The Rose and the Thorn

by Kate Macdonald

  I pat Fifine and Azor and grab a bowl of porridge. The whole family trickles in, one by one, all bar Freedom, who is already out. It is a quiet meal, and everyone keeps staring at me.

  “You're very brown, Rose,” says Hope eventually.

  “I've spent a lot of time in the sun. The gardens, Hope, they're so beautiful, if only-” I stop, because Hope will never see the gardens, no matter how much I might wish it.

  Spoons scrape bowls. Nanny remarks about the weather. Papa asks Hope what she has planned for today, quizzes Beau on his latest school work. I wish Freedom were here, even to annoy me.

  Suddenly, I hear his voice.

  “You should slow down-”

  “I can't believe you didn't come straight to me last night-”

  “We didn't want to shock-”

  “She is my sister, Freedom!”

  Honour. Honour is here. I have barely managed to get out of my seat before the door is flung open and she is there, standing on the threshold, her eyes wide and her hair wild. She takes one look at me and bursts into tears, and we are running towards each other, arms extended. We sink to the floor the second we are together, sob each other's names, and sit there of the floor until everyone else starts moving around us. Nanny whips out a chair.

  “You really shouldn't sit on the floor, Honour love-”

  “Here, take a pillow-”

  “I'll get some tea!”

  It is only when Honour has been properly sat down and everyone else has moved away and I see my sister fully for the first time, that I realise what everyone is fussing about, something that should have been very apparent the minute I clasped eyes on her.

  Honour is very, very pregnant.

  Everybody suddenly finds themselves something to do, and Honour and I are alone together for the first time in months. She babbles that she's so sorry she got married without me. I gush that I'm so sorry I left her. I can't believe she's going to have a baby; no wonder she was always knitting whenever I checked in with her. I wish I'd been there, when she told everyone she was expecting. At least, I suppose, I will be here to support her now... although at what cost?

  I will not be there for Thorn.

  I fill her in on where I've been, and she doesn't seem at all shocked or surprised.

  “I knew you were alive,” she says, beaming. “I just... felt it. The night before my wedding, I swear I almost heard you call to me, saying that you were all right and not to worry.”

  The night before her wedding. The night I wrote to her for the first time. Perhaps the magic of the castle could reach the outside after all.

  “Hope and Beau believed me,” she carries on. “Nanny and Papa wanted to, I think... Freedom never did, of course. He never listens.”

  “He's stubborn, like that,” I mumble, knowing very well it's a trait we both share. Honour knows it too, and smiles knowingly at me.

  “You look different,” she says.

  “As do you!”

  She laughs, placing a hand on her massive belly. She must have conceived straight after the wedding; she cannot be any less than seven months. I've seen full-term women with smaller bumps. The look suits her though, and she reminds me of Mama, all round and soft and devoid of sharp edges. She looks stronger than Mama ever did though, thankfully.

  “I mean it,” she regards me carefully. “Something's changed in you.”

  “I feel different,” I tell her. “But I don't know why.”

  Honour tilts her head disbelievingly.

  “I met someone,” I conclude.

  “Ah, yes, your mysterious companion. What was he like?”

  I tell her the absolute truth, about who -or what- he is.

  She sits there in silence for a moment, not stunned, not shocked, just... silent. Finally, she says, “But what is he like?”

  Unfathomable relief washes over me. There is no judgement in my sister, not a sliver. Just pure understanding, unquestionable clarity. Honour indeed.

  Talking about Thorn is difficult, but somehow, with her beside me, I manage it. “He is intelligent, witty, compassionate and kind... at least, I thought he was. I thought...” I thought he was everything. “I thought he was the most gentle soul that I had ever met.” A lump is rising in my throat. “But... he lied to me.” I tell her, with some difficulty, about terms of my entrapment and release.

  This makes her quieter for even longer. “I see,” she says tonelessly. “And... how does that make you feel?”

  “Furious,” I whisper. “Betrayed. I never thought... there were always things he was keeping secret, but I had my secrets too. Not like this, though. I couldn't... I honestly couldn't believe he would do something like this. Even though I completely understand why.”

  Even just a day's perspective has given me that much. Of course he didn't want to be alone. Of course he wanted more time with me. I wanted more time too. But the deception eats into me: he should have told me, and trusted that I would not leave.

  “And does it change the way you feel about him?”

  It should. It did, in that moment. But already my old feelings are sliding back into place. I shake my head. “I think those are somewhat firmly fixed,” I admit.

  But he kept you prisoner.

  Was I a prisoner? I did not feel like one. I was not treated like one. And... and I still cannot shake the feeling that there was another reason he didn't let me go. Ariel was trying to tell me something before Thorn sent her away. “There's more.” She had said. What had she been prevented from revealing?

  “Did you tell him, this gentleman of yours?” asks Honour. “How you felt about him?”

  “He knows.”

  Honour groans, and her whole body seems to groan with her. “Oh, Rosie...”

  “What?”

  “You didn't tell him.”

  “I... I've told him lots of ways!” I argue. “I've told him that... that I like his face. And that... his soul is like mine! I... I assure you, I made my feelings perfectly obvious.”

  “I assure you sister, the poor boy probably thinks you're just friends.”

  I bite my lip. “You can't know that.”

  “No, but I do know you. You really aren't... the easiest of people to read.”

  “I... You've always found me easy to read!”

  “I knew you before you had expressions. I've picked up on your subtle ways. But honestly, dearest sister, you are very good at keeping things locked up. You have been ever since...”

  She doesn't need to finish that sentence. We both know how it would end. And, as usual, of course, my sister is right.

  Could Thorn honestly not have known I would have stayed, anyway? Did he honestly think, after all this time, that I didn't care? That I would walk away without a single glance over my shoulder?

  But you did. You did exactly that.

  It is after Honour leaves that it hits me for the first time, hits me with such a force that I have to clutch the mantelpiece for fear of falling.

  “Rose?” Hope asks, walking back into the room, “What's wrong?”

  “I'm never going to see him again!”

  What have I done?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Letters from the Past

  Try as I might, I am sure my family can see my distress the following morning. I try to busy myself by helping Beau with his school work. Hope, of course, requires no such assistance. She's been smarter than me for years.

  Honour comes round for lunch. I offer to visit her tomorrow, but this idea is quickly rebuffed. Either no one wants me to leave the house ever again, or they're still trying to think of a plausible reason for my absence that doesn't sound so truly remarkable before all the villagers learn of my return.

  After Honour departs to her abode in the mid-afternoon, I find myself rather alone. Hope and Beau are at school, Nanny has gone to the market. Freedom, I suspect, has gone hunting. He is clearly trying to avoid me, having barely spoken a word since our reunion. It makes me long for the days when he used to tease me and push
me out of trees.

  I wander into Papa's study. This is usually the forbidden room, but today the door is wide open, and I sense I am welcome anywhere right now.

  “Ah, Rosebud,” Papa's face flutters into his almost-smile, the nearest semblance of happiness he has managed since Mama's death. I give him a hug which he gladly returns, and I stay there for a little longer than I planned to.

  “I have a gift for you,” he says.

  “A gift?”

  “It was... for your birthday,” he says quietly. “It belonged to your mother. She wanted you to have it.”

  He opens his top drawer and pulls out an old, weather-beaten package, thick and dusty.

  “From Mama?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why... why me?”

  “From your infancy, she had set aside gifts to give you all once you turned eighteen. Lord knows what I'll do for Beau's, poor boy. But this is most assuredly for you.”

  Gingerly, I peel open the wrapping. It is, unsurprisingly, a book. The Fey Collection, I read, and then open the cover.

  My darling Rose, you will know most of these stories already, but I have them here, written down for you, just in case. These are the stories of our ancestors. My mother gave this to me on my eighteenth birthday, and her mother gave it to her. Share these stories with your brothers and sisters, my little fairy. Be adventurous. Be afraid. Be brave. Above all, love fearlessly, for as long and hard as you can.

  A lump wells in my throat. I know she did.

  I turn the first page, and begin to read. The first few I am familiar with, particularly the one about the dark fairy, who the queen trapped at great cost.

  There is another story I've not heard before, at least not from her. It talks about the castle the evil fairy is trapped in, how her magic weakens it with every passing day. How one day, she may break free, and wreak havoc on the world once more. It says she is guarded by a terrifying monster, but a neat line crosses through that part. Another hand has written over it, “the castle is protected by a beautiful creature.” In the margin, in such clear writing, she has added, “He is not a monster!”

  Mama. She is talking about Thorn.

  I left Thorn alone with this evil creature still prowling the walls. I pray that he is safe. I curl my hands around my little amber rose, and hope that he can feel the warmth of me through his thorn pendant.

  There are other stories in the volume, ones she never got a chance to tell us. They are about what happened after the fairies fled their homeland, shed their wings, became human in almost every way. “These are the stories of your ancestors.”

  Thorn was right. Mama was descended from the Fey.

  There is something else amongst the wrappings of the book, a tiny hand mirror of delicate design. At first, I am entirely confused as to why she would have included this in a gift to me, the least of her daughters to treasure such an item. Then I pick it up, feeling its heavy weightlessness, and notice the flawless etchings.

  This a fairy mirror. She took it from the castle. I have seen so many like it. Clutching it to my chest, I try not to cry. It is all I have left of that place.

  For the next few days, I exist in some kind of dream. Nothing feels real, nothing feels right. It is akin to the numbness I felt after Mama's death. I am moving, but not breathing. I don't feel fully alive.

  I try to put on a brave face for my family, eating and chatting with as much energy as I can muster. They must notice something amiss, but probably put it down to me trying to re-adjust to my old life. I make light of it, where I can, jokingly complaining about my narrow bed and lack of feathery pillows.

  My family keep me busy. Nanny always appears to be needing help with the laundry and the cooking, tasks I am more than willing to help with as they occupy my mind, and I'm worried I've grown idle living in such luxury. Hope and Beau always seem to need help with school work, even though Hope works out problems so quickly with just a little assistance from me, that it's quite clear her problems were invented. Honour visits whenever she can, which spares me from Freedom's attempts to busy me- namely, assisting him with skinning his kill while he stares at me stonily.

  “I'd prefer to model for you, if I have the option,” I tell him, which earns me a dirty rag in the face.

  When I am left alone, the thoughts come as quickly and darkly as a winter's night. Thorn, Thorn alone in that castle, thinking I did not care for him, thinking I was gone for good. What can I do? Wait until the next Solstice, and pray it opens in the same place? Do I have another option? What if I can wait, and it doesn't open? Or even...

  If you come back by that route, Rose, I am not sure I will still be here.

  What if he can't wait? What if I do go back, and Thorn is not there waiting for me?

  The next day, I share the book with Honour.

  “Why do you think she gave to me?” I ask.

  Honour shrugs. “She left me her best linens for my eighteenth, and a set of exquisite spoons. Sometimes... sometimes I think Mama knew that she was never going to live to see us grow up.”

  She had not been well for a while before Beau came. It might have been logic, rather than instinct, but somehow, I am inclined to agree. Her note, her advice to live bravely, is the sort of thing one would write if they weren't planning to say it in person.

  “Did she leave you a note too?”

  Honour nods. “She told me that I was the most caring person she knew, but that I should look out for myself, and not be afraid of asking for things,” she smiles shyly. “I told Charles to dance with me the very next day.”

  “I wonder what she told Freedom.”

  “She told him that he would always look after us, that he would never fail us, and that he should be careful when shooting.”

  I stare at her.

  “She gave him a crossbow,” she says, by way of explanation.

  “How... how do you know what she told him?”

  Honour looks about guiltily. “After you left-” she starts, but is interrupted by Freedom marching from the study out into the cool evening air. He looks at me stonily as he passes.

  “Is Freedom angry with me?” I ask.

  Honour wriggles about uncomfortably. “Mad at himself, I fear.”

  “How so?”

  Honour sighs and re-adjusts her seat. I still can't stop looking at her. She is so large. I've missed so much. I find it difficult to concentrate on her words, even when I've asked for them. “When you went missing, we were naturally all distraught, but Freed... he was out there in the forests every day, every hour, searching for you. That first week he barely ate or slept. One day, I found him in his room, clutching the note that mother had left him. He was just seething with rage. It... it almost got to the stage were I thought about trying to convince him that you were dead, that there was no point searching. But then he stopped of his own accord. I think he's wishing he carried on.”

  Except, he didn't stop. He just starting being more secretive about it. I had seen him the mirror, walking the woods day after day. “It wasn't his fault,” I mumble.

  “Try telling him that,” Honour advises. “Because he's not listening to anyone else right now.”

  I step outside and find him there, leaning against the wall. I know at once that he has heard the conversation.

  “I should have searched harder.”

  “What part of trapped in a fairy realm don't you understand?”

  “I could have found you. If I'd been quick enough. If I'd realised you were missing- I could have found that stupid gateway and made it give you back to us.” He is shaking. “You heard what Mama wrote to me. She said that I would always protect you, never let you down. But I did. I really, really did.”

  “Freedom, no one is to blame for this but me.”

  “But-”

  “I am sorry for what I put you through. Don't do this to yourself. I'm safe, I'm unhurt, I'm here.”

  “I saw you, you know. About two months ago.”

  “I... I know.”<
br />
  “You were standing in this meadow, across the stream, flanked by fog. I thought you were ghost or a vision... but called out to you, and you called back. Why... why didn't you come to me?”

  “Somebody was hurt,” I answer. “I couldn't let them-”

  Freedom grabs me roughly, very suddenly, and pulls me into his arms. “Don't leave us again, Rose. Don't you dare.”

  I want to make some sort of joke, to tease him, to push him away and make light of it, but I don't, I can't. For a few, rare moments, I am just a girl who loves that her big brother loves her, and never, ever wants to leave him.

  Except, of course, I do.

  “I missed you,” I say earnestly. “Also, I learnt to climb trees.”

  At this, Freedom laughs. He holds me at arm's length. “You did?”

  “It's a lot easier when your teacher doesn't push you out.”

  “You are never going to forgive me for that, are you?”

  “I'm your little sister. I don't have to forgive you for anything. That's my speciality.”

  “I thought that that was winding me up?”

  “That too. I have lots of specialities. Also, I shot a wolf.”

  “You did?” Freedom's face breaks into a wide smile. “Well done! Did you- wait. What were you doing hunting wolves? I thought you said it was safe where you were?”

  “It was... mostly.” I think of the shadows, of Moya in the glass, which makes worry about Thorn again.

  “Mostly?” Freedom is not impressed. “What... what else was in that castle, Rose? Apart from your companion?”

  “It doesn't matter now,” I say quickly, only to appease him. It matters now more than ever.

  I couldn't let him die.

  At the time, I convinced myself that anyone would have done the same. Perhaps most people would. But what had Margaret said? She would have stayed... but not for the same reasons. At the time, I didn't know what she meant, or ignored it if I did.