In the morning, I slipped back into my room and went to my closet to change into a fresh dress. I was startled when a flock of birds rushed through the open window of my room and stacked themselves on top of one another until they made a silhouette of Bari. In a blink they became flesh and Bari stood before me, not wearing a stitch of clothing.
She gave me a mischievous look, clearly proud of her magic feat.
“You’ve graduated to birds,” I said to Bari, smiling back. Involuntarily, I flashed back to the day of the Burning and Bari’s scorpions. Birds were much less scary.
“I still sometimes prefer my beetles . . . Our firsts stick with us, I guess,” she mused as she walked over to the closet and grabbed a robe.
Bari stopped at the mirror and checked her own reflection. I wasn’t sure if she was admiring herself or just making sure that all her flesh was in place.
Her features had grown sharper and more birdlike. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t why I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Her movements were careful and precise, just as they had been when she was a child. Now, as she pulled the brush through her long, dark curls, I wondered how the intervening years had treated her. Was the Grays’ the first door they’d knocked on or had there been years of scrounging and scavenging? Bari’s impassive face did not betray any hint of what they had suffered through.
“Hey, look . . . ,” she said. She took a knife off the table and in one swift move cut off her finger.
I gasped.
“Bari, what are you doing? Why would you do that?” I squealed and rushed toward her to help stop the blood that should have gushed from her finger.
But before I could get to her, a beetle crawled out of the space where her finger had been. And another and another, until the beetles made up the exact space and volume of the missing finger. Bari waved her wand with her other hand and the new finger was flesh again.
“When we were little, you pointed out the obvious flaw in my spell. That it left me vulnerable. I fixed it, Farrow,” Bari said proudly.
Bari had turned her power on herself and perfected it. She could regenerate.
“That’s amazing, Bari,” I said, meaning it. “You’ve come such a long way.”
She turned into a flock of birds again and flew in a flurry of feathers from one side of the room to the other—before returning to her human form beside me.
“So have you, Farrow.”
“I have no magic.”
“And yet you got within a hair of killing the Queen. And you were all alone.”
“I had Hecate. And South.”
“A pile of ashes is hardly—” She stopped herself at my sharp look.
It was true that Hecate was ash. But she was more than that.
“I’m sorry, Farrow. I didn’t mean it. It’s just that Galatea showed us what you went through. And I thought our years were harrowing . . .”
“But I am not like I was . . .”
She shrugged. “None of us are the same. But we are always sisters.”
“Even if I am closer to human than Entente?”
“Bite your tongue. You will never be human,” she said quickly.
“But what if Galatea doesn’t find another way to bring my magic back?” I asked.
“Magic always finds a way. You’ll adapt, like I did.”
Bari looked down. One of the bugs that had escaped from her finger before was roaming around the floor now.
“You missed one,” I said, expecting her to scoop up the bug and make it flesh again. Instead, Bari squashed it with her foot. She winced in pain as she did it. But she grinned.
I smiled at Bari. In her own way, this was her telling me that everything would be okay. I just wished I could believe her.
I left Bari, feeling a little lighter, and went outside to see South. When I entered the barn and climbed to the loft, I saw Cinderella hunched over him. In her hand was a cup. She was dressed in a servant’s uniform.
“Get away from him,” I commanded.
Galatea’s spell was supposed to block humans from seeing South. Had it failed? But then I remembered how specific spells had to be. Cinderella was a member of the household. That was why she could see him.
She looked at me sharply.
“I heard him screaming. This is just water. What’s wrong with him? Why is he out here? Who is he?”
“He’s South . . . He’s my . . . We grew up together. He has a condition. He is better away from people.”
Cinderella and I descended the ladder. “It’s more than just a fever, isn’t it? It’s magic? Did Amantha do it? Or was it Bari? Bari’s always threatening to turn me into a fly.”
Cinderella had seen South’s wings. They must have burst through his shirt in his sleep.
“They didn’t make him like this,” I said, my heart flooding with guilt.
“Who did, then? Did Galatea? Did you?” she asked pointedly.
“I already told you, I don’t have an ounce of magic,” I hedged, which increased my guilt exponentially.
“Then what happened to him?” she insisted.
“He was touched by magic a long time ago,” I hedged again.
It was enough that Cinderella had seen South’s wings. There was no reason to tell her that she was harboring not just any Entente, but a Fate.
Before I could say more, South screamed again.
“It’s okay, South . . . ,” I whispered.
He turned over toward the wall and began to snore.
“Your voice calmed him,” she marveled.
“What’s with the uniform? Are you planning another heist?” I asked quietly, wanting to change the subject.
“They make me wear it. All our servants are gone. I will not allow my home to be a sty,” she claimed proudly. But again her voice told another story as the words came out shakily. My sisters could banish dirt with a wave of their wands, and yet they had made her their servant instead of their sister.
“I don’t understand why you stay here,” I said. “Why are you helping us?”
“Because this is my home. It’s where all my memories of my parents are. I’m helping because he’s hurt. And my father taught me that we help the hurt, no matter who they are. No matter what the risk. He’s gone, but I still live by that.”
“Even when the Entente, when Galatea has made you essentially a servant in your own home?” I blurted. The uniform and the teasing did not fit with what the Entente were supposed to be. Amantha and Bari should have left their teasing days behind, and Galatea should have repaid the Grays’ kindness by treating Cinderella as a sister.
“That’s why I have to. I will not let them change who I am. What I believe is right. They are wrong but not because they are Entente. But because of the choices they have made. Because they did not return the kindness that my family gave to them . . .”
“That is noble of you. Maybe more noble than we deserve. For what it’s worth, I am sorry for your loss,” I said, but as her eyes clouded over, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to the story and more to Cinderella.
South moaned again.
“I’ll get him some mangal root. But I think he might need something stronger. I’ll come back with more food and more medicine,” she said, and she began to make her way to the barn door. I stopped her.
“Ella, can I ask you something else?”
She shrugged.
“The name . . . why do you call yourself the nickname they gave you? I don’t understand.”
“It’s how they see me. It’s who I am as long as I am under this roof.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
She paused a minute, surprised as if no one had asked her that in a long time.
“Cinderella. For now. Perhaps if I ever become Lady Gray as my father once intended, I will be Ella again, but I think not. I think even then I will keep it. You can’t make what’s happened to you, unhappen . . . so maybe I am Cinderella now and until my Ever After . . .”
This I understood. I touched my nose. I had chosen to keep it because it was a reminder of all I had been through to get here. Cinderella’s name seemingly was the same thing. A scar never belongs to the one who makes it. It belongs to the one who is scarred. And at some point, the scar becomes part of you. The nose was mine. The name was hers.
‘Cinderella, it is, then . . . ,” I said finally.
When she left, I climbed back up to South. He was curled into a ball. Even though there was no one else in sight, he still felt the pain of so many Presents. I didn’t know what the radius was on his power, but if it was anything like Iolanta’s, we were still too close to people.
“I know who I am now. I know who my mother was. She gave me her gift. I am more whole than I’ve ever been. But she’s gone . . . ,” South said as he covered his face with his hands. “We aren’t alone. The others, they’re all around us.”
“Shh . . . ,” I whispered.
That’s an understatement, I thought.
“There are people here,” he announced suddenly.
I raced to the window of the barn. I didn’t see anything but the house in the distance. There was no sign of the Queen’s guard on the horizon. All I could hear was the sound of the horse neighing in the stable below us.
“There is no one else here. Do you sense them coming, South?” I asked, thinking of the guards.
“No, they’re here,” he said emphatically, and he pointed to the rafters.
There was nothing there but a few birds, cooing and rustling.
“South, you need to rest.”
“They’re gentle, though. They mean us no harm,” he said. He pointed to a mouse in the corner of the loft and seemed to strike up a one-sided conversation with it.
“I know, it’s hard . . . But I hear you,” he reasoned. The mouse perked up its nose probably looking for food, not comfort.
I sighed, hating that we were sharing a space with vermin. But hating even more that South was so very far from okay.