Chapter Seven Kit
Chapter Seven
Kit
“Kit?” says the girl who looks like me. The body that looks like mine.
I lift my hands. Unblemished. Delicate. Slim.
Catharine’s hands.
I shift my gaze back to the me-who-isn’t-me and whisper, “Catharine?”
She nods. I try to take a steadying breath. When I glance at the clearing, Speir is gone.
“It worked?” Mother asks, approaching me. Her eyes shine. “You have switched?”
“What have you done?” I demand. My words are strange and lilting in Catharine’s mouth. They do not sound as angry as I feel.
“I’ve saved you.” As Mother reaches for me, Catharine retreats behind me. “I promised I would protect you, and see? You’re out of that wasting body. You’re engaged to a prince. You’re free.”
“Did you know?” Catharine murmurs, her fingers grazing my sleeve. “Did you know she would do this?”
I turn to protest. Before I can, Catharine gulps a breath and runs for the forest. I start after her, but my mother catches my arm.
“Let her go,” she says. “We have no need of her.”
My heart pounds. “I need her.”
I wrench away and run after Catharine. Mother calls my name, but soon I’ve left her behind.
Catharine’s trail is clear—she was never taught how to move in a forest, and even my basic lessons in tracking from my grandmother are enough for me to follow her.
I’m struck that my ankles don’t hurt when I run. How long have my ankles been hurting?
Catharine has not gone far. I find her sitting at the base of a tree, arms round her knees, trembling. Except it’s me—I’m looking at myself, small and shaking.
Have I always been so small?
How is any of this possible?
“Catharine.” I drop down in front of her. “I didn’t know.”
She hugs her knees tighter. “Why did she do it?”
“I’m—not sure.” She meant to protect me, but I don’t know how to say that. I take Catharine’s hand—my hand, twisted joints and swollen knuckles—and hold it gently. “I don’t understand, but I—we’ll find a way out of this. We’ll make it right.”
“How?” She looks up at me with wide eyes. “A deal with the Hidden Folk is almost impossible to break.”
“Deal?” I echo.
“That finman said there was a price.” Catharine’s words almost run together in her worry. “Your mother made a deal. And we don’t even know the exact words they used! The words mean everything!”
I take a moment to collect myself. Catharine is panicking, but she seems to understand what’s happening better than me. She has accepted our world turning impossible more readily than I have—maybe because magic isn’t impossible to her. I tap at my collarbone and breathe away my own uncertainty.
“It’s a curse,” I say, partly to convince myself. I lift my chin. “What happens in the folktales when there’s a curse?”
Catharine’s shoulders begin to steady. “The curse breaks.”
“We know the person who cast it,” I continue, thinking out loud. “You said he was one of the finfolk?”
“He was dressed like them.” Catharine closes her eyes. “The stories say they dress in shimmering clothes like fish scales.”
I cast back to the tales she’s read to me. “Is it common for one of them to be so far inland?”
“He might have come down the loch, the same as the princes.”
It’s too much of a coincidence: two princes from the north followed by a magical being who features in northern stories. “Could he have come from the Islands of Skyare?”
Catharine nods slowly. “Yes. I’ve never heard of the finfolk in our own tales. Only the ones from the islands.”
“Then we follow the stories,” I say, seizing onto the plan as it forms in my head. “We search the places where magic is still strong, and we find a way to undo this.”
“It would help to have the exact terms used for the deal,” Catharine says. “A bargain can’t be just … broken, but sometimes there’s a loophole in the wording.”
That means I need to speak with my mother. We need a solution, and we need it now. Catharine cannot be allowed back to the castle in my body.
Out loud, I add, “We’ll have to go north in secret.”
Catharine frowns. “My father would want to help.”
My heartbeat picks up speed at the thought. “But if he found out what’s happened, he would punish my mother.”
We look across at each other, and for a moment the few feet between us seem to widen. I feel the hypocrisy of my concern. Should I even worry for my mother after what she has done?
If we return but do not reveal that Mother has switched us, Catharine will be in danger from the king. But if we tell the truth, Byrne might kill my mother.
Despite everything, I want to protect her. To protect them both.
I am at Catharine’s mercy.
At last, Catharine gives a small nod. “All right. We’ll go in secret.
Once the curse is broken, we can decide how—if we tell him.
” She brightens, just a little, and my stomach clenches at the sight of my own face showing relief as my own voice says the words, “Perhaps it will be better this way—we can arrange it so Father will worry less.”
I tap my collarbone and swallow back my nausea. That secret can wait.
It is well into the afternoon by the time I return to the castle, alone.
Mother is waiting outside, apparently expecting me.
She beams as soon as I come into sight, and I try not to clench my jaw.
I school my face into a passive expression.
Perhaps it will come easier in Catharine’s body, because she has so much practice in appearing polite.
“I know it’s a great deal of change,” Mother says as soon as I’m close. “But I swear, it’s for the best. Where is your stepsister?”
“I couldn’t find her.”
I adjust my pelisse, not used to the way it fits so snugly. This one is tailor-made and meticulously adjusted, unlike most of my old clothes. I have a whole host of questions for my mother. I start with the one that’s been burning my throat the whole walk home.
I take a steadying breath. “Would you have left Catharine here? With him?”
She frowns. Stands a little straighter. “He had no intention of letting you leave, Kit.”
I feel as if I am falling. As if I am standing before a stranger. “You would have abandoned her to—” I can’t say it. My voice cracks, and my heart is breaking. “You know that he would—”
“Why should it matter?” she demands, suddenly angry. “If he hurts you, why should his own daughter be spared? You are his daughter too!”
I want to sink to the ground. “Catharine could tell him the truth. If he learned about the curse, he would execute you.”
“She would not dare.” Mother lifts her chin. “You have a warrior’s heart, Kit. A clever mind. You would have done as much or more. But she—she will break under his first look and not have the courage to reveal the truth.”
And I see it as Mother wished—me, in my new and beautiful body, gone to the islands to marry, have babies, and live my days in splendor.
And Catharine, my sweet Catharine, the victim of her father with him never knowing he is harming his own precious child.
It is perverted and sick and I hate that my mother could ever think of it.
I hate that I can imagine her thinking of it.
“Catharine is innocent in all of this,” I hiss. The emptiness, the crumbling in me, turns hot.
Mother shakes her head. “And even if she did attempt to communicate the truth, I have some safeguards in place. Speir promised that neither of you would be able to speak of it to anyone who wasn’t involved. We don’t need to worry.”
It is disgusting to hear how she’s thought it through. I want to point out that we wouldn’t need to speak it for anyone paying attention to recognize I am not Catharine, even if I look like her.
I grasp for another question. One that’s practical and logical and not full of everything wrong in this situation. “How did you even find Speir? Isn’t he one of the Hidden Folk?”
Mother looks a little surprised. “I see you’ve been listening to Catharine’s stories.
Yes, he is. And I found him—of all places!
—in our garden on the night of Prince Idris’s birthday.
They had been speaking, the prince and he, and I followed when Speir walked away.
I did not recognize him as one of my guests, and of course I was curious what secret business the prince had.
Speir walked round to the water’s edge, and I saw him gather the mist into the shape of a boat.
He stepped onto it, and it was solid as wood.
I caught his attention before he left, and we struck a deal. ”
“What was the wording of it?” I ask. I need her to tell me without suspecting what I’ll do with the information. “What does he get out of this?”
Mother waves off my concern. “Nothing I wasn’t happy to give.”
“But what were the terms?” I press. I try another angle. “You’ve done everything so precisely; I know you must have negotiated an impressive agreement. I want to know how.”
Her eyes narrow the smallest bit, just at the corner. She is becoming wary. “You will just need to trust me, my dear.”
That’s the most I’ll get out of her. Any more, and she will know I intend to run.
“Now, to be safe,” Mother goes on, “I think tonight you should complain of a headache and go to bed early. I will, of course, make a show of looking for ‘Kit’—”
“Tell him that ‘Kit’ has gone to bed as well,” I suggest. I am not sure how my stepfather would feel about my disappearance, but I can’t risk him sending search parties out tonight. “He can discover she’s gone after we leave.”
“Yes, good.” She presses my hands, in happiness or excitement or both. I’m distracted for a moment by the feeling of it—the warm gesture that doesn’t hurt. I hadn’t realized I’d braced myself for pain until it doesn’t come.
I force myself to focus. I want to protest, to make my mother see how horribly wrong she is about all of this. But I need supplies. I need to move about the castle without anyone—the king or my mother—suspecting anything of me.
“Very well. I will retire early.”
I move to go up to my room, but as I pass the study, a voice calls: “Catharine!”