The Safe-Keeper's Secret Read online

  Often she was amazed at how well they had been designed for each other. His father’s farm—which Cal, an only child, would inherit—was situated just outside of town on the northern edge. It was private enough for someone who wanted to consult with a Safe-Keeper, but close enough to town that it was not hard to reach. His steady income from farming and raising cattle would mean she would not have to worry when troubled visitors arrived at her door, whispering, “I cannot pay you. I have nothing to give.” And since farming was a job that took a man’s time, often from sunup till sundown, Fiona would be alone enough to make visitors feel comfortable about creeping in to tell their secrets.

  They were truly meant for each other, although Calbert did not seem to know it yet.

  Fiona sometimes thought she should wait till they were both much older—eighteen and sixteen, perhaps—before she let him know how much she loved him and how well suited they were. But then she worried that some other girl might snatch him up first—Megan Henshaw, most likely, because all you had to do was look at her smooth, scheming face and know that she was already planning her wedding down to the last fall of lace. Therefore, most of the time Fiona thought she should tell him now, as soon as she could, so he realized where his future lay and began to prepare for it. Even so, she might not have approached him that day in late autumn except that circumstances combined to put them alone together for a few moments, and Fiona seized the opportunity when she had it.

  It had not, on the face of it, been a propitious day. Cal had arrived late that morning, sauntering in with a little half-sneer on his face, nodding in acknowledgment when his friends greeted him with whistles and cheers. Miss Elmore, who had been outlining a mathematical problem to the ten-and eleven-year-olds, did not at first respond to his arrival, just finished her long explanation. Fiona reacted, though; her breath caught slightly in her throat and her heart fluttered a moment behind her ribs. From the corner of her eye, she watched Cal take his seat, stretch out his long legs before him, and toss out a laughing comment to his admirers.

  Miss Elmore was still talking. “Very well. I want you to solve the problems I’ve written on the board. No talking to each other, mind, and no cheating! Calbert,” she said, almost with no change in inflection and turning casually in his direction, “what was the crisis that kept you from our presence so long this morning?”

  None of the ten-year-olds began work yet on their math problems, just held their pencils suspended above their papers. Everybody in the room wanted to hear the answer to this.

  “Am I late?” Cal asked outrageously, drawling the words. “Stupid rooster. It doesn’t seem to know morning from night anymore.”

  “Blaming a farm animal. That doesn’t seem right,” Miss Elmore replied. “I think you need to take a little more responsibility for your own actions.”

  “Well, I’m responsible for feeding him. Maybe if I let him go hungry a few mornings he’ll wake up a little faster.”

  The boys sitting around him laughed. Fiona smiled. Miss Elmore was not amused.

  “Maybe if I let you sit inside for a few lunch periods you’ll learn how to get here a little faster,” she said.

  Calbert scowled. “I’m not staying in at lunch.”

  Miss Elmore shrugged. “Or you can stay an hour after class for three days. Your choice.”

  Cal couldn’t stay after class, and everyone knew it, since his father required him to be home in time to help with evening chores. Cal’s father actually wasn’t entirely sure an education was what his boy needed, and public opinion pretty much assumed that Cal stayed in school only to spite his father. At times like these, Fiona worried that Miss Elmore’s strictness might make Cal decide that working full time on the farm was better than spending half his life in class.

  But Cal was too imperturbable to let on if Miss Elmore had bested him. He shrugged and settled back more comfortably in his chair. “Fine. I’ll sit in at lunch. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Good,” said Miss Elmore briskly. “Now. While the younger children work on math, I want the rest of you to sit and listen. I’m going to read you a story written by a royal scribe in Wodenderry.”

  Fiona half listened to the story Miss Elmore read, but she wasn’t too engaged by the tale. She put more of her attention on the arithmetic. She didn’t think she had completed her addition correctly on at least three of the problems, and she wished Reed was sitting close enough so that she could surreptitiously show him her paper and he could indicate her success by a smile or a frown. But she was sitting near the back and Reed was in the front row. Miss Elmore had separated them three weeks ago for just such an infraction. So she sighed and looked over the problems again, trying to drown out the sound of Miss Elmore’s voice.

  Once the reading was over, the entire classroom turned to history and geography, and then they were all given writing assignments modulated by grade. Lunchtime couldn’t come fast enough after that, and they all spilled out into the dirt clearing that served as their play area when they weren’t trapped inside.

  Fiona took her lunch with a couple of the girls in her class, eating the bread and cheese and apple that her mother had packed for her the night before. She would have preferred to eat with Reed, but he always gobbled everything down in five minutes and then ran off somewhere with his friends. She could always hear them thrashing about in the woods nearby, or yodeling out insults, or throwing things that might not have done much damage but always generated a great deal of noise.

  Today she had just finished her meal when Reed materialized beside her, a long red scratch weeping blood along his forearm. “Reed! What did you do?”

  “Caught it on a branch,” he said, not overly concerned. “Do you have something I can wrap it with?”

  “No, but Miss Elmore probably does,” she said. “I’ll go ask.”

  “That doesn’t look like a branch mark. That looks like you got caught on a thorn,” Fiona heard one of the other girls say.

  “Do you think it’s poisonous?” Reed asked. He said it as if that would please him.

  Fiona didn’t hear what the other girls replied because she was already inside the schoolhouse. A few steps down the hall and she was turning into the upper-grade room.

  Where Miss Elmore was nowhere to be found, but Cal Seston was making his presence felt.

  He was standing on a chair in front of the blackboard, drawing naughty pictures in chalk. He spun around when he heard the door open, and then relaxed when he saw it was only Fiona. He grinned at her.

  “Thought you might be the old witch,” he said.

  Fiona studied the illustrations, mostly crude images of naked women. The subject matter didn’t offend her, but she wished he’d shown a little more artistic ability. This must be the first thing she’d come across that Cal wasn’t good at. “She’ll know you’re the one who did it,” was all she said.

  “Nah. I’ll tell her I fell asleep and they were on the board when I woke up. Someone trying to make me look bad.”

  “She won’t believe you.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care what she thinks.”

  She admired that level of self-assurance; she tried not to care what people thought, but sometimes she still did. “Where did she go?”

  He hopped down from the chair and was standing so close to her she could smell the soap and sweat on his body. “She didn’t bother to tell me. What do you want her for?”

  Reed’s cut was not deep and he rarely bothered to stop for small wounds, anyway. Fiona doubted he was even still waiting for her to return to the playfield. “Oh—I had a question for her. But I’d rather talk to you,” she said in a rush.

  He folded his arms and leaned back against the board. “Me! I’m not good at answering questions.”

  She smiled at him. “Not a math question or a history question, silly. I just wanted to know if you’d ever—if you thought—if you realized—I think you and I were meant to be together.”

  It took a moment for him to digest th
e words; she watched his face change as he understood and considered them. “What do you mean, together?” he asked presently. “Like, you want me to kiss you? Go to the festivals with you? Stuff like that?”

  “That would be fun,” she agreed. “But I meant—forever. We were meant to get married and live together and have children and spend our lives with each other.”

  There was a moment of blank silence, and then he hooted with laughter. “I’m not going to marry you!” he exclaimed.

  “Not now, of course,” she said patiently. “But you—”

  “Not ever!” he broke in. “You’re a bastard child! No one is going to marry you! And you’re ugly, too, with that pale face and those funny eyes. I’d give you a kiss or two if you really wanted, but I wouldn’t court you for real. Nobody will. You don’t have a father or a name. Or enough of a face to make up for it.”

  Fiona stared at him and could not speak.

  He stared back at her a moment and then laughed again. “Damn,” he said. “This day’s getting crazier all the time.” He pushed past her and walked back toward his seat.

  Fiona stared at the place on the blackboard where his body had just been. It seemed to shimmer and be on the point of dissolving. Her ears seemed to be expanding and contracting, allowing sound in and then shutting it off in an uncertain rhythm. She thought there might be the sound of footsteps crossing the room, but with the unreliability of her hearing she could not be sure.

  “She thought I might want to marry her,” Cal said from behind her. So someone else must have entered the room. Fiona closed her eyes in mortification. She had thought it could not get worse, but if Calbert was going to repeat every word she said—

  “I heard her,” said a quiet voice.

  Fiona opened her eyes. Reed. She did not turn around.

  “You’re a brat and a nuisance, but at least you’ve got royal blood in you. A man doesn’t mind talking to you,” Cal said. “But she’s loony. And she’s never going to get a husband, let alone me.”

  Reed’s voice was soft, easy, the voice he used when he was fishing in earnest and didn’t want to startle away his prospects. “My mom’s friends with the witch down the road,” he said. “Elminstra? You know her?”

  “She’s loony, too,” Cal said.

  “If I asked her to, she’d give me a potion for warts and hives. She’d give me a potion that would make your skin itch and flake off and turn bloody when you scratched it. She’d give me a potion that would make your hair fall out and never grow back. Or worse,” Reed said.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Cal said sullenly.

  “If you ever say another word about my sister—to her, or to anybody else—I’ll get every single one of those potions from Elminstra, and more besides,” said Reed. “I’ll put one in your milk one day, and spread one on your chair another day. I’ll spill one on your head when you’re walking home from school and I’m sitting up in a tree hanging over the road. If you ever say a word about my sister, or to my sister, you’ll be sorry I didn’t find the potion that would make you curl up on your daddy’s farm and die.”

  This second silence was even more profound.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” Cal said at last.

  “Good,” Reed said and walked the remaining few feet across the room till he was at Fiona’s side. “Did you find something to tie up my arm?” he asked.

  Still staring at the blackboard, she shook her head. Reed added, “Well, let’s look for Miss Elmore, then. It’s still bleeding.” And he put his hand on her shoulder, turned her toward the door, and walked between her and the sight of Cal Seston until they were out of the room.

  She was crying by the time they got to the hallway, and so blinded with tears that she couldn’t blunder her way out the door to the dirt clearing. Reed led her in the other direction anyway, out the front door to the narrow porch overlooking the road that led away from school, back to home and safety. All of the other children were out back, so they sat together on the porch, Reed with his arm around Fiona, Fiona sobbing wretchedly.

  “He said—he said—” she choked out and his arm tightened.

  “I heard him,” Reed replied.

  “Why would anybody be so mean?” she wailed.

  “Cal Seston’s a rat and a bully. Everybody knows it. Everybody but all the girls,” he added somewhat bitterly.

  “But why would he say those things?”

  “Because he likes to hurt people. Because he thinks it’s funny.”

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she moaned.

  “He won’t tell anybody.”

  “He will.”

  “He won’t. Or I’ll give him a rash in places where he didn’t know he could itch.”

  Fiona giggled through a sob. “What if he didn’t believe you?”

  “Well, then, he’ll find out, won’t he?”

  Fiona lifted her head, which she had burrowed into Reed’s shoulder. “Don’t you,” she begged, “don’t you tell anyone how stupid I was.”

  He kissed her on the cheek. “I won’t,” he said. “Not a word.”

  And he never did.

  Chapter Six

  They were all together again for Wintermoon, Angeline arriving in company with Thomas, and Isadora brought to the Safe-Keeper’s cottage by a Cranfield merchant who had been only too happy to do a favor for the Dream-Maker. It was the most joyous holiday of the year, though it took place on the coldest, darkest day, and Fiona and her mother had been baking for days in preparation.

  There were pies made from dried summer apples, and sweet hard cookies. There were three kinds of bread and two varieties of cake. They had made blackberry tarts and blueberry tarts, and Fiona had suggested they make kirrenberry tarts as well.

  “Ugh. No. They have a very bitter taste,” her mother had said.

  “I thought we could give one to Thomas. And maybe it would turn him silent for a day,” Fiona said.

  Damiana choked and started laughing. “Make him some kirrenberry tea and see if he drinks it,” she said through her laughter. “It would have the same effect.”

  But of course Fiona didn’t.

  Everyone arrived at once, Angeline and Thomas from the west, Isadora from the east, and they all hurried into the house to get warm. Everyone was loaded down with bundles—clothes for a few days’ stay, of course, as well as the traditional gifts of the holiday—and all the travelers carried inside with them the sweet, clean scent of winter.

  “My, I don’t remember a winter so cold in at least ten years,” Isadora exclaimed. “Poor Helwick, he’d loaded up his wagon with hot bricks for my feet, and he kept asking me if I was warm enough, but of course I wasn’t. I finally snapped at him, ‘Well, it would be a dream come true if the whole cart caught fire right now and I could get warm all over.’ So the whole rest of the trip he kept looking around, afraid everything in the wagon was going to go up in flames.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it would snow,” said Angeline.

  “It would be worse!” Thomas replied. “Then it would be cold and wet, and your trip back to Lowford would be even slower than your trip here.”

  “But at least it would be pretty,” Damiana said.

  “Till the horses churned it up and your kids mucked it up and it melted and froze a few more times—”

  “He’s in a fine mood,” Damiana observed to her sister. “Was he like this the whole way from Lowford?”

  Angeline grinned. “He doesn’t like the cold.”

  “Well, it’s warm inside,” Damiana said. “Everybody get your things settled in. Fiona and I will put dinner on the table.”

  Since the six of them had celebrated Wintermoon together for as long as Fiona could remember, everyone knew exactly where their bundles belonged. Reed had already been moved to Fiona’s room, to sleep on a mat on the floor; Angeline would sleep in his bed. Isadora, who claimed she could not climb stairs of any kind, would sleep on the sofa in the
main room. Thomas would stow his gear in Damiana’s own room, as he always did. The house would be full, but merry.

  After the meal, which was delicious, they gathered in the main room to begin decorating the house. Fiona and Reed had spent the last two days roaming the woods to find the proper boughs—oak for strength, birch for beauty, cedar for serenity, evergreen for steadfastness, rowan for faith—and they had brought them all back to make a huge pile in the middle of the main room. They would weave all the branches together—the thin, bare limbs of the wood twined with the supple bright strands of evergreen—to make ropes to wind over every surface or dangle above every doorway. They would save the best branches, of course, for the big wreath that would hang over the fireplace until Wintermoon night.

  The women had hoarded ribbons and scraps from sewing projects all year, and these were used to bind the branches and add their own magic and memories. “Lace from a young girl’s wedding gown—that’s for hope,” Angeline said, dropping her contribution into the pile.

  “Red ribbon from Fiona’s winter dress—that’s for merriment,” said Damiana.

  “Gold thread for riches,” said Isadora.

  “Blue silk for summer,” said Fiona.

  Thomas, who did most of the work of binding and hanging the branches, rarely had actual items to contribute, but this year he pulled out a long strand of twine hung with tiny brass bells. “Given to me by an unfriendly merchant who found my revelations less than appealing,” Thomas said with a little smile. “He said I should always wear these wrapped like a collar around my neck, so that everyone could hear me coming and prepare.”

  Damiana and Angeline laughed at that, though Fiona didn’t think it was so funny. Who would want to be the kind of person whose arrival made everyone apprehensive?

  “What shall they represent?” Angeline asked.

  Thomas raised his eyebrows at that, as if the answer “truth” was so obvious that he didn’t need to state it. But Damiana took hold of the long string of bells and shook them to a sweet frenzy. “Let them stand for celebration,” she said, and they all agreed.