by Shannon Hale
“Conrad, I’ll keep you cleaning eggs off the floor at bed-hour, believe I will, so meet Isi and sit down.”
Conrad sniffed. He put the fistful of eggs casually on his plate, rubbed the sticky pieces onto his pant leg, and held out his hand to Ani. He had dull gray eyes, and the freckles on his face lay together as tightly as scales.
“Name’s Conrad,” he said. “I keep the geese.”
“Kiss her,” someone shouted over the din of breakfast.
Conrad jerked his head toward the yeller and yelled back, “Shut it or I’ll stuff your nose holes full of breakfast, and I’ll clean it and you off the floor until next morning if I have to.”
He renewed his gesture of welcome, and Ani took his hand and then surreptitiously wiped off the egg goo behind her back.
“Good to meet you,” she said.
“Where you from?” said a girl in the back.
“The Forest,” she said.
“Of course you are, you sparrow chick,” said the girl, “but which part?”
Ani realized that most of this group must have come from the Forest to work in the city and send money home to families.
“Near Darkpond,” she said, repeating the place she had heard Finn’s neighbors speak of.
“She talks like someone I know from Darkpond,” Ani heard a girl say.
Some nodded, and she was dropped out of the general attention in favor of breakfast. Ani ate slowly, focusing on swallowing the heavy, hot food that it seemed too early to eat. She watched Conrad and his friends, amazed at the heaping plates of eggs and lumps of beans with mutton chunks and hot, greasy oat muffins they consumed with careless speed. When the dishes were empty, they wiped their mouths on the backs of their hands, their hands on their trousers, or on each other in brief, concentrated wrestling matches, and the benches emptied with rousing scrapes of wood against the stone floor.
“Get your stick,” said Conrad, grabbing his own from where it stood with the others near the door. As they left, a chorus of "Conrad’s got a girl, Conrad’s girl,” moved from mouth to mouth.
“Come on, goose girl,” Conrad said testily, and they walked up a narrow street.
Ani used the base of her stick between stones to help her climb. Conrad did not wait, and she caught up to him when the steepness had ebbed out. Soon Ani could hear the mutterings of animals—sheep, pig, chicken, goat—they lost their particularity in their numbers. Conrad unlocked the door of a low structure. The jabber of housed geese greeted their entrance, and immediately Ani realized that their language was far different from swan. She found herself unable to pick out a single word.
“You kept geese before?” said Conrad. Ani shook her head, and he rolled his eyes. “Take it easy at first, all right? Just let me do it and you stand back and make sure they don’t wander away. Geese don’t like new people, but better a new girl than a new boy. The ganders nearly bit the knees off the last boy that came crawling from the Forest looking for a city job. He didn’t last long with me. With the pigs, now.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said.
“I don’t care if they bite off your kneecaps, goose girl, I’m just telling you.” He shrugged and opened the pen.
Geese were smaller and much less grand than the swans she knew. Though like her swans in form, the geese seemed simplified by larger heads, shorter necks, and feet and bills orange like exotic fruit.
The palace grounds in Kildenree did not have a goose pen, and Ani had seen the birds only from a distance. Sometimes from the library window she had watched a short-haired country girl with bare feet, a stick, and a hat made of thick paper rolled in on itself like a whittled bit of wood. She used to walk a dozen geese down a river-sided lane toward the free pastures on the edges of the city. It had seemed carefree enough to Ani then, and the girl had given the impression of happy complacency, the geese at her feet just pale flutterings of her thoughts.
Ani’s thoughts were pulled back to the moment by a loud, unlovely honk. A broad-headed gander stepped out of the pen and knocked Ani’s leg with his beak. She tumbled backward in surprise and landed on her backside. When she looked up again, his neck and head were stooped down to the ground and forward, as though his body held a ready sword. He was rushing forward, his open, hissing beak aimed at her face. She flung her arms over her head and tensed for pain, and when nothing happened, she peeked out to see Conrad’s crook around the gander’s neck.
“Stand up,” he said. “That’s a stupid thing to do.”
Ani scrambled to her feet, leaning over to her dropped stick with an eye on the geese.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Huh. Let’s go.”
It was several long, bruising streets to the pasture gate. Fifty geese were too many for one boy and worse for a boy and a goose-ignorant girl who more often than not found herself in the middle of the gaggle, her calves nipped emphatically. Conrad maintained his position in the rear, driving the horde with whistles and nudges from his staff. Occasionally he shouted, “Goose girl, they’re drifting,” and sent her scampering after a loose bunch.
Ani listened in vain to their mutterings to pick out familiar sounds. She tried some swan, and they seemed to laugh at her and nip at her legs a little harder.
At last they reached a narrow, arched gateway cut in the city wall. Beyond it lay green pastures, bordered on the near side by the outside of the city wall and on the far by tall water trees and a narrow stream. The sight of the pasture caught the geese’s attention like the smell of food after a fast. Their necks straightened, and their small eyes focused on the grass and the shimmering stream beyond.
Ani slipped through the arch before them to count the bright beaks as they passed by. It was a bulky wave of white, defined by orange bills and blue eyes.
“Forty-seven,” said Ani. “There should be fifty, but I’d pledge blood we didn’t let a one get away.”
Conrad shrugged.
“Aren’t you concerned?” she said. “Shouldn’t we go back and look?”
He met her look with defiance. “They were missing before. I’ve been alone with this rabble for more than a week, and what can I do if three disappear when there’re forty-seven off in every direction? I’d like to see you do better.”
The day moved slowly with the sun, and Ani stayed in the shade of a lone beech tree in the middle of their pasture. Not distant from her feet lay the near lip of a small pond that filled with the edges of the stream. The geese wandered near the pond, moving in groups of five or so to graze where the grass was longer or digging for grubs on the muddy banks. It was not a broad pasture, but long, bordered on both ends with hedges that served as fences, beyond which Ani caught glimpses of sheep on one side and something else, maybe cows, on the other.
Ani gazed into the distance, hoping to see horses out to graze, and among them, Falada. But Tatto had told her the horses were kept in the city pastures behind the palace. To assuage her guilt, Ani reasoned that Falada was probably much better off than she, eating mountains of oats and sleeping contentedly in the royal stables. If he was not dead. That thought stung. And if he was, how could she find out without being killed herself?
Speculation was useless. There was no occasion to leave the fields all that day. What was I expecting, thought Ani, an hour off for tea? Hours past noon, a street hawker leaned out of the pasture arch announcing hot meat-breads in a clear, practiced call. Conrad waved him away with a disappointed gesture. Neither goose girl nor goose boy had any money.
When the sharp orange of evening sun burned on the horizon, Conrad called to her that it was time to go. He had remained separate from Ani all the day, seeking his shade under the birches that grew along the stream, tossing stones upstream and lazily chasing geese to hear them honk.
The herding home was easier. The geese were worn from the day and ready to rest. Only once were the crooks employed, when a couple of ganders left the group to make sport of a broken-toothed street cat that had come too close to one of t
he females.
When they had locked the geese into their pen and stumbled into the dining house, Ani at last understood the concentrated devouring of breakfast. Her stomach perked up at the smell of food, muttering and tightening itself in anticipation.
Dinner with the workers was as lively as the breakfast had been, despite the fact, Ani noted, that they were fed bean and lard pies, potatoes without butter, and green beans that were cooked to mush. The group ate vigorously, and Ani felt inclined to do the same. The smell of animals on people was even more pungent, but Ani ate through it.
A noise drew her attention to the door. It slammed behind a girl near Ani’s age, red faced and huffing for breath. Her black hair was loose at her shoulders, and she had wide eyes that put Ani in mind of an owl. She leaned against the doorpost, waved her hand at a group of boys who stood nearby, and, swallowing air, pushed her voice through her throat.
“Quick. Razo, Beier. That sulky old ram . . . he beat down a hole in his pen . . . got into my chick coop . . . I tried to stop him, but I—”
Without a word, two of the boys grabbed the nearest crooks and fled the hall. The door shut, and the girl faced the hall. Immediately Ani noticed that the girl’s expression changed. She no longer fought for breath, and a creeping smile pressed dimples into her cheeks. “But I couldn’t stop him because I was so busy rigging a bucket of oat mush above the door.”
Laughter bubbled out of the corners of the hall, building as the other workers caught on. Ani smiled, too, and shook her head as her imagination raced to the coop, where those poor boys were opening the door. The girl bobbed a curtsy and sat on Ani’s bench.
“It’s a payback,” she said, grabbing a cold bean pie. “They put colored eggs in one of my chickens’ nests for a week. I poured every medicine I knew down that poor hen’s throat and laid witch-bought charms around her nest until I finally spotted a bit of paint on some hay. Devilish, they are.”
The girl smiled with good humor, and Ani smiled back until she felt shamed by the girl’s prettiness and confidence and looked down.
“You’re from Darkpond?” said the girl. “I’m Enna, from Sprucegrove area, you know, just down past the stream.”
Ani nodded.
“Not to worry. Conrad’s no festival, but he’s all right enough. He takes time to warm up to new people, just like any animal.”
“I’ve only just arrived in the city,” said Ani. “My first time here, really.” Enna raised her brows, and Ani nodded, grateful to have some truth to tell. “Can you tell me news? What happens here?”
A boy across the table heard her question and snorted. “Not much, not for us, you see that. Not a day off—”
“But marketday,” said another.
“—but marketday, and maybe a festival or two, but won’t be another festival until wintermoon, and then who knows.”
No break until next marketday. Ani realized she would have to wait a month for an opportunity to find Falada. But surely he was well off, she convinced herself. If he is alive, he must be well.
“When’s the prince married?” asked a girl one bench over.
Ani casually put her hand on her neck to hide the goose bumps pricking her skin.
“Oh, don’t recall,” said the boy. “Not now, anyway.”
“There’ll be festival then, you’ll see, like the royals like to have to toot their royalness. It’ll be a week long with little work and apple cakes for free.”
Ani tilted her head and tried to speak as though the answer did not matter the least in the world. “Getting married, is the prince?” she said. “To whom?”
“Some yellow girl from Kildenree. A princess, I guess. Can’t imagine His Royal would marry anything less.”
“She’s a princess,” said Enna. “I laid my very own eyes on her expensive skin.”
The eaters around lifted heads and quieted down.
“Why didn’t you tell about it before, Enna-girl?”
“Yeah, you got secrets as dark as your mop?”
“I did tell about it to those who shut up and listened, so shut it now and I’ll tell. It was two weeks or so ago, and I was heading to the apothecary near the city gate for what I thought was a sick chicken, and the streets were all lined with people. Everybody was talking about her. No one had known when they would come, you know, with them traveling so far, and never did send a messenger forward, I heard someone say.”
“And those Kildenrees, or Kildenreans, or whatever, came marching in with their own little army, I’m guessing.”
“Not really. Just twenty men or so, and more horses. The princess rode a big white horse with all the trappings.”
Ani felt her heart beating in her stomach. Falada. He was alive, then. She wanted to grab Enna’s arms and beg her for every detail. She sat on her hands.
“And I don’t know much about horses, but I heard some men talking by me, and they said it was a cursed good horse, and that she didn’t know how to ride him right, and that she probably rode some docile puppy horse through the Forest and mounted the fine steed last minute just for show and all.”
Ani smiled.
“Just like a princess,” said Conrad. “But enough of horses, what’d the girl look like?”
“She’s not for you, Conrad,” said his neighbor, who promptly got an elbow in the ribs.
“Pretty, I guess,” said Enna. “Light hair, not so much a real yellow as washed-out brown, like Conrad’s bathwater. She was wearing a dress showy enough for a princess, silvery and sparkling with a neck almost this low.” Enna pointed to a spot four finger widths from the hollow of her throat. One girl laughed and another sighed. Ani placed a hand on her chest and felt her cheeks warm. On her, the dress had fallen slightly lower.
A girl laughed and pointed at Ani. “I think the goose girl’s dreaming she’s the princess.”
Enna put an arm around her shoulder and shook her amiably. “Who wants to be a snooty, lace-necked royal and miss tending the geese? Right, little sister?”
“No, that’s right, I wasn’t thinking that,” said Ani. “Um, did you hear anything they said? The princess or her guards?”
“Mmm, no, I don’t think so. There was one guard, a big man with two braids the color of bad milk hanging down each shoulder, that rode up with her, and they leaned in close and talked, looking down at us, around at the city, passing judgment on everybody and everything they saw, I guessed. A bit boorish. I’d imagined princesses were supposed to sit up straight and look stoic, if you know what I mean.”
Ani nodded.
“That’s it, really. A lot of horses, a few wagons, twenty scruffy guards, and a princess in a gaudy dress showing enough bosom for a tavern girl.”
A tall girl grumbled. “Tatto said that she takes one of her own guards wherever she goes, to go eat, to the gardens, like she doesn’t trust the palace guards. And she’s never left the palace grounds, afraid to dirty her tiny foot on our Bayern stones.”
“I heard she’s had ten new dresses made since she arrived,” said another girl, “and that’s a fact, because my aunt’s friend’s a seamstress in the city and she knows the palace dressmistress.”
“They say she never goes riding or into the city, but stays holed up with her Kildenrean friends and they whisper to each other in that whiny accent.”
Several nodded. “That’s how Kildenreans are,” said one.
Ani began to nod, then stopped. If I were where I was supposed to be, I never would have met the workers of the west settlement. I’d be the yellow girl from Kildenree, with the whiny accent and pompous manner. Just then, that seemed a pitiable fate.
The door swung open with force, its knob thumping against the wall. Razo, a short boy with a dark, defiant head of hair and an expressive face that was grim and severe then, stood with hands in fists. Beier stood behind him, holding their unused staffs. Their hair and shoulders were dripping with a gray slop.
“Enna,” said Razo, his voice trembling with warning.
Enna just
laughed. “You’re welcome, boys.” She raised her water mug in salute. Others raised theirs, too, in a cheer heavy with laughter that did not completely break until the hour for bed.
Chapter 9
The days dawned with a frail morning chill and filled out with mild breezes. Autumn’s newness hummed in the air. The geese sensed the coming change, and pairs strolled together, leaving their grown goslings solitary. Occasionally one bird interrupted its browsing to stare up at a breeze, smelling what news it brought, calling out to its brothers and sisters, The first gust of autumn is here.
Or so Ani imagined. She passed most of the day under her beech tree, her gaggle at a safe distance. She watched and she listened. Geese made so much more noise than swans, she wondered how she would ever be able to single out the sounds, let alone assign their meanings. This time she had no aunt to guide her. Some bird tongues were so similar that going from one to the other was like switching between her Bayern and Kildenrean accents. But goose was unlike any bird tongue she had learned. She leaned forward, cocking her head like a robin to a worm in the ground. Prattle, prattle, honk, honk, hiss—the sounds were as meaningless as the rustling of dry leaves.
At night Ani felt exhausted, but often she could not sleep, not for hours, the darkness behind her eyelids promising dreams. Adon’s middle split by a sword tip. Talone yelling, yelling. Ungolad’s hand on her boot.
Lying on her bed, she could see the dark intimation of the southernmost palace spire and on certain nights a dim star of a candle flame that winked in one window. She watched it until she slept. That point of light spoke of someone else awake, someone thoughtful, someone alone. Sometimes in her dreams, her mind wandered those foreign palace halls, tripping over carpets too fine to be pressed by her dirty boot, losing herself in passages too elaborate for her goose girl brain. She was often searching for something, Falada or Selia, and when she found them, she stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do. Sometimes instead of searching, she was running. A hand seized her ankle.
In the mornings, Ani dressed her bruised, goose-bitten body and breakfasted in silence. The girl Enna sought her out from time to time, and Ani tried to respond with friendly attentiveness. Ani felt as dumb at conversation as she had over Gilsa’s cooking pot that day she prepared the lunch, the contents turning blacker and smelling fouler despite her anxious attempts. She had no practice at making friends. And, she discovered, her own trust had been drained dry.