“All right,” I announce. “It’s time to go to bed.” I lift the sleeping bag Jules brought over and hand it to her, but it falls right through her arms. With a sigh, I unroll the sleeping bag perpendicular to my bed. “There you go,” I say, gesturing to the makeshift mattress.
Seraphima delicately lifts her cotton gown, stepping gingerly onto the purple sleeping bag as if it’s a red carpet. She walks the length of it and then promptly crawls into my bed. “This is lovely,” she says, pulling the covers to her chin.
“Lovely,” I mutter. I slip into the sleeping bag just in time for Frump to use me as a springboard to jump onto the bed beside Seraphima.
“Try to get a good night’s rest,” I say.
“Oh, I always do,” Seraphima replies earnestly. “Beauty sleep is critical. You sleep well too,” she says, glancing at me. “It looks like you’ve missed a few hours.”
Frump yowls, curling at her feet.
“You’re so sweet,” Seraphima says to him. “But I’m sure Icouldbe more beautiful if I tried.”
There’s another yelp, and a soft bark. Seraphima giggles.
“Of course I remember. You had the fairies spell my name inthe sky. And you had Queen Maureen make my favorite apple tart, but you didn’t tell her you’d stolen the apples from Rapscullio’s orchard.” She reaches down and absently starts patting Frump’s head. “What about the time I made you that biscuit for your birthday but I overcooked it into a pile of ash, and youstillate the whole thing because you didn’t want me to feel bad?”
He waddles up the mattress until he is closer to Seraphima’s face and licks her cheek. She blushes fiercely.
“You’ve always been so good to me, Frump,” Seraphima whispers. “How come I didn’t see it until you were gone?”
Frump whimpers softly, and she shakes her head.
“The way you looked never mattered to me. I always knew, you know. That it was you who lined my slippers up at the edge of my bed, and who made me breakfast, and who tidied my closet and washed my linens. So you’re a dog. So what. You make me feel like the princess I always wanted to be.”
Although I probably shouldn’t be eavesdropping, I can’t help but smile. They sound the way Oliver and I did, when he was still trapped in the book, and I would talk to him for hours beneath my covers. To anyone else listening it might have sounded like a one-sided conversation, but we knew better.
I fall asleep to the thump of Frump’s tail, the sound of pure happiness.
The sun has barely broken over the horizon when I’m awakened by the sound of someone singing in an earsplitting soprano.
“Welcome, welcome, big bright sun. . . . Oh, this day will be such fun. . . . Come to sing me their hellos . . . little birds with little toes!”
I crack open an eye to see Seraphima dancing—literally dancing—around my bedroom. “What are you doing? It’s six-thirty freaking a.m. On aSunday.”
“Oh, good morning, serf. I was just greeting the new day!” She flutters to the window and presses her palms to the glass. “It’s the loveliest morning!”
I put a pillow over my head. “It’s still night. Go back to bed, Seraphima. Let’s do this all over again in four hours.”
“You are wrong. A lady rises with the sun. . . .” Seraphima sits down at my desk, trilling her lips in rising and falling scales. It is quite possibly the most annoying sound on the face of the earth.
“What. Are. You. Doing,” I grit out.
“If I don’t warm up, how do you expect me to sing all day?”
“I don’t expect you to sing all day!”I yell.
When I raise my voice, Frump growls, and Seraphima nods. “I know. Sheisbeing excessively loud.”
“I’mbeing loud,” I repeat.
She puts her hands under the curtain of her pale blond hair and fans it out over her shoulders. “So I’m thinking I’d like a bun, wrapped in a braid. Maybe accented with a few flowers.”
I slip out of the sleeping bag and gather her hair in my hands. “Ponytail it is,” I say.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Seraphima says. “I’m telling Oliver you’re poorly suited as a housemaid. You’d do much better in a stable.”
That’s it. I lunge for Seraphima, and for a second I thinkI might get a slug in, but Frump grabs the back of my T-shirt with his teeth and hauls me back.
