Chapter 4: The Brother who Stood between me and the World.
The world outside our door felt like a different country, one where I was no longer welcome.
When Mother announced we were going to the market, cold dread pooled in my stomach.
“Must we?” I asked, my voice thin. “Can’t Wilhelm go?”
“Wilhelm is at the forge,” she said, firm but strained. “And we will not act as though we have something to be ashamed of.”
Her eyes were too bright, too determined. She wasn’t just reassuring me; she was reassuring herself.
But I was ashamed. Mortified. How could I face them? How could I stand among the villagers who had watched my forehead shine with empty, humiliating light?
The village didn’t greet us with whispers.
It greeted us with silence.
It trailed behind us like a second shadow. Conversations thinned as we approached and resumed only after we passed, louder and oddly brittle. People found sudden interest in the sky or in their shoes, anything but us.
At the butcher’s stall, Mr. Grent, who always had a joke for me, focused on sharpening his knives, his ruddy face unusually closed.
It wasn’t pity. It was the discomfort of people who had no language for what I had become.
At the ribbon seller’s booth, a cluster of girls my age whispered among themselves.
Mother’s grip tightened around my hand.
“A pound of peas, please, Jonas,” she said too brightly.
Jonas nodded, eyes flicking from her to me and away again. He filled the sack, accepted her payment, and handed the peas over without a word.
Brick by brick, the silence built a wall between our family and the rest of the village.
By the time we turned for home, my cheeks burned. I stared only at my feet, watching the Colorless Girl walk back to the only place where the silence didn’t suffocate.
***
At home, chores steadied me. I peeled potatoes and hung laundry beside Mother and let the rhythm of work quiet my thoughts. But the dream from the other night kept returning, the presence, the voice, the light. I felt I knew him, though the memory slipped like water through my fingers.
Then Mother called, and the moment dissolved.
***
The next morning, sunlight pressed against my eyelids like a reprimand. I burrowed deeper under the quilt, wishing I could vanish into the straw stuffing.
Wilhelm knocked softly. “Come to the forge. It’ll help.”
The forge had always been my refuge, Father’s hammer striking steady and sure, Wilhelm working the bellows in patient rhythm.
The bell over the door jingled. A merchant stepped inside, dressed in fine clothes worn down by travel.
“Heinrich!” he boomed. “Your steel is the only thing that survives the mountain passes. I need six blades. I’ll pay upfront.”
Father nodded. “They’ll be ready.”
As they discussed the order, the merchant’s eyes swept the forge and landed on me. I ducked my head, letting my hair fall like a curtain.
“So,” he said, his tone shifting into a too-friendly warmth that made my skin prickle, “that’s the girl from the testing, eh?”
Father’s hammer did not resume.
“My daughter, Elsbeth,” he said evenly.
“A pity,” the merchant sighed. “Pretty thing, but with no prospects.” He smiled, oily and false. “My cousin runs a laundry house in the city, a respectable place, good work for girls who… need direction. It’d get her off your hands.”
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Before Father could speak, Wilhelm slammed the bellows handle down. The sound cracked through the forge like a thunderbolt.
“She is not going to a laundry house.”
The merchant blinked. “Now, son… be realistic…”
“I am being realistic,” Wilhelm said, stepping between us. His shoulders blocked me from view. “My sister doesn’t belong in boiling water. She belongs here. With her family.”
“Wilhelm,” Father said sharply.
But Wilhelm didn’t retreat. “I don’t care what happened in that temple. I don’t care what anyone says. She is my sister. Whatever happens, wherever she goes, I’ll take care of her. That is my duty. As her brother.”
Silence filled the forge, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
The merchant looked between my brother's fierce expression and my father's stony one. His smile tightened. "Well. No need for theatrics. I was only making an offer." He counted out his coins, snatched up the blades, and left without another word.
Wilhelm turned. His anger faded, replaced by fierce certainty.
“You saved my life, Elsbeth,” he said. “With your strange magic. I am here because of you. So I won’t let go of you. Ever.”
My throat tightened. Father picked up his hammer again, and the familiar clang rang through the air, a sound of finality and of acceptance.
Tears blurred my vision, not from shame this time, but from relief so deep it felt like a second birth.
I was not a burden to cast aside.
I was a sister who had once held on tight and was now held in return.
***
Dinner was quiet. The stew was hearty, the bread fresh, but conversation faltered. Mother offered comments about the weather and a neighbor’s new chickens, but each remark fell into silence. Wilhelm nudged pieces of carrot toward me, small gestures that said more than words. Father ate methodically, but the rigidness in his shoulders had softened.
Their love was fierce and protective, but it treated me like something fragile.
Sleep pulled me under quickly.
The next day, I went to the forge with Mother. Morning light filtered through the open doors, catching motes of dust in warm, drifting beams. Father was just finishing a new commission—a beautifully balanced dagger meant for the captain of the town guard. Its polished steel gleamed like captured starlight, and the leather-wrapped hilt was still drying from its final coat of oil.
He placed it gently on the worktable to cure.
I settled onto my usual stool, watching Wilhelm hammer away at a glowing bar of iron. His steady rhythm—clang, clang, clang—had always soothed me, the forge’s familiar heartbeat.
My attention drifted back to Father’s dagger. It was so simple and yet so beautiful. The kind of beauty I could never quite create with my own hands.
Before I realized it, I stood and stepped closer.
As I leaned in to admire the hilt, my hip brushed a small jar of pigment Father had been using to mark wood patterns. The jar tipped. Time seemed to slow.
A streak of bright, wet paint spilled over the table—slid toward the dagger—and splashed across the leather-wrapped hilt in a vivid, unforgiving smear.
I froze.
The dagger lay there, ruined by a clumsy swipe of paint. My breath caught in my throat. This was Father’s commission. His craftsmanship. His livelihood. And I had stained it like a careless child.
Panic surged through me.
Without thinking, I dropped to my knees beside the table, my hands shaking.
In a surge of panic, I reached for it, for the memory of its weight, the feel of its groove. The G-Pen flickered into my hand, cold and translucent.
Please… please work just once.
I drew frantic, uneven strokes in the air above the dagger—symbols meant to restore, to cleanse, to undo. Silvery light flickered weakly. The paint shimmered, pulsing as though about to lift away…
Then the magic sputtered.
Collapsed.
The paint sank deeper into the leather, as if mocking me. My magic hadn’t cleaned it. It had made it worse.
A soft shift of footsteps sounded behind me.
I turned quickly.
Wilhelm stood in the doorway, a bundle of firewood in his arms. But he wasn’t looking at the table—or the ruined dagger.
He was staring at the fading shimmer of my failed spell.
He knew.
I braced myself for the pity. Or the confusion. Or the quiet disappointment that had haunted me since the testing.
But Wilhelm simply set down the firewood.
He walked over slowly, his expression calm. Without a word, he took the dagger from the table, turning it in his hands to inspect the damage.
“Fresh paint,” he murmured. “Good. Fresh is easy.”
My breath caught. “…Easy?”
He smiled a little—warm, steady.
“El, paint dries from the outside in. If you act fast, you can save the leather.”
He picked up a clean cloth and a bottle of oil from Father’s workbench, placing them gently in my hands.
“Here,” he said, guiding me. “Rub the oil in slow circles. Don’t scrub. Just coax it out.”
His hands covered mine, steadying them. Together, we worked the cloth over the stained leather. Little by little, the paint loosened, lifting away in soft, dissolving streaks. The hilt returned to its natural color, the leather unmarred.
When it was done, the dagger looked perfect once more—untouched, pristine.
Wilhelm exhaled softly, satisfied. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
I looked up at him, tears stinging my eyes. “I… I tried to fix it. With magic.”
“I know.” His voice was gentle. “And it didn’t work.”
I shook my head.
"But this did." He nodded toward the restored dagger. "Skill. Patience. You don't need magic for everything."
He said it without judgment, only simple truth.
And somehow, that kindness hurt more and healed more than any spell ever could.
For the first time, the weight inside my chest eased, just a little.
Maybe I wasn’t alone in this after all.
Will the Fairy King finally appear?
What fate awaits Elsbeth...
Find out in the next chapter, same time, same place.
