But Velius’s fingers were warm, the heat emanating from them so strong that Rumbold was thankful for the presence of his shirt on the skin between them. Perhaps he would find a brand there later, in the shape of a thumb, palm, and four lean fingers. It would be worth it. His spent body savored the warmth.
Velius spoke once more, in a low tone for only the prince’s ears. “I am glad you chose life, my cousin.”
Rumbold didn’t try to understand his meaning, but he took comfort in the loyalty the words conveyed. He sat in that chair at the sparring ground’s edge, watching the men—his men—and let his tortured, fey cousin heal him. He vowed to return the favor someday.
7. All Relative
SATURDAY WOKE SUNDAY UP just by staring at her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her ax in her lap. It had taken Sunday an eternity to fall asleep after the previous evening’s events; surely no one had had a good night’s rest. She wondered if Saturday had slept at all. Perhaps her giant bright-eyed sister had finally come to put her out of her misery just when things had gotten interesting.
They say that secrets live at the bottom of a wine bottle. Mama had made it there the night before, slow glass by slow glass, but she’d never spoken a word. Papa just pulled his chair up close to the fire and smoked his pipe. The children perched on sofa arms or huddled together on the floor and listened to their fey Aunt Joy tell them all about the family they thought they knew.
It had never occurred to Sunday that “Fairy Godmother Joy” might be their mother’s sister—after bestowing Sunday’s nameday gift upon her, Joy had journeyed to Faerie and never returned. Joy’s twin sister, Sorrow, was the prince’s own equally powerful godmother. And Trix, their fey foundling brother, was in reality their cousin, son of wayward actress Aunt Tesera.
Nor had Sunday ever considered the prophetic consequences of being the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Her birth and subsequent optimistic normality had simply disproved Papa’s fairy-tale notions. Aunt Joy had laughed heartily at that naive insight and declared Sunday to be a delightfully silly girl.
Sunday’s thoughts had played jump rope into the wee hours, searching back through her life for clues and pieces of a puzzle she had always been. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Not yet dawn,” said Saturday. The candle was small; there was only enough light in the room to resolve her sister into a transubstantial shadow. “Life isn’t fair,” said the shadow.
Sunday considered her own circumstances: the sudden responsibility of unknown powers, her recent affection for a man trapped in the body of an amphibian. “I know,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything more helpful.
“It’s no surprise that Wednesday’s mostly fey, the way she speaks in riddles and all. I mean, look at her—she’s the spitting image of the Fairy Queen, just like Aunt Joy. But the rest of us? Friday’s an empath. Thursday’s a seer. Peter’s a sorcerer. Really? Peter?”
Saturday and Peter were as close as Sunday and Trix; Sunday understood how this revelation suddenly made a stranger out of a best friend. She did her best to ease her sister’s mind. “Peter’s a sculptor. You know how he is with wood. His nameday gift from Godmother Joy was a carving knife.”
Saturday pointed to the door. “Which Aunt Joy is down in the kitchen right now teaching him how to etch runes with!” Sunday winced, and Saturday lowered her voice before continuing her tirade. “Trix isn’t our brother, he’s our cousin ...”
“Saturday, he never really was our brother to begin with.”
“But he was still family.”
“He still is.” It was pointless arguing with Saturday this early in the morning. Or ever.
“And you’ve got so many magical powers, Aunt Joy doesn’t even know where to begin.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Sunday said. “How is Papa taking it?”
“He’s positively giddy.”
Sunday groaned.
“Papa always wanted to father some earthshaking wunderkind.”
“He had Jack for that. I am hardly earthshaking.”
“Well, he seems to think you will be. ‘Destined for greatness’ and all that,” said Saturday. Her tone suggested that the stewpot was more deserving of the accolade.
“‘Destined for greatness’? He actually said that?”
“Word for word.”
Sunday wished she could fall asleep again and wake up days ago, none the wiser, in a sun-filled glen beside a Fairy Well. “What about Mama?”
“Mama hates magic,” said Saturday. “She won’t have any part of it. She’s been working in the kitchen like a madwoman since before daybreak.”
“I thought it was before daybreak right now.”
“Then since last night,” Saturday clarified. “She’s made enough bread for the week, started a stew, scoured the pots, and fed the chickens. Now she’s rearranging the pantry.” Sunday grinned at a chore list substantially shortened. “And she won’t talk to anyone. Not even Aunt Joy.”
Saturday said “Aunt” as if it somehow erased the fact that Joy was both a fairy and their godmother. “If Mama won’t talk to anyone, then how do you know she’s so upset about all of this?”
“She’ll talk to me,” Saturday spat, “because I’m the norma1 child.”
Ah.
Saturday held up her ax. “This. This was my nameday gift. Sturdy, reliable Saturday. My lot in life is to keep busy, working beside Papa in the Wood every day and watching my siblings master talents I will always covet. They will go off on grand adventures and have stories sung about them. They will be ‘destined for greatness,’ while I am destined for nothing but living and dying a poor woodcutter’s daughter.”
Sunday didn’t believe any of that for a second, but there was no sense in trying to offer what had not been sought. Poor woodcutter’s daughter indeed. “Poor” had more to do with Saturday’s self-pity than the family’s wealth. Saturday guttered the candle, but Sunday didn’t need the light to know there were tears in her steadfast sister’s bright eyes.
“Papa and Peter will be looking for me.” There was a rustle of clothes as Saturday moved to stand. “Aunt Joy is expecting you soon,” she said from the doorway. “Your lessons are to begin at breakfast.”
Lessons, Sunday thought into the silence her sister left behind. Lessons to awaken something that had lain quietly ignored inside her for almost sixteen years. Lessons from a woman she had heard about all her life in stories spoken with love, a woman who in an evening had become a stranger Sunday wasn’t sure she should trust. Lessons that would keep her from visiting the Wood for yet another day.
She dressed slowly and made her way down the stairs one by one. She lingered in the sitting room and finally moved to the kitchen. The smells of baking and frying and boiling and chopping filled the air. The floor outside the pantry was piled with broken jars, dried vegetables, and herbs gone to rot. She heard her mother rummaging around like a rat in the wall.
Fairy Godmother—Aunt—Joy sat patiently at the table, waiting for her.
Sunday took a generous slice of fresh bread and a hunk of cheese from where her mother had left them on the counter. She sat across from her aunt and slowly chewed her breakfast, wondering which question she wanted to ask first. One by one, Aunt Joy answered them all, many without the asking.
“The fey magic in your blood comes from your grandfather.” She glanced at the pantry door. “Our father. He spent much time at the Court of the Fairy Queen. It altered his very nature.”
“Do all humans change when they enter Faerie?” Sunday swallowed her bread and shoved a piece of cheese in after it. Table manners were currently the least of her worries.
Aunt Joy took no notice. “It depends on the length of the stay and their proximity to the Fairy Queen.”
“Grandfather was very close to her?”
“He was her lover.” Mama walked out of the pantry, angry eyes flashing. She bent and began to sift through the discarded piles, tossing the remotely edible bits into a slop b
ucket for the pigs.
“In the physical sense of the word only,” Joy said to Sunday. “His heart still belonged to your grandmother and hers to him. Had they not been truly in love, there would have been no saving him.”
Just as Sunday had not been able to save Grumble. Still, the words gave her hope, small and insignificant a shred as it was, and she clung to it.
“The Fairy Queen cannot give birth to her own children; instead, her powers are conveyed to those closest to her. Father was her favorite consort for a time, so his progeny were born fey-blessed.” Joy patted her black hair. “Albeit some more than others.”
“All except Mama,” corrected Sunday.
Mama froze at her bucket. Joy arched a perfect eyebrow. “Your mother,” said Joy, “is lazy.”
“I never wanted any part of it,” Mama said to the bucket.
“Only because you couldn’t be bothered to think before you spoke!”
Sunday sat in silence while her mother and her aunt stared each other down, much in the way she and Saturday often did. Speaking. Words. Mama always reminded her that words had power. How did the rhyme go? One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a gir1, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.
As soon as she thought it, Sunday knew: things Mama said came true. This was why she rarely opened her mouth save to bark orders she knew would be obeyed. This was why she constantly scolded Sunday about what she wrote. Words had power. Mama wasn’t being overbearing; she had been trying to keep her daughter from making huge mistakes.
Only, Sunday had made those mistakes anyway. Because Mama had eschewed her power, her daughter had no concept of the breadth and depth of her own. Thanks to Mama, Sunday had no choice but to learn everything she could from Aunt Joy. Sunday was furious. She wanted to write her own story, make her own choices, not exist as a result of someone else’s silly decisions and past transgressions.
Saturday’s early-morning tirade raced through her mind. If Sunday had the power to make things happen, then she would use it. She pulled the journal from her pocket and slammed it open on the table. In a heavy hand she wrote: I AM NORMAL.
A tear escaped down Sunday’s cheek. No matter how many times she wrote those words, she knew they would never be true. She was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and she was anything but normal. The ugly words mocked her. For the first time in her life, Sunday tore a page from her magic journal. She crumpled it into a ball on the table.
Joy opened the paper, read what Sunday had written there, and wadded it back up again. “Sunday.”
Sunday bit the inside of her cheek. She might not have been able to stop the tears, but she refused to cry.
Joy blew softly on the paper ball and suddenly a white pigeon preened in her hand. It hopped onto the table in front of Sunday. Above the bird, her aunt smiled at her.
“Normal is all relative.”
***
Sunday’s first lesson was spinning wool into gold. They had brought the spinning wheel out into the garden so that Sunday could be close to her new pet; the bird cooed prettily in the tree beside her. Sunday wasn’t sure what the lesson had to do with her writing coming true, and she told Joy as much.
“You know how to write, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why would I waste my time teaching you something you already know?”
Somewhat less than satisfied, Sunday frowned at the bag of wool. “Isn’t it usually straw into gold? That’s what all the stories say.”
“Do you know where to get straw this time of year?”
“There might be some in the barn, but it’s for—”
“And if I had straw, would you have the first clue as to how to spin it?”
“No, but—”
“Then quit dwelling on other people’s stories and make up some of your own. I’ll be back in an hour.” With that, she turned and walked back into the kitchen to further antagonize Mama.
Next to planting beans, spinning was the most boring job in the world. Even Friday thought so. Sunday leaned over and pulled a handful of wool out of the bag; it was already carded. Thank the gods for small favors. She wound a leader of waste wool around the spindle and began.
Sunday turned the wheel with her right hand and let the wool pull through the fingers of her left. Gold, she thought. Be gold. She said it out loud. She closed her eyes and chanted it in her head. Be gold. She opened her eyes. No gold. Just old grayish yarn from old grayish sheep.
Some teacher Aunt Joy had turned out to be. Lessons were generally taught. How was Sunday supposed to learn with no guidance? And Joy had the gall to call Mama lazy!
Sunday sighed and kept spinning. Well, it was a chore Friday wouldn’t have to do later. She was on her third handful of wool when Trix came along and sat down beside her. His bare hands and feet were covered in dirt and crusted under the nails with black. His trousers were muddy at the knees and his hair was mussed. Not unusual for Trix. Not much was unusual for Trix.
Sunday was desperate for conversation. “I’m spinning wool into gold,” she said.
“You’re not doing a very good job.”
“I know.” She tugged on the wool. “You look slightly grubbier than normal.”
“Thank you! Papa left me his bag of seeds from Thursday. He told me to dig a trench and plant them all the way around the house.”
“You can’t be finished already.”
“I asked the moles and worms to help me,” he said, the same way Sunday would have said, “Well, of course the sun rose this morning.”
“Moles and worms?”
“They were most obliging, but then, they always are. They’ll talk your ear off if you lend them one. It wouldn’t have taken half as long if I hadn’t asked in passing about one’s family. Moles have pretty extensive families. Is that sharp?”
Trix’s finger edged closer to the wickedly tipped spindle. It was a silly question, but one she was much better equipped to discuss than moles and their numerous relations. She smiled a mischievous smile. “Don’t touch it!” she yelled.
Trix jumped and snatched his finger back. “Why not?”
“It might be cursed,” said Sunday.
Trix played along. “Do you think so?”
“One can’t be too careful,” warned Sunday. “There is a cursed spinning wheel somewhere in Arilland, but there’s no way to know for sure if it’s this one.” She leaned in to Trix as if telling him a secret, much the same way Papa did. “No one can.”
“What happened to make it cursed?”
Sunday looked into the sky dreamily as she spun, telling the story as if she were reading it off the clouds. “Long ago there lived a young girl who hated spinning more than anything else in the whole wide world.”
“Like you,” Trix interjected.
“Very like me,” Sunday agreed, “only more so, if you can believe it. She hated it so much that one day she declared she would rather sleep her life away than ever touch a spinning wheel again.”
“Silly girl.”
“Indeed. For in saying so she charmed the spinning wheel. And when she pricked her finger on the spindle, her blood sealed the charm forever.”
“And she fell asleep?”
“She did! She slept for a hundred years. When she finally woke again, she was a frail, brittle old woman with no friends or family left in the world. Realizing her folly, she demanded that the spinning wheel be brought to her and destroyed.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. When she fell asleep, they thought she was very, very sick or under a spell. They had no idea that the spinning wheel was the cause, so it was lost.”
“What happened to it?”
Sunday absent-mindedly pulled more wool out of the bag as she spoke. “It fell into the hands of a vengeful fairy who had been wronged by a selfish king. On the king’s granddaughter’s nameday, the fairy gave the child the gift of humility, along with the spinning wheel. The parents cou
ld not refuse such a gift in front of their subjects.”
“Clever fairy.”
“Clever and mean and powerful. She altered the charm on the spinning wheel so that it would not only put the granddaughter to sleep for a hundred years, it would put the whole castle to sleep as well. The kingdom would be an easy thing to conquer; the fairy had only to trust the curiosity of little girls and pray she eventually pricked her finger on the spindle.”
“Did she?”
“The night before her sixteenth birthday.”
Trix gasped.
“The whole castle instantly fell asleep. The king and the queen, the cooks and the serving girls, the guards and the errand boys, the horses in the stables and the hens in the henhouse. When the spell was complete, the fairy surrounded the castle with a wall of thorns and set a basilisk to guard the gate so the castle would remain untouched, ready for her to inhabit in a hundred years’ time.”
“But someone got in.”
“For some heroes, nothing is impossible. A young prince hacked through the wall of thorns and slew the basilisk. He made his way to the topmost tower of the castle, where the sleeping princess lay, and he woke her with a kiss of true love.” If true love couldn’t work the way it was supposed to in her own life, she could at least make it work for someone else. “The princess awoke and then the entire castle. The fairy was never seen again.”
“What about the spinning wheel?”
“When the princess was well again, she ordered the spinning wheel brought before her to be destroyed.”
“Just like the girl before her.”
“And just as had happened to the girl before her, the spinning wheel was nowhere to be found. It remains intact, somewhere in Arilland, to this very day.”
“Do you think it will ever be found again?”
“Oh, it gets found from time to time. You’ll hear of a girl struck down with a sleeping sickness from which she will not wake. When her friends and family are questioned, they’ll find she was spinning at the time she fell ill. They will look at the pad of her finger and see the mark of the spindle that stole her life. They will seek out the spinning wheel and try to destroy it, but it will be too late.”
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