Bladed Wings Read online

  I discovered there was one good thing about having a caretaker; the house was cleaned twice as fast. This meant that I didn’t have to clean as much and had more time to explore outside. It was a lot nicer in the open air than the cold draftee house. I walked out into the sun letting it soak in for a moment warming me and making be feel instantly better before I turned down the gravel path that ran around the house leading down to a formal garden boarded with overgrown hedges and rose bushes.

  The turf still looked like it was in pretty good condition, but was yellowed in patches where the leaves from the large trees that spotted the gardens had shed their leaves. I hitched my baggy trousers up which only came to my calves anyway, and kicking off my shoes climbed to a low branch of the biggest oak so that I could see more of the land surrounding the house.

  Down the back was a well-established orchid of apples. A few young trees were scattered over the ground, where they had grown from fallen apples. Beyond the gardens there were vast fields of slip daisies and still further away lay rock strewn valleys. A river ran through a gully about 500 metres down from the house, winding back up around the village that was barely visible over a small hill, before disappearing into the mountains.

  I climbed back down and walked around to the far side of the house where I found a large area that was surrounded by a red brick wall, which looked to be a kitchen garden, it was next to the kitchen door anyway. I walked around the whole thing but didn’t find a way in. It was too high to jump and didn’t have enough handholds to climb. I went back to where I had seen a length of timber by the driveway and leant it up to one of the walls. The wood was slippery and I kept sliding back down whenever I was nearly high enough to see in.

  “C’mon, I just want to see what’s in there,” I huffed under my breath. Finally on the last try I lunged for the top of the wall and peered over the top. It was a kitchen garden as I had thought with basil, oregano, peas, an overgrown strawberry vine and several other plants that I didn’t recognise all jumbled in together. I jumped over, careful to land on a bare patch of soil so that I didn’t crush any of the plants. The air inside smelt heavenly, tinted with rosemary and peppermint as I brushed past the bushes. I pulled up a few weeds and poured some water from a watering can that had filled with rainwater on the smaller plants. I was relieved to find that there was a small doorway in the far wall so that I wouldn’t have to climb back over to get out again. Looking at the door again from the outside I could barely make the door out from the brick around it. I smeared some dirt at the bottom so that I could find it again and went in search of some gardening tools.

  Back at the boarding house the landlord Henry had let me set up a garden on the roof which several of the neighbouring shop owners came to admire and add to when they needed a break from work. They all said that my garden was the most lovely and relaxing space in the whole city. I suspected they were just humouring me, but I appreciated it all the same.

  Setting off down the hill from the garden, there was a tool shed and some stray chickens. Further down, stones and the odd outline of a building could be seen in the tall grass. I breathed in the fresh country air, not even minding the tinge of cow manure that wafted by on the breeze.

  “This use to be a village you know.”

  I jumped, slipping in the wet and falling onto the damp grass banging by knee on something hard.

  “I did it again didn’t I? Here, let me help you.”

  It was the caretaker. I had scraped my knee on a loose stone when I fell, which was now staining my pants a dull red as it bleed through. He insisted I sit down so that he could take a look at it. I’m not good with pain so I allowed myself to be guided to the remains of a stonewall to sit down.

  He ripped off the bottom of the torn trouser leg and pressed on the skin around the cut. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out, I rarely hurt myself which was good as I didn’t like any kind of pain.

  “It doesn’t look too bad, but I had better put something on it to stop an infection. You haven’t seen any Marshmallow around here have you?”

  “Seen what?”

  “The plant not the candy,” He laughed.

  “I don’t know what it looks like,” I admitted. “But there is a herb garden just up there.”

  He trotted up the hill returning a moment later with a handful of roundish, velvety leaves.

  He put the leaves in his mouth and chewed them into a soft paste that gave off a foul smell.

  “I hope you aren’t about to do what I think your going to do!” I said wrinkling my nose.

  He grinned and to my disgust covered the cut with the soggy leaf mixture then tied his hanky tightly around it.

  It felt gross. Like peanut butter in your shoe.

  “What’s your name? You didn’t tell me before.” I said to take my mind off it.

  “Michael. Can you walk on it?” He helped me to my feet.

  Standing didn’t hurt as much as I thought and I was able to walk with almost no limp. The pain was slowly ebbing away and the bleeding had stopped.

  “What are you doing out here anyway, not meaning to sound rude but shouldn’t you be cleaning?” I asked as I adjusted my top, retying the strings at my side that secured the cloth around me.

  “I need to fix the chicken pen before a fox gets to them. You can watch if you like.”

  I was too embarrassed about letting him scare me again to stay, so I told him that I needed to change and set off back to the house.

  Mum and Linda were getting dinner ready in the kitchen under the instruction of a stocky, voluptuous and rather bossy looking red haired lady, who I guessed was our new cook. I slipped on yesterdays leggings that were on the floor in my room and went back down to help.

  “I’m guessing that your Lilly, I’m Jacqueline. Well don’t just stand there grab some knives and forks and set the table, then when your done you can run and fetch some eggs and milk from the cool room and beat up some omelettes.”

  “Sure, did you want me to go and buy some milk and eggs before I do all of that?” I asked.

  Jacqueline clicked her tongue and threw a potato over her shoulder at me. I ducked as it spun over my head smashing against the wall behind me. Her aim was scarily good, I turned to clean up the mess and found that it hadn’t hit the wall as I had thought but the door of the cool room. Her potato had knocked the door open and inside was a full pitcher of milk and a basket of eggs, along with the wrapped packets of meat. Jacqueline chuckled as I retrieved the eggs and milk. I could tell she was not a woman that I would want cross with me. There defiantly wasn’t any food in there an hour ago and I guessed that she must be a mage of some sort. All children were checked for signs of magic when they were five. Neither Linda nor I had any trace of magic much to our parents surprise. Grandmother, my father’s mother, was a mage. She was one of the most powerful in the country, but we had been sworn by both mum and dad as far back as I can remember never to tell anyone because she worked for the King as his chief mage and it would put us in danger of kidnap from rival kingdoms if they found she had a family. As a rule, no one in the kings court was aloud to marry for this reason.

  We only had a quick supper, I watched Jacki every moment hoping that she would do more magic but she never so much as let out a spark. She kicked us out after we had finished eating so that she could set up the kitchen properly. Mum went back to her cleaning humming distractedly to herself, and Linda hastened back to her room. I stayed and watched mum for a while but she seemed not to notice me. After a few minutes I couldn’t watch her any more and longed to be outside again.

  When I got outside I turned to go and watch Michael fix the pen but realised I didn’t actually know where the chicken pen was. I went back to where I left him and headed on down the hill to the sounds of clucking and the odd stray chicken. The pen wasn’t large but it was in bad shape. It looked like a tree branch had knocked down a part of the wire, which was where the hens had gotten out. I stood back behind the trees to watch, not wa
nting to interrupt.

  He had managed to lift the branch off the side, which was impressive as it was a very large branch, and was twisting the wire together as a temporary patch. The way he did it was so smooth, taking the two pieces between his fingers and twisting them almost seamlessly together. I had never seen anyone fixing a fence before but I was sure that this was not how it had been done on the other patches that had been fixed by the previous owners. They had all been done with extra strips of wire and looked rather dangerous. As I watched I noticed the outline of what looked like a hunting knife beneath his shirt when he lifted his arms making his shirt tight across his back. It didn’t bother me particularly as I was sure that there must have been all kinds of wild animals in the woods behind us that he would have to watch out for whilst completing his work.

  I watched from my hiding place until it begun to grow dark and I hurried back wanting to explore the house a bit more before the light failed.

  Chapter 2

  The next few weeks went by so fast that I didn’t have time to look around as much. Every day was spent cleaning and unpacking. I went outside as often as I could to tend the garden. The roses had responded well after I had cut away the dead wood and removed the insects that were feeding on their leaves and flowers. New buds came out after a few days and I could almost hear them humming with pleasure when I gave them fertilizer from the shed. Jacqueline benefited from my work in the herb garden, which she said that she could never find the door of, so I had taken over its care for a while. The herbs that I brought her hung from the rafters in the kitchen. I discovered that she knew a lot about the various plants and their uses in both cooking and medicine. She never came out to the garden with me but I often went to see her in the afternoon when she would talk for hours about the plants as we prepared them for drying and storing. Michael occasionally joined in when he had some free time, but he and Jacqueline’s personalities seemed to clash and more often than not the session would end with Michael storming out the door red in the face after arguing with her. I came to suspect that they both secretly liked these encounters, after one time I ended up breaking up the argument leaving them both moodily tying twine around bunches of rosemary and thyme, but each with the hint of a smile on their lips. I thought it was amusing watching them each argue their own point seeming to know when to stop and when to probe further like an old married couple even though Jacki must have been in her forties and Michael looked no older than 25.

  Finally in our second week mum said that the house was good enough to ‘live in’ which meant we could finally stop cleaning. Jacki had enough herbs and vegies from the garden to last her through until next winter and we had finally stopped finding chickens around the house.

  The rest of the food stocks however were becoming alarmingly low. We had brought some food with us when we moved, but after two weeks the pantry was almost bare. I jumped at the chance to get out of the house, and told mum that I would go down to the village for groceries. Jacki gave me a list and strict instructions about what not to buy as I was leaving. Mum offered to drive me as it would take me half the day to get there and back, but I declined insisting that I needed the fresh air. It was strange, her mind was not quite right but her appearance had not changed in the slightest. She was still the immaculate woman that she had always been in her dark blue dresses and carefully pinned dark blonde hair. I was grateful for this as in the few times we had gone out in the last month before we left the city, no one had treated my mother badly as they often did the dirty street kids that had gone slightly strange as mum had. Only the vacancy in her eyes suggested that she was ill.

  The village was very small, just one main street lined with knickknack shops and a café about halfway along. It was late in the afternoon though and I knew that I would be lucky to make it back by dark so I went straight to the food store. There wasn’t very much there just a few rather old looking vegetables and fruit and some milk and stale bread. When I tried to ask one of the assistants he just mumbled something about markets and walked off.

  I found most of the things on Jacqueline’s list eventually and even found a sign advertising a Farmers Market in a few days. I was probably just being paranoid but by the time I got home I had the odd feeling that the people in the village had been avoiding me. Nothing obvious, but little things, like the girl at the counter wouldn’t look at me and kept muttering things that sounded very rude under her breath, I just thought that she was perhaps tired and cranky but then as I was leaving I heard her talking in whispers to the other girls and when I turned back I noticed that the other people in the store quickly looked away when they saw me looking. Then on the way out of the village I walked past a mother and her son. As I passed her she picked him up covering his head with one of her white gloved hands, and sped up, her skirts fluttering until she was past me. It had begun to rain, which may have explained her behaviour, but it still unnerved me and made me feel like a street urchin, the children that roamed the streets of the city, like them I was being hurriedly moved on and out of their village.

  I was soaked through when I got home. After I delivered the groceries, Jacki mistook my pale face and general mood of wretchedness as the first signs of a cold and insisted I go straight upstairs for a hot bath. When I got up there, I found the bath already run and soft towels ready for me. I was glad that I had my own bathroom, it was so much more peaceful. In the boarding house we had to share a bathroom with the rest of the floor, about 10 people.

  I pulled my thin night dress out of my suitcase and crawled under the covers of my bed. It was so warm and cosy that I was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  I woke up the next day to a dreary cloud strewn sky. I had taken to being Michael’s shadow most days. It was a good way to learn about the grounds and the village. I had assumed that today he would be indoors because it was raining. After an hour of searching the house, I happened to see him coming out of the woods in a travelling cloak.

  I ran down to catch him, but by the time I got to the kitchen door he had gone.

  “I hope your not going to go outside and come back in dragging dirt around my kitchen.” Jacki said haughtily, elbow deep in the dough for tomorrows bread.

  “No, Im not going out, besides I don’t know where he went.”

  She grunted which was her way of agreeing without actually letting you win the fight. She was too busy to talk with me today so I was forced to sulk around the house whilst the rain lashed at the windows. At around 3pm we turned on the lights as the rain clouds grew increasingly ominous. Linda came and found me in the study just before dinner.

  “Mum wants us to come down for dinner in an hour,” she said, not coming in and hastily leaving once she had given me her message.

  An hour later I arrived in the kitchen, Linda was already there looking impatient, but she knew as I did that it had to be something pretty important for mum to call a family meeting. I wandered over and sat up on the edge of the bench. Ten minutes later mum came in looking harassed. Her hair was on end from running her fingers through it and she had dirty hand marks on her skirt which I was sure she didn’t know about or she would have changed.

  “Ok girls its time we discussed school options.”

  Linda sat up a little straighter. I didn’t really care, I was never very good at school.

  “I want you girls to go to the best school in the country. Moneys’ no problem.” She finished guessing what I was about to say.

  “Now, I was hoping to send you both to my old school Cholanders, but Michael has informed me that it closed down shortly after I left. According to him there are only two ways for you girls to get your schooling.” I didn’t ask why she was asking Michael for school tips as I knew I wouldn’t get a good answer.

  “The first,” She continued, “is for you both to attend Lady Cassandra’s which is a very reputable finishing school, it is however quite some distance away so you will have to stay in their house of residence.”

  She had go
tten up from the table and begun to pace with her hands clasped behind her back. I could tell she had rehearsed the whole thing.

  “The second,” she continued, “is for me to hire tutors. I understand that this is a big decision so I will allow you both until the end of the week to think about it.”

  Linda and mum left the room talking intently about schools and future careers. I stayed behind to help Jacqueline stuff a chicken for dinner.

  “What do you think that I should do?” I asked her as I pushed the spiced bread mixture in.

  “You’re askin’ the wrong person little miss,” she said as she tied an apron around my skirt. Her red hair had streaks of flour in it from repeatedly tucking stray pieces of hair back into the cloth that held her hair back without dusting her hands first.

  “I was home schooled, you need more in there or it’ll just come out again, more, more. I will miss your antics if you go away though.”

  I handed her my tray to put in the oven, than sat and scrubbed the potatoes as I thought. That night I dreamt that I went away to school but instead of dorms we slept in cells and the headmistress kept turning into a huge bird and attacking me whilst everyone laughed.

  The next day everyone was preoccupied. Mum seemed to have a relapse and spent the day muttering and nodding to herself, snapping at anyone that disturbed her.

  Linda was taking the school thing way too seriously. She was walking around trying to get one of the maids who had started that day, to tell her more about Lady Cassandras and only stopped when I asked her to come to the shop with me. She jumped at the chance saying that she could ask the locals about school. As soon as we got to the village she took off for the library.