She was seventeen, slim, and taller than Mag. There was a deceptive softness about her, like velvet over lean muscle. The corners of her wide mouth turned up as if with some secret pleasure. Her green eyes were wide, her lashes thick and black. She had long hands, clever at weaving. Her long brown dress was the typical valley coarsespun. As she watched the old woman and horse disappear down the cliff, intently she watched the pony, too, for he did not like being left behind. He was a big, sturdy pony of elven breed. When he raised his head and charged the fence suddenly, meaning to jump it, she lifted her hand in a sign that jerked him back. He turned away, his ears flat, his tail switching.
She could not see the village below, the land dropped too steeply. She would have gone with Mag but for the sow, due to farrow and as likely to eat her piglets as nurse them. The cottage felt larger without Mag, and she liked its emptiness. Mag’s occasional absence was the only privacy she had. She loved Mag, but the cottage was small. She turned from the window, took up the mop, and began to scrub the wooden floor, mopping first without spells. When she tired of that she sent the mop alone over the boards, making it dodge around Mag’s loom and around their two cots, around the table and their two chairs.
The one room served the two of them for cooking, for sleeping, for weaving and mending, and for canning and drying their garden produce. Its stone walls were smoke darkened, its rafters low, with herbs and onions hanging from them. She seldom went beyond the cottage and garden, except when Mag took her trading to some small village. There were no neighbors; she was used to the company of the beasts. The cottage was the only home she remembered. She thought she was no kin to Mag. Mag was as sturdy as a turnip, always the same and always steady. Sarah was, Mag said, as changeable as quicksilver. In this room Mag had taught her the jeweler’s arts and taught her to weave so she could earn a living, and had taught her the spells for gardening and gentling the beasts.
She could remember nothing of her childhood. That part of her life was without form, and Mag would tell her nothing about her past. When they did travel to some small village among other Netherworlders, the old woman sometimes put the deaf spell on her so that, listening to the villagers’ conversation, suddenly she would lose meaning and know that she had for a few moments been deafened, made unaware. Though Mag would never admit to such spells.
She took up a cloth and carefully dusted the clothes cupboard and the kitchen safe, then knelt to polish a carved chest. She liked to dust by hand, rubbing oil into the ancient wood. But now as she pulled out the drawers of the chest to do the edges, the bottom drawer stuck. Kneeling, she tried to straighten it by reaching underneath.
When she felt papers stuck there, up under the bottom of the drawer, she drew back.
Then she reached again, fingering them. They crackled dryly. When she started to pull them out, one tore. Dismayed, she hissed a spell to free it. Three sheets came loose, the old, yellowed papers dropping into her hand. She spread them on the floor.
She thought Mag would not hide papers unless they had to do with her. How furtive the old woman was. Sarah was afraid to look at them. Maybe she wouldn’t want to know what they would tell her. She closed her eyes, trying to collect herself, torn between excitement and fear.
The earliest thing she could remember about her life was her ninth birthday. She had become aware suddenly, as if jerked from deep sleep, had been riding a horse double behind an old woman who was a stranger to her, had sat pressed against the woman’s soft back as the horse worked his way down a cliff. She didn’t remember ever riding a horse before; she didn’t remember the landscape around her. She had been bone tired, aching from a journey she could not recall. Below them stood a thatch-roofed stone cottage, a lonely, bare-looking hovel. The old woman had called her Sarah, but the name had meant nothing to her.
At the cottage she had stood against the fence while the woman unsaddled the horse and watered and fed him, then the wrinkled old creature said,“I am Mag. Today is your ninth birthday.”
“It’s not my birthday. I don’t remember my birthday. Who are you?”
Mag had led her into the cottage and sat her down in the rocker before the cold wood stove, had knelt and built a fire, lighting it with a flick of her hand. Then she took a clay bowl from the shelf and began to mix gingerbread. Sarah had watched, numb and angry. When the dough was rolled out, Mag made a gesture with her hands that caused ginger dolls to be cut from the dough without any cutter or tool.“The dolls are tradition,” Mag said. “Part of the birthday celebration.”
“It’snot my birthday.”
“It is now. This is the first day of your new life. You are nine years old.”
Mag had set about decorating the dolls with magic runes that appeared suddenly deep in the dough. She had baked and cooled them, and made Sarah promise not to watch as she hung them outdoors in the fruit trees.
But of course she had watched from the window, and when, after her birthday supper, Mag sent her to search for the ginger dolls she found the wishing doll at once. It was the only one with emeralds baked in for eyes, in the fading light its green eyes gleamed at her. Coming back with it, she had stopped to look in the water trough at her reflection, wanting to see her own face, and her image shone up at her as unfamiliar as the face of the ginger doll. She was surprised that her eyes were the same clear green as the doll’s emerald eyes.
But from the cottage, Mag had seen her look into the trough and had been enraged.“You must not look at reflections. Not your own, not anyone’s reflection. A reflection is an image, and it is powerful. In this kingdom the queen does not allow images.”
After that, Sarah had avoided the water trough for a long time.
Now she touched the brittle papers, knowing they held a reflection too, a reflection of her own past. Her stomach felt hollow. The yellowed papers rattled in her shaking fingers.
Two sheets had been torn from books, their left-hand edges were ragged and they had page numbers. They were made of strange, foreign paper, very smooth, and the printing was not the usual handwritten script, but rigid and precise. The third paper had thin blue lines to guide a childish handwriting, and the child’s words stirred her strangely.
May 9, 1938.
She is dead. My little Mari is dead. She was so small when I found her, just a little lost kitten alone and hungry in the garden. She had long white whiskers, she was so beautiful, her colors all swirled together like the silk tapestry that hangs in our hall. Her eyes were golden, with black lines around. She rolled over, flashing her eyes at me. She was starving, she wanted a home. Her throat was white, and her paws white, waving as she rolled. I picked her up and took her in the house and fed her leftover scrambled eggs and toast and milk. She ate until I thought she’d burst. I knew her name should be Mari, I don’t know how I knew.
She slept with me every night of our lives together. Five years. She always met the school bus, racing across the neighbors’ yards to the corner. She never went in the street after I scolded her. Sometimes when she looked at me I thought she wanted to tell me something. I thought she was trying to talk human language, but of course she couldn’t. She could only talk with her beautiful golden eyes, or by touching me with her paw.
Now she is dead. The doctor couldn’t mend her sickness.
I hate doctors.
I buried her under the fuchsia tree. I dug the hole, I wouldn’t let Daddy help. I dug it deep, and I wrapped her in her blue blanket. I put in her favorite sofa pillow and her little dish. I made a clay headstone with her name and picture drawn into the wet clay, and baked it at an art school. I will miss her forever and I will love her forever.
There was no signature. Sarah knelt on the cottage floor holding the lined paper, shivering with pain for the child’s agony.