Elswyth sprouted tree roots from her ankles, which quickly spread over her shoes and crawled across the floor.
“And her soft skin turned to hard bark, protecting her once and for all against the touch of the lustful god.”
This was the hardest part. Elswyth sucked in a breath and pushed vitæ into every corner of her exposed skin. The soft green coloring slowly turned brown, hardening into a thin crust of bark.
She pushed more vitæ into the branches of her fingers, which grew and spread until they were a small canopy. The flowers in her hair fell away, replaced by laurel leaves, and more branches grew from her forearms and shoulders and head. Finally, she stood transformed, half woman and half tree. She looked back at Silas,who stared up at her with what she thought, hopefully, was a look of awe.
The audience began to applaud. Elswyth breathed for a few moments, holding the tree pose, fighting the lightheadedness. It had taken nearly all of her vitæ, and she could feel herself draining, her eyes fluttering, as though she were about to faint. If she pushed any further, she would surely fall into unconsciousness. Luckily, the roots around her feet kept her upright—all part of the trick.
Slowly, she began absorbing the plants. They seemed to grow in reverse, leaves shrinking into buds, branches shortening into stems, and roots trickling backward. As they absorbed back into her body, some of their vitæ came back to her, and the pain of withering began to fade. Once she was sure she wouldn’t faint, she started to speak once more.
“And so, finally free of Apollo’s clutches, Daphne lived out the rest of her days atop the mountain, becoming the world’s first laurel tree. But Apollo did not forget his love for her and forevermore wore a crown of laurel branches. That is why, to this day, we bestow a crown of laurels upon our victors.”
The bark on her skin retreated, as did her ivy-hair. Finally, she stood unadorned in front of the crowd. They erupted into applause. She gracefully deflected their attention to Silas, gesturing for him to stand. He bowed, and Elswyth curtsied alongside him.
She wove a wreath of laurels from her fingertips and gestured for Silas to bow. He obliged, and she placed it over his glowing crown of elderwood, which had begun to dim from lack of vitæ. His eyes shone from underneath the crown, briefly meeting hers, lost between locks of dark hair like a tiger peering through tall grass. She thought of putting her hands through that hair again,how it had felt to touch his skin—and then pulled away, heart suddenly racing. Surely it was only the exertion from the tableau vivant. Surely it was only the nerves.
Elswyth turned to the crowd and curtsied once more. She rose to a standing ovation. A sea of unfamiliar faces smiled at her. She couldn’t remember a time where anyone had applauded her, shown such bare-faced approval, and a blush threatened at her cheeks. There was Percival, smiling so broadly that his face had gone red. There was Lord Forrester, grinning crookedly, applauding. And Venus Forscythe, clapping louder than all the rest, perfect teeth shining in the candlelight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The lotus flower’s ability to rise above the mud in which it blooms makes it a symbol of purity and enlightenment in some Eastern religions. In Greek mythology, however, consuming the lotus flower caused one to sink into a state of blissful apathy.
Venus invited Elswyth back for dinner the following week, and now Elswyth sat across from an unfortunate-looking fellow named Mr. Plum. He was a rather dull and mean-spirited man, and Elswyth wondered why Venus had seated them together. Surely he could not have been a potential match for Persephone. The man was a commoner, after all. And beyond that, he was pale and bespectacled with dull, uninterested eyes. Elswyth had always tried not to judge a person based on their appearance, with varying degrees of success. She knew, from living with her scar, how quickly most were to equate beauty with goodness, and deformity with evil. Unfortunately, where it concerned Lignus Plum, Elswyth surmised his exterior and interior beauty were roughly equivalent.
“Of course the professors are all radicals,” Mr. Plum said, biting into a piece of chicken. “Some of them are nearly treasonous,I’d say, with their ideas about the colonies. And now admitting women. What have we come to, as a country?”
Elswyth ignored Mr. Plum and watched the servants bringing out the next dish. She sat at the end of the longest dining table she had ever seen. At least a dozen people sat to her left, eating from countless silver trays stacked high with food. Servants—mostly immigrants from colonies—placed new dishes on the table and then produced fruit from their fingertips: huge pineapples and mangoes and apples and plantains. The main course wasfilet de boeuf, bloody in the middle and served with butterenfleuragewith blooms of lilac, lavender, and hibiscus suspended within.
“Academic types are never as clever as they think,” said the man next to Mr. Plum. He wore a navy captain’s uniform and had a supremely British look about him: blond hair, a thin straight nose, and sharp blue eyes. He waved his glass of absinthe lazily. “A military man knows how these people really are. The colonies need the empire to save them from themselves. Just look at the rabble pouring into London right now. When they want something, they come right to us.”
This man—Captain Coriander Burr—was of more interest to Elswyth than Mr. Plum. She’d managed to corner Hyacinth Thatcher after her comments at Venus’s party. Hyacinth had informed her, after some coercion, that Captain Burr had obviously carried a torch for Persephone and that she’d rejected him rather publicly. She claimed to have seen them in the garden together, but Persephone had vehemently denied it. The captain was below Persephone’s station, after all, but he was apparently a close friend of Prince Oliver’s—a fact he had readily boasted about all night. He’d somewhat recently been promoted to the rank of captain for valor shown at war, although which war and what particularact of valor seemed to change with each telling. He was a man accustomed to killing, at least, and he’d had a reason to loathe Persephone. That made him very interesting indeed.
“Hm, quite right,” Mr. Plum said. “And just look at the result. Crowding and disease. Women, slain in the streets. Doubtless the Reaper came from abroad. An Englishman could never commit such barbarism.” Behind Mr. Plum, a servant spun a pomegranate from her fingertips, as though delicately crafting pottery. She placed it on Mr. Plum’s plate, and he waved her away. He began to eat, taking the seeds in bunches, red juice staining his lips.
Elswyth watched the servant move to the next plate. With each new fruit, it seemed as though her wrists grew thinner, her cheeks more sunken. A green-blue bruise peeked from beneath her sleeve, a sure sign of withering from expending too much vitæ.
Captain Burr spoke again, loudly, as if daring anyone to challenge him. “Military men—that’s who should be teaching in these schools. No nonsense, no fancy ideas, just the hard truth.”
From next to her, Silas spoke. He’d been silent for so long that he seemed to materialize out of a cloud of his own brooding. “And what truth is that, Captain Burr?”
Captain Burr turned to look at Silas, as if realizing for the first time that he was there. Silas hadn’t yet spoken to Elswyth and had mostly ignored the other guests. “That the British Empire is the greatest civilizing force on the planet. Surely you must appreciate that—I would have thought your father ensured that you received a proper British… education.”
He chose the words very carefully, but a smile still tugged at his lips.
Mr. Plum perked up at this. “Yes, that is a good point. What was your education like, in the colonies? Do you have schools in India?”
Silas turned to Mr. Plum with an unreadable expression. “No,” he said flatly, “we’re raised by crocodiles and taught to make tea with our teeth.”
Mr. Plum stared at him stupidly for a moment, pomegranate juice glistening on his chin.
“He’s mocking you, Plum,” Captain Burr said. “I heard you didn’t leave a ship for the first thirteen years of your life, Blackthorn.” He smiled, leaning forward. “That you followed Lord Harrow like his shadow. That you were barely out of leading strings when you witnessed the Rape of Rajpur. Is that true? I wonder what that must do to a boy.”
Captain Burr leaned back and grinned, tapping the table twice with his fingers. “What was it like? Come on, tell us.”
Silas smirked, but his eyes remained lifeless. “That much is true.”
“Don’t keep us waiting,” Mr. Plum said. “I love adventure stories as much as the next fellow.”
