by Jes Young
“He said that?”
“He didn’t say anything because he was a bird. But he tapped on the window when I asked if he wanted me to come out.”
“That wasn’t a bird, it was a Harbinger.”
“A Harbinger of what?” I asked. “You better not say doom.”
“Not doom,” George laughed, “change. The starlings means change is coming to you, one part of your life is over and another part is about to begin.”
“Well,” I shrugged, “they’re right about that.”
Chapter Ten
The wall was lined with swords and knives and weapons – oh my. They gleamed in the sunlight that flooded the attic, imposing and lethal. Matt was standing in front of them – eyes cold, posture stiff – and he looked lethal too.
“Good morning,” he said. His voice was empty but considering some of our previous conversations, polite indifference felt like a win. “Have you settled in?”
That morning George, Francis, and I had moved some of my things from the cottage up to the Manor where, we all agreed, I would be safer.
“It’s like I never left.” I planned to keep things light and uncontroversial, avoiding another confrontation if I could. I didn’t tell him that I was back in my old room, the one Rivers and I had shared. I thought it was probably better not to mention her.
“So swords, huh?”
“Not swords Princess, steel.” That seemed to loosen him up a little. “I’ll teach you swordplay, of course, but you’ll also learn to wield other weapons. Daggers, throwing knives, the scythe; essentially if it has a pointy end, I’ll teach you to use it.” He smiled when I laughed but returned his face to an expression somewhere between dislike and disinterest as soon as he noticed that he had.
“Many of We are born with a natural affinity for a certain type of weapon. Take a look. Does anything particularly appeal to you?”
“What’s this one?” I asked, running my fingers along the ivory grip of what appeared to be a large mallet.
“That’s a battle hammer and it probably weighs as much as you do.”
“I’ll keep looking.”
He nodded. “I think that would be wise.”
What’s the opposite of a kid in a candy store? Because I was like that as I looked at the weaponry displayed before me. I picked up daggers, throwing knives, tridents, swords, and spears but in the end nothing really jumped out and said, ‘kill with me.’
“Do you want to suggest something?” I asked.
“Considering your slight build and height, I’d suggest something like a rapier.” He looked to me for some hint of recognition. “It’s like a fencing foil.” Still nothing. “The Three Musketeers used them.” I knew that one. “Eventually, we’ll move on to something more substantial, but this is a good place to start. This one has a double sided blade so it’s good for cutting and thrusting and also for the point work required in a duel.”
“Point work?”
He swished the sword back and forth through the air. “Do you want to hold it?”
Not even a little bit.
The guard was the back of a sea monster, beautifully worked in intricate turns of silver. The pommel, complete with two small emeralds for eyes, was the monster’s head. There were waves in the steel of the long, sharp blade and an inscription in a language I did not recognize.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“It doesn’t translate from Old Elvish exactly, but basically it’s asking if life or death awaits you on the waves. My grandfather won this sword from a Siren about five hundred years ago.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t use it? I don’t want to break it.”
“A sword like Melusine doesn’t break.” Matt laughed, handing me the sword. “Let me show you how to hold it.” He adjusted my hand on the grip. “Your thumb and index finger control the weapon. See? They go here. Your thumb rests on the flat part here, and your index finger loops around it. You control the blade with those two and the rest of your fingers provide balance. Try it out.”
I swooped the blade through the air a few times, mostly to make him happy.
“It’s a little too long for you.” He looked disappointed. “I can get something similar for you though, if you want to learn to use it.” He looked back at the arsenal of steel hanging in front of us. “Maybe the trident is your thing?”
I shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
The trident is not my thing but it turns out I’m not bad with throwing knives.
*******
George was leaning against the counter holding his still empty coffee mug. The minute he saw me he held up his hand. “Wait for it,” he said, pointing to the coffee pot behind him.
It beeped a second later and he poured himself a cup, taking a few careful sips.
“So…um…I have a few questions I’m hoping you can answer. Some stuff about…you know…everything.”
“Sure, some stuff about everything. That was bound to come up.” He took another sip of coffee, bracing himself. “Shoot.”
I thought about it for a second before I started, then all my questions came rushing out at once.
“I want to know about my mother. What was she like? How did you guys get picked for this gig protecting me? Did she pick you? Do you hate me for it? What happened to her? How did she die? Did Alex ever date her? Was he in love with her? Was Robbin? Who’s my father?” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I think that’s everything.”
He gave me a minute, pausing to see if I really was finished, before he said, “Did you write any of that down? Because you lost me after ‘what was she like?’” He rubbed his eyes and stretched.
Watching him, shirtless and rumpled with just a hint of scruff on his handsome face I thought to myself, ‘this man is not your cousin and you have seen him naked many, many times.’
“What’s so funny?” he asked when I laughed. I certainly couldn’t tell him I’d just realized he was good looking and shirtless and not a blood relative.
“It just occurred to me that we’re not actually related. We’re not, right?”
He took another sip from his mug and refilled it before he joined me at the table, pulling a sweatshirt off the hook by the door on his way over. He slipped his arms in and zipped it up.
“You and I are not related but Francis is actually your first cousin on your mother’s side. And Matt and I are brothers. You’re not related to Bennett either but he and your mother were very close, he was her advisor and in many ways, he was like a father to her. I think it would please her to know that you are in his care. I can’t tell you who your father is—I mean that literally. There are enchantments in place to stop me even if I wanted to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Bennett doesn’t think you’re ready to know.”
“Is it awful?”
“It’s not Robbin or Alexander, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That didn’t even occur to me.”
He shrugged. “Alexander and your mother were very good friends but he was never in love with her. Robbin had something with her once but it was years ago.” He took another sip of coffee. “You shouldn’t worry about it.”
Was Robbin thinking about her every time he was with me? “I feel kind of nauseous.”
He nodded, patting my hand in a comforting way. “Shall I continue or is that enough for one day? If you want to go on I can tell how each of us ended up here protecting you. That should be entirely nausea free.”
“Go on,” I said, hoping that would distract me from picturing Robbin kissing my mother.
“Like I said, Frances is your closest living relative. He volunteered to come here as soon as Bennett told him what was being planned. He and your mother were close and I think he blamed himself for not being there to protect her when They attacked. I suppose he still does, knowing Francis. He didn’t have a family to leave behind, just a long-term engagement to the loveliest of your Generals, Estella. They are the very definition of on agai
n off again; they shouldn’t live with each other but they can’t seem to live without either. I’ve known Francis a long time and I don’t honestly believe he ever intends to marry her, nor she him for that matter. The engagement is a way of keeping the other from moving on – just in case either has a change of heart. It’s sick really. In his angry, overbearing way, Francis loves you; he doesn’t regret coming here to protect you. In fact, keeping you alive has kind of become his life’s work. You should never doubt him; he’d die to protect you. Given the chance he would have died for any of the other girls as well.”
There was no irony in George’s voice, no joke of any kind. When he said Francis would die to protect me he meant it, serious as a heart attack.
“I was one of Bennett’s apprentices when he was your mother’s advisor; his favorite apprentice, I like to think. I’d been with him maybe twenty years when he said he was coming to live in the World and asked me to come too, to assist and learn and to one day do the job I am doing right now. It has been my great honor to serve you, my Princess, and an equal pleasure to be included as a member of your family.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He stuck his tongue out at me, to lighten the mood. “Matthew came for adventure and glory – and also because I was going and he didn’t want me to have all the fun. He asked Bennett to bring him and the old man surprised both of us by saying yes. I don’t think you know this, but Matt can stop time for a second or two when the situation really requires it. It doesn’t seem like much, but sometimes a second is all you need to make the difference. Bennett saw that he’d be useful and brought him along. He’s always been very fond of you, Matthew. I hope you will try not to be too angry with him for the way he’s acting. When he comes to make amends, and he will, let him. He can’t help being stupid.”
“It runs in the family,” I said, earning myself a sharp smack on my arm.
“And of course, you know why Robbin came.” George said.
“And I don’t regret it for a minute.”
I looked up to see Robbin standing framed in the doorway, his navy blue pea coat dusted with snow, his chocolate brown eyes full of apology.
I couldn’t believe that he had no regrets where I was concerned, not entirely, not when I had so many about him. Surely somewhere inside him there must have been some small regret; coming here had cost him his best friend. I had to assume that sometimes he missed that relationship; that sometimes he must have blamed me for its loss. Or maybe sometimes he looked at me and wished I were my mother, regretting that fate had forced him to make due with a pale substitute of the original. But I said, “Thanks for saying that,” instead of any of that other stuff.
“I’m not just saying it, it’s true.”
George patted me on the back and quietly left the room.
It seemed like a long time that Robbin and I stood in the kitchen without saying anything, just staring at each other. Once in a while I’d catch a word or two of his thoughts or some image of the two of us would slip through his mind. I didn’t see my mother, which I found extremely comforting.
He cleared his throat a couple of times. He always cleared his throat when he had something difficult to say, like the words were stuck and he was trying to force them out – or back down.
“The other night...”
“George already told me about the enchantment, about what it does to you. I get why you had to…stop. It’s ok.”
“I shouldn’t have let it get that far in the first place. It kind of felt like my last chance to be with you in that way and I wanted to try, you know, so I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life regretting that I never did. Does that make sense?”
“I just wish you had told me.”
He nodded, looking contrite. “I should have explained everything before I left but once I decided that we had to stop I needed to get away from you. I didn’t have it in me to switch from being so close to making love with you to yet another conversation about why it couldn’t happen.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’m really tired of those conversations too.”
“Do you forgive me?” he asked.
“If you forgive me.”
He smiled, then nodded. “So I can stay?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would leave. “You’d better,” I said. “God knows I need all the help I can get.”
“So we’re friends then?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Chapter Eleven
The break room at Bennett Falls Bank looked exactly like every other break room in every other bank and business across the country and probably the world. The neutral walls were covered with a mix of state mandated posters about minimum wage and OSHA standards and inspirational ones that featured plucky kittens who encouraged you to hang on. There was a large round table, a coffee pot, a small fridge, and an old microwave. The staff lockers were on one side of the door and the time clock was on the other. Hanging between the two was a sign, written in Pop’s perfect penmanship, which read, “Tardiness will not be tolerated.” It was a wholly unremarkable room, one I’d always thought of as utilitarian and just a little ugly. That morning it looked like heaven.
It was good to be back. After weeks of sadness and confusion and unwelcome surprises, it was good to be anywhere that wasn’t the cottage or the Manor.
“Oh thank God you are finally here,” Nina said as she stormed into the room. Forceful and abrupt and full of energy, Nina stormed everywhere she went. “It’s been chaos here without you. Chaos.”
I smiled at her, happy to see my brash friend after weeks of missing her.
“Chaos,” she said again for emphasis as she threw herself dramatically onto a chair.
Nina was one of those girls who somehow gets prettier and prettier the longer you talk to her until, by the end of the conversation, you think she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. But she wasn’t beautiful, not really. Her lips were too small and her eyes were disconcertingly dark against her pale skin. Her hair was a shocking red that shouldn’t have been natural but was and she had exactly seven freckles across the bridge of her nose. Not that anyone noticed that. Whatever she lacked in classic beauty, she more than made up for in confidence. She had the easy smile, the flirting eyes, the swaying walk that girls who are beautiful – and therefore used to getting their way – all have. Nina almost always got her way. I’d always loved that about her, the way she made herself beautiful just by believing that she was.
“How’ve you been?” she asked, suddenly remembering that she was supposed to be concerned about me.
“I was having a nervous breakdown but I’m better now.” I clicked my locker shut and pinned my Bennett Falls Bank nametag to my sweater. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to you. I just couldn’t handle…conversation.”
“Matthew told me you were having a hard time.” Nina paused and looked at me with just a hint of worry around her saucer-sized eyes. “Do you know? About me and Matt? He and I have been seeing each other since the funeral but I don’t know if he told you or not.”
One thing you have to give the Bennetts credit for, they could really keep a secret. I pressed a smile onto my face and said, “He isn’t really talking to me right now.”
“I know. He mentioned that.”
I wondered what Elf-free version of our falling out Matt had given her. I wondered what she knew, how much of what she knew was true. I was willing to bet it wasn’t much.
“So, now that you know about Matt and me are you mad?” she asked.
“Surprised maybe, but not mad. He’s great and you’re great and I’m sure you’re great together.”
“And we’re ok? Really? Because it’s sisters before misters as far as I’m concerned.”
“Have at him,” I said. Even though I wasn’t sure I actually felt this casual about Nina dating one of my cousins I didn’t see the point in upsetting her or making Matt any angrier.
> “Can I tell you something kind of terrible? I sort of seduced him at the funeral. He looked so sad—I couldn’t stand it. I had to fuck him just to cheer him up,” she said, laughing. “Am I the worst?”
“Kind of,” I replied, “but then who am I to judge people who suffer momentary lapses of judgment at funerals?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” she said, pointing at me with one perfectly plucked eyebrow raised.
Sitting there with Nina the whole incident on the porch with Alex didn’t seem that bad, it seemed sort of dishy and fun. I’d tell her about it, she’d laugh, and I’d feel better about the whole mess.
