A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,105

the ultimate burden of protecting my siblings, then why not start early? Even if my eighteenth birthday was still more than a year and a half away.

When I pushed open the door to our home, my sister greeted me with a glad cry as she always did. Unlike the house I had just left, everything here was neat and in good order, the furniture sturdy and every surface scrubbed clean. Even the curtains looked newly washed. It was larger, too, with two more rooms tucked away, as well as a loft where Clementine and I slept. The reward of my parents’ careful running of their small store. That and their willingness to live out of town where there was room for a bigger house.

I tried to smile, but Clementine knew me too well. Her face fell, and she hurried over to take my hand.

“What is it, Elena? Is something wrong?”

I shook myself. “No, indeed. Don’t mind me, Clemmy. I’m just tired.” And it was true. Nothing was wrong, now. But still I couldn’t dislodge the feeling of unease that had settled over me beside the river.

“Oh, poor thing. Of course, you’re exhausted, traipsing through the woods all day.” She hurried to take my bag from my shoulder, gesturing for me to sit down while she emptied it, laying the herbs inside out neatly on the table.

“We had some special visitors while you were gone.” She giggled. “Well, not visitors exactly. Customers.”

I ran a hand over my eyes. “I heard. Mages, were they?”

She nodded, looking a little crestfallen that someone had beaten her to the news. “One of the ladies caught sight of some of our fresh fruit and had a ‘hankering that couldn’t be denied’ apparently.”

I rolled my eyes, but Clementine was obviously fascinated by her brush with the upper class. Our oppressors. I pressed a hand to my head. I must be more tired than I realized. Now I was the one getting dramatic.

The mages might wield all of the power and much of the wealth in the kingdom, but they were the only ones able to control the power. And we did all see at least some benefits from it. If only because their growers and wind workers ensured the crops grew, and their creators built roads. Even their healers were available to those who could afford them.

“I hope they paid well,” I said.

“That they did,” said Mother, bustling into the room. “And extra. As if counting out the correct amount wasn’t worth their time.” She shook her head in wonder.

“That’ll be us one day,” said Clementine, pride in her voice. “Once Jasper graduates, and we all join him in Corrin.”

“Aye, that it will,” said Father, coming in from outside. He picked Clementine up and swung her around, although at eleven she was really too old for such things. None of us protested, however.

When he put her down again, his eye fell on the neat rows of gathered herbs on the table. He raised his eyebrows.

“You did well today, Elena.”

I sat up straight and smiled back at him. I had managed a good haul, although the subsequent events of the afternoon had driven it from my mind. I had always been the best at finding the hidden spots in the woods where the rarer herbs grew. The ones that would fetch a good price in the store—either fresh or dried.

My family would miss me when I turned eighteen and signed up to go away to war. I knew they would. But better me than Jasper or Clementine. No one said it, but we all agreed on it. And the law was clear. One child from every family must sign up to join the army when they turned eighteen. And if no one stepped forward to volunteer, then the youngest would be forcibly conscripted on their eighteenth birthday.

I had heard it debated from time to time, but no one seemed able to agree which position was less enviable—to be an older one, forced to choose, or the youngest, without a choice at all. I saw the sadness and the fear in my mother’s eyes sometimes, when she watched me. Most families sent their brawniest son and hoped he could survive the three years until he had served his term and was free to return home.

I sometimes wondered if that was why Mother had fallen pregnant again, a full five years after my birth. It had been clear by then that Jasper was special, and that he could not be wasted on the front line of a never-ending war. My parents had already begun to save their coin, in fact, knowing how much tutoring he would need once he finished in the Kingslee school at age ten.

Perhaps my mother had hoped to bear more sons, who might have been better suited than me to surviving in battle. But she got Clementine, the sweetest—and weakest—of us all.

I had never actually had the courage to ask, though, so perhaps that had not been it at all.

“Did any of them drop anything?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized they were hovering on my tongue.

“Who?” Father looked confused.

“The mages, you mean?” Clementine tipped her head to one side, regarding me quizzically. “Why?”

“Oh, them.” Father returned to packing up the herbs.

“Not that I saw,” said Mother. “Although from the careless way of them, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Why do you ask? Did you stop by the store and find something?”

I shook my head. “Not me. But young Joseph—Isadora’s little boy—found something it seems.” I hadn’t meant to tell them what happened, but I couldn’t keep it to myself—not with the way it weighed on me. The story wanted to escape.

Plus Samuel had been there. I didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, and once he started talking, it was hard to know how others would react. I just hoped he hadn’t recognized Joseph or seen which house I went into to return him. Thankfully he wasn’t the sort to pay attention to details.

“Something valuable?” asked Clementine. “Do you think they’ll miss it? The mages, I mean.”

“I certainly hope not.” I sat up, drawing in a breath. I hadn’t even thought of that. “It was words. Some sort of printed dispatch or something.”

All movement in the room stilled.

“And young Joseph found it, you say,” said Father, after a breath.

I nodded. “Samuel and Alice found him down by the river. We burned it. But…” I took a deep breath and finished in a rush. “He was trying to copy it. In the dirt before I arrived, apparently. They only just stopped him in time.”

“Trying to copy the…the letters?” Clementine stumbled over the words, her face white.

“If he’d managed a whole word…” Even my father looked afraid.

I swallowed and nodded. “But he didn’t. That’s what I keep reminding myself. He didn’t. And he’s only a child, too. Perhaps…perhaps the power wouldn’t have grown strong enough in him to do much damage.”

No one responded to my hopeful suggestion. Because we all knew the power of words. Words had the power of life—and the power of death. Written words shaped the power, released it from inside us out into the world. But only the mage families could control that power.

Certainly not people like us. Or young Joseph. If any of the commonborn wrote so much as a word, the power would come rushing out in an uncontrolled explosion of destruction. Just like in that poor village up north. In one instant gone forever, wiped off the map. How many letters had it taken? And who had written them? We would never know.

I might hate the system that trampled us into the dirt, but I understood it. There was a reason none of us could ever be permitted the wonders of reading and writing. Without the bloodline that would enable us to control the power once we accessed it, it was just too dangerous. One slip up, and…

The door banged open, and we all jumped.

Thomas, the young boy who sometimes helped in the store now that Jasper had left, leaned against the doorframe, panting.

“What is it, Tom?” asked Father.

“Trouble,” he panted out. “Trouble at the store. Something about those mages.”