Alanna

by Tamora Pierce

  The squire obeyed the kitten’s command. Cuddling it against her shoulder, she searched her saddlebags for her blanket.

  “How did you get here, little cat?” she asked, gently toweling it dry. “It’s a bad night for anyone to be out-of-doors.”

  The kitten purred noisily, as if it agreed. The poor thing is skin and bones—not someone’s pet, Alanna reflected. Wondering what its eyes looked like, she lifted its chin with a careful finger, and gulped. The black kitten’s large eyes were as purple as her own.

  “Great Merciful Mother,” she breathed with reverence. Settling by the fire, she fed her guest as she thought. She had never heard of a cat with purple eyes. Was it supernatural? An immortal, perhaps? If so, she wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with it. She had troubles enough!

  His stomach full, the small animal began to wash vigorously. Alanna laughed. Violet eyes didn’t make a creature supernatural. Weren’t she and Thom proof of that? This cat certainly behaved like a normal animal. Thinking of something, she lifted her new pet’s tail and checked its sex. Satisfied he was a male, and ignoring his protests against the indignity, Alanna settled him on her lap. The kitten grumbled for a few moments, then settled himself. She leaned back against the willow’s broad trunk, listening to the animal’s very loud purr. It’ll be nice to have a pet to talk to, she thought sleepily.

  The sneezes hit her, five at once, blinding her momentarily. Swearing like a guardsman, Alanna wiped her watering eyes. When she could see, a tall hooded stranger was standing beside her fire!

  Alanna jumped to her feet, her sword unsheathed and ready, spilling the yelling cat to the ground. She stared at the newcomer, fighting to calm herself. She had no right to attack this—man? woman?—simply because she had been surprised.

  “May I be of service?” she gasped. The kitten was tugging on her boot, demanding to be held once more. “Hush,” she told it before looking at the stranger again.

  “I saw your fire through the trees.” The newcomer’s voice was husky and soft, like the wind blowing through the treetops, and yet somehow Alanna was reminded of a pack of hounds belling in the hunt. “Would you permit me to warm myself?”

  Alanna hesitated, then nodded. The stranger threw back the concealing hood, revealing a woman—the tallest woman Alanna had ever seen. Her skin was perfectly white, setting off slanting emerald eyes and full red lips. Her hair was unbound, falling loosely below her shoulders in black, snaky locks. Alanna gulped. The woman’s face was too perfect to be quite real, and she settled before the fire with boneless grace. She watched Alanna as she sat down clumsily again, her amazingly green eyes unreadable.

  “It is odd to see a youngling alone in this place,” she said at last. Her mouth curved in a tiny smile. “There are strange tales about this tree, and what passes beneath it.”

  The kitten jumped back into Alanna’s lap and purred. Alanna stroked it nervously, never taking her eyes away from her visitor.

  “I was caught by the storm,” she answered carefully. “This was the first shelter I found.” And now I’m sorry I found it, she added to herself. I don’t like surprises!

  The woman looked her over carefully, still smiling that hooded smile. “And so, my daughter, now you are a squire. Within four years you will be a knight. That doesn’t seem so far from now, does it?”

  Alanna opened and closed her mouth several times with surprise before biting her lips together. The “squire” part was easy; beneath her cloak she was wearing the royal uniform, as was required when squires went abroad without their masters. But the woman had called her “my daughter”; the stranger knew she was a girl, even though she was dressed as a boy with her breasts bound flat! And her own mother had died years ago, when Alanna was born. Suddenly she remembered that she had heard the woman’s voice before. Where? At last she made the safest answer she could.

  “I don’t want to seem rude, but I’d rather not speak of the Ordeal,” she said flatly. “I’d like not to think of it, if possible.”

  “But you must think of it, my daughter,” the woman chided. Alanna frowned. She had almost remembered… “When you undergo the Ordeal of Knighthood, many things will happen. You will become a knight, the first woman knight in more than a hundred of your years. You will have to reveal your true sex soon after that; your own nature will not let you remain silent for long. I know well how much you hate living a lie before your friends at the palace.”

  Alanna stiffened. She had remembered that voice. Jonathan had been a boy, dying of the Sweating Sickness. The palace healers said there was no hope, but Alanna—only a page then—had gotten Sir Myles to convince them to let her use her healing Gift. The sorcery causing the fever was too much for the magic she knew, and in the end she had appealed to the Great Mother Goddess. She had heard a voice that hurt her ears—a woman’s voice that sounded like a pack of hounds in full cry, like the huntress urging them on. And she had heard that voice again, only a year ago, when she and Jon were trapped in the Black City. They had called on the Goddess for help then, and she had told them what to do.

  “That’s impossible,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “You—you can’t be—”

  “And why not?” the Mother asked. “It is time we talked, you and I. Surely you know that you are one of my Chosen. Is it so strange that I have come to you for a time, my daughter?”