Jane Feather - The Least Likely Bride

She had grown soft, Olivia thought now, with a half smile, stretching under the sun’s warmth. Her northern resilience had been eroded by the south’s mild climate and gentle vistas. She was accustomed to deep snow and bitter cold, and the damp drizzle of a southern winter offered no challenges to the soul. It brought a dank chill that seeped into your bones, and the northeast wind blowing off the sea was a vicious thing indeed, but it grew monotonous rather than menacing.

But here now was summer. And it was as if the winter had never been. Here were brilliant skies and the wonderful expanse of the sea. She had never before known the sea. There were moors and mountain ranges in her native Yorkshire, and winding rivers in the Thames valley that she had called home for the past three years, but nothing to compare with this wondrous sense of expansion, this vast vista where sea met sky and promised only infinity.

Olivia threw her apple core far out across the headland and felt her soul lift, her spirit dance. There were sails out there, pretty white sails on lively craft. Below her, gulls wheeled and drifted on the currents of warm air, and Olivia envied them their wonderful freedom, the ability to give themselves to the current without purpose or necessity, but for the sheer joy of it.

She laughed aloud suddenly and took a step closer to the edge of the cliff. She stepped into a patch of undergrowth. She stepped into nothing.

There was pain, a confused morass of pain against which no one hurt stood out, distinguishable. There was a murmur of voices, one in particular, a quiet voice that accompanied cool hands upon her body, turning, lifting, anointing. A pair of gray eyes penetrated the dream tangle where all was confusion and fear. There was a drink of gall and wormwood that brought a muddled skein of terrifying images in the world of nightmares, things she could put no name to that writhed around her like Medusa’s serpents.

She fought the bitter drink, knocking away the hands that held the cup to her lips. The quiet voice said, “Just one more, Olivia,” and her flailing hands were held in a clasp, cool and firm, and her head rested in the crook of an arm.

With a little moan, she surrendered to a strength and a will much greater than her own, and the foul liquid slipped between her parted lips so that she swallowed in a choking gasp of distaste.

And this time she sank into a dark pool, and the green waters closed over her head. The hurt receded and now there were no nightmares, only the deep, restful sleep of healing.

Olivia opened her eyes. What she saw made no sense, so she closed them again. After a minute, she opened them once more. Nothing had changed.

She lay very still, hearing her own breathing. There was no other sound. Her body was filled with a delicious languor, and she had no desire to move. As she took inventory, she was aware of a stiff soreness at the back of one thigh, a certain tenderness here and there, but as she ran her hands languidly over her body, everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be.

Except that she was naked.

She remembered standing on the cliff path, throwing her apple core across the headland. Then there were dreams, nightmares, voices, hands. But they had been part of the dreams, not real.

Her eyes closed and the deep pool took her again.

When next she swam to the surface, she could sense movement around her. Men were talking in hurried whispers; a chair scraped; a door opened and closed. Her breathing quickened with the atmosphere of urgency around her, but she kept her eyes tight shut, instinctively reluctant to draw attention to herself until she could regain a sense of herself in whatever this place was.

In the renewed quiet, she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in a bed that was not a bed. Or at least it resembled no bed she had slept in before. Tentatively she moved her legs and encountered wooden sides. They were not high, but it felt as if she was lying in a box. She looked up at a ceiling of oak planking. An unlit lantern hung from a chain. But there was no need for lamplight, because great slabs of sunlight slanted into the room from latticed windows a few feet from the foot of the bed.

But the wall wasn’t straight. It was paneled in some glowing wood and curved. The windows were set into the curves, and they stood open, soft sea scents wafting in on a gentle breeze.

Olivia turned her head on the pillow. She turned it tentatively because it hurt a little to do so. The pillow beneath her cheek was crisp and smelled of the flatiron and fresh morning air.

She looked into a chamber, a paneled room with latticed windows and rich Turkey carpets on the shining oak floor. There was an oval table and a sideboard, several carved chairs. But it was not a regularly shaped room. It had no corners. And it seemed to be moving. Very gently, but definitely. Rocking like a cradle.

Olivia’s eyes closed once more.

When she next awoke, the sun still shone, the chamber still rocked gently. She was looking into the room as she had been when she’d fallen asleep. And this time she was not alone.

A man stood at the oval table, bent over some papers, working with something in his hand. He seemed to Olivia to be cast in gold; a shining aura surrounded him. Then she understood that he was standing in the sunlight from the window and the bright rays glinted off his hair. Hair the color of golden guineas.

He was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. He held himself very still, only his hands moving. He seemed detached, centered on himself and his work. It was a quality Olivia recognized because it was her own. She knew what it was to lose oneself in the world of the mind.

She wondered whether to speak, but it seemed impolite to disturb his concentration, so she lay watching him through half-closed eyes, deep in the languid warmth of her peculiar bed. Her body was still sore, and the back of her head felt bruised. Other disparate aches and pains lingered with the slight muzziness in her head. She felt remote, contented, the terrors of the nightmare world vanquished. And she was aware of the strangest connection between herself and the man at the table. It was puzzling but only vaguely so. Mostly it made her feel happy.

And then he spoke. He didn’t raise his head or look up from his work, but he said in the harmonious voice she remembered from the dreams, “So, Sleeping Beauty returns to the world.”

The question didn’t so much break the silence as slide into it. “Who are you?” she asked. Of all the questions that came to mind, it seemed the only one of any importance.

He looked up then. His hand fell idly to the papers on the table as he regarded her, with a half smile on his lips. “I was expecting you to brush your brow and say, ‘Where am I?’ Or words to that effect.”

When she didn’t immediately reply, he came around the table and perched on the edge facing her, stretching his legs, crossing them at the ankle. The sun was behind him and his golden head was ablaze. He laughed, a light, merry sound. His teeth flashed white against the deep bronze of his complexion, and laugh lines crinkled at the corners of his deep-set gray eyes. “Don’t you wonder where you are, Lady Olivia?”

She wondered if he was mocking her. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chin. Only as she did so did she realize anew that she was naked. The sheet, crisp and fresh and clean, was all that lay between her bare skin and this man, who sat there so insouciant, laughing at her.

“How do you know my name?”

He shook his head. “No prescience, I’m afraid. ‘Olivia’ was sewn into all your undergarments. A common enough practice, I believe, in large households with busy laundresses. I had to undress you to tend to you, you understand.” There was a glimmer of secret amusement in his eyes that made Olivia’s skin prickle. Then he leaned sideways to a small table and picked up a book. It was the book she had been reading when she had stepped into thin air.