Rennet clucked his tongue. “A storyteller, a weaver, a poet, an artist. Words for the same thing. A seer. Someone who sees—not always with the eyes. There was a famous blind proph… Ihavespent too much time in this house. John will find that funny.” Rennet absently rubbed the ring on his finger with his thumb before continuing. “I knew a storyteller when I was young, and he told me all these stories, the same stories, but with different endings, if he wanted, or set in different places. Some are familiar, but with changes each time, like… like many different paths. That is what seers do, they look down the paths. And some of them choose to describe those journeys to us. Like how in your movie, the mermaid lives and marries the prince, but in your book, she doesn’t.”
“Papa says beings have souls and I should ignore that story,” his princess recited dutifully, then suddenly straightened with excitement. “You can make the endings whatever you want?”
“Yes.” Rennet thought about it. “No. You can try, but sometimes things are not in someone’s nature, or are not meant to be.” He thought seers must wish for the happy endings, for their own peace of mind, but the world did not always listen. But Eleanor MacArthur-Jones was not going to learn that from him.
“But I want the happy ones,” Eleanor insisted with all the confidence of a spoiled and well-loved child. She was quite different from her predecessor. Her predecessor would have approved. “Will you tell me a happy one? One fromyourstoryteller?”
Ah, and now she turned the big eyes on him, as though Rennet needed to be convinced, as though Rennet had ever refused her anything.
Nonetheless, he tried to appear reluctant, if only for a moment. “If you insist, philomele.” Of course, finding stories that were appropriate, or could be made appropriate, took some thinking.
Rennet brightened a few moments later. “Ah. I have one about a dancer and an inventor! Will that do?” It was a story that had been heavily edited for a child’s consumption. Rennet had realized that rather abruptly, some time in the 1970s, when he had remembered the story and become uncomfortably aware of what it had really been about. The existence of a cruel king was a fact a child digested without question. The nature of the king’s offenses, however, had not occurred to Rennet until well into adulthood, as Jacob had no doubt intended.
Fairy tales were often like that. The lesson stuck, even when the child did not know why.
What possible lessons had Jacob expected Rennet to need with those stories? That he could be loved? That bravery existed? That wearing a mask and hiding away would only lead to more loneliness?
Rennet nearly closed his eyes.
“I want to be an inventor!” Eleanor decided boldly, oblivious to Rennet’s moment of realization, and it was a struggle for Rennet to not look around her room to spot the tap and toe shoes on the floor, the tutus hanging from hooks outside her closet, and the ballerina lamp on her tiny desk.
“Of course, mishka,” he managed. “I will tell you a version of that one, so you can learn the other versions later, if you want. And for you, for me, this version will have a happy ending.” He found himself clutching his tail and took a deep, steadying breath. “But first, perhaps some other stories. That way you will appreciate it more.” Or fall asleep and forget he had mentioned it, if Rennet was lucky for once in his ridiculous life. “Or you will decide you do not want to hear it until later.” Much later. Rennet already had a feeling that the real story, not the one Jacob had told him, but the one hiding behind the one Jacob had told him, would haunt him tonight. Maybe for a few nights. Jacob’s stories left aches. If Rennet had not been so distracted by his darling princess, he would have remembered that before mentioning them.
His darling princess looked unconvinced by Rennet’s logic, but did not argue, because she trusted him. She trusted her Uncle Rennet as much as she trusted her beloved fairy godfather, and Rennet would strive to never disappoint her.
“If you still want the story later, I will tell it.” A safe, happy version. “I could even write it down so that you can learn it and then retell it in your own way.”
Rennet froze, breathing harder for one moment at the revelation that he really could. Some of those stories might already be tucked away along with Jacob’s serious writings—those stories meant for Kaz and Kaz alone, the papers kept locked in a satchel that Rennet had never dared open. Papers to make Rennet weep to think of, and that the owners of this very house, the fathers of this very songbird, might murder him to possess.
Fairy tales were not all that interesting to most adults. But the tales told by a seer were hardly ordinary. If two historians wouldn’t kill Rennet for them, that friend of theirs, the other scholarly one with the pretty eyes and the dimples, most certainly would. Or, at least, he would ask Rennet for them so sweetly that Rennet would struggle to say no.
“Your face looks funny,” Eleanor informed him.
“Fairy tales are meant to entertain and educate us.” Rennet blinked. “And his did. But I didn’t realize…” He wasn’t sure he wanted to read those stories as an adult and see what Jacob had seen. He was afraid of what he might find in them for Eleanor. But she would need them. Rennet was suddenly certain of that.
“Is this the story?” his princess asked doubtfully, giving Rennet a look of scorn that he did not think had come from her parents.
It would not do to disappoint a firebird. Not this one or any other. They would not allow it. They were muses, and their powers worked even on imps who told crude jokes better than elegant stories.
Rennet shook his head and swallowed dryly at this glimpse of his future, of old, faded pages, and sharply happy memories, and work. All to please one little girl. And her parents. And the other children. And himself, and Miki, and one long-gone diva.
And Jacob.
If thiswouldplease him. Rennet couldn’t say for sure.
“Of course, mishka. I will tell you so many stories.” Rennet cleared his throat twice and clamped down on his tail to keep it from twitching. He thought again of Jacob telling tales before bedtime, and tried to keep his voice like Jacob’s, calm if a bit rough, full of a soothing, whiskey-like warmth. He looked at Eleanor and remembered himself at that age, curious and bright and always so different. Alone, even with others.
But Jacob had given him stories about the cost of ugliness and the price of beauty, and never quite belonging. And love.
He had also given Rennet tales of about duty and choice, patience and kindnesses, bargains and compromise. Rennet had no duties, needed no patience, and had no trouble compromising. But a certain songbird most definitely would, and would need such stories to guide her.
Had Jacob known that, all those decades ago? Had he seen it like he’d seen everything else?
Damn it. Rennet was going to do this. He could not even completely blame it on la princesse, firebird though she was.
“There is no better way to know him than through his words. But,” Rennet informed her gravely, “you may also see yourself in them, as I did when I was younger than you.”
He imagined he would have regarded Jacob with the same expression of confused doubt after a statement like that.
