This is a dream.
They are becoming.
She digs. Hard, physical labour. Once it would have ripped the skin from her hands but now she barely feels the wood of the spade against her skin. Her hands are as hard as she is. They feel as little as she does. When the shovel hits the buried chest it sends a shock up her arms, into her shoulders, along her muscles and into her heart.
She feels nothing.
“I should be doing that, Merela.”
“No, you should not be doing anything.”
“But I am—”
“Adran Vieloss, only daughter of a dead man. Rich enough to be touring the Tired Lands looking—”
“For a husband.”
“Aye.”
“No one will believe me.”
“They will.”
Into the hole. Open the chest. Opening her father’s chest.
They cut him down, Merela, they demanded his money and when he didn’t give it they cut him down with an axe.
Gold and jewels. Always his way, don’t trust banks, don’t trust foreigners, play poorer than you are. Hide the valuables in the forest and only he and she would ever know where.
They tortured the other servants, for hours, said they must know. They cut some of them into pieces while they still lived.
“How can I marry one of these people, Merela? After what they did? After what they wanted to do to me?”
“Feel my hands, Adran.” She does. Her touch is a shock even though it is familiar. So soft.
“They are rough, Merela.”
“My hands are hard, soft one, as your heart must be.”
“Do you actually think a blessed will marry me, Merela?”
She stares at her, tries to forget the way Adran makes her feel. Dispels jealousy. Discipline, girl. Adran is not pretty, not beautiful, but over the years she has slowly become something new. As she has. Adran has straightened. Her carriage is the carriage of the blessed. Her speech is the speech of the blessed. Her manners are the manners of the blessed. When Adran speaks to people she looks them in the eye. It suits her.
She looks at the treasure at her feet.
“Yes, Adran. They will marry you. Even without this”—she kicks the chest—“they would marry you.”
“And I will raise daughters who will be queens,” she says, and she does not cry. Does not let her fear and hate show.
“And if they are boys?”
A moment of alchemy, when the girl vanishes, becomes a woman, older, dressed in green, harsh-faced.
“If they are boys I shall drown them like unwanted puppies.”
They are becoming.
This is a dream.