"You miss bossing me around."

  "That too," Valerija said, just before she closed the door.

  When she was gone, Marjeta slipped her hand under her pillow and held her three little hare puppets tight, closed her eyes, and coughed herself back to sleep.

  Birthday Gifts

  The day of her decad dawned in swirls of pinks and oranges, and Marjeta watched them all from her bedroom window. Now that she was well again and no longer coughing like a plague victim, she was once again back in her and Valerija's shared rooms. At fourteen, Val would soon be given rooms of her own, but until then Marjeta clung to their little nest. This was the place that made her happy. At her sister's side. Being ten didn't make up for what she would lose. In four more years, she would be where Valerija was now, but Valerija would be gone.

  She would never catch up.

  Marjeta breathed on the window and misted a circle. In it she drew a simple bear shape. A talisman. It was the bear who had broken the ice of her illness and brought her gasping to the lake side. She frowned and quickly rubbed the bear shape away, her sleeve squeaking against the thick glass.

  "Awake already?" Val said. Her voice was croaked with sleep.

  Marjeta turned away from the view of the meadows and farmlands green with life and looked at her sister.

  Val was sitting up, rubbing gunk for her eyes and yawning. She was mussed and crumpled still with dreams, all sleep-sticky. She looked almost as young as Marjeta for a moment, with all the weight of their mother's expectations lifted from her.

  "I've been up for ages. Being ten." The pride bubbled in Marjeta's chest. Her decad meant she was old enough to have people start taking her seriously. It always felt as though her mother would baby her for longer, knowing that she was the last of the nestlings. Now perhaps Marjeta would be treated like Val was, with nods of deference and have people listen instead of pretending attention while thinking of something else.

  Valerija sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair, unknotting the night's thoughts and shaking them free. "Too eager. It's the same as being nine, you know."

  "It's not."

  "It is, I have more experience in these matters, so hush." Valerija left her grooming and rummaged under her pillow to produce a small gift wrapped carefully in a pouch of embroidered velvet. It was only slightly bigger than her hand, flat and squarish in shape. She held it out. "Happy day to you."

  "What is it?" Marjeta made no move to come from the window. Olaga would be here soon to dress them with the help of her maid girls, and she wanted to enjoy this time with Val.

  "A gift, pet. Stop being dull and come get it, you do want it, I promise you."

  Her first gift of the day. A shiver passed along Marjeta's spine followed by a prickling wave of heat. It felt like excitement and terror and fever mixed together and ground like fresh herbs. Val could read her down to her bones, even the things she hoped she kept secret. Any gift Val gave her was going to reflect all she wanted.

  Marjeta left the window view, slipped across the flagstones and sat down next to her sister. Before she took the offered present, she hugged Val tight enough to make her laugh breathlessly. She breathed in the scent of her sister's hair, like dark icy currents and black figs and incense.

  "You're crushing me, you mad thing." But Val hugged back, just as fierce. There were some things that didn't need words or magic. After a long moment, Marjeta released her, though she snuggled up closer to her sister's side with her feet tucked under her thighs, before she took the velvet package. The pouch moved slippery over the hard cold thing inside it and Marjeta wondered if it could be a book. She wasn't a huge reader like Nadija and Val, but she did enjoy tales. Perhaps it was even a book of simple spell workings — something she could do with practice. She loosened the ribbon and slid the velvet down in soft creases.

  It was a silver mirror, delicately edged with roses and thorns and set with tiny gems of red and green and blue. Even if she had not seen it that night on the castle wall, Marjeta would have known it from the way the magic coiled under her palm, like whispers against skin.

  The mirror surface was no bigger than the palm of her hand, and Marjeta could make out only a part of her face — a wide brown eye, liquid as a lamb's; the arch of an eyebrow, the line and flare of her thin nose. "You can't," she said.

  "Of course I can. Oma passed it to me, so it belongs to me and I can do with it whatever I wish." Val snatched it out of her hands and grinned so that all her small white teeth showed. She had a toothless space on the lower left side, but that was nothing to the double gap Marjeta sported right at the very front of her smile. "And I do wish for you to have it."

  Magic. Marjeta's heart swelled, scared and thrilled. Real magic. A priceless gift — and Val was never free with her little collection of magical artefacts. "Mama gave it to you," she argued. "Not Oma Zoli—"

  "I know. Don't let her know you have it. I'll show you how it works." Val held the mirror up to her face and breathed on it, misting the mirror surface just as Marjeta had done to the window. "You remember to give it blood, right? Though sometimes it will work with just breath — but you need to work fast for that." Val took Marjeta's hand and closed it around the mirror's handle. It was cold enough to burn, like holding onto an icicle. "Once you've done that, you say, 'Mirror, mirror, take my soul, show me the thing that makes me whole.'"

  Marjeta said nothing and watched her sister's breath fade.

  "Marjeta?"

  "It's lovely." And it would not work. Maybe the mirror was made of pure magic and would work even for someone like her, but Marjeta did not want to find out that it wasn't. It was better to have it like this. Something to keep always in the back of her mind like a promise made, and almost kept. Potential.

  "Well..." Val frowned. "I'm glad you like it. Maybe you can't call the moon with it, but you should be able to do basic finding spells. That's what it was made for — it's meant to help you find lost things." She put her hand over Marjeta's. "Best put it away before Mama sees it." Her smile was back, bright and wicked and red.

  Quickly, Marjeta wrapped the mirror again and hid it in their shared closet under a book and scraps of folded material meant for one of Val's endless sewing projects.

  They'd returned to the bed, where Val was brushing and braiding Marjeta's hair, when Mama arrived with Olaga and breakfast. "A blessing on your decad," Mama said, though to Marjeta it seemed she barely noticed that Marjeta was actually in the room, as all communication seemed to be directed toward the three statuettes and their offering trencher.

  Marjeta glanced down at the fireplace, where the coals were being scraped and stirred by the maid, new logs ready to burn. Tarkis had scuttled into one corner, annoyed by the maid's daily intrusion, and Marjeta clicked her fingers softly.

  The salamander slithered across the floor and crawled up under the girls' blankets, his warm head burning against Marjeta's thigh.

  The room filled with stern silence, with the echoes of her mother's religion. The salamander's excursions remained unnoticed as Mama began burning a wrapped bundle of sage sprigs in a copper bowl, silently frowning as she watched the leaves smoulder, before she turned to her youngest daughter.

  Marjeta accepted her birthday blessings, and let Mama anoint her head with olive oil infused with rosemary. The clean smell of the herb lifted Marjeta's spirits. Mama always relied on ritual to take her through the days, her hours divided into prayers and blessings, offerings and gatherings, wards and charms. Olaga said she'd not always been like this.

  "I've brought you a gift," Mama said in her drifting far away voice, once she'd dotted Marjeta's forehead and eyelids with the oil. She motioned for Olaga to step forward so she could take from her a heavy case, about as long as her forearm, that tapered to a rounded point. She handed this solemnly to Marjeta, who took it with equal solemnity. Decads meant adulthood, and here was the first sign of that. It felt too heavy for its small size, the beading rough against her fingers.

  The outside of the narrow case had been brocaded and beaded with a fine hand, a bright pattern of flowers and hares, and the four narrow handles visible at the top were gilded iron. A travel set of cutlery.

  Mama was preparing her. Val had received a set like this, hers patterned with stags and hounds, for her own decad. There were four implements: a skewer, a wide spoon, a two-pronged fork and a sharp little knife. Marjeta didn't even have to remove them to know that they would be beautiful. "Thank you, Mother," she said, even though her heart was clenched and her eyes watering. "This is a treasure." They were all going to leave one day. That's what the cutlery meant. One day the daughters would travel out from their castle, going to other stone fortresses far from family and friends. There they would survive or die.

  "A treasure is only as good as the way in which it is used," Mama said in return, though she managed a smile. "I am glad you like it, Marjeta."

  Rain started to fall; the summer morning swept away by a sudden rolling grey bank of clouds. It looked as though Marjeta's decad feast would be a wet one. Hardly surprising for mid spring, but it still made Marjeta's heart leaden.

  "Drink this." Mama handed her wine sweetened with honey. "And then Olaga will see to it that you are ready. Your father has a great many gifts for you."

  Even that thought couldn't cheer her. The wine was heavy and sour under the sweetness and left an aftertaste that she could not swallow away. Marjeta stared glumly at the set of travel cutlery, and wished she was small again and running free as foxes from swale to shore.

  *

  When Marjeta and Valerija made their entrance to the hall, the rain was still battering down like a jeweller’s round hammer on tin. In honour of Marjeta's decad, the hall had been decorated with garlands of ribbons and spring flowers, scented with pine boughs. Tables were laid and set for feasts, and men and women had been hired to dance and sing and perform acrobatics. It was not a formal feast, Marjeta being the fourth child — and a daughter — but it was excuse enough to set the kitchens to work, and to celebrate a spring day.

  And now that day had turned its back on the revellers, they felt the impetus to drink hard and laugh louder, to sing and make merry as if to spite the weather. They sang to drown out the storm.

  Marjeta had packed away her earlier gifts in her room; the mirror from Val, Mama's travel cutlery, an ivory thimble from Olaga, a package of silks and threads sent from Nadija earlier in the year and saved for her; and all the assorted little gifts from maids-in-waiting and the women who crowded around her mother.

  No one really paid much attention to Marjeta. She was an excuse. She moved among the crowd like a mouse between stems of meadow hay, watching the conversations spill and splash from one face to another. When it came time to feast, she was seated next to Val, to the left of her mother, and watched the duke, her father, eat and drink. He was a distant ogre, a man she hardly knew. She'd never felt close to him. He'd fathered her, and he knew her name, but it always felt to Marjeta that she might as well have burst fully formed from her mother's forehead for all the attention he gave her.

  Today was a little different. Once the meat and pastries and soups had been mostly consumed, and the wine had been emptied from many carafes, her father turned to her, leaning across the table. Just past him sat Josef, who was staring dull eyed at his plate as though he were a man whose soul had long since fled. Usually, it was Josef who was the centre of her father's attention, and Marjeta squirmed as Papa's dark gaze settled on her. Like Mama, his hair was the colour of the last withered leaves of autumn, and his eyes were slanted and black, but that was the only resemblance. He had a mouth a little too full of teeth — a condition Marjeta was sure she was inheriting from the way a new tooth was pushing out high on her gum — and a pointed jaw where Mama's ended in a flat, stubborn line like the chopped end of an antler. He kept his reddish beard trimmed close to his jaw line, not quite committed to shave it all away.

  "Ten," he said, as though his solemn pronouncement made it so.

  "Yes, Papa." Marjeta bowed her head and scraped the end of her knife blade across the gravy, leaving a wavy line like a river. She wanted to go to the river, catch fish, find if her secret oak still stood. Anything but be sitting here and wondering what sentence this man would pronounce over her. She'd wanted his attention, she knew, and now she had it she wanted it taken away.

  "You girls seem to grow faster than reeds in summer." He glanced past Josef to where his important guest sat. A man, younger than Papa, with hair that curled dark, a clean-shaven face like he was a penitent. "Soon your sister will be going to Duke Calvai Jurie."

  Why was everyone trying to remind her of this? It must be a punishment for some sin she'd committed without realising. Marjeta managed a feeble smile in Duke Jurie's direction, though the man barely seemed to notice it.

  The Duke Jurie was not here to congratulate some nobody child on turning ten, but to see the girl who had been presented as his replacement wife. Val. Papa had made the engagements almost as soon as the duchess's blood had been rung from the birthing sheets.

  "Yes, Papa," Marjeta mumbled.

  "Don't look so sad, you'll have other things to keep you occupied." He allowed himself a little conspiratorial twist of a smile. "Like Josef here, he has something for you."

  At the sound of his name, Josef jerked in his seat and swung his bowed head to look at Marjeta. He was pale, sad, and Marjeta wondered at that. His new wife was not in attendance. Too sick, had been the rumour, but it was said in a way that made it sound a lie. "Ah," said Josef, and licked his lips nervously. They were dry and cracked. "I've a present for you. Don't think I forgot."

  "Thank you." Marjeta could see no sign of any gift, and Josef made no move to reveal one now. "That is very kind of you." She wanted to pull at her own hair to stop herself from hoping, to kick herself until she was bruised. Just because the moon made promises, and just because she wanted it.

  "Mama says you are very fond of my old pony, Dust—"

  Marjeta couldn't contain her shriek. The hall went quiet for a moment to stare, but when all she did was bounce in her seat with her hands clapped over her mouth, they soon returned to their drink and food.

  Even Josef was smiling. "Ah," he said. "Seems I can make one woman happy at least, even if it's a little woman. Dust is yours, and may she bring you as much joy as she brought me."

  Her brother had barely finished talking before Marjeta had breathlessly thanked him, over and over, her words almost incoherent.

  Papa was leaning back, an eyebrow raised, while at his side Mama was looking pinched and brittle, her smile forced in place. "And a new bow," Papa said as he raised one hand lazily. "You're stronger now, and a better shot, your instructor says."

  A servant came forward at his gesture, carrying a bow, still unstrung, but made of nutwood and horn, curved like the antlers of an ox. Another servant brought her arm- and finger-guards of tooled leather. Marjeta's heart was pounding. These were the kind of gifts she wanted—a horse, a beautiful weapon. Not thimbles and mirrors and cutlery. The moon had seen the future and told the truth. The moon had given her what she needed. She grinned hard enough to make her face ache. Who cared for magic mirrors she couldn't use, or thimbles when she hated to stitch? Who cared for the gifts of women? These men — Papa and Josef — they understood her, they knew she was like them. Marjeta stirred a fire of resolve in her chest. She would make them proud, make them see how good she was, how much she deserved these gifts. Perhaps they would take her hunting with them, astounded that some little girl could ride and shoot as well as they.

  The night had improved, and the storm shuddered, half forgotten, drumming in time with the musicians and the dancing feet.

  It was almost morning when she was taken to bed, her nurse Olaga leading her as she stumbled and yawned, heart as bright as a newly lit oil lamp. A strange whimpering noise came from behind the thick door, and Marjeta paused, suddenly afraid. The sound cut through the night's excitement and made her think of loss, off the terrible womanly screams of foxes. Something was in pain behind those doors, something terrified and lonely.

  "Hush, lamb," said Olaga at the look on her face. "It's your last gift." She swung the door wide, the hinges silent and red with fresh oil.

  At the foot of Marjeta's bed, curled up in a woven willow basket lined with hemp, shivering and crying, was a golden-dark wolfhound pup, all long legs and nose, and a tail that kinked as though it had been broken. “Sasha,” Marjeta whispered, naming the creature that was to become her own wild heart for the next four years.

  Spiralling Out

  Sasha's low grating growl reverberated against the stone walls of Marjeta's bedroom. Immediately alert, Marjeta sat bolt upright, wary and wide eyed, watching the shadows. It had been a long time since Marjeta and Valerija had shared a room, and Marjeta no longer walked sleepy-headed to Val in the dark. The only breaths that stirred Marjeta's room in the night were her own and those of the wolf hound and the kitten-small salamander that had followed her to a new hearth.

  Sasha had outgrown the little willow basket at the foot of her bed. Now the adult wolfhound stretched out across the entire bottom half of the bed, a protector and friend.

  The wolfhound was a huge, hunched shape, snarling at the door. Marjeta slid one hand under her pillow to retrieve the little knife she kept there. It was one part of the travel cutlery set her mother had given her for her decad. She was nearing fourteen now, but she kept the little gift close still. She had no other weapons to hand. The horn-curved bow had been a gift from Papa, not one that even Mama could confiscate, but a bow in such close quarters was little good.