Six of One by JoAnn Spears

of fabric, it did not rise. When I stroked the ermine that edged her sleeve with my finger, the motion failed to compress the fur. I felt myself doing these things, but they had absolutely no effect at all.
    Elizabeth, not one to be left out for long, stepped up and proffered one of her lovely hands, set off to perfection by a beautiful signet ring of diamonds and rubies on mother-of-pearl.
    “I’ve read about that ring!” I said. “You always wore it, Elizabeth—right up until the day you died. It contains a double-cameo portrait of yourself and your mother, doesn’t it?”
    “It does,” she confirmed. “Try to remove it from my finger.”
    I could feel the weight of the ring in my hand, feel it glide along Elizabeth’s slender finger as I tugged at it; still, there was no denying that the blasted thing did not actually move!
    “Try to blow out this candle, Dolly.” Jane took a candle from a nearby sconce and held it a hair’s breadth away from my face. I puffed at it for dear life, but the flame did not even flicker; it was uncomfortably hot against my face.
    “Move it back, please!” I demanded. “I don’t want to show up looking like a burnt offering at the altar tomorrow! Be careful how you handle that candle!”
    Jane withdrew the candle and, with the gentlest of puffs, blew it out.
    I took a deep breath. There was no more getting around it: this was no Renaissance dinner theater, no show, and no bridesmaids’ wedding-eve prank. All my life, the shades of the Tudors—fascinating and elusive—had haunted my world. That night, we had traded places. The shades were dead-solid real in this little world, and I was but a shadow.
    I suddenly felt the need of another hit of that good strong ale. Might as well , I thought to myself; it seemed likely that calories consumed when you are a shade in someone else’s world wouldn’t count.

Chapter Fourteen
    Dolly Receives Instruction on the Mission Position
     
    Elizabeth simply did not know how to give up; she grabbed another lit candle from across the room and reloaded the sconce.
    “Dolly, you were interested in my ring. Please allow me to show it to you.”
    Elizabeth, with her hand in the light of the flame, slid the ring from her finger and opened the cameo to reveal the portraiture within it. As promised, the twin cameos showed Elizabeth herself and a young and elegant Ann Boleyn. In coloring and feature, mother and daughter shared nothing; but even in those miniscule images, their facial expressions were strikingly similar.
    “In my humble opinion, you certainly don’t have your mother to thank for your looks, Elizabeth; you do, however, strike me as having inherited a good measure of her spirit,” I said. “Lucky you, imbued with her ’tude!”
    Elizabeth was pleased. “How astute you are, Dolly! Few of our guests mark the similarity.”
    Suddenly, there was thunder on the left—a sign of incipient madness, according to the ancient Greeks, and, on this occasion, I was inclined to agree with them.
    “Dolly, be silent!” hollered Mary, hair flying and neck veins popping. “Elizabeth, you will close that infernal ring now , please!” As she spoke, Mary turned her head away from the ring and raised her arm to shield her eyes from it, like a vampire turning away from a cross. “And both of you —” she continued, “Elizabeth, Jane—stop waving those candle flames about! Would you burn yourself by your own foolishness?”
    The future Bloody Mary, maker of dozens of martyrs by fire, sagged at the knees a bit after she delivered her salvo. Composing herself, she resumed control of the conversation.
    “Well, we’ve made some progress. I think that you understand now, Dolly, that this is no game. This is our world, and you will remain in it with us for the night.”
    “I am but a ball in your court, Mary, here for your sport. But why am I here?”
    “Transposition of epochs,” Mary answered. “Shades of us have been with you all of your