Slowly, each of them curtseyed, accepting the pain and punishment they had brought upon themselves. Slowly, Wednesday closed her eyes, in patience or prayer or something else. Slowly, the crowd parted along the walk to the Grand Hall.
Sorrow had risen to join them in the courtyard.
“Forgive my tardiness, Highness. I have not been myself as of late.” Rumbold had never seen his godmother so small and pale as she was now, swaddled inside her robes, old beside Wednesday’s ethereal youth. For all that they seemed mirror images of each other, when they were set side by side, the mirror cracked.
The aura of power around Sorrow, however, was rivaled by no one.
“I understand congratulations are in order.” She turned to Wednesday. “Hello, Niece.”
15. The Third Time's the Charm
THE HOUSE WAS DARK when Sunday arrived home. She gently climbed the stairs to her tower room, tiptoeing past the rooms where Saturday and Trix and Peter lay sleeping. She bit back pain as she eased the new dress over her bruised body, slid her weak arms into the sleeves of a nightgown, and tossed back the thin covers of her bed. Her journal sat on her pillow, small and lonely and wanting to know her troubles, but after only a few tearstained paragraphs, she simply didn’t have the strength. Nor did her mind have the serenity required for sleep. She dreaded another torrid night of wandering long strange hallways in someone else’s shoes. What Sunday needed was calm and comfort.
Without Mama, the kitchen was just a memory of yeast and herbs and a dying fire. Aunt Joy was waiting for her there. “A little birdie told me what happened. Can I offer you some tea?”
“Yes,” Sunday said automatically. And then, “No. Wait.”
“What, dear?”
“Please,” said Sunday. “No magic tea. I can’t take any more magic today. I don’t care if it will solve all my problems and make everyone’s dreams come true. I just want to be me, with no help from the birds or the gods or the universe”—she glared across the table accusingly—“or you.”
Joy laughed, an expression Sunday was still not used to seeing on the face Wednesday wore most days. It suited her aunt, drew lines in her cheeks and around her eyes that made her seem more ... human. Another word she rarely associated with Wednesday.
“Cheers, little one.” Joy took a cup and saucer from the cupboard, delicate pieces from a set of china Thursday had sent Mama long ago, after her infamous naval elopement. “It’s just tea, I promise. It comes with nothing but conversation. And a biscuit. And sugar, if you like.”
“Some of both, please.” Sunday plopped down in her chair in front of the fire. “It’s been such a very long day. My life has been one string of very long days lately. Ever since...” She decided to burn her tongue on the tea rather than finish her sentence.
“Since I arrived?” asked Aunt Joy.
“Very near then.” She blew the stray floating leaves to the edge of the cup, let the warmth of the porcelain seep into her palms. “Once, not so very long ago, I was just a girl made of nothing but silly wishes and fairydust, who wrote stories and pretended she was a gypsy or a pirate or the queen of the world.”
“And now...?”
“And now,” Sunday said, as if that would suffice.
“Now you are a young woman in love with a prince.”
“Am I?” asked Sunday. “Am I really in love with him? I thought I loved someone once, but I didn’t. Or, rather, it wasn’t enough.”
“I loved someone once,” said Joy. “A street magician, a conjurer of cheap tricks, a shyster, my father said. But, oh, he was so much more than that. He caught my eye and bewitched my heart, and I was a fool for him.”
“How did he die?”
“Sorry?”
“You’re not together,” said Sunday. “I just assumed.”
“No, child. He is very much alive.”
Someone as powerful as her aunt had let the man she loved slip through her fingers? “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know what became of him, in the end.”
Sunday realized she’d asked the wrong question. “What happened to you?”
“I had a sister,” she said. “Women began speaking in snakes, children disappeared into the Wood, the king of Arilland lost his name, and I had a dark sister.”
“Can no one else keep Sorrow in check?”
“No one like me,” said Joy. “No one is as close to her, who can tidy as quickly and neatly the messes she makes. I was not there for the first royal wedding, nor was I there when Queen Madelyn—your dear princes mother—died. This is my last chance to undo what she has done.”
“The last?”
“It must end here, because this time it involves my goddaughter.”
“But I’m not going to marry the king,” said Sunday. “I’m in love with the prince.” The word slipped out so easily. “Love.” The echo of it hovered in the air.
“I know.” Joy smiled again. “But, like me, you have a sister.”
A chill settled over Sunday, one that she could not shake and that the small fire could not dispel. “Wednesday.”
“The king has asked for her hand in marriage tonight, and she has accepted.”
“But you were supposed to stop it,” said Sunday. “Why aren’t you there stopping it right now?”
“I cannot stop the unstoppable.”
“Then why are you here?” Sunday cried.
“I am here to right a wrong,” said Joy, “and to teach you.” She took Sunday’s empty teacup. “You should try and get some rest before your sisters get home.”
***
When Mama poked her awake the next morning, Sunday screamed. Her mind was still fresh from dreams that tasted of storms and sea and blood and hunger. Her ribs were still bruised from the beating in the courtyard, but she didn’t want to alarm her mother. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You startled me.”
“You started quite the scandal, disappearing with the prince last night.”
“I was badly hurt. They carried me inside and took care of me.”
“No one saw you leave the courtyard, and everyone else involved in the ruckus woke up exactly where they had fallen.” Mama rubbed a bruise on her right cheek. “Including me. And then some brawny, fire-haired guard told me you’d been escorted home in the royal carriage.”
“They knocked me to the ground, and I managed to crawl to the kitchen door. That’s all I remember, Mama, I promise. I was very ill.”
“So ill that you lost your dress?” Mama scoffed. “Don’t lie to me, Sunday. It isn’t you.” Sunday opened her mouth, but Mama held up a hand. “Don’t tell me the truth either, because I can’t lie to your father. Just tell me this: are you in love with the prince?”
“Yes.” All her torment filled up that one word and spilled over the sides.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Mama sighed. And then the strangest thing happened: Mama softened. “Come with me, child.”
Sunday dressed as quickly as she could and followed her mother down the tower steps to her parents’ room in the main house. Mama led her to the trunk at the end of her bed, a fixture for so long, Sunday had forgotten it was there. Mama pulled off the quilts and pillows—more of Friday’s handiwork—stacked on top of it. The lid creaked as she pried open the long-neglected hinges. Among the sundries inside the trunk was a box. Inside the box was a dress of silver and gold, the most beautiful dress Sunday had ever seen.
“This was Tuesday’s gift from Joy,” Mama said. “I think she would want you to have it.”
“What happened last night, Mama?”
“The king asked your sister to marry him.”
Sunday didn’t need to ask which sister. “And she accepted?”
“As if she could have done otherwise.”
But Wednesday could have refused to marry the king ... and then he could have ignored her refusal and ordered her to marry him anyway. Aunt Joy had said the event was unstoppable. “When will the wedding take place?”
&n
bsp; “Tonight,” said Mama, to Sunday’s astonishment. “Friday will have her hands full today making a brand-new dress for Saturday. The gods know how we’re going to move her around the castle with that leg.”
Sunday remembered a wheeled chair resting near a bed of small white flowers in the garden. “We’ll find a way. What about Wednesday’s wedding dress?”
“Wednesday stayed at the castle,” said Mama. “Monday is taking care of her there.”
“Monday.”
“I’ve made my peace with her, fool girl,” said Mama, though Sunday wasn’t sure if the “fool girl” Mama referred to was Monday or herself. “I have a daughter about to become queen. Holding the rank and title of princess against my other daughter seems trivial.” Mama took Sunday’s hands in hers. “Or daughters,” she added.
“You mean me,” said Sunday.
“I saw the way you and the prince looked at each other that first dance,” said Mama, “as did everyone else in that room, before his father’s ridiculously dramatic display erased their memories. I’ve seen that look before. It was a look your father and I shared, once upon a time.”
“Do you still?” Sunday asked desperately. “Do you still look at each other like you once did, back at the beginning of the story, when everything was a question you were too afraid to find the answer to?”
“If you can pull yourself away from your own ridiculous drama, you’ll find out.” She motioned to the dress in the trunk. “Go on.”
Sunday lifted the dress by the shoulders. It smelled magically of honeysuckle and sunshine, not thirteen years of storage. Aunt Joy’s gift had not saved her sister; Tuesday’s death must have been one of those unstoppable events. As with Jack, so much in the world had hinged upon Tuesday’s life, and the ending of it.
“Are you sure?” Sunday asked her mother.
“What do you mean am I sure? I said so, didn’t I? You know I mean what I say, whether I like it or not,” she scoffed. “The dress is yours, Sunday.”
It was always meant to be hers. Sunday saw that now. Clever Aunt Joy. It wasn’t just Monday with whom Mama meant to make peace. She had to make peace with her own powers.
Seven for a secret never to be told. Seven Woodcutter had stopped having children after seven daughters, just as she’d said. She had called Trix family. She had announced that one of her daughters would be engaged by the end of the week. She had cursed those elfin red shoes of Tuesday’s to never wear out and doomed her own daughter to death.
Not knowing Grumble’s fate was hard enough. Sunday couldn’t imagine having to live with the guilt of killing your own daughter. “Monday said I looked like her,” said Sunday. “If my putting this dress on causes you pain, I won’t do it.”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Mama said. “I was the reason your sister died, plain and simple. I have regretted those words every day since.” She sat down on the edge of her bed, as if every syllable she spoke held a weight she was long tired of carrying. “I miss her,” she admitted. “I miss them both. I didn’t realize how much until I saw Monday again.” Mama stroked Sunday’s cheek. “Your resemblance to Tuesday is the gods’ way of giving me back, in some small part, a piece of the daughter I never got to know. I have to accept that and appreciate it.” She dropped her hand. “I can’t do that if I push you away, too.”
Sunday hugged her mother tightly. “I love you so much, Mama,” she said. “No matter how hard you push.”
Seven Woodcutter put her arms awkwardly around her youngest daughter. “I love you, too, Sunday. No matter what happens.”
For once, Mama didn’t have to say it for Sunday to know it was true.
***
Sunday found Papa in the back garden. He was whittling a birch branch to nothing and watching the sun spin the clouds into pink candy. She sat down beside him without a word. Her white pigeons cooed softly in the holly tree beside them. The wind barely ruffled the grass below; the sky barely moved above. Mama would be calling for her any minute, but she needed something. Finally, her father gave it to her.
“There was once a beautiful young girl,” he said. The breeze and the birds and the sound of his blade on the branch blended into a song.
“Was she the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world?” asked Sunday.
“Yes,” said Papa, “but that’s another story. So this beautiful young girl—”
“Was her name Simone?”
“Her name was Candelaria,” said Papa, “but that’s another story. Candelaria had a cat—”
“Was it a smart cat?”
“Cats are neither smart nor dumb. They are just cats. And being cats, they have an extraordinarily good sense of balance.”
“That they do.”
“Which is why Candelaria was caught by surprise the day she saw her cat fall and, quite ungracefully, not land on its feet.”
“Was it hurt?”
“Only its pride. Cats possess even more pride than balance. ‘If you promise to never share what you have seen here today,’ said the cat—”
“Cats can talk?”
“When they choose to,” said Papa, “but that’s another story. ‘If you promise to never share what you have seen,’ the cat said to Candelaria, ‘then I will grant you one wish.’ ”
“Did she wish for a unicorn?”
Papa held up a finger. “Being given this wish was a miracle,” he said, “for Candelaria’s father was deathly ill.”
“Did he have a cough?” asked Sunday. “And the chills?
“A cough and the chills and bumps and a rash and a fever and black toes and a gremlin sitting on his chest.”
“That’s not good,” said Sunday.
“They had not the slightest hope. But Candelaria now had a wish.”
“Did Candelaria wish for her papa to be saved?”
“No,” said Papa. “She wished for a unicorn.”
“Ah.” Sunday curled her toes into the cool wood of the bench and rested her chin upon her knees. Not quite the ending she had hoped for, but for that brief time during the telling, they had been just Sunday and her papa, and nobody else. Just like the story, their time was now over, their ending bittersweet. Unless...“What color was her unicorn?” asked Sunday.
“Oh, she didn’t get a unicorn,” said Papa.
“She didn’t?”
Papa turned to her, and that smile Sunday had missed so much of late suddenly appeared on his face. She almost cried aloud with relief and happiness. “Of course not,” he said. “She got another cat.”
“Another cat?”
“Yes indeed,” said Papa. “For the only things in this life more selfish than beautiful little girls are cats.”
Sunday wrung her hands. “I’m so sorry, Papa,” she said, her voice choked with invisible tears. “I am so very sorry that we never had a cat.”
Papa’s bark of laughter startled the birds, who scolded him properly, and he pulled Sunday to him in a hug so wonderful that she didn’t mind her scrapes and bruises. “I don’t want this nonsense to come between me and my little girl.”
“Neither do I, Papa.”
He tossed the useless branch away and sheathed his knife. “I still don’t like him, though.”
“The prince?”
Papa scowled. “Or his father. Just because you are the king and you can get everything you command doesn’t mean you should.”
“He did ask Wednesday for her hand,” said Sunday, “or so I’m told.”
“Yes,” said Papa. “But he didn’t ask me.”
No, he hadn’t. But he was the king. He didn’t have to. And that was the point. Sunday worried then that the sins of the father would be visited upon his son as well. “And what about the prince?” she asked casually.
“He hasn’t asked me anything yet,” said Papa. “But I suspect he hasn’t asked you anything yet either.”
“No,” said Sunday. “He hasn’t.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” said Papa. “If you are ... don�
�t.” Sunday put her chin back on her knees. Parents always told their children not to worry about things. “If you’d like, I’ll do my best to reserve judgment until I’ve met your prince.”
Her prince. The words felt like a warm breeze. Her prince. “I think that’s wise,” she said. And then, “Yes, I would like that.”
Papa leaned back on the bench with his arm around Sunday; she snuggled into the shoulder that had been molded over the years to exactly fit a daughter’s head. “So tell me about this fellow I haven’t met yet.”
“He makes me laugh,” said Sunday.
“I make you laugh,” said Papa.
“As much as I hate the crowds and the costumes,” she said, “I feel strangely comfortable around him.”
Papa harrumphed. “That’s my job, too.”
“He seems to go out of his way to seek me out,” she said. “He worries about my mood and my well-being. He seems to genuinely care about me. Why would he do that, Papa? He doesn’t even know me.”
Her father sighed. “My dearest Sunday,” he said, “I wasn’t scared of losing you until that last part.”
“You’ll never lose me, Papa.”
Mama yelled for her from deep inside the house.
“See?” he said. “Your mother’s trying to spirit you away
“We probably should get ready. The royal carriages will be coming for us.” She tried to stand up, but her father squeezed her tighter.
“The royal carriages will wait,” said Papa. “We could sit here until tomorrow and the royal carriages would wait.”
“But Mama will not.” Sunday heard her mother call once more, this time for them both, and louder.
“I know that, little dove.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of twilight. “I also know that there’s a reason they say the third times the charm.”
And so they remained there, in guiltless peace, until Mama called again.
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