Monster

7. Dresses & Guns

1825 October 21th

Eight O'clock in the morning

Dresses and Guns

Elsa was very tired the next morning over breakfast—she had stayed up past the point she was even able to think properly, thoughts of the ball and Matilda's sad story about Nicholas stuck in her head.

She could not imagine the disappointment and heartache it very well may have caused her, and hoped she never had to experience it herself.

"Elsa, darling, what is it?" Borys, her father, asked from across the table.

Matilda sat a dish down before Elsa and swept away. Looking at the maid now, it was as if the conversation between the two of them the night before had never happened.

Elsa turned back toward her father. "I was told about the ball."

"Ball?"

"Oh, father, do not pretend you do not know," she said a little testily. She already knew he wouldn't allow her to attend, and therefore was already distressed. "I was told by a few of the other girls in town. It is taking place to-night, is it not?"

"It is," he admitted. "But I do not intend for you to be there."

"Because of the monsters? I will be quite fine, Father." She wondered if whether or not she should mention Ronan's having asked her, but decided it would sound more appropriate to her father if he were asked by the man, first. "Besides, your SKS will be there. I can arrive and leave with you."

"No," her father said, with the effect of a slamming door.

Elsa knew that voice-it was a voice not to ponder with. It was final.

Elsa decided, however, that she would attend the ball, even if it meant having to sneak away with Ronan.

So that evening, after Elsa had spent the whole day deciding on what dress to wear, even though none of them were ball-worthy, she sat by the window to wait.

She wore a gown red as blood, and she had pulled her long hair into a braided knot, tied on her favorite slippers, and dabbed a little of her perfume upon her wrists. She pinched her cheeks for color and scrubbed her lips upon a cloth so they appeared redder. She could not deny that she was nervous, awaiting Ronan to arrive, for her father to either call for her to descend the stairs or keep the offer a secret as though the man had never come. But Elsa knew that Ronan would come, because he would not abandon her—not so soon.

But the girl waited, and waited, and half past six turned to seven, and the sun had set blood-red in the sky. Ronan had not come.

She heard her father leave the house, peeked out her window and watched him on the street, leaving for the SKS's mission to the ball. Emotions seized her; fear for her father, but also fire in her veins, to have been hopeful and let down. To have been forgotten.

Suddenly, despite the humiliation she felt, her cheeks redder than having been pinched, she realized that she could not sit in her room and sulk—she had to either sneak one of her father's weapons and travel there herself, or lock her window, pull the drapes, and call upon Matilda for hot tea and spend the night in bed with one of her many books. If indeed, the latter was not considered sulking.

After a few minutes of consideration, she got to her feet and walked to the door to open it; the corridor was quiet, only the sound of Matilda's singing in the study a few doors down. Elsa slunk into the dim hall and down the stairs to her father's keep, where he stored all of his finest weapons and archery. The door, as to be expected, was locked. She racked her brain trying to remember where she had noticed the spare key once, when she was not trying to locate it. After a few minutes of absently searching around his chair before the fireplace, realization took her toward the mantel.

Under a small pile of her father's book, sat the spare key.

She stepped inside her father's workshop, leaving the door ajar while she ambled down the dark steps with a lit lantern to roam through all the possibilities. Though she did not know what all of the weapons did, she discovered a pistol, whereupon she tucked it under her dress and into the waistband of her corset, before ascending the steps back up and out of the keep.

She wasted no time and slipped directly out into the night, where the sky was the darkest shade of cobalt blue, and the air was cold and prickly as icy needles. Elsa felt the fear seep into her bones no matter how much she told herself she was not afraid. The SKS were out, and there was only one dead body per week, she remembered. By the time she pushed through the gate and started on the path into town, pride had begun to spread over the disappointed like spilled ink.

She had watched Ronan kill one of the monsters, and it had been the most horrifying experience, but not as horrifying as losing her mother—that was deeper, as if someone had broken her rib-cage to squeeze and rip her heart right out. If she were to get attacked on the way to the ball, she'd take her attacker down as well, so she could avenge her mother's death. Taking the pistol from under her dress, she continued on, her heart in her throat, but she had to be ready for anything.

"There is something to be said about a girl wielding a pistol, in a dress."

Elsa spun on the heel of her slipper and saw Ronan standing ten feet away, in a black cloak and hat—his arms crossed. In the twilight his hair looked scarlet, and his tender eyes shone in the shaft of the winter moon's light. He looked, to her horror, as beautiful as the male characters she'd read about in books.

She snapped out of it, and wanted to toss a sly remark back, but did not want Ronan to know he had wounded her. Instead she held her shoulders back and chuckled, although it sounded, to her horror, unsteady. "Says the man whom shows at a lady's window late after dark."

Ronan looked a little off-put for a moment. "I told you I couldn't resist checking to see if you were okay, miss Elsa. And I offered to walk you to the ball."

"Well, as you can see I am walking on my own, and do not wish for your assistance, as you are too late." She turned back and continued to walk, knowing that certainly he would follow—which he did.

"Elsa, I am sorry I was late. I ran into a monster."

That stopped her quicker than she would have liked, and she swallowed. "I see." She looked over her shoulder at Ronan.

"Let me walk you to the ball, or back home."

"It isn't as if we can spend the evening together," she said dismissively. "The SKS plan to stay outdoors in search for the monsters, as you had told me."

He looked regretful. "Well, do not let my absence stop you from having a lovely evening, Elsa. However, I would be honored if you saved me that last dance."

She considered Ronan, considered the situation. At last she relented. "Of course."

He did not, she realized, even try to conceal the grin that spread across his face, bleached under the silver moon. He walked toward her, and only then did she catch the scent of metal and rust.

"The smell," she started. "It is like..."

"Blood," he answered, the smile completely gone from his face. "The monster had scratched me." He lifted his left arm and Elsa saw the tear in the fabric of his sleeve, a little blood on the fringes.

"Are you going to be alright?" Elsa asked, a little flustered.

"Yes," he answered. "Of course. As I've said, just a scratch. It isn't anything to fret about, Elsa."

She was standing closer now, having moved so to examine his arm. She looked up at him now, and he down into her eyes. "You should be more careful," she scolded.

"I assure you, I am as vigilant as I can be around them. They move quickly, and suddenly I feel as if I am moving in water waist-deep. They have nails as sharp almost as their teeth. They appear nearly like skeletons around us, as you had witnessed—it is their true form."

"Their true form?" the girl repeated. "What do you mean? What is their false form?"

"Human," he answered.

Elsa felt a shiver down her spine.

"Shall we head to the ball, then?" he asked, and held out his arm.