The Wildkin's Curse

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘You’re pale and sweating, and the skin under your eyes is blue,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Your heart beats too fast for a boy your age. Do you ever have trouble catching your breath?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Were you sick as a child?’

  He shrugged and nodded. She felt his heart with her scarred fingers, then nodded her head and went back to her shelf. ‘I’ll give you a bottle of my potion. I want you to drink a teaspoon every morning and every night. When it is finished, come back and I’ll make you some more.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ Merry asked.

  ‘It’s made from boiling lily of the valley and hawthorn blossoms in water,’ she said. ‘I have added some tincture of foxglove leaves to it, for extra power. It’ll strengthen your heart and make it beat more smoothly. In the meantime, be careful of overexerting yourself. You do not want your heart to fail you again.’

  He leant his head miserably against the chair. ‘Thank you . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘I’m called Palila of the Birds.’

  Merry nodded, vaguely recognising the name. He looked at her more closely, thinking he had seen her somewhere before. Then it came to him. ‘I know you! You . . . you’re Princess Rozalina’s warden!’

  The old woman nodded. ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘You held the chain that bound her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . what are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here. I have always lived here. I do not like the palace. If it was not for Princess Rozalina, I would never go there.’

  He shook his head, bewildered.

  ‘Did you think I lived with her always? I used to when she was a baby, but I could not bear being always locked up and confined, and she knew I missed the sea and my birds. I always did much to help the hearthkin in the city too, and I know they missed my healing arts. So Princess Rozalina said I was only to come during the daylight hours, when she is awake and needing company. I go out at dawn and dusk to gather herbs and to tend the sick, and then I go on up to the palace and break my fast with her.’

  ‘It’s a long way,’ Merry said, thinking of the dreadful climb back down that precipitous cliff-face to the seashore, and the hard scramble over the rocks to the harbour, and then the long way through the city and the forest and the steep road zigzagging its way up to the palace, which could not be so very far above their heads now.

  ‘Bless you, I have my own set of steps,’ Palila said. ‘They lead up to the cellars. Most of the servants think I sleep there somewhere, if they think about it at all. Princess Rozalina and I spend the day together, playing games and telling stories, and then we have supper and I come home. She wants to talk to her mother most nights.’

  ‘Talk to her mother? But . . .’

  ‘But Queen Shoshanna is dead. Yes, I know. Her ghost haunts the tower. I do not mind, but it has driven other guards of Rozalina’s close to madness.’

  ‘I think I saw her,’ Merry whispered.

  ‘Queen Shoshanna?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The old woman regarded him with steady dark eyes. ‘There are few who can see so clearly. Most only feel the ghosts of the dead. It does not surprise me though. You found my cave, which few can do. You must have some measure of the Sight. And you called to Horace.’

  ‘No . . . I didn’t call him . . . though I did follow him . . .’

  She frowned.

  ‘I need a pelican feather.’ Merry thought how stupid he must sound. He tried to explain, but the old woman waved her hand dismissively, saying, ‘Of course, we know that. I told you we heard you calling.’

  ‘You heard me calling?’ Again Merry had the sense that it was his brain that was stuffed with feathers, not the cushion he was sitting on. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Do you not know you have the Gift of Calling? Three times already I’ve heard you call.’

  Merry shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It is one of the Gifts of the wildkin. You can call to birds, like I can. One day you’ll be able to talk to them, if you wish. We call it the Tongue of the Heavens.’

  Merry stared at her, wondering if she was mad, like the boy on the wharf had said. ‘I can’t speak with birds.’

  She made an impatient movement with her hand. ‘No, of course you can’t. Not yet, anyway. Yet you have the Gift. You are like a newborn child, with a brain hungry for language, first learning to babble sounds that have meaning.’

  ‘But . . . do you mean when I whistle? Or try to mimic bird sounds? Or when I play my lute . . . sometimes I try and put the songs of birds into my music.’

  ‘They are all ways of speaking, but they are not what I mean. I mean when you reach out, with your mind, with longing, with desire, when you seek to connect . . .’

  He stared at her, and she said gently, ‘You are calling now.’ At her feet, the pelican stirred, turning his head, looking at Merry with great, dark eyes.

  ‘You do not know how rare it is, to have the Tongue of the Heavens,’ she said, leaning forward to stroke the pelican’s smooth white head with one of her misshapen hands. ‘I have it too, and the Tongue of Darkness, the secret language. Princess Rozalina, she has the Tongue of Flame. Now that is the rarest of all Gifts, the most beautiful, the most dangerous.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘She has the power to move people with her words, to sway them, to make them feel and think and understand things they’ve never felt or thought or understood before. She has the power to change people’s minds, which you must know is the most difficult thing to do in the world. Yet she lives in a world haunted by silence. I fear she will go mad if she does not escape soon. That, or her enemies will kill her.’

  ‘So you know why we need the pelican feather?’ Merry said after a long pause.

  ‘I can guess,’ she said peacefully. ‘You have the cloak of feathers?’

  He nodded, and she sighed a long, deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Then ask him.’

  Merry leant forward in his chair, fixing the pelican with his eyes, thinking only, Please . . .

  The pelican shuffled forward a few clumsy steps and opened wide his beautiful white wing. Merry reached out and gently plucked one of the feathers.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and the pelican bowed his head.

  CHAPTER 25

  Morning of the Spring Equinox

  ROZALINA WATCHED THE PELICANS SOAR AND WHEEL AGAINST the sky with new hope in her heart. It had always been a bittersweet joy, watching the white-winged birds soar over the vast blue water and wishing she too could fly free. Now there was no bitterness in the sweetness, no sorrow in the joy.

  Rozalina had wished for a hero to come to her, someone tall and fair and strong, and he had come. That at least was one wish she did not need to fear. Unlike longing for her mother again, or hoping her father would die. Both those wishes had come true too, but they were dreadful things to want. Rozalina thought of Count Zedrin with a warm glow in her heart. He was the one, she knew it, and today was the day when at last she would fly free as a bird over the wave.

  She looked around her, at the small room that had been her home for sixteen long years, and was filled with exultation at the thought she might never see it again. She had done what she could to make it a home, but since she was not permitted any curtains or tapestries to soften the hard, cold, glass walls, or anything that might be used to help her escape, it was rather stark and bare.

  She was allowed only songbooks and storybooks, which Palila brought her from the palace library. Sometimes Palila dared to conceal within them fragments of older books written in the secret language of the wildkin, what Palila called the Dark Tongue. She had taught Rozalina how to read it and speak it, and many of the stories she told at court were inspired by these old tales.

  Rozalina had to be careful how she told the old tales, or the new stories that were sent to Palila from all over the country, by pigeon p
ost or pelican messenger, news and gossip written in secret codes and concealed within the pelicans’ great bills, or tied in scrolls to the pigeons’ legs.

  She would write the tales down on parchment with her quill, giving them different names and scenery, and new rhythms and cadences, until the old tale was barely recognisable. This was when Rozalina was at her happiest, her quill pen scratching against the parchment, her fingers ink-stained, her brain busy with words and visions unfurling.

  If she was not careful to conceal one story within another, her father or the astronomer would guess she had been in contact with the outside world, and they would take Palila away again, hurting her to try to find out what she knew and how.

  Rozalina sighed. She looked out the south-facing window, down to the fountain where the swans floated. That was where she had first seen Count Zedrin, the hero she had wished for. She had seen into his heart and known what she must do.

  Count Zedrin was there again, sitting on the stone edge of the fountain, staring up at the window. When he saw her, he got to his feet and raised a hand to her. She raised hers in return. He then pressed his hand to his heart and bowed to her. Rozalina smiled.

  Zed stood for a moment longer, his hand pressed to his heart, which was beating uncomfortably fast, then he sighed and turned away.

  He had not slept well last night, his brain on fire with thoughts of Rozalina and plans to rescue her. In the end, he had got up in the pale pre-dawn light and scouted the courtyard and round the tower, dismayed at its height and impregnability. He had seen her in the window, so small and frail and so far away. Was it even possible to get in and out that narrow slit of a window? And the doorway was well lit and well guarded. No one could approach without being seen.

  If only he knew whether Merry had managed to find the last two feathers! Because it seemed clear to Zed that he needed the cloak of feathers. Even if he tried to rescue Rozalina while she was at the feast today, they would still need to fly over the high surrounding walls. And then what? He needed a fast ship to get her away. A fast ship and fair winds.

  He thought of the Wind Dancer and strode back to his room, where he hurried to the desk and scribbled a note to the Wind Dancer’s captain, asking him to have the ship provisioned and ready to sail, pending further orders. He sealed the note with wax and his signet ring, and rang the bell.

  Aubin the Fair answered it, looking rather displeased at being required to do such a menial task. He was tired-faced and dishevelled, his moustache without its usual waxen twist.

  ‘What has happened to your squires, my lord?’ he said testily. ‘It is their job to answer bells and run messages, not mine.’

  ‘They’re busy,’ Zed said curtly. ‘Though if you see them, tell them I want to see them now. And get someone to run this down to the harbour for me, as quick as you can.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Aubin replied, taking the note in his big, callused hand. He stood, hesitating.

  ‘What is it?’ Zed asked impatiently.

  ‘My lord, I hope you will forgive me talking out of turn . . . it’s just, with your uncle being dead and all, and you not having anyone older and wiser to advise you . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s this wildkin witch, my lord. You seem fair enthralled by her and it doesn’t seem right, a young lad like you, getting trapped in her guiles.’

  Zed jerked irritably. ‘You should not speak of the king’s granddaughter in such a way. She is the crown princess, and just an innocent girl. It’s a crime the way she’s been kept locked up all this time.’

  ‘No, my lord. It’s a crime for you to say so,’ Aubin said. ‘The king knows what he’s about, keeping her locked up. She’s a wildkin, and dangerous. Haven’t you heard the tales about how she cursed the poor prince so all his other children died? And now she’s bewitched the king to change the law so she will inherit the throne. A wildkin! And a girl! The king must’ve run mad.’

  ‘Aubin! You must not speak so. It’s all gossip and lies.’

  ‘It’s no gossip that he named her crown princess,’ Aubin pointed out. ‘I was there, I heard him. It doesn’t seem right, to disinherit you in her favour.’

  ‘I’m not disinherited,’ Zed said, trying hard not to lose his temper. ‘If the king had not changed the law on female inheritance, I would never have been in line for the throne anyway.’

  Aubin looked dissatisfied.

  ‘Please, just take the message for me,’ Zed said.

  The constable looked down at the note. ‘A message for the captain? You planning on setting sail?’

  ‘Chtatchka blast it, that is none of your business! My message is private. I have given you an order! Go and do it!’

  Aubin shook his head worriedly. ‘A starkin lord uttering hearthkin oaths. It’s a bad sign, a very bad sign. Indeed, yes, the world is coming to ruin.’ He turned and went out, one hand worrying at the limp end of his moustache.

  Zed stared after him, deeply perturbed. Where were Merry and Liliana?

  Palila insisted on Merry resting a while longer, and made him a cup of hot peppermint tea while she laboriously ground up some chestnuts in her mortar to make him a bowl of thin gruel. Merry was not hungry, but after a few mouthfuls he began to eat more eagerly, feeling warmth and strength returning to his body.

  ‘It was so lucky I met you,’ he said. ‘You are the Erlrune’s contact in Zarissa, aren’t you? Would you be able to organise a boat for us, to get away from here?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she answered after a long moment. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight,’ Merry said. ‘At sunset.’

  ‘Very well,’ she replied, after a much longer pause. ‘I have friends among the fishermen, people who owe me favours. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘It has to be ready,’ Merry said. ‘All will be lost if we cannot escape the city. Make sure it is down below your cave at sunset.’

  ‘A boat, at sunset, below my cave,’ she repeated, and drew a small wooden desk towards her, beginning to scrape clean an old piece of parchment.

  ‘Have you always lived in the cave?’ he asked, tasting another mouthful of the chestnut gruel.

  ‘For many a long year,’ she answered. ‘I like to be close enough to see and hear the sea.’

  ‘And how did you come to be nursemaid to the princess?’

  She shrugged. ‘I came when Queen Shoshanna was first brought here. I thought perhaps I could help her escape. She was too heavily guarded, though. I tried sleeping potions, and poisons to strike the guards down with cramps and vomiting, and I tried bribes. Three times I almost had her free, only to be seen, or betrayed. I was lucky not to be killed for my pains.’

  For a moment the only sound was the knife against the parchment. Then Palila continued in a soft voice, as if speaking to herself, ‘The years passed. Queen Shoshanna had begged me to make sure she did not conceive a child, not wanting to condemn one of her blood to a life spent in prison and degradation. Then one day she changed her mind. A message came . . . a prophecy had been uttered . . .’

  ‘Three times a babe shall be born, between star-crowned and iron-bound,’ Merry said.

  She stopped and stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘First the sower of seeds, the soothsayer, though lame, he must travel afar. Next shall be the king-breaker, the king-maker, though broken himself he shall be. Last, the smallest and the greatest—in him, the blood of wise and wild, farseeing ones and starseeing ones. Though he must be lost before he can find, though, before he sees, he must be blind, if he can find and if he can see, the true king of all he shall be.’

  ‘How do you know of this?’ Her voice was tense and urgent.

  ‘It was my father who spoke it,’ Merry said.

  She sat still a long moment, then began to sharpen the point of her quill, her old hands trembling. ‘Your father . . .’

  ‘Yes. He died. He was killed.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ she murmured, beginning to write carefully on the parchment.
‘You know then why Shoshanna decided to have a child. A child that had in him the blood of wise and wild, farseeing ones and starseeing ones . . . I helped her make sure she conceived, and then I helped her give birth. She had never been strong, and all those years held captive had broken her health. She died.’

  ‘Poor queen,’ Merry said inadequately. ‘And poor little princess.’

  ‘Yes,’ Palila replied, very low. She stood up, folded the parchment in two, and beckoned to Horace, who waddled towards her, opening wide his beak. She concealed the message in his pouch, bent and whispered close to his head, and then watched as he waddled out the cave mouth and took off into the air. Her old face looked weary and sad.

  ‘At least she had you,’ Merry said, trying to comfort her.

  Palila smiled briefly. ‘I was never enough for her. She longed for her mother, and wished for Shoshanna so hard she called her ghost out of its grave. And now she has wished for a hero, and it looks as if he has come.’

  Merry sighed. He pressed his hand to his heart, feeling the shiny triangle of skin where he had been stabbed and where Liliana had healed him. It seemed as if Zed would win the princess’s heart and hand, and with it the throne, while Merry had lost everything.

  It was like the romance of Zed’s parents, which had ended in peace and prosperity in Estelliana Castle, contrasting so cruelly against the tragedy of Merry’s parents, which had ended in the death of his father and the endless fight of his mother for justice and freedom.

  For the first time, Merry felt a little stirring of rebelliousness. I am the true heir, he thought to himself. I am the one who should be named crown prince. Why should I not have what is rightfully mine? Maybe if I could win the throne, I could offer it to Liliana, and she could be queen as she deserves to be.

  He sighed again, so deeply Palila looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Come, are you feeling better? It is time to go.’

  He nodded and got slowly to his feet, handing her the small wooden bowl, which he had scraped clean. She rinsed it and put it back on the shelf, then lit a small oil lamp that smelt sickeningly of fish. Holding it in one hand, she lifted a curtain of pelican skins at the back of the cave, revealing a steep and narrow staircase winding up through the rock. It was so low that Merry would have to duck his head.