Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly
To everyone who’s ever felt that they’re not enough
This is a dark tale. A grim tale.
It’s a tale from another time, a time when wolves waited for girls in the forest, beasts paced the halls of cursed castles, and witches lurked in gingerbread houses with sugar-kissed roofs.
That time is long gone.
But the wolves are still here and twice as clever. The beasts remain. And death still hides in a dusting of white.
It’s grim for any girl who loses her way.
Grimmer still for a girl who loses herself.
Know that it’s dangerous to stray from the path.
But it’s far more dangerous not to.
Prologue
Once upon always and never again, in an ancient city by the sea, three sisters worked by candlelight.
The first was a maiden. Her hair, long and loose, was the color of the morning sun. She wore a gown of white and a necklace of pearls. In her slender hands, she held a pair of golden scissors, which she used to cut lengths of the finest parchment.
The second, a mother, ample and strong, wore a gown of crimson. Rubies circled her neck. Her red hair, as fiery as a summer sunset, was gathered into a braid. She held a silver compass.
The third was a crone, crookbacked and shrewd. Her gown was black, her only adornment was a ring of obsidian, incised with a skull. She wore her snow-white hair in a coil. Her gnarled, ink-stained fingers held a quill.
The crone’s eyes, like those of her sisters, were a forbidding gray, as cold and pitiless as the sea.
At a sudden clap of thunder, she raised her gaze from the long wooden worktable at which she sat to the open doors of her balcony. A storm howled down upon the city. Rain scoured the rooftops of its grand palazzos. Lightning split the night. From every church tower, bells tolled a warning.
“The water is rising,” she said. “The city will flood.”
“We are high above the water. It cannot touch us. It cannot stop us,” said the mother.
“Nothing can stop us,” said the maiden.
The crone’s eyes narrowed. “He can.”
“The doors are locked,” said the mother. “He cannot get in.”
“Perhaps he already has,” said the crone.
At this, the mother and the maiden looked up. Their wary eyes darted around the cavernous room, but they saw no intruder, only their cloaked and hooded servants going about their tasks. Relieved, they returned to their work, but the crone remained watchful.
Mapmaking was the sisters’ trade, but no one ever came to buy their maps, for they could not be had at any price.
Each was exquisitely drawn, using feathers from a black swan.
Each was sumptuously colored with inks mixed from indigo, gold, ground pearl, and other things—things far more difficult to procure.
Each used time as its unit of measure, not distance, for each map charted the course of a human life.
“Roses, rum, and ruin,” the crone muttered, sniffing the air. “Can you not smell them? Smell him?”
“It’s only the wind,” soothed the mother. “It carries the scents of the city.”
Still muttering, the crone dipped her quill into an inkpot. Candle tapers flickered in silver candelabra as she drew the landscape of a life. A raven, coal-black and bright-eyed, roosted on the mantel. A tall clock in an ebony case stood against one wall. Its pendulum, a human skull, swung slowly back and forth, ticking away seconds, hours, years, lives.
The room was shaped like a spider. The sisters’ workspace, in the centre, was the creature’s body. Long rows of towering shelves led off the centre like a spider’s many legs. Glass doors that led out to the balcony were at one end of the room; a pair of carved wooden doors loomed at the other.
The crone finished her map. She held a stick of red sealing wax in a candle flame, dripped it onto the bottom of the document, then pressed her ring into it. When the seal had hardened, she rolled the map, tied it with a black ribbon, and handed it to a servant. He disappeared down one of the rows to shelve the map, carrying a candle to light his way.
That’s when it happened.
Another servant, his head down, walked between the crone and the open doors behind her. As he did, a gust of wind blew over him, filling the room with the rich scent of smoke and spices. The crone’s nostrils flared. She whirled around.
“You there!” she cried, lunging at him. Her clawlike hand caught hold of his hood. It fell from his head, revealing a young man with amber eyes, dark skin, and long black braids. “Seize him!” she hissed.
A dozen servants rushed at the man, but as they closed in, another gust blew out the candles. By the time they had slammed the doors shut and relit them, all that remained of the man was his cloak, cast off and puddled on the floor.
The crone paced back and forth, shouting at the servants. They poured down the dusky rows, their cloaks flying behind them, trying to flush the intruder out. A moment later, he burst out from behind one of the shelves, skidding to a stop a few feet from the crone. He darted to the wooden doors and frantically tried the handle, but it was locked. Swearing under his breath, he turned to the three sisters, flashed a quicksilver smile, and swept them a bow.
He was dressed in a sky-blue frock coat, leather breeches, and tall boots. A gold ring dangled from one ear; a cutlass hung from his hip. His face was as beautiful as daybreak, his smile as bewitching as midnight. His eyes promised the world, and everything in it.