Unbalanced, I tip forward, bracing myself against the abruptly, impossibly empty chair. A raucous, rasping chorus fills the room, goblin laughter bold and burbling, and I whirl around, shielding myself from the sudden mass of black feathers that swoops upon me. The bird caws again, flapping vengeful at my face as it pecks and claws, and I try to move away, turn away, but it is everywhere, dogged and inescapable as death. Covering my eyes—for surely it is those soft and vulnerable globes it seeks to pluck from me!—I stumble blindly for the door, only to step on my own skirts and fall. My knee cracks on the stone and the pain robs me of breath. I cry out, rolling and reaching for my aching knee, and the bird is there, all feathers and fury, its black wings beating a gale as its beak latches onto my cheek.
And then, emptiness.
Warily, I prop myself up on one elbow. The bird, a raven as large as a cat, is on the floor nearby. Catching my gaze, it hops well beyond my grasp. The movement is awkward, ungainly; there is something wrong with the creature’s talons, an unnatural curl that twists them back upon themselves, and even as I peer closer—
—the raven vanishes. Or, doesn’t vanish precisely, but is simply gone—with my stepmother now crouched, naked and breathing harder than I am, in its place. Reaching into her mouth, she pulls out a shard of mirrored glass the size of my thumbnail. “You will feel more yourself, Fairest,” she says, her voice hoarse and broken, “now this foul thing is removed.”
I touch my cheek, feel the blood running fresh from the wound. I remember Lady Heron, and the glass I pulled from her side. The dauntless scarlet flow that leeched all warmth from her flesh. Tell my sister. My hands begin to tremble. Couldn’t hold me. My stomach convulses and I lurch onto my side, vomiting a thin burgundy gruel onto the stones.
“Fetch my robe,” my stepmother says. “And my canes. Please, Fairest.”
Her neck is red, marred with deep crescents that will likely bruise. Shaking, I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. “I—I don’t … I’m sorry…”
“Hush now.” She smiles. “After all these years, what use have the two of us for apologies?”
I fetch my stepmother’s robe. And her canes. We sit at the round wooden table, the small shard of glass between us. I fuss at my fingers, trying to scrape away the dried blood crusted around my nails. What a fright I must look. “How—how … the raven, I mean…”
“I was a witch long before you were born, before I even laid eyes upon your father. Did you think I had forgotten all my clever tricks?” She pauses, prods the shard with her index finger. Gingerly, as if it might bite. “Though, for a while, I could do nought but mend. It swallows no small part of you, Fairest. I think you have had a taste of that.”
I look away. From the shard, from my stepmother. “But how long?”
“Several years now.” Her chuckle is raspy, dry as the last leaves of autumn. “Blessed three, I should have gone mad locked in this room without my wings.”
“But you could have fled at any time!”
“Is that what you think? That I could leave you to the fate I myself had wrought? You, and then your daughter? The mirror held me for so long, so sweetly and so ruthlessly—but the fault was mine. I stood before it. I asked my foolish question. I opened my heart to its hooks.”
“Has this been your penance?” The words taste as bitter as they sound.
“No, Fairest, it has been my justice. And it is not yet done.” My stepmother stands and hobbles across to her nightstand. Moving with care, she retrieves the jug of water left for her bathing and returns to the table. Gently, she takes my hand in hers. I flinch but stop short of pulling away. My stepmother works patiently, rubbing at my fingers with an old linen napkin. “So much blood,” she murmurs. “And so little of it yours.”
I tell her everything, words spilling from my lips like stolen jewels.
My stepmother listens in silence as she cleans, pausing now and then to dip her napkin in the water. Soon the cloth is pink as my daughter’s cheeks—and oh, my daughter, my darling one! How could I have spoken to her with such fury? How could my heart have been so quickly hardened against its sole delight that almost I wished her—
“Yet you did not,” my stepmother says, wiping at my tears. “And she is not.”
“Oh, but what have I done? My husband returns in a matter of days.”
“Lord Heron will miss his poor wife sooner than that.” Leaning back in her chair, she nods at the mirrored shard between us. “Take that thing and throw it from the window. Its song is faint, but still I hear it keenly.”
The sky outside is a cold, wintry blue and I fling the shard as hard as I can, the mirrored side glinting in the sunlight as it sails its final arc. My thumb smarts; blood beads from a fresh-made cut. “Good riddance to you,” I mutter. Despite the chill, I linger by the window a moment more, staring out at the pine forests that border this side of the castle grounds and at the mountains beyond, their crowns hidden in low cloud.
She could have fled at any time. Fled and flown and been free.
“Fairest,” my stepmother calls. “There isn’t much time.”
Squaring my shoulders, I take a deep breath and turn to face her. “Tell me, then. What must I do?”
I shall leave you alone. Without light. Without song. Without the skin of another soul to warm you in the night. You will pass in absolute solitude, knowing only the unsteady beat of your failing, fragile heart.
My daughter is wholly unafraid of the old woman who sits before her, smearing a clear but strange-smelling ointment onto her face. She giggles, wrinkling her nose, and reaches out to run eager fingers through my stepmother’s hair. “Are you a fairy?”
My stepmother smiles. “Some might say so.” There’s a kindness in her voice and in her eyes. Gently, she untangles her hair from my daughter’s grasp and sweeps it over her shoulder. “Now stop wriggling, little one.”
“Mama says magic is dangerous.”
The woman flicks me a glance. “Your mother is right. You should mind her words.”
Beneath its ointment, my face itches and my mouth is dry with doubt. She could have fled at any time, I tell myself, fled and flown and been free. Fear is a stubborn habit; it must be broken again and again. Though my stepmother was well pleased with what Lady Heron had brought to the castle, she refused to let me watch as she mixed her ingredients. It is not for you to know, Fairest. One day, perhaps, if you choose such a path, but not this day. I was sent instead to fetch my daughter, whom I found curled up on her bed, speaking in whispers to the yellow-haired doll my husband brought back from his travels last spring. Her eyes widened as I entered the room, and she shrank back when I sat down beside her.
I’m sorry, my pet. Please forgive me.
Are you still cross with me, Mama?
Oh no, my pet. I pulled her into my arms, held her and rocked her as I did when she was a babe. No and never again. Pressing my face into her hair, I soaked in the sweet, familiar scent of her scalp until she started to twist against me, protesting the tickling of my breath. Tickling, am I? Tickling? My fingers found her ribs, and the soft hollows of her knees, wiggled in beneath her arms until she was shrieking with laughter. Come, I said at last, smoothing the tangled curls from her eyes. There’s someone who wishes to meet you.
The doll she left discarded on the bed, its glass-eyed gaze fixed on the ceiling.
“Fairest?” My stepmother holds my daughter by the hand. “We are ready.”
“Where—where is your ointment?”
“My enchantment was wrought to last. I have no need of unguents, nor any quills save what fledge from my own skin.” She nods at the two feathers lying side by side on the table, sleek and black with promise. Muttering beneath her breath, my stepmother selects the smaller of the two and twirls it between her fingers.
“Will it hurt, Lady Fairy?” my daughter asks, voice faltering.
“No, little one. Quite the opposite.”
Quick as a serpent striking, the woman stabs the feat
her into my daughter’s chest and I gasp, rushing forward even as the nightdress she was wearing puddles to the floor. Puddles, then begins to flop and bounce. Chuckling, my stepmother pokes at the linen with her cane until from beneath a fold there flies—a raven, smaller than my stepmother when she takes the form, but so beautiful. As the bird circles the room, swooping and soaring, my fear dissolves into pride. Such mighty wings, such grace! My daughter flies as though she has spent all of her days in the air!
“It might be simpler if you disrobe,” my stepmother says. She’s holding the second feather in one hand, beckoning me close with the other.
“What if we become lost? What if—”
“Do you suppose I have frittered away all these years without making preparations? Without securing us a haven? You need to trust me, Fairest, one last time.”
I shed my blood-stiff garments and take a deep, steadying breath. She could have fled at any time, fled and flown and been free.
“Three days, Fairest, before this magic weakens. We have much ground to cover.”
I close my eyes. Already I can smell the mountains, can taste the snow-crisp air. Then a flash quiets my mind, and I feel myself flexing and folding, stretching and sharpening and—flying, flying, oh! Flying so fast, too fast for this too-small space, with giddying swoops, and banking as a wall rises before me, and another wall, and another, and there—the window and through it to the open air. From behind me, a black arrow shoots. She wheels and caws, and there at her tail is the smaller bird, the beloved bird—oh, my beloved bird!
I follow them both, our wings beating us through the clear and boundless sky.
When death comes at last, your hair will be silvered and your bones grown thin with years. I will stay by your side, spinning sweet tales of fairies and goblins, of soft-hearted dwarves and maidens bold and fearful and true. The birds, too, will come to honour your passing, ravens and crows and all the souls of the air. Do you see them, stepmother? Do you see them flying, so fast and so free?
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Kirstyn McDermott
Art copyright © 2018 by Audrey Benjaminsen
Triquetra Page 4
