Curses, Inc. And Other Stories

by Vivian Vande Velde

  A dying one.

  Ardda weighed the necessity of getting him warm against the necessity of tending the wound.

  In the end, she laid her hands against the injured shoulder, wished for his health and well-being with all her might, then she took hold of his feet and dragged him along the snowy path, using as much care as she could spare not to bang his head against rocks or tree stumps.

  At the lean-to—three walls and a roof made of woven branches—she found broken-off sticks and twigs too small for the wood-gathering expedition to have bothered collecting, and she hastily arranged them into a pile. "Fire," she wished, imagining the warmth of it on her outstretched fingers, seeing in her mind's eye a tiny flame catching, hearing it crackle, smelling the smoke.

  Wishing worked best with a physical start. She wouldn't have had to wish nearly so hard if she'd taken the time to at least strike sparks with a flint, but she feared there wasn't time. She feared the young prince might die at any moment. Later on she might decide she'd been wrong, that she should have spent her wishing energy solely on healing; but there was no way to be sure.

  Fire leapt from her fingertips, and already—after all her walking in the snowstorm—that little bit of wishing left her exhausted. She used up a few more precious seconds to nurse the fire, to set the clay pot over it, place a handful of snow and the herbs into the pot, and then she turned to the prince.

  She wished strength into him, using up nearly all she had left herself to do so. Then she took her knife and cut the arrow out from his flesh. "No bleeding," she wished, having nothing to spare for the pain.

  The arrow came out, the prince didn't bleed to death, and Ardda packed the wound with the herbs, then wrapped it all with a length of fabric from her skirt since she hadn't thought to bring fresh cloths from home.

  She spent the rest of the long night rubbing his limbs to keep him from losing them to the cold.

  By midnight the snow stopped falling, and just after dawn—as she was blowing her breath onto his hands to warm his fingers—the prince opened his eyes.

  Perhaps it was her face—or perhaps it was the young man's pain, or the smoke from the fire, or the first dazzling shaft of sunlight through the bare branches—but the prince winced, then kept his eyes closed.

  "You will survive," Ardda told him, wish and comfort wrapped together. "You will be fine."

  The prince nodded but didn't open his eyes.

  He's weak from loss of blood, Ardda thought, and indeed in another moment she could tell by his breathing that he'd fallen back asleep.

  But his reaction still hurt.

  During the night she'd been pulling the lean-to apart branch by branch to keep the fire alive, but any more of that and the whole thing was likely to fall in on their heads. She changed the prince's bandage, and when that didn't wake him up, she dared to crawl out of the lean-to in search of what wood she could find in the vicinity. This she stacked in a pile close at hand.

  He would not survive another night outdoors, she knew. He needed more warmth than this simple fire provided; he needed shelter from the wind, and hot broth to give him strength. She regretted not having the horse; except, of course, the horse had been exhausted and would have balked at traveling through the snow and wind last night. Fighting him, she wouldn't have made it this far. And in any case the prince was obviously in no state to ride.

  Thinking of the horse reminded Ardda of the animal's impression of the prince: kind, and gentle, and generous. Not, of course, she told herself, that she was as fond of apples as the horse was.

  But as she sat looking at the prince, thinking how handsome he was, she thought that maybe—if he got a chance to know her before he saw what she looked like—maybe his basic goodness would help him disregard her appearance.

  So that when he stirred again and his eyelids fluttered once more, Ardda wished the glamour back on herself: a smooth cheek, an easy-to-live-with nose, and—not being greedy—hair that didn't exactly curl but framed her face loosely.

  The prince opened his eyes.

  "Be strong," Ardda wished at him. "Be well."

  His eyes didn't stay open any longer than last time, but he gave a tight smile: acknowledgment that he heard her, and understood, and was trying to be brave.

  Her heart melted.

  "My name is Ardda," she told him. She clasped his hand. "I have the power of wishes, and I am wishing very hard for you to Get better."

  He gave her hand a slight squeeze. "Thank you," he whispered, little more than a movement of his lips.

  "I have to leave," she told him, "to get your horse, to bring you back to the safety of my cottage. I am wishing Wild animals away from here. I am wishing you Health."

  "Garn," he whispered, which made no sense till he added, "Prince of Imryn," proving Ardda had been right. He put his hand over his heart: a bow if he'd been standing and if he'd had the strength—courtly manners that set Ardda's heart beating faster.

  "I'll be back by noon," she wished and promised.

  Prince Gam's eyes fluttered open for an instant, too short a time for Ardda to know whether he'd seen her. But she liked to think he had, for he fell back asleep with a smile.

  There was not nearly the wind that there had been the night before, and what there was blew at her back. Ardda got to her cottage in good time. Along the way she had tried to decide whether she should construct some sort of litter for the prince that the horse could pull through the snow, but in the end she thought that would take too long and that it was likely to get caught in the snow anyway. She brought a stool, to help Garn mount, fed the horse apples, promised him many more, then clambered onto his back. Then, riding as fast as she dared, she returned to the lean-to.

  The fire was down to almost nothing, despite the pile of sticks she had left where Prince Garn could reach them. But the prince was breathing easily, and there were no tracks but her own near him.

  "Garn," she said, shaking him awake. "Prince Garn."

  "Ardda," he whispered, surprising her that he had remembered. He reached out his hand and brushed her cheek.

  Did he remember and wonder? Or was it just tenderness?

  "You have to stand." Ardda wished so much strength into him that her own knees became wobbly.

  But he stood. He leaned on her shoulder to climb onto the stool. He swayed slightly, and she didn't think he was going to make it. But he gathered himself and swung up onto the horse.

  By then Ardda needed the stool herself. She climbed up behind Garn, putting her arms around him to hold on to the reins, though she realized that if he started to fall, there was little she could do.

  From this position, there was no way to retrieve the stool—yet another reason, if she was counting, not to let the prince fall off: She'd never get him back on.

  She gave the reins a little shake so the horse would walk slowly and started back toward her cottage.

  After three days of lying on a pallet in front of Ardda's fireplace—wrapped in all of Ardda's warm blankets so that Ardda herself had to wear her cloak to bed to keep from freezing, spoon-fed Ardda's soup, subjected to Ardda's wishes for well-being, kept clean and dry and safe from the cat—Prince Garn finally could stay awake longer than five minutes at a time.

  After four days he was strong enough to sit up by himself.

  After six days he could get up out of his makeshift bed.

  After ten days he was ready to go home.

  "Come with me," he invited Ardda.

  She had just brought in an armful of wood. To keep the prince warm day and night, she had burned much more than she had made provision for, and she had been thinking that, eventually, she would have to go out into the woods for more.

  He took her hand, which she had wiped on her apron but which was still gritty from the bark, and he kissed it.

  She loved his royal manners.

  Still, Ardda felt her cheeks get warm. Then she worried. Did they redden at the same rate, she wondered, her natural right cheek and the glamour-a
ffected left?

  They must have. Garn smiled at her and said, "My family will love you. You're beautiful, you saved my life, you're kind and sweet and beautiful."

  That was two beautiful, Ardda noticed, but didn't let it worry her.

  "My father can grant you lands, so you'll be a noble lady, so we can marry. If you're willing," Garn added hastily. He brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek.

  Ardda couldn't help but flinch, knowing what the cheek really looked like.

  "What?" Garn asked.

  "I'm not beautiful," Ardda told him. She only meant that even with the purple mark covered and the nose looking smaller than it really was, her eyes were still squinty and her hair was muddy brown and straight.

  But the prince said, "Of course you're beautiful. I thought that from the first moment I saw you, even before I knew how wonderful you were, even before I knew you were going to save my life." But he frowned, slightly, even as he said this, as though trying, trying to remember...

  It was time.

  "I'm not beautiful," Ardda repeated.

  "You are," the prince protested, somewhat weakly, somewhat breathlessly.

  "I have the power of wishes," she reminded him. "I have wished a glamour on myself so that you could look at me without wincing."

  "Nonsense," Garn said. "I'd love you anyway."

  Ardda released the glamour.

  Garn winced and looked away.

  Ardda waited for him to repeat that he loved her anyway.

  And waited.

  Ardda closed her eyes.

  She said, "I'm the same person I was before. I can keep the glamour. No one else need know."

  "I would know," the prince answered.

  "Yes," Ardda said.

  She could wish for him to love her, but that seemed as wrong as tampering with her family's memories.

  In the end, he packed provisions for the trip and said no more of taking her with him.

  Ardda had returned the glamour to her face so that he would look at her before he left, but still he would not. Sitting astride his tall horse in her front yard, he looked at his hands on the reins and said, "I couldn't live a lie. Truth is not in what appears to be, but in what really is."

  Ardda couldn't argue with that. All she could have said was that sometimes truth has nothing to do with what you can see.

  But she didn't say that. She said, instead, "You're absolutely right."

  And she cast a glamour on him.

  She made him look as though he had pointy ears with tufts of fur at the ends. She covered his face with warts and made his eyes orange.

  "Good-bye," she said, waving.

  Garn, of course, had no idea what he looked like. He smiled, still not looking directly at her, gave an elegant half-bow, and put his heels to his horse's sides. He'd have a surprise when he got back to court, a surprise that would last for a year, but only a year.

  Ardda picked up her cat. "You know," she told the cat, "I've been foolish. Of course everyone in my own village knows what I really look like, but Prince Garn has reminded me that the world is a big place."

  The cat said, "Meow," which Ardda took as the most sensible thing anyone had said to her in a long time.

  And with that she packed her own provisions and set out, with the cat, the goats, and the chickens. And with big, bright eyes and golden hair that was all luxurious curls—because sometimes you just have to be a little bit greedy.

  Past Sunset

  THERE WAS A STREET in the village where I grew up that everyone knew not to travel down past sunset.

  During daylight hours it was a perfectly fine and normal street. Housewives opened their shutters and strung clotheslines across the way so that fresh-smelling laundry hung to dry two and three and four stories above the cobblestones that the neighborhood grandfathers kept well swept. Merchants from the surrounding countryside set up stalls to sell fresh fruit and vegetables, live chickens and rabbits. While the sun was there to warm the stones, you could hear the clop clop of horses' hooves and the rumble of the wooden wheels of carts and carriages. You could hear the laughter of young boys playing their chasing games and the rhythmic counting of girls playing their games of skipping and hand clapping.

  But as the sun began to set, the farmers hurried to take down their stalls and return to the safety of their country homes. The housewives pulled in their sheets and shirts and locked the shutters. Those who lived on other streets of the village found different routes on their way home, and parents didn't have to call their children in because the children knew not to linger outside.

  For when the shadows blended into night's darkness, there was a lady you would see if you were foolish enough to look. Your first thought might be that she was pale and beautiful, standing there in a white gown that flowed in the evening breeze. Silently, she would beckon for you to come closer. You might be fooled by her sad face. But then you might remember that there wasn't necessarily a breeze that night. And then you might notice that she was much too pale, even for a fine lady. And if you looked at her eyes...

  Never look at her eyes, the stern grandmothers in their black shawls warned us—for there was no looking away.

  The children of the village would always reach an age—for us girls it was often when we were nine or ten; for the boys, usually earlier—when all our parents' and grandparents' and neighbors' warnings weren't enough; when, in fact, those warnings only served to stir curiosity—and stir it and stir it, until we had to see for ourselves what we had so long been warned about; when we would find a way—there was always a way—to locate ourselves in a room that overlooked the street; when we would crack open the shutters and alternately hope and dread that this would be one of the nights that the ghostly lady appeared.

  Those nights that she did appear, she always found the cracked-open shutter—no matter how quiet the would-be observer had been, and no matter that we almost always knew enough not to have a candle in there with us to show a telltale sliver of light into the street.

  But she always knew.

  And if there was an open window, she would come and stand directly beneath it, and—always silently—she would motion for that child to come out in the street to join her.

  We might have been curious, but we weren't stupid.

  If we were especially daring or if we weren't fast enough, the lady—whose feet normally seemed as firmly placed on the ground as our own—would begin to drift up, up, closer and closer until we would slam the shutters closed and stand or crouch with our hearts beating wildly, having seen that everything was exactly as it had always been described to us, and thankful that—for whatever reason—this particular ghost's domain was outside, on our street, and she couldn't pass through walls or shutters.

  But there was always the fear that someday a child would be too daring, or too slow.

  This had never happened in recent memory. But Grand-mère Edmée—who wasn't actually anybody's grandmother, but who was probably the oldest person living in the village—Grand-mère Edmée remembered a ghost long before the citizens had risen up in revolution and sent the king and his family to the guillotine. Grand-mère Edmée said there had been a ghost when she herself was our age—a hard-enough concept to believe in itself—but she added that then the ghost was a young man, not a young woman. She also said that her own grandmother talked of a ghost who was an old woman—an old woman who had been cursed by a witch. But who she was or why she had been cursed, nobody knew. This talk of ghosts who changed age and gender made us say that Grand-mère Edmée had spent too much time in the wine cellar. But nobody wanted to see what would happen if the ghost did touch you, or if you looked into her eyes.

  All of this—all of it—changed the autumn I was twelve.

  By then I had seen the ghostly lady often enough that I was cautious—no one ever outgrew caution—but I was no longer impressed. I would have gladly given up our famous ghost to live on a normal street, like my friends who could stay out past sunset and who c
ould leave their windows open on a hot summer's night. As my brother Antoine had done before me, I became less interested in seeing the ghost and more interested in making sure the younger members of my family took no reckless chances.

  In our house, where the kitchen and the parlor looked out over the street, the adults generally spent the evening in the parlor, with the shutters closed. We were two stories up, with the pâtisserie selling its wonderful tarts and pies on the ground floor and the Guignard family occupying the middle floor.

  One evening of the year I was twelve, when autumn teetered on the brink of winter, I was in the kitchen, because my ten-year-old sister Mignon claimed to have a chill; this required sitting by the kitchen fire after the rest of the family had moved to the parlor. Our brother Gaétan, who was nine, had offered to keep her company—a clear signal, so far as I was concerned, that the kitchen shutters would bear close watching that night.

  So I was embroidering a rose on a dinner napkin to cover a stain, while Gaétan whittled a piece of wood that was supposed to eventually be an extra sheep for the Christmas crèche, and Mignon—sulking at being found out—was huddled close to the fire, wrapped in a blanket.

  A noise at the side window made us all jerk our heads up.

  It sounded like pebbles—or beans—hitting the outside of the shutters.

  "Marianne," Mignon called to me in a whisper. "What was that?"

  Before I could answer that I didn't know, a voice called, "Jules," which was my grandfather's name.

  The voice belonged to the Widow Morin, who lived next door above the butcher's shop, her kitchen window separated from ours by a very narrow alley.

  Mignon, in a strong voice that belied her claims of not feeling well, called out, "Grand-père! Maman! Papa!"

  Fifteen-year-old Antoine was the first into the kitchen, followed by Maman, then Honorée—who was six—then Grand-père. Papa was last because he'd hurt his foot in an accident at the mill and he still had to use a cane.

  "Jules!" the Widow Morin called. "Are you there? I need help."