When the holiday feasting hall appeared, Celie began to worry about the Castle.
Normally it appeared during the winter holidays, coming into being at sunset and disappearing again at dawn. They would feast and sing and dance among beautiful decorations that were provided and changed every year, and then the Castle would take it all back. But the Tuesday after the roomful of fabric had appeared, the arch into the holiday dining hall stretched open and stayed that way.
Since the king was hearing petitions and Ma’am Housekeeper was on the far side of the Castle overseeing the counting and sorting of some linens, a maid showed up at Celie’s door to ask for help. None of the maids wanted to set foot in the holiday feasting hall for fear it would disappear again with them inside it, she explained, and they wanted someone that the Castle respected to have a look.
“I’ll come right away,” Celie said loudly.
She hurried out of her room, pushing the maid ahead of her, and locked the door. When the maid had knocked, Celie had shoved Rufus under her bed, and she could hear him squawking and trying to work his way out from beneath the trailing bedclothes. She was a little annoyed that the spell Bran had put on her door hadn’t worked on the maid, or on her mother a few days before, and now she worried that the spell only worked on maids coming to clean.
When she got to the archway that led to the holiday dining hall, however, she did stop to feel flattered for a moment. There were several maids gathered there, and they all brightened when they saw Celie coming. One of them nodded as though to say that Celie was just the right person to take care of things.
“Has my father been told?” she asked, though she guessed the answer.
“No, Your Highness,” the maid who had fetched her said. “We didn’t want to disturb him during court.”
“If someone would please fetch the Royal Wizard,” Celie said.
“Wizard’s in the Armor Gallery, Highness,” one of the maids said. “And we en’t supposed to bother him, either. ’Specially when he’s lookin’ at them things.”
Celie pursed her lips. She pointed to the maid who had come to her room. “Go into the throne room and signal to Prince Rolf. He can leave the petitions easily, and if there’s need for my father to come, he can get him.”
The girl nodded and hurried across the main hall to the double doors of the throne room. Celie steeled herself to step through the archway, hoping, as the maids had, that it wouldn’t whisk her away somewhere.
She could of course see into the room, which looked musty and disused. The long feasting table was shoved against one wall, and there were a number of large crates in the middle of the room. It had never occurred to her before, but there were no windows, and naturally there were no candles lit inside. The room was cavernous and gloomy, and there was dust on everything, even though it was barely two months past the holidays.
The maids were all watching her anxiously. Celie straightened her spine. The Castle had never removed a room with someone in it; it certainly would not start with her. Not while she was raising Rufus for it. She took a step forward.
“What in the name of— Isn’t that the holiday feasting hall?”
Pogue Parry’s voice carried across the main hall.
“Cel! What are you doing?” Rolf chimed in a moment later.
Celie turned and saw her brother coming out of the throne room with the maid in tow, and Pogue hurrying across the stone floor, hair windblown and cheeks ruddy from being outside.
“Today’s new room is the holiday feasting hall,” Celie said, feeling strangely relieved. “But it’s all gloomy and boxed up. I was just going inside to see what is in those crates.”
“Excellent, and very strange,” Rolf said. He took her arm. “Let’s go together, shall we?” He looked at the maids, his eyes glinting. “Anyone else coming?”
“I’m coming,” Pogue said. He put a large hand on Celie’s shoulder. “No one else needs to come,” Pogue said quietly to the maid hovering nearby.
The three of them took deep breaths and then stepped through the archway together. They stopped just inside the feasting hall. Nothing happened.
“It’s safe,” Rolf said sharply over his shoulder to the maids.
“Don’t be rude,” Celie whispered.
“I am not pleased that they got you to take the risk for them,” he retorted. “You’re not to be the official Castle poison taster, as it were.”
“It’s fine,” Celie said. She slipped out of Rolf and Pogue’s grip and went to the first of the crates. Pogue followed, and together they got the lid off. Inside, nestled in straw, were the golden baubles that had hung from the ceiling at the winter feasts. In another crate they found silk streamers carefully wound around spools, and so on. Each crate contained a treasure trove of beautiful things that had been used to make the holiday feasting hall appear magical. But now, packed away like this, they all seemed tawdry and faded.
“Why is this happening?” Celie wanted to know.
“You know what I want to know?” Rolf asked in a hushed voice. The other two looked at him. “I want to know who it is that puts up these decorations every year, then takes them down and packs them away.”
Celie looked at him blankly. “The Castle does it,” she said finally.
“The Castle would just leave it all up, wouldn’t it?” Rolf argued. “It’s people who would bother to pack all these things in straw.”
A weird, queasy feeling was growing in Celie’s middle. She thought about the dusty rooms, the faded tapestries. She’d always thought that the new rooms came to entertain the Glower family and the other people who lived in the Castle. When the holiday feasting hall wasn’t in Sleyne, where was it? Were there people feasting on the golden plates every other day of the year? She looked at the crates and the stacked chairs with growing horror.
“What has happened?” Bran swept into the room, looking even more wizardly than usual in formal robes and a round hat. He stopped short. “It’s the holiday feasting hall,” he said in a hushed voice. He locked gazes with Pogue. “This isn’t good,” he said.
The sick feeling in Celie’s middle grew even worse. What was happening to her Castle?