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ONE day, when Cora was still a girl of seven, the village erupted in a roar.
The king, it seemed, had banished his son, the one who stole to the village at night and provided food for the hungry and blankets for the cold. The only good-hearted man among the men of King Sebastien’s castle, banished for the very reason the villagers loved him: his kindness.
The village people were outraged. They stormed through the streets and into the center of town, and they gathered at the fountain but did not dare open the underground chamber. They cursed their king.
Cora’s father found her among the villagers in the streets. He had come with news of his own, but when he saw the people cursing in the streets, he raised his voice and his hands and said, “People of Fairendale,” and every head turned his way. “Listen to me, please.” They looked at him and he looked at them. His eyes softened. Their eyes softened. “I beg you,” he said. “We must keep the peace. At all costs.”
A few of the village men, known for their tempers, shouted at him and called him mad. But the fire had gone out of the others, for they respected Cora’s father as an advisor of sorts. He had always shown himself to be a wise man, and a kind one, too.
“How will we keep the peace?” one of the men shouted. His face turned red like the flowers that sprinkled the hill. “The king has stolen our help. Our children will starve.”
“We will find a way,” Cora’s father said. “We will plant a garden, perhaps.”
The angry men grumbled, but a woman spoke up. “I tended a garden as a girl.” She was a woman who had not been born in Fairendale, but one who had followed her husband when he met her on his travels.
The fire, however, had not cooled in Cora. She found herself protesting. “From what will we plant a garden, Father? We have nothing left.”
Her father looked at her, his eyes wide in that way he had when he was surprised, or, perhaps, disappointed. He had not expected her to thwart his peace efforts, you see. But she could not support his peace, now, could she? The king had banished the only goodness in the castle. They could not live without goodness. A world cannot survive without goodness.
They must fight back. They must let the king know that he could not banish a man who had saved them from starvation. They could not simply die and do nothing about their dying.
“We will make do,” Cora’s father said.
“With what, Father?” Cora said, louder this time, for she wanted the people to hear. She wanted their fight. “With what will we make do?” She spread her hands before her and then waved them back toward the village houses. “There is nothing left.”
And though she was only a girl of seven, the townspeople looked at her, and they saw the truth. Cora found that she could be powerful with not only her magic but also her words. She felt the power in her hands, and she held it and turned it over and kept it until the time was right to let it loose.
“My daughter,” her father said. He looked around at the people. They had eyes only for Cora. “She has the magic that can do this. She can save us.” He turned back to Cora.
Cora did not quite expect to become the savior. She looked at the power in her hands and then shook her head. “No, Father,” she said. “I cannot create something from nothing. Without Prince Wendell’s gifts from the castle, we will not make enough food. There is nothing we do not need. Nothing we can use to turn into food.”
“So we will gather what we do not need,” her father said. He held up a finger. “Stay here for a moment.” He walked toward their cottage and disappeared inside. When he came back out he was carrying a blanket that used to be her mother’s, a blanket neither of them had touched since her mother died.
Her father held it out to her. “Here,” he said. “We do not need this.” His eyes were darker than the forest trees. She knew it was sorrow that turned them so.
“No, Father,” Cora said. She turned away. She could not bear to see the blanket in his hands, to imagine it gone from the chair where her mother used to sit.
Her father’s eyes turned glassy. “I will do whatever it takes to see that you eat.”
“Not this, Father,” Cora said. Her throat felt tight and heavy. “I will not do this.”
Her father shook the blanket, his eyes spilling now. “We do not need it,” he said. His voice rose in desperation. “Do it, Cora.”
“No,” she said, and the wind picked up with her voice.
Her father grabbed her by the arms and shook her. She could not feel the power any longer, not with her father’s hands and the shaking and the way she could not think.
There were noises all around her, and when Cora looked, the people had gathered a small pile of candelabras and silverware and bowls, what they did not absolutely need. Cora shook her head.
“See?” her father said. “Do you see, Cora? We will find a way.”
“It is a bandage,” Cora said. “Nothing more.”
“But it is enough,” her father said. “For now.”
Cora looked back at the people. “We must find the root,” she said. Her voice grew louder again. “We must pull it out.”
The people looked at her with sad eyes. Her father turned her toward him again. “No,” he said. “We must keep peace. We must be good people.”
“Good people do not give in to bad people,” she said.
Her father’s shoulders drew forward nearly imperceptibly, though Cora noticed, for she knew her father well. “My daughter,” he said. “You have much to learn.” And then he leaned closer, and his voice grew softer, barely more than a whisper. “Good people wait for the right time. The time is not now.”
And so, because she loved her father, and because she loved the people of this village, she did it. She turned their offerings into a garden. And she made it flourish with enough food for the people to eat modestly well. They did not always sleep with full bellies, that much is true, but they did not starve.
Cora performed her magic quietly, waiting for the right time.
Always waiting for the right time.