And Violet responded accordingly. “Well, I want something to eat. I’m hungry. That nasty salad stuff isn’t any good. I want blueberry bread.”
“Erris said you can’t have any.”
“What does he know?”
“You must think he knows something if you want to go outside,” Celestina said, with a tone of someone who has easily bested her opponent. “Anyway, he’s a fairy and your mother’s brother. Don’t you think we should trust him? So go back to bed and when he returns, we’ll see.”
Violet’s lips compressed and her pale face turned red rather abruptly. Her eyes cut to me, her rage plain, as if I had anything to do with it. I kept my face blank, and she turned with a toss of her hair. I felt I had been involved in some argument I did not clearly understand.
Neither of us spoke until the sound of Violet’s footsteps had shrunk into nothing.
“I’m sorry about her manners,” Celestina said.
Celestina didn’t like Violet either, I realized. She had been so solicitous to her, I had assumed her to be the sort of person who lives to care for others, but it was an incorrect assumption. I could see now that Celestina loved something here, the house and maybe even the romance of working for a man the villagers regarded as dangerous, but whatever the appeal was, it wasn’t Violet.
“Mr. Valdana is a wise sorcerer in many matters,” Celestina said, “but he’s blind to her. You should see the instructions he always leaves. ‘Buy her oranges. Read to her at night. Help her wash up.’ He seems to think her constant sicknesses have denied her so many things that he can’t possibly deny her anything.”
“But how can she grow up if he spoils her like a child?”
“I guess he thinks that will come when she is of age. If she comes of age.”
“What does Ordorio intend for her, eventually? She’s fifteen. I mean, most girls are beginning to be courted by then, aren’t they?”
“He’s mentioned that she might be able to return to the fairy kingdom and perhaps become queen, but not until she’s grown.”
“She can’t be a good queen if she can’t do anything for herself,” I said.
“Maybe not a good queen,” Celestina said. “But certainly she wouldn’t be the first pampered and sheltered queen in the world. Perhaps it won’t matter, now that Erris is here.”
Yes. Erris might be the one to inherit the throne and all its troubles. I was not sure if this thought was especially comforting either. I changed the subject to music until the noise of the sewing machine forced us into silence.
By lunchtime, Celestina was handing me a simple pair of newly made trousers and one of her own shirts. I slipped up to my room to change, a flush on my cheeks, as if I were still in Hollin Parry’s house and any moment he would turn the corner and say that I was a lady and should have fine things.
And I loved fine things, it was true. Since I was a girl, I had been attracted to a flash of gold or the shimmer of silk. Clothes do not change a person’s appearance only, but their feelings as well. Now I changed from well-to-do girl of Lorinar in a fine full skirt and puffed sleeves, with my hair swept over my ears and demurely pinned, to a creature of the forest, camouflaged in cream and brown, rough and quick and ready. I looked ridiculous now with my hair neat and ladylike. I pulled out the pins and let it tumble down. The girl who looked out at me from the mirror was no longer a shadow of my mother or a foreign girl pretending to be a lady of Lorinar. She was wild. She was strange.
There was something about her I rather liked.
I plaited my hair, for the hair of a wild girl would quickly get knots and fall into her food, and went down for lunch.
Chapter 7
After lunchtime, Erris still hadn’t returned from foraging, so I set out to find him somewhere in what Celestina said was a hundred acres of forest and rocky shoreline.
The fog had vanished; the sun shone at last on trees just beginning their autumn transformation. It was not only that the day looked bright; it felt bright, sweeping into my lungs, scented by ocean, filling me with strange vigor. I started running just to feel my legs and heart pumping and my braids flying. I leaped over a fallen tree trunk, fleet as a deer, and then I stopped, gasping for breath. I wanted to feel like a child again, but my body seemed shocked by it; it had grown used to stately movement and stuffy rooms. Even dancing was something I rarely did anymore.
I recalled playing in the gardens as a girl, ducking under bushes, seeking hidden places. I remembered clambering up mountain paths and slipping off my shoes to cross the wide but shallow river near Shala, where the court went in summer. When had my limbs grown long and stiff and unable to slip under and over and through? My heart was pounding in my chest still. I didn’t want to feel as tired and grown-up as I did.
My steps tugged me toward the shore. I crossed a plank thrown across a trickle of river and passed through a grassy patch that had been cleared of trees once, and where only bushes grew now. The trees turned to dwarves near the shore, and then the sky opened completely, a bowl of blue above the deeper shade of the sea.
Erris didn’t hear me approach over the pounding waves. And for another moment, I let him be alone. I was alone too; we were alone together with the waves beating stronger than my heart. I had crossed the ocean, I realized, but I had never seen the shore. I had only come on and off of ships.
I made my way across sun-warmed rocks that separated the stubby trees from a slick world of tide pools and algae. Erris had a basket at his side, with seaweed and shells, but he was very still, looking out at the islands that rose from the water like giant turtles sunning themselves, carrying tiny forests on their backs.
“Erris?” I finally said.
He rose and turned in one motion. “Oh… it’s you, Nim.”
“Who else would it be?”
He shrugged a shoulder, then grinned. “I see Celestina dressed you up.”
“Do I look terribly silly? Like a little boy?”
“Never like a little boy. No, not at all. You look naughty. Like a runaway.” He walked near enough to touch me.
“I suppose I am a bit of a runaway,” I said, looking at his hands. I wanted to touch them. I knew they would feel warm and alive. I didn’t care if it was all an illusion. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t run away from home.”
“But you won’t run away anymore?” he said casually, now looking at my hands. I wondered if it was something he truly worried about.
“You don’t think I would abandon you, do you?” I answered.
“I wish I could abandon myself,” he said, and suddenly we weren’t casual at all. “Do you really think there could be a good outcome to any of this?”
“Well, yes. I mean, Annalie told us to come here.”
“The spirits told her to tell us to come here. Who knows about spirits. What if that spirit was my sister? What if Annalie misunderstood? Maybe I’m just supposed to help Violet.”
“You don’t think you’re here to help yourself at all?” That was, admittedly, a bit of a horrifying thought.
“I have to be realistic. If I start hoping to have my real life back, I think I’ll break down entirely. Hope is painful. I waited all those years to be freed from clockwork, and I don’t think I can wait anymore. I can’t imagine that my body is still alive somewhere. This is it. This is all I’ve got, Nim. I’ve got to deal with that.”
“So, you’re just giving up?”
“I’m trying not to give up,” he said. The cries of seagulls around us seemed to echo the desperation inching into his voice. “I’m trying to find some purpose, some rhyme or reason for what happened to me. If I’m here to help my sister’s child, then that is something I can do even as I am.”