chapter 1

The Eighth Birthday

 “Another year, another year, another year has come,” sang the children gathered about the long table. Their voices rose, both in pitch and volume, as the final verse wound to a merciful end. “You are one year older now, so shout ‘Hooray!’ You’re done!”

The room filled with shrieks and giggles as Bertie, the day’s star, jumped on top of his chair and gave a great cheer of triumph before leaning in to blow out the nine candles topping the small nut cake.

“Start with me, Mama? Start with me?” he begged, his little voice piercing through the room’s tumult with far more clarity than it had any right to.

“Yes, yes,” our mother answered, pushing through the clamoring crowd of my siblings to the table’s edge with a practiced nudge of her hips. “After Papa, of course.”

She pulled the platter toward her and, with swift slices of the butter knife, cut a scant sliver of cake. She deposited it on a plate and pushed it down the length of the table to where our father sat watching the evening’s festivities play out with glassy eyes.

He’d opened a new cask of ale for the occasion and was already three mugs in. He grunted in acknowledgment as the first piece of cake—­the biggest there would be, if my eyes calculated correctly—­landed in front of him. Without waiting for the rest of us to be served, Papa picked up his fork and began shoveling it into his mouth.

My siblings began to wriggle with impatience. Every eye was on Mama as she sliced the remainder of the cake.

As it was his birthday, Bertie got the next piece, and he crowed over its size, reckoning it was nearly as big as Papa’s.

Remy came next, then Genevieve, then Emmeline, and I began to lose interest. Mama was serving down the line of us, in birth order, and I was bound to be waiting for a long time to come.

Sometimes it felt as though I was fated to spend my entire life waiting.

Everyone began to eat their fill as soon as the plates appeared before them, noisily exclaiming how good it tasted, how rich and moist the cake was, how sweet the frosting.

As Mathilde—­the third youngest—­got her piece, I glanced over with interest at the remaining wedgelette, and a stupid spark of hope kindled inside me. My mouth watered as I dared to imagine how nutty my bites would taste. It didn’t matter that my serving would be not even half what Bertie was afforded, didn’t matter that there was barely a covering of icing on its surface; I would still receive a sample.

But Mama picked up the last piece and popped it between her lips without even bothering to serve it up on a plate first.

Bertie, who had been watching the rest of the portioning with greedy eyes, hoping he might somehow snag a second helping, had the decency to remark upon it. “Mama, you forgot Hazel!”

Mama glanced down the long table and she did look surprised, as though she might have well and truly forgotten me, wedged away in the farthest corner, rubbing elbows with Mathilde and the cracked plaster wall.

“Oh, Hazel!” she exclaimed, and then raised her shoulders, not exactly with a look of apology, but more with an expression of “Well, what am I to do about it now?”

My lips tightened. It wasn’t a smile of forgiveness, only a grim acknowledgment of understanding. She hadn’t forgotten me and we both knew it, just like I also knew that there was nothing I could say or do that would cause her a moment of remorse, a pang of repentance.

“May I be excused?” I asked, my feet already swinging as I readied to jump down from a bench cut too tall for my tiny frame.

“Have you finished your chores?” Papa asked, startling, as if he had just noticed my presence. I didn’t doubt he had forgotten about me. I took up a scant amount of room in both his house and his thoughts, little more than a footnote in the great, bloated volume of his life’s memoir.

The thirteenth child. The daughter never meant to have been his.

“No, Papa,” I lied, keeping my gaze downward, more on his hands than his face. Even direct eye contact with me took more energy than he was usually willing to spend.

“Then what are you doing in here, dawdling like a lazy wench?” he snapped.

“It’s my birthday, Papa,” Bertie interrupted, his blond eyebrows furrowed.

“So it is, so it is.”

“Hazel couldn’t miss my birthday!” he exclaimed with indignation.

A blush of pride crept over my cheeks as my brother stood up—­stood up to Papa!—­for me.

Papa’s jaw worked, as though he was chewing on a wad of tobacco, even though he’d not been able to buy a tin of it in months. “Dinner is done. The cake is gone,” he finally said. “Your birthday is well and truly celebrated. Hazel needs to go off and do her chores.”

I nodded, my two brown braids brushing the tops of my shoulders. I scooted off the back of the bench and gave a little curtsy to Papa. Before I hurried out of the crowded dining room, I dared to pause, looking back at Bertie to offer him the tiniest grin.

“Happy birthday, Bertie.”

With a twirl of my pinafore, I rushed out of the house and into the chilly spring air. Twilight was just about to give way to true and proper night, the time of shadow-­men and woodland creatures with limbs too long and mouths full of teeth, and my heart raced with an uneasy thrill as I imagined one of them stumbling across me on my way to the barn.

With a grunt of effort, I pulled the big sliding door shut and made my way to the back worktable. It was dark, but I knew the route by heart. I found Papa’s tin of matches and lit my oil lamp, casting weak golden light into the darkened stalls.

My chores had been done long before dinner—­I’d even managed to do some of Bertie’s for him in lieu of a gift. I knew it was wrong to lie to Papa—­Mama was always going on and on about keeping yourself free of sin, somehow only ever cuffing me on the back of the head during her admonishments—­but if I stayed in that happy, celebratory chaos for a second longer, my walls would crack and tears would begin to roll free.

And nothing put Mama or Papa in a worse mood than seeing me cry.

With care, I climbed the ladder to the loft, balancing the lantern precariously on one arm as I made my way up to my bedroom.

I’d been sleeping in the barn ever since I’d outgrown the exhausted little cradle that had held all thirteen of us as babies. The cabin’s attic could fit only four beds—­my brothers and sisters slept three to a mattress—­and there was simply no space for me.

I found my quilt and curled it over my shoulders, snuggling into its decadence. It was the one thing I had that proved my godfather actually existed, that he had come for me once and would maybe one day return.

It was also an enormous sore spot between Papa and Mama.

Mama wanted to sell it off at market, arguing that the silk velvet alone would bring in at least three years’ worth of coins. Papa said that selling off the Dreaded End’s gift would bring an unholy mess of perdition upon the family and forbade her to touch it.

I traced the swirls of gold thread—­real gold, Bertie had often murmured in wondered admiration—­that spelled out my name.

HAZEL.

This was not a blanket that belonged in a barn, on a bed of straw. It didn’t belong with a family of too many mouths and too few rations, too much noise and too few hugs.

But neither did the little girl whose shoulders it now covered.

“Oh, Godfather,” I whispered, sending my plea out into the dark night. “Will this be the year? Will tomorrow be the day?”

I listened to the sounds of the barn, waiting and wishing for him to respond. Waiting as I did every year on this night, the night before my birthday.

Waiting.

I drifted in and out of sleep peppered with bad dreams.

Down in the valley, in Rouxbouillet, the little village skirting our forest, the bells of the Holy First’s temple chimed, waking me.

Once, twice . . . seven times, then eight, and so on, until they struck their twelfth note.

Twelve.

The hours of sunlight.

The months of a year.

An even dozen.

I saw my siblings lined up from biggest to smallest, their smiles bright, their faces so lovely and shining and beaming.

A perfect set. The perfect number.

And then there was me. Small, dark, freckled, miserably mismatched me.

As the last of the twelfth chime died away in the clear midnight air, I breathed in the first moments of my eighth year. I waited to feel different, but nothing had changed. I raised my hands, spreading the fingers as wide as they would go, wondering if they looked older. I stared at the end of my nose, hoping my freckles had somehow miraculously disappeared from the swell of my cheeks.

I hadn’t grown up.

Would the Dreaded End care?

“Another year, another year, another year has come,” I sang to myself, nestling into the straw and velvet. My voice sounded small within the great space of the barn. “You are one year older now, so shout ‘Hooray!’ You’re done.”

I paused once more, straining my ears for any sign of my god­father’s approach. Still nothing.

“Hooray,” I muttered, then turned over to sleep.