Jodi Picoult - Between the lines

He smiles. “Cook tends to go a bit overboard.”

“Well, I’m not going to let it go to waste. Come on in and grab a fork.”

He looks horrified. “I can’t come into your chamber.”

“Why not? You’ve been in my room dozens of times.”

His face reddens. “It’s different in here, somehow.”

“No, it’s not. Besides, we’re seven stories up in a tower. Who’s going to know?”

For the next few hours, Oliver and I sit in front of the fire making a small dent in the sumptuous meal. He regales me with stories of practical jokes he’s played on Frump, and gives me brief verbal sketches of each of the characters I am likely to meet. I tell him about my fight with Jules and how my mother tried to cheer me up. Then our conversation turns to a brainstorming session as we try to figure out what we can do to force an exit from the story.

“As soon as the book is opened,” Oliver says, “you’ll disappear, because you aren’t part of the story.”

“Even if that’s true-which you don’t know for sure-you wouldn’t go with me. We’d be right back where we started.”

“But isn’t it better to have at least one of us on the outside, instead of neither?”

I can’t answer that, not honestly. Before, I wanted Oliver by my side, but I didn’t really know what I was missing. Now that I understand what it feels like to be near him, it’s going to be that much harder to have it taken away.

“The book is stuck on a shelf in my bedroom. No one’s ever going to notice it, much less open it.”

“Then we have to force its hand,” Oliver says. “There must be a way to get a book to open itself.”

“Magic,” I suggest, joking.

Oliver looks up at me. “Of course,” he says, raising his brows. “We need to start with Orville.”

I stifle a yawn with my hand, but Oliver sees me do it. “You,” he says, getting to his feet, “have had a very long day. It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

He takes the candleholder he used to lead us upstairs and walks to the door. “You can’t just leave me here alone,” I say, panicking. What if I go to sleep, and when I wake up, this is all gone? I don’t know the rules of this world. I don’t know what’s likely to happen.

“I’m right downstairs,” Oliver says. “One flight. Stomp on the floor and I’ll come running.”

We are standing at the threshold to my chamber. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I say, repeating Seraphima’s words.

He grins, then leans down and kisses me good night. We are both still smiling when we break apart. Oliver starts down the stone steps. “Dream about me, Cousin,” I call out.

I can hear him laughing all the way down the stairs.

Oliver could feel the mortar of the stone tower beneath his fingernails. He didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold on. But then again, below him there were only crashing surf and jagged rocks. One false move, and he would surely be dead.

With a mighty heave, he hoisted himself onto the wide stone ledge of the tower window.

But instead of seeing a beautiful princess, the girl of his dreams, the one he’d traveled far and wide to find-he saw a tall, caped man pacing back and forth. “Well?” the man demanded.

His voice was like fog crawling over the horizon. His hair fell like a raven’s wing over one brow, and a scar that ran the length of his face curved his mouth downward. His fingers were long and bony, tapping impatiently on his arms.

“I don’t have all day,” he said.

No one had told him to expect anyone other than his true love in this tower, but in retrospect, Oliver knew that he should have anticipated this. If it had been easy, someone else would have rescued Seraphima by now.

Before he could begin to wonder how he-a boy who didn’t even carry a sword and who had promised his mother he wouldn’t fight-could defeat a villain who was at least six inches taller and forty pounds heavier, Seraphima emerged from behind a folding screen.

She was wearing a dress so white it was dazzling, beaded and jeweled at the bodice, and with sleeves that tapered down to her fingers. On her head was a gossamer wedding veil.

Immediately, over Rapscullio’s shoulder, she saw Oliver.

Oliver’s eyes lit upon her silver hair, her violet eyes, her heart-shaped face. And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath was timed to hers, so that his blood sang.

This was why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.

Seraphima’s lips parted. “Finally,” she whispered, as if she had known he was coming all along.

But that one word was enough to make Rapscullio turn around, his cape billowing like a cloud of smoke. “Well, well,” he said, every word a whipping, “look who’s crashed the party.”

THE NEXT MORNING, I ARRANGE FOR A PICNICbreakfast with Delilah in the tower where I rescue Seraphima. I figure that before we start out to Orville’s cottage, we should be fortified.

And I kind of want to spend a few more minutes alone with her, instead of letting Queen Maureen grill her over the banquet table.

I thought I’d memorized everything there was to know about Delilah-from her freckles to her favorite blouse to the way she always gives her goldfish an extra helping of food-but as it turned out, there was so much left to learn. Like the fact that her skin is as soft as a feather, and that her hair smells of apples. Her hand fits mine like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Delilah scrambles up the tower steps ahead of me, kicking her skirts out of the way. “Stupid dress,” she mutters.

“It may be stupid,” I reply, “but it looks quite nice on you.”

She looks over her shoulder at me. “I bet you’d feel different if you were the one wearing it. Have you ever traipsed through a meadow in heels? I think not. …”

“I don’t traipse. Men don’t traipse. We… swagger.”

Delilah bursts out laughing. “Swagger? You?”

Affronted, I pause on the steps. “What? What’s the matter with the way I walk?”

But before Delilah can answer, she reaches the top of the tower and gasps. “Oliver,” she says, “when did you do all this?”

“Every now and then, having a castle full of servants is a real perk,” I say. I peek over her shoulder and see that they have exceeded my expectations. A sheepskin blanket has been draped over the middle of the floor, and a feast is spread across it. There’s an entire roast turkey, and apricot chutney, and stuffed figs. There are olives and grapes and plums piled high in the queen’s best china bowls. A carafe of blackberry cider sits beside two golden chalices.

“I’m going to gain ten pounds before I leave this place,” Delilah mutters. “A piece of toast would have been fine.”

Doves coo in the rafters above us as she sits down on the blanket, her loathed dress whispering around her. She pops a grape into her mouth and sighs. “This is so unreal. I feel like a princess.”