* Author : Anna Madden
* Narrator : Eliza Chan
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Originally published in DreamForge Magazine.
Rated PG
The Last Petal
by Anna Madden
Miss Lily Dale preferred hands to faces. Hands told a story that faces could hide.
Her father’s hands had become so gaunt, so fidgety. A shipping merchant without ships was a man without a livelihood. He spent his days inside their new home writing letters to the port master. The ink looked like dried blood under his fingers.
A good daughter wore a smile, but Lily’s lips faltered, betraying her. “I’m headed to market, Papa. I’m going to—”
“Go along then, child. I must finish this.” His attention barely wavered from his parchment.
Lily drew back. Better she had been born a son, destined to build rather than hinder. As matters stood, her father had sold off their valuables to pay off the debt collectors, and there was little she could do to help.
The floorboards shifted beneath her feet. She skirted the warped planks lest she fall through them and into the empty larder below. At the counter, she scraped three pennies from the bottom of a jar, planting them in her apron pocket. Lily stared at the two coppers left. She bit into her inner cheeks, then counted again.
Her father’s quill stopped scratching. “There, there,” he said, his eyes on the table. “Things will be as they were again. You’ll see.” His words were as empty as the jar.
“Of course, Papa.”
Lily tied her bonnet. She would find work in town and earn her worth in copper, she promised herself, closing the front door quietly behind her.
She set out on the lane beside their cottage with an empty basket clasped between her gloved fingers. Her knuckles were swollen beneath the cloth, the skin sore and dry and itchy. Her hands had once been as white and fresh as her namesake. Whose hands were these?
Switchgrass and lemon-colored buttercups surrounded the path she walked, the tall growth rippling back and forth. Ahead, a rose-gray roan stood tied by the manor house near the village’s entrance.
At the market square, the villagers eagerly peered into her white bonnet, their eyes thirsty.
“A sweet flower,” she overheard. “A shame, that.”
Lily gritted her teeth and bought small items at a stall: some thread, more lye soap. “Do you know of any work?” she asked, handing over a penny. The woman who palmed it had hands more worn and gnarled than her own. Seeing this, Lily blushed.
The woman shook her head, her cheeks a pair of withered petals.
Two pennies bought stale loaves from the baker’s tray. “Can I work here, Mr. Hemlock? I could learn how to bake.”
The baker snorted. He leered over his table and pinned her with soot-black eyes. “You know, you’d be prettier if you smiled,” he said. “My son still talks of you. He could make you smile, I reckon.” He rubbed his hands together. “It’s time Ashton settled down now he’s bought the manor house.”
Picturing the estate brought back memories from when Lily hadn’t needed gloves. A brief season of ease and brashness and unappreciated sunshine. Many of the young men had tried to court her then, the baker’s son among them. She swallowed once, then twice.
The baker touched her arm. His dough-covered palm clung to her sleeve. “You aren’t sick are you, girl?” he asked. “It’s been awhile since you returned to town.”
