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her sharp brown eyes were bright and inquisitive as a bird's. Sybil closely resembled her sister, Maggie's
peppery Granny Brown, except that she was rounder and kinder and of a sweeter disposition than either
Maggie or her grandmother. Maggie used to think, when she was small, that Sybil was so sweet because
she lived in a house made of cookies and candies. But that theory hadn't borne up under adult scrutiny,
since the house's building materials had apparently had no noticeable influence whatsoever on the
personality of Grandma Elspat, the child-munching ogress.
"I ought to have known I could count on you, Auntie," Maggie said. "Everybody else is ready to have
me drawn and quartered because I don't want to go along with their plans for my life."
"I know, dearie, I know." Sybil kept patting her hand. "I've been watching. And I know you wouldn't
ever do anything you didn't feel was right, whatever Maudie and your father and the King think. I only
wonder if it's really wise to put off your future for the sake of your unicorn? Don't get me wrong." She
held up a hand to stave off the retort Maggie's mouth was open to make. "Moonshine is a marvelous
creature, and you'd be a fool not to enjoy his company. And, of course, you're quite right about our
witches' tradition being rather against marriage to unmagicked men. But times are changing, child. Magic
is wearing thinner with each generation, and if strong witches like yourself don't breed it'll soon be out at
the heel altogether."
"YOU never married," Maggie said. "And Moonshine likes you, which means you probably never
even-"
"Don't be pert with me, Maggie Brown," Sybil snapped. "No, I never have, if it's any of your business,
Miss, but if you must know it's because of my powers. Gentlemen callers don't care for a woman who
can check up on them as I can. And I-perhaps I know just a little too much about the goings-on of other
folks to let me work up the kind of notions about a man I'd need to have to mate with him."
She turned thoughtful. "Though there was once, mind you. But it's not my future we're talking about here.
Weren't there any of those young men you could've married, just to please your father? Someone who'd
let you keep Moonshine?"
Maggie shook her head. "Only one old widower, Lord Feeblydon, who came to the christening on a
litter. He's in his nineties, I believe, and blind. I offered to marry him. I thought he might enjoy a little
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looking after, and wouldn't interfere with Moonshine and me, but Dad said he wasn't about to call any
ninety-year-old relic 'son'."
"Unreasonable man, your father," Sybil sympathized, shaking her head.
Maggie nodded glumly. "And the thing is, Aunt Sybil, even if it weren't for Moonshine I wouldn't care to
marry any of those men. They all know I'm base-born on Mama's side, and most of them have a
wretched attitude towards witchcraft. That whiny warlock you may have seen with Prince Leofwin was
the only one among them with any magic, and he makes my skin crawl. But I wouldn't even mind that
except they all make fun of me behind my back. I know they do. For all their flattery, I didn't feel like one
of them even liked me."
"I was going to talk to you about that, Maggie," Colin put in. "The thing is, see, you don't know how to
gussy yourself up and talk like a real lady. That's what those fellows are used to. Why, you're a very
attractive girl, if one likes the type, and all you have to do is-"
He choked on his last sentence, ending it with a cough as he caught the force of her glare.
"Just where do you suggest I start to make myself pretty for your kind, Master Songsmith? Shall I start
by bleaching my hair and skin, or will it do if I just make myself a couple of inches taller?"
Colin blushed. He hadn't realized his own preference for willowy fair ladies was so obvious to her.
"You can start, niece," Sybil said severely, "By apologizing to your friend. If he hadn't liked you well
enough to come back and help you, we'd have nothing to argue about here. You'd still be locked up in
the tower."
Maggie flushed bright magenta, and said in the smallest voice Colin had ever heard from her, "Sorry."
Colin shrugged. "Perfectly all right, old girl. I only meant you should really try to wear a nice dress
sometimes, maybe fix your hair up like the ladies in court, put a bit of scent behind your ears. I know you
can do it," he said encouragingly. "You washed up rather well that time you danced for the gypsies.
How's anybody supposed to know you well enough to get to like you if you bark at them all the time and
perfume yourself with last week's goose bastings?"
She lowered her eyes and clenched her hands till they were white-knuckled in her lap, but her chin was
still set stubbornly. "Why should I want to know them anyway, people like Leofwin and that silly Earl
Greystraw with his awful sonnets?"
Sybil shook her head. "You young folks are so quick to trounce each other. Poor Robbie Greystraw.
It's not his fault about the sonnets, you know."
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