Fire Princess

Chapter Twenty-One

"Isn't that Sophie?" Callis asked as they almost finished eating.

Agatha's head snapped up and she looked out the window to see Sophie kneeling in front of graves. She knew exactly who's grave it was. Sophie's mother's. Agatha excused herself, slipped on a tattered black coat and put a candle on the saucer before silently approaching her friend, who was looking mournful.

"Sophie?"

She turned to see Agatha approach.

"My mother saw you out here."

Agatha crouched next to her and laid the flame in front of the graves. She could barely make out an eroded butterfly in the headstone over the words.

LOVING WIFE
&
MOTHER

Two smaller gravestones, both unmarked, flanked it like wings. Sophie didn't say anything for a long while.

"He thought it was her fault," she said at last, gazing at the two unmarked headstones. "Two boys, both born dead. How else could he explain it?" She watched a blue butterfly flutter out of darkness and nestle into the carving on her mother's decayed gravestone.

"All the doctors said she couldn't have more children. Even your mother." Sophie paused and smiled faintly at the blue butterfly. "One day it happened. She was so sick no one thought it could last, but her belly still grew. The Miracle Child, the Elders called it. Father said he'd name him Filip."

Sophie turned to Agatha. "Only you can't call a girl Filip." Her cheekbones hardened. "She loved me, no matter how weak I had left her. No matter how many times she watched him walk to her friend's house and disappear inside." Sophie fought the tears as long as she could. "Her friend, Agatha. Her best friend. How could he?" She cried bitterly into her dirty mittens.

Agatha looked down and didn't say a word.

"I watched her die, Aggie. Broken and betrayed." Sophie turned from the grave, red faced. "Now he'll have everything he wanted."

"You can't stop him," Agatha said, touching her.

Sophie recoiled. "And let him get away with it?"

"What choice do you have?"

"You think that wedding will happen?" Sophie spat. "Watch."

"Sophie..."

"He should be the one dead!" Sophie flushed with blood. "Him and his little princes! Then I'd be happy in this prison!"

Her face was so horrible that Agatha froze. For the first time since they returned, she glimpsed the deadly witch inside her friend, yearning to unleash.

Sophie saw the fear in Agatha's eyes. "I'm s-s-s-sorry-" she stammered, turning away. "I-I don't know what happened-" Her face melted to shame. The witch was gone.

"I miss her, Aggie," Sophie whispered, trembling. "I know we have our happy ending. But I still miss my mother."

Agatha hesitated, then touched her friend's shoulder. Sophie gave in to her, and Agatha held her as she sobbed. "I wish I could see her again," Sophie wept. "I'd do anything. Anything."

The crooked tower clock tolled ten times down the hill, but loud, doleful creaks thickened between each one. In each other's arms, the two girls watched the hunched silhouette of old Mr. Deauville as he wheeled a cart past the clock with the last of his closed-down shop.

"I just don't want to end like her, alone and...forgotten," Sophie breathed.

She turned to Agatha, trying to smile. "But my mother didn't have a friend like you, did she? You gave up a prince, just for us to be together. To think I could make someone happy like that..." Her eyes misted. "I don't deserve you, Agatha. I really don't. After all I've done."