“Wrong again,” she called back. “Tell me what you do remember.”
I didn’t have to tell her anything. I could turn the other direction, toward the village, as I’d planned.
So why was a voice inside telling me to follow her? Telling me she might have answers to questions I’d stopped asking long ago but had never forgotten? The farther she walked, the stronger that feeling tugged.
Follow her.
I looked to the east, toward the village.
Follow her.
I looked at Mrs. Crossey, making steady progress. The distance between us widened.
Follow her.
Hiking my bag up to my shoulder, I hurried down the slope.
“Tell me the first thing you remember.” She didn’t look at me when I fell in step beside her or act the least bit surprised that I’d joined her, as if there had never been any question I would.
“The day I arrived at Chadwick Hollow, I suppose.”
Yes, I’d given in, but she hadn’t won. I was only playing along. I had my bag, and once I discovered what she knew—if anything—I’d still head for the village. She hadn’t changed my mind. Only delayed me a little.
“It was my ninth birthday.” May tenth, 1850.
I had replayed those hours in my mind so many times over the years, searching for clues to my past. I was sitting in Headmistress Trindle’s office, staring at her desk. She was speaking, but I was more interested in two boxes in front of me. One, polished mahogany with shiny brass fittings, and another, a dull wooden cube with the faded image of a girl lacquered to its lid.
When the headmistress noticed my distraction, she told me the boxes were tea caddies. She’d received the newer one as a gift from grateful parents who’d just adopted one of my classmates. The other would be given to the charitable society, where all old but still useful things went.
The memory then jumps to that night as I crawled into my cot and the headmistress caught me stuffing that old caddy into a crevice between my mattress and the wall. When she asked why I had it, I confessed I’d taken it from her desk and hidden it under my coat.
“You can’t send the little girl away,” I’d said. “She’ll be all alone in the world. It wouldn’t be fair.”
The headmistress mulled that for a moment then said, “No one is ever really alone in the world. And it seems you’re in luck. Since today is your birthday, you may keep it. Consider it a gift. But don’t let me catch you taking things that don’t belong to you again. Do you promise?”
I’d nodded, and I kept that promise. I never stopped taking trinkets that caught my fancy, but she never caught me again.
“Nine years old, and nine years ago,” Mrs. Crossey muttered to herself. She nibbled the tip of her thumb and counted to herself, “Forty-one? No, it couldn’t. Maybe?”
“Why is it important?” It certainly wasn’t to me.
She stopped and stared at me. “It’s important because your mother must have been a Fayte Guardian.”
“A what?”
“A member of the Order of the Fayte. Like me. Like many of us in the castle.”
Was that a joke? A test? “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. We’re very careful about that.” She sniffed with pride. “The Fayte Guardians are servants in the truest sense of the word and have been for nearly two thousand years. We’re protectors, you see. Present yet unnoticed and always prepared to act.” She frowned. “At least we were. Before this blasted efficiency campaign.”
Alarm bells clamored inside me like the bells of St. George’s Chapel on Sunday morning, and in my distraction, I stepped on a pebble, its sharp edge stabbing through the thin sole of my boots. I winced and limped and made more of the pain than was necessary because I didn’t know what to say to her madness.
“You are a Guardian, too,” she said, watching my theatrics. “Just like your mother.”
I stopped. There was that word again. Mother. “Do you know something about her?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Only that a gift such as yours passes from mother to daughter,” she said. “So, it stands to reason that your mother possessed it, which would make her one of us.”
“A Guardian?”
“A Fayte Guardian. Yes.” She straightened and looked pleased with herself, probably thinking I believed her.
I let it pass and instead stared at the misty hills and darkening clouds. I didn’t want to argue, not if she held some clue to my past.
“Tell me,” she said, “do you remember anything about her? Your mother, I mean. Anything at all?”
How many times had I tried to conjure something from my past? A face, a touch, a voice. I’d tried everything and failed. “Nothing.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Ida mentioned it. No matter. There are other ways.”
“Other ways of what?”
“Tracing the bloodline. The Fayte track such things. Births, unions, the emergence of gifts. There are records that could be consulted, should you wish it. Once this matter with the Queen is resolved.”
It had been so long since I’d indulged the desire to know my parents. But here was a chance.
I was tempted, to be sure. But only for a moment.
The woman was clearly playing me for a fool. There were no Fayte Guardians or records. These were fantasies she’d probably invented to trick me. I didn’t know why she would concoct such insanity, but it hardly mattered. I couldn’t stay, and it should have been as clear to her as it was to me. I’d slammed the door on that possibility when I fled the House Steward’s office.
Besides, it didn’t matter what she knew or didn’t about my family, did it? I was doing fine on my own. I shook my head. “That won’t be necessary. The past means nothing to me.”
A question formed on her face, then faded. “Of course. This isn’t the time to drudge up the past. Not when you have your future to consider.”
“My future?”
“I can see you’re
