Books of Bayern Series Bundle

by Shannon Hale

  “I am embarrassed about my accent,” said Ani, “and I’m so confused . . . I don’t know what to . . . ” Ani heaved a breath but could not stop the first sob, which was followed by another and a third. Her stomach tightened, and she bent over and cried hard. Her hair closed in around her face. She felt the woman pat her shoulder.

  “There, there, now. No more crying. It’s all wetness and no comfort at all.”

  Ani thought she was right, for she felt more miserable than before, so she put her palms over her eyes and tried to stop. Her breath pulled harshly at her throat, and she sounded to herself like little Rianno-Hancery after a tantrum.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t cry anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “All right, child, all right. Now, just you tell me what I can do to set you straight, provided I don’t have to get involved.”

  Ani nodded and then realized that the woman was asking her to make a decision. She longed for Talone, her father, Selia (no, no, not Selia), Falada, the lost handkerchief (not that either), just one of her onetime advisers. What a child I am, she thought. She straightened her back, placed her hands in her lap, and stared at the fire. Even from a distance, its heat burned her eyes.

  Grow up. Think. What did she need? The road. But the road to where? The thought of going back to Kildenree on her own was absurd. She had no food or means, no horse, and on foot it would take her months, and the snows would arrive before then. Talone had told her to go to Bayern and find the king. It was possible that Talone and his men had defeated Ungolad, and if so, they would be with the king. Besides the king, there was the prime minister. She had met him once as a child—perhaps he would remember her face and act as her witness. And if Selia and her traitors were there waiting for the escaped princess? She could hear her heartbeat escape her ribs like the quick thuds of Ungolad’s boots behind her.

  Even so, were she offered a carriage back to Kildenree, passage paid, she could not go until she had found Falada and learned the fate of Talone and those faithful few. Bayern. It had to be her choice.

  “How far away is the capital?”

  “A day and a half in a wagon, but don’t you be thinking about walking it and losing yourself again in our forest until I find you facedown in my carrot patch a week hence with no more sense than you had when you left.”

  “May I go with you to the city for marketweek?”

  The woman considered. “Yes, that’ll do, and I’ll expect you’ll be wanting an oufit so you don’t stick out like a lightning tree. Finn’ll take you come next week’s end, and then we’ll be done.” She nodded and picked up her knitting.

  A boy in late adolescence entered the house and stepped up to the hearth to kiss his mother. The firelight lit up bits of white wool that were stuck to his sleeves and the hairs of his arms. He stuck out a hand to Ani and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, Finn,” said Ani.

  The boy smiled and disappeared into a dark corner where his bed resided.

  “Go to sleep now,” said the woman, rising.

  “Yes, um, lady?”

  “Gilsa,” said the woman. “I’m no lady.”

  “Gilsa, when is next week’s end?”

  “Eight days. Hmpf, child.”

  Ani lay on her side, watching the black logs throb orange with the last life of the fire and thinking that she would never fall asleep. It seemed only the next moment that she opened her eyes to a room already silvery with dawn. The door opened and Gilsa came in with a handful of eggs, her hair uncombed and stuck with bits of hay and wisps of wool.

  “Oh,” said Ani, sitting upright, “this is your bed.”

  “Well, of course it is. Do you think I sleep in the shed every night?”

  “I didn’t think at all.” Ani stood and smoothed the blankets over the pillow. She had never had to wonder where other people slept. In a palace, everyone had a place. In her ignorance, she realized, she was thoughtless and selfish.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ani. “Thank you. You don’t have to sleep out there tonight.”

  “That’s certain. My charity lasts about one night on thin hay and then I get tetchy.”

  Ani resolved that for the rest of her stay she would not be a burden. The first day, while Gilsa knit ferociously on her stool, Ani tried her hand at preparing the noon meal. After the questionable results were painfully consumed, Finn returned to the cooking and Ani, chagrined, observed carefully.

  Gilsa discovered that Ani was quite good at finding the roots she needed for dyeing the yarn. Soon Ani was sent more and more on errands in the woods to keep her away, Ani suspected, from the delicate work. After one such errand, Ani made her way across the neat, dirt-swept yard with an apron full of roots when she heard the chickens croaking uncomfortably in their coop. Small feathers took flight as they left and reentered the pen again and again.

  A rat, a rat, they croaked. We will not stay, the rat stays still, there, under, under.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter,” said Gilsa, her hand on the coop door. “They’re scared, as if there’s a green snake in a nest or a fox underfoot. But I’ve cleaned out the coop twice and can’t find a thing.”

  “A rat,” said Ani. “A dead rat, under the floor, and the hens sense him.”

  Ani took the roots inside and was sorting them before she realized she might have to explain her comment. When she stepped back outside, Gilsa was directing Finn to remove the floorboard Ani had indicated. Underneath was a newly dead rat corpse.

  “How did you . . . ?” Gilsa looked at her sharply.

  “My parents used to raise chickens,” said Ani.

  After the first night, Ani spent the sleeping hours on the itchy wool and hay in the shed. She was restless at first, waking at every creak of board and whine of tree. Could Ungolad track her here? She did not know, but after her first night in the shed, Ani begged a board to lock herself in from the inside. Finn complied without asking questions.

  The night before their departure, Ani sat by the fire, rolling up Gilsa’s pullovers into tight bundles and fitting them into the packs. Finn prepared the travel food. Gilsa was finishing the sleeve of one last pullover, a vibrant orange with suns and birds floating on its breast and back. She hummed a tune, light and sleepy, a lullaby. It tugged at the lip of Ani’s memory, and she stopped her packing and watched the singer.

  “You aren’t done yet,” said Gilsa.

  “I know that song. Does it have words here? Do you say, ‘The tales that trees could tell, the stories wind would sing’?”

  “‘Hear the trees a-listening, feel the fire whispering. See the wind a-telling me all the forest dreams.’ It’s an old tune. I used to sing it to my boy.”

  “What does it mean?” said Ani.

  Gilsa’s metal needles clicked together, a sound like a strange beast feeding. “It talks about the old tales, I guess. How in faraway places there are people what talk to things not people, but to the wind and trees and such. ‘The falcon hears the boar, the child speaks to spring.’ And to animals, too, I gather. I’ve always wondered.” Gilsa looked down her nose at Ani. “Is it possible? Would you know about such things, child?”

  Ani continued packing. “It may be so. I . . . have heard tales about the times after creation when all the languages were known, and tales of people who still remember how to talk to the beasts. But about wind and trees and spring and all that, I thought it was just a nursery story.”

  “May be. But all things speak, in their way, don’t they?”

  “I suppose. Just not very clearly.”

  Gilsa looked narrowly at Ani as though at a troublesome child. “We all talk to something besides just ourselves, from time to time. I talk to my goat and my chickens and my apple tree. I don’t know if I’m heard, and I don’t think I’ve been answered back, but it can’t hurt. Now, just think of this, that a person could talk to fire or to a goat and the fire and the goat could answer back. How would that be?”

  “Are there such things in Bayern? Magic
things?”

  “Magicians, sorcerers, witches,” said Finn. He rocked back on his stool, and it creaked.

  “Tricks is what they do, boy,” said Gilsa. “That’s not what she means.”

  “I’ve seen them,” Finn said softly, “in the market. A witch can look at you and say what ails you, and a sorcerer can make things into what they’re not.”

  “Yes, yes, child.” Gilsa waved a dismissive hand. “They’ve some kind of gift for seeing and showing, but it’s all flashy and comedy and giving a coin to hear what you already know. She’s talking about the old ways, aren’t you, little one?”

  “I think so. There are so many tales, so strange and beautiful and perfect. They are not what are real, but better. I thought I had something that was magic once, but I lost it, and now I don’t think it was at all.” She touched her chest where the handkerchief had been and frowned. “I wish there was magic. If all the tales were true, then maybe they could tell me what I’m doing, and what I am to do now.”

  “Ah, now, don’t cry over lost years and forgetfulness. The tales tell what they can. The rest is for us to learn. The question is, are we smart enough to figure for ourselves? Now, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Ani did not respond. There was a thin wail of a wind caught in the chimney. For a moment the sound was stronger than the crackle of the fire, as sad as a broken bird.

  Chapter 6

  Early the next morning, Ani was arrayed in a yellow tunic and sky blue wool skirt. She wore a pair of Finn’s old boots, the soft leather laced tightly to her calves. When Gilsa told Ani that no Bayern was as fair as she, Ani requested a cloth like the one Gilsa wore to hide her long yellow hair. Disguised as a Bayern, Ani thought she had a better chance of getting to the king before being noticed by Ungolad’s men. After she was safely in the king’s presence, it would be simple enough to remove the headscarf and show her hair as proof of her heritage.

  Gilsa finished knotting the scarf against Ani’s forehead and patted her cheek as she might the goat’s neck after a milking.

  “These are your clothes,” said Ani.

  “They were,” said Gilsa.

  Ani slipped the remaining gold ring from her pinkie. “I would like to repay your kindness. I would like you to have the ring.”

  Gilsa looked down at the twinkling bit of gold.

  “Now what would I do with that, pierce Poppo’s nose?” She smiled, and Ani realized she had not known the woman could smile. “You may need that, my precious, before your road’s won. You’ll find some other way to repay me, that’s certain.”

  Ani had little practice in arguing, and she put the ring back on, disappointed. She felt the burden of the food she had eaten and the night she had slept in Gilsa’s bed.

  It was still early when Finn and Ani shouldered their packs and set out, and the forest was wet and humming in the morning blueness before true dawn. Finn seemed pleased to be silent, so Ani walked for a league listening to the heartening prattle of the forest birds and to her own breath that became heavier and shorter the farther they strode. By the time Finn motioned that they stop for a rest, Ani suspected the weight of the pack had rubbed the skin from her shoulders completely off.

  They halted again later that afternoon where their path merged into a green way pressed with wheel ruts. The trees there thinned into lighter woods. Ani looked back and surprised herself with a longing to stay in the true forest. Gilsa’s house, small and lost in a ponderous ocean of trees, seemed more like a home than all her memories of her mother’s palace. She found that she had little desire to return to that palace, except for the comfort of a bed and food and knowing her place. But, she reminded herself, Kildenree is no longer my place. Nor is Gilsa’s house. She looked back to the road.

  Through the whispering forest noises came the distinct sound of a horse’s hooves. Finn stood up, straining his eyes down the road, and Ani backed away to a tight group of trees. Her heart quickened her breath, and she did not dare even call out to Finn. But when she listened to the clomp and rhythm of the hooves, she realized that this was a horse with a short gait, and alone, not likely one of her pursuers. When the brown nose of a cob rounded the corner, there was recognition on Finn’s face.

  “Hello, hello,” said the driver, a boy younger than Finn. In the wagon sat another boy and a girl, her hair wrapped up in a red scarf. All their clothing was dyed in bright colors like Ani’s, for which she was relieved, having felt quite loud in her bright yellow and blue among the simple green and brown of the forest. The wagon halted beside them, and the rider stood up. Ani touched her head and made certain the headscarf was pulled low over her light brows.

  “Hello,” said the driver. “Finn, who’s she?”

  “Mother sent her to help me at market,” said Finn. The others looked at her, waiting. Ani had decided to use her grandmother’s name until she was sure she was safe from Ungolad, but there in the woods before that weather-beaten wagon, Isilee seemed too grand.

  “I’m Isi,” said Ani. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Finn turned and looked at her. Ani had spoken with the quick vowels and smooth slurring of the Bayern accent, practiced for days while hunched over hunting for roots near Gilsa’s house. Finn frowned but said nothing, and she smiled at him gratefully.

  The wagon riders continued to stare.

  “Well, hand me a rotten apple,” said the driver.

  “What’s all this?” said the other boy. “She sounds like she’s from around Darkpond, but she’s not from around Darkpond, or we’d know her, you hear me, Finn?”

  “Yeah, you’d best tell where she came from.”

  “Forest,” said Finn.

  The driver shook his head. “Well, I don’t like it, and neither does Nod, and Nod’s not used to pulling five, and we’re not used to cozying up to strangers. We can take her pack in the wagon now, so she’s useless to you, and I think she’d best be on her way.”

  Ani was not surprised. She waited to feel her shoulders lighten as Finn lifted the pack from her back and to be left alone in the woods that she was beginning to know.

  Finn said, “All right, then,” touched Ani’s elbow, and began to walk down the road.

  “You can go with them,” Ani said softly. “I don’t mind, Finn, and you can’t miss marketday.”

  Finn shrugged and kept walking. Ani could hear the groan of the wagon as Nod pulled up beside them at a slow pace.

  “Don’t be stubborn, Finn,” said the driver.

  “Yes, get in, Gilsa-boy.”

  “Look now, you dolts,” said the girl, “Finn’s sure to be carrying a seedcake from Gilsa, and we can’t get a crumb of it like this.”

  “Come on, Finn,” said the boy, “we just want to know who she is.”

  Finn kept his pace. The driver reined and groaned.

  “Get in, both of you, you goat brothers.”

  She and Finn clambered into the back of the wagon. There was little room, the large sacks taking up the floor space. Ani followed Finn’s lead and sat on her sack, like children winning individual games of king-of-the-hill.

  Finn reached into his pack and pulled out a small cake wrapped in a scrap of basket weave.

  “Fresh yesterday,” said Finn, and handed it to the girl to split. Ani smiled at her, sure she had made the protest from kindness, but the girl did not meet her eyes.

  “Go on, Nod,” said the driver. He looked askance at Finn and tapped the horse with the reins.

  They rode at a horse walk well into night. Ani curled onto her pack of blankets and watched the clean brightness of trees in open places slowly slide by. The three neighbors chatted regularly and even managed to coax updates out of Finn. He admitted he was worried about a chick that was born with a marred foot and his mother, who often knit in too little light.

  As they told stories of what had passed at home since last marketweek, Ani listened and tried to piece together what life must be like living in the Forest on the edge of Bayern—difficult, impover
ished, backbreaking work and the persistent question if they would last through another winter, she guessed. But she envied their commonality.

  She had no stories to share and did not speak, and the four did not speak to her. Ani curled up tighter on her pack and tried to take up as little room as possible.

  The wagon stopped for the night near a blackened fire pit that was soon ablaze.

  As the travelers prepared a group meal and set up their bedrolls, Ani thought to be grateful for the second half of her Forest journey when Selia had refused to help her. At least she had had some practice at setting up her own bedroll. Finn, aware of Ani’s ineptitude with meals, quickly fixed hers along with his and saved her a small embarrassment. Ani thanked him in her Bayern accent.

  The next morning, Ani awoke before the others. She looked at their faces in the pale hint of dawn and felt acutely alone. In sleep, even the relative familiarity of Finn’s face was dulled. They seemed complete strangers, their dark hair, their work-shortened fingernails and dirty hands, their peaceful sleep noises assuring they felt at rest in this great wooded world.

  She rose and stretched, pulling even tighter that tension of solitude that was strung inside her chest. The horse whinnied sleepily. The sound was like a wound awakened, and she hungered for Falada’s company. The horse’s brushes and fittings stood on a rock by his side, and she set to work on his dull brown coat.

  Ani whispered as she brushed, hummed softly at his twitching ears, imitating the nickering of mares to their foals, and tried to sense where he most liked to be rubbed. Though she could not speak to this horse, though his words did not enter her head as Falada’s had, his flesh was familiar beneath her fingers, and his movements made sense to her eyes.

  “Nod seems to like you.”

  Ani started and turned to see the driver yawn and rub his eyes. He reached out to pat his horse’s neck. “So tell, then, you’re good with the beasts?”

  “I think so.” She did not know how the Bayern looked upon those who were able with animals, but the boy did not seem suspicious.