I didn’t cry until I was twelve years old.
Mutti and Pappje had caught the pox . . . from me. I’d recovered a fortnight prior and was still weak, unable to fully walk normally again. Oma said the pox ate away some of my bone. That didn’t stop me from sitting by their bedsides—in agony—day and night.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Myrthe,” my mutti rasped, reaching out a hand so frail the veins popped like scars. I gripped it in my own. Then I grabbed Pappje’s limp one. I held the two to my lips. Kissed their knuckles.
“I’m here.” How long would they know that? How long would they see and comprehend? Pappje hadn’t woken in days. Not even when we half-heartedly celebrated my birthday on the winter solstice last week. Mutti spent most days in feverish delirium. Every time I asked Oma when they’d get better, she responded with a crisp, “They may not.”
They grew worse by the day. Oma did what she could for them. Soup. Water. She made me chop and haul firewood into our humble canal cottage despite my limp and the pain shooting up my left leg with every other step.
I didn’t complain.
But none of our efforts changed the sickly pallor on my parents’ faces.
So I chopped more firewood. I plucked feathers from geese bought from markt, and while Oma boiled the meat, I stuffed the feathers into quilt squares and laid them over my parents.
Oma was wrong. I got better. So would Mutti and Pappje.
Chills seized Mutti’s body as though the three quilts atop her were made of paper. I adjusted them. Again. Pulled my own hat off and settled it over her icy brow.
That’s when the burning began in my throat. A fist of fire constricting my air. It moved to my eyes. Was I growing ill? This foreign sensation hurt, but it felt right. Like sorrow straining for release.
I bent my head over their clasped hands, listening to Mutti’s ragged breathing. This was all my fault. If I’d gotten better sooner, maybe they’d still be well.
“Oh, Mutti . . . I wish you’d never known me.” Never birthed me. Never hugged me and caught my illness. “I wish this would end.”
Get better. Get better. Please get better. It had been so different being under Oma’s cold care these past several weeks. Come back to me.
Mutti’s shivering stopped. Pappje’s hand became weighted, limper than the riverfish we ate in summer. My thumb swiped over something wet.
I looked at Mutti’s and Pappje’s hands in mine. Water smeared their knuckles where my face had rested. Wetness covered my cheek too. Tears—things I’d seen on Mutti’s face but never felt on my own.
Pappje’s hand turned to ice in mine. It suddenly didn’t feel like a hand at all. Startled, I dropped it. His arm fell with a slam against the edge of his cot. A chill entered my chest, though I couldn’t place why.
Something had changed.
Something unnatural.
“Is he dead?” asked a shaky voice beside me.
I nearly jumped out of my calfskin trousers. Mutti struggled to prop an elbow beneath her. Trembling, she stared at Pappje.
I didn’t know which to react to first—her question about Pappje or the fact she was up. Awake. Talking.
“Mutti!” I threw myself into her arms, remembering at the last minute to be gentle.
She didn’t return the embrace but instead slid out of my arms. Color was already returning to her face. “Mutti?”
She had eyes only for Pappje and scrabbled for his hand, nearly toppling out of her cot from the effort. “Koen. Oh, Koen, don’t leave me alone.”
“Mutti, I—”
“Give me peace, child,” she snapped. I startled away. “I’m not your mother.”
I had yet to look at Pappje. I wanted to grasp the joy of Mutti’s return. But . . . what did she mean she wasn’t my mother?
“Ilse.” Oma stepped into the room. If she was surprised to find Mutti awake and recovering, she hardly showed it. “Do you know this child?”
“Wilma!” Mutti reached for Oma. “Your son . . . he is . . . oh, he’s left us.”
“Yes.” Oma stared at the scene, held captive by the still-cold body of her own child.
Tears streamed down my face, but I sat. I waited for Mutti to comfort me. For her to see me. Why was she so angry at my presence? “Mutti?”
“Get this child away from me!” Mutti collapsed over Pappje’s body. “Oh, Koen . . .”
Oma yanked me into her bedroom—the only other room in our small home. I stumbled to the bed when she released me, sobs tearing from my chest. “Oma, what did she mean?”
“You’re crying.” She said it like an accusation, then turned her back to me and rummaged in an old trunk.
I
sniffed. Not sure I liked crying. The more I did it, the less in control I felt. I was wet everywhere. My eyes, my nose, my face. But more than that, my chest hurt. “Why did Mutti say she’s not my mother?”
Oma whirled on me with a small bottle clutched in her hand. “Because you removed her memory of you.” She sounded . . . triumphant. “I was at the door, listening. You said you wished Ilse had never known you. Your tear struck her hand.”
She pressed the bottle against my cheek. I was so confused—so surprised—I didn’t think to move. A moment later, Oma held the bottle aloft and a small tear bounced around the bottom of the jar like a trapped guppy, flickering silver and white and magic.
“Finally.” She corked the bottle and placed it in her trunk. “You’re the Wishtress, Myrthe. Each tear you cry has the power to grant a wish.”
Wishtress? I’d heard of her—the most powerful Talented in all of Fairhoven. No, in all of Winterune. Maybe even the world. A Wishtress was born every hundred years or so. Always female. A heroine of the kingdom. That’s all I’d ever heard of the Wishtress—all anyone could tell me.
I couldn’t be the Wishtress. I was poor. Brittle boned. Distraught. I couldn’t even cry until today. Then I thought about what Oma said. “You removed her memory of you.” Because I’d cried and made a wish . . . Mutti couldn’t remember me?
Another part of my words—my desperate prayer—teased my memory. “I wish this would end.” I wished their sickness to end . . . and it did.
“I . . . I killed Pappje?” I gripped my hands in front of me, as though they could keep the broken whisper from reaching Oma’s ears.
But she heard. And she nodded. “You used a raw wish. More dangerous than a spark on cotton.” She faced me head-on and grabbed my shoulders. I couldn’t tear away from her intense gaze. “You’re never to use a wish again, Myrthe. Not until you’re trained properly. I’ve studied the ways of the Wishtress my entire life and will teach you in time. Every tear you cry must be bottled. I’ll protect them. I will protect you. Otherwise you could end up killing others.”
My small form seemed to shrink beneath the weight of her words. I was unable to comprehend much other than I killed my own pappje. And I made Mutti forget me.
This was my fault. All of it.
I wanted away from Oma. Away from her knowledge and her icy words. Her lack of feeling and the victorious glint in her eye over this new discovery.
I didn’t want to be the Wishtress.
I wanted to be Myrthe, holding my parents’ hands again . . . before they’d gone cold. Praying for them. Hoping for them. Caring for them and hugging them.
I fled the bedroom, knocking the doorjamb with my hip in my disjointed attempt at haste. I burst into the main room. It was empty of life. Pappje lay on the cot. Cold. Dead.
Mutti was gone.
The front door hung open on its hinges. Cold night air not yet breathed on by spring gusted into the room and caused the fire to flicker.
I ran toward it. “Mutti? Mutti!” I could see nothing in the darkness. No. She couldn’t leave me. She wasn’t well enough!
I reached for my coat, but Oma stayed my hand. “I’ll find her.”
“She’s my mutti!” I had to help. Had to fix this.
“She doesn’t remember you. She doesn’t want you.”
Doesn’t want you.
Oma slammed the door behind her, leaving me in our cottage with the body of my dead pappje.
* * *
The next morning, we stood over two graves.
She’d found Mutti frozen and lifeless less than a mile from our home. Oma didn’t let me see her. Didn’t let me kiss either of them goodbye. Instead, she woke me from where I’d curled in the corner by the fireplace. “Come say words over their graves.”
I had no words other than, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I fell to my knees. This was so much worse than when they lay side by side trapped in illness. At least then I had hope. I could tuck myself into their arms and will my love for them to warm their bodies.
Now they lay in the earth, blanketed in darkness. I wanted to be with them, but I didn’t want to die. I sniffed hard as the frightening burning built in my throat. There was no stopping it from spilling over in hot tears.
Oma knelt beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, an uncharacteristic show of tenderness. I moved to lean my head on her chest, but something cold and hard met my cheek.
A glass bottle.
“Let it out, child,” Oma whispered as the first tear slipped into the vial. “Just keep crying. I’m here.”
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