by Shannon Hale
“So, you see, that’s what I saw,” said Ani. And coughed again.
The man shook his head, and then she saw that he was indeed laughing.
“Here I stand,” he said, “glum as a plum because I couldn’t do it by myself, and you’re right, I’d run away from those blasted, overpopulated training fields to break in this beast away from the stable-master and his horde who have been laughing at my fatuous attempts all week. And to come here, for privacy, and get schooled in horse mastery by a girl.”
Ani gave a vexed laugh.
“Oh, I mean,” he said quickly, “not that you can’t know more about horses than a man. I’m botching all from my hair to my shoes today. What I want to say is, you’re better with this bay than I can ever learn to be, and you seem to enjoy riding him. When you’re his mistress, he doesn’t look to need any breaking at all. I can’t give him to you outright as, actually, he’s not mine, but I don’t see why you couldn’t take him to your home for as long as you like, or until I get the word that he’s needed. So, yes, truly, why don’t you take him so the poor beast can be ridden properly, all right?”
Ani’s face flamed instantly, and she looked down and waited for him to realize his error. She shuffled her feet, wishing for a tree to lean against or behind.
“Don’t be shy about it. May I remind you, lady, that you haven’t been shy so far? Go on, he’s yours.”
Ani felt humiliation deep as her bones, and she shook her head.
“Oh, you might think that I’m trying to pawn off my job of breaking him onto you. I can pay you. I think. I’m unfamiliar with this kind of business. How much would be fair?” Ani covered her face with one hand, and the man groaned and muttered angrily at himself. “Blast, I’ve done something again. You don’t offer to pay ladies. You’ve insulted her again, you daft, clumsy brute.”
“No, you’re very kind. You don’t understand. It’s just, I’ve no place to keep him.”
The man seemed to see her dress for the first time, and his gaze fell behind her, where the gaggle waddled about and honked at the sun that was slipping into the west. It was his turn to blush.
“You’re not . . . I’m sorry. I’d thought you were, you were just picnicking out here. I was thoughtless. Forgive me.”
Ani laughed. “A goose girl should feel honored to be mistaken for a lady with land to put a horse on, sir.”
“You didn’t say ‘sir’ when you stole my horse. Geric. My name’s Geric.”
He stood expectantly after that, perhaps waiting for her name; but, her boldness spent, she just nodded and walked away. Conrad was fording the stream, and it was nearly time to herd the geese home. When she turned back, the man and his horse had gone. Ani felt disappointment slide into her body where the wind had blown her free. She shook her head at herself and tried to trick it away with forced detachment.
“You’re not who you used to be,” she said. “You’re just a goose girl.”
Chapter l0
The next day was stormy rain. Ani lay awake in her bed to the euphony of heavy water on her thin roof. The pane was a stream of moving darkness, and she watched it lighten to silver. It was the first rainfall since she had come to the city. In the dizziness of early morning and little sleep, Ani wondered what she would find outside, if the night and the water had washed it all away, the pasture, the walls, the guards, the palace, and left her with her name again standing in mud and darkness.
Soon Jok was awake, picking at the wrinkles in her wool blanket, mock grazing. Sometimes he would pull a balled bit of lint loose and let it hang from his bill. Ani greeted him, and he said, It is raining. It is raining, she repeated. He continued his dry graze. She asked the goose if it was morning, but he did not answer. She tried, Is there sun in the sky? But he still did not understand, unresponsive as though no sound had been made. Are you hungry? she asked. Yes, said the goose.
“That’s no help,” Ani said. “You’re always hungry.”
Unsure if it was night, dawn, or day, Ani dressed, steadied the bird on one shoulder, and dashed to the workers’ hall.
Several workers were gathered there, and not one seemed sure of the exact time. Ideca’s girls had laid out bowls of an informal breakfast, and the workers snacked casually, lounging on the benches and on the floor, talking, as though rain had scrubbed away all the work.
Ani found Conrad in a group playing at pick-up-sticks, and she asked him if they were to go to the fields.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Thank you so much, Sir Helpful One,” said Enna. “Isi, you’ll see how it goes soon enough. The mistress only has a few rain cloaks, so we take turns seeing to our animals. We stay here, mostly, and wait for the storm to clear.”
“Rain days’re almost as good as marketdays,” said Razo.
When two of the pig-keepers returned, Conrad and Ani took their oiled cloaks and went to the pens. Jok followed, splashing through the puddles, squawking about speed and no food, but otherwise undeterred by the rain. They brought wet clover from the animal garden and dry corn from the feed barrels, taking armloads into the clamorous stall and pulling enough water from the well to last the day. Ani left Jok there, and she and Conrad hurried back to allow others a turn at the cloaks.
The rain did not stop. The day never dawned more than the brightness of lightning shocks or the dim grayness that came from neither east nor west. Ani sat apart, gazing at the night-day, wishing to lie down on the pavement and let the water soak her, then beat down on her, through her, work her away until all that was left was her core. She wondered what that would be.
The next day would be marketday. She marveled that she had been in the city one month and she was still the goose girl. Yesterday she had been as bold as a queen with that rider, that Geric, yet she could not be bold with herself.
At the idea of Geric, her thoughts slipped to an image of his hands as he held the knotted reins, the straps seeming thin in their bigness. And the three lines that marked the corners of his eyes when he smiled. And the moment when she climbed onto his horse, when her skirt slipped up over her knee. Before she pulled it down, he must have seen her shift, or perhaps, perhaps her leg.
Ani stood to shake off the chill of embarrassment. The light of outside was wet and dull, but the hall was aflame with candles. Most of the workers were present, playing games and laughing, their holiday voices shadowed by the tenacious rainfall pounding the roof. The oiled cloaks hung on the wall, out of demand. Ani was tempted to take one and go check the geese, converse with them in their friendly, cryptic language, chattering at spiders and complaining of closeness. Or she could run back to her room, lie on her cot, and watch the rain blur the world of her window.
And hide, she realized. Always she wanted to hide. No more. To approach the king again, she would need a horde of people by her side to guarantee she would not be the victim of a quick dagger in a dark corridor before ever telling her story. Where else could she meet people to help her but here? She took a breath and joined the throng.
Enna was sitting near the fire, watching cheese melt on the bread she had placed on a hearthstone. A dollop of orange cheese dripped off the crust, and Enna caught it with her finger, licking it off before she could feel the heat.
“Sit down,” she said when she saw Ani. She handed her a thick slice of bread and a block of cheese with a knife, then turned her eyes to the hearth.
“Why aren’t you playing?” said Ani, gesturing to the many games of cards and sticks around the room.
“Oh, the fire,” said Enna. Its orange fingers waved specters on the blacks of Enna’s eyes. “I get to looking and can’t look away. Don’t you ever feel like fire is a friendly thing? That it’s signaling to you with its flames, offering something?”
Ani watched not the fire but the play of its light on Enna’s face and felt comfort that there were others who listened for language in what was supposed to be mute and who sought out meaning in what was only beautiful.
“Enna, today’s free.
Why doesn’t anyone go out into the city? Everyone huddles here as though there’s nowhere else in the world.”
“You know, there’s not for us, all of us Forest folk. And not especially for the boys.”
“Why not?”
Enna looked at Ani quizzically.
“This truly is the first time you’ve been out of the Forest, then? We don’t really belong here, you know, if you ask anyone in the city. We still belong to our families back home and just live here. We watch their animals. We’re almost, almost like animals to them.” Enna looked at Razo, who sat across the room, losing at sticks.
“When these boys reach a man’s age, they don’t receive their rites and the javelin and shield from their chief and become a part of their community, not like the town boys. The fathers of our boys never received a javelin. There are no chiefs in the Forest, and the king doesn’t think twice about his Forest men. It doesn’t really matter, I guess, until poorer families like ours send their sons and daughters into a city for a little extra coin. I know my family hasn’t an idea of how we’re treated in the city.” Enna looked back at the fire. “We’re so ignorant out there in the trees, Isi. We’ve no idea the world’s bigger than the walk to a foothill pasture.”
Ani nodded.
“You belong to your family, you know, and if you marry a Forest man, you’ll belong to each other, but never to a community, never to this city. I feel like we creep around the borders, stepping in to live along the west wall like spiders while we’re young and unwed and then stepping out again, back into the shadow of the Forest. If you ask me, I’d rather be there. But some of these boys, they’d remove fingers to be given a javelin and belong to the city.”
Ani glanced around the room. Conrad and Razo played at sticks opposite her, their boyish faces tense in the competition. But they’re nearly men, she thought. They should be visiting taverns and hunting and meeting daughters of butchers and tailors. Yet every night, in clear weather or foul, all the workers left their posts and returned to the safety of the hall.
“It doesn’t seem quite fair.” Ani felt a moment of regret that she would not be queen of this country after all, would not have a chance to set this injustice right.
“It never did to me,” said Enna. “But I don’t know much. I just see how things are. And they’ve been so for a long time, through tales and spells. Who’m I to question the law and the king?”
“You’re Enna,” said Ani. “That’s somebody.”
Enna smiled. “So’s Isi.”
Is she? thought Ani. Then I’d like to be her. I’d like to be somebody.
“She is, you are,” said Enna, as though she had heard Ani’s doubt. She touched Ani’s hand. “Thanks for not making fun of me about what I said about the fire. I know it was silly. Razo would’ve laughed.”
“I do kind of the same thing, you know, but with the wind. Is that silly, then, too? I feel as if it’s always tugging at my ears and speaking at me kind of desperately, but I can’t hear.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Enna, “that’s how I feel, too.”
“There’s a story my aunt used to tell me that’s about, well, about a lot of things, but to me it was mostly about the wind.”
Enna sat squarely in front of Ani and placed her hands in her lap. “You’d better tell it now, goose girl, or I’ll bother you about it till next marketday. Hey there, Bettin,” said Enna, getting the attention of another girl, “come closer. Isi’s telling a story.”
Ani nearly blushed from the attention as the other girl joined them, but she lowered her eyes and thought about the words she would say.
“It goes like this. In a farm village far away there’s a maiden with hair like the yellow apple, and she works in the fields all day with her head down and her hair dragging alongside so that the tips’re black as raven beaks. Sometimes the wind catches her hair and pulls it up into the air, and the maiden looks up to where the wind is going, up to the high pastures where the wild horses run.”
Razo approached, glum from losing his game, and asked Enna what they were doing.
“Isi’s telling a tale,” said Bettin. “Sit and listen.”
“One day her mother says, ‘Go to the high pastures, you lazy girl. Go and bring back dry wood for a cookfire.’ So the maiden runs out of the fields she knows and up to the high pastures, and she pulls up the dead roots of a lightning-struck tree. But underneath, deep in the dark soil, you know what she finds? A nugget of gold that’s growing like a potato. The maiden knows she should dig it up and take it to her mother, but she’s heard of the mystery of the wild horses, and so crouches nearby and waits. The horses come.”
“What horses?” said Razo. “What mystery?”
“Shut your hole, Razo, and just listen,” said Enna.
Ani wished she had not started, because now the hall was quieting, and many of the workers nearby were turning toward her. Enna prodded her knee and smiled, telling her to continue. She took a deep breath and fought to remember her aunt’s words, but she could remember only images. The words were her own. She let them come.
“Wild horses, white as light on water, tall as cherry trees. They love to run, so fast they think they can become the wind if they just keep running. They run by the maiden, and the wind of their running blows her hair around her.
“And then one horse sees a flash of gold, and he stops. He paws away the soil, nudges the gold from the ground, and chews it up, fast as a carrot. Gold-colored spittle drips from his chin, his eyes are brighter, he shakes his mane. Now when he breathes out, there’s music. This’s why she waits.”
“What kind of music?” said Bettin.
“It’s music more beautiful than a woman, more beautiful than a tree. It’s almost as beautiful as the horses that run, so fast and so wild because they want to become the wind. The song’s the sound of that wanting, of the wish for loosing of manes, and hooves that don’t touch the ground, and breath that doesn’t end.”
Bettin smiled, and Ani raised her head and met the eyes of those who were listening.
“The maiden returns every day to pull up roots and dig up rooted gold and hear the horses breathe out the music of flight. Every night she goes home and her mother beats her with a switch for not working the fields, and her back’s bent like the snow-heavy birches, and she thinks about those horses who’ve never been broken, not like her. But now she’s heard that song, and she disobeys her mother and returns every day. The song’s so beautiful that pain doesn’t hurt.”
“I think I know what that means,” someone whispered.
“Then one day, there’s no more gold. The maiden pulls up roots until her fingers bleed, and she digs in the dirt with her fingernails, but the ground’s empty. When the horses run by, they don’t stop, and she puts her face on the ground and cries.
“The tears clear her thoughts, and she sits up. My hair, she thinks. I know what to do. So she goes to the snow-melt stream and washes the dirt from her hair, and it shines like a sunrise on a still pond. Then she takes a leather knife and cuts it off, all, right from her head, and puts it on the ground. She sleeps by it all night and doesn’t feel cold.
“The next day the horses pass. Their running feels like earthquakes and sounds like thunder, and they don’t stop for her hand-cut gold. But before her heart breaks, the last horse stops. He paws at her loose hair and looks up and sees her. Then, slowly, as though it’s a handful of hay, he eats her golden mane. This time when he breathes out, the song that’s on the air pierces her heart like a terrible, perfect knife. The horse shimmers and begins to run, faster and faster, and his white hide becomes whiter and whiter until it’s too brilliant to see. There’s a flash, and when she blinks, the horse is gone and a white-maned wind whinnies and prances and pushes around her. And the maiden mounts that wind and is borne away, up into the higher pastures, up and never seen again.”
The hall was quiet. The hearth fire snapped at the silence, and the flames lowered themselves inside the glowing embers. Ani
waited.
“She was never seen again,” said Enna.
“What does that mean?” Beier whispered to Conrad.
“Did she become wind, too?”
Conrad shrugged.
“It’s true?” said Bettin.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be true or false. My aunt told it to me a long time ago.”
“I don’t get it,” said Conrad.
“Well, thanks be for that,” said Enna, a protective hand on Ani’s shoulder. “If you had to get every story ever told, we’d be in short supply.”
Conrad’s face flushed, and he turned to Ani. “Well, what’s it supposed to mean? Horses eating gold and turning into wind. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know,” said Ani. She looked at her hands. “I guess I never really knew what it meant, I just thought it was beautiful. I remember when my mother overheard my aunt tell me a story like that one, my mother was mad. But my aunt said, if we don’t tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won’t believe it.”
“That’s true,” said Razo. “I haven’t heard much of strange stories for years, and when Ideca served us rotten cold bean soup for the third time last week, I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“Isi said something strange, Razo,” said Enna. “Ideca’s cold bean soup three times is as ordinary as your boots smelling of sheep dung.”
Bettin rose and yawned. “You’d best tell another story tomorrow, Isi, or I mayn’t believe my dreams tonight.”
A murmur of assent passed through the hall, and most nodded their heads. Tomorrow, and every night, tell a tale.
The night air was dark and heavy in after-rain when Ani left the hall for her room. The moon cleared a scrap of sky, and the moonlight turned the outside of her windowpane into a silver mirror. She stooped there a moment, examining her eyebrows to see if marketday would require another purchase of thornroot. They were dark brown, though perhaps fading from the darker color of a month before.
Ani glanced at her full face and stopped. It was the first time she had looked at herself since the morning she had left her mother’s palace. Her face was emphasized by the headscarf, rounder and paler, but, she was surprised to see, not sadder. This reflection seemed more significant than the one she had often seen in the palace mirrors, staring back in simple boredom.