When Aster kissed his cheek, she tucked a sylke flower into the buttonhole of his jacket so that he might think of her, and Arris pictured her walking down an aisle toward him, borne aloft by the ethereal sylke blooms of her wedding bouquet. Miella smelled of honey and cinnamon, and Arris imagined that perhaps each year they would exchange pots of honey. Eyolda reminded him of a lissome shadow, and he imagined following her into the dark. Zanaza’s charming laugh rang in his ears long after she walked away, and hedreamt of a child sounding like her. He thought of tracing his finger down the curious scar of Flykra’s neck and Heka’s warm breath on his cheek and what it would feel like to touch the pink silk of Edmea’s hair.
Arris wanted, wanted, wanted.
20Ursula’s Secret
A few days after the first trial, Demelza woke to a piercing howl. She bolted upright in bed. Every time she woke up in the mushroom residences, Demelza imagined she was in Hush Manor. She pictured waking up in the library with a rare book nuzzling her fingers, her father’s latest research assignment waiting beside a steaming cup of tea.
It was odd to dream of such things when her dreams before Rathe Castle had always been the same. In them, she would wake and stretch her arms and then gasp in shock at the sudden weight on her back throwing her off balance. In those dreams, Demelza saw the sprawling shadow of swan wings on the floor before she realized they were hers.
But Demelza had not dreamt of swan wings in some time. Of late, her dreams seemed infinite. Sometimes she was a crone tending to a cottage garden. Sometimes she ruled an empire that the stars trembled to behold. Sometimes she was surrounded by strangers. Sometimes she was ensconced in her family nest, where her mother andsisters laughed at Prava’s pitiful attempts during a game of charades.
When Demelza heard the howl, she thought she had imagined it. But she knew she wasn’t imagining the sudden brightness in her room. Splashed along the walls was a familiar, shifting emerald light. Was she so homesick that she had conjured the precise fragrance of Prava’s library? She could smell her mother’s perfume of oleander and honeysuckle. She caught the scorched book smell that filled the room every time the library wyvern had a nightmare…
But how?
Demelza turned to her right and saw that a tear had been rent into the stone wall. It was quite slender, no more than the span of one’s hand, but through it Demelza could see—
“Home,” she breathed.
A figure flickered past the tear in the wall. Demelza thought she saw a ripple of the library wyvern’s inky fur. And then:
“Demelza? Child? Is that… is that you?”
Demelza was convinced she was still dreaming. She reached a trembling hand to the wall only for another howl to rip through the room. She startled, her gaze whipping to the door. A dream? It couldn’t be… it was too real. Even now, the scorched smell of paper lingered heavily in her room. Unbidden, her father’s voice found her.
“The stones of Rathe Castle and Hush Manor taunt me terribly… They whisper, you know, for siblings talk…”
Siblings.
Demelza wished to think longer on this, but the howl had yanked her back to her surroundings. She grabbed her robe and ran into the sitting room. A blonde bear sat in a wreckage of what appeared to be various cushions, several glass bowls full of cream, broken eggs and at least a hundred lemons.
“RIGHT IN MY EYE!” she howled, tumbling to the floor and pawing miserably at her snout, only to bellow and wave her left paw in the air. “AND A SPLINTER? I HATE SPLINTERS.”
Talvi stepped out of her room and stared at them.
“This is a terrible dream, yes?” she asked.
“Ursula!” said Demelza. “What… honestly, what am I looking at?”
Ursula flopped onto her belly. “I got hungry.”
“How!” said Talvi. “The kitchens started leaving bread, fruit and cheese downstairs because of your petition!”
“But I didn’t want that,” said Ursula miserably. “I wanted lemon cake. And it was going fine, but lemon juice got in my eye and I got startled and then a wooden spoon broke and now…” Ursula held out her paw. “And now I have a splinter. I’ve been trying to get it out on my own for the past hour. Someone else has to do it.”
Talvi looked around the room. Her gaze lingered on the ripped cushion. She scowled and tightened her robe around her. In that moment, Talvi reminded Demelza of her sister Corisande. Corisande was the sweetest of her sisters. In her spare time, she was always bandaging the limbs of broken animals or soothing one of the ghost servants when theyhad to endure their death anniversary. Corisande always had time for everyone… except if she was woken up before she was done resting.
Then she was downright ferocious.
Prava, who had once gotten it into his head that their family ties would be stronger if they went on early-morning hikes through the moors, made the mistake of waking Corisande with a small trumpet. The shrieking honk she let out in her fury made the foundations of the nest tremble and turned the fur of the wyvern hare white for an entire day out of pure shock. Corisande didn’t even remember getting upset. When she finally awoke at a more reasonable hour, she laughed as she spread beetle jam on her toast and told them all about how she had the silliest dream.
After that, Prava decided they would do evening puzzles as a family instead.
“Ursula, I cannot remove your splinter as I, firstly, have no wish to be decapitated and, secondly, am so sleepy I am convinced that I am a figment of my own imagination,” said Talvi. She turned to go back to her room, but then looked over her shoulder at Ursula, who pitifully waved her wounded paw. Talvi snarled.
Demelza sighed and held out her hand. “All right, let’s see that splinter.”
“No,” said Ursula, reflexively tucking her paw against her chest.
