by Katie Cross
Miss Bernadette stood on her toes and looked over the queue. Her lips moved as she counted in her mind.
“Good! We’re all here. You have the list of cold weather herbs required for your book of samples. Please collect as many as you can find and come back when you’re done. We’ll begin classifying them by medicinal purpose tomorrow.”
“Finally,” I whispered, a cloud of white air billowing from my mouth, relieved to be out of the classroom for a change in scenery. A few girls grumbled about the cold, but Miss Bernadette bestowed her shining smile and the muttering faded.
“The sooner you finish,” she said, “the sooner you’ll have a mug of Miss Celia’s vanilla bean hot chocolate in your hands to warm you up!”
Encouraged, the students immediately started into the forest in packs of two or three. Leda met my gaze.
“Ready?”
“I am,” I said, gazing round. “But where’s–”
“Hey girls! You ready?” Camille bounced up, ringlets flying, apple cheeks bright red in the cold. “Let’s go. It’s too chilly to stand still. I want to get my hands on some of that hot chocolate afterwards.”
We followed Camille to an empty section of the woods. Camille immediately filled the quiet, as always.
“Did you hear the story?”
Leda rolled her eyes.
“No, and we don’t want to. You know how I feel about gossip.”
“I know, I know,” Camille droned. “You couldn’t care less.” She looked at Leda askance, her voice nonchalant. “That’s fine. I won’t tell you about Priscilla’s quibble with a first-year that got her in trouble.”
Leda bit her bottom lip. I started a countdown in my head, waiting for the moment she would capitulate. There was nothing Leda enjoyed more than one of the third-year trifecta doing something wrong. If they got caught, that is.
Three … Two … One …
“Fine,” Leda said, the bait too delicious to ignore. “But just this once!”
“Great!” Camille pounced toward her opportunity like a cat. “Last night, Ruby went into the hallway to go to the little girls room but didn’t have a candle. It was urgent, so she went anyway. Naturally she didn’t see Priscilla walking toward her, because Priscilla didn’t have a candle either.”
Leda made a poor attempt at hiding how much she wanted to know what happened by turning her face to the trees and letting out a sigh. But she edged a little closer, watching from the corner of her eye.
“What happened?” I asked, egging Camille on.
“Well,” Camille said, drawing it out. “They smacked right into each other. Priscilla wore some kind of cream on her face so Ruby thought she was a ghost and screamed. Miss Celia came running down the corridor with a broom, yelling. And then Priscilla tripped on the hem of her nightgown and toppled head over heels, smearing the cream all over the place.”
Leda and I stopped walking, both of us clutching our sides as we laughed. The sight of plump Miss Celia running with a broom over her head, and Priscilla going ankles up, was too much.
“Apparently her nose is swollen and she has a bruise on her chin where it hit a doorframe. Miss Celia made Priscilla stay up and clean the cream. Priscilla sent an emergency message to her father last night, asking him to get Ruby expelled and Miss Celia fired!”
Leda applauded, no longer ashamed to fully contribute to the conversation.
“Well done Ruby!”
“Let’s send her flowers, shall we?” I asked.
“That’s not the best part.” Camille lowered her tone and glanced around, as if we weren’t the only three people in sight. She bit her bottom lip in sordid excitement.
“Ruby told me in secret that she didn’t recognize Priscilla. Her face was swollen and her nose larger than normal. She thinks that Priscilla performs a transformation spell on her face every day before class, and that’s why she’s so beautiful.”
“I’ll bet she was seething!” Leda cackled in delight, a hand pressed to her stomach.
“She’s a horrid, wicked girl,” I said. “No wonder she’s so good at transformations. She does them every day.”
“Yes, she is.” Camille agreed, then sighed. “I’d just die for her hair, though.”
Leda and I laughed again.
“Bianca!” Camille grabbed my arm, a sudden thought occurring to her. “Have you gotten the next letter yet?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just last night.”
“And?”
Camille’s eyebrows rose as I recounted the letter.
“It didn’t say anything about the match,” she said in disappointment. “You don’t even know when it will be?”
“No clue.”
Camille shot Leda a look of question, but Leda firmly shook her head.
“No. I won’t.”
“Oh, fine,” Camille muttered with a roll of her eyes. “Be fair.”
I pointed out a few plants on our list, and Camille stepped forward to harvest them. Leda and I scrounged through the bushes nearby. When Camille slipped out of earshot to struggle with a particularly stubborn root, Leda stepped up to my side, fidgeting with the edge of her cloak.
“Bianca, can I, ah, ask you something?”
“Sure, I guess.” I leaned back on my haunches.
She grimaced. “It’s more of a confession.” She paused to let me take that in, then blurted out, “I accidentally told Camille about your curse. I didn’t mean to! It just came out.”
I looked out to see Camille fall onto her backside, victorious, a wiggling root in her clutches.
“What do you mean it ‘just came out’?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her face darkening. “She kept talking and talking. I couldn’t get her to stop.”
“That’s a surprise,” I said under my breath.
“I kept seeing glimpses of your future at the same time and got frustrated, which made the images come even faster. So I finally snapped at her to be quiet because I thought I saw something about your grandmother.”
My eyes widened.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing that makes sense. It all happens so fast, and sometime it’s …” she trailed off. “Never mind!”
Not wanting to frustrate her further, I backed off on the interrogation.
“It’s okay, Leda.”
Leda slumped into the dirt next to me.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “Camille’s harmless. Shocked that Miss Mabel would do something like that, but harmless. She won’t tell anyone. She’s kept my secret for years.”
I let out a long sigh. It felt nice, actually. I hated secrets, even though they surrounded my life. “She would have found out eventually.”
Relief flooded Leda’s pale face. “I expected you to storm off and be angry.”
“Just because I haven’t yet doesn’t mean I won’t,” I said, still a little tempted.
“Would you? I’d feel better.”
“How about I make a scene in the dining room? I’ll smear cream on your face and send you head over heels after dinner.”
Leda managed a wry grimace I imagined she intended to be a smile.
“Thanks.”
We started working through the plants in a comfortable silence until Leda broke it with a question. “Speaking of your curse, what kind is it?”
I hesitated and rested my weight on my fingers. They sank into the cold dirt, numbing the tips. If there was one thing I never wanted to talk about, the curse took first place. It only put me in a foul mood, like eating a bitter fruit. The horrible taste lingered, and once you knew what it tasted like, you couldn’t forget for a long time.
“Does it matter?” I grumbled. “A curse is a curse.”
Her forehead furrowed in confusion. “Maybe. Maybe not. Your future changes so much, more than most. It’s … it’s like there are really powerful influences outside your control that keep moving it. Most people are fairly in control of their future, and it usually shifts with th
eir decisions. But you’re different. I wondered if it was your curse controlling the outcomes.”
Something in her tone made my blood run cold.
“It’s an Inheritance curse,” I said, after working the same spot of frozen ground for a plant with little success.
Leda abruptly stopped digging.
“An Inheritance curse?”
I nodded.
“Those are really rare,” she said in a low tone. “Who received it?”
“My grandmother.”
“The sick one?”
My heart squeezed. For me no other grandmother existed, but Leda couldn’t know that. I’d never met Papa’s family, and knew nothing about them.
“Yes.”
“Your mother must have it then as well.”
“That’s how it works,” I said with a clenched jaw, accidentally pulling a leaf too hard. The plant fell apart in my hands and I tossed it away.
“Is it affecting her?”
“Arthritis has already started to cripple her hands, if that’s what you mean. Can we talk about something else?”
“Not yet, I just have a few more questions,” she said, oblivious to, or not caring about, the sharp sting in my voice. She’d make a wonderful politician. “Is your grandmother going to die because of the curse?”
“Not if I can help it,” I muttered. Leda tilted her head to the side.
“What do you mean?”
I set my jaw. “Nothing,” I muttered. “Forget I said anything.”
“Look what I found?” Camille said, breathless and rosy-cheeked as she rejoined us. “Some winter savory. Miss Bernadette said it’s difficult to find! There’s enough for all of us. Jackie’ll be so jealous! Uh oh, is everything okay?”
She looked between Leda and I.
“Fine,” both of us said at the same time. Camille dropped her pile of plants and fell to her knees by me.
“Did Leda tell you?” she asked, peering into my eyes. “It’s my fault she told me your secret. I exasperated her. I do it often. I never mean to!”
“Yes.”
“I think it’s terrible,” Camille declared. “I vow never to like Miss Mabel. And I won’t tell anyone! I’m a good secret-keeper.”
“Thanks,” I said in a droll tone. “That means a lot.”
Leda, never swayed from her original intent, broke into the conversation.
“You aren’t thinking of trying to bargain with Miss Mabel are you?”
I glared at her.
“Let it go, Leda.”
“Bianca, Miss Mabel isn’t going to bargain with you for your grandmother’s life. You know that, right?” she said.
“I don’t know if it will work, but it’s the only chance I have to save her,” I snapped. “Satisfied? Are there any other happy things you want to talk about?” The echo of my acerbic tone bit like a razor as I picked at a few grass blades with vicious strikes, but I couldn’t stop now. “The curse, my grandmother dying, the painful death my mother can’t escape from? How about a few sick puppies or abandoned kittens for good measure?”
Leda reared back.
“Sorry.”
She knelt in the grass and sat back on her feet, falling into silence while I attempted to piece my control back together with a few deep breaths. Contrition overcame me. None of this was her fault. Camille put a hand on my arm.
“It’s okay, Bianca,” she said in a soothing voice. “You’ve got a lot going on right now.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked up at Leda. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I get it. Since I told Camille about your curse, consider us even.”
But her curiosity hadn’t waned; I could feel it in the air. I knew what she didn’t dare to ask.
“Seventeen,” I said, straightening up. “Miss Mabel cursed my grandmother at age seventeen.”
Leda’s eyes widened.
“Seventeen?” she repeated, casting a worried glance to Camille.
My stomach felt sick.
“No wonder you volunteered for the Competition,” Leda said. “You’re the third generation. If Miss Mabel doesn’t remove it by your seventeenth birthday–”
I finished it for her.
“I’ll die.”
Camille gasped, her hands flying to her face. Leda opened her mouth several times to speak, but had nothing more to say.
“Oh, Bianca, no,” Camille whispered. “No wonder you’re Competing.”
“I don’t want to talk about it again,” I said, making eye contact with both of them. “Winning the Competition is my only chance. I’ll do whatever I need to in order to live. In the meantime, you tell no one. Okay?”
They both nodded a mute agreement. We quietly resumed our search for the right herbs, the silence speaking between us.
14
Hazel
Leda remained in her room that evening, holed up with a new stack of books on curses. No amount of pounding or pleading drew her out, so we left for dinner without her. Camille, Jackie and I descended the stairs, laughing when a statue of a forest nymph Miss Amelia had set out that evening startled Camille.
Miss Celia walked into the entryway from outside, bringing a blast of chilly air with her that cut through my dress and wrapped around my legs.
“Merry meet, Miss Celia,” Camille called.
Miss Celia waved in an absent gesture. Her puffy face beamed bright red from the cold. Both sets of her sausage-like fingers worked at the strings on her cape with little success. Dark crept in from the outside with the icy wind that pushed against the school in thick gusts.
“Blessed be, but it’s cold out there!” Miss Celia cried, finally succeeding with the thin strings. “I’m glad that delivery is over with. The good gods know I never want to venture out in the cold.”
“What were you delivering?” I asked. Camille and Jackie continued to the dining room, leaving me standing on the stair alone.
Miss Celia’s buxom chest swelled.
“An order of my cinnamon buns,” she said with a little titter. “Ten dozen, with extra icing. It made me a nice sacran or two.”
I slowed to a stop at the bottom of the steps. One or two of the golden, octagonal sacran coins seemed like a cheap price for so many cinnamon buns. Her pastries should net her at least three or four silver pentacles, but she looked so pleased I didn’t say anything.
She shook a few stray leaves off the back of her cloak, and I couldn’t help but notice the frayed hems and tattered edges. Miss Celia never looked poor, but her kitchen clothes typically bore speckled flour and tomato stains. Although everybody said that Miss Celia had been here for ages, I realized I didn’t know much about her.
“Are you saving for something?” I asked.
She waved me off with a little cluck. “Just my retirement, like everyone else.”
That should have been a few decades ago, I wanted to say but smiled instead.
She cast a wary eye toward the dining room and visibly shifted back into Priestess of the Kitchen mode. “I smell bread. Do Rebecca and Michelle have dinner ready? I hope they restocked the firewood and spiced the peaches.”
I looked to the open dining room doors. Camille and Jackie stood inside, talking to Brianna, a second-year with full brown hair. She had a lovely nose, a warm smile, and reputation for being friendly to the first-years.
“They just rang the bell,” I said.
Miss Celia’s hands fluttered over her hair, soothing back the strands of gray and white. Instead of setting them right, she made them stand up on end, drifting in the drafty hallway.
“I guess I better get in there. I didn’t mean to be so late. There was an emergency in Bickers Mill, and the apothecary had to leave in the middle of my order. Oh, well. So mote it be.”
Emergency. Apothecary. Bickers Mill. My stomach clenched in fear. The sleepy village of Bickers Mill never had emergencies. I cleared my throat and tried to keep my tone even.
“What kind of emergency?”
“Oh, one of his elderly patients fell sick two nights ago. Poor thing,” she crooned and hung her cape on an iron coat rack near the door. The pegs spiraled out like giant arms. It was a gargantuan piece of furniture that had startled me several times when I came down the stairs with only a candle. “It sounded like she wasn’t going to make it.”
“Did you hear a name?”
I realized I’d lost any claim to subtlety when Miss Celia gave me an odd look and her face dropped.
“Oh, Bianca. I forgot. Your family lives in Bickers Mill, don’t they?”
“Yes. My grandmother is–”
“Hazel? Is her name Hazel?”
My heart stuttered and leapt into my throat.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Miss Celia reached out and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Bianca. A woman who, now that I think about it, looked just like you, came running in, asking that he follow her. She mentioned a Hazel, and he left straight away.”
I managed a weak smile, but inside I wanted to scream.
No! Not yet. Give me a chance to bargain with Miss Mabel. All I need is a few days!
“Y-yes. Thank you, Miss Celia.”
“Come on,” she said, motioning me to the dining room. “Let’s get some warm food inside you, and you’ll feel much better. That’s a good girl.”
“Actually,” I said, digging in my heels. “I just realized I forgot something in my room. May I go get it?”
She hesitated, studied my face, and nodded.
“Take your time,” she said, patting my shoulder again. “I’ll set some dinner aside for you.”
The sounds of the dining room faded behind me as I took the stairs two at a time. Three candles in my room blazed to life the moment I barged in. A feather flew into my hand, and a fresh sheet of messenger paper flapped onto the desk from my hidden cache below the mattress.
My hand trembled as I wrote:
Mama,
Miss Celia told me that Grandmother has fallen ill again. Please write with details as soon as you can. I may still have a chance to bargain with Miss Mabel, but I need as much time as you can give me.