by Shannon Hale
A sawed-off treetop dropped onto the road. Miri jumped back and screamed. At that same moment, another treetop blocked the rear escape.
“What the—” Gunnar started.
Loud pops filled the air, and what seemed to be buckshot went flying into the group. Guards hollered and ducked, some running for cover as they were struck on their face and hands.
It was not musket fire, however—just Felissa and Sus blowing seeds through reed shooters while Astrid hammered burst berries between rocks. In the momentary chaos, Miri pulled out a small knife strapped to her ankle, cut the leather mailbag off Gunnar’s donkey, and threw it into the brush beside the road. She could not risk going through the bag herself.
The noises stopped, and the men realized they had not actually been shot. Some of the guards fired muskets blindly into the woods. Miri shut her eyes, praying the girls had remembered to lie flat on the ground.
Some checked the animals for wounds and others searched the brush and trees beside the road, the guards with their swords out. Gunnar found the mailbag on the ground. He opened it to make sure the letters were still inside. Miri hoped that at least one was missing.
Miri looked around, all innocence, her hands clasped to her chest.
“My goodness, what was that?”
“Bandits,” said a guard. “Their weapons must have misfired, lucky for us. We should pursue—”
“Oh oh,” Miri said quickly. “I feel so …” She let her eyes roll up and fainted elegantly onto a bush. Moments later she felt herself being lifted into a wagon. She fluttered open her eyes and watched the guards clear the sawed-off tree from the road, declaring they should deliver the lady and the traders safely into town.
They were not pursuing the bandits. Miri felt so relieved she began to cry behind closed eyes.
“She’s weeping from fright,” Miri heard someone whisper. “Poor delicate creature.”
As usual, Gunnar went into Jeffers’s house to talk with him in private. A guard set Miri on the reed-strewn ground outside.
“Have there been more bandits on the road than usual lately?” Miri asked him.
“Rumors of them,” said the guard.
“I’d like to return to Asland. If you’ll escort me to the royal palace, you will be well compensated.”
The guard shifted his feet. “I’m not going to Asland.”
Not going to Asland? These traders always returned to Asland. Where would he be going?
Jeffers came out, and Miri examined him for any sign of disappointment. Had the girls succeeded? He was frowning, but then again he was often frowning.
The Lesser Alvans gathered with animal pelts, reed baskets and mats, dried fish, and other goods to trade and sell. Jeffers set the prices, negotiating between villagers and traders.
Miri stayed in the shade of the house, pretending to be recovering from her faint. Astrid approached and stealthily deposited coins in Miri’s hand before leaving.
“Good work,” Miri whispered.
“Shh,” Astrid said, running off.
Miri counted the coins behind her back. Enough to purchase food for the next month and beyond. She leaned her head back and exhaled.
Miri had years of experience with traders, selling her family’s cut linder stone and buying food to get them through the next season. Still, back home there was no robber village head, nor a scarred bandit lurking, possibly plotting to avenge the death of his chief. Miri began sweating as she strolled through the goods, selecting bags of grain, salt meats, cheeses, and other foods she could help prepare for the sisters, insisting on the same prices she’d heard Jeffers set. She carefully selected a fine pot of honey.
“Where’d you get that money?” Jeffers shouted from across the way.
The conversations quieted. Jeffers stalked straight to Miri.
“Are you addressing me, sir?” said Miri.
“Where’d you get that money? All of a sudden you have money on the very day that the mail—”
He stopped.
Miri stepped back, inching her way out of his shadow. “I brought money with me from Asland,” she lied. “I’ve grown so tired of hunting that I choose to spend it on food for me and the stone house sisters. Is that all right? In Lesser Alva, can a person spend Danlandian coins to purchase food?”
“Of course you can,” said a woman.
“I’ll take your coin,” said a trader, and others laughed.
Jeffers spit to the side. He leaned against a thick pillar of his house and watched her.
She glanced at Fat Hofer. His eyes were hidden in the shade of his hat, but he touched the brim, almost as if he were giving her an approving nod.
She quickly finished her purchases, and the girls arrived to help her carry them back to the house.
“I never see you speak to the other villagers,” Miri said as they stepped off the reed island.
“We don’t really belong to the village,” said Felissa. “Our house sits on dry ground. And we have no boat.”
“A Lesser Alvan without a boat is like a bird without wings,” Sus said gravely.
“And we don’t go to chapel,” said Felissa. “We’ve never been invited.”
“But Ma taught us the stories of the creator god, and we say our prayers,” said Felissa.
They stacked the food in a corner of the linder room and stood back to survey the treasure. Even Sus smiled.
Miri asked, “Now may I teach you Poise?”
Felissa laughed. “Make me a honey cake and I’ll sit through anything.”
Miri laughed too, mostly because she felt uneasy in her belly and wanted to chase the fear away. She dismissed the feeling as surplus fear. They’d gotten away with their banditry. At least, Miri hoped so.
Chapter Ten
Night drops into the soul
Like a stone in water
And wind hides the ripple
Of the hole, of the hole
The heart bears the slaughter
The dry lungs tipple
The breath unrolls like a scroll
It was still bottomless night when Felissa’s sharp inhale woke Miri.
Miri sat upright, rigid with sudden panic, and caught in the corner of her eye a shape in the doorway. Tall, perhaps a man. But when she looked, no one was there.
Felissa was sitting too.
“Do you feel that?” she whispered.
Miri shook her head no. She had not the talent for detecting emotions that the sisters had.
“Someone was really mad,” Felissa said. “I felt so much anger, but you were all asleep.”
“Maybe someone started to enter the house,” said Miri.
“Or maybe I was dreaming,” Felissa whispered.
Felissa yawned and lay back down. Miri stayed sitting on the reed mat, facing the door. If someone had been there and stepped onto the linder threshold feeling angry, Felissa might have felt it. Perhaps the intruder fled when Felissa awoke.
Miri’s heart was fearfully pounding, easily keeping her eyes open. But an hour flowed by and the uneventful dark soothed her. As her heartbeat calmed, her eyes wanted to close. She pinched her leg to stay awake.
Sometime later she decided to lie down, just to get comfortable. She did not think she had fallen asleep until she woke again. The sky was barely lighter, the sun still a suggestion, an idea unspoken.
Miri rolled onto her back. With the coming of day the threat seemed to be gone, so when she heard a noise in the corner of the room, she suspected a rodent searching for food.
She turned to hiss at it, but it was not a rodent.
Jeffers had picked up her pack from the corner of the room and was headed toward the window. Miri nudged Felissa but did not take her eyes off Jeffers. Something glinted in his hand. A dagger?
He stopped, his gaze swinging to her.
“No one steals from me,” he said.
The glint swung outward. Miri knew in that brief moment that seemed longer than an exhale that she should move. But she seemed
tangled, trapped in a net of panic, her heart thudding away all reason.
He would have struck her, but a cord looped around his neck. Sus pulled.
“Support!” Astrid yelled, hooking him around the neck from the other side.
Jeffers raised his knife to cut the loop but Felissa struck him in the hand with a long stick, knocking the knife away and then thumped him in the belly to bring him to his knees.
“Here,” said Astrid, handing Miri her pole.
Miri shook herself and scrambled to her feet. Even winded and kneeling, Jeffers thrashed like a caiman, and it took all of Miri’s strength to hold her pole. Sus pulled on his other side. Felissa thumped his middle again.
Astrid climbed onto the roof. “Meat! We’ve got meat! Hurry! Live meat!”
Many villagers were up boating before dawn, hunting the night creatures, and it did not take long for someone to respond. Two men jumped out of their boat and approached the house with knives out, expecting to carve up a caiman.
Instead they saw Jeffers, thrashing on the floor of the linder house, hooked with two caiman poles.
“What are you about, girl?” asked a village man.
“He sneaked into our house, tried to rob us,” Astrid said, hopping back through the window. “Four girls alone, and we caught him. I call for village punishment.”
More had arrived now, looking through the windows and open door because they had not been invited in.
“It’s Jeffers,” some said, backing away.
“Doesn’t matter who he is,” said Astrid, loud and tall. “He’s meat now!”
The villagers hesitated. This was not a stranger or even some known troublemaker. This was Jeffers tied up and doubled over. Whether it was sacred law or not, Miri could see they would never agree to execute Jeffers.
“Maybe we should just—” a man started to say.
“Astrid has the right to cut him up,” Miri interrupted. She did not want to give the villagers a chance to excuse Jeffers or he’d keep harassing the girls. “But instead she’ll show mercy. Banish him. Jeffers must leave on peril of his life. If he returns to Lesser Alva again, he’s caiman meat.”
“But … ,” someone muttered. “But that’s Jeffers.”
Jeffers lurched to his feet, grabbing Miri’s pole. He tore it from her hands and swung. She fell back, and the pole just missed her head. Sus pulled with all her might, Felissa struck him with her stick, but in his anger he seemed unaffected by pain. He snarled like a beast and swung the pole again. This one hit Miri, striking her on the side with a whack hot as a boiling kettle.
Astrid yelled, “Come in! Come in!”
The village poured into the house, laying hands on Jeffers, pulling him away. Still he thrashed, striking two villagers before enough men could hold him down. His violence seemed to make up their minds. Miri felt the moment when the hesitation streamed away.
“Banishment,” Astrid said fiercely.
“Banishment,” said a woman.
“Banishment,” more voices echoed.
Miri heard pieces of conversations around the room.
“He crossed the threshold uninvited …”
“… four girls at home alone …”
“… swinging at that city girl …”
“… banishment is just …”
The girls watched from the window as several men escorted Jeffers to the woods. He talked the whole way but did not fight back.
The villagers still in the house trickled out reluctantly, looking around as they went, as if they’d always longed for a chance to peek inside.
A young girl whispered to another, “Where do you think they keep their chest of gold?”
One woman paused by Miri. “Did he hurt any of you?”
“I’m all right,” said Miri, rubbing her bruised side. “He was trying to steal my things.”
“We caiman-looped him before he knew what we were about,” Felissa said.
“Good girls,” said the woman. She glanced around. “This room is emptier than I imagined.”
“There’s no chest of gold,” Miri said. “There never was.”
“I wasn’t—” the woman started.
“Is that the rumor?” Miri said. “That the stone house sisters are wealthy? They fish and hunt like the rest of you. The only difference is that they live in this stone house alone, no neighbors to support them.”
The woman nodded, her blush fading. “I didn’t know your ma well. She kept to herself up here, didn’t she? And you girls seemed to do fine after …” The woman sniffed. “Still, I should’ve come to say sorry, should’ve brought you food and checked to see if you were all right. We should’ve done something when she died.”
The woman shook her head at herself and sniffed again before leaving.
Miri felt a strange tightness in her throat as if she would cry, though she was not sure why.
“I didn’t know anyone in town even noticed when Ma died,” said Felissa.
“They noticed,” said Astrid. “They just didn’t care.”
“I’m sorry,” Miri said. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“Her name was Elin. And she had blue eyes and long, thin fingers and a habit of humming when she thought she was alone.” Astrid spoke each word as though she could call up the memory into flesh.
“And she had a big laugh,” said Felissa.
Sus’s serious expression shifted to allow a smile. “I remember her laugh.”
“Do you have a ma?” Felissa asked.
“I did once,” said Miri. “I was born, and she was sick. She held me for a week and didn’t put me down once.”
Felissa lifted her arm. Miri shuffled closer and let Felissa hug her. It had been many weeks since anyone had held Miri, and the sudden touch made her feel even more the ache of absence. Sus and Astrid drew in, and the four of them stood together, arms around each other, hugging away the fear of Jeffers and the sadness of losing a ma that never completely goes away.
“Miri,” Felissa whispered, “you don’t have to ask permission.”
“To enter our house,” Astrid said.
“Not anymore,” said Sus.
• • •
That night lying on her reed mat, Miri was as crowded with thoughts about Marda as the night was with sounds. Never before had she wondered, when their ma spent her last week holding newborn Miri, where was little Marda?
Miri had always considered that week with her mother the most precious thing she owned. She reached into her bag to retrieve her second most precious possession, the linder hawk Peder had carved for her. The head and beak were smooth, polished over time by the touch of her fingers.
I miss you, Peder, she quarry-spoke, her message riding the memory of their farewell in the palace courtyard. He was too far away to hear, but she kept quarry-speaking anyway.
I miss you, Marda …
Miri quarry-spoke the memory of the day she and her sister had explored the old princess academy building. A stolen afternoon, a giddy freedom, laughing voices echoing in the empty stone rooms.
Miri could not think of a memory she could quarry-speak that would communicate, I’m sorry Ma died of having me and so abandoned you. I’m sorry I left you too.
So she just kept quarry-speaking the happy memory, clinging to the linder hawk, in a swamp as far away as the moon.
Written Autumn Week Twelve
Never received
Dearest Miri,
This is silly, but I swear I heard you yesterday. I was pushing a cut stone up the quarry path when I suddenly remembered that day we walked all the way to the old stone minister’s house, remember? The spring after the building was no longer the princess academy. We wandered through the empty rooms, and you acted out things your tutor would say. I do not remember ever laughing so hard.
Today that memory was as sharp as a stone wedge. But it had such a sense of you, as if I was not just remembering it myself but you were also quarry-speaking it to me.
I watched for you a
ll day. I was so sure you were near. You did not come, of course. It was just my silly imagination.
Still, I went to sleep last night sure that you are well somewhere in the world and thinking of me.
Your sister,
Marda
Chapter Eleven
Katarina’s scourge
Bloody, bloody war
Danland sings a dirge
Never, nevermore
As usual, Miri woke sweating. Winter was coming, but autumn still crackled hot, like embers spitting ashes, refusing to go out. They had a house full of food purchased with their bandit money, but none prepared, so Miri put some beans and water in a pot over the fire so it would be ready in time for lunch.
She trudged into the village and sat beside Fat Hofer. At first she thought he was asleep there in his same spot, leaning against the chapel, his eyes hidden by his hat, but when she placed a couple of coins beside him, he immediately snatched them up and tucked them under his blanket.
“Will Jeffers come back?”
“I doubt he’s gone entirely,” he said. “Late last night I saw a boat off toward the sea where no one hunts. But he would be foolish to attack you again.”
“Sometimes men are foolish.”
Fat Hofer grunted but offered no opinion.
“You’ll keep an eye out for him?” Miri asked. “I’d feel safer knowing that you were watching our backs.”
“If you pay me, then yes.”
Miri smiled. “You’d do it anyway.”
Fat Hofer lowered his cap farther over his eyes. He whispered, “Don’t tell.”
Miri patted his soft, warm hand and walked back, finding the girls in one of their usual fishing spots.
Knee-deep, watching for snakes and searching for fish, Miri took a calming breath. The breeze off the water smelled so normal Miri could not remember why she used to wrinkle her nose at it. The air was rich, thick, and full of life. Pleasant, even. How strange to feel as relaxed in this sticky, biting, crawling swamp as she might leaning back in a well-used chair.
“You like it here,” Felissa said, moving in to swish a net beside her.
“Hm?” Miri said.
“I sensed it from you this morning in the house. Whenever you woke up, you used to feel disappointed, as if remembering again where you are and wishing you weren’t. But today was different.”
