When she woke, the darkness still cradled her. She reached for her handkerchief of berries, but remembered she had already eaten all of them. Her palms stung from Odele’s punishment. The sound of her sisters’ heavy breathing floated across the room. They always slept soundly.
Sitting up, she ran her fingers across the fresh wounds in her hands. It would hurt to carry water tomorrow. The last time Odele had struck her was months ago. The floor was cold through the thin blanket she called a bed, and since she was no longer sleepy, she stood and made her way to the window.
The bedroom was at the top of the house. The window allowed a glimpse of the sprawling forest, which made up most of the land. Other houses sat nestled in small clearings, and eventually the forest cleared to make way for rolling hills, farms and pastures, and then the village and the palace. Issina could see its spires sparkling in the distance, the white stone glowing brilliantly in the moonlight.
Unlike every other rainy evening, the night was clear with not a speck of storm clouds. She pushed the window open and breathed in the fresh air. It filled her with energy. As she stared at the palace, she thought of the magical people honored enough to live there. Edryn and Sybil would live there someday, and their status and wealth would make Odele happy and secure. Any day now, a courier would stop by to collect names of the coming year’s entrants for the festival performance.
Raising her hands, she looked at her long cuts in the pale light. She thought of the searing pain, but most of all how she might convince Odele to let her put her name in for the performance. She was finally old enough, having reached her sixteenth birthday only a few months earlier. Although Sybil and Edryn had not been chosen for the past two years, she knew she had a chance if she could enter. She closed her eyes and touched her two eyelids, the skin warm and velvety. She ached to know if magic flowed in her veins. If only she could learn the right spells, maybe she could unlock powers to fix everything that had gone wrong.
Thunder growled in the distance, and she looked up to see storm clouds rolling in. The forest grew darker in the diminishing light, a black blanket dotted here and there with a soft white glow emanating from its depths. She had seen this glow before wherever the trees grew taller, and figured it was only the moonlight playing tricks on her eyes. Tonight she wasn’t so sure. She wanted to stare longer, but the air turned frigid as the first raindrops fell. She should have known a clear night couldn’t last. Closing the window, she walked back to her blanket. She lowered herself to the floor and listened to the pelting rain as a thin, watery frost coated the window.
Every morning before breakfast, she had to fetch water. It was a chore she enjoyed and loathed, but this particular morning she knew it would be more difficult than usual. Edryn, rubbing her one eye with a tight fist, sat up in bed. Her black hair had turned frizzy during the night, and it cast shadows on her face. Issina wondered how long it would take to get a brush through it before she could leave to fetch the water.
“He’s coming today,” Edryn said excitedly as she lowered her fist and blinked. She jumped out of bed and sat at her vanity.
Issina stood and found a brush among the piles of clutter in front of her. “You mean the courier?” she asked.
“Yes, you dolt. This year will be different. They’ll choose me and Sybil, you’ll see.” She cringed as Issina tugged at her hair with the brush.
“I didn’t say they wouldn’t,” she said, convinced Edryn was right.
“I see it in your eyes. You don’t want us chosen.” Edryn reached up and grabbed Issina’s wrist. “I saw your corra shift just now. What are you thinking?”
Issina tried not to laugh. She enjoyed it when her sisters wanted to know her thoughts and couldn’t see them. A surge of energy rushed through her. “I’m not thinking anything... only that I might enter my name as well.”
“What!” Edryn dropped her wrist and laughed. Sybil stirred in her bed, but remained asleep. “You? You have no magic. You’re not capable of anything but everyday chores. The festival council will already know this—or they will once they examine your blood.”
“Things can change.” She lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew in order to submit her name for approval she had to sign her name in blood on the form. The blood was then inspected by the council and deemed worthy or unworthy of submittal, after which names were approved or disapproved for performance and judging.
At the moment, it did seem impossible that she would be accepted.
She caught a glimpse of the cut on her left hand as she smoothed Edryn’s hair after each brush stroke. Perhaps she only wanted to submit her name to see if she was chosen—to see if magic did flow in her veins and had simply been suppressed so long that it had gone into hibernation. She wanted to touch a plant and help it grow like her sisters could. She wanted to dance with air as light as feathers against her skin and create music to make others weep with joy at its beauty.
Edryn smiled. “You’re so brainless.” She giggled as she peered at her reflection and batted her eye. “Things like magic don’t change. You either have it or you don’t.”
Issina stopped brushing. “That’s not true.” She thought of Odele, who had no magic whatsoever, but claimed she had wielded it before Issina was born.
“Ah, I see what you’re thinking,” Edryn said as she pulled the brush from Issina’s hand.
“I thought you said that was impossible.”
“Sometimes anyone can see your thoughts. Your face gives it all away.” She yawned and covered her mouth with her dainty hand. “I need some breakfast. Bacon and eggs sound good. There is nothing like bacon, don’t you think?” She licked her fingers loudly. “Greasy and salty and so filling, and you always cook it perfectly. You’d better go fetch the water before Mother wakes.”
Issina’s stomach gurgled and she studied Edryn’s smattering of light freckles across her cheeks, her perfectly pink lips that formed a heart when she pressed them together. Issina touched her own cheeks and lips with trembling fingers. “If you’re so clever, what was I thinking just now?”
Edryn turned and looked up. Her skin was delicately pale in the sun shining through the window. “You were thinking about how you destroyed Mother’s life, how you took everything away from her and made us move here from our home and the only other people like us. The least we can do is make sure you’re miserable because of it.”
She kept her mouth shut. Although her sisters sometimes referred to something terrible she had done in the past—something she couldn’t remember—she never asked for clarification. The one time she had asked, she had received a slap for an answer.
The forest smelled of frost and rain as she made her way back to the house. The rain always stopped before sunrise, and it was only in the winter that it turned to snow. In the summer it remained fluid, sometimes freezing into icicles just before morning, the forest a shivering grove of refracted light.
The garden next to the house was just as vulnerable to the cold. It often sparkled more brilliantly than the forest, every budding flower and leaf a delicate frozen masterpiece.
As she approached the garden, she caught sight of Edryn and Sybil crossing the chicken yard to enter their green wonderland. The garden was their paradise, and it was off limits to Issina. Still, she stepped up to trellises and peered through a break in the heavy foliage.
Edryn and Sybil, dressed in only their white chemises and fur-lined cloaks, twirled happily along the trails. They raised their arms and chanted rich, beautiful phrases. Ice shattered, frozen edges disappeared, stems lengthened at a rapid pace.
Although their work was enchanting, Issina knew it was only a small portion of what the growers did every morning as they visited expansive fields and gardens and sang the frost away. By the end of summer, the crops were healthy and abundant—more so than if the sun had been left to do the growing on its own. The only areas untouched by the growers were the forests, and they didn’t look as beautiful or as healthy. Issina knew this from th
e berries she picked along the path. They were significantly smaller, some of them burned with the cold and not as sweet as those grown in the garden at home.
The growers’ work seemed to require large amounts of energy. After a few minutes, Sybil and Edryn sat on the ground, gasping. There was a reason they had to be chosen by the council and could not become full growers on their own. They needed training to increase their stamina, and only one person could provide them with it.
Gilbert and Gissy honked at Issina’s heels, startling her from her reverie. The silly geese had followed her out when she had opened the gate, staying with her the entire trip. Sometimes her goat, Cassia, followed her, but she seemed low lately, sleeping past sunrise in her corner of the chicken yard, her peppery-gray hair more dull than usual.
Issina picked up her water buckets and entered the chicken yard. Cassia greeted her, bleating at the top of her lungs. Issina smiled at seeing her friend so full of energy. “You must be feeling better, old girl.” She knelt in the powdery dirt and scratched between the animal’s ears.
“Maaaa,” was all the goat said, but Issina liked to believe she said, Yes, thank you.
Issina tried to ignore how skinny the animal felt. Her ribs were clearly visible.
“Maaaa to you too,” she said with a frown, and pecked a kiss on Cassia’s nose. She stood up to finish carrying the water inside.
Odele was in the kitchen dropping biscuit dough onto a baking stone. Her graying hair was swept into an intricate knot, revealing her slender neck, which always reminded Issina of a swan gliding through the water.
“It’s about time,” she snapped as she glanced at Issina. “Your sisters are starving.”
“I’ll bet they are.”
“What did you say?” She spun around as Issina set the water buckets on the floor near the oven. Nobody had stoked the fire yet, meaning breakfast would be even later.
“Nothing,” she muttered. She grabbed a basket and a knife before heading to the root cellar where they kept vegetables and meat. Sometimes she stole food from the cellar, but Odele could almost always tell when she had eaten something, which was why she tried to be careful with the berries and eat them only at night or in the woods.
She made her way down the stairs. The room stayed very cool, even during the hot summer days, and was situated well beneath the house. The hard-packed dirt walls were webbed with spindly roots and the air smelled sweet, like cold plants.
She headed for the cured ham hanging from a rope secured to the ceiling. It was nearly gone, but what was left looked so tempting that she licked her fingers after she had cut a few slices and put them in her basket. She glanced at the mostly empty shelves around her. It was the middle of August, and winter would come sooner rather than later. Normally the cellar would have been more stocked by this point, but Odele had been forced to sell food in the market during the past months to pay debts. Issina hated to think of the meager scraps of food she would get once the snow began to fall and her mother and sisters hoarded more for themselves. There would be no berries then.
She looked at the roots snaking out of the walls. Last winter she had sliced some and eaten them at night in her room. Bitter. Oddly enough, she had enjoyed the taste as it burned down her throat. Like a balm, the roots had calmed her growling stomach. Now, looking at them before she turned to head back up the stairs, she wondered if she should cut some more. She touched a knotted mass of them near a shelf. They were cool against her skin and made her think of the music in her dreams, of tall trees and sparkling light.
After breakfast, she entered the sitting room to dust the furniture before the courier arrived. Sybil stood at the window watching for him. Her three eyes blinked dreamily as the late morning sun wrapped around her curvy form. Issina noticed she had dressed in one of her lovelier gowns—a deep purple taffeta skirt and tightly fitted bodice that revealed the tops of her pale breasts, squeezed together by the corset. She was eighteen years old now, the peak age for finding a husband.
“He likes this dress,” she said when she turned to see Issina watching her. “Last time he came to deliver a message, I was wearing this dress. He couldn’t keep his thoughts off me. I read his corra like an open book.”
“Why do you wish to please the courier?” Issina asked, confused. He had no bearing on the council’s decisions, but she did have to admit she remembered his handsome face. Sybil might have been attracted to him.
Sybil laughed and stepped closer to the window. Heavier than Edryn, her plump but dainty face was framed in reddish-brown ringlets cascading to her waist. “I want to please almost everyone. Getting anywhere is about connections. It has been slow going, but I know we’ll improve our situation if we make enough of those connections.” She smiled and touched a potted plant on the sill. The flowers were the same purple as her dress, and Issina could have sworn they grew a deeper purple when Sybil touched them.
“I understand,” Issina said, and pulled a feather duster from her threadbare pocket.
“Do you really understand?” Sybil turned and frowned. Issina promptly looked away. “Edryn told me about your desire to enter your name,” she said gently. “I don’t see how we can stop you—unless Mother puts her foot down. She may wish to see you embarrassed by publicly showing your lack of magic. You don’t seem to understand anything about our world.”
“Your world?” She stopped dusting the bookshelf in front of her. She clenched her jaw and stared at the floor. “I’ve lived with you my entire life,” she said with shaky breaths. “We are of the same blood. I must share at least a small portion of what you possess.”
“Is that so?”
She looked up as Sybil put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “You... dusting our furniture, eating our scraps, upsetting Mother nearly every hour of the day... you share what we possess?” She stepped nearer and pushed her face close to Issina’s. “If I were you, I’d be more careful about where you place your hopes. You’re forgetting where you belong, Issina. Edryn and I have plans, and if you upset them in the slightest, we’ll put an end to you quicker than you can blink with those two ugly eyes of yours.”
Whenever Sybil looked at her so intently with her three amber eyes, Issina felt as if a flame was focused on her forehead, burning her skin. She knew Sybil was trying to read her corra.
“I’m not trying to upset your plans,” she said, looking at the floor again. “I only want to know.”
“Know what?”
A spot on the rug consumed her attention. She stared at the black mark. “I only want to know if I can be like you.”
Sybil huffed. “Not in a million years.” She spun around in a whirl of taffeta and marched back to the window. “Finally,” she said in sweet voice. “He’s here.”
The courier was handsome and young, just as Issina remembered from months earlier when he had delivered a package of specially ordered seeds for the garden. His clothes were pressed and clean and he smelled slightly of his horse, but it wasn’t unpleasant. He stood in the center of the sitting room, facing Odele, Sybil, and Edryn. Issina stood in a dark corner with her feather duster dangling from one hand. She had not been present the last time her sisters entered their names.
“Madame Grenefeld,” he said with a short bow to Odele. “Your two lovely daughters wish to submit their names again this year?”
“Of course.” Odele flourished her hand in Sybil’s direction. “Sybil is my eldest. She will go first.”
“Very well.” He flashed Sybil a smile as his focus drifted down to her chest and back up again. He blushed. “As I recall, you two were very close to being chosen last year, but there was an unusually large number of contestants.”
“We’re determined to be chosen this year,” Sybil said with a giggle as she tossed her ringlets over her shoulder. “We’ve been practicing and we’re much stronger in our talents.”
“I can only imagine.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his bag as well as a long silver pin. It was large enough for Is
sina to see from across the room. He walked to a writing desk near her. She froze when he stopped and looked into her eyes. “I didn’t see you there,” he said with a smile and nod.
“I tend to blend in.”
He chuckled and set his papers on the desk. “Miss Grenefeld, come here, if you will.”
Sybil floated across the room on her soft-slippered feet and extended her slender fingers to the courier. Issina saw her hold her breath as the courier lifted the pin and dug it into the tip of her smallest finger. There was a short gasp from Odele and the courier lifted the pin and pulled a quill from his bag. After dabbing the tip into Sybil’s blood, he placed a cloth against her finger and handed her the quill. He motioned to the top paper on the desk.
“Sign quickly, Miss.”
She did as she was told. Her blood seemed to sparkle against the parchment. Edryn followed suit, and as the courier packed up his things, Issina squeezed the handle of her feather duster and fumbled with the words in her mouth. She stepped forward like a shadow peeling itself from the wall.
“Courier, sir, I was hoping I could... I’d like to enter my name into the festival.”
His eyes widened. He turned to Odele. “She is your daughter, Madame?”
“Yes, but not a drop of magic in her.”
He bowed briskly then glanced at Issina, smiling. “Sometimes gifts are not visible. I pride myself on finding worthy entrants. I would hate to miss one.”
Bonded: Three Fairy Tales, One Bond Page 13