The Head Cook retired Jane from his service. When I was ten and Jane’s eyesight had dwindled to the near end of her nose, she accidentally cut off the tip of her finger. We slept in a room tucked under the kitchens where the air carried a hint of cinnamon and spice. We gazed at the stars with the other Under-servants, dreaming of far away until it was time for bed. At the end of the day, when every knife was sharpened, Jane took me upstairs to sit at the paws of one of the great bronze lions guarding the lower gardens. As I grew older, I helped her: fetching vegetables from the bins, keeping count (if the Soup Chef said twelve onions, he meant twelve), and sanding the chopping block. Just in case one of the cooks had a sudden need for a taster. I’d hold a corner of her apron in one fist and a wooden spoon in the other. When I was small, I followed her around the kitchens. She had a soft spot for me the size of a plum pie. But he didn’t know anything.įor all her nearsightedness, Jane taught me to read, write, count, and wield a whetstone. Roger, the Second Stable Boy, said they were yellow. Some folks said they were gray, some blue, some green. My eyes were the color of water, which is to say they had no color whatsoever. My hair flew around like the white fluff of a dandelion.
Everyone from the Head Steward down to the Stable Boys called me Darling Dimple. I’m told I screamed at this pronouncement, but it did me no good. She squinted nearsightedly at my wrinkled red face. The Under-slicer, Jane, plucked me from my departed mother’s side. The day I was born, she kissed me good-bye, curled up her toes, and died. My grief-stricken mother spent her days chopping vegetables and sobbing. My father was a sailor who’d been lost at sea.
My mother was an Under-chopper, working beside the Under-slicer in the castle kitchens, when she had me. You wouldn’t suspect that it had anything to do with dragons. Perched on the side of a mountain, the castle blazed like a diamond in the sun-majestic, but ordinary as castles go.
Not that you would think so to look at it. But I was born in a castle built by dragons. I wasn’t born in a tower or in a golden chamber.
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