The Starlight Slippers Read online

  Francesca chewed on the likelihood of that. “Really? And what is it a mural of?”

  I drew a blank. I’d been too busy getting out of trouble to pay attention to the actual painting. All I could recall was the glimmer of a waterfall. But Francesca wasn’t allowed in the King’s suite either, so I doubted she’d seen it.

  “Scenery,” I said, shrugging as if all murals were scenery.

  “Mountains. Trees. That sort of thing,” Gillian added.

  Francesca’s gray eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe us. But she was one to pick her battles wisely, so she snapped her fingers. “Marci wants both of you. In the wardrobe hall. Now,” Francesca said. And then she broke into an uncharacteristic grin. “We’re getting new uniforms.”

  * * *

  —

  I stood in the wardrobe hall as regrets rumbled around in my head. If only we’d gotten up a few minutes earlier. If only we’d had time to try all the locks in the reading room. If only we had some hint, some clue as to what kind of lock the key fit.

  At that moment, the key lay beyond my reach, concealed in my clothes, which were neatly folded on a chair across the wardrobe hall. My apron topped the pile, the pocket carefully tucked underneath so that the lump it made wasn’t visible.

  Twisting at the waist, I glanced over my shoulder.

  “Hold still,” Rose, the Head Seamstress, admonished.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I stood in my stocking feet, wearing only my camisole, my bloomers, and my locket. The locket was silver and inscribed with the same starburst as the one on the key. It had been handed down through the Wray family to my mother and then to me.

  “Arms straight, please,” Rose said.

  I held my arms out while she tightened the measuring tape around my middle. I struggled with the urge to sneak another look at my clothes. My shoulders twitched.

  “Young lady,” Rose said, tilting her head to one side and blinking owlishly, “if you don’t hold still, you will be the only Girl wearing an ill-fitting dress.”

  Marci, the Wardrobe Mistress, cleared her throat. She was enthroned behind her desk, eyeing me.

  I stiffened into a statue. The measuring tape squeezed my hips. I hoped that the Head Seamstress’s idea of a well-fitting dress allowed for things like bending over and breathing.

  Rose squinted at the tape and then scribbled in her notebook. Her bristly black hair was sprinkled with gray and lay twisted in a knot at the nape of her neck. Heavy black eyebrows accented her flat, broad face. She wasn’t pretty, but she was striking. Everything about her was clearly defined. Her shoulders squared off. Her black eyes snapped with interest. Her chin thrust out like she meant business.

  And she did. She’d measured her way through the roomful of Princess’s Girls like the Head Cook whipping up a meringue. Girl after Girl had whisked through Rose’s measuring tape. Well, we were only the Princess’s Girls for a few more weeks. When the royal wedding day dawned, we would be the Queen’s Girls. New title, new uniforms.

  “Which one are you again?” Rose asked, tapping her notebook.

  “Darling—” I began.

  “Dimple,” Marci said.

  “Fortune,” I said at the same time.

  “Which is it, Dimple or Fortune?” Rose asked.

  “It’s Fortune.” Marci sighed apologetically. “Sorry, Darling.”

  I’d been called Darling Dimple for so long that people often forgot it wasn’t my real name. Actually, I was Darling Wray Fortune, heir to Magnificent Wray and the very last Wray of all. At least I thought I was the last. Cherice had claimed she was. But I had no particular reason to believe her.

  “Assistant Wardrobe Mistress,” I finished, standing a little taller.

  “Under-assistant to the Wardrobe Mistress,” Marci corrected.

  I shrugged; that was too much of a mouthful. I’d shortened it. It amounted to the same thing. Princess Mariposa had given me the title as a reward for apprehending Cherice.

  “Ah,” Rose said, ticking off my name on her list. “Thank you. You may go.”

  I scurried to the chair and snatched up my clothes. Francesca and the other Girls had already left, eager to be about their chores. Only Dulcie, the youngest Girl, and Gillian remained. Gillian, already having been measured, dressed slowly and deliberately. When she was finished, a perfect bow would grace her back. Her sleeves would puff just so. I yanked on my clothes. The faster, the better.

  Once dressed, I patted my pocket, just to be sure the key was safe.

  “Dulcie,” Marci warned, “the Head Seamstress is waiting.”

  Dulcie planted herself, fully dressed, before Rose. Arms crossed tightly over her chest. A stubborn frown on her face. She scuffed her toe into the carpet.

  “You are…?” Rose asked her.

  Dulcie clamped her lips together.

  “This is Dulcie,” Marci said. “Dulcie, take off your apron and dress.”

  Dulcie shook her head, red braids flying. A stray curl slid over her forehead.

  Rose reached into the satchel at her feet and pulled out a drawing.

  “Young lady, you must cooperate or you will not be wearing this,” Rose said, flourishing the picture under her nose.

  Dulcie’s cheeks pinked with pleasure. I scrambled over to see for myself. Gillian followed, leaning over my shoulder.

  The drawing was of a Girl wearing a sky-blue dress with a lace pinafore that had ruffles over the shoulders and a heart-shaped pocket. She wore white stockings and shiny black shoes with straps. Two squares of fabric samples were pinned to the paper: a sky-blue silk and a delicate white lace. Lace! Ruffles! Silk! Shoes!

  Could this be our new uniform?

  “Oh my,” Gillian said.

  “Is that what we’ll be wearing?” I gasped, imagining my boots gone and the shiny black shoes in their place.

  “That is what the Queen’s Girls will wear to the royal wedding,” Rose said. “Stubborn children who will not be measured will not attend.”

  “Only to the wedding,” Marci said. “You’ll have more serviceable clothes for every day.”

  I didn’t care; I’d wear all the serviceable clothes they gave me just for the chance to wear a silk gown and a lace pinafore.

  “Did you draw this?” Gillian asked Rose. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I only sew what the Royal Dress Designer dreams up.”

  The Royal Dress Designer! My heart quickened.

  “Who is the Royal Dress Designer?” I said.

  “Madame Zerlina Trinket.”

  “I’ve never heard of her. Does she live in the castle?” I asked.

  “Gracious, no, child, she has a grand salon in the city.”

  A grand salon.

  “Oh.” I imagined gold-trimmed doors atop a sweep of marble steps. DARLING WRAY FORTUNE, ROYAL DRESS DESIGNER, a brass plate on the door read. Behind the door lay acres of marvelously thick carpet and scores of fabulous gowns. Just like Queen Candace’s closet, only these dresses would be mine. Darling’s Gorgeous Gowns. I liked the sound of that.

  “Dulcie, did you wear your camisole or your petticoat today?” Marci asked.

  Dulcie turned scarlet. I glanced down at her suspiciously flat skirt.

  Marci let out a prodigious sigh that said her patience was worn to its last thread.

  “Go get properly dressed, and make it quick,” she ordered. “Before I have to have a talk with Mrs. Pepper-whistle.”

  At the mention of the Head Housekeeper, Dulcie dashed off.

  “She’ll only be a moment,” I told Rose, who tucked the drawing back into her satchel.

  “She’s really fast,” Gillian agreed.

  Just then, the door swung open and Princess Mariposa swept in. Her movement set the ruffles on her
violet skirt dancing. Her ebony tresses bounced. Her changeable sea-blue eyes sparkled like sapphires. The blue-diamond engagement ring on her hand flashed as she waved a yellowing paper.

  Marci and Rose stood up at the Princess’s approach.

  “Marci—” Princess Mariposa cried, and then stopped. “Good morning, Rose.”

  “Good morning, Your Highness,” the Head Seamstress replied.

  “Are the Girls measured?” the Princess asked.

  “All but one, a Miss Dulcie,” Rose said.

  “She’ll be here in a minute,” Marci told the Princess. “May I help you with something?”

  “I’ve discovered an old letter of my grandmother’s.” Princess Mariposa flourished the paper in her hand. “Marci, I must have the starlight slippers!”

  “I shall dance all night,” Princess Mariposa cried, waltzing across the carpet. The paper flapped as she moved. “I shall wear a beautiful gown with the starlight slippers twinkling on my toes. My wedding ball will be the most wonderful—the most romantic—evening of all!”

  “The starlight slippers?” Marci echoed with an odd frown.

  Princess Mariposa stopped twirling so quickly that her skirts twisted around her like a funnel. She shook her skirts loose and held the paper up.

  “They are mentioned in this letter written by Magnificent Wray. I found it when I was reviewing some old correspondence. The slippers sound wonderful. Just listen.” The Princess cleared her throat and read: “Wedding slippers crafted of leather and lace and bejeweled with starlight opals. Slippers that reflect the starlight itself. Memorable shoes for an unforgettable evening.”

  With a flourish, she folded the letter and tucked it in her sash.

  “They sound dreamy,” Gillian breathed.

  “Indeed they do,” Marci said. “But I have never seen such a pair.”

  “Never?” The Princess’s brow creased. “They were made for Queen Candace’s wedding.”

  “They sound marvelous, Your Highness,” Rose said. “But shoes aren’t like dresses; they can’t be altered. If you had them, they would probably be too big or too small.”

  “Are you sure?” the Princess asked. “A little padding or a little loosening…”

  “It’s the lasts, you see,” Rose said. “They are carved the exact width and length of the person’s foot.”

  “But the Royal Cobbler could—” the Princess said.

  “You could pad them if they were too long, but they would be difficult to dance in,” Rose continued. “A shoe that is too short?” She shook her head. “Cut off the front of the shoe? Lop off one’s toes?”

  Gillian shuddered.

  “Well, I won’t know until I try them on,” Princess Mariposa said. “I shall just have to find them and see.”

  “Do you know where your grandmother kept them?” Marci asked, tugging at the scarf knotted under her collar as if something were bothering her.

  “Surely they are still in the Queen’s closet,” Princess Mariposa replied.

  My stomach clenched. I glanced at Marci.

  “I don’t know,” Marci said slowly. “I’ll look and see.”

  Closets lined both sides of the wardrobe hall. One through six held the Princess’s clothes, and the seventh contained Queen Candace’s dresses. All one hundred of them. Nobody wore them anymore. And nobody went into her closet.

  Well, no one but me.

  It wasn’t your average closet; Queen Candace’s dresses weren’t ordinary gowns. They were filled with magic. Just by trying one on, I could become someone else in the castle. The Princess never, ever went in there.

  “Hand me the key,” the Princess said.

  “The closet isn’t kept locked; the key is missing,” Marci said, bustling toward the door. “I’ll take a quick look.”

  “Missing?” Princess Mariposa exclaimed. “When did that happen?”

  Marci stopped in her tracks. “Long before I was the Wardrobe Mistress,” she said. “Baroness Azure talked about having a new key cast, but so far as I know, that hasn’t been done.”

  Gillian and I caught each other’s eyes. My hand dropped to my apron pocket, and my fingers curled around the starburst key. Could the solution to my mystery be that simple? I’d been so busy looking for the right lock, I’d forgotten all about the missing closet key. I squinted; the closet’s lock seemed a little smaller than the locks on the other doors.

  “Oh, let’s not bother about that,” Princess Mariposa said, waving the matter away. “Let’s look.”

  “I’ll—” Marci began. But before she could move a muscle, the Princess darted over, flung the door open, and flew inside.

  Marci’s mouth hung open. Gillian gasped. What would happen when the Princess touched those dresses? My knees knocked together.

  “Oh!” the Princess cried from the closet.

  I raced in after her, with Marci and Gillian at my heels.

  Sunlight flooded the long, narrow room, splashing over the rose-patterned carpet and shimmering on the dresses themselves. The stained-glass canary set in the great peaked-arch window glinted at me. Beneath it, on a small table, sat a gilded birdcage in which a real canary fluttered on a gold perch.

  “Oooh,” Princess Mariposa crooned, leaning over the cage. She poked her finger inside the wires and stroked the canary on his head. “My widdle precious birdums, Sir Goldie Sweetie.”

  I gaped; I’d never heard the Princess talk like that to anyone before. I squirmed with embarrassment. But the bird, whose real name was Lyric, closed his eyes and arched into the Princess’s ministrations.

  “I was just keeping him here where he’d be close by. So I could look after him,” I said.

  Lyric’s birdcage usually hung from a stand in the Princess’s dressing room. But lately, having a million wedding-related decisions to make, the Princess found that his singing irritated her and she wished him out of her sight. She never said where we should keep him. And I never volunteered that I’d put him in the closet.

  “You be good for Darling, birdie boy,” the Princess cooed.

  Gillian tugged on my sleeve. “Sir Goldie Sweetie?” she whispered, fighting back a chuckle.

  I wrung my hands, aware of the dresses on their silver hangers with the numbered gold badges. They hung as stiffly as icicles. A frosty glaze covered the normal sparkle of jewels and glimmers of lace. If dresses could hold their breaths, then these were puffed up and turning blue.

  Marci coughed behind me.

  Princess Mariposa straightened and looked around.

  “I’d forgotten how beautiful they are,” she exclaimed, petting a nearby sleeve.

  I winced. Would she notice anything unusual about them? Pick one up?

  The dresses obviously heard her, because the next thing I knew, they had thawed enough to recklessly flash a few crystals and wiggle a few ribbons at her. I glared at them. Were they crazy? Did they want the Princess to know about them?

  After I’d worked so hard to keep their secret?

  But, no, Princess Mariposa was too caught up in admiring them to notice anything out of the ordinary. I tweaked the ruffle on the one nearest me. A silent warning.

  “The Queen’s wedding dress is here at the back,” Marci said. She padded over to One Hundred, a white satin gown embroidered with doves and roses, speckled with crystals, and frothing with lace. Marci unceremoniously pulled up the train and peered beneath.

  “They’re not here,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “But there are shoes under some of these,” Princess Mariposa remarked, rifling through the dresses.

  “We’ll check under all of them for you,” Gillian exclaimed, pulling me down to the floor.

  I knew it was a waste of time, but I made a show of crawling around on the carpet with Gillian, peeking under every dress. Gillian held up the flam
e-colored slippers that sat under Eighty-Two.

  “These are pretty,” she said.

  “You could try them on for size,” Rose offered from her post at the door. “That way you can decide if the search is worth the trouble.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Princess Mariposa said, taking the slippers.

  She placed them on the floor. Then she slipped out of her shoes and wiggled into the bright orangey-scarlet pair.

  “A perfect fit!” she announced, holding out her foot for us to see.

  “Oh my, how lovely,” Rose said. “Perhaps the wedding dress fits as well?”

  I felt like someone had wound my nerves around the bristles of a brush. The dresses couldn’t be left off their hangers. If they were—

  “Oh, I don’t know, Your Highness,” Marci began. “These dresses are old, fragile—”

  But the Princess was already pulling One Hundred off the hanger.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “They look like new.”

  And they did. But they only remained as bright and fresh as the day they’d been hung in the closet when the rules were followed. If someone took the wedding dress off its hanger and left it off—it would age into rags overnight.

  “Unbutton me, please,” the Princess told Marci.

  My heart thudded painfully as Princess Mariposa slipped out of her violet gown and into Queen Candace’s wedding dress. Please don’t fit.

  And—miraculously—it didn’t.

  The shoulders pinched, the waist puckered, and the sleeves hung askew. The fit couldn’t have been more off-kilter if it had been made for a sea serpent. And then my pulse slowed. The dress was doing it on purpose!

  “My goodness,” Princess Mariposa said, eyeing the left sleeve trailing over her hand.

  “Hmm,” Rose said, walking over to her with an intense stare. “It seems rather…odd in the construction. But maybe”—she examined the too-short right sleeve—“it could be altered.”

  Princess Mariposa’s eyes lightened with interest. “Do you think so?”

  “We could remove the sleeves, refashion the bodice, rework the train,” Rose mused, circling the Princess and studying the gown from every angle.