Thinking back, there’d been a number of clues.
For one thing, houses tended to employ parlor maids when they couldn’t afford sufficient footmen. Such places hired women since they could pay them less. Wald Abbey was big on formality and had plenty of footmen, and as such had no need to hire a parlor maid.
Besides, I’d never once seen Ainsel doing any work. Certainly, we wouldn’t have worked in the same areas, so it wasn’t strange that I never ran into her. But why was it I never even saw her downstairs? Maybe I’d assumed the higher-ranking maids took their meals elsewhere, but it was basically unthinkable that I’d never once passed her in the servants’ hall.
And that night, Mrs. Banks had gone mad about seeing Diana and checked every servant’s room. She’d looked at my face and gone immediately back into the hall. If she was actually checking all of us, it made no sense she wouldn’t even look at the bed next to mine.
“You’re Diana.”
Reeling, I staggered across the room and sat down heavily on my bed. I stared at Ainsel for a while.
“Diana is just a name the humans gave me. I hate it,” she said, with a shrug. “I’d much rather be called Ainsel.”
“Why?” I said, lost. I pressed my fingers to my temples. “I mean, you’re the faerie everyone forgets. So how is it I can remember you? Can always see you?”
Part of me still hoped this was a bad joke, but Ainsel was totally serious. One look in her eyes convinced me this was real.
“Well…I think both our hearts were lonely,” she said.
She looked down at her hands. I felt like her long, golden lashes were trying to hide the sadness in her eyes.
“If we both need each other, then when we’re alone together, we can connect. You weren’t used to this new place, had no idea what the future held in store for you, and felt isolated as a result. While I…”
Ainsel trailed off. I remembered how I’d pictured Diana, wandering the halls of this manor over the centuries, unable to find anyone who remembered her.
The pain of that isolation gripped my heart.
“I enjoy pretending to be human,” Ainsel said, embarrassed, rather like someone admitting to a silly hobby. “Observing humans, imitating them, surprising them… I think that’s just my nature. I love watching humans, reading the books they’ve written. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, by your standards. I wandered from place to place before deciding I liked it here. From time to time someone who needs me appears, and I give them a little surprise. It makes me feel like there’s a reason to be alive. But humans these days can live without us. It’s been a very long time since anyone needed me. Hundreds of years.”
“I…” I put my hand on my heart, leaning forward. “I need you. I’m sure that’s why I remembered you. I’m here with you, Ainsel.”
“Someday you won’t need me anymore.”
“That won’t happen!”
I couldn’t bear to see Ainsel weakly clasp her apron, so I took her hands in mine. They were frail, pale, cold little hands. I held them tight, as if to prove she were really here. The shape of her nails and the texture of her skin burned into my memories…but…
“We can’t be together forever,” she said. “Right now, we could be. But, in time, you’ll fall in love, marry, and leave this mansion behind. You’ll live happily in some peaceful village, or in the bustling corner of a city. Your memories of me will fade away until you can’t remember my name, my face, my voice, the warmth of my hands, the feel of my nails against your palms, or anything else. Right now, we find ourselves in the same place. But should you leave this mansion, I’m sure you’ll forget me, as I’m sure I’ll forget you as the years roll by.”
“No! How could I forget you? We’re friends!”
I tightened my grip on her hand, so as to not let her pull away, and peered into her face.
But when she evaded my gaze, I knew.
Friends. I’d been the only one who had used that word.
I’d just assumed that we were.
“Listen, Cathy. We aren’t like you. Our differences will bring misfortune eventually. Just as the cracks in a mirror destroy all they reflect, our world will crumble.”
In time, we would no longer seek each other out.
We were different beings.
That was the fact of it.
“It’s our fate. The time of parting always arrives, and that parting draws nearer as humans expand their world, as they no longer need magic. In another hundred years, maybe two, we’ll no longer encounter humans at all.”
Neither side would search for the other. The industrial revolution had changed how the human mind worked. We no longer needed faeries, and the faeries had lost interest in humans as a result. We were different beings. Just as the people upstairs and downstairs had little contact, as we humans made progress we forgot more and more about faeries. Much like how the people upstairs forgot about those of us downstairs. Much like how, after my death, no one would ever know I’d existed…
If one failed to live on in memories, it was like they’d vanished altogether.
Was that really true?
If so, how could one ever break the isolation?
“That’s just awful. I won’t ever let that happen,” I said, beginning to sob. “I won’t forget you. Not ever.”
Ainsel looked like she was soothing a stubborn child. But Ainsel, listen to me. Ainsel!
I don’t care what the rules say. What does it matter that we’re different beings?
She and I felt the same. Strong feeling burned bright in the hearth of my heart, much like blankets of ash when stirred by a poker. The heat rose and rose within me.
“Ainsel, we may be different, but everyone is different. The people upstairs, the people downstairs; every one of us is a unique being. Noble or not, we all have different values, and we all live in different worlds, but we still manage to get along, don’t we? We have things in common. As long as we remember those things…”
My emotions burned so overwhelmingly that I could only say half of what I meant.
Like when Lady Lavinia had brushed my cheek with her fingers…
Someday, that fence dividing us would come down.
I couldn’t say when, but I knew one day we would recognize our differences, and still connect.
I wanted to believe that.
So I looked up at her.
Her blue eyes shone with tears. I stared into those eyes.
“I’ll write a story,” I said.
The words came out of nowhere.
She looked startled.
“A…story?” she said.
“A story. I won’t rest; I’ll simply pour myself into writing this story. It will read like a dream, all about a chance encounter with the faeries and the strange events in this manor. I’ll learn more about you, come to know more about you, and then I’ll write stories. So many stories. That way… That way, even if we’re apart, I won’t forget.”
I said it like a wish. Like a prayer.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
Then I heard her giggle.
Ainsel was laughing.
“Yes. That’s right. Stories are written. I supposed that’s obvious, isn’t it? Humans can write,” she said.
“That’s right! We can. And books can be read again and again. I’ll write book after book! So I’ll never forget you, no matter how far apart we are.”
“What will the binding be like?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You’d better make the binding beautiful. I want the book you write to leap off the shelf. What if it were embroidered with gold and silver thread? I love those colors.”
“Er, um, yeah. I’ll do that,” I said, accepting her request.
Perhaps this was folly, a groundless promise. I was just a little girl, and a maid. I had no writing skills; maybe I’d never be able to convey what I wanted or finish anything.
But I could leave a record of what existed in this world.
If I could put my memories of you in prose…
“Cathy,” Ainsel said, leaning closer to me with a little smile.
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“Thank you. My friend, who saved me from my loneliness, thank you for seeing me.”
She placed her forehead against mine. Perhaps she hoped her feelings came across to me.
Come, Ainsel. Listen.
Even if I travel far from this manor, I’ll write stories. Stories about you, and about the other faeries, about beings from another world. I’ll write so many stories, they can never fit inside that little tin trunk. And I hope the stories about you will preserve the bonds between us.
So that, in the future, even a hundred years from now, stories about people—and about those that are not people—continue to be told.
The End