Pride and Percabeth

Chapter Thirty

Reyna spent the morning before the performance going over her lines.  She drank a calming tea made from lemon balm and feverfew to steady her nerves and lounged in her room, flipping through the script.
"Bob says hello, " Bob the Parrot squawked from behind the door to Miss Titan's room.  "Bob dit bonjour, Bob dice hola."
Reyna got up and banged on the door, causing her costume, a sleeveless, purple, classical dress tied with a gold-colored sash, a red ribbon to hold back her loose hair, and a wreath of ivy, to fall from the hooks.

"Quiet, you, " Reyna said. "Or I'll see that you're made into a Sunday roast."
"You spotted snakes with double tongue, " Miss Titan was practicing the fairy song from act two of A Midsummer Night's Dream. "Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody. Sing in our sweet lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; so, good night, with lullaby."
Reyna had to admit that Miss Titan possessed a lovely voice, even if her infernal bird was the bane of her existence.
"Excuse me," Miss Titan cracked open the door. "Did you need anything? I heard you knock."
She wore a simple white petticoat and a round gown made from cloth printed with scenes from a Chinese village.

"I just stumbled, " Reyna replied, too proud to admit to having raged at a parrot.
"Oh. I hope you didn't twist your ankle."
"All's well."
Miss Titan closed the door again, her curiosity satisfied.
After practicing Helena's soliloquy once again, Reyna sat down at the writing desk to answer the latest letter she had received from Madre Diana, the abbess of the Convento de la Trinidad in Valencia. She then wrote a quick note to her father and sister telling them that she would be home in Spain for Christmas.
Reyna thought about maybe inviting Miss Levesque and Mr. Di Angelo to visit whenever they could make the journey. Miss Levesque would enjoy sketching the crumbling Reconquista-era Castillo Loba, the Ramirez-Arellano family's ancestral castle, and the surrounding gravelly hills dotted with scrub and brush while the all the ghost stories and tragic tales, enough to fill several gothic novels, would send Mr. Di Angelo into raptures.