Chapter Three My Siblings Offer Marital Advice
Chapter Three
My Siblings Offer Marital Advice
“If there’s a locked room King Gervase doesn’t want you to look at,” Jonquil said, raising her voice to be heard over the cacophony of chirps, hisses, and yips, “you might want to stay out of it until we’re over there for a visit.”
“Wrong!” declared her wife, Gnoflwhogir. “Open the door immediately. Open every door! Find his secrets, steal his treasures, drink his wine!”
Jonquil rolled her eyes. “Don’t expect a quick rescue, is all I’m saying.”
“I’m not going to need a—”
“Tailliz is too far for me to get there right away,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “even on dragonback. And Mother never lends me the seven-league boots. But if you do the exact opposite of anything my wife tells you, there’s a chance you might lead a quiet life.”
Gnoflwhogir snorted, succinctly expressing her contempt for the very concept of a quiet life, and rolled off the bed.
She landed with a thump on the pile of rejected dresses that Liam, Calla, and Calla’s swarm of furred and feathery animal friends had tossed out of my closet and onto the floor.
A couple of chipmunks who’d nearly been crushed by Gnoflwhogir’s sudden drop scurried into a corner and chittered at her angrily.
Fairies can be difficult to deal with, although I’m sure they find mortals similarly frustrating.
The fae folk consider logic, reason, and self-restraint about as appealing as a pile of dead bugs.
Less so, come to think of it, since fairies have been known to make lovely dresses out of butterfly wings.
This notorious aversion to common sense may explain their propensities for tooth buying, child stealing, ear collecting, and so on.
Jonquil was often driven to distraction by Gnoflwhogir’s impetuousness, while Gnoflwhogir regarded Jonquil as rather unadventurous.
They had fierce arguments every now and again, and I’d needed to comfort Jonquil in the aftermath more than once.
Nonetheless, the magnetism that had locked their gazes together when they first met had never lessened.
Possibly it helped that Gnoflwhogir was six feet tall and muscled to match, with hair the color of jade, flawless skin a few shades lighter, and the large, reflective eyes of a nocturnal predator.
She always looked like she was about to pounce on you, whether to bite you or give you a kiss.
Jonquil was equally as lovely, for that matter—though I suspected Gnoflwhogir admired Jonquil’s dismemberment scars even more than her figure, particularly since Jonquil had acquired them while keeping the grootslang from chomping on her spouse-to-be.
As soon as my sisters and their spouses heard about my engagement, they’d come to my room.
It hadn’t taken long for them to get word—the throne room is too big to keep entirely free of insects, and a humble ant had overheard everything that passed.
Ants are terrible gossips. Calla knew about the proposal before I was all the way up the stairs, and she promptly shared the news with Liam, Jonquil, and Gnoflwhogir.
By the time the late afternoon sunlight was slanting through my bedroom window, the four of them, along with a horde of weasels and bluebirds and squirrels, had assembled to help me gather items for my trousseau.
The floor was a crush of small creatures ferrying lace gloves and silk scarves, while birds fluttered back and forth with earrings in their beaks.
I was sorting through my own underthings, since that wasn’t a task I wished to leave to a random squirrel.
Squirrels have awful taste; they’re as bad as magpies—the shinier it is, the better.
If I let them choose it, my lingerie would be nothing but sequins.
As it was, I’d need to double-check the shoes that night to make sure I was leaving with a few pieces of practical footwear and not a rodent-selected collection of silver, ruby, and glass confections.
At least the squirrels weren’t peppering me with unnecessary advice. My relatives were failing to observe the same courtesy.
“If he comes to you only in the dark, and you wonder if you’ve married some kind of terrible beast, never try to get a look at his face,” Jonquil told me.
“I know,” I said.
“No fetching a candle while he’s asleep, it’ll just end in tears.”
“And,” Calla began, “if it turns out that he is some kind of terrible beast—”
“I know!” A tiny hedgehog was taking a nap in my underwear drawer, so I delicately removed it and handed it over to her.
“—then remember you don’t have to put up with any crap from him,” she continued without pause as she slipped the hedgehog into her hair, where it joined a family of wriggling dormice.
Animals never poop in her hair, by the way, no matter how many of them are living there.
They reserve that for other places. Like my underwear drawer.
“You can break whatever his curse is without being a doormat,” she said. “Always stand up for yourself.”
I sat down heavily on the bed. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about, then?” Jonquil asked. “Spinning wheels? Flax stalks? Getting stuck to a goose? If you do your best not to touch anything suspicious—”
“Touch everything suspicious!” Gnoflwhogir urged, baring a grin full of needle-sharp teeth.
“Kill anyone who tries to stop you!” Her fingers reached for the great claymore she usually kept strapped to her back, but she hadn’t brought the sword to my bedroom.
Her hand dropped, brushing fondly across her necklace of left ears instead.
They looked very much like dried apricots.
“Stab yourself with every spindle,” she advised me.
“Put your hand on every goose. Be bold, be bold!”
“But not too bold,” Jonquil cautioned, frowning.
Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold, I mentally recited—the traditional instruction given to women who might be about to marry murderous villains.
“For goodness’ sake, Jonquil, I’m aware of the common difficulties new brides face.
” Why was she reminding me of poems I already knew by heart?
Why was she warning me about overly adhesive geese?
My stepmother had given me the same practical education as my sisters.
“I know what to do if my husband-to-be is invisible, or quadrupedal, or has a rotting pile of maidens’ corpses in his castle. ”
“None of that will happen in Tailliz, hen,” Liam said, speaking for the first time.
He came from Ecossia, and a trace of his homeland’s accent lingered in his gently rolled r’s and the soft glottal stops of his final t’s.
“Well, maybe the pile of bodies, but I doubt it. Tailliz hasn’t any magic to speak of.
Not a single sorcerer’s been born there in over a century.
” He tucked another dress into the carved wooden chest. The ferret lurking inside busily folded it up.
“There’s a talking lion who’s counseled the royal family for generations, and I’ve heard rumors about odd things in the woods. But no more than that.”
“Odd things in the woods?” I asked.
He shrugged. “There’s been talk of animals behaving strangely. And some that aren’t natural. Misshapen. At least, there was talk of it a few years ago. I’ve not been out that way in a while.”
Calla looked concerned at the thought of unnatural animals. I was concerned myself, although not for the same reasons. I’d been on enough quests to know that unreliable, offhand rumors can turn out to be of crucial importance.
Liam was the best informed of any of us about the western kingdoms. Ecossia is an island country not far across the straits from Tailliz.
It’s a wild land of hills and bogs, best known for strange enchantments, fierce warriors, and fluffy sheep.
He had the characteristic Ecossic look to him—red-orange hair, a strong chin, and freckles, along with paler skin than anyone of Skallan heritage—but he was neither an enchanter nor a warrior. Nor was he a sheep, obviously.
He was also not, I suspected, the minor Ecossic prince he’d claimed to be when he came seeking Calla’s hand.
Based on his knowledge of fabric and couture, my best guess was that he’d been a tailor.
He made my sister happy, though, and that was what mattered.
Besides, his expertise ensured there was a judicious eye on the dresses going into my trousseau.
Liam handed a beribboned blue ball gown to a trio of snakes, who grabbed it with their mouths and dragged it awkwardly across the floor to the chest. “So what are you worried about, then?” he asked.
I wandered over to the window and placed my hands on the sill, squinting at the dying daylight. Surprisingly, the room behind me went quiet, the mice and hamsters silencing their squeaks and the flutter of wings dying down as the birds settled themselves on curtain rods or bedposts.
They were probably expecting me to express my feelings by bursting into song, as Calla sometimes did. Which meant they were going to be sorely disappointed. I have yet to improvise a stirring ballad on a moment’s notice.
“What if I go all the way there and I don’t like him?” I said. “Or what if he doesn’t like me? What if I can’t stand living in Tailliz and miss being here every single minute for the rest of my life?”