—fire from the death of water—
The words echoed through my mind, and for once they did not remind me of my Hermetic lessons, but left a vague impression of doors and hallways, a secret place with swirling lights and firelight dancing in someone’s eyes—
Another dream, surely, and the memory was gone as soon as I reached for it. I pushed the window open and sucked in a breath of cold morning air. The birdsong was much louder now: a hundred sparrows perched and fluttered in the birch trees that had turned autumn-gold, and the sky above was bright, infinite blue without a single cloud.
“I’m getting married,” I whispered, and could not stop staring at that blue sky until Astraia pulled me away to get dressed.
I could remember Mother, just a little, from before the sickness took her. But I could not remember celebrating the Day of the Dead with her. The first graveyard visit I remembered was the first one after her death. The memory was in fragments like needles: the stiff black mourning dress scratching at my neck; Astraia’s endless, hopeless sniffling; the bright, unseasonable sunlight that cast knife-sharp shadows across the gravestone and its crisp new inscription.
“THISBE TRISKELION,” my father had carved, and underneath, “OMNES UNA MANET NOX ERGO AMATA MANE ME.”
One night awaits us all; therefore, beloved, wait for me.
It was a line from an old poem about sundered lovers, one awaiting the other on the far side of the river Styx. I had seen the words a hundred times before, yet as I stared at them today—edges now soft from the passage of years—they felt new . . . and ominous. I couldn’t shake the image of writhing shadows closing over a helpless pale face.
“Nyx!”
I blinked. Astraia held out the bottle of wine, her eyebrows drawn together. I took it quickly and gulped dark red wine, rich and spicy. It reminded me of wood smoke on cold autumn air, though today—like that first Day of the Dead—was strangely warm.
Astraia shot me a look but said nothing. She never said more than she had to at the graveyard; none of us did, but because she was the family chatterbox, her silence was especially grim. At least she was no longer glowering at Father and Aunt Telomache, as she had last year when they were just engaged. That had been a strange time: I was not used to being the more cheerful and compliant daughter.
“Nyx, darling,” said Aunt Telomache. Her hand rested on the swell of her stomach—she was always fondling her belly, any moment she had a hand free, as if she couldn’t possibly believe she was so lucky as to be bearing Father’s child. “Won’t you recite the next hymn?”
Like a slap to the face, I remembered that I was supposed to chant the hymn and then take a drink—not gulp wine and stare witlessly into the distance without singing before or after. My face heated as I plunged into the next hymn for the dead. I stumbled on the first lines, but soon the rhythm took over and I lost myself in the low, mournful chanting.
Until I realized they were all still staring at me. Astraia had pressed a hand to her mouth as if to hold back laughter, Aunt Telomache’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and Father’s face had acquired the icy blankness I hadn’t seen since the day he announced Aunt Telomache would be our new mother and Astraia spat at her.
For a moment it felt like I wasn’t there at all, but staring through a window into another world, one where I was a terrible daughter who deserved to be hated.
But you were.
The thought entered my head as easily as breathing—and was gone in a heartbeat, as my mind finally caught up and I realized that I had not been singing one of the funeral hymns at all, but a peasant song: Nanny-Anna’s lament for Tom-a-Lone. Most of the verses dwelt on the lost delights of his kisses, which would make it inappropriate for any graveside, but the song ended with Nanny-Anna swearing she would mourn him forever, “and let worms eat my eyes before I love again.” At my mother’s grave, before my father and his second wife, it was a deadly insult.
I surged to my feet. My heart pounded in my ears while my stomach twisted with ice. I opened my mouth, but the only words I could think of were I hate you, and those were wrong and made no sense. Instead I whirled and ran, dead leaves crackling under my feet and tears prickling at my eyes.
I skidded to a halt outside the gate of the cemetery, panting for breath. I thought I was about to burst into sobs, but beyond the prickling, no more tears came.
Something was wrong. I was always moody in the autumn, especially on the Day of the Dead—and who wouldn’t be?—but this year it was worse than ever. This year, the whole world suddenly felt so wrong that I wanted to scream.
“I believe you win the prize for graveside misbehavior.”
I jumped at the sound of Astraia’s voice. She stood behind me, arms crossed and cheeks slightly dimpled in the way that strangers thought was sweet and I knew was calculating.
“Well,” I said, “you got all the attention last year.”
The last Day of the Dead had been only a few days after the spitting incident. I had been the only one in the family who was talking to everybody else.
Astraia’s gaze didn’t waver. “If you’re trying to make Father lock you up for the night, just tell me right now that you don’t want to do it. You can stay the favored daughter and I’ll carry out my original plan.”
I sighed through my teeth. “You know very well that you’re the favored one, and only you would think I was doing something that devious. I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not worried about tonight. It’s—it’s—”
“Mother?” Astraia’s voice softened a little.
“No,” I said shortly.
Astraia shrugged. “Well, as long as you’re going to be useful, I suppose I’d better save you.” She pressed a hand to my forehead. “How shocking. You’re fevered from the sun and nearly fainted. You didn’t know what you were singing.”
I batted her hand away.
“I told you, I’m all right.”
“Nyx.” She looked at me, her eyes wide and reasonable. “Do you want to spend tonight having a family fight, or do you want to get married?”
I opened my mouth to protest. Then closed it. “I’ll sit down, then.”
“Good.” She patted my cheek. “Try to feel faint.”
I sat down with a huff. As she strode back into the graveyard to lie shamelessly, I leant against the cool stone wall and closed my eyes. My cheek still tingled where she had touched it; Astraia hugged me all the time, stroked my hair, and clasped my hands—but it wasn’t often that she touched my face. No one did.
Why did I remember the sensation of hands cupping my chin?
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25
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right, dear?”
I didn’t hunch over my embroidery, but it was a near thing. Aunt Telomache’s efforts to be motherly always made me want to cringe away, the more since I had realized they were mostly sincere.
I was tempted to say, No, the cabbage roses are nauseating me again. But Aunt Telomache had picked the wallpaper herself and loved it. At least I had been able to stop her from putting it into my bedroom.
“I’m quite recovered, Aunt,” I said instead, sneaking a look at the clock: half past four. Sunset was not far off. “But I would like to go help Astraia get ready.”
“Of course.” Aunt Telomache smiled, her left hand straying to her stomach. What would she do once the child was finally born?
I set my embroidery down on the little table by the couch. Afternoon embroidery in the parlor was a new tradition: it had started last year, when Astraia was still sulking about the house in black and I had decided that somebody had to pretend we all got along. Since then, I had not learnt to find embroidery interesting or enjoy my aunt’s company, but I had learnt that she was mostly genuine in wishing me good, and that helped me to bear her. A little.
Aunt Telomache stood alon
g with me, though unlike me she let out a little huff of effort that still managed to sound triumphant. She had even relished her morning sickness, and as she got larger she had only gotten more gleeful.
I supposed I couldn’t blame her. She’d lived nearly two decades in her dead sister’s shadow, and now at last, not only had Father married her, but she was carrying—by all Hermetic portents—a male child: the one thing that Mother had never been able to give him.
I could still find her annoying, though. At least the false smiles were getting easier.
“Thank you for sewing with me,” I said, as I always did. The words had long ago started sounding like a string of mechanical nonsense to me, but Aunt Telomache seemed to take them seriously every time.
“You’re welcome.” You couldn’t really say that somebody as leather-faced as Aunt Telomache glowed, but she came close. “Perhaps we should starting sewing things for your wedding chest soon?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I must go help Astraia.” And I fled the room before she could tell me again that my mother had been not only married but a mother at my age, and while she had been young when she wed, I was old to have never been courted, and so forth.
At least tomorrow I would finally have an excuse to be unattached. Because tonight, I would marry Tom-a-Lone.
It was an old peasant custom. As soon as the sun went down, the villagers would start a bonfire and bring out a beribboned straw man to represent Tom-a-Lone, returned for his one night of reunion with Nanny-Anna. Then a girl would be married to him in Nanny-Anna’s place, and the two of them would be crowned king and queen of the festival. Just before dawn, they would burn Tom-a-Lone, but the girl would be his bride all the next year. She’d get special honey cakes at the winter solstice and lead the dancing round the maypole in spring, but she couldn’t marry until after the next Day of the Dead.
Aunt Telomache always shook her head and muttered when it came time to pick the bride by lots. But Mother had attended the bonfire, and had herself been Tom-a-Lone’s bride when she was sixteen, so when Astraia and I turned thirteen, we got to enter our names. We were never picked, but we danced around the bonfire and gulped down barley wine with the rest of the village.
Until last week, when they drew lots and Astraia was the one. But she had told me with tears in her eyes that Adamastos was going to speak with Father as soon as he got back from the Lyceum next month, and she couldn’t bear to wait another year before she married him.
Then she had explained a plan that started with poisoning Father and collecting sixteen stray cats.
I had smacked her forehead and said, “Stupid. The bride is always veiled, right? I’ll just turn up in your place, and nobody will know until it’s too late.”
So now the plan was made and in only a few hours, I would be wed. I grinned to myself as I climbed the stairs. I was sure to get a lot of angry lectures tomorrow, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Aunt Telomache’s matchmaking for another year.
But when I got up to my room, it turned out that Astraia was in a matchmaking mood herself. She held her tongue while the maids were dressing us, but as soon as they left, she grinned at me.
“Last week, Deiphobos and Edwin talked to Father about you,” she said, leaning against one of the bedposts. “Are you sure you aren’t interested? Because Edwin made all that money when he ran away to sea, and Deiphobos was the best in his class at the Lyceum, and they’re both very handsome.”
I sighed as I sorted through the embroidered ribbons that we would tie into our hair for good luck. “Not you too. I’ll be married to Tom-a-Lone, remember?”
“Or if you can’t make up your mind, maybe you could have them both. Don’t the hedge-gods have a ceremony for that?”
“Astraia!”
“Oh, I forgot, you can’t marry either of them because you promised to wait for your prince.”
“I was seven,” I muttered, starting to tie ribbons into my hair. Astraia grinned as she moved to help.
“He’ll hug you and kiss you and be your light in the darkness—”
The teasing was nothing new, but the word darkness sent a shudder across my skin and I slammed my palms onto the table, rattling the comb and the little jars. “Shut up, you little toad!”
That got a shocked silence out of her: we’d fought when we were younger, but I hadn’t raised my voice against her in years.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
She rolled her eyes and kissed my cheek. “You wouldn’t be my sister if you didn’t have a little poison on your tongue.”
I met her eyes in the mirror. “And you wouldn’t be my sister if you didn’t have a little poison hidden in your heart. Whatever did you do to get Lily Martin out of the village?”
Lily Martin was the miller’s daughter, cow-eyed and buxom and by all accounts no better than she should be. Certainly she had tried her best to seduce Adamastos before she went on a very sudden trip to visit her relatives.
Astraia giggled. “I only wrote to her aunt that her stepbrother was spending an odd amount of time with her, and since her aunt is dirty-minded like all old relatives, she decided it was her duty to save Lily from his twisted passion.”
“Does Adamastos know he’s getting such a devious wife?” I asked.
“Oh, he knows what’s good for him.” Astraia’s smile was secretive and highly satisfied.
I snorted but said nothing. Adamastos was a quiet, kind boy who seemed more than a little afraid of Astraia—but he kept coming back to court her, and I supposed at this point he must know what he was getting into.
Outside the window, a bird sang loudly. The notes were sweet, but suddenly I wanted to scream, or cry, or break something.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. This was not a time to lose myself in one of my moods. I had a sister to save.
The thought felt familiar. I didn’t know why.
When we came downstairs—both of us wearing red silk, Astraia also veiled in red gauze—Father and Aunt Telomache were waiting for us. Father looked remote as usual, but he had an arm laid gently over Aunt Telomache’s shoulder.
“You both look lovely,” said Aunt Telomache.
“You can’t see me,” said Astraia, and I took the opportunity to pull the veil off her head. She giggled and shot me a triumphant look before bounding forward to hug Father, who pulled her to his chest with a sigh.
“Very lovely,” he said, and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. Then he looked over her at me. “Nyx, I spoke with your tutor today. I asked him to write you a letter of recommendation for the Lyceum, and he said yes.”
I nodded, gripping the veil and pressing my lips into a firm line, though I wanted to dance around the room. “Thank you, Father,” I said.
Father smiled and kissed Astraia’s head again. He would never dote on me the way he did on her, but he took pride in me as he never did in her. The knowledge still rankled sometimes, but I had mostly made my peace with it.
“We must be going,” I said. Father released Astraia and she briefly submitted to being kissed by Aunt Telomache before skipping back to my side.
We stepped outside together, hand in hand. The sun had just gone down; a little light clung to the sky, but the stars had already begun to glitter.
Like the eyes of all the gods, I thought, and tried to remember where I had read that phrase. An old poem, perhaps.
Astraia tugged on my hand. “You’ve seen the stars before.”
“I know,” I muttered, following her slowly.
She grinned at me over her shoulder. “Or were you admiring your true love’s home?”
I hadn’t even thought of the castle, but now that she said the words, I couldn’t help glancing to the east, where high above on the hilltop the ruins of the old castle were still visible as silhouettes against the darkening sky.
Nobody had ever tried to rebuild the home of the ancient kings after they were destroyed in a single night. The records of those days were nearly lost, but t
he legends went like this: nine hundred years ago, Arcadia was ruled by a line of wise and just kings, who defended the land with their Hermetic arts. But then one night, as the king lay dying, doom came upon them: some curse or monster—the legends differed on exactly what—destroyed the entire castle and would have destroyed all Arcadia, except that the Last Prince offered himself to the Kindly Ones. This is the bargain he struck: so long as he is bound to the castle as a ghost, whatever evil destroyed it is bound there too. So the castle can never be rebuilt and the line of kings is ended forever, but Arcadia will always be safe.
The stories always ended thus: sometimes at midnight, the Last Prince walks the ruins. If you see him and you call out his name—Marcus Valerius Lux—then he will turn and speak with you, for he wants to know if his people are safe. But he must always vanish with the dawn.
I first heard the story when I was seven years old, and I spent the whole day sobbing before I declared that I would find and marry him. For years after, I was forever sneaking away to the castle to play among the fallen stones. I chanted his name, half- longing and half-afraid, wondering what it would be like to meet him. Until one night I stole a Hermetic lamp and Father’s pocket watch, and after Aunt Telomache tucked me into bed, I slipped away to the castle. I sat on a stone, shivering despite my coat, until the pocket watch said midnight.
But when I called his name, nobody answered. That was when I realized how foolish it was to think myself in love with a legend. I cried and went home, and I avoided the castle forever after.
The village’s main square was lit with a blaze of torches and hung with garlands of ivy and sheaves of wheat—the emblems of Tom-a-Lone and Brigit. A great bonfire crackled high in the center, while to the left were the smaller cooking fires where two lambs roasted over spits and a great pot of the traditional chestnut soup bubbled. The rich, spicy scents floated on the air and tangled with the noise of the practicing fiddlers—and the dull roar of chatter, for half the village was in the square. Most were seated already at the tables that ringed the bonfire, but some of the women still bustled about making preparations, while children skipped underfoot. All of them, young and old alike, had ribbons tied to their wrists and arms and hair, just like Tom-a-Lone.