I am falling fast, yet not so fast that I do not hear the last thing she says. Her voice becomes as rich as the deepening night. “Dear one, do not lose your heart.”
When I wake the next morning my belly is wound in sorrowful knots, for I do not doubt I have dreamed every second of the fey woman’s visit. The folk have not shown themselves to me in years. Why would they do so now?
Yet when I rise, I find the delicate blue petals of Dewdrops strewn across my pillow. And when I leap from my bed to twist before the mirror, I see tiny flowers woven through my braids, as bright as winking stars against a night sky.
* * *
My joy at knowing the fey are near is full to bursting over the next few days. Both Hazel and Blessing see the change in me, although they attribute it to the fact that Father will return soon.
As if Blessing’s account of the fey folk on the day of my arrival had not been enough to thrill my blood, now I have seen them with my own eyes. It is as if I have believed someone I loved was dead, only to discover they have been alive and waiting for me years on end. If only I had been able to open my eyes and see it before now.
I determine then and there that I will forget the hurt Father has caused and throw myself into his arms when he returns home, just as I used to do. I will even embrace my stepmother and kiss her hands and learn to know her better. Indeed, I believe I am ready to love anyone at all.
When Father and his wife return from their journey a week later, Blessing and I are ready for them. Hazel has washed and brushed our hair until it gleams, and scrubbed our faces pink. For a reason baffling to me, she thought it would bring our parents pleasure to see us dressed alike, thus she commissioned matching dresses. It is unfortunate for me that I am fully twice Blessing’s width, which is exaggerated by the ridiculous frills on our frocks. However, even this cannot stem my excitement.
Nothing can go wrong. Not now. Not in this moment.
With our noses pressed to the chill windowpane, Blessing and I watch as our parents alight from the carriage. From Father’s quick, white smile as he shares a joke with the driver, I see immediately that he is in high spirits. My heart flips with anticipation.
In another moment, he is in the hall coming toward us, his wife floating on his arm. He brings the smell of cool spring air with him, of green and growing things. His smile spreads wider beneath his mustache when he sees us. I return it, ready to spring into his arms the instant he opens them to me.
“My daughters.” His voice rings through the hall like a deep bell. “How I’ve missed you. Come give your father a hug.”
Blessing releases her hold on my hand and surges forward. Her laugh tinkles like music next to his booming one as she wraps her arms around his neck.
But I stand still as death, my belly churning a sickening hot and cold. The word that Father has so carelessly uttered is beating at my heart like a hammer.
Daughters.
“Izzy, you’ve not missed me, then?” Father calls, holding out the arm not wound around Blessing. “Your sister is quick to greet me, as you see. Are you unwell?”
“But–” My words stumble out before I can stop them. “But, Father, Blessing is not your daughter. I am.”
Silence descends on the hall as if I have spoken the words to a curse. I hear the quiet swish of silk as my stepmother puts her hand to her mouth in a dainty show of shock. Blessing’s knuckles whiten as she grips Father’s shoulder, and I must look away from the pain on her face. Father’s smile is gone, but when he speaks, his voice is gentle.
“Isidore, that’s no way to talk, you know. Blessing is your sister now that her mother and I are wed. Of course, that means she is my daughter as well.”
“I am your only daughter.” My voice grows steadier as a flicker of fury begins to burn in my chest.
Father gives me a hard look. I immediately read his thoughts on his face. I do not love him so well for nothing. His eyes say, Of course you are my only daughter, though this is neither the time nor place for such an argument.
I recognize what he is doing for Blessing. He did it once for me. He knows as well as I that we are a patchwork family at best, with this marriage of necessity. But he is determined to make Blessing love him, as he was once determined to win my heart. It is in his nature to make people feel cherished. It is one of the reasons I love him as I do. Can I fault him for something so true and good?
Yet I see him kneeling there, one arm wrapped around Blessing, his wife standing at his side, and it is as if I am looking at a portrait. A portrait of which I am no part. It cuts me to the quick and I can feel my heart begin to bleed.
“Izzy, may we speak of this later?” Father asks quietly. “Perhaps I will come to your room.”
“No,” I say so abruptly I startle myself. “What is there to speak of? You have two daughters now, that’s all.”
But I have loved Blessing, I want to tell him. I called her sister and, more than that, I took her into my very heart as a true sister. I barely understand it myself. Even with the love I have for Blessing, I cannot stand the thought of Father calling her daughter. It is the same fierce possessiveness I felt when Blessing spoke of seeing the fey folk. There is no explaining it. I simply know it is gripping me by the throat so tightly I can scarcely draw breath.
“Anthony.” My stepmother’s voice is a breathy whisper. “I don’t want to cause any–”
Father holds up a hand and gets to his feet. “It’s not your fault.” His voice is suddenly weary. “I would like to rest in the library a while before dinner,” he says. “Izzy, will you come?”
I long to say yes. I ache to say it, and to follow him, and to make everything as it should be. But he is no longer mine. Even now, my stepmother is taking hold of his arm and drawing him away. She will not leave his side, not even to let me greet him properly. Jealousy and hurt are gnawing at me like a dog worrying at a bone. Though they are a misery, I am quick to recognize them as my one defense. So I cling to them and shake my head. Angry, hopeless tears stab at the back of my eyes.
“I’m going to my room,” I say with stiff politeness. “I will see you at dinner, Father. Welcome home, Stepmother.”
My stepmother eyes me as if I am a wild animal that will snap at her as sure as speak to her. Then she nods and offers a nervous smile. Father sighs and takes her arm as they make their way from the hall.
“Blessing,” I say, turning to my sister. She is the one bright spot remaining in this accursed day. “Will you come upstairs and help me out of this dress before Hazel can stop me?” I give a halfhearted laugh. “I’ve not ever hated a dress as much as I hate this one.”
But I am shocked to see Blessing’s lovely face flushed with an emotion I have never seen in her before now. Anger.
“Why would you not say I’m your sister?” Her voice wobbles.
Though I should have foreseen this, I am still taken aback by her question. I stutter, “Blessing, I … I thought you’d understand. Of course you’re my sister! Haven’t I said as much, many times?”
“Then what is wrong?” she demands, one hand on her slender hip.
“Father didn’t ask me to call you sister, did he? He called you daughter.” My voice goes flat. “You aren’t his daughter.”
“No.” Her brows arch. “No more than you are my sister.”
I can say nothing to that. Her words are true, of course, but they only prove she does not understand in the least. I do not understand it myself, truly. I can only repeat, sounding dull-witted, “You aren’t his daughter.”
The rift between us is tearing open, wider every moment. I can almost hear it, like rich fabric splitting asunder. If it were in my power to reach out and stop it, I would. But I do not know how.
Blessing watches me a few more moments, then gives a huffing, angry sigh from her nose and turns in a whirl of skirts. Before she leaves, she shoots a withering glance over her shoulder.
“I am going to speak to Father and Mother, even if you won’t. It seems to me y
ou’re no worthy daughter, behaving this way when they have just arrived home again.”
Her anger follows her like a storm cloud down the corridor. When she is gone, her words are still ringing in my ears. She is right. I am honest enough to admit that. I am not a worthy daughter. I have only to look in the mirror to see it.
My former stubbornness and anger dissipate into nothing, and in their place comes a horrid, black emptiness which yawns before me. I fear if I take a step forward I will be swallowed by it. So I do not succumb. I force back the blaze of tears and clench my hands together to stop their trembling. I float to my room like a wraith, barely aware my feet are moving.
A horrible thought slinks into my mind. The fey woman who visited me last night spoke words, and I think now they must certainly have been a warning. She knew, somehow, what was to come. Her words resound in me, clanging against my ribs like cymbals. Do not lose your heart.
How? I want to cry like a petulant child. How can I lose my heart when no one wants it?
I do not know how much time passes. It is dark beyond the panes of my window when Hazel finds me. She clucks over the wrinkles I have put in my dress by lying on my bed like a heap of rags, and she bids me to rise and eat, since I was rude enough to miss supper.
I do as she tells me, all the while feeling the empty space just below my ribs where my heart used to be. Can Hazel see it in my face? The loss of both father and sister in the space of a day. For that is what this feels like to me. I fear it has turned me into no more than a husk, no better than an aged person who must use a cane with every step she takes.
I wait the evening through to hear a knock on my door. For Father’s voice, or Blessing’s, on the other side, soft with apology or even sorrow for what they have done to me. What they have made of me. Each minute that I do not hear it, I grow more and more like stone and, at last, when the clock down the hall strikes midnight, I go to bed.
My dreams are disturbed, but when morning comes I am sorry to leave them behind, for waking is much worse.
CHAPTER FIVE
Months twist slowly by and turn into years. I grow accustomed to what my life has become. We all do, for we must.
Hazel tells me I am turning into a fine young lady, but I know she refers only to my figure, which grows gradually slimmer and taller. As for the rest of me, the part you cannot see, I know her dear old heart frets for it. She has not been my nurse all this time for nothing, and she is not blind to the changes of my heart, even if I do not speak them aloud.
It appears the only patch now in this patchwork family is me. When we sit in the parlor, as we do many nights, I see Blessing’s eyes on Father’s face, and understanding trickles down my spine. She has never known a father. How could she resist such a man as he, when he opened his arms and heart to her so willingly? He did the same for me when Mother died, and I never dreamed of fighting it. Can I blame Blessing for doing the same, when I can see in her face how hungry she is for his love?
Even so, I cannot see them together or hear them share a joke without thinking how they both betrayed me. Father chose a second daughter and has shamed me by it. Blessing placed his love before mine.
It is a simple thing. I wonder that they cannot see it for what it is. Yet somehow I am given the blame. Somehow it is my words which ring bitter and whose face turns sour as the weeks and months go by.
Three years it continues thus. My decision to distance myself is never made consciously. All the same, that is just what I do. It comes to pass so slowly even I can scarcely see it happening. I ride and sing and recite and learn lessons alongside Blessing. But never do we return to the sisterhood of those first two months. Then, it was the two of us alone with nothing between us except the truth of what we felt. Now, we are commanded to be sisters, and it has poisoned the bloom of friendship that had begun to spring up on its own.
It is the same with Father. I still cling to him in many ways, yet a wedge has been driven between us. Perhaps I am the one who drove it. Day by day it forces us farther apart. His love for me does not dim, and this is perhaps the hardest thing of all. I see it shining from his dark eyes when he speaks to me, and I see the disappointment each time he wishes to spend time with me and is met with rebuff. I cannot forgive him, not fully. I cannot forget. And though life continues normally on the outside, I know Father sees the shadows between us as clearly as I do. I ask myself why he does not simply reach out and sweep them aside. If he loved me, surely he would. I do not think, until it is too late, that each time he looks at me, he may be trying to do that very thing.
Most would think me callous to behave in such a way. I even begin to believe perhaps I have no heart at all. I dismiss this idea quickly, however. For each time I am silent in the face of Father’s love, I hear another piece of my heart shatter.
Thus I tell myself there is one thing a broken heart is good for, at least, even if it is only to prove I possess a heart at all.
* * *
I begin to wander in the wood.
At first I venture there from sheer obstinacy. I know full well Stepmother has forbidden it. I know, too, that Blessing fears the forest, which is another point in its favor. Yet I am no longer a child of fourteen, but a woman grown, with seventeen years behind me. I do not fear my stepmother’s wrath. If I am truthful, she has mostly sweetness in her nature. More so, I do not care for Blessing’s fears. I ceased to care for them long ago.
This forest is far different from the woods in the middle country. The trees here are not like the squat, woven-trunked, whispering things I danced amongst as a child. The trees in this wood are straight and proud and tall. They wear their leaves like a gathering of giant kings donning their crowns. The ground here is not covered in a soft carpet of moss and fern, as I am used to, for it is too hard and cold in the North for that. Though the forest floor stretches barren and brown and empty between the great trunks of the trees, there is yet life somewhere far beneath it, wending and pushing below the surface of the earth. It pulses beneath my feet like a promise sleeping in the frozen ground.
I do not wander the wood searching for the fey folk. At least, this is what I tell myself. Since the fey girl visited my room in the dark of night those years ago, I have not glimpsed a hint of the folk. Perhaps they disapprove of me and the changes these years have wrought in my heart. I can account for it no other way. So I seek simply the comfort of the trees and their soft nods and sighs of understanding. They never judge my thoughts. They never name me heartless.
Yet one night, though I do not seek them, I find the fey folk just the same.
The stars have just begun to poke their shimmering holes into the fabric of the black night sky, and the moon is so low I want to reach out and dip my finger in the creaminess of its face. A familiar clearing appears ahead of me. As I approach it, I find it is not empty. Voices drift through the night, as soft as the growth of trees. I can see the faint glow of blue fire bobbing sideways. Fey lanterns.
I crouch low and steal forward. Peering from behind the wide trunk of a tree, I see them. I draw a slow, deliberate breath to keep myself from gasping with pain as homesickness pierces me straight through.
Their familiar figures, tall and cloaked and still, stand in a circle. Though their faces are hidden beneath the deep shadows of their hoods, I feel sure I would know them if I could but see them. Each holds a lantern which flames sapphire light. Beneath the folds of their cloaks peek the blues and greens of the women’s dresses and the earthy browns and blacks of the men’s shirts. My gaze slides downward and I lift a hand to cover my mouth. For there are the glass slippers, the fey slippers. Silver moonlight catches at them and sends piercing light into my face.
These slippers are the most beautiful things I have yet seen. They are pieces of my childhood, tangible and sparkling. My heart lurches in my chest, as if making a wild attempt at escape. It aches for those slippers. In their lustrous surface I see the happiest moments of my life.
I’ve heard they carry their heart
s within their shoes, the fey.
The memory of my mother’s words swings my thoughts into sharp focus. A shiver tiptoes across my shoulders. The fey tread upon their own hearts. Their steps are careful and true. But would mine be, if I were to have a pair of my own slippers?
The last of the folk disappear into the shadows. I am up in an instant and running, practically tripping over my own feet as I fly homeward. When I reach my bedroom, I am breathless and damp with a sheen of sweat. Hazel shuffles to greet me, her wrinkled eyes open wide.
“What’s this, my dear? Whatever is the matter?”
Before I can open my mouth to speak, Hazel takes a step back to scrutinize my face. “Oh,” she says.
“What?”
“You’ve seen them, then.” She nods once. “You’ve seen the fey folk tonight.”
“How did you know?”
With a gruff laugh, she shakes her grizzled head. “I haven’t cared for you all these years for naught, my dear. Come, let me draw your bath and you can tell me about it.”
But I cannot wait. My words spill out. “I want to know about them,” I say. “Do they grant wishes, as some stories say? Where do they live out there in the forest? In houses like ours?”
For all that I danced and laughed with these folk in times past, for all that they were dear to my heart, I find I know next to nothing of them.
The questions are barely out of my mouth when one of Hazel’s bony hands shoots out to grip my jaw. She pushes her face into mine and squints. Skin bunches around her eyes. I am sure I have put some of those wrinkles there myself.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, because …” I waver. “I suppose because I’m curious. There’s nothing wrong with being curious, is there?”
She releases me with a sigh. Her face does not give much away. It never does. But even I cannot miss the fleeting sadness that crosses it now. “No, my darling. Nothing at all. Come, take a bath and eat. I will tell you about them when you are ready for sleep.”
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