Spindle's End (19 page)

CHAPTER 11

Rosie had an additional reason for being doubtful about the move to town. While Barder was offering them their own house, his shop shared a courtyard with the wainwright, and the wainwright had a niece, Peony. Rosie had thought after Flinx’s dramatic meeting with Zogdob,
you’re
the lucky one, you’re allowed to run away.

Peony was nearly the same age as Rosie, and an only child in a house of adults not her parents, for she lived with her aunt and uncle. But there the similarity between them ended. Peony had long golden curls—although of a softer shade than Rosie’s short defiant hair—and limpid blue eyes that smiled even when her face was solemn. Grown-ups had never patronised her; she was too graceful and too self-possessed, even as a baby, and as she grew older she was too sweet-natured. Condescension would have slid right off her, like snow on a warm roof. She was rarely disobedient, and when she was, it was generally to do with her lingering to give delight or some more practical aid by her presence, when her aunt and uncle expected her to perform some errand quickly.

She could sew, cook, and clean; she wrote a good clear hand and did sums accurately. She could carry a tune, she could dance, and play upon what variety of musical instruments the village offered. She was also beautiful. (She had long curling golden eyelashes, although not so long as Rosie’s.) It was all too much. Rosie had thought so for years, and avoided her.

Nonetheless, they met up occasionally. The village was too small for everyone not to know each other, and furthermore, Peony was only seven months older than Rosie, and most grown-ups seemed to think that accidents of chronology should oblige children to get along. Rosie was too good-natured herself to hate anyone without serious cause, but in Peony’s case she had considered it. Rosie had heard rather too much about Peony’s manifold perfections from the village folk, especially after some one or another of Rosie’s more tactless imbroglios. It was all the harder for poor Rosie because she and Peony were the only girls of their age in Foggy Bottom; everyone else was several years older or younger.

Rosie’s good nature had been sorely tested when that particular implication of Barder’s suit sank in. Since all three grown-ups, Aunt, Katriona, and Barder himself, were watching her anxiously, they saw her start, and heard her grunt, as if from a physical blow, a few moments after the initial announcement. What they did not know was that the grunt was a valiantly suppressed “Next door to
Peony
? I’d rather live in Med’s old house, with the mould spirit. Maybe Lord Pren’s new tenant will need a cowherd.”

She’d managed to elude Peony during the busy weeks leading up to the wedding although Peony had often been underfoot, brightly offering to do anything she could do to help, and saying disgusting things to Rosie like, “Oh, I do hope we can be sisters.” Rosie had been able to pretend she hadn’t heard. She wouldn’t be able to go on ignoring her now that she actually lived here.

But the confrontation didn’t go as Rosie expected, although it had begun as unpromisingly as she could have desired. Everyone had slept late the day after the wedding (Rosie had staggered out to feed the cows and the chickens and then gone back to bed) and it was midmorning before Rosie ventured into the forecourt. She had been driven there by Aunt, who recognised Rosie’s lurking about the kitchen for what it was, and knew that Peony was outside doing her own hopeful lurking. “My dear,” said Aunt, with a sympathy Rosie couldn’t help but hear, “you are going to have to come to some kind of terms with her. I know she is—she is not at all like you. But she is probably not all bad, even if she is a paragon.”

Peony, of course, stopped whatever she had been doing, and came up to Rosie with her best, most winning smile, and said, “Well, now that all the fuss is over, perhaps we can begin to know each other.”

Rosie, looking for allies, had glanced around hopefully for Zogdob, but Zogdob was curled up at the very back of the courtyard, pretending to be asleep. “Um,” said Rosie unencouragingly, standing like a soldier on parade, back stiff and eyes straight ahead. She stood up as much as she could around Peony, because standing she was half a head taller than the older girl.

“You know,” said Peony thoughtfully, looking up at Rosie, “you have the longest eyelashes I have ever seen—”

“Get
dead
,” said Rosie furiously, abandoning her imitation of a statue: “I
hate
my eyelashes.”

Peony stared at her with her mouth open, and then she burst out laughing. She put her hand on Rosie’s arm, and to Rosie’s own astonishment she did not resent the touch; she heard in Peony’s laughter that Peony was as worried about her new neighbour as Rosie was about being her neighbour, and that Peony had been sure she would say the wrong thing to Rosie, and it was a great relief to have done so and got it over with. Rosie began to laugh, too.

Her chest felt tight from weeks of work and change and fear and resentment and hope, and the first laugh hurt; but then she pulled in a great deep breath that filled her right up, and she laughed with Peony till they both had to sit down, right where they were, in the middle of the forecourt, and Peony’s uncle, Crantab, had to shout at them to move out of the way. When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

 

Aunt and Katriona’s baby-magic boarders rose to an all-time high of seven within a month after the wedding and Peony’s suddenly ubiquitous presence in their household was seized on with a slightly desperate gratitude—even two full-grown fairies at the height of their powers might blanch at the prospect of seven baby-magic boarders at the same time, and their other work did not ease off just because their home life was in an uproar.

Peony was (of course) good with small children, delighted to be of service, and happy to wear a charm that Katriona made her so that she could help maintain some semblance of order. Even if the charm did make everything she ate while she was wearing it taste like sheep’s brains. She mentioned this, after about a fortnight, humbly, to Katriona, who said, “Oh, fates, I’m sorry, that happens sometimes.” She made a new one, and watched Peony closely at their next noon meal, but Peony wouldn’t catch her eye, busying herself with preventing Mona from scaring Tibby into bursting into tears by making goblin faces (complete with warty green skin and fangs) at her. When Tibby wept, the tears turned into all sorts of interesting things, most of which would make Tibby cry even harder.

The next midday Katriona drew Peony out into the courtyard, pulled the charm off over her head, and handed her a basket. “Go have your meal with Rosie at the forge.”

Peony blushed. “The new charm is better, really. It almost makes me like sheep’s brains.”

Katriona laughed. “I can cope alone for an hour. Go on or I’ll put wings on your heels and fly you there.”

Nearly three months after Peony began taking her noon meal at the forge, Rosie was returning home after a long day: determining whether Grey’s wheelhorse’s lameness behind was caused by sore back muscles
(I dunno,
said Kindeye, the horse:
It’s me ankle what hurts, but it—it do
echo
a bit, now you ask me)
or a mild-mannered riding horse’s head shaking by a tooth abscess
(My head buzzes, I don’t
like
it, make it
stop, said Yora distressfully) or if a mare visiting Lord Pren’s stud wouldn’t come into season because she didn’t like the stallion her owner wanted her bred to (
Hmph
was all she would say to Rosie about it).

She found Katriona turning the several hundred spiders mobbing the kitchen ceiling back into the grains of barley they had been before Mona turned them into spiders. Katriona was returning them to their original shape very neatly, in clusters, so that they fell into the basin she was holding under them,
taptaptaptap
. Peony, for once looking a little tousled and harried, was sitting at the table mending knees in very short trousers. When the ceiling was spider-free (nearly: “Oops!” said Katriona at one point. “Sorry, I didn’t realise you were a real one”), Katriona put the basin of barley on the table and sighed.

“Peony, love, you need some fresh air. Our little horrors are all asleep—or if they aren’t I’m going to blow sleep-smoke over them, and professional scruples can go hang for one evening—Rosie, why don’t you take Peony for a walk?”

They wandered down the road, away from the square, toward the crossroads where you had to choose either Woodwold or Smoke River. It was a hazy, damp night, and you could almost hear the fog-sprites giggling. It would rain by morning. Peony put her arm through Rosie’s and sighed.

“You’re in our house more than you’re in your own,” said Rosie, a little jealously.

Peony smiled. “I’m useful there.”

“You’re useful
everywhere
,” said Rosie feelingly but without animosity. “Don’t your uncle and aunt miss you?”

Peony was silent, and Rosie felt a sudden pang of doubt. “Peony?”

Peony sighed. “I’m so tired, I can’t . . . Haven’t you ever noticed the difference between your house and mine?”

“Yours is cleaner,” Rosie said promptly. Rosie was very popular with Peony’s aunt and uncle, because she had taken on the exasperating and painful job of bashing and lopping their suddenly riotous dja vine into some kind of order. This was an almost weekly job, and Rosie felt she now knew how warriors riding into battle against fire-wyrms must feel. Dja vines did not, it was true, breathe fire, but their temperament and their teeth were similar. Peony’s aunt, Hroslinga, made a point of inviting Rosie in after each of these hazardous undertakings, and pressing samples of the baker’s best cakes on her. Hroslinga was an earnest, anxious, fidgety woman who kept her house extravagantly clean (thanks to one of Katriona’s charms, any venturesome magic dust fell off at the front step, although this did mean the front step required a good deal of sweeping) and did beautiful sewing; Rosie was unable to carry much conversation on either of these subjects, but liked the cakes.

Peony gave a sort of half laugh, half cough. “Yes, it is cleaner. And quieter. And . . . my aunt and uncle took me in when my parents died; they’re brother and sister, you know that, don’t you? And my mother’s only relatives, and my father was from the south.” Rosie knew all this. “It never occurred to them to . . . escape the responsibility; they’re good people. They’ve raised me kindly and treat me well.”

“They should!” said Rosie, unable to remain silent.

“Ye-es. I suppose. And I’m useful to them, so it’s not as bad as it might be—”

“Oh, Peony,” said Rosie sadly.

Peony said drearily, “They don’t love me. Not the way Aunt and Katriona and Barder love you.”

There was a little silence, and then Rosie said, “
I
love you.”

Peony made the little half-laugh half-cough noise again, and in something more like her usual voice said: “Well, I told you we would be sisters, didn’t I? Oh, Rosie, I was
terrified
of you! You’re as tall as a man, and as strong, from all that time at the forge, and you were Narl’s
friend
! Everybody is a little afraid of Narl! And your aunt and your cousin are the two best fairies in the Gig, and you talk to animals better than any fairy anyone has ever heard of. You were going to despise me, I knew it!”

“I wouldn’t have dared. The whole village thinks you’re perfect.”

“Yes,” said Peony, all the energy draining away from her again, and in that soft monosyllable Rosie heard what her friend was trying to tell her, and her heart ached.

“There’ll be supper by the time we get back,” said Rosie, and Peony nodded. They returned to the wrights’ yard in silence, but Rosie had Peony firmly by the hand, and Peony did not resist when Rosie drew her indoors. A delicious steamy smell of meat and greens and boiled oats met them, and Katriona’s voice.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. In the first place,
seven
of the little monsters at the same time? And this—er—lively with it? There isn’t that much magic in Foggy Bottom—in the Gig—and Dackwith’s family, you know, has never had any magic in it ever, not even a third cousin who could clear a kettle. And usually—you know how it goes—all you have to do is herd them, like a sheepdog with sheep. Kids are usually pretty willing to be herded, underneath the tricks; as often as not they’re scared to death by what they can do and really want you to stop them even if they can’t help trying to do it anyway. Not this lot. Some days I’ve actually thought they were going to get away from me—like today, right, Peony?” She was ladling as she spoke, and Rosie and Peony sat down next to Joeb and Barder, Peony’s eyes lingering briefly on her charm, now hanging harmlessly on the wall, above Aunt’s spinning wheel. The little gargoyle face grinned as if it understood the joke.

Joeb sneezed. No one—including Joeb—had known he was allergic to magic dust till Aunt and Katriona had moved in. Aunt was providing him with free anti-dust charms, since it was her and Katriona’s fault that the wheelwright’s house was suddenly much fuller of dust than it had been, but finding precisely the right strength and proportions was proving difficult. Joeb was perfectly good-humoured about it, and they would get the charm right eventually. (Neither Aunt nor Katriona could think of anything to do about Barder’s mother’s habit of running a finger over some surface, whenever she came to visit, and then inspecting the inevitably dirty tip of it with the expression of a woman who has just found a toad in her soup.)

“And it’s not only the children, is it, Aunt?” said Katriona. “I was rite-keeping Shon’s new wheelhorse, and of course he’s risking it by waiting till he can come to Foggy Bottom to have a new animal rited, but the worst has never happened yet, has it? But this time I could feel the—the texture of the keeping trying to twist out of my hands. I’ve never seen nor felt anything like that either.”