After leaving Galatea, I looked for South. I found him at the edge of the cliff that overlooked the stream running through the Reverie. Inexplicably, his shirt was off; his wings were outstretched.
I gasped. How did South still have his wings?
It was my first spell on a human. Before yesterday I hadn’t even managed to change any living thing except myself. How had my spell seen the light of a second day? There were rumors of spells lasting longer, but that was the stuff of Fates and the Fates did not dare overuse their powers. If there were exceptions, they did not tell us about them. And yet I, the youngest of the Entente, had somehow cast a spell that had lasted another day.
I stared at South’s wings, which looked different in the sunlight. They were a deeper purple than I’d thought. They were beautiful and luminescent, like a moth’s. Part of me marveled at my handiwork, but I winced as I saw where the wings connected in the center of South’s spine. His flesh strained against the new weight of his wings.
My eyes fell to the ground beside him, where his wand lay. He must have tried to fix it himself.
“South,” I said quietly as I sat down, far enough to give him room to spread his wings. I looked past him to the trees we used to make our wands. He saw my face next to his in the water and frowned.
“How are they still here?” I asked.
The wings flapped once, causing a draft of air that blew my hair back. For a second I thought he was going to take flight.
But instead he twisted around and tried to reach his wings with his left hand. In it was a knife. I gasped again.
He gave me a withering look and tried to explain. “They won’t come off.”
“South, stop!” I got up and ran to him but stopped short, looking at the knife.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he demanded.
“I don’t . . .”
“When Amantha and Bari and the other sisters are around, you are one Farrow. When they’re not . . . you’re another.”
He wasn’t wrong. When my sisters weren’t around, I had played with South—human games like hopscotch and catch, and I’d shown him spells. But when my sisters were around, I shunned him. I felt the same shame I’d felt with Iolanta and with Galatea creep in all over again.
“South . . . I . . . ,” I began but “sorry” did not seem enough.
“I wish you were the same Farrow all the time.”
His words cut into me with the same pain I imagined he felt when he’d cut into his flesh.
“You have to do it,” he demanded, holding the knife out to me.
I took the knife and threw it into the water.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
“Then use your wand. Help me, Farrow.”
I shook my head. The best thing to do was to wait for the spell to wear off.
“I’m getting these off, with or without your help. If you don’t do it, then I’ll just get another knife,” he countered. The look on his face said that he was serious.
“Okay.” I pulled my wand out of my pocket and pointed it at him. “Hold still.”
He opened his arms to me, as if to welcome my magic.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I asked. Wasn’t he afraid I would maim him further?
“Who says I don’t? But you did this. You can undo it. Stop being a chicken and just do it.”
I tried to think of a new spell, but the words did not come.
“What if I turn you into something worse? We need help, South. We need to talk to Hecate.”
“You have to do it. I can’t spend another day like this.” He looked at his reflection in the water. “I look like a monster.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry, South.”
He stormed toward the main house, but his wings slowed him down as a strong gust of wind pulled him back with every step. I looked away, feeling responsible for further humiliating him.
I looked at the water again, my face distorted.
He wasn’t the monster.
I was.
“Hecate, please,” I pleaded when I found her in her room.
It was the opposite of Iolanta’s room. Things from other people surrounded her. Dead people. There was a collection of brushes that lined her dressing table. Each one belonged to a dead Fate. She said that they kept her anchored to the Past. As the Fate of the Future, she was always in danger of getting lost in the visions of what was to come, just as Iolanta had gotten lost in all the Presents. Similarly, Galatea’s room was designed to keep her in the Present, just like her dresses. Her room was alive. Her furniture was made of live trees. Every fabric and surface was embedded with seeds, from the carpets underfoot to the curtain that wove itself together to open and close at the whim of Galatea’s wand.
I walked by Hecate’s dressing table like I would a graveyard, carefully and with deference. But I was also curious.
What would it be like to be Galatea, to touch one single hair and see the whole of someone’s life so far? What would it be like to be Hecate and see the whole of their future? What would it be like to be Iolanta and see their every truth right now?
“Farrow? Surely you did not come here to stare at my brushes?” Hecate asked brusquely.
I turned my back on the brushes and faced her. “It’s South. Somehow the magic hasn’t worn off. He still has his wings.”
“I know,” she said without blinking.
Of course she knew. She had to have seen it before it happened. She had to have known that his wings had stuck. But she’d also have to know when and how they would be remedied.
“Can you tell me how I did this?”
“Marry your words to your will and you can do almost anything, but that doesn’t mean that you should,” she said.
“Why are you punishing him when I am the one who messed up?” The words came out in a rush. I had never contradicted Hecate before. But the image of South struggling with his wings was there every time I shut my eyes.
“What we do has consequences. If you are to become a Fate, you have to know that. You all do,” Hecate countered.
“But why should he pay the price for what I’ve done?” I dug in, unable to let this go.
“We are all tied together. For better or worse. And you know that.”
“But South is human. He isn’t really Entente.” Even as I said it, I knew the words were unkind.
Hecate frowned. “South is just as much Entente as you or me. He was raised under our roof. But even if he weren’t . . . being a Fate means caring about everyone, not just the Entente. It means caring about everything in the Hinter and the Queendoms and beyond. It means that what you do matters. And what you undo matters.”
“Hecate,” I said, fighting a sigh. Hearing her logic, I thought of what Iolanta had said: imagine what it’s like to be South. And just then I imagined I had made everything that much worse for him. I was quite simply the worst Entente ever.
I pushed my wand in Hecate’s direction.
“Maybe you should just take it away from me for a while.”
“Why would I do that, when you’re going to need it where we’re going?”
How could she possibly want to take me anyplace now? I wondered.
“You’re coming with me to the palace today,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s time to pay our respects to the new Queen,” Hecate said as she gently took my wand and deposited it in my dress pocket.
“I thought we did that last week,” I protested, confused and a little relieved to feel the weight of my wand at my side again. If Hecate wanted to take me with her, then I wasn’t a complete waste of magic after all.
Queen Meena had died just a week ago, and the Entente, along with the rest of the Queendom, had been in attendance at the funeral. There were Entente at the side of every Queen, but Meena had been the most powerful. Hinter was the most powerful Queendom, which was why the Reverie was seated here. It was Les Soeurs’ duty to keep that power in check for the good of all the Queendoms. Hecate and Galatea had helped us with our glamours and we had mixed into the crowd in the square, along with what seemed like all of Hinter. Only Iolanta had stayed behind, because that many bodies filled with so much sadness in her proximity would have been too much for her senses. But she could see their interactions from the Reverie.
“Magrit was a princess then. Now she is the Queen,” Hecate explained.
“What’s the difference?” I asked. Wasn’t she the same person this week as she was the last?
“I don’t think she’s changed, but I fear she might change all of us.”