Fairest Read online

  “… Ilki and Olko. Then there are my sweet kittens.” She sat on her bed. Imilli leaned against her chest and purred.

  I put the ostumo on the night table and backed away.

  “I’ve named only two kittens thus far.” She looked at me.

  I raised my hand in front of my face.

  She went on. “Do you have any suggestions for the rest? Sit down. There are seven in the litter.”

  I sat on the stool by the washstand.

  “Not there. There.” She nodded at the chair by the fireplace, where I wouldn’t have dared to sit.

  I took it. “Perhaps you could name them Anya, Enye, Inyi, Onyo, and Unyo.”

  “Those are possible. What’s this sweetie called?”

  “Imilli, Your Grace.”

  “Ah. Then I will name the rest Amilla and Emille and so on.” She tasted her ostumo.

  I held my breath.

  Her complaining tone was back. “It isn’t hot. Moreover, it’s weak. The kitchen will have to do better when I come again. Would you like me to tell you which is my favorite sweetie?”

  She would come again! I nodded. The duchess told me, and told me which was her second favorite and her third.

  Two hours later, wild with worry and curiosity, Mother opened the duchess’s door a crack. There was the duchess, snoring in her bed, Imilli curled up in the crook of her arm.

  And there I was, sleeping in the duchess’s chair.

  The duchess became a regular guest at the inn. She remained fractious and difficult to please, but she adored Imilli and tolerated me.

  In the year of Forest Songs, when I was fourteen, I discovered a new way to sing. I was cleaning the Falcon chamber, which had been occupied by a Kyrrian merchant, Sir Peter of Frell.

  After I dusted the mantelpiece, I went to the washstand. The basin was there, but not the pitcher. As I sang, “Where is the pitcher?” I began to hiccup.

  I sang, “Did Sir Peter”—hiccup—“steal the pitcher?” I knew the tricks of less-than-honorable guests. “But,” I sang, “it’s very large for stealing.”

  I opened the top drawer of the bureau. “Empty. Then where is the—” I hiccuped. My next word, pitcher, seemed to come from the center of the canopy over the four-poster bed.

  The hiccup had flung the word across the room. How odd. I opened the middle bureau drawer. Empty. I opened the bottom drawer.

  “Ah-ha!” Shards of pitcher. “Sir Peter”—hiccup—“hid his crime.”

  An honorable guest would have confessed to breaking the pitcher and would have paid for the damage.

  “Sir Peter is a—” I hiccuped again. Scoundrel seemed to issue from the flowerpot on the windowsill.

  Hmm. I stopped cleaning and began a love song that was on everyone’s lips lately.

  “From your roses I’ve won just a—”

  I tried to fling thorn from my throat the way the hiccup had flung scoundrel, but it wouldn’t go. I sounded half strangled instead. I tried again and failed again. I went on with the song.

  “In your wide eyes, I’ve seen only scorn.

  From your heart song, I’ve heard but a …”

  I hiccuped. Sigh emanated from the corner by the door.

  I stayed in the Falcon chamber, not cleaning. I couldn’t stop trying to fling my voice. My hiccups passed, but I kept trying—and failing.

  Mother found me there and scolded me soundly. I didn’t tell her what I’d been doing, because it would have sounded ridiculous. I said I’d been woolgathering and returned to work. But from then on, whenever I had a minute of solitude, I tried again.

  I knew my stomach had done most of the work, so I pulled it in hard, trying to get enough thrust. For my pains I gave myself a sore abdomen. Still I kept at it, and sometimes I thought, Almost. Then, after a month, I had my first success. I was cleaning the Dove chamber, and I made the word apple sound as if it was coming from the floor two feet from my feet.

  Apples were the fruit I liked least, but they were delicious to sing and delicious to fling.

  I tried again and failed. But on the next attempt, apple rang from the windowsill.

  After that I made swift progress. Soon I could send my voice wherever I wanted, within reason. I couldn’t send it a mile away.

  My next endeavor was to learn to fling my voice without moving my lips. This required weeks of practice, touching my face to make sure it was motionless. I might have progressed faster if I’d looked in a mirror, but I never looked in mirrors.

  I named the new skill illusing. I was a good mimic, so I added mimicry. Alone in the stable, I learned to illuse Father’s voice—speech or singing—and make it come from the hayloft. I could conjure Mother’s voice answering from the yard outside, and I could call forth a whinny from an empty stall. I could even duplicate the creak of the stable door when it was opened.

  My first demonstration was to Areida, although I hadn’t planned it that way.

  She and I shared the Hummingbird chamber. Her bedtime was ten, while I was always up until midnight and later, washing dishes while Mother and Father and my brothers cleaned the tavern and prepared for the next day.

  It was a Saturday night. The tavern revelers had been boisterous. When the dishes were done I climbed the stairs, weary and angry. A drunken guest had called me an ogress.

  If I’d been an ogre, I could have persuaded him I was beautiful. I could have eaten him and made him think he was being caressed by the comeliest maiden in Ayortha. I may have been almost as ugly as an ogre, but I had none of their persuasive powers.

  Areida awakened when I came in. She sat up in bed. “Did anything happen? Did we get a new Master Ikulni?”

  This was her constant eager question. Master Ikulni was a legendary guest, who’d stayed with us only once, long ago, when Father’s grandfather was a boy. As soon as Master Ikulni had arrived, every mirror in the Featherbed shattered. No guest ever ate as much as he did. And the cook never cooked as well, before or after, as she had for him.

  Master Ikulni had paid in gold yorthys and tipped lavishly. But every coin melted into air the day after his departure.

  Areida craved the excitement of such an interesting guest.

  Tonight I had no patience. “Hush. I’m too tired.”

  “Oh.” She plopped back down with a thump.

  I undressed to my shift and got into bed next to her. I kept picturing the guest’s flushed, foolish face.

  “What do you wish?” Areida sang the beginning of a rhyming game.

  She was a pest! “Shh! Father will come. I’m too exhausted to sing.”

  “I’m not,” she sang, more softly. “I wish for a moat and a boat and a float.”

  I wished she’d shut up. I was silent.

  “I wish for a twister, a blister, a wide-awake sister.”

  “If you don’t hush I’ll smother you.” I felt tears coming.

  “I wish for—”

  “Can’t you just this once”—I squeezed my eyes shut. I wouldn’t let that taunt make me cry—“stop being a pest?”

  “No. I wish—”

  “I hate you.”

  She was silent.

  I felt awful. A tear got out. Now I’d made Areida unhappy. “I don’t hate you.”

  She was silent.

  A sob got out.

  She sat up. “I’m sorry.” She patted my shoulder. “I should have guessed.”

  I raised myself on one elbow. My tears were flowing now. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I despise them.”

  “They think I don’t have feelings.” I wiped my eyes on our quilt.

  “Can a dragon judge ostumo?”

  It was what she always said. It meant that louts had no idea of the finest things.

  She added, “You have the most beautiful voice.”

  “You do, too.”

  “Not like yours. And you always smell nice. Like fennel seeds.”

  “Fennel?”

  “Fennel. Warm and savory. And your eyes are gorge
ous.”

  “Thank you.” My eyes were my only acceptable feature.

  “And I wish I was as tall as you. You look like a statue.”

  I’d have given anything to be as neatly and daintily made as Areida.

  “Besides—” Her voice took on an adult tone I disliked. “Besides, how one looks isn’t important. You’re proof of that.”

  I was proof looks were important. Areida could say they weren’t only because she was pretty. But I didn’t want to quarrel with her twice in five minutes.

  We were quiet.

  She said, “I love you.”

  I touched her arm. “I know.”

  She settled back down. “Good night.”

  “Good night.” But I wanted to make amends. I illused a tiny mouse voice, coming from the floor near the bed. “I love you, too.” I illused a wet fishy voice, coming from the washbasin. “I love you, too.”

  She popped up. “What …”

  I illused a dry raspy voice coming from the fireplace. “I love you, too.”

  “What’s making—”

  I put her hand on my throat so she could feel the vibration. I illused a chirpy voice above our heads: “I love you, too.”

  “Tell me what you’re doing. Don’t just keep doing it.”

  “All right.” I told her about illusing. I put one of her hands back on my throat and one on my stomach while I tried to explain how I did it.

  A quarter hour later, I went to sleep, and she stayed up the rest of the night, trying to illuse.

  She kept trying for the following week, with no success. At the end of the week, I showed the technique to the rest of the family. None of them could do it, either, although each of them tried to learn.

  Mother and Father urged me to illuse at the next village Sing. They were proud of my voice, and they wanted me to stand out, this once, in a way that was to my advantage.

  But I decided to keep my illusing secret. If I revealed it, the villagers would try to learn, too. I’d have to explain how I flung the sound out. I’d have to address them all. Singing to them was easy. Speaking was hard. Worst of all, I’d have to show them how I moved my belly.

  It was too mortifying to consider.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A FEW MONTHS AFTER I discovered illusing, Mother and Father sent Areida to finishing school in the Kyrrian town of Jenn. Their notion was that a refined young woman would raise the tone of the inn.

  I understood. Why spend money on the ugly sister, who stayed out of sight as much as possible? Why spend money on the ugly sister when no amount of finishing would alter her face?

  I felt hurt anyway. For a day and a half I hated my family and everyone else. And myself most of all.

  Then I forgave them. But I didn’t forgive myself.

  Areida didn’t want to go. She wept as she packed.

  I was folding her hose. I sang, “Everything will be mildewed by the time you get there.”

  She laughed and mopped her tears with a table napkin. She sang back, “I can’t help it. I’ll miss you. Nobody hugs the way you do.”

  “You’ll have too many new friends to miss anybody.” I illused a succession of creatures from different parts of the room, singing, “Have fun at finishing school,” and “I’ll be waiting for you,” and “I love you.”

  When I was fifteen, in the year of Kitchen Songs, in the month of April, King Oscaro announced his betrothal to a commoner from the Kyrrian town of Bast. She was the daughter of a wealthy silversmith. Her name was Ivy—Ivi in Ayorthaian. She was nineteen, and the king was forty-one. She’d never visited Ayortha. The king had met her in Bast and had conducted his courtship there.

  She was a mystery and would remain so until the wedding ceremony. We have a superstition: From betrothal to wedding, alter nothing, or the marriage will be cursed. Ivi wasn’t to arrive at Ontio Castle until the day before the wedding, and only her own servants from Bast would wait on her until she was wed.

  The nobility were scandalized that she was a commoner. Everyone but me was outraged by her youth and her foreignness.

  I felt a connection to the bride, another outsider. I thought of her often, and spoke to her in my imagination, calling her Ivi—not Queen Ivi, as she would be, but Ivi, as if we were intimate friends. I was sure she had a voice beyond compare and the fairest face I’d ever seen.

  Our village tailor had a cousin in Bast. We learned that Ivi was high-spirited. She had a temper and was a great flirt. The tailor said she was “nothing extraordinary to look at, merely pretty.”

  To me, merely and pretty were words that had nothing to do with each other. Pretty went with miraculously, and merely belonged in another paragraph entirely.

  But the most important question, the question on everyone’s lips, went unanswered. The tailor’s cousin didn’t know what sort of voice the bride had. People in Kyrria didn’t break into song as we did. They had dances—balls—rather than Sings.

  Ayorthaians have been singers from the earliest days of the kingdom. There is hardly a mediocre singer among us. Legend has it that our first king, King Odino, sang in his castle garden, and up sprang the first Three Tree, the symbol of our kingdom.

  We believe singing has power—to call forth a tree, to heal the sick, even to move the stars.

  Feeling moves us to song. Ideas can move us to song. Even long vowels may move us to song. A sentence like They may stay away today is likely to be sung. Our ceremonies are conducted in song. We hold monthly Sings, and we call Sings for healing, for guidance, for settling arguments.

  Invitations to King Oscaro’s wedding were sent to the nobility, to influential commoners, and to dignitaries from Kyrria. The duchess was invited, naturally, and she and Dame Ethele stopped at the Featherbed on their way to the wedding. Dame Ethele had a cold, and a cold before a royal wedding is a near tragedy. One can’t sing well with a cold.

  By morning Dame Ethele was too ill to leave the inn. The duchess told Father to call in a physician. Then she had me help her dress for her journey alone to the royal castle.

  “It is a trial to have a sickly companion,” she said as I laced up her corset.

  “Mmm, Your Grace,” I said diplomatically.

  “People will criticize me for traveling alone. But I don’t keep a spare companion. No one does.” She stepped into her farthingale. “Fetch my bodice.” She sang, “Imilli looks thin.”

  “He’s growing old, Your Grace.” I held out the bodice.

  “Old! He’s not old. Help me with the hooks.”

  I began to do so.

  “Have you grown taller? I believe you’ve surpassed Ethele.”

  “Your skirt next, Your Grace?”

  She looked at me appraisingly. “Ethele’s gowns would fit you.”

  Occasionally guests gave cast-off clothing to Mother. Dame Ethele’s gowns were clownish. I demurred. “Thank you, but—”

  “Not to keep! To wear to the wedding.”

  “Whose wedding, Your Grace?”

  “Aza! I thought you were less thickheaded than most peasants.”

  “I’m sorr—” I gasped. “The king’s wedding? Your Grace, the king’s wedding!”

  I was terrified. There would be hundreds of strangers at the castle, hundreds of staring strangers who’d never encountered anyone as ugly as I was.

  But I wanted to see Ivi and the king and hear the singing. The singing at a royal wedding would be superb. And the duchess said there would be a Sing the night after the wedding as well. I’d hear every voice at court when they sang their solos.

  Mother and Father agreed to let me go. Indeed, they could hardly refuse the duchess, and they were excited for me. Both of them, and my brothers as well, came out to the coach to send me off.

  Mother said I mustn’t miss a single detail at the castle. “Your sister will want to hear about the fashions. And I”—she looked embarrassed—“should like to hear about the hairstyles.”

  Father said, “Pay attention to how they run the place, daughter
. A castle is just a grand inn.”

  Ollo said, “Sing loud, Aza. Let the king hear the Featherbed’s royal voice.”

  I blushed.

  Yarry said, “Don’t fret. The way you sing, you could look worse than you do, and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Yarry!” Mother said.

  “I only meant—”

  “Hush, son.” Father took four copper yorthys from his pocket. He sang, “In a castle it’s fine to have a purse that jingles.”

  I was close to tears. Father was so kind. I’d never had so much as a tin yorthy before. I put the coins in my reticule.

  The footman handed the duchess and me into the carriage. Mother waved her dish towel.

  The carriage door closed. The duchess leaned back against a brocade seat. “It’s a shame you’re so …” She trailed off, then resumed, on Yarry’s theme. “With your voice, if you were pretty, this trip might be the making of you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS WE RODE in the carriage toward Ontio Castle, the duchess talked about cats and I darned hose from the basket she handed me. We stopped for the night at an inn where both the beds and the porridge were lumpy. The innkeeper stared at me, as rude as any of the Featherbed guests.

  In the morning the road became steeper as we entered the foothills of the Ormallo mountain range. The slopes were dotted with boulders.

  Ontio Castle was halfway up Mount Ormallo, the highest peak in the range. Gnome Caverns was somewhere beneath the mountains. I thought of the gnome zhamM’s prediction that I’d see him there—and that I’d be in danger. The prediction still seemed preposterous, but I was nearer to his home than I’d ever been.

  The carriage rounded a bend. There was the castle, popping out above us, the famed ivy even greener than I expected.

  I had been taught the castle had sixteen towers, five square and eleven round. I felt them eyeing us, and I wondered if they were feeling friendly or hostile. If friendly, I hoped they wouldn’t change their minds when they saw me up close.

  The carriage clattered across the drawbridge. I saw swans swimming in the moat, four white and one black. The carriage stopped. I heard birdsong and people singing. A footman in royal livery helped the duchess step down. I jumped out after her.