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wasn’t expected to run in the footsteps of this scrawny boy.
    “Sunday,” said Papa. Clever Papa. His youngest daughter was Queen of Arilland now, with her bright and generous nature intact. She would happily give Mama a carriage and horses and whatever else she needed to make the trip north. Sunday would also be distraught on behalf of her favorite brother . . . far more distraught, it seemed, than Trix himself.
    Saturday didn’t understand Trix’s lack of reaction. Happy or sad or otherwise, Trix always felt something, and plenty of it. Now his face was turned to the fire, his back to the room. “Don’t you want to go?” she asked him.
    “No,” Trix said quietly to the stewpot.
    “Probably for the best,” said Mama. “I must ready my things.”
    “What’s your name, son?” Papa asked after the boy had drained another dipper full of water.
    “Conrad, sir.”
    “Conrad. I would have you run one more errand today if your legs can manage it. You will be well rewarded.”
    Conrad’s grimace at the mention of another run melted away at the word “reward,” but he still seemed skeptical. He twisted his grubby hat in his grubby hands and nodded at Papa.
    “Do you know how to get to the castle near here?”
    The boy’s dark hair flopped as he nodded. “I saw a tower on the horizon that scraped the clouds. Most of the roads lead there.”
    “Yes. Go there and say you have an urgent message for my daughter the queen.”
    Conrad sat up straighter. Smart boy. He was in the presence of the royal family, after all. Not that it made Saturday feel any different.
    “Tell her what you told us, and ask her to please send a carriage. She will see you properly recompensed.”
    Conrad popped out of the chair and snapped to attention like a jumpy summer insect. “Right away, sir!”
    Papa chuckled. “Now, now. Not so hasty. Won’t you stay for a bit of supper?”
    “No, thank you, sir. I’ll be on my way. If you please, sir.”
    “Very well, then.” Papa clapped the boy on his scrawny back. “Off with you.”
    Conrad bowed quickly, wiggled his toes in the holes of his ragged shoes, and ran out the still-open front door. Papa, Peter, and Saturday watched him from the doorway, kicking up dust as he made his way back down the hill to the main road.
    “I admire that boy’s energy,” said Papa.
    “He has almost as much as Saturday,” said Peter.
    “That he does,” said Papa as he shut the door. “If she were younger, I might marry her off to him.”
    Saturday scowled. She was excessively good at scowling. Papa just laughed. “Peter, you go finish up outside. Saturday, please help Trix with dinner. I’ll see to Mama.”
    Saturday paused before heading back to the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what to say to Trix; she wasn’t even sure yet how she felt about the situation herself. Peter and Papa were so much easier to talk to. They chatted and argued and laughed every day in the Wood. Trix was just so . . . Trix. Sometimes what came out of his mouth was as regular as the sunrise, and sometimes it was more cryptic than Wednesday’s poetry.
    Now that Wednesday was off in the land of Faerie, Friday had been apprenticed to an esteemed seamstress, and Sunday was a queen, Trix spent more of his time talking to animals than humans. As the last sister remaining in the Woodcutter household, Saturday supposed that it was her responsibility to comfort her cousin-brother. But she couldn’t very well talk to him directly about what had just happened . . .
    Saturday snapped her fingers and raced up the stairs to her bedroom to fetch the one thing she knew Trix prized above all else: distraction.
    When she returned to the kitchen, Trix was just as she’d left him, silently bowed over the fire. Trix usually wasn’t allowed to stir the pot, or milk the cow, or churn the butter, or spend time around anything else that might spoil in the presence of his strong fairy nature. Chances were Mama’s taste buds would be