“No. But if the town keeps growing the way it is, we are going to have to move. We’re finding too many girls wandering onto our property even though we have fences and all those signs up. Remember that day I brought you home?”
Briar nodded. “I didn’t think your mam liked me much.”
“I’d never seen her so angry, and with good reason. I came back outside and you were walking in a daze toward the house. You should have seen your face. The spindle was pulling you in.”
Briar remembered the jittery feelings she felt while near the house. She thought it was nerves because of the KEEP OUT signs. But it was the spindle. “I had no idea.”
“The fairies would come every few years and supervise while we tried to destroy it. The only trial that even came close was when we submerged it in the river. It didn’t seem to like the water. It came back to us, but aged. Fanny could feel that the curse had been touched somehow.”
“Why does the spindle come back to your family?”
“Prudence thinks it’s because of Aurora, her bloodline. The spindle seeks her out and we are the closest thing.”
He took a deep breath, his chest rising and lifting her up with it, as if he were helping her breathe. “The day after Fanny arrived, I spoke with her in the woods, told her of my plan. She wants this to end as much as we do.”
Briar nodded. That secret meeting was the conversation she overheard.
“I saw an opportunity. It was like a window in time had opened up. There was a change in destiny and I wanted to seize the moment and change my family’s future. You helped me with that when you pointed out how strange it was that we never left the valley.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. I was only frustrated that I couldn’t leave the valley.”
“Doesn’t matter anymore. You know already that I dropped the box in the middle of the ocean?”
“Yes. The spindle box.”
“You want to know how Isodora could possibly get hold of the spindle from the bottom of the sea? I don’t know. There was that storm.” He nestled his head in the crook of her neck. “My family will never be rid of it.”
“You might be soon,” Briar said quietly. “If the curse is fulfilled…if I die…you will be free. Promise me you’ll watch out for the children. They love you dearly and I know you’ll do right by them, making sure they go to good homes.”
“No. No!” Henry squeezed her tight against him, as if trying to keep her alive by sheer will. “We’ll all think of something. You have life in you, Briarly Rose, and we’re going to think of something.”
She didn’t want to hurt him, but she had to face reality. “My birthday is the day after tomorrow.” What she didn’t say was that she felt the poison pressing in on her lungs like fingers looking for a weak spot, and it was getting harder and harder to fight it. No one can stop the curse now. It’s too late.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
When Briar woke up in the darkness she could tell something was different. What felt like a wall keeping the sleeping sickness steady was gone. The pins and needles feeling was stronger now and once again traveling up her body. Her stomach. Her ribs. It was working its way through her bones and into her lungs, and then it would hit the target—her heart.
Afraid her panic would make the poison travel faster, Briar slowed her breathing and focused on the things that mattered. Pansy. The boys. Henry.
Henry had been so tender with her on the way back to the cottage, and the way he lowered her onto the bed. Even though Pansy was hovering, wanting to care for Briar herself, he plumped up Briar’s pillow and tucked her in. Told Pansy she could take the night shift.
Like Briar did while she was spinning, she released what her body was doing and retreated into her mind. She imagined happier days. She looked over at the bundles in the beds near her. The boys. Jack soundly sleeping, but Benny wrestling with monsters in his sleep. He’d gotten all twisted up in his sheet.
As the sunrise warmed the world and started to brighten the room, Briar drank in Pansy’s sweet face. Her long eyelashes restful on her cheeks, her heart-shaped lips, parted open to breathe. She’d been such a help to Briar these last few days. As Pansy rubbed the liniment into Briar’s sleeping legs there was a deep concentration etched on her dainty features, as if through force of will Pansy would save her sister.
Briar tested her limbs to see what would move. Not her toes. Not her knees. Not her thighs. She tried to bend at the waist, something she could do yesterday, but her body wouldn’t respond today.
Alone, and not having to put up a front for anyone, Briar let herself fall apart. This was it, then. Today or tomorrow was all she had left.