Dragonfly Maid

What if any of it was true?
That was the question keeping me here. The question I knew would keep me awake and deliver me to Mr. MacDougall’s door at midnight.
Maybe then I could get some answers.
But that was still hours away.
Right now, with Marlie still in the kitchen, I had a rare surplus of time to do exactly as I pleased.
My pulse quickened as I closed the bedroom door and darted to the wardrobe, found my bag, and pulled out my memory box. Even through my gloves, the wood felt warm and smooth.
I dropped cross-legged onto the floor and breathed in the box’s smell. The rich, earthy fragrance—a reminder of the black tea it once held. Lifting the hinged lid, I gazed upon my treasures.
A piece of yellow yarn from Dotty’s rag doll, an iron key from the school’s old caretaker, a glass marble from a girl who knew the name of every bird she ever saw, and other trinkets. Each a tiny container of a memory I’d collected. I sifted through them all until I found the one I wanted.
I tugged the glove off my right hand before taking Abigail’s tiny oval locket between my fingers. I rubbed the delicate filigree around the edge, and my heart raced.
Darkness gathered along the periphery. A swirling cloud that grew denser until it blotted out everything else.
Slowly, images emerged. A modest room. A cabin, perhaps. A rustic plank floor beneath me, a crackling hearth as large as the wall in front. A woman leaned over an iron pot suspended above a fire that gave a shine to her loose sable hair. Hair that resembled Abigail’s.
When the woman turned to me, her smile made the corner of her cornflower eyes wrinkle and sent a riot of happy tingles through me like so many shooting stars. Trust and love for this woman engulfed me.
“Look at those big brown eyes!” the woman cooed. “Why is my Little Abby still awake? Sleep, my darling. You need to sleep.”
She touched my forehead, and the sensation raced from that point to every extremity.
And then the vision slipped away.
I closed my eyes and tried to hold onto the image. The curve of the woman’s cheek, the warmth of her voice, the tenderness in her touch, and all the emotions that filled me. The memory had been so vivid this time. I had noticed details I hadn’t before. Dried lavender suspended in three bunches over the hearth. The gingham pattern of the woman’s dress beneath her apron. The smell of a meat broth in the pot.
The vision was so real now, as clear as any true memory.
I savored it until the details faded again, then I put the locket back in the box, closed the lid, and returned it to my carpet bag.
When everything was back in its place, I crawled into bed with my stolen memory and let it carry me away.

CHAPTER NINE
By the time Marlie returned, I’d been lying in bed for an hour, maybe more. The warm embrace of the stolen memory had faded and again I was sifting through my fragmented recollection of what had happened at the tree. I was trying to stitch the jumbled flashes into something I could understand. Something that made sense.
But none of it did.
“Jane, are you awake?”
I kept my eyes closed and didn’t answer, only tightened my grip on the covers at my chin so she wouldn’t see I was still wearing the same frock I’d worn in the kitchen. When she’d brushed her teeth at our porcelain basin, braided her long, tawny hair, and crawled into her own bed, I waited for the soft mewling of her snores.
Only then did I slip a stockinged foot to the floor. I paused, listening for any disturbance to her slumber.
At the next wispy inhalation, I knew I was safe. I pulled the rest of myself from bed and quietly slid my feet into my boots, laced them, and grabbed my coat from the peg by the door.
As I pulled it closed behind me, I heard the last of the hall clock’s eleven chimes. Another hour before Mrs. Crossey would be expecting me, which meant I had time.
Moving quickly, I navigated the corridors and kept to the shadows. After-hours strolls, especially outdoors, were against the rules for servants. Since it was a rule I’d broken before, I had no trouble dodging the guards and other nighttime staff.
When I finally emerged from the castle onto the North Terrace, the night air sent shivers racing to my toes. But a bit of cold wouldn’t stop me from confirming what I now suspected: that I’d been tricked by Mrs. Crossey, nothing more. My fainting spell was likely caused by an insufficient breakfast or overwrought nerves, and not the nonsense she’d have me believe.
That certainty grew with every step.
I pushed through the gate and placed a rock in the opening so I couldn’t be locked out, then hurried down the path, eager to see that tree and confirm it was a perfectly normal tree. That would put my mind at ease.
At the bend in the pathway, I could make out the grove in the weak moonlight despite the nightly fog drifting off the river.
A lingering fear twisted in my gut. A flash of smoky red tendrils winding about my arm. Serpent eyes glittering like tiny flames.
I pushed away those thoughts.
There was no danger.
There was nothing unnatural.
I only had to see that tree again, stand before it, prove to myself it was all in my head.
Still my heart thumped, keeping time with my footsteps.
I could see little more than the outer rim of oaks now. The fog had grown as thick as a storm cloud. My pulse raced and it was so dark I could hardly see my feet, but I couldn’t stop. I had to continue. I had to get there.
And I was close. Just another few paces.
Something rustled along the ground behind me. I whipped around, my chest pounding. I watched the blanket of