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Your father guarded her, jealous as a jackal, and kept her in a tower room But her reputation as a beauty for the books filled the countryside He weren’tbefore you were born—that’s usually the way of it when the wife looks like a lion or a sun—and when you ca, she loved you terribly You were as dark as she was light, the tiny little ht I tell you, darling-duck, it hurt to look at her sometimes, when she stood at her to with you at her breast, and her hair all filled up with fire I used to wonder if she gave you h her teat

But one night she was not in her tower You were almost a boy and the fat was still on your cheeks, then You waddled about her eive her a chair, I swear it She stood all day, and lay on the stones to sleep, and I never heard the woman co, what she did that strange night (the rich don’t tell us but how they like their ribbons tied and their tea brewed, and Yaya doesn’tyour father’s anger clouded up heaven and shook the thatch fro

He and his old fortune-teller blustered about the Castle, full of their own huffing wind, blaht not to do as she pleases He seized me by the arm hard as an iron cuff and we raced up the rickety staircase to the tohere yourin her arms with not a care in your head She looked at your father with the glance of a tiger with a full belly, her golden eyes all bright with hate and happiness

I won’t forget that look, not for all the apples I could eat Helia hated the King, and that’s the truth; you ask hirown and see if he calls your old Yaya a liar You woke up with a cry when your father ripped you from her and shoved you intothat she spat a tooth onto the floor—how do you like that? But she didn’t hardly blink, and that awful look never left her eyes He hissed at her, and it was a strange, black, dark thing he said:

“Woain I should have cut your throat when I first saw you”

“Probably true,” purred your an to be afraid that there was so A servant never says nothing unless she’s asked, and who ever asked Yaya a thing but when the supper was co?

“Do you remember?” he spat “With your death I instruct your son”

She grinned horribly at his purple face and whispered just as sweet as cream, “And he will learn, oh husband mine He will learn”

She died the next uess why or for what criht with a slab of butter I was there, in the courtyard, and I held you close, and like a good nurse I turned your face away at the last moment

It was before dawn, in the sleepy gray, and your father pulled poor Helia out of the Castle, in a plain white shift with her hair strea The batty old conjurer was there, in his fine blue robes, but he never spoke a word—a servant never says nothing unless he’s asked—just s tied your poor dah-hewn ropes She didn’t struggle, not even when the ropes were so tight her wrists bled But when she saw you, well, noshe doesn’t care if her babe sees her burn She wept, then, and screa to reach out to you, her little chick a-

peeping away in the ed to live, no, not once

I wanted to help her, Yaya did, but I would have burned beside her, and you would be all alone with no one to love you and stand up between you and the rotten thing in your father

The King drew a long knife and hacked off her th to his addle-brained Wizard They stood over her for a moment, and your sire’s face was dark as dirt Then, he lit the branches of ash and oak with a great crackling torch, and she was still screa sound, like a song, a frightful death-song that came out of her bones, and you cried even harder, so scared you were by that screeching, singing noise The fire licked at her feet and caught her dress; it lit up her head like an angel’s

Now, your Yaya wouldn’t lie, no matter what they tell you at dinner, so listen when I say what I saw When the fire had wrapped her all up in red, through the wriggling flaold to black and the shape of her body wobbled in the scald, looking now like the Helia I knew, and now like so

They’ll tell you Yaya is off her head and drinks too much bad red beer, but I think the Wizard saw it, too, and his eyes went angry He rushed us all out of the cold, saying that someone would come clean up her bones, but that the baby shouldn’t see—I told hiht not to have dragged you out of bed to watch, but he ignored ed old stork always does