PART ONE:
The Curse of Gold
THE FIRST TALE
God-mothers
Once upon a time, on the coldest night of midwinter, in the darkest heart of the forest, Death and Fortune came to a crossroads.
They stood tall and unfathomable in the glass-smooth snow, Death in her shroud of pyre smoke and shadows, and Fortune in her gown of gold and bones. More than that cannot be said, for no two souls see Death and Fortune the same way; yet we all know when we meet them.
On this night, a woman had come to do just that: meet them. Her dull carrot-colored curls twisted from under a woolen cap, her wind-burnt red face as worn as the threadbare cloak over her shoulders. One hand clutched a dimming iron lantern, which smoldered just bright enough to catch the snowflakes flitting by like fireflies before they melted back into the dark.
Her other hand was locked around the ragged mitt of a little girl beside her.
“Please,” the woman said, shivering in snow up to her shins. “We’re stretched thin to feed the twelve other mouths already, and this one— she’s ill luck. Wherever she goes, the milk spoils, the wool tangles, the grain spills. Whatever she touches falls to ruin.”
The little girl said nothing.
“She’s only . . .” Fortune tilted her head, and the wreath of coins about her brow shimmered and flipped, changing from copper to coal to silver to gold. “Three? Ten? Forgive me, I never know with you humans.”
“Four,” Death said in her soft, dark voice, for Death always knew. Fortune wrinkled her nose. “Young. The proper age to be spilling grain and breaking things.” “She’s the thirteenth,” the woman insisted, shoving the lantern higher as if to drive her point home like a stubborn cow. Weak firelight
caught on Fortune’s coin wreath, on the wispy hem of Death’s hood. “Like me. That makes her the thirteenth daughter of a thirteenth daughter. Her luck’s rotten to the core.”
“You told your other children you’d take her into the woods to seek her fortune.” The Low God plucked a coin from her wreath and let it dance about her fingers, flashing copper and silver, gold and black.
“In truth, you were seeking me,” Death finished in her dark-velvet voice, and the woman’s features crumpled with shame. “Yet here you have found us both. You have come far, through the dark and through the frost, to ask our favor.”
“Asking a blessing of the Lady of Luck. Risky. No way to know what that would be.” Fortune’s face slipped between cruelty and sympathy as her coin slipped through quick fingers, flashing day and night, red and white.
Death, on the other hand, did not stir. “You know my gifts, and so you know though there is plenty I can take, little can I give. But I will tell you: Only one of you will go home.”
The woman drew a sharp breath.
Fortune smiled, and her coin flashed like the sun and the snow, like shadow and like blood. “You sought Death in the woods. Did you think the way back would be easy?”
The woman said nothing. The flame in the lantern burned lower.
“Ask,” Death commanded. “What will you have of us?”
The lantern shook in the woman’s hand, her knuckles cracked with callus and cold. “I want what’s best for—for everyone.”
“Choose,” Death commanded again. “Which of you will return?”
The woman let go of her daughter.
Fortune lifted the girl’s chin. She found two eyes of sharpest black in a pale, freckled face, two braids the color of the lantern’s flame tied off in bits of rag.
“What is your name?” Death asked as the woman turned and fled the crossroads, stealing away the last scrap of firelight.
“Vanja” was the first thing I said to my godmothers, “my name is Vanja.”
CHAPTER ONE
CardGames
It has been nearly thirteen years since Death and Fortune claimed me for their own, and I have come far enough through winter and cold that almost no one calls me Vanja now.
