Keeper's Cottage
It was tfee silence that woke Jenna in Keeper's Cottage the next morning. After ten years of waking every day to the busy sounds of The Ramblings, not to mention the riot and hubbub of the six Heap boys, the silence was deafening. Jenna opened her eyes, and for a moment thought that she was still dreaming. Where was she? Why wasn't she at home in her cupboard? \Vhy were just Jo-Jo and Nicko here? Where were all her other brothers?
And then she remembered.
Jenna sat up quietly so as not to wake the boys who were lying beside her by the glowing embers of the fire downstairs in Aunt Zelda's cottage. She wrapped her quilt around her as, despite the fire, the air in the cottage had a damp chill to it. And then, hesitantly, she raised a hand to her head.
So it was true. The gold circlet was still there. She was still a Princess. It hadn't been just for her birthday.
All through the previous day, Jenna had had that feeling of unreality that she always got on her birthday. A feeling that the day was somehow part of another world, another time, and that anything that happened on her birthday was not real. And it was that feeling that had carried Jenna through the amazing events of her tenth birthday, a feeling that, whatever happened, it would all be back to normal the next day, so it didn't really matter.
But it wasn't. And it did.
Jenna hugged herself to keep warm and considered the matter. She was a Princess.
Jenna and her best friend, Bo, had often discussed together the fact that they were in fact long-lost Princess sisters, separated at birth, whom fate had thrown together in the form of a shared desk in Class 6 of East Side Third School. Jenna had almost believed this; it had seemed so right somehow.
Although, when she went around to Bo's rooms to play, Jenna didn't see how Bo could really belong to another family. Bo looked so much like her mother, thought Jenna, with her bright red hair and masses of freckles, that she had to be her daughter. But Bo had been scathing about this when Jenna had pointed it out, so she didn't mention it again.
Even so, it hadn't stopped Jenna wondering why she looked so unlike her own mother. And father. And brothers. Why was she the only one with dark hair? Why didn't she have green eyes? Jenna had desperately wanted her eyes to turn green. In fact, up until the previous day, she had still hoped that they might.
She had longed for the excitement of Sarah saying to her, as she watched her do with all the boys, "You know, I do think your eyes are beginning to turn. I can definitely see a bit of green in them today." And then: "You are growing up fast. Your eyes are nearly as green as your father's."
But when Jenna demanded to be told about her eyes, and why they weren't green yet like her brothers', Sarah would only say, "But you're our little girl, Jenna. You're special. You have beautiful eyes."
But that didn't fool Jenna. She knew that girls could have green Wizard eyes too. Just look at Miranda Bott down the corridor, whose grandfather ran the Wizard secondhand cloak shop. Miranda had green eyes, and it was only her grandfather who was a Wizard. So why didn't she?
Jenna felt upset thinking about Sarah. She wondered when she would see her again. She even wondered if Sarah would still want to be her mother, now that everything had changed.
Jenna shook herself and told herself not to be silly. She stood up, keeping her quilt around her, and picked her way over the two sleeping boys. She paused to glance at Boy 412 and wondered why she had thought he was Jo-Jo. It must have been a trick of the light, she decided.
The inside of the cottage was still dark apart from the dull glow cast by the fire, but Jenna had become accustomed to the gloom, and she began to wander around, trailing her quilt along the floor and slowly taking in her new surroundings.
The cottage was not big. There was one room downstairs; at one end was a huge open fireplace with a pile of gently smoldering logs still glowing on the hot stone hearth. Nicko and Boy 412 were fast asleep on the rug in front of the fire, each wrapped warmly in one of Aunt Zelda's patchwork quilts. In the middle of the room was a flight of narrow stairs with a cupboard underneath, with the words UNSTABLE POTIONS AND PARTIKULAR POISONS written in flowing golden letters on the firmly closed door. She peered up the narrow stairs that led up to a large darkened room where Aunt Zelda, Marcia and Silas were still sleeping. And of course Maxie, whose snores and snuffles drifted down to Jenna. Or were they Silas's snores and Maxie's snuffles? When they were asleep, master and wolfhound sounded remarkably similar.
Downstairs the ceilings were low and showed the rough-hewn beams that the cottage was built from. All manner of things were hung from these beams: boat paddles, hats, bags of shells, spades, hoes, sacks of potatoes, shoes, ribbons, brooms, bundles of reeds, willow knots and of course hundreds of bunches of the herbs that Aunt Zelda either grew herself or bought at the Magyk Market, which was held every year and a day down at the Port. As a White Witch, Aunt Zelda used herbs for charms and potions as well as medicine, and you'd be lucky to be able to tell Aunt Zelda anything about a herb that she did not know already.
Jenna gazed around her, loving the feeling of being the only one awake, free to wander undisturbed for a while. As she walked about, she thought how strange it was to be in a cottage with four walls all of its very own that were not joined to anyone else's walls. It was so different from the hurly-burly of The Ramblings, but she already felt at home. Jenna carried on with her exploration, noticing the old but comfortable chairs, the well-scrubbed table that did not look as though it was about to roll over and die at any minute and, most strikingly, the newly swept stone floor that was empty. There was nothing on it apart from some worn rugs and, by the door, a pair of Aunt Zelda's boots.