Then, at last, the fireworks were done, and the lights went out over the choppy, monster-infested sea. Queen Maisie hugged each of her friends and kissed them goodbye. And then she thanked each of the retainers and servants and cooks and washers of dishes, all of whom had come out to see the fireworks and celebrate their queen. She thanked each one by name, and she gave them each one of the shells she had gathered that day.
Yes, Phin, she collected that many shells. They were small.
No, Phin, the fog and the nightgown weren’t still in the basket. May I proceed?
“Bedtime, Your Majesty, wouldn’t you say?” asked Lady Dorcas, her voice sugary as a boiled sweet, with the same hardness under its gloss.
“Yes, Aunt,” said Queen Maisie, matching Lady Dorcas’s honey tone. And she hugged her auntie and kissed her cheek, and no one who saw the lady and the queen in that moment would have guessed that one was about to try to murder the other and that the intended victim knew it perfectly well.
The queen went up to her bedroom and closed herself in. She had finally come up with a plan, and she wasted no time in setting it up. She took one of her unspoiled nightgowns, stuffed it full of bedclothes, and thumped the lot into the shape of a girl. Then she tucked it into her big four-poster bed, pulling her quilt right up to its chin. The hat made of wishing-bird feathers stood in for her own head, and partly covered by a pillow, it looked right convincing, especially after Queen Maisie had closed the bed-curtains and made it dark inside. Then she took the ruined nightgown with the stains and tears from where she had hidden it behind a potted plant, and put it on. It made her shudder a bit to do it, but a girl can’t let shudders get in the way of saving her own life, now, can she?
Next, the queen doused all the lights in the room and opened up the doors to her balcony to let in the moonlight. Then, still dressed in her tattered nightgown with the bottle of fog clutched in her hands, she crept behind a tapestry by her bedroom door to let her eyes adjust to the dark and wait for what would happen next.
The palace clocks chimed ten, then half-past, then eleven, then half-past that. And then came a new sound, but a familiar one: Queen Maisie’s door opening slowly. Then footsteps, also familiar, and just one set of them. Lady Dorcas had come to do the job herself.
Queen Maisie waited until her aunt had crossed the room; then she slipped out from behind the tapestry just in time to see Lady Dorcas lean through the curtains. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump! Five thumps, to match the five tears in the ruined nightgown she wore. Just as Queen Maisie had guessed, her aunt had not looked too closely at the shape of the girl under the bedclothes. But she might check to be sure her knife had done its work before leaving, and that would spoil the effect. There was no time to hesitate.
Queen Maisie uncorked the bottle of fog and poured some out at her feet, hiding the bottle in her nightgown pocket. (Another lesson, Miss Maisie: A girl always ought to have pockets in everything, even nightgowns.) And then, with the fog swirling about her like all the mystery of the underworld, Queen Maisie stepped forward in her bloodstained nightgown and spoke. “Why have you killed me, Aunt?” she demanded.
Well. You may imagine for yourself how shocked Lady Dorcas was. She jumped back away from what she had taken to be the girl’s body in her bed and dropped the long, thin knife she’d been holding. At first she thought she’d made some sort of mistake, but then, of course, she saw the rips and the stains: five, to match the five blows she’d just delivered. Not to mention there was that fog pooling about Queen Maisie’s ankles. A right ghost she looked.
And then the ghostly queen stepped forward again. “Five times you stabbed me, Aunt,” she said.
And Lady Dorcas backed away, of course. “I . . . I didn’t!” she protested, the wicked liar.
Queen Maisie took another step toward her, and the fog followed. “It was not hard to lie to the child-queen of this land when she was alive and there was nothing but sunshine,” she said in a singy sort of voice. “But now I am the Queen of Fog, and you will not lie to me again.”
And she took another step. And Dorcas backed away faster this time, four steps that carried her right to the door to the balcony. “Your Majesty,” Lady Dorcas protested desperately, “forgive me.”
“Five blows, and you dare to ask my forgiveness?” Queen Maisie took another step. “The Queen of Fog has not given you leave to speak. But I will give you a choice, since for many years I thought you loved me.”
“What kind of choice?” Lady Dorcas barely got the words out, her teeth were chattering so hard.
“The fog, or the sea,” said Queen Maisie.
“I don’t understand,” Lady Dorcas managed.
“Come with me into the fog”—and here the queen brought the fog swirling up between them with a flick of her wrist—“or take your chances in the sea.” And she pointed at the balcony behind her aunt. “The fog or the sea, Aunt. Which will it be?” And then, because, of course, only one of those choices would really do, Queen Maisie flicked her wrist again and sent the fog lunging obediently after her aunt.
And that was all it took. Lady Dorcas screamed, turned, and leaped over the balcony rail.
Now, had she jumped from any other balcony in the castle, she would’ve been dashed to death on the rocks. But Queen Maisie’s window was the only one that fell straightaway down into blue sea.
