My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(108)

The harbor folk loved their Christmas, and it was no secret that they loved it like pagans. They wanted to dance and drink, put on their oversize saints’ masks and caper about frightening babies. Unlike the First Settlers, who were of Charis stock and came into the world, so they said, with their hands folded in prayer, these latecomers were mostly descended from Jhessians, those sharp-eyed folk of old tongue and older gods, and they wore their civility as light as summer shawls. But life was hard here and the myths were dark, and the Church kept them proper, most days.

“Mornin’, maidy,” Scoot called to Neve as she passed him on her way to the factory. “Find ought on your porch this drizzle-blasted morning?”

His smile seemed genuine, so Neve guessed he didn’t know. The fishwife behind him, though, sucked in one cheek to chew and looked caught between pity and envy, and that’s how Neve knew the word was out.

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t very well lie and say no, but neither could she bring herself to admit it, at least not without making clear how she felt about it, which would simply not do. Girls were supposed to be happy that someone wanted them, as though they were kittens in a basket, and any left by day’s end would be drowned in the pond.

Scoot misread her silence. “Well, maybe the ghosts of your boys haunted off all your suitors,” he said kindly. “It’s the only explanation, a sip of honey like you.”

Neve murmured some response, though she couldn’t have afterward said what. She cast down her eyes and kept going, glancing back at the turning of the lane to see the fishwife talking in the hunchback’s ear, and him looking rueful after her, like she was a kitten already sinking beneath the water.

Was she?

No.

Because she was going to refuse.

“You’re going to what?” demanded Keillegh Baker when Neve told her.

It was midmorning, and they were at their hoops in the longroom, needles busy. All down the row girls blushed and purred and crowed and gloated and wept and sulked, just as Neve had known they would. Irene had a length of lace from her sweetheart, Camilla a comb from hers. May’s too-straight back told her tale of woe, while Daisy Darrow had gifts from three boys, and the delicious drama of a tussle on her porch, too, when they bumped into each other at midnight, all surly fists and mayhem.

“I thought Caleb would kill Harry,” said Daisy, eyes shining with the thrill of it. “But then Davis broke a pot over his head. Oh, Mam was mad. It was her strawberry pot from Cayn.”

Neve did not join in, but only whispered her news to Keillegh, the baker’s daughter, who was the closest she had to a friend anymore, and not quite a friend at that. The thing about having friends who are as close as blood, as true as your own heart—as the twins had been to her—is you don’t bother much with other people. And if you’ve the misfortune to get left behind, well, you’ve made yourself a lonely nest to sit in.

“I’m going to refuse him,” Neve repeated.

Keillegh was shocked, and Neve in turn was shocked by her shock. “Do you really think I could say yes?” she asked, incredulous. “To him?”

“Yes, I think you could say yes! What else will you do? You’re not still thinking of killing yourself at Fog Cup.”

“Not killing myself, no.”

“Not outright maybe. Just a slow death by mildew, if you don’t starve first. Ilona Blackstripe lost the rest of her toes, did you know that? And have you ever seen sicklier babies?”

“Well, I won’t be having babies, so it’s not my main worry.”

“No babies.” Keillegh shook her head, fingering the little silver chain that was her gift from her own boy. “I’ll never understand you, Neve. It’s like you’re another species. You had those two strapping boys out there and you never even kept warm with them, and you don’t want babies either? What do you want, may I ask?”

What did Neve want? Oh, wings and a hatful of jewels, why not? Her own ship, with sails of spider silk. Her own country, with a castle in it and horses to ride and beehives in the trees, dripping honey. What use was wanting when a full belly was as remote as a hatful of jewels? And she did want babies, truth be told, but in the same way as she wanted wings: in a fairy-tale version of life, where they wouldn’t look like those poor Blackstripe sicklings, and she wouldn’t be digging tiny graves every couple of years and pretending life went on.

And what about love? Did she want that, too? It seemed an even wilder fairy wish than wings. “Nothing I can have,” she replied, before the sparkle of senseless wanting could grow too bright.

Keillegh was blunt. “So take Spear and count your blessings. He may be a misery of a man, but his house is warm, and I happen to know he eats meat every week.”

Meat every week. As though Neve would sell herself for that! The rumble of her tummy just then was happenstance—a result of forgetting breakfast in all her nerves that morning, not to mention that her hen had dried up, poor Potpie, destined soon to fulfill the promise of her name.

The reverend, Neve knew, had a dozen hens and a strutting rooster to rule them.

The reverend had a cow.

Butter, thought Neve. Cheese. “That’s all lovely,” she said, settling her grumblesome tummy with a firm press of her palm. “But there is the matter of that row of graves. How many wives should a man get to put in the ground before someone tells him to get a new hobby?”