New Opening, The Eldest Sister

I've been thinking for a while about revamping the opening chapter of The Eldest Sister. I've been feeling like it's a little dull (seven rejections in a row will do that to you). So this morning, I decided my elbow was healed enough that I could risk some more typing, and I re-did Chapter One. I am quite thoroughly pleased with the result. What follows here is not the entire first chapter, but it is the part that most agents would see if they request a few pages along with the query (as many of them do). What do you think? If you were an agent, would this pique your interest?

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Tesni was ten the first time she met one of the y Tylwyth Teg. She didn’t realize at the time that’s what the old hag was—after all, an Eldest-of-Three didn’t have harmless encounters with the Fair Folk, any more than a Wicked Stepsister or an Oldest Son. Had it been Tesni’s youngest sister Elain, now, nobody would have thought anything of the meeting. Just an old women walking past the ugly little girl working in her garden, nodding and commenting on how lovely her flowers were.

That sort of thing happened to Youngest-of-Threes all the time (except the ugly part). Had it happened to Elain, she would have offered the old lady one of her flowers, the old woman would have taken it, and a few years down the road given her a magical gift (one that would utterly discompose her two elder sisters, naturally) in return.

That was how it was supposed to happen. Tesni, though, just stared dumbly at the hag, curious about her unusual amber eyes, and didn’t say anything. Nobody had ever noticed her flowers before. The garden was the one place she could be where nobody expected her to be a proper Eldest-of-Three. Her plants didn’t care that before her mother died and her father’s second wife gave him a third daughter, Tesni had been happy and pretty and petted. They didn’t care that by the time Elain was sixteen, Tesni was going to have to be very wicked and cruel, and would be either banished from Glynbach or killed for trying to ruin her sister’s happiness.

They only cared that she tended them as carefully and lovingly as an Only Daughter or Princess-Stolen-At-Birth. The only times Tesni could fly into a proper rage at Elain without even trying were when her four-year-younger sister would destroy one of her flowers by stepping on it without thinking, or tearing it up by the roots “just because.”

Because of this, Tesni’s family decided the garden could stand as another example of her pride and selfishness, and never interfered with her spending time in it. So for the old lady to comment at all, much less favorably, upon the flowers, came as a shock to the little girl.

The hag waited patiently, but when Tesni didn’t say anything at all, she went on her way. Tesni mentioned the incident at the dinner table that evening, much to her father and stepmother’s displeasure.

“Nonsense!” the merchant said, spearing a piece of meat with his knife and transferring it to his trencher. “Only y Tylwyth Teg have amber eyes.”

“And the Fair Folk would never speak kindly to you,” the stepmother said, helping Elain with her milk before she spilled it all over her pretty tunic. “You are an Eldest-of-Three.”

Tesni bit her lip and nodded, looking at her distorted reflection in her cup of water. Frizzy mouse-colored hair—sallow skin—a long, crooked nose—small muddy eyes—pinched mouth—yes, everything about her proclaimed her an Eldest-of-Three. The stupidest person in Glynbach would recognize her as such. Surely the Fair Folk would do so as well.

“If it was a Fair Folk,” the stepmother said, a frown marring her pretty face, “she was probably expecting to see Elain out in the garden, instead of Tesni. Youngest-of-Threes are supposed to love flowers and growing things, after all. We’ll have to make sure she spends more time out there from now on.”

“But my plants!” Tesni cried in dismay.

“You can still tend them,” her father said. “Just not when anyone is likely to see you. It will have to look like the garden belongs to Elain, not you.”

Tesni wanted to protest, but she swallowed her words. What did it matter? Everything was going to end the way it was supposed to anyway, whether she protested or not.

She glanced at the middle sister, Alis, placidly eating her meal without paying the slightest bit of attention to anything else. Tesni wished she could be that complacent about her role.

It would make life so much easier.

Copyright 2011 E Louise Bates, do not use without permission.