Chapter 3 Woe, Woe, Woe Shall Cry the Men Who Know You!
Woe, Woe, Woe Shall Cry the Men Who Know You!
Demelza loved to sing.
That she was abysmal at it made no difference since she rarely had an audience anyway.
Before her sisters had flown the nest, they used to hold contests seeing who could listen to Demelza the longest before finally clapping their hands over their ears.
The last one standing was allowed to choose that night’s bedtime story.
“Father could offer you to a warlord, sister, and surely all his enemies would fall upon a sword rather than endure that screeching,” Eulalia had once said with an admiring sigh.
Eulalia was the most violent of Araminta and Prava’s brood.
She wore spikes of glass in her elaborately braided golden hair and had filed her teeth to points.
Long ago Eulalia had been promised to a lesser baron far from the Isle in exchange for a torn scroll.
The baron thought the wizard Prava was a fool, for the torn bit of parchment was nothing but an obscure cooking recipe passed down as an oddity.
Prava did not correct the baron of its true import: a piece of the puzzle to life everlasting.
Once the marriage contracts were struck, Prava gave thanks that the baron was a fool, for he loved his daughters and hoped they’d be quick about dispatching any husbands, if only so they could come home faster.
Once Eulalia’s wings turned white, she would be wed to the baron.
The baron planned to use her to lure out his brothers’ secrets and take control of his father’s land.
After that, who knew what the future held.
Eulalia’s betrothed might think he could control her since he possessed her swan key, but he was no match for her.
With the exception of Demelza, all the girls were promised to rulers in distant lands. Although the day they would fly the nest loomed over all of them, such an occasion felt as distant to Demelza as the horizon. At least, it did until it abruptly … didn’t.
As a hatchling, Demelza’s differences hardly mattered.
There was only ever the warm weight of her sisters’ fuzzy, fog-colored wings, the sound of their mother’s humming and the wind rustling the gloom violets above them.
In the dark nest, the chicks’ sole source of light was Araminta’s hair sewn through the twigs, snowflakes and book pages like a living wisp of sunshine.
Each night, their father, Prava, kissed their heads and sang them a lullaby to sleep:
My darlings, my dears, my sweet little fears
Together, the world will be ours
Your keys are my might
Your truth songs my sight
Woe, woe, woe
Shall cry the men who know you!
Now sleep and sleep, grow strong
Sleep now and develop your song
For one day you’ll fly and you’ll be my eye
Over mountains and river and streams
You’ll bring me power and you’ll be my spy
And soon, I shall have all my dreams
Woe, woe, woe
Shall cry the men who know you!
Sharpen your teeth and stretch out your wings
And the world shall be yours for the taking
One day you’ll be grown and then you shall sing
And you shall set all the lands a’shaking
Woe, woe, woe
Shall cry the men who know you!
Demelza remembered the day she realized that she was not quite like her sisters.
It was early spring and they were six years old.
They had just finished their breakfast of toasted aphids and honey gruel and were playing a game of hide-and-seek in the nest. Araminta sat in the middle, smiling and sewing while her daughters tripped over one another in an attempt to hide.
All of a sudden, a familiar whistle echoed through the nest. The whistle could only mean one thing:
“Father is coming!” Corisande trilled, fleeing from her hiding spot.
The others followed, their wings aflutter.
Their father’s visits were the best part of the day.
When Prava visited, he brought gifts from all over the Isle.
There were bits of shimmering ribbons culled from the strange flowers that grew in the Vale of Sylke; jeweled honeycombs from the cave bees of the Glimmers; nevermelt dolls carved of ice high up in the Aatos Mountains and ropes of opalescent sea pearls from the bottom of the Famishing Sea.
Father never visited them in the morning.
Oftentimes, he did not join them until supper, but once Prava was with his daughters, his attention never strayed.
He played games, read stories, bathed them—always minding the spot behind their wings—and sang songs so that he was always the last thing they saw before they closed their eyes.
Like the rest of her sisters, Demelza was eager to greet him, but she had tripped on a strand of pearls.
As she righted herself, she caught a glimpse of her mother’s face.
Araminta had not moved from her seat at the center of the nest. Her hands lay folded elegantly in her lap.
Her mouth was curved in a smile, but her eyes were wide …
shining. It reminded her of when her sister Evadne had tumbled down the staircase.
Araminta had screamed, her eyes wild until Evadne let out a wounded chirp.
It was fear, Demelza realized. But what would Mother have to fear from Father?
“Settle down, my sweet ones,” said Prava, standing at the entrance to the nest.
The nest was a curious thing. During the evenings, it hunkered down, settling atop the chicks as snug as a blanket.
But during the day, the nest widened. The star-shaped pedestal upon which it stood clambered outward into the sky.
The nest was constantly accommodating Araminta’s brood, who sometimes wished for mazes to run through and who, lately, had been craving little beds to sleep upon rather than crowding together at the nest’s center.
When Prava entered, the nest creaked as it expanded.
A few of the billow lilies lost their grip in the garden ceiling and floated to the ground.
Prava wore a long, black suit with flashing gold buttons. Gold earrings winked at his ears and his russet hair fell in mussed hanks around his shoulders. His slitted eyes were full of warmth.
“Today is a very special day,” said Prava, patting each of their heads.
“Presents!” screeched Eulalia.
“Please?” added Dulcinea, fluttering her gray wings.
“Presents, presents, presents!” chanted Evadne, Eustacia, Corisande and Euphemia.
“It is better than presents,” said Prava, smiling.
“I knew you would all be vital to my plans and now I have proof! Today is your first step into glorious power, my little ones, for I have struck a bargain for each of your keys, and with the secrets you shall bring me, I shall have immortality within my grasp!”
Eulalia frowned. “So … no presents?”
“Power is its own present, my dear,” said Prava.
“Can you eat it, father?” asked Corisande.
“Well … no, not exactly.”
Corisande pouted. “Then I don’t want it!”
Prava had been smiling, but now his grin fell.
He crouched to Corisande’s level and smiled.
Six delicate silver chains winked around his throat.
Prava touched one of them and Corisande gasped as her wings shot out and lengthened, surrounding her in a flurry of feathers.
When Demelza blinked, her sister was a cygnet.
Corisande cried out—or rather, squawked—and their mother ran to her.
“Araminta, let the girl feel her feelings,” said Prava, holding up his hand. “She must learn. You all must learn.”
He gathered Corisande in his arms, cooing softly to her as he stroked her head. “Do you understand, my sweet? It is not about what you want. Your wants will come later. If you play your parts correctly there shall be world and wants enough for us all.”
Corisande trembled.
“Oh don’t give me that face,” said Prava.
“You will still get your honeyed aphids and licorice treacle, but you are to remain in this form for the next hour while you reflect on the ungrateful attitude you demonstrated to your doting father.” Prava glanced at his daughters.
“Does anyone else wish to say something to me?”
Demelza’s other sisters crowded closer. All of them eyed one another’s wings with matching wary expressions. All but one. Alone of her sisters, Demelza did not have wings.
She had noticed, of course, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.
She could climb and run as well as any of her sisters.
She could not flutter a few inches off the ground, but she could jump very high and surely that was the same thing?
But for the first time, Demelza sorely felt the lack of them.
Prava set down Corisande and clapped his hands. “Now for my surprises! Today you shall learn to fly! Come along, come along.”
Araminta’s brood toddled out of the nest with Corisande waddling behind them. Demelza fell into line, but Prava touched her shoulder.
“Not you, sweet.”
Demelza watched her sisters vanish down the steps. She felt a strange lump in her throat. Her palms felt hot.
“Now, now, Demelza, do not weep,” said Prava, gathering her to him.
Her father smelled like hot metal and bog smoke.
Anyone else would think the wizard reeked of death.
But the daughter of a monster knows only that the monster sits beside her each night to sing her to sleep.
She does not concern herself with how he occupies the rest of his hours.
“I want to be…” Demelza hesitated, searching for the word her father had used. “I want to be vital too, father! I want to fly.”
“Dry your tears, my child,” said Prava. “We all have different gifts in life. You may envy your sisters, but I am certain they will envy you, for while their days will be filled with rigorous instruction, you shall have free range of the Manor and the Lakes. I have instructed the library wyvern to compose a curriculum of independent study as well. Won’t that be nice? ”
Demelza sniffed. Running outdoors and reading in the library sounded very nice indeed. Perhaps it would not be so bad. She hugged her father and Prava kissed the top of her head.
“Do not fear, my strange little bird,” he said. The bottom of his fangs grazed her scalp. “I will find use for you yet.”