by Shannon Hale
Clear thought seemed to have left her at the pasture archway where Falada last called her Princess and where Ungolad’s knife had bit her. Her hair hung long and uncovered. The sight and feel of it made her uneasy, and she avoided any person who neared her path. She remembered that there was a safe place to go, and she struggled to get there, listening to the wind for the cool murmuring of water and a path away from people.
Four nights she spent on the ground. Except for the first night, when loss of blood and exhaustion closed her eyes for her, Ani was conscious enough to feel the cold of early spring nights. Even in the deepest part of sleep, that awareness of cold pursued her, bruising her dreams and waking her often with icicle fingers on her skin. Day was an extension of the nightmare. She walked, and fell, and walked. When certain plants and mushrooms that she recognized as food crossed her vision, she dropped her left hand and harvested them in passing. But she had little thought for food, and she only sought out word of water from roaming breezes when the thirst clenched her throat. Once she awoke with a start to find her face underwater, having stopped to drink in a stream and lost consciousness.
There were people in the Forest. She did not know if they were good or bad. She never strayed far from the great road that led to the city, keeping it almost in vision off to her left. Though when breezes brought images of humans, she was forced to march farther in.
High morning after her fourth night, Ani found the familiar little path that led off one of the many twisting Forest roads. She almost fainted from relief at the sight of the places where she had wandered in search of roots and berries so many months ago, and she thanked creation for memory and luck and the hints of winds that led her.
She was startled when she first saw the cottage again, worried that she was mistaken, for its aspect was wrong, before she understood that her vision was not trustworthy and she saw two houses of shifting images. Perhaps there had not been as many trees in the woods as she had seen.
Poppo the goat bleated at her, and Gilsa raised her head from her garden.
Ani meant to call a greeting but found her voice was as questionable as her sight. The thought of rest suddenly made her giddy with fatigue. She kept walking forward until the woman caught her by her arms and held her still.
“Yes, what, child?” said Gilsa. It seemed her voice was short not from impatience but worry.
“Gilsa, I’m going to faint again.”
And she did.
Ani awoke lying on her stomach on Gilsa’s low cot by the fire. It was blazing cheerfully, the crackling of the wood sap accompanied by the pleasant clicking of Gilsa’s knitting needles. The halfhearted light of evening peered through cracks in the shutters.
“I’ve slept all day,” said Ani.
The clicking ceased, and with a low grunt Gilsa slid her chair closer.
“You’ve slept all day, night, and day again. But your fever’s gone now and you’re in precious little danger.”
Ani winced, sure that was not completely true. Gilsa watched her, then shook her head as though dismissing sentiment.
“Heavens, child,” she said, “I appreciate your warning me of the faint this time, but you might have let me know you were injured and where before tumbling to the ground. It took me time to cut the clothes off you and more time to wash you clean and find the wound. A thoughtless way to ask for hospitality.”
“Oh,” said Ani, “that was the blue tunic that you gave me, and I’ve ruined it.”
Gilsa scowled. “Cry for a knife in your back, not an old blue tunic, gosling. You didn’t even rouse when I washed the stab clean and tied it up tight. Finn thought you were dead.”
Ani saw Finn across the room, sitting on his bed with his hands folded on his knees. He nodded once to her in greeting, then stood and brought her a large bowl of hot bean and onion stew. She ate ardently, and they watched her in silence.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I told Mother,” said Finn, “that somebodies—”
“Some persons,” said Gilsa.
“Some persons were trying to kill you, and might come this way. She couldn’t believe it.”
“Yes, well, I can now, but I don’t want to hear about it.” Gilsa stopped and stared at her stilled knitting for a moment. She put it away and huffed. “Though, on consideration, perhaps I’d better.”
Ani told them all, even of Falada’s head, and learning bird tongue and the wind, telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth. When she finished, she looked from the fire to Gilsa, who scarcely hid her amazement, and Finn, who stared blankly and then nodded to her encouragingly when he noticed her gaze.
“Well,” said Gilsa. “That’s a story you don’t hear on the eve of wintermoon, even if you do tell it with that neat little accent like you’d been grown here.”
“I used to tell stories to the other workers, sometimes on rainy days, sometimes on cold nights when the only sounds were the fire and the wind outside. Tales my aunt told me, stories I’d read in books. In these last months I’ve told more stories than I thought I knew. And I’ve told lies. To hide. Now, telling you the truth, it sounds to me like just another story.”
“I like that story,” said Finn.
“Hush up,” said Gilsa, “it’s not a story that asks for liking.”
“I’m not sure I like it yet,” said Ani. “Maybe it’s just strange to hear it aloud. I’ve never told it all to anyone, not even Enna, who knows some. Saying it makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I’d like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”
Gilsa huffed. “You want it all to end with you riding home on a tall horse and everyone cheering or some such like the young daydream.”
Ani watched the firelight turn the hearthstones gold. “Maybe I did. Maybe I hoped I’d return home again and everyone would say, We were wrong about her. And they’d see that I’m special and beautiful and powerful and all that.”
“Oh, you all wish such stuff, you and Finn like you. Right now he’s probably daydreaming about getting a javelin and shield, as though such nonsense will make the chickens lay bigger eggs.”
Finn looked down at his boots, his face hidden by his hair.
“We know it’s all just daydreaming. In all likelihood, no one in this forest’ll ever get a javelin, and I’ll never see my mother’s kingdom again, let alone be hailed by crowds as the jewel of Kildenree. Maybe it’s vain to wish for it. But sometimes, it’d be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth. Right, Finn?”
Finn looked up through his hair, and she saw that he smiled.
Ani was forced to stay and heal in Gilsa’s house. She troubled about every passing hour and looked to the weather, wondering if the pass snows were melting, if the army had moved yet, if the prince had yet wed his false bride. She told Gilsa, “I’ve got to get back soon, to tell the other workers and enlist their help and go march on the palace and demand an audience and convince the king—”
“Patience,” said Gilsa, and escorted her from the window back to bed.
The cut was deep, and she had lost much blood and healing time moving through the woods. She lay on her belly day and night, fretting when she was not sleeping. After two days, Gilsa allowed her to rise awhile and follow her around the yard, though she was not to lift so much as a chicken’s egg. When Ani shadowed Gilsa into the coop anyway, Gilsa slapped her hands away from the task and then asked her what the chickens were saying.
“‘People are here to take the eggs’ and so on. Chickens aren’t the best conversationalists.”
“I’m glad,” said Gilsa. “Makes me feel better about eating them.”
That afternoon they were visited by Gilsa’s nearest neighbor, a round woman named Frigart who frequented the cottage in good weather. She sat by the hearth a
nd complained of her husband and son while Gilsa, half listening, knitted caps. Ani, tired of lying down, was at the table, leaning forward to keep her wound from touching the chair back. The light slanted into the room from the window, and when Frigart’s gesticulating hand passed through the light, it sparkled.
“That ring,” said Ani. She stood and took her hand. It was a ruby in gold setting, as familiar to her as the face of its owner. Her face burned.
“Where’d you get this?”
Frigart pulled her hand away. “That’s none of your affair.”
“It was on a man who was murdered in these woods,” said Ani. “Did you take it from his body? Did you bury him?”
“No such thing.” Frigart spat with the words in agitation. “What a thing to say! It was given in payment.”
“What is it, Ani?” said Gilsa.
“This was my ring.” She remembered Talone that last night in the Forest, his fist at his heart swearing loyalty. “I gave it to a friend who was killed.”
“Well, you can’t have it back if it ever was yours,” said Frigart. “I don’t know how my lodger got ahold of it, but I fed him for two months before he could get out of bed to lift a finger and earn his board, so it’s rightfully mine. And I’m still helping him, I’ll have you know, letting him stay on and work with my husband. Says he needs to earn money to take a long journey.” She frowned, and her cheeks pushed up like a little child’s. “Besides, I’ve never had a pretty thing in all my life.”
Gilsa protested enough to do any mother proud, but Ani insisted, and when Frigart left, Ani accompanied her home. Finn accompanied Ani, his arm through hers. They walked nearly an hour at a pace slow enough not to tear open the cut again and easy enough that neither Frigart nor Ani lost her breath. Ani could feel her heart beating in her back from pain and in her throat from excitement as they rounded a bend and saw the cottage. A man was chopping wood in the yard. His hair had always been dark for a Kildenrean, though now it was speckled with more gray than she remembered and grew unchecked past his shoulders.
“Talone,” she said.
Talone looked up and dropped the ax. He ran forward and she tensed, afraid he would embrace her and her wound, but he stopped before her, took her hand, and fell to one knee.
“Princess,” he said. He cried over her hand, his back shaking with sobs.
Frigart, with new and awkward gestures of respect, invited “Princess” indoors, where she set them up in chairs around her hearth and, with regretful looks, left them to talk alone. Finn stayed, quiet on his stool by the window.
Ani insisted that Talone tell his tale first. It was short, and she suspected that he left out many of the details of hardship. All had been slain, nearly he as well. His hand touched his side, and Ani thought it must have been a deep and mortal wound that cut him down. Talone had fainted from blood loss and awoke to the sounds of midnight grave digging. He pulled himself away unobserved and wandered through the woods, finally finding Frigart’s home, where from necessity he had remained ever since.
“I knew Ungolad and his friends would be in Bayern, so my plan was to return to the queen. I . . . took . . . some time to heal, and then the winter months trapped me, and having no money or horse hindered me more.” He shook his head, and his eyes lined with anger. “I thought you, too, were slain. I thought the only chance of redemption would be to stay alive and find a way back to your mother or they might never have learned of the treachery. If I had known, Princess, I would have searched for you, in the Forest, in the city. You have been unprotected all this time. I have failed unpardonably.”
“Not at all, Captain. We were betrayed and outnumbered. I, like you, decided that for the time there was no remedy but perseverance. And we’ve both survived.”
Talone smiled at her. “Your mother would be proud if she saw you now. Though she might not recognize you with your hair hid and speaking in that smart accent.”
Ani covered her lips with her hand, embarrassed that she now spoke in the Bayern fashion unawares. The movement of her arm pulled the skin of her side, and she dropped it again with a shudder. He gestured to her middle and inquired.
“Ungolad,” she said.
He looked mournful, an expression she guessed he had worn for many months.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Please don’t be,” she said. “He was greedy and overconfident. If he’d grabbed me instead of hazarding a swipe of his dagger, I’d be much less alive.”
Ani told her story to Talone, and this time it seemed more real, so much so that when she spoke of Falada’s head on the wall, she had to pause with a hand over her mouth to stop a sob. Talone’s eyes never left her face, his expression betraying grim wonderment. Finn leaned forward, his chin in his hands. When she forgot the detail of Conrad’s chasing his hat on the wind, Finn prompted her and chuckled at the relation.
“I suppose when Conrad was invited into the presence of the king to tell of the goose thieves, he also told of me or spoke to the guards, because they found me that night. He did. Ungolad. And I ran.” Ani closed her eyes briefly at the memory, but the terror was starker in darkness. She looked back at Talone and smiled. “Dear Talone, can you even know what comfort it is to find you?”
Talone breathed deeply and broke his gaze from her face to the window. The shutters were closed, and no light broke through the slits. A breeze tapped the branch of a tree on the wood in a timid knock. He seemed to study the noise and the evening as a general would look over his battlefield.
“There is a war, then,” he said. “Ungolad is a clever man.”
“And Selia,” said Ani. “I think she’s been overlooked too often. I remember years ago my aunt saying that Selia had the gift of people-speaking. She’s used that gift well.”
Talone nodded distractedly. He did not seem interested in the dangers of Selia or the gifts of language, only in the war.
“How long until you can safely walk back to the city?” Talone asked.
“Now,” said Ani.
Talone looked at Finn.
“Mother says in a week.”
“Mother’s boy,” said Ani with play spite.
It was decided in four days they would return. And if she could not make it by then, “I’ll carry you,” said Talone, “though you’re a mite bigger than you were when I found you sleeping by the swan pond.”
Ani and Finn slept at Frigart’s house that night and returned the next day, Ani leaning on both Finn and Talone as she walked. After the excursion, she slept for a day and a night, and Gilsa assured her that she had been warned.
Talone walked to Gilsa’s house daily, dragging any fallen logs he found, which he chopped into fire-size blocks with Finn’s ax. After that ritual chore, he sat with Ani by the hearth or on a stool in the garden, and they planned, or talked and talked over all that happened in that Forest and all they knew of their enemies. Both agreed that returning now to Kildenree was hopeless. The Forest Road would take them months.
“There is the mountain pass,” said Talone. “With war parties gathering, it would be difficult to slip through it unseen, but it may be our best option.”
Ani shook her head. “Even if we succeeded, all we could do is warn the queen to ready her armies. There’d still be war. No, I think our best hope’s to return to the city. I’ve friends there who might accompany us to act as witnesses against our murder, and with you supporting my testimony, we’ve more of a chance of convincing the king.”
The days passed too slowly for Ani. Everything around her spoke of action—the pale blossom buds on the apple tree about to unfold, the bent green necks that poked up in Gilsa’s garden ready to straighten and reveal their leafy heads, the birds that scavenged the ground for seeds and sang tunes about now, now, now. Whenever Gilsa discovered Ani pacing or leaning on the fence and looking through the trees as though looking ahead, she guided her to a chair or cot and made her sit.
“Rest while you can. Even a princess has skin that heals with tim
e.”
Gilsa was hardly impressed to learn that her refugee was royalty. She tossed around titles with a playful spirit, never really believing them. She gave Ani a simple skirt and tunic dyed beech leaf green. The first time Ani put it on, she discovered that the four thin gold coins, her savings for a way home, had been rescued from the pocket of her blue skirt and slipped into the new one.
“They’re for you,” said Ani. They were as light on her palm as birch leaves.
“No such thing,” said Gilsa. Her tone held the tight self-awareness that a joke was imminent. “You can pay me back when you’re queen.”
The night before departure, Talone stayed at Gilsa’s. There was much debate over who should sleep in the shed. Gilsa thought the travelers needed bed rest more than she, Ani insisted that neither Gilsa nor Finn should be ousted from their own beds, Talone thought he and Finn would fare best in the shed, and Finn nodded to whatever plan was stated at the moment.
“Get back in my cot, girl,” said Gilsa. “You’re sickly.”
“No, I’m not,” said Ani.
“Oh, no? Well, maybe stubbornness is a sickness, did you ever think of that?”
In the end, they set up makeshift bedrolls on the floor before the hearth and slept side by side like little children sharing one bed.
They rose early and breakfasted slowly, holding too hot tea to warm their hands and staring at the morning fire. Finn was going with them, on his insistence. Gilsa was thinking of last minute cautions for her son and occasionally reminding him that she would be alone and in ignorance until he sent word. Talone cleaned his sword thoughtfully, a gift from Frigart’s husband when he learned the real value of the red ring. Ani watched their faces painted an early orange from the hearth light.
Ani was stilled by the remembrance of the first time she took her leave of that place six months previous and the girl she had been then. Smiling, she thought of her blunder, thoughtlessly taking Gilsa’s own bed as though she were still a princess in a palace and pleased to be waited on. And of wandering into a foreign city with a feigned accent and the naive notion of simply finding the king and telling what had happened, a plan that was easily frightened out of her by the sight of Selia wearing her dress. She had run three times since then. She would not run again. All would be set to right, or let Ungolad’s dagger find its mark.
