31_days | [1st November][A Little Princess] The Fairy Queen

Title: The Fairy Queen
Day/Theme: 1st November/"Things you've never seen"
Series: A Little Princess
Character/Pairing: Becky/Sara
Rating: PG

If Sara tells a story, people will listen, Becky thinks. Sara’s voice is a song, sometimes she even assumes the relaxed, easy position of a minstrel in a medieval tapestry; her hands showing her listeners the music that they cannot hear.

“…And so it came to pass on this day that Randall was lying by the stream in the woods, whiling away the hours by listening to it gurgle. The leaves on the trees above him were turning golden as autumn spread over the land. Very, very faintly, he could hear the sound of someone singing and so, being the gallant knight Randall, he chased the song over hill and dale until he found the singer. He found her sitting by a well and he gasped, for she was the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen. She had golden curls that spilled all the way down to her feet and her eyes were as blue as the sky. Her shape was slender and willowy; and as she rose and came towards Randall, he became utterly enchanted by the Fairy Queen.”

Becky has never seen a truly blue sky; after all, she lives in London, where smog clouds the air from the ground to the stars and even on a good day all you can see is a slightly blue-tinted grey. She knows, however, that it must be bright and brilliant and beautiful, because Sara says so, and that’s always been good enough for Becky.

Golden curls are something else again: Becky has seen those on the young ladies at Miss Minchin’s. Most are the carefully ordered ringlets of those who spend a good portion of the night tying them up in rags. Some do curl naturally, you can tell them by how much less tired they are of a morning; these are the ones who didn’t spend the wee hours trying to find a good side to sleep on and who didn’t end up sleeping on their faces. Few of the girls with ringlets were kind to a scrawny scullery maid with eyes too big for her face and brown hair that frizzed. They are right for the Fairy Queen who steals children from the cradle and entices knights and minstrels to her side but not for gentle Aurora, nor for unhappy Cinders or for defiant Rapunzel. To Becky, the innocent Sleeping Beauty has cat-like green eyes when she awakens; the long-suffering Cendrillon of Becky’s imagination wears a scullery maid’s cap and apron and sleeps in the right-hand attic; and the Rapunzel who braves the wasteland in search of her blinded lover has straight dark hair that barely falls past her shoulders. Becky does like one fairy tale princess – the Goose Girl, who has her rightful inheritance stolen from her but remains a princess even in rags and mud splatters. Becky keeps the old nickname “Princess Sara” close to her heart: nowadays the only mouths it falls from are hers and Mr Carrisford’s. Even so, it makes their princess blush and smile and Sara never makes a protest. She is eighteen now and as eager to spread largesse as she was at eight. She has not forgotten the long, cold nights in the attic and neither has Becky.

Often during those nights, Sara would crawl into bed with Becky and she would tell stories until her voice was hoarse and her throat aching with unshed tears. Becky would hold her princess and offer useless murmurs of sympathy and they would fall asleep together sometime in the midnight hour, too exhausted from their brutal labour that day to keep their eyes open.

Becky once tried to apologise for her clumsy comforts and was surprised when Sara turned her face into Becky’s shoulder with a queer little laugh and she could feel the damp of Sara’s tears stain her skin through her night-gown.

“You will never know the solace you bring me,” Sara had whispered into the darkness. Becky hadn’t quite understood the words but she knew the meaning and her heart had leapt.

She will never leave Sara’s side, not even when Sara marries as she inevitably will (and the princes, in Becky’s mind, are never quite good enough for the princesses) and goes to her husband’s house. Becky will follow her, she told Sara once when she was in an anxious mood, she would go back to being a scullery maid if she had to. Sara had sworn with all the solemnity of her grave nature that she would never leave Becky behind. Sara keeps her vows and so does Becky; breaking this one would be unthinkable.

“Winter came and winter went,” Sara says, her face sad and serious, “but Randall did not return from Fairyland until seven years had passed. The Fairy Queen threw him from her horse and rode merrily away as Randall crept over the grass, sick and pale.”

Some days, even with the remembrance of their vow in the back of her mind, warming her heart, Becky’s new life seems to be only a wonderful dream. She will tremble suddenly, even on the balmiest of summer days, overcome with the fear that, when she blinks, she will awaken in an icy bed with a mattress of rock and the faintest fingers of a grey dawn will filter through the threadbare curtain as she weeps quietly into her pillow. At those moments, she is sure that her seven years in Fairyland will one day be over and Sara will push her off the back of her white palfrey, leaving Becky to crawl from the gutter bedraggled and alone.

But there is the vow, and Becky has more faith in Sara than that. There is no such thing as an empty promise with Sara and Sara has promised she will not leave Becky.

Now Sara’s story is finished and Miss Lottie is rising to her feet, only just realising the cramp in her leg. The story ended with Randall returning to his faithful beloved Jean and Becky hopes – no, Becky knows – that their story, hers and Sara’s, will always end that way, too.