Read Online The Salamander Spell by E. D. Baker - Free Book Online Page B

over here and give me a hand!” Chartreuse tapped her toe with impatience until Grassina reached her side. Handing her younger sister the small wooden bucket she’d been carrying, Chartreuse said, “Mother is ruining my life! It didn’t take me long to find those butterflies, but when I took them to her, she sent me out to pluck dandelion fluff. And I so wanted to talk to Prince Pietro. I told him how much I like poetry, and he was going to write me some. But look at what that fluff did to my fingers! No one will want to write poetry to my beauty after this.” Still talking, she shoved pink fingertips under Grassina’s nose. “It felt soft at first, but I’ve pulled so much of it that my fingers are worked nearly to the bone. It was bad enough that they were practically pickled in that vinegar last night. My hands are probably scarred for life. A princess shouldn’t have to do things like this. It’s a disgrace! I’m so tired, I could lie down right here and fall asleep—if the ground was cleaner. What have you been doing?”
    “Looking for the toad I told you about,” Grassina said, her face flushing as she remembered that she’d let the toad get away.
    “And it took you all day? Just be glad you didn’t have to pick dandelion fluff. My back is so sore from bending over that I feel like an old crone. Take that in to Mother for me,” Chartreuse said, pointing at the bucket. “I need to wash before supper. I just hope I don’t run into any of my princes before I change out of these dirty clothes.”
    Without the toad in her possession, the last thing Grassina wanted to do was go see her mother. “If that’s what you want, but won’t Mother think that I picked it all?” Swinging the bucket for emphasis, she raised it in such a big arc that the soft fibers threatened to fall out.
    “Never mind!” Chartreuse said, snatching the bucket away. “I’ll do it myself.”
    When they reached the castle, the two girls parted; Chartreuse went in search of their mother while Grassina headed for the dungeon. She knew she’d have to face her mother sometime, but she hoped to find another toad first. In the meantime, she wanted to talk to her father, the one person who could truly commiserate with her.
    “I can’t really talk to Chartreuse about it,” she said from her seat on an old chest that her father had had carried down to the dungeon. Grassina was sitting in the room he’d taken over when Olivene decided that he’d been a rat long enough and changed him back into a human. It was a lot more comfortable than it had looked the first time she’d seen it; he’d had it cleaned out and a few pieces of furniture brought in, making it almost homelike. “When I try to talk to Chartreuse,” Grassina continued, “everything is either about her or the kingdom. I don’t think she cares about anything else. She can’t see any of this from my point of view, or yours, and certainly not from Mother’s. Although I suppose I can’t blame her for that last part. Mother is terrible now. I know she hasn’t been like this for long, but it’s getting harder to remember her any other way.”
    “Not for me,” said King Aldrid. “I can still close my eyes and picture her exactly the way she was the day we met. I started loving her that very first moment and never stopped, despite what she might have thought. It was my fault she became a victim of her family curse, and I’ll never forgive myself. If only I’d listened to her mother.”
    “But you said that everyone thought Grandmother was crazy. I don’t remember her very well, but I do remember that she did the strangest things. Once she had me stand with my feet in two buckets of water for most of an afternoon. She said she was trying to protect me from the fairies.”
    King Aldrid sighed. “That sounds like her. Maybe she knew something that we didn’t. And now your mother . . .”
    “Mother isn’t crazy, she’s cursed. There’s a difference. A curse can