Chapter I.4 #2
Growing up, Miria’s father had owned a real bed, but she and Hans had slept on straw mattresses on the floor.
During the winter, there were advantages to that arrangement; Miria could pull hers closer to the fire for warmth.
But it had never been comfortable. What other furniture they’d owned had probably seen better days, though Miria remembered nothing of it other than that they hadn’t had a lot.
A table with two benches. A chair that her grandmother had claimed until she’d died, and then her father had claimed afterward.
There had been a chest for storing blankets and coats and heavy winter clothing during the summer.
A set of shelves had held the cooking implements.
Her father’s axes and saws had been stored by the door, making it easy for him to choose the tools he needed when he left early each morning.
In this room in the new house, there were no tools or signs of manual labor to be found.
The main room boasted an ornate stone hearth and a long table of fine wood before it.
Instead of benches for seating, there were ample chairs.
A white runner, embroidered with strawberry blossoms, split the table in two like a line of frosting, and atop it sat a crystal saltcellar and spice chest in the shapes of apples.
Two silver candlesticks gleamed in the sunlight through the window.
Even the mantel was sprinkled with tiny ceramic flowers—a red rose and a white, a pink blossom and a yellow—like cake-toppers.
Curtains framed the windows in shades of gold, and a vase of fresh irises added purple to the colorful décor.
Hearing no sounds coming from the next floor, Miria climbed the stairs, noting the banister, too, was polished to a rich shine. Her hands shook as she paused on the landing. She was more overwhelmed by the home’s opulence than she’d been when she’d nearly been struck down by a reckless driver.
This sitting room was grander than the dining room, boasting not merely plain chairs but upholstered ones.
More candlesticks covered the mantel and small tables.
Perhaps not all were silver, but there were so many.
Tapestries hung on the walls, and heavy curtains on the windows.
There was a rug before the fireplace and paintings in carved wooden frames.
One painting in particular caught Miria’s attention, and she drew a sharp breath.
Her father had enough funds to pay for a family portrait; that alone was shocking, though perhaps not surprising given everything else she’d discovered.
What was far more intriguing was that the family in the portrait was not hers.
Not entirely, or not as she’d known them.
Her father must have remarried. She had a stepmother and two sisters.
Despite not having seen her father’s face in years, and despite him being considerably better groomed and dressed than he’d been in her last memory, Miria would have recognized him anywhere.
Gray shaded his neatly trimmed beard, but his face was every bit as hard as she’d always recalled it.
Not even a new wife or newfound wealth could soften him.
Her brother’s features were more recent in her mind, and they were not much changed since the last time she’d seen him two years ago, so possibly the portrait was several years old.
His hair remained that indeterminate shade between blond and brown, always lighter than Miria’s or her father’s had been.
Otherwise, he much resembled their father in this painting, more than Miria thought he’d done in reality.
The woman who was presumably her father’s new wife drew most of Miria’s interest. She looked vaguely familiar, although Miria couldn’t place her, and the two girls could have been no more three or four years old.
They looked uncomfortable in their fancy dresses, and Miria couldn’t blame them for that.
Adaline complained loudly at times (at first in person, and more recently in her letters) about stiff fabrics and heavy layers and itchy lace.
(And then, in the next breath, she would exclaim how beautiful the gown she was describing was, because Adaline’s contradictions were part of her charm, or they were if you were Miria.)
Miria squinted, trying to discern any resemblance between her sisters and her father, but aside from the dark hair, she could not.
It was possible they weren’t actually related by blood, that the girls’ mother was a widow and they were the product of a marriage before she’d met Miria’s father.
But that possibility didn’t stop Miria’s heart from beating with a softer emotion than the ones that had driven her here.
She had sisters she’d never met, and the bits of her insides that didn’t burn with a need for vengeance bled a little with the realization of yet another loss.
Sisters were another thing her father had stolen from her, and Miria’s imagination flew with the missed opportunities—games she could have taught them, hair she could have braided, hours they could have spent perfecting their stitching together.
Where were the girls now? The house was quiet, and Miria was grateful for it, but part of her couldn’t help but want to take a peek at her new siblings.
And still you must find something to use to curse your father and brother, the anger in her heart whispered, and those missed dreams crashed into reality.
The options for that were endless now that she was in a house filled with small luxuries.
But if Yali’s warnings about the ramifications of cursing hadn’t been enough to stop her, and they probably had not been, the possibility of any curse inadvertently hurting her sisters was enough to make Miria pause.
What would happen to the girls if true harm befell their father?
Could they lose everything? Miria had lived hungry for her first five years.
Her desire for vengeance at any cost wavered before the possibility of inflicting that pain on innocent children.
She would have to think about this, and she would have to be very careful.
It was one thing to be willing to pay any price to protect Adaline.
But if she shared that cost with innocents, then she became the monster everyone believed the witch to be.
Adaline would not thank her for it, either, nor could Miria love her so much if she did.
Miria passed through a couple more rooms, letting her fingers trail lightly over fine linen table coverings and pretty furniture. As Overseer, her father most likely maintained an office in the house, and that seemed like her best bet if she wanted to steal a personal item for a curse.
At the sound of a door opening below, she slid into the stairwell and braced for potentially seeing her father, but it was a woman’s voice that carried up through the floors. Miria couldn’t make out the words, but the woman spoke authoritatively, and the sound scratched at her memory.
“Let me see the girls,” the woman said to someone, and Miria ducked into a room on the third floor with an open door. “There’s nothing like a child’s funeral to make me appreciate my own blessings.”
Miria, apparently, wasn’t the only one to hear the woman’s voice. A door at the far end of the hall creaked open, and a young girl stuck her head out.
Her resemblance to the children in the painting was passable.
She was clearly one of Miria’s sisters, though possibly the painter had been too kind.
The girl’s eyes and hair color were the same, but the girls in the painting were pink-cheeked and red-lipped, healthily solid.
This girl’s skin was pale and her frame wispy.
Judging by her height, several years had passed.
As Miria tried to guess her age, a second girl appeared alongside the first, looking very much the same in complexion.
They possessed one other unexpected commonality as well, which caused Miria to draw a breath with surprise. They both had magic in their blood.
It had been difficult for her to see it at first with their cheeks so bloodless, but as they shuffled out the door, she caught the faint shimmer of it beneath their skin.
Her ability to recognize magic had been one of Miria’s last skills to manifest, but once she developed the eye, magic’s telltale signs were unmissable.
Yali had taught her that magic was often, though not always, passed through families, so both of the girls possessing it was not a shock.
Miria having it as well suggested the magic came from her father’s side if they were sisters by blood, but it was hard to say.
Unless the proper spells were cast, magic faded with age.
If Hans had ever had it when he was a boy, Miria would never know.
She’d never asked Yali if that was one reason she had let Hans go.
The girls’ wide eyes and cautious expressions made Miria long to wrap them both in hugs and force some hearty food upon them—although no doubt she was being silly and reliving her own childhood needs.
With all her father’s money, the girls couldn’t want for food or anything else so tangible.
She was merely angry and pained and looking for new reasons to despise her father.
Bustling on the stairwell interrupted Miria’s musings. Her stepmother’s voice—or the woman Miria assumed was her stepmother—had grown closer, and she wasn’t alone. The stairs creaked as an older woman appeared at the top. Her gaze swept right over Miria and landed on the girls.
“Come,” she said. “Your mother is home and wishes to see you. Are you feeling up to going downstairs?”
It didn’t appear to be much of a question. Hands were taken, and the group slowly passed by Miria and down the steps. After a moment, Miria followed. Although her spell had worked so far, she remained cautious and waited until everyone had moved into the sitting room before peering inside.
The woman who’d brought the girls down was fussing about with setting up tea while the girls submitted to their mother’s attention.
Strangely, they showed little affect as they were doted over, their faces drawn.
Miria could not recall ever being able to stand so still at their age.
Either her stepmother was better at discipline than Miria’s father had ever been, or perhaps she’d really been as uncontrollable as her father and Nana had always accused her of being.
The thought made her smile, but the emotion only lasted a moment.
Her stepmother turned then, and Miria gasped. It was the woman from the funeral, the one whom the priest had called Rosmilda—the one who had blamed the witch for the child’s early death.
So that was why Miria had thought the woman in the painting looked familiar. The painter hadn’t quite captured her likeness well enough for her to make the connection before, but there was no mistaking it now.
As if she heard Miria’s sudden breath, Rosmilda glanced toward the doorway.
Her eyes narrowed, and Miria drew back, pulse quickening.
Logically, she knew the odds of having been seen were low, yet it was best not to linger any longer.
Hitching up her skirt, she retreated back to the stairs and down to ground level.
No one raised an alarm, but she paused only to grab the saltcellar from the dining table.
The crystal bowl was mostly empty and deceptively heavy in her hand for its size, and the few grains it held scattered across the floor as Miria tucked it into her purse.
Just in case. Having seen her sisters, Miria was nearly certain she could not go through with a curse, but it made her feel better to have possibilities—and to steal something of so much value from the man who’d already stolen so much from her and who threatened to take so much more.