A Season Most Unfair by J. Anderson Coats

Author:J. Anderson Coats
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The Agnus Dei charms take hardly any time to paint. I finish them in three nights, settled happily at my bright table long after everyone has gone to bed, when the only light is the flame of one of Henry’s first candles that I sneaked out of the cast-off bucket.

It’s not the same, though. I feel like I’m trespassing, like I have no business at this table I’ve spent so many hours at in years past.

Then it’s time to paint the Scholastica charms. I lay one across my palm and consider it. The picture is pressed into the wax instead of standing in relief, and there’s less detail to the background. Big Gray’s frown of judgment comes through even though it’s tiny.

With an Agnus Dei you must paint each one the same way. The lamb must be white. The cross on the banner has to be red, and the grass he’s sitting on must be green. If it’s not just so, travelers won’t buy them. I’m not sure why—they know our wax isn’t from Easter candles, so the paint shouldn’t matter, either—but it does, so that’s how we paint them.

A Scholastica charm is just wax, though. There’s nothing holy about them, even if the wax has been blessed, so it doesn’t matter how I paint them.

There are many slighted daughters out there, and each one is slighted in her own way.

So I paint each Scholastica charm differently.

Big Gray is brown tabby in one, like Sunshine, and orange in another like the Fox. Sometimes the cat is sitting in a field, other times on a floor of dirt or flagstones. Once against a night sky full of stars.

By the time I’m finished painting, I have four dozen perfect Agnus Dei charms, each the same as the one before, and two dozen Scholastica cats, none the same as the next.

Before I wrap them in scraps of linen to keep them safe—and secret—I hold one of my Agnus Dei charms next to one of Henry’s, laid out to dry on the corner of the table. His paintwork is better than it was, but nowhere near the same as mine.

I’ve had years to learn a steady hand and an eye for mixing color. I know how to paint in layers to keep the colors from being too pale. It’s not his fault his charms aren’t as good as mine, but if he’s not willing to listen and learn, there’s not much I can do to help him.

This will be a gooseberries-and-privy moment for certain. For both Henry and Papa.

But it gives me an idea.

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