Juniper & Thorn(52)

Papa stopped his pacing. The grandfather clock on the wall gonged seven. It occurred to me that there was one thing Papa hadn’t yet done: punish us. His punishments were usually swift and predictable, a new constraint, a tougher tribulation, something taken away and not replaced. So far I couldn’t see what in his plan was supposed to make us freshly miserable. Perhaps my cleverer sisters could, but in truth, I was the one who knew Papa’s cruelty better than either of them.

It had taken me so many years to realize this, but there were things I understood that my beautiful sisters never could.

“I don’t suppose we have any choice at all,” Undine said. Her voice was as frigid as a waft of air from the icebox.

“Why should I let you choose?” Papa’s gaze cut to her with scissorlike precision. “Why should you get a say in anything at all? This is my house and you are my daughters and without my seed you would just be a dream in your mother’s mind. I have given you everything, even endured the blow of Titka Whiskers’s infernal curse, and you have repaid me only with loathing and deceit. It would cause me no grief to see you married off to a man with a face full of boils that spew pus in your marriage bed, or to a man who blackens his wife’s eyes for burning dinner. I imagine you will be first chosen, Undine, loveliest and bitterest of my daughters. My black plum, sweet-tasting but poisonous.”

“Even the cruelest and ugliest man in Oblya is far better than you,” Undine spat, but I could see her face blanch. I thought of what she had said about Papa—that he wanted no one to spoil his daughters but him. I supposed this was one way of doing it. My sisters would be spoiled (no man would choose me to take to wife when Rose and Undine were there), but only through his orchestration. If you fed a man a potion that drove him to eat his neighbor’s heart, you too would taste a bit of blood in your mouth.

Magic was like that. It always implicated its caster.

Rose stared at me from under her lashes, violet eyes fierce. We both knew the truth of how I had managed to elude Papa’s spells, or at least we knew about the black sand. We could save that secret and spend it only on a good man, so that our sister wouldn’t suffer with boils or beatings. Still I feared that this was not the worst thing Papa was planning for us. What would he do when he was presented with the truth? How would he fashion it into a sharper blade, a hotter brand? I knew that he meant to make a weapon of it.

My palms were growing damp and I wiped them on my nightgown. Rose looked angrier at me than she ever had before.

Papa didn’t berate Undine for her words. Maybe it was true what she’d told me, about him wanting daughters with teeth. He only drew a breath and said, “The very least you all could do is make yourselves look lovely and sweet. Wash your faces and comb your hair, put on your mother’s lilac perfume. Wear your finest dresses and shoes. The more men who fall in love, the fatter our feasts will be.”

And then he pushed past us out of the sitting room, before Undine could protest or Rose could soberly remind him that he had trashed all of our gowns and jewels. Undine tugged at the torn collar of her dress and Rose fingered the end of her braid. I stared and stared at the flattened carpet, my stomach feeling as empty as a blue porcelain bowl.

“I’ll take a bath first,” Undine said finally, curtly, “and then Rose can go after. It makes no difference whether Marlinchen bathes or not. We all know that she will not be chosen for a bride.”

It was as mean as I expected, but still her words made me flinch. I couldn’t precisely blame Undine for her anger now—this was perhaps one occasion where being plain of face advantaged me. Undine stalked up the stairs; in another moment, I heard the bathroom door slam.

In the spell of silence that followed, Rose said, “You would save me, wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

“You can only spend your secret once,” she said, still fingering her braid. “I don’t know how you got that black sand, and I don’t think you would tell me even if I asked. That’s all right. But say one man comes asking after me and another asking after Undine. You would tell Undine’s suitor the truth, and leave mine in the dark, wouldn’t you? Of all of us, Undine would survive best being wed to a strange man. You would be too afraid, and I couldn’t bear it. I just couldn’t. Tell me that you’d spend your secret to save me.”

All I could do was gape at her, struck so dumb by her words. Never before had either of my sisters beseeched my help. Never before had I held something neither of them could touch. Rose knew as much of the truth as I did, but that didn’t matter—she thought I had the secret that could either ruin or deliver her.

It felt like standing at the very top floor of our house and leaning over the railing, dizzy with the possibility of descent. It felt like knowing that you would fall but having to keep on leaning anyway until you did. I didn’t want any part of it.

And, despite everything, Sevas was still my secret, my lie. The black sand had come off in my bath. It belonged to me and me alone. A new realization sank its dark roots into me: even if I had known where the black sand came from, I would not have told her.

“I told you everything I know,” I said slowly. “About the bath and the black sand. You can have that secret and spend it however you wish. I don’t know if it’s enough for Papa, though.”

Rose made a noise in the back of her throat and jerked upright, as if someone had yanked at her braid from above. “I’ve always been kind to you, Marlinchen. Kinder than Undine. I hope that you change your mind.”