Hero

  “Sunday’s the storyteller,” said Monday. “What about me?”

  “I don’t know.” Saturday felt bad, and not just because she couldn’t answer the question.

  “Neither do I.” Monday removed a tiny, ornate mirror from her skirt pocket. “This was my nameday gift from Fairy Godmother Joy.”

  Saturday snorted. “A mirror?” Surely Aunt Joy could have done better. As gifts went, a mirror was pretty useless, even if you were the most beautiful girl in the land.

  “A looking glass,” Monday corrected. “It’s for looking.”

  “To see what?” asked Saturday.

  “Right now, I see the most beautiful face in all of Arilland.”

  “That’s got to count for something.” Not to her, of course, but Saturday felt sure that beauty was very important to some people.

  “Perhaps. But behind that face, inside the woman, all I see is nothing,” said Monday. “The beauty has only ever brought me pain.”

  Saturday wasn’t very good at polite conversation, but she was very good at arguing. “That beauty won you all sorts of prizes when you were younger. It got you a prince. It got us a house.” The tower that supported the ramshackle cottage in which Saturday and her parents currently lived had been given to Monday by her royal in-laws as a bride gift.

  “What help was beauty the day my twin sister danced herself to death? It snared me a prince who never loved me and then cast me aside for another woman, a witch who killed my daughter.”

  “What?” Saturday’s grip on her sword’s hilt tingled. Monday had said it all so casually, as if it had happened to someone else. Saturday hated all their horrid family secrets. She felt bad that she was not closer to Monday, that she had not been able to rescue her eldest sister in her time of need. She wanted to kill the woman who’d hurt Monday and dared harm a niece she’d never known.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were useless, but Papa had taught Saturday to say them anyway.

  Monday cupped her soft, alabaster hand around Saturday’s dirty cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said brightly.

  “You’re not sad,” Saturday realized. “Why?”

  Monday held up the mirror again, turning it so that Saturday might see herself in the glass as well. “Look deeper,” Monday said. And then with her honeyed voice, she rhymed:

  “Mirror, Mirror, true and clearest,

  Please show us our mother dearest.”

  Inside the small oval surrounded by jewels, Saturday watched the image of her dusty hair blur before resolving into that of her mother. Mama was in the kitchen, as ever, kneading dough as if she were scolding it for keeping supper waiting. Saturday could almost smell the smoke from the oven fires, almost feel their heat as Mama mopped her brow with a sleeve.

  “Thank you, Mirror,” said Monday, and the vision vanished.

  “Huh,” Saturday snorted again. “Not so useless after all.”

  “It is the reason I do not believe my daughter is dead.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Bits and pieces, yes. She’s not using the name I gave her at birth, so she’s been difficult to find, but I have the sense that she is there. The mirror has shown me the world from a young girl’s eyes. I believe my daughter is that girl. I believe she still lives.” Heedless of her iridescent white overskirt, Monday took her sister’s mud-covered hand in hers. “Saturday. When you leave this place, if you ever find my daughter, please tell her that I love her. And that I’ve never stopped looking for her.”

  Saturday nodded, interested that Monday had said “when” and not “if.” “What does she look like?”

  “Hair as black as night, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood,” said Monday, as if reading from a recipe book. “She is the fairest of us all.”

  Every mother thought her daughter the fairest of all, but coming from Monday, this was undoubtedly more truth than compliment. “Okay. I mean, I will.”

  “Thank you.” Monday released Saturday’s hands. “It may not tell me who I am, but at least it’s given me hope.”

  A thought occurred to Saturday, so she blurted it out, as she did with most of her thoughts. “You are a butterfly,” she said. “You are beautiful and light and airy, and you make people happy just by being present.”

  “Ever at the whim of the wind and fated to die young?” Monday laughed, and a murmuration of starlings flocked to the fence posts to listen. “I may be beautiful, but I don’t think I’ve blossomed yet. I feel more like a caterpillar: atop a leaf, admiring the view.” She stood to receive Erik and Velius, who had returned from the well. But before she greeted them she turned back to Saturday and asked, “But tell me, sister, who are you?”

  It was a good question. Without swords and sisters, who was Saturday Woodcutter? Besides a clumsy giantess with a big mouth and a never-ending supply of energy?

  The mirror exploded with bright colors as the earth cracked and spewed forth geysers of water. Storms raged and towns flooded. Families were swept away from each other, their cries out-howled by the wind and their bodies drowned in the rain. The mirror flashed one horrible scene after another at them, and then went still. Even Monday’s lovely reflection couldn’t allay Saturday’s sense of dread after what she’d just witnessed.

  “What was that?” asked Velius.

  “I don’t know,” said Monday. “It doesn’t normally do that.” She graciously accepted the cup of water Velius had brought her as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Erik likewise thrust a mug into Saturday’s hands. His eyes never left Monday.

  “Velius, would you mind escorting me back to my rooms?”

  Velius gave a small bow. “Of course, milady.” He turned and bent his elbow so that Monday could rest her hand upon his arm.

  “Good day, Erik,” Monday said to the guard.

  “Good day, Highness.” Erik might have been blushing under his beard, but as both blush and beard covered his cheeks in red, it was hard to tell.

  “Good day, sister,” Monday said to Saturday.

  “See ya, Monday.” Saturday let Erik watch them walk away for a while before punching him in the arm. “You’re in love with my sister,” she teased.

  “Have been my whole life,” said the guard. “So have the rest of these men. In fact, the only bachelor in Arilland not in love with your sister is the one whose arm she’s on.” Erik swung the wooden sword Velius had handed him in wide circles, stretching out his muscles and warming up to spar. “So, what did you ladies talk about? Girl secrets?”

  Saturday didn’t know the first thing about girls, or their secrets. “She asked me who I was.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing.” She thought about it again briefly, but those thoughts were instantly swept under storm winds and rains and the cries of the doomed from the magical glass of Monday’s mirror. Saturday shook it off. Who was she? She knew who she wanted to be: an adventurer. Someone about whom stories were told, like her brother Jack. But right now, she was neither of those things. “Yeah, I got nothing.”

  Erik settled into an attack position. “I beg to differ. You got a sword and a destiny. That’s more than most people get.”

  “I guess so.” That damned sword again. It was time to find out who she was without it, before she was Monday’s age and still had no idea. Saturday unbuckled the swordbelt with difficulty and tossed it in the dust by the fence. The vigor she’d been feeling immediately left her limbs, and her muscles began to ache. She picked up the wooden sword that Monday had left behind and prepared to die once more.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  2

  Distraction

  THE MESSENGER came as Mama was making dinner. It was a proper messenger this time, not the usual itinerant troubadour curious about the family of legendary Jack Woodcutter and willing to trade dubious ditties of derring-do for a crust of bread and a dry patch of hay for the night. Saturday was the first to dash for the door. Whoever answered the door got out of doing ridiculou
s household chores for as long as it took to deal with the company.

  The boy on the stoop looked about Trix’s age, or at least the age Trix appeared to be. With his strong fey blood, Trix would always appear younger than his foster siblings, and it would be his fate to outlive them all. But this messenger boy—assuming he was human—could have been no more than thirteen or fourteen. He had no pony, and his skinny bones stuck out at sharp angles from underneath his tattered clothing. Over those bones was skin of a hue that Saturday knew from experience was due more to birth than to long hours under the unforgiving summer sun. When the boy took his hands off his knees and straightened, skinny chest still heaving with breath, he looked up at her with kaleidoscope eyes of green, blue, and yellow. Straight black hair stuck out from under his dusty cap like the bristles of a horse brush. He was from the south, then, somewhere beyond the perilous desert sands. Had he run all the way from there? Judging by his ragged shoes, it was entirely possible.

  The boy eyed her as if he expected something. Money? No one in his right mind would approach a shack like this with dreams of riches, however great or small. He put a hand to his chest and coughed dryly into one bony elbow. “Water,” he managed to croak, at the same time it occurred to Saturday. She barreled through the empty living room and the full kitchen to the pump in the backyard, her sword sheath banging against her calf as she ran. She heard Mama call, “Who’s that at the door?” before telling Papa to go and see. Papa slowly rose from his usual resting place by the kitchen fire and dutifully obeyed.

  Everyone obeyed Mama. They didn’t have a choice. That was her gift. Everything Mama said came true, so Mama didn’t talk much except to bark orders to her husband and children. Aunt Joy said Mama didn’t speak because she was lazy. Mama said it was the only way she knew how to live a normal life.

  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.”