by Anita Valle
“He wants to know if the rumors are true,” said Rowan.
Maelyn lifted her chin. “What rumors?” Though she already knew.
Rowan cast down his eyes, flawlessly respectful. “The rumors that you have dismissed every servant in the castle.”
Maelyn did not even blink. “I have.”
“The footmen?”
“Yes.”
“The counselors?”
“Yes.”
“Even your ladies-in-waiting?”
“All of the servants,” said Maelyn, impatience crawling through her tone. “I expelled every one of them, from the sentries to the scullery maids. No one dwells in this castle but my sisters and myself.”
Rowan nodded. “Very good, my lady. I will tell the king.” Droplets gathered on his forehead and he yanked the cap off his gray hair to dab his face. “Beg your pardon, my lady…. May I ask why?”
“Did the king ask why?” Maelyn raised a single eyebrow.
“No,” said Rowan.
“Then you may go.” Maelyn unhooked her ivory cape and draped it on the arm of her throne. She felt anxious to reach her chamber and extract the combs bearing up her heavy brown hair. “Rest well before your journey, Rowan. Have you eaten?”
Rowan nodded, dabbing his face again. Maelyn noticed a trembling at his knees and sensed he struggled to stand erect. She hurried down the four steps that lifted her throne above her visitors.
“Come. I’ll help you to your horse.” She tucked herself under Rowan’s arm, alarmed at the fierce heat coming from his body. “Lean on me.”
She felt him settle against her shoulder. She intended to give him light support, but suddenly the full weight of his six-foot stature crushed down on her. Maelyn gasped as she crumpled to the marble floor with Rowan on top of her.
“Rowan!” Maelyn cried, uncertain whether to be outraged or terrified. He felt like a boulder on her ribs. His hot face pressed against her neck. She squirmed until she’d freed her hands and pushed back his head. His eyes….
Maelyn’s shriek reached every corner of the castle.
Chapter 2
“People die too much,” said Princess Coralina Corissa at breakfast.
Maelyn looked horrified. “Coco!”
“Tell me they don’t!” Coralina challenged with her vivid purple eyes. “Every twelve seconds somebody drops. From plague or treachery or just stupidity. Can’t they find something better to do?”
“Rowan wasn’t stupid,” said Arialain, the youngest princess. She drooped over her berries and porridge, her wispy yellow hair nearly dipping into the bowl. “He was kind…. Even when I was little….”
Maelyn nodded. It didn’t surprise her to see Arialain so distraught. Her soft heart was easily touched. “He was kind. We’ve lost a faithful servant.”
Coralina rolled her eyes theatrically. “We’ve lost all our faithful servants, remember?”
Maelyn bristled and dug her spoon into her own porridge. How little Coco knew. How little they all knew….
She flicked a glance at the other princesses seated at the table. Either Rowan’s death had a quieting effect or they had given up arguing about the servants. Only Coralina seemed unaffected.
“Well, which was it?” Coralina asked.
“What?” said Maelyn.
“Plague, treachery or stupidity?”
Maelyn shut her eyes. “Red Fever.” Without looking she could feel the startled eyes of her sisters. “I thought the realm was finally rid of it.”
“Are you… are you sure?” Arialain asked.
Maelyn nodded. Rowan had probably woken in perfect health yesterday morning. By evening he was dead. That was Red Fever.
Coralina lifted a wedge of cheese off a silver platter and bit off the tip. “Who will carry our messages now?”
“No one, I hope,” said Maelyn, and Coralina laughed. But Maelyn brightened with a new thought. No messenger meant no correspondence with her uncle, the High King of Grunwold. Rowan would not be returning to answer for the “rumors”.
Hopefully the king wouldn’t notice.
Chapter 3
When night blackened the castle windows, Maelyn turned the latch on her library door. She needed to be Maelyn for a while. Not the daughter of a king. Not the eldest of nine sisters. Not the ruling princess of Runa Realm. Just Maelyn and her books.
She had spent the day dutifully. Attended Rowan’s burial. Gave his wife a satchel of goldens. Prayed with the friar. Sung with the minstrel. Spoken with eloquence of Rowan’s faithful service. Ate the mutton pie served to her.
Maelyn sighed. She was grieving. But displaying grief as a duty was disheartening.
She lit a candle and gazed about her library, comfortably cluttered with padded reading chairs, miniscule tables, and towering shelves of books. She’d find a new story and steep her mind in another world.
She held her stub of candle at eye level and searched the nearest shelf for a book she hadn’t read. The Finicky Fairy – that was fun, she’d read it last winter. The Useless Unicorn. A bit silly but animal stories were never her favorites. The Carnivorous Carriage. If books were any less scarce, she’d have burnt that one. It still gave her nightmares.
Her candle flame passed all the titles on the shelf, then the two shelves above. It glided to the next bookcase, brushing each book with its gentle light. Methodically, the flame worked its way across the walls, lighting shelf after shelf. Maelyn found herself murmuring the titles aloud. “The Peculiar Prisoner, The Nauseous Knight, The Sinister Slippers, aren’t there any I haven’t read?” Ten minutes of careful searching later, Maelyn faced the dismal truth – she was bookless.
Disgusted, she blew out her candle and stalked to the window, though night hung too heavily to see beyond the glass. This meant a walk into town and a wearisome haggle with the Book Miser.
She hated that man.
Chapter 4
“You can’t be his younger brother,” said Maelyn. “Rowan had only a sister.”
“I was not born his brother,” said the young man before her throne. “His mother took me in as a child.”
“You were an orphan?” Maelyn asked.
“Yes, my lady. We have that in common.”
Maelyn blinked, stunned at his boldness. Though all of Runa knew her birth story, no one spoke of it. Ever. “And what do they call you?” she asked to change the subject.
“Willow, my lady.” The young man grinned. “The family is fond of trees.”
Maelyn pinched her smile before it spread. The sister was Maple. The father was Spruce. Even Rowan’s infant son had been called Lumen for the ancient trees native to Runa.
Still she felt suspicious. “Why have I never seen you before?” Though she’d noticed him at the burial, he looked too unlike Rowan to be taken for family. Slender and tall. Yellow hair in careless waves. Barely older than herself, she guessed.
“I don’t venture out much,” said Willow. “I work best in solitude.”
“Yet you wish to be Royal Messenger?” Maelyn lifted her eyebrows. “That means venturing out quite a bit.”
“I do wish it.” Willow’s face grew earnest. “My brother served as your messenger, and his father before him. It would honor me to do the same.”
His voice rang true but Maelyn groaned inwardly. A new messenger meant her uncle’s question must be answered. She wished she had another task for Willow, something to delay sending him to Grunwold….
Maelyn pressed her scepter to her lips for a long moment. “Willow… do you know the Book Miser who lives in Creaklee?”
Willow looked taken aback. “I – I do, my lady. I’ve dealt with him.”
“Does he like you?”
Willow smirked. “Does he like anyone?”
Maelyn laughed, ashamed that she did. “I have your first task.” She reached beneath the legs of her throne and withdrew The Finicky Fairy. “I’m in need of something new to read. Take this to the Book Miser and trade it for whatever he will give you
.”
Willow took the book from her outstretched hand and bowed. “My deepest thanks, my lady. I will not fail you.”
He strode for the arched doors at the far end of the throne room. Maelyn relaxed in her chair. How perfect. Her uncle would receive no message. And she would gain a new book without a verbal tussle with that wretched miser.
Chapter 5
It was the messenger’s fault.
If he hadn’t revealed he was an orphan, she might be sleeping now. Not watching the shadowy folds of her bed curtains while her mind simmered with memories.
Maelyn pushed back the curtains and lit a candle on her bedside table. From a small drawer she removed a worn and tattered journal, lifting it with reverent fingers. She settled back in her pillows and opened to the first page. Her smile softened at the firm handwriting, comforting as the face of a friend.
Once there was a king so enchanted by his beautiful bride that he named his realm anew, calling it Runa in her honor.
The king gave his precious queen all her heart could ask, but one. She longed for a daughter. Nightly the couple prayed, but for nine years the nursery sat as empty as the queen’s arms.
In their tenth year, a terrible fever struck the realm, bringing death to nearly every household. In desperation, the king journeyed to nine distant kingdoms in hopes of finding a cure. But like a filthy cloak, the fever covered them all.
Before turning back, the king chanced upon a small child, the sole survivor of her village. An idea sprouted in his mind. He could not cure the fever, but perhaps the hole in the queen’s heart.
Months later the king returned home and presented his astonished queen with not one, but nine baby girls. “One from each kingdom I visited,” said the king. “They are orphans.”
The queen wept joyously at the row of cradles, each bearing a sleeping infant. After bestowing a kiss on each child’s forehead she said, “Now they are princesses.”
Maelyn returned her father’s journal to the drawer. She’d been the oldest baby in that row of cradles – about three years of age when Father found her by the road. Arialain had been less than a week, frail and born too early. Nine girls from nine kingdoms, orphaned by nameless strangers. Suddenly they became sisters, bound not by blood, but by their parents’ love.
Maelyn slid out of bed, shivering as her feet touched the floorboards. She wrapped a heavy shawl over her nightdress and padded to the window. The kingdom nestled in darkness thick as a wool blanket but the first smudges of sunlight colored the horizon.
She remembered only fragments of that distant day. Mama’s dead face. The long road that blistered her feet. Her terror when Dorian, the king’s manservant, lifted her off the ground. How good the bread tasted….
“You never saw us as orphans,” she said, addressing her unseen father. “You called us ‘hidden princesses’. Born in other lands, waiting for you to find us.” Maelyn smiled weakly. “But Father, many do not see us this way. I never knew how many… until you were gone.”
* * *
