8 - in the Study of Eve

once upon a time there was a story, and that story was a story about stories.

“Please wait here until you are called on,” said the veiled lady and Demi only managed a distracted nod as the woman retreated in a soft chorus of bells and left her alone in a breathtaking room.

It was all light and color, like being inside a jewel box. The walls were like the walls of a conservatory or greenhouse, all glass seamed with metal, but instead of being clear, the glass was all colored in rich shades of green and blue and red and gold. Each great frame of the windows was a complex picture in stained glass, and the panels in between were decorated with scenes of fruits and flowers and trees. It seemed as if the windows were dedicated to scenes from myth, as Demi saw fairies and unicorns depicted among the green leaves of light.

Demi put her bag down on the ground and breathed in the feeling of the place with her skin.

She turned around and around, her arms spread wide, enjoying the feeling of dancing inside a box of jewels and light. The floor was a beautiful wooden parquet made of subtle shades of brown. It was not ostentatious enough to draw interest away from the astonishing windows, but Demi realized that there were figures of flowers underfoot there too.

It was like a room from a dream, and Demi adored it.

There was one window of clear glass amid all the jeweled windows; one window that seemed as if it had been built for looking out rather than turning inward.

It was roughly oval, an elongated octagon cut like a gemstone. It had a deep, broad sill, almost like a window seat, one that extended away from the wall in an egg shape. The seat and the muntins that divided the facets of the window were a reddish gold that seemed illuminated by the western sun. The muntins looked like lines of golden thread sewn to frame the picture of the window.

The tall, stained glass windows that flanked the observation window rose up toward the curved, vaulted ceiling. Like the other windows in the room, they depicted scenes from myth, using lapis and emerald glass to tell a definite story. The room was roughly divided into two halves by the observation window, split like the hemispheres of a globe. The two windows that flanked the observation window on either side were the tallest and grandest of the stained glass windows, and both were framed with gnarled limbs bearing fruit and flowers. The stories told by the two halves of the room were not mirrors, but perhaps analogues. The stained glass windows on the right side of the room as she faced the window seemed to tell the story of a girl whose truth had been found inside the fleshy middle of a pomegranate. The windows on the left had a similarity about them, an echo without sameness. They told the story of a girl who found her truth in the shadow of an apple tree.

This room was clearly meant for quiet thought. There were several deep club chairs and arm chairs arranged variously around the room, and tasseled pillows lay in the chairs and scattered across the floor in idle, hedonistic piles. There was an interlocking pattern on the rug, a hilbert curve punctuated by stylized flowers that might have been roses or tulips. Other than the light that came through the stained glass and the observation window, this room was lit by lamps with shades of colored glass which depicted either flowers, or insects. Demeter Serraffield did not know until later that this room was called “the Study of Eve.”

It seemed to Demi that the jewel box room was some person’s private treasure. She felt it, instinctively. This room had been very carefully cultivated, very carefully curated, and then very carefully arranged. Although Demi did not labor under the delusion that it had been arranged for her personal pleasure, she loved it as itself, as its own thing, with abandoned disregard for the person who had arranged it. The study might have been the personal property of the devil himself and she wouldn't have minded it.

It put her at ease — more at ease than she had been before, certainly. She took a deep breath, then let it out. This room even smelled of fruit and honey, and a strange dustiness that was not indicative of either a lack of tidiness or a lack of use. It was queer, but not uncomfortable.

After some moments passed as she moved around the room, examining the windows and the furnishings, it became clear that Demi’s chaperone would be some time, if he came at all. The veiled lady hadn't locked Demi into the bejeweled room, and yet Demi had no strong desire to leave it. She was far away from her father’s petite demesne, and so any investigation she did would be for pleasure rather than purpose, and the room of stained glass was pleasurable in itself.

Having decided that she would stay in the beautiful room for the time being, Demi went to the egg shaped window seat, kicked off her shoes, and crawled into it, looking out over the City below.

It was enough to make her shiver with delight and let out a high, nervous giggle, and she pressed her fingertips against the window, peering out like a child on her first train ride.

In the wide circular break in the feathery mist that hung just below the Pinnacle, she could see the bulge of the great City beneath her, gilded by the light of the late afternoon sun. This small room was above the dome of the arcology, and seemed to hang over nothing, almost by magic.

It was a strange picture, and she somehow felt as if she alone of all the people in the world had looked upon it. It was like looking over an impossibly high wall and catching a glimpse of untold numbers of marvels and horrors that had not yet been described or catalogued by the powers of mankind, things that could only be understood as half formed dreams or fancies. It felt like creeping on stage during a play and looking off to the sides to see the hidden activity in the wings, or like being among marionettes and looking up to see the movement of the strings.

She had an inexplicable feeling that she was looking upon a thing that she saw, but did not properly comprehend, as if she had witnessed some profound secret that she could not make sense of. The dizzying view gave her a sense of vertigo, and she sat back on her feet, trying to make sense of what she had seen and yet not understood.

But there were easier thoughts too — thoughts of pleasure and amusement and fancy.

She certainly had the high seat now. She was high in the Pinnacle, in the crown of Metropoly, like a princess in a tower, looking down at the tops of the clouds.

This was really the ideal spot to read. Demi pulled her bag up into the seat with her and dug into it. She had two books with her. One was the Swallow, naturally. More than two books would have been a heavy weight to have on her shoulder all day, when one accounted for all the other things she had managed to stow away. Besides, Robert Grave had chided her when he had seen her trying to somehow fit five books into her bag along with her other treasures.

“It's not as if you’ll be away from your books for that long, my lady,” he had said. “They've all been packed up and sent ahead. Chose your favorite and I’ll put the rest into your luggage.”

Of course, they both knew that she didn't have to choose a favorite. Her favorite was readily apparent, and that was part of the problem.

“But what if I end up somewhere and I don't have the right book on me?” she had asked, biting her lip. “I’ll hate it if I want it and I don't have it with me.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive, little mistress,” Robert Grave had said with a slow smile. “We must all make our little sacrifices.”

She had wheedled and waxed poetic and made very picturesque pleading faces, and at last he had relented. She was allowed to pack two books in her shoulder bag, rather than one. As it was, two had been pushing the limit. Her precious bag was stuffed to bursting, with socks, silverware, a small blanket, a rescue inhaler, twine, scissors, a first aid kit, a portable game system, important letters and cards, jewelry, shiny stones and other small treasures, and a beloved pair of slippers.

A Forest Girl was always prepared, after all.

She really ought to take time to pamper her beloved bag once she got settled in her new room. It had been going the distance like a champion. She would clean it with saddle soap and condition it — or whatever one did to pamper a leather bag. She wasn’t entirely clear on it herself, as her personal maid had been in charge of such things while she still lived at Forest Home.

But Mariana had not come with her to the City. She was safe back at Forest Home, keeping Demi’s things in order at that grand estate.

Demi would have to ask a knowledgeable person about the pampering of bags. She didn’t mind doing it herself. Her bag was a dependable companion and was deserving of her care.

Looking down at the two books that lay on the sill before her, Demi felt an uncomfortable itch in a place she could not scratch.

She had been right. She had been right!

Neither of the books she had brought suited the room or her mood, the strange string of events that had brought her to this place, the fluttery nervousness in her stomach. She couldn't read. Not these books. Not now. Not even the Swallow would do. She needed something new, something enticing, something she had never read before.

Only the seduction of novelty might have cured this case of maddening anxiety.

She ought to have known.

A little forlorn, she patted them both apologetically. It wasn't the fault of the books after all.

And then she looked out over the City again.

She leaned against the window, silk stockinged knees pressed against the sill, and ran her fingers back over her sleekly pinned hair. She pressed her teeth against her lower lip and came to a decision.

It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, she thought to herself.

That was often the common consensus of the council of Demi.

It was also too late in the afternoon for anyone to redress her act of rebellion. Not enough time remained to force her to change before the meeting. They would have to accept her as she was.

Demi had a very acute sense of when it was the right time to gamble.

She was just pulling the last of the pins from her hair when she heard a quiet footstep behind her and apologized with a guilty laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said with an easy mixture of mild self-chastisement and sweet, impish charm. She felt more herself than she had since stepping off the train at Grand Central. Even in this unfamiliar City, she was getting her feet again. “I know you went to an awful lot of trouble to have me arranged just so, and I know it was my father’s express wish, but this just isn’t me. I look better like this. It’s more honest, even if it is less professional. I’ll be sure and take all the responsibility for my choice. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima — ”

As she turned to beg forgiveness from her stuffy equerry, the mass of her curly brown hair tumbled down her shoulders and settled like a long mantle behind her. Framed by the light of the window, with her fingers laced together before her and a shy smile of contrition, she made a very striking picture.

(This was calculated, naturally. She knew how to put herself at advantage.)

But it was not the equerry who stood before her. It was her reader: the tall, serious man in the serious suit.

“Lord Eisenreich!” she cried in astonishment, the color rising to her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I thought you were Mr. Darby.”

(It was genuine astonishment, a genuine flush, and genuine squirming. She had put herself at advantage to dull the anxiety of her father’s nervous equerry, not to exhibit herself before the cool and remote Iron Duke. She felt a little ridiculous, like a pigeon parading in front of a mirror. Certainly, he did not have the least interest in how she chose to arrange her hair.)

He had been looking at her blankly as she squirmed in place, but then he seemed to come to himself at once, and his eyes focused on her again.

“I am not Mr. Darby,” he agreed shortly, and studied her. “You’re right,” he said after a moment of thought. “It does suit you better that way.”

The way he said it was frank and disinterested, as if he were making a plain and bare statement of fact. He apparently did not intend for it to be a compliment, merely an observation, and so was not the least bit uncomfortable making it. After all, he had not said he liked it, merely that it suited her. Depending on how he regarded her, this might make the remark cutting rather than generous. Demi read and understood all this in his eyes and his voice and his words, and she trembled a little inside the shell of herself.

His words were not really the sort of thing to set a girl’s heart aflutter.

Eisenreich himself was not particularly well cast as the type of romantic figure that might have been appealing to a girl her age. Barring the attractiveness of his authority and position, he had little to recommend him. He was not what other people would have called handsome, although she found him appealing. He was not genial. His manners were brusque and curt. He did not seem like the sort of man who was accustomed to either giving or receiving empty flattery. He was very dry and aloof, a man in late middle age with a reputation for being dreary, dull, hard, and unfriendly, with a direct and exacting nature, and as her father’s equerry had put it: an intense disposition.

And yet.

Inside the fragile shell of her body, her membranous heart trembled.

She lit up from the inside.

He had not given her an empty platitude. He had given her a simple, grave truth: one small moment of recognition and acceptance. He had spoken honestly, and she had understood him.

Demi flushed more deeply and brought her hands to her cheeks involuntarily, conscious of, and embarrassed by the fact that she had lit up so obviously. It was dangerous to give so much of herself away so easily, particularly to a man she knew very little about and whom she had only met an hour previous.

No matter how much she wanted to.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” she repeated, and squirmed in place again. “Please excuse me. I think the light of the window has dazzled my eyes.”

It was a silly excuse, but she depended upon it.