Day In. Hide Out.

Chapter 3

Then I make my way up the stairs with the lit candle and push up the door a hair. The moonlight escaped from the hallway long ago, and it's dark once more. The musty smell of aging wood and cobwebs makes me wrinkle my nose as I move the door from its place and climb up the steps and out into the hallway. With a soft "thunk", the door is back in place and the rug is placed over it carefully again.

As I tiptoe silently around the staircase and peer into the empty living room, a noise frightens me. It's coming from the kitchen, and I stop behind the stairs and reach my head around to listen. Suddenly, the door jars and flies open, and the room is filled with Ms. Harte's scary, surprisingly booming voice. "Why, I should have the woman executed!"

My eyes are all that peek around the banister through the bars as King Branton strokes his chin. They haven't yet lit candles, but the open kitchen door shines a square of light dangerously close to where I stand. "Well, I do love a good party after an execution. And she did starch my good robe less than a fortnight ago when I specifically instructed her otherwise....we shall see," the king concludes.

With that, he steps up on the first stair. The poor winding staircase creaks as he walks further up, and I take refuge underneath it to hide from Ms. Harte's wandering eyes. She seems lost without the king in the large, empty room. When the door to the king's chamber is shut firmly, she turns on her heel and proceeds back to the lit kitchen. Inside, I see servants working on peeling vegetables and preparing fresh bread. Another cleans the floor near the door, and the last washes the dinner dishes of the royal family.

Surprised as I am that it's as late as it is, when the king is finally in for the night, I dash across the shimmering marble floors and hide in the dark shadows once more by the heavy oak door carved into the front entry wall. When I see the witch-like shape of the cook appear at the doorway, I crumple in the corner and try to not be seen. But the kitchen light disgraces me and only highlights the bright white of my dress hem. I've hidden my satchel under my coat, and I'm sure to look foolish, but Ms. Harte can't get over the very fact that I'm there to notice my unusual size and stature.

She nearly yells, but then, seemingly veiled with a calm demeanor, she beckons to the servant peeling vegetables into a large metal sink. The woman puts down her food and comes over, drying her hands on her cream colored apron. She has a red tinted face, and her feet are planted a foot apart, as if she's readying herself. Her pointed chin and sharp nose make her look even scarier in the silvery moonlight casting in from the window above us.

The woman puts her plump hands firmly on my arm and leads me out the back door. With a glance of pure disgust, she shoves me out and slams the door in my face.

I look around me. I've taken to reading out here, on the lonely days when the king is away at another castle or in town, where he rarely ever goes. And sometimes, when all the chores are done and no one notices I've gone, I sneak out and lose myself in a book for hours. It's a peaceful place, aside from the stale odor of the guards' pipe tobacco. I even have a hidden trunk of my favorite books stored away behind the woodpile at the end of the wall.

There are no elaborate brick pillars or guards along the wall like the front of the palace. It still, however, is scattered with many windows, as are the front and both sides. A skinny, old looking cat sleeps atop one of the low window sills. The stables are far to the side, but in the dim moonlight, you can still see small dots running around a pen from a distance. Trees line the forest that butts up to the palace fence, but it's a tall and sturdy fence made of iron, with spikes on the top of each post.

Carefully and quietly, I slide along the wall toward my book trunk, which hides in the shadows where two walls meet and a wood pile towers over me to upper floors. I bend down and open the box, straining my eyes to tell one book from the next. Reaching in, I pull away a book tentatively. I lean it toward the vivid light from the high moon and read the spindly, curly letters strung across the dark blue cover. The binding is decorated with little silver flowers, and I feel the stitching with my fingertip softly.

I take the satchel from underneath me, and set the book inside carefully. Along with it, I put in a hardcover novel, thick with wonderful words arranged on a printed page, each forming the beautiful story even more. Its blood orange dust jacket is crinkled at the edges, showing signs of the worn book being read and touched by many hands, mostly mine as I admired it to and from the shelf. It was my father's, and though I've never had the pleasure of reading it, I always wondered what story lay within the dark maroon covers. After adding a third book to my already heavy bag, I close and latch the trunk carefully and slide it further into the darkness. Satisfied, I rise to my feet and lean on the wall thoughtfully.

I eye the space between two iron bars on the gate across the courtyard. I've always been a thin girl, mainly because they never fed me much, and I think I can fit if I try very hard. After looking all around me for guards and checking the kitchen door softly to see if it's still locked, I dash across the cobblestones as soundlessly as I can manage and grab the fence with both hands. I bite my lip, judging if this was a mistake.

Then, taking a leap of faith, I turn sideways and slide right through. Thank you, King Branton, and your harsh temper. He never let me have dinner on the weekends because he said I'd be too lazy to work if I was fat. Our old house, ramshackle as it now is, sits just across these woods, but I never dared to come so close to the palace because I knew of my parents' debts to the royal family in years past.

When I was young, I used to pretend I was the princess of the land, wearing a crown of flowers and granting everyone's greatest wishes. I named all the trees and climbed them and scraped both my knees, and in the end my mother scolded me for being unladylike. I would dip my bare toes in the little blue brook and listen to the babbling of the water as it ran over the pebbles and make up stories and tell them to the clouds, and blades of grass beneath me.

Not believing for a moment that I really did what I just did, I look back through the bars. I feel as if I've just broken out of prison. My boots sink into the soft earth, and the smell of pipe smoke and thrown out, rotten fruit has died away. Now, all that remains around me is the fresh smell of trees, and leaves, and the approaching dew of the early morning. I take another step into this new world, and the few remaining leaves fallen from a tall oak tree crunch under my boots crisply. I take another step, and another, until I can't hear the guards' bored muttering and the click of the horses' heels as they kick up dust in the pen.

As I venture further into the forest, it gets darker. A tunnel of tree branches woven tightly like a spider web closes the light of the moon out as dawn sets in. I feel as if I've been walking for days. Above the mountains, soft pinks and oranges radiate and turn the snowy mountaintops purple and blue. Little white clouds are beginning to form and fill the empty sky, and golden fingers of morning sun meander through the stripped branches of the trees and strain to touch the ground.

Dawn breaks through and I stop at the foot of a tree. In the distance, I hear the front doors of little village cottages slamming, bells on the doors of the shops tinkling, and the groggy villagers beginning to walk about. The clopping of horses' hooves and crunching of wagon wheels on the dirt road fills my ears, and, as it grows, the chirping of crickets and bird songs dull. Finally, as I walk, through the thinning trees, I see a line of shops along our Main Street.