Chapter 2

By the moment I left the forest my knees trembling, the sun had gone down. Stiff from gripping the deer legs, my hands had gone completely numb miles last. The deepening cold would not even be warded off by the body.

Apart from the battery light leaking from the closed windows of our rundown cottage, the world was ablaze in dark blue. It was like walking through a living painting, a fleeting moment of stillness, the blues rapidly changing to complete black.

Each step up the path motivated only by near-dizzying hunger, my sister's voice floated out to greet me. Though I smiled a little, I didn't have to interpret her remarks to know she most likely was talking about some young man or the ribbons she had seen in the neighborhood going in lieu of chopping wood.

I kicked my boots against the stone door frame to remove the snow. Ice bits came loose from the cottage's gray rocks, exposing the faded ward-markings inscribed around the doorway.

Once my father persuaded a wandering charlatan to offer one of his wood carvings against a witch damage for the engravings. There was so little my father could do for us that I had not had the heart to tell him the engraving was useless. . . and clearly fabricated.

Mortals lacked magic lacked any of the greater force and speed of the witches or High Wiz. Claiming some High Wiz blood in his family, the man had merely muttered a few gibberish words, wandered on his way, and carved the whorls and swirls and runes around the door and window.

With an asp-like sting, the icy metal handle stung my flesh as I pulled the wooden door open. As I went inside, light and heat blinded me.

"Mira" Amanda’s gentle inhale scratched past my ears, and I blinked back the fire's brightness to see my sister before me. She was wrapped in a tattered blanket, but her gold brown hair the hair we all three had, was coiled flawlessly around her head. Eight years of destitution had not taken her will to appear beautiful. “Where did you acquire that? ” The undercurrent of hunger sharpened her words into a sharpness too familiar in recent weeks. No mention of the blood on me. I had long since lost hope of them noticing if I returned from the woods each evening. At minimum until they grew hungry once more.

As I let the doe off my shoulders, I inhaled a soothing breath. She thudded the wooden table, shaking a ceramic mug on the opposite end.

My Voice had gone hoarse, every word painful as it came out. Where do you think I got it?

As usual ignoring him, my eldest sister and Celina still silently warmed their hands by the hearth. Coming out my boots and placing them by the door, I turned to Amanda and peeled the wolf pelt from the doe's body.

Her brown eyes remained fixed on the doe. Will it take you long to clean this? Me. Not her, nor the others. I had never once seen their hands sticky with blood and hairs. Thanks to the guidance of others, I would only have learned how to gather and harvest my killings.

Probably as empty and painful as mine, Amanda pushed her hand against her stomach. She was not cruel in that regard. She was not like Celina, who had been born with a sneering on her face. Amanda sometimes just. . . not acquired knowledge. She never considered herself capable of getting her dirty, which kept her from volunteering to assist. I had never been able to determine if she simply rejected our true poverty or if she actually did not understand it. Whenever I could afford it, it still hadn't stopped me from purchasing her seeds for the flower garden she cared in the milder months.

And it And it hadn't stopped me from purchasing two little tins of paint_ red, yellow, and blue__ during that same summer I had enough to buy the cold iron. Though the paint was now flaking and fading, our home still showed traces of her only present, little vines and flowers along the windows and threshold and edges of things, tiny curls of flame on the rocks bordering the fireplace. Any extra minutes I had that abundant summer I used to embellish our home in color, sometimes concealing ingenious items in drawers, behind the worn-out drapes, under the tables and chairs.

Since then, we had not experienced a summer that comfortable.

"Mira". My Father's strong growl was the result of the fire. His face immaculate, his black beard well trimmed like that of my sister's. "What luck you had today__ in bringing us such a feast."

Celina snorted from beside my father. Not unexpected. Any little compliment for anyone me, Amanda, other towns often led to her rejection. And any comment from our father often led to her mocking as well.

Almost too weary to stand, I straightened but positioned a hand on the table next to the doe as I shot Celina a glare. Of us, Celina had suffered the most with our wealth loss. From the time we had left our estate, she had silently held grudges against my father, even following that terrible day one of the creditors had come to demonstrate how unhappy he was at the loss of his money.

At least Celina, unlike my father, did not bombard us with pointless chatter about recovering our riches. She just spent whatever money I didn't hide from her and seldom bothered to note my father's limp presence at all. Some days I struggled to determine which of us was most miserable and resentful.

I said, turning my attention to the doe, half the meat we could consume this week. The deer consumed all of the rickety table that was our kitchen, work space, and dining room. I continued, aware that no matter how elegantly I said it, I would still do most of it.

I concluded, mostly to myself, "And I'll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides. " Anyway, no one bothered to verify they had heard me.

My father's destroyed leg lay out before him, as near to the heat of the fire as it could get. The cold, the rain, or a temperature change always aggravated the terrible, crunched injuries in his knee. His self-made cane was propped against his chair; it was one Celina sometimes tended to leave far out of reach.

Celina said always when I hissed about it, he might find work if he were not so embarrassed.

Hated him for the harm too: for not fighting back when his thugs and that creditor burst into the cottage and broke his knee.

Amanda and Celina had raced into the bedroom and closed the door. I remained begging and

wailing over every scream from my father, every crunch of bone. I had soiled myself and then vomited straight on the rocks in front of the fireplace. The guys left just then. Never did we run across them.

The healer consumed a large portion of our remaining money. My father could hardly walk six months, a year before he could cover a mile. The copper he brought in when someone felt sorry enough to purchase his wood carvings was insufficiently keep us fed. Five years ago, when my father still couldn't move much about and the money was absolutely and totally gone, he had not protested when I declared I would be hunting.

He hadn’t bothered to attempt to stand from his seat by the fire, hadn’t bothered to look up from his wood carving. He just let me walk into those deadly, eerie woods that even the most seasoned hunters were wary of. He’d become a little more aware now—sometimes offered signs of gratitude, sometimes hobbled all the way into town to sell his carvings—but not much.

“I’d love a new cloak,” Amanda said at last with a sigh, at the same moment Celina rose and declared:

“I need a new pair of boots.”

I kept quiet, knowing better than to get in the middle of one of their arguments, but I glanced at Celina’s still-shiny pair by the door. Beside hers, my too-small boots were falling apart at the seams, held together only by fraying laces.

“But I’m freezing with my raggedy old cloak,”

Amanda pleaded. “I’ll shiver to death.” She fixed her wide eyes on me and said, “Please, Mira.” She drew out the two syllables of my name—mii-raa— into the most hideous whine I’d ever endured, and Celina loudly clicked her tongue before ordering her to shut up.

I drowned them out as they began quarreling over who would get the money the hide would

fetch tomorrow and found my father now standing at the table, one hand braced against it to support his weight as he inspected the deer. His attention slid to the giant wolf pelt. His fingers, still smooth and gentlemanly, turned over the pelt and traced a line through the bloody underside. I tensed.

His dark eyes flicked to mine. “Mira,” he murmured, and his mouth became a tight line.

“Where did you get this?”

“The same place I got the deer,” I replied with equal quiet, my words cool and sharp.

His gaze traveled over the bow and quiver strapped to my back, the wooden-hilted hunting

knife at my side. His eyes turned damp. “Mira … the risk …”

I jerked my chin at the pelt, unable to keep the snap from my voice as I said, “I had no other

choice.”

What I really wanted to say was: You don’t even bother to attempt to leave the house most days.

Were it not for me, we would starve. Were it not for me, we’d be dead.

“Mira” he repeated and closed his eyes.

My sisters had gone quiet, and I looked up in time to see Celina crinkle her nose with a sniff. She picked at my cloak. “You stink like a pig covered in its own filth. Can’t you at least try to pretend that you’re not an ignorant peasant?”

I didn’t let the sting and ache show. I’d been too young to learn more than the basics of manners and reading and writing when our family had fallen into misfortune, and she’d never let me forget it.

She stepped back to run a finger over the braided coils of her gold-brown hair. “Take those

disgusting clothes off.”

I took my time, swallowing the words I wanted to bark back at her. Older than me by three years, she somehow looked younger than I did, her golden cheeks always flushed with a delicate, vibrant pink. “Can you make a pot of hot water and add wood to the fire?” But even as I asked, I noticed the woodpile. There were only five logs left. “I thought you were going to chop wood today.”

Celina picked at her long, neat nails. “I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters.” She

glanced up from beneath her dark lashes. Of all of us, Celina looked the most like our mother— especially when she wanted something. “Besides, Mira,” she said with a pout, “you’re so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me.

Your hands are suited for it—they’re already so rough.”

My jaw clenched. “Please,” I asked, calming my breathing, knowing an argument was the last thing I needed or wanted. “Please get up at dawn to chop that wood.” I unbuttoned the top of my tunic. “Or we’ll be eating a cold breakfast.”

Her brows narrowed. “I will do no such thing!”

But I was already walking toward the small second room where my sisters and I slept. Amanda murmured a soft plea to Celina, which earned her a hiss in response. I glanced over my shoulder at my father and pointed to the deer. “Get the knives ready,” I said, not bothering to sound pleasant.

“I’ll be out soon.” Without waiting for an answer, I shut the door behind me.

The room was large enough for a rickety dresser and the enormous ironwood bed we slept in. The sole remnant of our former wealth, it had been

ordered as a wedding gift from my father to my mother. It was the bed in which we’d been born, and the bed in which my mother died.

In all the painting I’d done to our house these past few years, I’d never touched it.

I slung off my outer clothes onto the sagging dresser—frowning at the violets and roses I’d

painted around the knobs of Amanda’s drawer, the crackling flames I’d painted around Celina’s, and the night sky—whorls of yellow stars standing in for white—around mine. I’d done it to brighten the otherwise dark room. They’d never commented on it. I don’t know why I’d ever expected them to.

Groaning, it was all I could do to keep from collapsing onto the bed.

We dined on roasted venison that night. Though I knew it was foolish, I didn’t object when each of us had a small second helping until I declared the meat off-limits. I’d spend tomorrow preparing the deer’s remaining parts for consumption, then I’d spend a few hours currying up both hides before taking them to the market. I knew a few vendors who might be interested in such a purchase— though neither was likely to give me the f*e I deserved. But money was money, and I didn’t have the time or the funds to travel to the nearest large town to find a better offer.

I sucked on the tins of my fork, savoring the remnants of fat coating the metal. My tongue slipped over the crooked prongs—the fork was part of a shabby set my father had salvaged from the servants’ quarters while the creditors ransacked our manor home. None of our utensils matched, but it was better than using our fingers.

My mother’s dowry flatware had long since been sold.

My mother. Imperious and cold with her children, joyous and dazzling among the peerage

who frequented our former estate, doting on my father—the one person whom she truly loved and respected. But she also had truly loved parties—so much that she didn’t have time to do anything with me at all so I can contemplate how my budding abilities to sketch and paint might secure me a future husband. Had she lived long enough to see our wealth crumble, she would have been shattered by me__ more than my father. Perhaps it was a

merciful thing that she died.

If anything, it left more food for us.

There was nothing left of her in the cottage beyond the ironwood bed—and the vow I’d made.

Every time I looked toward a horizon or wondered if I should just walk and walk and never look back, I’d hear that promise I made eleven years ago as she wasted away on her deathbed.

Stay together and look after them. I’d agreed, too young to ask why she hadn’t begged my elder sisters, or my father. But I’d sworn it to her, and then she’d died, and in our miserable human world —shielded only by the promise made by the High Wiz five centuries ago—in our world where we’d forgotten the names of our gods, a promise was law; a promise was currency; a promise was your bond.

There were times when I hated her for asking that vow of me. Perhaps, delirious with fever, she hadn’t even known what she was demanding. Or maybe impending death had given her some clarity about the true nature of her children, her husband.

I set down the fork and watched the flames of our meager fire dance along the remaining logs, stretching out my aching legs beneath the table.

I turned to my sisters. As usual, Celina was complaining about the villagers—they had no

manners, they had no social graces, they had no idea just how shoddy the fabric of their clothes was, even though they pretended that it was as fine as silk or chiffon. Since we had lost our fortune, their former friends dutifully ignored them, so my sisters paraded about as though the young peasants of the town made up a second-rate social circle.

I took a sip from my cup of hot water—we couldn’t even afford tea these days—as Celina

continued her story to Amanda.

“Well, I said to him, ‘If you think you can just ask me so nonchalantly, sir, I’m going to decline!’

And you know what Tomas said?” Arms braced on the table and eyes wide, Amanda shook her head.

“Tomas Mandray?” I interrupted. “The woodcutter’s second son?”

Celina’s blue-gray eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said, and shifted to address Amanda again.

“What does he want?” I glanced at my father. No reaction—no hint of alarm or sign that he was even listening. Lost to whatever fog of memory had crept over him, he was smiling mildly at his beloved Amanda, the only one of us who bothered to really speak to him at all.

“He wants to marry her,” Amanda said dreamily. I blinked.

Celina cocked her head. I’d seen predators use that movement before. I sometimes wondered if her unrelenting steel would have helped us better survive—thrive, even—if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with our lost status. “Is there a problem, Mira?” She flung my name like an insult, and my jaw ached from clenching it so hard.

My father shifted in his seat, blinking, and though I knew it was foolish to react to her taunts, I said, “You can’t chop wood for us, but you want to marry a woodcutter’s son?”

Celina squared her shoulders. “I thought all you wanted was for us to get out of the house—to marry off me and Amanda so you can have enough time to paint your glorious masterpieces.” She sneered at the pillar of foxglove I’d painted along the edge of the table—the colors too dark and too blue, with none of the white freckling inside the trumpets, but I’d made do, even if it had killed me not to have white paint, to make something so flawed and lasting.

I drowned the urge to cover up the painting with my hand. Maybe tomorrow I’d just scrape it off the table altogether. “Believe me,” I said to her, “the day you want to marry someone worthy, I’ll march up to his house and hand you over. But you’re not going to marry Tomas.”

Celina’s nostrils delicately flared. “There’s nothing you can do. Clare Bettor told me this

afternoon that Tomas is going to propose to me any day now. And then I’ll never have to eat these scraps again.” She added with a small smile, “At least I don’t have to resort to rutting in the hay with Isaac Hale like an animal.”

My father let out an embarrassed cough, looking at his cot by the fire. He’d never said a word against Celina, from either fear or guilt, and apparently, he wasn’t going to start now, even if this was the first he was hearing of Isaac.

I laid my palm flat on the table as I stared her down. Amanda removed her hand from where it lay nearby, as if the dirt and blood beneath my fingernails would somehow jump onto her

porcelain skin. “Tomas’s family is barely better off than ours,” I said, trying to keep from growling.

“You’d be just another mouth to feed. If he doesn’t know this, then his parents must.”

But Tomas knew—we’d run into each other in the forest before. I’d seen the gleam of desperate hunger in his eyes when he spotted me sporting a brace of rabbits. I’d never killed another human, but that day, my hunting knife had felt like a weight cat my side. I’d kept out of his way ever since.

“We can’t afford a dowry,” I continued, and though my tone was firm, my voice quieted. “For either of you.” If Celina wanted to leave, then fine.

Good. I’d be one step closer to attaining that glorious, peaceful future, to attaining a quiet house and enough food and time to paint. But we had nothing—absolutely nothing—to entice any suitor to take my sisters off my hands.

“We’re in love,” Celina declared, and Amanda nodded her agreement. I almost laughed—when had they gone from mooning over aristos to making doe-eyes at peasants?

“Love won’t feed a hungry belly,” I countered, keeping my gaze as sturdy as possible.

As if I’d struck her, Celina leaped from her seat on the bench. “You’re just jealous. I heard them saying how Isaac is going to marry some Greenfield village girl for a handsome dowry.”

So had I; Isaac had ranted about it the last time we’d met. “Jealous?” I said slowly, digging down deep to bury my fury. “We have nothing to offer them—no dowry, no livestock, even. While Tomas might want to marry you … you’re a burden.”

“What do you know?” Celina breathed. “You’re just a half-wild beast with the nerve to bark orders at all hours of the day and night. Keep it up, and someday—someday, Mira, you’ll have no one left to remember you, or to care that you ever existed.”

She stormed off, Amanda darting after her, cooing her sympathy. They slammed the door to the bedroom hard enough to rattle the dishes.

I’d heard the words before—and knew she only repeated them because I’d flinched that the first time, she spat them. They still burned anyway.

I took a long sip from the chipped mug. The wooden bench beneath my father groaned as he shifted. I took another swallow and said, “You should talk some sense into her.”

He examined a burn mark on the table. “What can I say? If it’s love—”

“It can’t be love, not on his part. Not with his wretched family. I’ve seen the way he acts around the village—there’s one thing he wants from her, and it’s not her hand in—”

“We need hope as much as we need bread and meat,” he interrupted, his eyes clear for a rare moment. “We need hope, or else we cannot endure.

So let her keep this hope, Mira. Let her imagine a better life. A better world.”

I stood from the table, fingers curling into fists, but there was nowhere to run in our two-room cottage. I looked at the discolored foxglove painting at the edge of the table. The outer trumpets were already chipped and faded; the lower bit of the stem rubbed off entirely. Within a few years, it would be gone—leaving no mark that it had ever been there. That I’d ever been there.

When I looked at my father, my gaze was hard.

“There is no such thing.”