Until Then

A plague kept the capitol quiet that winter. The first whispers of it arrived in midsummer, when hornets prevented adventures in the old rose and lilac gardens. It had barely rained in a month. Esolie watched from casements in the library as the flowers shriveled only a few days after blooming. The hornets disappeared soon after that.

Autumn arrived slower than anyone anticipated. The Queen's ladies-in-waiting, who were never seen but in vivid silks and quilted skirts, swamped about the dead garden in grey linen sheaths. They took up all the space on the stone benches, fanning themselves desperately with beaded fans. Several of them loosened their gloves in misery.

By then, everyone in the castle murmured about the sickness of boils and high fever. It had lazed about during the summer, lingering near the river and unmentionable parts of town. At the time, Esolie’s father announced it would stay there, so long as everyone was careful with whom they conducted business. Hearing this, the Lords and Ladies breathed a sigh of relief.

But when the brisk air finally arrived, everyone in the capitol knew someone who had died. The gates to the inner capitol closed, then the gate around the castle. Checkpoints were set up to inspect message bearers and high-ranking merchants for symptoms before they made deliveries to the inner capitol.

Esolie's mother assured her nervous friends that the fever would perish now that the days were colder. “My husband is never far from the mark, you know,” she said, dimples appearing on her golden brown cheeks.

“That is true,” said one of the lords she was speaking to. His teeth flashed in a quick smile, but the crease of discomfort remained between his eyebrows.

Esolie knew the fever would stay strong. The rain had not returned except for a few light showers at the end of summer. She remembered very little of the years before – she was young, and they all blurred together – but she remembered it was always raining.

Esolie’s father, a court strategist, had come to the same conclusion. He suggested tightened security, that no one leave the grounds unless prepared not to return. He grew nervous under the scrutiny of the rest of the court, spending most nights poring over accounts of older plagues in the library.

Winter brought no snow. The plague had its spindly fingers curled over the city in a grave hush. Adults grew somber and short of temper. Quarrels abounded through the echoing stone walls of the castle.

The Queen had three children, one merely a fussy babe, another a girl around Esolie’s age named Isábel who strained on a short tether. She and Esolie played often, and it was understood Esolie would become a lady-in-waiting to the princess when they were older.

The other, an older boy of eleven, was that week preparing to go out with the King on a visit of great import.

Such fights rang out in the halls of the castle that Isá insisted she and Esolie spend the day outside in the dank winter garden, where her parents’ arguing couldn’t reach them. It was chaotic enough in the halls that the girls managed to slip by their caretakers without the typical fur-lined gloves and stifling wool mufflers foisted upon them before they stepped out under the cloudless sky.

“What will they serve for dinner tonight?” asked Isá. Her red hair glinted in the cold winter sunlight as they sat in the courtyard.

Esolie sat on the bench next to her, swinging her legs over the edge. She couldn’t wait to be old enough for her feet to touch the ground. “I don’t know,” she said. She wished Isá would stop asking her questions like that.

“Then, what will happen tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

Isá groaned. “I didn’t invite you out here so you could bore me.”

Esolie frowned. She wished she hadn’t let it slip to her that she had a knack for figuring how events would transpire. She was glad she at least had the presence of mind to swear her to secrecy. It had been bad enough when her father thought she might possess the talent; she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else knowing. It only led to trouble.

“Two weeks ago,” Isá recounted, as if to remind Esolie, “you said the hunting party would kill a boar, and they did. Why can’t you make a prophecy now?”

“I don’t know, and it’s not prophecy,” said Esolie, for what felt like the millionth time. “Can we play a different game?”

Isá wasn’t done yet. “Can you tell me what you do know?” she asked, hopping up from the bench. At eight, she was two years older than Esolie and much taller. If she was so inclined, she might try to rattle the answers out of her.

Esolie didn’t know anything - nothing that a normal person didn’t know, anyway. But she often anticipated how someone would react to news, or how a venture would end when somebody mentioned the circumstances surrounding it. She understood cause and effect more than most, even more than a number of adults around her. Sometimes particular hints leapt out.

She pointed to the smooth, rose-tinted pendant hanging around Isábel’s neck. “Your necklace is important,” she said, eager for the game to be over with. Ordinarily, she would not have drawn attention to the fuzzy halo coating the pendant, but Isá was trying her patience.

Isá looked down. She twirled the stone in frost-nipped fingers that almost matched it in color. “What do you mean? It’s an ordinary quartz.”

Esolie shrugged. The necklace had looked that way for as long as she could remember; many things did. Even Isábel’s mother, the young queen Giuliana, carried an unnatural glow. The light signified importance, and it always faded after some event or another had transpired.

Isá gasped and lifted the braided ribbon over her ears to let the stone dangle before her. An excited smile leapt across her face as she stared at it. “Do you think it’s secretly wondrous, like those machines from the South? Your father hails from there, doesn’t he? We should ask him.”

“Mm… I don’t think it’s like the machines.” Esolie also didn’t want her father hearing anything about this conversation; it would only lead him to drill her for hours again with questions about her skill.

Isá’s smile faded under a disappointed pout. “Why not?”

Esolie sighed, not knowing how to end the conversation without revealing a secret her parents had forbade her from ever divulging. “I don’t know,” she lied. “There’s just nothing strange about it, other than I can tell it’s important somehow.”

“How can you tell?”

Esolie put her head in her hands. “There’s a light that appears on things sometimes. It always goes away after something happens around it.”

“Maybe it means you should have it,” Isá said after a moment. She held the necklace up to Esolie’s sleeve. “It matches your gown, after all.”

Esolie tried to contest her, but Isá draped the necklace over her head and nodded with a satisfied grin at her handiwork.

“I dare say you’re quite accessorized now,” Isá said, plainly admiring her own sense of fashion. She grabbed Esolie’s hand and led her from the bench. “Come, let’s look about in my jewel chest and find something that will match this awful thing Mother had me wear today.”

As soon as the pendant settled against her chest, Esolie worried about the consequences she might have stirred by telling Isá about the light. She followed at her usual plodding pace, falling behind as the princess scurried in her habitual burst of nervousness past a tapestry bearing her family’s coat of arms. The woven badgers watched them from the corners of their eyes.