THE CASCADE BONUS CONTENT

Deleted Scene - Alfonso and Ana

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I love this scene! But unfortunately, it slowed the pace of the book and took the characters in a direction I wasn't sure about. So instead, I weaved in the most important character development stuff into Alfono's opening scene. The scene would have occurred immediately after Alfonso received the letter about the theatre troupe leaving.

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It took him a while to track her down, but eventually, someone managed to give him directions to the right room. He knocked on the door and waited to be summoned, which, after a moment, he was.

   The woman was younger than him by at least ten years, if he was any judge, though she hid her youth behind an angry expression and an air of suspicion that all but leap forward and bit him, like a dog guarding its mistress. He dropped a courtly bow.

   “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, pitching his voice the way he did when he played Kings and Princes.

   Ana didn’t return the bow. “You’re Hemmings’ boyfriend?”

   “Friend,” Alfonso replied, offering her a winning smile. “I’m not sure about anything more than that. Young love settles rarely, don’t you find?”

   “I’ve no idea,” Ana said, her tone only barely skirting the right side of civility. “He’s not here if you’re looking for him. He and Melly are still trying to find a way back to fairyland.”

   Alfonso realised he’d started off on the wrong foot and would need to work hard to regain the conversation. He’d heard about Ana, naturally: the events at Llanotterly the year before had been told and retold across almost all of western Ehinenden—they’d even thought of turning it into a play until Christopher had lost his nerve.

   “I wanted to talk to you, actually,” he said, letting a hint of the farm creep into his accent, a shadow of his real self that he fought to keep hidden. Except from Hemmings, anyway. Which was, in fact, why he was here. “About… well, about Hemmings. I don’t know who else to speak to who might understand.”

   This time she did smile, though it disappeared as quick as a fox caught inspecting the hen house. But at least she stepped back to let him into her room, which was almost exactly the same as the one he shared with Hemmings: tastefully decorated, well-lit and large. Unlike theirs, however, Ana and Melly had a window seat carved into the wall. There was no window, obviously, but someone had painted a landscape on the wall behind, even going to the effort of meticulously re-creating wooden window frames. He also noticed that Ana and Melly’s bed was bigger than the one he and Hemmings had.

   “Take a seat,” Ana instructed.

   Alfonso looked around. He didn’t much fancy crossing the room to sit beside the fake outdoors, so he pulled up a chair by the dresser. Ana arranged herself on the bed, though it might have been more accurate to say she dropped herself, landing with a flumph and absolutely zero grace.

   “Hemmings mentioned you and Melly are together…?”

   She nodded. “For a while now. But I thought Hemmings was just your ‘friend’?”

   “Maybe a touch more than friends. But…” He left the sentence hang, holding his hands up in a shrug.

   “ I’m not psychic, and I’m too tired to play guessing games. If you want to talk to me, then talk.”

   “I suppose I just wanted to know how you manage it. Y’know, with one of them.”

   Ana’s eyes narrowed. “One of ‘them’?”

   Bloody hell, he was getting it all wrong—him, the fabulous Alfonso who made grown men weep with his oratory! “An elf, I mean. Not that I mind him being an elf, but all this other stuff… genies and monsters and magic mirrors. It all feels…”

   “Unreal?”

   Alfonso nodded. “I suppose I’m the last person you’d expect to be bothered by it, but it’s one thing to play at fairies and another to discover—”

   “—that things like that really exist,” Ana finished for him. “You forget sometimes they’re literally from another world.”

   “He’s too beautiful,” Alfonso found himself saying. It wasn’t what he’d thought he’d say, but he went with it anyway. Sometimes it was better just to get the lines out and worry about them later. “But he’s not human-beautiful, is he? He’s all cheekbones and dark eyes and moonish skin, and if you put that on a regular person, they’d look horrific. But on him… on him, it’s perfect, and I don’t know why that makes me nervous, but it does. I need…” He took a breath. “I need advice.”

   Ana regarded him silently. Alfonso got the sense she was weighing him up—it had been years since he’d had to audition for a role, but all the old nerves came flooding back under her steady, appraising gaze.

   He met her eyes, schooling his body to hide his anxiety. It didn’t matter if she liked him, that wasn’t what he was here for. He was here for Hemmings.

   Ana pursed her lips, then nodded.

   “People always end up looking like who they are,” she said, her tone softer than before.  “Melly’s physically beautiful, but that isn’t what makes her attractive. She’s attractive because she worries herself sick about other people and hates asking for help; she collects these hideous glass figurines, and tomatoes make her fart, and no, it doesn’t smell of flowers. She’s proud and clever and uncertain, and God forbid anyone crosses her. That’s what makes her really beautiful, not her hair or cheekbones or whatever.”

   Alfonso couldn’t help smiling. “Hemmings snores. He denies it, but he does. And he’s very sincere. When he says something, there’s no artifice to it. He doesn’t pretend. I like that. He’s got no idea about anything; he told me once he doesn’t bother with gold because it’s too soft, but he carries around bone dust and pieces of string and bags of salt, and I’ve seen him picking up copper pennies when he thinks no one’s watching. He says he’s almost fifty years older than me, which can’t be right as he doesn’t have a clue how anything works, and I’m sure I’m the first person he’s been with.”

   “But you’re frightened of him?”

   Alfonso thought for a moment. “No, not of him. But what he represents? Where he comes from? Yes.”

   “Do you love him?”

   The question hung in the air, a cue he didn’t have the line for. He’d certainly never meant to fall for anyone seriously, not again. And the thought of leaving the theatre made his whole body sting like he’d stumbled into boiling water and only just managed to pull himself out before he lost his skin.

   “I… I like him. A lot. But I’ve only known him a few weeks, how can I say I love anyone that quickly? And all that’s before acknowledging the fact elves, and genies and God knows what else are real, and whatever else I might feel for him, he’s part of all that.”

   “Well, if it helps, ogres and little yellow monsters made of knives are also real,” Ana said with a thin smile. “It’s an exciting new world.”

   Alfonso glared at her. “I don’t appreciate being laughed at like I’m some country bumpkin who’s getting the heebee-jeebees about messing around with the Lord’s son.”

   For some reason, he found his breath catching in his throat as he waited for Ana to speak. He realised that he wanted her to contradict him. Not because he cared what she thought, exactly, but because he was deathly afraid it was true.

   “I don’t think you’re a ‘bumpkin’, but it seems to me you should have thought of that before you decided to start this whole thing up with him,” Ana answered. “You could have left after the Calan Mai disaster. You knew what he was by then, right?”

   “I suppose I didn’t expect it to go any further than that one night,” he admitted. “We said at the time it was just going to be a, uh, sweet farewell kind of thing… but one day just led to another, and now here I am.”

   “So what next?”

   “I don’t know,” Alfonso said miserably. “I like him more than anyone I’ve met in a long time. Perhaps if there wasn’t all this other stuff going on, if he could come with me and the theatre… But his family are trapped on the other side of these Mirror things, and he’s frightened. He says there could be a war. He needs to go home, I understand that, but at some point, he’s going to ask me if I’ll go with him, and I don’t know what to say when he does, but I don’t know what do if he goes, either. I guess I thought you might have a solution.”

   “If I had, I’d be happy to share it. I’m not exactly over the moon about Melly threatening to leave.”

   “Would you go with her if she asked you to?”

   “Yes.”

   Alfonso licked his lips. “I don’t think I can if Hemmings asks me. It’s… I don’t want to lose him, but... It’s too much to ask. I have a life here, friends. I fought for it, and I don’t want to give it up.” He looked up, searching Ana’s face for some clue to her reaction. “I suppose that makes me the villain of the piece?”

   “When I was twelve years old, I found out someone I loved very much was a wicked man,” And said, a stillness settling on her. “For a long time, I didn’t believe in people, didn’t trust them. I was the only person in the whole world who saw things as they really were, and everyone else was either a blind idiot or an evil one.”

   She started picking absently at a loose thread from the eiderdown she was sitting on, but her sludgy green eyes never left his. “I’ve come to realise it’s not so simple as people being ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Hell, I wish it was, sometimes. You’re not a bad person if you don’t want to travel to a completely different world with someone you’ve just met.”

   They stared at each other a moment longer, and then Ana’s thin lips lifted in a smile. “Bet you never thought anyone would say that to you?”

   “Not outside of a play, anyway,” Alfonso said, managing a smile too. “I do like him, you know? I like him a lot. If we had longer, or if their Mirrors weren’t all broken and I could come home again…”

   Ana nodded. “I understand. But the best thing you can do is say all this to him.”

   “Yes, that’s what I think, too. Bugger.”

   Alfonso stood up and held out his hand. Ana shook it.

   “You won’t tell anyone about this?”

   “You have my word,” Ana answered. “And we’ll look after him. I promise.”

   Alfonso nodded his thanks, trying to find her words comforting and not further evidence of his failure.