Chapter 2
"Come on Eryn," Mother shouted, standing at the base of the ladder that led into their small cottage's attic. "Papa will be home soon, and he'll be hungry like a monster from smithing all day."
Eryn rolled her eyes. Papa was hungry like a monster whether he worked the forge all day or not. Even on his day away from the sweltering heat of fire and metal he would still tear through a roasted duck and a bowl of berry porridge like it was going to run away from him.
She was standing at the top step of an unsteady stool, trying to reach the furthest corner of their elevated pantry, where the last bag of the salt they would use to flavor the duck sat mocking her reach. If only she were just a little bit taller.
Of course, there was nothing she could do about that. Her father was the tall one, and she was merely of average height for a girl of fourteen, though she did possess a lean strength that had come from many days of begging her father to tag along with him to his shop in Watertown's square.
"If you're going to come to work with me, you're going to come to work," her father had said.
She had been eager to agree, and had surprised her father, both in her effort to keep him supplied with the iron he used to make horseshoes and scythe blades for the farmers, and for asking to return with him on future days.
"You will be a strong young lady," he had said with a laugh. "But mind you don't work too hard. Few boys will want a wife that can lift more grain than they can."
Eryn smiled at the thought. She had taken his advice to heart, and only gone to the smithy with him on odd days, staying home with mother and learning the ways of the household on the evens. Which was why she was standing on the top of a rickety old step stool, struggling to reach that last bag of salt. If her father was to be believed, she was growing into a very pretty young lady, despite the fact that she favored doeskin pants and loose homespun blouses to skirts, and kept her hair cut to her shoulders so it wouldn't get burned at the forge.
"I've almost got it," she called down to her mother.
She steadied herself on the stool, and leaned forward again, trying to judge the distance, the shiftiness of her platform, and the weight of the bag. She knew she should be able to reach it, after all she had put it there at the beginning of the year, and she had surely grown at least a smidgeon since then. Still, the salt evaded her, leaving it in her mind that perhaps Roddin had snuck up while they were sleeping and shifted everything back. He liked to play tricks like that.
"Hurry, my love," Mother said. "You know if we don't salt it in time, Papa will bellyache about the flavor."
"Papa always bellyaches about the flavor," she replied. "It's too salty, it's not salty enough, the skin is too crunchy, the skin isn't crunchy enough."
He always found something wrong with the duck, but it was more of a rolling humor than a serious complaint.
Eryn stretched out one last time, sighing with the effort, but falling just short. The tips of her fingers touched the edge of the bag, and then she felt herself losing her balance and was forced to shift her weight back. "By Amman," she said under her breath. Papa would have scolded her if he'd heard her speak so.
She turned her head and looked back at the daylight rising through the small opening to the attic, feeling her heart begin to beat faster. She knew she could get the bag of salt. She knew how to retrieve it even though it was beyond her grasp.
She also knew she was forbidden.
***
Eryn had been twelve when she and her family had first discovered that she was Cursed. It had been a total accident, as the discovery usually was. She had just been fortunate that only her family had witnessed it, or she would have been locked up within the hour, and they would have been summoned to their small village. His soldiers, the frightening men who patrolled every corner of every province in search of the Cursed, to take them away from their families, never to be seen again. It had seemed unfair to her, but he was the Emporer, and all were his subjects. They had no choice, and no say.
They had been having a picnic, way out in the Whistling Woods on a beautiful spring day. Papa had loaded his cart with food and drink for once, instead of ingot and hammer and wood. He had guided them through the lighter part of the brush to a wide, shallow stream that divided a gigantic field of grass and wild flowers. They had eaten and drank, played games like hide and find, and Papa had even shown her how to draw a bow and loose an arrow. It had been the perfect day.
It had been the perfect day, until they had loaded up the cart and started making their way back home. What was a bright, cool, sunny spring day turned dark as heavy clouds moved in, and before long the wind had picked up and a steady rain began to fall, soaking them all to the bone. They didn't really mind being wet, in fact she and Roddin had enjoyed jumping in the newly created puddles that were born in the cratered earth of the woods. If that had been the end of it, their lives could have continued as before.
It had been a flash of lightning, and a tremendous clap of thunder that had startled their horse, Maxin. He had snorted and reared back, then launched forward like one of the arrows they had been loosing earlier. It would have been easy enough to let him race his way back home, except she and Roddin had been out in front of the old stallion, jumping in the puddles and playing tag. It was Roddin who'd found himself in the frightened horse's path.
She could still see it clearly in her mind. Papa's booming voice roaring out her brother's name in warning. Mother's shrill cry of alarm at seeing her child in harm's way. Eryn herself saw the horse before Roddin did, and out of nothing more than instinct she had wished her brother would move from here to there.
It had felt strange then. A tingling sensation that had started behind her ears and ran down her back and chest to her arms. Of their own volition they shot out straight towards Roddin, and the air in front of him began to wiggle and squirm. She saw Roddin's hair get blown to the side as though he were caught in a mighty wind, and then his whole body had been lifted up and thrown aside, only moments before Maxin rushed by with the cart.
They had run to him then, Mother and Papa, with Mother leaning down and wrapping her arms around her older child. Eryn had been too stunned to move, and she stood as still as she could while her arms dropped to her sides and the tingling sensation faded. She realized then that she was crying, and she brought up one of her arms to wipe away the rain and the tears. When she pulled her it away, she saw that it was streaked with blood.
***
Papa had seen it too, she remembered, and he had rushed over to her and held her tight and cried. She didn't know why he was crying, not at first. She had been too young to pay much attention to the stories about the Cursed. In time, they had told her that she must never tell anyone what had happened that night, and that she must never let her ears tingle like that again.
It had been an easy promise to make at the time, but a much harder one to keep in the two years that had followed. After all, how could it be a Curse when she had used it to save her brother's life? How could it be bad when it was so useful? She had gone out to the edge of the Whistling Woods on her own when nobody expected her to be anywhere in particular. She had tried again and again to make her ears tingle, and to feel the energy rushing through her body. It had taken weeks of trying, but eventually she made it happen once, and then again. It was never as strong as when she had pushed Roddin out of Maxin's path, but it was enough to do little things.
Like move a bag of salt just a tiny bit closer.