The Spinner and the Slipper (19 page)

FIVE

Many moments passed before Heloise could bring her trembling limbs to pick themselves back up and put her on her feet. For a while she’d wondered if she would ever be able to move again. A sylph’s scream has that effect: It can turn a man of iron into a quivering jelly.

Heloise’s ears rang, and the resounding echoes were so jarring in her head that her eyes seemed to pulse with the throb of them. But she got up and brushed off the fallen sticks and leaves that covered her like a blanket. Several trees had broken and dropped large branches around her, leaving a terrible mess on the path. It looked as though a small hurricane had blown through. She was fortunate none of those limbs had landed on her head.

The sylph was gone. Heloise would have liked to tell herself that it had never existed to begin with, but she wasn’t so foolish as to try. Instead she straightened her garments and went in search of her peeling knife and gathering basket. Her basket had been blown well across the path, caught in the branches of the fir tree in its ditch. Only for a moment did Heloise hesitate to slide down and collect it. But the sylph was gone, and so was the shadow she’d heard singing; she needn’t be afraid.

But they would be back.

Mirror.

Heloise froze, her hand tightening its hold on the peeling knife. But no, that voice . . . that thought had come from inside her own head. It wasn’t the sylph. And it wasn’t the shadow. It was an internal voice, speaking her own language.

Mirror
.

“Forget the mirror,” she growled.

All her peelings of oak bark had been tossed far astray; she found only a few of the largest curls. Well, she had a task to complete and no one to interfere. Why should she go running home, bellowing about invisible beasties? Or for that matter, why should she rush to peer into her mother’s dim little glass? No point in that, no point at all.

Hiking up her skirts, she continued down the path to the next oak tree, dropped her basket among its roots, and clambered up into the lower limbs. Perhaps she wasn’t as careful this time about checking for old scars. Perhaps she wasn’t as gentle with her knife. But she did her job as she was supposed to.

Hoofbeats sounded in the forest once again. Heloise, perched in the oak, turned and saw a blue hat and cloak appear through the sylvan shadows. Master Benedict had found his horse.

He rode at a brisk trot right under her tree, never once looking up, and continued to the place where she and he had spoken; there he dismounted. Heloise, up in her tree, watched him silently.

“Little girl?” he called. His voice was anxious and his eyes were very wide as he surveyed the damage to the forest all around. “Little girl, are you here? Dragons blast it! Dragons blast and eat it! I should never have left her.”

Oh. Heloise smiled a small, rather silly smile. So he’d come back to rescue her. A little late, to be sure, but still . . .

She almost called out to him. But when he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted for all the world to hear, “
Little girl?
” she decided not to. Heroic rescue notwithstanding, she didn’t think he deserved an answer to that.

With another curse or two, Master Benedict climbed back on his horse and rode away. Heloise watched him go. Then she returned to her peeling. In the distance, she could still hear Master Benedict’s voice calling out the occasional, “
Little girl!
”

And behind that, the sylph’s scream echoed in her brain. Only now, several minutes afterwards, did it begin to take shape in her mind, forming words she could understand:

“
Night! Night! The Song of Night!
”

She would have to think about that. Later. For now, the south-end dye house still awaited her delivery.

There could be no smellier place in all the world than the south-end dye house. Except—said a tiny, reasonable part of Heloise’s mind currently uninfluenced by the assault upon her nostrils—possibly the east-end, west-end, and north-end dye houses. They, in their various fetid corners of the estate, each as far removed from the central manor house as possible, were probably just as smelly. But Heloise had never traveled far enough across the sprawling acres of Canneberges to verify it. Besides, her pride rather liked the distinction of
her
dye house being the smelliest.

The big dyebath sat inside the stone-walled house itself, and from the appalling stench wafting through the door and window openings, Heloise guessed the dyers had an impressive batch in the works. Outside the dye house, many little fires burned, tended by a host of sweaty dyer-boys. Some scooped shovelfuls of wood ash; some boiled great caldrons of stale urine. A few prepped other fires beneath caldrons near piles of oak bark ready to be boiled down for the tannins. To these Heloise must add her offerings.

“Hullo, Heloise!” one dyer-boy called cheerily. His eye held a hopeful gleam, and she knew exactly what his next question would be. “How’s Evette? Is she with you today?”

“Mmmhmmmph,” Heloise said, which was the best greeting she could muster while trying not to breathe. She dumped her basket of oak-bark curls onto the waiting pile. “Mmmph,” she said with a quick bob and a hint of a smile.

But the dyer-boy wasn’t paying attention. He looked over Heloise’s head, an expression of pure joy lighting his sweat-streaked face. “Hullo, Evette!”

“Hullo, Edgard.”

Hearing her sister’s sweet voice, Heloise whirled about. Great Lumé’s light, what was
she
doing here? With everything else already on her mind, the last thing Heloise wanted to deal with was Evette’s kindhearted pretense that their scuffle of that morning never happened.

Had she
really
thrown pottage into her sister’s eye?

No wonder Master Benedict called her a little girl . . .

Heloise felt her face heat up, and she couldn’t meet her sister’s smile. But Evette went on smiling anyway, drawing up alongside Heloise and chatting to the dyer-boy just as though he didn’t stink worse than all the pig-keepers in all the kingdom rolled into one. He bore the beatific look of a man receiving angelic blessings from above. It was almost enough to transform him from the plain, smelly, red-faced young lump that he was. But not quite.

Heloise tried to sidle away.

“Oh, dearest,” said Evette, deftly linking arms with her. Heloise hated when Evette called her “dearest,” partly because Evette always said it with such genuine affection. “I have only to deliver these new skeins for Meme. She gave me permission to ask the dye master if they have finished skeins to carry up to the Great House. Wouldn’t you like to come with me? For your birthday? I know Meme wouldn’t mind.”

Heloise’s face burned brighter at these words. Sure, Meme wouldn’t mind. Meme wouldn’t
care
.

“I should head back,” Heloise muttered, extricating her arm from Evette’s. She ignored the hurt look in her sister’s eye. “The boys at home . . . you know . . . they’ll break something. Or each other.”

“Grandmem’s come calling, and she’s watching Clotaire and Clovis,” Evette persisted. “Do come, Heloise. I know you love to see the Great House.”

This, Heloise could not deny. An opportunity to see Centrecœur, the massive center of all Canneberges estate (some of the wings of which were more than six centuries old) was not to be sneered at. It was a rare chance that saw Heloise on the road to Centrecœur, and she hated to pass it up now.

She didn’t answer, but Evette, knowing her sister well, took her sullen lack of protest for acquiescence. “It was lovely to see you, Edgard,” she said, curtsying prettily to the dyer-boy and no doubt sending him into raptures without end. “My best to your mother.”

“Oh, Evette?” the dyer-boy called before they’d progressed even two steps toward the dye house. Heloise groaned. She could guess what was coming now as well. It was remarkable how predictable everything about Evette had recently become. “Evette,” said the dyer-boy, “are you going to Le Sacre Night?”

What a stupid question.
Everyone
went to Le Sacre Night. That was the whole
point
of Le Sacre. Heloise rolled her eyes and huffed.

But Evette turned her sweetest smile on the poor, gasping lad. “Of course I am. With my family.”

“Would—would you let me escort you this year?” the dyer-boy asked.

Heloise sensed the pricking of ears around the dye-yard. All the other boys of certain age looked up from their various tasks. If looks could kill, that yard would be full of murderers. But poor stinky Edgard didn’t seem to notice. His heart, his life, his fate, hung upon Evette’s next words.

“I’m sorry,” said Evette, still smiling. “I’m going with my family. But thank you for asking. That was most kind.”

He could not have answered, so Evette did not make him. She dipped another curtsy and, once more taking Heloise by the elbow, led her away to the dye house. Heloise cast a glance back over her shoulder, and even she felt a dart of pity for the crushed Edgard returning to his fire-tending.

“Poor Edgard,” Evette murmured. “I wish he wouldn’t ask. I feel wretched turning him down.”

“Well, why do you talk to him at all then?” Heloise hissed, not wanting to be overheard by the other boys in the yard. “You only get his hopes up. You should try snubbing him sometime. For his own good.”

Evette cast her sister a sideways glance. On anyone else, her expression would have seemed irritated or possibly superior; on Evette it was simply concerned. “Edgard is a polite, respectful young man. I couldn’t be anything less than polite and respectful to him. Besides, Fleur Millerman has her heart set on his asking her, and I know Edgar will get around to it once he thinks about it properly.”

Evette would never see, of course. Heloise sighed, watching as Evette called into the dye house and delivered Meme’s newly spun flax thread. Evette would never see that Fleur, for all her virtues, had one glaring fault against her as far as the boys of Canneberges were concerned: She wasn’t Evette.

It wasn’t that Evette was the prettiest girl on the estate. Heloise could think this without malice, even as the two of them gathered reams of red-dyed thread to be delivered to the Great House. Evette wasn’t particularly pretty at all, certainly no prettier than Heloise, not even as pretty as Fleur Millerman or Agnes Shearman or even Edwidge Flaxman (no relation—there were lots of Flaxmans in Canneberges).

But Evette was by far the kindest. The sturdiest. The warmest, the most sincere, the most . . . the most . . . Heloise stopped. Mental listings of her sister’s virtues could go on forever.

No, there was no doubt about it. Beauty was not the chief asset sought after by the young men of Canneberges. They all wanted something more. They all wanted Evette.

Heloise glowered over these thoughts for several silent minutes as she and her sister tramped up the long road, away from the stinky dye-yard and on toward Centrecœur. But the day had turned into a fine one, and though the sun was high, the air was still cool and fresh. It lifted Heloise’s spirits, enough even to make her forget for a time that she’d talked to a wind only a few hours ago and listened to a shadow sing. Those strange events seemed too bizarre to have been real. Real was happening right now, walking this road beside her sister. She could even forget that she’d thrown pottage at Evette that morning. Mostly.