Tabitha Brewer often had dreams about a mystical faerie land, where everything was much brighter than the world she currently knew. Her world was a place where a devastating plague ran through the winter streets of Castletown and had recently killed its queen. A place where Tabitha’s mother’s sunken cheeks deepened as she sorted through a donation box left on their door—matchsticks, blankets, and the like. “Useless,” she said, straining her back and letting out a frustrated sigh. “If they really wanted to help us, they could have given us some proper coin.”
Tabitha stayed quiet, head down in their small room. It was better that way. Nothing for her mother to criticize.
Her mother’s sharp gaze soon found her anyway. Though her mother was still the same dark-haired beauty men would fight at the bar for when she worked as a serving girl, their fortunes had turned. She thrust the open crate in front of Tabitha. “Tabitha. Go and sell these. Don’t come home until they are gone.”
Tabitha took the box and fled outside the boarding house, moving so quickly that she didn’t look over the donations herself. Not until she reached a corner of Market Street where she thought she could try her hand at selling. She frowned. A few packets of dry food lay on the bottom of the open crate. Her stomach growled at the sight, but her mother must know best.
They needed the coin more.
Chill wind pulled at her long hair and ran up her patchwork skirt. Dusk was falling. Tabitha would have to work quickly to get home before she froze. She looked left and right for potential customers, but there weren’t many people on the snow-laden streets. No one quite knew how the plague was spreading, but most agreed it was better to stay indoors and away from strangers.
Especially on an evening like this.
Still, Tabitha had to try. “Matchsticks for sale! Perfect for a cold winter night!”
No response. Eventually a cat wandered over to her from a nearby alleyway. The fluffy ginger Tabitha called Biscuit was only half-grown and far too skinny, but Tabitha didn’t have any of her own food to give her. Not tonight.
Guilt still crept over her at the sight. Tabitha loved to feed any stray cat she found, and sometimes, when she dreamed of her faerie land, she thought she might have a dozen cats and more than enough food to care for them all.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said when the guilt became too much. “We need proper coin to pay the landlord—not food or matchsticks. But you . . . maybe you could find Tom? He can probably find a few rats for you.”
Tom was a sleek brown tabby and her favorite of the stray cats she knew, even though she had only met him a few months earlier. There was just something about him—like he somehow understood everything she said. And after their first meeting—where Tabitha combed out his fur and gave him some of her own dinner scraps—he always seemed to have something to share with the others.
He was the best hunter in the whole group.
He even brought her some food once, and not by trying to share one of his rats like a normal cat might. He had carried her a small branch with a few wild berries and then led her out to the forest to find the whole bush. He was almost a faerie dream all by himself. And wouldn’t that have been wonderful? A cat who could walk and talk and be a truer friend than anything human?
Thinking of her faerie dreams, she considered her box of donations again. What would it be like to actually use them? Tabitha spied a potential customer and tried a new approach. “Matchsticks for sale! Guaranteed to transport you to a brighter, more magical world!”
“That’s a pretty way of putting it,” the gray-haired woman said with a wink and a wrinkled smile. She and her husband were bundled up and walking the streets together. “You always have such a clever way with words—a mark of a true saleswoman. Or even an artist.”
Tabitha smiled hopefully. “Would you like a matchstick, Granny Tailor?”
The woman glanced at her husband, then nodded. “Sure, love. We can spare a few coins. Just be sure to spend a few of them on yourself.”
Tabitha could never do that. If her mother caught her stealing, she would get the switch for sure. But she nodded as she took the woman’s coin.
“Here. Take this as well.” The soft-spoken tailor took off his scarf and handed it to her. “It’s too cold of a night to be out here without one.”
Tabitha flushed as she mumbled her thanks. Her mother might not want her to take the scarf—or anything that wasn’t coin—but she didn’t want to be rude.
Maybe she could sell it after they were gone?
But it was warm. And such a bright and cheery shade of blue that matched the tailor’s eyes.
She would sell it last if she could.
After both of the Tailors left, Tabitha looked at her box again, trying to determine what to sell next. Not the scarf and not the food, but maybe the blankets?
A dark shadow fell over her. “Not nice to con a sweet old couple out of their savings like that,” said a gruff male voice.
Tabitha started, looking up at the dark-haired man who now towered over her. A scarf and rough beard hid most of his face, but he wasn’t one of the normal city guards. He had the silver and black uniform of one of the king’s men. And he must have been lurking somewhere in the dark—watching her.
She swallowed a few times before finding her words again. “Wh . . . what do you mean?”
He tilted his head at her wares. “Those matchsticks. They’re donations from the revered matrons and the crown. I spent a half-day in this ungrateful dump helping to deliver them, and you can see the royal fox on the crate. Why should anyone have to pay for something you got for free?”
Tabitha shuddered and took a step back from the box. Selling on the street wasn’t legal without a proper charter, but most of the city guards were willing to look the other way with the plague going on. Or at least, she had never had any trouble before—besides her mother cursing her if she came home without selling everything she had. “Mother wanted me to sell them. We need coin. The rent is due . . .”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Is it? And does the landlord know what sort he’s lending to?”
Tabitha looked down at her patchwork dress self-consciously. She had stitched on the patches the best she could—forming a decorative pattern—and combed out her sable-brown hair, but she knew what she looked like.
Gutter scum.
The man still leered at her narrow figure, coming closer. “How old are you now, girl? Old enough to know how your mother spends her days . . . and her nights.”
Tabitha was thirteen. She might be old enough to suspect there was more to her mother’s unstable moods and late-night activities than the woman would share, but Tabitha never wanted to know the truth of it. It was just the rent. Times were tough for everyone.
The man clicked his tongue at her. “And now here you are, all grown up and ready to follow in your mother’s footsteps; panhandling and selling unlawful goods is a crime in Castletown. I would only be doing my job if I reported you . . . Or perhaps, you could give me a reason to look the other way?”
He took another step toward her, and she took a step back. Closer to the alleyway.
She didn’t see anyone else on the street, and her voice caught in her throat. Tabitha knew all the matron stories and she believed them, too. But she was not someone a faerie would wish to lend their magic to, not someone that a prince would rush to aid.
She wasn’t anyone at all—Tabitha knew it, and this man seemed to know it too.
His arm came up behind her, trapping her in. “Your mother put her nose up one too many times for my liking, always thinking she’s worth more. But you give me what I want, don’t make a sound, and I’ll give you the coin you’re looking for. You can even keep the rest of your matchsticks. It’s a fair trade, and I promise your mother won’t mind.”
Tabitha’s whole body trembled with something more than cold. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. Her mother only intended her to sell the donation items and nothing else.
Her mother wouldn’t want her to sell anything else, would she?
But truthfully, Tabitha wasn’t sure. She didn’t know who her father was. Her mother often cursed him as a rotten deserter who never wanted a child. But her maternal grandfather had been a brewer, and her mother could make her coin as a server at the alehouse he supplied. That was until the plague shut the alehouse and other indoor meeting places down. Now, coin was always short, and her mother’s temper could be a frightful thing.
Perhaps even more frightening than the man in the street.
The man backed away then, but only to reach into the donation box. He grabbed one of the remaining matchsticks and snapped it in half. “Oops. You best hurry and make your mind up, girl. My offer doesn’t have to stay so sweet.”
He reached for a packet of coffee next, like he planned to rip open the bag and spoil it.
Granny Tailor had just praised Tabitha for the gift of her clever words and an active imagination, but it could easily become a curse. Tabitha could imagine all the terrible things this man could do to her if she continued to refuse him.
He would keep breaking her matchsticks—everything she had left.
He wouldn’t give her the promised coin.
At best, she would come home to her mother empty-handed.
At worst, he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and she might not come home at all.
The guard ripped open the coffee sack. Her breath came in sharp gasps. All she could hear was the ripping and the beat of her own heart.
Then, a yowl and a curse.
She looked up to see the guard trip into the open crate with a great thump. The wooden box snapped under his bulk, and an angry tom cat was scratching his face—white paws flashing through the hazy gray.
Tabitha ran.
She reached the other side of the market before she stopped, shaking with fear and cold. She couldn’t think, had no notion of where she could go.
She wished and wished for a dream world that would never appear—not for a girl like her.
That horrible man had just proven it.
Great spots covered her vision. Something in the shadows moved, and something in the wind called her name. Perhaps she could really see another world in the inky unknown?
Silky fur rubbed against her ankles before she could bring herself to move toward the half-formed image.
Still trembling, she picked up the cat. “Tom. Oh, Tom.”
His fur was soft. His hazel-green eyes were wide with what had to be sympathy. And he had saved her. He was only a cat, but he had acted as her prince and might be her only true friend in all of Castletown.
That was when she started to cry. “I can’t go home. Mother said I couldn’t, not until I sold all the matchsticks.”
Her mother often cursed her if she couldn’t sell all that she was meant to. Even threatened Tabitha with a switch. What would her mother do if she came home without anything at all?
The man would have spoiled everything by now.
“I can’t go home,” she realized, but she quickly wiped her tears away. She might indulge herself later, but nothing would be helped by crying now. “What can I do instead? We don’t have any more matchsticks, and we’ll freeze if we stay out here.”
“Mer-row?” Tom reached one of his white paws to the bright blue scarf that was still around her neck. It was almost a cat-hug, something Tom had never done before.
It was sweet that he cared, but this wasn’t a dream world, and a brown tabby cat couldn’t help her any more than her tears.
Somehow, she had to find a place for them both. Out of the cold and the coming night.
The thought of providing a proper shelter for one of her beloved strays made her braver than she could ever be on her own. Tabitha straightened the cat in her arms, knocking on one silent door and then another until Tom meowed and pawed at the scarf again. That’s when she remembered. The Tailors. They had their own shop in the outer-row of the city, where they mostly restored old dresses and other clothes.
She knocked on the door as soon as she found it, and Granny Tailor answered.
Tabitha steeled herself before rushing forward with her words. “I’m sorry to bother you, Granny, but I wondered if you meant what you said about me being a good saleswoman. And if perhaps you could use a good saleswoman in your shop.”
The woman blinked, looking her up and down. “How old are you, child?”
“I’m fifteen.” Tabitha straightened her stance. The man on the street seemed to think that she was older than she was. She was tall for her true age of thirteen but gangly, thin, and absent of any womanly curves; it might be an obvious lie, but an important one.
In Castletown, a girl of twelve or thirteen might take the lighter duties of an apprenticeship with her parents’ blessing.
A girl of fifteen or sixteen could do it on her own.
The silence that followed was agony, but then the woman widened the door opening. Warmth spilled out of the threshold like a portal to another world. “Well, you certainly need someone to teach you to sew that dress up properly. Come in out of the cold. You and that cat both.”
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