by Jane Yolen
Great-aunt Gilda squared her shoulders, bid us good day, and went back into her belvedere, shutting the door very solidly behind her.
We were all too shocked to speak and so dispersed to our private places, each and every one of us, without saying what we were thinking.
• • • • • • • •
Yet not a day later, after taking the potion that Great-aunt Gilda concocted for her, the queen went bathing in a mountain stream with her ladies-in-waiting, more for the sake of cooling than cleanliness. Mostly humans are a disgustingly filthy lot.
And a frog—or so the queen said—climbed upon her royal knee and prophesied that she would have a child.
Now, I have known many frogs. And though the peepers especially are a solipsistic tribe, believing they alone bring up spring from the edge of the world, frogs have no magickal talents at all.
None.
And they usually don’t speak to humans.
“Unless they’re enchanted princes, of course,” Dusty whispered to me when we heard. “But even then, they can’t tell the future.”
He was right, of course, as he often was. But wrong, too. As he can often be.
The human ability to believe the unbelievable is legendary. In rapid succession, they can believe the world rests on the backs of giant turtles and that the stars sing out in spheres. They believe that angels guide their days and that aliens from faraway worlds live among them—who also guide their days. They can believe 101 things that no fey would ever consider without first checking out the rumors, possibilities, and downright lies.
The queen heard the knee-creature out, leaped from the stream, and rushed off home, her crown on her head and precious little else on. We know this because Bobbin and Robbin had been spying on her. Or rather spying on her pretty handmaidens, and didn’t the Aunts ream the two of them out afterward.
Once at the palace, in a high, breathy voice, the queen told the king of the prophecy, though she conveniently left out the Bidding, the potion, the Wish, and the Oath. The king wouldn’t have been happy about the Oath. If he was careful about one thing, it was keeping us Shouting Fey alive.
The king, though well past believing her promises, was not above hope. In fact, he hoped for a month and then lost faith all over again.
Faith twice broken is hard mending, Father likes to say.
But much to everyone’s surprise—except Father’s—the queen gave birth some nine and a half months later, huffing and puffing and screaming almost as loudly as a Shouting Fey.
Gave birth to a girl.
Father said, “There is a law to be enacted years hence called Probability, and it means that occasionally a frog’s prophecy will have to be accurate.”
“What law?” roared Great-aunt Gilda, no longer pale and quiet as she’d been for months until the news of the queen’s baby had been announced with a rather large bottle of champagne in a basket addressed to her and delivered by three footmen in full livery. The Oath, you see, had been fulfilled.
“I have it in a book somewhere. Shall I get it for you?” Father asked, which was always an effective way to stop a conversation with Great-aunt Gilda, who huffed out of our pavilion and back to her belvedere, muttering about the difference between possibilities and probabilities to anyone who would listen.
• • • • • • • •
Robbin and Bobbin went off spying again and came back with the news that the king, staring down at the little bundle wrapped in a pink blanket, had announced, “Now that we know my beloved wife is not barren, she will soon have a second child. A boy this time.”
When Father heard that, he shook his head. “That kind of encouragement only leads to bad behavior.” And then he added, “Poor king. He doesn’t understand the power of women. Or their desires. Or how perfect and perfectly wonderful girl children can be.”
• • • • • • • •
The king and queen called the princess Talia, a lovely name for what was a homely, bawling, squawling infant. I’d flown into the palace, snuck into her bedroom, and peeked at her one night when even the nursemaids had fallen asleep, exhausted from her constant demands.
Red-faced from her latest screaming bout, Talia lay in her golden cradle, eyes closed and all but naked, having kicked off her covers. A silken blankie had been flung halfway out. Who knew human babies had such strength?
A silver rattle lay next to her head. I considered flying down and covering her up again, less to make her warm than to put that belly out of sight. I thought about placing the rattle in her fat little fingers. Or bonking her on the nose with it. I even thought about tickling her feet.
And then she opened her eyes, saw me, and started to scream again. It was louder than Great-aunt Gilda’s worst Shout, without any magick in it at all. Just anger or frustration or royal temper, or a combination of all three. It nearly shattered my eardrums. And it did not auger well for the young woman she would become.
I shuddered and flew right back home. There I lay on my bed for a day and a half with a blistering headache that no tisane could touch. The baby princess had no magick, but she sure had lungs.
• • • • • • • •
Several weeks later, the king Bid the Family to come to Talia’s christening and bring her, each one of us, a valuable and magickal gift. He was quite specific. He wanted gifts of fabulous beauty and a soft voice to be numbered in our giving, which made sense, since right at the moment, anyone could see she had neither. He also wanted sweetness of character, an ability to enchant the masses, the brains of a scribe, and the ability to pluck music from a harp. And much, much more.
The usual stuff.
The Bidding looked like an ordinary royal invitation, written in gold leaf. The king’s scribe had decorated the tops and bottoms with babies and crowns, and a smattering of harebells painted in odd, unnatural colors, as if the man had simply never seen one up close. Harebells, that is, not babies. There was a purple ribbon wrapping the invitation into an inviting scroll. Inviting, that is, if we’d been angling for an invite.
But this was no ordinary summons, as the messenger who delivered it made sure we understood. It was a Royal Bidding.
By custom—and the laws of magick—none of us could refuse.
Remember, I was thirteen and as contrary as any thirteen-year-old. I was no longer quite as quiet as I’d been as a child, though still accident-prone. I now used the library to find out as much as I could about the world outside of our small kingdom, and wanted nothing more than to be away from the close confines of our life here. After all, I was learning about everything I could, from coprolite and bat guano to Darwinism and entropy. I tried cookbooks in the hopes of understanding what this chocolate I’d been reading about could possibly be. I’d even borrowed the Archimedes book from Dusty, reading passages over and over again till the book was threadbare. I was only up to the H’s in the bookshelves, but then I was only thirteen.
As I flew home one day in a long, slow soar from the meadow, where I often went to read books aloud because that usually helped me understand the hard parts, I happened to glance down just as the king’s messenger in his red-and-gold uniform arrived at our front door. I could see the bald spot on his head, round as a bull’s-eye, and stifled the urge to drop one of the books on it, All About Iron. It was a boring book, and it seemed from above that he was sure to be a boring man. They deserved one another.
I watched as he shifted awkwardly, first on one leg and then the other, as if he were some kind of stork. He looked uncomfortable and afraid; most humans do when trespassing in our woods. Every once in a while, he leaned forward and tentatively rapped his knuckles on the door, which no one ever does, and so no one heard him. Or if they did, they assumed he was a woodpecker. Finally, he leaned even farther forward, nose almost on the door, searching—I supposed—for an iron knocker, though we, of course, had
none, iron being anathema to the fey, though the book on iron never mentioned it. So much for All About.
I flew down, startling him, though he stood his ground. As frightened as he was of me (they are told that we eat human children for our Christmas breakfast), he was much more afraid of what the king would do to him if he didn’t deliver the invitation.
I landed badly and hurt my ankle, but it was nothing compared to other landings I have had. This time, I didn’t even let out a moan.
“Mistress,” he said (actually, I was not yet old enough for such address, but messengers are sticklers for good form), “the king sends you his greetings and a Bidding.”
“What is it?” I asked, pointing at the scroll. “His greetings or the Bidding or something else?”
“I am . . .” And then he was taken by such a severe cough, I had to wait several minutes to hear the rest of his answer. When the spasms stopped, he said in a bruised and shaky voice, “I am not of the privilege or class to know what is in the Royal Scroll.” He said it as if it was in capital letters. I suspected he couldn’t read, being only a messenger.
“I”—at that, he almost started coughing all over again, but managed to gulp it back down—“can only give it to one of the Shouting Fey. The king Bids them come and gift his new daughter with beauty, a soft voice, sweetness of character, the brains of a scribe, and a fine ear for music.”
He looked at me carefully to be sure I was indeed one of the Family. I suppose the wings gave me away. And the fact that I had just dropped down from the sky.
“Do you need to come in?” I asked, taking the scroll from him.
He squeaked, “No. I am just . . . following orders.” And before I could ask anything more, he had turned and was gone, running out of the woods as fast as his legs could take him.
I brought the scroll inside to Mother, who was in the kitchen with Father having a cup of steamy mulberry wine even though it was early afternoon.
She unrolled the scroll with a sigh.
Standing in front of her, I could easily read the Bidding upside down, a trick I’d learned over the years with Father in the library. He watched me and knew what I was doing.
“Gorse . . . ” he warned, but it was too late. I’d already scanned the entire contents. The scribe’s writing was very big, with nothing much else to commend it, especially its lack of punctuation.
As the king of all shires here around and further
I Bid the entire Court of the Shouting Fey
to come to the christening of
Talia
Princess Royal Duchess of Coventry
Lady of Wellington Wells
and Airdel of the Seven Hills
The christening starts Monday next at 8 am
Appropriate gifts are mandatory
Do not be late
I was appalled. “He clearly never met a comma or period he liked.”
Mother said, “What?”
Father smiled wanly.
And then I realized what the message actually said. I made a face. “Why did he Bid us? He’s got all those cousins and hangers-on and in-laws and outlaws who can come with gifts,” I said. “And we’re so poor, we’re forced to live on moonbeams and drink dew and . . .”
It wasn’t really true of course, but lovely in its own way. I’d borrowed the moonbeams and dew stuff from Great-aunt Gilda, who in full rant could go on like that for hours.
Mother shook her head. She was one Shout away from blasting me back into my room, though I doubted she would waste her daily Shout on such small stuff. Still, she stiffened and her head snapped up. “He will want us to confer such attributes as—”
“I already know that,” I broke in sassily.
She looked at Father and said four words to him, the same four she’d used when any of her children reached the Age of Argumentation, as she called it.
“You . . . speak . . . to . . . her.” She struck her middle finger on the table for each syllable with such force, the cups of wine nearly fell off the tabletop. Her mouth looked pinched, as if she’d been sucking on lemons, and her normally gooseberry-green eyes were suddenly black as shrouds. “Innocence is all very well and good, and I know she’s the baby and your favorite and you’ve insisted on keeping her in the dark about family stuff while educating her far beyond what can be found in our borders, but honestly, my love, you’ve left this one for too long.”
• 4 •
TIED
Innocence. Mother had thrown the word between them as if it were so filthy, it hurt her mouth to say it. But if she meant by “innocence” that I’d been left unschooled in matters that I should have known about, I agreed. Secrets are one thing, but intentional stupidity another.
Father drew me out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the library. His touch was soft, but there was no denying the steel beneath. I’d never actually noticed that steel before. Strangely enough, it was comforting.
With its floor-to-ceiling shelves and cozy divans and chairs, the library was usually a sanctuary. But it was cold that day, and the room was full of shadows. They should have served as a warning. Or if I’d more magick at that pivotal age, I might have guessed the truth.
We sat between the N’s for Neverland and the O’s for Ontology and Oz. Not having read past the H’s yet, I had no idea what those things were, though Ontology had a lovely lilt to it. I wasn’t so sure about Neverland, which sounded awfully negative.
My back was as rigid as Mother’s had been. “Why must we spend our remaining bits of magick on some stupid human baby?” I said in that challenging way thirteen-year-olds have. “Just because a stupid king Bids it!” I waved a hand in the general direction of the castle, or at least in what I thought was the general direction of the castle, though I was a full ninety degrees off. The library, being round and in the very center of the pavilion, often had that effect on my understanding of the compass points.
“I mean,” I continued, “we have nothing, and the king has a million acres of land. He has six rivers, five mountains, and the tithing of all the farms from the Western Sea to the East.” This last I’d heard Great-aunt Gilda say. My hand was still waving about like a compass needle gone mad.
“A quarter million,” Father said.
“A million, a quarter million, what’s the difference? It’s still a lot!” I crossed my arms and grumped. I’d gotten very good at grumping lately.
“Think, Gorse, think,” Father said. It was something he was always saying to me, but never to my brothers and sisters, as if I were the only one deficient in thinking. “In a spell, any kind of numerical discrepancy makes a huge difference.” Father’s face was solemn. “Which you know.” Then he added even more softly, “And in life as well, my darling girl.”
My mouth curled downward, like a parenthesis. Calling me his darling girl did nothing to pull me from my grump, even if I was—in Mother’s astonishing word—his favorite. But I was determined to let him know. “Well, it’s not a spell. And it’s not fair.”
Father smiled at me. “Of course it’s not fair. And even less fair than you know. That’s what Mother wants me to tell you.”
“No she doesn’t.”
“Just listen for once, Gorse, and think,” Father said. “I know that’s hard to do at thirteen.”
And then I remembered the other word. “What did she mean by innocence?”
He sighed. “Your mother learned what I am about to tell you when she was so young, it ruined her childhood. I determined it would not happen to any of you, and with you being the last, and so often ill, I wanted to let you still have a time of not knowing—”
“You of all people to say that, Father.”
His long face looked even longer, and he ran a hand through his hair, disclosing his elf ears, a sign that he was really distressed.
“Hear me out, child. I had thought, you see, to have discovered how to change things long before you got this old. But . . .”
I tried to look as if I were not listening. I played with my hair, twining strands around my fingers. Once Father had tried to explain to me why I was the only one with black hair, why Alliford the only one with red hair. The explanation had letters in it—RNB or DNO or something—but it was another of those not-fair things, and I’d refused to listen. He’d even tried to tell me it had to do with peas in a pod, and that had made no sense at all.
I looked up at the cupola, where last year’s autumn leaves still lay dark and sodden against the glass.
“This is important, dear child,” he said.
I made another face. “So important you deliberately kept it from me?”
He put his hands on mine. “Really important that you listen now.”
So I listened. Father doesn’t use the qualifier “really” often. And of course I really wanted to know what he had to say. So, I leaned in toward him, and he knew he’d gotten my full attention.
His voice got quiet and solemn. “Now, you know all about Biddings. But you don’t know the why of them. So I am going to tell you that, but a lot more, too.”
“Is this true, or a story?” I wasn’t going to let the grump go very easily, even though I knew Father couldn’t lie.
“Perhaps a bit of both,” Father said, “since I am telling you what the Aunts and your mother have told me.” He smiled sadly. “The story is the sweetener.”
I nodded. And listened.
“Now,” Father began, “the king owns many acres of land. He can ride out as he wills. He can conquer more acres if he wishes. He can have a summer house on a far island and go on long trips to the Continent. He taxes people as much as he can, and when he can’t, he sometimes imprisons them and takes their homes or starts wars. He can even marry again if his wife displeases him.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “She displeases me,” I said. “She’s a whiner and—”
