I sighed. “August. Please. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You never want to get in trouble.” She pouted at me. “Please, Toby? Please, please? I just want a slice of cake without Mother standing over me muttering about stains on my clothing—as if they would show if she allowed me a speck of color! I heard Sir Etienne took a new squire. I want to flirt with him and see what colors his cheeks turn! I want—”
“Fine, fine,” I said, laughter overflowing my lips and spilling down my chin. If I didn’t cut her off, she could keep listing her desires until they formed a pile tall and untidy enough to reach the stars. “I will chaperone your adventure.”
“Because you are the best sister,” she said, and darted forward to kiss my cheeks, first one and then the other. “The best and the kindest of sisters. I could search all of Faerie forever, and never find a sweeter sister than yourself.”
“As if I’ve ever told you no,” I grumbled, wiping her kisses away with swipes of my hand and trying not to look as if I enjoyed her attentions. It was a small fiction, but one of the few I was allowed.
“Why would you?” She beamed. “You can’t search all of Faerie and find yourself, for you are unique in all the worlds. You’ll have to settle for me, the second sweetest. I’ll get my cloak.”
Then she was away, bounding to the cloakroom with all the vigor and enthusiasm that she brought to everything she actually wanted to do. I had never seen her bound to do the dishes, for example, or to tidy her room, but then, why should she? She had me to do those things. She always would.
I smiled as I trailed after her, more slowly. The idea of adventure was August’s, but the benefits would belong to both of us. Food would be pleasant. Company more pleasant still. For all of August’s jokes about flirting with the squires, we both knew her attention would be focused on Sir Grianne, who was much more entertaining to make blush than any stripling squire.
Not that I’d be flirting with anyone. I had friends below the stairs who would be perfectly delighted to see me, especially if I offered to chip in on the chores, and my relatively indestructible nature makes me ideally suited for fishing dropped flatware out of scalding wash water. My talents are scant and strange. Might as well take advantage of the ones I have.
August’s cloak was all the colors her clothing was never allowed to be, red and gold and orange and green, the month she was named for stitched into a patchwork of velvet, silk, and hand-dyed cotton. It had been a gift from Father’s patron, or Mother would surely have burnt it long since. Next to her, I was plain to the point of invisibility, my cloak a simple brown, my dress a worn and practical heather green. It was best that way, that I should never draw too much attention.
Even Faerie had seen the sense in that. My hair is a shade of ashen blonde that looks more like a sun-weathered brown than any fully definable type of gold, and my eyes are a foggy gray that trends into white to the point of seeming to have no real color at all. August is a watercolor sketch of a girl, strawberry-blonde hair and eyes the color of fireweed honey, water white and flawlessly clear, and I am her washed-out shadow. And as long as we play to that, as long as people look at her rather than at me, the too-blunt angles of my cheekbones and the softened points of my ears are less of a concern.
I can disappear in the presence of my sister, and by disappearing, I remain safe.
I collected my shoes from their place by the door, stepping into them, and waited for August. As always when preparing for a trip to Shadowed Hills, I felt as if I were forgetting something, some small but essential accessory that was required for me to visit the home of my uncle and his family.
Then August came to meet me, a smile on her face and a sparkle in her eyes, and the feeling faded. She hooked her arm through mine as I opened the front door, the wards letting us through with a tingle on our skin, like stepping into the cool water of a running stream: there and gone again in an instant. No one outside the family would be able to access the tower, even with no one home to bar the doors or guard the windows. As long as we stayed inside, we would remain perfectly safe.
The world outside was not so kind. We walked through Mother’s garden to the gate. Flowers bloomed in all directions, a miraculous profusion of colors, their blossoms open to their fullest extent to drink in the watery light of a Summerlands dawn. True day is rare in the Summerlands. It comes more frequently to the land Mother controls, the tower and the acres around it that constitute her claim, for many of Father’s herbs thrive better in true sunlight, and her flowers appreciate it as well. Still, the sun never shines here as directly as it does in the mortal world. The previous night’s moons were still visible overhead. Six of them, currently, all different sizes, and one with rings.
I pointed upward, bumping August with my hip. “Look,” I said. “A ringed moon. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those.”
“Last year, just before Lughnasa,” said August, then paled, glancing quickly around to be sure she hadn’t been overheard. When no one rose from the bushes to accuse her, she calmed, and we proceeded from the garden side by side.
Titania is the Lady of Flowers, but Maeve was the Lady of Frost, the keeper of the winter nights, and when she betrayed us, the bulk of her festivals were stricken from our collective customs, forbidden and unmade. Were it not for the impossibility of erasing Moving Day from our accounting, Samhain would doubtless have been excised. As that wasn’t possible, we lost Lughnasa instead, the festival of harvests, proof that the wheel turns.
Titania denies that Samhain ever had anything to do with harvests or the progression of the year into winter, says it was chosen only to balance Beltaine, and perhaps she speaks truly. But August has accompanied Father to the Library of Stars as his research assistant on the few occasions when he’s been able to convince her to sit still for long enough, and she’s told me what she read in the older histories.
I sometimes wish she hadn’t. I shouldn’t dare to think, even for an instant, that our True Queen could be fallible. If ever I were to meet August’s laughed-about mind-reader, I would be executed that same day, for the crime of doubting the undoubtable. And I would deserve it. If Titania revises history, she does so for good reason, and with Faerie’s best interests at heart.
I had barely finished forming the thought when a bolt of pain shot through my temples and I stopped walking to grimace and grasp my forehead with both hands, making a pained sound. August stopped as well, turning to look at me with wide and anxious eyes.
“October! Are you well?”
“Just a headache,” I said, trying to wave away her concern. “Probably from my lack of supper.”
“Father left you something to eat, even as he left me,” she said, suddenly suspicious. “What happened to your supper, October?”
“Would you believe I just forgot to eat?”
“No, but I’d believe you would tell such a transparent lie.” She sighed. “What was it this time?”
“A family,” I said. “Hamadryads, traveling from Wild Strawberries to Golden Shore.”
“Ah. Changelings in their company, then?”
I nodded, momentarily silent. August had watched enough Moving Days to know what that particular destination meant. These weren’t people seeking a softer position or a better term of service; they were running for the lives of their children. She reached over and took my hand, squeezing it in her own. We were both all too exquisitely aware of the delicacy of my situation, and how few rights I had.