by Shannon Hale
With that touch his countenance changed. He dropped his hand and looked away.
“I should go,” he said, already walking to his horse. She stayed by the stream. When he had mounted, he turned back and frowned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Isi.” He rode up the hill, through the arch, and disappeared into the stones of the city.
After the dark affirmed it was the middle night, Ani left Jok dozing on her bed, wrapped her hair into Gilsa’s blue headscarf, and slipped outside. She had recently oiled the hinge of her door, and it closed silently behind her. It was a long walk to the palace and seemed longer after dark, with nothing to watch but stray cats and closed windows. With every step the cold of the cobblestones pushed up through her boot soles and into her bones. She was wearing Gilsa’s pullover. It was bright and patterned, and she felt as obvious as a goose in a murder of crows.
The night guards stopped her at the gate. Of course they would.
“I’ve been called to the stables,” she said. Her forehead itched with cold and sweat, but she did not raise her hand to it.
The lead guard looked her over and then motioned for her to pass. She was a girl, a Forest girl by the look of her head wrap, and not possibly important enough to lie or plot. Ani knew a trusting guard might let an innocuous girl enter alone, but leading a princely, maddened horse back through was another matter. But she had to try.
There were others on the stable grounds—guards, late workers, and sleepless stable-hands. She nodded to those she walked past, and they nodded back. The stable where she had last seen Falada lay at the end of the yard, a painfully long walk that stretched on and on, the distance seemingly unchanged with every step.
When at last she ducked through the fence posts and into the long building, Ani knew it was wrong. There was an odor of stale hay and muck piles without the sharp, warm smell of animal. She ran to the end. Every stall was empty. Ani wiped her forehead with a loose end of the scarf and took a bracing breath. She would have to check every stable. Like the cold, hopelessness pricked at her skin.
She crossed the arena and ducked through the railings. Something caught—an exposed nail, a tether hook—and held a corner of her head wrap. Her fingers were numb from the cold, and she tried to feel it out blindly. Cloth, wood, metal, all felt the same.
“Ho there,” said a stable-hand, “what’re you doing?”
“I’m caught,” she said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Ani tugged harder. He spoke too loudly. Others were looking that way, and she was caught like a hooked fish breathing in cruel, dry air. And then she saw him. Across the field. He had stopped and was looking at her, wondering at the commotion.
“You’d better leave,” said the stable-hand.
Two pale braids. That was all she could make out at that distance. Pale braids. Panic seized her, and she had no thought but—away. She pulled herself free, and the scarf fell, long, unraveled, on the hard ground. Her yellow hair shone like silver in the moon-lightened field. All she knew to do then was run.
Ani did not look back. She knew he was behind her. She knew he was stronger, and she was so cold. Her boots hit the ground, and the impact shook her body, but her feet could feel nothing. She was as numb as her fingers, as numb as fear had made her mind. She stumbled and ran. He would be close now. Right there, behind her. Close enough to reach out, to grab her by the neck, to bring her down like a fox on a hen, jaw tight on its throat.
There’s something I can do, Ani thought. There’s something. She could not think what. The wind from her running grabbed at her ears like a child anxious to tell secrets. She strained to understand, but it was just noise, like the chattering of the geese had been all those weeks ago.
Up ahead the guards at the side gate blocked the exit, and another hurried from his post toward the sounds of running.
“That man,” she said as soon as she was close enough to speak, “he’s trying to hurt me. Please.”
The guards turned their attention away from her, and she continued to run, at last outside the palace and into the dark of the sleeping city. She turned back to see Ungolad at the gate and heard him yell in outrage, his pursuit stopped by the warning of javelins pointed at his chest.
Ani did not stop running until the leaning streets eased, and she looked around at unfamiliar buildings and knew she was lost. She rested against a house, her head on her trembling arm, and concentrated on breathing the cold air that stabbed at her throat and lungs like icy fingers. Ungolad knew she was there. They would search now for a Kildenrean girl with long yellow hair. There was fear again. Falada was gone, and all was wrong.
There had been something, an idea, a sensation, something she could have done, something that was stronger than the knife in his hand. Something in the wind. She could not remember, though she tried as she stumbled west on the sleepy streets, hiding behind barrels and piles of refuse when she heard footsteps behind her own, but seeing no one. She finally gained the city wall when the moon had set and followed the wall in utter darkness to her own room. At last, her own safe place.
Ani locked her door, fell on her bed, and was asleep at once. She did not wake until Conrad rapped on her door after breakfast.
Geric did not come that day. Ani waited for him to bring the news of the horse’s death. She could imagine how he would look, what he would say, how his gait would be slower, despondent, each foot reluctant to take a step, his eyes slow to meet her face. But they would meet her face, and he would take her hand again, and all would be well.
He did not come.
After the sun had started its long slope into the hollow of the western sky, Tatto passed through the archway. “I’ve got new boots,” he said, explaining why he picked his way across the grass, carefully avoiding goose droppings. Ani watched with sleepy eyes and a resigned dread.
“I’ve been sent by my chamber-lord to deliver to you a message.” Tatto spoke officially, raising one hand, palm upright, in a stiff gesture of oration.
“Yes, go on,” said Ani. He was inclined toward dramatic pauses.
“Here,” he said. “A letter from someone in the palace.”
The parchment was sealed with a plain pool of wax. Ani broke it and read.
Isi,
Matters here are worse, and the prince needs me at present. At any rate, I think I had better not return to your pasture again. I do not know how to write this. You know, this is my fourth draft of this letter, and I am determined to finish this one even though I will sound like a right fool. So I will just say it. I cannot love you as a man loves a woman. I am so sorry if I have presumed what is not true or have taken liberties with your sentiments. I hope you can forgive me.
Geric
A postscript scratched at the bottom read, “I have failed you twice. The horse you had regard for was already taken away when I arrived yesterday.”
Ani folded the letter and put it in her pocket. Tatto was watching her face. Curiously, Ani did not feel like crying, or running away, or sighing. Instead, she felt anger burst open inside her, an overripe fruit. She felt like picking up the fist-size rock that lay by her foot and throwing it, hard. She did. It made an unsatisfactory thump on the ground.
“Not good news,” said Tatto.
“I should be used to it. But right now I’d like all my troubles to stand in front of me in a straight line, and one by one I’d give each a black eye.”
“Oh.” Tatto stood by, waiting to see what she would do.
She kicked her beech tree. The trunk was as thick as two men, the smooth bark as hard as a city stone. She could not even make the branches shiver. She shouted and kicked it again as hard as she could, knowing she could not even dent the bark. She was reminded of one of her temper-prone ganders that had tried to attack a carthorse, only to get kicked by a rather large hoof.
Ani stopped and pressed her forehead on a branch in a kind of apology. The pressure of the tree on her face soothed her. She clo
sed her eyes and thought she could hear a kind of breathing echoing all around her, from leafless branches and the thick trunk and below her feet. She opened her eyes and saw Tatto staring.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“I think so,” she said with some satisfaction.
“I saw my ma do that once”—he pointed at the tree trunk—“but to a milk pail. Kicked and chased it clear across the yard, crushed it to a ball of metal. Really.”
“Yes, well . . . ” Ani looked off to where some geese paddled on the pond, though the water was near freezing. I cannot love you as a man loves a woman. Her heart twisted at that. And not coming back, she thought. Put him away, with the others who will not come back. Aunt, father, Selia, brothers, sisters, Talone, the guards, Falada. Put Falada away.
“Tatto, do you know where they sent the princess’s horse?”
“Yes, the knacker two over east from your pens.”
Ani thanked him, and when Tatto had left, she told the geese to stay put. She found the knacker’s yard first by smell. The place reeked of discarded parts of animals—an odor sour and mean that lodged in her throat. Bits of coarse hair and feathers tossed around on a ground breeze and lay on the dirt thick as dust on a floor unused. A man in a heavy apron was sharpening his ax on a whetstone, even as she had imagined he would be.
“Sir,” she said, “the white horse, the royal one, has he been killed?”
He looked up from his ax.
“Aye.” He stepped forward. Clumps of animal hair stuck to his boots and to the dark stains on his apron.
“Yes,” she said. “I thought so. Yesterday.”
“A friend of yours, was he?” said the knacker, expecting her to laugh.
Ani winced. “Yes, actually. A good friend. But I’ve spent two months mourning and can’t cry anymore.”
“What are you, a misplaced stable-hand?”
“Goose girl,” she said.
The knacker nodded and pumped the pedal of the whetstone.
“Sir, a favor,” she said.
“Favor,” he mumbled, and kept it spinning.
She removed the gold ring, the one Gilsa had refused, and held it out to him, letting the afternoon sunlight flicker on its edge like a halfhearted star.
“For payment, for a proper burial.”
He looked up again and let the wheel spin down. Ani crossed the yard, conscious of the animal hair under her boots, and put it in his hand. His fingers were the dirty brown of unwashed blood. Ani swallowed at the touch. It could be Falada’s blood.
“He was a noble beast and shouldn’t die to be dog’s meat. Give him the honorable rites due the mount of a princess.”
The knacker stared at the circle of gold and shrugged. “All right.” He gave the wheel another pump. “Do you want to see him?” The hand with the ring motioned to his right, and Ani noticed for the first time the hind leg of a white horse, the white hair stained all colors of brown from blood and dirt. It lay on the ground, severed from his body, being readied for dog meat. She took a step forward, her hand to her mouth. She saw the tip of another leg, the rest hidden by the hut.
“No,” she said, “I’ve seen enough. I have to go.” She turned her back and ran.
Four mornings later, Ani and Conrad herded their flock to the pasture, anxious to let them graze while the weather held clear and kept the winter rains and snows in abeyance. Ani liked to hurry into the sunshine of the pasture, not idling longer than needed in the shaded street.
That day, she stopped. Her eyes were drawn to the curve of wall above the arch. There, fastened to the stones, his neck attached to a round, polished board of dark wood, was the head of Falada. Ani grabbed at the stones in the wall to keep herself standing.
His mane was washed and combed straight down his disembodied neck. He was scrubbed clean of the blood of death and the mark of the ax. His head was imposing, bright white, nose pointed forward, like the proud carriage of a horse at a run. His eyes were glass balls, black as new moons.
“Look at him,” said Conrad. He did not seem surprised.
“Why would they do that? Hang him there as they do the criminals?” She could not look away from the cold, glass eyes.
“Some favorite animal of a rich man, no wonder, though I don’t know why he’s hung by the goose pasture gate. You’ve never seen inside one of those fancy estates? Full of stuffed animals, dead pets, big deer heads.”
Ani could not leave the spot. Conrad and the geese were far down by the pond, and still she stood. Cruel, cruel, she thought. This is a proper burial? These are honorable rites? She was angry and torn and heartsick and blamed herself and everyone in the world.
Falada, she said.
For a moment, the head seemed to agitate, like heat haze shimmering on a road. The dead face did not turn toward her. The dead eyes did not look. In that place in her mind where she had often heard his voice, she thought she felt a word spoken, soft as a spider’s footstep. She could not understand.
Falada, look what they’ve done to you.
The eyes stared blindly; the stiff nose pointed forward.
Chapter 14
Winter came at last. The cold formed rain like knives that tore at the skin. Snow had topped the mountains in the west for weeks, white harbingers of the coming months, and then the first ashy flakes fell into the city streets. The geese stayed in their pens. The workers shoveled snow out of the west streets. When the snow stopped falling but stayed stubbornly on the fields, the workers stayed in the hall.
The winter Forest did not permit easy travel to visit their families. The restless ones wandered the city without coats, loitering outside taverns because they were not permitted inside, overhearing news to bring back at supper. There was talk of the wintermoon festival and the preparations for the royal wedding come spring. Tatto supped with them occasionally, full of palace news that they listened to eagerly, if with a healthy amount of incredulity.
“My da’s company of soldiers doubled since harvestmoon. They don’t train as much in the winter, but they’re all in the city. There’s going to be war.”
Razo snorted. “Even if his company’s bigger, that doesn’t mean there’ll be war.”
“War in spring, that’s what I’ve heard.”
Worse was Mistress Ideca’s news, some days after the first snow fell.
“This afternoon in came two of those strange warriors, what arrived with the yellow girl. They said they were looking for another yellow girl, one of their own that got lost in the coming.” Ideca scowled at the thought, as though too many yellow girls could ruin anyone’s day. “That’s right, a second yellow girl, and said she’d have the hair and the accent and all. ’Course, I sent them on their way, said we don’t keep foreigners around here.”
“There’s a dolt for you,” said Razo. “Why’d one of the princess’s girls be here? Try two places: the palace or the graveyard. That’s what I say.”
Razo looked to Ani for support.
“Two yellow girls,” said Ani, “who would’ve thought?” She felt giddy suddenly, happy with her secret and her disguise. Ungolad had seen her at the palace, but she would not be going back. They had killed Falada. They could not do worse. She felt strangely free.
There was no reason now to stay in Bayern. Falada was gone. Geric was gone. Every month she collected her thin gold steed, and come spring thaw, she would have saved enough to buy supplies and her way into a company of traders going to Kildenree.
She was not looking forward to spring. Her mother and Calib would doubtless welcome her home, and it would be nice to see her sisters again, but Ani had nothing real to return to in Kildenree. Still, Ungolad was searching, and if she stayed in Bayern, he would find her sooner or later. Besides, Ani knew that the families of the slain guards needed to know of their fates, and the murders and treachery of Selia and her followers should not go unpunished. Knowing it was right did not make the decision easier. She looked around at the workers and realized she would miss them terribl
y.
So in the meantime, Ani meant to enjoy being the goose girl. When the others were making plans for wintermoon, Ani took part, as eager to go with them as they were eager to show off the activities to a newcomer.
“Are you sure you should?” said Enna behind a silencing hand. “Won’t the guards be there, and they’re looking for you now.”
“I can’t hide forever,” said Ani. “Besides, I’m not who they’re looking for. I’m Isi, the goose girl, and I’m going to wintermoon.”
It was as though marketday had exploded. The festivities began in market-square and flooded outward, consuming street after street in their color and tumult. Doorways and windows burst with giant paper flowers, and colorful ropes were thrown from window to window and building to building. On top of every turret blazed a paper sun dripping ribbon rays. People wore their best clothes, dazzling with strings of glass diamonds. Improvised bands of flute, harp, and lyre played in the streets. Children lit noisy bucket bombs and strings of purple star-mirrors. Magicians drew designs in the air with the weaving pattern of their balls. Drummers sat at the feet of sorcerers, giving rhythm to the pulling of apples from their boots and the turning of pigeons into bursts of flame.
“You’ll see,” said Bettin, one of the sheep girls, “even Forest folk are welcome everywhere at wintermoon.”
Razo walked ahead, pulling on Ani’s sleeve. “Come, Isi, we’ll show you the witches.”
Ani had never before seen a sorcerer or heard a drum, and she lingered, mesmerized by the strokes of his hands and the beating of the drum that insisted itself into her heart’s rhythm. Is it magic? she wondered. Or tricks? She watched the sorcerer transform a walnut inside his clenched fist into a scarf. She looked to the faces of the crowd around her and saw that they laughed where she had been in awe and grinned to see the rat become smoke and the child spit a coin from his mouth. I tell strange stories, she thought, and they marvel, but to them a sorcerer is nothing unexpected.
Then she saw one spectator with a face that looked as incredulous as she felt. His pale blue eyes were unblinking, afraid to miss any movement of the sorcerer’s hand. He turned slightly, and Ani flinched, lowered her head, and walked away. Yulan. Standing not two persons from her side. The drum beat a faster tempo, mimicking her heart. She walked at that pace for two streets before daring to turn around, face the throng, and try to pick out his face. Yulan was not there.
