Anthony—the scoffer, and the third oldest—had started glaring at me, and when his gaze flicked to one of the small beds next to the one I had appropriated, I could guess why.
“I don’t move much in my sleep,” I said. “I’m sure I wouldn’t take up much room in the big bed.” My eyes fell on the still-messy table. “And why don’t I help you clean up breakfast, Jack? It must be time for the evening meal soon.” I hoped my words didn’t sound too hopeful.
Jack just stared at me with wide eyes. “Wow, she’s actually nice!”
What about my appearance made that a surprise? My age? My looks? Or just the fact that I had earlier stolen his toast? Danni rolled her eyes and shoved him with one shoulder.
“None of us are going to offer to help with your chore, so you shouldn’t stand there like an idiot. She might change her mind.”
That effectively galvanized him into action, and he rushed forward to take one of my hands, tugging me toward the table. How old was he? Six? His grip felt nothing like Alexander’s, and yet the feel of his hand in mine reminded me of my missing friend. His had been the last touch I felt, and it already seemed distant enough to have been a dream.
I remembered the sensation of being cradled safely against his chest and had to fight back tears. What had happened to him? Where could he be?
Thankfully Jack didn’t notice my distress, keeping up a running stream of words as he instructed me on their usual practice for disposing of leftovers and washing the plates. I worked as quickly as I could, despite the unfamiliar tasks, conscious that the eyes of all the children dwelt on me as they busied themselves with their own evening activities.
Somewhat to my surprise, it was Anthony who took the lead in preparing what appeared to be a stew, although both Poppy and Louis assisted him in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Listening to their chatter, I realized that most of the chores were shared on some sort of rotating basis.
With a flush of embarrassment, I realized how ill-equipped I was to be added to such a roster. I had no idea how to scramble eggs or cook a stew. Or even gather the eggs in the first place—beyond the general assumption that it must involve going into the coop and then looking around. How would I explain my ineptitude?
But thankfully, for the evening at least, they stayed true to their promise not to ask questions. And the smell of the stew soon made other thought difficult. I still restricted myself to small bites and slow chewing, but I let myself eat until my stomach felt uncomfortably full. My bowl still held food when this happened, so it hadn’t been my imagination earlier. My stomach had shrunk.
When I noticed Louis eyeing my leftovers, I pushed them over to him with a smile. His eyes lit up, and he dug in without a word. Anthony shook his head, his face scornful, but Ben looked at me approvingly. I managed a smile for him as well, although my muscles seemed to have grown more sore from the rest than they had done from the previous exertion, and even sitting felt almost unbearably painful.
I forced myself to leap up and help with clearing the table after the meal, anyway, earning a head nod from Danni whose turn it seemed to be. I had no great experience with children, but I had expected a house without adult presence to be chaos in the evening, with no one interested in bed. But to my surprise, all of the younger children drifted quickly toward their various beds, Louis, Danni, Jack, and Poppy all piling into the big bed, while Anthony took the smaller one on the end. His face defied me to go back on my earlier words, so I carefully avoided any indication of dismay or disapproval.
Only Ben and Daria remained sitting at the faded fire, having pulled over two chairs from the table. My back ached almost unbearably, and I longed for one of the comfortable sofas from my personal sitting room back home. But I tried to remember instead the discomfort of the previous night, and to remind myself that the aches and pains from my headlong flight and two nights sleeping on the ground would pass soon enough.
And if that was the worst I suffered, I could count myself fortunate. Memory of my stepmother’s orders to Randolph flashed through my mind, and I shivered. Daria watched me, her eyes concerned, so I made myself smile and gathered several cushions in front of the fire to sprawl on. At least they were softer than the too-small wooden chairs.
For a long time, silence reigned, the murmurs and grunts and sighs of the younger children giving way to the rhythmic breathing of sleep. Daria, who had been occupied in knitting something that looked like a sock, put her work aside and gave Ben a significant look. He murmured something about checking on the donkey and slipped from the cottage.
Daria grabbed a cushion of her own and lowered herself to sit beside me. My eyes had begun to droop, but I stiffened at her presence, my mind racing again.
For the second time this evening, the younger girl placed a gentle hand on my arm.
“I said you didn’t have to tell us anything, and you don’t. But sometimes it helps to talk about it. And if you want to talk…”
I stared at her face, so full of concern and sympathy. What would happen if I opened my mouth and spilled out the truth?
Chapter 7
But for all her air of weary responsibility, this girl was years younger than me. And she had no experience of the world of royalty and privilege and duty and intrigue and disguised hatred from which I had fled. How could I, who felt so insufficient myself, place such a weight and a burden on her?
And what would she do if she knew what danger followed you? asked the unpleasant voice in my head. What would happen to you if she decided you were too much of a danger for her sanctuary?
I pushed the thought away. I had neither seen nor heard any sign of pursuit since I had awoken without Alexander in the forest. And he had gone to great lengths to hide our tracks before that. No one was following hot on my heels. I could afford one night of rest.
Still, I felt guilty that she clearly thought I had fled unwanted attentions. And I felt I should say something to prepare her for how little I knew of this life.
“Thank you for your shelter,” I said. “I appreciate it more than I can say. I won’t stay long—”
She quickly shook her head. “I don’t mean to chase you away. We all have stories we prefer not to remember.” She glanced back at the sleeping figures, her face darkening. “But this is truly a safe haven. You are the first person to ever stumble upon us. And I’ve been living here for years. And Ben’s been here longer than that.”
I frowned at the fire. “But how did you all end up here, then?”
She shrugged. “Ben and I were the first. And we were brought here by the old lady who originally owned this cottage. Her husband built it, apparently, although she never told us why they wished to live so remotely. And he had died before even Ben arrived. I guess she took us in because she was lonely.”
I examined her face since her own gaze had latched onto the fire. There was sadness there when she spoke of the lady, but not deep grief. What had she been like? My own thoughts wanted to turn to my father, but I forced them to stay on Daria’s words. I had allowed myself to be swallowed by grief for far too long and look where it had led me. I had been completely unprepared for my stepmother’s plans.
“There’s a small town two days’ ride from here,” she continued.
I stiffened, unsure whether I felt more fear or hope.
Daria quickly laid a reassuring hand on my arm. “Don’t worry, no one from there knows where we live. And we always take care to wind through the trees in a different pattern, so we don’t make any sort of permanent track.”
I threw her a questioning look, and she explained that they had a small cart and a single donkey. “He’s old but serviceable, and we usually use him for hauling rocks. But several times a year some of us make the trek into the town to trade for things we can’t make ourselves. Once we even went further, all the way to Lestern.”
“It’s a small city on the coast,” she explained, presumably because of the spasm that crossed my face at the mention of the center of my grandfather’s ho
ldings.
“Yes, I’ve…I’ve heard of it,” I managed.
“And on some of our trips we’ve found someone new to join us,” she said when I didn’t elaborate. “Children like us who had nowhere else to go. Or who needed a refuge—somewhere far away and safe. The villagers are used to us now, they don’t question our presence. And we don’t have anything valuable enough to tempt anyone to try to find where we come from.”
I regarded her with wonder. She said the words so simply, as if they were nothing. As if she hadn’t come from nothing herself and yet found a way to do such good in the lives of others, despite her few years.
“And so, you see, you’re perfectly safe here,” she told me earnestly, taking my hesitation for uncertainty and fear.
“Yes, yes, I see,” I said slowly. “I just…” I bit my lip, trying to think of the best way to frame my words. “I’m afraid I won’t be much use to you all. I know I’m the oldest here, but I’m not used to a life like this. I don’t…” I looked down at my hands as my words trailed away.
Daria placed her own hands over my clasped ones. “Yes, I noticed.”
I looked quickly up at her, and she smiled. “Your hands, I mean. You don’t have the hands of someone used to a life like ours.”
I flushed, but she just shrugged.
“And yet, whatever the life you’re used to looks like, something happened to send you flying from it. That’s all I need to know. The rest you’ll learn soon enough. I’m sure you’ll be of more use than Poppy was when she first arrived. She was little more than a baby when we found her.” She chuckled softly, and I shook my head in fresh wonder.
I still felt a tug to reassure her somehow that I had not fled from what she feared for me. But then I remembered what I had fled from. A dead father. A stepmother who hated me enough to order her loyal henchman to take me out into the forest and rip me apart as if I had been set upon by a pack of wild animals.
A shudder ran through me despite the almost unpleasant heat of the fire. What I had run from was bad enough. Perhaps nothing needed to be said, after all.
The quiet sound of the door opening made us both jump, but it was just Ben. His presence dispelled any further chance of confidences, and we all began to move toward bed.
When I eyed the enormous bed, full of sleeping children, Daria appeared beside me again.
“If you’d like, I could—”
But I cut off her offer before she could finish. “I’ve already stolen your bed once today. I won’t do it again. I’ll be fine in this one. Truly.”
And despite my earlier nap, I now felt so tired I believed my own words. Poppy had snuggled against Danni in her sleep, so I slipped in on her other side, curving myself around her small sleeping shape. I took care not to actually touch her, but I needed to use all the space I could wrangle if I wanted to avoid falling straight back out again.
I had done nothing to exert myself, but my heart raced, and I took deep, careful breaths in an effort to slow it down. Was all of this just a dream? Would I wake to find myself still on the ferns with Alexander keeping watch beside me? But the aches in my legs and back told me his absence was no dream. And the soft pillow beneath my head told me my new haven was no dream either. And yet, when I thought of my life only three short days ago, it was hard to believe any of it could be real.
What would my father say if he could see me now?
When I swam back up to consciousness, roused by a variety of unfamiliar sounds, I found that my efforts to remain separate from my bedfellows had been thwarted by sleep. I lay some distance from the edge of the bed, Poppy sprawled across my legs, and both of Danni’s arms clinging to one of mine.
Danni must have woken at the same time as me, though, because she hastily pushed my arm away, sitting up and clambering out of bed over the protesting form of Jack. Louis had already left; in fact I couldn’t see him anywhere in the large room.
Poppy was harder to dislodge, reminding me of a contented cat who had found a comfortable stretch of sunshine. But Danni, who had sped out of the cottage only to quickly return with a clean but dripping face, soon pulled her protesting from the bed and sent her outside to “help Louis.”
The two children soon returned together, bickering over something and both carrying a small basket with fresh eggs. Some of them even still had small, wispy feathers clinging to them. I tried to disguise my interest in such a trivial thing, but Danni gave me a curious glance and Daria a knowing one.
Over breakfast I could make little sense of the general chatter and ended up having to beg for an explanation. It turned out that as well as tending to the chickens and the garden and chopping wood and laying small traps in the surrounding forest, the children had discovered a shaft from a long-abandoned mine.
“All the main veins were well and truly tapped a long time ago,” Ben explained. “But we can find small slivers that were trapped in too much rock to be worth collecting by the miners. And if we’re careful and slow we can work them free.”
“Gemstones!” said Jack, his eyes shining.
I admired his enthusiasm for something that sounded like exhausting and back-breaking work for little reward.
“We trade them in the village for the supplies we need,” Daria added. “Many of the villagers are the children of the old miners, and they think we’re crazy to work so hard for slivers that are worth so little. But we don’t really have any other choice—we don’t grow or collect enough of anything else that we could use to trade.”
“What about hunting, and skins, and such?” I asked, thinking of Alexander.
Anthony shot me a hard look, a harsh laugh in his tone. “Poaching you mean? Doesn’t strike us as a good idea. Not when we don’t want anyone nosing around our business.”
“Oh.” I flushed, once again feeling foolish. I had forgotten that the forest was largely owned by the crown, except for the portions owned by large estates such as my grandfather’s. That’s why the castle was able to employ a whole team of huntsmen. No one else was permitted to hunt anything but the smallest game. “I didn’t think…No, of course not.”
Anthony narrowed his eyes. “Obviously not.”
Daria shot him a glance before speaking to me in a much kinder tone. “Even a small village like the one near us has royal officials who would report the appearance of any stolen hunt. And a good thing for us, too, or we wouldn’t find ourselves so alone out here. But the royal hunters don’t venture so far, and no one else dares risk it. Not when they can’t sell or trade their catch.”
Anthony gave a small snort, and she rolled her eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”
I looked back and forth between them, and she took pity on me again. “Lots of the forest-dwellers poach for their own tables if they think they can get away with it, of course. But no one lives this far in but us. And it’s not worth it for others to trek so far merely for their own table. Not when they can’t gather a full catch and trade what they don’t need.”
“Oh, I see.”
I wanted to tell them all that I actually knew a great many things. But somehow I didn’t think they’d be very impressed by my knowledge of exactly what depth of curtsy was required for foreign dignitaries of different ranks. And it would certainly raise some unfortunate questions. So I swallowed my pride and took the pitying and condescending looks thrown my way with what grace I could muster.
It was a lesson I had to repeat many times throughout the day. Even Poppy and Jack at times became my instructors. I didn’t find even a single chore that I could do unaided except for the sweeping, which I rushed to do before someone else could claim the broom, desperate to be able to do at least something. And even then I could see Daria itching to show me a better way. But thankfully for my sense of self-worth, she refrained, and let me complete the job in my own, inefficient style.
Ben, Anthony, Louis, and Danni had all taken the donkey and cart to the abandoned mine while Daria stayed behind to supervise Jack and Poppy—and me. She explaine
d that one of the older ones always stayed behind to keep an eye on the younger two, but I suspected she had taken the task today in order to help me.
Apparently, the day before, Louis had taken Jack and Poppy out berry-picking, hence the reason why I had found an empty house. The others had only collected them on their way back home.
Their efforts had been fruitful, and Jack and Poppy bounced around all morning in high spirits while Daria prepared dough for several pies. I watched her work with interest, but she refrained from requesting my assistance for any but the simplest baking task.
Instead I helped feed the chickens, weed the vegetable patch, and collect bucket after bucket of water. Daria thanked me profusely each time I popped back inside, explaining that Poppy and Jack were no use for fetching water, but her gratitude only made me uncomfortable. The smell of the baking pies filling the cottage only reminded me who exactly it was that owed the most gratitude in this situation.
The others returned earlier than they had the day before, drawn by the promise of pie, I suspected, and Danni carefully showed me several tiny slivers of winking light which she tipped onto her palm from a small leather pouch.
“Diamonds,” Jack breathed, peering over my arm.
I heaped praise on them, hoping my face didn’t show how small and few they seemed for so many hours of work. Daria met my eyes over the heads of the others, and I suspected she must have guessed something of my thoughts. But her expression reminded me of her earlier words. They had reason to be grateful for the meagerness of their haul. If enough of value remained to be truly worth the effort, then others would have come chasing it.
When I leaned back in my chair after the meal, my belly warm and full of sweet pie, I remembered with a start that I had been going to leave during the daylight. I bit my lip. Tomorrow would do just as well, no doubt.
Except that when the next day came, the children explained that they were to take a day off from the mine in order to check their collection of traps. Naturally they expected me to accompany them, and it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. While we walked through the forest, I could ask which plants and berries were safe to eat. Perhaps I might even be able to learn how to set up a small trap and skin any catch.
A Dream of Ebony and White: A Retelling of Snow White (Beyond the Four Kingdoms Book 4) Page 6
