“I’m not a child.” Though I had died one in my last life, I supposed. I’d been ten and a half, and crushed by a stampede of goats in the hills outside my village in northern Lebanon. Death by goat hoof massage wasn’t the worst, though I wished I hadn’t been forced to kill the stupid goat herder a few minutes before, to keep him from drowning his little cousin in the lake. She hadn’t even thanked me, just screamed so loud that the goats had gone wild.
But just because I’d died in a child’s body didn’t make me one. He knew how many times I’d lived. This was bullshizz.
“You will always be innocent, and you are most definitely a child. Stop thinking about this subject.”
“Well, what should I think about?”
“Remember what we spoke about after you saved Mbemi?” he replied, his tone softer now.
I did remember. I’d seen things in that life not even I could joke about. I hadn’t been able to save my charge, though I knew my little sister’s soul had gone on to… somewhere good. She’d been my whole world, in that life. And I’d failed her, like I’d failed my first sister, Dina.
I’d felt completely hopeless after she’d died, and my Mystery Man had been worried. So he’d given me a project. A hobby, one he’d said he’d entertained himself with a long time ago.
Void dreaming. Honestly, I thought I might be pretty good at it.
“What did you come up with so far, little one? Tell me.”
I tried to think about what I’d built in my mind so far. He’d said, if I constructed the dream carefully enough, I could escape there when the pain got too bad, or when the world seemed hopeless. “It’s a beach, a white sand one, at night. The sky is filled with stars, so many of them, there’s not even darkness. It glows, purple and lavender and silver, glittering from one edge of the horizon to the other. Below, the shallow sea is filled with fish that glow almost as brightly as the stars.”
“Where are you?”
“In a hammock,” I said with a laugh. “I’m in a hammock, and for some reason, I can smell chocolate. Someone’s bringing it to me.”
“Who?”
“I haven’t gotten that far. I’d like it… I’d like it to be you. You have to be in my dream world somehow.”
“No, little one. Don’t let anyone like me into that sacred space. Choose someone worthy.” His voice got even quieter. “I need to go.”
“Already?”
I hated it when he left early. The tugging in my chest that meant it was time to go back to Earth hadn’t even begun. “Wait! My third guess!”
“Make it fast,” I heard from far away. He started singing a French song about plucking a bird. He always sang me back into my new life, though not usually with bird torture lyrics.“Je te plumerai la tête, je te plumerai la tête, et la tête, et la tête, Alouette…”
Suddenly, the tug was there, pulling me out of the ether. I didn’t have much time. I tried to think of one of the names for my favorite fairy tale, the one I’d heard over and over, different versions of in different countries. Gilitrutt… Ruidoquedito… Joaidane… No. The most recent version was—“Rumpelstiltskin!”
He didn’t speak. I yelled it again, twice, just like in the fairy tales. Names had power, but so did numbers. “Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin!”
The song cut off, and I heard an odd noise, but I was tumbling away before I could figure out if it had been a snort, a laugh, or a scoff.
It didn’t matter. I woke up bald and red-faced, having my bare ass smacked by a midwife with two missing front teeth, who smelled like garlic and red wine, and started living another awful life.
This time in France.
At least there might be croissants this time. Or even chocolate.
CHAPTER2
Feather
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER
There was no chocolate in this cruddy existence. There weren’t even fresh croissants, not for me. But, as I licked a dollop of pink buttercream frosting off my finger, running for my life, I thought this one might not be the worst I’d ever lived.
“You useless salope! I’ll beat you bloody!” the baker in question shouted down the alley, as I fled. I’d just run my finger—well, my whole hand, really—through the frosting on the side of the cake one of the Dauphine’s cousins had ordered for her New Year’s fête.
Normally, I wouldn’t have dared such a thing. The baker had been my boss for four years, since my parents had died from pox, and I knew just how much he liked to use the thick hickory switches if I did even the tiniest thing wrong.
