Friday curtseyed. “Thank you, chef.” Elisa followed her lead.
Cook handed Elisa the distaff of nettle fibers and waved them both away. “Now, now, none of that nonsense, please. I’ve some smelly work to get back to, thanks to a dawdling young herb girl and some clever farmers’ children.”
The rain had passed early that morning—that part had been no dream, either. The meadow before them was green and vibrant, shadowed only by the fat clouds rolling by. The children were even more full of energy than usual, if such a thing were possible, as if they’d been watered and now stretched out to the sun like sated plants. Roughly half of them still ran laundry races, while the other half were off adventuring with baskets, seeking every edible treasure they could find and presenting them to the woman who sat beneath the willow tree—a woman who was not, as Friday had guessed, Queen Sunday.
It was Monday.
The eldest Woodcutter sister sat on a large blanket, surrounded by a dozen large baskets and a sea of ivory sateen fabric. Elisa’s brothers may have been cursed into swans, but Monday was the epitome of the bird in human form, tall, flawless, graceful, and white. Judging by the limpness of her overskirt, Friday suspected that Monday’s underdressings had been sacrificed for the greater good. She did not grieve for the not-so-poor soul relegated to Princess Monday’s castoffs.
Monday planted a kiss on the cheek of a young girl with green-tinted skin—the Kate the children called “Pickle”—who presented her with a handful of fresh berries. Her slender fingers collected the berries in a beautifully embroidered handkerchief, and she sent the child back into the fray.
“Velius has released me from my nursing duties,” Monday announced. “To be honest, I’m little help to him anymore. Now that the initial rush of ocean-tossed refugees has settled, there’s not much he can’t heal on his own. So I’m here to be your loyal subject.” She raised a basket as if toasting Friday’s health. “I come bearing scads of material and sewing implements and the willingness to instruct the masses as you see fit.”
Friday blushed. Ever since Sunday’d become queen, Princess Monday had returned to Arilland from her castle in the north, eager to reunite with her estranged family. Having recently become a victim of fate herself, Friday realized it was possible that Wednesday’s spell had something to do with Monday’s presence—but Friday knew there was more to the tale.
Though their eldest sister was still by far the most beautiful woman in Arilland, Friday felt a shadow inside her, cold and swirling like a conjured mist. Something terrible had happened to Monday, something beyond the loss of her beloved twin those many years ago. It haunted her eyes and lent a mystery to her figure that only served to make her more of a legend.
No one ever mentioned her absent husband, the dark prince who had swept her off her feet and made her the subject of romantic songs for years to come. If Monday wanted to keep her secrets, that was her business. As long as she reached out to her family, Friday would reach back.
“Elisa, you remember my sister Monday.” They had been introduced last night in the presence of Mr. Humbug, but Friday felt safe in assuming that the evening had been a blur for them all. Elisa curtseyed and Monday nodded to her.
“Enchanted.”
The word made Friday smile. Ever the diplomatic princess; Monday’s greeting was so much more than a simple salutation.
“I must teach Elisa how to spin these fibers on the drop spindle. Once I have her started, I can help you sort fabric, cut squares, and collect a few of the children who might be interested in helping us.” She was afraid of insulting her perfect sister, but Friday had to ask, “Can you sew?”
Monday gracefully took the question in stride. “Not as deftly as you, dearest sister, but I can hold my own among the idly embroidering ladies of the court. I do not possess a magicked needle, however. I have been known to prick my finger a time or two.” She waggled those pale, slender fingers, and Friday felt her laugh at a joke that bubbled up inside that secret inner darkness.
As Monday emptied the baskets, Friday began instructing Elisa. She felt uncomfortable—who was she to be teaching anyone, when she had only just been apprenticed herself? She repeated her prayer to the gods for the safety of her mentor, and added a prayer to Yarlitza Mitella that she might forgive her brash apprentice for overstepping her bounds.
Managing the distaff and the spindle was awkward for Elisa at first, but she caught on quickly and was soon spinning like a madwoman. After about an hour she was walking around the meadow pulling the nettle fibers from the distaff and kicking the drop spindle from time to time to keep it spinning.
Elisa seemed pleased at her progress, but Friday secretly hoped the kitchen boys would be able to fill two or three more sizeable distaffs full of the stuff before sunset. They would need vast amounts of the yarn if they hoped to make seven shirts. Once there was enough to start Elisa on warp and weft, the task of spinning would pass to Friday and the brothers . . . but there could only be as many spinners as there were distaffs.
So, for the moment, frustrating as it was, Friday was allowed to sew.
Friday waved Wendy over. She told her to fetch Elaine and Evelyn and any other men, women, or children who had the patience to sit still and stitch. Friday called out to Frank and the young women watching the babies so that they could pay attention while she and Monday demonstrated the simple stitching of the fabrics.
“Right sides together,” Friday heard herself repeating as she looked over her students’ handiwork. “Right sides together.” She missed her teacher so much her heart ached. When fear and sorrow threatened to overwhelm her again, she squashed the feelings down, repeated her prayers, steeled her will, and forced herself to carry on.
In that moment she realized the exact nature of Monday’s internal shadow, though she did not yet know the reason for its existence.
For Friday, sewing the patchwork was like coming home. She lost herself in the rhythm, stitch after stitch, at the same time becoming one with her surroundings. She was the breeze that played in Monday’s white-gold hair, she was the ripples around the swans in the pond, she was the grass trampled beneath the feet of laughing children. She was the willow tree, solid yet bending. She was the sun, shining warmly down upon the world and finding it good.
She looked forward to wearing her patchwork skirts again.
As twilight descended upon them all, Monday and Friday repacked the baskets. Some of the children took their squares back to the palace to work on into the evening; so passionate were their pleas that Friday didn’t have the heart to deny them. Elisa carefully wrapped up her spindle and Conrad helped carry everything back to the kitchens, where they collected more fibers and food for the swan brothers.
Friday’s heart was so light that she almost didn’t mind the long walk to the top of the sky tower, and when she walked confidently through that Elder Wood door, every one of the brothers smiled at her.
Even Philippe.
8
Blame It on the Fairies
THERE HAD BEEN something special about this day. Tristan’s senses felt heightened—he had felt more whole as his swanself than he ever had before. He could not fly high enough or fast enough or swim far enough. The fat clouds in the sky cooled the air to a perfect temperature, and he could have glided on the delicious breezes for months without effort. The colors of the world were richer: the green grass, the brown earth, the blue pond rippling with sparkles. The wind that sang through each of his feathers invigorated him, and the fish that came easily to his beak were tasty and filling.
When the sun fell low in the sky, he was almost reluctant to return to the tower, but his brothers nudged and honked him along. The transformation was virtually painless; he shed his feathers, lost his beak, and stretched his swanskin with magical ease. He did not usually remember being his swanself, but he remembered transformation, the ache of bones, the chill from down loss, and the sense that his skin would split with the effort of expansion. This day was not like
all those other days, and he wondered why.
“Is this what it’s like for you?” he asked François, who remembered the days but rarely spoke of them. “Is it always this . . . alive?” Tristan did not know a better word to use. Friday, so proud of her book reading, probably did.
“No.” François dressed himself in the clothes that had been neatly folded for them and ran his fingers through his short mess of hair. The brothers’ hair had never grown in all the years they’d been cursed, nor had any of them needed to shave. Sebastien’s small beard had been the same since the day the spell took hold; the rest of them had stayed smooth-cheeked.
What would it be like to brush his hair, to bathe, to dress, to feast as a man again? Tristan missed these mundane things, or at least he thought he did. Either way, he looked forward to getting back to the painful life he had forced himself to stop wishing for many years ago. There was nothing he would miss about being a swan, especially considering he remembered very little . . . except perhaps flying. Yes, he would miss flying. Especially on days like this.
“What’s it like?” Tristan asked of all those other days. “Can you explain it?”
François furrowed his brow.
Before he could respond, Christian chimed in. “Odd, isn’t it, that we’ve never asked this question before?”
“It’s never occurred to us,” said Bernard.
“We all do the same thing every day,” said Rene. “I guess I just assumed it was all the same.”
Philippe said nothing.
“But it’s not, and we know it,” said Christian. “We all know that François remembers more of these days than the rest of us, but we never think to ask why, or ask him exactly what he remembers. Why now?”
“I remembered today,” said Tristan. “Most of it. At least, I think so.”
“So did I,” said Bernard.
“So did I,” echoed Rene.
Philippe said nothing.
François’s smile was wan. “It was a good day. I’m glad this was a day your swanselves chose to remember. Some days are like this, but all too few. Some days are like dungeons, dark and cramped. The swanskin feels . . . strange . . . as if I’ve put it on wrong, or suddenly it’s too small.”
“Is it painful?” Tristan asked.
“Yes,” François said matter-of-factly. “Usually the torture is more mental than physical. I’m fine one moment, and the next I find myself trapped in this unnatural body I cannot escape, with a mouth that will not let me cry for help. Some days my arms and legs stay with me as phantoms, unbalancing me and weighing me down. Flying is hell on those days.”
For years they had wandered through this nightmare, and only François had borne the memories. Tristan felt ashamed for asking the question, and guilty that the youngest of them had shouldered this burden alone for so long. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” François’s tone shifted, and the wry grin turned to a wide smile. “Those are the days I dunk each of you under the water to make myself feel better. It’s not like you remember.”
Philippe stepped back as the twins jumped forth to tackle François and wrestle him to the ground.
“How dare you besmirch my honor!” cried Rene.
“My poor, pretty feathers!” cried Bernard.
Sebastien raised an eyebrow but did not break them up. It was good to hear laughter again, and there was no need to fear their discovery in this place.
“But why?” Christian repeated, almost to himself. “Why did we never think to ask François about this before now?”
“The curse is ending,” said Sebastien. “Its power is waning.”
Their eldest brother’s anger had waned as well these past few days, turning instead to a resigned melancholia. He, too, would have remembered this day spent with his one true love, the swan Odette. She had shared her shelter on that frozen winter’s day when they’d met, and she’d followed them ever since, migrating westward, unafraid of Sebastien even in his human form.
Odette—the name Sebastien swore she was called, though Tristan knew not how—preferred to spend her evenings in her nest of rushes down by the pond, but this night she had returned with them to the sky tower; Sebastien thought it best to bring her there to keep her safe from Mordant in the coming days. Her form was only slightly smaller than Sebastien’s swanself, but she made herself smaller still, huddling against the crumbling wall farthest from the Elder Wood door and closest to the sky. Tristan hoped she acclimated quickly to the height and the ruckus. Sebastien kept her close, petting her gently and cooing to ease her trembling.
“I apologize to you as well, swan sister,” Tristan said to the bird. “This must be so hard for you,” he said to Sebastien.
“You will know my torment soon enough, little brother,” Sebastien replied. “You have had only a taste of what it is to have someone so bound to you that you fear losing her more than life itself.”
Tristan and Christian exchanged glances. There was another question the brothers dared not ask, about Sebastien’s intentions to free himself from the curse along with the rest of them. They knew Sebastien would never jeopardize their chances of returning to the world of men, just as they knew Elisa would weave the shirts in order to break their curse, regardless of Mordant’s arrival. The curse would be broken, for better or worse, and Sebastien would conquer those demons when they came . . . so the brothers said nothing. Instead, they left the eldest in peace and went to pull the twins off François.
Tristan would contemplate his own torment when Friday walked through that door, and not before. Now was the time for the brothers to stretch their limbs and enjoy the cool twilight. They would need their strength; there was much work to be done!
As twilight faded into evening, Tristan found himself inching toward the Elder Wood door. He had reached out for the handle, compelled to open it, when Friday walked through, hugging three sticks full of what looked like tan spider webs. Her cheeks were flushed from the march up the stairs, and the wisps that had escaped her braid made a wild halo around her face. He couldn’t help but mirror her generous smile.
“It was a good day,” she said breathlessly.
“Ours was too.” He took the sticks from her and carried them into the room.
Elisa followed with two bulging sacks, which she quickly handed to the twins, and then turned back through the door for a bucket filled with food.
“No fancy basket this time?” teased Bernard.
Friday tucked some loose strands of hair behind one ear. “I thought it might be useful as a chamber pot, if necessary.”
“We’ve never needed one before,” said Rene.
“You’ve never eaten much as a man before, either.” Sebastien took the bucket from Friday and began laying out the food for their supper. “That’s very generous of you, princess. Thank you.”
“And not very princess-like,” Tristan pointed out. “Be careful, Miss Woodcutter. Your true colors are showing.”
Friday’s grin would have had him jumping off the tower after her all over again. What was it about love that turned men into fools? Was there a way to convince the magicked stones of the tower to at least leave him half his wits?
“Arilland is a different sort of country. We blame it on the fairies.”
“Rene blames things on the fairies too,” said Bernard. “Especially when he overindulges on minnows.”
Every one of his brothers laughed except Philippe, and the princess laughed with them. For all her earthiness, Tristan could not see Friday as a celibate, prayer-filled acolyte. Tristan felt some guilt that his dreams of the future made hers obsolete. He had lost so much in his life; he was not going to lose Friday as well.
Sebastien bowed to the princess and ordered his other siblings to attention. “François, portion out the food. Rene and Bernard, move a few stones around and see if you can’t create some sort of privy. Philippe, help Christian and me sort out the contents of these bags.”
He moved to pick up the bag by the door; in
doing so, he passed within whispering distance of Tristan. “Tend to the girls,” Sebastien hissed. “See that they have everything they need. And that they eat.” As if Tristan wouldn’t have done so anyway.
There was a knock at the door; three faint beats of a fist muffled by the old wood.
“That’s Conrad,” said Friday. “I asked him to bring up some water.”
Tristan prised the door open a crack, using the Elder Wood to block his body from sight, out of habit. A thin brown arm stretched around the door with one full tin bucket, and then another.
“Thank you,” Tristan said before he thought better of it.
“Keep her safe,” said the boy, pulling the door after him.
Was there anyone in this castle who didn’t love Friday Woodcutter? The swan brothers and Elisa depended on her. Her sister the queen gave her everything she wanted. Children—both high- and lowborn—trailed her skirts like cygnets, and strange magicians popped out of thin air to aid her on her quests. This squire would probably follow her to the end of her days, should she but ask it.
It wasn’t so hard to imagine. Tristan himself had followed her right off the edge of the tower.
Without warning, the fear found him again. What if, when this was all over, Friday let him go? Tristan didn’t want someone to love right now. He wanted love like his parents had . . . like Sebastien had. Tristan wanted the freedom to care about Friday and have her care about him, without the fear of losing her forever. But now that the end of the curse seemed very real, he was forced to think about what would happen after. Before he’d met Friday, he’d wanted nothing more than to return home with his siblings and reclaim his birthright. But now she was such a part of their lives that leaving Arilland would be one of the toughest things he would ever do.
As soon as Tristan considered keeping his distance from her, for both their sakes, Friday raised her head and looked right into his eyes. His resolve shattered like the broken walls of the tower room.
Dearest Page 10
