The Kindness Curse

and put them on the table under the light from the chandelier. This was an old book, hand-written. Such odd, old-fashioned, looping handwriting. The yellowed vellum pages were stained by water and what might just be mud. The ink had run in some places—the words still legible, though—and in others were dimpled from water. She found the broken binding and empty wooden cover panels and torn pieces of the leather cover buried among the pages. Merrigan's hands shook from anger as she lifted a few pages to examine. Why would someone so utterly destroy a book, and yet save the pieces?
"I suppose some idiot destroyed it in a fit of rage, and someone else salvaged it, intending to fix it." She lifted a few more pages, squinting at the loopy handwriting and old-fashioned spelling. The pages had headings, so she sorted through the first twenty or so pages and put them into groupings by the headings. That would certainly help in re-assembling the book.
Merrigan stopped short at that thought. Why would she even want to assemble the old book?
After a few moments of internal debate over the waste of time versus doing something she would enjoy, which Judge Brimble hadn't paid her to do, she put the papers down and dug out the broken cover. Merrigan move slowly, delicately. Not because she expected the book to be valuable, but just because it was a book.
She saw writing on the spine. Tiny and faded, but retaining enough golden sparkles to make the letters legible. The fact someone had written with gold ink had to mean it was valuable.
"Of the great secrets of this land," she read aloud, slowly piecing together the words. "I do like secrets." She put the cover down slowly, carefully, spreading it out flat so the inside surface faced upwards.
The book waited for its torn pages to be put back into place. Like a hand waiting to be filled.
She shuddered from some feeling she couldn't understand, and shut the glass panel with a careless, soft thud. Merrigan fought the urge to stick her tongue out at the piles of pages, and walked back around the table to resume her sewing. She had work to do, a little bit of justified punishment to levy.
Oddly, when Fauna brought her supper tray, the girl didn't notice the broken book lying at the far end of the long worktable. Even more odd, Merrigan kept looking at those papers all through her evening of sewing. She imagined sewing the pages back into the binding with the same ease as she sewed the first seams of the snowy linen shirt. She couldn't push aside the thought of reweaving the book together, even when she was tired enough to lower the chandelier on its long chain to blow out the oil lamps. She left just one lamp to light her way to bed in the thick chair cushions piled in the big, deep window seat. Sighing with satisfaction, she adjusted the clean blankets that smelled of lavender, and closed her eyes, falling swiftly into sleep.
Merrigan heard a voice through her dreams, whispering, pleading with her to fix the book, and promising her rewards beyond her wildest imagination.
She didn't believe in wild imagination. She believed in common sense and having a careful plan and making calculations and carrying through. And not trusting in anyone but herself for success, as she had learned through bitter experience.
Still, would it be so bad, hedging her bets?
When she woke the next morning, she dismissed the night's dreaming and pleading and considerations as just that—dreaming. Yet the idea of putting the book back together lingered at the back of her mind while she cut out the material for a second shirt and basted the pieces together. During her noon meal, she overheard the judge laughing with someone about the baker's frustrations with all the lies being told about his wares.
That decided her.
The book had to be valuable, to someone. She would repair it and take it with her when she left, and serve Judge Brimble right if it turned out to be a treasure he had overlooked. The man was odious, and his cruel treatment of a book just proved it.
She had to do something to punish the egotistical bag of hot air, since she still couldn't remember Nanny Tulip's handy little spell for choking collars. After a full day of listening to that man talk, the false joviality in his voice, comforting and advising one man over problems that provided amusement to someone else two hours later, Merrigan wanted to do more than frighten him. That was all the collar would do—choke him a few times, frighten him, turn his face red and cut off his voice at inopportune moments. Eventually the spell would wear off, or he would throw the collar away. She couldn't do anything permanent. She had never been able to do anything permanent.
"That's the problem, isn't it?" she muttered as she put aside the tray with her half-eaten meal and picked up the pieces of the first vest. "Only simpletons get permanent. Granted, if they have the wisdom to protect it. Most of them do learn to be a little more alert. Why can't I get permanent? My problem is that I get soft and rely on other people. I never should have trusted Leffisand to hold onto the kingdom. Or his own life, for that matter. Oh, Leffisand, why did you have to be so stubborn? Would it have been so bad to let that noble idiot cousin of yours heal you?"
Merrigan stopped, the words catching in her throat, at the sight of three, now four, now five, drops of water on her sewing. She wasn't crying, was she? She hadn't let herself cry in years. It was such a waste of time and energy. Someone always came in and caught her crying, and that was simply embarrassing.
Sniffing and then swallowing hard, to ensure a sob didn't escape her, she got up from the table,