The Theft of Sunlight Page 2

  I swallow and glance back at Niya.

  She looks up. “It’s not working. I don’t know if it’s me or . . .”

  “Here,” I say, catching the end of one of my braids. “Try my hair. See if that works.”

  Niya takes the bit of hair I snap off and bends over her bowl again. I grip my skirt with my fists and hope, hope that it’s Niya’s magic that isn’t working, and not . . . not that Seri is truly beyond our reach.

  “It’s working,” Niya says, her voice flat. I look down to see the leaf has turned, the silver needle glinting brighter than it should as it points straight toward me.

  I raise my eyes to Niya’s. Seri isn’t just missing. She’s somewhere even magic can’t find her.

  She’s been snatched.

  Chapter

  3

  Mama sends me home with Bean and Niya. While they shut up the house, closing the shutters and bolting the doors, Baba and I take a dozen horses with us to town as mounts for the search parties. By dusk, Sheltershorn feels like a different place, the square deserted and the streets empty. Not a child can be seen anywhere, all of them kept indoors for fear that the snatchers might strike again while everyone is searching for Seri.

  We search through the dark, hour after hour. But night edges into dawn, and the search parties have scoured every hidden vale and winding road, and there is still no sign of Seri. Mama and I return home to rest for a few precious hours as dawn burgeons into day. Baba will lie down at a friend’s house in town, that he might rejoin the search efforts that much quicker.

  “Any news?” Niya asks as she and Bean join us to help untack the horses.

  Mama shakes her head.

  “We’re not giving up,” I tell my sister. “We just need a rest. Is there anything else you can do to help?”

  Niya shakes her head. “I’ve tried a dozen different things. Nothing works.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mama says, her voice rough. “Even the Circle of Mages hasn’t figured out how to track the snatched.”

  “Do you think they’ve tried?”

  I glance at her, steadying myself against the wooden stall, exhaustion dragging at me. “They’re the highest group of mages in the realm. Why wouldn’t they?”

  She drops her gaze to my feet. “They’d have to care.”

  I grunt in agreement, and leave Bean to finish looking after my horse.

  Mama and I rejoin the search again near mid-morning, having slept away the intervening hours, only to find it is over.

  “It’s no use,” one of the organizers says, her eyes so darkly shadowed they look bruised. “Wherever Seri is, she isn’t here anymore. We’ve sent search parties down all the major roads. We’ll have to put our hope in them.”

  I follow Mama to Ani’s house, unable to quite come to grips with this. When we arrive, I slide out of my saddle and lean against Muddle’s solid mass. She turns her head to regard me, one ear permanently crooked, and then leans down to take a taste of my skirt.

  Mama calls to me. I free my skirt and trudge toward the door.

  “They can’t give up.” Ani’s voice is like a slap in the face. I jerk to a stop as she storms out of the house. She glares at Mama and me, and then strides away.

  “Ani!” her mother calls. “Anisela!” She casts a helpless glance at me. I’m already moving as she says, “Don’t let her go off alone, Rae.”

  I catch up with Ani at the first crossroad. She stands there looking one way and then the other, as if lost. As if her sister might suddenly show up once more, a smile lighting her bright, chubby six-year-old face, the wind whipping her hair out of the twin braids she always wears, same as my sisters.

  “This way?” I suggest, taking a single step in the direction that will lead us out of town. No need to parade her grief before everyone.

  After a long moment, Ani dips her head and we fall into step together. She doesn’t say anything, though she adjusts her stride so that I can keep up. We pause when my own house finally comes into view, the red-brown adobe walls rising tall. The house is bounded by a low stone wall, and past it is visible our goat pen, and then the long, low bulk of the stable. Beyond that are the practice rings, with horse fences made of wood carted in from the distant mountains, and then the pastures where most of our herd grazes.

  The house lies quiet, Bean and Niya closed up indoors, waiting for news.

  “I didn’t believe it could happen to us,” Ani says abruptly. “To my own sister. Did you ever—well, you would never be snatched. But your sisters, do you worry about them?”

  I tamp down on the hurt. She is angry and grieving and oblivious to how her words might sound to me, true as they might be. I was never at risk because snatchers take only the able-bodied. I answer quietly, “I worry a great deal.” Especially about Bean. Niya, with her magic, might be able to keep herself safe and win an escape, but Bean has no such advantage.

  Ani nods.

  It’s hard not to fear for every child in Sheltershorn, though the snatchers come so rarely. The last time it happened, three years ago, two children disappeared altogether, went out to play and never returned home. And as with Seri’s disappearance, no amount of searching, not even by the best of our trackers, returned a child to us.

  “They found that boy who disappeared once, a few years ago.”

  That was ten years ago, when Ani and I were only eight. I remember it well, for none of us were allowed out of our houses for nearly two weeks, until the threat of more children being snatched had waned. The boy escaped of his own accord and was rushed away to stay with relatives far out in the plains. His family followed after him within a week, leaving behind the life they had built here in order to keep their family together.

  “He even escaped the Darkness,” Ani says. “He might be able to tell us something.”

  The Darkness. A poison the snatchers plant in the blood of those who are snatched. If they manage to escape, it blossoms in their veins and eats away at their minds until they are left a husk of themselves. Our religious scholars have found a treatment, and while it’s effective in destroying the Darkness before it can take a child’s mind, it’s devastating in its own way, for the Blessing washes away the child’s most recent memories.

  Most folk find the Blessing worth the resultant loss—what are a few weeks or months of your life compared to your whole mind? But some, like the parents of the boy who escaped, prefer to take the risk to keep their child whole, and instead flee deep into the plains. And sometimes, if they go far enough, fast enough, the Darkness does not touch their child.

  “If he could tell us anything helpful, surely we would have heard by now,” I tell Ani, not wanting to give her false hope.

  “I can’t give up,” Ani says desperately. “I can’t.”

  If only there were some lead, some small clue to grasp at, but we’ve turned up nothing: no one remembers anything unusual, every stranger has been accounted for, every wagon searched. There is not a track out of place, nothing.

  “Baba is riding east with two other men, following the road to Lirelei,” she says. “Everyone’s heard that . . . that the children might be sent on from the eastern ports.”

  “It’s good that he’s going,” I say. It’s only scraps of rumor and fireside theories that suggest the snatched end up as slaves in other lands. Who sends them, how they are to be discovered—no one knows. But it’s worth the journey if Seri can be found.

  Ani turns to me, her face tight with fury. “Children disappear every day. Have you thought about that? Perhaps only every few years for us, but in the cities? Across the whole of this kingdom? It must be a few every day. How can it go on? How is it that no one manages to stop it?”

  I shake my head. It had been easy enough, these past years, to pretend the snatchers were not so constant or near a threat—because they rarely strike here, in so small a town as this. But now little Seri is gone, with her laughing eyes and impish sense of humor. Niya asked if the Circle of Mages really has tried to track
the snatched, and I wonder if they have. If they care, or the royal court cares, or if anyone at all knows how the snatchers are able to hide every last trace of our children.

  Ani takes a deep breath. “What use are the taxes we pay? What use is our king and all his soldiers, if they can’t stop our brothers and sisters from being stolen on the streets?”

  “Not much,” I admit. It might be treason to say so, but there is no one to hear us on this empty road. I run my hands over my head, tug at my braids, hating this helplessness. “What can we do, though?”

  “I don’t know,” Ani says, and for the first time since she came to our cart asking after Seri, she begins to cry.

  I fold her into my arms, holding her tight as she sobs into my shoulder, and promise myself I’ll keep trying. And I won’t give up either.

  Chapter

  4

  That night, we sit around the kitchen table, looking in silence at the potatoes Bean has cooked, seasoned with salt, cumin, and a little garlic left from last fall’s harvest.

  “I didn’t burn them,” she says tentatively as everyone remains still.

  “No, love,” Mama says. “We’re just tired.”

  Baba nods. “And tomorrow will be a long day caring for the horses. We’ve ignored them enough already, and ridden half of them harder than we should.”

  He’s right, of course. I barely wiped Muddle down, let alone curried her. I know Bean made sure to pick out all the horses’ hooves as they were brought back in, and everyone’s been watered and fed and put out to graze, but we’ve over forty horses. I know the horses need more than we’ve given them. But I can’t help asking, “Isn’t there something more we can do for Seri?”

  “Pray,” Mama says.

  “Everyone’s praying,” I say tightly. “You’re the one who always says that as much as we ask for help, we have to help ourselves.”

  “I know, Rae. But we’ve done everything we can. It’s out of our hands now.”

  I hate that I don’t know how to argue with her. But Seri can’t be tracked. By tonight, her father will have reached the nearest small city where a mage might be found. I have no doubt that their attempt to track Seri will end as Niya’s did: with nothing.

  Bean reaches over and slides her hand into mine, squeezing tightly. I look across the table at our parents. “What about the snatchers themselves? Can’t we find some way to stop them?”

  “What can we do?” Baba asks. “We’re horse ranchers.”

  I have no answer. I don’t want to believe there’s nothing we can do. I can’t. But I still have no answer.

  The meal finishes in the same silence it began. I push away my plate, glad to be done. The potatoes may not have been burned, but they still tasted like ash on my tongue.

  “I wasn’t going to mention this quite yet, Rae,” Mama says before I can rise, “but a letter came for you yesterday—well, for us. It’s from your cousin Ramella.”

  “Melly wrote?” It’s not unusual; we keep up a regular correspondence, and I look forward to her yearly visits with her husband, Filadon. He’s an actual lord with a small holding, and they spend most of their time at court in Tarinon. “To both of us?” I clarify, because that is the odd part.

  “To us,” Mama says, indicating herself and Baba.

  “What about?” Bean demands. “Are they coming to visit?”

  “It’s an invitation for Rae to join them at court.”

  My sisters and I stare at her, and then I shake myself once. “Well, she asks that every year. I’ve no interest in the court.” The prospect of visiting the king’s court, being surrounded by the wealthiest families of our land and all the vaunted beauties of their lines . . . me, with neither a title nor riches nor beauty to my name? No, thank you.

  Mama slips a fold of paper from her pocket and slides it across the table to me. “Why not read Melly’s letter first?”

  Niya takes the letter and spreads it open for us both to read, Bean crowding over my shoulder to see as well. Ramella has learned recently that she is with child. The other night—wait, what?

  “Melly’s pregnant?” Bean sputters at the same time that I go back to reread that sentence. “Oh, Rae, you have to go!”

  “She’ll have friends to be with her,” I say almost absently, reading on: it occurred to my cousin that she would enjoy my company in the city over the next few months.

  “Friends?” Bean nearly screeches. “Rae! This is Melly! We’re her family.”

  I nod, still reading. Filadon is greatly occupied helping with the preparations for the prince’s wedding, as well as other affairs of state, and they would appreciate my presence. Could my parents possibly spare their dear cousin Amraeya through the summer?

  “Rae?” Mama asks when I finally look up. “Would you like to go?”

  “I don’t know how you can expect me to go now,” I say, disbelief tingeing my words. “I cannot possibly leave Ani, and we’ve the horses to take care of as well.”

  “We are Melly’s only family, though,” Mama says. “Think about it.”

  “The royal wedding’s coming up,” Bean adds.

  “That’s true,” Baba says. “If you leave in the next couple of weeks, you should make it in good time for that.”

  “And,” Bean says with growing excitement, “maybe you’ll even meet someone for yourself.”

  My laugh comes out as a derisive huff. “Bean. My prospects of marriage are as good here as they are there.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never been there. Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

  “I’ll meet many people,” I agree. “None of whom would marry me. And none of whom I would wish to marry.”

  “But . . . ,” she begins.

  “I’m a cripple.”

  The cold simplicity of my words brings Bean up short.

  “It’s just a slight limp,” Niya offers timidly.

  “All right. I’m a turnfoot.” It is the same name the village children threw my way when we were young. The same name over which Ani threw her first punch in my defense. The hurt has long gone out of the word, but it doesn’t change the fact that that is how people see me. And the royal palace—where Ramella and Filadon live—is unlikely to be filled with people who appreciate limping peasant girls.

  My family has nothing to say in return.

  “I can’t leave Ani right now,” I say. If I can’t find Seri, the least I can do is stay by Ani while she grieves. When Mama parts her lips to argue, I add, “And anyhow, there’s Spring Fair to plan for. I always help Baba with that.”

  “The fair?” Bean repeats in disbelief. “How can you compare the fair to court?”

  “I’m sure there are a good number of pigs in both places,” Baba points out thoughtfully.

  “Oh, Baba.” Niya half moans.

  “Ani does need you,” Mama says, meeting my gaze. “But let’s not make any decisions quite yet, shall we? Just think about it.”

  “All right,” I say, my mind already made up.

  Chapter

  5

  I ride over to see Ani again the following afternoon. Sheltershorn is busy again, though there are still no children visible. But the work of living must go on, and those who dropped everything to help with the search have once more picked up where they left off. Wagons move ponderously through the street again, and a few women have gathered on the corners to share whatever bit of news they’ve come by.

  Ani meets me at the door of her house and nearly drags me away. “I need to get out,” she says. “I can’t stand any more aunties right now. Even with all their news.”

  “News?”

  “It’s strange,” Ani says absently. She sets a pace I can easily match. “Are you all right with a walk?”

  “Just fine.” We head down a side street, taking the most direct route out of town possible. When we reach the edge of the plains, I say, “What’s the strange news, then?”

  “You know our prince was betrothed to that foreign princess from across the mountai
ns? Turns out the girl that’s been staying in the palace all winter long was an impostor—some noblewoman who didn’t like the true princess and betrayed her along the journey. The story is she used magic to switch places and silence the true princess, and sent her off to work as a goose girl once they arrived in Tarinon. The king only just figured it out.”

  “That’s . . . strange.” It sounds like something out of a fireside tale, believable only by the light of the flickering flames. “You’re sure the story hasn’t been blown out of proportion?”

  Ani shakes her head. “The king’s couriers brought the news with the mail. They said the impostor’s to be closed into a barrel pounded through with nails and dragged behind a brace of horses till dead.”

  “What?” Since when has our king meted out such horrific punishments? He’s known to be proud, certainly, but not cruel.

  Ani grimaces. “That’s the punishment the impostor chose for herself, thinking it would be done to the true princess.”

  It all sounds very elaborate, and absolutely horrifying. Betrayal and cruelty cloaked as justice, and at the heart of it, magic used as a weapon against the royal family. I hope—oh, how I hope!—they won’t start searching for other hidden magic. At least this impostor came from another land, and not Menaiya itself.

  “It’s all the aunties have been talking about today,” Ani says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. How must it feel that Seri’s loss has already been overshadowed by other news?

  Ani sighs. “Anyhow, I’m sure you’ll get better details than us. Isn’t your cousin staying at the palace right now?”

  I nod. “She is. She’s even invited me to spend the summer there.” Baba had suggested I could make it to the wedding, but I don’t think I want to see a girl who was forced into servitude now be forced into marriage. Unless, I suppose, she wants that future.

  “Will you go?”

  I look at Ani, but she’s very carefully gazing out over the plains. We’ve left the town behind us once more. “I doubt it. I’d rather stay here.”