Careful with Those Shears
I rub my chest, where the aching’s been growing worse the past few days. I’m probably just tired.
Mum shoots me a sharp glare from across the room. She’s at the spinning wheel, while I pick burrs out of loose wool. Dad insisted on helping, though he fell asleep after only a few minutes. I’m glad; I hear him moaning in the night, unable to rest. Besides his injury, his joints always ache when it starts to get cold.
Maybe that’s my problem. Is there such a thing as rheumatism of the heart?
“Are you in pain?” Mum asks when I absently rub the aching area again.
“Oh—no,” I say, too quickly. I hadn’t meant for her to notice.
Mum’s brows draw together in a frown. “You haven’t made any bargains or accepted any gift, have you?”
“Of course not!” I’ve barely seen anyone since I’ve been home, anyhow. “It’s not that sort of pain,” I add. “Just a little aching.” The failure to fulfill a promise is a sharp, deadly thing, not this steady tugging .
Still, Mum’s frown deepens, and she rises from her wheel to come inspect me. I’m not sure what she can discern about an internal ache, but I submit to her scrutiny. She presses a hand to my forehead, tips my chin up to stare at my eyes, lays a palm on my chest to feel my heartbeat. “Does it seem like you’re missing something? Like something’s not quite right?” Mum asks finally.
I consider a moment. “Well, yes. I suppose. But that could be—”
“Because you’re missing your prince,” Mum supplies.
I blush. “Missing my friends .”
A smile flits across Mum’s face before the worried expression reappears. “Does anyone owe you anything?”
“Owe me?” I stare at Mum. “What could anyone owe me?”
“Did you grant any favors, or has anyone made a promise to you that hasn’t been kept?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Except, someone owed me a crown. But an unfulfilled bargain only hurts if it’s with the Folk, doesn’t it? I mean, it wouldn’t affect me if another human made a hasty promise.”
Mum nods. “I’ve never heard of a promise bothering like that unless it’s given by one of the Folk.”
I run my tongue over suddenly dry lips and cast about in my memory for any other promise made to me. There must be some other explanation!
“Hester?” Mum prompts. She lays her hand on my forehead again. “You look unwell.”
The aching in my chest has worsened. But it can’t be caused by a silly promise from Hugh—
Hugh, with his too-charming smile and his too-bright eyes and his too-gold hair, his vivid clothes and his lively sitting room and his constant flittering from one thing to another. But most of all, his strange insistence that he always keeps his word, that he never lies …
“Hester?” Mum says again, worry lacing her voice. “What is it? Who was it?”
I clear my throat. “It—it can’t be Hugh. He’s a prince, not a faerie! ”
“Prince Fitzhugh?” Mum’s eyes grow rounder. “What did he promise you?”
“Just a crown.” I fidget with the wool in my lap while a blush rises on my cheeks. “But he said—well, many other strange things—and I’m not sure if a crown is enough for all this— ”
“Are you saying,” Mum asks in a faint voice, “that Prince Fitzhugh is the cause of your heartache?”
“That’s all that comes to mind, but it is preposterous, isn’t it?”
“So you are saying,” Mum says helplessly, “that Prince Fitzhugh may somehow be one of the Folk, and he is somehow indebted to you?”
I run my fingers through the wool and look at the sooty ceiling. “That would be very bad, wouldn’t it?”
Mum makes a choked noise. “Very.”
“Is there a way to know for certain? Maybe I’m just ill,” I say. “Dying of consumption isn’t that unpleasant, is it?”
“Stop smiling like that,” Mum says. “This is nothing to laugh at, Hester!”
“What will happen if I just ignore it?”
Mum purses her lips and walks back to her spinning wheel, picking up the yarn she’d been working on. I’d think she was calm if I didn’t see the frantic trembling of her hands. “Whoever’s indebted to you feels worse than you are. He’ll be compelled to come find you. Does—does Prince Fitzhugh know where you live?”
I suck in a breath. “I don’t know.” I think of the letter I’d just sent straight to the palace. “If it is Hugh, which I don’t want to believe, then it wouldn’t be hard for him to find me.”
Mum’s face grows grimmer. She is silent for a long moment, the only noise in the cottage the hum of the spinning wheel and the keening of the wind around the doorframe. Dad snorts in his sleep.
“I don’t see how it could be Hugh, anyhow.” My forehead wrinkles. “He was strange as long as I knew him. But that would mean that one of the Folk has been impersonating the prince for months! How could his family not notice? ”
Mum’s voice is nearly a whisper. “Changeling.”
Changeling. Hugh, a changeling? I rub at my chest. This conversation seems to have deepened the ache I feel, which still could be coincidence. I can’t prove that it’s not consumption.
Of course, that would leave Mum and Dad childless, which would be greatly inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as Prince Hugh being a faerie changeling!
I’m getting dramatic. Standing abruptly, I say, “I need to get a bit of air.”
Mum doesn’t stop me when I leave the room and run away from the cottage. I blindly climb the nearest hill.
My heart pounds, and I gasp for breath when I reach the summit. It’s cold up here, but I revel in the bitter wind. I raise my face to the sky and let the air flow around me and through me. Maybe it can blow away all my aches and sorrows.
It doesn’t. It just chills me to the bone, so I wrap my arms around myself and stare at the road winding down below. Smoke rises from the chimneys of Lower Splott in the distance, and I have a sudden vision of Hugh and Kelpie riding into town, havoc in their wake.
My stomach roils at the thought that Hugh might be—might be—I can barely even think it to myself. It’s preposterous, ridiculous, impossible, utterly nonsensical. Hugh is the prince! He’s strange, but he’s human !
Isn’t he?
The pounding of my heart doesn’t slow, even though I’m not running anymore.
Because it knows—my heart knows.
This ache I feel is not consumption.
Hugh is, somehow, not Hugh at all. The man I thought I knew must have been one of the Folk all along.
I stay on the hilltop until I can no longer feel my toes and the fat clouds threaten to pour rain any second. I’ve been through all my memories of Hugh and my time in the capital until I’m quite sure there is no other explanation, no other reason for my current case of heartache.
Well, the bargain sort of heartache, anyhow. I have more than one reason for the other, more sentimental sort, which are not interesting enough to go into at the moment.
I retrace my steps to the cottage slowly, not because I’m worried about tripping, but because I wish to postpone the conversation with Mum and Dad for just a few more minutes. Cowardly, I know.
I step back in the cottage just as the first rumble of thunder and crash of rain sound outside. I’m glad we’ve managed to get some sort of walls back up. They may not be the sturdiest, but we should stay dry. Dad is awake and propped up by the fire, sharpening his shearing scissors. Mum stirs a pot of stew—potato and carrot, I discern by the smell. She looks up at me, her face drawn into tight lines. I tip my head toward Dad, and she shakes hers wordlessly. I stifle a sigh. Up to me to tell him, then.
“There’s my girl,” Dad says. “What have you been thinking, wandering about in this cold?” His voice is warmer than the fire, softer than the bits of wool I still have clinging to my skirt, and I’d run and hug him if he weren’t holding an open pair of shears.
I look over at Mum, who stares tight-lipped at the stew. I tromp over to the fire and sit on the floor at Dad’s feet. “I think one of the princes is a changeling.” My voice is small and wobbling, unfortunately. I’d been hoping to project a sort of maturity and wisdom.
“You think what ?” Dad says, while Mum scolds, “Not so loud,” and casts a furtive glance over her shoulder.
“I don’t think there are any Folk to overhear—careful with those shears, Dad!” I lower my voice and scoot away from his knee. I feel my confidence returning, now that I’ve got the initial declaration out, and am proud that my voice is slightly less jittery. “One of the princes—the younger one, which is better for the line of succession—so that’s at least something to be glad about—”
“Is a changeling ?” Dad asks. Unlike Mum’s tightly-wound face, all Dad’s features are limp with wonder.
“Well, I can’t prove it yet.” I eye the shears, wondering if I could scoot closer to him again and pat his knee in a comforting way, but I stay put. I’d rather not lose an eye tonight, if I can avoid it. “But it makes sense out of a lot of odd things.”
“You’ve considered that it means the true prince was taken as a baby?” Mum mutters without looking at me.
I wince. “Yes.” I’d spun that thought around and around while standing on the hill. I think the wind really did help open my mind. “Do you think he’s still alive?”
An inarticulate gurgle comes from Dad’s direction, and I give him an apologetic glance. Mum and I have at least had the afternoon to get used to the idea.
“There’s no way to say,” Mum says tightly. “Until you speak with—” She breaks off, and I pick up her thought.
“With Hugh, yes.” I sigh. “Must I go speak to him?”
Mum finally turns away from the stew, anguish on her face. She wipes her hands on her threadbare apron. “We don’t know, really, that he is—well, why go back to the city because of speculation?”
“Because I’m afraid he’ll come here instead,” I say, and Dad makes another choking noise. I scoot over and rest my head on his knee. Reckless, but Dad needs me more than I need full use of my vision. He strokes my hair with a trembling hand. “When I took his horse—I knew she had to be Folk-touched!—he gave me a crown, and said he’d give me another after he got home. But then I didn’t see him again.”
“So all you have to do is collect your wages,” Dad says. “That’s a long journey for a crown.”
I laugh without humor. “I know. But if he were to come here—!”
Mum sits next to Dad with a creak and a sigh. “Wait until the other prince answers your letter, at any rate.”
I shudder into Dad’s calf and voice the thought that’s plagued me all afternoon. “What if Hugh’s not the only one, and I just asked for a favor from a—from a—” I choke. Why would the Folk take the second son, but not the first? Why didn’t anyone in the family notice?
“We won’t let you be taken or hurt,” Dad says. His voice is thick with emotion. “I’ll throttle anyone who tries to lay a hand on you, man or Folk, even if I have to drag myself like a worm.”
As it happens, Dad does not have to drag himself anywhere, because at that moment the door bursts open. Cold wind and biting rain rush into the cottage, and there on the doorstep stands Hugh himself.