And then I wonder what it might contain.
But no time to open it now, so after a brief moment’s deliberation, I grab it and swing the strap over my shoulder, then I hurry into one of the stinky streets branching off the square.
The Burrows, my neighborhood, is a stone’s throw away. Running through the muddy paths that pass for streets in the shantytown, past hovels with holes in their reed roofs and hopping over rivulets of filth, I turn another corner and there’s our door.
It whines loudly when I shove it open and step inside. Breathing out a sigh of relief at having made it, I spin around to close it, leaning against it.
I’m home.
“Aline!” a woman calls out from the dark depths of our little house. “Is that you?”
“Yes, I’m here!”
“Where have you been?”
With a sigh, I unsling the leather satchel and the cloth bag from my aching shoulders and trudge through the long room that constitutes the entirety of our home. The fire is burning at the other end and smoke laces the air as it makes its way through the hole in the roof, mingling with the aroma of the herbs hung to dry on hooks on the walls.
“I brought some apples,” I say, lowering the bag on the table, casting a furtive glance at the narrow bed where Brogan lies and the figure of Naida bent over him, fussing with his covers. “It would do him good to eat something fresh.”
Naida. I’ve never called hermotherbut that’s what she is to me. The only mother I’ve ever known.
“I’ve told you many times not to steal.” She sounds weary. The face she lifts to look at me is young, but with the fae, that doesn’t mean much. Her hair, pulled back at the nape, is starting to turn gray, her fae ears cutting through it like blades. “We make do.”
“Do we?” I reply more sharply than I’d intended. Struggling to control my emotions, I empty my cloth bag on the table, catching the apples before they roll off. Then I turn toward my pallet… and freeze.
“Greetings, little sister.” The tall, slender figure of my brother, Eiras, detaches itself from the shadows. He grins at me, revealing those sharp teeth of fae kind. His pointed ears poke through his pale blond hair. His nose is crooked where he broke it as a young boy falling down some steps. “You weren’t here when I arrived.”
“Was I supposed to sit around and let us starve while you were off wandering?”
His grin falls and his mouth tightens. “Aline...”
“Nice of you to finally show up,” I grumble under my breath, glaring. Reaching my pallet, I drop the satchel on the thin mattress and sit down cross-legged. “You’ve been gone for ages.”
“Missed me, huh?”
I harrumph to avoid giving him a reply. I need a moment to tamp down my initial blast of anger.
It’s not that I don’t know what he does out there. He works the odd job, moving from farmstead to farmstead, bringing back food, clothes, and sometimes coin. I shouldn’t resent hisabsences, but it’s hard not to when we’re so hard up and he isn’t around to help. After racing for my life through the city for three apples, I admit I resent his easygoing attitude.
“I brought enough this time,” he says more softly. “We’ll be set for a while.”
“And after that?”
“Come on now.” Casting a frown my way, he sits at the table, grabbing one of the apples. “At least pretend you’re happy to see me, little sister.”
Aware of Naida’s reproving look, I rub the smooth leather of the satchel strap and take my brother in. He looks tired. He probably walked for days to reach the capital. He’s older than me, a fae obviously, light where I’m dark, tall where I’m short. He has fae magic, the non-threatening, life-growing kind, faint and gentle, more of an aid than a weapon. It’s a gift he received from Brogan, who is his natural father.
As for me, I wasn’t born to this family. That much is obvious. This is a fae family, and I’m a human foundling. Naida has told me the story quite a few times, how she heard me squalling inside the library and decided to keep me the moment she laid eyes on me. When I was younger, I often asked to hear it. So I was taken in and raised alongside Eiras.
And things were fine for a long time. We have been well off, for the Burrows’ standards, always with food on the table and new shoes when the old ones got too worn. Brogan took good care of us, and I grew up learning the tales Naida, the best storyteller in the land, if you believe the rumors, taught me. All the great legends and myths, all the folktales and tall tales. All the stories recorded in the books and a few that aren’t.
Her knowledge cannot afford us a living, of course. It’s different if you’re on the road, touring the towns and villages and performing, without a family depending on you, without having to stay rooted in the stinking Burrows. Storytelling became apresent she gave to me, a knowledge passed down through generations.
Then, for a while, she was a librarian at the palace, right here, in Siris. That was before my time and before Brogan had his accident. I don’t know why she left that post.
Thankfully, she also knows about herbs and curing ailments, the only way she can earn any coin nowadays, and that’s another boon she has bestowed on me.
Things, as I was saying, were fine while Brogan was in good health and working in construction. We had enough to live on, until one of his legs stopped working. A curse, probably cast by rogue, dark fae hiding out in the woods, which landed him in bed. They are a plague, coming down from the mountains where they hide to snatch cattle and abduct maidens or young men, demanding ransom coin or carrying them off to their caves, never to be seen again. These aren’t tales Naida tells me; these are stories circulating on the street, and I have no doubt they are true.
