It wasn't that I expected my sister to wait on me. I'd just thought she would have the courtesy to offer to get me a drink after knowing I'd been gone all day. Tiredly, I stood and fetched myself a cup of water.
"Benella. Really, where are your manners? I'm asking you a question," she said.
"Water-On-The-Bridge," I managed to say between gulps.
"How unfair," Bryn cried.
Blye stepped into the room from our bedroom, two panels of fabric in her hands and pins in her mouth. Bryn spotted the question in her eyes and explained.
"Father sent Benella to Water-On-The-Bridge." Bryn turned back to me. "We're both older. We should have been allowed to go."
I set down the cup with a laugh.
"You would have walked twelve miles and back in a single day without any food or water? I doubt not."
Bryn had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. "I thought Father sent you in a wagon."
"With what coin?" I said, exasperated. Her face took on a flushed hue, and Blye's eyes rounded. "I'm tired," I said quickly before she could respond. I turned to head to our room.
Blye spit the pins out into one of her hands.
"You can't go in there. I'm using your bed to lay out my dress pattern." I stared at her. Using my bed to make another new dress for herself? Perhaps, if I hadn't been so tired, my temper would have sparked, but I couldn't find the energy.
Instead of answering, I turned and let myself into Father's study, closing the door behind me. His chair wasn't very comfortable to sleep in, but the rug before his hearth would suit me fine. I lay down on the floor and closed my eyes.
Five
"Bini, child, wake up," Father said softly, touching my hair.
The shoulder pressing into the rug ached with cold, and my eyes felt hot and gritty as I blinked them open. Outside, the wind blew, rattling the branches, and a slight breeze came down the unlit chimney in Father's study.
"Come eat some warm soup," he encouraged, helping me to my feet.
In the kitchen, Bryn and Blye waited at the table. The unusual sight gave me pause. They never held dinner for me. As soon as I sat, Bryn started serving a thick vegetable soup.
"I assume everything went well at the Water, Bini?" Father asked while we waited.
"The Head was absent, but Tibit said they were pleased you were considering their offer."
"What offer?" Blye inquired.
"A private teaching position."
Bryn paused in her ladling.
"That's the one you considered before we moved here, isn't it? Four years is a long time for a position to remain open. What's wrong with it?"
"The position is fine. The pay is slightly more than I make now," he assured us.
I watched my sisters' eyes glimmer with excitement, but I felt wary.
"Why didn't you take it four years ago, then?" I asked.
Bryn passed the soup around. It filled the void in my stomach and warmed my blood.
He gave me a slight, sad smile.
"The cottage is not fit for a family of four." Before my sisters could ask how he meant for us to live there if there wasn't enough room for all of us, he added, "But now you are of an age to marry."
Blye clapped her hands with a huge smile.
"You've accepted the baker's request for Benella, then?"
My stomach dropped, and the soup I'd recently eaten soured in it. Surely, he wouldn't force me to wed the Baker after what I'd told him.
"Benella is still too young to wed, just as you were too young in my mind four years ago."
Blye's face turned to stone. "Surely, you don't expect one of us to wed the baker."
"I will not force a groom onto you if you have no care for him. That said, are there any you care for?"
"I'd accept Tennen if he asked," Bryn said demurely.
"I'm afraid that match wouldn't suit you, dearest. The Coalre family is as out of coin as the rest of us, and I would not have you going into a marriage with false ideas or hopes," he said calmly between sips of broth.
I stayed focused on my own meal, but from the corner of my eye saw my sister's face flush at Father's blunt words. Part of me wanted to cheer him in his softly worded criticism of her shallow nature, but I squelched that part, knowing it unkind to Bryn. As Father stated, she did work hard, most of the time, to keep the cottage a home. What would happen when she and Blye both wed? Who would mend for Father and cook for him? I could do a fair job at a meal if a person didn't mind a lack of variety. Mending bored me to tears, but I could sew a straight line. I'd never have the skill of either Bryn or Blye, though. Unless my future husband was a tailor, I didn't see that my lack of skill would matter.
"If you have no preferences, I'd like to announce your intent to marry and see what offers we receive," Father said into the silence.
"How soon?" Bryn whispered.
"In the morning, I'll talk to the baker. By evening, the rest of the village should know."
* * * *
A flat-faced sheep farmer from the south came to offer for Blye after Father returned home. The short, muscled man spoke plainly of his need for someone who could weave and sew well and promised himself to be a soft-spoken, gentle man. Given his propensity to gaze at the ground when speaking to Blye instead of meeting her gaze, I agreed with his self-assessment. After listening to his offer, Blye kindly declined.
Bryn consoled Blye after the man left, saying at least someone had come for her. Though Father had discounted Tennen, I felt sure Bryn still held out some small hope that he would appear and offer for her nonetheless. She quietly served another dinner of vegetable soup; and I knew, dress or no, I needed to attempt to set traps the following day.
* * * *
I crept from bed during the twilight hour when the birds sang gustily before the dawn. Shaking out my dress, I frowned at its dingy, pale blue color. It needed a washing desperately, but I put it on anyway and hustled out the door before Father rose from bed. The cool air prickled my skin; and I set out toward the estate, carefully placing traps on my way, to check the enchanted dirt that spilled from the wall.
When I reached the rough patch of soil, I wasn't disappointed by barren earth. A single line of turnips thinly dotted the expanse, starting from the edge to lead toward the tumbled rock. The row didn't stop there but continued with uprooted turnips lying on their sides over the rocks and into the darkened woods within, a blatant invitation that struck me as very wrong. I stared at the roots while biting on my lower lip. My stomach growled. I wanted the food, no doubt about it, but I wasn't willing to fall into some sort of trap, which was how it appeared to me. I recalled all of the other times I'd harvested there and walked the boundary, looking to pluck any bounty I could find.
Rifling through my bag, my hand clasped around a spare ribbon I used to tie back my hair. The color had faded and the ends were frayed, but I laid it down on the ground anyway.
"It's not much, but all I have," I whispered, "for the things I've taken in the past. Thank you."
Before I changed my mind, or my hunger changed it for me, I darted away. Behind me, I heard the vines moving and ran faster, hoping the estate wouldn't hold a grudge over everything I'd taken. It was the only explanation I had for its odd behavior.
I should have known I couldn't outrun magic. The vines flew along the ground and caught me by the ankles while others stretched down from lofty heights within the canopy to curl around my upper arms and lift me high.
"Please," I whispered as they shuffled me back toward the wall. "I meant no offense."
Ahead I saw the turnip filled dirt and crumbling wall. The vines didn't set me down there. They kept shuffling me forward over the wall and through the dark misty trees as the sky began to lighten. Finally, before a large gnarled oak growing at the edge of a pond, they released me. I landed with a splash in the waist-deep waters and scowled. Dripping wet, I stood weighed down by my heavy skirts.
"Confounded dress," I muttered, struggling toward the shore.
The tree groaned, a low noise of wood rubbing on wood, then gave several small splintering cracks as the surface of the trunk began to shift. I stopped my approach and stood still in the knee-deep water to watch with wide eyes as a face formed within the wood. Rough, slashed bark eyes squinted at me, and a great long nose twitched as if the eyes couldn't believe what they saw. Below the nose a wide mouth opened slowly, looking as if the tree was breaking and about to topple. Instead, it spoke.
"Teach him," it said in a series of cracks and groans. The leaves above trembled with its effort.