***
Later that night, as I am getting ready for bed, Niya comes up to our room. “There was something in your bag,” she says. “It must be what Lord Stonemane gave you.”
“What?” I look up. The gifts for my sisters I had passed on to them, the words for Niya exciting general interest, and the stone horse amusement. I had not looked for anything in the little rucksack, leaving the empty water flask and cheesecloth at the bottom of it. I certainly had not noticed anything else in it when I’d reached in for the flask or a bite of food to munch during my walk back.
“Let’s see,” Bean says, coming up beside us.
“This,” Niya says, and hands me a slim object, a little longer than my hand. It is a bone knife the like of which I have never seen before, the handle inlaid with mother of pearl and onyx, the ivory blade serrated, its center carved in a flowing, rippling design of curves and flourishes.
“He had an odd idea of gifts,” Bean remarks. “Little stone horses and chipped kitchen knives—it’s not even metal.”
“I doubt he’d carry iron,” Niya points out.
“No,” I agree, turning the knife over in my hand. The knife I hold is a work of time and art, a precious thing. It is hardly a chipped kitchen knife—and yet, Bean’s description matches what I had first seen on the plains, what Stonemane had offered me in the palm of his hand.
“You didn’t accept it when he tried to give it to you, did you?” Niya observes, watching me. I shake my head, wondering that even she cannot see it for what it is. “That’s a faerie for you.”
Bean grins. “That ought to teach you. I wish I could do that little trick.”
“I’m glad you can’t. I wish he couldn’t either.”
“I wish you wouldn’t hate him so for my sake,” Niya says, moving away to change out of her tunic and skirt. “He turned out to be quite all right.”
I lay the bone knife on the floor beside our sleeping mat and slide into bed. “I don’t hate him,” I say. I think of him, his lips shaping the word cripple, and I find myself hating my turned foot, my deformed ankle and stilted gait. And there it is in truth: I disliked him because of his own beauty, because of his grace and elegance and perfection of form, none of which I can ever hope to attain.
“I don’t think he liked you the way Bean thinks he does,” Niya continues, pulling on her nightshift. “But I think he found you the most interesting of us three. Even if I could sew him up in a circle.”
Bean climbs into her corner, nestling into the blankets. “And even if I didn’t burn the potatoes.”
I smother a laugh as Niya blows out the candle, crawling in between us. “He was a clever one,” she says, yawning. Bean just snorts. She had not been particularly impressed with his gift to her. Mama had offered to string the horse on a cord for her as a pendant, and Bean had half-heartedly agreed. I suspect that Mama knows as well as I do that there is more to the little horse than we can see. I expect Bean will discover its secret in time.
Lying awake now, I think of Stonemane’s words before he gave his debt payments. You should on occasion be kinder to yourself. The bone knife glows a faint white in the darkness of the room. He picked his gifts well for one who had met us each only briefly. I reach out a hand to touch it, finding the hilt cool and smooth. It was my own thoughts and arguments he turned back to me, calling me by the name I have accepted as my own and branded myself with. A word that cuts deep as bone.
I wonder if it is a word I can cut out of myself, a word I can learn to forget. Perhaps he spoke truly, and I should offer myself some little kindnesses. Perhaps his knife is meant as a token to keep with me, to help me look past my poor clubfoot. And, I think with a smile, something to take with me the next time I walk blindly into danger.
“Warm nights,” Niya murmurs, rolling over and taking the sheet with her. Bean grunts in return. At some point, I will have to start chiding her about all the unladylike noises she makes.
“Pleasant dreams,” I whisper back, grateful for the dark of the room and the love of my sisters.