Cruel Beauty

“I believe you win the prize for graveside misbehavior.”

I jumped at the sound of Astraia’s voice. She stood behind me, arms crossed and cheeks slightly dimpled in the way that strangers thought was sweet and I knew was calculating.

“Well,” I said, “you got all the attention last year.”

The last Day of the Dead had been only a few days after the spitting incident. I had been the only one in the family who was talking to everybody else.

Astraia’s gaze didn’t waver. “If you’re trying to make Father lock you up for the night, just tell me right now that you don’t want to do it. You can stay the favored daughter and I’ll carry out my original plan.”

I sighed through my teeth. “You know very well that you’re the favored one, and only you would think I was doing something that devious. I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not worried about tonight. It’s—it’s—”

“Mother?” Astraia’s voice softened a little.

“No,” I said shortly.

Astraia shrugged. “Well, as long as you’re going to be useful, I suppose I’d better save you.” She pressed a hand to my forehead. “How shocking. You’re fevered from the sun and nearly fainted. You didn’t know what you were singing.”

I batted her hand away.

“I told you, I’m all right.”

“Nyx.” She looked at me, her eyes wide and reasonable. “Do you want to spend tonight having a family fight, or do you want to get married?”

I opened my mouth to protest. Then closed it. “I’ll sit down, then.”

“Good.” She patted my cheek. “Try to feel faint.”

I sat down with a huff. As she strode back into the graveyard to lie shamelessly, I leant against the cool stone wall and closed my eyes. My cheek still tingled where she had touched it; Astraia hugged me all the time, stroked my hair, and clasped my hands—but it wasn’t often that she touched my face. No one did.

Why did I remember the sensation of hands cupping my chin?

25

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right, dear?”

I didn’t hunch over my embroidery, but it was a near thing. Aunt Telomache’s efforts to be motherly always made me want to cringe away, the more since I had realized they were mostly sincere.

I was tempted to say, No, the cabbage roses are nauseating me again. But Aunt Telomache had picked the wallpaper herself and loved it. At least I had been able to stop her from putting it into my bedroom.

“I’m quite recovered, Aunt,” I said instead, sneaking a look at the clock: half past four. Sunset was not far off. “But I would like to go help Astraia get ready.”

“Of course.” Aunt Telomache smiled, her left hand straying to her stomach. What would she do once the child was finally born?

I set my embroidery down on the little table by the couch. Afternoon embroidery in the parlor was a new tradition: it had started last year, when Astraia was still sulking about the house in black and I had decided that somebody had to pretend we all got along. Since then, I had not learnt to find embroidery interesting or enjoy my aunt’s company, but I had learnt that she was mostly genuine in wishing me good, and that helped me to bear her. A little.

Aunt Telomache stood along with me, though unlike me she let out a little huff of effort that still managed to sound triumphant. She had even relished her morning sickness, and as she got larger she had only gotten more gleeful.

I supposed I couldn’t blame her. She’d lived nearly two decades in her dead sister’s shadow, and now at last, not only had Father married her, but she was carrying—by all Hermetic portents—a male child: the one thing that Mother had never been able to give him.

I could still find her annoying, though. At least the false smiles were getting easier.

“Thank you for sewing with me,” I said, as I always did. The words had long ago started sounding like a string of mechanical nonsense to me, but Aunt Telomache seemed to take them seriously every time.

“You’re welcome.” You couldn’t really say that somebody as leather-faced as Aunt Telomache glowed, but she came close. “Perhaps we should starting sewing things for your wedding chest soon?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I must go help Astraia.” And I fled the room before she could tell me again that my mother had been not only married but a mother at my age, and while she had been young when she wed, I was old to have never been courted, and so forth.

At least tomorrow I would finally have an excuse to be unattached. Because tonight, I would marry Tom-a-Lone.

It was an old peasant custom. As soon as the sun went down, the villagers would start a bonfire and bring out a beribboned straw man to represent Tom-a-Lone, returned for his one night of reunion with Nanny-Anna. Then a girl would be married to him in Nanny-Anna’s place, and the two of them would be crowned king and queen of the festival. Just before dawn, they would burn Tom-a-Lone, but the girl would be his bride all the next year. She’d get special honey cakes at the winter solstice and lead the dancing round the maypole in spring, but she couldn’t marry until after the next Day of the Dead.

Aunt Telomache always shook her head and muttered when it came time to pick the bride by lots. But Mother had attended the bonfire, and had herself been Tom-a-Lone’s bride when she was sixteen, so when Astraia and I turned thirteen, we got to enter our names. We were never picked, but we danced around the bonfire and gulped down barley wine with the rest of the village.

Until last week, when they drew lots and Astraia was the one. But she had told me with tears in her eyes that Adamastos was going to speak with Father as soon as he got back from the Lyceum next month, and she couldn’t bear to wait another year before she married him.

Then she had explained a plan that started with poisoning Father and collecting sixteen stray cats.

I had smacked her forehead and said, “Stupid. The bride is always veiled, right? I’ll just turn up in your place, and nobody will know until it’s too late.”

So now the plan was made and in only a few hours, I would be wed. I grinned to myself as I climbed the stairs. I was sure to get a lot of angry lectures tomorrow, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Aunt Telomache’s matchmaking for another year.

But when I got up to my room, it turned out that Astraia was in a matchmaking mood herself. She held her tongue while the maids were dressing us, but as soon as they left, she grinned at me.