Tales from the Hinterland

by Melissa Albert

  He went home in a red rage. He beat his horse, slapped the servants, overturned his wine. Watching his fit of temper from her usual seat was his father’s mistress. She had lived in the castle since the queen’s death, and was known for her gifts with magic. Long had this witch despised the prince for his cruelty and caprice, and longer had she dreamed of eliminating him, thus chiseling a path for her own illegitimate son to inherit the throne. The old king’s recent illness had only made her more eager to dispose of the prince.

  She approached him once his fury had cooled to a sulk.

  “What is upsetting you, my boy?” she asked, hiding her hatred in soft words. He searched her face for signs of mockery and, perceiving none, told her of the three maidens in their bearskins and how he had been fooled. The witch made her face grave, even as her heart filled with dark joy.

  “If you wish her to submit,” she said, “you must burn her skin of yellow fur. Once you’ve done so, she will not be able to refuse you.”

  And the witch removed herself to her chambers, certain she was sending the young man to his death at the claws of the gold-furred bear. But the prince was cheered, eating and drinking heavily and falling that night into happy visions of pliant women. He woke refreshed and returned on horseback to the woods. He built a fire a little ways from the bears’ clearing, then climbed into a tree to conceal himself. When the beasts arrived they looked behind each trunk, but did not spy him among the leaves.

  Slowly, slowly, the prince crept to the ground. When the maidens were distracted by their bathing, he stole over the grass and seized up the golden bearskin. It was unwieldy in his arms, smelling of juniper and sweat. When he threw the skin on his fire, the golden maiden screamed as if it were her body that was burning. The fur went up quick as kindling, flaking to ashes before her cry had died away.

  “Now,” said the prince, returning to the riverbank, “I claim you as my bride.”

  The girl’s eyes burned hotter and harder than his campfire. Already her sisters had stepped back into their skins.

  “You will never see me again,” she told him, “not a tooth nor a nail.” And, climbing onto the back of the white-furred bear, she disappeared into the woods.

  The prince went home even angrier than before. He tore at his shirt and kicked his dogs. He rushed to the witch’s chambers, set on beating her for her bad advice. If she was surprised to see him alive, she did not show it. Before he could reach her she threw a fistful of fine green powder into his face, which filled his head with a sweet stupor. When he could think again, he was lying on her couch, his temper soothed.

  The witch had calculated quickly while the young man was under her spell. She could not move against him without drawing the suspicion of the king, but chance had contrived to make for him a more dangerous foe. If she could be clever, the problem of the prince might soon be solved. She knew that nothing fought so hard as a cornered creature; she must convince him to corner his maiden once more.

  “This girl is more headstrong than we realized,” she said. “You are a lucky man: there’s no prize sweeter than the prize hard-won. You’ve taken her skin of fur, it’s true. But if you want her to truly be yours, you must take her woman’s skin as well.”

  So determined was he to win his maiden, the prince did not question the advice of the witch. He saddled his horse and took to the roads alone. Knowing the bears would not return to the river, he traveled far and wide, disguised as a peddler, and sat at roadside inns each night with open ears. He heard many tales, of singing bones and frozen men and girls who became stars. And one weary night, he heard the tale he was listening for: of two bears and a wild maiden who ran together in the woods, and slept inside a circle of alder trees an hour’s ride from the inn where he sat.

  He set out at once. When he reached the alder clearing his heart quickened. There lay his own bright maiden, asleep between the white- and the black-furred beasts. Quickly he let two arrows fly into the necks of the bears. They woke just long enough to die, as the prince overpowered the maiden.

  He held her face between his hands, her hair spilling like molten metal over his fingers. For a moment his heart shrank from the thought of what he must do. Then she turned her head and bit through the meat of his palm.

  Pain turned his rind of pity into wrath. From his belt he pulled a knife. By the light of the moon, kneeling in the blood of her slain companions, he skinned the maiden.

  She did not bleed. She did not scream. Her skin came away as easily as a fruit’s peel. He rolled it up, tucked it into his pack, and considered the prize he’d won.

  The maiden lay between his knees, beneath his blade, all of her pulsing and churning and unmuffled. Her curving bones, her throbbing heart, the parts of her he could not bear to look at. Even her thoughts could be seen, the violence in them leaving soft indents on the air. She did not run or weep or beg. She only looked at him.

  “Give me back my skin,” she said.

  But she didn’t move, neither to strike out at him nor to escape. The witch was right. His beloved had become defenseless, defeated. With eager hands, certain now of his victory, the prince made a fire and held her woman’s skin over it, close then closer, until the air sizzled with rendering fat. “You’ll obey me,” he told her. Sweat made pale drops on his lip. “You’ll be my loving bride.”

  Before he could thrust her skin entirely into the flames, she held out one delicate hand, all flexing tendon and salt-white bone. The prince took it.

  * * *

  They rode on horseback to his castle. He saw faces in the trees as they rode, of wolves and deer and other beasts who watched them with mournful eyes. The girl was bare in his arms, wet against his shirtfront. They reached the castle at sunset, the light pouring over his maiden like red honey. The witch saw them from her window, and gnashed her teeth to know her enemy still lived. Then she steadied herself and walked to the yard, ready to greet the prince and his stolen bride with false exclamations of joy.

  But her tongue was stopped at the sight of the plundered girl. Heedless of the witch’s horror, dazzled by his own triumph, the prince called out in a high humor.

  “I have returned,” he said, “and with me my happy bride. Bring a judge to my chambers, we wish to be wed.”

  The maiden watched the prince as the binding words were spoken. When the time came for her to accept him, she said again: “Give me back my skin.”

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  * * *

  The prince hid the skin. He hid it so well he almost forgot where he’d tucked it. For many weeks after their wedding he kept his new bride close at hand. She shared his hours, sat in council with him when he was required, attended him at every meal. He savored the fear her strange form struck in the hearts of lesser men. His father’s men, who would one day answer to the prince, and to the wife who sat beside him.

  She would be a good queen, obedient and beautiful and belonging utterly to him. Her new face was not the one he’d fallen in love with, but it was the one he had made for her. He had tamed a wild thing, and life together was a game they played. She slipped off to search for her skin—pacing the halls, sliding behind tapestries, digging to the backs of old wardrobes—and he followed after, bringing her always to heel.

  Though it was true he could not touch her easily. There was no place for his hands to find purchase. He had dresses made for her, dress after dress, charms stitched into their bodices with the hair of girls who’d died for love, and these dresses were always wet. A skin does many things. One of those, it seemed, was to hold the dampness in.

  Still, he was lucky. She was obedient, this bride. Beautiful and obedient and utterly his. And yet.

  And yet.

  He shook the thought away like a fly. Like a fly, it came back: a change had recently come over his maiden. No more did she seek to escape him; she followed him instead. No longer did he have to retrieve her; she was always by his side. At night she breathed steadily in his arms, a wakeful kind of breathing t
hat shredded his dreams to restless pieces. When he woke in the deepest hours, he could see the shine of her open eyes. If he believed himself to be alone—in the stables, perhaps, or walking over the grounds—he would turn and find his wife at his elbow, quiet as only a thing of the woods can be quiet. So quickly she’d learned to mute the bellows of her lungs, the ticking of her naked heart. When she found him like this he did not like to look at her, because if he did she would repeat the only words she had spoken since he took her from the woods.

  “Give me back my skin.”

  She said it evenly, without pleading or resentment, but would say nothing else. If she begged, he thought, if she raged, one day he might have complied. But she did not.

  The days passed and with them the first fever of his wanting, the heady joy of having won. The day came when the prince grew weary of his maiden. The touch of her gaze was like the stinging of silver insects. He dreaded her silent approach and sensed she had secrets from him still, that hid deeper even than the exposed recesses of her rib cage. Finally he banished her from his chambers, taking comfort, at least in sleep, in the walls of his solitary room.

  Still he woke in the night with the sense that someone was watching him. When he lit his lantern, nothing was revealed by its light.

  * * *

  The castle whispered about the prince’s unsuitable bride. After the old witch spread the story of their rough courtship, even the servants watched the maiden for signs of savagery. They carried their tales back to the witch: that the girl lived, still, as if she’d never lost her bearskin. That she kept her chambers like a den, the windows covered and the fire unlit. She was starting, they said, to stink. Her chambermaid said worse things yet, claiming the girl had bitten two fingers off a servant who tried to change the sheets on her unused bed. There were rumors, too, that a maid had gone missing, then a cook. But servants were never reliable.

  The witch waited impatiently for the maiden to find her skin, knowing what the prince did not: that once she had extracted from him the secret of its hiding spot, she would not suffer him to live. But, after spending her first days as a wife in a fury of searching, the maiden appeared now to be devoted to her husband, remaining by his side from morning to night.

  It was curious, very curious. The witch would, she decided, find the thing herself.

  “Look beneath the boy’s mattress,” she murmured to her son. He would make a good king one day, so long as he had his mother at his ear. “Look in the stables, look inside his mother’s bridal chest. Try the closets, try the chamber pot, run your fingers over every seam.”

  The prince had concealed the skin well, but nothing stays hidden forever. The witch put her feet up at night and drank glasses of red liquor, congratulating herself on bringing a bride as good as an assassin’s knife into the castle. Once the skin was found, vengeance could not be far behind.

  * * *

  The prince had never been clever, but he was inspired in his concealment of the skin. After he and his maiden were married, he’d climbed to the highest tower, reached out its narrow window, and hooked the thing onto an outcropping of stone. When it rained, she felt a terrible pricking all over her body, as the skin was pelted with drops. When it snowed, she shivered; when the sun beat down, she twisted with the heat.

  The maiden suffered under the torment without insight, her animal’s mind unsuited to parsing such mysteries. She filled her waking hours as best she could and slept very little, refreshing herself but briefly from her well of deep black dreams. She gave in at times to grief, when no one could see her. But she did that less and less. It was better to live as her animal self had lived, moment to moment, muzzle always reddened by berries or blood. The servants had stopped visiting her rooms, but she knew how to find them. She could creep and slip and let her body become one with the shadows. She never went hungry, those days. But still she longed for her skin.

  In time she came to understand a crucial thing. Patience was rewarded in the wild woods. Here, in the castle’s polished halls, action was the more certain course.

  * * *

  The prince woke early one morning to find his fire had gone out. No breakfast waited for him, his washing water was stale. He called, then shouted, then became uneasy. He expected his wife to meet him at his door, as she always did, to ask for the return of her skin. But even she was not there.

  Your skin, he thought, walking to breakfast. Your wretched skin. He didn’t know what had woken him so early; the sun was still rising. He’d had too much wine the night before and his mind was moving slowly. Otherwise he might have remarked on the quiet of the castle. He might have found it troubling that half the lamps had gone out, that there were no maids to steer carefully clear of him in the halls.

  He was startled to find his father at table. The king hadn’t left his chambers in months, and when he did he was never alone. Even when he slept two men stood guard against bad dreams. Odder still was to see the old man looking so lively. Nervously the prince considered that his father could get well, and rule for many years to come.

  “Hello, my son.” The king’s eyes were bright.

  The prince bowed first and then recoiled. There was an odor coming off the old man. Gingerly he sat, looking around for a servant to bring him breakfast.

  “Closer than that,” said the king.

  Reluctantly the prince moved to the seat beside his father. There the smell was worse. It was a metallic scent, edged with a dreadful sweetness.

  “Closer still,” the old man said. “Come kiss your father.”

  With great distaste the prince leaned toward the king’s cheek. As he did so the man turned his head, kissing his son on the mouth with lips that tasted of blood. The prince was too startled to escape him. And with dawning horror he realized that the old man’s eyes, though familiar, were not the king’s own. They were the eyes of the skinned maiden.

  The prince leapt up, alight all over with terror. The lips he had kissed curdled into an awful smile, as his wife slithered free of the king’s wet skin. She stood bare before him, and he saw her clearly at last. Not a skinned maiden, but an unsheathed blade.

  “I have tried on many skins this night,” she said. “Servant skin, witch skin, skin of a king. But none suits me so well as my own. Give me back my skin.”

  The prince ran. Recklessly at first and then, when reason returned to him, toward the stairs. He stumbled over something lying in the hall—what was left of the witch, her gray-threaded hair still attached at the scalp. He swallowed his bile and ran on.

  The sun rose higher, baking the windows and illuminating the awful evidence of his bride’s long night. Fear sped his step, and still the maiden outpaced him, meeting him at the top of each stair.

  “Give me back my skin,” she said.

  He reached the tower at the castle’s very peak. It was empty but for a spinning wheel with a silver spindle, a piece of his mother’s dowry. The maiden watched as he reached through the window and retrieved her skin with trembling fingers.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her. “Here is your skin. Take it and go.”

  The maiden seized the thing and tucked it about herself with care. But the skin had been long mistreated, scorched by sun, pummeled with rain, bitten by frost. Her self showed through it in pieces.

  “It does not fit me anymore,” she said. “I cannot make enough of too little. But”—and she looked toward the spinning wheel—“I can easily make enough of too much.”

  The prince was fast, but not so fast as a creature of the woods. The maiden girded the gaps in her skin with choice bits taken from her husband’s, until she had something that suited her very well. Thus protected, she returned to the woods, and found herself welcome.

  ALICE-THREE-TIMES

  When Alice was born her eyes were black from end to end, and the midwife didn’t stay long enough to wash her. After the queen sent the old woman away, she looked a long while at her baby: sallow and placid and long as a tadpole, black eyes wash
ed cool by the sun. The queen had suspected the child was not her husband’s, and now she was certain. The baby had the glittering gaze and sullen mouth of the feral people who lived in the ice caves at the very cap of the Hinterland. For a time the king had taken their ruler as his consort, when she and a band of her men visited the castle. In a weak moment the queen revenged herself on her husband with one of these hard-eyed men. This baby was her reward.

  The thing was its father’s from forehead to heel. Only its hair was the queen’s: showing yellow already, enough of it to curl. The queen studied the creature, feeling the places where its passage had unknit her. She thought of the names she could give it, all suitable for a princess, and rejected them. For now, at least, the baby would be nameless.

  On her way through the castle the midwife spread the tale of the little princess’s birth. She whispered of the girl’s black eyes and her silence, and the queen’s cold fury at what she had made. In the kitchen she was given a glass of liquor to nurse, and told her story louder: that the girl had the eyes of the secretive mountain folk. That she left her mother’s womb on a gush, not of blood, but of ice water.

  Though the queen was not then in favor with her husband, still she had her spies. The midwife remembered that when the knife came down in her cottage that night, silencing her prattling tongue.

  The queen slept easier when the midwife was dead, but there was still the matter of the baby to attend to. She was given first to one wet nurse and then another, and neither could feed her. Both claimed the touch of her mouth dried their milk at the source. At last the girl was handed to a servant, who was instructed to raise her on sheep’s milk.