Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(3)

“Ah, you’re back,” Mum sighed, her tone relieved. Her eyes narrowed suddenly. “And you’ve got dirt on the bag!”

“I’m sorry, Mum,” I said. “Someone bumped me and knocked me to the ground, and I dropped it. But the shirt should be clean.”

“Knocked you to the ground?” She spied the dirt stains on my heavy grey skirts. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You didn’t overtax yourself, did you?”

I shook my head. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“Well, sit down and rest yourself. We’ve some time yet.”

Mary frowned as I slid into one of the battered kitchen chairs, feeling very tired suddenly. Perhaps I had pushed myself too hard, running home and back. I wasn’t used to that sort of exercise. Mary’s good mood seemed to be restored after going into the cold larder for eggs and raw bacon. Her beet-dyed pink skirts swished back and forth as she bounced between the counter and the old, black wood stove.

“I should make extra. Owen loves his bacon,” Mary cooed, stretching fat, thick strips across the cast iron pan.

“Mister Owen,” Mum corrected firmly, without looking up from the fire.

“Mister Owen,” Mary repeated cheekily, winking at me. I dropped my head on the table. I didn’t have the energy for her nonsense this morning.

I’d only been still a moment when I felt a nudge against the top of my head. “Sarah, you forgot your pill.”

“Mum,” I groaned into the table.

“You have to take them every day as soon as you wake up, Sarah, no skipping, no forgetting. We don’t spend our hard-earned money on these things for you to scorn them.”

I winced. Mum knew just which strings to pull, and when she wanted to save time, she simply yanked on the big one labeled, “Guilt.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled as Mum dropped the pressed brown tablet into my hand.

My parents paid dearly for the special medication from Mr. Fallow, a disgraced former Guild member who worked as an apothecary, in the heart of Rabbit’s Warren. A mix of vitamins, herbs, and components that weren’t quite legal, the pills treated an array of symptoms leftover from a prolonged battle with Japanese measles when I was three.

I’d been doing all I could to avoid the pills for weeks. They left me feeling sick to my stomach and twitchy, like I was coming out of my own skin. I’d palmed two so far that week, after being so jittery than I darn near dropped Mrs. Winter’s prized orchid pot. But Mum was watching me now, and so I dutifully popped the rusty-tasting lump between my thin lips.

I accepted the cup of bone-chilling water from the sink pump and showed her my empty mouth, careful not to arch my tongue and give away the pill’s hiding place. She patted my head. As soon as she turned, I spat the tablet into my hand and tossed it into the fire. The flames crackled with dirty green smoke, but Mum was too busy to notice.

It took all of my concentration to keep the triumphant smirk from my lips. Nice Snipe girls did not smirk.

“I’ll mind the bacon, Mary,” Mum said, shooing her from the stove. “It’s washing day, so you two go gather the hampers. Be ready to snatch up the sheets after the wake-up bell, then get to the dusting. Mrs. Winter is expecting a guest in the parlor this afternoon.”

Mary pouted. “I was going to help serve breakfast.”

I snorted, covering it with a false cough. By “serving breakfast,” Mary meant standing by the breakfast table and simpering at Owen behind his parents’ backs. Fortunately for Mary, Owen ignored her flirtations in favor of the bacon. I didn’t want to think about what could happen to my family if he noticed and complications arose.

“I can handle breakfast,” Mum told her sternly. Mary’s pout deepened and her brows drew together in a stubborn line. Mum responded with a hard stare over the top of her wire-rim spectacles. Mary’s mouth bent into a mutinous frown. Mum glowered back. Sensing that the facial expression warfare was at its end, Mary rolled her eyes and snatched a laundry basket off the worktable.

Pinching my lips together to prevent a snicker, I followed Mary out of the servants’ hallway. My skirt slapped dully against the kitchen door.

Like their parents before them, my parents had been working for the Winters since they were children. Mum was perpetually worn and snappish. We practically had to carry Papa home after he spent all day working on the Winters’ gardens and grounds. Mary said she could remember a time when Mum smiled and hummed while she worked. She could remember Papa drinking water with supper and telling stories in front of the fire, instead of dropping off to sleep as soon as he flopped into his worn-out leather chair, a bottle dangling from his fingers. She never said that this stopped when I came along. She really didn’t have to.

The worst part was that there was no end in sight, no holiday, no retirement, just years of work stretching out before me like an endless hallway – where every door was marked “Back-Breaking Labor.” I already knew what my life would be like in a few years after Mr. Winter arranged my marriage to some Snipe boy and I moved away to take care of some other Guardian family. Mary, as the stronger of the two of us, would remain behind to replace Mum as head housekeeper. My future would be even more work, only without a mother to take the brunt of the kitchen chores and remind me to take my pills.