by Nancy Chase
Catrin grabbed his arm. “But Geoffrey, don’t you love me?”
“Catrin, I—” He stopped himself, shut his mouth, shut his eyes, took a deep breath. Then he looked her square in the face and pushed her hand away from him. “No, Princess. I don’t. Go home and marry a prince.”
A cold wind touched her. As the ship approached Magpie Island, the slanting light made one of the pillars of broken rock look like the spire of a great tower. When they passed beneath it, a shadow fell as if they had sailed over the edge of day and on into night, but beyond, on the mainland, she could see sunlight on the battlements of her father’s castle. Once they arrived, she would say farewell to Geoffrey forever and marry some prince her father had chosen. Her throat closed tight, but still she didn’t cry.
Geoffrey was at her elbow again, saying something and trying to thrust an object into her hand. “I’m sorry, Princess, I know this is yours, and it wasn’t right to keep it from you. Please take it. Here, and the key too.”
It was her golden book. She felt no joy to have it again after all those years. She absently tucked the key into her pocket with the little bundle Kae had given her. It was only to avoid having to look at Geoffrey that she opened the book at all.
On the first page was a picture, edged in silver and gold, of a grand castle with bright banners flying from the turrets and green meadows all around. She could almost see the banners flutter, almost smell the new-mown hay.
The next page was painted with a hundred colors to show a walled garden full of flowers and fruit trees of every description. Somewhere someone was singing. Her eyes were too blurred to read the words.
She was about to turn to the third page when, with a flash of black and white feathers, a Magpie perched on a rope above her head.
“Twice fortunate, Princess, thou art:
A golden book, a joyous heart.”
“Joyous!” she exclaimed. “My heart is breaking. How can you talk about joy?” She turned another page.
The Magpie squawked.
“But read only one page a day,
Or we will steal them both away.”
“Leave me alone! I’ve gone twelve years without laying a single finger on this book. I’ll read as many pages as I want now.” She clenched her fist, and Geoffrey’s rose crumbled into dust in her hand. With a howl of grief, she flung the pieces at the Magpie, and the bird flew away shrieking.
“Catrin!” Geoffrey said. “You can’t just—”
She turned on him blindly. “I’m tired of being told what I can’t do! Why do you care anyway? Let me be myself now while I still can. Who knows what will be forbidden tomorrow? I’m being sent home to marry a stranger, and I’ve never even kissed a man before.”
The rising wind fluttered the pages of the golden book. The next picture was a swirling, dark, stormy one of a maiden and a hero clasped in each other’s arms. Geoffrey swallowed hard. “We can’t change who we are, Princess.”
“Why not? Why must I be a princess? If the Magpies can change shape, why can’t I? I’d rather be anything else—a kitchen maid or a cow in a field, I don’t care. At least they don’t have to spend their lives shut up in a castle or a convent doing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. At least they don’t have people telling them who they must marry.”
“Princess, you know you don’t mean that. Besides, if this book of yours really is what your mother told you, it’s dangerous to anger the Magpies. They can change into a drop of rain, a gust of wind, anything.” His voice grew soft, though his eyes were anguished. “Catrin. I wouldn’t want anything to harm you.” His hand trembled as he touched her face.
“I don’t care.” Catrin leaned into the warmth of his palm. “They can take the wretched book if they want it. I just want you.” As the sea tossed the ship beneath them, she flung her arms around him and pulled his head down to meet hers in a first, breathless kiss.
The sudden howl of the storm wrenched them apart. Rain fell in torrents, wooden planks groaned, and taut ropes hummed in the wind. Catrin flung up her arm to shield her face from the spray. “The Magpies!”
“Don’t worry,” Geoffrey shouted above the uproar. “They can’t sink us! They can’t touch our magic sails. Get below deck and hold tight to your book!”
Catrin scrambled across the heaving, slippery deck. Her hair blew across her eyes, and her gown tangled around her ankles. She tripped, and her book spun out of her hand. She grabbed for it, but a wave burst over the railing and swept it toward the edge.
“Geoffrey!” A rush of cold salt water stung her throat and flooded her nostrils until she choked, unable to breathe. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed to the deck with her wet skirts pooled around her in a nimbus of crumpled gray silk.
“Princess!” Geoffrey ran to her side and tried to lift her, but she pushed him away, gesturing across the heaving, storm-washed deck.
“My book,” she gasped. “If I lose it....”
He glimpsed a flash of gold swirling in the dark flood and sprang for it, catching the book just before a wave washed it overboard. The princess moaned and lay still. The winds roared through the riggings, and the waves clashed higher than the gunwales.
Geoffrey knelt by Catrin’s side and tried to thrust the book into her unresponsive hands. “Take it, please take it. You can’t let the Magpies steal it from you. I love you!” A wave knocked him backward, and he nearly dropped the book into the sea.
“Go away!” he shouted into the wind. “You’re killing her!” The magic sails flapped and boomed, but did not tear. They shone white as milk through the storm: The Magpies could not touch them.
Geoffrey gave a grim laugh. “By the power of these sails, you’ll get no book today.” Pulling a knife from his belt, he grabbed the edge of the sail and began to cut.
Morning blushed soft as rose petals over the sullen gray sea. The beach was strewn with bundles of silks and furs, scraps of gilded wood, a mast, a torn sail, a broken chest of gold, a silver goblet. The king knelt in the wet sand to lift his daughter in his arms. Her head fell back limply, and her hands were cold. He put her before him on his horse and spurred back to the castle, weeping. “Catrin, Little Bird, my own dear princess. Let the iron bells toll. Instead of a wedding, I must give you a funeral.”
“We will fast for a week,” he said to his men, “then nine black horses with silver bridles will carry her to the tomb.” He let no one else touch her but laid her out himself upon her tapestried bed, with candles lit all around. He straightened her sodden gown and smoothed her tangled hair. “What’s this?” His fingers found a pouch made of milk-white canvas hanging by a silken cord around her neck. The cord was twisted so tight it cut a purple bruise into her throat. “Alas! The waves battered you so, your own purse has choked you.” But when he tried to loosen the cords, the princess’s eyes fluttered open.
“Little Bird, you’re alive? Praise the day! We’ll feast for a week, and then twelve white horses with crimson harness will pull your wedding carriage.”
Catrin looked about her in confusion. When she saw the pouch made from the cloth of the magic sail and felt the weight of her golden book safe inside, she smiled. “Yes, Papa, I will marry gladly, for I have promised myself to the sailor boy who saved my life.”
The king’s smile faded. “I will invite a hundred princes to a grand ball, so that you may choose some other bridegroom.”
“No! I love Geoffrey.”
“I’m sorry, Little Bird, but he is dead. No one else survived the wreck but you.”
Catrin turned her face to the wall, blinking hard. “Very well. Then I will not marry.”
“Catrin! You are a princess, and the kingdom needs an heir. In seven days you will marry a prince. You will not disobey me in this.”
“But I made a vow—”
“Enough!”
Catrin fell silent. She could not defy the king, but if he agreed to a bargain, he must abide by it. She opened the pouch and pulled out her golden book, thinking over her
next words. If the book really did contain the Best Story in the World, this would be a bet she could not lose. Wouldn’t it? She tightened her lips and risked all.
“Very well, Papa. I will do as you wish on one condition. In this book is a story I like very much. If one of your hundred princes can bring me a better story than this one by the end of seven days, then I will marry him. If not, I will do as I please.”
“Catrin! A princess does not bargain like a market-day fishwife.”
He was so much older than she remembered, a fragile shell of the warrior he once had been. She wanted to run to him and hug him around the neck as she had done as a child, but instead she raised her chin and tilted her book so the jewels glittered in the candlelight. “The book is worth a queen’s ransom. If I offer it as a prize to the winning prince, will it not earn me a rich marriage?”
In the coldness of her eyes she looked very much like her mother. The king’s breath caught, and a chill ran down his spine. He straightened his shoulders, shaking off his uneasiness, and when he spoke, his voice was light. “As you wish, my dear. How can I deny you anything, after so nearly losing you? Once you are feeling more yourself, I am sure one of the princes will catch your fancy, and you will forget all about this nonsense.” He bent and kissed her forehead. After he left to spread the glad tidings of her recovery, Catrin again turned her face to the wall.
Some time later, a middle-aged maid bustled into the room carrying a heavy rosewood chest. “Aye, Catrin, my pretty pet. I’m fair worn out with weeping for sorrow and weeping for joy. When I heard you was drowned, I near thought I would jump into the sea myself, after missing you all these long years. Are you here, and alive, truly? Praise the Seven who kept you safe.”
The woman paused expectantly, but Catrin never moved. “Catrin, pet. Don’t you remember me? It’s your old maid Megan. You’ve come home a true princess at last, and I’m to be your lady’s maid. You’ll be wanting to change out of your wet things, so I brought these up.” Megan opened the chest to reveal carefully folded gowns in shades of lilac, jonquil, and periwinkle. “All of your own things were either lost or ruined in the sea. These were your mother, the queen’s. They’ve been packed away for years, but they’ll do until we can have some new ones made for you. Princess?”
Catrin neither moved nor spoke. She just sat holding her golden book in her lap, staring at nothing until at last Megan cleared her throat and said, “Don’t worry, pet. You’ll be wanting to rest now, so I’ll just leave you to your sleep. It’s a grand day, to have you home again.” Clicking her tongue worriedly, she dropped the gowns back into the trunk and scuttled out.
After a long time, the princess opened her book to look once more at the illustration of the hero and the maiden. She could see it clearly in her mind. Geoffrey had held her that way; Geoffrey had kissed her so. Geoffrey, with his hair dark as thunder and his eyes like the sea.
The page was blank. She turned the page, then another and another. Every page was warped and damp; not a single word remained. The pouch had protected the book itself, but the seawater had seeped in and washed away all the ink and the wondrous pictures. A tiny sound like the keening of a gull escaped her throat: The Best Story in the World was lost.
She dropped her face into her hands. Geoffrey was dead. The Best Story was lost. Without it, she would lose the bargain she had made with her father, and in one week he would force her to marry a stranger who would take her book from her. And without her book, she would surely die.
She looked out her window as if she expected to find help there. Beyond the castle wall were the cliffs, the cliffs where her mother had leaped to her death. Far below, the gray water sighed among the rocks, sluggish and thick as blood. The gulls wailed in the sky. Out toward the horizon, Magpie Island was a dark speck on the sea.
Well, if she must die, she must, but she could at least keep her vow to Geoffrey. Moving slowly, as if death already weighted her limbs, she removed her dove-gray gown, and from the very bottom of the chest chose one of raven black. She let her hair fall loose about her shoulders as she had not done since she was a little girl.
She put her golden book into the pouch Geoffrey had made and tied it about her waist. On the floor she noticed a small roll of cloth, which upon examination she recognized as the good-luck charm Kae had given her. It must have stayed safely in her pocket until just now. She smiled sadly to think of her friend and tucked the bundle into the pocket of the black gown. She started down the narrow side stair and out toward the twisting path that led along the cliffs.
She was halfway across the courtyard when she saw the Magpie perched on the limb of the rowan tree. All at once her despair gave way to rage. “That Story was mine, bought twice over with the lives of those I loved. It was mine, and I want it back!” The bird took to the air with a shrill cry.
The stable door was wide open beside her. She ducked into the cool dimness, shouting for a horse. The white-haired stableman, eighty years old and nearly blind, staggered backward grasping his pitchfork, his eyes and mouth opened wide. “The queen! Your Majesty!”
Catrin snatched the reins of the nearest horse. “Hobb, saddle this horse. Now!”
The old man fumbled with the straps, his eyes rolling with terror. “—returned from the dead. May the Seven save us!” Catrin heaved herself into the saddle. She was out of the castle gate and thundering after the fleeing Magpie before the old man had panted up to the kitchen to tell his wife the cook that the queen’s ghost was haunting the stables.
The white stallion’s hooves clattered on the cobblestones, striking sparks that flashed like fireflies. Catrin clung to the saddle, her hair whipping about her shoulders, her face pale as death. Quick as a shadow, the Magpie darted over fields and woodlands. Nimble as moonlight, the horse followed.
They chased across hills and moors, valleys and streams, through many trackless places, until at last the horse staggered to a halt in a dense forest, his sides heaving and froth dripping from his bit. Catrin leaned her head against his neck, unable to unclench her fingers from his mane.
When finally she sat up, there was the Magpie, without so much as a feather ruffled, hopping along the top of a fallen, moss-covered log. “Good evening, Princess.”
“Is that all you have to say?” she demanded when she got her breath back. “You steal the thing that is as precious to me as life itself, you lead me on this wild chase through the wilderness, and ‘Good evening’ is the best you can do?”
“Have you another topic that you would prefer to discuss?”
“Give me back the Best Story in the World.”
“You were warned. Strong magic always has a price. You ignored the riddle.”
It was true. She had ignored the riddle. Geoffrey’s death was all her fault. With her carelessness, she had killed him, and she had no way to make it right, but she had to try. Choking back her desperation, she forced herself to sit tall in the saddle. “I am a princess. I order you to give back what you stole from me.”
The Magpie laughed. “I don’t think you are in a position to command anything, Your Highness. If I decide to turn into a gust of wind and blow away, how will you find your way home?”
Catrin glanced around. The last of the daylight was gone. Night noises creaked and scuttled in the underbrush and, in every direction, the tangled oaks and firs loomed black as ink and thick as thatch. There was no moon to light the way and no path to be seen. “All right, I apologize. But I lost my mother and I lost Geoffrey because of this Story, and I won’t give it up now without a fight.”
The Magpie considered. “It’s not as simple as that. It is true that the queen and the sailor lad gave what they held most dear to win this Story for you. But what have you ever done to win it for yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I hate to waste a perfectly good Story. So, I will offer you a second chance. A wager, if you will. If you can answer seven riddles in seven days, you may have your Story back.”
&nbs
p; “And if I fail?”
“Then, like your mother and your sailor lad, you must give up what is dearest to you.”
Catrin smiled bitterly. “What can I possibly have left that is worth taking? I have already lost everything I care about. Would you take my title? My fortune? You may have them, and welcome.”
“I do not want your fortune, child. For the wager to be equal, you must risk something you value. That is the way of magic.”
“What, then?”
“Your memories of Geoffrey.”
“My memories!”
The Magpie nodded. “You would simply forget you ever knew him. I imagine you would then marry some prince your father chose and live comfortably in a castle for the rest of your days. Most people would not think that was such a terrible fate.”
Catrin’s mouth went dry. To have lost Geoffrey was terrible enough, but not to even remember him was the worst thing she could imagine. She twisted her fingers into the stallion’s mane until he champed the bit nervously. Finally, she straightened her back and raised her chin. “Very well. Ask me the first riddle.”
The Magpie studied her, first with one eye, then with the other. Finally it fluttered to the high end of the log and said:
“What is darker than the night
And colder than the stone?
And what light shines the brightest
When it shines quite alone?”
Catrin opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had no idea what the answer was. “Don’t worry, Princess,” the Magpie chuckled. “You have until dawn to answer. I will come to your bedroom window at sunrise. Until then, I wish you pleasant dreams.” With a flick of its wings, it vanished.
“I’ll be there,” Catrin whispered. When the stallion tugged impatiently at the bit, she loosened the reins and let him find his own way through the thicket. Feathery fir boughs brushed his flanks; twigs trailed along Catrin’s face and snagged her hair, but she only stared straight ahead, not even raising a hand to ward them off. The words of the riddle echoed in her mind, but she didn’t know the answer.
