Dearest Page 3

  Friday searched her mind, wishing she could recall more than the flashes of random visions that flickered before her eyes. With them, bubbles of sadness and terror burst inside her belly. She saw the swans again, and her mistress beside her, but those had been a dream. She did not want to disappoint Velius as she had disappointed her mentor. “I . . . I’m not quite sure.”

  Velius enveloped her hands in his larger, warm ones. His palms were surprisingly uncallused for a knight, just as hers were despite all her years of sewing. This unblemished skin was a particular fey trait they shared.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and she obeyed. No harm would come to her in this world or any other with such a protector. Behind her lids the darkness turned to clouds of deepest indigo. “Breathe.”

  As she did, the clouds brightened and parted before her. Trees full of chirping birds surrounded her; sun warmed her skin. A soft breeze rustled the leaves above her and danced through her hair. She wore her usual costume: a plain linen shirt, bodice, and full patchwork skirt. There was a basket in her hand. Velius stood by her side, unchanged from the formal court dress he’d been wearing in her bedchamber.

  “I know this place.” She smiled into the sun and filled her lungs with fresh air that smelled of wildflowers and baking bread. “I often stop in this glen on the way to the church.”

  “I thought more familiar surroundings might set your soul at ease before we proceed. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” said Friday. “It’s lovely.”

  “Many do not share your optimism as regards my use of magic. Especially in the wake of our former, unbeloved king.”

  Rumbold’s father, King Hargath, had used magic to extend his own life by both literally and figuratively consuming the lives of his fey-blooded wives. Her sister Wednesday had barely escaped his clutches.

  Friday raised her brows. “To decry the use of magic would slight both my own family and myself. So long as it is used for good and healing, I believe magic should never be shunned.”

  The duke bestowed upon her the infamous smirk that set all women blushing. “I’ll be the first to admit my intentions are not always pure, milady.”

  Friday was not immune to his beauty. She knew he meant it politely, but she was not used to being a woman that men sought out, even in jest. Normally, girls like her were destined to become dedicates of the Earth Goddess and one day, if they were very lucky, maybe even great abbesses like her Aunt Rose Red.

  Then again, dedicates, acolytes, and abbesses didn’t normally fall in love with every person who came their way, either. Sister Carol might have seen this trait as a distraction, but Friday preferred to see it as a sign that she was destined for her chosen path. Humans and fey were all children of earth, and so Friday felt her seemingly endless capacity for love a boon to her Goddess. She would continue doing her best to stay true to the path of Earth; Sister Carol would come around eventually.

  Friday turned away from Velius, whose inner and outer beauty almost seemed to glow in this other-place. “Even so, it is not for me to judge, Your Grace. That is between you and the gods you favor.”

  “You are too kind, princess.” He placed a chaste kiss on the back of her hand. “This world is sorely lacking in kindness.”

  “Perhaps our new king and queen will set a trend.” She sat on the fallen log he indicated, straightened her skirts, and settled her basket. “Can I offer you some conjured dream-pastries? I’m sure they’re delicious.”

  Velius chuckled. “Thank you, no.”

  “Pity.” Friday replaced the biscuit in the folds of the napkin and sucked the golden crumbs off her thumb. It was, indeed, as scrumptious as she’d imagined. “To work, then.” She slid her hands back into Velius’s, which were so warm with power that she almost broke into a sweat. She crossed her legs at the ankle and took a deep breath. As she exhaled, the visions came to her again, more slowly and smoothly, as if she were relating a tale remembered from Papa’s knee. She forced herself to think of the recent events not as a memory, but as a story that had happened to someone else a very long time ago.

  “I was in the carriage with Mistress Mitella on our way to her home in the north. We had made it as far as Hammelyn when the horses bolted.” She saw their rolling eyes and blocked out the memory of their screams before they reached her ears. “There was no warning, besides the horses, of course. The driver managed to cut them loose, but the carriage never stopped moving—the earth rose up and caught the wheels and we were at its mercy. Then the water came, raining from above and rising from below. It filled up the cab as if the gods had dropped us in a lake. Mistress Mitella opened the door and ordered me to swim free.” Her voice abandoned her briefly, and she paused to regain control. “That’s the last I saw of her.”

  Friday might have been overcome with sadness had it not been for the calm strength of Velius radiating in warm waves next to her like a healing sun. Her brother Peter sometimes had this same calmness about him. “I’ve never been a very good swimmer.”

  The duke did not laugh at her. “It would not have mattered if you were. It seems the gods took it upon themselves to turn the high seat of Arilland into a seaport. I’m only sorry you were caught in the middle.”

  “Has there been any word from Mistress Mitella? Or the driver?” Friday stopped herself. If Velius had known, she would already have answers. “Who would have angered the gods so?”

  “By all accounts, it was your sister.”

  “Wednesday?”

  “Saturday.”

  Saturday? The least fey Woodcutter sibling of them all? This should probably have surprised Friday, but it didn’t. Velius knew, as she did, that even without a scrap of magic Saturday had the power to anger anyone. “By whose accounts?”

  “Your father, your brother, and Monday,” said Velius. “Apparently, Trix spelled them all to sleep so that he could run away without your mother stopping him. Saturday did not succumb immediately, thanks to that damned sword of hers, and she managed to stay conscious long enough to throw a magic mirror after him. This particular mirror subsequently broke the world . . . and summoned pirates.”

  Pirates? Of course. It made sense when one’s sister was a pirate queen. “Thursday gave that mirror to Saturday last spring, before we came to the ball. Just before we met you.” There had been yards of gorgeous material in that trunk as well, and a proper seamstress’s kit, thanks to the foresight of Captain Thursday’s magic spyglass, or the remaining Woodcutter sisters might never have been able to attend that fortuitous occasion. Friday lamented a moment for her beautiful sewing kit, now lost to the waves of a misplaced ocean. She could kick Saturday.

  “Why did Trix run away?”

  “A message came for your mother that her sister, your Aunt Tesera, was dead. Her body lies in state at Rose Abbey.”

  “Trix’s true mother is dead? Oh, the poor darling. Mama would have forbidden him to go, of course.” Everything Mama said came to pass, for better or worse. That was her gift, and her burden.

  “We’ll never know,” said Velius, “though I’ll wager he didn’t want to leave it to chance. Thursday took your mother and Saturday on her ship, so that she might see them safely delivered to the north. Erik accompanied them as well.”

  “Good.” Few people could rein Saturday in as efficiently as her fencing teachers: Erik and Velius. Mama could too, of course, but not without substantial resistance and possible dire consequences. “How is Papa taking all this?”

  “Your father and Peter are building a ship.” He put his arm around Friday’s shoulders. “In the meantime, Rumbold has sent messengers far and wide. We will discover what happened to Mistress Mitella. And everyone else.”

  With that, the forest faded and Friday’s bedchamber returned. The noises of the Wood were gone, and beyond the stone-rimmed casement the sunlight had dimmed to a late afternoon glow. The fallen log beneath her was now the silk and down of her bed.

  Velius released her hands; Friday stretched her fingers out i
n the blessed cool of the room. “I shall keep you no longer, milady. I expect there are more than a few people eager to see you.”

  The duke nodded to her squire, who had slipped quietly back inside the chamber without anyone noticing. Conrad opened the door, stepped aside, and bowed as her family poured through with gifts and smiles and love. This time she opened her mind to their emotions, letting herself be overwhelmed by their good intentions. And whatever portion of Friday’s soul that had yet to heal itself did so immediately.

  3

  Princess of Children

  REFUGEES SWEPT into Arilland’s palace only slightly less rapidly than the magical floodwaters that had evicted them. Every room was quickly filled, the larger areas transformed into mass sleeping quarters for those farmers and tradesmen who could not find lodgings in the lower city and surrounding areas.

  Every morning, Friday steeled herself against the onslaught of emotions running amok through the palace. Aunt Joy had taught her meditations that allowed her to achieve calmness in crowded spaces, but silencing the ever-increasing population of Arilland was a true test of her mettle.

  Sunday and Rumbold all but lived in the Great Hall. When the doors were open, they received guests and settled disputes. When the doors were closed, they decided graver things, like where to house everyone, how to feed them, and whom to approach in the neighboring kingdoms for help. Velius took charge of the healers and turned the larger ballroom into a makeshift hospital. Princess Monday demanded the position of head nurse until Velius caved—her beautiful face at a patient’s bedside worked more miracles than any panacea he could conjure.

  Not one to stay idle, Friday appointed herself the Princess of Children. Every morning she, her young squire, and her Darlings would make the rounds, collecting any new children and seeing to their needs. Some parents were reluctant to leave their progeny in Friday’s care—mostly the lords and ladies who felt that the unwashed masses had no business mingling with their royal betters. But after a day or two in the company of childhood boredom, these parents were all too happy to turn their young ones over to Friday.

  “But what will you do with all of them?” Sunday had asked her big-hearted sister before granting her strange request.

  “The laundry,” Friday had answered with a smile. As she had learned from making herself indispensable to the Sisters, the best kind of fun was the kind that was also useful. This task was also best done outside, away from a palace teeming with emotions that Friday was still struggling to handle.

  The weather stayed in Friday’s favor—the skies seemed to have cried all their rain into the ocean and had no more to give. After collecting the children and baskets of soiled clothes, Friday and her flock marched down to the pond and set up camp. The older boys built a lean-to to shade the babies from the sun. A few of the older girls sat with them, as well as Frank, a young man with no use of his legs but a sixth sense when it came to babies. They took turns with the changing and the feeding and the rocking and the cooing and the snuggling. There was much snuggling.

  Friday broke the rest of the children into teams for sorting, washing, wringing, hanging, and mending. At first, washing was more of a punishment for the misbehaved, since, for the life of her, Friday simply couldn’t dream up a way to make this fun. And then the misbehaved discovered the amusement of soap-fighting. After that, punishments turned to spot-scrubbing.

  Each team had their own individual challenges. Whoever finished the task first got to sit with Friday or collect lunch from the kitchens. Whoever finished last was made to wash the babies’ diapers. John and Wendy sat with Friday as many times as Michael had to fetch diapers. Only Ben the Ubiquitous accompanied Michael while attending to that particular chore.

  When all the lines were hung and the bread and cheese were gone, the children were free to play their own games in the fields until dusk. In the evening, Friday returned her weary charges to their parents, happily yawning and bearing clean clothes for the palace maids to redistribute.

  But the strain on the palace did not leave Friday’s new Darlings untouched. As the days passed there were so many lines of clothes that no more could be hung. The children began using tree limbs, or the sunny patches of dry grass, where linens whitened best. There was less and less free time in the late afternoon. Vigorous games gave way to less energetic prospects like floating in the pond, watching the swans, or napping. All work and no play made the children irritable; Friday was eventually forced to leave some of the work undone. Worse still, the lunches began to shrink in size, though the number of children only grew.

  Conrad joined Friday at the edge of the pond one afternoon, while the children played an elaborate game involving much running and screaming and barking and throwing of sticks. There was too much work to declare today a holiday, but an afternoon of idleness was sorely needed.

  “You are doing the best you can,” he said.

  Friday smiled away a yawn she could not stifle. She was unsure how much of the exhaustion she felt was her own, and how much of it was the children’s emotions compounding this feeling she was too tired to block. “And here I thought I was the only one who could sense the feelings of others.” It had become a joke between them—Conrad’s years of reading unspoken signs from masters in countries with an unfamiliar language seemed at many times on par with Friday’s own powers of empathy.

  “Be careful, mistress. Children have a sixth sense. They can tell when you’re not happy.”

  “I promise to stitch up an extra-large smile before our journey back to the castle tonight.”

  “Then I will guard your sadness in the meantime,” said Conrad.

  Having a squire was an odd business. This boy—this young man—was her responsibility now in a way that her brothers and her charges had never been. The decisions she made would directly affect him, and no one else was responsible for the outcome save her. His complete willingness to trust her made her humble; it would have been disrespectful for her not to trust Conrad in kind, so she would and hope for the best. She thought it sweet of the young man to stay and help her instead of offering to take the first message from Rumbold and run straight out of Arilland—Friday certainly wouldn’t have blamed him.

  Friday let out a long breath and allowed herself to relax. “Thank you.”

  “As milady wishes.”

  Not so long ago, it would have been scandalous for a “lady” to frolic in the fields. Worse still, a woodcutter’s daughter posing as a member of the royal house would have been tantamount to treason. These were different times in Arilland and—inconceivably—it had been her family who’d changed them.

  Now, as long as the children were taken care of, no one cared if the princess dipped her toes in the duck pond. It’s possible no one would have cared had she tossed her dress aside altogether and taken a swim. “I would rather be teaching them to read instead of training them for the workhouse.”

  “This is a time of adversity,” said Conrad. “It will not always be like this. But it is important that they know to be useful in such times.”

  “It is also important that they not forget to be children.”

  “I was never good at that,” said Conrad in earnest.

  “Nor I.” Friday had been put to work from the moment she’d understood the word “chore.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps your sister the queen chose the wrong shepherds for this flock.”

  Friday chuckled at that. “Perhaps.”

  “But as no other champions have stepped up to the task, I suppose we must bear the burden a little while longer.”

  Friday smiled at her squire. As if sitting beside a sunny pond in the late afternoon watching the swans and listening to the laughter of children could ever be a burden.

  It was not perfection, though—there was a sorrow on the wind. The bitter, icy tendril of sadness pierced Friday’s skin as easily as her needle slid through silk. She concentrated on the shrieking laughter behind her; this feeling did not come from the children playing in th
e field.

  Friday lifted her gaze to the opposite bank of the pond. The girl Rampion stood there, tossing what looked like dried corn to the swans. The birds acted like fools for her, squabbling over the tidbits and pulling at her skirts and apron. Rampion smiled and Friday felt a laugh spring up in her throat on behalf of the mute girl. But there was still a profound wistfulness about the scene on the shore, echoes of the same sadness that had gripped Friday’s chest back in the bedchamber.

  Poor Rampion. It was good that the swans came to her. Like children, wild animals were always drawn to those who were pure of heart, a fact that Friday herself could readily substantiate. If the poor mousy girl had a kind heart, as Friday suspected she did, her troubles would work themselves out in the end. Only . . . this sadness felt old, cobwebbed with hopelessness and despair.

  The wind kicked up Rampion’s skirts; the bevy of swans—seven of them, Friday noticed—flapped their wings in the gust like a dance. The breeze caught Rampion’s kerchief and blew it away. The strands of her limp hair caught the late afternoon sun and glittered like gold. For a moment, Friday saw the long limbs and innocence of a young woman. A memory struck her: Tuesday. Friday could almost feel the presence of her vibrant dancing sister, lovely in her solitude right up until the day death took her.

  “Odd.” Conrad’s comment pulled Friday out of her reverie.

  “Hmm?” Friday lifted her toes out of the water and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Odd? I think it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s odd because there is no wind,” said Conrad.

  Friday lifted her head. He was right. No leaf stirred, no grass blade bent, and there was barely a ripple in the pond before them. Friday held an arm out and felt no pull of the breeze on her sleeve or tickle of it across her skin, yet the scene before them played out as if trapped in a blustery dream.

  Perhaps she and Conrad were too low to the ground? Friday stood, holding her body still so as to catch any stray brush of wind. Rampion caught the movement and ceased her dancing with a slight bow of the head to Friday. As she stopped, so did the wind. The swans dispersed, pecking once again at corn kernels hiding in the grass and at one another in turn. A tiny cloud covered the sun and that wistful sadness returned. Rampion was naught but a mousy herb girl once more. The dream was over.