Dancing on Strings

The Missing

A teacup was set in front of her and tea poured and Ophelia interlinked her fingers, settled her chin on the platform and looked between them.

"So! My darlings! Tell me everything! What have I missed?"

Mai and Anna-Beth glanced at each other.

"It might take more than breakfast to explain," Anna-Beth said.

"But what about you? What have you been doing? You've been travelling the kingdom for months," Mai said, "You must have a new story or two to tell us."

"Oh, darling, it's me. Of course I have stories! But that's for the evenings in front of a fire. Come." She patted Mai's hand. "Tell me now, you must, what should I be looking forward to in the coming week? What's the drama? What's the gossip? I must say, I've been hearing some very strange rumours. Sick princesses and missing ladies? Tell me it's not so."

Ophelia's bounce faded slightly as she looked between her companions.

"Surely not," she said, her voice lowering.

"Two of the princesses are sick. In comas," Anna-Beth said.

"And two ladies have gone missing. Investigations haven't uncovered anything yet," Mai said.

Ophelia frowned, settling back against her chair, one elbow resting on the back as she pursed her lips.

"Hmm, how unsettling," she muttered. "Do they know what ails the princesses?"

"No. Not yet."

"And... these disappearances, they're the only two from court?"

"Yes," Mai said, "I mean... I assume so. No one else who is in residence has gone missing. Why?"

Ophelia pursed her lips again, then looked around. "Does anyone have a morning paper they're finished with?" she called.

One of the older men held up the paper he'd just finished and a servant collected it, bringing it over.

Ophelia took it and shook it out, scanning the front page and rolling her eyes.

"Honestly, the winnings of the latest race shouldn't take precedence," she muttered to herself as she rifled through the pages until she found the one she wanted and flattened the paper, holding it up for the others to see.

Another Missing!

The massive letters across the page screamed at them and Mai took the paper, staring at it.

'Last night marked the disappearance of yet another young woman – bringing the count up to fifteen women and twelve men.

Miss Lucy Harker is seventeen, described as having brown hair and eyes. A resident of the Northern Quarter, she is the latest victim in a recent spate of disappearances that spans gender, age and class.

Police have made no progress and refuse to comment on their investigations, continuing to insist that these disappearances are unlikely to be connected due to the variations in The Missing.'

Mai gaped at the page before her eyes snapped up to look at Ophelia.

"Twenty-seven people have gone missing?!" she said, staring. "How is this the first I'm hearing of it?"

"Oh please, who here reads beyond the society pages?" Ophelia said with a dismissive wave, settling against her chair again. "And people go missing all the time."

"Not that many people in a month," Mai said, pointing at the article and Ophelia lent forwards.

"Exactly," she said, her eyes shining and yet dark. "But that isn't the only thing. The capital isn't the only place suffering this. You want to know one of my stories? In every town and every city I passed through over the last year, there were whispers of The Missing. People who seemed to simply fade into the night. One man I spoke to even told me of how he was in the same room as his sister when it happened. He turned away for barely a minute to put a log on the fire and when he looked back, she was gone. No one came in or out of that room. She just disappeared."