Hero (3 page)

Saturday thought they were both full of beans. As the only normal member of the family, Saturday knew good and well that Mama was nothing like normal at all.

Saturday worked the hand pump until the water ran clear, then rinsed out a dry bucket before filling it and toting it back into the kitchen. “Come in, son.” Papa’s booming voice echoed through the house. He led the boy into the kitchen and sat him at the table between Peter and Trix. Saturday handed the boy a dipper full of cool water and he drank greedily. He wiped his mouth on the back of an unclean hand and said without ceremony, “I come to Seven Woodcutter from the abbess.”

The statement meant nothing to Saturday, so she looked to Peter for guidance. Peter looked at Papa. Papa looked at Mama. The hand with which she’d been stirring the stew had gone still. “Rose Red” was all she said.

“The very one,” said the boy.

“My sister,” Mama reminded the rest of them. “Youngest but for me.”

“Six,” said Peter. Mama nodded.

As if naming your children after a day of the week wasn’t silly enough, Granny Mouton had numbered her daughters One through Seven. Over the years, they had all taken other names: Sorrow, Joy, Teresa, Tesera, Snow White, and Rose Red. Only Seven had remained Seven.

“I come from one sister with news of another,” the boy said eloquently, as if he were reading a letter. “Tesera is dead.”

Tesera. The fourth sister. Trix’s wayward actress mother. Papa walked over to where Mama stood by the fire and eased her into a chair. Trix hurried over, took the spoon from her hand, and resumed stirring the stew. Mama’s face was wistful and sad. Trix’s face was turned to the fire. Saturday could only guess how her foundling brother felt about the death of the woman who’d handed him off as a baby to be raised by someone else.

“The abbess asks that you come to her,” the messenger boy said to Mama.

“Yes,” Mama said automatically. Her voice sounded far away. “Of course. Right away.”

“Where is the abbey?” asked Peter.

“To the east and north,” said Mama. “On the plains between the mountains and the sea.” It sounded far. Very, very far. Mama rarely even left the yard. Her sister was asking her to leave the kingdom altogether.

“How will you get there?” asked Saturday. Surely Mama wasn’t expected to run in the footsteps of this scrawny boy.

“Sunday,” said Papa. Clever Papa. His youngest daughter was Queen of Arilland now, with her bright and generous nature intact. She would happily give Mama a carriage and horses and whatever else she needed to make the trip north. Sunday would also be distraught on behalf of her favorite brother . . . far more distraught, it seemed, than Trix himself.

Saturday didn’t understand Trix’s lack of reaction. Happy or sad or otherwise, Trix always felt something, and plenty of it. Now his face was turned to the fire, his back to the room. “Don’t you want to go?” she asked him.

“No,” Trix said quietly to the stewpot.

“Probably for the best,” said Mama. “I must ready my things.”

“What’s your name, son?” Papa asked after the boy had drained another dipper full of water.

“Conrad, sir.”

“Conrad. I would have you run one more errand today if your legs can manage it. You will be well rewarded.”

Conrad’s grimace at the mention of another run melted away at the word “reward,” but he still seemed skeptical. He twisted his grubby hat in his grubby hands and nodded at Papa.

“Do you know how to get to the castle near here?”

The boy’s dark hair flopped as he nodded. “I saw a tower on the horizon that scraped the clouds. Most of the roads lead there.”

“Yes. Go there and say you have an urgent message for my daughter the queen.”

Conrad sat up straighter. Smart boy. He was in the presence of the royal family, after all. Not that it made Saturday feel any different.

“Tell her what you told us, and ask her to please send a carriage. She will see you properly recompensed.”

Conrad popped out of the chair and snapped to attention like a jumpy summer insect. “Right away, sir!”

Papa chuckled. “Now, now. Not so hasty. Won’t you stay for a bit of supper?”

“No, thank you, sir. I’ll be on my way. If you please, sir.”

“Very well, then.” Papa clapped the boy on his scrawny back. “Off with you.”

Conrad bowed quickly, wiggled his toes in the holes of his ragged shoes, and ran out the still-open front door. Papa, Peter, and Saturday watched him from the doorway, kicking up dust as he made his way back down the hill to the main road.

“I admire that boy’s energy,” said Papa.

“He has almost as much as Saturday,” said Peter.

“That he does,” said Papa as he shut the door. “If she were younger, I might marry her off to him.”

Saturday scowled. She was excessively good at scowling. Papa just laughed. “Peter, you go finish up outside. Saturday, please help Trix with dinner. I’ll see to Mama.”

Saturday paused before heading back to the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what to say to Trix; she wasn’t even sure yet how she felt about the situation herself. Peter and Papa were so much easier to talk to. They chatted and argued and laughed every day in the Wood. Trix was just so . . . Trix. Sometimes what came out of his mouth was as regular as the sunrise, and sometimes it was more cryptic than Wednesday’s poetry.

Now that Wednesday was off in the land of Faerie, Friday had been apprenticed to an esteemed seamstress, and Sunday was a queen, Trix spent more of his time talking to animals than humans. As the last sister remaining in the Woodcutter household, Saturday supposed that it was her responsibility to comfort her cousin-brother. But she couldn’t very well talk to him directly about what had just happened . . .

Saturday snapped her fingers and raced up the stairs to her bedroom to fetch the one thing she knew Trix prized above all else: distraction.

When she returned to the kitchen, Trix was just as she’d left him, silently bowed over the fire. Trix usually wasn’t allowed to stir the pot, or milk the cow, or churn the butter, or spend time around anything else that might spoil in the presence of his strong fairy nature. Chances were Mama’s taste buds would be too coated with remorse to care what passed her lips tonight. Saturday hoped for her own sake that the stew was palatable.

“So I was thinking,” Saturday said to Trix’s back. She’d learned from the years of working with Papa and Peter to start a sentence like this, with little pertinent information. If whomever Saturday addressed was wrapped up in his own thoughts, she could garner attention without having to repeat herself. Clearing one’s throat also worked. Or yelling.

“What,” Trix said into the fire, not at all his joyfully optimistic self. His voice was deep and apathetic. He sounded like Peter, thought Saturday, and that was strange enough.

“I was at the guards’ training grounds today,” she began again. Sunday always chided Saturday for never starting her stories in the right place. When Papa told stories, he engaged his listeners like this, encouraging them to ask questions. At the moment, however, this tactic did not seem to be working for Saturday.

“You’re supposed to ask me what I was doing there,” she prompted.

“You’re always at the guards’ training grounds,” said Trix.

“Only on my days off.”

“Which is almost every other day now,” said Trix.

“I know. It’s annoying.” Saturday shook her head. “But that’s not the point! Monday came to see me today.”

Trix banked the fire and covered the pot with a lid. “You should have started the story there.” He sat down across the table from her.

Saturday stuck out her tongue.

“Gee, Saturday, whatever was Monday doing at the guards’ training grounds today?” The humor in Trix’s voice relaxed her a bit, even if it was at her expense.

“Monday showed me her nameday gift.”

“She did? What was it?” This time, Trix’s intrigue was in earnest.

“It was a beautiful little hand mirror,” said Saturday.

“How beautiful?”

“As beautiful as anything the fairies could make.”

Trix grimaced. “You need to work on your descriptions.”

“Almost as beautiful as Monday herself,” said Saturday.

“Ooh, that’s much better.”

“Better still—it’s a magic mirror. A looking glass.”

“Really?”

Saturday nodded.

“How does it work?”

“She holds it in her hand, says a little rhyming verse, and the mirror shows her whomever she’s asking to see.”

“That’s a pretty clever gift.”

“I thought so too,” said Saturday.

“Almost as clever as yours.”

It was Saturday’s turn to grimace.

“Hey, nobody else got a gift that changes with her destiny.”

“That’s because everybody else got magical powers,” said Saturday.

Trix tilted his head and sighed in defeat. “So why does Monday’s mirror suddenly fascinate you?”

“Do you remember the trunk Thursday sent this spring?”

“No fair answering a question with a question,” said Trix. “Of course I remember.”

Saturday knew he would. He’d spent hours killing an army of trees with the bow and arrows Thursday had included for him inside that trunk. Trix hadn’t aimed for any animals—on the contrary, the squirrels, birds, and chipmunks made up his arrow-retrieval team. In that trunk had been the miles of material Friday had used to make dresses for all those ridiculous balls Sunday’s true love had forced them to attend. Saturday twisted the blue-green bracelet around her wrist, briefly reliving that torture.

“Do you remember what Thursday gave me?” asked Saturday.

The answer took him a moment; he had been too busy testing out his new toys at the time to give much notice to anyone. Then his eyes widened. “You got a mirror.”

Saturday nodded and pulled the silver-backed mirror from her swordbelt. There’d been an ebony-handled brush in the silk purse along with the mirror, but Saturday had left it up in her room.

This mirror was larger than Monday’s; the silver framing it made it unwieldy, top-heavy, with no balance whatsoever. Saturday had no idea why Thursday had given her the fool thing; she had more use for it as a club than as an instrument of vanity. Roses stood out in relief all over it; the embellished thorns around the handle made it incredibly difficult to hold.

“What’s it say on the back?” asked Trix.

He was right; there was a word faintly etched between the petals. “‘Very’?” Saturday guessed. “Or . . . ‘Merry’?”

“I think it’s French,” said Trix.

“How would you know?”

“Wednesday,” said Trix.

Until her recent emigration to Faerie, Wednesday had often spouted impromptu poetry in foreign languages. They only knew it was poetry because Wednesday used her lofty poetry voice during the recitations, but Saturday wouldn’t have been able to tell French from Cymbalese or Trollish. Papa couldn’t tell the difference either—he’d told Saturday as much once—but he always applauded Wednesday’s performances. Animals talked to Trix; maybe some of them had French cousins. “I think it means
‘
glass.’ Or ‘water.’”

“Or ‘flamboyant useless object’?” suggested Saturday. Trix made a face. “Well, that’s what
I
would have written. Want to see if it works?”

In a flash, Trix leapt over the table and landed in the chair beside Saturday, much like she had vaulted the fence earlier to sit with Monday. As impressive as the move was, it was a good thing Mama hadn’t been around to witness it. “Do you know what to say?”

“I’ll make something up.” Saturday and Peter often played rhyming games while they worked in the Wood—games that Saturday won more often than not. She could easily come up with something that might coax a smile out of her brother. She straightened again in her chair and held the great gaudy thing before them. She and Trix looked back at themselves over her outstretched arm, fascinated by their humble reflections.

“Mirror, Mirror, gift of doom,

Show us Mama in her room.”

Trix giggled. Saturday waited for the image to blur and resolve into a picture of Mama rummaging through her wardrobe, but the mirror did nothing. She wished to see something so hard, her eyes began to hurt. It took her a moment to notice that Trix was no longer interested in the mirror, and another moment to realize what an incredible fool she’d been. She’d said “Mama,” and Trix’s mother was currently dead. It would have been just as easy to say “Papa.” Why hadn’t she done that instead? But it was too late. She almost wished the glass had shown those terrifying floodwaters. Anything but this.

“Gods,” she sputtered, “I’m such an ass.”

Trix left her glaring at herself in the mirror and went back to minding the stewpot. “You tried,” he said. “I appreciate the effort.”

“I only wanted to—”

“Just set the table, Saturday. Please?”

“Okay.” Saturday shoved the offending mirror back into her swordbelt and went to put her stupid, idle hands to work. As she set the bowls and spoons clattering upon the table, she said, “I’m sorry,” before she forgot.

“So am I,” he answered.

Peter returned to the kitchen. Saturday gave him the rest of the spoons and the cloth napkins and a look that explained exactly how far she’d shoved her big foot into her big mouth. He took them all from her without a word and finished setting the table. Saturday and Peter didn’t need words to communicate, but for Trix’s benefit she said, “I’m going to fetch . . .”

She stopped before saying “Mama” and reopening the wound she’d just kicked with her boot. She thought about switching it to “Papa,” and then wondered if Trix knew who his father was . . . or if his father was even human. As there was just no good way to finish the sentence, she fled the room.

She didn’t bother knocking; her parents would have heard her footsteps echoing through the living room and down the small hall. Everything about Saturday was large and loud. Trying to pretend otherwise was a waste of time.

“Dinner’s ready,” she called.

The door opened a crack to reveal Papa’s face. “We’re coming, m’girl. Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can do?”