The Stepsister's Lament

by S R Nulton

  So if he needs more, it will be accurate,” I told her as I placed a pouch full of dried leaves and two pieces of parchment in a spelled box on my windowsill. She couldn’t carry anything, but she could find the Fey who had asked for help and tell him what I’d said.

  “And send word to everyone that has spoken to me.

  They need to go visit relatives, immediately.

  In theory they should be safe from harm,

  But anyone I’ve touched may have cause for alarm.”

  She looked dismayed at this. “All of us? How long do we need to be gone? Will we be in danger?”

  The dryad was sweet, but sometimes the speed of the world overwhelmed her.

  “Yes, darling. They must leave for a bit.

  You should be fine if you hide in your tree and stay quiet.

  You will know when she has come and when she is gone.

  That evil cannot be masked for long.

  When she leaves, wait two more days then bring them home.

  To any who stay, do not leave the boundaries of the wood alone.

  If they are going, they must go now.

  After, you all need to avoid each other somehow.

  Spread out and dig deep.

  Just don’t make a peep.

  I’ll come back when things are secure,

  But only if your safety can be ensured.”

  “What shall I do with these?” my other guest asked. He was holding my bag of herbs, filled to the brim. I didn’t feel like responding in a painfully bad rhyme, so I just took the bag and shoved it in Aunt Grace’s pantry. She had put a preservation spell on it long ago so her food wouldn’t go bad when she got herself lost in the wood on the way back from visiting friends. Aunt Grace had befriended quite a few fauns and their drinking games could often go for days. Because of a spell my mother cast on her, Aunt Grace couldn’t actually get drunk, but she got really loopy when she was tired. Which was how she ended up married to a salamander, but that was something to think about another time.

  Once Ssoothgra was on her way, the rest of my preparation went quickly. I locked all of my herbs, food and other perishable supplies in the pantry. The messenger closed and bolted all the windows and shutters. Meanwhile, I grabbed another bag and loaded it with some travel food, two changes of clothes, some flint, and my hunting knife. A quick change into hunting gear and I was ready to grab my bow and hit the road. I did not count on one surly, ginger, bear of a man that had apparently imprinted on me.

  ~

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked me. More like declared, really. It is hard to consider something a question when there is no change in your tone of voice. It didn’t help that he had decided to stand in my path and scowl at me. I tried to move around him a few different times and ways, but had to stop when he threatened to tie me up and see if that got me to talk.

  I huffed at him again and prized my mouth open.

  “Away from here I must go,

  Or rivers of blood will begin to flow.”

  “That wasn’t half bad. A bit morbid though,” he mused. “Where are you planning to run? You obviously don’t believe that Christopher can protect you, so where?”

  It just occurred to me that the man spoke of my sister’s husband with a rather odd familiarity. Not a mere messenger then. He was waiting for my response, with a slight smirk. My eyes narrowed. He was enjoying my humiliating speech patterns! The troll-brained fool thought it was funny.

  “Free I have been, and free I shall be.

  I’ll follow this road ‘til it meets the sea.

  My path is my own and now I should start,

  So I guess I should thank you before we must part.”

  His mouth began to rise at the corners as he fought a smile. The sight did nothing to warm me. It was sly and his eyes twinkled with amusement at my expense. It was a look I had seen far too frequently in my life to mistake it for anything else. “Did you know that the king of Alenia has complete control of his family’s marital arrangements?”

  I shook my head, confused by this change of subject.

  “Yes, and he can even marry family members in absentia. In fact, he has but to say the word and anyone in his family can be married to a man or woman of his choosing… without them even being in the same room, let alone giving permission. It isn’t popular now, but a few centuries ago, it was a real problem.”

  I still wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but it was beginning to make me nervous. My family has had some rather odd marriages, historically. Oddly enough, my aunt marrying a salamander wasn’t the worst. Neither was Cindy being married because of her shoe size. The result was my paranoia when people started talking about weddings. The fact that the man was walking around me like a seamstress, trying to find fault in a ball gown, did not soothe any of my quickly growing anxiety.

  “Did you know that by law, if a woman marries into the royal family, and if there is no male head of her family, any other unmarried woman in the family is then placed under the control of the woman’s new husband?” That seemed a bit convoluted. But then it hit me.

  Christopher had married us. Without telling me.

  “Son of a goblin’s whelp!” I hissed.

  “You did not come to help!

  Nor did you come to give

  To me this dire missive!”

  He grinned and shook his head. He was terribly handsome, but all I wanted to do was smack that smug look off his face. “I was rather worried when Christopher spoke to me about his new stepsister-in-law, but intrigued when he described you to me. And seeing as how you were suddenly in danger, it seemed like a perfect way to protect you. After all, the princess as much as said that your life might be on the line, and we wouldn’t want that.”

  “Madness! Senseless and mean!

  You cannot want me after what you have seen.

  You cannot know what you have done.

  There is no way to gain what you’ve won!”

  My face must have reflected my horror, because his grin faded rather quickly and he began to listen.

  “Cinderella told him little of the matter

  And knew nothing of what will follow after.

  I thought perhaps I could prevent this all,

  But now we must watch as the kingdoms fall.”

  I had started to shake and the man pulled me into his arms to try and calm me. It didn’t help. He’d just ensured that he would either die young or be tortured for years.

  “Shhh,” my new husband said as he gently moved me down the path. “I have a carriage just around the bend. I wanted to meet you without the ostentation. We can travel in comfort while you tell me what is wrong.”

  Chapter 3: If you Give a Moose a Window

  Like a lost lamb, I followed his coaxing down the garden path before allowing him to help me into the carriage. Once he had settled into the seat opposite my own, we were off.

  I was so tired. Tired of being attacked. Tired of being misunderstood. Most of all, I was tired of having others decide my life for me. Christopher had no idea that he’d just put his friend’s life in danger. The Abesentia clause was an old one, enforced by magic. You were literally magically bound to the other person, meaning that if my grandmother was tracking me then she could also track him. My idiot brother-in-law had possibly destroyed my only chance of keeping casualties at a minimum, but I would figure out a way around it. Meanwhile, I needed to tell my new husband a bit about the predicament he’d found himself in. Not everything, of course, but enough that he might realize the gravity of the situation instead of sitting there looking incredibly pleased with himself.

  “I am cursed, you know, and blessed as well.

  My fate, it seems, has an ego that swells.”

  He quirked his brow and quipped, “As does my heart when I gaze upon your beauty.” Then nodded that I should continue when I rolled my eyes.

  “A prophecy woke with my first cry on earth.

  T’was one that arose before my gran
dmother’s birth.

  When I was five, a seer came

  And gave me a life filled with blame.”

  I cast my mind back to the words that had haunted me my entire life.

  “A child of misfortune, her blessing cursed to shame

  A child brought low at the loss of her name

  Her destiny intertwined, twisted in a knot,

  With one few would know, her life with danger fraught

  A child unpraised and unadorned

  Sought not for beauty, her very life scorned

  She’s hunted by blood, a fool but wise

  From ashes and shadow a beauty will rise

  A servant of all, a servant of none

  By her hand shall an empire be undone

  The heart of a prince she will win with a glance

  The kingdoms’ fates, all decided with a dance.”

  We fell into silence then, but noise of the road made it less of a burden as the carriage bumped and jostled us about. My new husband, whose name I still didn’t know, sat across from me and stared at the ceiling of the coach. He seemed to be mulling things over, trying to make sense of everything I had told him. I watched the light from the window play on his auburn hair before turning away to watch the trees speed past.

  That made me sit up and look more closely at our route. There was only one forest so close to my cottage and only one route through it and the old carriage road hadn’t been used for close to a century. Which begged the question, how was this safe for a carriage, let alone carriage horses? Especially considering the last domesticated animal that had taken the path had been eaten three feet in by a spider goblin. I leaned a little closer to the window and got my answer.

  I hadn’t paid much attention when we first got in, but it appeared that the carriage was being pulled by a manticore and driven by a dwarf. Manticores were notoriously bad tempered and had a tendency to stab people with their scorpion tails when they were upset. Dwarves were no less dangerous and were known to use their hammers to destroy kneecaps and the occasional skull with little to no provocation. One preferred mountains and the other forests; it was an odd mix, to be sure. Not to mention a very temperamental one.

  “What does it mean that you are a child of misfortune and your blessing cursed you?”

  I jumped, but turned my attention back to my brother-in-law’s friend. He decided to start at the beginning, apparently. How methodical of him, I thought briefly before launching into an explanation that would surely make me look more foolish.

  “You must have noticed I speak in rhyme,

  And it seems to happen all of the time.”

  I waited for him to nod before continuing.

  “Cinderella’s Fey godmother may be clever and good,

  But not all of us have had the protection we should.

  My mother had heard of a girl who opened her mouth

  And diamonds and roses in abundance fell out.

  She thought this hard on the girl at hand,

  So she decided to change the spell’s demand.

  Instead of rocks and the flowers of love,

  She wanted me to speak like a gentle morning dove

  And my words be valued more than the stone

  That graces the back of the Dwarven king’s throne.”

  He nodded. The Dwarven king was purported to have a diamond the size of a cart’s wheel forming the back of his throne and it had become a common way of denoting something’s value. “So you could speak words of wisdom, but right now they are often hidden or prevented from coming out because of all your flowery speech? That makes sense. But why poetry at all?”

  Now came the embarrassing part.

  “She aimed for only men capable of falling for me,

  Those not bound in matrimony.

  She thought it quite clever to weave in the spell

  The meaning behind every rose petal that fell.

  She sought to flatter a young man from the start

  So I might more easily win his heart.

  But mother has never been quite so good

  In the arts of magic as her age suggests she should.

  So, instead of only speaking this way to certain men

  I must wax poetic, no matter they be little girl or hen.”

  And now my reflection in the window showed a face as red as the roses I’d just mentioned. Fantastic. I sighed again. I’d been doing a lot of that of late.

  “What was meant to bless brought nothing but pain.

  It did not make me seem clever, it left me in shame.

  Ask your friend and he’ll tell you true about how

  I spoke our whole dance through.

  I’m guessing he thought if you married a fool,

  Marrying a stranger would be less cruel.” Then I smirked.

  “My sister, Portia, though not cursed with rhyme,

  Can peel paint with a laugh shriller than a squealing swine.”

  Although, that was more due to her personal inclination than nature’s demands. Portia took perverse satisfaction from watching people cringe at her laugh. She also loved to find humor in every situation, but was annoyed when she had to explain the joke to someone else. She always got a kick out of my curse.

  A great rumble, like thunder, drowned out the sound of the wheels and the creaking of the wood. It took me a moment to realize that my companion was laughing. Well, chuckling really. It never graduated to a full belly laugh, just sort of rumbled around in his chest. He was a rather large man. It made sense that the bigger the chest, the more powerful the laugh. Still, for someone who had not been around men all that frequently, and certainly not when they were laughing at something she said (though there were plenty of snickers over how she said things), the sound was rather surprising.

  “Does she really? Chris said it was terrifyingly bad, but he has always been rubbish at describing things well. He either understates it or uses archaic phrasing that he found in some ancient treatises on cattle theft. And just so you know, Portia is being courted by a farmer’s son in the next village. Cindy said that the boy had been smitten with her for years and loved the fact that she laughed at all his jokes. Your mother was less than pleased, but had no say in the matter after the king decided to gift the two of them with a lovely farm in another province.”

  I smiled, despite agreeing with Mother’s constant worry that she was settling.

  “Josiah had chased her since they met three summers past.

  Mother thought his infatuation wouldn’t last.

  It seems that she was wrong again

  And he wants to be much more than friends.”

  We lapsed into silence, but it was more comfortable this time. The forest had given way to fields on one side and foothills on the other. In the distance I could see the last of the winter’s snow still clinging to the northern mountains. We were headed directly for the Fey Forest, but I couldn’t imagine why! I must have been right about him being part Fey. Otherwise we would be kicked out as soon as we crossed the border.

  “It’s odd,” he murmured. “The prophecy is worded unlike any I have heard before, and my family specializes in such things.” He paused and ran a hand through his hair before turning his dark green eyes to meet mine. “Let me know if I have interpreted this wrong. Basically, your mother gave you a poorly devised blessing. You’re not going to be well known, not for your beauty or for causing any wars, but you are very important.” I nodded reluctantly and he continued.

  “You’re being hunted by family and you will both take down an empire and save the kingdoms. From what I’ve heard, I’m guessing it is your grandmother’s ‘empire’. But why?” He froze and looked at me. “She’s a criminal, isn’t she?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that explains a little bit about why you’re so afraid. Still, why does half the prophecy sound like it’s talking about your sister?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve pondered the same for many a year,

  But I can give
no answer, I fear.

  Regardless, my Grandmother will hunt me down.

  No one should be with me when I am found.” A tear trailed down my cheek as I continued.

  “Her lover is a man more akin to a wolf

  And I’ve watched him outpace a horse on the hoof.

  I have seen what they do to those they resent

  They are not afraid of blood; they revel in its scent.”

  He shook his head and pulled me to him, rubbing my back gently. I let him, allowing myself to be comforted for once. It was definitely a foreign feeling. “I will protect you, little gem, and we will figure out what it means. No one is going to get you. You’ll see.”

  One arm circled round my waist and the other round my shoulders until he had me held tightly to him and was petting my hair. I let my eyes fall shut and relaxed, concentrating on the rocking carriage, the feel of strong arms comforting me, and the scent of pine trees in the summer. I don’t know when it happened, but soon enough, slumber grasped me tightly in her claws and decided to drag me under. For the first time since I was seven-years-old, I slept in peace.

  ~

  “Welcome back, sir. You must be exhausted from your trip.”

  “It wasn’t too terrible,” a voice rumbled from my lumpy pillow. I had been meaning to get some feathers and restuff it, but kept forgetting.

  “Shall I help you with the sleeping miss, then?”

  The rumble started again, this time sounding remarkably like thunder. Or laughter. That seemed familiar somehow, like I’d had that thought before, but before I could grasp it fully, it was gone. My, but it was a strange dream. “No, Darvey. I can handle her.”

  My pillow rocked and almost jolted me from my dazed state. I groaned.

  “Shhh. Go back to sleep little gem. We’re almost home.”

  ~

  There was a moose staring at me. I was feeling a bit fuzzy headed, so I blinked a few times. Nope, still a moose. Strangely, his head wasn’t on a wall, it was through a window. The window had to be quite large to fit his antlers, though it was hard to tell at that moment. Is that what you call them? Antlers?