by Shannon Hale
“Enna, you’re worried.”
Enna nodded. “I think that you should come hear what Tatto’s telling the others.”
When they entered the hall, Tatto was seated grandly on the end of a table, and the attention of the workers was unusually and unquestioningly his.
“ . . . and it’s all set for spring, once the pass snows melt. It’s as sure as a copper’s copper, says my da.”
“If it’s true, peacock, why would they tell you?” said Beier.
Tatto sniffed. “Common knowledge. Rumor can’t get there before the war, anyhow.”
“War?” said Ani.
“With Kildenree,” said Enna.
“What do you mean, Tatto? Why would Bayern attack Kildenree?”
“It’s the other way round,” said Conrad. He was looking at her shrewdly. She glanced away.
“Exactly.” Tatto nodded. “Word’s out they mean to attack us, have been planning it for years. But we’ve got the mountain pass road just about finished, and we’ll be there before they can get us. I guess that princess, the yellow girl, was a decoy, sent to marry the prince to pretend all’s well. But she went against those rough yellows and told the king about the war because she likes Bayern and doesn’t like how evil her people are, or something like that.”
“The princess,” said Ani. “The news that Kildenree’s attacking Bayern came from the princess. And the king believes her?”
Razo shrugged. “I heard some rumors this winter about Kildenree and their plans.”
“This’s her plan,” Ani whispered to Enna, gripping her shoulders urgently. “This’s her way of sealing her secret.”
“Don’t worry, Isi,” said Tatto. “Da says our army’ll crush them like a grape between fingers.”
“Yes, he’s right,” said Ani. “They will.”
“I say about time,” said one of the sheep boys. “We haven’t had a good war since my da was a boy.”
“Not that we’ll see any of it,” said Sifrid.
“Maybe,” said Razo, “if it’s big enough, maybe they’ll need the Forest boys, and we’ll all be given javelins and shields and join the king’s army and come home warrior champions to crowds of swooning city girls.”
Many laughed, though there was hope in the laugh. Someone started a war song, and most of the boys and some girls joined in. “The valley quakes, the long road calls—the javelins march, the young men march, the new bloods march where kings command. The mountain shakes, the mighty falls—and warriors march, the brave men march, the bloodied march with sword in hand.”
Ani watched them, and every word of the song felt like the blow of a hammer. The hall shook with their voices. Then suddenly the singers stopped, leaving the silence heavy with images of Forest boys as men and warriors. The fire in the hearth popped and flamed.
That night, Ani could not sleep, could not even lie down. She paced in her tiny room, a new plan taking uneasy form. She had told Enna once, “Even if some of the workers were willing to go to battle on this, I don’t think it would be right to endanger their lives just to get back my name.” But now there was war. This was no longer her battle, not just a spat between two former friends or bad blood among countrymen. Now Selia was pulling all Bayern into her viciousness. The massacre in the Forest had not been one separate, brutal act—it was the first brawl in Selia’s personal war for power. And Ani was the only person with the knowledge to stop it.
Tomorrow, she would tell the workers the truth and beg them for their aid. With a guard of friends, she had a chance of making it to the king alive, and there she would have to tell her tale. The thought of exposing herself like that was frightening. She had no evidence, just her yellow hair and her story. But Selia had a story, too, and false witnesses, and behind it all the convincing power of people-speaking.
The squeezing in her stomach would not allow her to sleep that night. She walked off restlessness by striding to the goose pens. Jok and his mate nestled near the gate, and he raised his head when she entered.
Ani greeted him and sat for a moment, wondering at the beauty of white birds in the dark. Jok nuzzled his mate sleepily, and the goose prodded his feathers with her beak.
I am alone, Ani said to Jok. Come rest the night in my room.
The two birds followed her, silent but for tiny, distinct flaps on the cobblestones. The walk was not far, and soon the pair nested in a disarrangement of her blanket, their stout bodies filling most of the space. Ani sat beside them awhile, a hand on the warmth of their feathers. Then she paced again. There was no room for her in the bed, and she did not care. She mumbled to herself—war, Selia, wind, the king, and war.
Her cheeks were hot from worry and movement, and she sat below her window, her back to the street, and let the crack under the door move air over her hand and up to her face.
She awoke perhaps an hour later. She was lying on the hard cobblestones of her floor, her cheek resting on her outstretched arm and her loose hair over her face. There was another noise coming from outside. The first noise had awakened her. She held perfectly still and listened.
The creak of a boot sole. A small stone freed from its mortar by a careless foot. A hushed, heavy breath. Ani, moving only her eyes, glanced up to her little table where sat the mirror Enna had given her at wintermoon. Its face tilted toward the window, toward the slit in her curtains where they never fully closed. Stooped outside was a form, one eye peering in, a bit of cheek, part of a long, pale braid.
The door opened slowly, the noise as slight as the breath of a sleeping bird. Ani did not move. Nothing seemed clear, as though she were still sleeping and seeing the strange images in a fragmented dream. The door opened wide, separating the corner where she lay from the intruder. Ani rose slowly to her feet. The rustling of her skirt was masked by his step. His step, she thought. His. Ungolad.
As the name entered her mind, fear jolted through her frame and woke her blood and widened her eyes. She could see his back now and the glint on the tip of his bare dagger. He crept toward the bed where two geese slept, indistinct pale shapes in the dark blanket. A too small draft curled around her ankle. No way out. The window was sealed. She would have to slip out the door.
Ani took a step. And another. Another. She held her skirt in her right hand, softly, to keep it from touching the door. Her toe crossed the soft line of moonlight that fell through the doorway. He was at the bed. His hand touched the blanket. Ani took another step and entered the light of night.
The two geese squawked when roused by a stranger’s hand. Ani started and then ran. She heard Ungolad curse and the trumpeting calls of the geese—attack, enemy, danger, bite, beat, protect! Her boots pounded against the stones, and the impact beat her joints and shook her vision. The horrible thuds of boots on rock echoed behind her. She thought she heard doors opening to the right, and still, farther behind now, the honking of geese. For months she had been practicing fleeing from Ungolad in her nightmares. Now she could think of nothing but how to run.
She ran a path she knew, the easy road, past the settlements, not up to the pens but down, the street leaning toward the city wall. The west gate. Thud, thud, thud came the running behind her, always the sounds getting closer together, always the sounds getting closer. She could hear his breathing now, hard in his throat. Her muscles were trembling. She waited to feel his hand grasp her neck or spring for her legs and pull her down, a fox on a hen. The west gate rose before her, the empty socket of stone that spilled into the pasture, the wood, the Forest. Above its eye, the white blue semblance of Falada, guardian of the gateway. Ani looked up. The footsteps behind missed a beat. He leapt for her, to catch her before the city ended. A touch.
Falada, she said.
Something happened. Like lightning at her back. Like a beast tearing out her side. Like a touch of heat exploded into flame. She cried out, and her voice sounded animal in her throat, quiet and strange and frightful. It was pain. She put a word to it, and her feet stumbled.
His dagger
had caught her back.
The footsteps behind her did not resume. She heard his body hit the ground with a grunt. He had leapt too far to meet her with his knife and must have fallen. But, she thought, he will be there when I fall as well. The thought was as inevitable as her stumbling feet.
Princess, said Falada.
Her feet found stones, and she kept running.
She ran from stone to grass, and the lower pitch of running startled her, and she thought he ran behind her still, so she ran still faster, down the pasture, propelled by the pain in her back as though it were her pursuer pushing her forward. She leapt over the stream and looked back to see his form racing down the hill.
There was a dry storm crackling in clouds darker than the sky. A stab of lightning briefly lit the face of the north horizon. The world seemed blacker at its departure. The pasture was restless with winds, tumbling over one another like bears at play, knocking against trees so hard that their leaves shook like knees. It swirled around her, a hundred different winds at once, pouncing on her shoulders, thumping against her back, hunching her shoulders against its force. And it stayed near, as though it sensed images of its own language like salt on her skin.
The dark figure was coming toward her. With every touch of air on her skin, with the sting in her back, with her mind that rolled over itself like the storm, she bade the wind strike. She felt the rush, and then stillness. The figure fell hard to the ground and turned over twice. He stayed down, arms over his head, crouched low as a stone, hiding from the wind that ripped at his clothes and hair. Ani turned to the woods and ran. She did not look back again.
The trees turned to wood and the wood to deeper wood, and she took no heed of where she ran, but away. To breathe was agonizing, yet she could not get enough air. She thought perhaps the running would go on the length of a forest, the length of a kingdom, the length of a world. When she came to the wall that closed in the royal woods and pastures, she climbed it without thought. It was low on her side and dropped two men’s height on the far. She jumped down, hit the ground, and, stunned out of breath, lay painfully still.
The moaning noises of the woods. The buzz of a night bug’s flight. An owl. No human sounds. If a guard patrolled the wall this far in the woods, he was not near. Ani told herself to stand before a guard returned, before Ungolad leaned over the wall, looked down on her, and smiled, predator at prey. A breeze that roamed the ground along the wall passed over her neck. She tried to calm her heart and clear the fear from her head enough to listen. There were no human images in its speech. She coaxed a wind to her from down the wall and sought it for news of the woods she had left. No scent of Ungolad lingered. She must have outrun him somehow or, more likely, lost him in the wood. She lay still and listened to any breeze that came near, and their stories soothed her, and her heart slowed and her eyes drooped.
She made a last effort to stand and stumbled away from the wall and farther into the woods. Afraid to fall asleep bleeding into the earth, she stayed standing as she tore strips from the hem of her tunic with an effort that awakened the pain anew. By the time she had wrapped her middle with the strips, the ground and trees and sky were tilting and spinning so that every direction seemed to be down. She put a hand over her eyes and found a darkness dimmer than the night. Her body crumpled onto the hard earth.
Part Three
Yellow Lady
Chapter 17
Ani walked for three days. Daylight revealed that her back was stained with the dark brown of dried blood, and when she touched the cut with her fingers they came back a fresh red. She kept walking.
Clear thought seemed to have left her at the pasture archway where Falada last called her Princess and where Ungolad’s knife had bit her. Her hair hung long and uncovered. The sight and feel of it made her uneasy, and she avoided any person who neared her path. She remembered that there was a safe place to go, and she struggled to get there, listening to the wind for the cool murmuring of water and a path away from people.
Four nights she spent on the ground. Except for the first night, when loss of blood and exhaustion closed her eyes for her, Ani was conscious enough to feel the cold of early spring nights. Even in the deepest part of sleep, that awareness of cold pursued her, bruising her dreams and waking her often with icicle fingers on her skin. Day was an extension of the nightmare. She walked, and fell, and walked. When certain plants and mushrooms that she recognized as food crossed her vision, she dropped her left hand and harvested them in passing. But she had little thought for food, and she only sought out word of water from roaming breezes when the thirst clenched her throat. Once she awoke with a start to find her face underwater, having stopped to drink in a stream and lost consciousness.
There were people in the Forest. She did not know if they were good or bad. She never strayed far from the great road that led to the city, keeping it almost in vision off to her left. Though when breezes brought images of humans, she was forced to march farther in.
High morning after her fourth night, Ani found the familiar little path that led off one of the many twisting Forest roads. She almost fainted from relief at the sight of the places where she had wandered in search of roots and berries so many months ago, and she thanked creation for memory and luck and the hints of winds that led her.
She was startled when she first saw the cottage again, worried that she was mistaken, for its aspect was wrong, before she understood that her vision was not trustworthy and she saw two houses of shifting images. Perhaps there had not been as many trees in the woods as she had seen.
Poppo the goat bleated at her, and Gilsa raised her head from her garden.
Ani meant to call a greeting but found her voice was as questionable as her sight. The thought of rest suddenly made her giddy with fatigue. She kept walking forward until the woman caught her by her arms and held her still.
“Yes, what, child?” said Gilsa. It seemed her voice was short not from impatience but worry.
“Gilsa, I’m going to faint again.”
And she did.
Ani awoke lying on her stomach on Gilsa’s low cot by the fire. It was blazing cheerfully, the crackling of the wood sap accompanied by the pleasant clicking of Gilsa’s knitting needles. The halfhearted light of evening peered through cracks in the shutters.
“I’ve slept all day,” said Ani.
The clicking ceased, and with a low grunt Gilsa slid her chair closer.
“You’ve slept all day, night, and day again. But your fever’s gone now and you’re in precious little danger.”
Ani winced, sure that was not completely true. Gilsa watched her, then shook her head as though dismissing sentiment.
“Heavens, child,” she said, “I appreciate your warning me of the faint this time, but you might have let me know you were injured and where before tumbling to the ground. It took me time to cut the clothes off you and more time to wash you clean and find the wound. A thoughtless way to ask for hospitality.”
“Oh,” said Ani, “that was the blue tunic that you gave me, and I’ve ruined it.”
Gilsa scowled. “Cry for a knife in your back, not an old blue tunic, gosling. You didn’t even rouse when I washed the stab clean and tied it up tight. Finn thought you were dead.”
Ani saw Finn across the room, sitting on his bed with his hands folded on his knees. He nodded once to her in greeting, then stood and brought her a large bowl of hot bean and onion stew. She ate ardently, and they watched her in silence.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I told Mother,” said Finn, “that somebodies—”
“Some persons,” said Gilsa.
“Some persons were trying to kill you, and might come this way. She couldn’t believe it.”
“Yes, well, I can now, but I don’t want to hear about it.” Gilsa stopped and stared at her stilled knitting for a moment. She put it away and huffed. “Though, on consideration, perhaps I’d better.”
Ani told them all, even of Falada’s head, and l
earning bird tongue and the wind, telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth. When she finished, she looked from the fire to Gilsa, who scarcely hid her amazement, and Finn, who stared blankly and then nodded to her encouragingly when he noticed her gaze.
“Well,” said Gilsa. “That’s a story you don’t hear on the eve of wintermoon, even if you do tell it with that neat little accent like you’d been grown here.”
“I used to tell stories to the other workers, sometimes on rainy days, sometimes on cold nights when the only sounds were the fire and the wind outside. Tales my aunt told me, stories I’d read in books. In these last months I’ve told more stories than I thought I knew. And I’ve told lies. To hide. Now, telling you the truth, it sounds to me like just another story.”
“I like that story,” said Finn.
“Hush up,” said Gilsa, “it’s not a story that asks for liking.”
“I’m not sure I like it yet,” said Ani. “Maybe it’s just strange to hear it aloud. I’ve never told it all to anyone, not even Enna, who knows some. Saying it makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I’d like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”
Gilsa huffed. “You want it all to end with you riding home on a tall horse and everyone cheering or some such like the young daydream.”
Ani watched the firelight turn the hearthstones gold. “Maybe I did. Maybe I hoped I’d return home again and everyone would say, We were wrong about her. And they’d see that I’m special and beautiful and powerful and all that.”
“Oh, you all wish such stuff, you and Finn like you. Right now he’s probably daydreaming about getting a javelin and shield, as though such nonsense will make the chickens lay bigger eggs.”