Prologue
Fire was a strange child, had always been, as far back as she could remember- even before the incident that forever-ago Winter. She was different, nothing like the heavy gilt-framed portraits of pompous, rich, glaze-eyed men staring disapprovingly down at her whenever she walked down a hallway. In her own home. She knew it, and she knew that the others knew it, and she knew that they did not know that she knew that they knew it. Really, though, it wasn't hard to overhear people whispering a few rooms over, and like any self-respecting child she couldn't help but listen at the door once she heard her name.
It was always the same, though. If it was Hettie and Cook, they would be whispering about how they were worried about her, how she wasn't like other girls her age, how she needed to stop being so wild all the time if she was ever to have a decent future. If it was her sisters, they wouldn't be whispering. They'd be giggling loudly about how she was stupid, she was dirty, she was uncivilised, she was rough, she was rude, she was ugly, she was never going to find a husband. Not that she wanted a husband, for that matter. At nine years old, she couldn't imagine ever wanting one, even when she was old enough to have one. But, she often thought with a sigh, they were right about the other things. She never really understood what they were talking about, and she stopped asking for clarification soon enough when they laughed behind their hands each time. She was always covered in mud and leaves and twigs, and sometimes blood from the various scrapes and scratches on her legs. Every time she had a bath, she would become just as filthy straight afterwards. She couldn't remember her manners, or which spoon to use, or how to style her hair, or how to drink tea like a lady. She always forgot to tie up the ribbons on her dress, or to smile, or that she needed to walk indoors, or to put on shoes, or to brush her hair. And she would never have the cream-and-roses complexion and golden hair of her sisters. But that wasn't the worst of it. If it was her father whispering behind closed doors, it was always about how she was so unlike her dear old dead ma, how she was driving him insane, how he couldn't put up with it much longer, how he wished she would just grow up and be a proper lady, how she just couldn't do anything right.
It all used to bother her. Now it rarely did. She used to try so hard to be a proper little lady, with pretty dresses and clean fingernails and a lovely smile on her face. She'd tried to learn the pianoforte, and she tried to learn the violin. But her fingers weren't made for making music, and they slipped and stumbled all over the keys and chords. She'd tried to play nicely with her dollies, having teaparties and brushing their hair. But those dollies had ended up dirt-stained, waterlogged, and torn into little pieces. She had tried. But nothing she ever did worked. Her father still hated her. Now she simply took the beatings in silence. She didn't even cry anymore.
And she hated him, too. She could barely even hear the part of her that craved his praise and his pride anymore, that wanted him to love her and comfort her and tell her it would be all right, squashed so tightly as it was. She hated him, hated him for beating her, hated him for being so disappointed in her no matter what she did, hated him for loving her sisters more than he loved her, hated him for always blaming her for her mother's death, hated him for being the thing she'd cried most over.
She was always locked in her room after being beaten, and this time was no different. She pretended to lie down nicely in her bed like a good girl, and Hettie gave her a sympathetic look as she closed and locked the door behind her. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… She counted the footsteps in her head as she climbed out of bed and took out the little key she kept under the music box. Nobody knew she had it. She doubted anyone even knew that it existed. She'd found it in one of the old rooms in the west wing, hanging on a set of keys that opened every door in the manor. The others were hidden under her mattress.
When she counted 23 footsteps, she put the key in the lock and opened the door.
There were lots of little ways outside her house, but her favourite was out one of the guest room's window. There was a large tree with wide branches that easily supported her small body going down. When she reached the bottom, she ran through the fields and into the forest, her already-bruising legs and back barely slowing her at all.
She reached the tree before her breath started to shorten, before her legs started to tire, before her lungs started to burn. She reached up and pulled herself into the branches, climbing and jumping across them as she climbed higher and higher off the ground. When she reached the canopy, the leaves brushed her face and arms and embraced her, the way she imagined a mother might. The rough bark gave her bare feet something to grip on to as she ascended to her favourite spot.
Above the canopy, the sky was cloudy and as far as the eye could see in three directions was the treetops that made up the Singing Forest. In the other direction were the fields, and behind them, the manor house on the hill. She turned back around, to face the endless expanse of trees, and settled in as it began to rain. She loved the rain. It was cool and soft and wet, and coated everything in a layer of diamonds and mist that made it all look otherworldly. She also loved the cold that came with the rain. It woke her up, made her feel alive.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine growing up and leaving, going Somewhere Else, where… well, it would be better than here. She wasn't allowed to read books, and the only books in the house were boring books about stuffy old men or Cook's old recipe books, so it wasn't like she had much to go on. Still, she let herself imagine that she was with Isabelle, maybe on a ship, which looked like a floating house, sailing on the ocean, which she imagined looked like the treetops before her, but made of water. She let herself believe for a moment that it was real.
As she climbed back down, she heard a howl. It sounded menacing. And close. She put on the fur quickly, the better to defend herself in case it came too close, and started running for home. Before she got halfway out of the woods, however, something bounded out in front of her. Brown Wolf. It was big, so much bigger than her, and its eyes had nothing human in them. Its claws were wicked blades, only slightly worse than its teeth. There was no way she would be able to fight it. But she could outrun it. The vixen was fast, and faster for being so small. As she turned, the Brown Wolf attacked, slicing through the fur on her thigh and deep into the flesh. She yelped and staggered, before righting herself and running as fast as possible, faster than she ever had before. She lost it after a time, and the fur too, and climbed a tree the better to hide from it and its brothers. She ran through the treetops, trailing blood from the wound and feeling quite dizzy, before arriving all too soon at the edge or the forest. She stumbled and half-fell down the tree, but picked herself up again and staggered up towards the house on the hill. It seemed to her like the journey took forever, and her mind was floating away. She kept grasping it back, but as she reached the servant's entrance, it floated too high and she couldn't reach it, and she fell down onto the steps.
She woke to Hettie wiping her face with a wet cloth, and whimpered as she sat up.
"Now, now, dove. Need to get you cleaned up. If your father sees you've been tracking mud through the house again, he'll go hopping." She doesn't know about it. She hasn't seen the blood. Keep it that way, Fire.
"Yes, Hettie." She looked around. She was in Hettie's room. Good. "I'm fine, really, I was just tired. Do you mind if I rest for a while?" Hettie's face drew into a small smile.
"Yes, of course, dear. I'll be in the kitchen, helping Cook, if you need anything. Rest up, dove!" With that, she closed the door behind her. Immediately, Fire was out of bed and searching through the draws. She found it exactly where she'd expected. Pulling her dress up, and careful not to get blood on anything, she washed the wound in the small basin beside the bed, and tipped it out the window. Then she threaded the silk onto the needle, and started to stitch. It hurt. Oh, it hurt. But she didn't let herself flinch. She pulled the thread through the three deep slices in her thigh, and tied them at the ends. She'd never been good at embroidery, and the stitches were clumsy, but they would hold the wounds together, and that was all that mattered.
She had always been a fast healer.