I close the door behind me. It's wooden, but not even remotely thick enough to stifle the sound of revelry coming from the room beyond. The troupe of musicians long ago gave up their valiant playing, drenched in sweat and arms slack by their sides, and are now receiving grateful drinks from their audience. Instead of the thrumming dulcimer, the singing of the lyre and the trilling of the pipe flute comes the raised chorus of celebrant inn parishioners. Everyone knows the old carols well enough to join in, and even the less confident in their voices can take part, any unsteadiness washed away amidst the roaring of their peers. With the drink flowing and the atmosphere festive, the cold rain keeping everyone from heading home just yet, there is no shortage of enthusiasm to carry the tune.
As such, I can still hear each word of the rousing fifth chorus of
Twixt Tree and Stream
from this side of the door. I can't remember the words to the next verse, so it is well that I am not taking part. Instead, a different celebration is beckoning.
"Why are you waiting?"
Her voice is a song I prefer over any Yule carol. I turn from the sealed door and towards the shadowed steps leading down into the cellar of the inn. Her lantern burns away the dark at the bottom of the stairs, and her smile is rosy and mischievous in the warm lamplight. She knows as well as I do that we are not allowed down here. But where I am held back by my familiarity with the scolding fury of our town's innkeeper, Peony is spurred on. Her soft shoes tap the rhythm of the distant carol on the stone floor of the cellar as if longing to begin the dance again.
"You cannot think anyone minds our being here, surely," she coaxes with a musical giggle. "They are too enrapt in the Yuletide festivities to mind two youths taking a little time for themselves away from prying eyes. Come."
She extends her free hand up towards me. Her pale forearm is spotted both with light freckling and beads of sweat where she has pulled up the sleeves of her red, woollen dress. Red to complement the rich ginger of her bouncing curls of hair, tucked up into a bun on the back of her head with a pin made of foreign jade. Her grey-blue eyes glitter like the sky yielding its first flakes of seasonal snowfall. Red cheeks, flushed with wine, just like mine.
"Come, hurry," she insists. "Before the new year, if you please."
How could I refuse such an invitation? Grinning foolishly, I descend the steps and follow her deeper into the cellar.
Peony and I are friends, though that is more the median average of our relationship rather than its usual state. We were close as infants, I am told. We played together in the cobbled streets of Bairnby Magna while our mothers caught up on each other's lives in the market. As we neared our teenage years, we naturally drew apart. I became aware that she was a girl, and I was not the only one. But it felt as if I alone was paralysed by her growing fairness. Peony made new friends, smarter and wittier and more handsome. Catching a dance with her in the summer became increasingly difficult, since there was always some suave smile on the sidelines ready to tempt her out of my arms.
But we do still like to talk, and it seems that destiny wishes to accommodate us. My father can always find a litany of small bureaucracies for me to take to the scrivener's office where she works as an assistant to her mother, and she is forever coming by the glassworks with a request for a set of mugs or a new pane for her parents' windows from my master. If I didn't know better, I would think Peony awfully clumsy to be constantly in need of fresh glass.
And there is always Yuletide. The customary overindulgence of wine annually makes me bold, when I can insist on a few moments of time with Peony. A few dances, some friendly words...
This year, Peony has asked me down into the cellar of the inn where we can be alone. And though earthy chill seeps through the stone walls with their reinforced pillars of wood, I barely feel it. Beneath my cotton shirt and the leather of my breeches, through the soles of my light dancing slippers, I am warm indeed. The atmosphere is sweltering. My skin feels positively aflame.
Peony walks through the cellar with her lantern in hand and the hum of a carol on her lips. Her light strides are in time with the distant music of the revel, and I watch the graceful sway of her hips with rapt fascination. She is an excellent dancer, her light frame much more suited to the movements of our local measures than my taller, broader body. When she is spinning in my arms, I often feel as though my big hands, calloused by the heat of the glass forge, will do her harm. Beside the casking workbench in the centre of the cellar, she demonstrates her grace by spinning about on her shoes and facing me, placing the lantern onto the wood surface of the bench and freeing her hands.
"Thank you, Felix," she says. "For joining me in misbehaving. I know this was difficult for you."
Her laughter is intoxicating. I step up alongside, but am upset by the way I loom over her, so I take a step back. Peony pursues me. She holds me in place with her dainty hands on my upper arms.
"You are so frustrating!" she complains with a merry laugh. "Time and again I watch you approach the brink of honesty towards me, and time and again you flinch away from the edge!"
"That's not-..." A sudden tickle touches at the edges of my throat, and I am forced to clear it before I can continue. The sound echoes uncomfortably against the stone. "That's not true."
"Then you hold yourself back from me because you wish it?" Peony's lips curl into a feline smirk of disbelief.
"Of course not. I followed you down here, didn't I?"
"After almost half a decade of coaxing and several cups of wine!"
"You would rather I was a brutish womaniser?" my wounded pride inspires me to retort. "Would you rather I took after Gotric and his predatory ways?"
"Hardly!" Peony laughs at this jibe at our mutual friend. Gotric is a decent young man, close in age to the both of us. But he does so lose his head around women. "You are not that, Felix. I know it well. I appreciate that about you. Still..."
She pinches me through my shirt with her slim fingers. "You are yet too shy for my liking!"
Her words make me laugh, and she is kind enough to join me. Too shy, is it? And here I was thinking myself the upstanding gentleman. I have been viewing Peony as a prize worth taking my time over. I had envisioned us as fast friends first, a foundation of camaraderie strong enough to hold what might come after. Strong as the stone beneath our feet. Strong and cold...
