Page 25

Yudit scurried off to find the fairy. When she reached the well, she was not in the best of moods.

“Hello, small child!” the fairy welcomed Yudit as she drew up the bucket. This time, the fairy had disguised herself as a lovely princess in a glittering gown. “Might I trouble you for—”

“GO AWAY!” Yudit shrieked. “I DON’T WANT YOUR DUMB GIFT, YOU DUMB ROUGH SLOUCHING BEAST! I’M ONLY HERE BECAUSE MY DUMB OLDER SISTER SAID I HAD TO!”

The fairy frowned. “You are a very rude girl. Since you do not want a gift, I will give you a curse instead. From now on, plants shall wither wherever you go, and toads will leap out of your mouth! Not just toads—frogs as well! Frogs and toads and…and other loathsome, unpleasant amphibians!”

Yudit ran off, leaving a trail of dead and withered plants in her wake. When she went to Gruoch and reported what had happened, however, her oldest sister was not as displeased as might have been expected.

“I can work with that,” she thought aloud. “It’s nae as profitable as endless gems, but it’s a handy way tae destroy mah neighbors’ crops if they gie me any trouble. I’ll tell the next child tae be mair polite, though. Civility clearly yields a better value.”

So Drusilla was sent out with strict instructions to be on her best behavior. When she gave the fairy a drink, she asked for a gift which would allow her to hide alone in the wilderness, far from the domineering duchess. She was given the power to cover tracks so well that neither bird nor beast could follow them.

Alexandra told the fairy she was always hungry; thanks to the duchess’s impractical staff recruitment policies, the castle cooks were incapable of producing an edible dish. The fairy gave Alexandra the power to eat anything.

Winifred went next and spent her time complaining about the dark, dreary castle she was forced to live in. She was gifted with the power to make windows into somewhat larger windows. One must imagine the fairy was beginning to tire at that point.

No one is certain what passed between Nicki and the fairy. Nicki had always been the quietest of the children, and she kept her story to herself. Conclusions can perhaps be drawn from the fact that Nicki suffered from severe hay fever and ended up with the power to make anyone sneeze.

Finally, just as night was about to fall, Gruoch commanded her precocious five-year-old son to go to the well.

“My goodness! There seem to be a great number of human children,” the fairy groused after she’d taken her sip of water. “I may have severely underestimated the scope of my project. Tell me, little boy, how many children are there in the world? Is it a lot?”

“Och, aye!” Lulach confirmed. “Dozens and dozens.”

The fairy went pale. “Dozens? Dear me, that would take far too long. I’d be giving out gifts and curses for days. No, you shall be the last. Seven is a good, traditional number, and I must make myself content with that.”

“All richt,” Lulach warbled agreeably.

“Now, what is it that delights you most? And please do tell me what delights you instead of whining about bad cooks or small windows or what have you. I’m sick of hearing it.”

Lulach didn’t have to pause to think. “I like fish.”

“Fish?”

“Fish! Thare are mair different kinds of fish than thare are different kinds of mammals and birds and lizards all together, and the dwarf pygmy goby is only a third of an inch long, and the only fish that can blink are sharks and mudskippers, and a flounder haes both eyes oan the same side of its heid, and—”

“Fine!” the fairy cut him off. “Fish! Got it! From now on, you shall be able to turn into a great big flounder. My work here is done.” With a sigh of relief, the fairy snapped her fingers and vanished from the human realm forevermore.

The duchess was disappointed that only Jules returned with the ability to regurgitate riches, but other than that, she was not dissatisfied with the results. True, she couldn’t conceive of any immediate uses for covering tracks or enlarging windows, but she imagined opportunities might present themselves with time. She made the children swear to keep their powers secret, and schemed of the best ways to put them to use.

However, she had not foreseen how many difficulties she might have raising seven superpowered children.

Some of the problems were on the milder side. Winifred stomped around in a constant tantrum, frustrated that there were only two windows in the entire castle. Especially since neither was in her bedchamber, which was as dark and gloomy as ever. Alexandra took to devouring not only her meals, but the plates and silverware that came with them. And while no one could ever pin the blame on Nicki for certain, a surprising number of sneezes occurred at the most embarrassing times possible. Right in the middle of long speeches from visiting nobles or fervent flirtations between lovestruck townsfolk.

Lulach and Drusilla began vanishing for days on end, the first to the sea and the second to the forest. Five gardeners quit one after another when, thanks to Yudit, they arrived at work to find all their efforts had been accidentally destroyed. And on the very first night after receiving the fairy’s gift, Jules nearly died in bed—half-smothered in an overgrowth of delphiniums, nasturtiums, foxglove, and phlox. Philodendrons had crawled into Jules’s nostrils, and wisteria had climbed down the poor child’s throat. If Yudit hadn’t stopped by to ask why Jules had skipped breakfast, there’d have been nothing left but a riot of flowers growing on a suffocated corpse.

The duchess met each of these challenges with strict rules and a wicked tongue. Any tantrum, any unexcused absence, any breach of secrecy, any forks eaten, any sneeze—whether it could be proven to be Nicki’s fault or otherwise—was met with fearsome diatribes about the children’s lack of intelligence and poor self-control. As for Jules and Yudit, they were commanded to share the same bedroom and stick close together at all times, much to their mutual horror and dismay.

They spent the next few years furious with Gruoch and furious with each other. Yudit resented the intrusion into her privacy. Jules dreaded having to listen to Yudit’s adolescent poetry, and also suffered from a constant, agonizingly sore throat due to the duchess’s relentless demands for wealth. All in all, Jules felt that life could not possibly be any worse.

An opinion that had to be revised when the kidnappings began.

Chapter Eleven

Swamped

I clung to Sunbeam, my arms around his neck as a wave three times my height crested overhead. We were drawn up into the swell, lifted toward the roiling foam at the top. Lightning cracked across the sky. The roar of thunder left my ears ringing. A fierce wind drove blinding rain into my face, but it couldn’t get me any wetter than I already was.