Rae Carson: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Just then, Ximena ambles toward me, so I excuse myself and hurry away. I’m not ready to face her. I don’t know what questions to ask.

We endure the jungle five days more. Exhausted from double watches and stiff from cramming into too few carriages, we gradually leave the stifling growth of the rain shadow for the dry side of the mountains that overlooks the desert floor. Joya d’Arena, the Jewel of the Sand, stretches before us. Orange-red dunes roll along the horizon, soft with heat glare. I know Joya is a harsh, scorched place, but the wind-whipped sand and the fading light make it seem velvety and welcoming.

Lord Hector guides us west along the desert’s edge, toward the sea. I see a line of deep green, perhaps days ahead, but in the shimmering heat it’s hard to know. Beyond the palms awaits Brisadulce, Joya’s capital. Alodia visited once, and she returned with stories of a marvelous oasis, beautiful sandstone buildings, and sparkling people who adored her on sight.

I’m eager to arrive, if only to change my clothes, order a bath, and lose myself in an enormous, multicourse meal. My head aches to think of fresh fruit and chilled wine.

We make camp along a stream that trickles from the mountains and heads west toward the city and the sea. In our borrowed carriage, Ximena orders me to take off my dress so she can wash it. She helps me with the buttons and I’m a little relieved, a little nervous, to have her so close by. She’s been a mother to me as long as I can remember. But I think of her hairpin—something I’ve seen almost every day of my life—sticking out of a man’s neck, and I marvel that I know so little about her. I’ve never asked. Where does Ximena come from? When did she begin working for my family? Why has she chosen to love me so? “Spoiled girl,” Alodia called me more than once as we were growing up. “Coddled just because she’s chosen.”

Alodia is right.

“Ximena.”

“Yes, love?” Her fingers are busy at my back, loosening the stays.

“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

The fingers pause. “Why do you say this, my sky?”

Tears prick at my eyes. “I don’t know who you are or anything about you. I don’t know who Aneaxi is. And it’s my fault.”

For once, my nurse doesn’t brush off my objections with platitudes and weak praise. She just reaches around with her strong arms and hugs me close.

Ximena tells me that she is an orphan. As a little girl, she served priests in the refectory and laundered their robes. One man, Father Donatzine, noticed her quiet, hardworking spirit. He taught her to read and write well enough to scribe among the great historical documents of the Monastery-at-Amalur, where she took a special interest in the Common Man’s Guide to Service . After years of engraving the precious words onto her heart, Father Donatzine recommended her for service to my father, who was a young prince at the time.

“I still visit Father Donatzine when I can,” she says as she hangs my skirt to dry outside the carriage window. “He can’t read anymore. So I read aloud for him. He loves the passages in the Scriptura Sancta about God’s chosen.” She has a lovely smile that makes happy lines around her small eyes. “He was so pleased when God chose you on your naming day. He’d made a special point of living long enough to see the next choosing.”

I don’t remember Father Donatzine. I should be flattered that a man I never knew attached such importance to my existence. But it feels intrusive.

It occurs to me to ask, “Will you miss him?”

Ximena nods. “Very much.”

She pulls herself through the open door of the carriage and sits beside me on the bench. Her hands are sturdy and callused. I try to imagine them making careful brushstrokes on parchment. I’ve felt her rough fingertips against my back my whole life, watched how dexterous and capable they are. Capable of killing with a hairpin.

“You’re looking at me strangely.”

“That day. With the prisoner.”

Her gaze softens. “I thought you might ask.”

“You moved so quickly, Ximena! And you knew exactly where to stick that pin, and you knew he wasn’t attacking me, and I . . .” It’s coming out wrong, like I’m accusing her, which would be ridiculous since she’s not the only one who killed that day.

But she looks at me the same way she always does, with endless patience and perfect love. “My sky, I wish I could tell you many things.” She brushes my cheek with her knuckles.Then the carriage rocks as she descends the steps. “I need to check on Aneaxi.”

Tiny bumps rise on my arms as I watch Ximena navigate the sleeping rolls and pit fires of our small camp. I realize I’m peering from the carriage clad only in my chemise and torn slip.

The next day I ride with Aneaxi, who needs extra space so her splinted leg can lie across the bench. Each time we hit a bump, she winces and sweat coalesces on her forehead. She fans herself while answering all the questions I should have asked long ago.

I learn that my lady-in-waiting is the bastard child of Conde Sirvano, of my father’s court. Too controversial to make a good political match, too important to be shipped off to the monastery that raised Ximena, her status was a fluid thing, subject to the mood of her father. “Growing up in his household was dreadful,” she says. “Whispers as I passed, dark glances. All my clothes were hand-me-downs from my older half-sister. But she would rip them or pour ink on them before giving them to me.”

I am rapt as she remembers it all, because I know what it’s like to have a favored sister, to bear the studied, condemning gaze of the court. All my life, Aneaxi has been the sympathetic one, wrapping me in a hug and saying how sorry she is for everything. Now I understand why.

“I started volunteering in the laundry. Just to get away and to feel useful. One day at court, my father noticed my hands—all cracked and peeling. He beat me.” She shrugs, as if it doesn’t bother her in the least. And it probably doesn’t—not anymore. Aneaxi is never one to stay upset for long.

“But he also decided that if I wanted to work so badly, he would find something appropriate to my station, such as it is. He actually used those words, ‘such as it is.’ So he made me attend his latest wife, who was only a little older than I. He thought it would be a punishment, but we became friends. And when your mamá took pregnant with Alodia, my lady recommended me to Ximena, who was the queen’s attendant at the time.”

I ask, “Do you ever regret coming to the palace to serve my family?”

“Oh, dear, no. I loved your mamá. Alodia too, even though she is exasperatingly independent and stubborn. But you, Elisa. You are the delight of my life.” She grins wickedly. “And besides, the food at the palace is so, so much better. The conde’s cook should have been sent to the bull ring.”

I giggle, remembering the night a year or so ago when we crept together to the kitchens for coconut pudding, right under Ximena’s nose. Aneaxi has always been equal parts empathy, good cheer, and mischief—the perfect foil and partner for my earnest and careful nurse.

She stops fanning herself. Her eyelids are thin, near translucent like fine parchment. She has grown old recently, sometime when I wasn’t watching. I lean over and kiss the wrinkles that cord her forehead.

She smiles, eyes still closed. “You’re a good girl, Elisa. God was right to choose you.”

I swallow. Her love for me has always been a foolish thing, but I’m grateful for it. Maybe God sent her to me for a reason. Maybe he knew I’d need someone who could understand, even if only a little, what my life would be like. Gently I pry the fan from her fingers. As I wave it across her face, she sighs contentedly. I stay with her for a long time.