“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Celine tried again. “So am I.”
“I know.”
Celine smiled. At least she had a bit of a conversation going. That was encouraging. “No one liked me much, either, when I first got here.” She reached up, cautiously, and dried the girl’s cheeks with her gloved hands. “But now I think they’re warming up a bit. Sometimes it just takes a little time.”
The girl shook her head. “They will never like me. I am different.”
Celine’s heart gave another tug. How many times in her life had she said those same words herself? She had always been different. Taller than any girl in her class. Too skinny. Never as good in school as her brother and sister. Never quite able to measure up to what her parents wanted her to be. “You know, when I was about your age, everybody teased me, too. Because I was so tall. They called me Beanpole, or Beanie.”
The girl finally glanced up from beneath a fringe of dark lashes, examining Celine with startling blue eyes. “You are rather tall,” she said gravely.
“I am.” Celine nodded, laughing. “My name is ... Lady Christiane. What’s yours?”
“Fiara.”
“Fiara?” Celine almost choked, gasping and saying the name at the same time. “You’re Fiara?”
“Aye, and I already know who you are. You are not Lady Christiane, you are Celine. The lady of the moon.”
That declaration almost knocked Celine over. She gaped at the little girl, speechless. A strange tingle shivered up her back, raising the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. “What ... who ... who told you my name?”
“No one. You are the lady who came here on the moonlight. On the eve of the new year. The moon brought you here.” She cocked her head to one side. “Your back ... there is something odd ... does it hurt very much?”
Celine’s heart started to hammer. “How do you know all that?”
“I know many things.” The girl bit her lip and dropped her gaze. “That is why no one likes me. I should go now.” She turned to leave.
“Wait.” Celine caught her arm gently. “Please. If you ... if you know the moon brought me here, do you know how it brought me here? Do you know ... how it might send me back?”
The girl paused, as if thinking, then shook her head. “I am not sure. My mother knows more than I, but I am not allowed to speak of her.”
“Could I speak to your mother?”
“She is not here. She lives in a village, far away. She sent me here to live with my aunt b-because ...” She let the sentence trail off and bit her lower lip once more, as if unsure she should finish.
“You don’t have to tell me. You don’t even have to say where she lives. Could I send a message to her?”
“I do not see her often. I have to go now.”
Celine let her go but followed, feeling desperate. “Please, if there’s any way I could speak to her—it’s very important.”
Fiara kept walking. “You are a very nice lady of the moon. I will try. Would you like a kitten?”
“W-what?” Celine stuttered, caught off guard by the sudden change of subject.
“A kitten. My cat had kittens.” The girl stopped in the middle of the bailey and turned to face Celine with a tentative smile. “I will call one of them for you. The black-and-white one, I think.”
Fiara didn’t move. She didn’t say a word or make any sound at all, but just stood there with that shy little smile hovering on her lips.
A few seconds later, a small black-and-white kitten came bounding through the snow toward her.
Fiara scooped it up and cuddled it, rubbing her cheek against it, making a little purring sound. Then she handed it carefully to Celine. “He will stay with you now,” she stated.
Stunned, Celine didn’t know how to respond. She took the kitten, trying to hide her surprise at Fiara’s actions. A mystic of great knowledge and power, everyone had called her. “Th-thank you,” she managed at last.
“I will come see you if I can think of a way to send a message to my mother,” the little girl promised. A second later, she vanished around the corner of one of the outbuildings, leaving Celine alone with her gift.
The kitten, purring so hard its fragile body vibrated with sound, was sinking its tiny claws into her arm as it tried to climb closer into the warmth of her cloak. Celine glanced at it with a frown, trying to disengage the little feline.
He had a streak of black above one eye, like a raised eyebrow, and another sooty patch beneath his nose.
Celine couldn’t help but smile. The resemblance was just too striking. “There’s only one name for you,” she declared. “Groucho.”