“Has she come alone?”
“As far as I can see, yes.”
Mommy, who was gripping Victoria so tight it was winding her, relaxed her hands with relief. Even if she didn’t speak of it often, everything that went on outside the house worried her. And yet Victoria would have so loved to walk around out there! Her adventure with Godfather was a long time ago, now. The days felt long to her, and she found her little journeys here less and less satisfying. She had explored everything to be explored.
“You can let her in,” Mommy finally decided.
“Really?” Great-Godmother asked, amazed. “The actual sister of Baron Melchior? I’ve seen you turn away every visitor, refuse every parcel, but opening your door to a Mirage whose brother was killed by your nephew, that doesn’t seem unwise to you?”
“We’ve always stood together, she and I. Times have become difficult for the Mirages. Illusions are no longer well perceived, the era of frivolity is over. Since she became bankrupt, Dame Cunegond lives alone, I know not where, but above all, not a word about that in front of her—keeping up appearances is all she has left. Open to her, Madame Rosaline.”
Great-Godmother turned the key of the cupboard. A tinkling of jewelry and a smell of perfume, even stronger than that of the burned pie, instantly swept into the music room.
“Good day, ladies!”
Victoria felt her heart race with excitement. The Golden Lady! Every time she came to the house, it was a real party. She called Victoria “my little dove,” and always had surprises for her: showers of cherries, acrobatic bear cubs, dancing dolls, and many other illusions, too. So Victoria was very disappointed when the Golden Lady didn’t even glance at her. She only had eyes for Great-Godmother, as her wide, red mouth stretched from ear to ear.
“You, here! So the rumor was true?”
“What rumor?” muttered Great-Godmother.
“The one announcing the departure, or, I should say, return of our little reader!” The Golden Lady turned in all directions, making the golden pendants on her veil tinkle, as though looking for someone else in the music room. Victoria, thinking it was her, hoped she would finally notice her in Mommy’s arms, call her “my little dove,” and blow confetti into her hair.
“Don’t look for Ophelia, dearest friend,” sighed Mommy. “The rumor’s wrong, I myself don’t even know where she is.”
“What a shame!” The Golden Lady was smiling, but Victoria thought she saw her fingers, with their long, long red nails, clenching.
“May I offer you some tea?” said Mommy, in her sweetest voice. “In exchange, I’ll take all the news from the court you’d care to give me!”
“I’m not staying,” said the Golden Lady. “In fact, I was hoping to find our ex-ambassador at mine. I mean, at yours.”
Victoria looked up at Mommy, sensing her arms slacken. She, too, seemed disappointed.
“It’s just that, you see, Archibald isn’t here any more often than Ophelia is.”
“Why are you looking for him?” asked Great-Godmother.
“It so looks, I mean, it so happens that he ordered an illusion from me and never announced his intention to purchase it. If you could at most indicate to me where to reach him, he’s so elusive!”
The Golden Lady had always been a bit strange, but she was even more so today, and that intrigued Victoria, greatly. Perhaps it was because of her mouth. She hesitated over every sentence she uttered, as if she’d had too much of what Mommy called “illusions for grown-ups.”
“I’m so sorry, my dear Cunegond, you find me as in the dark as you,” said Mommy. “Archibald must still be hanging around in goodness knows which Compass Rose! He’ll be back. He always comes back.”
The Golden Lady had listened to Mommy with the utmost attention. Her thick, tattooed eyelids had opened wider, along with her smile. “In that case, I’ll be back, too.” With those words, she left through the cupboard, just as she had arrived.
Victoria followed her without even thinking. The long-awaited surprise hadn’t come to her, so she would come to the surprise. She left her heavy, stupid body behind, in Mommy’s arms, to leap outside, light as a thought.
She skipped behind the Golden Lady, who kept twisting her ankles on the street’s cobbles, not suspecting she had company. Victoria had already been out into the street a few times, but never on a journey. It was completely different. The sounds made by the Golden Lady’s heels and pendants had become hazy. The lampposts rippled, as if turned into rubber, and their light became a large white blot against the darkness. Victoria saw the same carriage passing and re-passing in the road, seconds apart; when she journeyed, she sometimes saw or heard things double, so it didn’t surprise her.
The sky here was no more real than it was at the house. Mommy had told Victoria that one had to go along many roads and many stairs to see it, but that it was so cold, that sky, that it would instantly turn her fingers to ice.
Victoria never felt really cold or really hot when she journeyed, but she’d go to see the sky another day. The Golden Lady had just disappeared into a lift at the end of the road, and Victoria had to hurry to get into it, too. Huddled in a corner of the lift, she watched her with increasing curiosity. The Golden Lady was no longer smiling, but the way she held herself was very funny: sometimes, she tilted her head excessively to one side, or then scratched her hip by stretching her arm behind her back.
Looking down, Victoria suddenly noticed her shadow. Or rather, her shadows. The Golden Lady seemed to have lots of them, swarming around her feet like living creatures. Were they one of her surprise illusions? Victoria hadn’t noticed them earlier, these shadows, with her other body’s eyes.
She followed the Golden Lady out of the lift and had to walk behind her for quite a while—fortunately, Victoria didn’t get tired on journeys—before entering a tiny house with her. The place looked like the little studio to which Mommy would retire for a couple of hours a day to do her embroidery. There were dummies’ busts, a large blackboard covered in chalk-written notes, and a counter twice Victoria’s height.
But not an illusion anywhere.
The Golden Lady closed the door behind her and picked up the receiver of a telephone on the counter. Victoria hoped something more interesting was going to happen soon; she was starting to get bored.
“Change of plan,” the Golden Lady said into the receiver. “Our little runaway isn’t here, either. But I’m going to longer a bit linger. Linger a bit longer. No, my child, I prefer to remain discreet. This Madame Cunegond isn’t yet coffee table—comfortable—but she may open more doors for me than anticipated. Tell all my dear children to remain vigilant. Every day counts.”