In the morning the sun burst forth as though to welcome this errant boy to Jack’s promise of a second summer. By midmorning the day was almost hot. I glanced out the window as I cleaned up Robin’s mess in the kitchen and saw Jack working in the garden below. Not to plant—no, it was much too wet for that—but to set and build the new paths of the maze.
I shook the boy where he lay sprawled between the two chairs. He woke with a start, saw it was only me, and then stretched and yawned languorously.
“Come on, my lad, you have work to do.”
“Work?”
I pulled him by the collar of his grubby shirt to the window and pointed down to the garden. “See that man down there?” And as if he had heard me, Jack looked up from a rock he was hoisting into place and smiled. I opened the window, and leaned out. “I have a new pair of sturdy hands to help you, Jack! He’ll be down in a moment.”
“Great! There’s plenty to do,” he called back.
“I am not a gardener. I don’t do dirt,” the boy said scornfully.
“You are now and you will do dirt if you wish to remain and eat. My sister may have coddled you but I will not.”
He started to protest. He needed his hand for playing the fiddle. He was tired after his journey. He was hungry . . .
I paid no attention, and while he was off in the water closet, I rifled through his bag until I found a clean shirt and a pair of socks that while not clean, were at least dry. When he reappeared, I thrust the clothes and his shoes into his arms, and practically pushed him out the door. I shut it hard and turned the lock, keeping his fiddle as hostage.
“Shit,” I heard him mutter, and then his feet thudded down the stairs. Lily barked as he passed the landing and he barked back, finishing with an ascending howl. Lily joined him and for a minute or two, the pair did a duet. Then he continued down to the door, clumping like a one-legged farmer.
I returned to my kitchen, grumbling and swearing as I washed dirty dishes, returned them to the shelves, wiped down the counters. Then I cleaned the house, cleaned myself, and dressed for work. Before I left, I chanced a glance out the window to see how Robin was managing in the garden. And there he was, despite his earlier complaints, laughing and joking with Jack as they moved rocks back and forth creating the low wall. After a moment or two of studying him, I softened my heart, thinking he might be a fair-enough lad after all.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, ALONE AT my kitchen table, I retrieved my letter to Serana and reread it. It was stinging, true enough—but a fair complaint. Still I did not want this to be the last words on the matter, so finished it with more temperance.
He can stay, but he will not eat unless he works. Shutting my ears to his complaints, I sent him to work in the garden with Jack, lifting the mountain of tumbled stones and rebuilding the garden wall. It is dirty labor, but honest. Far more honest than the fiddle, which he bought with your return ticket and tried to charm me with on his first night.
But he has paid me back for this injury—as only a clever child can. Even as I finish this letter at my recently cleaned kitchen table, he is standing in my sitting room, playing his fiddle with abandon. He has tracked garden mud and wet leaves into my house, staining Baba Yaga’s red wool rug—that rug that carried Caliphs across the gold desert. He finished eating and left the dishes and now is playing a naughty reel to mock me. The strings sing like a drunken thrush and I must stifle again the longing for a time that will never come again.
Oh, I am angry with you. He will be a handful. And yet listening to him play, I know it will be impossible to stay angry—with you my blood sister or with your scare-bird. I saw Sparrow, a curious spirit, peeping over the fence to watch him work. No doubt his fiddle called to her as well. In the meantime, I will keep him toiling in the garden with Jack and let the living earth return to him some sense and humility along with love and diligence.
Fractious, but still your loving sister,
Meteora