Meadow Faeoria's Arc

Chapter 3 of 12

Meadow stepped into the yard with the wand raised. The ash-girl watched from the doorway. The pumpkin sat by the woodpile, larger than a washtub, its rind gone soft in patches. Black mold spread across one side in a slow bruise. A dead vine curled off its stem like a hook. Meadow could smell the rot from three paces away. She knelt beside it. This was the part she had never done alone. Her mother had shown her once, in a field above the palace, the year spring first reached the underworld. Persephone had pressed her palm to a seed and coaxed it into a full apple tree without a word. Meadow had only watched. She set the star of the wand against the pumpkin's rind. She closed her eyes and thought of her mother's hand on the seed. She thought of green pushing through cold ground. The wand grew warm. Then hot. The rind under the star began to shine. Steel rose out of the vine. It curled up and over the pumpkin in thin black ribs, the way frost climbs a window. The mold on the side lifted, turned bright, and set into panels of stained glass — purple and rose, lit from inside. Wheels rolled out from beneath the rind on their own iron spokes. The stem twisted into a lantern hook. The rot smell thinned and was gone. Meadow stood back. The carriage was taller than she was. Light moved inside it like a slow candle. It rocked once on its wheels and settled, waiting. Behind her, the ash-girl made a small sound. Not a gasp. Something quieter. "It's real," the girl said. "It's real until midnight." The girl stepped down into the yard. She walked around the carriage once. She put one blackened hand against a steel rib and left a print there. She did not wipe it off. "I've never been in a carriage," she said. "You'll be in this one within the hour." The girl turned. In the glass panels, her reflection was orange and pink, warmer than she looked in daylight. "The dress next." "The dress next," Meadow said. She lifted the wand again. The star was still hot. She could feel where the magic had spent itself — a thinness in her wrist, as if she had bled a little into the steel. She had not counted on that. Her mother had never mentioned a cost to the caster. Only to the thing. She glanced at the sky. The last light was going. She had a dress to spin, shoes to shape, and a girl to move from this yard to the palace gates before the bells began. Meadow flexed her fingers around the wand and turned back to the ash-girl. "Stand still," she said. "This part goes on you."