Rowan sighed and pulled her knees to her chest. The idea of love made her nervous, and she and Tom never discussed it. “Well, the poets certainly thought it so,” she said, drawing on her scholarship, as she always did when she felt unsure of herself. “If they’re to be believed, a woman’s eyes can know a future lover upon seeing him, and if the man sees the fire in those eyes, sees himself there, then he can fall in love before they’ve even spoken a word.”
“But what do you think?” he asked, a fervor in his voice. “Do you think it’s possible?”
She considered this, furrowing her brow. “I don’t know. I suppose I like the idea of some part of our bodies knowing and recognizing our futures even if our minds cannot. That appeals to me. But no,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think it possible.”
“You don’t?” he laughed. “Really? If your future husband came riding into the village one day, you don’t think you’d recognize him immediately?”
Rowan shook her head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“How does it work, then?”
She was silent for a moment as she tried to untangle what she thought from what she felt. “I think in order to love someone, you must know their heart. You need to witness their goodness, and you can’t know something like that unless you’ve known someone for a while. I think familiarity breeds love.”
“That’s not very romantic of you,” he laughed.
“Isn’t it?” she wondered. “I think there’s something charming about couples who grow to love each other as they get to know each other. Why, didn’t you tell me that your parents only married because their own parents wanted to merge families? Presumably they didn’t love each other at the beginning, but now I imagine they feel all the more proud of their love because it wasn’t easy to come by. It was something they worked at.”
Tom snickered. “You can imagine all you want, Ro, but I find it highly unlikely that my parents love each other even now.”
“No,” she said, mildly troubled. “They love each other.”
“They’re familiar with each other. There’s a difference. I’m talking about love, grand love—that thing that makes your chest feel like it’s about to explode, that makes you feel like your knees are about to give way, that certainty that you’ve seen the essence of your future in a pair of red lips.”
Rowan sighed. “Tom, beauty isn’t the same thing as goodness; it isn’t the same thing as love.”
Tom smiled slyly. “Ro, just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Rowan was growing increasingly uncomfortable. “You needn’t play games, Tom. We both know you’re talking about Fiona Eira. You might as well call her by name. But you haven’t even met her—you’ve only seen her once. You’re delusional if you think you know her.”
“But my heart knows her,” he said, not to be dissuaded. “She is my future. When I looked in her eyes, I saw my birth, my death, everything in between, as if knowing her so intimately in the future means that I already know her now.”
Rowan noticed an unfamiliar tension in her shoulders. In their relationship, she was the one used to having the answers. She was the one who explained things to Tom, but here he was so confident, explaining things to her as if she were a child. She didn’t like it.
“Tom,” she said. “I know you want me to make the introduction. I know that’s what you’re getting at, but you’ll have to ask another girl. My father doesn’t want me speaking to her, remember? Can’t your mother do it?”
“My mother won’t do that, and you know it,” he said. “She already thinks poorly of the glassblower. And besides, sometimes I’m not sure my mother is fond of the idea of me ever taking a wife, especially not …”
“Such a pretty one?” Rowan finished what Tom seemed unable to say.
Tom nodded. “The pretty ones are always ill tempered. I’ve heard her say it fifty times if I’ve heard her say it once.”
“Let me guess, the lovely harlots are for Jude. You’re meant for a dull girl with big cow eyes who knows her way around a broom.”
“Exactly,” he laughed, and then he reached out for her, placing a hand on her arm. “Ro, you have to help me.”
She bit her lip and exhaled a long, painful sigh. “Fine,” she said.
Hearing the words was like a cure-all. He sat up and took her tiny hands in his, unable to keep what he knew was a very stupid grin from his face. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I promised my father, but you going on and on about your one true love is beginning to nauseate me. I’ll do it, but on two conditions.”
“Anything.”
“One, my father can never know that I disobeyed him.”
“I’ll not tell a soul,” he said, a hand to his heart.
“And two,” she said, grinning, “you must stop being so sentimental. It’s making me sick.”
“Oh, Rowan,” Tom said, hugging her. “A person could not have a better friend than you.”
She laughed and pushed him away. “What did I say about being sentimental? I’ll go tomorrow, okay? And then I’ll report back to you.”
Tom squeezed her hands and looked deep into her eyes. “I don’t know what I’d ever do without you,” he said, and she laughed and pulled away, focusing her attention back on the frozen lake.
“I can’t wait until we can swim again,” she said. “Sometimes winter seems interminable.”
He nodded, his mind drifting to the countless days they’d spent together in the lake as children, and he wondered if those would be able to continue now that they were grown. There was a game they used to play. His grandmother said that when she was a girl, water nixies had lived in the caves under Seelie Lake. They were fierce creatures, she said, that no one ever saw because they only came out at night. But, she insisted, were a man to go swimming by the light of the moon, the nixies would tear his flesh from his bones. Tom had told Rowan, and the game had been born. With the sun high in the sky, they would take turns swimming out to just above what they’d decided was the nixies’ cave, and lingering there, they would try to count to ten before swimming back to safety. Tom knew the nixies were no more than a tall tale told to frighten children, but when he was alone in the frigid water, that knowledge did nothing to still his fear.
He would feel it start at his toes, and then slowly it would creep up his foot until it felt like an icy hand grasping the base of his ankle, sliding up, and soon he would start to lose his breath. Gasping for air, imagining a horrifying underwater death, he would propel himself up and out of the water, flailing and desperate to get to shore, convinced that the sharp teeth of the nixies were within severing distance of his feet. Consumed with horror, he would plunge farther and deeper into the water, as if this would somehow help him to clear the distance more quickly, when what was really needed was a light and steady stroke along the surface. But sometimes when you want something so badly that you will do anything to get it, a light touch simply isn’t possible.
It was only upon seeing Rowan’s calm face, her absolute certainty that he would make it, that he was able to steady himself and swim the rest of the way to the rocky shore. Sometimes he felt sure that had he attempted the same feat alone, he would have drowned. But the faith in Rowan’s eyes had always been there to save him. Sometimes it still felt like that. And sometimes those days felt very far away to Tom. Nothing had actually changed since the previous summer, and yet he had a sense that their swims together might never happen again. It was almost as if they were perched on the edge of a precipice, and at any moment, one of them might simply slip off and disappear.
4. THE LOVERS
SEAMUS FLINT SAT in the corner of his workshop, an ache gnawing at his belly. He looked over the pieces he’d made since coming to Nag’s End. They were good. He was skilled, and his work filled him with pride, but he knew that however much his pieces might fetch, it would never be enough. The money he owed was more than he would ever be able to m
ake on his own, and there was only so long he could hide before collection time was nigh and the wolves were at the door.
When he’d conceived of the move, Nag’s End had seemed the perfect destination. Nag’s End was a forgotten place. It was difficult to reach and contained nothing of interest to an outsider. It would be at least a year’s time before anyone would be able to locate him.
And then there was Henry Rose. Nag’s End hadn’t been chosen simply for its wild mountain beauty. Henry Rose was a rich man, a very rich man who ought to take pity on his orphaned niece. Goi Flint hadn’t counted on the man being so unkind.
He rubbed his thumbs together as he thought. Fiona was his only hope. If she could make contact with Henry Rose or that mousy runt of his, then maybe the man might be made to see reason. There was still a way, he told himself, the sweat beading on his brow. There was still a way.
Rowan stood at the forest edge, watching Fiona Eira’s house. She wanted to speak to the girl, but she knew she couldn’t simply knock on the door. She could perhaps trust her cousin to keep a secret, but her parents were a different matter. Goi Flint did not seem a particularly warm man; instinct told her to avoid him. She knew this much as one knows to put on a coat when the wind begins to bite. And so she watched from behind a tree for nearly a quarter of an hour, carving her initials into the bark with a hunting knife. She had just begun to tire and was nearly about to give up when the door creaked open and Fiona poked her head out. Rowan noticed that her cousin appeared much less confident than she had originally thought. There seemed something frightened about her, something injured. Presumably that was what Tom sensed in her. Boys loved beautiful, frightened things. They loved to play the rescuer.
Fiona wore a red dress and a matching cloak, and her hair was pulled back in an intricate plait that showed not a single deviation from midnight. She carried a basket with her, a white cloth draped over its contents, and she glanced over her shoulder, back at the cottage, as if she were afraid not of something without, but of something within.
When Fiona chose the long wending path on the outskirts of the village, rather than the more direct route, Rowan saw her chance. She followed a few paces behind her cousin. Any mountain girl worth her salt would have known she was being tracked, but perhaps being a child of the sea made you careless. Presumably, on wide-open beaches, there was little to fear and few places to hide.
Rowan followed her cousin, watching the rich red of her cloak drag along behind her. It wasn’t until Rowan grew impatient with the girl’s lack of awareness that she allowed herself to relax enough to step on a twig. The snap finally pulled Fiona out of her reverie.
“Who goes there?” she yelped, startling like a frightened animal.
Rowan held out her hand to the girl, as she would to a wild thing—as if offering her scent would ease the tension—but the girl took a step away.
“I thought we might talk,” Rowan said carefully. “May I walk with you?”
Fiona appeared to think the request over for a moment, and then she nodded, more to herself than to Rowan. “I’m going to the square. I suppose we can go into town together.”
Rowan shook her head. “I’ll walk you partway there, but I can’t go into the square with you.”
Timidity turned to suspicion in Fiona’s eyes. She cocked her head to one side. “Why not?”
“It’s difficult to explain.” Rowan smiled warmly at her cousin, to reassure her. “My father, he doesn’t want me to speak with you. We can’t be seen together.”
The girl nodded, though she maintained her distance, and Rowan took a step closer. She moved to speak but found she could not do so. Up close the girl was even more lovely than she’d supposed, and there was something else. There was something about her features that Rowan recognized. And then she realized that it was her own features made more obvious—lengthened and plumped, opened up for the world to see, whereas Rowan had always felt that any loveliness she might possess was apt to fold in on itself, like a house boarded up for a winter storm.
“Why are you staring at me?” Fiona said finally.
“We look so alike, you and I.”
“We are cousins,” Fiona said, a blush rising in her cheek.
“So we are,” Rowan said gently.
“But almost opposites,” the girl said, now taking a closer look. “Even in our dress.”
And it was true. Standing there in the snow, one raven-haired beauty wrapped entirely in crimson and one pale-haired sparrow of a girl swathed in white.
“We must look like a tragedy,” Fiona said.
“What?” Rowan asked, taken aback.
“We must look like blood in snow. That’s all I meant.” And she shook her head, clearly unsure of herself. “I’m not smart,” she said, beginning the walk toward the square.
“You oughtn’t say such things,” Rowan scolded, following the girl. “You seem smart enough to me. You shouldn’t speak of yourself so, or others will start to believe it.”
“It’s true, though,” Fiona said, keeping her cousin in her periphery. “People have always said it about me—At least she’s pretty. At least she has that. And I do.” She lifted her chin as if daring Rowan to defy her, to say that she was not, in fact, pretty.
Rowan smiled, charmed by the girl despite herself. “I’ll not argue with that, but you could be both.”
Fiona shrugged and stared at her cousin. “You’re not like other girls I’ve met.”
“I’m going to be a scholar,” Rowan said proudly.
“You can read, then?” Fiona asked, astonished, for kingdom-wide it was exceedingly rare for a girl to be taught to read.
Rowan nodded. “In several languages.”
Fiona furrowed her brow, and then her eyes grew wide as if some aspect of the world had suddenly clarified for her. “Do you think you could teach me?”
“Sure. It would be fun. You could come round to my house, and I could give you lessons.”
“Really? You’d do that?” she asked, hope shimmering behind her black eyes.
“Sure. Only …” Rowan grew quiet as she remembered. “My father …”
“Why won’t your father acknowledge me?” Fiona said, her excitement quickly replaced with hostility.
“I don’t think it’s you he wishes to avoid. I think it’s your stepmother’s new husband.”
“But I am his brother’s child, am I not?”
Rowan stopped and stared through the snow at her cousin. “But you can’t be. You are my mother’s brother’s child.”
“Are you saying I’m a liar?” the girl asked, fists balled at her sides, scarlet blooming in her cheeks.
“I’m just being logical. They can’t have been brothers,” Rowan said gently. “We have different names. You are an Eira and I am a Rose. Surely if they were brothers, they would have the same family name.”
Fiona nodded and then grew shy again.
“It’s a lovely name, Eira,” Rowan continued, trying to lure her back out.
“Thank you.” Fiona smiled. “It means ‘snow.’ Rose is quite nice too.”
“Thank you. It means … well, it means ‘rose,’ ” Rowan said, laughing at her obtuseness, and soon Fiona was laughing too.
Fiona shook her head. “Well, whatever your father’s reasons might be, I wish he would see to it to change his mind.”
“So do I,” said Rowan.
Fiona now looked at her cousin, regarding her with an air of great seriousness. “If your father has forbidden you to talk to me, what are you doing here now?”
Rowan bowed her head. “I have a friend who wants to meet you. He wants an introduction.”
The girl smiled to herself, and Rowan wondered how it would feel to be so completely confident of your own beauty.
“I know the boy,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yes,” Fiona said, walking again. “There are two brothers. They were both watching me. One was quite beautiful, but he wasn’t interested in me.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. He has other interests. It was the other one. He was less handsome, but he had a kind way about him. A little awkward, maybe, but special.”
“Tom’s not awkward,” Rowan said, barely able to contain her shock at her cousin’s vanity. “He’s the best thing this village has to offer by a long shot.”
The girl paused for a moment, a small grin forming on her lips. “You might be right,” she said after a while. “You say he wants to meet me?”
“He does.”
“And you’re to arrange it?”
Rowan nodded.
“Well, if my own cousin is to arrange it,” she said, a big, beautiful smile illuminating her face, “then how can I refuse?”
“Shall he come round to your cottage?” Rowan asked.
Fiona grew quiet for a moment, as if she were concentrating, trying to come up with the right answer. Finally, she shook her head. “No. He can’t come by the cottage. That won’t work at all. I will meet him here. Tomorrow. Do you think that will work?”
Rowan nodded. “I’ll arrange for it. Can you meet him here tomorrow at this same time?” she asked, and Fiona agreed.
The two girls stayed a moment longer, staring into each other’s eyes. And now it was Fiona’s turn to sense something strange between them.
“You know,” she said, “there’s something so familiar about you. It’s as if I’ve always known you. Tomorrow will you come too?”
The idea of seeing Tom and Fiona together caused a sudden painful constriction across Rowan’s chest, and she began to wonder if she might be making a terrible mistake. She shook her head. “No. I know that would be customary, but I have other commitments.”
“I see,” Fiona said, not bothering to hide her disappointment.
And though Rowan could tell that this girl, so cold only moments before, wanted her to stay, wanted to talk with her, to make some sort of connection, she knew she couldn’t let herself befriend her.
The Glass Casket Page 5
