But on the morning of the ball, she sewed the last stitch in her own gown, and the other three hung nearly ready for the stepsisters and Augusta. She was heavy-eyed and dull when dawn streaked the sky, but she laid her needle aside, stripped off her night dress, and lifted the beautiful garment over her head.
She stood before the mirror and gazed at herself. The skirt of the gown made a wide arc, hanging in lovely folds and nipping in at her waist delightfully. The bodice was low and showed her curves just enough, but not wantonly. The little sleeves were no more than whispers. The colors of the fabric shone in the candlelight as if the fabric was lit from within: a tender glowing brightness. Thursey sighed with wonder at the reflection that looked back at her. How she wished that Gillie would come tapping now.
After breakfast she washed Delilah's hair in rainwater and was curling it up on bits of cloth when Druscilla began screaming frantically from the hall below. Thursey thought she had found the gown tucked beneath her mattress, and she raced down in panic, Delilah and Augusta pushing at her heels.
They found Druscilla standing in the middle of the hall, her head raised, screaming at the top of her lungs. When Augusta started toward her, she stopped screaming, stuck out her hands, and cried, "Stop! You'll mash them!"
Augusta came charging on, took one step where the rushes were thin, and fell flat on her backside.
All around Augusta's sprawling form, strewn among the rushes, were little glints of light.
It was Druscilla's pearls. She had broken her string of pearls.
"Seventy-two," said Augusta, getting slowly up and rubbing her bruises. "Seventy-two exactly. And the string cannot be restrung without every one of them." She turned toward Thursey and scowled. "What are you waiting for?"
Thursey got down on her hands and knees and began searching out the pearls from among the rushes. When she had found twenty-four, she could see no others, and she began picking up the rushes themselves to clear the floor. I'm like Aschenputtel, she thought. For Aschenputtel's stepmother, just before the ball, threw a dish of lentils into the ashes and made Aschenputtel pick up every one. But, Thursey thought, the white bird came to help her. There's no white bird for me.
"All seventy-two," repeated Augusta and turned on her heel to leave.
"But . . . but . . . but . . ." sobbed Druscilla, pointing to the corner of the hall.
"What now!" bellowed Augusta. "What are you pointing at?"
"Down that mousehole," cried Druscilla. "One went down that mousehole!"
When Augusta had departed, ranting, Druscilla dissolved in another pool of tears, and Delilah sat down on a chair while Thursey continued to crawl about on her hands and knees seeking pearls among the rushes.
Soon she had found forty-nine.
"Look harder," grumbled Delilah.
Then fifty-six.
"Keep looking," sobbed Druscilla.
Then sixty-seven.
"Move more rushes," advised Delilah.
And finally she had seventy-one pearls safely in her apron.
"Now the mousehole," said Delilah. "Put your hand in."
She tried, but it wouldn't fit.
"You're not trying hard enough," sobbed Druscilla.
"You will find that pearl," said Augusta stalking in again, "or you will not go to the ball."
Finally Thursey, failing to dig the pearl out or even to see it with her eye to the mousehole, went to sit sadly in the stables with Anwin. "I can't go to the ball, then," she said. "I'll never wear Gillie's dress. Augusta says the string can't be finished without it, and Druscilla can't go without the pearls, and I can't go if she can't!"
"In a mousehole," Anwin mused. "I have heard talk involving magic and a mouse."
"Oh, Anwin," Thursey said with disgust. "Don't talk like Gillie! Magic can't help me now."
"Magic got your dress, didn't it?"
"Gillie brought the material."
"But how do you know he didn't get it by magic? And even if magic won't help you, maybe the mouse can help."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about the hole," said Anwin. "Think about it like a mouse would, think about what it is like to be in there."
"All right," she said hopelessly. She thought about the little mouse going down into the hole, dark and warm, climbing down and down until he reached—what? A warm dark tunnel? A little cave with a soft bed made of lint and feathers? It must be below the floor then, his bed.
And below the floor was—what? What would his walls be made of?
Thursey scrambled up, grabbed a trowel and ran round the outside of the inn to the corner of the hall.
There she began to dig. And pretty soon, when she had dug the dirt away from under the corner of the hall floor, the trowel pushed suddenly into an opening and she looked in to see a nest of lint and thread, and, lying to one side, Druscilla's pearl.
"Now child," said Anwin when Thursey had returned the pearl and restrung all seventy-two onto a linen thread, "Put on your ball gown for me, for I will not be here to see you dressed in it tonight."
"But Anwin, you have to stay for the ball. And it's Easter, you won't travel on Easter."
Anwin shook his head. "I'll be on the high road among the silence and the hills on Easter day, child. I don't take to all the pomp and fuss of the king's ball— especially at Easter when I would rather be alone with my own prayers."
She dressed in the gown for him and pinned up her hair, and Anwin took from his pocket a pair of silver shoes that fitted her exactly. "And how will you ride to the ball? In the carriage with your stepsisters?"
"I'll ride the old mare, I guess."
"With your skirts hiked up?"
"I will. I don't trust what Augusta and those two would think of to do to me between here and the castle, Anwin."
He laughed, thinking she was right. "You could perhaps slip off on Augusta's old sidesaddle, though. I've seen it in the harness room."
"I'd feel a fool, Anwin. I only know how to ride like a boy."
The old man grinned broadly, thinking of her riding with her skirts hiked up, to the castle. "Well you are too beautiful for it to matter. And wearing that gown, no one will notice how you got there. Now let me see the books you have done while I've been away."
She brought them out, and while she stitched on the hem of Druscilla's gold dress, he examined each one attentively. "Child, oh, child," he said at last, "How lovely. They're beyond my wildest imaginings."
"Which do you like best?"
"It's hard for me to say. One of these two, but I'm not sure which." He held up the story of the gooseherd, and "Liisa and the Prince." "Gillie is like the goose-herd. He, too, has made magic so you can go to the ball."
"Oh—oh, no, Anwin! Not Gillie!"
And then he saw what he had done, for the goose-herd had gone away forever. He put his arm around her. "But Gillie won't disappear, he's far too real for that, child. Here now, here now. . . ."
When she had quieted, he continued examining the books. The boldest, "Liisa and the Prince," he looked at again and again. There was red for the fire that Liisa carried in the skull and for the burning pit. And black for the dark forest and for the ogress, black for the lamb that strayed. White for the linen dress Liisa put on, white for the spilled milk she must pick up. Anwin read some of the pages aloud, quite engrossed. "The ogress spat in the face of Liisa's mother, and said, 'My body to you, yours to me,' and they were changed about. But only Liisa knew." He smiled and examined the pages, then read the last lines, "The prince built a pit of burning tar and the ogress and her daughter fell into it, into the fire, and that was the end of them. And Liisa heard the spirit of her mother whisper, 'Now I shall rest for I know you are happy at last.'
"Lovely," Anwin said. "Lovely. Has Gillie seen your books?"
"Oh no, he would think them childish." "Are you sure?"
"I—I don't know, Anwin. Wouldn't he?" But Anwin only smiled.