Starlight Cowboy

by Stephanie Beck

  Beyond Fairytales

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  Taliasman by Anastasia Vitsky

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  If I had been born a boy, I would have followed in my father’s footsteps and become a tradesman. Because I was a girl, he sold me instead.

  “No,” Vina corrects me when I bring up the story, which is not often. She doesn’t like the facts, and I dislike her pretty lies. “Your mother agonized whether to let you go, but she knew you would be better off here. She wanted to give you a better life.”

  I would call Vina on her mistruths, but she claims I still reason as a child. All of my protests to the contrary serve to prove her right, at least in her mind. Only when I agree with her does she admit I am a full-grown adult.

  “You’re happy with me, aren’t you?” Vina makes me sit next to her at the formal dinners she hosts most nights, and she dresses me in rich silks with real lace. If I tell her no, she sends me to my room as punishment for what she calls my petulance. If I resist, she gives me one of her lessons in obedience. Some are painful, others pleasurable, and all serve to narrow my world and make me focus on her. How could I not, when she owns me?

  “No,” Vina corrects me when I call her my owner. “I set you free, and I gave you the life you never could have had otherwise.”

  When I turned nineteen, no one wanted to marry me. My mother fussed with my hope chest, if it could be called that, arranging the one cotton handkerchief as if it could attract a suitor.

  “Let me stay with you,” I entreated my parents, and I won. I always did. The house needed new walls, and I wielded the power tools. Small of stature and still a child, I could carry them to the electric outlet on the neighbor’s property. As an adult, Father would have faced fines for stealing electricity.

  “You’ve turned her into such a tomboy no one will want her,” Mother chided Father, and the truth stung. I could have cared for my parents into their old age, but they wanted me gone.

  When a visitor arrived, unannounced, I scrubbed our last two potatoes. The striking woman in a red hooded cloak would get an entire potato to herself. Father and Mother would share the second potato, and I would boil the peelings in the leftover water for myself. My mouth watered, and I gave thanks for the visitor’s coming. I could fill my belly for the first time in months. Curious about the newcomer, I eavesdropped on the conversation. Vina punishes me now for listening, but I hadn’t learned her rules yet.

  “You can’t provide for her,” the stranger said, and Father’s shoulders sagged. “She will give her youth to you, and what will happen after you die?”

  If I had been a boy, the stranger would have asked me about my life. I would have learned Father’s trade, become the “& Son” of his third-generation woodworking business, and taken my rightful place as heir to the master of the house. As a girl, I cost Father a dowry he couldn’t afford to pay.

  “If you aren’t offering Talia a suitor, why are you here?”

  That was Mother, blunt as always. Father preferred to work with his hands, but Mother’s sharp tongue rang through the house day and night. “Charles,” she would say, “the eaves trough is crooked.” No matter how tired or hungry, my father would fix the eaves trough before Mother gave him dinner. Those nights, I darned socks with a growling stomach until Father took his first bite. When one of us wore out our only pair of socks, I unraveled the yarn, tied the frayed ends, and knitted once more.

  The stranger laid a cloth sack onto the table. The contents clinked as Father loosened the drawstring.

  “Gold?” Father shouted, scraping his chair back. “Sell my daughter to a slaver? Get out of here before I break your scrawny neck!”

  “How much?” Mother asked, and with those words, she sealed my fate.

  If I had been a boy, Mother would have counted the coins given to marry her son. Instead, she sold me for enough gold to keep her in new silk stockings every day for the rest of her life. She no longer needed a knitter of thrice-used yarn.

  Back at the palace banquet table, Vina waits for her answer. “You’re happy with me,” she repeats, and her eyebrows arch in warning. I can repeat her litany of lectures before they come from her mouth. “Instead of letting you die in uneducated squalor, I brought you to my palace where you want for nothing. I gave you food, clothes, and books. God meant for you to be mine.” When I fail to produce the expected apology and affirmation of her twisted version of events, she slides her chair backward. “Couldn’t we have one day without this discussion?”

  “You bought me,” I whisper, refusing to give in. “How can you expect me to be happy?”

  She pinches the skin above my left elbow.

  I would run, if I had any place to hide. I would fight, if I had any weapons to wield. I would argue, if I had any listeners to hear. Instead, I edge away from her grip. Whether she dismisses her servants or allows them to watch, the outcome is always the same. I will not give gratitude for lies. “No,” I say, because refusal provokes consequences only when she listens. I lower my head, studying the tasseled fringe of the tablecloth embroidered in gold thread.

  “My heart grieves at your obstinacy.” Instead of grief, her voice quivers with restrained anger.

  “My mother sold me,” I repeat, and Vina frowns.

  “Do you want me to treat you as a possession?”

  “It would be more honest,” I blurt, and she stops her arm midway from reaching toward me. “How much did you pay for me?” She still refuses to tell me, over a year after the transaction that turned me into a member of her household. Or chattel, as I say.

  She crooks her finger and points to the floor. Uncomprehending, I bend to inspect the parquet for a dropped fork. “Kneel,” she commands, and the blood courses through my veins. I double my fists, but she takes no pity. “You refuse to take your place at my side, so you may kneel at my feet. Or shall I strip you of your clothes and beat you into submission?”

  She has proclaimed my happiness for the past year, and each assurance deepened my resentment. I did say this would be more honest, didn’t I? The powder-blue velvet of my dress crushes beneath my knees as I fall to the floor. I should refuse the degrading order, but her manicured red nails work their way through my hair.

  “Why?”

  “Good girl,” she says, and against all reason, I am pleased. I rest my forehead against her thigh, and a soft exclamation causes me to tilt my head backward. At the last second, I open my eyes. Laugh lines crinkle around her dark brown eyes filled with compassion and—can it be?—love. “If you…but you don’t,” she corrects herself. “Will you behave, or must I send you to your room?”

  I will end up in exile sooner or later, awaiting her nightly visit. Today, however, I am more willing to participate in her charade. “My queen,” I say, and she smiles at my irony.

  “I will be your queen,” she promises. “But not until you are ready.”

  Discomfited, I rock back on my heels. My buyer, redeemer, patron, and queen? For the past year, I have wished for my old life back. I want to scrounge for coveted potato peelings instead of turning down saffron salmon served on gem-studded silver trays. I wish I could cry as the worn-out yarn refuses to stretch into a proper heel.

  Taking pity on me, she gives the command I have longed for all day. “You may go to your room.”

  I should apologize for what she deems bad behavior, but I leap to my feet to scurry away from the hostile, prying eyes of her many servants. They can’t understand what a great lady like Vina would want with poor trash like me. “Thank you,” I murmur, with sincerity, at last. I escape through the long, narrow hallways to face my dressing-girl’s displeasure. She unfastens and loosens every inch of my clothing, replacing the costly fabrics with a simple cotton nightgown. Disapproval radiates from every taut muscle in her body, but I ignore her. In my new life, only Vina’s displeasure counts.

  “Talia,” Vina scolds when she arrives after dinner. “After thirteen months, is
n’t it time for you to settle in?” She raises the hem of my nightgown and traces the pattern of welts.

  Instead of answering, “Yes, my lady,” I hurl my bitterness at her. “How can I?”

  In turn, she asks instead of answering. “Why can’t you?” Rage, shame, and hopelessness overwhelm me, and I turn away. She lifts my chin and says with the firmness of nobility who never have been disobeyed, “Answer, Talia.”

  “If I had been a boy,” I mutter, “none of this would have happened.” She releases her hold and allows me to continue. “A boy would have carried on the family name. A girl meant another mouth to feed.”

  “You want me to treat you badly, in accordance with how you feel about yourself?”

  I kneel, but she raises me up. “No, my lady,” I answer when she stares for too long. “Just beat me and get it over with.”

  Instead of the lash of the belt that has sent me to bed in tears for a year and a little more, her lips brush against my forehead. I gasp, trembling, and open my mouth. She nuzzles my cheek with her own. “Such a child,” she murmurs.

  “I’ll be twenty-one in the spring,” I argue, and she covers my mouth with her own.

  “Such a child,” she repeats. “Rejecting the one who wants you, all because a few pieces of gold exchanged hands. Have you forgotten the dowry your father would have paid to your husband’s family?”

  I close my eyes, breathing in the lavender scent of her laundress’ washing oil. “Shh,” I beg, clasping my hands around her neck. “What we’re doing is wrong.” But I do not stop. I should hate her, but today, my will is weak.

  “Did I break your bones?”

  “No.” I smile.

  “Did I break your heart?”

  Yes, I want to say, but the potato-peeling girl fled ages ago. I could have lied to protect myself, but months of regular meals and fine clothes have turned me soft. “No,” I admit. “But my parents only took money for me because I was a worthless girl. If I’d been born a boy….”

  “If you had been born a boy?” She holds me tightly, caressing my sore bottom. “I would never have allowed you here.”

  She thinks she means her palace, but I know she means her heart.

  ***

  Later, I ask how she found me. She lifts a rounded piece of silver dangling from a solid metallic chain around her neck. “Feel this,” she says, and I rest my index finger on the intricate metal design. To my surprise, the disk reverberates in time with my own heartbeat. When I hold my breath, trying to force my heart to slow down, the pulsing slows as well. Uneasy at the witchcraft, I back away. She hangs the amulet around her neck, delicate petals contrasting with her gold chain.

  “This called me to you,” she explains, and I don’t pretend to understand. Father always did say that a woman who never married must be a witch. Years later, she will tell me about a man named Nicodemus. For now, however, she settles for a simpler explanation. “As long as I wear it, your heart is with me.”

  What happens when you take it off? But tonight is the first time I have ever felt peace in her palace, and I hold my tongue.

  “Are you happy here?” This time, she asks as if she wants to know.

  “No,” I say, smiling. “Not until you teach me all you know.”

  On that day, she makes me her apprentice. Me, Talia, who was born a girl.