“You really should tell them,” I plead for the thousandth time, my voice drifting through the narrow space of the cupboard, where it meets Bran’s finely shaped ears and disappears in the light of his room.
A sigh escapes through to my side.
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“You’ve been saying soon for months.”
“Soon always comes quicker than we think, Pirouette.”
“You have to give your parents time. To prepare.”
“I know,” Bran says a little too roughly. “Emmitt says there’s no rush. In the meantime, I’ve sworn him to secrecy about my plans to apprentice with him. I’ll tell them when I’m ready.”
It’s no secret that Tailor Soren hopes to pass The Golden Needle on to his eldest son. But Bran spends every moment he can spare at Schulze’s clock shop, reveling in the stable purr of ticking clocks and marching gears. Though lately, Emmitt spends most of his waking hours aloft in the high gables of the rathaus, charged by the Margrave with repairing the massive, two-storied glockenspiel gracing the town hall. The clockmaker has become Bran’s hero. His new choice of vocation will hit his parents hard, but with time, I’m sure they will come to accept it. Bran is not.
Tired of trying to change his mind, I pluck a tiny, wooden dancer from the shelf in the cupboard. She’s the first toy the puppetmaster made for me, a little ballerina whose legs dangle with impossibly straight posture, her pointed toes shod in painted slippers lacing to her knees. Prima Ballerina, I named her then, delighted with this gift from the warm, gentle man who said I could call him father. Dark brown hair, the same shade as my own, dashes across her forehead, topped off by a wooden bead for a bun. I love her still.
“So, what about you?” Bran’s voice interrupts my memories.
“What about me?”
“You can’t keep ignoring the truth.”
I look through the cupboard, blood rushing to my head. The sensation jolts me as it always does. I’m always surprised by how hot and immediately blood flows from one place to another in my body against my will.
What does he mean? I’ve always been so careful.
“When are you going to say something to Gephardt, get him to see reason? He can’t possibly go on like this. Both of you are exhausted. Gep doesn’t look good, Piro.”
“He’s fine,” I say shakily, trying to convince myself as much. “We’re fine.”
“Fine is for kettles of fish. You are not fine. Neither of you.”
I rub my dry and bleary eyes, feeling the delicate clink of Prima’s legs against my cheek as I cradle her in my hand. It was past midnight when I left my father sound asleep at his workbench and tiptoed up to my room, too tired to prod him toward his own sleeping quarters. I’m just grateful he’s actually getting some sleep.
“You know we have no choice, Bran. The Margrave won’t pay us until we deliver this next dozen. And with the money we’ve had to spend on paint and supplies … his quoted price will earn us a little overage, but still. My father must finish the soldiers. And I must help him.”
“If only there were magic words you could utter to render all those pieces finished in a second,” Bran groans sleepily. “If only.”
“People like us don’t have the luxury of magic,” I reply softly. “Not anymore. You know that.”
“Who believes any of that hogwash anyways?” Bran asks. “Seems like it’s mostly superstitions. A bunch of old hearth tales, that’s all. There’s always a good lesson or a bit of truth in them, like the stories you perform in your wagon. But real spells? Words with power? It’s always struck me as funny that the Margraves are so fearful of such things.”
My heart constricts at his words. Gephardt always asserted our Margrave is the strictest of them all; Erling considers it a great honor to lock up or burn any supposed conjurer. It was his great-grandfather who started the whole trouble in the first place, that first unruly king of Elinbruk who recklessly destroyed most of his family, nearly wiping out his line.
Closer to home, the story of Old Josipa still rings in my ears. When I was just past what my father marked as my twelfth birthday, a Tavian healer known as Old Josipa was out gathering herbs, bits of bark and roots for her poultices and salves. A child happened to follow her and heard her chanting. The child came running back, telling all who would listen that the old woman was speaking to the earth. In return, plants rose up from the ground, their leaves leaping right into her basket.
Even though the medicines Old Josipa collected were the very things needed to soothe a fever or calm an upset stomach, and she only used her magic for the good of others, it mattered not. When the child’s tale made its way to the Margrave’s ears, Old Josipa was seized and made an example, her poor body lashed to a pole and tossed on a burn pile like a dried shock of wheat. I’d had nightmares for months after, fearing that Old Josipa’s fate would someday be my own.
I must have fallen quiet for too long, for the next thing I know, a hand extends toward me, breaching the empty space between our walls. I sit up and stare at it. Bran wiggles his fingers, and I instinctively drop the little ballerina and place my hand, callused and small, in his own eager and warm one.
Looking at the spaces between our treasures, I can see only parts of Bran, mere slices of the fabric of his face, a strip of eyes shaded
