Page 19 of Sweetling
“Do you think it glows with magic?” said Merry.
“I think he lives in a tree,” quipped Rory. “Aren’t they into nature and trees and the like?”
“That’s stupid,” sneered Nora, “nobody would live in a tree.”
“Plenty of things live in trees,” Rory argued back.
“Squirrels, raccoons, birds…” Oona began to list all the creatures she knew.
“Those areanimals,” Nora insisted with disgust. “He’s a man. A fae. And where would his unicorn go in this tree house of his?”
“In his own tree,obviously,” said Rory, just to rile their sister.
Nora, always so sensitive and easy to rile, pinched her lips together in a sour expression. “This is a stupid thing to talk about. Everyone knows he bought the old Scarborough estate, so it’s probably just an old moldering house.”
Oona gasped in delight. “You get to live in a big house?”
Molly did her best to smile. “So it seems.”
“Anoldone,” Nora interjected. “Probably doesn’t have any floors anymore and no furniture.”
“Enchanting, Nora, thank you.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Let’s talk about something else. What are we going to do with this room? It has the best window. I think I might want it. I’m oldest, so I should get to have it.”
She looked up when none of her sisters responded. Molly too glanced up, expecting at least one argument, for argument’s sake.
The three younger girls were staring at Molly, their faces gone downcast.
“Do you really have to go?” asked Oona in a little voice.
Molly’s heart lurched, and she quickly knelt on the floor before them. The girls threw their arms around her neck, and Oona began to cry.
“Hey now,” Molly soothed. “It’s all right. Things will be just fine. You’ll hardly miss me at all.”
Oona shook her head, rubbing her tears and leaky nose into Molly’s neck. “No, we won’t! We won’t forget you!”
“I know you won’t, love. And I’ll be sure to visit. It’s not forever.”
“Did the fae say that?” Nora asked. She didn’t sound malicious, but Molly still threw her a dark frown over Oona’s head.
“I haven’t spoken with him yet, but it doesn’t matter. I say I’ll visit, and so I will.”
“You haven’t spoken with him?” Nora repeated suspiciously. “Didn’t you last night—”
“Never mind. I’ll speak with him.”
That seemed to placate the girls, and Molly spent the next few moments mopping up tears, even as her own heart cried out.
She didn’t want to leave them.
Sure, she’d been making plans to leave. She had her stash of coins—now packed safely in one of her canvas bags. But she didn’t think she would’ve gone far—maybe a different neighborhood, establish herself somewhere new. And maybe the girls could have come with her after a time, the younger ones at least.
All her plans, vague as they’d been, had come to nothing. They hadn’t been much, but they’d been hers—and now they were less than a puff of smoke.
Her life was careening out of her control again, and Molly had to swallow back her panic.
That terror lodged in her throat when a brusque knock came at the door, and on the other side, Brom said, “They’re here—the mayor and the fae. It’s time.”
