by Susan Ee
Helene put her arm around the girl and walked her out into the drawing room.
“No need to get upset, dear. Being the clever woman that I am, I’ve discovered a new income stream for us. Tomorrow, we can go to the market. You can pick out whatever colors you like.”
Cinder knelt and stared at the suds on the floor. A new income stream. The next hunt. Every full moon.
Her whole body began to tremble and she could hardly breathe.
Chapter 4
Cinder normally liked market days. On those days, she was free to wander around town on her own with no chores to do for a few hours other than to buy whatever looked fresh.
But today, she had a hard time enjoying anything. The next hunt was coming. It was weeks away, but it would inevitably come just as the moon would inevitably grow fat and full.
She stumbled around, only half aware of what she was buying, when she saw the flower stall.
Cinder was drawn to the stall and the silver-haired woman who was giving a basket of flowers to a customer. Cinder politely waited until the woman was gone before talking to Silver.
“Will you help me, please?” The words barely escaped her mouth.
Silver looked at her with sharp eyes. “Help you with what, child?”
Cinder looked around to make sure no one was listening. The market was busy and everyone seemed to be preoccupied with their own business. Still, she kept her voice down to a whisper.
“I’m the girl who killed the nobleman in the woods.” Tears blurred her eyes as she whispered it, and her whole body trembled.
A look of surprise came across Silver’s face.
“My stepmother is going to send me on the hunt again and again. Every month on the full moon. I don’t know what to do.” She tried her best to keep her voice from quivering.
Silver’s nostrils flared and she stood tall. “Well, blubbering about it won’t help you.”
Cinder blinked rapidly, feeling her eyes dry at the sting of Silver’s indifferent tone. There was nothing like indifference from others to make a girl stiffen her spine and trudge on. What choice did she have?
“That’s better.” Silver handed her a thorny rose. “Here. Come back over here and help take the thorns off. You’ll at least be out of the way of my customers then.”
Cinder hesitantly walked around to the other side of the stall.
Silver handed her a knife to clip and scrape the thorns. “My granddaughter Ruby used to help me, but her father has too many chores for her now.”
Silver had thick gloves on to protect her hands, while Cinder had none. But Cinder didn’t complain.
It was comforting to have something to do instead of fret over what would happen in a matter of weeks. She scraped and clipped, her fingers getting prickled.
When she was done with the first rose, Silver handed her more. Cinder started to say that she had her own chores to do for her stepmother, but Silver had already turned to talk to a customer. Cinder picked up a rose and began cutting off the thorns.
Silver helped customers as they came by but didn’t say anything to Cinder during the quiet times. Cinder figured that maybe she was supposed to forget she’d ever confessed to her. Sometimes, people were like that. They pretended that a thing never happened and everyone moved on as if in silent agreement. Perhaps this was supposed to be one of those times.
Only, Cinder wouldn’t be allowed to move on as if nothing ever happened because it was about to happen again soon. Her hands began to tremble and she pricked herself even more. Blood trickled down her fingers and along the rose stems.
Silver took the rose out of Cinder’s hands and handed her a pair of gloves.
“Here, use these, silly girl. Don’t get blood all over my flowers. You don’t want some ladyship discovering a young girl’s blood on her market flowers. She may get a taste for it and come after you.”
Silver wiped the stem clean of blood. Cinder looked up at her nervously. Did ladies really do that?
Ladies all seemed so proper and well mannered. But she supposed her stepmother was the same way in public. In private, though, she was practically demonic.
It was much easier to de-thorn the roses with gloves on. When Cinder was done with the roses, Silver gave her the task of separating out dried flowers into bunches for sale.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go. I have chores—”
“Yes, you do. And they are not going to get done if you’re gallivanting around the market.”
She shoved the dried flowers into Cinder’s arms. Bit by bit, Silver gave her more tasks and showed her how to do them. They talked of nothing but flowers and the mindless tasks of dealing with them.
Cinder gradually calmed down. It soothed her to be preoccupied, and every time her mind drifted to thoughts of running for her life through the dark forest, Silver gave her another task to do that took up all of Cinder until she got the hang of it.
At the end of the market day, Cinder helped Silver pack up and put everything into her wheelbarrow. A heavy mood fell on the girl as she packed the flowers up for the morning.
One more day closer to the next hunt.
Silver walked away without saying goodbye. Nor did she take her flowers with her.
“Silver, you forgot your flowers.”
She turned to look at Cinder.
“What are you dawdling for?” asked Silver. “Come along and bring those flowers with you. You don’t expect me to push that heavy thing all the way home, do you?”
Silver turned and walked away.
Chapter 5
Cinder watched Silver walking away down the market. She had already spent all day helping Silver. She’d have a full day’s chores waiting for her when she got home. But she had occasionally stayed all afternoon at the market before.
She picked up the flower cart and rolled after Silver. The woman was brusque and sometimes odd, but at least Cinder knew Silver didn’t hate her the way her stepmother did.
Silver lived in a cottage surrounded by flowers at the edge of the dark forest. Her tidy cottage stood in stark contrast to the other houses in town, which were mostly water-stained and dark. Those were houses with dark windows covered by drab curtains. Hardly anyone smiled or wore bright colors. Black had been the height of fashion for as long as Cinder could remember.
The only one in town who had bright flowers all around her house was Silver. Anyone else and it would have been downright weird. Only the wealthiest had flowers. So naturally, those who were most concerned with their social status had flowers on display.
The only exception was Silver. She was the town’s only flower grower. Without her, there would be no perfume. Without her, there would be no color at the fancy ladies’ balls. Without her, there would be no bees or honey in town. So Silver was accepted, if not exactly popular.
“Leave the cart there, girl, and come inside.”
Cinder looked at the darkening sky. Every year, the night fell earlier than the year before. Now, it was getting dark at three in the afternoon. She didn’t like the idea of walking home alone in the dark, but that was the kind of thing they were all getting used to.
Silver’s cottage was bursting with color. Flowers, both fresh and dried, were everywhere. Others had tried to raise flowers without much success. But under Silver’s hands, they bloomed almost year-round. The scent was glorious and full of spring, even though it was fall.
The cottage had a large hearth with a comfortable-looking rocking chair nearby. In front of that was a large table full of flowers. Silver’s home welcomed Cinder with a mixed scent of roses, honey and rich stew.
She expected Silver to pause by the hearth to kindle a fire, but instead, she lit the candles and walked into the backroom. Silver was rich enough to have a two-room cottage. Only merchants and lords had multi-room houses.
It was almost unheard of for a market vendor to live in a cottage made of petrified wood with more than one room. That was testimony to how valuable her services were.
&nbs
p; Not sure what she was supposed to do, Cinder followed Silver into the second room. As soon as she stepped into it, she gasped.
Instead of flowers draped everywhere, there were knives, swords, spikes and all manner of soldierly things. Metal glinted from all corners. Weapons and armor were hung on every wall.
“Stop looking so shocked,” said Silver. “Every woman ought to have an armory in her house.”
“But…why?” Cinder gaped at the glinting knives and swords made especially for smaller frames.
“Because we live in a world with violence and hate, where too many of the stories we hear are the Dark King’s propaganda. Because half the population can kill women with their bare hands. Because there is nothing to save us but us.”
She ran a finger along a blade, caressing it like a lover. “Anyone who lays a hand on me will bleed out before he knows what hit him.”
Cinder watched her with wide eyes. “But you’re a grandmother. I’ve seen you with your grandchildren.” She blinked, trying to make sense of it.
“What of it? You think you cannot be feminine and still be a deadly fighter? You think grandmothers and flower sellers can’t kill and hunt and defend herself against other hunters?”
Cinder stood in the flower grower’s armory and tried to breathe.
“You asked me to help you. I cannot save you. But I can teach you to save yourself. Understand? It will be hard work. Harder than you’ve ever worked. And when the time comes, you’ll be completely alone with not enough training to do much other than to confuse your clumsy body.”
She walked around Cinder, squeezing her arms and tapping her calves.
“And if you’re lucky enough to survive the next hunt, then you shall have passed your second test. Come back to me alive, and I’ll teach you how to survive the next time. And the next. And the next. Eventually, you might look forward to the hunts.”
Silver stopped directly in front of Cinder. “Eventually, it might be the hunters who are afraid to go into the woods under a full moon.” There was a hard glint to her eyes. “As it should be.”
Cinder could hardly breathe. “You’ll…you’ll teach me?”
Silver looked her up and down with an assessing eye. “When the Wild Wars started, I was younger than you. Skinny and gangly, with a body that hadn’t grown into itself yet. I had my head full of stories of true love and Everness.”
“Everness? The kingdom of sunshine and happiness? It’s hard to imagine you believing in such a fairy tale.”
“It’s not a fairy tale. It’s our neighboring kingdom, child. The Dark King guards the way to it, and commands all to speak of it as a silly fairy tale because he fears that all his subjects will go there instead of staying in Midnight.”
Cinder could only blink in surprise. She couldn’t simply believe Silver over a lifetime of being told that there was no such place full of sunshine.
Silver saw her resistance and sighed. “Anyway, beliefs can kill. I believed fairies were wee creatures full of mischief and harmless fun. And that belief certainly killed many. When the Wild Wars started, we had to call the enemy ‘wild fairies’ because people were dying from their belief that ordinary fairies were harmless.”
She moved to take down a tiny knife. “Try this.” She handed it to Cinder.
The handle was bigger than the blade, but it felt light and well balanced in her hand.
“Hold it like this.” Silver adjusted the knife in Cinder’s hand.
“But it’s so small.” The blade was no bigger than Cinder’s pinky finger. “How can I fight off a horseman with this?”
“You don’t fight off a horseman. Not yet. For now, you fight off a man who is so preoccupied with his own power and lust that he won’t be paying any attention to you. Use his belief against him.”
“I don’t understand. I’m all he’ll be paying attention to.”
“No. Not you. He’ll be preoccupied with what’s in his own head and body. You are just a thing to him. An animal to be conquered and consumed. That’s his belief. And it can be a fatal one, just like our belief that the fairies were harmless. That was a deadly conviction at the start of the Wild Wars. Understand? The hunters have no inkling of you as a person, with a will that is not his own.”
Cinder nodded even though she wasn’t sure she fully understood.
Silver turned and walked out of the armory.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Silver. “We only have a couple of weeks, and you have a world of tactics to learn.”
Chapter 6
Each morning and each night, Cinder ran over to Silver’s cottage to train. She learned that her wool shoes were fine for cleaning floors but not so fine for running. Silver gave her leather shoes with thick soles that helped, but she also cautioned that a survivor needed to be self-reliant. Comfortable shoes wouldn’t always be available to Cinder.
So Silver made Cinder run to the cottage in the predawn hours in her bare feet. It would toughen her feet, she said. But she allowed Cinder to run back home after the sunrise with her new shoes, which was a huge relief to Cinder.
During the day, she would squeeze in all her chores at her stepmother’s house as fast as she could. There was a never-ending list of things to do, and her stepfamily were constantly adding to it. But none of them were awake as early as Cinder, and all of them retired long before Cinder went to bed. So no one noticed her absence in the predawn hours and after supper.
During her visits to Silver’s cottage, Cinder did as many chores as training. She fetched pails of water, lifted heavy stacks of fertilizer, and had to climb trees to collect flowers that only grew on the top branches.
“Please, Silver. I only have a few weeks before the next hunt, and I can only be here for a few hours a day. Can’t I train all the time I’m here? I promise I’ll come and help you if I survive the first few hunts.”
“Silly girl. You are training all the time you’re here. And if you do what I tell you, you’ll be training all the time that you’re at your stepmother’s house, too.”
Cinder didn’t argue. Silver was a strange woman, and that was all there was to it. But Cinder couldn’t fathom why Silver thought pushing the flower cart and digging holes for new plants was good training. Every night, Cinder went to bed with sore muscles and slept like a rock.
But she continued because Silver would get in an hour or two of knife lessons along with grappling lessons each day. Once every few days, Silver would teach her a new move—one for fighting hand to hand and one for the knife. Cinder liked the knife moves better. It made her feel secretly powerful to have a hidden weapon, but Silver refused to let her rely on it.
“Weapons can be taken away from you and used against you. Your strength of mind and body is always yours. Learn to rely on yourself and yourself alone. Everything else is gift, and it’s a gift just for that moment.”
Each night as she ran back to her stepmother’s house, Cinder watched the moon grow fuller. Each night, the terror abated the tiniest bit, only to resurface in the morning with her aching body and the knowledge that she was only a girl in a kingdom full of hunters.
One night, while she ran home, three teenage boys on horses raced down the muddy road. The moon was three-quarters full, and she could see the ghostly lines of their faces.
They were handsome and clean in a way that boys seldom were. They wore leather and velvet and were laughing. The biggest one had a whip and was whipping both his horse and the other boys’ horses if they got near.
The other two boys seemed undaunted by the whip and kept racing to go past the biggest boy.
Cinder moved off the road to let them pass. As they passed her, one of the younger boys raced to move past the biggest one. The older boy raised his whip and whipped it down on the younger one.
The boy cried out and fell back, dropping his rein. The horse reared up.
The boy fell backward and thudded onto the muddy road.
The oldest boy burst out laughing. The other boy didn’t laugh,
but neither was he jumping off his horse to see if the fallen one was all right. He put out a burst of speed to overtake the oldest boy while he was preoccupied with mocking the fallen boy.
The biggest one tried to whip the second one as he raced past him. Then the two boys sped down the road, not even looking back at the one who was lying in the mud.
“Are you all right?” asked Cinder. “Do you need help?”
“I don’t need your filthy help.” He lay there, curling up in the mud in his pain.
“Well, you certainly look like you need help. And if one of us is filthy, that would be you.”
He tried to glare at her but was too busy trying to breathe. Then he tried to get up, trying to look dignified.
Cinder debated what to do. Should she help him? He had said he didn’t want her help, so she stayed where she was.
“Good luck, then.” She turned and continued to trot down the road.
“Wait.” He sounded alarmed.
She stopped and turned to look at him. He was on his feet under the three-quarter moon. He was almost as tall as her, even though they were probably about the same age.
She cocked her head at him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home. Where are you going?”
“Home as well.”
“Then you’d better get going,” she said. “It’ll be full night before you get there at the pace you’re going.”
“Why are you running? Are there wild fairies about?” He looked around nervously.
“There are always wild fairies about, but I haven’t seen any if that’s what you’re asking.”
He walked toward her. “I’m headed the same direction you are.”
“Would you like to run with me?”
He walked a few steps with her in silence, obviously trying not to limp. “You don’t believe in walking?”
“Sure. But the longer I take to get home, the longer it’ll be before I get to sleep.”