INTERLUDE
MAISIE LOOKED AROUND, her face wavering between nervousness and triumph as her fingers worried Negret’s handmade book. The adults in the room hesitated, torn in their own ways between surprise and sadness. It was Petra, on the hearth, who began resolutely to applaud, and after a heartbeat or two, the others joined in. The girl, who had begun to look worried, allowed herself to smile.
“But Maisie,” Jessamy said from the sofa as the clapping faded to silence again, “no one would send a child away for taking things. You know that, surely.”
“But they did,” Maisie insisted. “They did! In the story,” she added quickly. “But they did.”
“Well, all sorts of things do happen in stories that would never happen in real life,” Phineas Amalgam said, leaning forward in his chair in the corner and frowning.
Maisie’s face was rapidly crumpling into distress. “It could happen,” she said quietly. “People do take things.”
“But a family would never send one of their own away for it,” Jessamy persisted.
“They would,” the girl said stubbornly, her eyes filling. “They did. In the story.”
Jessamy, at a loss, got up from the sofa and came to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Maisie. She put an arm gingerly around her shoulder.
Amalgam stood, clearing his throat. “The thing about telling a story,” he said, “is that one has to make choices. No story can contain every detail, so a storyteller has to decide what to put in and what to leave out. They have to pick and choose what to tell about what came before, what comes afterward, and plenty in between. It’s part of the art, making those decisions, but just as it’s very easy to leave too much in—and I am often guilty of that—it’s often tempting to take too much out.” He walked over to sit in the third, center chair by the fire, which had been empty for most of the evening. “And I think, if you don’t mind a bit of constructive criticism from a man whose job it is to tell tales, you have taken too much out of this one.”
Maisie wiped her eyes. “You think it should’ve been longer?” Her voice wavered. “I just wanted to get to the part where they took her home as fast as possible.”
“I know,” Amalgam said gently. “But still I think you have some missing pieces. Perhaps we can help you figure out what to put back. Would that be all right?”
The girl hesitated. She looked bashfully around the room. “I suppose so.”
Amalgam clapped his hands on his knees. “Well, then. Here’s one thing I always do when I’m figuring out whether I’ve told enough of the story: I tell it, just as you have done, to people I trust. Or at least,” he added with a wink, “people I trust with the yarn.” He looked around the room. “And then I say to them: I have told you this tale. What questions do you have?”
Maisie looked around at the faces in the room. She swallowed. “I told you this tale.” Her voice was very small. “What questions do you have?”
There was a silence; then, “I have some.”
Maisie turned, surprised to hear the first question come from Antony Masseter, at the corner chair by the sideboard. His eye patch was interesting, but apart from that, she had not paid much attention to him, nor he to her. “All right,” she said dubiously.
“Very good.” Masseter folded his arms. “You’ve told us the siblings of the knave left their home from time to time. Before the knave was sent away, did her siblings leave her at home when they went on these journeys?”
Maisie hesitated, then nodded.
“Did they tell the knave why she wasn’t invited along?” Masseter asked. Maisie nodded again. “I am guessing,” he said thoughtfully, getting to his feet, “that the reason had something to do with the sword the King of Finding Things wore, and the loop the King of Tying Things had learned to make that was strong enough to bind monsters. Perhaps their journeys occasionally took them into danger.”
Reluctantly, Maisie said, “Yes, sometimes.”
“I see.” The peddler walked slowly, thoughtfully, toward the chairs surrounding the fire. “I think it’s very important not to leave those things out. Or the part about how the knave came to be sent away.” He leaned on the back of Amalgam’s chair to look down at the young storyteller. “It wasn’t simply that she took things all the time, was it?”
“No,” Maisie whispered.
“I thought not. I found myself wondering—as I thought about the sword and the loop and the tools to open locks without keys—whether perhaps, it was those things she took. Not to keep them herself, of course, but simply to know. To know what the kings did when they left, and to know why those voyages were too dangerous for a knave to join. I wondered if perhaps she was a bit of a finder herself, and no matter how hard the others tried to hide their tools, the knave managed to find them. Perhaps she was given a lecture; possibly a lecture that made her feel quite a bit like she wasn’t being taken seriously, or that they hadn’t noticed how much she had grown up. She was told not to search; not to find; not, at all costs, to touch. But she couldn’t help herself.” He fixed his sharp green eye on the girl shrinking back into Jessamy’s arm. “Could she?”
Maisie merely shook her head, her own eyes wide.
“Yes, this is all very important.” Masseter looked down at the folklorist. “Wouldn’t you say so, Amalgam?”
“I would
