circles of tea, and replies, “You don’t have to.”
“Yes I do. I don’t want to, but I have to.”
“That’s not true. We could run away to India. You’d never have to wear a corset again,” he smiles.
“I can’t leave my family.”
This sparks silence.
Chander breaks it, “I miss my family.”
The silence reignites.
“I love you. But I can’t leave my mother. She’ll think I’ve been kidnapped again. I can’t put her through that.”
Silence burns stronger.
Chander kisses me then says, “I understand.” He stands and offers his hand to help me up, “M’Lady.”
I properly take it, “Thank you.” He doesn’t let go of me.
Instead, he takes me in close to him and says softly, “God, you’re beautiful.”
Somehow, I feel like I am.
Slowly, I let go of his hand and close the door behind me, tiptoeing through dark halls and dusty corridors. I take the servant’s stairs up the three levels to my bedroom, my breath is baited, waiting to see sun or moon outside. Light or dark. Exposed or hidden.
Sun.
God damn it.
I run as quickly and as silently as possible to my room. I hear a knock at the door a few floors below me and the butler opens the door. I run faster. Muffled voices. I hit my cherry wood door and throw it open, taking one giant leap and landing on my bed and burying myself in the covers, closing my eyes and trying to calm down my breath.
“Soleil! Time to get up! Mr. Sinclair is here to see you,” Aunt Maude beckons as she walks into my room with half a dozen maids who throw open curtains and gather things needed for the day to come. I pretend to be sleeping still and make a half-hearted groan. “Now!” she yells.
I spring out of bed and sit on my vanity chair, pretending to be half in the realms of dreams.
“What did you do to your hair? It’s a mess.” She picks up a strand of my free, wavy golden blonde hair like it’s a filthy snake found in the rose garden.
“I happen to like it like this.”
“You’re turning into your mother,” Aunt Maude scowls. She directs the maids to put it up into a simple bun.
I hate her. I hate her so much.
Before I know it, I’m a porcelain doll again. I resent it and love it at the same time. They corset me in and put me in a dark blue dress trimmed with black lace like the perfect little doll should wear. I’m presentable
I want to slap Aunt Maude.
Aunt Maude walks me down the stairs and engages me in petty chatter she cares nothing about only so we can look aloofly beautiful when Fredrick sees us coming down. He’s talking business with my father. He stops when he sees me; the look on his face is somewhat like Chander’s before left. Except Chander’s is so much more genuine and loving. Fredrick appears like he’s planned it all out, a poor actor in an opera. He is an actor. It occurs to me I’m an actor too. I pretend that my face lights up when I see him too. I’m thinking of Chander.
“Miss Soleil, you look absolutely lovely today,” he takes my white-gloved hand and kisses it delicately.
“Thank you, Mr. Sinclair,” I say politely.
“Shall we be leaving?” Aunt Maude asks. Fredrick nods and we do.
Outside the sun is more bearable than it was yesterday. Perhaps it’s the way I’ve learned to look at it.
Chander’s dark hair is slicked back properly, he’s in a perfect gentleman’s clothes and makes no eye contact with me. He looks so handsome. I repress the giddiness that builds inside of me. After he’s helped Aunt Maude up, he takes my hand and looks at me, straight in my eyes (it sends electricity through my being) and whispers in his perfect voice, “Careful, Miss. It’s a bit slippery, and the ground is harsh.” He glances to Fredrick. I don’t think he’s talking about falling in the literal sense.
“Don’t worry. I promise I won’t. Thank you, Mr. Gadhia,” I smile and he smiles back but we both push it away before it becomes obvious. He helps me up and the moment of our meeting in the sun has completely slipped through my fingers.
Fredrick slides in after I and the horses begin moving.
“Where are you taking me, Mr. Sinclair?”
“I would want it to be a surprise, but I know I can’t keep it from you. The American Museum of Natural History.”
“Oh! How lovely!” I exclaim quite honestly. “I have always wanted to go to that museum!”
Aunt Maude looks completely scandalized—The American Museum of Natural History is a place for young children, scientific men, and the middle class. Not a wealthy debutante. I don’t care—I’m elated.
The journey is quite swift, as well as our adventure through the building. I feel my intelligence grow tenfold. Aunt Maude is in a huff behind us as we leave. She’s a mess. I can’t help but laugh at her each time I glance backwards. Education is not her strong suit.
Thu sun hangs low in the sky. Fredrick looks exceedingly nervous, as if I might fall beneath the horizon as the sun does.
He turns to me, I see the sweat dripping from beneath his temple, “I’m not ready for this day to be over. Would you like to walk around Central Park for a while?”
I reply yes, even though I wish I could let Chander help me into the carriage sooner than later, Central Park is only across the street.
Chander’s still by the carriage, he’s finished The Moonstone and now is reviewing The Vedas. I hope he’ll show me what that is tonight. I want to run to him and hold him and talk to him for hours on end. We keep walking straight.
“Hello! Lad!” Fredrick calls to Chander, catching his attention. I know Chander’s at least two years older than Fredrick. “We’ll be in the park for another hour or so.” He flips Chander a coin. “Thanks, lad.” I scowl at Fredrick unnoticed by everyone except Chander who laughs. I smile back.
I wish night would come faster.
As we walk, I concentrate on nothing but reviewing my Hinduism in my mind for tonight. Fredrick attempts to make conversation with me, it’s half hearted. On the bright side, Aunt Maude has discovered what privacy is and walks a comfortable five yards behind us.
“I said I would never find the right note, but I did and it sounded incredible! You really should come see our production of Pirates of Penzance.”
“Oh yes, that sounds delightful,” I answer knowing well I will never spend the time or the money to do so.
Fredrick turns to me, completely serious, sweating and shaking, “Soleil, forgive me if I seem brash, but through these last days it has become obvious to me that you are the most wonderful girl in all of New York City.”
“Oh. Thank you, Mr. Sinclair. That’s very kind.” Chander said I was the most wonderful girl in all the world.
“And it seems that when I am not with you, I so desperately want to be with you. And when I see you, I become exceedingly happy. And I think we would make a fine match.”
Panic sets in me, “Mr. Sinclair, what are you trying to say?”
He drops down on one knee.
I think I might faint.
“Miss Soleil Aymond, will you marry me?”
I’m dizzy. I can’t breathe.
“Please say something, Soleil.”
“No.”

I want to bury myself ten feet underground and stay there for a very long, long time.
The depths of my feather bed are never deep enough.
My tears stain the pink silk fabric and I’m torn, just like I wish I could do to the sheets, the pillows, my whole life.
I think I’m drowning most times.
I’d classify this as death.
Once she heard about Mr. Sinclair’s proposal, Aunt Maude forced me to say yes. She said it was a fine match—he’s handsome and has a fortune of a decent size.
She accepted a marriage proposal for me.
I’ve never felt so powerless, so much like a porcelain doll. Her threat was that my father would disown me if I didn’t. He would. I wouldn’t mind so much losing him and Aunt Maude—but my mother. I can’t leave my mother.
The diamond is too big, too heavy, too perfect as it sits on my dresser—taunting me with its fourteen karats and gold band inlaid with tiny little pearls—my birthstone. I hate the way it stares at me. I pick up the ugly thing and nearly hurl it across the room. I stop. That would look suspicious. I slam it against the table.
It’s dark out and I’m hungry and craving tea. I missed dinner. I didn’t want to see anyone after Aunt Maude took control of my life without consideration from me. A breeze comes through the window, somehow that makes me cry harder.
The door opens and closes, I know I should stand and try to wipe away my tears, but I don’t. It’s too late for anyone proper. Chander sits on the bed next to me and says nothing.
If I’m drowning, I might as well drown in him.
I sit up and throw my arms around him, resting my head against the beat of his heart that is steady even when I’m not.
He holds me and when I’m finally calm enough to speak I say, “I’m so sorry. I hate this, Chander. It’s all my fault. I’ve made such a mess of things.”
He’s quite then he whispers, “In India, we have a caste system. There are the Untouchables, like me, who are worthless scum,” he laughs. I’m not sure if he’s serious. “And then there’s you. The Kshatriyas. You’re a ruler and warrior. And you’re strong enough to make it through this—we’re strong enough to make it through.” I hold him tighter—an action when I’m too weak for words that possibly says it better. “You’ll make the right choice, Soleil. I believe in you.”
“I want to run away with you. I do. I want to go to India. I want to be with you,” I reply desperately.
“You don’t have to do that. You could marry that Sinclair fellow and I could be your coachman. We could still be together. You’d get to keep your mother and your status and all your pretty things and me. It would be fine that way.”
“And you’d always be waiting on me. You’d never get to see your family again and I’d never get to paint my hands with henna and wear a sari and bangles and that little red dot on my forehead like you said Indian brides do. No.”
“A bindi,” he corrects. I hear the smile in his voice. He lies down on my pillows and I still lay on his chest. “I love you.”
“I love you too. And that’s why we have to leave.”
“You’ll be an Untouchable.”
“I don’t care.”
His deep brown eyes meet my hazel ones, “Yes you do.”
“It’s worth it.”
Chander smiles and gently kisses my forehead. “Soleil…”
“Yes?”
“When we get to India, will you marry me?”
“Of course,” I reply, trying to sound calm while suppressing ecstatic screams.
“Good.” He holds me tighter and gives me another kiss. “It won’t be legal. We’re not allowed to marry people that aren’t Hindu.”
“What if I converted?” Legality doesn’t matter to me too much, but if I can have it, I will.
“You’re still white and that’s not allowed either.”
“Then how?”
“We’ll do it ourselves with my siblings. I’ll find a Pujari who will marry us. We’ll be fine.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise,” he smiles with his laughing eyes and half-moon lips and strong jaw.
Chander reaches down into his pocket and extracts something I can’t see, he’s hiding it in his palm. “Well, you’re still a beautiful American girl,” he smiles deviously and sweetly. He opens his fist. It’s a raw stone, uncut, unperfected—wildly beautiful. It’s slightly blue but shines like the moon and tied to a dull silver ring. I can’t breathe for a moment. “It’s a moonstone. Like that book. I’ve had it since I was a kid. I’m sorry it’s not like your other one. One day we’ll get it cut and set in real silver. That’s just steel. I have a friend who picked it up for me. Don’t worry, it’s not really stolen or anything—“ I shut him up with a kiss.
“Do I have to put it on myself?”
He laughs and runs his fingers through his hair before placing it on my left-hand ring finger with the most amount of love in his eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Soleil Gadhia. That sounds perfect,” I say, biting back tears that threaten—this time in joy.
“It does. It’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard.”
I hope my smile says all the words I can’t seem to find.
My ear finds its way over his heart once again. For a moment we sit in silence, then he begins to sing something quietly in Hindi, a pretty lullaby, I assume. I can tell he’s suppressing a smile that proves that he’s not taking the song so seriously but it entrances me. His voice is sweeter than any cookie or candy I’ve ever tasted. I’m drowning in the sweet syrup of that voice, of everything that is him.
And as I’m drowning in a sea of tossing tides that carry me and don’t pull me, just support me—I realize I hardly know Chander at all. But there’s something magical and hopeful in the truth that he loves me and doesn’t know me. He’s saving me—he’s pulling me out of the cold waters of my mortal existence and giving me a glimpse of warm immortality—his voice, his smile, his eyes—that is immortality. And one day I will know him and he will know me and if I grow with him (like two climbing roses), not against him (like earth pushed together to create mountains) I know that being seventeen or being seventy won’t matter, the water will be perpetually warm. I promise to be my best self for him—for an eternity and beyond that—because one day when we are reborn, I want to be the sun and him to be the moon. My karma and my love are things that I will carry with me through that eternity—and I pray to Brahman and Shiva and Parvati and Chandra and Surya that Chander will be next to me through all of it.
“You’ll love India. The food and the colors and the people. We even have the best tea in all the world,” He changes the color of the water I drown blissfully in from pink to violet, but I love each of those colors just as much as the other and the water is just as pleasant.
“And that would be? Nothing beats Earl Grey.”
“Chai. I’ll make it for you soon.”
I consider this for a moment then reply, “Soon. I like the way that sounds. Like the words sun and moon combined.” I smile and he kisses me.
I imagine his kisses are little drops of moon light and mine are the sun’s rays and with each kiss is an eclipse ensues, creating a new color somewhere between gold and silver. I love that color. I love him.

I’ve never been much for engagement announcement dinners; I’ve always thought I’d simply tell the newspaper. That way we wouldn’t be obligated to come to another social event. However, Fredrick wanted to have a large party—so we’re having a large party.
My mother refused to put on an event on such short notice. This infuriated Aunt Maude and my father, but she had already begun to meditate (something she said Chander taught her when she first hired him, my heart soared for him when she said that) and there was no more discussing the matter. The Sincliars believed it was inappropriate for an engagement announcement to be held at the man’s home. So after much debate, the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was decided on.
If I have to announce my sham of an engagement to a man I do not love it might as well be a place filled with gorgeous art.
I’m practically one more of the statues in the Roman hall with prefect posture and a beautifully carved face. I’ve been so cheerful making plans to run away with Chander that I feel beautiful and happy.
They believe I’m pleased about Fredrick.
It makes me even more giddy to know they’re completely in the dark.
It’s late and I wish I was with Chander. But he’s outside watching our carriage and I’m in here being the perfect little bride.
We talk casually and dance and I’m not here, I’m out there, him teaching me how to meditate too.
“Isn’t it, Soleil?” Fredrick asks.
“What?” I pull myself out of my fantasies. “Oh. Yes.” I reply, not knowing what I’m agreeing to.
Fredrick stands and taps his spoon against his wine glass. I realize I’ve just said yes to announce my demise. I stand in a rush, then straighten myself out when I realize everyone is staring at me and I look like a madman.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Soleil and I have a very important, very happy announcement to make.” He takes a dramatic pause. I realize I should be smiling. I smile falsely. “I have proposed to Miss Soleil and she has said yes!” Well, that’s not true, but it really doesn’t matter all that much.
The 100 of the guests that I do know and the 600 of them that I don’t all applaud.
Aunt Maude and my father have smug looks on their faces. I don’t care. I’m getting out of here and I’ll be free one day. One day nearer than far. And I’ll be more awake than I ever have when I’m here sleeping, drowning.
The congratulations come like waves on the beaches of Newport that I no longer find so mystifying.
Mary Abbot says congratulations with a scowl on her face, I’m not sure if she’s upset I’m supposed to be marrying Fredrick or I was the first one to become engaged in general. She hasn’t a beau of her own yet to speak of besides Clarence Hatherford, Duke of Richmondton. She was appalled, as we all were, to learn that Richmondton is not a place and therefore should have no Duke. Clarence Hatherford turned out to be a dirt-poor and desperate gold miner from out West with a good skill in the art of conning named Levi Jones, hoping to scam the Mary into matrimony.
Ruby Morgan smiles and looks at my golden hair with the utmost jealousy, her own is stringy, short, and dull. However, I’m glad to see her, her parents hardly ever let her out of their tower-like mansion. Her congratulations are quick. I watch her find John Tisdale and pull him into the cloak closet for a few moments, completely unnoticed by anyone but me, I suppose. A butler goes into the closet to retrieve someone’s jacket, he returns with both of them at his heels and without a cloak. He brings them to Ruby’s parents and the Morgans leave swiftly after saying some harsh words to Mr. Tisdale. John looks frightened and stumbles around aimlessly, blinded by fear for Ruby and himself.
Katharine Bradford looks upon me broken-heartedly. She looks absolutely stunning but as far as I know she’s in love with Archie Sputher and Archie Sputher hasn’t paid any mind to her. She even has new slippers as beautiful as glass. Her step-mother and two step-sisters shoe her away and back home before I’ve truly had a chance to talk to her. She leaves in such a hurry, one of her slippers falls off. No one notices it.
Essie Worthington practically snaps at me when I talk to her. She pouts her red as blood lips at her new stepmother. It turns her skin of normally snow white an awful shade of green, poorly reflecting against her ebony black hair. I don’t understand why she hates the new Mrs. Worthington so much, she seems perfectly lovely to me. My question is answered when she begins to gossip about her step-mother with me. It seems absolutely absurd, but Essie is confident that because she is more beautiful than Mrs. Worthington, Mrs. Worthington is going to hire someone to kill her. I’m startled by Essie choosing me to discuss this with, Andrew Radcliff pulls her away, and she begins screaming at the top of her lungs about the matter. Mr. Worthington takes her home before she has made too large of a scene.
Belle Hayworth still looks like an animal trapped hopelessly in a cage, she congratulates me fully and truly, but she looks so miserable that I can’t bear to think of anything but her pain. For the first time, I realize how kind yet uneasy she is to my family in comparison to anyone else. The only evidence I can think of that would explain this peculiar fact takes me back five years ago in Newport. Her father and mine were speaking with one another in a joking way, bragging about their children and wives while we practiced our manners for our debuts over tea. Mr. Hayworth claimed Belle was such a good luck charm for his business she could practically spin straw into gold. My father said that if it was true, she should try; Mr. Hayworth consented and to make it more interesting, laid his entire business on the line as a bet. I don’t recall Belle ever being able to spin that straw into gold, but I don’t believe my father is in command of Mr. Hayworth’s business. But I look into her sad, brown eyes and know she’s wishing for someone to save her—prince or dwarf—I don’t think she gives a damn. I hope she does find someone to save her like Chander saved me. Despite his belief, Howard Gaston is not her savior.
Charlotte Rothchild seems oddly joyful as she speaks to me wearing another red dress—it seems the red is the only color she owns. Her grandmother has just passed away, she was perfectly healthy. The authorities believe there might have been something more chilling involved. But she seems completely unaware of the severity of the situation and dances off with William Beaumont. As handsome as he is, he gives me an uncomfortable feeling, the sharpness of his features, the look in his eyes, the way he conducts his body—he reminds me of a wolf. Charlotte seems to be incredibly in love with him, though.
Fredrick continues to stare at me like he should love me, but he doesn’t. He thinks I can’t tell. I do. It’s rather funny. I want to tell him he’ll never have to worry about pretending to love me again soon. I wonder how awful this is for him.
One day he’ll find an absolution from everything and I’ll be in India sipping chai with Chander. I hope Fredrick finds someone he can love truly and not have to pretend. That is my hope for all of them as I leave them behind like a parting ship, waving handkerchiefs and hats like banners of goodbye, of resolution, of absolution.

Private boxes in Operas are so portentous.
The wealthy ones rest conceitedly above the lower class like angles in heaven and common people of Earth. They feel angelic, like they’re more than the middle class because they have too much of everything.
I’ve stopped cataloging myself with them.
I want to be a million other places. But I am here, spending the last night with my mother as enjoyably as I can. It’s at the Sinclair box we sit. Everything is made of red velvet and black leather, it seems. Red roses and paintings of such fill anyone’s desire for decoration. The light is dim, but I can see my mother yawning and fanning herself. I’ll miss her blue eyes. I’ll miss her childlike attitude.
Everyone pays attention now, as the girls have stopped singing and there is Fredrick Sinclair playing Fredric—the dutiful, lovable pirate apprentice who throws himself at girls and ends up with one who may or may not truly love him. The irony is not lost on me. He sings, “Oh is there not one maiden here?” I see him looking up to this booth as he does. I think, “No. No there isn’t one maiden here.”
I feel like a Greek goddess in a white, flowing dress that sparkles golden in the light, a wreath of leaves made of gold, bronze, and silver crowns my head, and a hundred little bracelets made of the same material embellish my wrists. At the intermission, I’ll run to the carriage and strip off my shoes and petticoats and corset and maybe I really will be a Greek goddess. Perhaps soon I’ll be a Hindu goddess.
We have it all planned. Currently, Chander’s on his way once again to the Opera House, having gone back to the mansion to pick up my luggage. They’re full of jewels and silks and anything that might be worth something to sell for food, for clothing, for a marriage license, for a better life. And at intermission, I’ll sneak out and we’ll go to the station and take the midnight train to Boston and from there, we’ll get on a boat to Paris, then another train to the Mediterranean Sea, and finally a ship to Bombay. I don’t know how long it’ll take. I don’t care. As long as I do get away. I’m running away and I’m enthralled with it.
Mother lights a cigarette and thinks no one will notice. I do. So does my father. He takes it away and stomps it out silently. She rebels by lighting another and handing it to me, her eyes don’t leave the stage as she does so.
I realize my mother’s drowning too.
Suddenly I feel nauseous. The smoke that is now in my lungs, the idea of traveling half way around the world, the thought of leaving my mother—I’m going to be sick. I put out the rebellion and fan myself down. It doesn’t go away. I quietly dismiss myself to the powder room.
By the time I have finished vomiting my heart out and putting myself together again, intermission is already well under way and the room is becoming more and more full. I exit quickly, hoping not to be noticed. It’s now or never. I didn’t get to tell her that I love her, that I’ll miss her, the truth—I know she’ll support it, now more than ever. But I can’t let the moment pass.
I’m practically running through the crowd. Dodging in and out of ladies and gentlemen who look at me with disgust. I need to find the exit. My mind has already let paranoia set in. I see myself never finding the end to this labyrinth and being eaten by the minotaur that is society. I see Chander leaving without me. I see him falling in love with a girl with long, dark hair like the night sky he lives in, who wears saris and bindis and bangles like I used to wear gloves, who has eyes of coffee and skin of caramel and a soul as cruel as a storm.
Corsets are not meant for running in, but I do.
Spiraling paranoia clouds my brain so badly, I run into a man. He grips my shoulders as I try to continue to run. His face stretches into a sickly grin, “Miss Soleil, you should be more careful. Where are you running to?”
I’ve never really been scared like this before. That crooked grin, those dish-water eyes. “Nowhere, Mr. Gaston. Only to get back to my seat as soon as possible. I do believe it’s time to go back.”
The lobby is growing barren. He keeps his hand on my wrist as he checks his pocket watch, “Yes. Don’t want to miss any of Fredrick’s stunning performance.”
I pull. He doesn’t let go. He’s not muscular in the slightest, why am I not strong enough to get him away? He exhales a breath and I smell it—whiskey, much too much of it.
“How is Miss Hayworth?” I ask politely, using my free hand to tidy my hair and give a hopeful look. Why won’t he let me go?
“Miserable. I proposed to her, you know. She refused. Who does she think she is? That girl has tangled with the wrong man!” He snarls, coming closer to me. “Dismissed! Rejected! Publicly humiliated! Why, it’s more that I can bear. I have to get my status back.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Howard,” I’m backing into a wall. God, he’s hideous. He loosens his bow tie until it hangs limp around his neck. “You’re drunk,” I whisper, cowering.
He seems so big now. Not a bit of him is scraggly or scrawny—but not like before in a masculine way, in a way that makes me want to scream.
“You used to love me. Now you love that schmuck Sinclair.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is!” He screams, I’ve never heard a man besides my father scream before.
“Let go of me!” I yell back and desperately try to get away.
“I have to have someone,” his cold and damp fingers run along my cheek; passively, violently.
In panic, I form my hand into a fist, hit him in the gut, and run. I see the comforting darkness of night out the doors. It’s a shady back entrance but the wide world lets me breath in raw air—not cheaply perfumed or filled with the smoke of cigars that have no escape. I call Chander’s name. Once. Twice. Thrice. And walk around the Opera House, searching for some sign of my knight in shining armor and white horse. That panic and fear sets in on me, if he’s not here…
“Soleil!” I hear. It’s that syrupy mix of an English, American, and Indian accent I’ve found such comfort in. I run towards the sound and fall into his arms like a blanket of stars and the moon on the darkest night. It’s all too warm out and his body is cool.
“What happened?” Chander asks and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. I want to melt into him and never leave. I hate this life I’m leaving behind—I can’t wait to get out.
“Howard Gaston—he cornered me, he was drunk, I was scared,” I say as I burry my face in his tuxedo, taking in every bit of him that I can.
“You’re fine. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe. Let’s go.” He glances back across his shoulder. “He was just trying to intimidate you, he’d never do anything. And if he did, I swear, I’d kill him.” Somehow this threat of death comforts me. Chander takes my hand and helps me up that big step into the carriage. He’s done it a thousand times before, but now it’s different.
“As a specimen, yes, I’m intimidating.” The train voice, taking me farther away. I freeze. I turn. I feel like vomiting again. “You’ve hit rock bottom, haven’t you, Soleil?” rhetorically he asks. He’s casually clicking a gun’s safety on and off, on and off, on and off. With each click I wince as though I’ve been hit by one of its bullets. “But, we all expected it didn’t we? You’re not pretty enough to get much higher. But what would your father say? I’m sure he’d give me anything to not tell…”
“What the hell would you even want? You’re already rich and Belle isn’t his to give,” I yell.
“No. But we men have a very complicated way of dealing with things. You wouldn’t understand. The whole world is just one giant business deal,” the light of the moon is harsh on Howard’s face that looks pale and queasy and angry. I hold on tighter to Chander. “You see, you women are chattel. Objects of desire, maybe, but truly just used for your unprecedented capability to bear and care for children—specifically male children to make more business deals and more babies and business and babies and business and—“ he cuts himself off, “Well, you see, Belle could produce such fine children, I know that. I know that you would make… mediocre ones. However, I also am aware of the predicament we are in now. Your father and Belle’s have a very interesting relationship. If there ever was a pair of men that hated each other more, I’d be stunned. Belle’s father believes your father is horribly controlling and tyrannical, while your own believes the other is simply mad and a dirty liar. If I tell Belle’s father about this situation, he’d gleefully tell the papers before the morrow and you’d be just as dead to the world as any old prostitute. Now, if I know your father well, which I believe I do, he’s not the kind of man to back down without a fight, is he? No, he’d instantly reveal to the world how truly insane Mr. Hayworth is and send you, Miss Aymond, to a finishing school hundreds of miles away from here and leave your little friend here to rot on the street with a bullet hole in his chest. Hayworth is quite indeed mad, but bright enough to know how to silence the madness before it begins—he will anonymously send a tip to the Society Pages about your little scandal. You’ll be miserable and I’ll have my bride. This is how life works for us, Soleil.”
“Go put more oil in your hair, smoke a cigar, tell me when you actually know something of life, pretty boy,” Chander scowls but it sounds like he wants to laugh at Howard.
Howard cocks his head and glares at Chander without saying anything, he turns back to me. “Sleeping with your coachman? That’s low, Soleil. You are a whore.”
“You don’t call a lady that,” Chander says coldly, but I feel the blood heating beneath his skin.
“And who are you to tell me what I will and will not do? Your mother and grandmother and great-grandmother were probably all whores. Your sisters are whores. Soleil is a whore. All you know are whores.”
Chander practically throws me off him and into the carriage. He lunges at Howard, screaming obscenities, mostly in Hindi, a few slip out in English, and punching him. I don’t know what to do. I’m too mortified to move.
And there’s that gun. Darkly beautiful and ornamented with roses and snakes intertwining with each other, the snake about to sink its fangs into the bloom of the rose, trimmed with letters I’m too frightened to read. Inches from Howard’s fingertips. I’m terrified.
Once I regain my senses, I try to pull the two of them apart, shouting at the top of my lungs, “Chander! Chander stop!” I push them away from each other. Chander leaves with a bloody lip and nose, but Howard’s limping on his twig-legs and buds of bruises are already blooming on his skin.
There’s nothing more for them to do. Nothing more to say. Nothing more to feel.
Howard turns back to the Opera House, away from the dark alleyway where I’m beginning to become more and more uncomfortable. He spits blood on the ground by our feet. I don’t know much about things of this crude nature, but I know that’s one of the most disrespectful things you can do to a person.
“You’re a dirty rich bastard, you know that?” Chander yells behind him. I don’t disagree with the statement.
“I could always take out a step for your father, Soleil. Keep him in my good graces. I could kill your lover for him, couldn’t I?” Howard stresses the world “lover”, taunting us with how flimsy the concept is compared to the firm gun held expertly in his hands.
Chander is inching towards Howard, his palms raised, looking at the ground. I feel as though a piece of me as broken off as he walks closer to Howard, I hate the naked feeling. He whispers, now facing down the barrel of the gun and Howard Gaston’s slimy eyes, “By all means, kill me,” he exclaims. “Just know that if you hurt Soleil in any way, I will have you killed. And that’s a promise I can make on my grave.” Chander’s doing something. He wouldn’t waste his breath in this idle conversation. He keeps inching closer. Somehow Gaston doesn’t notice.
“You’ll be dead.”
“I’d kill you myself,” I pipe in, huddling against the carriage. It occurs to me that I don’t doubt for a moment its truth.
“You’ll be dead too, you stupid girl,” Howard scowls.
“I have friends. Not like you would know much of that concept.”
“Killing you and her—it wouldn’t be much different from killing dogs.”
Chander is so close to him. I don’t know why Howard isn’t noticing it. Nor do I know what in the world he’s trying to do. Until that moment.
The light of the moon catches on something that reflects its own light back to the sky. A scream escapes my lips. As it does a sound like thunder, like rain, like a soul being torn away from a body echoes in the alley. I’ve never heard anything so loud before. So terrifying. I run to Chander. Something pierces my skin once I come close, but I don’t feel the pain. I press my palms against the wound in my side, vaguely sure there’s blood leaking out of it. But I’m on my knees cradling his head in my lap, tracing over his jaw line with the tips of my fingers, whispering his name desperately. His eyes are shut. There has never been a time where I’d like to see his tea eyes more. I’ve never wanted to view anything so badly before in my life. Chander’s blood and mine are becoming indistinguishable; I can’t tell whose gash is worse. But he’s not saying anything. Why won’t he say anything?! Tears spill from my eyes like rain I wish would fall to wash all the blood away. And I cry to the gods to let me have him, to make him come back, to say something—I want to see those laughing eyes. Chander’s so quiet. I’ll die on these streets with him because I see no point in a world without a moon.
I’m dying. And Chander’s dead. So I lay with the moon and take his palms and whisper, “You are the moon. I am the sun. And no person nor no spell nor no god could keep us apart. I love you.”
“You are the sun. I am the moon. And no person nor no spell nor no god could keep us apart. I love you,” it’s weak, but I’ll drown in it. I’ll forever drown in it.
“Chander!” I snap up and press my ear against his heart. I feel the steady beat I have always felt. I sob and he lets me stay over his chest, both of us bleeding to death. It’s then that I realize I have no idea where Howard is.
My question is answered when I move my eyes to where he was standing. Now he is laying with his eyes wide open and a trickle of blood running from his mouth to the larger pool of it that surrounds him.
Chander killed him.
The most peculiar thing is I don’t want to cry for the loss of Howard Gaston or the blood which is now on Chander’s hands—I cry for Belle Hayworth, for the relief she will feel, for all the unexplainable feelings that will crash through her body. And I want to help her sort through them; I want to be her friend.
It’s hard to be friends with someone when you’re dead.
I pull Chander’s shirt off, rip it in half, and tie one half tightly around his gash which is only on his arm. I wonder why he’s so weak, it’s not a bad cut. Next, I take the other piece and do the same with my own wound on my waist. I wonder still how Chander’s knife got into Howard’s hands and how Howard’s gun got into Chander’s hands. My head swims, but I help Chander sit up and drag him against the wall.
“The sun needs you, Moon. Please… Tell me the story about Parvati again, Chander. What’s your youngest sister’s favorite sweet? Once we get to India, darling, we’ll by her a whole box full of it—whatever it is. Tell me. I love you, please, tell me you love me. I love you,” I say desperately, stroking his face, trying to get him to say something more, to open his eyes, to tell me he loves me. But his eyes stay closed though I still can feel his pulse. “Please, Parvati... Shiva… Vishnu… Brahman… Anyone! Help me!” I yell in a hopeless tone.
“He’s going to need a doctor. As are you,” a voice says behind me. I turn. Fredrick Sinclair stands behind me, still in his stage makeup, only glancing at us, staring mortified at the lifeless body of the man I once held dear.
Everything that could have gone wrong tonight has.
“Mr. Fredrick! Please, I beg of you, please don’t—“
He cuts me off, “Come now. We don’t have much time. He must’ve hit his head. My father hasn’t been in practice a long time, but he’s still a doctor. He can treat your love.” Fredrick offers his hand to me. He looks broken, though does a good job of hiding it.
I take the hand and clutch my side as a fresh wave of pain shoots through, crippling me. Fredrick holds me as I recover from it so I don’t crash to the ground once again. It doesn’t go away, but I’m more concerned about Chander. Fredrick and I drag him to the carriage, as he’s much bigger than both of us, careful of the wound on his arm, and slide into the back of the carriage. We leave Howard’s body in the alley, with both the gun and the knife reflecting red blood off their metallic surfaces. Fredrick takes the reins of the horses, which by some beautiful miracle of Brahman have not run away after all the terror that has just occurred, and takes us towards his home.
I continue to stroke Chander’s face and say sweet words regarding astronomy and religion and fairytales. Things about his appearance come to my attention that I have never noticed before—the rounded shape of his nose, the plumpness of his lips, the thick of his eyebrows that somehow seem to stay uniform, the true darkness of his long and messy locks of hair that fall over his forehead. I weld these images into my mind so that the thief that is time can never steal it away from me. Vertigo is becoming unbearable and the carriage ride is too, too long. I lay my head on his chest, feeling the gentle heartbeat locked just under his skin, it’s so comforting, so real that I’m sure everything else in the world has to be an illusion. There’s just him and I. And he’s only asleep and my kiss will wake him, just like his woke me. But I’ll save that for another time, because his steady, steady, steady heartbeat is what marks seconds turning into minutes into hours into days into weeks. It’s my favorite sound in the world. I drown in the tossing seas of that heartbeat like I have his voice and I don’t realize I have lost my consciousness to a world of bindis and gods and chai tea and love.

When I wake, I’m too hot. That’s the first thing I think. Next, I realize I don’t know where I am. Then, reality sinks in as if it were a sinking ship.
“Chander,” I moan, desperately scratching at the sheets, trying to find where they end so I can find him. I must save him like he saved me.
“You have to stay still, Soleil,” Fredrick says and checks my forehead. I just then realize that it is in fact burning up.
“Where is he? I want to see him!” I yell with all the strength I can muster.
“He’s in the next room. You’re too weak now. You lost a lot of blood and he hit his head hard on the ground.
“I don’t believe you. Let me see him.”
“You will soon. I need to talk to you,” he looks like he’s been to hell and back. Tired and emotionally miserable.
Part of me wishes I loved him, so he wouldn’t be so heartbroken, but I know that’s not something I can control. His face is cleared of all the powder, rouge, and kohl that only made him look silly last night and he wears trousers and shirtsleeves, barely able to keep himself awake, I take this as acceptable.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I cruelly refuse, then I think of him valiantly saving Chander and I from death in the alley last night. It sends a fresh wave of pain over my whole body, but not from the gash on my side. “All right. What?”
“I know you don’t love me. I know you never will or have loved me. But I love you.”
“No you don’t! I know you don’t! You only want to love me!” I spit out hotheadedly. If Aunt Maude were here, she’d be mortified by my lack of manners.
“You don’t know what I feel,” he snaps. “And even if I didn’t love you, we still wouldn’t have a choice.”
“A choice in what?” I ask cautiously, fear pulsing through my veins.
“We still have to get married, Soleil,” he says gently.
My face grows hotter, if it was possible, “No. I’m going to India with Chander. We’re not staying here.”
“You have to stay here, Soleil. You have to marry me or your lover will be executed and your mother will die.”
My head spins, “What does my mother have to do with any of this.”
“She became ill with what we believed was worry for you, until we discovered she has actually contracted Influenza. My father’s treating her as well as keeping Howard’s murder a secret. He’ll turn Chander into the authorities and stop treating your mother if you make one slip out of line.”
“Why, Fredrick?! I know you don’t love me, he couldn’t possibly want you to marry a woman you do not love who doesn’t love you either.”
Fredrick explains remorsefully, “You’re one of the richest bachelorettes in all of New York. My father needs your bounty. He takes it as a payment from your father for treating you and your mother.”
I’m not making sense of any of this. My head spins and swims and back flips of the edge of sanity. “No… No! You’re lying! You’re a filthy liar! I don’t know why you want to marry me, but you’re lying! You miserable scum, why would you lie to me?!” I scream.
“I’m not lying! I’ve done so much for you!”
“No! You just want to keep me alive so you can kill me later yourself.” I feel my sanity slipping through the cracks of my fingers like sad on a beach.
“Soleil! I don’t want to marry you, but I have to! And you’re crazy! I don’t want to kill you.”
The sheets are hundred ton iron plains, trapping me under them. I can’t move but I can scream. “Really? You don’t want to kill me?! Oh! Well in fact, if you look at it this way, technically our marriage is saved! Well, this calls for a toast so pour the champagne!” I scream, tears rolling down my face.
Fredrick’s standing up to leave, he’s at the doorway, his face is angry, he’s closing the door behind him, he’s leaving me to rot in here, he’s turning back, he’s saying words, “By the way, Miss Soleil, you were pregnant but you lost your baby last night.”
I’m swimming in an ocean of confusion and fear and pain. There’s a lot of pain. I can’t see the sky, I have no way to tell which way is up or down or how to reach the surface—all I know is that Chander’s there and I have to reach it. And I’m dying and I can’t breathe and I don’t know where he is. I realize the ocean is made of my own tears.

“I think accents of lavender would be lovely. Peonies would be ideal, but I suppose calla lilies will do. No, no! Roses are unacceptable. Roses cannot be lavender. That’s simply ridiculous,” Aunt Maude frets over flowers for my wedding.
The florist has come to our home, presenting his best ideas in our parlor and Aunt Maude has rejected them all, it seems. I refuse to do anything other than fan myself and pluck petals from the stems of flower arrangements and strew them across the floor defiantly. It’s small acts like these that keep me sane. Spilling red wine on my future mother-in-law’s or Aunt Maude’s or my own best dress, knocking over vases, coming down with a very terrible headache on the day I’m supposed to be picking which chapel to be wed in, tearing out the pearls and ripping the hem of samples of my wedding dress—this makes life bearable. I no longer feel as though I need to pretend to be perfect. I don’t want to be perfect.
My mother has become more ill with each passing day, and there have been twelve of those fleeting packs of twenty four hours. I’m to be married as soon as possible. That day is June first. I plan to be dead or by some other way unreachable by the eve of the changing month. I know my father would never be so cruel as to not find other help for treating my mother after Mr. Sinclair becomes no longer an option.
“Maude, really. Just pick out any old arrangement. No one will be looking at them anyhow and they’ll be dead before they can wonder about it.”
Aunt Maude becomes red, but I’ve turned back to disassembling a daisy and lounging about in a very unladylike manner on the fainting couch. “Soleil, we want the flowers to be beautiful so people will look at them.”
“We want them to look at my face and my gown and the stained glass windows and the cake and the ring and Fredrick and my bridesmaids and the groomsmen and now we want them to look at the flowers as well? My goodness, Aunt Maude, we’ll make them positively dizzy.”
I can tell she wants to slap me. I’m beyond caring about the pain any longer, I don’t care. And I’m sure she would have if Fredrick hadn’t walked in at just that moment.
“Oh, Fredrick, darling. Aunt Maude thinks peonies would be exquisite, but this awful florist refuses to get them for us!”
The florist looks at me confused, then as Fredrick orders him away and tells him he could do his job better, he shoots me a glare. I smile back pitifully, genuinely, hoping it will repay for the business he has just lost. I pray he can make up for it somehow, but I’ve been doing anything to ensure this will be the most horrid wedding anyone has ever been to. Even things that are done to the highest standard I find fault in and demand for a different version. That way perhaps we won’t be ready come June first and have to cancel the wedding for a while longer. It’s wishful thinking, I know, but at least it keeps me sane as well.
“Dear, how is my mother?” I ask and sit up straightly with faux bright eyes and loving, light touch of hand against his.
“A little better today. She was asking for you at around noon, but she then fell asleep once again.”
“Oh, goodness. That’s good then, I suppose. I miss her so…”
“Yes. It is good. Perhaps she’ll be well enough to attend the wedding.”
“Perhaps.”
“The Abbots are holding a ball soon. They hope to cheer everyone’s spirits about losing Howard. I thought that would be nice for you, I know how sad you’ve been about your mother and Howard.”
“That sounds lovely,” I lie.
He lightly kisses my gloved hand. I feel it burning a hole through my skin, “Oh, how much like the little girl you were before all of this occurred.”
I’m nothing like the little girl I was before all this occurred. I find no enchantment in balls and dinners—they make me feel so confined. The thought of loving Howard Gaston makes me laugh and gag at the same time. I realize I’m beautiful with or without all the powder, rouge, and kohl. And I fight because I’m strong. I fight for my mother, for freedom, for love. Love is my resistance against everything they force down my throat with gloved hands tied behind my back.
And with all my heart and soul I love Chander Gadhia. My coachman. The best singer and storyteller I know. My best friend in the whole world. The father of my lost child. A man who I’ll have to go to hell and back to see again.
I expect to see him again.
Hell and heaven are no incredible distances for the sun and moon. I will see him. And he will hold me in his strong arms and sing me songs in a tongue I never knew existed and tell me stories about a place and a time I’d never think of on my own. And I will cradle him softly and sing him songs in a tongue he never knew existed and tell him stories about a place and a time he’d never think of on his own. We’ll read stories together that neither of us knew before and laugh and cry of the words before us. He will come home with sweat over his brow and a weary strength in his back while I have been teaching our children French, Hindi, Spanish, Greek, piano, violin, guitar, harp, arithmetic, modern science, history of worlds near and far—anything they want to know. He’ll bend down to kiss their tan foreheads and I’ll smile and wait my turn. And that kiss… that kiss will be like the heavens and hells which we’ve had to overcome to stand there and kiss each other so openly, so without fear.
“Soleil,” Fredrick says, brutally tearing me away from my fantasies.
“Yes, my dear?” I reply in a chipper tone, though I feel like hissing at him to go away and let me wallow in misery.
“Your father would like you to see him in his study.” He speaks the words gently, as if I’m a glass ball that could shatter at any word spoken too harshly.
But I don’t shatter, only crack. I have not spoken to or seen my father directly since the night of the opera. His orders and updates are given to me through Aunt Maude or Fredrick. He has no interest in seeing his whore of a daughter.
Apparently now he does.

The air seems heavier in this part of the house, the light dimmer, the color less vibrant. I’ve been in his study once before. It was when I was young and curious about this grand old house I lived in, I wanted to explore every nook and cranny. I was reprimanded so heavily, I began to cry each time I even saw my father for a month. My hand trembles as it forms a weak fist and taps on the hard wood door.
“Father, Mr. Fredrick said you wanted to see me here,” I say softly.
“Come in,” he announces in his gruff voice. Timidly, I do.
It hasn’t changed at all since innocent curiosity brought me here, but now as whorish, horrible behavior beckons me to the room the mood has shifted to a chilly hatred that radiates from my father. I sit delicately in the small leather chair opposite him and the large velvet one guarded by his desk full of old books and trinkets I can’t name. His hair dark is graying but, like a lion’s mane, every hair is still as cemented into his head as it was when he met my mother, I assume. And even more like a lion, he looks at me with gray eyes like he’s waiting for the kill. I fully expect to get my throat clawed out, I brace for death.
He begins to speak, it’s a cold, heartless voice, “How are the wedding plans going?”
I know he doesn’t care, he’s playing me, trying to make me feel loved and welcome before he rips my heart out for the kill. “Fine. Aunt Maude wants lavender accents.”
“Then you will have lavender accents.” I nod blankly, he continues, “And of your bridesmaids?”
“I plan to ask Belle Hayworth to be my maid of honor. Ruby Morgan and Katharine Bradford would be nice as other maids.”
“I promised Mr. Worthington you’d make his daughter one as well.”
I fight a protest that burns in my voice about how much I despise Essie Worthington, “Yes, sir.”
My father turns to the ledger in front of him and scribbles down business I’m sure he thinks I wouldn’t understand, “Fredrick seems to be taking the situation rather well.”
“He is.”
“I don’t know how he could stand to marry filth like you, but I’m sure he has his reasons.”
I don’t say anything.
“Well?” He turns to look at me agitatedly.
“Yes sir. I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“But I’m sure you’re wondering how Mr. Gadhia is.”
This is a trap set by a clever lion, I’m sure, but I can’t help but perk up. I choose my words carefully, “Any caring and polite girl would be interested in hearing how a once faithful employee is.”
“You are no longer a girl. And your actions were neither caring nor polite. You are a tramp. And I have no idea why in the world the respectable Mr. Fredrick Sinclair wants Gadhia’s trash.”
I say nothing.
“Well?! Say something, you stupid whore!” he yells and slams the book closed.
“I’m not a whore!” I yell back. “I love him!”
His lips twist into a sick grin, “You’ll never see him again.”
“I will. I swear to you, I will see him again.”
“You are not leaving my sight. I will not have you disgrace the Aymond name anymore than you already have.”
“I’m not your puppet. I don’t care about our name.”
“You have no idea where to find him.”
“Then he’ll find me.”
“Contrary to your deluded belief, you are not a character one of your fairytale stories. You are not a princess and he is not a knight in shining armor that will come and rescue you from an evil fairy. He’s a penniless Indian scum and you are a slut of a debutante.”
I grit my teeth, “Where is he?”
My father laughs. It’s twisted. Like a lion’s roar and an evil witch combined in one, “We men have a very complicated way of dealing with things. You wouldn’t understand. The whole world is just one giant business deal.”
My eyes widen and a chill runs down my spine. This is exactly what Howard said to me on the night Chander killed him.
“Vous pouvez aller maintenant, Princesse Sommeil Beauté, Mademoiselle Soleil. Je suis sûr que votre lune et votre prince va vous sauver. Après tout, aucune personne ou charme ou dieu pourrait vous séparer.” He shuts the ledger and shoes me out.
I’m terrified and frozen from the inside out. I will never be warm again.
My father’s words, spoken in French. I translate them in my head, “You may go now, Princess Sleeping Beauty, Miss Sun. I’m sure your moon and your prince will save you. After all, no person or spell or god could separate you.”
I’m shaking.
How does my father know the words Chander and I say to each other in the dark of night behind locked doors? How does he know that Chander is my moon?
But something else is gnawing away at me as I walk out the door more horrified than I’ve ever been in my whole life.
The circular image on the cover of his ledger is of a snake about to clamp its wide jaw around the bloom of a rose and the words, “Sanguis rosas pingit dies novum” surround it. It’s made of gold and set on the leather cover of the book. I place it instantly. It’s on my father’s cane, Fredrick’s lighter, the Bradford’s goblets, the Worthington’s teacups, Howard’s gun. For the first time, I wonder what it means.
I have to know what it means.

That night, I’m haunted by nightmares.
Chander in a prison made of stone walls that are damp and cold. He’s bloody and just barely alive but he knows I am there and he’s pounding on the walls by the door. I call out to him but I have no voice. I’m in a cell now too, on the other side of the door. I can’t hear him call, but I know he’s there. I slam my fists against the door and yell on the top of my lungs, but he does not hear me. But my jail is not as dark as his was, mine has a window, a bright window that leads to a joyful world where roses bloom and grow incredible heights, they reach window and I realize we’re trapped in a tower.
Far below the window, the other girls I debuted with make merriment on a grassy plane. Essie eats an apple and stares at her reflection in a hand mirror with a carefree smile on her lips. Belle plaits straw into gold. Charlotte plays fetch with a large dog. Katharine sits close to a fire, engrossed in the flames, getting covered in cinders just like she did when she was a child. Ruby braids her impossibly long, auburn hair over and over again. Mary throws a golden ball high into the air and never lets it hit the ground.
Over the horizon, the sun has started to set and my eyelids are becoming droopy when I notice a beautiful bed, fit for a princess standing just below the widow. If I jump, it will catch me. Forgetting about Chander, I do jump. The roses help guide me beneath the sheets and I close my eyes blissfully.
Then the other girls begin to shout, I open my eyes once again. I see Andrew Radcliff holding Essie. Belle and a man I have never seen before embrace. William Beaumont takes Charlotte’s hand. Katharine and Archie Sputher dance to music only they can hear. John Tisdale strokes Ruby’s face. Levi Jones takes Mary’s arm for a stroll. And Chander Gadhia, looking as handsome and healthy as the day he taught me I was more than a rich, white, society girl gives me a kiss to awaken me from my slumber.
Instead of his soft lips, I find cold scales. This is not Chander. This is a snake, now bearing its fangs and ready to kill me. I scream. The other girls around me do as well. It seems all of our princes have turned to serpents. But it’s too late for someone to help us, and we are all devoured by the monsters.
Darkness. Coldness. Emptiness.
A light turns on. It’s faint, coming from a gas lamp, dimmed as low as it could be. I’m blinded by it for a moment, then he comes into focus.
A twisted grin, a bowler hat, a pair of beady blue eyes, a light, stubbly beard.
“Hello my dear. Welcome to the land of fairytales,” he says, all together too seductively.
A knife. A knife with a handle made of leather. A knife with a seal embellishing the leather. A beautiful rose. A horrible snake. An inscription, “Sanguis rosas pingit dies novum”. A stream of blood running down my right cheek. A scream that jumps from my throat.

*O.o
Now I'm scared to go to bed..............*

I’m too, too, too hot when I wake. Sticky sweat coats my body and glues my nightgown to my skin. I’m cold though. Shivering from the inside out. I strip off the gown, shaking and letting the tears run down my face unstopped. I don’t like the feeling of nudity. I pull on my bronze colored silk one made for summer, I don’t care, its’ clothing. Unsteadily, I sit on my old rocking chair. Even the small squeaks put me on edge. Shivering, shaking, scared beyond recognition—all things I am as I fight away the images I so expertly trained my mind not to think of break through and pour onto my consciousness.
Sanguis rosas pingit dies novm.
The words haunt me, invade my safest, sweetest memories and skew them to some dark fantasy created by an evil witch. I don’t know why the man from my most terrifying memory has come back to play with me or why the seal on his knife is the same as so many of the relics from the world I once thought was safe. All I know is I don’t feel protected by the wealth and power of my society any longer. Even as I was plotting to escape the clutches of high-class New York City, it was as though nothing could touch my mother or the other girls who I befriended as a child. They were always dominant enough to not fall under the fairy’s curse.
Everything I know about the world around me is wrong.
That is, except for one thing which I want so desperately, it burns and sends my head into a fit.
Desperately, I want Chander. I want him to whisper sweet songs into my ear with his lullaby of a voice. I want him to tell me stories of the gods and goddesses I wish I had grown up with like he had. I want to tell him secrets I haven’t admitted to myself. I want to discuss literature with him. I want to be his sun and his princess. I want to make sure his heart is still pounding. But he’s so very absent. And I wonder if he really is locked in a cell somewhere, pounding with bleeding fists against the wall, covered in filth.
These images I fight to keep out of my mind. I can’t afford any more mental trauma than I’ve already experienced this night.
“Hello, my dear. Welcome to the land of fairytales.”
I cringe as I think of it. Instead of the pretty songs Chander sang to me like I wish for, these are the words that echo over, and over, and over, and over again in my head. It makes me want to crawl deep, deep down into the center of the Earth and stay there for as long as the human race lives.
He had a German accent. That comes back to me. His breath smelled of garlic. That comes back to me. His fingers were long and spindly and careful. That comes back to me. He read me stories—so many stories. That comes back to me. They were dark stories, all containing cannibalism or slaughter. That comes back to me.
There were horrible wizards and dirty men and poor, innocent girls who somehow or another managed to find a happy ending. A maiden whose hands were chopped off by her own father. A lady who watched her fiancé force himself upon, murder, and eat another woman. A girl who was taken from her own home to live with a man who kept her locked out of all the rooms in his home but one, where her brutally took the lives of helpless wanderers. These were his favorite. He assured me that I would not have a happy ending in my fairytale.
I sit as far away from the window as I can, scarred from the dream. I’ve spent enough nights watching the sky to see how many minutes Chander and I had before the sun arose and forced us into reality to know that its rays are just beginning to stretch towards dawn. No one will be awake for hours in my home, but I know I’ll never be able to go to sleep again without the haunting images of what I think is my fate.
I consider the possibility of suicide. For all I know, Chander’s already dead—I wouldn’t put it above my father. And if he is dead, I have nothing left to live for. I have no friends, no family, not even a pet to make me feel needed. The pretty sparkles of chandelier light and the glistening of pearls off dresses imported from Paris are nothing but materialistic, narcissistic spells to me now. I think of a time when those spells would entrance me and two months ago seems so very far away. The days of being eight and without a scar forced upon me by a pale hand and a blade whose embellishment is eerily the same as things in my own home are perhaps as far away as India at this moment.
My fingers find my face and trace the small indent. The feeling of the groove makes me more outraged than I’ve been in a long time. I’m utterly powerless in everything that is going on around me—the dots I can’t seem to connect. Tears shake me violently like the storm I’m now drowning in once again. Breath is a substance to rich to be found in my lungs regularly, but in large gulps. I scream and pull at my hair and tear at my nightgown and scratch at my skin until it bleeds. For a moment after the blood first comes, I slightly calm and watch it spill from my wrists. Crimson enchantment I can count on to be within me until the moment I die. Then the last image I have of Chander comes to my mind—with his laughing eyes shut and so much of the blood seeping into every piece of material. It doesn’t calm me any longer. I’m thrust into another fit. Screaming and sobbing and letting the blood run deep into the threads of my nightgown.
Finally, I can’t take it any longer. I need air. I can’t breathe in here. In the dark of my closet I find a pair of boots and a long, black cloak made for winter. Quickly, I put them on, not knowing where I plan to go, just knowing I need to get out. It’s shocking no one has woken up after my fit and now I’m running down the hallway, sobbing. I don’t take a candle, for that would have taken too much thought, but my feet find their favorite place despite the blackness. I throw open the door without consideration.
Emptiness. Just like my heart. All his piles and piles of books—gone. The small bed covered in messy quilts—nothing but a mattress. Tiny night stand typically covered with burnt out candles—disappeared.
The tears fall faster now, less like a tantrum and more like genuine pain. Because pain is all I feel. I flinch to lie on the only thing left in the room, his old mattress (not even the bed frame remains) but stop myself when I see a red glint coming off of it.
Oh god. Oh Brahman and Shiva and Parvati and Vishnu—oh god. It’s as if a corset has just been fully tightened around my torso. I lose all the breath that was in my lungs and possibly the sanity I once possessed.
The knife from my nightmare, from the memory of eight years ago I tried so hard to push down, from the last night I saw Chander alive sits placidly in the center, covered in blood. If it’s my own or my lover’s—it doesn’t matter, our blood is one and we will both bleed.
A snake in position to attack a rose.
Sanguis rosas pingit dies novum.
I feel faint. Nowhere is safe, nowhere is safe, nowhere is safe. Not my own home—not at all—but not even in the place I once felt most secure. My fingernails start to tear at my wrists to distract from the trauma, but they only find the black cloth of my cloak. So instead of hurting myself any further, I run.
Run out the cellar door, run out to the mild weather of May in Manhattan, run to the one person who loved me from the moment I was born because she is the only woman on the face of the earth who could console my tears and would tell me what is going on, even if she is irrevocably sick.
I’ve never walked to the Sinclair mansion before, but I have to now.
It’s amazing to me how alive the streets are at such a late time of night. Shady, with no doubt, are the characters, but I don’t listen to them or pay them any mind whatsoever. I have to see my mother. I turn to Madison Avenue and pray I remember where it is. A large, red brick mansion is the third on the street and I know that I’m much smarter and have a better memory than anyone gives me credit for. Without knocking or ringing the doorbell, I try to break through the door.
It’s locked.
Of course it’s goddamn locked. It’s four in the morning in New York City.
Maybe I am a stupid whore.
Though, that doesn’t matter now. I just need to see my mother.
I bang on the door, not caring in the slightest about if I wake someone up. They deserve it—they all deserve to be woken up at the crack of dawn to their future kinswoman, covered in blood and tears and desperate beyond measure. My brain racks itself for all the profane words I know to scream at the door. As it turns out I don’t know that many.
The door opens, finally. It’s Fredrick in his own nightclothes. “Miss Soleil, what are you doing here?!”
“I want to see my mother.” I demand.
He crosses his arms, covered in blue and black stripped sleeves, “You can’t come here like this. What in the world is the matter with you?!” I’ve never seen him look this angry, the burning hatred in his eyes. He doesn’t want to marry me any more than I want to marry him. However, that’s irrelevant at the moment. I have to see my mother.
“Let me see her!” yell I. Uncontrollable tears leak over my face, I don’t want them to at all. I want to be strong and persistent to get what I want. Tears make that persona difficult to use.
“What is wrong with you?! This is not how debutantes behave! Come, I’ll have my coachman take you home.”
“No!” I scream at the top of my lungs as his hand touches my arms to drag me away. “No, no, no! Please no!” My knees become too weak to stand on, I sink to the ground. “No. Just goddamn show me where she is! Please…” I’m so weak and pathetic, sobbing at his feet.
Fredrick begins to go back inside. I cry harder, cursing air and life and roses in my mind.
He looks turns to me, “Let me make you some tea.”
“I don’t want your fucking tea,” I spit.
Fredrick looks at me sternly with brown, greenish eyes that have never seen a day without food, never heard a woman swear, never known what it’s like to carry someone else’s heart in your own. He’s so young, such a child. “Well, a drink then. Or even tap water and a washcloth. Jesus Christ, just come in!” he shouts impatiently.
I follow his command and stare at the hardwood floors under my feet, the red and navy blue carpets and he leads me to the parlor. I sit on one of the plush couches with my shoulders slumped forward, still looking at the floor beneath.
“I want whiskey.”
Something tells me that he regards me skeptically, but a few moments pass and he hands me a damp towel and the glass full of amber liquid I’ve never tasted before. Before I begin to clean my arms, I gulp all of the burning, terrible liquor. I hate the way it feels. But in the moments after, I’m filled with a sense of dizzy calmness. It helps. Quite a lot, actually. But I don’t ask for more. Then I pull off the cloak and set the towel over my horrifying arms. Fredrick stays quiet and I appreciate that. He has no need to know why I’m in such a state and I have no need to tell him. It seeps up the new blood that is leaking and clears away that which has already dried so that only the strong scabs and open wounds are left. It stings.
“You might want my father to look at that.”
“No. Just give me medicine for it, let me see my mother, and I’ll leave.” It occurs to me that I have no idea where I’d go after I’m done here.
He obviously ignores me, “Soleil, we need to discuss some things.”
I look up for the first time since entering his home only to stare daggers at him. I notice his boyish appearance and for the first time dread marrying him, not only because I’m already engaged to another, but because I am simply not romantically attracted to him. At all.
“Say something,” he demands.
“You’re a bastard.”
He takes this as saying something, but doesn’t comment on the severity, “You need to get away from here.”
“What?” I ask, confusion wiping the harsh look off my face and furrowing my brow.
“There are things that—“
“What in the world is going on here?!” A voice exclaims from the doorway. We both turn. My father and Mr. Sinclair stand there, dressed in their finest clothes and the smell of cigar smoke and brandy.
“Soliel Aymond! What are you doing here?!” My father shouts.
“I was looking for Mother,” I say innocently. Of course he doesn’t think I’m innocent at all anymore. Maybe screaming would have been a better option.
“This is completely inappropriate! How could your daughter get out of your house in the middle of the night?! And how did she get here?!” Mr. Sinclair yells, his large face trimmed with mutton chops turning red as Charlotte Rothchild’s clothing.
“I’m sorry! I just wanted to see my mother,” I defend.
“Then you could do so during calling hours like a young lady should, Miss Soleil,” my father reprimands through gritted teeth.
“But she’s always asleep then and you say I shouldn’t bother her! I haven’t seen her since the Opera!”
“And you think she would be awake at four in the morning?” Mr. Sinclair huffs, “Women know nothing of logic.”
“I would wake her!”
“When she’s nearly dead?! You think she would want to see you so much to have you interrupt her sleep?! Really, Soleil, you are a stupid girl,” My father’s words cut like fingernails in flesh. But I know it’s not true.
“She loves me.”
“She tolerates you, like the rest of us.”
An icy silence follows his words. Then Mr. Sinclair turns to his son.
“And you. Why did you let her in? You know better than that, Fredrick!”
Fredrick stands and moves to whisper something to him. His words turn Mr. Sinclair’s face even more like a ripe tomato. Fredrick leaves without another word.
Mr. Sinclair looks at my father and mutters to him something about a meeting and order. I can’t hear him, but I hear my name. When he finishes, my father nods solemnly and returns his sight to me. I’m confused. I don’t like all the things men keep from women.
“We should be getting home now. You have a fitting for your wedding gown today and your bridesmaids will be joining you.” He smiles in his false way, lips cruelly stretching over his yellow teeth, as he walks closer to me like impending doom. His gloved hand grabs my arm, breaking all the skin that had just begun to heal and pushing away the towel. “Dear Jesus! Soleil!” My father cries out as he sees the carmine life-juice, Mr. Sinclair exclaims something as well, but I don’t hear it.
Father turns abruptly back to Mr. Sinclair, “Well! Don’t just stand there like a fool! You know she has to be perfect!”
Wide-eyed Sinclair examines my cuts. He tells my father there’s nothing he can do except make sure they don’t become infected. Father swears and says some nasty things in regard to Fredrick, for some reason.
“He can’t let her do this again! He knows what needs to happen and therefore how she needs to be,” Father says harshly and Mr. Sinclair runs up to, I assume, chastise his son for things out of his control. Fredrick can’t control me any more than he can control the sun.
This is all so confusing. Why do I have to be perfect? For the wedding? Somehow I think it is more than that.
Now, my father grabs my hand and pulls me away towards the door. I protest and scream and claw at his fingers and grab onto anything I can with my free hand to keep him from dragging me out, but he is strong for his age and I am weak with confusion and fear and despair. The air is warmer and the sun is breaking over the horizon when we step up. I don’t want to see the sun—I miss my moon too much. If he is alive, which he very well might not be, he might be looking at this new dawn as if I were really there to tell him he’s more significant than a lowly, Indian servant. I wish I had said this more to him—that he is just as valuable to the world as any white man and that he is the only reason I continue to breathe. The moment I stop paying attention to the celestial begins is when I’m thrown into a carriage by my father, that startles me, but doesn’t hurt anymore than accidentally running into closed door does when you’re trying to read and walk at the same time. But when the first blow hits my cheek, it stings like venom. The second and third and fourth and fifth—they continually hurt more and more until I’m too tired of staying the words, “Stop” “Help” “Chander” and “Gods” and give into the sweet bliss of unconsciousness.

If pure evil exists, it comes in the form of the many attendants who pick and prod at me with pins and needles to fit my wedding gown perfectly to what they call my “assets”, which would be my perfectly slim waist and long arms.
My father forgot to mention that my bridesmaids are all six of the other girls I debuted with. Our private fitting room is as full as it could with the girls, their chaperones, Aunt Maude, I, and all the dresses. It kills me to admit it, but the dress is beautiful. White as an elephant’s trunk and shiny as the moon with little pearls like tiny presents in bouquets. The other girls’ dresses are lovely too. Lavender compliments them so well despite their various skin tones and hair and eye colors.
Yet they all look solemn. As do I, I suppose, but we’re a bunch of girls in a wedding party, shouldn’t we become ecstatic at every detail?
Bandages cover the marks on my arms. Aunt Maude claims to the others that I have a horrifying and embarrassing rash that will be cleared up by June. After the beating my father gave me on the way home from the Sinclairs’, I expected to be bruised and bloody from head to toe. Though, all I am is sore (so sore it hurts to lift a finger). It’s beyond peculiar—there’s no way after knocking me unconscious he could have not left a mark. But, frankly, we’re all a little worse for the wear—Ruby has a bloody lip, Katharine looks like a mess, Essie’s baby blue eyes have deep purple bags under them, Charlotte is wearing bandages as well on her right hand and neck, Belle winces each time she moves, and Mary jumps a the tiniest noise.
However, our chaperones can always be counted on to make small talk and pretend that we’re not all falling apart.
“Oh, yes indeed the menu is the hardest part! Everyone has something different in mind. Soleil has no preference, but all the men want steak while the women would prefer something lighter—like lobster. Her father suggested we have traditional French cuisine, however the Sinclairs would have none of it! On top of it all, the chefs say we must have our desired orders two weeks in advance to the wedding day!” Aunt Maude says like a perfect society lady, fretting over the little things and not caring at all that her niece and the bride-to-be nearly clawed herself to death the night before. It infuriates me, but there’s nothing I can do. Nothing at all, about anything.
The six other proper ladies chirp about how simply awful that is. Us debutants look ahead blankly, like we are walking corpses.
I’m drowning so fully in every move everyone makes, every little comment and position of their bodies. Tossing waters, I can’t find the surface. So I stare blankly at the mirror in a daze, in my own world where the sun and moon don’t have to chase each other, they can simply be together. No one can drown in deep water, there are only small pools that reach my bare calves. And I can move without aching and sleep without nightmares—just dreams. My moon and I talk about gods and literature and sing songs in Hindi—I like that.
“What do you plan on doing about the cake?” Mrs. Wellington asks.
“Red velvet,” I pipe in like I’m in a trance, still finding comfort in imaginary arms.
“Soleil, I thought we agreed we would be having German chocolate,” Aunt Maude says, nearly losing her temper.
“I don’t like German chocolate,” I state monotonously.
Aunt Maude tries to keep her composer, “We discussed this, Soleil. German chocolate fits everyone’s preferences better.”
“It’s my wedding.”
“It’s also Mr. Fredrick’s.”
“Except he wants to be married. At least let me have the cake I wish when you’re sentencing me to a life of misery.”
Gasps fill the room. Aunt Maude is flushed. I’m still blank. For all I care, we should put it in the papers and shout it to all the world that I will have to be dragged down the aisle. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about what people here think of me anymore.
“You don’t want to marry Mr. Sinclair?” Charlotte questions with furrowed eyebrows. She finally stops fidgeting with the bandages.
“I’d rather die,” I reply with complete and total certainty.
The older women look horrified while the debutantes look at me with consideration. I wonder what they’re thinking, why do they not call me a tramp and storm out?
“Oh, my goodness. I think your corset is a little too tight. Not to mention how crowded this room is,” Aunt Maude loosens the strings, which I certainly do appreciate, then she turns to the cluster of chaperones, “Let’s leave the girls to talk for a bit and get a cup of tea, shall we?” She smiles falsely and they exit cautiously. I step down from the pedestal and sit in one of the now vacant seats.
It’s awkward to say the least. We don’t look each other in the eyes and stay quiet enough to hear a pin drop. I count that five do from Belle’s hands.
Essie breaks the silence. She turns to me with her regular snobby demeanor and says, just like her old, viscous self, “I know why you don’t want to marry Fredrick. It’s because you had an affair with your coachman.”
I refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing me squirm. “Yes. That’s true,” is my undaunted answer.
“But the servants are so dirty. How could you stand to let one touch you?” Essie spins a piece of her ebony hair around her finger absentmindedly.
I hate this girl. I really do. My hands ball into fists around the white satin of my dress. Then, I begin to list off speculations like they’re facts, “Ruby, I know your parents don’t approve of your secret romance with John Tisdale. I know that there’s no Duke of Richmondton, Mary, and that you love him either way. I know you never did care for Howard, Belle. I know Archie Sputher will never even look at you, Katharine. Charlotte, I know William was the one who killed your grandmother, yet somehow you still find him simply enduring. And finally, I know you’re clinically mad, Essie. You’re paranoid that your beauty is so great that everyone—specifically your new step-mother—will try to kill you to capture it for themselves. I know you’re with Andrew Radcliff as well, by the way. As much as you all would like to think that you are better than me, you’re just the same.”
Essie looks at me with utter hatred. I smile through gritted teeth. No one says anything. What are they to say when I have just destroyed their illusions of safety? The world has destroyed mine, so why would they get hold on to those childhood fantasies?
Then, to my complete surprise, Belle begins to speak with a timid voice that has been quieted so many, many times, as she does she looks down at the skirt of her dress and fiddles with the hem, “All the things you say are true, Soleil. Our Lord has not been kind to us and will not help us any longer. The world is dangerous to be living in. Listen to the cracks in the walls and the silence of breathing, watch the roses grow and their inevitable deaths—perhaps then we will know why He is doing this to us and we can escape his grasp. He cannot be trusted, nor can His followers or those who enforce His divine law. Listen, watch. We cannot let Him win.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re supposed to reject God and be godless animals?! You are certainly confused—the Lord is the only thing we have left now! Therefore, I do plan on letting him win,” Essie shouts.
“You do not know who your Lord is, Essie,” Belle replies.
“I’m not a polygamist barbarian—my Lords are Jesus Christ and his heavenly father. I refuse to be swayed by your insanity.”
“He was the one who made you go mad, Essie. And He could mend it, but he chooses not to for he wants to watch you suffer.”
“You’re lying,” Essie says with icy inflection.
“The Lord is the one who controls our fate, not your God. Listen. Watch. You will know.”
Belle’s words echo in the silence of the room. My eyes focus on her face, still staring down to her hands and her skirt. It’s expressionless other than twinges of hurt and pain you can only see if you look hard. She’s telling the truth, I see it in the calm way she conducts herself. The Lord is what is doing this to us. But He is not God. He may control me, but He cannot seal my fate. I will listen to silence and watch budding roses and I will not marry Fredrick Sinclair.

I’ve had a song stuck in my mind, the lyrics I’m unable to get away from, sung by the sweet voice of my love. I don’t know what they mean—they’re in his language, not mine. Though, I still hum them and smile as I do so before letting a few tears run down my cheek in a sharp pang of longing. He has the most gorgeous voice I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. God, I miss his voice. But when the nightmares come to play with me in the black of the early, early morning, I think of the song and the delicious songs he sung me (my godly knight in shining armor, coming to rescue me from demons of the underworld) and suddenly I’m not so scared anymore.
The songs are the only crutch I have now, never leaving—I don’t want them too. Every morning, every time I’m supposed to commit myself to heaven before sleeping or eating or doing anything an average person needs to do in order to avoid death, I sing his song with incorrect lyrics from memory.
I hum the song now as we drive in our new carriage with our new coachman to Belle Hayworth’s home, the only person outside my family beside the Sinclairs I’ve been permitted to see. They think she has broken eyes—she won’t do anything to spark more rebellion inside me. Of course, that’s completely contrary—too much rebellion has killed her soul. I’d like it to kill mine as well.
Aunt Maude is fretting over how skinny I’ve become—the small amount of fat I housed in my body is dwindling. I have no interest in food brought to me on a silver platter which I’ve tasted a hundred thousand times before. All I want now are the flavors of India Chander told me I couldn’t even dream of. Chai tea the most. Earl Grey I’ve begun to find repulsing.
“Soleil, truly, you’ve become unbearable to look at. You’re simply horrifying—like a corpse,” Maude scolds.
I ignore her, “Do you think the trees enjoy having leaves? Or perhaps they enjoy the feeling of winter nakedness. What do you suppose the trees are like in India?”
“Really? More of this hopeless obsession with that place? You’re never going to see him again, Soleil. You’ll be dead before you do,” she states blatantly, as if it is common knowledge I should have learned from my tutors when I was young.
“Then again, I suppose they don’t really have winter in India, too exotic of a climate. I assume the elephants eat all the leaves off the trees anyways, but perhaps a few survive.”
Aunt Maude gives me a lecture about how to have a polite conversation in society. I hum the song and don’t listen.
The carriage stops in front of the Hayworth mansion. It’s the smallest I’ve seen anyone in our circles have but I don’t care for any reason in particular. The door is opened by our new coachman, an elderly gentleman with white hair and long beard, red cheeks, bright eyes and a jolly temperament. If he had been with us during my younger years, my parents would have most likely had him play old St. Nick for me during the holidays. I know now St. Nick does not exist and it would have not been my parents, it would have been my mother. He smiles at my aunt as he helps her—she pays him no mind. Next, he takes my hand with a kindly squeeze.
I turn to him and smile genuinely, as I do have a soft spot for coachmen, “Thank you, Monsieur. Your help is greatly appreciated.” I kiss his carmine cheek, like a gleeful little girl would St. Nick, causing him to blush even redder.
“You are a joy, my dear,” he chuckles and I turn to walk the steps to the Hayworth’s.
Aunt Maude knocks on the door in her huffy way, adjusting her brown walking dress and smoothing down gray hairs. She straightens her posture even more than it was before, if it was possible. Their butler answers, but Belle is hovering right over his shoulder. She brightens when she sees me, just barely releasing a smile. I brighten at the sight of her as well.
“May I help you?” the butler asks.
“We’d like to call upon the Miss Belle Hayworth,” Aunt Maude replies properly. She either doesn’t notice Belle behind him or chooses to not acknowledge her.
“Please, may I have your card?” She presents it. He turns to go back to the parlor room and bumps into Belle who couldn’t jump out of the way in time. Belle and I both suppress giggles, life slowly returning to our eyes. The butler looks flustered as he readjusts his dark bow-tie. He obviously doesn’t know how to handle a situation where the person being called upon is already present. Therefore, he simply hands the card to Belle and announces, “You have a card from Ms. Maude Aymond and Miss Soleil Aymond.”
“Please, do let them in. We can’t leave them out on the door step like stray cats beaten and bruised to the bone, can we? Come, let me give you a bowl of milk, a pat on the head, and, if needed, a way to put you out of your misery.” She meets my eyes and I know she’s referencing Fredrick Sinclair on the night of my first fits and nightmares.
I don’t know when it became so that Belle and I are best friends. Sometime between tea and gown fittings, I suppose. When we shoot each other looks we both somehow can read and send letters saying what we truly feel by coding, decoding, and recoding them once again. Laughing at Essie. Riddles. We speak in riddles. Somehow this all happened in ten days.
I know her now. I know her heartbreak and trauma. Her dreams and aspirations. She knows mine. Friendship is an odd thing.
Aunt Maude is giving her a peculiar look at her choice of words, but I suppose she thinks no more of it than that Belle is a strange girl. I know better than that. Belle’s words are not something one should take lightly.
“Dearest Belle,” I squeeze her hand once we are inside and on our way to the parlor. “I suppose the cat must be put out of her misery now, as all the attention and milk in the world cannot mend her broken limbs.” I strike a dramatic pose on her deep purple fainting couch. We giggle. This throws the adults in the room (my aunt, her parents and chaperone) off our trail of spoken word-puzzles. Belle’s family laughs about the silliness of young girls, Maude just huffs.
“I’m sorry, kitty, but I have no scissors to snip your whiskers for if I was a kitty like you, I would want to cut them as well and my loves love me so that they have taken them away.” She forms her fore and middle fingers into a pair of scissors and cuts my imaginary whiskers with her pretty, white fingers.
“Oh, but you are a cat like me! The Queen of the Kittens! Haven’t you, wise queen, any way to meet an end?” I try to act dramatic and playful, but the words roll of my lips solemnly, I think of the song, but it makes my sadness worse.
“My dear Princess of Pussies, haven’t you a prince to think of? One with a song for you?” It’s vague enough for the others in the room to believe we speak of Fredrick, but she knows of Chander’s lovely voice and my heartbreak.
“The song is so very far away! And so very hard to hear with these triangle ears! Is it not hard to hear your own love’s call with such pointy things?” Her true beau is a man she met last summer at her own summer home in the Hamptons named Jesse.
She fidgets with her fingers, “The Queen’s King hasn’t called in a very long time.” She pauses, reflecting. “Maybe it is time for this monarchy to give way. Perhaps it will be at the hands of a swift dagger to the heart? A pretty silver blade in a prettier box full of lovely things the Queen once wore while courting her suitors?”
“Indeed.” I place my fingers over her own comfortingly. “Because what is a Queen or a Princess without her knight in shining armor? That’s no way for the Queen and the Princess to live. Not when the kingdom would rather see them be wed to others and beat them when they disobey.”
“No. We’re not pampered house kitties, but alley cats. Father,” Belle turns to him, he perks up with a smile. He loves her. A part of me burns with jealousy so strong, I hate my only friend. I quickly overcome it. “We can’t be royal cats without our royal jewels. May I give my jewelry box to Miss Soleil?”
Mr. Hayworth begins to speak, but Aunt Maude does so before him, “Absolutely not! Soleil has jewelry boxes of her own.”
“I would have to agree, my dear.”
“Oh. I suppose it will have to wait until the wedding, won’t she need something borrowed?”
“You’re not married, darling. That would be bad luck.”
“Traditions like that are silly. I would be overjoyed to place some of Belle’s lovely upon my heart as I give it away,” I beam at her.
“Well, it’s decided then. Soleil’s bridal jewelry will something of Belle’s,” her mother announces.
“Yes. And I’m sure you will be so gorgeous that if you look in the mirror, you’ll shock yourself to death!” Belle giggles. “That is, if you choose the right one,” she sighs, “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” she emphasizes the last word in a nonchalant way only I can notice. She jumps up from her seat beside me in faux excitement. “Princess Pussy, it seems that you and I will no longer be monarchs. Our triangle ears will turn back to human-like circles!” Emphasis on triangles. Blue triangles. I’ll remember that. Belle offers me her hand. I stand too and she yanks me into a waltz to music only she can hear. I find the song in my mind and dance to it.
“Once upon a time…” I begin.
“There were two beautiful monarchs who despite grace and kindness were beaten for falling in love with the wrong men,” Belle continues.
“So the monarchs ran away! Ran far, far away to a world of eclipses.”
“And oceans too!”
“Yes! Oceans too! Where they could dance and laugh with their loves for all time.”
“They never came back because their running away was final.”
We giggle girlishly at the prospects of this, the adults aren’t paying attention to us foolish debutantes.
Between laughs, Belle’s face becomes solemn, “We must show the Lord that he does not control us.”
“I’m not going down without a fight.” I promise.

In the heat of the moment, I reach out. I reach out and touch the cool flesh his palms and place it over my heart as if to tell him he’s the only thing that it aches for any longer. The heat comes after the words, after the sweet words that are a waterfall, pouring from the place that I put his hand a little after. And he caresses my face with his other five fingers. I count them to make sure he’s still perfect. He still is. He speaks one more lyric of sweet words—he sings the chorus of our song. Telling me I’m a princess and his sun. I reply the same way only with speech and then it becomes blurred, a piece of paper in the fire as something crosses a line and I’m dizzy.
Desperately, I shake the image away, shake away my daydream. But the longing still burns in my breast. I no longer trust myself with such fantasies of a time after the wedding when I have joined him, reincarnated into the sun and the moon because Brahman favors tales of defying love. I think of Romeo and Juliet. I wonder if they were reincarnated into anything. Then, I remember they were only characters in a tale. Perhaps they were real and Juliet has been incarnated into me, Romeo into Chander, Paris into Fredrick.
There is only one more agonizing day of life I must survive through. After which I will be a sun. Three more tasks to perform. One more person to see. I’m not dying without saying goodbye to my mother. This is why daydreams are the only thing I cling to. I can’t do it anymore. I cannot sit here and pretend to care about the words Mrs. Sinclair speaks or how Fredrick fakes his love for me or how I’m a whore and my father hates me. My mind is the only escape.
“So where do you and Miss Soleil intend on living after your marriage? Surely you cannot live here,” Mrs. Wellington inquires as she sits daintily before us. She’s so beautiful, but not more beautiful than Essie.
Fredrick laughs, “No, we plan on spending our first three months of marriage in Newport at my summer home while we search for new arrangements. It will be a lovely summer, won’t it, Soleil?”
He daringly squeezes my hand. There’s no romance in the gesture. He has stopped faking his love to me directly. It’s a show he’s putting on for everyone else, as I have already become bored with the plot. But there’s comfort. Dull comfort. He smiles at me, expecting something horrid in return, but I simply smile back. There’s no use in hating him for only being a man—which I have determined is the only reason I decided to hate him in the first place. I only strongly dislike him. That’s all.
Despite all these factors, the soft women at the table let adoring smiles cross their lips before washing it down with a sip of wine and a glance to their own husbands. The girls don’t make any reaction; they stare blankly ahead, not minding anything around them with dead eyes. The same dead eyes I possess.
Our supper at the Sinclair’s to celebrate my last evening as a debutante is going well, I assume. For as far as I can tell, no one has actually murdered anyone else yet. Though, there’s hardly anyone in attendance. Strangely, Archie Sputher, William Beaumont, Andrew Radcliff, and John Tisdale are all supposedly away on business, which is not good for Fredrick, whose groomsmen are fully composed of the missing bachelors. As well, Essie, Katharine, Charlotte and Ruby have promised to attend tomorrow but for some reason are not available tonight. Mrs. Wellington seems subtly uneasy and concerned when the subject of her step-daughter is brought up; while on the other hand, the other girls’ parents seem uneasy as well, but more in a hateful way.
“And what about your plans for children? You certainly are a young couple; I assume that is something you don’t plan on achieving right away,” Mrs. Wellington continues.
“Yes, one or two long from now. We’d like to enjoy life as a married couple for a while,” Fredrick explains his view and passes it off as ours. Belle, to my right, awkwardly shifts and subtly rolls her eyes. She can’t take this either. We’ll be glad to get away from here to our perfect world of sunshine. Though, right now, I can’t wait for that to present itself.
I sip my red wine, realizing for the first time how much I truly loathe the flavor, and pull the napkin from my lap to place it on the table. I begin to stand and say, “Pardon me, messieurs and maquerelles, I need to check on our dessert for the evening, I shall return as soon as I can.” I smile falsely. Belle is looking at me nervously, but I walk away, down the hallways of the Sinclair house before anyone can say anything in opposition.
Find her. I must find her. Our houses are so large and I don’t know why, so conceited in nature and I’m so small and so lost. As always. Why am I always lost? Why are they always so large? I climb the staircase, not bothering to be cautious of being caught. The upstairs is silent. Dead silent. It sends chills down my spine as I remember the time a few weeks ago when I and the only two people I loved were residents in this upstairs part of the Sinclair mansion. Trying to fight death in all our nearly silent ways. Dead silent. I hate the sound. The room in which I lived for a few days is to my right. It’s plain, stripped of all the sheets and embellishments. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I don’t know what rooms they were pinned in, away from me. In my own there were promises made they knew they couldn’t keep, promising that I’d see these rooms. Silence.
“Soleil,” the silence is interrupted from behind me. I look behind to see it. “They’re not here,” Fredrick says delicately, he’s on the last step, with his hand extended to me, yielding my retaliation. He looks so young, just a child as he stands there with his hair perfectly slicked back and his smooth, young cheeks.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “I’m not looking for him. I know he’s gone. I want her.” Taking his hand now would be equivalent to jumping back to the time before I met Chander, loving balls and dresses and gossip. I don’t take his hand.
“She’s not here either. Please, come back down—“
Panic rushes through my blood, “Fredrick, I’m not a doll anyone can throw around anymore. If she’s not here, tell me where she is.” I grit my teeth and pretend to be strong when I know he’s wearing the life out of me.
“I don’t know. Truly, I don’t.”
“Why do you have to lie to me every time I talk to you?!” My finger nails find the pink fabric of my dress’s sleeves and begin to claw at it to distract from the anger and hurt, only to remember how short they cut them. The anger that they took my one way of escape away from me drives me to find a sharp angle even further.
“Stop,” he whispers and places his hands over my own. “You’re too pretty to have those markings on your arms again.”
“What do you know of beauty?!”I spit, hoping my words are venomous darts to be lodged in his mind. “Or of love or truth or anything beyond the ‘complex dealings of men’.”
Fredrick’s young brown eyes take on a look of age I’ve never seen them possess before. He backs away and leans against the wall opposite of the stair case and takes a cigarette and a lighter from the breast pocket of his jacket. A faint, solemn smile crosses his lips as he inhales the smoke and I stand there awkwardly.
“You are beautiful—you’re the most beautiful of them all.”
“Essie is,” I correct spitefully yet suddenly have become very self-conscious of the way my shining blonde hair has been piled on top of my head, the way my dress fits on my body—all of it suddenly seems important.
“Physically, yes. Though, we all know how crazy she is. But you—you’re so powerful and you don’t even know it. So dangerous and daring. You’re going to get us all killed if you’re not careful. That’s what makes you the most beautiful.”
My eyes dart around awkwardly as he speaks, not knowing how to receive anything he says, “You’re just trying to distract me. Where is my mother?” I demand.
“Truly. Soleil, you don’t understand, do you?” The smile has faded, the cigarette’s fumes becoming thicker.
I laugh and cry all at once as I shout the words, “No! No I don’t, actually! I don’t understand why I can’t see my mother or how I’m dangerous or what makes me beautiful or the purpose behind our marriage or why the hell I can’t simply be with the one I love!”
Fredrick lets out a smoky breath. It doesn’t look right. He can’t be just a child smoking a cigarette. But when he looks back to me, he has aged so many years. “You cannot repeat to anyone what I tell you.”
“I can’t promise that,” I reply, just to rub him the wrong way, though I know perfectly well a task like that wouldn’t be too difficult.
“Well, you have to, because I could be killed for telling you.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He chuckles, “Perhaps in a different time, in a different situation we could have been friends. I do enjoy your company. You’re clever and sharp on top of all your beauty.”
“Tell me where my mother is,” I demand, ignoring his flattery.
My fiancé, in turn, ignores me, “However, I don’t want to marry you anymore than you want to marry me. You’re right. I don’t love you. Despite your beauty and wit, I find you overdramatic, moody, desperate, and cheap among a myriad of other things.” I glare at him with daggers, but he doesn’t notice, aloofly involved in his own little world. “But, Soleil, that’s not what matters. What matters is the order of things. You will be a perfect little bride and no danger to anyone else. Chander will be dead. The other girls will be just as perfect and safe.”
“Why?” the eeriness of his tone making my own voice crack as I say the word. I’m not sure if I truly want an answer.
“What was your favorite story as a child?” he asks, seeming to be back to normal—the old, pretending to be in love with me boy that he was when we were downstairs. “You loved fairytales, didn’t you?”
I nod and cross my arms over my chest protectively, “Briar Rose.”
“Of course. She slept so nicely, didn’t she? You don’t though. You’re still sleeping.”
“I’m not.”
“How do you Chander wasn’t just a dream? How do you know for certain he’s the one who’s supposed to wake you from your eternal slumber?”
“I love him.”
“Do you? I don’t seem to remember you fighting so hard to see him when he was nearly dead. Not to mention your complete lack of effort to find him now.”
“He’s dead.”
“You don’t know that either.”
“I feel it.”
“Just as you feel you love him? How much wine have you been drinking, Soleil? Stop loving. I’m telling you this because one day I want to be able to be friends with you. Stop relying on your emotions. Please, I’m begging you, darling.” He puts out his cigarette between the hard wood floor and his shoes and comes near me to take my hands. I let him only because I’m so confused and dizzy I need something to steady myself with. “Think for just a moment what caused you to get in this situation to begin with. Detach yourself. You’re Hindu now because of him, aren’t you? Reach nirvana—just try. If you don’t try for yourself they will beat it out of you.” His eyes, young and old—I can’t tell which one they resemble more now—stare deep into mine. Hints of green I hadn’t seen before come to my attention and I decide that they’re in fact green and not brown as I had thought them to be.
“Tell me why all of this is happening,” I say calmly, suppressing everything he’s trying to bring out of me, trying to find enlightenment.
Fredrick smiles kindly, “Because that scar on your cheek means so much more than you think it does, Princesse Bruyere Rose.”
I run.
I run back down the stairs and into the first coat closet I see. How does everyone know everything about me? What secret bank of knowledge has become public?
It occours to me that Fredrick’s supposed helpful information only brought on more questions. And I can’t wait for the new day to bring a swift end. Death is an easy escape.

Lace. It’s a world made of lace of off-white and gold. I hate the feeling of it. The words roll off my tongue hatefully. I’m sick of lace. And tulle. Tulle as well. Dresses in general seem to make me cringe today. To my dismay, there is an entire sea of the articles of clothing out there and in here.
They fret over every little thing, every strand of hair, every thread of cloth, every tiny angle of every pearl. It’s not in vain, I look like a poor little girl’s paper doll, cut out of a fashion magazine given to them by their mothers who received it from the ladies they serve. We all do. The lavender dresses make the girls look like the violets that have begun to bloom everywhere now.
But I am the queen of all of them with my tiny, nineteen inch waist pulled tighter by a large ivory bow. Under the bow is layer after layer after layer of full, ruffled satin, lace, and tulle that tapers off into a long, long train. Above it is bodice of satin until it reaches the neckline which is a deep v, embellished with more ruffles and satin and lace. A clear mesh of tulle runs down my arms and up my neck, ending only when it reaches another strip of lace and satin. And all of this is embellished by beautiful, shining fresh water pearls; some big, some small, some pink and some white and some gold. I love those little pearls like I love to watch little children play—wholesome and pure—things I will never be again.
The clear, white rays of sun in paradise filter in through the window pane, so light and beautiful as everything around me is. The girls are all walking corpses, murdered by adolescent longing, Belle and I are solemnly smiling at the prospects of a life after this one. I will enjoy dying in this beautiful setting, in this beautiful room from my childhood. I convinced Aunt Maude, my father, and Fredrick that being wed in Newport would simply be the most romantic place in the world. Irony springs from my birth in this very house eighteen years ago in twenty days—so very unpolluted and chaste. Now I’m nothing but the picture of a soiled dove. Though, I don’t care. I’ll be with him soon. And that is all that matters.
Belle has brought her jewelry box, a beautifully intricate thing, covered in colorful designs I’m surprised anyone would let her own. I compliment her on it and she claims it’s an old family heirloom.
“Soleil, you look beautiful,” she smiles as I begin to look through it, searching for the blue triangle and my something borrowed. Her eyes look as alive as I’ve ever seen them against the purple of the dress and under the kohl around them. It’s strange, but when they’re not so miserable, they look so light, almost a bluish green, like the sea.
The other girls echo back less enthusiastic and truthful chirps of the same words.
“Thank you Belle. As do you.” I beam and then turn back to the box.
“Though, Soleil, I think you and I should decide upon what jewelry you shall borrow in private, if it’s all right,” her voice is cautious, telling me to stop at this very moment, I obey.
Aunt Maude sighs and stands from my bed, “Yes, I suppose,” she announces and the maids at once stop pinning stray strands of golden blonde hair in place and putting more and more powder upon my cheeks. I watch their each individual faces, knowing well this will be the last time I see them. It’s a shame I never learned their names. One is pregnant—I hope her baby is as beautiful as the stars and can become more than her mother ever was, I dream of a world for it where social classes don’t matter. But they all exit dutifully and I will never know their names. “Ladies, let’s leave the bride and her maid of honor to their own,” she announces and nearly leaves.
“Aunt Maude,” I say quickly. She turns back, gray eyebrows raised over grey eyes. “Thank you for teaching me about beauty. You’ve showed me what it truly means to be pretty.” Physically, this is true, but I mean it more as an example of what is not beautiful.
She gives me a suspicious look, but my own is too placid for her to correctly read and she has nothing left to do but accept the compliment, “Yes. You’re welcome. You do look beautiful, so I suppose I taught you well.” I pretend to smile genuinely and she leaves in her grey walking dress that I will never see again.
Next, the debutantes follow behind her. It’s funny knowing I’ll never have to compete with them again and like I have in fact reached nirvana, I find my little hatreds for them melt away as if it were a flowing river, an eclipsed sun. Mary, Charlotte, Ruby, Katharine, and then Essie file out and I feel more relief as each of them does. The door is politely shut.
Then Belle and I are alone in the room which I spent my virginal summers when I was small. She sits down in the chair next to me, which was previously occupied by Ruby, and hugs me comfortingly like we both have wanted to do so many times before in the most ghastly moments of our horrible society. Once she releases me, she wipes a few tears from her eyes swiftly, not wanting to die with kohl running down her cheeks and whispers, “We’ll be with them soon.”
I take her hand and have trouble speaking, surprised at how odd it is to not talk in code with her, “Jesse will be so glad to see you. You look like the ocean, he’ll love you.”
She laughs, “I don’t look like the ocean. I look like a silly little high-society girl in a peony costume.”
I laugh with her, but protest to her words, “No. Oceans are found in movement and depth of heart. You’re so kind and free now, Belle. At least you will be soon.”
“Soon is your favorite word isn’t it?”
“Soon. I like the way that sounds. Like the words sun and moon combined,” I reply and find tears swimming in my own eyes, only to remember what I have hidden.
Belle comforts me as I stand and go to the book shelf, “Yes, soon. You are the sun, Soleil. And Chander is the moon. You’re just as beautiful as the sun and you’ll be together… soon.”
I find the book as she finishes—Romeo and Juliet. “They say that no story has been original since Shakespeare. I believe they’re right. You and I are just two of a million Juliets, and there are a million Romeos too.”
“Though our Romeos are already dead.”
“True, but it’s close enough,” I sigh and open the cover to find carved out pages and a ring hidden inside. I grin at my own deception and take the ring out. It’s a raw, uncut stone tied to an iron loop—it’s my favorite thing in the whole world. Hatefully, I slid the one I was given by a man I do not love off my finger and toss it carelessly aside despite its material worth and with care put the one I truly do love on in its place.
Belle looks up excitedly, “You have your ring?”
I show her it, “It’s a moonstone.”
“It’s beautiful,” she admires. “Now for Jesse’s present to me.” She opens her jewelry box and scoops out the absurdly expensive necklaces and rings and bracelets and such until there is nothing left, then she finds presses against the blue jewel diamond on the very bottom, unlike the rest of the diamonds, it was poorly designed and the floor falls right in the middle of it, creating a triangle. I grin at her cleverness. As she presses it, a diamond four above it pops open like an opening door, she pulls the jewel out completely and attached to it is a small vile of pink liquid.
“He gave you the box, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she answers quietly. “He told me to hide my secrets in it. He said oceans have storms and ladies aren’t allowed to be cloudy. So he told me that anytime the waves are too rough and there’s no lighthouse in sight, I can always have a way out. A vile this size will kill ten men.”
“Two little girls shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Just then, the door opens and I nearly die of fright. All five of the other girls stand in the doorway, Essie in the lead with Katharine beside her, holding a bottle of champagne.
“What are you doing?!” I shout furiously.
Essie continues to waltz in, not caring that this is my home and not her own. “I left my gloves and your father wanted you to have this bottle of champagne. Your aunt said it was fine to come in.”
“Well, it’s not! Leave!” Belle says angrily.
Essie sits on the bed, the other girls pour in.
“What are you doing?” Mary asks, her brow furrowed with a bit of unease.
“Nothing,” snap I.
Essie looks at us oddly too and soon all of them are examining the odd scene they walked in on.
“What is that on your finger?” Ruby questions.
Charlotte interrogates, “Why is all your jewelry out?”
“Have you been crying?” Katharine investigates.
Belle and I don’t know what to say besides our defensive denials.
There’s a long silence after I yell, “It’s my wedding day, I can do what I wish! Why can’t you all leave us alone?!” but they don’t leave.
Essie breaks the quiet with a voice somber voice I have never heard her use before, “You’re going to kill yourselves.” The others gasp and go wide-eyed. Essie continues, “I know that liquid you’re holding, Belle. Andrew gave some to me. He said death was a better escape than what they could do to me.”
We don’t know what to say, so we sit there coldly.
Charlotte squints at the vile, “Will gave some of that to me as well.”
Ruby and Mary confirm that they were given the poison as well. Katharine and I are the only ones that did not receive any from our loves. Though, her love does not love her back.
Essie rises and takes the alcohol from Katharine and the vile from Belle who protests a little but gives up. She opens the champagne and pours it into seven glasses found by my washbasin and around the room, as some of the women have wanted water throughout the morning. She drops some of the poison into each of the glasses until there is none of it left. The dead look is so prominent in her eyes as she hands us each a cup, it alarms me.
“I don’t want to live anymore,” she says simply.
No one says anything for a moment. We stare at the glasses.
“If I die young, burry me in an ocean of satin,” Belle whispers.
“Lay me down to rest eternally on a bed of roses,” I say back.
“Sink me into the sea at dawn,” she replies.
“Send me away with the words of his beautiful love song,” I finish.
Charlotte agrees, “It will be the ballad of a dove.”
“We’d go with peace and love,” Ruby continues.
“Make me a rainbow and I’ll shine down on my mother, she’ll know I’m safe with Chander when she stands under my colors,” I fantasize.
“I’ll be wearing white when I come into your kingdom, Lord, I’m as green as the ring on my little, cold finger,” Katharine mutters.
Mary almost laughs, “I’ve never known the loving of a man, but it felt nice when he was holding my hand. There’s a boy back in town that said he’d love me forever, who would have thought forever could be severed by the sharp knife of a short life?”
“Life isn’t what I thought it’d be. What I never did is done. I’ve had just enough time,” Essie concludes with an extreme amount of finalization.
We all wait a moment, seconds ticking by like eternities. Then Essie brings her glass to her blood red lips and drinks down all of the lethal champagne. She closes her blue eyes and smiles slightly. I don’t watch her die—I close my own eyes and sip all the liquid against my pretend-pink lips without thinking anymore of it, but I hear the other girls chugging theirs as well.
Somehow, I find myself smiling too, thinking of Chander’s handsome face and all the gods I will meet once I have become the sun. I feel myself losing control of my body and the sound of seven glasses shattering on the ground fills my ears.
Sun and moon. Soon—so very, very soon will the sun and the moon be together. Soon—I’m his goddess and his princess once again. Soon—I’m filled with the warmness of love. Soon—and I’m the sun.

When my eyes open again, I realize I must have gone blind with death. Such a shame, as the sun is supposed to be the all-seeing eye that watches over and protects all life. Or perhaps I am not blind and there is simply no sun at all to give light in this heaven. Perhaps I am in fact the sun and it is only night—Chander is giving light to the world. I like the thought of that—his sweet silver light and melodic voice give comfort to all the sleeping people with a lullaby.
Then I become somewhat aware of my physical surroundings. A solid stone floor that’s damp like a cold wash cloth on a sweating, feverish brow and a wall to my right of the same material. My side is sore and so are the roots of my hair, like someone picked me up by a clump of the blonde strands and threw me on the ground. I assume this is what death always feels like and think no more of it.
I’m no longer in my wedding dress but left with my undergarments—only bloomers and a camisole. Despite their obvious filth from being on the ground, I feel free in them. My hair is free as well, tumbling down my shoulders in strange waves and curls.
Death is freedom.
I like death.
Without much thought about the gesture, I roll onto my back and wish to find a starry sky to look up into, though I find only more blackness. Somehow, this makes me smile, the vastness of the dark. And before I know it, my voice is stumbling over words I don’t know, pretending I do, as I sing the song he sang me back to the universe, hoping it will multiply and turn into a song a hundred thousand times more beautiful. A song that beautiful could only be sung by he himself. I don’t know what I’m saying, it’s probably rudely inaccurate, but it’s comfort to me in this endless space. It makes me smile, knowing I still hold a piece of him.
Suddenly, I’m reminded of the moonstone engagement ring and am pleased with the universe to find that death has come and taken it with me as well. In a lightless world, it catches some of it in its shimmery layers and reflects it back to me. I’m glad to know I’m not blind. I send a thankful prayer to Brahman, Parvati, and Vishnu which doesn’t have to go too far to reach them. But I don’t stop singing the song with a slight smile on my lips.
“Soleil,” the deities say back in acceptance with a surprisingly weak, yet comforting voice. It’s Chander’s voice.
Perhaps they know my love and want to give me some type of reassurance that he is near me. Perhaps the moon wants to tell me for himself. I keep singing joyfully—over and over and over again.
“Soleil, is that you?” it repeats, a little less groggy. “Please, Brahman, tell me that’s Soleil,” the voice is strong with hope. I’m sitting up and staring with my brow furrowed in that direction.
I reply simply, “Yes.”
The world lights on fire with the beauty of an eclipse, other worldly yet destined by science. It’s a miracle and a fairytale and an epic love story found in my romance novels and I can’t help but cry.
A torch is lit on the wall of the far side of the space I previously thought vast to reveal a cubed cell of about twenty-four feet. Tan hands hold the match to the torch and from those tan hands, strong, tan arms follow and then a sturdy chest covered by a soiled white shirt and a neck which I would most certainly love to kiss, from there a strong jaw now covered in the short stubble men have on their cheeks when they go too long without shaving and his whole face, beautiful face with a rounded nose and cupid’s bow lips and laughing, tea eyes—Chander. My moon has finally passed the stage of new so I can see his shining face.
I don’t think, I shout his name and jump into his arms and hold him so tight I’m scared I’ll hurt him, but I don’t ever want to let him go again. He falls back onto an old bed with a squeaky frame, startled by my sudden weight, but he holds me closer than I hold him.
He’s cool. Just as he has always been against my warm skin.
Eclipse after eclipse after eclipse—left everywhere and anywhere for the spectators on Earth to marvel at.
I will never let my moon go ever again.
There are so many words to say but I don’t want to have to worry about them just yet, I’d like to simply stay in his arms with my lips against his for forever. However, upon closer consideration, if I’m now immortal, it seems almost absurd how mortal the desperate contact we make is. I’d like to look into his laughing eyes and hear his sweet voice sing the song correctly as well. I pull away from him, only to rest my head on his shoulder and wrap my arms around his neck.
There are a hundred billion things I’d like to say—more sentences than there are stars in the sky—but I can only find one to whisper with heavy breath, though I didn’t think breathing would be so important in death, “I love you.”
Chander grins and slides his arm under my legs to lift me up with his working-man arms and lay me down like a princess on the old bed so I can look up at him and see him and bask in all his beauty. “Close your eyes,” he softly requests, I do, after a moment of hesitation (the loss of a single moment would be a great wound). I feel his fingers caress my face sweetly, “She looked so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her, so he stooped down and gave her a kiss.” And tenderly, he does. “The moment that he kissed her she opened her eyes and smiled upon him. She said—“
I interrupt him with open eyes so I can say my words, “You are the moon, I am the sun. And no person nor no spell nor no god could keep us apart. I love you.”
“You are the sun, I am the moon. And no person nor no spell nor no god could keep us apart. I love you.”
“I missed you so much,” barely whispered, I say as I pull Chander into me like gravity. He somehow finds space on the mattress between my body and the wall. His fingers graze my face, sending electricity through my being.
“It’s all right. We’re together now and that’s all that matters.”
That voice and those laughing, deep brown eyes bring me so much comfort, I realize what nirvana must feel like.
“What happened to you? They wouldn’t let me see you at the Sinclair house and I was too weak to sneak out and by the time I was strong enough you were gone. And I looked for you—I swear—but how could I have found you? They never let me out of their sights and you’ve been here the whole time—I suppose I always knew but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know the world could be so evil. But it’s better now. We’re together, we can stay here forever or as long as you’d like to—I’d be all right with forever but it is an awfully long time and I’d still like to see my mother as well. Oh, my mother, she has to be here as well, doesn’t she? I miss her so mu—“
Chander interrupts me with a soft kiss and a laugh, “Soleil, it’s all right. Just for now, let’s pretend we’re safe, can you do that for me?”
I nod, though I don’t know what we have to pretend for. “Please tell me what happened,” I request calmly in exchange.
The laugh fades from his eyes as he speaks, but he leaves his hand on mine to reassure us both, “I’m sorry I killed him.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“It’s not. We could have run away, but I couldn’t control my hatred for him. I really thought I was protecting you—I know he hurt you and he hurt that other girl too—I wasn’t about to let him hurt anyone else. But now you’re here—Soleil, you shouldn’t be here!” he says angrily.
“It doesn’t matter, Chander,” I reply firmly. “Like you said, we’re safe.”
He relaxes slightly, if only for a moment, “Right. We’re safe.” There’s a pause before he begins to speak again, “I was never treated at the Sinclair house—at least not that I remember. I woke up after the Opera in a pitch black room tied to a chair. Shortly after that a man turned on a lamp right in front of my eyes so I couldn’t see his face, but he spoke with a German accent.”
I ask what he said, thinking back to my own encounter with a German man in my early years with chills running down my spine.
He hesitates with an answer.
I tell him I won’t be frightened of whatever he has to say.
So he tells me unreserved because he trusts me and he loves me and he doesn’t think of me as a little glass doll, broken at every shift in balance.
“He talked about you, love, and fairytales—“
“What fairytales?” I question, my blood becoming chilled.
“Ours,” he speaks calmly, though I have determined everything back on earth must be falling apart. “And a few very gruesome others.”
“How would he know of our fairytale?” I say, more to myself than to Chander. Snakes, roses, and my father saying Chander and I’s words haunt my mind.
“He said that you’re still asleep. That can’t be true.”
“I’m awake,” I assure him.
“He also said I shouldn’t love you. I would’ve woken you truly if I was your real prince.”
“This is absurd—I’m not asleep! And it doesn’t matter because the fairytale is our game, not the truth. Why does everyone keep calling me Briar Rose?!” gritting my teeth, I spit out angrily.
“He called you Prinzessin Dornbusch Rose.“
The world melts as if subjected to a blazing inferno, but I become very cold.
“Oh, God,” I say, feeling my head begin to spin.
“What’s wrong?”
Chocking on words, tears, and memories, I try to explain, “When I was kidnapped, the man who gave me my scar called me that. You were taken by the same man that took me.” I have to stop for a moment to make sense of it all as Chander’s brow furrows, “But that doesn’t make any sense—my father knew where you were the whole time,” I groan.
“Perhaps it’s just a coincidence,” he delicately whispers and tucks a strand of hair that had fallen in front of my eyes behind my ear. “Let’s not worry about it anymore.” I see through his calm demeanor to a much more nervous truth I wish I couldn’t see. Chander changes the subject, “After that, they sent me here and I’ve been in solitude since.”
I feel his unease despite his words and it sends me over the edge. I can’t fight the hatred that is boiling in my blood like Chander couldn’t that night. He killed my love after leaving a horrific mark on my skin and destroying our safe haven. Angrily, I sit up and clench my fists, “No! I feel so powerless here! He needs to pay! I hate him! How could he do this?!”
“Calm down,” Chander says sternly and sits up as well. “You’re not helping anyone by getting so worked up. It’s useless because you are powerless now, Soleil!” He’s nearly losing his temper as he tries to turn me to face him, but I can’t. Though there’s truth in what he says, I don’t want to admit it.
“No, no, no! He has to have his punishment! How could he tear us apart like that, Chander?! How could he take you away from me?! And how are you sitting there so calmly?! Don’t you care?! You killed Howard because he hurt Belle and I, so why don’t you want the German man to die too?!”
“I do want him to die. I want him to rot in hell. But we can’t do anything about that, Soleil.”
“I’m sick of not being able to do anything!” Furious tears roll down my cheeks like they used to every day in life. Not even in death can I escape that.
Chander takes my hand. I want to fight him away but it’s so contradictory and he’s so strong, “That’s something beautiful about Brahman, Soleil. Karma will do something. Not every act of justice has to be committed during life, my dear. The universe will take care of it.”
I soften slightly, “But what if it doesn’t.”
“If Karma doesn’t take care of things, then why are you here with me now?” he smiles and I find myself smiling back at his laughing eyes. There’s a pause as we both rest our heads on the bed once again. Chander continues, “I really need to learn how to not talk about myself all the time. Tell me what’s happened to you.”
“I love listening to you go on and on and on though,” I joke, then become serious. “I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning would be nice.”
So I do start at the beginning and leave nothing unsaid. I tell him of our lost baby and my missing mother, the symbol of the rose and the snake surrounded by the foreign words and my father’s beatings, Fredrick’s peculiarity and my friendship with Belle—all these things until I reach the wedding. I stop there for a moment.
Chander looks at me with so much patience and sadness and care as I recount the tale. He’s so torn by all the things I have told him because when I suffer, he suffers too, just as I suffer for him. Love—what a silly, beautiful thing.
“I didn’t marry Fredrick Sinclair.”
“At least there’s something good.”
He smoothes his hand over the ring, admiring the stone and the fact that it is still on my finger. “Yes. All the girls and I killed ourselves before the wedding with poison Belle’s beau gave her. Apparently, all the girls had a vile of the stuff but Katharine and I, which is odd, but we only used Belle’s. And now I’m here with you. That about brings it up to date.”
“Wait, you killed yourself?” Chander asked with a furrowed brow and a strange withdrawal.
“Yes. To be with you. I knew you had died. I could feel it. I couldn’t bear to be away from you and I couldn’t bear to marry Fredrick. I hope you’re not angry.”
“Soleil, we’re not dead.”
“Don’t be absurd, of course we are. You were killed by the man who gave me the scar and the poison I took could’ve killed ten men—let alone seven girls,” my own brow furrows.
“Really, we aren’t dead,” Chander exclaims.
“But I drank all the poison, Chander.”
He places his hand over my heart. “It’s beating—you’re alive.”
“Nonsense,” I put my hand over his to find a steady thump and gasp after laying my head on his chest, discovering the same beat. “Perhaps all heavenly bodies have a heartbeat for the nostalgia.”
“I was never killed. The man didn’t kill me. I was blindfolded and then transported here while I slept.”
“They must’ve killed you while you slept.”
“Soleil, this isn’t death, this is prison. You and I are both in custody of the German man.”
“But I took the poison!”
“You must’ve just fallen asleep.”
The world crashes around me. There was no bright light at the end of a dark tunnel or feeling other than hope. No muscle contraction. No gradual drift or sudden plummet.
Sleep.
It did feel like I had fallen into a deep slumber. But now I feel sick.
“Oh, Chander. Oh, God. Brahman, Shiva, Vishnu,” I cry and burry my face in his old white shirt. “No… This can’t be happening. I escaped. We escaped. We were safe. But we’re locked in a room with no doors or windows being held captive by that awful man.”
He cradles me and gives me kisses of comfort that would have meant so much more when I was blissfully ignorant, “We’ll be all right. We have each other.”
“Until they rip us apart again.”
“I’m not letting you go. They’d have to kill me to lay a finger on you.”
“Don’t say that, Chander. If you say that, you’ll end up dead and I’ll be horrifically disfigured yet kept alive only to know the pain of living without my other half.”
“You’re overreacting, darling. Don’t think about that. For now, we’re together, aren’t we?”
“I miss my mother,” and my newly regained sanity is slipping through my fingers once again.
“Stop,” he commands, trying to combat my madness.
“Will you sing me the song?” I request, gathering all the comfort I can find.
“What song?”
“The song in Hindi,” I reply and stumble as I try to the repeat the words.
Chander laughs and for a moment I feel as though we both may not be truly, coldly dead within the hour, “It’s Ten Thousand Miles.”
“It is? I’ve loved that song since I was a child.”
“Coincidence, I suppose. I always thought it sounded better in Hindi than in English.”
“Will you please sing it?”
With a slight smile, he begins and the words pour out of him so sweetly and beautifully, despite what language, it’s simply enchanting to hear. At times, I hum along, but his lullaby voice is so beautiful, I want nothing to distract from it. I’ve never heard anything so lovely before—so entrancing and stunning and dizzying.
“Fare thee well my own true love
And farewell for a while.
I’m going away, but I’ll be back
If I go ten thousand miles.
Ten thousand miles, my own true love,
Ten thousand miles or more,
And the rocks may melt and the seas may burn,
If I should not return.
Oh don’t you see that lonesome dove,
Sitting on an ivy tree,
She’s weeping for her own true love
Just as I shall weep for mine.
Oh come back my own true love
And stay a while with me
For if I had a friend all on this earth,
You’ve been a friend to me.
And fare thee well my own true love
And farewell for a while.
I’m going away, but I’ll be back
If I go ten thousand miles.”
Chander finishes and I can barely think of words to say.
“That was simply gorgeous. Where did you learn to sing like that?”
“My mother,” he smiles slightly.
I sigh, “I wish I could have met her. She sounds lovely.”
“She was.”
We don’t say anything for a moment in our pitiful longing.
“Despite your song’s beauty, I don’t want you to fare me well,” I finally think to say. It’s witty, but I add no humor to it.
He says simply, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. You can’t kill yourself again either. I love you too much.”
“I promise.”
“And you’re marrying me as soon as we sort this all out. We’re going somewhere far, far away and you’re marrying me,” Chander demands playfully.
This makes me smile, “I promise that with all my heart.”
We stay awake for hours. Saying sweet words or kissing sweet lips—it’s amazing how much I missed him and how glad I am to have him once again. The feeling of drowning that had been so prominent not so long ago has completely dissolved. I’m happy to be alive and awake and above the water—untouchable to all the things that had once bothered me. With Chander in the sky, though it is not visible. We are in the sky we can’t see as perfect celestial beings—princess-prince, goddess-god, sun-moon.

I haven’t realized sleep has come until I’m saying his name softly and trying to find his smooth, tan flesh with my half-asleep fingers as my eyes are not yet ready to be pulled out of my sweet, dreamless slumber. His warmth is something I miss. But my fingers find only sheets on this island. I say his name again, stronger and reach out with more persistence. This is an island in which I am alone. I’m alone again.
This is not happening. I will not be alone again. I will not be without him. I will not take reality when our dreamland is so goddamn comforting. I will not.
My fingers find satin and lace and my hair in a perfect, proper braid. I’m too terrified now to open my eyes. I refuse to accept this and try to fall back asleep, since this is obviously a nightmare which the most vulnerable part of my mind has conjured up to teach me a lesson about valuing my love. Though, it is becoming apparent that I will never be able to fall asleep again. This foreign place is a tossing sea and I’m drowning once again, I call Chander’s name to help me, and but he is not there to answer me.
Instead, another cold, hard voice responds to my plea, “He’s not here.”
Melting, drowning, sleeping—it’s all useless and petty. I open my eyes ruefully and turn to face the man who gave me my life and I’m sure would be just as willing to take it away. A countryside darts too quickly past the window of a train with a first class compartment of red velvet, trimmed with bronze. He sits in the seat across from me, his silver-white hair shining in the early morning sunlight. I want to slap him.
“I hate you,” my voice I hope resembling daggers.
Father answers in a heartless chuckle, “That’s not how a lady should talk. Is it, Soleil?”
“Bastard,” I reply, almost smiling in spite of my own brutal situation as I sit up from the make-shift bed.
His smile falls instantly and without thinking, he slaps me and takes out a cigar in one swift motion, “You will learn how to behave yourself.” He clamps the stick of tobacco between his yellow teeth and takes a lighter from his breast pocket. “How many times have I told you that you’re a whore of a daughter? Why did you feel compelled to add ‘mad’ to the long list of your negative qualities?” My father blows the smoke into my face and I would like to slap him just as hard as he slapped me. I hold my cheek in my hand to silence the sting, loathing the weak position he has put me in and making up for it by glaring at him the cruelest I know how.
My voice is venom, “Tell me where Chander is. You know, I wouldn’t find it shameful at all to kill you outright. In fact, I’d be doing the world a justice. You’re a wicked, evil old man.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You couldn’t even manage to kill yourself.”
I ignore his comment, “Where is my fiancé?”
“Fredrick now refuses to take you as his bride therefore he is no more of your concern. No man in his right mind would take someone as insane as you as his wife,” my father says this bitterly, though it matters not to me.
“My true fiancé would. Chander. He will take me as his wife once you tell me where he is as you have obviously stolen him away from me once again merely to save our family name. Though I’m surprised you haven’t realized that it has already been soiled beyond repair and I take pride in that achievement, Father.”
“You are a delusional, whorish girl.”
I smile because I know he hates it when I do so, “I’m not. He said so last night. We’re running away and you’ll never catch us.”
He smiles because he knows I hate it when he does so, “You’re mad. You haven’t seen him since he murdered Howard Gaston and you never will again. You must have dreamed it all under all that poison the seven of you took.”
That can’t be true. That’s not true. He’s lying to destroy my happiness.
Though nothing makes any sense whatsoever. How could I be the prisoner of my father now and the prisoner of the German man then? It’s not possible. How could I have even gotten into a room with no doors or windows? How could Chander still be alive? How could I have survived the poison with no repercussions whatsoever? Hallucinatory dreams, at least, would be a side effect.
But why did it feel so real?
My father notices my confusion and withdrawal and internal turmoil and rejoices in it, “You’re mad, Soleil.”
Perhaps I am in fact mad.
“Where are the other girls?” I finally decide to ask, trying to change the subject while I clean up the mess that is in my mind. And of course I really do care about their state.
“Have the debutantes that debut and die together recently decided they actually care about one another?” Father mocks, taking in an apparently heavenly breath of cigar smoke before smothering it in an ash tray like he would love to smother me.
“They’re my friends.”
“Really? You’re now friends with Miss Essie Wellington?
To speak the truth and say no would be to give him power over me, so I lie and claim she is.
My father laughs coolly and takes his cane in his hand, almost deliberately turning the handle so I look into the evil eyes of the snake, whose fangs are mere smidgens from the rose’s pretty petals. Sanguis rosas pingit dies novum. I’d like to take that horrible cane and hit him over the head with it. “I’m sure she’ll be simply overjoyed to hear that.”
“So they’re all alive?”
He scowls at me, “Of course they’re alive. What makes you think you’d be so lucky as to live while all the others died? They are at least somewhat respectable. You, on the other hand, should have died in the gutters.”
“Where are they?” I repeat.
“They’re all on this train. Sleeping in delusional, peaceful slumber much like you were, I assume.”
“And where is this train going, monsieur?” I ask with a bitter, sarcastic edge.
“Füssen, Germany.”
“Germany?! Why are we in Germany?!” my jaw drops as I leap to the window, finding green landscape sprawling by. It’s odd, seeing the tall, evergreen trees I have seen in the northern part of my own home state back in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Everything here seems foreign yet the same. I have never left New England—now the train must have past Paris and I have slept through the Eiffel Tower.
“You are going to finishing school. All seven of you are.”
I turn away from the window to stare into his cold, grey eyes and my jaw drops further. Finishing school. My own personal hell on earth topped off with a fiery hot cherry that Essie Wellington will be there and Chander Gadhia will not.
“You have to be joking.”
“If no suitable man in all of New York City will marry you, perhaps a nice German fellow will.”
“I’d rather live my life in spinsterhood on the streets than with a ‘nice German fellow’ who is not our old coachman.”
My father snaps and yanks me by the long and perfectly arranged blonde braid so he can be right at my level without using the cane as anything but a weapon, “That is precisely why you are going! You are out of control and a terrible influence on the other girls who are going to the school only to be cleansed of the sins you brought upon them! A lady of your stature cannot be acting like a lovesick, delusional character in one of your silly little romance novels. You cannot be Juliet, Soleil. I would never give you two the joy of both being dead. You will live, he will die and you will be perfect. Do you hear me?! You will be perfect.”
“Perfection seems somewhat overrated,” I snap back and remove his hand from my hair. “At least, your ideology of it. I don’t want to live up to it. Why should I have to when in Chander’s philosophy of the subject, I am the absolute definition and with him, I am no one but myself?”
My father’s smile is sicker than I have ever seen it. He perches his good ankle upon the knee of his bad and places the cane on top, moving like a cobra about to strike, “You have so much spirit. Just like your mother.”
“And I assume you know where she is as well,” I use my poison voice and stay standing above his seemingly weak and old body. Though, I know he is strong.
“At the Sinclair house, of course.”
“Despite your belief, I’m not an idiot. I know she hasn’t been there for a long time.”
“And just where do you believe she is, mademoiselle Holmes?” Father taunts.
“With Chander. You know they are the two people in the world I would die for and you’re punishing me for being something other than a just another soulless, wealthy bride of Manhattan because I love. And to you that is a crime worthy of capital punishment, is it not?”
The sick smile has returned, “Oh, come now. I am your father. I do want the best for you, why wouldn’t I?”
I’ve begun to scream and cry like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I believe it’s because of my recently self-diagnosed schizophrenia, “Because you don’t know what love is! You love nothing but money and power just like every other man in New York. And that’s not love at all, it’s self-centered and vain. You try to control us women like pawns in your little game but we actually want to feel something when we hand our hearts over to become the queen in your life-size game of chess. You simply can’t stand it because you feel absolutely nothing inside of you and I feel so much.”
Somehow, he has stayed calm through all my verbal assaults much like I have stayed calm through all of his since I was first old enough to listen to them. “The name of your new school is Bett aus Rosen. Feel free to tell Miss Belle Hayworth. She’s in the compartment next door on the right.”
I’m only wearing a nightgown, but I don’t stop to consider this as I swiftly exit our little room which I determine is much, much too small. Oddly enough, I trust my father’s directions and go to the compartment on the right. But the pregnant maid is standing beside our door. She holds her belly and looks off distantly into the sky, I can’t tell if her look is contemplative or pained. So for a moment, I delay my reunion with Belle to talk to the maid who has most likely been taking care of me for as long as we both can remember, whose name I never even bothered to learn.
“Hello,” I say softly, trying to recover my voice from all the shouting.
She looks back to me and glares, “If you’re searching for sympathy, I’m not giving it to you.”
“No, I’m not,” I reply. “What is your name?”
The girl softens slightly, “Isabelle.”
“How long have you worked for us?”
“Since my mother died when I was ten. She was your serving girl before I was. Why do you care?” Isabelle answers with hate in her voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not looking for sympathy either.”
“Why are you accompanying me? Won’t your husband miss you?”
“I’m not married. And your father thought I would be the most suitable person to attend to you at your new school.”
“What of my Aunt?”
Isabelle turns away from me and scoffs, “You don’t love her. Why do you care?”
“Innocent curiosity.”
“Nothing about you is innocent.”
I can barely contain my laughter—here a pregnant, unwed maid only a little older than I is telling me I’m the dirty one, “Not to be unkind, Miss, but you and I are more or less in the same position.”
“I’m nothing like you. I hate you.”
I give a somber smile and find myself imagining a time not so very long ago when all I wanted in the world was a good husband and pretty gowns. My words come out like a day dream, “Well, I apologize for that. I can’t say I don’t deserve it—my bad behavior has dragged you to some foreign place, far from your home and loved ones and now your baby will have to know a home that you have no knowledge of. Not to mention we’ve known each other for most of our lives and I have just now learned your name. You have every right in the world to hate me.”
She says nothing and I hear my father call her from within the room. So she obeys the order to go inside and I turn and knock on the door of the Hayworth compartment of the train. Mr. Hayworth’s somewhat timid voice tells me to come in.
Before I can truly survey the room, Belle has shouted, “Anna Sun!” and thrown herself into my arms excitedly.
I reply with her own nickname, “Sea of Grace!” and hold onto her tightly, only then realizing just how lost I would be without her.
“I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“You as well, my dear.”
We release but still hold onto each other’s hands. Her skin is stunningly pale and covered by a white, lacey nightgown almost identical to my own. Just like mine, her gorgeous brown curls are pinned back in a long braid. It’s bizarre how alike we look. But her eyes—those beautiful sea-blue eyes, they’re alive and hopeful and wild like I’ve never seen them before. She’s so beautiful, it’s shocking. How could she be so pretty when we were so nearly dead?
“We’re in Germany!” she exclaims excitedly. “It’s so gleefully far from Manhattan.”
“I know,” I try to answer with the same gusto as she, but falter. She leads me to sit next to her on the seats identical to the ones in the room next door and doesn’t let go of my hand.
“Hello Miss Aymond,” her father greets pleasantly and turns back to his newspaper after I reply in the same fashion. A young maid sits next to him and works on her needlepoint. Both are so engrossed in their activities that I am sure they will pay no mind to our girlish gossip.
“Our school’s name is Bett aus Rosen,” I say with little enthusiasm.
“That sounds very… German,” she replies somewhat awkwardly for lack of a better adjective.
“Yes. I’m sure our lovely new finishing school will be just bundles and bundles of German,” I bitterly tease.
“Try to stay positive, please,” Belle scolds, “At least, it is a fine one. Perhaps one of the best in all the world.”
“You’re quite informed.”
“I suppose so.”
I lean in close to the girl and whisper, “Why didn’t we die? Was it truly poison or was it some other drug that only caused us to sleep?”
She shrugs her shoulders, “Father said we were lucky.”
“I don’t feel lucky.”
“I do.”
“And why in the world is that?”
She leans in closer and whispers even quieter, “I saw Jesse.”
Does the world simply love to watch my confusion multiply and multiply or did Belle truly see her love just as I saw mine?
“I saw Chander,” is the only thing I can think to say with my jaw dropped down to my ankles.
We both look at each other stunned.
“Miss Aymond, I think we’re nearly at the station. You girl’s need to look nice for your new peers,” Mr. Hayworth puts his paper down and gives us a cautious look, telling us politely that we are crossing a line.
I give Belle a longing look but Mr. Hayworth has made up his mind that it is time for me to leave and there is nothing either of us can do to change that. She says goodbye and I exit the room though I have only entered a minute ago. The conductor is calling in German for Fussen, I can’t make out the other words.
It’s like I’ve had too much wine—I feel sick. Nothing makes sense. The world is spinning and shaking and trembling. And death looks so promising, but I have promised Chander (whether he was a dream or real) that I would not try to take my own life once again. Someone kill me. I really would like the confusion to end.

“Breakfast is served at seven and they will be correctly educated everyday from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon with an hour at twelve for lunch. Then their time is their own until supper at six and at seven we hold mandatory services in the church for an hour and a half. After that, free time until ten o’clock at when we have a strict lights out policy,” Madame Hartmann, the headmistress of Bett aus Rosen brashly teaches us about the laws of her dear finishing school.
I already hate her and she hasn’t even said a single word directly to me. She’s the German version of Aunt Maude here to mold me into a perfect porcelain doll once again. I count three differences: Madame Hartmann wears trumpet skirts with a pouter pigeon blouse unlike Maude’s marron walking suits; Madame Hartmann’s hair, elaborately piled atop her head, still retains some brownish color; and Madame Hartmann speaks in an awful, horrible, chilling German accent that makes me want to press my palms over my ears, crawl into a corner, and stay there for as long as I can still hear it pounding in my nightmares.
The woman continues with her terrifying voice, “I’m sure the girls will love our expansive gardens and large library for their free time. We also have several pianos in our music hall and around the building as well as a lovely art room. The girls will enjoy their time here.”
This is prison.
I believed my house back in Manhattan was, but surely, this is something far beyond that. Locked in the hills and forests of an unknown land, filled with people whose words I don’t understand, crawling with adults who will whip my back to make it stand straight. Perhaps it is my schizophrenia acting up, but in every little corner, on every tiny trinket the snake is attacking the rose. Sanguis rosas pingit dies novm.
My father speaks up to ruin it further, “But these girls will not be allowed in the library.”
The one good thing this treacherous place had to offer has been stolen by his gruff voice and assertive words. Belle and I give nearly inaudible gasps and go unnoticed. No library. No books. No way to breathe.
This is beyond prison—this is a hell worse than I thought a person could imagine.
“Of course, sir,” Madame Hartmann answers instantly and subtly changes her course of direction as a poised lady should.
We walk along the dimly lit halls as if they’re passages in a crypt. They might as well be as the seven of us school girls are walking ghosts in our uniforms of white pinafores over white dresses that go down to the wrist, up to the chin, and down to the floor. We’re accented with pink ribbon and lace. So sickly innocent I might vomit. The style is lovable on the girls of seven or eight, but on us once-debutantes, it looks absurd. Especially as we stand next our grown up fathers and plain maids, as each of us has traveled with both.
“Thank you for taking them in during the summer, Madame Hartmann, it was so very kind of you. I’m sure you’ll teach them how to properly behave with flying colors,” Mr. Bradford compliments.
She lets a satisfied smirk cross her face, “Their education will be somewhat different from the girls who come to us at seven, but the quality will, undoubtedly, be the same.”
“Of course,” Mr. Bradford smiles and shakes her hand, as it seems we have come to the end of the tour at a grand parlor with at least fifty seats crafted of beautifully carved wood and soft, floral fabric. I have gathered nothing about the building itself other than that there are many dark hallways with many locked doors. And I hate it. That’s an important piece of information as well.
She checks her pocket watch. I note that it is, in fact, a man’s pocket watch, “The ladies’ trunks will have been delivered by now. I’ll let you all say goodbye and afterwards a few girls will be down to show them to their rooms.” Madame Hartmann then curtsies and exits, leaving the twenty one of us to wallow in awkwardness.
“Yes. Well. This is the best thing for you right now, girls,” my father announces and sinks into one of the deep violet armchairs to rest his weak leg.
No one, not even the awful Essie, has anything to say for a moment. Then, the somewhat caring fathers take their beautiful daughters in their strong arms and speak of love and longing and crime and punishment. The other not-so-loving fathers (Ruby’s, Charlotte’s, and my own) stay awkwardly quiet.
“Don’t worry, Soleil. Ida will be staying here to keep you company,” my father finally says and smiles his horrid, loathing smile.
Ida is holding her stomach, as it seems she always is, and not paying attention to anything else in the world whatsoever.
My sarcasm is thick and goopy, “Delightful. It will be nice to have someone so experienced and familiar lace my corsets in this new place. Perhaps one day we’ll become the best of friends.”
“My thoughts exactly. Especially because you have recently become so found of the servant class.” As I try to think of something witty to say, father rises again, “Gentlemen, we need to be on our way if we are to catch the seven o’clock train. You may come home for Christmas if you behave, Soleil.” Father states. The maids from the school have already reappeared in the large doorway to take the men back outside and us to our chambers.
Of course he wouldn’t let me have the last word. He never would give me the satisfaction. I bite the inside of my cheek to fight the fury boiling within me.
The men let go of their pretty offspring and say forgiving words as if we’re going to die. I feel as though we might. They walk away from us, muttering farewells until there is only one left lingering in the doorway, my father, pausing for a moment and turning back to me, “Sanguis rosas pingit dies novm, Prinzessin Dornröschen.”
Then he is gone and I am shaking.
All of our personal maids are still in the room, as well as one of the school’s. Mary’s face is in her hands, crying gently as Ruby tries to comfort her. Katharine sits so close to the fire, a flame may jump too far and catch on the sleeve of the awful dress. Essie leans against the wall with her arms crossed, Belle is perched in the large armchair closest to Essie. Charlotte sits all by herself in the corner. And I stand in the center with my jaw dropped.
Essie turns to her girl, “Beth, will you take the others and check if our correct bags have made it to our rooms? Also heat some water—I think we could all use a bath after this long day of travels. When you are finished, come down here with a fresh cup of tea for each of us.”
There is protest I didn’t expect to find in Beth’s eyes and tone of voice, “Miss, I have orders to stay right by your side.”
“Well, now you have orders to leave. My father isn’t here anymore so you will only be answering to me,” Essie snaps harshly.
“But, miss, I need to stay with you.”
“No, you need to do the things I ordered you to.”
“Perhaps if I, or someone else, stayed with you—“
“You will go to our rooms, check for our bags, draw some warm water, and come back with seven cups of Earl Grey containing two lumps of sugar and a lemon wedge,” Essie shrieks as if this task is the one thing that matters in all the world.
Terrified, Beth consents exit the girls exit the room quickly.
Essie continues with a frightening calm and crosses the room to face me once we are alone, “Prinzessin Dornröschen? That’s rather shocking, Soleil. I didn’t peg your father as a man who gave such lovable pet names.”
“It’s not lovable,” I spit.
“And what does that Latin thing he said mean?” Belle asks, curious.
My cheek will be bloody for weeks if I clench down on the inside of it any harder, but I do as I sink into one of the chairs and ignore my friend’s question.
“Well,” Essie sighs and spins a piece of ebony hair around her finger, “Soleil’s personal strangeness aside, I’d rather ask the obvious question—why aren’t we dead?”
Mary looks up from her hands, tears still streaming down her cheeks with red eyes, “My father said it was Soleil’s doing… again.”
All their eyes snap to me at once, “I swear, I didn’t do anything!” I shout.
“Obviously you did, tramp!” Essie screams and grabs at my hair, becoming too close to me, hurting me. “Your father said those outlandish things. It was at your wedding that we took the poison. And most of all, you’re the one who had to go around sleeping with her servants, killing her mother, and disgracing us all. You’re the reason we’re here.”
I don’t hesitate in slapping her pretty little face. She retaliates quickly—pulling at my hair, clawing at my skin, finding any way she can to hurt me with a deranged look in her eyes. I fight back, loathing everything about her until Belle rips us apart. Essie retreats to Katharine, who holds her and says comforting words just as Belle does to me. We all sit in stunned silence for a moment before Mary mumbles weakly, “Well?”
“Sanguis rosas pingit dies novm is an inscription on an image of a snake attacking a rose. It’s everywhere—I don’t know what it means.”
“There you have it—Soleil’s crazier than I am,” Essie scowls.
I practically growl at her like an animal, “No.” I throw Belle of me when I get up in a rage. The girls give me strange looks as I dig through the room, flipping over lamps and ashtrays. As I look, I explain my other infidelity. “His nickname for me is Princess Briar Rose. It’s not a compliment.” I flip over the last ashtray in the room with a scowl on my face. The gray residue spills on the pretty carpet of floral like a spring snow that will freeze all the hopeful blooms. I curse when there is nothing there on the golden bottom.
Ruby speaks up with a voice as meek as Mary’s, “My father calls me Rapunzel.”
The girls go around and reveal their own nicknames—First Mary, then Katharine, Essie, Belle, and lastly Charlotte.
“I’m Frog Princess.”
“Cinderella.”
“Snow White.”
“Miller’s Daughter—from Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Little Red Riding Hood.”
We all look at each other for a moment without words, then I turn back to the empty ashtray.
“Something’s not right,” I say quietly, just barely audible, and wipe the gray dust off the inside with my pale finger. My weak voice fuels me to pick up the tray again and show it to the girls. The solid evidence I wanted so desperately to find a minute ago now I wish I could erase.
They stare at the symbol for a moment. I see it in their faces that they know where to find it in their own homes; they simply haven’t realized it before.
Essie is the first to wake from the trance I have inflicted on them. She plucks the seemingly average household object from my hand and throws it against the farthest wall, “We will never speak of this to anyone else,” she shouts.
“How can you be so naive?! Charlotte yells back, standing up and moving to face her. “Don’t you understand that now we have to know what it means?! Essie, it could explain everything.” My respect for Charlotte grows tenfold.
“There are things that are better left unknown. What if we don’t like what we find out? Did you ever think about that, dear Little Red Riding Hood?”
Essie’s blue eyes practically pierce through Charlotte’s lightly freckled skin, but she doesn’t back down, “You’re scared of what you don’t know. But I care more about the reasoning behind our similar nicknames and escape of death and this repetitive emblem!”
“Wrong,” Essie smirks, “I’m scared of what I do know. They’ll eat our hearts to gain our strengths.”
“You’re insane,” Charlotte clenches her jaw with an ironically wolf-like grumble and turns away from the black-haired debutante to look at all of us. “I plan on figuring out what’s going on. Anyone who would like to join me is welcome.” She glares at Essie for a final time then exits the room, throwing open the large door furiously and slamming it behind her.
Katharine mutters, “This is not what should be happening. We need to stay together.”
Essie snaps, “We don’t need each other at all.”
Katharine says something kind and tries to fix Essie’s messy hair to comfort her. Ruby and Mary with cluster with them, whispering scandalized words about the fiery girl who just stormed out of the room, I’m sure.
Belle and I give each other the same look, knowing we should chase after Charlotte to investigate our strange situation farther and hating the four girls we were left with.
“Charlotte’s right, ladies,” I state, “I want to know why all of this is happening.”
Our eyes turn to the maids who renter the room timidly, Beth holding the tray of tea. “Where has Miss Rothchild gone?” she asks politely, shyly.
“No!” Essie screams and exits her little circle to take the tray from her girl and throw it on the ground, creating a horrible mess in the already disastrous room. “We will not be speaking of Miss Rothchild any longer. And look what you’ve done now, you stupid girl! You’ve spilled all the tea!” Beth looks like she’s on the verge of tears and begins to apologize, but Essie speaks before she can, “You sicken me. Clean it up before the headmistress sees and begins to think ill of me for having such an incompetent maid.”
We stand shocked for a moment, watching Beth tremble as she gets on her knees to clean up the china shards. Katharine bends to help her, being the irrevocably altruistic girl she is, but Essie holds her back.
I finally turn to Ida, who for once wears a look of emotion upon her face, “Ida, Belle and I would like to be taken to our rooms now.” She rips her eyes away from the unfolding scene of Essie’s vicious, psychotic nature to nod and turn back the way she came.
We leave quickly and without looking back as Ida and Belle’s own maid lead us down the twisting, dark hallways I fear I will never be able to learn. It’s so quiet for a school inhabited by giddy, giggling girls. I hate the sound of nothing. Every little thing about this place sets me on edge, sends chills up my spine, makes my heart race.
“You’re expected at dinner soon, Misses,” Ida says absentmindedly.
“I’m not hungry,” I reply, hoping to have more time to discuss our situation with Belle and Charlotte.
“It’s not optional.”
I’m too confused and preoccupied to even be annoyed at that comment.
We’re lead up a staircase and I decide a person would have to carry around a torch to get anywhere. Ida and the other maid’s poise in walking through the building somewhat alarms me. Though, finally we arrive at a wide and strangely well-lit hall with seven doors and rose wallpaper. Ida turns the handle of the first on the right while the other maid walks Belle down to the last room on the left. I grumble at the distance between us, but Ida shoes me inside.
I have walked into every five-year-old girl’s dream bedroom.
The walls are decorated with images of climbing roses and little fairies and princesses and princes like from the fairytales our fathers have dubbed us the stars of. The bed is just like my gown—white and trimmed with pink ribbons on a frame of gold while a canopy of white mesh hangs over it. A large wardrobe of white stands next to a window overlooking the irritatingly beautiful rose gardens of Bett aus Rosen above a cozy window seat cushioned with pink and white throw pillows. A carpet of roses decorates the wood floor and even the large mirror on the white vanity is surrounded in even more roses.
My jaw drops and I cringe. I’ve never had anything against the fragrant flower, but this is just too much.
“Do you like it?” Ida asks disgustedly, since my look of initial shock must make me look as if I do.
Suddenly, a strong girlish urge to look into the wardrobe overcomes me. On impulse I walk to it and furrow my brow at what I find—a few more dresses identical to the one I wear now, a funny, medieval looking green, white, and brown dress, and a riding habit of deep red with black accents which I can’t help but find simply gorgeous, “Perhaps…”
Ida rolls her eyes and crosses the room to sit at the window seat. “I suppose I could understand why a girl like you would find this appealing—it could give you the illusion of purity once again.”
I shoot her a dirty look, “Why do you hate me so much?”
“Didn’t you already explain why I hate you back on the train?” She stares at me like I’m the most unintelligent person she has ever met.
“Couldn’t you at least fake a little respect for me? I am your employer after all. And I’m not so bad. I could be Essie and do something as horrid as what she did to Beth to you.”
“You’re worse than Essie.”
My face becomes red, “I am not worse than Essie Wellington.”
“You know, simply by saying that you become worse than her.”
“Why?!” I cry and throw the riding habit down on the bed so I’m free to use my hands for possibly smacking her as I march over. “You’re incredibly rude and intolerable to be around, so how are you justified to say such a thing about me. And you better tell me because I’m getting sick of yelling and fighting!”
Ida smirks, “No.” I want to wring her little neck as she stands and walks to the plain white door on the right wall by the vanity. “My room is here. I’ll take you to dinner when the time comes.” She begins to turn the knob, but stops. I hope she isn’t sensing my plot to attack her from behind. Instead, she pulls a white envelope out of the pocket of her apron and places it on the dresses. “That came for you. I believe you’ll find it most interesting.” I’m distracted for a moment by the pretty, curling letters of my name on the front and Ida sneaks into the room unvanquished.
It takes a moment for me to collect myself enough to lay my fingers upon the soft parchment and venture to check what is inside. I stand in the center of the room and scream and stomp on the floor and pull at my hair in frustration of how goddamn powerless I am—like a toddler’s temper tantrum. When I recollect myself and give up trying to rip the pillows in half, I grab the letter and flop onto the window seat in a most unladylike fashion.
Of course I know that gorgeous script, carefree and childish—just like the writer who sculpted it. I just don’t know if I want to know what it might have to say. It’s strange thinking everyone’s dead and now here I am to find that they’re perfectly alive. With care I pull apart the mildly sticky sheets to find the treasure chest within:

Dearest Soleil,
Oh, darling! How long has it been since I have been able to speak to you?! An eternity, it seems. However, I must assure you, I am well once again and very glad because you are safe at your new finishing school.
With care,
Your Mother

My heart sinks at how little I find. This means nothing. This is nothing. This revolting little thing isn’t even her most beautiful handwriting. She could have written this in a matter of seconds and, as she said, I haven’t spoken to her in weeks. This is what she chooses to tell me when she finally can say something?! I thought my wonderful, loving mother would have something more substantial to alert me of. Like what “Sanguis rosas pingit dies novm” means or the significance of the fairytales or at least the words, “I love you”. No. This is any other insincere letter we ladies receive and send through the post on a daily basis.
Another scream tries to jump from my throat, but is blocked by more juvenile, weak tears and I end up coughing and crying in a most unpleasant, angry way. My fingers try to rip the note apart, but despite the betrayal I feel, they can’t seem to bring themselves to do the dirty deed of destroying something she put hands on and smells of her perfume. Instead I angrily hid it under the cushions of the window seat, that way I’ll feel like I’m crushing the useless piece of paper every time I sit in this spot.
I console myself enough with the thought to look out the high window to the rose garden below. The sun is setting under the line of dark green pines past the grassy clearing set aside for the younger ones to play in the flowers and by the well. They laugh in purity and I wish I could be like them, just like Ida says I wish to be like them. A little dirt road runs down the path, acting as the barrier between the safety of the roses and the darkness of the woods. I follow the path with my eyes and find the tip of a roof located within other clearings. Madame Hartmann explained to us earlier that the stables and the field are located within those spaces. I’d like to run free in those wide-open fields.
“Soleil,” Belle’s voice comes from the doorway where she looks most anxious, bouncing on her heels, trying to be quiet as she rips me away from the window. My brow furrows when she grabs my wrist and drags me out of the room saying only the word, “Come.”
She shuts the door silently behind her and pulls a key from the pocket of her pinafore to lock it behind us. Charlotte stands outside, leaning against the horribly papered walls.
“What are you two—?” I begin to ask but am cut off by their shushes.
They walk down the hallway, back to the stairwell, and climb up while I follow, stumbling along the dark path. Charlotte doesn’t look at me. Belle only gives fleeting glances.
Why is everything in my life coded in layer upon layer of cryptic nonsense?
We continue to ascend the stairs until Charlotte veers off to the left into a small hallway with one door only. Without entering the room, we sit on the cold, cement floor with our legs tucked under us like proper ladies do when they sit upon the ground.
“Charlotte wants to be a part of our coalition,” Belle states when she feels it is appropriate.
“What coalition? I don’t remember forming a coalition with you,” I snap, rather irritated.
“Well, I suppose our friendship is a form of coalition.”
“So Charlotte would like to be friends with us?”
“Charlotte can speak for herself,” Charlotte scowls at the two of us and all our childlike gibberish. “I think it would be safest if the three of us stuck together.”
“All right, I suppose that’s fine. I don’t understand why we couldn’t have just discussed this over dinner rather than you dragging me all the way up here,” dumbfounded, I reply.
“That’s not what I mean,” she corrects, “Soleil, tell me everything about you.”
“What? Why? That doesn’t seem entirely necessary.”
“However, it is,” Belle says like this is the most obvious thing in the world.
“Tell me what’s going on! I hate how everyone knows everything and simply refuses to let me in on it.”
“I’ve figured out the significance of our similar… dreams,” Belle says.
All of a sudden it hits me like a train on my chest. Chander’s touch leaving lingering sparks on my arm and cheek. The feeling of his silky, night-colored hair between my fingers as he tells stories from far off lands. His sparkling brown eyes, laughing until he sings and then the substitution is so beautiful I will never think another voice sounds lovely again. These things are too vivid, too burned into my memory.
“It wasn’t a dream at all,” I whisper. “You saw Jesse, Charlotte saw William, Essie saw Andrew, and so on.”
Belle smiles and pats me on the head like a little dog, “Precisely. I wasn’t sure until Charlotte told me about it herself. The rest was inference, but we all were somewhat less mortified than we would normally be about coming to this school and I guessed it was because we had recently been with our loves.”
“The only questions now are how and why,” Charlotte informs, “It hardly makes any sense at all since the voyage across the ocean would have taken at least five days and to get to the middle of Germany would’ve taken another couple of days.”
“Are we even truly in Germany?” I ask, probably sounding like an idiot.
Belle giggles, “Of course we are. No place in America has geography like this. My speculation is that the poison we took only put us in a deep, deep sleep. Sort of like—“
“Don’t say it,” I threaten as her blue eyes wander around the room, trying not to meet mine as she disobeys my command.
“Sleeping Beauty.”
“Well, you’re an awful lot like that stupid Miller’s daughter from Rumpelstiltskin, aren’t you?!” I snap, offended.
Charlotte laughs, “Honestly, Soleil. Calm down.”
“No. I am not this horrid ‘Sleeping Beauty’ character. I’m Soleil Aymond and no one else.”
Belle begins to laugh too, “It is rather like Sleeping Beauty. We were in a deep, unbreakable sleep that could only be woken by the presence of our princes.” I glare at her and she stops laughing, “But, back to what I was saying. I asked my father and the date today is June twelfth—meaning if the ship took around seven days and the train to Fussen was two days, we still would’ve had an extra day or two between the train and the ship or right after your wedding.”
“That’s certainly a long time to sleep,” I murmur in wonderment, glare completely faded.
“Indeed. I believe we saw our loves sometime around June seventh.”
I nod, “Except, how were we out of the drug’s influence for that small amount of time.”
Belle shrugs, “We were drugged again afterward.”
“By whom?! We’ve been with our fathers the whole time… haven’t we?”
Charlotte lets out another amused chuckle. I glower at her but she simply rolls her deep brown eyes and continues plaiting a small strand of her bright blonde hair absentmindedly.
“That’s what we’re not sure of,” Belle whispers harshly, angry with herself for not knowing.
“But we can know,” Charlotte pipes up and undoes the braid, brushing it with her fingers. “Belle and I had more similarities than just seeing our beaus and having fairytale nick-names. Something we think you will as well…”
My heartbeat quickens, my palms become sweaty, and I resist the urge to touch my cheek, which I had somehow managed to forget about more or less throughout the last few weeks.
“I was abducted when I was ten,” Charlotte states.
“And I when I was twelve.”
My jaw drops, “I was nine. They held me for ransom, they gave me a scar.”
It’s now their turn to look stunned, “A scar? Where? Why?” Charlotte asks desperately.
I point to my cheek. “You don’t think it could have anything to do with all of this... could it? Sanguis rosas pinigit dies novm? The drugs? The fairytale pet names?”
The girls squint at my cheek but can’t seem to make out the line so I wipe off the powder so we can all move on.
“Why does she have a scar, Belle?” Charlotte says frantically and ignores my questions.
Belle looks mortified, “I have no idea. That doesn’t fit. Why would she have something we don’t? It doesn’t make senses with the uniform structure of what is done to all of us. What is done to one is done to all.”
“There has to be a reason for it.”
They spiral into a seemingly never-ending loop of speculations until I shout over them, “Ladies. Perhaps the answer will become clear if you tell me what happened to you.”
Belle half-smiles without much effort, “Right. Sorry. Well, I fell asleep one night and woke up in a room that was not my own home. A light was shined before my eyes so I couldn’t see the man’s face, but he told me fairytales and had a German accent. My parents also said it was because of the ransom.”
Charlotte nods, “That’s exactly what happened to me.”
Chills run down my spine, there are so many things I want to scream out but none of them come to mind right away, “Yes. He gave me the scar right before I was taken back home. But Chander said this is what happened to him as well.”
The others look flustered once again—angry that I know something they don’t, angry that something happened to me that did not happen to them, “Why would he say something like that? Why would something like that happen to him?” Charlotte’s words cut like sharp teeth into flesh.
“Perhaps your beaus were taken as well but they chose not to tell you,” I reply with snobby inflection like Essie or Mary would use.
Charlotte scoffs and rolls her eyes. Belle looks mortified.
“He tells me everything,” the brunette says with worry.
“Perhaps not.”
“Or perhaps this is just an odd fluke that has something to do with your scar,” Charlotte’s brown eyes glare into my hazel one’s, her lethal coolness shaking me just as much as any of the shocking information. “Don’t be catty just for the sake of being catty. We’ll never get anything done.” I’m about to say something of the contrary, but she begins to speak again, “I believe we should wait and watch. The patient and clever wolf catches its prey before the much more amorous and flamboyant lion.”
In my mind lions lead to tigers, tigers to Chander, Chander to love, love to marriage, marriage to wedding gowns, and wedding gowns to the fitting for my own when I first heard Belle speak in her intellectual code. That springs something much deeper.
“Belle… who is the Lord you spoke of?”
She has been twiddling her fingers but looks up with panic in her eyes and a scold rising in her throat. The words never make it out of her throat.
“What in the world do the three of you think you’re doing?! Why aren’t you in your rooms?!” Ida stands at the end of the corridor—red faced from furry and the added weight of the child within her stomach as she ascended the stairs.
Charlotte is the first to rise with a vicious glance towards Ida, without any words but including a slight snarl as she makes her way down to her room without saying goodbye.
“You’re a whore,” Ida says matter-of-factly towards me as Belle and I stand. “I can’t believe what a disgrace you are to your fathers, your families, this school—everyone.” We keep our heads down and follow down the path Charlotte has already pioneered. I don’t want her to see my pale skin. Ida continues to tell us how terrible we are as we say nothing in retaliation—resistance is futile.
Yet somehow, my friend manages to whisper in my ear just as quietly as the cooing of a dove as she holds my hand within her own, “The wicked fairy.”