Milady
“You can't go!” I said.
“I have to,” Simon said. He was pacing around my sitting room. We had had this conversation so many times that my carpet was getting worn in the pattern of his pacing.
“No, you do not,” I insisted.
“Elizabeth,” he said, stopping pacing and coming over to me. He took my hands. “It’s been two months now. Two months since Beauty left, a month since Hob disappeared. We can’t keep it hidden much longer, and I can’t wait here if she – if they are in danger.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked. “Ride into the forest and wander lost until you die in the cold?”
“Hob went into the forest, and she must have found the castle. I will find it the same way she did,” he said.
“Unless she failed and is dead!” I exclaimed. “Besides, I do not think she went that way. I told you before, her shoes were left under the bench, and the snow had not fallen deeply where she had been sitting. She must have been taken the same way Beauty was. And you wish to follow them?”
“We must do something!” he said. "Oh, I could wish I had driven a hundred railways through that blasted forest! I have to do something. I have to!"
“Something is not riding into the dark forest with no more idea of where you are headed than you have now!” I said. I pulled away from him and went over to the window. I looked out into the dark forest in the distance, wondering if the others even still lived. “They must do. They must,” I said to myself.
“Let me go after them,” he said, coming to stand behind me.
“Oh, how can I stop you?” I said, wearily. “You will do as you wish, with my leave or without. If you must seek your own death, then be it on your head.”
“You cannot stop me,” he said, “but I would not abandon you.”
“Abandon me?” I said, biting back bitter laughter. “I have my father, do I not? And David. If you will go, then go. And if you return, bring them back with you.”
“I will,” he said. “Or I will not return.”
I heard him stride from the room, but I did not leave my place by the window. I gazed out again towards the forest. “Where are you, Beauty, Hob?” I said to myself. “Why did you go?”
I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned with a frown on my face, expecting Simon again. Instead, David stood in the doorway, looking as weary as I felt. I lost the frown and ran to him. He gathered me in his arms, and for a moment I clung to him, then I pulled away.
“Why the frown?” he said, smoothing his hand over my forehead.
“Simon,” I said.
“I saw him leaving,” he said. “He seemed almost pleased. Have you had news?”
“None,” I said, casting my eyes down.
He put his arms around me again and held me tight. “They are well,” he said. “I know it.”
“I wish I could believe it,” I said. “They have been gone so long now. The house is so empty – I did not realise how I would miss them before I lost them. And Simon has been here day in, day out, wearing me with his own grief and worries. And I must keep on lying to Father and to the world, but I fear it is only a short matter of time before the lie unravels, and it all falls apart.”
I flung my arms around his neck and wept noisily, messily, into his shoulder. He held me tightly until I had cried myself out. “You must have hope,” he said after a while. “It is hardest for you, who are left behind. I wish I could help more.”
