Page 38 of The Starling and the Hatter

I reached out. I couldn’t help myself. The vulnerability pulsing through her expression and posture called out to me, making me ache to soothe it. Though I wanted to hook my hand around the back of her neck and pull her into my chest, I contented myself with simply brushing her cheek with my thumb. “Every piece of you is important to me.” The vulnerability of my own words startled me, and I gave a shrug, trying to push aside the weight of what I had just said. Every piece of her was important to me. Her eyes, her hair, her heart, her smile, her small feet, the curve of her neck and the sway of her back.

She blinked up at me, and the way she stared, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted, made me ache to close the distance between us.

Instead, I swallowed and dropped my hand. “Why don’t you like your name?”

Her wide eyes blinked several times with an unsettling fragility. “It’s the name of my family—my brothers.”

The haunted look in her eyes made me want to wrap her up and keep her safe, or find a weapon and hunt down her brothers. “Laws, Elise. What did they do to you?”

She looked away, her chin pulling up as she tried not to cry. “They were bigger and stronger, and it didn’t matter if I disagreed. I never won an argument because their fists were faster than mine were.” She sniffed and looked back at me. “And they were more willing to use them.”

My heart pounded so furiously that I could almost hear it. I clenched my fists, locking in my anger so it would not spill over onto her.

Elise

I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Was I really going to tell Hatcher my story? Part of me thrashed against the idea, but the larger part of me desperately wanted to know if he would hear my story and still see me for me.

I watched him swallow before he asked, “Your parents were already gone?”

I nodded.

He paused, choosing his words with care. “You said you were seven when your father died, but what about your mother?” he asked, leaning in, his soft, compassionate eyes inviting me to confide in him. “When did she die?”

I let out a small puff of bitter laughter. “I’m not sure she did.”

Concern and confusion chased across his face. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “She’d been sick. It had been more than three years since my father died, and the burden on my brothers was…great. They didn’t think my mother did enough. She cared for me. She cooked and cleaned, but she’d never been a performer, so it was left to my brothers to earn the money. So on the few occasions when she got sick, they had no patience for it.” I swallowed, hating the memories that scraped against my mind, digging in and making it bleed. Memories of my brothers yelling at her, railing against her for her weakness. Looking back, I was sure that their anger had lengthened her ailments even more. “That last time…” I said, rubbing at the side of my neck then pressing the back of my fingers to my mouth before continuing, “I’d been caring for her, and she said something about how we’d be better off without her. I brushed it off, she had a fever after all, but she kept saying it, over and over. I fell asleep, worried that she really believed it. I certainly didn’t believe it. I was terrified of living my life without her. And my fears were justified.” I tear streaked down my cheek.

“What happened?”

I sniffed. “She was gone when I woke up.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. No longer there. The bed was empty. At first I thought that was a good thing. If she could walk, then surely she was feeling better, but she wasn’t out tending to the fire.” Numbness washed over me as I recalled that morning. “She wasn’t down at the stream washing clothing. She wasn’t…anywhere. When I asked my brothers, all they would say was that she’d left. She left us. They said it over and over. She left us. They called her weak and uncaring. But I didn’t believe them. I couldn’t believe them. They wanted to pack up the wagon and leave, but I refused. I searched the woods for hours, screaming her name, apologizing and begging her to come back.”

“What were you apologizing for?”

I shrugged. “All the things a child thinks they need to say sorry for. I thought I hadn’t done enough, either to help or to care for her. Maybe I was the reason she was dissatisfied with her life. Maybe I was to blame.”

“You weren’t.”

“I know that now.” At least I wanted to know it, to believe it. “But I didn’t know it then.”

“So it was just you and your brothers?”

I chewed the inside of my lip as I nodded. “With my mother gone, they were determined to make me a performer. You see, my mother hadn’t wanted that life for me. She always said it was too easy for people to mistake selling an act for selling yourself.”

I could see by the look in his eyes that he was imagining all the horrible things I might have endured, so I took pity on him and finished the story.

“Luckily, that’s not what they had in mind. At least…I never thought it would come to that.” I breathed deep through my nose, trying to find my composure. “That’s what finally made me leave,” I explained, my voice tight and high with my determination to keep it together, shoving the tears down and forcing my words forward. “You see, my brothers were mean and manipulative. They were happy to convince me with their fists and their threats that they were always right. But they were also fiercely protective of me.” It was important that he know this. Important that he understand the loyalty I’d felt for them. “They never let anyone else touch me. They wouldn’t put up with people jeering or taunting me. They scared off anyone who seemed too interested. It’s why I never considered leaving. Their protection was worth something. It was worth everything. It was a guarantee that I could walk through the world unharmed except by my brothers. And I could handle that,” I said, nodding my head, putting on the mask of tough resilience that had served me for so long. “I could take a beating and still carry on the next day. And when I did well—when my performance was good and the audience was generous, they were grateful.” Those moments had been everything to me. When they were kind and appreciative instead of cold and hard. “They congratulated and cheered me. It was those times when we really did feel like a family. Despite my father’s death, despite my mother being…somewhere…or nowhere. At least we could count on each other, right?”

His face reflected the disappointment that he felt coming. We both knew this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

“I gave them everything,” I said, the words pouring out of me hard to stop now that I’d started. “My loyalty. My time and talents. I cooked for them and cleaned up after them. I danced and performed and gathered the coins that supported us. I didn’t stop them when they stole from the rich dodos who pranced about the festivals. We had plenty of money. Our act was good—the best,” I declared with an odd mixture of pride and fierce anger. “And what we didn’t gather in donations, they stole out of the pockets of those who could afford it, and that was fine. Fine enough that I didn’t argue over it.” I blinked my burning eyes. Perhaps I should have protested. Perhaps my mother would have wanted me to stand up for what was right. “But then they got more bold, less principled, if they ever were in the first place, and they started stealing from everyone. They conned desperate people,” I admitted, my throat burning with anger. “They sold miracle cures to women whose babies were nearly dead in their arms and fathers whose children had been born blind. Anything for a coin. It was all a great joke to them, and I hated it.”

“You couldn’t do anything.” He said it as a statement, not a question, and it was a relief to know that he had some comprehension of what my position had been.