The Stepsister's Lament Read online

  “You mentioned that she wasn’t afraid of bloodshed?” Reese prompted, gently, his hands shifting down to my shoulders.

  I closed my eyes and gave him a reluctant nod.

  “Long, long ago, when I was a girl,

  And mother still set my hair in curls,

  I was sent to Granny’s house

  Wearing a red cape and new white blouse.

  My grandmother said she’d been very ill

  And mother feared she had taken a spill.

  I was sent with a basket in hand

  Through the darkest trees in the land

  To bring her some respite and cheer.

  And also a small flagon of beer.

  “As I wandered through the wood, staying on the path,

  A man hidden in the trees startled me with his wrath.

  He growled out strong curses and threats of pain

  Screaming to bring the goods or not come back again.

  Another voice argued back

  Begging to be given some slack.

  I stepped just off the path to see the fight,

  Though I did fear I should die of fright.

  There he stood, the wolf shining in his eyes,

  The man that I fear, the one I despise.

  His had the other man, back against a tree,

  And held him by the throat as he struggled to be free.”

  I shuddered slightly and took a deep breath as I relived the scene.

  “He killed that man where he stood,

  Under the trees, deep in the wood…

  And then I ran from the scene,

  Not knowing that I had been seen.”

  Reese’s grip tightened as I spoke, but he never interrupted. Meanwhile, I was caught in the memories, and I could practically smell the yeasty scent of fresh bread and the slight bitterness of beer.

  “I backed away slowly and reached the road,

  Upon which I had just blithely strode.

  Back up the path to Granny’s house I ran.

  I hoped beyond hope that she would have a plan,

  But when I got to her door,

  There stood the man I’d seen before.

  The wolf looked at me, his eyes aflame,

  And watched me, leaning against the frame.

  He asked what I’d intended to do,

  But before I could think things through

  My Granny came from round the back

  And watched the scene with mouth gone slack.

  Instead of coming to my aid,

  She asked the man what I had said.

  He told her all that I had seen

  And then he told me not to scream.

  “He threw me up against the door

  And made me listen as my Granny swore.

  Then he set me down upon my feet

  And Granny came with words so sweet.

  They told me not to say a word,

  For who would believe a little bird?

  But I said nothing, just shook my head.

  I understood not what they had said.

  “Then her hand flew through the air,

  And sound cracked like ice ‘neath a bear.

  My face throbbed and burned like fire

  As I took more of my Granny’s ire.

  She told her lover to hold me down

  When I began to thrash around.

  Then she back went into her house.

  I was kept pinned so as not to rouse.”

  My voice shook, but I had to get through it. If I stopped, I would never finish, and secretly, I worried that I would be stuck in that moment forever. I’d never told anyone the full story. Cindy and Portia had each heard pieces of the tale. My mother and aunt always seemed to be aware of it as well, but this was the first time I could say it all, start to finish.

  “The wolf moved close, as if to speak

  And I could not make a peep.

  My fear was potent and strong.

  I wondered if I’d be killed ere long.

  Before I could be ripped asunder,

  Out of the woods there came a hunter.

  He ran toward the wolf and me

  With an axe he’d used to fell a tree.

  He swung it once and down went the wolf.

  For the hunter needed little proof.

  “Granny came out and thanked the man

  For saving me from the wolf’s hand.

  She told a tale of what had occurred,

  And it was nothing like you now heard.

  And I was much too scared to say

  That it had not happened quite that way.

  Wolf was taken far from there

  To live with others who murdered on a tear.

  Granny has never forgiven me for

  What happened so long before.

  The man she’d claimed was taken far away

  And she was given reprieve from her evil sway.”

  I let Reese think about what I had said for a while, ignoring his questioning look at the last bit. He didn’t need to know what fate would befall him if she found us. There were much worse things than death.

  As he thought, his hands never stilled, one gently rubbing my shoulder and the other gliding over my hair. “I think I may hate your family,” he finally told me. “I’ve never truly hated anyone before, so this is a real accomplishment for me… I just don’t see how anyone could be so heartless as to attack a child. What was it she had gone to grab before the huntsman came?”

  A shiver tore through my body as I remembered that day.

  “It was a pair of sharp sheep shears.

  The sight of those still brings me to tears.

  Never had Granny owned a sheep,

  But those shears were her pleasure to keep.

  She cuts off the pieces that you will most miss

  And it seems to give her a feeling of bliss.”

  Reese was the one shivering this time as he considered the implications. I hadn’t stated anything outright, but some things are just too horrible to describe, and doing so in rhyme made them worse.

  “Do I even want to know how you found that out? I am sincerely praying that it wasn’t personal experience.”

  I sighed and cuddled in close, telling him about a few of the stories I’d overheard from my mother and aunt. The ritualistic murders to increase her magic, the examples made of business associates who stole from her, the mysterious disappearance of my grandfather and the collection of men she surrounded herself with that didn’t seem to be there willingly… I avoided the details, but I could see him filling them in quite well as I spoke. Then, I decided it was time to move on before we both ended up with nightmares.

  It was a bit like what I’d heard other young people did, telling ghost stories in the woods. Except mine all really happened.

  “It was just after the wolf that mother married again.

  She had told Granny that stepfather was naught but a friend.

  We moved far away from Grandmother then,

  And I swore I would never go near her again.”

  Reese let out a breath of relief. “Good. When you stopped… for a moment I was worried that you were going to tell me you were missing a toe. I am not sure how I would feel about a wife with a missing toe,” he teased, attempting to lighten the mood. “Honestly, it is strange to hear about things like that. My grandparents were incredibly kind and loving, if a bit strict at times. I mean, grandfather can be a bit ruthless with those outside the family, but he isn’t exactly bloodthirsty.”

  “Your grandfather! We left him to the flames!” I gasped.

  “And the servants? Were they injured before it was contained?”

  My husband blinked his eyes at me, their color impossible to distinguish in the low light of the moon. “What are you talking about? My grandfather wasn’t there. And the walls are protected by magic, so the fire won’t spread or cause too much harm to the structure of the lodge. It’s an expensive but very useful spell. It also stops the flames from affecting anyone offer
ed protection by the house, so none of the servants would have been hurt.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “You said your grandfather told you where we should go

  To find the seer whose prophecy upon me did bestow.”

  “That was a bit of a difficult one, wasn’t it?” I glared at him until he relented. “Alright, my family has a tendency to collect rare objects of magic. One of those things is a set of magic mirrors. The main ones are at the hunting lodge and our homes, but grandfather has a hand mirror that he travels with. He was out on business, so I contacted him via mirror. That is why I was able to get his advice and he was still safe from the fire. Rest easy, little gem, for no one was harmed.”

  Up above, a star flashed across the sky before disappearing. My mother told me once that it was a portent of terrible things to come (she always was the emotional sort). My aunt told her that was complete rubbish and falling stars meant nothing. Later, she told me that there was no harm in wishing upon one, as long as you understand that those sorts of things rarely came true. Still, that dark night, wrapped in the arms of a man I barely knew and lost in a forest with my crazy grandmother after me, that night I wished as hard as I could. After all, what harm is there in wishing for the impossible?

  ~

  We traveled on Bernard for three more days, masking our scent with crushed pine needles and rabbit tobacco. We heard nothing more from the wolf as we rode, but that was not entirely unexpected. He was generally a quiet hunter unless he was trying to spook his prey on purpose. Then again, we were in a very dangerous wood, so he was probably having quite a bit of trouble with the native creatures. More than we would, at least. Nevertheless, we did our best to hide our path and relied quite a bit on Bernard’s intelligence. In case you were unaware, it is a really odd feeling to trust a moose with your life. Quite uncomfortable, really.

  We filled our days with idle talk. Reese seemed to always turn the conversation to me, all the while gently wearing at my resolve to stay distant. It is difficult to be standoffish to someone who seems genuinely interested in getting to know you. It took a few abruptly aborted conversations about hobbies before he struck gold; he asked about my family, only this time the focus was on my sisters. So I told him all about them.

  I told him about Portia’s wicked sense of humor and how she was always laughing at something. It wasn’t always appropriate or socially acceptable, but her love of jokes was only rivaled by her love of horses and dancing. She was nothing if not complicated. I may have also mentioned her social ineptitude and head-in-the-clouds attitude. Not that I had much right to cast stones. Still, they were pretty entertaining at times and even she enjoyed the awkward situations she found herself in.

  I told him about Cindy and her love of organization and family. She was the one to help us get through my stepfather’s business failing as well as his eventual death. I had a bit of a hard time convincing him that she wasn’t all sweetness and light. It constantly amazed me how people underestimated that girl. I told him about my flighty mother, who loved to spend money but hated to think about where it came from. If I neglected to mention her protective nature when it came to us girls, including my stepsister… well, he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

  I also told him about Aunt Grace, her practicality, sharp tongue, and how much she hated housework. She would regularly tell me that the laziest people will go to great lengths to avoid work, then she’d show me a spell she’d invented to do the dusting or washing for her. I couldn’t use them at the time, but that knowledge came in handy when I started helping Cindy. When we were in our teens she fell off a ladder while trying to clean the outside windows. There is no greater way to motivate a mediocre magician to practice than making them clean a mansion by themselves.

  Not that I could even be considered mediocre. I was a late bloomer when it came to magic. Even my mother was able to cast basic spells by the time she was 6. I was about 15 before I could do anything. Grandmother was not happy about that. Aunt Grace kept telling me that she would help me with my magic when I was in my 20s, so I knew that I was probably going to start picking up things soon, but it still seemed odd, considering witches always get magic early.

  Most of the days were spent talking about my family. Because we were riding a moose, I conveniently didn’t have to look Reese in the eye while telling embarrassing stories. That was a great relief as quite a few of my tales involved my ending up in uncomfortable situations.

  At night he would shift the conversation away from the personal. We would lay back and he’d tell me all sorts of fantastical stories. Reese knew the most entertaining ones, mostly about people who came from Brenlew. The way he spoke made it sound like it was a real place, which is quite a feat when most of the stories revolve around river gods pulling islands from the sea or an animal leaping from a tapestry to become a new, sentient species. The tales were so wonderful that I wished it weren’t just a legend, but everyone knew that Brenlew didn’t really exist.

  Despite his lack of personal stories, I did find out more about Reese than I expected. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word, always looking to keep me comfortable and safe, but also going out of his way to make sure I wasn’t afraid. He even calmed me after a nightmare without a single question. He just held me as I cried and gave me the space to bring it up if I chose. Also, after the conversation about my grandmother that first night, he seemed to curtail his flirting a bit. It was odd. He seemed to be trying to become my closest friend. There was no romantic tension, just good-natured teasing and a lack of awareness that I was female. It was a bit bizarre, to tell the truth.

  Reese led us deeper and deeper into the woods as the days progressed. I’d always lived just on the edge of the woods in the past, and never in such a vast, old forest. I was rarely invited to a spot just inside the deep woods, let alone the Fey Forest itself! My best guess was that we were heading closer to the Northern Front. The Fey Nation had been locked in a war with the wraiths of the Northern Wastes for centuries and it had left the area around the Front rather sparsely populated. It was it mainly full of old and unwelcoming creatures as well as those unwelcome in the southern cities for one reason or another. It surprised me that we would be heading so steadily toward such a wild area.

  The trees towered so far above that there was no hope of seeing their highest boughs from the forest floor. Some trunks were so large that it would take nearly seven adult trolls holding hands to circle them completely. It was essentially another world in there and I had never been in a place with so much color. It was as if a rainbow had forced itself to appear in only shades of green and been splashed across the earth there.

  We had to cross more than one stream, but I had never before seen waters like those of the Fey Forest. There are plenty of books that talk about how brooks babble and water laughs in the sunlight. In this mysterious forest, it was more than a literary personification. It was reality. The water actually sang as we move past it. The tune changed constantly, sometimes happy, sometimes depressed, sometimes calm, sometimes sounding like a tempest waiting to happen. It also could laugh, which was an… odd thing to find out. One stream actually had a giggle fit as a school fish started jumping out to catch bugs. At one point, it even waved at me! The water, not the fish. That would have been really strange.

  The animals in the vicinity were odd, though. While not exactly tame, they clearly had not been around many humans before. Or if they had, they saw no reason to fear us. I guess that we weren’t as scary as the predators in that forest. Whatever the reason, they seemed to be curious about our presence and would often move closer instead of running away. It got so crazy that at one point, a doe and her two fawns (much larger than normal, not to mention the wrong colors) just watched us pass before following behind for over a mile and at the same time several birds (with fangs) circled our heads as we continued on.

  Added to all this, time itself seemed to pass differently there. Each day was an eternity overflowing with sun da
ppled paths and birdsong. Each night was an eon, filled with the creaking of trunks and scurrying of nocturnal forest dwellers. Just when I began to worry that we had lost our way, my travel companion announced that we had arrived.

  Chapter 5: Evil Fairy?

  “We’re here,” Reese declared while I looked around in confusion.

  “What do you mean ‘we’re here’?

  Reese, there is nothing to see, I fear,” I told him as he swung down.

  The ease of his movements never ceased to surprise me, particularly as it meant he was used to riding around on a moose. Even after days of travel, riding a moose never seemed to get any easier for me…

  The man smiled at me, reminding me of the conversation, and walked up to the thicket of thorns that had completely blocked our path. They reached to the highest canopy and were viciously hooked things with tiny barbs ready to attach themselves to any available skin and sink in too deeply to remove.

  “Oftentimes, little gem, the world is not as it would seem. I believe you need to work on shifting your perspective,” Reese explained, and with that he walked up to the thorns and knocked. I blinked and dismounted as well. Okay, I slipped off and fell on the ground, but you would too if you had been there! The place was very unsettling, which is saying something considering the odd waterways we had passed earlier. The problem was my eyes and ears seemed to be having a disagreement on some vital matters. Like reality. Then again, reality had never been all that great at matching up with my perceptions. Inhaling deeply, I realized my nose was confused as well. It had sounded like a fist hitting a solid door, not a man rustling prickly vines and smelled like wood smoke and summer warmed dry pine needles.

  I looked around to see if the scent was coming from somewhere else, but the Fey Forest doesn’t have dead leaves on the ground and stays mild year round. Reese knocked again and I walked up to investigate the oddity before me.

  Reaching forward, I pricked my finger on the thorns and pulled back quickly before I had to remove it with a pair of tweezers.

  “How can it sound so much like a door,