It whooshes up hot. The logs catch quickly.
“Not so bad for a naturalist,” Madrigal says. “Though it would be easier if I were an elemental. Sometimes, I think I’d rather be almost anything than a naturalist.”
“Even a poisoner?” Arsinoe asks.
“If I were a poisoner, I would be living in a grand house in Indrid Down rather than my mother’s drafty cottage by the sea. But no. I was thinking perhaps of the war gift. To be a warrior would be much more exciting than this. Or to have the sight and know what will come to be.”
Arsinoe plunks her stool down near the fire. She does not mention that the Milone house is much more than a drafty cottage by the sea. That is all Madrigal will ever think of it as.
“Why did you come back?” Arsinoe asks. “If you are so dissatisfied? You were six years on the mainland, and you could have stayed there.”
Madrigal prods the flames with a long stick. “Because of Jules, of course,” she says. “I couldn’t stay away and let her be raised by my dull sister.” She pauses. She knows she has spoken out of turn. No one in the family will hear one word spoken against Caragh. Not since she took Jules’s place in the Black Cottage. How that must annoy Madrigal, who hardly has a kind word to say.
“And you,” Madrigal says, and shrugs. “A new queen. I wasn’t even born when the last one was crowned, so I could not miss this. You are the only excitement this island has seen in all that time.”
“Yes, excitement,” says Arsinoe. “I imagine my death will be very exciting.”
“Do not be so dour,” Madrigal says. “I am on your side, unlike half these people. Why do you think I’ve brought you all the way up here?”
Arsinoe sets her crossbow and bolts beside her foot and stuffs her chilly hands into her pockets. She should have refused to come. But with Jules in Wolf Spring with Joseph, it was either this or chores.
“What do you think my Juillenne is doing down in town?” Madrigal muses, fiddling with something in her coat. She pulls out a small bag and sets it in her lap.
“Welcoming home an old friend,” Arsinoe says. “Her best friend.”
“You are her best friend,” Madrigal says slyly. “Joseph Sandrin has always been . . . something else.”
She pulls four things out of her bag: a curving braid of hair, a strip of gray cloth, a length of black satin ribbon, and a sharp silver knife.
“Low magic,” Arsinoe observes.
“Don’t call it that. That is the temple talking. This is the lifeblood of the island. The only thing that remains of the Goddess in the outside world.”
Arsinoe watches Madrigal set out the items in a careful row. She cannot deny being fascinated. There is a peculiar bend to the air here, and a peculiar feeling in the ground, like a heartbeat. It is strange that she has never stumbled across this place, and this bent-over tree, before. But she has not. If she had, she would have known immediately.
“Be that as it may,” Arsinoe says, “low magic is not a queen’s gift. We aren’t like everyone else. Our line is . . .” She stops. “Sacred,” she almost said. Of the Goddess. It is true, but the words turn the inside of her mouth bitter. “I shouldn’t do it,” she says. “I should go down to the water and yell at a crab until it prostrates itself before me.”
“How long have you tried that?” Madrigal asks. “How many times have you called for a familiar who hasn’t come?”
“It will come.”
“It will. If we raise your voice.”
Madrigal smiles. Arsinoe never thinks of Madrigal as beautiful, though many, many people do. “Beautiful” is too gentle a word for what she is.
“Jules will help me to raise it,” Arsinoe says.
“Don’t be stubborn. Jules may not be able to. For her, things come too easy. The gift is there, at her fingertips. She reminds me of my sister that way.”
“She does?”
“Yes. Caragh opened her eyes one day and had the gift. All of it. Just like Jules. It was not as brutally strong as Jules’s is, but it was strong enough to turn my parents’ heads. And she did it without work.” Madrigal stokes the fire and sends up sparks. “I have wondered sometimes if Caragh isn’t somehow really Jules’s mother. Even though I remember giving birth to her. They were so close after I returned to the island. Jules even looks more like her.”
“So, uglier, you mean.” Arsinoe frowns.
“I didn’t say that.”
“What else can you mean? You and Caragh look similar. And Jules looks nothing like either of you. The only feature she and Caragh share is that they are both less pretty than you. Jules bonded with Caragh, but what can you expect? You were gone. Caragh raised her.”
“‘Raised her,’” Madrigal repeats. “She was scarcely nine years old when I returned.”
She takes up the cloth in her lap and tears away errant threads until the edges are clean.
“Maybe I do feel guilt for leaving,” she says, staring down at her work. “Maybe that’s why I am doing this now.”
Arsinoe studies the strip of gray cloth. She studies the braid of dark brown hair and wonders who it belonged to. Beneath the bent-over tree the breeze has stilled, and even the fire burns quietly. Whatever it is Madrigal is doing, they should not be doing it. Low magic is for the simple or the desperate. Even when it works, there is always a price.
“Have you noticed that no one is panicking that your gift hasn’t come?” Madrigal asks. “Not Cait. Not Ellis. Not even really Jules. No one thinks you are going to survive, Arsinoe. Because naturalist queens do not survive. Not unless they’re beasts, like Bernadine and her wolf.” She ties a knot in the strip of cloth and uses it to anchor another knot around the braid of hair.
“Great Queen Bernadine,” Arsinoe mutters. “Do you know how tired I am of hearing about her? She is the only naturalist queen anyone remembers.”
“She is the only one worth remembering,” Madrigal says. “And for all their savagery, the people of Wolf Spring have gotten used to that. They have accepted it. But I haven’t.”
“Why haven’t you?” Arsinoe asks.
“I am not sure,” Madrigal says, and shrugs. “Maybe because I have watched you, growing up in Jules’s gifted shadow, the way I did in Caragh’s. Or maybe because I want my daughter to love me, and if I save you, she might learn to.”
She holds up the bit of braid and cloth. Arsinoe shakes her head. “It will go wrong. Something always does when it comes to me. Someone will get hurt.”
“It will hurt when your sisters kill you,” Madrigal reminds her, and presses the charm into Arsinoe’s hand.
It seems like a harmless bit of junk. But it does not feel that way. It feels far heavier than any braid and strip of cloth should feel. And more alive than any rosebud in her hand.
“The Goddess is here, in this place,” Madrigal says. “The priestesses pray to her like she is a being, some faraway creature, but you and I know better. We feel her inside the island. Everywhere. You felt her in the mist that night, in the boat, when she would not let you go. She is the island, and the island is her.”
Arsinoe swallows. The words feel true. Perhaps once, the Goddess was everywhere, stretched out over the sky all the way to the mainland. But now she is drawn in, curled up like a beast in a hole. Just as powerful. Just as dangerous.
“Is this Jules’s hair?” Arsinoe asks.
“Yes. I took it when I was brushing it this morning to put into a bun. It took forever to straighten it and braid it together.”
“What about the cloth?” It looks old, wrinkled, and dirty.
“A strip of Joseph’s shirt, from when he was a boy. Or so my mother says. He ruined it on a nail out by the barns, and Jules kept it after she gave him a new one. I don’t know how she remembers these things.” She snorts. “Of course, there are other things of Joseph’s that we could use, but we don’t want him charging Jules like a rutting stag.”
“This is a love spell,” Arsinoe says. “You are teaching me to use low magic, to
do a love spell for Jules?”
“Is there any motivation in the world more pure?” Madrigal hands her the length of black ribbon. “Wrap them together and then tie them around with this.”
“How do you know how to do this?” Arsinoe asks. Though in truth it feels almost as if she herself knows how to do it. Her fingers twist the braid and cloth together effortlessly, and she would have known to reach for the ribbon even if Madrigal had not instructed her to.
“Off the island there is nothing else,” Madrigal whispers. “Close your eyes. Look into the flames.”
“Jules would want to do this herself,” Arsinoe says. “No, she would not do it at all. She does not need this.”
Across the fire, Madrigal purses her lips ruefully. Every girl in Wolf Spring knows about the Sandrin boys. Their mischievous smiles, and eyes like storm clouds reflected upon the sea. All that wind in their dark hair. Joseph will be that way now. And even though Arsinoe loves Jules, and thinks of her as beautiful, she knows that Jules is not the kind of beautiful that holds a boy like that.
Arsinoe looks down at the charm, winding itself between her fingers. Moments ago, it was a scrap of nothing to be tossed into the bin or for birds to use to line their nests. But there is more to it in the knots that Madrigal tied, and the twists where Jules’s hair and Joseph’s shirt press tightly together.
She finishes the last wrap of the ribbon and secures the end. Madrigal takes up the silver knife and slices into the underside of Arsinoe’s forearm, so fast that it takes the wound a few seconds to bleed.
“Ow,” says Arsinoe.
“It didn’t hurt.”
“It did, and you could have warned me before you did it.”
Madrigal shushes her and presses the charm into the running blood. She squeezes Arsinoe’s arm, squeezing her into the charm like milk into a bucket.
“A queen’s blood,” Madrigal says. “The blood of the island. Thanks to you, Jules and Joseph will never be parted again.”
Arsinoe closes her eyes. Jules and Joseph. They were inseparable since birth, until she came along. Until they tried to save her, and were parted for their trouble. The Black Council imposed no punishment on Arsinoe for her part in the escape. Except for guilt. And in the years since, guilt over Jules losing Joseph has punished her plenty.
Madrigal releases her arm, and Arsinoe bends at the elbow. The bleeding has lessened, and the cut begins to throb. Madrigal did not think far ahead enough to bring along anything to cleanse the wound, or bandages. So perhaps the price of the magic will be the loss of a queen’s arm.
Madrigal slides the charm into a small black bag. When she hands the pouch to Arsinoe, her fingers are sticky and red, and the charm inside feels like a small heart beating.
“After it dries,” Madrigal says, “keep it somewhere safe. Under your pillow. Or braid it into your own hair, if you can keep from constantly cutting it.”
Arsinoe holds the charm in her fist. Now that the magic is made, it feels wrong. A crooked thing, twisted through with good intentions. She does not know why she did it. She has no excuse, except that it was easy, and nothing has ever come easily to her before.
“I can’t do this to Jules,” she says. “I can’t take away her will like this. No matter the reason, she wouldn’t want it.”
Before she can reconsider, Arsinoe throws the charm into the fire. The bag burns away like nothing, and Jules’s hair and Joseph’s dried scrap of shirt blacken and curl like the legs of a dying insect. The smoke that comes from it is foul. Madrigal cries out and jumps to her feet.
“Put the fire out and let’s go home,” Arsinoe says. She tries to sound like a queen, but she is shaky and weak, as if she has lost a pint of blood rather than a few spoonfuls.
“What have you done?” Madrigal asks sadly. “What have you just done to our poor Jules?”
ROLANTH
In the cloistered courtyard on the eastern side of the temple grounds, Mirabella can be alone. It is one of the few places the priestesses will let her go unescorted. One of the few places they feel is safe. Even when she prays at the altar, one or two of them are there, standing in the shadows. Only in the courtyard, and in her bedroom at Westwood House, may she be by herself. Free to think, or recline, and even to weep.
She has wept often since Rho’s test in the cliffs. Most of the tears she has hidden. But not all. Word of her upset traveled quickly, and the priestesses have begun to give her suspicious glances. They cannot decide whether her weeping is a sign of weakness or of great mercy. Either way, they would prefer that she did not do it.
Mirabella tucks her legs underneath her on the cold stone bench. As she lifts her foot, a small, black-and-white tufted woodpecker lands in her footprint and hops back and forth.
“Oh,” she says. It is a spritely thing, with smart black eyes. She pats the pockets of her skirt and gently shakes the folds of her cloak. “I am sorry. I have no seed for you.”
She ought to have brought some. The doves cooing would have been a welcome distraction.
“It is not seed he’s after.”
Mirabella turns. A young initiate stands at the entrance of the courtyard, in the opening of the snow-crusted hedge. She holds her white hood tight against the chill of the wind.
Mirabella clears her throat. “What is it he is after, then?”
The girl smiles and walks into the courtyard. “He wishes to cheer you,” she says.
She releases her hood, and the woodpecker flits quickly from the ground to dive into her collar.
The queen’s eyes widen. “You are a naturalist,” she says.
The girl nods.
“My name is Elizabeth. I grew up in Bernadine’s Landing. I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. It is only that you looked so sad. And Pepper always manages to make me smile.”
The little bird pokes his beak out from behind her hood and disappears again just as quickly. Mirabella watches with interest. She has never seen a familiar; in the temple, a priestess gives up her gift, and familiars are forbidden.
“How is it that you have managed to keep him?” Mirabella asks.
Elizabeth rubs her tan cheek against the bird’s head. “Please don’t tell anyone. They would kill him on sight. I have tried to keep him away, but he will not go. I suppose I’m lucky that he is easy to hide. It is cruel to make us send them away, before we take our bracelets. What if I change my mind and leave the temple? Where will Pepper be, then? In the woods nearby? Or high in the mountains, where he may never hear my call?”
“It is cruel to make you give him up at all,” says Mirabella.
Elizabeth shrugs. “My mother says that once, priestesses did not have to. But now the island is so fractured. Naturalist against poisoner against elemental. Even those few with the war gift, or those fewer with the sight gift, are hostile to one another.” She looks at Pepper and sighs. “Giving them up unites us. And the sacrifice binds us to our faith. But you are right. It’s still cruel.”
“Could I?” Mirabella asks, and holds out her hand. Elizabeth smiles, and the little bird flies quickly to perch on the tips of Mirabella’s curled fingers.
“He likes you,” Elizabeth says.
Mirabella chuckles. “That is kind. But you are a naturalist. This bird will do whatever you say.”
“That’s not exactly how the familiar-bond works. And in any case, you would be able to tell. He would be hesitant and less bright-eyed. He might leave droppings in your palm.”
“Lucky that he likes me, then,” Mirabella says.
Pepper blinks once and then shoots quickly back into the safety of Elizabeth’s hood.
“Seeing you here alone, so sad, I had to see if we could help.” Elizabeth settles down onto the bench beside her. “I know why you cry.”
“I imagine every priestess in the temple knows.”
Elizabeth nods. “But it means something special to me,” she says, “as I was almost the girl sacrificed.”
“You?”
“The way
they make it sound,” she says. “The duty and the commune with the Goddess. I almost said yes. I thought I should. Her name was Lora. The volunteer. She died believing she had done a great service. And there are worse ways to die than that.”
Worse ways, like being burned alive by your sister priestesses. Mirabella tried that way of thinking. Telling herself that she had saved the girl from the flames. It did not work. It was not right, no matter how it happened.
“We are all dual-natured, Queen Mirabella. Every gift is light and dark. We naturalists can make things grow, but we also coax lobsters into pots, and our familiars tear rabbits to shreds.”
“Yes,” says Mirabella. “I know this.”
Elementals burn down forests as easily as they water them with rain. The war gift is for protection as well as slaughter. Even those with the sight are often cursed with madness and paranoia. It is for that reason that any queens born with the sight are drowned.
“Even the poisoners,” Elizabeth says, “are also healers.”
“Now, that I have not heard,” says Mirabella. Poisoners are notoriously vicious. Every one of their executions is a mess, when every executed woman or man is put to death by flamboyant poisons that bring blood to the eyes and spasms so hard they break their backs.
“It’s true,” Elizabeth insists. “They know the ways of healing. They have only forgotten it in the face of their hunger for council seats.”
Mirabella smiles slightly. Then she shakes her head. “But it is not the same, Elizabeth. It is not the same for queens.”
“Oh, I know that,” the priestess replies. “And I have only been here at Rolanth for a short time. But already I can see that you are a good person, Mirabella. I don’t know if you will make a good queen, but that seems to me a promising start.”
A dark, black braid slides out of Elizabeth’s hood, almost as dark as the queens’ own. It reminds Mirabella of Bree, the way she wears it. Pepper the woodpecker ruffles his feathers. He seems to be a bird of few words.