by Shannon Hale
"Mercy, Enna," said Doda, "you shouldn't let your face show how jealous you are of that Sidi."
"Ha," said Enna.
"So what about it, girl? When're we going to see you secure your own Embo?"
"You'll never see me with an Embo," said Enna. "For one thing, our names would sound horrible together."
"Excuse me," said Finn, stepping around Doda to leave their camp and walk out into the market. Enna wondered what friends he was seeking out so late at night.
Doda thumbed in the direction Finn had gone. "What about . . . ?"
"Finn?" Enna smiled and looked down. "When we were younger, our friends teased that we'd end up together, but it was all nonsense."
"Was it?" Doda raised her brows. "I wonder. Seems to me the boy might be fond of you."
Enna shook her head. "We've been friends for years and he's never said a thing. He's a nice boy. Truly the nicest boy I've ever known. How does one person get to be so nice, Doda? Did his ma nurse him on honey milk?"
Doda nudged Enna with her boot and laughed. "Nice? Seems like you might like nice."
Enna straightened and sighed with exhaustion. "He's just Finn. We've been friends too long and I know him too well, you know? And he's still a boy, Doda. If I ever find a man, he'll have to be a man, really a man, to handle me."
Doda shrugged and crawled into her bedroll. Enna lay down carefully, arranging the blankets around her ankles, and turned on her side. There, sitting against the wall, was Finn.
"Oh," she said, "I didn't know you'd come back."
He did not answer. In the light of the crescent moon, she could not see where he was looking.
"Finn, did . . . " She started to ask him if he had heard her speaking to Doda, then decided that she did not want to know. What had she said, anyway? She could not remember exactly, just that she and Finn were not a couple, surely something he already knew. No harm done, she thought—she hoped. She bade him good night and uneasily tried to fall asleep.
Enna woke in the bruised-eye blue of predawn to the creaking of wagons and scratching of dragged barrels. Finn slung his sack of knitted goods on his shoulder and wandered off to sell elsewhere, a halfhearted smile on his lips as he nodded farewell to Enna. She did not know if she had hurt his feelings the night before, and she realized that if she had, Finn would never say a word.
Enna set up her crate of eggs next to Doda's wood bowls, and as soon as marketday crowds wandered in, she began to pitch lower prices than normal. It would be nice to make some extra coin, but her gaze kept wandering to the rising streets, up to the wind-fingered orange flags on the palace turrets.
Across the market-square, Enna thought she eyed a small group of palace guards, and she strained on tiptoe to spot any familiar faces. They were lost in the crowd. A woman purchased a dozen eggs, and when Enna had filled her basket, she blinked at what was revealed. Inside her crate, in the middle of her cream and pale yellow supply, sat one orange chicken egg, the color bright as a poisonous berry.
Enna peered covertly at the crowd. There, walking steadily but quickly away, she was sure she spotted an all-too-familiar figure. A boy of fifteen, slight, unremarkable but for a shaggy head of hair that stood nearly straight up. Razo. He had been an animal worker in the city as well, and Enna remembered often wondering with Isi and the other girls if his hair naturally stood on end or if he encouraged it up to compensate for his short stature.
Enna put a hand over her mouth to hide a smile as her thoughts turned mischievous. When she had kept the king's chickens in the city, Razo had spent a week slipping brightly painted eggs under one of her hens and had Enna convinced that the creature was suffering some horrible ailment. There had been pranks to get back at him in the past, but it seemed the gauntlet had been thrown yet again.
Enna held up the odd egg, threw back her shoulders, and shouted.
"The orange egg! I have it, the orange egg of the omen!"
A bent woman stared at her suspiciously. "What are you gabbing about, girl?"
"Haven't you heard of the orange egg that guarantees the finder fortune and long life?" Enna turned slightly to the gaping Doda and winked. "It's a treasure. And to celebrate my luck, I'm selling all my eggs for half the price!"
No one seemed to have heard of a portentous orange egg, but Enna's exclamations and prices brought in a small crowd. Enna glanced slyly to where Razo had gone. She could see him standing among his brothers and their wooden goods for sale. His gaze was directed at her, and he seemed completely stunned.
It did not take Enna long to empty her stock of eggs and attract curious bystanders as well. People walked away, muttering about the special egg to their companions. Razo soon stood a few paces away, staring at Enna and looking fretful.
"Razo," she said, and smiled at him. "I haven't seen you since my last trip to the city. How've you been?"
Razo nodded in answer and shuffled closer. "Wh-what you got there, Enna-girl?"
"Don't you see?" she said with high enthusiasm. "It's the orange egg of the omen."
Razo groaned. "Oh, Enna, there's no orange egg . . . "
"How can you say that? Look!" She held the thing up close to his face and barely kept from laughing.
"Enna, shh." He looked around uncomfortably. "I feel bad now. I only meant it as a joke, really, a kind of 'hello, I'm here, too,' you know? I was sure you'd know it was me. I didn't think you'd get so worked up—"
"There she is!"
Three palace guards with iron-tipped javelins interrupted Razo's confession. Enna started and nearly dropped the egg. She did not recognize any of them.
The tallest one saluted her with his javelin. "We heard of you, miss, from across the market-square, the finder of the long-searched-for orange egg."
"Uh . . . ," said Enna.
The sound of the hard wings of pigeons was suddenly loud in her ears, and in a moment she was covered in the birds, as they perched on her shoulders and arms and one proudly on her head.
"You see, even the birds recognize the egg," said another soldier.
"Er . . . ," said Enna, suspiciously watching the birds flit away.
"We should take you before the king. This is a great day for all of Bayern."
Enna glanced at Razo and thought that he must look even more astonished than she did. "Uh, yes, of course, let's go."
"Are you a friend of hers, then?" the tall guard asked Razo. "Lucky lad." He thumped Razo's shoulder and turned to escort Enna through the crowd.
As soon as they were out of sight of Razo, a young woman with her hair wrapped up in a scarf like a Forest woman's walked in step beside Enna.
"I just wanted to congratulate you, miss, on your remarkable find."
She turned her face, and Enna stopped midstride to laugh, at once understanding that Isi had sent the guards. And even the pigeons, no doubt prodded by Isi's gift with bird speech, had been part of the ploy.
"Oh, Isi, that was brilliant!"
"Razo will never recover, I think," said Isi, smiling broadly.
"Nor will I, you rascal. You should feel my heart thumping. When the birds landed on me, what a fright! And I saw myself before the king trying to explain. . . . I'm so glad it's you."
They flung their arms around each other and laughed and hugged. Enna held her friend at arm's length and looked her over.
"But what are you doing out here, and in . . . ?"
"In the old goose girl disguise? I like to go out occasionally without the fanfare, you know, just walk around and feel like a normal person. If I don't hide my hair, I can't go two steps from the palace without being recognized as the princess."
Enna nodded. Isi's hair was yellow, a novelty in a land of black and brown hair, and when uncovered it hung to her hips. Even though Isi was from another kingdom, her accent sounded truly Bayern, one word bleeding into the next, with short vowels and deep consonants. Enna noted that today the princess sounded like a city woman, though she often slipped into the rougher tones of a Forest dweller. Enna
smiled, remembering that if there was one thing her friend did well, it was imitating sounds.
But something seemed different in Isi, in her expression, as though she were pained and trying to hide it. Enna tried to guess what might be amiss. "So, any news? I've been hoping to hear that you're expecting a, you know . . ."
Isi sighed. "Yes, you and half the court. Everyone wants an heir to the throne. It's been two years, and a touch of desperation has crept into the ministers' eyes. Look at you. Whenever I see you again after some time apart, I have to remember how pretty you are. And how about me?" Isi turned sideways with a serious face, as though she posed for a portrait.
"You still look like the goose girl to me."
"Good," said Isi.
They continued to stroll through the market. Enna glanced at the guards to see if they looked confused by their talk. She did not know how much the people of the palace knew, as she and Razo and Finn knew, of the way this foreigner came to marry their prince Geric. She was certain they knew pieces of the story—how a princess of the neighboring western kingdom had been betrothed to the prince, but the treacherous lady-in-waiting rode into the city instead, bearing the name Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee. And how the true princess, aided by a group of animal workers, confronted the false bride in front of the king and prince before the marriage took place.
But did they know of the months when their princess hid her yellow hair in a Forest woman's headscarf, donned a Forest accent, called herself Isi, and tended the king's geese? Did they know that she was largely responsible for the Forest dwellers gaining citizenship? And did they believe the rumors of her power with wind and birds?
"I like to see what friends the Forest lets loose on marketday, but I didn't expect to be so lucky as to have my Enna back," said Isi. She purchased small bags of roasted nuts and gave them to the guards and Enna. "This outing is often my only time away from the palace. Seems like I don't leave much lately."
"Why not?"
Isi shrugged, and Enna could read in her manner that she would rather talk about it when they were alone.
"I'm glad I made it here today," said Enna, "if only for the Razo trick."
"Whenever you come back—"
"It's like I never left." Then Enna remembered. "Leifer," she said heavily. "Isi, I've got to talk to you privately."
Isi nodded and without any questions gestured her guards toward the palace.
Chapter 3
They did not speak of Leifer as they left the market-square and climbed the narrow, cobbled streets. Enna had not seen Isi since her mother took sick. She was shocked to hear now that the young prince, Geric's brother, had passed away from a fever in early summer.
"I would've come see you," said Isi, "but Geric was stricken, and things here were . . . " She paused and looked around distractedly. "Watch that cartwheel."
"What?" said Enna.
"Oh, nothing." Isi seemed embarrassed and did not explain.
The farther they walked, the more distant Isi seemed, and sometimes she did not respond at all to what Enna said. Enna watched her silently, worry creeping over her like a chill.
When at last they reached the hilltop and the palace courtyard, Isi dismissed the guards and took Enna to a side entrance. The door was partly ajar, but before Enna could push it open, a breeze did so for her. Isi tugged at her headscarf to loosen it, then another breeze unwound it from her head and laid it in Isi's hands. Her long yellow hair fell free.
"Isi, your skill with the wind is much better than I remember," said Enna.
Isi tilted her head and whispered something about a palace page in a hurry.
"What was that?" said Enna.
Isi scrunched her eyes closed and batted the air before her face. "Being out in the crowd, it affects me so much faster than it used to. Let's go somewhere—quieter."
Isi took Enna's hand and led her deeper into the palace, farther in and farther down. Isi nodded to a sentry standing beside a stone door, and he grunted as he pulled it open. There were no windows. The guard lit a rush torch on the wall, and thin smoke crept along the ceiling. Enna could make out a small room, shelves loaded with armor, lances, javelins, axes, golden boxes, ivory statuettes.
"A treasury," said Isi. She sat on a blanket that lay on the floor, and Enna followed. The sentry shut the door, and there was a hollow thunk as it sealed. The light in the room was low and yellow. Trembling shadows moved over Isi's face.
Isi sighed. Her face smoothed as she relaxed. "Geric found this place for me a few months ago, just after it started to get worse. He says he can't talk to me anywhere else. He says it sadly."
"What is it?"
"The wind."
"Oh," said Enna, beginning to understand.
"You know, when I first learned to understand its language, I could feel only the bigger winds. I'd sit in the goose pasture, and when a breeze rose off the stream I could hear, or rather sense, where it had been, what else it had recently touched—wet stones, a sparrow, a lost goose. And when I was indoors, I rarely felt anything, just a draft from the hall, a slip of air from an open window. Now, Enna, it's everywhere. I've come to realize that air is made up of tiny parts, and wind is a lot of them moving fast. Right now, even in a still room, I can feel the air. I hear it constantly.
"That's why Geric likes to trap us in here like a couple of worms in the earth. We can shut out most of the movements. And I can have a few moments of . . . quiet." Isi smiled. "So now that I can hear you, tell me about Leifer."
Enna took a breath. "I was wondering if there's such a thing as fire speech, like how you know bird and wind speech. Leifer, I think he's learned to control fire somehow, but he . . . can't seem to control it very well."
"Oh," said Isi, a soft, birdlike sound, and gently lifted the edge of Enna's skirt from her ankles. "You're hurt. I wonder why I didn't hear the wind whisper of it before. There was so much going on outside, I guess, and that bit got lost. I can have a physician look at it later. Enna, did Leifer do that?"
Enna shrugged off the concern and jumped into the story of Leifer's trip to the deep wood, the vellum, and his behavior up to the night when he set her on fire. "You see why I need to know what I can, now, before he does something else, something worse."
Isi looked at her a long moment, still and unblinking, as though she were a robin waiting for a predator to pass. When she spoke, it was in her softer voice that Enna remembered from evenings around the hearth when Isi would tell stories to the animal workers. "Fire. It must have a language, though I never learned it. According to the old tales, most everything has a language.
"The story I know says that the -Creator first spoke the word to make the world, and then all things could speak to one another, but each thing multiplied and withdrew into its own kind and forgot the languages of the others. Once snail and stone spoke, wind and tree, frog and water." She took Enna's hand and looked at her fingers as though for comfort. "Once, people could speak to all things, and that means to me that it's possible for us to learn all those languages again."
"Anyone can?" asked Enna.
"Some people have more of a knack for it than others, it seems, just like a good wheelwright can burn bread and a good baker might miss a nail. Once, before knowing wind speech gave me any trouble, I tried to teach Geric, but he just couldn't learn it. Fortunately.
"There are three different gifts—people-speaking, animal-speaking, and nature-speaking. Some people are born with the ability to learn one. I knew others from my home kingdom who had people-speaking from birth, and all their lives they knew how to talk to people just so, to encourage love and loyalty. I wasn't born with wind speech—I was sixteen when I first understood its words, so who knows when and how a person can learn?
"Even for people with the knack, I think most languages are too difficult for us to figure out on our own. When I was little, my aunt taught me how to hear birds speaking to one another, and I had a skill for imitating the sounds back. Even with natural ta
lent, I needed her help to understand in the beginning."
"But no one taught you to hear the wind," said Enna.
"No," said Isi, "that was different. I was ready to hear it, I guess, and seeking it. With the wind, all it took was one word to get the sense of it. After wind gave me a first word, I began to hear many more, and then I began to be able to suggest a breeze go this way or that."
"Well, I don't know who would've taught Leifer to understand fire speech, unless that vellum gives him power," said Enna.
"I doubt it," said Isi. Enna smiled and remembered that for someone with such uncanny abilities, Isi was remarkably unbelieving when it came to superstitions or reports of magic. "Maybe the vellum contains writing about fire-speaking, and he's learned it on his own."
"That blasted vellum. You know, it makes me mighty uneasy, Isi, that my brother is chest-deep in something sticky and I can't haul him out."
"Fire." Isi's eyes looked unfocused, as though she were seeing something far away. "It must be extraordinary and . . . and terrible. I don't know what it would feel like to understand it."
"Well, it's bound to be something like wind, right?"
"I wonder." Isi rubbed her forehead and looked down. "Wind is unique. Its very existence is a language, and it can't help but carry the images of where it's been. Every air movement that touches my skin tells me of what else it's touched. But fire doesn't move like wind, and it's so much more intense. I don't know what to do for him."
"So, you don't know of a way to, I don't know, erase it? Maybe if I could learn the fire tongue myself, I could figure out how it works and help him."
Isi blinked. "Erase it? I read once, somewhere in that old library, accounts of a desert kingdom called Yasid, to the south. Travelers from there reported of a people who had some kind of relationship with fire. Maybe they would have an answer to that, but I don't."
Enna looked at the orange heart of the smoky torch on the wall and was surprised to feel hopeful. "So, maybe the best thing after all would be for me to—"
