Dearest (2 page)

Conrad held out the ends of the skirt-sack to the hairy guard. “It’s heavy,” he warned. The hairy guard nodded, pulling the sack up over his shoulder and lifting the girl with ease, as if she were nothing but potatoes.

You may not be strong,
Omi’s voice echoed in his mind,
but you are quick. You move mountains in your own way.

The hairy guard entered the receiving hall only a few steps before him, so Conrad saw everything. He saw the young queen raise her head as they entered and calmly reach over to her husband. The young king stopped mid-sentence at her slight touch and turned to her. They communicated without a word. The king followed his wife’s eyes to the hairy guard’s burden and his face became stern. He slowly raised a hand and curled his fingers, urging them forward. The queen raised a hand too, putting trembling fingers to her lips.

Conrad knew from experience that the best way to deliver bad news was quickly. “Your Highnesses, I bore a message this day to Seven Woodcutter from Rose Abbey. Tesera Mouton is dead.” He turned to the queen. “Your father asked that I deliver the same message to you, in hopes that you would send a carriage to take your mother north.”

The young king seemed confused.

The young queen’s big blue eyes were anxious and sad. “Of course, but . . .”

Another guard—copper-haired this time—leaned in to the royal couple. “All roads north are blocked at the moment.” The guard added no honorific to the sentiment, and neither the king nor the queen admonished him for it.

“. . . but what does this have to do with Friday?” the queen finished.

It was Conrad’s turn to be confused. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I don’t understand.” Was something supposed to happen on Friday? Had the Woodcutters neglected some pertinent information in their message?

A dark, fey gentleman uncurled himself from the chair behind the copper-haired guard. “Everyone out.” He casually swept an arm across the room and the assembly turned and left. Conrad, unaffected by the magical influence of the gesture, remained.

“I’ll get Monday,” the copper-haired guard said, before disappearing himself.

What? Would the guard really not return until Monday?

This did not seem to further upset their royal majesties, who stepped forward as soon as the hall was clear. The hairy guard gently lowered the sack to the floor. The skirt was dull and damp with mud, but the soul of its original colors still shone through. In the dark, Conrad had not noticed the richness of its many fabrics. A unique material, to be sure. The queen had certainly recognized it at once.

Conrad began to realize just how important his delivery truly was. He rushed to the girl’s side and uncovered her face.

The queen gave a choked gasp and the king caught her in his arms before her legs gave way completely. The fey man appeared on his knees next to Conrad and placed a pale, long-fingered hand on the girl’s equally pale shoulder. His lids fell over eyes the deep indigo of late twilight. After a moment they reopened.

“She is well. The sleep is a healing sleep. She has a bump on the head, nothing more.” The fey man backed away, allowing the young queen room to collapse in a billow of golden skirts. She gently cradled the girl’s head in her lap. Conrad noticed the family resemblance now. He noticed, too, that the queen’s feet were bare. He smiled inwardly at this.

The king was speaking to him. “. . . what happened?”

“I had just left the Woodcutter house, Your Highness. There was an owl in the road and it frightened me, so I moved to avoid it. Then the world broke. I hit my head.” His explanation sounded like a child’s. He was far more eloquent when delivering someone else’s well-thought-out words. Funny, he hadn’t thought about his injury since finding the girl. The fey gentleman reached a hand over to examine Conrad’s own noggin, and Conrad let him. The hand was warm. Suddenly the room seemed steadier. “Thank you, milord,” he told the man.

“When I awoke, it was twilight. The far side of the road had been replaced by a muddy beach, beyond which lay . . . lies . . . a vast ocean. I washed myself off and made my way up the shore until I found . . .” Conrad still wasn’t sure what to call her.

“You dragged her all the way here?” The fey man sounded dubious.

Conrad was forced to admit his shortcomings. “I tried, Your Highness. We didn’t get far. But then a man came along driving a cartful of hay.”

“Hay,” the king mused. “Did this man have yellow eyes?”

The question shocked Conrad so much that he forgot his manners. “How did you know?”

“Velius!” the king addressed the fey gentleman. “That’s the same man who helped me back to the castle after my transformation. I’d bet my crown on it. We must find him!” He turned to Conrad again. “Did he tell you his name?”

“I’m sorry, Highness, he did not,” said Conrad. “But his donkey’s name is Bobo.”

“Then we will use the beast to find the man. Thank you, friend. Please stay; my wife will see you are taken care of. Velius, quickly!” The king leapt to his feet and ran out the door.

Conrad stood quietly before the pretty young queen, unsure of what to say next. Her thin golden crown nestled deep in the golden hair that fell around the face of the girl in her lap. After a moment she held a hand out to Conrad. Since there was no one else in the room, he took it. Her eyes were as blue as the cloudless summer sky.

“Thank you,” she said to him. “Thank you for saving my sister.”

2

“R
IGHT SIDES TOGETHER
,” her teacher said. “Keep the stitches small.”

“Yes, mistress.” Friday Woodcutter smiled graciously and did as she was bade, even though these tasks were things she had been doing from the time she’d been old enough to use the enchanted needle Fairy Godmother Joy had given her on her nameday. Friday was so ecstatic that she’d been apprenticed to the esteemed seamstress Yarlitza Mitella that she received every instruction, no matter how menial, with great joy.

She had always enjoyed her time at church with the orphans as well, but Sister Carol seemed increasingly reluctant to instruct her further in the ways of the Earth Goddess. Friday did everything the Sister asked and made no secret of her desire to one day become a dedicated acolyte, but after several seasons of resistance, Friday had stopped pushing. The children loved Friday, and Sister Carol—whom she respected mightily—had never asked her to leave, so Friday continued returning . . . and continued ignoring the feeling that she didn’t fit in. She had her suspicions as to why she might not be the picture of a perfect acolyte, but she took a page from her mother’s book and kept those thoughts to herself, lest the Sisters toss her out for good.

But here, lost in the slide of material in her hands and the magic needle pressed against her fingertip, the world felt right. Whatever path she was meant to follow, it would always involve this perfect expression of mending and creation: sewing. Every stitch she made was an offering of thanks to the gods.

“Right sides together!” Yarlitza Mitella ordered. Friday loved the mellifluous cadence of her teacher’s voice. Mistress Mitella hailed from high in the mountains above Faerie, where the people had smooth magenta skin and silky black hair and everyone wore smart leather boots that seemed to last forever without ever appearing unfashionable.

“Yes, mistress.” Friday checked for the ninth time that her material hadn’t magically turned itself inside out, and then cheerfully continued with her row of tiny, almost imperceptible stitches. The push of the needle and pull of the thread was meditative; Friday could have happily gone on like this forever.

Mistress Mitella sighed loudly and threw her hands up in the air. Her teacher was the second-most animated person Friday had ever met (the first was her younger sister Saturday). “Do you know how this is supposed to work?”

Friday paused her stitching and gave Mistress Mitella her undivided attention. “I admit I do not, mistress. I am blessed to be in your tutelage, and I promise to do everything in my power to be a diligent student.”

“This!” Mistress Mitella swept her arms toward Friday. “This is what I mean. It is my job to give the instruction and it is your job to complain. We must argue. Your anger then challenges you to surpass even my own skills.”

Mistress Mitella wanted her to be
mad?
Even if such a thing were in Friday’s nature, she was desperately afraid of losing her apprenticeship. “Between the orphans and my siblings, there is enough animosity in the world without my adding to it.”

Her teacher plopped down on the cushioned seat next to Friday. The ruffles in her layered skirt echoed the fluttering of her hands. “I agree with you! And you are an excellent student!”

“But you are still unhappy.”

The mistress’s hands flew up in the air again. “How do I challenge you? Obstinacy, conceit—these I can instruct. I do not know how to teach to kindness and grace.” She said the words as if they were the worst traits a person could have, but Friday did not take offense. She had spent enough time around Mama to know otherwise.

She could sense keenly the mistress’s frustration, but took care to guard herself and not let the emotions overwhelm her or the situation, as Aunt Joy had taught her. “I am afraid,” Friday admitted reluctantly.

Mistress Mitella brightened. “Yes. I can work with fear. Of what are you afraid?”

Heights, mostly, though Friday didn’t see how that was pertinent to their conversation. “I am afraid of disappointing you.”

Mistress Mitella squeezed Friday’s pale fingers with her deep-red ones. “You won’t,” she said, but the words Friday heard instead were, “Make it fly.” Dark storm clouds gathered in the window behind her teacher. Lightning flashed in her teacher’s eyes.

Storms like this meant magic, and lots of it.

Friday bent her head over the material in her hands and challenged herself: right sides together, stitches small. “Fly,” she whispered into the thread. She did not know why she had been instructed to do this; she only knew that she must. “Fly.”

Pain erupted behind her eyes and in the base of her neck, as if the lightning was now flashing inside her skull. Stitch by stitch. Impossibly tiny. Impossibly quick. “Fly.”

The stitches turned red as liquid fire, dark as blood spilled from a pricked finger. The fabric slipped from her hands and spread itself out before her like the pages of an open book. Friday stepped onto the floating sheet. She soared through the ceiling of their sitting room in the palace, over the carriage that waited at the gate for them, and out above the white-capped waves of the crashing sea.

This was her true fear come to life, though it diminished some with the sturdiness of the material beneath her and the breathtaking sight before her.

A wedge of swans surrounded her, leading her south for the winter. There were seven, their white wings each spreading out to almost the length of a man, their unfeathered black masks cocked jauntily like fellow bandits.

She felt the gentle brush of a wing at her side and shivered.

“Stop that,” said one of the swans.

“He said not to touch her,” said a second swan, with the voice of a young female.

“He didn’t say that,” said the one who had touched her.

“Yes, he did,” said the first swan. “I was right there. He said if you didn’t obey him, he was going to lock you in the stocks and let our sister beat you.”

As the swans spoke, Friday’s floating material began to descend, and her with it. The birds didn’t seem to notice. Her fear of falling returned tenfold, gripping her heart in her chest with icy fingers.

“That wasn’t a real threat. Besides, she hits like a girl.”

“You think so?” said the first swan.

“Keep it up and you’ll find out,” said the girl swan.

The rest of their conversation was lost in a rush of wind as Friday plummeted to the ground. She opened her mouth to scream but there was no sound, no breath. Flailing, her limbs tangled in the yards and yards of material that enveloped her all the way down to . . .

. . . her bed.

A calmness settled within her breast, though her heart still ached from the phantom fear.

Not completely sure of where she was, she remained still, eyes shut, and felt the room. The sheets above and beneath her were silk and satin. The air was crisp and cool and smelled faintly of wood smoke. She could hear birds, both outside the window and within. The wild ones beyond told her it was daytime, and that the weather was fine. Her feathered friends chirped of sunshine and not rain, not storm winds and floodwaters. Inside the room, the swans from her dream still argued among themselves in the comfortable pattern of sibling rivalry.

She was not in the carriage. No longer in the company of her esteemed tutor. The bed that held her rescued body felt familiar, somewhere safe. The dream-fear in her chest melted as she woke. Happiness. There was happiness in this room, laced with concern. For her.

“You are a Grand High Bugaboo, Mikey.”

“Yeah, well you’re a gold-dipped bum-licker.”

“Stop being ridiculous, Mikey.”

“He started it!”

“Pretty sure I didn’t invent being ridiculous. I would have remembered that.”

Friday calmed herself and forced her mind to be silent. She would not worry the children with difficult questions that she knew would be answered in time. Orphans had enough complications in their lives without her adding to their burden. Friday sent a silent prayer to the Earth Goddess, whether or not she was listening, and called upon her strength. It was up to Friday to maintain what smiles she could in such a confusing moment.

“Listen to my darlings,” Friday said with a voice far stronger than she felt. “Calling me back home with their sweet songs.”

A trio of voices cried, “Friday!” and suddenly her bed was filled with children energetically clamoring for hugs. Somewhere at the foot of the bed, a dog barked. She could see the nose and front paws of a puppy still too small to surmount this obstacle. Judging by the size of his paws, it wouldn’t be an obstacle for much longer. He had a ways to grow. Just like her children.

John and Wendy and Michael weren’t technically hers, but as orphans they weren’t technically anyone’s. Or, rather, they were everyone’s. They belonged to Arilland and were therefore the responsibility of its citizens. It was a burden Friday didn’t mind bearing.