Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [77]
Sitting up, he also remembered that he was looking for someone. A princess. She was to be his bride and he had lost her somewhere here in this strange cold place. Where was she?
“Hello?”
He looked around. He was in a room made of green glass. It was round, and even the floor curved, rather like being in a bubble. There was an archway leading out of the bubble, and as he stepped toward it, something fell from his pocket and landed on the floor with a chime.
Looking down, Christian found a woman’s high-heeled dancing slipper, made of exquisitely blown glass in blue and green and gold. He picked it up, and a brief flash of memory told him that it belonged to his love, who had lost it entering her golden carriage. He was bringing it to her now, and he held it tightly to keep from dropping it again.
“Hello?”
He carried the slipper out of the green room, into a red room, then an orange. Was there nothing more here but a long silent chain of round glass rooms? He saw no other signs of life, heard no sounds but that of his footsteps and his breath.
Gazing around a pale rose room, he thought he saw something glimmering through one of the walls. Stepping closer, he could just make out a figure through the glass. Not his own reflection, but what appeared to be a woman. She knocked on the glass, frantic, as though trying to reach him.
“Step back, step back,” he shouted to her. His heart racing—it was his bride-to-be, he knew it—Christian raised his foot and began to kick the wall. He wished he were wearing boots and riding breeches instead of oddly shaped velvet slippers and cumbersome robes, but he couldn’t remember why he was dressed this way, either.
At last the wall splintered, and he helped the young woman step through. She was clad in billowing trousers and a tight, low-cut bodice, and he made a note to ask her to dress more modestly once they were wed.
“Is it you?” He studied her face, now feeling doubtful. She did have dark hair, and the fuzzy image in his mind of his bride was also dark haired. He held up the slipper. “Is this yours? Are you her?”
They both looked at her feet. They were bare, and the reflected glow of the pink floor made them look pearly and perfect.
Christian knelt and offered her the slipper. She slid her foot into it and stepped down. Her dark brows were knit with concentration.
“It might be mine,” she said, and took a step.
The shoe slipped off her foot and she stumbled, catching herself on the slick, curving wall.
“I don’t think so,” Christian said. “I shall keep looking.”
“May I join you?” Her lower lip trembled. “I think I’m looking for someone, too, and I don’t want to be alone.”
“Of course.” Christian picked up the slipper, took her arm with his free hand, and together they walked out of the pink room into a blue one.
Through the wall of this room they spied a number of other people, and Christian and the men on the other side managed to break a large hole in the wall so that the three strangers could cross through. They were a stately older couple and a young man with a bare chest. Christian tried the slipper on the lady, even though she seemed too old to be his bride. Her narrow foot was too long for the slipper, so they all shrugged and moved forward.
The young man took the arm of the girl in the billowing trousers, and she smiled shyly up at him in a way that made Christian jealous. The girl said her name was Marianne, and she seemed relatively certain that this Dickon was the person she was looking for, but in this strange glass world there was no way to be completely sure.
They passed through more rooms, until they met another young man, this one bearing a strong resemblance to Dickon. He said his name was Roger. Roger, too, was looking for a dark-haired girl who was to be his bride, which made Dickon draw Marianne all the closer. But Roger peered into her face and shook his head.
“Someone else, someone else,” he