Summer in Orcus

by T. Kingfisher

But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love.

She didn’t want her mother not to love her, she just would have liked things to be…different.

“I’ll need a weasel?” asked Summer. “Possibly. It gets him out of my coat, anyway, and that’s all to the good.”

1. Don’t worry about things that you cannot fix. 2. Antelope women are not to be trusted. 3. You cannot change essential nature with magic.

And at that point, Summer said to herself, I shall be in so much trouble that it will not actually be possible for me to get in any more trouble, so it doesn’t really matter how long it takes. There is something very freeing about knowing that you are in the worst possible trouble that you can be in. No matter what you do, it cannot possibly get any worse.

She told herself this sternly several times and then wanted to cry, because it doesn’t help to yell at people who are cold and wet, even when the person yelling at you is you.

For one horrible moment, Summer felt as if she had gone down to the secret chamber of her heart and found her mother writing on its walls.

“Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.”

“Are the cheeses very fierce in your world?”

It was strange to feel safer because one was guarded by geese, but among so many strange things, it hardly registered at all.

She did not know much about being captured by enemies, but Summer was a veteran of the public school system, and she knew that there are things that even the cruelest disciplinarian was forced to accept.

“Pretty things are usually poisonous,” said the weasel. “It’s why they can afford to be pretty.”

“All will be well. Or well enough, anyway. With a bit of work.”