Legendary

by Stephanie Garber

While some rooms on the estate had monsters hiding beneath the beds, Tella swore her mother’s suite concealed enchantment. Hints of emerald light dusted the air as if fairies came to play whenever her mother left. The room smelled of flowers plucked from secret gardens, and even when there wasn’t a breeze, the sheer curtains billowed around the magnificent canopy bed. Above, a citrine chandelier greeted Tella with the musical sounds of kissing glass, making it easy for her to imagine the suite was a bewitched portal to another world.

Tella’s mother didn’t mind if her daughters played with her dresses or tried on her fancy slippers, but she’d asked them not to touch this box, which only made it more irresistible to Tella.

Scarlett could spend her afternoons daydreaming about traveling shows like Caraval, but Tella liked to have real adventures.

Tella you're getting on my last nerve already. That girl basically raised you, don't be so disrespectful.

mother’s opal ring, Tella’s favorite piece of jewelry. The milky stone was raw and rough, shaped like a starburst, with sharp tips that sometimes pricked her fingers. But when Tella held the opal up toward the light, the stone sparked, covering the room in embers of luminescent cherry, gold, and lavender that hinted at magic curses and rebel pixie dust.

But this day, right as Tella slid on the ring, she noticed something else. The chandelier above her stilled as if it, too, had been caught by surprise. Tella knew every item in her mother’s jewelry case by heart: a carefully folded velvet ribbon edged in gold, blood-red scarlet earrings, a tarnished silver bottle that her mother claimed held angel tears, an ivory locket that wouldn’t open, a jet wristlet that looked as if it belonged on the arm of a witch rather than her mother’s elegant wrist.

The only item Tella never touched was the dirty-gray sachet, which smelled of moldy leaves and charnel-sweet death. It keeps the goblins away, her mother once teased. It kept Tella away as well. But today, the ugly little purse flickered, drawing Tella toward it. One moment it looked like a bundle of rot and smelled of decay. A blink later, in its place rested a gleaming deck of cards, tied with a delicate satin ribbon. Then, in a flash, it was back to the nasty pouch before it transfigured into the cards again.

The cards were so very, very pretty. Such a dark hue of nightshade they were almost black, with tiny hints of gold flecks that sparkled in the light, and swirly strands of deep red-violet embossing that made Tella think of damp flowers, witches’ blood, and magic.

The young woman pictured reminded Tella of a captive princess. Her lovely white dress was shredded, and her tear-shaped eyes were as pretty as polished sea glass, but so sad they hurt to look at. Most likely because her head was caged in a rounded globe of pearls. The words The Maiden Death were written at the bottom of the card.

The Prince of Hearts. It showed a young man with a face made of angles, and lips as sharp as two knife blades. One hand near his pointed chin clasped the hilt of a dagger, and red tears fell from his eyes, matching the blood staining the corner of his narrow mouth.

These cards were definitely not toys.

The Aracle. She did not know what the strange name meant, and unlike the other cards, this one did not appear to be violent. The edges were covered in ornate swirls of molten gold, and the center was silver like a mirror – no, it was a mirror. The shining middle reflected Tella’s honey-blond curls and her round hazel eyes. But when Tella looked closer, the image was wrong. Tella’s pink lips were trembling, and fat tears were running down her cheeks.

As her mother bent toward the carpet where Tella sat, her hair fell around her clever face in elegant rivers. Her locks were the same dark brown as Scarlett’s, but Tella shared her mother’s olive skin, which gleamed as if she’d been kissed by the stars.

It was her father who was easily angered. Her mother was the soft breath of air that blew out his sparks before they could ignite into flames.

‘Your future can be whatever you wish. We all have the power to choose our own destiny. But, my sweet, if you play with those cards, you give the Fates pictured inside them the opportunity to shift your path. People use Decks of Destiny, similar to the one you just touched, to predict the future, and once a future is foretold, that future becomes a living thing, and it will fight very hard to bring itself about.

In her haste to pick up the deck, Tella’s mother hadn’t noticed the third card Tella had turned over. The one still in her possession. The Aracle. Tella carefully hid it beneath her crisscrossed legs as she said, ‘I swear to never touch a deck like this again.’

The world had tasted like magic and starshine, like granted wishes and dreams come true, yet beneath it all, death still coated Tella’s tongue.

Until yesterday, this estate had contained the entire world of Caraval. Its grand wooden doors had led visitors to elegant balconies draped with lush red curtains, which surrounded a city made of canals, streets that had minds of their owns, and uncanny shops full of magical pleasures. But in the brief time since the game had ended, the turreted house had shrunk in size and the ephemeral wonderland hidden within its walls had disappeared, leaving behind only the parts that would normally belong inside of a grand house.

‘The count lives in Valenda, and we can’t let him see you,’ Scarlett said.

We can't let him see Tella? Girl, we can't let him see YOU.

Tella knew Scarlett thought she was lazy. But Tella had a theory: neat rooms were easy to rifle through and search undetected because it was simple to put carefully placed things exactly where they’d been. But messes, on the other hand, were difficult to recreate. With one sweeping gaze, Tella could see no one had been brave enough to lay a finger on her personal disaster.

Tella had died during the last game. But that had been her decision,

Yet Tella could not forget the letter in her pocket, reminding her of a debt to be paid and a mother who still needed to be saved.

It had been seven years since Tella and Scarlett’s mother, Paloma, had disappeared.

So for years Tella clung to the hope that her mother had met death, because no matter how hard Tella tried, she could not stop loving her mother, and it hurt too much to imagine that her mother didn’t love her back.

Tella pulled out the letter she’d received from her friend.

pretty sure its Jacks too right?

But her friend and Legend could not be the same person – the payment her friend referred to made Tella certain of that.

The interior was lined with an unappealing burnt-orange and lime-green brocade that most people would never look at closely enough to notice the slit along the edge of it, which allowed her to hide the catalyst for this entire situation: The Aracle.

Tella’s fingers tingled as they always did when she pulled out the wicked little card.

If she’d not taken this card and the ring right before her mother left, Tella would have had nothing to remember her mother by.

The card still showed her mother. She looked like a battered version of the Lady Prisoner, depicted in Decks of Destiny, covered in blood, and caged behind the harsh iron bars of a dim prison cell.

Dante tossed the coin once more. ‘It’s said these were forged by the Fates. People used to call them “luckless coins.”’

I’ve heard if you spin a luckless coin, you can see which Fate it belonged to.’

The coin twirled until the etchings on either side began to take a solid shape, merging together as if by magic to form a brutally familiar picture. A dashing young man with a bloody smile, and the sort of havoc-wreaking grin that made Tella picture teeth biting into hearts and lips pressed against punctured veins.

The cruel young man held one hand near his pointed chin, clasping the hilt of a dagger, while red tears fell from his eyes, matching the blood staining the corner of his mouth. The Prince of Hearts.

no kiss could be worth dying for,

For it was also said the Prince of Hearts was not capable of love because his heart had stopped beating long ago. Only one person could make it beat again: his one true love. They said his kiss had been fatal to all but her – his only weakness – and as he’d sought her, he’d left a trail of corpses.

It also didn’t escape Tella’s notice that he’d just spoken of the Prince of Hearts as if he and the other Fates were still walking around the Empire, and not vanished for more than a century.

Nothing good has ever come from anything a Fate has touched.’

And a bath of crimson clouded Tella’s vision.

But the game was over now; Tella could do as she pleased.

‘My sister has no idea, does she?’ ‘No,’ Julian said. ‘And for now I want to keep it that way.’ ‘Are you asking me to lie to her?’ ‘It’s not as if you haven’t done it before.’

Saying something was for someone else’s own good was almost always another way of justifying something wrong. Of course since she’d said it first, she couldn’t properly berate Julian the way she wanted.

girl...

‘Despite my actions during Caraval, I don’t enjoy deceiving my sister.’ ‘But it’s hard to stop once you start.’

‘Caraval might all feel like a lie to you, but it’s my life – my truth. This last game was as real for me as it was for your sister. While she was fighting for you, I was fighting for her.’

‘I know better than to fall in love with Legend.’

‘Be careful,’ Julian added, as if Tella needed another warning. ‘Fortune-tellers aren’t like you and me. They see the world as it could be, and sometimes they try to bring about what they want, rather than what should be.’

The air was full of salt and secrets.

For many, Legend was the definition of magic.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

Again, Tella sensed that Legend was toying with her as the smoking curls of incense widened into the shape of hands and waved her toward an open door.

‘Even if I wanted to, I could not tell you Legend’s name,’ said Nigel. ‘None of his players can reveal this secret. The same witch who banished the Fates from earth centuries ago gave Legend his powers. His magic is ancient – older than he is – and it binds us all to secrecy.’