Tales of Arilland (10 page)

M
y name is Sunday Woodcutter
, and I’m ungrateful.

I am the seventh daughter of Jack and Seven Woodcutter, Jack a seventh son and Seven a seventh daughter herself. Papa’s goal in life was to give birth to the charmed, all-powerful, much-talked-about Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Mama told him she had just enough in her for seven girls or seven boys, but not both. Papa was sure his dream would come true when Jack Junior was the first of us to introduce himself to the world. That dream died the morning I popped out - eight children later - and Mama declared her womb officially closed for business.

I never knew Jack Junior, but I know his legend. I grew up surrounded by overdramatic songs and stories of his exploits and adventures, a good number of which continue to pop up about the countryside to this very day. At a very young age, I decided that the truth about him laid in the pauses between the sagas and the stanzas, in those brief moments when a man is still a man and not a mountain. The silence paints a picture of a handsome, hotheaded youth of too many words and too few thoughts to precede them. One thought more might have stopped my eldest brother before he killed young Prince Rumbold’s prize watchdog; one word less and he might not have goaded the prince’s evil father into siccing the prince’s eviler fairy godmother on him. Jack Junior was witched into a dog and forced to work in the slain mutt’s stead forevermore.

For fifteen long years my father has dutifully paid the family’s tax and tithe; and despite the fact that he harbors no loyalty to the royal family whatsoever, Papa wisely never says a word against them. As the unhappy incident happened the year before I was born – with the whole of my family alive at the time save me – I have always felt entirely left out of the matter.

My second eldest brother’s name is Jack as well, but we call him Jackie. The youngest’s name is Trix – which everyone assumes simply stands for “Jack Number Three.” They would be wrong of course, but none of us has ever felt compelled to correct them. Trix was a foundling child that Papa discovered in the limbs of a tree at the edge of the forest one winter’s workday. Mama says she was resigned to the fact that since she already had eight children to feed, what was one more or less? I have a feeling I know the truth of that too. Attached to Mama’s swift hand for discipline is the heart of a compassionate woman who could not abandon a child in the Wood, no matter how fey his origin.

My sisters and I—

“What are you doing?”

Sunday’s head snapped up from her book, her heart fell into her stomach, and every hair on her arms stood on end. She had chosen this spot for its solitude, followed the half-hidden path through the underbrush to the decaying rocks of the abandoned well, sure that she had escaped from her family. And yet the voice that had interrupted her thoughts was not familiar to her.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust, slowly focusing in on the mottled shadows that the afternoon sun cast through the dancing leaves of the trees above.

“I’m sorry?” She posed the polite query to her unknown visitor in an effort to make him reveal himself, be he real or imagined, dead or alive, fairy or...

“I said, ‘What are you doing?’”

...frog.

It took Sunday a second to make her gaping mouth form words that made sense. “I’m...” All caught off guard like that, she found herself sputtering the truth. “Telling myself stories.”

“Why? Do you have no one to whom you can tell them?”

It took her another second. “Well, no...I have quite a big family, actually. With lots of stories. Only...”

“Only what?”

“Only no one wants to hear
my
stories. I could tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“I will listen,” said the frog. “Read me your story, the story that you have just written there, and I will listen.”

It was completely absurd. Absurd that Sunday was somewhere in the middle of the Wood talking to a frog who wanted her to make him what she desired most in the world: a captive audience to her words. It was so absurd, in fact, that she started reading from the top of the page in her book without another thought.

“’My name is Sunday Woodcutter—‘”

“Grumble,” croaked the frog.

“If you’re going to grumble through the whole thing, why did you ask me to read it in the first place?”

“You said your name was Sunday Woodcutter,” said the frog, “and I thought it only fitting to introduce myself in kind. My name is Grumble.”

“Oh.” Her face felt hot. Sunday wondered briefly if frogs could tell that a human was blushing, or if they were one of the many other colorblind denizens of the forest. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” said Grumble. “Please, carry on with your story.”

She did. It was a little awkward, as Sunday had never before read her musings aloud to anyone. Her voice sounded loud and the words seemed foreign and sometimes wrong; she resisted the urge to change them or scratch them out altogether as she went on. For as long as she had sat under the tree writing them down, they were quickly read and over with in no time at all.

“I had meant to go on about my sisters,” Sunday apologized when she got to the end, “but...”

“I interrupted you. Forgive me.” Grumble hopped forward onto a closer damp stone. “As you can imagine I don’t get many visitors. I thank you for indulging me with your words, kind lady.”

“It was an honor,” she said automatically.

“Do you write often?”

“Yes. Every morning and every night and every moment I can sneak in between.”

“And do you always write about your family?”

Sunday flipped the pages of her neverending journal – a gift from Fairy Godmother Joy – past her thumb. It was a nervous habit she had had all her life. “I do,” she admitted, “but only because I am afraid to write anything else.”

“Why is that?”

She shifted her legs to a more comfortable position beneath her skirts. “Things I write...well...they have a tendency to come true. And not in the best way.”

“You must always be careful what you wish for,” said the frog.

“Exactly,” nodded Sunday. “So if I only write about events that have already come to pass, then there is no danger of my accidentally altering the future.”

“A very practical decision,” said Grumble.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Very practical and very boring. Very just like me.”

“On the contrary. I found your brief essay quite intriguing.”

“Really?” The thought occurred to her that he was just saying it to be nice, because it was expected. And then she remembered he was a frog.

“Would you mind coming to read to me again tomorrow? I would love to hear more of the story.”

If the smile Sunday knew was currently spread across her face didn’t scare him off, surely nothing she wrote could. “I would love to.”

“And would you...be my friend?”

The request was so charmingly humble. “Only if you will be mine in return.”

Grumble’s mouth opened wide into what Sunday took must have been a froggy grin.

“And...if I may be so bold, Miss Woodcutter...” he started.

“Please, call me Sunday.”

“Sunday...do you think you could find it in your heart to...kiss me?”

Sunday had wondered how long it would take before he got around to asking. She had assumed from the beginning that he was either a fey-blessed amphibian or an enchanted man, and his overly proper mannerisms had her leaning toward the latter. A maiden’s kiss was the usual remedy for that sort of thing. She was actually quite impressed that he had managed to sneak it in during the mere hour of their brief acquaintance. But he had been very polite, and as Sunday was surely the only maiden he would come across for a very long time it was the least she could do.

She placed her hands on the mossy stones of the ruined well and leaned down. His skin was bumpy and slightly wet beneath her lips, but she tried not to think about it.

Nothing happened.

They sat there, staring at each other for a long time afterwards.

“I don’t have to come back you know,” Sunday told him, “in case you were offering just to be courteous.”

“Oh no,” he said. “I look forward to hearing about your sisters. Please, do come back tomorrow.”

“Then I will, after I finish my chores. But I should be going now, before it gets dark.” She stood and brushed what dirt she could off her skirt. “Good night, Grumble.”

“Good night, Sunday.”

#

M
y sisters
and I are the unfortunate product of a woman with as little creativity at naming as her mother before her. Jack Junior was definitely his mother’s son in this, for had she thought things through Mama might have realized that the naming of her daughters was as clever in its simplicity as it was damning in its curses. Second born to my mother were the twins, thus securing a female majority in the household that was never again in jeopardy.

Monday was indeed fair of face, but Tuesday was the dancer.

I have patchwork memories of a slip of a young woman, a moth at the flame, a vision of constant movement whose grace the reeds and sunsets envied. The epitome of the Life of the Party, Tuesday garnered invitations from Royal Balls to County Fairs. She was loved by all who knew her, both human and fey. Mama enjoyed the popularity but complained about the cost of keeping her active daughter in shoes, which she often remarked was “more than enough for
twelve
dancing princesses.” It seemed a godsend to her when an elfin shoemaker gifted Tuesday with a pair of scarlet slippers he swore would never wear out. It turned out to be true, for Tuesday could not dance those shoes to death.

They danced her to death instead.

There was immense sadness in the wake of Tuesday’s passing, but no one mourned more than Monday. Once a week, Monday would walk the many miles from our ramshackle cottage in the Wood to the cemetery on the hill and place flowers on her twin’s grave. Every Tuesday she went, rain or shine, sleet or snow, despite our parents’ wishes. One sickly green morning she went out again, heedless, and on the way home was caught in a storm sent from the bowels of hell itself. Tossed in the wind, pelted by walls of rain and battered by fists of ice, Monday got lost in the Wood on the way back and found herself at the doorstep of a well-kept cabin.

Inside the cabin were two princes on hunting holiday – one dark and one fair - who had chosen to celebrate the storm as some men choose to celebrate everything. The fair prince began to congratulate himself on his recent success at finding a wife – he had given the girl a test and she had passed with flying colors, having spun three rooms full of straw into gold for him. The dark one proclaimed the Wife Test a marvelous idea, and determined that
his
wife would be so delicate that she would not be able to sleep comfortably with a pea under the mattresses. They were well into their cups when Monday arrived, a bedraggled wretch on the doorstep begging asylum.

The next morning, when Monday appeared before them with a rash of fresh bruises from head to toe, the dark prince fell to his knees and asked for her hand in marriage.

We owe our current livelihood to Monday. Her bridegift was a tower at the edge of the Wood that had no door—

“No door?” Grumble croaked in dismay.

“None whatsoever,” Sunday said. “If it had ever been part of a castle, that part was long gone. The tower only had a window, and very high up. The property belonged to the prince’s grandmother. It had been handed down in the female line for generations, but was never used. We were crawling over ourselves like rats in our little cottage, so Papa knocked a door in the tower and built the rest of the house around the base. Unfortunately, it looks nothing like a castle. More like...” She closed her eyes and remembered the years of schooltime ridicule she had borne. “...a shoe.”

“A shoe.”

The way he said it made Sunday chuckle despite herself. “Between Tuesday’s fate and our house, it seems that shoes are a recurring theme in my life.”

“And what of your other sisters?”

Sunday folded her book across her stomach and stretched out in a patch of fading sunlight on the moss-covered ground. “Wednesday is the poet. She’s been nicking Fairy Joy’s absinthe since she was old enough to hold a pen.”

“Fairy Joy?”

“Our godmother.” The sun was warm on her weary bones, and the conversation was low and comfortable. Sunday smiled and wished she could stay there forever. “Thursday always had itchy feet. She ran off with a Pirate King when she was about my age, but she still sends us letters and gifts from time to time. Friday is the best of us all, and spends most of her days at the church helping the orphans and the elderly. Saturday is the sturdy, practical one. She goes into the Wood every morning with Papa and Jackie and helps with the cutting.”

“And you’re ungrateful.”

The laugh that burst from Sunday’s lips surprised her. It was a curious thing, having one’s words thrown back like that. She turned to Grumble and propped her head in one hand. “’Bonny and blithe and good and gay,’” she recited. “Who could live up to that? And even if they could, what sort of tapioca-pudding life would that be? I told Mama I would much prefer an interesting life to a happy one. She called me ungrateful, and so I am.”

“And you are a writer, like you sister.”

“Well, I’m not quite so melancholy gravy as Wednesday, Our Lady of Perpetual Shadow...but yes, a little in my own way.”

“You have a gift for words,” said Grumble.

“A curse more like,” Sunday sighed. “Mama says I spend too much of my life in little fantasy worlds and not enough time in this one. And speaking of time,” the pool of sunlight had long since faded and the night breeze was cool on her skin, “I should be getting back home before I am missed.”

“Will you come again tomorrow?” Grumble said as she sat up. “Please?”

“I will try.” She ran her fingers through her hair in an effort to dislodge the bits of twigs and grass that had used her head as a playground.

“And...Sunday?”

“Yes?”

“Would you kiss me before you go?”