The door swings wide and my mother towers in the doorway. My heart tumbles all the way to my toes.
“I thought I’d come and see what all the pounding was about,” she says, glancing around the large, bare room that is mine. The boxes of junk, old appliances, and useless stuff still line the walls, but a lot of it suddenly became useful to the house when I showed interest in it. The boxes of books are now stacked on their sides to make bookshelves, on which I organized all the books last winter. The bedframe I’m building takes up a large portion of the room, but there are no posters on the walls, no photo booth strips featuring the smiling faces of Stella and Emmy stuck in the edges of the mirror, no magazine clippings of celebrities we have crushes on.
Zora pushes into the room past our mother and sets down my tray of food—some bean soup and dry bread, which means Elidi cooked. My stomach growls again. It’s not picky anymore. I stopped missing macaroni and cheese, soda, and Reese’s Pieces a long time ago.
“What are you going to put on that frame?” Zora asks. “Mother, you can’t be thinking about getting her a brand new mattress.”
“I can’t sleep on a couch forever,” I point out.
Zora puts her hands on her hips and looks around again. “It’s not fair. How come you get this big room? This is tons bigger than mine.”
My mouth goes dry. I know how this works. I polish up a brass lamp and put a bulb in it, and Zora wants to put it on the table downstairs near the couch, where it is used exactly one time. But not my room. She can’t have my room.
“It took me months to get this cleaned up,” I say through gritted teeth. “And besides, there’s all these boxes.” I try to think of something else to say to make her hate my room, but the truth is, I’ve put so much work into it that it’s actually kind of nice. I even climbed halfway out the skylight to clean it off after the leaves fell last year, which was probably really dangerous. And then I kept going out whenever they go to their lunar meetings. It’s a tiny, stolen moment of freedom, but it’s all I get.
“We could move all your stuff into the other room,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “And I’d bring my stuff in here.”
“That’s not my stuff,” I say, gesturing to the boxes piled in the corner. “And it wouldn’t fit in your room. I wouldn’t even have room for a bed.”
“It’s not fair,” she says again, bugging her eyes at Mother this time. “She gets the biggest room in the house! It’s bigger than yours. And a new mattress?”
“She’s not getting a new mattress,” Mother says.
“I’m taking this,” she says, stomping over to lift the heavy oval mirror from the wall beside the door. I only found it last week, when I started digging through an old chest, looking for curtains or anything useful. It was covered in dust, the glass splattered with gunk that took ages to scrub off and shine. The edges are intricately carved wood, and I love it.
I’m so relieved she’s not taking my room that I almost hold back my protest. The room is the only thing in the house that is mine. But I worked hard on the mirror, almost all day, working out the layer of grime underneath the edge of the wood where it overlaps with glass, polishing the whole thing.
“I found that,” I blurt out, my hands balling into fists. “I fixed it.”
“Where’d you get that?” Mother asks, her eyes narrowing.
“In a dusty old box of junk.”
“That was my mirror.” For a moment, her voice softens with thought and her face goes vacant, as if she’s far away. When the lines between her eyebrows smooth, I can almost see what my father might have seen in her twenty years ago. Her fingers flutter over her heart, then pick at the buttons on her flannel shirt.
“Then why does she get it?” Zora asks, oblivious to the rare glimpse of our mother without her cloak of cruelty. “She can’t have that and the big room. She gets everything good!”
Before I can explode with incredulity, Mother’s eyes snap back to the present, flashing with anger. “Go on, Zora,” she snaps. “I need to talk to Stella.”
Zora opens her mouth, then closes it. I enjoy the moment a little more than I should. She spins on her heel and stomps out. First my door slams, then hers does.
Mother turns to me. “What were you talking to Elidi about?”
“What?”
“This afternoon. Zora said she caught you two talking.”
Sensing the trap, I tread carefully. I don’t know what Elidi has already said, what she’ll say later. I only know that she’ll be believed, and I won’t. Maybe the whole thing was a trap, Elidi’s words included. Aware that I could misstep with every word, I speak slowly, watching Mother’s face for the slightest twitch. “We were talking about Harmon.”
“What about him?” she demands.
I don’t know what she knows, if he said anything, if anyone saw us talking from the path. I shrug. “He came over looking for her.” If I tell the truth, at least I can’t be caught in a lie. I can only be caught in others’ lies.
“What did you say to him?”
As if uninterested, I sit down on my couch. “Nothing much,” I say, forcing myself to take a bite of soup. It scalds the roof of my mouth, but I don’t spit it out. I have to look normal, to betray nothing. To act as if I don’t know that he’ll be their cult leader, that they force girls to marry against their will, that Elidi wants to get out of here as badly as I do. Maybe more.
“Tell me exactly what you said to him.” Mother looms over me like a storm cloud.
I set my bowl down and give her my best innocent look. “He just wanted to know where Elidi was, and I told him you weren’t home yet. That’s what she wanted to know, too. Why, what’s the big deal if I talk to him?”
She grabs my upper arm, her fingers crushing into my muscle. “You are not to talk to him again, do you understand?”
“Ow. And yes, I understand,” I say, leaning away from her. I never know when she’ll get the notion to give me a good slap.
“Remember where you belong,” she says. “Not here. Don’t go getting any ideas.”
“I’m not.”
She sneers at me. “Look at you. What would he want with you? You’re pathetic and useless. You’re lucky he deigned to speak to you at all.”
“I know.” I nod meekly, resisting the urge to throw the whole truth in her face. To tell her that even after he knew who I was, he stayed and talked to me, maybe even flirted with me. Now it feels like one of my vivid dreams, for once a pleasant one. But like Dad always said when I had the nightmares, it isn’t real.
With a final disgusted scoff, my mother pushes me back on the couch and turns to go. Before pulling the door closed, she turns back, though. “And don’t think I don’t notice how you hang on your sister’s every word. Just because you look alike doesn’t mean you are alike. You’re nothing like us, Stella. So stop trying to lure her into whatever little scheme you’re cooking up.”
I try not to show my surprise, but I must not do a good job of it. She sneers again. “What, you didn’t think you were smart enough to get one by me, did you? Stay away from Elidi. Whatever wild, city-girl notions you have, I don’t need them rubbing off on my daughters. They’re good girls, Stella. And I’m not going to let you change that.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“It’s your turn to do dishes. Don’t even think about trying to get out of it.” This time, she pulls the door closed behind her. I take a deep breath. My spoon rattles against the bowl when I reach for it. My stomach is shaking so hard I feel sick. I push my tray away and jump up to pace the room. A tiny pair of shiny black eyes catches my attention.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Tom,” I say, pinching off a piece of bread crust. I move slowly towards the little mouse that has kept me company for the past year. I kneel and set the morsel on the floor, then nudge it forward with my finger until Tom’s miniature hands reach out and pull it in. He munches on the bread, his eyes wary. I watch him for a while, until he drags the bread away into his little mouse hol
e in the wall. I sit back, calm now.
So my mother figured out I was talking to Elidi. So what? Even if she knows I was scheming, she doesn’t know what my plan is. I don’t even know what my plan is yet. But I’m going to make one. It might take a little longer to get it to Elidi, now that Mother is onto us, but it will happen. I’ll just have to wait until she’s forgotten about it and relaxed again. Once she’s comfortable enough to trust me again, I can make a move. Until then, I’ll just have to lay low and be an obedient little house slave.
When I come back from doing dishes, the mirror is gone. It’s too late to protest. Besides, I don’t like mirrors anymore. The pretty blonde who wanted to be a model doesn’t look out of them anymore. Instead, I see a girl whose white hair and pale skin make her look washed out, as if she might fade so much that one day, she’ll be nothing but a ghost with no reflection at all.
I have to get out of here before she makes me disappear altogether.
3
It’s several weeks before Elidi brings my dinner again. I can tell by her distractedness and the early hour when she interrupts my sanding that it must be a full moon. That, and the fact that her eyes have gone dark again, as they do every time she goes to one of her moon parties. Even though it’s pouring rain out, I know they’ll have their community dinner, do eye-color-altering drugs, and sacrifice a virgin. Or whatever cults do at their moon-worshipping ceremonies. I don’t know much more about what goes on at the meetings than I did after the first time Elidi mentioned them. But I do know that they meet every month without fail, come rain or snow.
One month, they went twice, because apparently, there were two full moons that month. They made a big deal about it. Stupidly, I thought they might actually let me go that night. Of course they didn’t. They all dressed up and hooted and hollered as they left, bursting with excitement. I sat in the room upstairs, my cheek pressed to the glass, tears sliding down the smudged pane. I thought if I burst through the glass and let myself fall, if that was the only way out, it might be better than staying here.
But that night, I saw two little mice under the edge of the bureau, waiting for me to drop crumbs of coarse bread from my plate. And I knew that if I jumped, no one would be there to drop crumbs for them anymore. I named them Tom and Jerry.
Tonight, the heavenly smell of baking bread fills the house, and I see that the slice on my plate is thick and light. I decode my family’s patterns by what’s on my plate, like a medium reading tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. The bread tells me that Mother cooked for the community dinner, and she’s rewarded me for the last two weeks of meek servitude by saving out a slice for me.
In case she’s hovering on the stairs, I take a bite and ask through a mouthful of food, “Whose turn is it to do dishes?” I’m so casual, in fact, that I almost convince myself I’m barely paying attention to Elidi’s answer.
“Mine,” she says. “But hurry, okay, or you’ll have to do your own, because we’re leaving in a few minutes.”
I already knew this, but I had to make sure she hadn’t switched with Zora for the night. Before I can give her a signal with my eyes, she’s gone, distracted by the fun she’ll have eating dinner under the covered pavilion, the soft spray of rain blowing in now and then, making the girls shiver and huddle close to their boyfriends. If they’re even allowed to have boyfriends.
I inhale my food, too nervous to savor the rare soft bread or the leftover lentil stew from the night before. They don’t eat at home these nights, so I’m lucky I have fresh bread. I hear Elidi already doing the day’s dishes downstairs, probably only dunking them in the soapy water a few times instead of scrubbing. Mother would never let me get away with that.
I slurp down the rest of my soup and leave my room, my mouth still full. Keeping my tray carefully balanced, I hurry downstairs. I set it on the counter beside the sink where, as I suspected, Elidi is doing a horrible job of washing dishes. For a second, I consider offering to take over. But that would ruin the plan.
As much as I want to wait for her to pick up my bowl, I can’t hover. If Mother came in and caught me alone with Elidi, she’d be on high alert. So I tell my sister to have fun before hurrying hurry back upstairs without drawing suspicion. There, I wait, my heart pounding. Elidi won’t say anything tonight She can’t. Just knowing she has the note I slipped under my bowl fills me with nerves, though. I get up and pace, dropping bits of crust from the precious white bread for Tom and Jerry.
When a knock sounds at my door, I almost trip over the bedframe in the middle of the floor. I scramble to the door, as if she’d wait for me to open it. It flies open just as I reach for it, almost hitting me in the face.
“What’s this?” Mother asks, holding up the note between thumb and forefinger. Even as I fight to swallow past the drought that has taken up residence in my throat, even as Mother’s eyes have gone the shade of a hot branding iron, I have a flicker of pride. I didn’t write out the whole plot, everything I’ve been planning since Elidi told me she wanted to leave. Not that I have a grand master plan with great detail, but I thought ahead far enough to know that it wasn’t safe to give details.
Mother waves the paltry note in my face, as if I might have forgotten what it was. As if it is somehow incriminating evidence, although it only says two words, so benign even the world’s best prosecuting attorney couldn’t call it evidence.
Talk soon?
“What’s your excuse this time?” Mother asks. “You come into my house and flout the rules, and now you’re trying to infect my daughter with your deviousness? I told you, you are not one of us. You only look like us on the surface. But you’re not. And if you know what’s good for you, you will trust me on this one.”
“I’m your daughter, too,” I say quietly. Instantly, I wish I hadn’t. The words hang in the air while she stares at me with such hatred I want to cry. I want to cry because I showed her my weakness, that it’s what I want more than anything. I want to cry with how much I want it.
But sometime last winter, I ran out of tears. She doesn’t deserve them, not a single one. I gave them all to Dad, because even though he was a liar, I get it. If this is what my mother is like, it was better for me to think she was dead all those years than to wonder why she hates me so much.
“One day, you will understand,” she says, her voice sharp and searing. “Until then, you could show a little appreciation for what I’ve done for you. So get that look off your face before I knock it off.”
I don’t know what look is on my face, but it can’t be as ugly as the hatred twisting hers.
Or maybe it can.
“Why don’t you do that?” I challenge. “It’s not like you’ve ever hesitated to slap me around before.” I can’t help but cringe away from her, though, when she strides forward. This time, she grabs my shoulders and shakes me so hard my head whips back and my neck cramps in protest.
“I’ve already given up more for you than you’ve ever had in your life.” Spittle sprays from her lips. “You think you’re suffering up here in your big, comfortable room? You know nothing of suffering.”
She throws me back against the couch, but instead of falling onto it, I hit the arm of it and crumple to the floor. Something flickers across Mother’s face, but she doesn’t help me. I’m still sitting hunched over, holding my throbbing side, when she storms out, slamming the door behind her. I hear the rattle of the knob and the click of the lock turning. If I hadn’t had the breath knocked out of me, I’d lunge after her. But even though the arm of the couch is padded, it was hard enough to leave a deep ache in my side, and I know I’ll have a nasty bruise.
For a while, I sit there fuming. And then I remember the reason for her visit, the note dangling in my face, and my blood stills. Elidi gave her the note. I thought she was on my side, that I could trust her. But in truth, I didn’t trust her completely, did I? Because if I had, I would have written out everything. This was a test. And now I know.
I curl up on the floor, cold suddenl
y, clutching my necklace the way I used to after the blackouts disappeared, when I still dreading having another one. But now, I don’t have my dad. I’m alone. More alone than I knew. I always thought if Mother wasn’t here, Elidi and I would talk, would become closer even than Emmy and I were. But now it was all in my head. Even my twin sister will betray me. I can’t trust anyone. It’s better to know that now than at the last moment, after I’ve given up all my secrets, all the tiny pieces of my life I have left.
Mother is right. My life is small and pathetic, and whatever she’s lost, even if it’s as inconsequential as a toenail, is more than I have.
Mother is right.
I sit up.
Mother is right. I have nothing to lose.
4
Half an hour later, I’ve packed my few belongings in a suitcase. I look at the musty clothes in the other suitcase I brought with me—flouncy skirts, a pair of sandals with heels, even a dress. For a while, I saved the white shorts and strappy tank tops, but when it became obvious I would not be going to any social outings, I gave in and wore them all until they are dingy and work-stained. I have no need for a dress now, so I shove that suitcase back onto the pile of boxes in the corner.
I examine the door, which is locked. I twist the knob as hard as I can, sure that I can snap the old thing off. But it holds fast. After checking the skylight, I decide to climb up. I never do this in daylight, but no one is going to stop me. They’re too busy racing around, getting ready for their party. Bracing a chair against the arm of the couch, I stand and push the skylight open. The long pane of glass only opens enough for me to slide my head and shoulders out at an angle. When I’ve come out before, I wriggle out and lie flat so I won’t fall, but I can’t see much at night except stars and the moon.
Today, bits of wet leaves and sticks fall through, along with a few cold, fat raindrops. I ignore them and breathe in the fresh scent of the wet air. Far below, in the valley, I can see fields and more forest, even tiny houses and barns. Somewhere down there, normal people are living normal lives. People who don’t belong to moon-worshipping cults or beat their children. People who go to regular school and do regular things. I don’t even care if their normal means getting up to milk the cows at dawn. It’s got to be better than this.
Unlikely Magic: A Cinderella Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 1) Page 5