A Girl in Black and White (Alyria 2)

“Once upon a time there was a girl—”

“Oh!” The little girl dropped the bucket; water sloshed out the sides and onto the wooden floorboards. “Was she the fairest in the land?”

Her grandmother wiped her bloody hands on a rag, glancing at the man on the table. He hadn’t made it—a simple bar fight and one life lost. She’d humor the girl with a story; it was the first death she’d seen, after all.

“You could say she was fair,” Isadora replied.

Her granddaughter shot her a frown. “Not the fairest?”

“Not every story gets the fairest maiden in the land,” Isadora replied. She needed to weave a lesson into this story. Her granddaughter could surely use it—she lived in a fairy-tale.

The girl pursed her lips but pressed a cloth to the wound on the man’s chest still seeping red onto the table. “Go on then, Grandmother.”

“But she was beautiful: blond hair, smooth porcelain skin, and dark eyes.”

The little girl’s brows lowered in suspicion at the description of her own features. “Grandmother—”

“Oh, hush. This is my story, not yours.”

Her granddaughter frowned again, but kept her mouth shut, rinsing the bloody rag in the bucket.

“She was a simple girl, living a simple life. Doing chores around the farm—”

“Oh, Grandmother.” She drew out the word. “Surely you jest. No magnificent tale starts this way.”

“How do you know? You’re only six, after all.”

“I know more than you think,” she grumbled.

Isadora continued. “She lived a simple life for quite some time . . . until she realized she wasn’t a normal girl.”

Her granddaughter’s eyes widened, now interested in the story.

“No, she wasn’t normal at all. She had . . . magic.”

“Really? Could she read people’s minds?”

Isadora shook her head. “No . . . she could open the seal, and release magic to all the land.”

The girl got an itch on her cheek with the back of her hand. “But, how did she have magic if it was locked up?”

“Well, some people were born with magic, and some were not. If the magic were unlocked, then everyone would have it.”

“What’s so bad about that? It sounds like fun to me.”

“It made many human men insane,” Isadora said simply.

The girl’s brows knitted. “How so? Did they go pillaging and raping?”

Isadora blinked. “Where did you hear about that?”

“Johnny and Castor were talking about how Titans go pillaging and raping.”

Isadora sighed. Six. Six years old going on twenty. She’d have to drag out the etiquette books soon. “You’re not to play with those boys anymore. They’re getting too old for you anyway.”

The girl’s eyes shot up from her work. “But, Grandmother, they are the only ones to play with. Otherwise, I have to cross the stream to get to Sarah’s, and you’re always complaining when I come home wet. Besides they’re only a few years older.”

“You’re a lady. You don’t need to be consorting with those Briar boys.”

The little girl snorted at the word ‘lady,’ but Isadora went on, ignoring the crass sound—she’d take one battle at a time. “The girl had to wear these . . . cuffs—” Her granddaughter frowned as she looked down at her own silver cuffs, “—to hide where she was. Otherwise, anyone would know how to find her. Well, one day, one fell off.”

The girl eyed her grandmother skeptically. She had the power to make one feel silly beyond disbelief with that gaze, yet she was only a child. “And one just fell off? Just . . . plop . . . on the ground?”

“Why is that so unbelievable?”

The girl pursed her lips as if she was disappointed in this story. “Mine have never fallen off.”

Isadora sighed, regretting that she agreed to tell this tale. “Fine . . . someone stole it.”

“Who?”

Her granddaughter’s expression was still dissatisfied, so Isadora thought, why the hell not? “Well her mother, of course.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open. “Her mother?”

Isadora nodded. “The girl had to go on the run because now everyone knew where

she was. So, she took off on her own, and tried to find an escort to get her somewhere safe.”

“A prince!”

“No, not a prince, just an escort.”

The girl frowned, dunking her rag in the bucket. “Grandmother, Old Man Briar has told a better tale than this.”

Isadora rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she huffed. “He was . . . an assassin.”

The girl looked up in awe, and Isadora wondered if she had a grandson instead of a granddaughter—but she was as stubborn as a girl, that was for sure.

“Did he carry a sword to chop off heads?”

“No, he only had knives. He was a skilled knife thrower, you see,” and because Isadora was beginning to think her story really was worse than Old Man Briar’s, she added, “the best in the land.”

“Did he kill lots of people?”

Isadora didn’t know how far she should take this, but there was a dead man on the table—the child wouldn’t be sheltered from death. “Well, he was an assassin,” she said simply.

“Did he kill men to save the princess?”