It was a cool day with the weight of clouds overhead heavy enough to keep the birds gone to ground. The rain in the clouds, however, had yet to fall to earth. So it was quiet. Quiet enough that Mariam heard—and recognized—the sound of tires on the gravel driveway outside long before the sound of the key in the lock of the front door.

It was more than enough time for her to vacate the living room where she’d been working on the accounting for her nonprofit. Even with as many ledgers as she had spread around her on the sofa, she was upstairs in no time at all. There was no trace of her downstairs by the time the front door swung open, save for the warmth of where she’d been sat on the cushions.

The cushions in her room were more than adequate for what she needed, even if she could have used the space that being in the living room had afforded her. The space on her bed would have to suffice. She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle out of the blanket before setting herself and the books down on the mattress. Climbing onto the bed herself, she pulled a pillow to rest against the small of her back.

The minutes and effort spent on settling in a new location were worth not having to talk to her parents as they came in the door.

Mariam’s lips pursed together as she sought to find her place again in the ledger she’d been looking at. There were advantages to being a company of one, but she found herself not infrequently wishing she had staff to help with what she was doing.

At the very least, she could use an accountant. Maybe the firm her parents used. What was their name—

She froze as she heard voices coming from the stairwell leading to the second floor. Her parents’ room was on the main floor. The only thing on the second floor was Mariam’s suite, the supply room for the cleaners, an observatory, and a couple other rooms. None of which her parents used, which meant they were coming upstairs to talk to her.

’Mariam, when are you going to get around to looking for a husband? What about college? You can’t just found something these days. What will the investors think?’

She was the investors, so far. Owner, operations management, and chief investment officer. She was not about to wait for them to come talk to her. But where was she going to go? Mariam was a bit high up to throw herself from the second floor window, tempting as it might be. But twenty-foot vaulted ceilings on the first floor didn’t really lend themselves to that…

Mariam was crouched and ready to dive under the bed as she heard the footsteps click clack down the hallway toward her door. But what if they looked under the bed for her?

–Bell and Waring, that was it, that was the firm they used–

“Miriam?” She bristled immediately at hearing her name mispronounced in her mother’s voice.

‘She’s the one who named me–’

“Miriam, your father and I have someone we’d like you to meet! Come outside, will you?”

‘Absolutely the everloving jumpjacking ******** not–’

Mariam had rolled herself under the bed by the time the door opened, and she pressed herself against the wall at the back.

“The Warings’ boy is outside! He’s a lovely boy. Miriam, where did you go?” Mariam held her breath as she saw her mother’s shoes cross the rug toward the bed. “You had to have just been here…” She watched her mother’s shoes turn in a circle.

So now her parents were trying to match her with their accountant’s son? Well, the other one’s son, the junior partner, had kids already, and none of his other sons were single, if what she’d overheard was true. But wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest–

No time for that. As Mariam saw her mother start to crouch down, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Whispered, “I pledge my life and loyalty to Ganymede, and to Tikal. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”

And disappeared just as her mother looked under the bed.

And reappeared in a room of silken pillows and delicate satin edged with crumbling lace. She had been here a scant few times, but time enough for the vanity to feel familiar as she sat at it and rested her temples against her fingers and her elbows on the vanity surface. Her thumbs made slow, soothing circles at the base of her jaw. After several moments, Mariam took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she sat up straight and looked out at the room.

It was still strange, this place. Like the first time and every other time after that, those words had deposited her in what she assumed had been a bedroom. Her bedroom? Maybe. Probably. It looked like the kind of thing she’d enjoy.

Mariam sank herself onto the bed with a sigh, muffling a cough at the dust that puffed up as she did. It was less than when she had first found this place. The evidence of that sat in several large trash bags gathered near a far wall. But there was still a very long way to go.

There was silence here, at least. Maybe preternatural silence. The silence that said there had once been many voices. But now, there were none. And she was fairly sure she preferred it that way. Better than her parents’ voices.

She was going to have to answer to her mother when she went back. But for now, Mariam could rest without worrying about the latest suitor. She had yet to go to college, and her parents had decided that evidently meant she intended to be a housewife. She had no intention of the sort, but considering her parents only wanted her to go to college to meet their son-in-law in the first place…

There would be no son-in-law of any sort, unless she happened to find someone who also needed a lavender marriage. They could move their paramours into adjacent suites and tackle the issue of children later, maybe waiting long enough for their respective parents to die and take the issue with them. The bed creaked and crunched as she sat back up, and Mariam wondered if it would ruin the authenticity of the place to bring a new mattress with her. But seeing as a paramour was not currently something Mariam actually had, she wasn’t going to have to impress anyone anytime soon.

An airbed, at least, would help considerably–

She swung her legs and got up from the bed, marveling as she usually did that the place was so well heated. It was cool, but comfortable. The tiles under her feet were a bit cold, but nothing unbearable. Mariam went to the heavy door that led from the bedroom to the rest of the house. The rag she’d left hanging from splintered wood protected her hands from the shards of glass that fell out of the once-ornate inset glass as she pulled the door open.

The tinkling of broken glass against the tile was a tragedy, really.

She stepped carefully over the shards on the floor and moved out into the hallway. The dark hardwood timbers offset the porcelain tiles on the floor, and pictures long faded and unreadable lined the walls. But she wasn’t concerned with the pictures.

This little sanctuary of hers had a combined conservatory and observatory on the roof.

It’d been delight and frustration combined to find it the first time, and it had taken several more visits before she had found out how to get into the rooms. But the light now danced across the tiled floors and cast little rainbows and splashes of colour from the stained glass windows. She had yet to leave the house–large though it was–and so she wasn’t entirely sure where the light was coming from, but she wasted very little time thinking about it .

Mariam pushed the door open after pushing away the gnarled ivy vines covering it. The ivy had been the reason she’d been hard-pressed to find the way in the first time, and even still she had no idea where it was growing from. There weren’t any holes in the ceiling that she could see, so did that mean it’d been purposefully cultivated? It had done an excellent job of hiding the way in, so maybe that had been on purpose?

Either way, the door and ivy swung back seamlessly into place as soon as she stepped through the doorway and released her pressure holding the door open. The first time, she’d worried that she couldn’t get back through. That didn’t seem to be the case, however, and now the click of the latch warranted no more attention than a quick, reflexive glance that direction. She settled herself on the large ottoman nearby, taking another deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment.

But, as always, the picture above the piano inevitably caught her attention. It was one of the few pictures that had, somehow, escaped the ravages of rot and ruin. It was a painting, as far as she could tell. Not that she could reach it to verify. But the icy blue eyes bored into her own with a sense of knowing that she couldn't shake. Icy blue eyes, pale white skin, and short white hair nevertheless swept into side swirls and otherwise covered with a large, plumed hat. It all seemed achingly familiar.

Mariam pulled some of her hair into her hand, looking down at the blond lengths with dark brown ends. She had stopped dyeing her hair some time ago, not accenting it with brown since high school.

Maybe it was time to change it. She looked up at the portrait that looked back into her. She wasn’t sure about the side swirls, but she had the feeling that the swirls were an illusion crafted from careful construction. The short hair? The short hair, she could do. Short cuts were coming back into vogue, and she was starting to get tired of her long hair anyway.

Plus her parents liked her hair long, and that was more than reason enough to cut it, in her opinion.

Not that their opinion was going to matter much when she finalized some of the plans in the works. She had gotten old enough to have access to her trust fund. It was more than enough money to buy herself a modest-enough place to live, away from them, and to live on while she got her philanthropy outfit set up. Her choices in the stock market had been quite fortunate, and she’d amassed enough after-taxes to replenish what she’d taken from her trust fund and form a sizable starting pool.

Good thing her parents hadn’t thought to attach a marriage contingency to her trust fund, just an age one–

But once she no longer lived under their roof, she would hopefully be able to stand on her own two feet when they inevitably tried to cut her off from both their support and their network of acquaintances. And then she could do whatever she wanted. Cut her hair.

Not marry a man.

The wonder of it all, and the sarcasm was hard to temper even in her thoughts.

But then, why wait? It was just hair. It would be a much-appreciated first step toward her independence, would it not? Her parents weren’t going to disown her for a haircut, no matter how much hemming and hawing and tutting they did about it.

Looking up at the portrait, she decided that the first thing she was doing as soon as she went back home–home?–was getting a haircut. A fluffy haircut around her ears, down to the nape of her neck.

It would be cute!

Moreover, it would be her own, and a harbinger of what to come as she peeled herself away from her parents. It had been their idea to send her to Crystal, and only her firm insistence on ‘finding her calling’ had kept them from immediately sending her to a ‘movers and shakers’ university overseas. The Waring boy, or any other, would never be of interest to her, something her parents had been reminded of countless times, and something they conveniently forgot about each and every time.

Something reminded her, ‘you know you’re going to make a pariah out of yourself, right?’

Of course she was.

But then maybe they’d leave her alone.