Chapter 1

I am not very clever.  My brother Sprout is lightning-quick at reading runes, and can trace out a charm faster than most faeries twice his age. For me, the runes fall off the page, mixing themselves up like someone put a bewildering spell on them.

I am not very funny. My eldest sister Petal once told a joke that left every pixie in High-Court School laughing so hard a week's worth of pixie dust exploded from their wings.

I'm not very strong.  My youngest sister, Bluebell, can heave pebbles and break woven spiderweb with her bare hands.  

My siblings are all extraordinary.  

I'm special, too.

My name is Mustard. I've got a temper.

When I was younger, I threw screaming tantrums over everything.  I'd tear the spider-silk off my skin.  I'd spit out my food.  I'd scream and cover my ears.  

My parents wanted to be good parents, I think.  They were good to my siblings. But apparently something about dealing with a screaming faeling day after day meant that after awhile they just cast a Silencing spell on me.  

If I could have spoken, I'd have told them, over and over, that the world *hurts.*  Sounds burn my ears.  Light screams into my eyes.  Spider silk rasps across my skin.  And Goddess Moon help the person who dares touch me.  My muscles jerk, and I flail.  Panic floods me.  My mouth opens to howl in surprised rage.    

I could have told them that after I learned some words.  But I was Silenced.

That's when I started hitting things.

Sprout tells me I shouldn't say things like "I can't help it."  He says I should own my own problems and not blame everything on my parents.  That I should learn tolerance and forgiveness, and I would feel better learning the fae graces of charm, effervescence, and cheer.  

He's my only brother and only friend, but I sometimes want tell him he should replace his head with a dung-beetle's ball.  They're both the same size and then there'd be a reason for the manure he tells me.

Because I can't help it.  It's like my body goes off before my brain gets a choice.  And the other kids think it's soooo funny to touch me.  They like a big, howling reaction.  

They don't do it now, though.  Not after I broke Buckwheat's arm.  

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I guess I'm not a complete immaturlarvae, for a "violent retrograde who's going to break her parent's hearts." Four of Buckwheat's gang were nobility, and untouchable.  Even in a fit of temper, I had enough cold calculation to call my shots.  But Buckwheat himself?   He was poor forest-floor trash who liked to hike up his status by picking on me.  When he did it again, I really let him have it.  

The storytomes called it "making an example."  Of course, in the storytomes, villains are the ones who make examples.  

Guess I'm a villain.  And I'm not sorry.  Because it worked.

I didn't really mean to rough him up so hard. It's just that when he touched me, I stopped restraining myself at all.  

Teachers give special students glittering stars for extra effort.  I've never gotten a glittering star.  If they had any brains at all, they'd give me a glittering star for every day I go to school and don't kill somebody.  Instead, I just get told I'm not trying hard enough.  

I got suspended for a full moon, but my parents managed to talk the school into giving me a "second chance."  In the meantime, my parents locked me in my room and told me to think about what I'd done.  And I did.  

I thought that I didn't give two farts in a windsock about anyone at school.  I thought that Sprout was right- nobody was going to help me, so I had to help myself.  I decided to stop caring what bullying children and useless adults had to say about what I did.  I experimented.  

I made two beeswax earplugs, to make the noise stop hurting.  I made a set of pinhole sunglasses, to make the light less bright.  I started sniffing ant-pepper, to plug up my nose so I couldn't smell. I went through every piece of clothing in my wardrobe to find the things least annoying on my skin.  Instead of the flowing, ethereal robes of a proper fairy, I found myself in skin-hugging tights and a coney-leather jacket, fur-side out.    

I put snail-shell shards on everything, out of pure spite.  

And when I got back, the bullies backed off.   Physically, anyway.  

They can still get to me in other ways.  

So that's me.  Delayed. Unfunny. Weak.  Violent.  

I'm the last person you want to give an enchanted sword.