Stepsister

by Jennifer Donnelly

Two more mice emerged from the ruins dragging something behind them. They presented it to her. It was a bracelet made of small gold links; a little gold heart with a ruby in its center dangled from one of the links. Her father had given it to her. It was covered with soot, but that could be wiped away.

  The ring would pay for Nero. The bracelet would buy her freedom. She could sell it and use the money to rent a room in the village for herself and her family. They could be free of Madame, her cows, and her cabbages.

  Humbled by the gifts, Isabelle placed her hand on the ground, palm up, in front of the mother mouse. The mouse hesitated, then climbed on. Isabelle lifted her up until they were eye to eye.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You don’t know what this means to me. I’ll never be able to repay you.”

  She kissed the mouse on the top of her head and gently set her down. Then she got up, clutching her jewels, and headed out of the ruins.

  The sun was peeking over the horizon now. Songbirds were welcoming the dawn. By the time Isabelle reached the road, she was running.

  “You came back,” the burly man said as he unlocked the gate. “I didn’t think you would. Do you have my money?”

  Isabelle, who had reached the gates only a minute before he had, was bent over, her hands on her knees, struggling to catch her breath. She’d run the whole way from the Maison Douleur to the slaughter yard without stopping.

  “I have this,” she said, straightening. She dug in her pocket, pulled out the ring, and handed it to him.

  He handed it back, aggrieved. “I said four livres, not a ring! Do I look like a pawnbroker?”

  Panic seized her. Never for a second had she considered that he might not accept it. “But it—it’s gold. It’s worth more than four livres,” she stammered.

  The man waved her words away. “I’ll have to sell it to the jeweler. He’s a tightwad. It’s a lot of trouble.”

  “Please …” Isabelle begged. Her voice broke.

  The man glanced at her, then tried to look away but couldn’t. Her face was streaked with soot. Her dress was soaked with sweat. One sleeve was stained with blood.

  “Please don’t kill my horse,” she finished.

  The man looked past her, down the street. He swore. Muttered that he was a soft touch, always had been, that it would be his undoing. Then he pocketed the ring.

  “Go get him,” he said, nodding toward the yard. “But be quick about it. Before I change my mind.”

  Isabelle didn’t give him the chance.

  “Nero!” she cried.

  The horse was standing at the far end of the yard, tied to a post. His ears pricked up when he heard Isabelle’s voice. His dark eyes widened. Isabelle ran through the mud to him and threw her arms around his neck. He whickered, then nudged at her with his nose.

  “Yes, you’re right. We need to get out of here,” Isabelle said. She quickly untied him and led him across the yard.

  In her haste to get to him, she had not seen the other horses in the yard. But she did now. There were two of them.

  They must’ve come in after I left yesterday, she thought. They were bony, fly-bitten. Their coats were dull, their tails full of burrs. She looked away. There was nothing she could do.

  More men had arrived. The burly man was now making coffee over a small black stove in a ramshackle shed. The others stood around, waiting for a cup, but soon they would pick up their sledgehammers and knives and start their work.

  Isabelle led Nero past them and out of the gates.

  As she was about to lead him away, she glanced back at the horses. No one had fed them or given them water. Why would they? Why waste food on animals that were going to die? They were old, used up. Worthless. Hopeless.

  Isabelle squeezed Nero’s lead so tightly her hands cramped. The bracelet, the one she was going to use to buy her freedom from Madame, and Tavi’s and Maman’s, weighed heavy in her pocket. It weighed even heavier on her heart.

  Isabelle looked up at the sky. “What am I doing?” she said, as if hoping the clouds might answer her. Then she tied Nero to the fence, took the bracelet from her pocket, and walked back inside the slaughter yard.

  “What a fool Isabelle is,” many people would say. “What an idiot to throw her bracelet away on a lost cause.”

  Never listen to such small-souled folk.

  The skin-and-bones dog who shows up at your door. The broken-winged bird you nurse back to health. The kitten you find crying at the side of the road.

  You think you’re saving them, don’t you?

  Ah, child. Can’t you see?

  They’re saving you.

  Isabelle, her head down, walked up the road from the slaughter yard, past the outskirts of Saint-Michel, trailing the three horses behind her.

  Madame is going to kill me, she worried. She didn’t even want Martin, who earns his keep. What will she say when she sees Nero and these two poor wrecks?

  And then a more disturbing thought occurred to her. What if Madame is so angry, she threatens to throw us out again?

  Isabelle hadn’t considered that possibility when she was bargaining for the horses’ lives—all she’d cared about then was saving them—but it loomed before her now. Tantine had been able to talk Madame into letting them stay after the sweaty dead dog disaster, but Isabelle doubted she would be able to save them a second time.

  “Isabelle? Is that you? What are you doing?”

  Isabelle looked up at the sound of the voice. She mustered a broken smile.

  “I don’t know, Felix. The mice found a ring for me, and a bracelet. And I was going to get us all away from Madame and her blasted cabbages. But I traded it all for Nero and these other two. I couldn’t let them die. Oh, God. What have I done?” she said all in a rush.

  Felix, who had been sent to the blacksmith’s for nails, tilted his head. “Wait … that’s Nero? What mice? Why are you bleeding?” he asked.

  Isabelle explained everything.

  Felix looked away as she spoke. He swiped at his eyes. Isabelle, nervously kicking at the dirt, never saw the silver shimmer in them.

  She was just finishing her story when a noisy group of boys, trouping up from the river, interrupted her.

  “Let’s see here … are there three horses or four?” one called out.

  “Three horses and one ugly, horse-faced girl!” another shouted.

  They all hooted laughter. Isabelle winced.

  “Get out of here before I kick your little asses,” Felix threatened, starting toward them.

  They scattered.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them,” he told Isabelle. “What they said … it isn’t true.”

  “Then why do they say it?” Isabelle asked quietly.

  Felix looked at her. At this girl. Who was weary and dirty, bloody and sweat-soaked, but defiant. This girl. Who was leading three helpless creatures that nobody wanted away from the slaughter.

  “That’s not the question, Isabelle,” he said softly. “The question is, why do you believe them?”

  “Nelson, Bonaparte, Lafayette, Cornwallis!” Chance shouted. “You’ve been right all along, gentlemen! I shall never ride inside again!”

  Chance was standing atop his carriage, legs planted wide apart for balance, as it thundered down the road to Saint-Michel. A card game was starting shortly, in a room above the blacksmith’s shop. He didn’t want to be late. His four capuchins were with him, chasing one another back and forth, screeching with delight.

  “Faster, faster!” he shouted to his driver.

  “Any faster and we’ll be airborne!” the driver shouted back.

  Nelson picked that moment to snatch the scarf Chance had tied pirate-style around his head—his hat had blown off miles back—and ran to the back of the roof with it. Chance gave chase, and as he did, he saw a rider cantering over the fields that bordered the road. She was nearly parallel with his coach.

  It was a young woman. Her skirts were billowing behind h
er. Her hair had come free. She rode astride like a man, not sidesaddle. Her head was low to her horse’s neck, her body tensed in a crouch. She jumped a stone wall, fearless, completely at one with her magnificent black horse. With a shock of delight, Chance realized he knew her.

  “Mademoiselle! Isabelle!” he called. But she didn’t hear him.

  “That’s Nero, it must be,” he said to himself, his pulse leaping with excitement. “She got her horse back!”

  He retrieved his scarf from Nelson and waved it, finally getting Isabelle’s attention. She did a double take, then laughed. Chance, never able to resist a bet, a contest, or a dare, pointed up ahead. There was a church in the distance, at the top of a hill. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “I’ll race you!” he shouted.

  Isabelle grinned. Her eyes flashed. She tapped her heels to her horse’s side, and he lunged into a gallop. Effortlessly, he jumped a fence, two streams, then streaked across a field. She was leaving Chance in the dust, but as she reached the end of the field, a hedgerow loomed—a tall, thick wall of scrubby trees and brush that separated one farmer’s field from another. It was a good five feet tall and at least a yard deep.

  “Huzzah, my fine fellows!” Chance declared to the monkeys. “Victory is ours! She can’t jump that. She’ll have to …”

  His words died in his throat. Go around it, he was going to say. But Isabelle was not going around the hedge. She was headed straight for it.

  “No, don’t! It’s too high! You’ll break your neck!” Chance called out. “I can’t watch.” He covered his eyes, then opened his fingers and peered through the slit.

  Isabelle’s hands came up the horse’s neck, giving him his head. The stallion closed in on the hedge. He pushed off with his powerful back legs, tucked his front hooves under, and flew over it. Chance didn’t see them land—the hedge blocked his view—but he heard them. Isabelle let out a loud whoop, the horse whinnied, and then he carried her the rest of the way up the hill.

  She was trotting him in circles, cooling him down, as Chance and his driver pulled into the church’s driveway.

  “Mademoiselle, you are dangerous! A foolhardy daredevil! Completely reckless!” Chance shouted angrily, his hands on his hips. Then he smiled. “We shall be the very best of friends!”

  “I’m reckless?” Isabelle said, laughing. “Your Grace, you’re standing on top of your carriage!”

  Chance looked down at his feet. “So I am. I’d quite forgotten.” He looked up again. “My monkeys were having all the fun, you see, and I thought, why should they? Tell me, where did you get that stunning horse?”

  “I rescued him. He was mine and then he wasn’t and then I found him in the slaughter yard. It’s a long story.”

  Slaughter yard? Chance thought, outraged. I bet that miserable crone had something to do with it.

  “What’s his name?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “Nero.”

  Ha! Chance crowed silently. It was all he could do not to dance a hornpipe on the top of the carriage. Her horse … a second piece of heart returned to her!

  He had been watching Isabelle’s map closely and had noticed that two new lines had appeared on it. One veered into the Wildwood and crossed Felix’s path. The other careened to the slaughter yard. Chance had not been able to guess why Isabelle had made the second detour. Now he knew.

  The boy, the horse, Chance thought, all that’s needed now is the stepsister.

  Chance knew that if he was going to help Isabelle find the third piece, he needed to keep her here with him for a bit, to keep her talking and hopefully edge his way around to the topic of Ella. Fate had forbidden Isabelle from going to the Château Rigolade and had banned him from visiting the LeBenêts’ farm. This was the first opportunity he’d had to speak with her since Nelson had shot the chicken thief.

  He sat down on top of the carriage and dangled his legs over the side. “You ride him as if you raised him,” he said, reaching a hand out. Nero walked over and allowed Chance to scratch his nose.

  “I did raise him,” Isabelle said, patting his neck. “I got him when he was only a colt. For my eleventh birthday. He was a gift from Ella’s—I mean, from the queen’s father—my stepfather. Tavi and I, we’re the queen’s ug—”

  “You’re her stepsisters, yes. I know. My magician told me. What an incredible gift. Was Octavia not jealous? What about Ella?”

  “Tavi had been given a leather-bound edition of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy the month before for her birthday. She wouldn’t have noticed if our stepfather had given me a herd of elephants. And Ella was never jealous. She was afraid of Nero, though. Afraid I would kill myself on him.” Isabelle smiled wistfully, remembering. “She worried every time I galloped off on him. Usually with Felix. Your carpenter. He was one of our grooms …”

  “Oh, was he?” Chance lightly interjected.

  “Ella threw her arms around us every time we returned and kissed us, as if she was afraid that one night we wouldn’t come back …” Her voice trailed away. “She was always so sweet, so kind.”

  Chance saw his opportunity. “You miss her,” he said.

  Isabelle looked down at the reins in her hands. “Every day. It’s a hard thing to admit.”

  “Why?”

  Isabelle laughed sadly. “Because she certainly doesn’t miss me. She hates me.”

  “You know this?”

  “How could she not?”

  “Because you are bold and dashing. Who would not love such a girl?”

  Isabelle shook her head. “You are kind, Your Grace, but you don’t know me. I was … I was not good to her.”

  “I know cavalry officers who wouldn’t jump that hedge. I know a brave soul when I see one.”

  Isabelle gave him a questioning look. “Are you saying I should—”

  “Try to see your stepsister? Try to make amends? Why, child, you read my mind!”

  “Do you think she would see me?” asked Isabelle, hesitantly. And hopefully.

  Chance leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I think we all make mistakes. What matters is that we don’t let our mistakes make us.”

  The church bell began to toll the hour—eight o’clock. Chance grimaced. The card game had likely started. “We must part ways, I’m afraid. I have business in the village. Paris is not far, young Isabelle!”

  He jumped down and opened the carriage’s door. Once inside it, he lowered the window, leaned out, and slapped the door. The driver turned the horses, heading them back toward the road.

  Chance and Isabelle waved good-bye to each other, and then Chance fell back against his seat.

  Things were going well. Isabelle was forging some paths of her own. The horse was hers. The boy, too. Or rather, he would be if they could stop sparring with each other. And now Isabelle was going to try to see her stepsister.

  Chance should have been elated at this thought, but he was troubled. He had Isabelle’s map. He looked at it daily, and no matter how much progress she made, the horrible wax skull at the bottom continued to darken. He guessed Isabelle had only a handful of days left before the skull turned black.

  Finding Ella and gaining the fairy queen’s help … these things were her only hope. And his.

  Chance leaned out of the window again, searching for Isabelle. He spotted her galloping back over the fields, growing smaller and smaller.

  “Go, you splendid girl,” he whispered. “Ride hard. Ride fast. Make the road your own. Hurry.”

  Madame LeBenêt slammed the bread dough on the table as if she meant to kill it.

  “Twice, Tantine!” she said resentfully. “Not once, but twice those girls have taken advantage of my kind nature. First the cheese, now the horses!”

  “Isabelle has a soft heart, Avara. Just like you,” Tantine said.

  Her voice was soothing, her expression placid, but inside she was livid. Things had been coming together so well, and now they were falling apart. That damned stallion was supposed to
be dead, not happily grazing in the LeBenêts’ pasture. Fate had bought him from a poor widow, then sold him to the slaughter yard, telling them he was too wild to ride, a killer, and must be put down.

  And if the very fact that he was alive wasn’t bad enough, at the midday meal, which had been the usual thin and tasteless affair, Isabelle had announced that she would be riding to Paris tomorrow to try to see her stepsister. Fate had to pretend to be happy about Isabelle’s wish for a reconciliation. Avara hadn’t pretended at all, but Isabelle had promised to do the morning milking before she left and to be back in time for the evening one. Plus, it was Sunday, supposedly a day of rest, and so there was little Avara could say about it.

  The horse, the boy, now the stepsister—was Isabelle forging the paths to them herself? Or had Chance drawn them on her map? He still had it, of course. What if he’d somehow learned how to make stronger inks? Fate shuddered to think of the chaos that rogue would unleash with such power at his fingertips.

  “Three horses she brings here from the slaughter yard. Three!” Avara fumed, driving the heels of her hands into the dough so hard the table rattled.

  Fate could bear no more of Madame’s tirade. “Have you seen Losca?” she asked, rising. “I have some mending for her.”

  “She’s probably in the garden. Seems to be her favorite place,” Avara replied. “Now there’s a girl who causes no trouble. She’s quiet, helpful, and she eats like a bird.”

  Avara said more, but Fate, already outside, didn’t hear her. Losca was indeed in the garden. She was sitting in the tomato patch, pulling fat green caterpillars off the plants and stuffing them into her mouth. Her cheeks were flushed. The neckline of her dress was soaked with sweat. She looked exhausted.

  “Where have you been?” Fate asked.

  Losca, her mouth full, couldn’t reply. Instead, she picked up something lying on the ground next to her and handed it to her mistress.

  Fate’s eyes lit up when she saw what it was—Isabelle’s map.

  “You wonderful girl! How did you manage this?” she asked.

  Losca swallowed her caterpillars, then explained to Fate, in her high, harsh voice, that she’d flown to the Château Rigolade early that morning before the household was awake. She’d squeezed through an open bedroom window and had silently glided down to the dining room. The map had been lying open on the table there, but Chance had been slumped over it, snoring.