by Shannon Hale
Chapter Five
The sun is staring, the water is fine
Little lily lie, lie a little low
The sweet river flow mixes into brine
Little lily lie, lie down below
Evening in the swamp rustled and stretched, clamoring for cooler hours. Other than the linder house at her back, Miri could see no other stone. Everything was alive and moving. The air teemed with birds, insects, and shadows of things flying. The grasses shook with the wind and with not-wind. The reeds whispered and clicked together, hiding creatures that scurried and jumped. The surface of the water trailed with the paths of skating bugs and arched with the movement of fish and larger animals. Everywhere was the sense of life just out of sight.
The girls sat outside after dinner near the water’s edge. They were stuffing tiny seedpods into the ends of short, thick reeds and blowing, challenging one another to see who could shoot a seed the farthest over the water.
“Now would be a good time to start with your studies,” Miri said.
“What studies?” asked Sus, cramming in more seeds. In the dimming light, her hair looked nearly black, the crinkly locks standing up around her head like the branches of a bramble bush.
“I think we should start with reading,” said Miri, “and once you’re comfortable, we can move on to other subjects, like History. You’re going to love History!”
Astrid laughed. “When would we have time for studying?”
“Well, now?” said Miri, not meaning for it to be a question.
“We’re just about to go check the traps and set them again for tomorrow’s breakfast.”
“You must have a way to purchase food or pay others to hunt it for you,” said Miri.
“Pay with what exactly?” Astrid asked, eyes narrowed.
“With your allowance …” Miri did not need to look around again to realize that the king’s money, supposedly sent each month from Asland, never made it to this little linder house.
“Allowance,” Sus said slowly, her mouth trying out the unfamiliar word.
“If you just sit and read, then you won’t eat,” said Astrid.
“Unless you’re Fat Hofer,” said Sus.
Felissa nodded wisely. “Fat Hofer can do nothing and stay fat. I think he has magic.”
“Magic isn’t real,” said Sus. “I think he eats flies.”
Felissa dropped her reed. “He does not! I’ve never seen him eat a single fly.”
“Then maybe he absorbs them,” Sus said. She paused to blow. Her seeds flew, landing with light ripples on the dark water. “Flies land on his skin to suck his blood, but instead his skin sucks them in. They say he knows everything. I think he knows how to get fat on flies.”
Felissa looked at Astrid and laughed.
“I want to absorb flies,” Sus said in her serious manner.
“Never mind about Fat Hofer,” Miri said. “Look, I have to teach you. The king said so.”
“Pbbt,” said Astrid, blowing air through her lips. “Never met the king.”
“I didn’t want to attend a princess academy at first either,” Miri said.
“A princess what?” Felissa asked.
“Academy. Like a school. Whenever a crown prince reaches the age of betrothal, the priests of the creator god divine which province or territory of Danland is home to his future bride. A graduate of a previous princess academy is chosen as tutor and sent to form a school there. It used to be just a formality and the highest ranking noble girls of the province attended for just a few days before the prince threw a ball and chose his bride. But in my case, none of us were noble. Or educated. Or considered fit bridal material for a royal highness. So we attended a real academy for over a year, and what I learned there changed everything for me and my village.”
Astrid blinked slowly like a lizard sunning. “And what use would a princess academy have for us? We’re not going to marry the crown prince.”
Miri blanched. “Um … right. Of course not. The king, your cousin, just wants you to have the benefit of an education. If I can find a way to buy food so you don’t have to hunt for it, will you do lessons with me each day? At least for a few hours?”
“Why not,” Astrid said, as if she believed that would never happen.
The next morning when the girls went out to hunt, Miri stayed behind to do some sewing. She finished converting the yellow dress into a tunic shirt with leggings while the girls were still out, so she walked toward the village.
Miri’s village on Mount Eskel was built from rocks stacked and secured together to make houses. But there were no rocks in the swamp. Though a wood grew nearby, those trees were all thin, wispy things with crooked branches. They must have been impractical for building houses because the Lesser Alvans only used reeds.
The houses had thick reed-bundle frames, wrapped and draped with woven mats. The roof mats were tightly woven to keep out the rain, while the wall mats were filled with holes to invite breezes. Most of the huts were barely large enough for a couple of people to lie down head to feet.
The ground of the village island appeared to be swampland covered by a strewn reed flooring. It was not until Miri was near the middle of the village and felt the ground shift beneath her that she understood she was not on land at all. The entire island was made of stacked reeds floating in the water. How thick would the false island have to be in order to float?
Miri spotted two smaller reed islands nearby. She could see the top layer of reeds was still green, then beneath that lay the golden white of dried reeds. The oldest reeds in the water were a dirty gray. The reeds on the bottom must decompose in the water. Miri saw a woman laying down fresh reeds around a house. Miri asked if she could direct her to Fat Hofer. The woman pointed but did not seem eager to engage in conversation with a stranger.
Miri knew she was on the main island of the village because it hosted the chapel. Fourteen pillars made of thick reed bundles stood straight, bending and meeting at the top to form a peaked roof. Woven mats formed the walls and roof.
Beside the chapel sat a man, his bald head protected with a cap, his legs covered with a cloth. He rested his hands on his belly, his lids half-closed as if he were about to nap.
“Fat Hofer?” Miri said. She had seen far fatter men in Asland, but he did look in good health, clearly not scrabbling to keep from starvation.
He squinted at her, lifting the brim of his cap against the sun. “I heard a lady of Asland had come to Lesser Alva. How good of you to attend me so soon after your arrival.”
Miri squatted beside him. “You don’t absorb flies.”
“What?”
“You don’t work yet you don’t starve. Which means people pay you. For what? You sit here, seemingly doing nothing. But you’re not doing nothing, are you? You’re watching, you’re learning, and then you trade information or advice for coins or food. You know things.”
Fat Hofer laughed, his folded hands shaking on his belly. “What an outrageous claim! I won’t even take the time to deny it.”
“The king’s officials send the sisters an allowance every month. They should have enough for food and clothing at least. But they have nothing. Please tell me what happens to their coin.”
He lowered his hat back over his eyes and put out his hand, palm up. “Nothing gets you nothing, my lady.”
“I don’t have any coin, but I do have a silk dress I can trade you,” she said.
“What good is a silk dress here? Come talk to me when you have a coin or at least food to share.”
Perhaps she could sell a dress to someone else.
She returned to the linder house and went through her bag, picking out a dress not too fancy but nice enough, and laid it over a windowsill so the humid air might work out the wrinkles. Miri used their outhouse and cleaned it, and then went for a short walk to hunt more of the water plants.
When she came back, the girls were home, and the silk dress was gone.
“Did one of you move the dress?” Miri
asked.
“You mean the one you left out for anyone to come steal?” said Astrid. “Toad toots, girl, don’t you know how to take care of your things?”
“None but a bandit would dare enter another’s house,” said Felissa. “But something hanging out a window? Anyone could steal that and no one would blame them. Always keep your things inside a house.”
“Or in a boat,” said Sus. “Though we don’t have a boat.”
“Um … my dress?” asked Miri.
“I hid your things for you,” said Felissa. “Just in case someone saw the fancy dress and decided to risk some thievery.”
The linder house had a cramped attic reached by climbing the wall and removing a flat stone. Miri followed Felissa up. Besides her dress, there were treasures that had belonged to their mother: a portrait of a woman, its paint streaking from heat; worm-eaten clothes; a glass-headed doll with a painted face; and stacks of letters.
Miri brought the letters down.
For supper they ate raw roots and stuck the tiny fish on sticks, roasting them over the fire till they were browned and crunchy.
“What happened to your parents?” Miri asked.
Sus and Felissa looked at their older sister. Astrid tested a fish with her fingers and then set it back over the embers to cook longer.
“Our ma died,” Astrid said at last. “Several years ago. Her name was Elin. We never knew our father.”
Sus reached out, placing her arm on Astrid’s knee. Felissa leaned her head on Astrid’s shoulder. Astrid put her arms around them both, a knot of sisters.
Miri had not seen her own sister in over a year. Separation felt like a fever—a wrongness and ache on her skin, as tangible as the lack of a touch.
With Astrid’s permission, Miri read the letters. They were all formal, brief notes from a king’s official in Asland, sent each month with the allowance. Starting about ten years before, the letters no longer came every month, sometimes missing several in a row. Around the time of Elin’s death, the letters ceased altogether.
“We used to have coins to buy food from the traders,” said Astrid, “but when Ma died, I couldn’t find any coins and figured we’d run out. I never knew they’d been coming from the king.”
Where was that money going now? Did it even leave Asland?
From the village Miri could hear singing. At first, just a single child’s voice, high and piercing, too distant for her to unstring the words from the night. And then more voices. The song became as wild and loud as the swamp itself, and then it softened, became melancholy, a ballad or dirge perhaps. But even when the song was as quick and high as a dance, it always sounded lonely to Miri. Far away. Unwelcoming.
She could not see the water outside the window. She could not even hear a ripple over the honks and croaks, rasps and cries of the swamp. But she was aware of it, the breeze wet, the feeling of greatness and endlessness, like that of standing on a mountain’s edge and sensing the cliff beyond. A cliff did not border emptiness. It met up with a great deal of air and falling. And falling was something, just as water was something.
Miri could sense the vastness of the ocean out there, and she felt displaced, a flower uprooted, tossed onto the water, pulled into the current.
Chapter Six
Trader, trader
Bone and stone
Pay it later
Get a loan
From the cracking and cawing moment of dawn, Miri was waiting where the forest path from Greater Alva spilled into the swamp. Over a week in Lesser Alva and at last a trading day had come. And not the sporadic traders who came from Greater Alva but the monthly merchants who traveled all the way from Asland. Those traders would carry letters.
She heard the creak of cart wheels and the snorts of donkeys before she spied the first trader trudge through the trees. A dozen more followed him. She ran forward.
“I am Miri Larendaughter, lady of the princess and envoy of King Bjorn to Lesser Alva. I am here to claim anything that has come from the king or his officials for his royal cousins in the linder house.”
The first trader tipped up his large-brimmed hat and smiled. His expression seemed as sincere as a snake’s. He wore muddied boots high as his knees, but his shirt was silk and his cap fine wool. “I’m Gunnar, head trader, and I’m obliged to check in with Jeffers first, my lady fanciness, and then I’ll come straight to you.”
“I’ll join you.”
Gunnar’s smile twitched. “As you wish, my lady.”
Most of the trading goods were stacked in small, two-wheeled wagons pulled by donkeys. The traders unhitched the donkeys on shore and pulled the carts themselves onto the main reed island.
The water was crowded with reed boats, people journeying from other islands all over Lesser Alva for trading day. Nearly hidden by the crowd, Miri spotted Fat Hofer still beside the chapel, his cap shading his watching eyes.
Gunnar approached a large reed house near the chapel and clapped his hands, since there was a woven reed curtain instead of a wood door to knock on. The door lifted to a man dressed in a blue linen shirt and fine trousers, his face browned, his beard cut to a point on his chin. Such beards had started going out of fashion in Asland years ago, and Miri had not seen anyone else keeping the style other than the chief delegate.
“Good morning, Jeffers,” said Gunnar.
“Good morning, all,” Jeffers said. “Welcome! You may enter my house.”
Gunnar and two other traders pushed in past Miri. She introduced herself and moved to enter too, but Jeffers blocked her way.
“I would invite you in, but we have business,” Jeffers said and let the door flap shut.
Miri waited. She paced. The top of her head began to burn in the sun. Jeffers’s house rumbled with laughter. She clenched her fists, but instead of punching through the door flap, she politely clapped.
Jeffers opened the curtain. His house was one large room. The woven reed walls and thick pillars were a bright gold, but the ceiling, darkened by smoke, was the color of oiled wood. Miri was surprised to see furniture like a real wood table, several chairs, and a reed mattress atop a wooden bed frame. Several men lay sleeping on mats.
“I believe there is a letter from Asland for the girls in the linder house,” Miri said.
Jeffers took the mailbag from Gunnar and went through the few folded and sealed papers.
“No, nothing,” Jeffers said. He smiled at Miri. “Sorry I couldn’t be of service. I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid my establishment isn’t hospitable to a fine lady such as yourself.”
Behind him, one of the sleeping men roused, rubbed his head, and stared at Miri.
“Very well,” she whispered.
As the door flap shut, the laughter renewed.
She stalked back to Fat Hofer and asked, “Who is Jeffers?”
He held out his palm.
“I’m warning you,” she said, “I’m in a mood to put someone on a spit and—”
He put both his hands up in defense. “I’m just trying to stay alive, since I sadly cannot absorb flies.”
“I promise I’ll pay you when I can,” Miri said. “Which will be sooner with your help. Please.”
Fat Hofer stared at her, rubbed his large nose, and sniffed. “All right then. Jeffers is the closest thing we have to a head of the village. He negotiates with the traders and sets the prices for all of Lesser Alva. His house is the largest and every night fills up with villagers who want to play darts and buy swill.”
“Swill?” Miri asked.
“A clear, scorching drink he makes himself,” he said. “Makes him pretty popular.”
“Not with me. He’s bribing the traders to let him steal the mail and the girls’ allowance. I’m so livid I could eat a snake.”
“You should know something,” Fat Hofer said.
Miri leaned forward, her breath held.
“Snakes,” he said, “are delicious.”
Miri scowled. “I have to go back to Asland and tell them what’
s happening here.”
“Planning to walk to Greater Alva yourself? Bandits called those woods home not so long ago and perhaps still do. If you do get to the port, how will you pay passage to board a ship?”
Miri stared at her bare feet, dried mud cracking off her toes. She felt as squashed as a toad in a wheel rut.
“If you find someone who will buy a silk dress, I’ll give you ten percent of what I make.”
“That’s thinking like a Lesser Alvan!” he said. “But alas, Lady Miri, no one in Lesser Alva cares about a silk dress. And unless you have solid coin, the traders arrange trades only through Jeffers. After your display, I’d guess Jeffers won’t be willing to do any business with you.”
But she had to try. She was here to teach the girls, and she could not do that if they were busy as birds hunting for food every hour of the day. So Miri fetched one of Britta’s dresses and returned to Jeffers’s house.
She clapped timidly and peered through the door curtain.
More of the traders had joined the others in the house, sitting cross-legged on mats, eating flat bread, chatting in small groups.
Jeffers leaned back in one of the wooden chairs, made cozy with frayed pillows. He smiled, but his eyes were unwelcoming.
“Yes?” he said.
“I have a dress I’d like to sell,” she said quietly.
Jeffers took a slow drink from a clay-fired mug. “It’s not proper for a lady to sell her own clothing off her back, now is it? Allow me to save your reputation by declining. But in good news, I found letters addressed to you!”
He handed them to a young boy who brought them to the door.
“Apologies, the wax seals must have cracked on the journey,” Jeffers said with a shameless smile.
She recognized the handwriting on the letters: one from Peder and one from Marda. She fingered the first letter’s broken wax and almost spoke an accusation when she noticed a blocky man with long hair and a bushy beard in the back of the house. A scar ran through one eye and split his cheek. Miri’s feet and hands felt icy cold.
