by C. E. Murphy
Pearl produced a deck of witch's cards that I was certain she hadn't owned a year ago, and played at reading our fortunes. I believed only I caught the downturn of her mouth a few times as she pulled cards from the deck, or the sharp glances she bestowed on Maman, Father, and myself. But she offered nothing in her readings beyond laughter and good fortune, and then to our delight Jasper and Jet stood up together and first recited the Winter Enchantment, an ancient poem to bring back the sun, then sang for us the first of many solstice carols, inviting us to join them in the next as they finished the first. We nursed the hearthfire, adhering, as we hadn't done in the city, to the old tradition of lighting no new fires on the solstice for fear of angering the faeries and spirits, and we placed a candle in the eastern window, to guide the sun back home again.
The boys gradually drifted into sleep, but—again, as we had not done in the city—we adults remained awake, growing increasingly quiet as the night went on, and awaited the return of light to a world that had, at this time a year ago, seemed impossibly dark.
A traveler arrived with the returning sun.
I pretended for a moment that he had come to the village the night before, and stayed there until daylight broke again, but his face was ruddy with cold, snot dripping from his nose and frost rimming both his heavily furred hat and his beard. His horse did not look rested, or well-fed, or even warm, though its breath steamed heavily in the winter air.
Father opened the door as the traveler rode up the drive, and I could see from his expression that he knew the man. He stood in the open door, waiting, and the man swung off his horse and said, without preamble, "The Spidersilk survived."
Maman cried out, but Father's knees cut from under him; had he not held the door frame he would have fallen. It took ten heartbeats before he gathered himself and straightened, then stepped into the house and said, "You'd better come in."
Once inside and divested of coat and hat, I—we all—recognized the man as Captain Stewart, who had sailed the Spidersilk. He told much the same story Fisher had almost a year ago, save with the Spidersilk's fate being driven hopelessly off-course. The crew had come, essentially by chance, on an island with enough of a harbor for safety, and had waited out the winter storms there. The stars had guided them back toward home, but the poor Spidersilk had been so badly damaged that as much time was spent keeping it afloat every day as making headway. Stewart had limped it into port only a few weeks earlier, learned of our misfortunes and our disappearance—still fodder for gossip, it seemed—and, remembering an idle conversation with Father about the hunting lodge years earlier, had set off in search of the family without telling anyone where, exactly, he intended to go.
"The cargo," Father said.
Stewart shook his head. "Not what it was when we set out. Time and weather has taken some toll. Still, silks and spices and gems—"
Pearl made a noise at this, a rough whimper unlike herself. Opal, almost as pale as Pearl, took her older sister's hand, while Glover, at the kitchen door, twisted half a smile and glanced away. I hadn't yet moved, unable to consider what another reversal of fortune meant. Just days ago I'd proclaimed I wouldn't go back to what we'd had, but then the possibility hadn't existed. In this new light, I was no longer so certain of my convictions.
Maman rose and came to clutch Father's hand while the boys stayed silent, even Jet knowing something important was happening, though he couldn't understand what.
"You'd better come," Stewart finally said. "The goods are yours, and so are the—" He broke off, glancing at the family, and shrugged, though we could all fill in the final word: debts.
"Tomorrow," Father said heavily. "You and your horse both need rest, and there's nothing a day's delay will change."
Stewart stayed, and the day took on a shrill edge as Father packed for the journey. The boys were overcome with the idea of innumerable toys again, though Flint insisted loudly and at length that he would have to take the goats and chickens with him. Beauty, of course, was a foregone conclusion: none of us could imagine life without the enormous bay mare anymore. Maman whispered with Opal about silks and fine smalls, and Opal, who had always seemed happy enough, rubbed the callouses on her hands and wondered if they would fade. Glover said nothing, and I watched the proceedings with a conflict of desires. Strangely, so too did Pearl, though she could be drawn into Maman and Opal's talk of beautiful dresses and shoes that were for show rather than sensible.
Our guest was given a hay mattress in front of the fire, and we retired to bed early, all too aware that Father would depart before the midwinter sun rose. I was changing into my nightdress when Pearl appeared, clutching her own nightgown and the new cloak from Maman around her for warmth. "You have to go with him."
"What?" I pulled the nightdress on and, although I'd heard her perfectly clearly, repeated, "What?"
She seized my shoulders, a more physically abrupt gesture than I was accustomed to from my reserved eldest sister, and almost shook me as she said, "You must go with him, Amber." Her green eyes were alight even in the darkness, from which she stood out like an apparition, ghostly and white.
I put my hands on hers at my shoulders, then took them away from that fierce grip and held them instead. "Why?"
Pearl shook her head once. "I don't know, but I saw it in the cards. I saw a journey for Father, and a death."
"Pearl!"
"I told you," Pearl said, although she hadn't, quite. "I'm a witch."
"Pearl," I protested, only half seriously, "if every woman rejected by a lover became a witch, there would be only witches in the world."
My sister's features settled into a reassuringly familiar contemptuous look, and her tone scathed as she said, "Father's cards showed a journey and a death, and Maman's lain beside his warned of secrets told and another death. But when yours crossed theirs, the fortune changed."
"To what?" Despite my protest, I found myself inclined to take Pearl seriously. She had never evidenced much sense of humor, and most women rejected by a lover didn't go white-haired overnight, either. That she had become a witch did not, somehow, seem so far-fetched.
"A journey and a bargain, secrets told and danger faced."
Something in how she stopped warned me. "And?"
Pearl shook her head. "The last card I turned usually means change."
"But?" A cool certainty slid through me, and unusual anguish creased Pearl's lovely features.
"But crossing Father's fortune, it could yet mean death."
I had already known, so it only took my breath a little. "So if I stay, he dies, and if I go, I might die."
"It might just mean change, Amber…."
"Pearl." I hugged my older sister for the first time that I could remember, then set her back with my hands on her shoulders, and said, simply, "Of course I'm going."
The others were not so easily convinced.
I presented it as already done: my bag was packed with much more practical clothes than I'd traveled in a year before, and with vials of the perfumes I'd made, as I was of a mind to sell some. Pearl, who was not guileless, but who had never in her life been bothered to lie, said I had told her the night before that I intended to go with Father, and that she thought a younger person on the road with him was wise.
Flint, now closer to twelve than eleven, proposed that he should be the one to go, as he was very nearly the next man in the family. Glover, as an actual adult, looked torn but said nothing, for which I was grateful; my family needed him more than they needed me. Father would have none of it: he could go on his own, with Stewart, and they would be fine. The argument—if everyone else voicing an opinion while I remained silently steadfast in mine could be called an argument—went on for some while, until the sun threatened the horizon, upon which I said, "We'll be losing daylight soon. If you don't take me with you, I'll walk along behind."
I saw Father take in the possibility of restraining me, mostly with a glance at Glover, and, as quickly, reject the thought. I could not be ke
pt tied up for weeks, and he concluded, correctly, that once I was released no one would prevent me from walking alone to the city, a journey vastly more dangerous on my own than with them. He said, "Very well," and in no more than another twenty minutes, Beauty was hitched to the wagon, which had its cover tightly drawn, Stewart's horse was tied to the tailgate, and we were on our way.
I soon learned that riding alone was vastly colder than riding in a wagon bundled with eight or nine other people, but considerably faster. To stave off both boredom and cold, I walked often, though I could not keep up with Beauty's less-laden pace as easily as I'd walked with her a year ago. On the other hand, I could walk much farther and faster than I did a year ago, and found a certain joy in pushing myself to keep up with the big horse. Stewart, who seemed to regard me as confounding and perhaps alarming, came around to my determination by the end of our journey, and joshed with me as easily as he might have one of his men. I was sorry to have the city's profile come into sight, and shocked, as we entered its gates, to realize that its sounds and smells, which had once been an unobserved backdrop to my life, were now unpleasantly loud and profound to me.
Stewart, watching my face, released a sympathetic chuckle. "I feel that way every time I come back from the sea, lass. After this past year, the worst sail of my life, I swore I'd never set foot on a ship again, but half an hour in town made me reconsider it all, despite everything."
"There are so many people," I said, a little wonderingly. They had a method to them, streams of passers-by going one way or another, but eddies and stops were created by sudden encounters, and the whole of the pattern had to shift and accommodate those changes. Children disrupted it all, going where they wanted, and voices, bells, wheels, beasts, all came together to create a cacophony that made my skin twitch. We passed through the chaos to the Crossroads, that inn which a year ago had not been good enough for my sister Pearl, and took two rooms that Father paid for with coin earned from his hunting.
We bathed that night, me in my room and the men in theirs, and in the morning, dressed as well as we could be, we went first to the docks to see the Spidersilk and its crew, and then, having assessed the cargo, Father went grimly to the bank.
Left to myself, I could have—perhaps should have—returned to the inn to wait like a dutiful daughter. Instead, thinking of the people I knew we owed money to, I went to the dressmaker whose sympathy had clothed us after the fire, and offered her eight vials of perfume as payment.
A wonderful combination of scorn and greed lit her eyes when I made the offer: in the city commerce was done with cash, not trade. But perfume was expensive, and mine was exquisitely scented, with a base that warmed to the wearer and made it unique to them. She tipped a drop of one against her wrist to test its scent and inhaled, then did her best to school her expression into disdain. But she took the offer, and with it, information worth more than coin: gossip. The Gryce family had returned, at least in part, and the youngest sister had lowered herself to engage in perfumery and trade. That knowledge would be worth as much as the perfume itself, if not more: people would come for weeks or months to have gowns made by her, just so they could hear in person about my rough hands and country dress.
The Noble, where we'd stolen blankets and pillows, would not be so easily put off. I visited cloakmakers and cobblers, inviting them to the Crossroads to see the furs we'd brought, furs that in our village we could trade for goods, but which in the city would be bought for cash. More than one tradesman leered at me, which they never would have dared to do a year ago, but several sent a journeyman to the inn to inspect our wares anyway. Father had tanned them well, and we had a handsome variety of fox, beaver, and rabbit, and a wolf skin from a solitary beast who'd thought our chickens were for his benefit.
That night it snowed, a thick white blanket muffling the city sounds, and in the morning nearly all of the journeymen returned, ploughing through the snow with their feet. One or two came with their masters, and they all, journeymen and masters alike, made offers on the furs. I sent the unaccompanied journeymen back to their masters with instructions to take me seriously, and by late evening—thanks in part to snow falling incessantly throughout the day, and the potential of a long cold season ahead—they had engaged in bidding wars that drove the prices up as far as the market would bear. The highest buyers left cards with me, asking that I come to them directly if we should return next year with more furs.
On the third morning, cash in hand, I waded through the snow to visit the management of the Noble, and with as much grace as I could present, paid them for our accommodations a year earlier, the materials we'd taken, and added noticeable but not offensively large percentage on top of that to make certain they had no interest in pursuing us toward a debtors prison. The jowly gentleman who ran the establishment looked at the pile of coin and, with business-like sincerity, invited us to stay with them at the Noble at any time in the future.
Everything else was beyond me: I didn't know who Father owed money to, or in what quantities, and could not myself go to make good the debts. The night I paid off the Noble bill, Father returned to the Crossroads to say he had brokered an agreement with the bank and his debtors that we would sell the cargo.
Given that much leeway, I insisted we bring the salt-roughened silks, in equal parts, to the dressmaker who had taken my perfumes, and to the ones we had most often frequented when we lived in the city. As with the perfume, as with the furs, the added value of gossip made them pay more than they might have otherwise, and on top of that, the silk had been through adventures. Its roughness could be seen as a fashion statement, and as such, had greater worth still. Furthermore, in only two days and despite the steadily falling snow, the story of my perfume had spread, and the other dressmakers bought vials from me as entirely separate transactions. We left more flush with cash than either of us had expected, and Father, once we were safely back at the Crossroads, looked at me in astonishment.
"If I'd had any idea you could bargain like that, Amber, I would have brought you into business with me before the troubles began. They might never have happened."
"I don't know that I could bargain like this before our troubles, Father. I learned it in the village, not the city."
Father shook his head and smiled. "The bank was reluctant to let me be the one to sell the cargo, for fear our bad name would taint it. But banks won't drive a hard bargain themselves. They see the money as already lost, and whatever they can get against it is an unexpectedly pleasant offset against the losses. They valued the silk at two thirds of what you've gotten for it, and if you can do that with the jewels…."
I could. The jewels were easier, in a way: salt didn't damage them, and pirates, storms, and having been lost at sea made a magnificent tale for any centerpiece of a necklace or ring. I traded perfume for trinkets for my sisters: a pearl ring for Pearl, and an opal necklace for Opal, and both the jewelers and myself felt we'd come out well. Little by little we paid off debts, until the cargo was gone and even the Spidersilk's remaining crew—a skeleton of what it had once been—had been paid. The evening after we paid them, my father counted what little cash we had left onto a table in our inn rooms, then sat back with the money between himself and me.
"Tell me what you would do, Amber. Send Stewart and the Spidersilk back out? Try to recoup our losses, begin again? Or take what we have and return home a little wealthier, perhaps a little wiser?" His smile had bitter edges, all his mockery directed inward.
I sat across from him, hands steepled against my lips, and considered not only his question, but the other money: the coin from selling my perfumes, and the furs that had brought cash to us free and clear of Father's debts. "It's enough," I said behind my fingers. "Perhaps only just, but it's enough to refurbish the Spidersilk and send it out again." I lifted my eyes to his. "Or we could offer the ship to Stewart for a nominal cost, let him take on the repairs and the risk of future ventures, and take what we have home again. I meant what I said at midwinter, Fathe
r. We've done well enough, at the lodge, and both my perfumes and your furs will sell if we want to come to the city once a year with them. In autumn, not winter." I cast an eye toward the window. We had been in the city two weeks now, and it had snowed nearly every day. Even Beauty would be slow, pulling the wagon home on roads filled with snow.
"Farming is a hard life," Father said quietly. "Full of new risks every season—"
"Unlike mercantile investment," I said dryly, and he laughed, surprised.
"There is that. But if I could make back our fortune, you girls could marry well. Live a gentler life."
"This," I said with a gesture at our earnings, "is nothing, here. But it is a fortune at the lodge, Father. It could buy us a cow and pigs. If we come back with furs and perfumes for a few years, and no further debts to pay here, it could buy Flint horses to breed, and a future for the boys."
"But you girls."
"None of us will be outrageously old in another two or three years, Father. If we've done well and want to come back to the city to find suitors and marry, there will be time yet." I thought, but did not say, Pearl is a witch, and in the stories, witches never seem to marry, and I had hopes for Opal and Glover, even if I was the only one sporting them. "I think we're better off without the Spidersilk. And," I added, suddenly cheerful, "if the others disagree, in the end, you can blame me. I'm sure Pearl will enjoy eviscerating me."
To my surprise, Father laughed again, and said, ruefully, "Ah, Pearl. It's good she's so beautiful."
"Perhaps if she wasn't she wouldn't be quite so…Pearl-ish."
"But imagine if she was, without the beauty."
