“But how will you choose?” I managed to ask. My face was growing hot. I was thinking of how big a man’s hands could be when they were reaching for you.
“I will give each man three nights to spend here in my home,” Papa said. “Three nights during which he may speak to each of you, if he chooses, and explore the house as he sees fit. The only rule I demand he observe is not to venture to the third floor; I have already warded the door to the stairwell against any intruders. And, at the end of his three nights, he will tell me how my daughters managed to escape the house without a bowl of black sand. If he does speak the truth, I will give him his pick: golden-haired and sharp-tongued Undine, violet-eyed and clever-minded Rosenrot, plain-faced but kindhearted Marlinchen.”
“I don’t see how that solves anything,” Undine snapped. “Our bellies will be just as empty as before, except with a new host of mouths to feed. Do you intend for these men, our guests, to eat goblin meat or glass apples?”
“I will charge each of them a petty fee,” said Papa, scratching at a small red spider bite under his beard. “For three days of lodging and food and of course for the chance to wed one of my daughters. I do not think many of them will refuse. After all, what better prospects do they have in this city?”
I thought of Sevas’s flat with its three cots and single grease-smeared window, of Niko’s small sack of rubles and how quickly it had emptied. I thought of the smirking men on the stoops and the drunkards and beggars slumped over in alleyways. They were all stretched out and skinny like a length of dirty gray rope, their ends fraying and their eyes dull as knots. If you lifted up the large stone that was Oblya, how many of these ashen-faced men would you find writhing under it? How many had Undine and Rose and I swept by on our way to the ballet theater, our jewelry winking like the points of kitchen knives, our silks hissing like mean whispers?
We did not have much, and sometimes we did not have even enough to feed ourselves, but we always had this: a house with three stories and a sprawling garden and a solid black fence around it, water that ran when we turned the faucets, lamps that flickered when we yanked their pull chains, and of course magic to make everything a little easier, a little brighter. I felt suddenly so guilty and sad that my stomach turned over on itself. The desperation of these men had repulsed me, even terrified me, but really I ought to have pitied them.
Papa stopped his pacing. The grandfather clock on the wall gonged seven. It occurred to me that there was one thing Papa hadn’t yet done: punish us. His punishments were usually swift and predictable, a new constraint, a tougher tribulation, something taken away and not replaced. So far I couldn’t see what in his plan was supposed to make us freshly miserable. Perhaps my cleverer sisters could, but in truth, I was the one who knew Papa’s cruelty better than either of them.
It had taken me so many years to realize this, but there were things I understood that my beautiful sisters never could.
“I don’t suppose we have any choice at all,” Undine said. Her voice was as frigid as a waft of air from the icebox.
“Why should I let you choose?” Papa’s gaze cut to her with scissorlike precision. “Why should you get a say in anything at all? This is my house and you are my daughters and without my seed you would just be a dream in your mother’s mind. I have given you everything, even endured the blow of Titka Whiskers’s infernal curse, and you have repaid me only with loathing and deceit. It would cause me no grief to see you married off to a man with a face full of boils that spew pus in your marriage bed, or to a man who blackens his wife’s eyes for burning dinner. I imagine you will be first chosen, Undine, loveliest and bitterest of my daughters. My black plum, sweet-tasting but poisonous.”
“Even the cruelest and ugliest man in Oblya is far better than you,” Undine spat, but I could see her face blanch. I thought of what she had said about Papa—that he wanted no one to spoil his daughters but him. I supposed this was one way of doing it. My sisters would be spoiled （no man would choose me to take to wife when Rose and Undine were there）， but only through his orchestration. If you fed a man a potion that drove him to eat his neighbor’s heart, you too would taste a bit of blood in your mouth.
Magic was like that. It always implicated its caster.
Rose stared at me from under her lashes, violet eyes fierce. We both knew the truth of how I had managed to elude Papa’s spells, or at least we knew about the black sand. We could save that secret and spend it only on a good man, so that our sister wouldn’t suffer with boils or beatings. Still I feared that this was not the worst thing Papa was planning for us. What would he do when he was presented with the truth? How would he fashion it into a sharper blade, a hotter brand? I knew that he meant to make a weapon of it.