Dearest by Alethea Kontis

sat up straight; Friday patted her on the back and Elisa beamed. Tristan couldn’t remember ever seeing his sister quite so happy—another kind of magic, but one he knew Friday would take little credit for.
    “Not only has she been tending Cook’s herb garden, but she’s been nursing the wild meadow behind it. This meadow is now almost completely overrun with nettles.”
    “Pestilent weed,” said Bernard.
    “Someone should really get rid of those,” said Rene.
    “And so we shall,” said Friday. “The whole crop is being harvested and brought into the kitchens as we speak.”
    “The kitchens?” asked Christian.
    “The greens themselves are edible, a good thing in a palace with too many people and too little food.” Friday hugged Elisa tightly. “Thanks to her foresight, your sister might have saved all who call Arilland home for the time being.”
    Friday held up one of the picture frames. “But now she must get to work.”
    Tristan amused himself at the thought of the ghost whose portrait had been cast aside for this strange venture. If there was as much magic bound to these stones as Friday would have them believe, surely some spirit from the netherworld was clicking his or her tongue right about now.
    He hoped his parents’ spirits were not similarly bound to the palace in Kassora. After all the chaos Mordant had created, his father and mother deserved their peace.
    “Tonight I will teach you how to weave something more substantial than wind,” Friday told Elisa. “We will start with simple yarn. The staff will strip down what nettles they can tonight, and we will spin them in the morning—if the curse allows it.”
    As always, Elisa cringed at the thought of discussing Mordant.
    “I’m sorry, my dear, but I need to know more about the spell, so that I might know best how to help you break it.”
    “We have always preferred high, out-of-the-way places like this,” said Tristan. “While we still lived in Kassora, just after the curse, we would meet Elisa in the topmost tower there. Every night before we went to sleep, we would pray to the Four Winds to deliver us. We did not expect an answer, but we prayed every night all the same. In time, a response came.”
    “The gods showed themselves to you?” Friday tried to imagine how she would react to receiving such a blessing.
    “Yes,” said François, with pure conviction.
    “We’re not sure,” said Tristan. “There are four gods of the wind but only one person appeared to us, a blue-skinned man in white robes. He appeared on the wind, instructed us on exactly how to break the curse, and then disappeared the same way.”
    Tristan knew the words of the remedy as if they had been burned on his soul, but it had been so long since he’d thought about them . . . softly he began to say the words aloud, and then realized that all his brothers were doing the same.
    “Gather stinging nettles if you will, though they will burn your hands and your fingers will bleed. Weave them into seven shirts with long sleeves, throw them over your brothers, and the spell will be broken. But from the moment you undertake this task until it is done, you must not speak nor laugh nor cry, though it may take years. The first word that passes your lips will strike your brothers’ hearts like a knife, and you will all remain as you are, forevermore.”
A poetic and haunting recipe of doom.
    Friday rubbed her upper arms briskly, though Elisa had allowed no breeze to penetrate the protective barrier she’d set up to shield them from the rain. “Your sister is worried about the exact letter of the remedy,” Friday addressed the brothers. “As am I.”
    “As are we all,” said Sebastien.
    Friday nodded. “Mr. Humbug assured us that we can bend the rules around the remedy, so long as we follow its exact words. Elisa has not spoken a word since the spell was cast, so we don’t have to worry about that part. My concern is the making of the shirts.” Friday turned back