A Wish Made Of Glass

by Ashlee Willis

  CHAPTER TWO

  Father tells me we are to leave the middle country. Our home is to be sold, its ghosts and memories given over to a faceless family who will never care for them. His new wife lives in the North, so it is to the North we must go to begin life anew.

  At first I can scarcely stomach it. I thought I was angry before, but now I am snapping and spitting with a fury like consuming fire. One thing alone keeps me from locking myself in my room and refusing to leave my home. It is the thought of my father’s wife. At least she will not tread these floors, I think. At least she will not put her hands on my mother’s things and haunt the rooms where my mother lived and died. It is this thought alone which gives me any happiness in leaving my home.

  Still, even the comfort of this thought hits me with something that feels close to pain.

  The next weeks are a flurry of preparations as the servants pack and carry. Though I am only fourteen, I have taken charge of the details of my father’s travels many times before. However, this journey is one I cannot keep my heart from rebelling against, and I refuse to take part in organizing it. Father sees and says nothing. He has grown nearly as quiet as I these past days.

  At last the final plans are laid and the day of our departure arrives. As our carriage rumbles down the lane, it pleases me to imagine a part of myself, broken off from who I am now, standing on the lawn beneath the sweep of willow branches. I can picture how she is waving goodbye. And though I am leaving her behind, she is yet smiling. For she will stay to haunt the shadows of the empty rooms here and walk the wood and dance in the glade. She will never be troubled by sorrow again. I make a silent, solemn wish that she will one day come and find me.

  Hazel holds my hand. Though I want to pull it from her and tell her I am not a child, I refrain. It comes to me that it would be foolish to push away even the tiniest bit of comfort, when I have so little left at all. My gaze is drawn to Father’s face. He sits across from us in the carriage, silent and grim. His head is turned as if he is gazing out the window, although instinct tells me his eyes focus only on empty space. He is pale and there are silver strands in the black of his beard I never noticed before. I realize with a jolt that his pain is as great as mine. Perhaps he just has a different way of showing it.

  My hand flutters with the impulse to reach out to him, to say a word or offer a touch which might take some of the anguish from his eyes. But then I remember that he has offered me no such word or touch of comfort. Stubbornness flares in me, strengthened by the pain already there. My hand lies quiet on my lap and I close my eyes.

  It is a long journey to the North, and it gets colder each mile of the way. Just as I begin to give up hope that we will ever arrive, we do. Father’s team of horses pulls our carriage past the square frosty hedges of a sprawling garden. I can see the pointy heads of dwarf evergreens, speckled here and there and tipped with snowy caps. At the end of the long drive, the house regards us like a proud white cat sitting on its haunches. It watches me as though I am the mouse it will devour for supper.

  * * *

  I told my father already, in no uncertain terms, that I cannot call this new woman Mother. He was quick to agree, and asked simply that I call her Stepmother. I cannot refuse him this small thing. Besides, it will not inconvenience me so very much to call her this, for I plan on calling her nothing at all unless there is no help for it.

  As we stamp snow from our shoes in the entrance hall, a woman sweeps down the stairs to greet us. It can be no one but my father’s wife, yet I am astonished to see that she is nothing like I imagined. She is hardly taller than I am. Her faded gold hair is piled plainly but elegantly on her head. The figure beneath her tasteful dress is plump and comfortable. In her bright gaze and in the shape of her face I see she was once a beauty. She forgets to offer me a smile in her rush to get to Father’s side. It is exactly the thing I have done many times before. When I see her do it, pain lurches in my breast, as if stone is growing around the edges of my heart.

  “Stepmother.” The curtsy I sweep is over-deep, just bordering on mockery.

  “Isidore.” She nods, but shows no indication of understanding the irony of my display. Indeed, she is finding it hard to tear her eyes from my father. I must take a slow breath to keep myself from shouting at her to release him.

  At last she turns, a slight flush on her face, and says, “And my daughter, your new sister.” One of her white hands goes out to indicate a figure who is standing at the edge of the shadows in the corner of the hall. I give a little start. I had not seen her there.

  “This is Blessing,” my stepmother says, and I hear the whisper of slippered shoes as Blessing steps from the shadows.

  I freeze when I see her face. For a moment, I think madly that she must be one of the fey. I have never seen such perfection in anyone’s features but theirs. Blessing’s smile is shy. Her eyes are like sapphires fixed upon my face. I find I cannot keep myself from smiling back at her.

  She is of an age with me, but that is where our similarities end. Where I am lumpiness and childish bulges, Blessing is slender elegance, budding already into delicate womanhood. Where my hair is coarse and dark as a raven’s, Blessing’s is fine liquid gold streaming over her shoulders.

  Her curtsy to me is light as air and, as I return it, I suddenly feel as awkward as the performing bear in the circus Mother and I once visited. But when I look up, Blessing’s smile has grown into a grin and her large eyes sparkle. It is a blast of warmth on the chill at my core.

  “Well, girls, you run along and get acquainted with one another,” Father says. “We shall see you at dinnertime.”

  I feel a fleeting stab of betrayal that Father would think to leave me like this, awkwardly, with a stranger and in a strange place. And not just any stranger, but someone he insists I call sister. Not just any place, but this cold, vast house he insists is to be my new home.

  Blessing’s warm hand wriggles into mine. “We could get you unpacked,” she says, and my face falls, for I am bored just thinking of it. Then I notice the gleam of mischief in her eyes as she continues, “But I’d much rather show you the hideaways in the house. There are even one or two Mother doesn’t know about.”

  I am unwilling to smile, yet somehow there is one slipping onto my lips. I am unwilling to accept so swiftly what I have raged against for weeks, yet I am nodding before I can stop myself.

  “Hideaways?” I say. “Truly?”

  Blessing’s golden curls bob as her head moves up and down. “Of course! This fusty old house has plenty. I’ve lived here my whole life and have had lots of time to find them. You must promise not to tell anyone when I show you. Swear?”

  “Yes!” I breathe. I am utterly drawn in. The worry of these past days falls from my shoulders. Even the lingering sadness from Mother’s death is not so sharp in this moment. I am once again a child, ready to play childish games.

  “There is time to show you one before dinner,” Blessing says, tugging me along up the stairs. “It’s behind the attic stairwell. We must wait to see the other hiding places, but there will be plenty of time later.”

  I follow her willingly. I do not even look over my shoulder to glance at the resentment I leave behind me like a cast-off rag.

  By all rights I should hate her, this beautiful creature who is everything I am not, who is everything I should be. Yet a cord has been woven between us at this crucial moment, in these fragile seconds. Cords like this one often prove strongest.

  Just like that, we are sisters.

  * * *

  Father and his new wife leave on their wedding journey three days later. They tell us they will be gone two months. Again I feel the sting of betrayal. I wonder that Father is marrying this woman of necessity, yet spending two months of pleasure far from me. Has he not told me many times I am the one who holds his heart? I begin to doubt I have ever had it at all. I begin to wonder if the closeness I felt between us these years was merely a cruel mirage.

  Yet Blessing is with
me in the swirl of snow on the wide front stairs as we bid our parents farewell. And when I see the pain in her face as the carriage disappears from sight, I tuck her arm against mine with a squeeze. My father has left me alone here on the verge of this new and strange life. Her mother has done the same.

  It is another cord woven between us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The North is cursed cold, I soon learn. Yet a frosty garden proves a perfect place for young girls to amuse themselves. We run along the stony, twisting paths and through a maze of hedges in a game of chase and find. When we tire of that, we sit on the icy iron bench nestled beneath the branches of a fir tree and do our secret-telling.

  The whispered confidences of two girls of fourteen are doubtless laughable to most. But Blessing and I know they are sacred. We know they are merely a way of promising, a swearing of our newly found sisterhood. Boys spit on their palms or cut their fingers and let the blood run together. Girls tell secrets. So we tell ours, and before a week is gone there is almost no corner of my heart Blessing has not seen. She is my sister now, in truth.

  When Father has been gone a month, the trees begin showing tiny green and pink buds. By the time he returns, the whole countryside will be awash with spring. It will come a full month later than our springtime in the middle country, true, but the North is almost a world of its own. It wears its frost as a queen of snow might wear her royal cloak, proud and white. The North is so different, in fact, I catch myself wondering if the fey folk are here as Hazel claimed they would be. The prick of homesickness, sharp and thin as a needle, reaches my heart at the thought of that. Not merely a longing for my homeland and the house of my childhood, but a longing for the folk themselves, the fey who used to love me so.

  At least, I imagined they loved me, before I knew it was all pretend.

  One day, as Blessing and I approach the farthest side of the garden, I stop. “What’s beyond these bushes?” I ask, hopping awkwardly on tip-toe to see over the tall hedge.

  “Only the forest.” Blessing’s voice is dismissive.

  “How can you say only the forest?” I ask, aghast. “No forest is only a forest.”

  The memory comes of fey feet dancing, quick as light and shadow on the mossy forest floor. I try to push it away, but it is too late. My heart is fluttering against my ribs and I know nothing will stop me from getting a glimpse of this forest Blessing dismisses so easily.

  “Izzy, what in the world are you doing?” Blessing watches with wide eyes as I grunt and heave, pushing the hedges apart to make a path between them. It is no small feat for a girl like me who is more accustomed to books and chocolate than to vigorous activity such as this. In less than two minutes there is dampness beneath my arms and beading on my forehead.

  “Help me, Blessing,” I say irritably. Just as I think I must be close to working my way out the other side, a hand grasps my shoulder. Blessing yanks me away from the hedge with a strength I never would have credited.

  I open my mouth to say something sharp to her, but fall silent when I see how white her face is, and how large her blue eyes in it. “It’s forbidden,” she whispers. “I am forbidden to go there and so are you. What did you think you were doing, Iz?”

  I gape at her a moment and then do the only thing I can think of. I laugh. “What do you mean, forbidden? Who says so? Why?”

  “Mother has always said so, since I was a child.” Blessing casts a glance at the ragged hole I have worked in the hedge. “Once you’ve lived in the North long enough, you’ll understand.”

  Now I am well and truly exasperated. “So there are monsters in the forest, is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No.” Blessing’s chin lifts a little. She is offended I would accuse her of believing in monsters. Very well, then.

  “Well, I won’t know until someone tells me,” I remind her none too gently. “But,” I shrug, “if you are too frightened to speak of it …”

  Before I can take full advantage of my own bluff by turning from her, Blessing blurts, “It is the fey.”

  My heart begins to thunder so loud it will be a miracle if anyone in the North does not hear it.

  “What?” I manage to croak at last. I work hard to control my face, though I fear it is of little use. I nearly spill everything then. I nearly hand Blessing this one last secret, the only one I have kept from her. That I have known the fey. Danced with them, sang with them, touched their hands.

  But I do not tell it. I do not speak. Somehow I cannot. My mouth will not cooperate. My throat contracts in rebellion. If I am honest, I know it is because this secret is my most precious. I am not sure if I could hand it so easily to anyone. Even Blessing.

  So I say, hating myself for uttering the words, “Stories? Wives tales, do you mean, about fairies and such? Surely you don’t believe in those things, Blessing.”

  Blessing’s hair bounces on her shoulders as she shakes her head. “I thought they were,” she says. “All my life I thought they were simply stories told to keep children from wandering too far. Until …” Her expression changes. One moment it is fearful and the next it is full of a strange but undeniable calm. That is when I know for certain she has seen the fey for herself.

  “When did you see them?” I cut quickly to the core of it. Jealousy rages beneath my skin, screams in each beat of my heart. The fey were mine. Are mine. Now I face the thought that perhaps I am no more special than anyone else who happens to wander into their wood.

  Blessing’s mouth turns up in a guileless smile and she takes my hand. I walk beside her like a wooden toy, staring straight ahead as we make our way to the house.

  “It was just once,” she says. “It was the very day you arrived, Izzy. In the morning, when I was sick with worry at your arrival, I looked out my window.” She sighs, remembering. “There they were, a half a dozen of them, straight and strong beneath their cloaks. I nearly missed them, for the mist was thick all around the edge of the wood. But somehow I think they wanted to be seen. They wished me to see them, so I would know everything would be fine.”

  It takes me a moment to understand. Then it is all I can do not to whoop with joy right there on the front steps of the house. As it is, I am nearly drowning in happiness.

  They came for me. They followed me. They are here in this frozen land, far from their home, because of their love for me.

  The disbelief I clung to these past three years falls away like chaff. I am amazed it took me so long to see through its flimsy mask.

  They came on the day I arrived. They came for me, my shameless heart sings.

  I grin at Blessing. I cannot help it. She grins back. The wind ruffles the fur on our hooded cloaks, so sweet it is as if spring herself has reached down to kiss us.

  “Do you believe me?” she asks, drawing her brows together in a charming show of worry.

  “Yes, I do.” I lean to give her a swift kiss on the cheek. This new knowledge has burned away the bile of jealousy I felt moments before. “I will always believe you, no matter what.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The deepest hour of the night has come, the hour the night birds and the insects revere with their silence. I cannot think what woke me. Stillness ripples like silk all around my chamber. Yet something is different. The air is thick with an unspoken, undeniable promise.

  I go still at the touch of something on my hair. It is a caress, delicate as a moonbeam. This night is so strange, anything may be possible. That is the only way I can account for the feeling that rises in me, half anguish and half elation. As I twist around beneath the covers, the word slips from my mouth before I can call it back.

  “Mother.”

  But the face I look into is not my mother’s. It is the face of a young woman, beautiful and lithe as a willow. I know at once she is one of the fey folk. The tips of her ears curve into gentle points beneath the swoop of her hair. Shadows move across her features, and it is hard to tell, but I think she is familiar to me. She looks to be not many years older than
I, though the fey do not age as humans do. She might be a century old or more for all I know.

  As I shift to sit up, she clicks her tongue against her teeth. “No, no,” she says. “Lie still. I’m nearly finished.”

  Obediently, I stop moving. All but my head, which I turn slowly to see what she is doing. Her long fingers are working my hair into a series of looping, intricate braids. I give a little gasp when I see that each twist of the braid is interlaced with dozens of tiny flowers. They are Northern flowers. I have seen them over the garden hedge, scattered at the edge of the forest. Blessing told me they are called Dewdrops. The fair, watery blue of them is a striking contrast with the black of my hair.

  “There!” The fey girl says with a satisfied breath. A smile flits to her mouth and is gone in the space of a moment. “Finished.”

  “It’s lovely,” I whisper, although my gaze is still fastened on her face. “Thank you.”

  I am not sure what to do or what to say. I am almost afraid to move at all for fear this is a dream and it will disperse like fog if I dare to breathe on it. Yet the fey girl’s hand is real enough as she rests it coolly on my arm.

  “Isidore,” she says softly. I wait to see if she will say more, but she allows silences to unravel between us.

  Her hair is the color of rich earth and her eyes are as green as forest ferns. They are the eyes of a friend, I am sure. The night is so still and her presence is so comforting that I begin to grow drowsy. It is just as my eyes begin to flutter closed that I remember how I know her. She used to play the fiddle as I danced in the fey glade, her bare feet tapping the rhythm upon the moss between the bright, speckled toadstools.

  I open my mouth to whisper this memory to her, but she is speaking already.

  “Be strong, Isidore,” she says, squeezing my hand as if she would transfer strength straight to my veins. Over her shoulder, from within the deeper shadows of my room, I think I see the glint of midnight eyes. I lift up on one elbow, straining to see the face to whom they belong. But her voice is a lullaby I cannot resist, and I am suddenly weary to my bones.