“Pardon?”
“The one who made you hesitate,” said Argento. “Marry her.”
“She’s not truly in the competition, grandfather,” Arris said cagily.
“And why would she be?” retorted Argento. “If you trust her and she makes you laugh, then what competition could there be?”
Arris saw Demelza before she saw him. She was crouched on the ground, half-hidden in the morning fog that moved sleepily over the grass. Beside the copse of peeping myrtles, the glass wyvern boat lay curled up in the middle of the lake, its nose hidden beneath the flop of its great, spiked tail and its sail wings neatly tucked along its back. Demelza’s hair was still mud-spattered, but the mud had begun to crack, and Arris spied bits of gleaming red hair. Demelza was wearing a nightgown. It had a high collar and long sleeves and billowed out around her. It hid her body completely from view but Arris blushed anyway. He had kissed girls who revealed far more skin than Demelza, but he had never kissed a girl in a nightgown. It was strangely intimate. Scandalous, even. It was the only garment meant to know one’s skin as well as a lover.
His heart beating uncommonly fast, Arris cleared his throat as he approached. Demelza turned and grinned. She looked bright-eyed, the previous evening’s panic gone from her eyes. She pointed at the shrub’s peculiar blooms, which looked like roses with petals of gray smoke. Arris had not noticed them until now.
“When I was a hatchling, my mother planted these in our nest,” said Demelza. “They’re fog roses.”
The word “hatchling” seized Arris’s thoughts.
“I’m sorry, when you were a what? Are you suggesting that you came from an egg?”
“Yes?” said Demelza. “Why? How were you born?”
“Violently, I’m told,” said Arris.
“The birth of a veritas swan is the opposite of violence. It’s supposed to be serene. Musical. We hum when we hatch, our voices rising into a crescendo of magic and purity so that our parents might bask in the truth of our perfection,” said Demelza.
The words were lofty, but she spoke them drily. And she scowled when she finished.
“Apparently, however, I squawked like a goose and sounded like someone had taken an instrument and thrown it off the cliff where, in the midst of its descent, it was attacked by a hailstorm,” she said.
Demelza then did something Arris did not expect. She laughed. At herself.
“Did it ever bother you?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said Demelza. “I learned to love it though. My sisters’ songs might be magical, but, I’d argue, mine is the most memorable.”
Demelza beckoned him behind the row of peeping myrtles. Not far off, Arris heard the sound of the other contestants approaching the garden walkway.
“Shall we?” asked Demelza blithely. She picked atsomething on her nightgown and scratched her head, where a great chunk of mud flaked off and tumbled to the ground. Beneath it, Arris could see the dazzling red of her hair.
Demelza faced him with an expectant look. “Or should we try to time it for the moment they walk past?”
“Have you… er, done this before?” he asked.
He really did not have a reason to be nervous, but her frankness was disquieting.
“No.”
“You seem quite… unfazed by the prospect of a first kiss,” said Arris.
Demelza waved a hand. “I have read enough of kisses and the like in my sisters’ letters. They seem to have varying degrees of passion. Dulcinea found her kisses with the king quite gentle and boring, and much preferred the heated embraces with his consort. Evadne, Eulalia and Eustacia prefer kisses of a crueler variety and intimacy that derives its fervor from the illusion of control or presentation of ruthlessness. Euphemia is, by her own admission, ‘deliciously depraved.’ So you see, from their letters, I have known a thousand first kisses.”
“Oh,” said Arris. “Well, in that case.”
He bent his head toward her, but Demelza moved back.
“Wait a moment,” she said, reaching forward to pick something from his hair. “I got a bit of mud on you by accident.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“Considering how particular you are about your appearance, I doubt you’d take kindly to being caught in an embrace speckled with dirt,” said Demelza.
