by Anna Bright
I couldn’t believe how far he’d come to help us. I couldn’t believe this was the heir to Saint George’s England, the boy who had kissed me and lied to me. I had shouted at him on Winchester’s doorstep, had left him behind in tears.
“So.” He nodded after Torden’s back, blue eyes wry. “Him.”
I nodded, my smile going a little rueful. “It’s that obvious?”
Bear bobbed his head slowly. “You’re—easier together. Than you and I were.” He cleared his throat, bowing his head. “But you used to look at me that way.”
My heart gave a painful beat.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “My God, Selah, I’m so sorry for what we did. I’ve had so much time to think, and I know you must have been utterly humiliated, and it was just—”
“Bear,” I interrupted him. “It’s okay.”
He winced. “Really?”
“Well, it was awful at the time,” I admitted. He grimaced. “But I’ve had to make hard choices, myself, since I’ve left you. And after all the terrible things that have happened, it just doesn’t make sense to fret over healed injuries.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Bear glanced across the circle at his knights, and I nodded meaningfully at the girl who had caught me earlier outside the tower.
“So,” I said. “Her.”
“Gwyn, you mean.” Bear blushed. “I saw her wearing cowslips not long after you left, and I started asking questions. And then Perrault radioed us, told us what had happened to you. My father said we wouldn’t become involved. But I had to come.” He pushed his rumpled hair off his forehead, grinning ruefully. “I think Gwyn was a little worried I’d show up here and fall at your feet and beg for your forgiveness and your hand.”
My shoulders unclenched with relief at this. Because it meant he wouldn’t.
I swallowed. “How’s Veery?”
Bear sobered, heaving a long breath. “Lost all his charm and a good deal of blood with that shot to the thigh he took. But the surgeons got to him in time. He’s resting now.”
“What a relief,” I sighed.
He stared into the fire, looking pensive. “I don’t know what I would do without him. We’re supposed to be starting Oxford together in the spring, Veery and Gwyn and Kay and I.”
“Oxford?” I brightened.
Bear nodded, his mood lightening a little, too. “We’ll have missed the start of Michaelmas term so we’ll go up in Hilary. Father’s excited. And I find I am, too.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I nodded happily, if a little enviously. College.
Then he shook himself, straightening, planting his tanned hands on his knees. “Right. I’m nattering on. What will you do next? Where are you off to now?”
Torden came and sat down next to me, and I nodded from him to Bear. “Torden, Bear. Prins of Norge. Prince of England.” They shook hands, Torden serious, Bear amused. I linked my fingers through Torden’s.
“We,” I said, “are going home.”
Dawn
By this the Northerne wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre,
That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wide deepe wandring are . . .
—The Faerie Queene
65
THE BEHOLDER
I hailed my godmother from the top of Baba Yaga’s tower and told her all that had happened. She wept, but my eyes were dry as I looked out over the city the rebels had saved. And I had been allowed to help. To be part of a day so, so worth writing about.
I overheard Fritz and Gretel talking, too, that day. They didn’t bother with code names, and they didn’t seem to hear me, though I tried to speak to them.
Maximilian had been dispossessed, and Fritz was now the hertsoh. Leirauh went home to her sisters.
I hoped Katz Castle could come to life again, the way Fritz had dreamed of it. We saw it with every passing hour in Stupka-Zamok, the new city rising from the ashes of the tower the rebels had laid low with the powder and guns Gretel had sent them.
Bear and his knights, Aleksei, and Hermódr remained behind to continue supporting negotiations. I bid them goodbye beside the river, one after the other, embracing them each tightly as Torden and I moved down their line.
To Hermódr: “Come and see us soon.” He pushed up his glasses and returned the offer.
To Aleksei: “Spasibo.”
He grinned at me, and it was a natural smile. Whole and unsullied by cynicism. “Farewell, Zolushka.” He punched Torden gently. “We’re going to have words over how you’ve stolen my bride, brother.” Torden laughed, long and loud.
To Bear: “Safe travels home.”
Bear held out his hand. “Friends?”
“Always,” I said, pulling him into a hug. “And Potomac and England will always be, after this.”
“Always,” he agreed.
“Study hard at Oxford.” I smiled, a little jealous.
Bear nodded.
Lang stood a little apart from the others. He hadn’t been aboard yet.
I swallowed hard. “You got what you fought for.” I looked around. “All this—this is what you worked for.”
“I did,” Lang said. “I got everything I wanted.”
But his words were a lie, and his eyes told the truth.
He had lied to me, and I had undercut him. We had cared for one another, and we had competed with one another. We were lucky to be standing here, together, alive.
But the hollow sadness in his face haunted me like a story with no ending. I couldn’t give Lang what he wanted, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.
“You aren’t coming back with us,” I finally said. Not a question.
Lang didn’t deny it. “What for?”
My arms went tightest around him. I didn’t know what to say. “You promised to keep me safe,” I said. “You haven’t delivered me back yet.”
“You don’t need me anymore to keep you safe.” His dark eyes cut to Torden.
Torden wasn’t what had changed in me. But if Lang had understood that, everything would have been different between us to begin with.
“It should be Yu, staying behind,” Lang finally said, nodding at the doctor a few feet away. “He healed your cook. He got Zhōng Guó back on its feet. He’d be perfect to help get this place running again.” He paused. “I’m just a smuggler.”
I shook my head, vehement. “You’re the zŏngtŏng’s representative here, as much as Yu is.”
Lang swallowed. “We both know why I can’t go back, Selah. There was the job, and there was you. And now the job is done, and you . . .” Lang fell silent, and I lifted a hand to his shoulder.
Breath and wanting rose up in me, fierce and protective.
“Someday,” I said, swallowing hard. “Someday, we’ll find each other again. Someday when we can be friends, when all that is just an old story we tell people.” I gritted my teeth a little.
“Maybe,” Lang said dubiously.
“For sure,” I insisted. I lifted my storybook, nodded at the radio we both knew was inside. “Keep an ear out.”
I stuck out my hand, and Lang shook it.
“Here’s to the next great adventure,” he said.
And then we went our separate ways.
We climbed the gangplank of the ship, my feet keeping time with the pounding of my heart.
Home. Home. Home.
Up in the rigging, Cobie loosened the lines, and Basile and Vishnu raised the anchor, cheering as it came loose from the riverbed.
“Homeward!” Basile hollered, grin broad as the horizon.
I spun around in a circle, shouting along with them, and Anya caught my hand and twirled me around until I was dizzy.
Skop, our new captain, manned the helm as the current carried us downriver, sunset light filtering through the sails and the birches along the riverbank.
Home.
I skimmed my hands over the tops of my plants, feeling the health of their leaves, closing my eyes as I pushed into the galley. And when I opened my eyes I burst into a laugh.
Wash, whose real name had turned out to be Märyäm, was standing over the stove, trying to explain to Will how to pinch dumplings closed so they wouldn’t leak. These weren’t the pelmeni we’d made in Baba Yaga’s kitchens; she called these chebureki.
Aleksei had helped us ask her yesterday if she wanted to stay in Yotunkheym, or if we could help her go somewhere else.
She told us her home—the place she’d been captured from twelve years before—was a peninsula downriver. She agreed to let us take her there.
I might not have been allowed to use the stove, but Märyäm had taken over without hesitating. She’d set Will to work rolling and chopping while she stuffed the chebureki with beef and onions and parsley and fried them in oil. The galley smelled like comfort, drenched in golden light from the lamps and Will’s happy laughter as he tried to follow Märyäm’s orders. Tears filled my eyes again.
Märyäm put her hands on her hips. “Do not cry,” she insisted.
I shook my head, swallowing. “I’m happy,” I insisted. “These are happy tears.”
Märyäm passed me a handkerchief and I wiped my eyes. “Do not cry,” she said again gently. Then she pointed at the sink, piled high with dirty flatware and plates and the rolling pin, and winked at me. “You. Wash.”
We all ate together in the galley, huddling together beneath the lamps. Will had made stew to go with Märyäm’s chebureki, and Perrault brought me a second bowl when I devoured my first in a few bites.
Torden ate three helpings of dinner and tried patiently again and again to tie the knot Vishnu demonstrated.
“No, like this,” Vishnu said, nimbly untying the rope and showing him once more.
Beneath the galley lamps, I saw red was growing back in at the roots of Torden’s hair.
I leaned against his shoulder and breathed him in, overwhelmed again that he was beside me.
He had asked Alfödr, and his father had agreed that he should go with me. Rihttá had given him her every blessing. Torden was coming to Potomac.
He would be at my back when I faced Alessandra again. When I defended my father. When I met my little brother or sister for the first time.
Cobie had told me I floated just fine on my own. But Torden was the one I wanted beside me as I soldiered forward.
No one balked when Torden took Skop’s old bunk belowdecks; he fit in among the crew so naturally. Skop had moved into Lang’s old quarters, and Anya stayed in my room. But that night, even with Anya curled up warm beside me, I couldn’t sleep.
I climbed the stairs with my book. My godmother’s voice was silent inside its binding, but I reveled in the smooth leather wrapped around words that I could drink as I pleased, that no one could take from me.
Out on deck, Basile and Jeanne were deep in conversation beneath the mainmast. Märyäm prayed softly, her head covered, her eyes turned east.
I climbed to the forecastle and met Homer at the helm. He rubbed one eye.
“Tired?”
“Eyes aren’t what they were,” he said a little gruffly.
“Want me to take over?” I asked.
Homer scowled a little, then nodded at the helm. “Go on. Ought to have taught you already, anyway.”
The night grew deep as Homer and I pored over his star charts and nautical almanacs. I steered and he gestured at the map and at the sky, illuminating the constellations I already knew and those I didn’t, teaching me how to find true north with Polaris.
“But all you have to do for now is follow the river.” Homer crossed his hands over his chest, squinting out at the night. “Can you hold course?”
The way was clear before me. I was as awake as I’d ever been.
I nodded.
“I’ll relieve you at dawn,” he said.
Homer left me to the quiet of the water washing the ship and the stars wheeling overhead. But I was only alone for moment.
I knocked on one of the barrels beside the helm and gestured for him to sit, just as Lang had done so many months before. But Torden stood behind me instead, wrapping his arms around me and fitting his chin above my head.
“You weren’t in your room,” he said. “You’re restless.”
I swallowed. “I’ve done everything I set out to do.”
Torden dipped his head, and I stole a glance sideways at him. “Selah.”
His earnest gaze told me I couldn’t hide from him. And I didn’t want to.
I had held him together, and let him lean on my shoulder, and he would do the same for me.
“I’m afraid for my father,” I said softly. “I’m afraid I’ve wasted too much time away from him. He would understand, but—”
But what if he’s gone before I return? What if he can’t speak, or doesn’t know me?
I took a long breath, and Torden held me tighter. I thumbed the tattoo inside his wrist, and he reached with his other hand to angle my engagement ring toward the light of the moon.
It sparkled on my left-hand ring finger, where he had placed it for the third and final time the day Baba Yaga’s house fell. It was exactly where it belonged.
“You took a risk,” Torden said. “You chose to help people protect themselves. I did the same.” He looked down at me. “You’re becoming everything a leader should be. I’m so proud of you, elskede. And your father will be, as well.”
Now all I had to do was follow the path of the river, like Homer had told me. The stars were so, so bright above, and the one I loved was warm and safe at my back.
I had come of my own accord. And now, of my own accord, I would go home.
[Der Jäger] trat er in die Stube,
und wie er vor das Bette kam,
so sah er, daß der Wolf darin lag.
“Finde ich dich hier, du alter Sünder,” sagte er,
“ich habe dich lange gesucht.”
—Rotkäppchen
So [the huntsman] went into the room,
and when he came to the bed,
he saw that the wolf was lying in it.
“Do I find you here, you old sinner!” said he.
“I have long sought you!”
—Little Red Cap
66
POTOMAC: ARBOR HALL
The sun rose, and the sun set, and the Beholder carried us downriver.
We took Märyäm to her home, a peninsula called Qirim, and Skop hired a horse and cart to take her to her village. She had sent letters there, and her sisters had responded in disbelief; they had feared the worst for Märyäm after she’d been captured more than a decade before.
Märyäm had cried as she read their replies. She hadn’t stopped talking since about the nephews and nieces she’d be meeting for the first time, about how she couldn’t wait to cook with her sisters again.
They were all home, waiting for her.
Märyäm had been a hearth for freezing women, a barred door against wolves. She was a good person, generous and kind and hospitable to strangers.
I hoped the fairy tales proved true. I hoped it came back to her a hundredfold.
“Spasibo,” I said into her shoulder as I hugged her goodbye.
Märyäm smiled at me, her chapped palm cupping my shoulder. “Safe travels, Selah.”
We sailed on. I kept my radio close. My godmother said the Rosary every morning.
And seven weeks after we had left Yotunkheym, on a chill day in mid-November, I guided the Beholder into the mouth of the Potomac with Torden and Homer and Skop at my sides.
It was a gorgeous afternoon, clear, with a blue sky and a steady wind. Cobie clambered through the rigging; Jeanne and Basile and Vishnu worked the lines, and J.J. scampered across the deck, in everyone’s way, giddy with excitement.
Movement on the banks caught my eye, and suddenly, there were cries on the air. I startled at the sound at first.
And then I heard their words. “She’s home!” one of them hollered.
From an outpost on the banks of the Potomac, a runner began to sprint upriver, alongside the ship.
I’m home.
And they were waiting for me.
From one outpost to the next, the runners outstripped the Beholder, racing west toward the setting sun. Torden kept one hand on my shoulder, one around my waist.
The wind blew my hair into my eyes, and the river washed over the hull of the ship, and my heart sang in chorus with it all as my city came into view.
Arbor Hall. My home.
I ceded my place at the helm, and Homer docked just as the sun began to dip toward the horizon. A massive, silent crowd awaited us on the pier.
My eyes searched them, scanning and discarding face after face that was not my father’s.
“Selah!” A familiar voice called my name.
My heart stopped.
I raced down the gangplank and threw myself into my godmother’s arms. She smelled like incense and the air smelled like earth and I was home, I was home, I was home.
I pulled away slightly, glancing around. “Where is he?”
Godmother put a hand on my shoulder. “He’s at the house,” she said, nodding in the direction of Arbor Hall. “I will explain everything. But you’re tired, and I want you to rest, and not to worry. What matters is—”
“Godmother, tell me,” I said more sharply than I meant to. “I’m sorry. But I—please.”
She pursed her lips, clasped her hands as if in prayer. The world tipped sharply beneath my feet. “He’s in bed, baby. The doctors don’t know what to do.”
67
Someone said something about getting horses or a carriage, but I hardly heard them. I felt irrational; I couldn’t wait. I ran.
“Selah!” So many voices shouted my name, but I heeded none of them.
I had crossed oceans and rivers and mountains and plains, barefoot and bleeding and starving and terrified. I had survived all of that and made it home.
I had not done it so that my father could die poisoned on his bed.
Was it poison? Was it age? Were Daddy and I simply cursed?
