Chapter 1 #2
The Fae claimed mortals weren’t supposed to have magic, not even the flimsy shadow of it most of us possessed when we were small. Maybe beyond our village, there were mortals who managed to keep their magic.
“I shouldn’t have had my hair all fancy,” she sighed into my shoulder. “Will you braid my hair for me for school tomorrow? Just like everyone else’s?”
My heart felt heavy. “Sure. And then I’ll walk you to school.”
“Don’t make trouble, Cara,” she murmured, and now she sounded like our mother. She was repeating her words.
But she popped her thumb into her mouth.
“Better not let Mam see you do that. She’ll put bitterroot on your thumb like when you were little.”
Lidi only sucked her thumb now when she was desperate to soothe herself. I wished I had a way of soothing myself that worked so well. I was more of the slamming-doors-and-cursing-things school of self-regulation. It was not very effective.
“You won’t tell,” she said confidently, around her thumb. She was right.
The lights were bright in our little cottage, shining out as dusk fell over the garden. Our cow and goats were still out in the pen, so I’d have to bring them in. Tay must be worse today, and I felt an ache of loss for something that hadn’t happened yet. Something I wouldn’t allow to happen.
Carrot, our orange-spotted cow, mooed at us as we passed. The scent of rosemary and thyme rose to greet us as I carried Lidi down the path toward our front door.
I set her down in the entryway. “Tay? Are you…well?”
He turned over in the bed by the fire. The patchwork quilts had flooded onto the floor, so he must have had a rough day. He wouldn’t have left the blankets I’d sewn him on the floor otherwise. “Cara. My favorite older sister.”
“Your only older sister,” I said, bending to pick up the quilts and fold them. “Which makes favorite not much of a qualification.”
His tunic was soaked with sweat, but he was shivering. I could smell the odor from his fever when I was this close, the way he’d been sweating and shivering in turns all day long. The flash of feeling I felt breathing the stale, sweaty smell shifted almost instantly into disgust at myself.
He might’ve sent Lidi to me so that he could have peace as he writhed in pain.
“Where’s Mother?” I asked, trying to keep the edge from my voice.
“Working, Cara,” he said, giving me that look, the same one Lidi had. He thought I put too much pressure on our mother. He thought I put too much pressure on myself. But someone had to hold our family together.
I sighed. “I’ll start supper.”
The kitchen windows were open to the garden, and tendrils of greenery spread through the window and clung over the sink and stove. I pulled herbs to cook our dinner with. There was a basket of mushrooms on the side table. “Lidi, are you sure about these mushrooms?”
“She’s a good forager,” Tay said. “I’m sure.”
I wouldn’t have trusted Tay and myself not to poison ourselves at her age, but she did have a sixth sense for what was safe. It was part of her magic.
I scrambled eggs with mushrooms, opened a jar of cinnamon apple slices we’d canned last fall, and cut thick slices of sourdough bread to dip in milk and egg and fry.
“Breakfast for supper, my favorite,” Tay said, as if it were a treat and not the most frugal meal.
Still, the scent that spread through our kitchen was delicious. I tried to bloom my frail tendrils of gratitude into full-blown flowers.
Lidi pushed our kitchen table over to Tay’s bed without being asked. Usually he could join us at the table, but she only moved three chairs over. Something tightened in my chest. I couldn’t bear to be cheerful tonight.
I set the bowls and plates on the table, then said, “I’ve got to tend Carrot and the assholes.”
Goats were almost always assholes.
“Language.” Tay gave a meaningful look toward Lidi.
“Truth’s truth, Tay.” I always called it the way I saw it. I picked up the lantern and made my way into the falling night.
It took me a while to get our critters fed, watered, and bedded down for the night. Curiosity, our ungrateful cat, wove between my feet as I made my way back to the house. I almost tripped, then picked her up and snuggled her warm little body close. “You just want a free ride, huh?”
The cat did not admit to her wrongdoings.
I had rescued her from dogs—despite my own deep-seated terror of wading into their snarling attack—and now she rewarded me by being an ungrateful, lazy thing that made friends with mice.
She alternated between sitting in the sunshine and lying in front of the fire.
But I still kissed the top of her head and nuzzled my chin between her ears as the two of us re-entered the front door.
I closed it with my heel and set her down on the floor.
Only my dish was left on the table, the lantern burning alongside it.
Mam sat in the rocking chair in front of the fire, rocking back and forth.
At least Tay was clearly wearing a new tunic.
He slumped on the freshly laundered pillowcases with his eyes closed while our mother read out loud to him.
Lidi lay on her stomach in front of the fire, paging through one of my favorite childhood books, looking at all the pictures.
Lidi looked up at me, her face lighting up, then scrambled to her feet. “Cara, can I do your hair?”
“Let her eat, Lidi,” Mam chided.
“It’s fine,” I said, smiling at Lidi. “I’d rather be pretty.”
I sank to sit cross-legged in front of the fire, then ate the cold, soggy fried bread with my fingers while Lidi bustled behind me.
First she combed out my hair, then began to braid it.
Her fingers were deft despite how small she was, and I felt the warm tingle of her magic on my scalp and the back of my neck as she braided. Flowers were blooming in my hair.
By the time she was done, Lidi was yawning. I looked in the mirror to admire myself for her sake, then kissed her goodnight. She climbed up the ladder into the loft, where we shared a bed.
Mam kept reading to Tay, her voice soft.
“You used to do voices,” I said, stretching out in front of the fire. Curi was sleeping on the hearth beside me. She raised her head to regard me suspiciously, as if I might take her place permanently. “Are we too old for voices?”
Mam humored me, but when enough time had passed that Lidi must have fallen asleep—with an ease born of innocence that I couldn’t imagine I’d ever possessed—she closed the book and set it down.
“I’m not going to argue with the two of you anymore,” she said. “I’m taking Lidi to the Fae. Tay can’t wait much longer for the cure.”
“I’m finding another way,” I said, shaking my head. “Tay can get better, and Lidi can keep her magic. Think what the farm could be like with her magic!”
“I don’t care about flowers blooming when my son is dying, Cara,” Mam said fiercely.
“Both of you, be careful,” Tay said. “Be easy with each other.”
“You’ve lived in this dreamworld of yours long enough, Cara.” Mam’s voice was softer, clearly trying to heed Tay’s request.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to Tay.” I lowered my voice to a whisper to make sure I didn’t snap. For Tay’s sake, not hers. “I just need more time.”
“We need Fae magic, and we all know what that costs.”
There was a lump in my throat, and I didn’t trust myself to speak.
Mam rose and reached toward me, then seemed to see something in my face and changed her mind. “I’m going to bed. I love you, Cara. But even you can’t change the world.”
She didn’t try to kiss me goodnight before she went to the door into the back of the cottage.
Then it was just Tay and me in the cozy glow of the firelight—a little bubble that was just the two of us.
“Do you think I’m being stubborn?” I asked Tay.
“Always,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“I just want the world to be different.”
But maybe I was too stubborn.
“If anyone can change it, I’d bet on you,” Tay told me, with the quiet warmth that he always spoke to me with now. My brother had always been kind-hearted, but now he was so tender, he terrified me.
As if he were always weighing his words, choosing carefully.
As if he knew that any words he spoke could be his last.