Thursdays With the Crown

by Jessica Day George

  Celie smiled. She felt the pouch at her waist and wondered what it would be like when they returned to the Castle triumphantly bearing an egg, a baby griffin, and a crown and ring for her father.

  If only they could find the missing piece of the Eye. Celie was sure it wasn’t in the Castle back in Sleyne, but she had a definite hunch that it was in the ruins somewhere. That was where the griffins lived, after all. And that was why, she suspected, the Castle had become more capricious and started moving more rooms to Sleyne. It had started waking up long before she and Rolf began collecting evidence of griffins being real and putting it in the holiday feasting hall.

  The Arkower’s nephew, Wizard Arkwright, had scolded Rolf and Celie for “distressing” the Castle by reminding it of its past. He had protested their putting tapestries, maps, and books with depictions of griffins in the feasting hall, which was actually the Heart of the Castle, and tried to hide the Eye from them as well. But now the Eye was in its place, and Celie was sure that if its missing piece was anywhere in Sleyne, the Castle would have found a way to tell her father by now.

  “Ethan,” Celie said as Pogue made some final adjustments to Rolf’s burden. “You stole the piece of the Eye, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I thought I was doing the right thing!”

  She waved aside his protest. “It’s not that … You know what it looks like!”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted.

  “Good, you can help me find it.”

  Chapter 11

  They kept to the thin trees at the start of the forest and made remarkably good time back to the Castle ruins, considering their exhaustion and the unwieldy bundle that Rolf was carrying. At the base of the hatching tower, Rufus’s father left them, and they all took a moment to catch their breath and look around.

  “I can’t believe the Arkower didn’t beat us here,” Rolf said. He stretched to ease his back. “Do you think that Rufus could take this up there for me?” he asked Celie. “I don’t think I can face all those stairs.”

  “I’m sure,” Celie said. “He’s anxious to fly.”

  Rufus had followed his father a little ways across the broken courtyard, but at the sound of his name he came romping back. Celie chirruped at him and he butted his head into her middle. She led him over to Rolf, but the egg was fastened so tightly that he couldn’t get it off his back.

  “Just fly up with Rufus and the egg,” Lilah said in frustration, after breaking a nail trying to pick apart one of the knots. Pogue glanced over, but he and Lulath were busy asking Ethan about where they could find food.

  “Oh, right,” Rolf said.

  “Here, boy,” Celie said. “Take Rolf up to the tower.”

  “What is that you have, Crown Prince Rolf?” the Arkower called out as he sauntered out of the trees. “An egg? We must bring it back to my cavern, where it can hatch in peace and safety.” He smiled at them, looking like a kindly grandfather.

  Rufus hissed. He slammed his body into Celie and she fell across his back. Lilah screamed, and Lulath shouted something in Grathian that Celie didn’t catch. She was too busy hanging on as Rufus took off into the air. She grabbed his harness, nearly slipping backward and landing on her head as Rufus shot toward the open windows of the tower. She shouted for him to take her back, but he ignored her and dropped her on the floor.

  Celie leaped to her feet and ran for the window, but Rufus blocked her way. She wrestled with him, trying to shove him aside so that she could see what was happening below, but he wouldn’t budge. She yanked on the harness and shouted at him, but he just kept squawking and batting his wings at her. The pouch at her waist came loose, and the ring dropped out.

  “What are you doing?” Celie yelled. She clapped her hands, trying to shoo him away, and he lashed out with one talon, scratching her palm. “Ouch!”

  Rufus cowered at her feet, frightened. Celie flapped her hand and then sucked at the cut. She stomped her foot against the pain, and Rufus backed into a corner, crying. She felt the crown at her hip slipping out of the pouch and grabbed it. One of the prongs dug into her cut and she shrieked again, reflexively tossing the crown across the room.

  The clang it made when it hit the wall rang in Celie’s head. She felt the strange sensation that meant the Castle had changed something. But that was impossible! This tower was—

  “It’s alive!”

  Celie slapped her hands against the floor, listening with her whole body, and there was no mistaking the warmth and faint hum of the living Castle. She jumped up and ran to one of the windows, and this time Rufus didn’t stop her. Her elation was short-lived as she looked down to the courtyard and saw … nothing.

  The others were all gone.

  “Lilah,” Celie screamed. “Rolf! Pogue! Lulath!”

  No one answered.

  From the distance, she heard another griffin cry, and she saw a form she thought was Rufus’s mother circling over the trees, but she couldn’t be sure. She shouted until she was hoarse, but they were all gone, even Ethan and the Arkower.

  Slumping back onto the tower floor, Celie looked at her griffin. Suitably contrite, he crept over and laid his head in her lap. She stroked his feathers absently.

  “We have a living tower,” she said to him. “But I’m afraid to ask the Castle to take us home. What if it never brings back the others?”

  Rufus carked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “I suppose they ran off when the Arkower came. I’ll just bet your father helped Rolf get the egg out of sight, and they’re hiding in the forest now.” She was trying to give herself courage, and she almost succeeded.

  “I’m not going to just sit here until they come back,” she decided aloud after a moment. “There are things to do: find the Eye, get back to Sleyne. We have one live tower, why not two?” She gently pushed Rufus off her lap and stood up.

  He cocked his head at her and preened for a moment before standing. He shook out his wings while Celie gathered up the crown, checking it carefully to make certain that it hadn’t sustained any damage when she threw it. It appeared to be unharmed, so she tucked it back into the pouch, snatched up the ring and dropped it into the pouch as well, and climbed on Rufus’s back.

  “To the tower,” she told him, pointing alongside his head so he could see where she meant. “The other tower. Quick, now!”

  Rufus didn’t even have to flap his wings. He just glided over the courtyard to the tower and perched on the windowsill. Celie didn’t bother to dismount; she pulled the crown out of her bag and tapped it against the window frame. It made a tinking sound, but nothing else. There was no echoing clang, no shudder that ran through the mortar of the tower. She did it again, a little more firmly this time, and winced at the sound that told her she had dented the crown. But it still wasn’t the sound she had been waiting for, and the tower still didn’t respond.

  Rufus climbed through the window and Celie hopped off his back. She slipped the ring on her right thumb before she crouched on the floor and tapped the crown against the flagstones, but there was still nothing. She looked around nervously in the dim tower, tucked the crown under one arm, and wiped her grimy palms on her equally grimy skirt. Then she took the crown and tossed it across the room.

  It made a satisfying clatter hitting the floor. But the tower didn’t wake up.

  “What are we going to do?” Celie said aloud.

  Unlike the crown, her voice echoed in the empty tower, which made her angry. She stomped across the floor, found the crown, shook the ring off her thumb, and threw them both across the room for good measure. The ring pinged off the wall and fell to the floor. The crown hit the floor with a hollow thud and rolled against the wall.

  Rufus cocked his head to the side at the thud the crown made. Celie did, too, then remembered the trapdoor in the floor. The hatching towers that were attached to the Castle now had wide low doors in the wall, but the doors in the two dead towers were bricked over and a rough trapdoor in the floor of each led
to a spiral staircase. Celie walked over and stomped on the trapdoor a few times, her brain whirling.

  Someone had altered these towers since the Castle had left them behind. Someone had been living in them, or using them, but the Arkower had said that they didn’t live in the ruins; they only provided things for the feasts. Was that why this tower wouldn’t wake up? Who had made the trapdoor? She stomped on the door again as she thought.

  From below, someone knocked back.

  Chapter 12

  Celie screamed and leaped backward. Rufus lunged, clawing at the door and shrieking his battle cry. From beneath the floor came the sound of shouts and pounding, and then someone tried to open the trapdoor. It didn’t work very well because Rufus was standing on top of the door, but they kept trying and shouting in a language that Celie didn’t know.

  Finally her curiosity got the better of her fear, and she grabbed Rufus by the harness and hauled him back. Rufus protested loudly but he moved, and then the door flew open. Celie was temporarily blinded by the lantern that the person carried, and so was Rufus, judging by the way he cried out and buried his head in her skirts.

  When her vision cleared she found herself looking down at a wizened little man. He was standing a few steps down from the tower room and holding a globular brass lantern. His eyes were so faded that Celie couldn’t tell what color they were, and the robe he wore was much the same. His beard was so long that it actually disappeared down into the stairway, by which Celie judged it to fall at least to his knees.

  “Hello?” Celie said. “Do you live here?”

  “A girl!” He gaped at her. “What is a girl doing in this old tower?” His eyes flicked to Rufus, but he seemed to be talking mostly to himself.

  “You speak Sleynth, too?” Celie asked, even though it was a rather silly question. She could hear him speaking Sleynth, though he had a heavy accent.

  “She speaks to me, and in the language I am speaking,” the old man said, appearing to address the wall. “Shall I answer? Perhaps. And in that way I could ask more questions of her.”

  “Yes,” Celie said. “I’ll tell you whatever I can if you’ll answer my questions, too.” She took a tiny step toward the old man. He was a little senile, certainly, but he didn’t seem to mean any harm.

  “She’s talking to me first. I suppose it’s impolite now to ask her name,” the old man said.

  “My name is Princess Cecelia of Sleyne,” Celie said in the bright voice she used with Lulath’s dogs. “What’s yours?”

  “Sleyne? That place where the Castle has taken itself?” Now the old man was truly talking to her. Though the color of his eyes had faded to a nondescript shade, when they focused on her, Celie found that his gaze was very sharp indeed.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Celie said. “I grew up in Castle Glower. My father is the king of Sleyne.”

  The old man made a gesture as though brushing aside her words. “There is no Castle Glower. There is only the Castle.”

  “Yes,” Celie said, nodding broadly. “It is the best castle,” she offered, not sure what to say.

  “It is the Castle,” he told her sharply. “Nothing else matters.” He studied her. “And your father guards it?”

  “Er. Yes …?”

  The man made a rude noise, as though he doubted King Glower’s ability to keep the Castle safe. He pointed to the crown that Celie was still holding.

  “He can’t do much without that,” he said.

  Offended, Celie drew herself up to her full height. With the old man on the stairs, she was taller than him, which she felt gave her the advantage. She put her hands on her hips, which was rather spoiled by the awkward way the crown was now sticking out over her wrist.

  “My father is King Glower the Seventy-ninth, and he is a very good king! The Castle loves him — it loves our entire family! My father is the tenth of our family to be king.”

  The old man shook his head as though her words were flies buzzing around his ears. “You must take him the crown,” the old man said a moment later. “And the ring.”

  He pointed to Celie’s tightly clenched left fist, and she blushed. She’d been trying to hide the ring, but she was clearly holding something, since she’d had to loop the handle of Rufus’s harness over her forearm to keep him back. Her knuckles were slowly turning white from holding the ring. “It was a mistake for them to be kept back.” He shook his head again. As if speaking to himself, he said, “She could have taken the Eye if it had not been lost. They must suffer, he must pay.”

  So the crown and the ring really could help … or so it seemed. Had the Arkower kept them back along with the Eye? Why?

  Celie blinked a few times, not sure what to do or say. “Who are you?” she finally remembered to ask.

  “I? I am an old man. I used to be a wizard. I used to be a lot of things …” He turned his attention to Rufus. “That is a fine griffin. Not full grown, of course.”

  “He’s four months old,” Celie said.

  “Very large for his age, then,” the old man said. He pursed his lips. “He’s of the king’s line.” He nodded. “I thought that they had an egg. They hid it so well.” His head bobbed up and down. “And why not? I am too old to take care of it. Though you are perhaps too young.”

  “Did you say the king’s line? What king?” Celie’s heart was fluttering, and she thought she knew that answer already.

  “The king of the griffins, who roosts even now in the stables that once housed his army,” the old man said, rocking back and forth and speaking in a singsong. The lantern light flickered across the walls. “With his beautiful, beautiful queen. Who has not gifted the world with an egg in long, so long, because who is there to raise it up and train it to battle? Only I, I and my ancient enemy, that monster in the mountain, and him they will not give an egg to.”

  “The monster in the … do you mean the Arkower?” Celie wanted to shake her head, her thoughts were buzzing around so crazily that it felt as though there were flies in her ears now.

  “The Arkower!” The old man wheezed with laughter. “The Arkower! Oh, the drama of it all! It is better than a pantomime for the winter feast!” The lantern shook so much that Celie hurried to stow the crown so that she might take the lantern from him. But he lifted it out of her reach, still chortling. “I’m not so far gone I cannot hold my own lantern,” he told her. “The Arkower! His name is Nathanal,” the old man said. “A plain name, but an honest one. Fitting that he got rid of it, the dishonest balagaha.” He shook his head, and then rocked a little as though the motion had made him dizzy.

  “Balagaha?”

  “Don’t use such foul language,” the old man clucked. “It’s unbecoming to a young lady, and a princess besides!”

  Celie mentally stored the word away for later use.

  “The Arkower’s name is Nathanal?” She brought her mind back to the more important information.

  “Indeed,” the old man said. “It means ‘of the soil’ in Arkish, but if he has ever worked an honest day in his life, I will eat that griffin.” He hooted with laughter, startling Rufus.

  Celie tugged Rufus back to her side, putting the ring in the pouch beside the crown so that she could keep a better grip on him. “And what is your name?”

  The old man looked almost as startled as Rufus had. “My name? I … No one has asked my name in centuries,” he said, and Celie saw that his mind had retreated again.

  “I’m sorry,” Celie said politely. “If you’d rather not tell me, that’s all right.”

  “Pffft,” he said, flapping a hand. “I’m not keeping my name from you to make more of myself than I am, like some wizards! I just haven’t … haven’t spoken to anyone in yeonks of time.”

  Celie stored that away as well. Yeonks of time. She liked the sound of it.

  “Bratsch,” the old man blurted out.

  “I beg your pardon?” Celie caught her mind wandering almost as badly as the old man’s. “I mean, bless you!”

  “That’s my
name,” he said, looking annoyed. “Bratsch.”

  Celie turned red to the roots of her hair. “I’m sorry, it’s … a very nice name.”

  “It means ‘musician’ in Hathelocke,” Bratsch said with a shrug. “A foolish name for one marked as a wizard from birth.”

  Celie slumped against Rufus, trying to catch these buzzing thought-flies. “You … you’re a wizard … and a Hathelocke?”

  “What did you think I was, a green horse? In these robes?” He snorted and gestured at his dust-colored, patched garments.

  “I — I —” Celie stammered. The old man’s rags bore about as much resemblance to her brother Bran’s robes as Rufus the griffin did to Rufus the stuffed lion.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bratsch said, waving a hand at her. “What matters is what a little girl from Sleyne is doing here in the ruins of the Castle …?”

  “That is what matters!” Celie leaped on this moment of sanity. “Yes! You are correct, sir! I need to get back to Sleyne, but with my friends and siblings who are here with me. There are six of us, and we all must get back to Sleyne as soon as we can!”

  “Of course you must, you don’t want to get the plague!”

  “No,” Celie agreed. “We certainly don’t! Is it true that it comes from the lake?”

  “Oh, yes!” Bratsch said, and spat to the side as though he’d tasted something foul. “Nathanal’s pride and joy: the curse of the lake! One dip of your tiniest toe, and you’ll be dead within a week.” He wiped his mouth with a dingy sleeve.

  “He created it?” Celie rocked back against Rufus. The Arkower had created the plague on purpose? “But why … why? And how is it possible to keep it cursed all these years?” Celie asked.

  “Renews it every year, doesn’t he? Vicious bolugur,” Bratsch snarled.

  “He … what?” A curse … and he renewed it every year? But who was left for it to kill, except his own people?

  “Why?” Her voice quavered. “Why would he do such a thing?”