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There’s a knock on the door and Catherine starts, broken away from her idle daydreaming; she’s the only one home, and they aren’t expecting any visitors. Shifting the laundry basket of milky cotton to her hips, she warily checks who it is through the window. They used to simply answer the door without a second thought, but the world has not been so friendly for some time now. Now, there was war, and her parents had impressed upon her the importance of checking, not censoring threatening stories of what happened to vulnerable young women when soldiers came marching through town, drunk on bloodshed.
A smile breaks out on her face when she sees who it is, and she quickly releases the laundry basket to throw open the door. Amethar has come again, dressed in what he thinks passes as commoner’s clothing…but she would recognize those crystalline eyes in anyone’s face. As he makes his way inside, she notices the overnight bag he has brought with him.
"Presumptuous of you to assume you’ll be spending the night,” she murmurs, even as she encircles her arms around his waist.
He looks sweetly confused, brushing worn knuckles across her face as if he can’t help himself. “I thought you said your parents were going to watch the mozzarella lambs all night.”
She laughs at him and they sway together until she pulls him to the bed. As they fall back, he busies himself waxing rhapsodic about the clear, golden rivers of her hair, the smell of tea spice on toffee-colored skin, the ghee gold of her eyes…
He is still running his hands through her hair when they’re finished, her head resting on his shoulder. She pets the hard planes of his candy chest, both of them so foreign to each other and yet, by now, so familiar.
Amethar reaches into his bag to show her some Candian trinket he has sequestered away for her; as he fishes around for it, a heavy tome falls out. At her curious mumble, he wrinkles his own (regal, princely) nose.
“Ah you know Rococoa is always trying to make me sit and study some line of Candian nobility or another. As if it’ll ever matter for me, especially during wartime.”
Amethar likes war too much for someone who has been in the blood, piss, and shit of it all, in Catherine’s opinion. But she supposes it is a relief for one who is fifth in line for any actual responsibility. She smirks into his shoulder.
“It’s amazing how often she forgets you don’t even know how to read.”
He shoves her gently in faux indignance before they finally settle back for the night. On the brink of falling asleep, she feels him shift and murmur something into the pillow.
“What?”
“Marry me.”
All vestiges of sleep leave her as she sits up, the covers falling around her waist. She stares at him, swallowing urgently.
…
The last time she sees Amethar is during that ill-fated wedding, her induction into the House of Rocks under the eyes of Father Belford Buttercream. As the war rages on, her family is uprooted, attacked by Vegetanian forces in the night, forced to run to an entirely different corner of the Isles. There’s no way for her to contact him, but as she clutches her barely-showing belly, she prays to the Bulb above that, when he comes looking, she will be easy to find.
Six months later, Catherine screams and sweats as she gives birth. As she brings life into the world, the first of Amethar’s sisters dies.
Catherine focuses on the view outside her window, the bright blue of the sky and the blinding white of the water. She clenches her fists in the bedsheets, old but clean. She is drenched with sweat and tears and blood.
Chai threatens to spill from the top of her mother’s plastic bottle body as she heats milk to wash the newborn. Catherine can feel her mother’s disapproving glower even as she acts as both midwife and comforter.
After pushing for what feels like the hundredth time, there is a sudden lack of pressure. Vociferous cries fill the air. The baby must have Amethar’s lungs; Catherine’s heart clenches at the memories of his deep timbre. Her mother gathers the child in blankets and frowns. When the baby is dumped in her arms, she sees why.
It’s a little laddoo, Candian heritage too obvious for them to ever hide it. At first she thinks he has been born like her mother, a whole in and of himself. But then, the head and little arms and legs uncurl themselves from the whole; a pudgy fist reaches for her hair. Catherine stares at her son and traces a fingertip over bumpy, burnt golden skin. He has golden hair and eyes like her, but she sees Amethar’s nose. It makes her smile.
Catherine names him Charles. A good, strong Bulbian name.
When Amethar sees his daughter for the first time, those golden, golden eyes will slice through any remaining incredulity or disbelief, flooding him with memories of a mischievous giggle and rivers of buttery hair. Catherine Ghee’s eyes.
…
Sometimes, Catherine still waits by the windows, expecting to see Amethar cresting the hill to her home, surrounded by the banners of Candia. He never comes. Catherine holds Charles, but every day she sees more of Amethar in him it becomes harder. Every night the baby cries and Catherine drags herself out of an empty bed, she spends less and less time hovering over the cradle.
Eventually she stops expecting him to come. She senses that she’s fallen out of love, if such a thing even existed beyond a war-desperate infatuation. She gathers the gifts and trinkets from him, the heavy book he had accidentally left behind, all that she had once so earnestly displayed, and dumps them in some forgotten chest to gather dust. Without them to constantly remind her of his smile, she hardens her heart.
Charles finds everything when she’s barely four, wandering through the house because everyone is too busy and all she does is get in their way. She’s never seen this trunk, up in the attic, collecting dust and cobwebs. She thinks it’s locked, but when she puts her hand on it, it opens, surprising her. Looking inside, she sees pretty little toys unlike anything she’s seen before, colorful and slightly sticky-sweet. She fingers a chalice proclaiming the marriage between two Candian women. House Rocks and House Meringue. A dark blue hand clutches one that is caramel gold. Underneath, the mug proclaims “There is strength in sweetness.” Charles looks at the sugar on her arms and her heart pangs.
Best of all, there’s a book inside. Charles loves reading, but they don’t have that many books at home. Carefully turning the pages, she mouths out words to herself. Histories of Candian Royalty.
Catherine doesn’t want to be a prince’s wife, but she sees how everyone looks at her, thinking her an unmarried mother, thinking she fell prey to some wandering soldier who didn’t bother to make an honest woman out of her. Father Belford is long gone.
“No one believes me about your daddy,” she whispers to Charles, who looks at her with a confused expression. It annoys her. She thinks of telling him his father is a prince of Candia, but what good will it do to have him spouting stories when no one believes hers?
Charles knows she annoys her mother, so she stays out of the way. Quiet. There’s something different about her, different from the rest of her family. She doesn’t look like any of them. Sometimes, she likes to pretend she’s from Candia, like in the secret book. She closes her eyes and thinks about being sugar-hard, and can almost see crystals of sugar appearing on her arms. Every day mommy and grandma and grandpa don’t look at her, she pretends she isn’t dairy at all.
Charles seems to look more Candian as he grows. Every diaper change and feeding becomes time she could be spending helping her parents on the farm, reestablishing the home they were forced to abandon.
Catherine’s father puts Charles to work as soon as he can walk. Their dinners together are silent. She stops getting up at night to check on him.
“Mommy, mommy look!” Charles looks over to see if her mother had seen the flowers she’d put on the table. They’re in the trash. She can’t remember the last time mommy smiled at her.
A few months before Charles’ fifth birthday, they get the news in their small corner of the world. Amethar has been made the King, has married a woman from the House of Meringue.
If there was something left of Catherine’s hope or heart, it fractures then. He had never even tried to look for her, she realizes. Had broken a sacred bond of marriage. Life gets more and more stifling every single day.
Years later, Saccharina sees the ferocity with which Amethar is willing to die in battle for Joren and wonders why he never tried looking for her mother.
The farm is failing, the chai in her mother’s bottle is drying up, her father is curdling. She tells herself she can’t take care of Charles anymore, but deep inside she knows she just doesn’t want the reminder any more.
“I have no expectation of a relationship with you. I know I’ll have to earn your love.”
" I’m sorry for being an inconvenience.” Amethar doesn’t negate what she says. It hurts.
He calls Ruby his daughter. He hugs her. Saccharina clenches her hands.
“We can be useful to each other.” I’m useful, I’m useful. Let me show you what I can do for you. Use me to bring magic back.
When Charles turns five years old, Catherine takes him to the biggest city in the Dairy Isles. She buys him a stick of fried butter, and then tells him to wait for her as she runs some errands. She journeys home by herself.
Forgiven. Forgiven, she says to everyone. Forgiven so that they never have an excuse to leave her again, so that she is the politest a person can be.
…
The worst years are at the nunnery. No one touches her unless it’s to strike her knuckles. They are cruel, recognizably and meticulously cruel to children still chubby with baby fat, justifying their actions with bitter smiles and words of the Bulb. They are instilling morality with suffering, they think, cleansing children with their tears. With their blood. There is no family here, no love – only the unfeeling light of the Bulb.
She lays in bed at night, dreaming of hugs and candy. She lays in bed whispering about how she hates the Bulb. She hates its light and the nuns and the church.
Enemy of the Faith, they call her.
If I’m queen, there will be no Bulb in Candia.
It’s the worst for her. Her dreams of being a Candian citizen have come true in the worst way, confirmed by sneers and whispers of heretic blood, of junk food. Even the other children avoid her. They steal her food, when it isn’t already taken away from her as a punishment.
“It’s fun to bicker!” I’ve never had anyone around to do that with…
She thinks a feast will help pave the way for her to have a real family. She puts pastries out during war councils.
Liam eats so quickly she thinks he’ll be sick. He wants to tell her about seeds and war with an almost manic desperation, as if he doesn’t say it fast enough she’ll stop listening. Two of his best friends have died.
She points out the yak’s milk, asks him about his family. Is it too soon to call him friend? Will she ever get to call him family?
They try to beat the Candian out of her with force, to remove the fragile crust of sugar on her skin. And she is so young and just wants the pain to stop so she lets them push her away from sugar toward a shield of dairy, becoming more cream-like every day, losing the burnt golden bumps of infanthood. They can’t completely take away the sugar in her blood though, no matter how hard they try. Cream her body may become, white and opaque, but she knows it’s still sweet; she’ll never be the pure milk they want. Every day they hurt her and she recedes into cream, every day they hurt her and push her into the sickly heat of the Bulb, she chants to herself to be cold. Be cold and they cannot hurt you, be cold and the Bulb won’t find you. Be cold like your mother. Be cold, be cold. She doesn’t notice the cream of her body slowly thickening and freezing, thickening and freezing over time.
…
She falls asleep clutching the book of Candian history, the one thing her mother had allowed her to bring from home. It’s her most prized posession; even the nuns could not find an excuse to take it away for blasphemy when it merely relays history about Concordian royal families.
Her dreams gift her with visions of four strong, candy women, all of them intimidating and magnificent.
The tallest of them, a blue raspberry woman with thin-rimmed glasses looks at her, assessing. She breaks out into a smile.
You’ll do. I’m your Aunt Lazuli.
They tell her everything she’s ever wanted to know about Candia. About her father. They save her life by showing her the magic in the world. They plant a seed of sadness and resentment in her, the tragedy of a life she never got to know.
…
She likes Rococoa, strong and direct. She answers questions in a perfunctory manner, holding nothing back, always admitting her own lack of knowledge. Better, her scarred face sees the constant bruises from bullying or the nuns’ beatings, and she teaches Charles how to fight back.
Sticks become makeshift swords. Rococoa teaches her to duck blows, to hit back in ways that don’t leave bruises, to incapacitate. Everyone who has ever touched Charles has hurt her and Rococoa teaches her how to return that pain.
Charles thinks Rococoa understands her best of all, with all her scars and her calloused fingers. But one day her aunt shows her a vision that softens her own eyes, loosens the strict line of her mouth.
Charles is a big sister now. Rococoa shows her two identical babies, one red and one black, plump and giggling. They hold each other’s hands.
Charles’ hands itch. Rococoa has taught her how to use them to inflict pain.
Be cold, be cold.
…
Lazuli’s teachings are the most wondrous gift, the reason Charles was given life. As Lazuli floods her mind with Candian magic and lore, she bestows a dream. She bestows the hope of a world where there is magic beyond the cold light of the Bulb, where sweet sugar curls in everyone’s palm. Charles, who has never had a dream, takes Lazuli’s dream as her own. She will collect tomes and artifacts so that magic can flood Candia once again. One day, she’ll meet Lazuli’s other followers, and they will be a family together.
It’s alright that Lazuli is never wholly with her, clearly splitting her attention among many different people, times, and stories. Nobody has ever given Charles even this much before.
Monk after monk bows to her, and she thinks “Lazuli just did everything right.”
Be cold, be cold.
…
Citrina makes Charles uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because she is a saint of the Bulb, but the lemon candy woman doesn’t preach at her. Either she is cognizant of Charles’ hate for the faith, or is herself still shaken by her death at the hands of the clergy. Charles avoids her, but still contemplates the horror of being run down in the street by the followers of a god to whom you had devoted your entire life.
It isn’t just her Bulbian devotion that makes Charles uncomfortable. It's also the waves of kind, soft, maternal energy that radiate from Citrina, smacking Charles in the face with what she never had. Citrina has Catherine’s yellow hair and eyes too, though hers are the neon of artificial sugar instead of the deep clarity of ghee.
She has a vision of Citrina one night while practicing magic under the covers. It makes Charles bristle; it has been a bad day already, a day where her name and the way others see her as a boy has been grating at her nerves. She turns toward the saint.
“What??”
Citrina looks at her with a level expression.
“Do you know what I always thought was the greatest blessing from a higher power?”
Charles notices how she avoids saying the Bulb’s name. She rolls her eyes, feeling her knuckles stinging from the nuns’ rulers.
“The greatest evidence of the favor we were blessed with was that he allowed us to partake in the act of creation, the very creative power with which he brought about the world. And sometimes, that means he gave us something that, by its very nature, was meant to be changed. Who knows this better than food?”
“Whoever is watching over us,” Citrina keeps speaking, though Charles notices her face collapse minutely in pain, “would not mind if you changed your name or how the world has wrongly labelled you since birth, I don’t think.”
And then she is gone. Charles has not noticed tears of cream making their way down her own face.
Charles pulls out her book for the hundredth time. Reads through well-worn lines of old Candian royalty, from generations past, mouthing them quietly as she traces the calligraphy of their names, seeks to throw off Charles. And she finally finds one that feels good in her mouth, a queen of old, a name that leaks of magic and honor and nobility, the heart of what it means to be Candian. A name befitting a princess of House Rocks, one that will inspire respect and be the most powerful magic-user to walk the land.
Saccharina.
It is a name decades out of use and fashion, but she doesn’t know that.
She starts deliberately pitching her voice upwards, the floating, piercing pitch of a teenage girl. She grows her hair out as much as she can without getting caught. It flows bright golden like her mother’s.
…
It is Sapphria who teaches her what makes royalty. Teaches her the manners and the poise, the carefully worded sentiments. Teaches her how to make people look at her mouth while her hands rob them blind.
“Remember, the most important diplomatic tool is roasting someone but sounding so polite while you do it that they can’t call you out on it.” Sapphria winks at her and Saccharina giggles.
Sapphria teaches her how to be polite and delicate, how to act noble and play the game so no one looks at the blood and sweat underneath it all. Sapphria shows Saccharina that royals can resent their lot in life, though she wouldn’t have thought it possible before. Sapphria makes Saccharina wonder whether any blood-borne ruler is fair to the people they lead.
Liam is eating with his hands. Sapphria had taught her exactly which utensil was used for which food, depending on the company kept.
Ruby is glaring openly. Amethar throws his crown across the ground.
"So polite! You’re so polite. It’s almost unnerving.” " Stop sucking up to him!”
Saccharina keeps smiling even as she wants to scream. Even when acting as nobility, everyone can tell she’s putting on a farce. Too polite, she’s being too polite, none of them have been raised like this.
“I don’t know if any monarch is truly rightful…” “Aren’t you a queen?”
Yes, she thinks. And she thinks of all those war meetings, those expeditions, the sacrifices made. She is a queen. What she wouldn’t give up to bring magic back, for all people.
“I want to get rid of hierarchies.”
…
“My words in this company usually put me in worse standing than before I started.”
Saccharina pulls her hair. Why do I do everything wrong.
Ruby hates that Saccharina does everything right. Hates that Saccharina can fight and speak and do magic. Hates thinking that she was Lazuli’s back-up choice.
Hates that Saccharina somehow knows exactly what to say at every moment, to everyone from Theo to Snickersnack, while Ruby is admonished for suddenly wanting to lay claim to the crown.
Jet always knew what to say…and when she didn’t, she was earnest and charming enough to get away with it. Ruby never learned how to be like that.
It used to be Jet and Ruby, trying to be like their father and not their mother. And now Ruby is understanding Caramelinda more day after day. Meanwhile Saccharina is Amethar’s heir, equally as ready to jump into a fight outnumbered. Ready to push her way into their family.
Ruby looks at her shadow and hopes she won’t lose this last vestige to Saccharina as well.
…
She is careful, ever so careful when she practices the magic. But now that she recognizes how it has always been inside her, the realization opens up an overflowing well she can hardly contain; magic is constantly flowing out of her. She tries to be so careful, but one day the nuns catch her casting a cantrip.
From then on, the whip, a rare and most brutal punishment, is used on her regularly. One of the nuns does the deed while another kneels beside her Saccharina’s face and looks almost sympathetic.
“We’re doing this for your own good. This is the only way to set you on the right path under the light of the Bulb. This is a kindness, you’ll see. You’re a child led astray, and this is the kinder alternative to execution. We’re saving you. The Bulb does not forgive.”
My entire life has been an assassination attempt.
Maybe it’s even true. She grits her teeth, bites her tongue until it bleeds as hard as her back. Until her whippings are one day observed by a visitor, a representative from pope hopeful Belizabeth Brassica. A carrot in full plate watches dutifully as her back is sliced into shreds and does nothing to help. He asks after why she is being punished and frowns at whatever the nuns say. He places a hand on her bare back, pressing where the wounds sting the most, and does not bother laying hands. Whatever he senses, he doesn’t lift his hand. She barely keeps herself from screaming.
The nuns look resigned.
Crying, feeling candy-sweet blood sticking her shirt to her back, she suddenly knows her fate has been decided. She hates the Bulb. She runs into the night, rushing to the docks.
In the middle of the night, she screams into the empty ocean, the docks, and the sky. She screams and screams until storm clouds gather above her and the ocean rises to soothe her pain. Saccharina’s eyes glow blue and wind moves around her as she throws the force of the milky sea straight at the nunnery. She does not look back.
…
She sneaks onto a boat whose captain she’s seen around in the rare moments they were allowed out of the nunnery. He is an older strawberry cream-cheese gentleman, with an eyepatch and bushy mustache. He clearly has Fructeran blood, perhaps even Candian. It makes her trust him more. His boat holds no sign of the Bulb; she’s pretty sure it’s a smuggling ship that hauls just enough legitimate product to hide everything else.
She’s barely on board for an hour before his arm reaches into the barrel she’s hidden in and pulls her out by the collar of her threadbare shirt. She snarls at him but he only looks bemused, at least until he catches the blood still dripping from her back.
He patches her up and puts her to work swabbing the deck. She watches him, and when she knows he’s looking, she casts prestidigitation. Everyone freezes.
They think she is some fae spirit or witch from the sea until she explains her Candian heritage. That was a major risk, Lazuli whispers in her mind, sounding almost approving.
This is the first place she will meet worshippers of gods other than the Bulb. Smugglers, pirates who are who they are because they are worshippers of the occult. Beautiful tattoos and even more stunning stories. These are not men who think they are guided safely to shore by the light of the Bulb. They give praise to mercurial, easily displeased spirits of the sea who have allowed them their lives, curdle and fat that can ruin the milk of the sea as much as make it even more delicious. Gods to whom you prostate yourself when the sea threatens to devour you. Gods with true power.
They give her the tattoos as well, winding from shoulders to ribs, covering long scar lines.
Witch-Queen of the Dairy Sea.
She stays on deck for a year, working the entire time, proving her worth with her own magic. She guides them through storm after storm, keeping them alive, appeasing their gods right along with them. Laying the seeds that they will remember when she comes back.
“To not be seen as a penniless orphan with nothing, I’ve had to earn everything I’ve ever gotten.”
Don’t be an inconvenience, Charles.
She is crew, and as crew she is given equal spoils from anything taken off another ship. This is how she gets her first weapon and her first gift all in one, a longsword and short sword set. They teach her how to use it, and tell her it will serve her faithfully if she gives it a name.
Freezerburn.
When she finally decides it’s time for her to go, to spend some time in Comida, getting more information on the Bulb and the state of the world, she is surprised that they are genuinely sad to see her go.
I’m going to go celebrate with the people who’ve been with me since the beginning of my journey.
…
Being an urchin on the streets of Comida is difficult. There is no softness, no warmth to be found in the alleys of a food-eat-food world. But she is free, and with Freezerburn at her side and magic in her fingertips, she’s even powerful.
She spends a year studying Comida, studying the literal fruit born of the Concord. Uvano is trying his best, she thinks. It’s far more ideal than inherited monarchy. She will prove she is ready to be a leader, just as he did.
She wonders if his daughter will be able to stomach not gaining the throne. She doesn’t have the practice Saccharina has been cultivating since she found out who her father was.
In Comida, your house is so important, a sign of status and dignity; it means everything to be a child of a more formidable man before you. Saccharina spends time in alleyways thinking about hers. About being Ghee, unwanted, unsharing of anything in her mother but golden eyes and rivers of golden hair.
I’ll be the first of my name, she thinks. A name befitting her power, and one she’ll be sure to give forward to every child in her house. Even the bastards. She thinks on what to make it, something that a flag and a house and a family will be proud to own. As she thinks, she casts a spell mindlessly, watching magic swirl around her fingertips…one of her favored spells, a thin layer of ice moves its way up her wrist, making the delicate impressions of snow gathered on the edge of a windowsill. Frost.
Delicate and dangerous, sometimes deceptively so. She decides to follow it up with something that was used against her, a source of such pain and misery. It is now hers to claim, a reminder and a show of power.
Saccharina Frostwhip, first of her name.
…
When she has food, she shares what little she can glean with the other feral children on the street.
One day, she will come back for them. And those who want to follow her, she will take. Friends. Even when they are useless to her.
“Where have you been all these years?” Is spat at her angrily from Ruby’s lips.
When Ruby and Jet first get to Comida, it is a lighthearted adventure. They feast, and Ruby swings herself up to do acrobatics on the carriage roof.
Sometimes, though, she gets desperate from the hunger, from not seeing food days in a row. She steals what little she can from windowsills, from bowls left out for stray cats.
“I know looting isn’t…that it doesn’t show me in the best light.”
It’s not proper behavior for nobility. It’s one of many reasons Saccharina is sure no one will like her if they know who she truly is, all that she has done. But they are also the least likely to understand that there is no choice for morality in destitution.
Sometimes she gets so hungry that she just starts walking. Walking around the edges of the city, in the places where there is still nature to see. One day, she comes upon a fallen tree and finds peppermint acorns inside. Nearly drooling, she grabs at them frantically and starts eating. They taste like magic, and she begins to cry. She wishes she could just…could just fly away, away from everyone and everything, away from her past and her future, away into the sky where there would be nothing to think about but the wind around her. The way it feels when she does magic, a death sentence in Comida.
“I love seeds! You know, one time I found a seed, and it let me fly!”
As she lays against the tree, staring into the night, energized from a wonderful little spark that let her fly, she sees another vision of Lazuli. It has been a long time.
Find the priestesses by name Menthus. They shall teach you about the Sweetening Path.
It is a Vegetanian name. Saccharina sneaks into another boat going from the Pulp Bay to the Green Juice Ocean. She is not caught this time.
…
It takes her time to find them, but when she does, she is initially disappointed. The most powerful of the Menthus clan, High Priestess Spearia, has been long married to Duke Jawbreaker. It is, at least, another reason to go to Candia. Her homeland. Her right.
She hears of Jawbreaker’s many husbands and wives. This is a man who will accept magic, who has the liberalism to understand her plight. This is another goal.
…
They are happy to have her, ultimately. They tell her they have never seen raw magic as formidable as hers. She spends some of the best years there, honing her magic, learning of the Sweetening Path. She looks forward to meeting the Sugar Plum Fairy, the most powerful of the Candian spirits.
They are followers of the Sweetening Path, but they also teach her about Vegetanian gods, those found and worshipped deep in the Verduran Forest. There are severe gods, one made of a holy trinity of three – The Mother and The Father, who feed Vegetation to the Child. There is the gentler spirit, the Jolly Giant, his statues of broccoli and foliage littering hidden alters.
The priestesses bring her to meet with the smaller tribes in the forest, herbs and spices hidden away from the general population. Tribes of Oregano and Rosemary, who teach her of the twin gods Sal and Pimienta.
They teach her to camouflage herself as Bulbian, teach her how to hide her magic in places like Comida, though it makes her bristle. It is critical for them, so close to Brightgarden, to learn how to hide in plain sight. She never loses her hatred of the Bulb.
…
When Saccharina leaves, she is taller, broader. A woman grown. She has mastered the magic of the Sweetening Path, mastered her innate magic, her birthright.
High Priestess of the Sweetening Path.
Ruby has just started understanding her own magic. She bristles at the notion that Saccharina has focused her entire life on this endeavor while she has been lackadaisically skipping between interests because she’s never had to focus on anything.
She and Jet had never decided on any single goal, and here is a woman who knows she will bring about the Golden Age of magic, will destroy the church. All of the vague inklings of a plan that Jet and Ruby never got to even mold into a solid dream.
…
When she leaves, she is no longer sweet cream ice cream. She is freezing cold mint, years in Vegetania making her entire skin tone green.
They give her leathers and a cucumber shield, to protect her as she makes her way through Fructera on foot.
…
Hiking through Fructera, Saccharina breathes in the smell of ripened fruit and sticky-sweet juice. Passing the Uvano estate, she stops suddenly at the sound of children crying from a large-ish building in the capital city.
It is the first orphanage Saccharina liberates. When she does it, she carries out all the small berry children, some of them so young that they are still seedlings. Some are desperately ill in the cold, clammy home, not being given proper treatment. They run into the forest and she tries her best to save them with her magic, tries to pour healing into them. What good is her magic if she can’t save them, if she can’t even save children who are relying on her for help?
Most of them are alright. An older banana teenager gathers them up and nods at Saccharina. They stand around watching as a small cherry child coughs and coughs and nothing Saccharina does can help her, not after the illness has run so long.
She dies in Saccharina’s arms.
As they walk away from a quick, makeshift grave, Saccharina feels something changing within her. She looks at hands that just held a life a few moments ago. Her smell holds the hint of cherry now, and swirls of dark cherry syrup, like blood, flow around her stomach and thighs, around the lap where a dead child lay.
…
Some of the children decide to come with her. Others head with the banana, deeper into the Fructera.
As they walk together, some of the older teenagers tell her about the Fructeran gods they used to read about in fairy tales; how the goddess of sun-ripe berries and citrus, Chiquita, constantly orbits the god of dryness, death, and night, Sunkist; tragic lovers dancing around each other and never able to touch.
Travelling through Fructera, her merry band helps her liberate some books on these smaller gods, books that were scheduled to be burned. She herds them back toward the bay as fast as she can afterwards. Her dreams are filled with cherry syrup.
…
One of the teenagers who has chosen to go to the bay with her is older, around her age. His smile is lopsided, stretching one half of his mouth further than the other. His eyes are the color of bruised peaches, his body lean and lovely, speckled strawberry skin. He is her first kiss.
He is rough sometimes, leaves her lips bruised in the teenage awkwardness of first intimacy, but he pays attention to her. He could never hurt her more than she has already been wounded, in any case.
They part ways at Pulp Bay, where he gives her one last kiss. Laughing, he shows her that the palms of his strawberry hands, which he used to cradle her jaw as they kissed, have candied, reflecting the sun as they shine with sugar.
She smiles at this. One of her…scoops, has become strawberry ice cream, and she flushes at how much he must have touched that part of her to leave such a mark.
He gives Saccharina a gift, one of the only things the children could find to play with in the orphanage – a set of two decorative cherries.
…
She spends the next few years at sea. Her ragtag band joins a crew, and she buckles down to amass followers.
She is a pretend noblewoman amongst working men, and she shares their drink and their sorrows. She dreams of a coronation in a barn, with kegs flowing around her and the sea outside the window.
I’m used to fighting with my men. Being in the front.
Over years, she performs magic deep in the tides of the sea, aweing and saving sailors, amassing a fleet of smugglers and pirates and occultists loyal to her. They ride out storms without fear when she is on board, directing water and air around the ship, swirls of magic and milk. Men join her when they want the guarantee of life even through the most rollicking of storms. She makes her way from swabbing decks to being voted Captain of a mishmash of different ships. It’s her mismatched fleet, one of the first things that she had earned without being given or stolen.
Storm-Captain of the Frosted Fleet
She hears of a fellow captain, the former heir of House Cheddar. A woman who clawed her way from the top down to the freedom of the sea, just as Saccharina claws her way from the bottom up to the responsibility of a title. They are two ships passing in the night.
…
While marauding, focusing on merchant ships with the insignia of the Bulb, she claims a set of shining plate mail for herself. It is a sign of her power, and she stands taller in it, covered from head to toe. She catches her reflection in the milk sea and smiles at how far she has come from that little laddoo boy…mint ice cream with strawberry and cherry, in full plate, wearing her favored mint-spotted robes.
From that day on, she carries herself with a confidence and swagger she does not yet know is from her father.
Saccharina can sense Ruby in the room, can almost feel the princess-bastard flipping her off. It’s alright, she tries to convince herself. Ruby will come around, she’s only a child. Then she flinches, remembering what she was doing and how far she had gotten when she was 18 herself.
…
During her years on sea, they stop on land a variety of times – often to gather magical artifacts or tomes, to free prisoners of the Bulb, or to just wreak general havoc on the those who abuse Bulbian power.
The first time Saccharina steps foot in Candia, it is because one of her marauders has family in Dulcington that he thinks would want to join her. As she makes her way to the city with him, she ignores the stares she is getting – ice cream is rare, the obvious mix of Candian and the Dairy Isles. Saccharina ignores it all, because over the edge of the small candy town, she can see the royal palace for the first time. She swallows, letting the wave of emotions crest over her. Anger, briefly, for the birthright she never got to grow up in. Sadness, at the family she’s never been a part of. Anticipation, for when she will finally meet them, when she has made herself worthy of being a princess, with enough power and magic and manners, so that they will have to accept her.
You’re not my sister and you’re not my queen!
At Dulcington, she collects the people she needs to get and then finds herself stopping by the window of a store specializing in armor. There is a pair of chocolate epaulets in the window, with a shimmering caramel cape attached.
Back on the ship, she takes the cherries she had gotten as a gift in Fructera and attaches them to her epaulets. As she’s changing, she notices some of her ice cream has gone vanilla.
A second scoop, over her heart. She smiles wanly.
Saccharina overhears some local women speaking on how one of Duke Jawbreaker’s sons will be sent to Candia as a ward. She waits for the day when she will meet the Duke in person.
“Pissing contest! Now!” Growing up on a ship for much of her life is helping her in ways she could have never predicted.
…
They make other forays into Candia over the years, finding Lazuli’s hidden books and teleportation circles, collecting quite an amalgamation of lost lore. She finds a standing circle for the Sugar Plum Fairy and Saccharina waits there, almost trembling with excitement at meeting such a powerful magical deity.
As soon as the fairy arrives, Saccharina knows there is something wrong, that there is some trickery in the swirling purple air. The fairy is hiding much of her power. When Saccharina speaks on wanting to bring magic back to Candia full-force, that she is continuing the work of Lazuli, a frown appears on the fairy’s face. She is hiding her power from the world, just as she is hiding from Candia. Saccharina looks at her and gasps; it is difficult to focus on the fairy completely, but she can almost see what looks like the shimmering light of the Bulb at the edge of her vision…
She barely makes it out of the encounter alive, cognizant of having made a powerful opponent, and disappointed once again.
The Sugar Plum Fairy looks between her and Amethar and smiles cruelly. “You don’t just leave something special out so anybody can ruin it,” she says in her deceptive child’s voice.
Saccharina’s back is a mess of scars.
…
She becomes a traveler of the world in those years, free and strong. As a young woman, she takes many lovers too, though a lopsided strawberry smile will always hold a special place in her heart.
There is Ceresia, where they stop to find magical artifacts. Saccharina keeps the company of a lovely bread roll, an older woman who deserted the Ceresian army and lives secretly deep in the Fields of Wheat off the coast. Her hands are scarred and worn from years of violence instead of magic, but they are warm and experienced as they smooth over Saccharina’s frozen body. They laugh together in bed, giggles floating through the air; and afterward, they share a beer, and she whispers the secrets of Ceresia’s gods into Saccharina’s flushed ear. Gods of harvest, the three sprites Barley, Grain, and Wheat, who blow into the Horn of Cornucopia, who lead the unsuspecting deep into fields of wheat. They will lead you astray, but if you manage to find your way out, they bestow the divine power of pure barley beer and whiskey. Saccharina hears about the nearly forgotten pantheon of Ceresian gods, twisting family lines and histories, how old Ceresians throw their burnt toast into the fire as a sacrifice. She learns of Wonder Bread, the man who travelled Ceresia preaching kindness and tolerance, and was crucified for those very sins.
When Saccharina finally leaves Ceresia, there is waffle cone growing along her shoulders and her shins. She is the new owner of Winterscoop the spooning staff. Behind her, she leaves a sweet bun with Hawaiian glaze on her skin and newfound hope in her heart.
…
Over her travels, Saccharina gathers the in-between people, those who don’t feel like they have a place in the world, who are treated as mistakes by their peoples. Cereal, who live on the borders of Ceresia, Candia, and the Dairy Isles. Pizza and hot dogs, tomatoes, vegetable cakes and sweet rolls. She even finds those rare ice cream people, sorbets and custards living on the borders of Fructera and Candia, at the edge of the milky sea. She takes people forgotten and rotted, molding, bitten, melted, and oven-burnt. The ones nobody else wants, she makes them her family.
Ruby looks at this force, a force of grit and dirt, an army raised from nothing.
Jet had always wanted to be a general, had always asked if General Jet would ring well across the battlefield.
…
Saccharina spends time in Carn with a steak named Jawbone. The sex is messy and carnal, but it’s good. He smokes cigarettes afterward, the smell of char and wood smoke filling the room.
Everyone is openly pagan here, enough so that it almost feels like home in Jawbone’s arms. She makes more allies here than any other land, people who are not desperate enough to come with her but can help her all the same. Saccharina explores Carn to find lore of the Ravaging one, the god of the Hunt and Spiller of Blood. Old meat women living in wood-smoke houses speak to her of the Hamburger Helper, how you leave a dish of blood out in the middle of the night and wake up to find someone has cleaned your entire house and left dinner warming in the oven.
When she leaves, Jawbone runs his fingers over the new bacon freckles on her back and belly.
Chuckling gruffly, baring his razor-sharp teeth, he says “I think you’ve left me maple-glazed.”
On her boat, she smiles that she has left so much of herself on other people. That she’s become an irrefutable part of Jawbone’s life, that he’ll never be able to just forget her and leave her behind.
As she travels through the Chili Sea, she adds fish sailors to her fleet.
…
After two decades of life, nearly a quarter of which she has spent on the sea, Saccharina has to admit she’s gathered as much Candian magic and lore as she can without finally settling down in her homeland.
She won’t admit she’s been scared to do it up to this point.
She takes the followers who want to come, the rest of them continuing on her fleet, and they make their way across Candia’s forgotten lands, through the forests and the Great Stone Candy Mountains. They collect artifacts and tomes along the way as they find them, hiding from the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Deep in the mountains is the first time she comes across a lone tribe of chocolate mountain men and marauders, rejected chocolate people with all different Easter colors powdering across their skin. They have been living in the woods these many years and instantly attack her; after she uses magic to fend them off, her show of power is enough to cow them. It is the first step toward trust. The chief of the tribe introduces himself as Jon Bon (or did he say Bon Jon?), and allows her to stay in their territory.
From their tattoos and their stories, she learns the version of Candian magic that even Lazuli could not tell her about, not with her gaze eternally forward-thinking. The older forces of the Sweetening Path who get their power honestly, unlike the fairy; the smell of sugar so raw you can almost taste the cane, chocolate spirits so old and dark they were more bitter than sweet, the legends of Old Sucrosia. The language and tattoos of old Sucrosi that she inks into her own shoulders and hips and ribs, intertwined with those worshipping the dairy occult. She spends her downtime reading tome after tome, Lazuli’s work, her own writings, books the tribe has handed down over generations, and all the texts she herself has collected.
Archmage of Lost Sucrosia.
Saccharina instantly makes friends Bon Jon’s serious young niece, a purple chocolate woman with long red hair named Violata. She gets very close to Violata indeed, who says she will train her to travel through the forests confident and unseen, an excuse to hold her face very carefully and kiss her silly. Violata is a woman of few words. Her kisses taste like orange cream, and she tells Saccharina it is because there is Fructeran in her blood, that her mother was bittersweet with orange zest.
She lays her head in the middle of Saccharina’s bare chest when they’re alone, red hair flowing between strawberry and vanilla. Over sticky sweet summer evenings, she leaves an entire patch of chocolate ice cream in the middle of her two scoops, and Saccharina smiles to see the sundae completed. Mint ice cream with a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of strawberry, with chocolate ice cream nestled in between. Violata often is.
Chocolate fingers run through Saccharina’s hair, which has retained her mother’s golden color and clarity even through all these years and all these changes. They sit in front of a shard of sugar glass under moonlight, and Violata helps cut her hair, trimming the sides down to nothing and cutting the remainder into choppy waves that hit the bottom of her neck. Together, they dye the golden color away into streaks of pink, white, and brown, dripping down her neck, caught by flushed purple lips.
The Sundae Sorceress
…
One night while they’re out, a different chocolate tribe attacks, chocolate warriors littered with almonds, walnuts, and pecans. They brandish weapons of toasted nuts set on fire, marshmallow spears blazing through the air. Saccharina bursts in amongst the sound of screaming, the nauseating smell of melting chocolate, and fends off the attack, destroying chocolate soldier after chocolate soldier. When it’s all done, she’s relieved to see Jon Bon is alright, until she hears guttural moaning from her side.
Violata’s face is melting before her eyes.
Gooey stands in front of Queen Saccharina, her right-hand woman and captain of her guard.
Her one eye looks out, beyond what mortal men can see, tracking where every fighter and army is in the woods with otherworldly skill. It is an invaluable talent and it makes Saccharina’s heart pang.
“I don’t really have time to pursue relationships,” she finds herself jokingly saying to Manta Ray Jack, golden eyes shifting to Gooey glaring at Theo.
The glares eventually melt into something else, something deeper and spicy. Theo blushes and splutters but he returns her remarks at brisk speed. Saccharina’s heart hurts as she commands them to go have sex lets Violata go.
…
Saccharina wants to burn every other chocolate tribe to the ground. Instead, she puts her feelings away for the hundredth time, and uses her raw force to bring them all together into one large people, offering them collective power and a fortified home deep in the mountains. As they settle into their base, other Candian citizens emerge from the woodwork, looking to join. Swifty gives her a headache, but she can’t deny the usefulness of his speed and stabbing ability.
They set up geothermal vents and climate control; she makes guest rooms and cleans towels. Maybe it’s almost as good as a palace. Maybe she will set out a feast and it will get her a family.
…
Ruby hates that Jet never got to meet their sister, because Ruby doesn’t want to admit Jet would have loved her. That Saccharina is everything Jet wanted to be. That Saccharina made it by starting with nothing when Ruby and Jet couldn’t, even when they were born with everything. That Saccharina has done what Jet and Ruby wanted better than they could have and without any help. She has her followers and is keeping magic alive, fighting the powers-that-be in a way they could have never imagined. Saccharina is a general and a teacher and a protector of magic and Jet…is dead.
She is the leader of an army forged out of nothing (and in her dreams Ruby sees General Jet, Rococoa’s scar across her face and Flickerish flying in her hands).
Saccharina has taught people all over the world magic, has kept it alive with just embers, is being seen as the next Archmage of Candia (and Ruby just learned what magic is from Lazuli, has just begun questioning why the rest of the world looked down on it, has had her dreams of doing magic by King Jet’s side swept away for visions of revenge, of burning bread and shredded carrots).
Saccharina has fought the Bulb her entire life (and Jet and Ruby have just let the Bulb ruin their life with nothing but petulant whines about the unfairness of the world).
Saccharina thinks that she’s earned everything she could possibly earn and still Ruby hates her.
Ruby hates Saccharina because Saccharina is who Jet would have been if only given the chance. And as she looks at her shadow, alone, as she sees her father, Theo, and Cumulous look at Saccharina with hope they have not had since Amethar held Jet’s broken body, she thinks Saccharina will be the daughter, the heir, the sorceress, for whom she is left behind.
…
She gets the news deep in the mountains. Her existence has finally caught up to the House of Rocks. Amethar has been excommunicated from his position. She can only steeple her fingers as if the news has not rocked her to her core, has not flooded her with guilt about the inconvenience her entire existence has been. From the remainder of the hall, she visibly sees the news spread among her ranks. Soldier after soldier falls to their knees in devotion, humming deep and earthy and bone-chilling cold. And from the back, someone starts the chant that finally reaches her ears.
Queen Saccharina of House Frostwhip! First of her Name! Ruler of Candia and the Sugarlands!
…
Now that she is heir, she decides it’s finally time to speak with Jawbreaker. He is a man with many spouses, most of whom practice their separate religions and cultures. If there is anyone else who will accept and respect what she has done, it will be him.
It is devastating for it to end in a childish pissing contest, with his complete lack of acceptance for her claim, his view of her as a stumbling block as he prepares for the war at his doorstep. His wife has been stolen, his people are being burned. And still he turns her away, turns away her powerful magic to satiate foolish pride. As she leaves, anger and humiliation warring inside her, Saccharina wonders when meeting her family will leave her with anything but shame in her chest.
When his neck still has bruises from the noose, he is the first to lower his eyes in the face of her rightful claim.
Spearia looks at her warmly and sees so deep inside her that Saccharina flinches back from the gentle finger on her forehead. No one can see who she really is, not if there is ever to be a chance for them to like her.
“Goddamn, we are related,” Jawbreaker hoots, letting bygones be bygones as easy as sugar burns. He is the first one to acknowledge they are family.
She almost doesn’t notice the tears when she tells them she has put her pride behind her, swallowing her feelings once again in service of the magic she will bring to the land. Almost doesn’t notice purple hands gently laying a blanket on her shoulders and guiding her away.
…
She doesn’t know, but it is one month before she will finally meet her family. She is laying on the bed face down, and it is a rare night where Gooey has joined her in bed, gently petting her hair.
As she hears her warriors feasting below, she finally asks Gooey a question she’s always wanted the answer to.
“Gooey…why do they all like me so much? Why are they so loyal to me?”
Are you…are you saying the snake would have liked me?
Theo kneels at her feet. “I will follow you to the temple.”
Amethar looks at her and sees the only woman he ever truly loved in her golden eyes. He bellows at Grissini, yells that she is his daughter reborn as lightning shakes the earth around him. A daddy-daughter special.
Cumulous looks over with tears in his eyes as he holds the Ring-pop. He introduces her to the Order of the Spinning Star as the rightful (legal) heir of the Candian throne. He asks her to be the Archmage of Candia, and it is all she has ever wanted, more than being queen.
Even Caramelinda looks at her, and they are, for a second, just two women who are living lives they never asked for, suffering Ruby’s wrath with dignity.
Gooey’s hand pauses in her hair as she takes a second to think.
“Because you are kind. Because you are intelligent. Because you saved them.”
Gentle fingers run across her arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. Gooey touches Neapolitan hair and mint cream skin, scoops of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry dabbled with cherry swirl and bacon bits, rainbow tattoos and a veritable blanket of pale scars, all shielded in waffle cone. Her hands even find those secret places where Saccharina still has, to her consternation, burnt orange hills of laddoo.
“Because everyone sees themselves in you.”
Ice cream is the most versatile of foods. Her breath freezes at the comfort of the Ice Cream Temple, built eons ago by hands just like hers.