Hero

Papa chuckled. “Now, now. Not so hasty. Won’t you stay for a bit of supper?”

“No, thank you, sir. I’ll be on my way. If you please, sir.”

“Very well, then.” Papa clapped the boy on his scrawny back. “Off with you.”

Conrad bowed quickly, wiggled his toes in the holes of his ragged shoes, and ran out the still-open front door. Papa, Peter, and Saturday watched him from the doorway, kicking up dust as he made his way back down the hill to the main road.

“I admire that boy’s energy,” said Papa.

“He has almost as much as Saturday,” said Peter.

“That he does,” said Papa as he shut the door. “If she were younger, I might marry her off to him.”

Saturday scowled. She was excessively good at scowling. Papa just laughed. “Peter, you go finish up outside. Saturday, please help Trix with di

Saturday paused before heading back to the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what to say to Trix; she wasn’t even sure yet how she felt about the situation herself. Peter and Papa were so much easier to talk to. They chatted and argued and laughed every day in the Wood. Trix was just so . . . Trix. Sometimes what came out of his mouth was as regular as the sunrise, and sometimes it was more cryptic than Wednesday’s poetry.

Now that Wednesday was off in the land of Faerie, Friday had been apprenticed to an esteemed seamstress, and Sunday was a queen, Trix spent more of his time talking to animals than humans. As the last sister remaining in the Woodcutter household, Saturday supposed that it was her responsibility to comfort her cousin-brother. But she couldn’t very well talk to him directly about what had just happened . . .

Saturday snapped her fingers and raced up the stairs to her bedroom to fetch the one thing she knew Trix prized above all else: distraction.

When she returned to the kitchen, Trix was just as she’d left him, silently bowed over the fire. Trix usually wasn’t allowed to stir the pot, or milk the cow, or churn the butter, or spend time around anything else that might spoil in the presence of his strong fairy nature. Chances were Mama’s taste buds would be too coated with remorse to care what passed her lips tonight. Saturday hoped for her own sake that the stew was palatable.

“So I was thinking,” Saturday said to Trix’s back. She’d learned from the years of working with Papa and Peter to start a sentence like this, with little pertinent information. If whomever Saturday addressed was wrapped up in his own thoughts, she could garner attention without having to repeat herself. Clearing one’s throat also worked. Or yelling.

“What,” Trix said into the fire, not at all his joyfully optimistic self. His voice was deep and apathetic. He sounded like Peter, thought Saturday, and that was strange enough.

“I was at the guards’ training grounds today,” she began again. Sunday always chided Saturday for never starting her stories in the right place. When Papa told stories, he engaged his listeners like this, encouraging them to ask questions. At the moment, however, this tactic did not seem to be working for Saturday.

“You’re supposed to ask me what I was doing there,” she prompted.

“You’re always at the guards’ training grounds,” said Trix.

“Only on my days off.”

“Which is almost every other day now,” said Trix.

“I know. It’s a

Trix banked the fire and covered the pot with a lid. “You should have started the story there.” He sat down across the table from her.

Saturday stuck out her tongue.

“Gee, Saturday, whatever was Monday doing at the guards’ training grounds today?” The humor in Trix’s voice relaxed her a bit, even if it was at her expense.

“Monday showed me her nameday gift.”

“She did? What was it?” This time, Trix’s intrigue was in earnest.

“It was a beautiful little hand mirror,” said Saturday.

“How beautiful?”

“As beautiful as anything the fairies could make.”

Trix grimaced. “You need to work on your descriptions.”

“Almost as beautiful as Monday herself,” said Saturday.

“Ooh, that’s much better.”

“Better still—it’s a magic mirror. A looking glass.”

“Really?”

Saturday nodded.

“How does it work?”

“She holds it in her hand, says a little rhyming verse, and the mirror shows her whomever she’s asking to see.”

“That’s a pretty clever gift.”

“I thought so too,” said Saturday.

“Almost as clever as yours.”

It was Saturday’s turn to grimace.

“Hey, nobody else got a gift that changes with her destiny.”

“That’s because everybody else got magical powers,” said Saturday.

Trix tilted his head and sighed in defeat. “So why does Monday’s mirror suddenly fascinate you?”

“Do you remember the trunk Thursday sent this spring?”

“No fair answering a question with a question,” said Trix. “Of course I remember.”

Saturday knew he would. He’d spent hours killing an army of trees with the bow and arrows Thursday had included for him inside that trunk. Trix hadn’t aimed for any animals—on the contrary, the squirrels, birds, and chipmunks made up his arrow-retrieval team. In that trunk had been the miles of material Friday had used to make dresses for all those ridiculous balls Sunday’s true love had forced them to attend. Saturday twisted the blue-green bracelet around her wrist, briefly reliving that torture.

“Do you remember what Thursday gave me?” asked Saturday.

The answer took him a moment; he had been too busy testing out his new toys at the time to give much notice to anyone. Then his eyes widened. “You got a mirror.”

Saturday nodded and pulled the silver-backed mirror from her swordbelt. There’d been an ebony-handled brush in the silk purse along with the mirror, but Saturday had left it up in her room.

This mirror was larger than Monday’s; the silver framing it made it unwieldy, top-heavy, with no balance whatsoever. Saturday had no idea why Thursday had given her the fool thing; she had more use for it as a club than as an instrument of vanity. Roses stood out in relief all over it; the embellished thorns around the handle made it incredibly difficult to hold.

“What’s it say on the back?” asked Trix.

He was right; there was a word faintly etched between the petals. “‘Very’?” Saturday guessed. “Or . . . ‘Merry’?”

“I think it’s French,” said Trix.

“How would you know?”

“Wednesday,” said Trix.

Until her recent emigration to Faerie, Wednesday had often spouted impromptu poetry in foreign languages. They only knew it was poetry because Wednesday used her lofty poetry voice during the recitations, but Saturday wouldn’t have been able to tell French from Cymbalese or Trollish. Papa couldn’t tell the difference either—he’d told Saturday as much once—but he always applauded Wednesday’s performances. Animals talked to Trix; maybe some of them had French cousins. “I think it means ‘glass.’ Or ‘water.’”

“Or ‘flamboyant useless object’?” suggested Saturday. Trix made a face. “Well, that’s what I would have written. Want to see if it works?”

In a flash, Trix leapt over the table and landed in the chair beside Saturday, much like she had vaulted the fence earlier to sit with Monday. As impressive as the move was, it was a good thing Mama hadn’t been around to witness it. “Do you know what to say?”

“I’ll make something up.” Saturday and Peter often played rhyming games while they worked in the Wood—games that Saturday won more often than not. She could easily come up with something that might coax a smile out of her brother. She straightened again in her chair and held the great gaudy thing before them. She and Trix looked back at themselves over her outstretched arm, fascinated by their humble reflections.