Christian didn’t know where he was. In fact, for what seemed to be a very long time, he didn’t know who he was. He was lying on a cold, slick surface, and his wrists itched. When he scratched at the rough woolen bands around his wrists he remembered that his name was Christian, and that he was a prince.
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 muttered.
“I, too,” Christian said, brandishing the slipper. “Come with us.”
They came to a room of gold, and Christian knew they were at the end.
In the middle of the room sat two young women in small golden glass chairs. Both were dressed alike in peacock blue ball gowns, festooned with real peacock plumes, and both wore feathered masks and had dark hair.
“Which one of you is my bride?” Christian studied them both, his pulse racing. She was here … one of these beautiful girls … but which one?
Neither of them spoke, though one lifted a hand and then dropped it, looking over her shoulder at the shadows behind her.
“May I try this slipper on you both? It belongs to my bride,” Christian said, not sure what else to do.
“By all means,” said a kind voice. The shadows stirred and a plump woman in a lace cap and shawl came forward. Her grandmotherly demeanor made Christian smile. The old woman laughed like tinkling glass. “Try the slipper on both of our young ladies, if you please! It will fit only your true love!”
His true love! At last, he would find her! Sinking to his knees, Christian held out the slipper to the girl on the left. She lifted her feathery skirts and presented her bare foot.
Christian started to slide the glass dancing slipper over her toes, but then he hesitated. There was something wrong with her feet. They shone in the dim light like hard, milky glass. He looked up into her eyes, a question on his lips.
Her eyes were blue.
That wasn’t right, either.
He looked at the next young woman, on his right. She raised her skirts to offer her foot. It was smooth and pale, too, but skin and not glass. Clutching the slipper so tightly that the filigreed design was leaving deep ridges in his palms, he gazed into her eyes, and saw that they were a beautiful deep violet. He realized that the wool bracelets around his wrists had stopped itching at last.
A sigh escaped Christian, and he put the slipper on his true love’s foot.
The corner of her mouth quirked up in a wry smile, and she pulled two pieces of broken glass from a fold of her gown. She bent down and fitted the broken pieces to her foot like a jigsaw puzzle.
“Thank you,” she said to Christian. “It’s so vexing to lose a single shoe.”
“Poppy?” The name came to his lips easily.
She laughed and threw her arms around his neck. “It took you long enough,” she said, and planted a kiss on his lips.
“Roger?” The other girl stretched out her arms to the tall young man, tried to stand, and fell.
Roger rushed to gather her in his arms.
“No! No!”
The Corley—Christian’s memories were as clear as glass now—began to scream and stamp her feet. The walls around them began to glow brighter, and Christian drew Poppy in close.
“No! No!”
The old witch seemed to swell and her face was dark purple. She gestured with clawed fingers and servants came running with strange tools and pans of molten glass.
He felt a tug on his arm, and found Marianne there.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. Her other arm was linked in Poppy’s, and she was drawing them both toward the door.
Lady Margaret was beckoning to them silently from the passageway. Lord Richard was helping Roger with Eleanora.
“Where is the Corley?” Marianne’s eyes were wide and her voice sounded strangled. Her grip on Christian’s arm loosened and she grabbed at Dickon. “She was right here …”
“Run, now!” Lord Richard’s voice was low and urgent.
However the Corley traveled through the walls of her palatial glass prison, it was by no means that Christian could detect. They ran down a passageway and found themselves in a round green room that had no other door he could see.
They turned to go back, and the Corley was there, a seething pot of molten glass in her hands.
“This is my realm,” she hissed. “And if I wish to keep you here forever, I will!”
The Corley spilled the pot of molten glass at their feet. The floor began to bubble and melt.
“Keep clear!” Christian wrapped an arm around Poppy, who was closest to the Corley.
“I am not staying here,” Poppy shouted, shaking him off.
She turned to the nearest wall and shot it point blank with her pistol. Then she leaped through the shattered ruin, pulling Christian with her. They found themselves in another round room, and Poppy used the butt of her pistol to break the far wall.
Christian joined her, smashing at the walls with the hilt of his long knife. Together they moved on and on through an endless chain of glass rooms until suddenly, screaming, Poppy smashed through a wall of sapphire glass and they found themselves tumbling onto the hearth rug of the Seadowns’ parlor. Someone snatched Poppy by the shoulders, and Christian cried out and reached for her as she thrashed and cursed.
“Poppy! Stop that! It’s me, Rose!”
And Poppy collapsed into her sister’s arms and burst into tears.