Sam shook his head decisively. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Well, it happens in Skalla.”
“Skalla is a very strange place.”
“Says the masked man who fights monsters with his fists.”
The adults drank the wine and chatted while Jonquil frowned thoughtfully at the baby, and then the visitors departed with nary a hint about the queen’s demand.
“Perhaps it has slipped her mind?” the man speculated.
The woman shook her head. “No matter how insignificant we may be, she cannot have forgotten the curse she laid upon our household. There is some plot afoot here. We should not drink the rest of the wine, and we should destroy this doll lest it do harm to our child.”
They poured the dregs of the bottle on the ground and threw the doll into the fire. But the wine they had consumed caused them no ill effects, and the doll burned like an ordinary doll.
The queen came over to chat with her neighbors once every couple of weeks for the next few years, bringing gifts that were eventually accepted. Most often, she came with her own child in tow. Jonquil and Melilot began to play together once the younger girl was able to walk. They’d squeeze their way through the garden fence to view the marvelous flowers. Their parents discussed the noteworthy issues of the day,such as which farmhands were secretly kings and whether an alliance with the mermaid kingdom would put a stop to mute girls washing up onto the shore and causing a fuss.
Melilot’s father came to look forward to these visits. Her mother, however, never fully trusted the queen.
“A sorceress does nothing unless it is to her own benefit, and neither does a monarch,” Melilot’s mother warned her. “Someday, she will try to take you from me. Be watchful and wary, and do not be deceived.” Melilot listened and tried to do as her mother bade her.
But when Melilot was still very young, her mother died.
It would be a neater story if her death could be blamed on the queen—a spell, a curse, a dagger in the night. In later years, Melilot would wish she had the consolation of believing the queen was the cause of her mother’s death, of having someone to blame. But she did not believe it. Her mother’s death was as terrible and as prosaic as any ordinary death, with no hint of magic to it. No telltale bird proclaimed the queen to be a murderer; no flute made of bone revealed some hideous plot behind it all. Melilot’s mother died of pneumonia, and this time neither medical skill nor special herbs were able to save her.
Soon after that—far too soon, in Melilot’s opinion—her father began to woo the queen. Romancing her with his words, sending her small presents she could not possibly need. She accepted his attentions, and before long he informed Melilot they were leaving their warm, snug cottage and moving into the drafty stone palace next door. Her father was marrying the queen and would become her new consort.
“I am your mother now,” the queen advised Melilot the day she arrived in the palace. “I will raise you as I raise my own child, and I shall teach you sorcery and all manner of secret things.”
“You are not my mother,” Melilot retorted. “My mother is dead.”
“You are willful,” the queen scoffed. “But you must learn to obey me nonetheless.”
Less than a year later, the queen gave birth to another child, a girl she named Calla, after the beautiful lilies that bloomed in the garden.
“This is your sister,” the queen informed Melilot the day the child was born. “Now that you and I are linked by blood, you must acknowledge I am your mother.”
“You are not my mother,” Melilot rebutted her. “My mother is dead.”
“You are willful,” the queen sneered. “But you must learn to obey me nonetheless.”
Their quarreling grew constant. Her father stayed neutral whenever they fought, never weighingin—
“That must have stung.”
“What? No. Why?” Startled, I spoke so loudly that Sam drew an inch or two away. We’d been huddled close together in the darkness, and I’d shouted almost directly in his ear. “It wasn’t like he took her side,” I continued in a quieter voice. And tugged him back again; cold air was already filtering into the gap betweenus.
“If you don’t take sides in an argument between a parent and a child,” Sam replied, “doesn’t it basically mean you’ve sided with the adult? That’s who has all the authority. It’s not a fair fight.”
I spent a few moments thinking about that. “Maybe,” I said. I’d always laid the blame for the miseries of my childhood on my stepmother. It had never occurred to me that my father might have had some culpability as well, if only through inaction. “I’m sure he was trying his best,” I told Sam. “Anyway, it hardly matters now.”
The years passed by, one after another, and Melilot learned medicine from her father and also, albeit reluctantly, sorcery and statecraft from her stepmother—although she was never particularly good at either magic or politics. She grew to love Jonquil and Calla as sisters. But she always remembered the words of her mother, and she never gave the queen her trust.
Her father was sorely grieved by the rift between the two. It wore on him and aged him beyond his years. He grew frail and weary, and no one was shocked when, not so much as a decade after his remarriage, he followed his first wife into death.
“I’m sorry.” Sam gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “About your father and mother, both.”
“It’s all right. It was years ago.” After the slightest of pauses, I added, “But thank you, even so.”
