The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre

by Gail Carson Levine

  I hugged her, as I couldn’t remember doing before, and sobbed. “I’m sorry!”

  She held me, which I also couldn’t remember ever happening. “Never mind. Your oratory will improve.” After a minute she let me go and left the chamber.

  My heart rose to my throat, but she didn’t close the door behind her.

  I didn’t dare dash away again, so I waited a few dutiful minutes to see if Annet would come and considered where I might go if I were really on my own.

  I knelt on the window seat to look outside. The castle dominated the tallest hill in the region, and the tower room rose high enough for me to see beyond the inner and outer ward walls. The town crowned the next hill.

  In eastern Lakti the terrain was flat and grassy; in the west, where Father fought, flat and stony. The Eskern Mountains in the south diminished to high hills in the center of the kingdom and gentled further in our northland.

  A blue sky turned the moat water into a pretty ribbon. Tiny April leaves dotted the bushes beyond the castle. The gray stone walls and rust-red slate roofs of the town guildhalls enticed me, as distant objects always did.

  Closing my eyes, I leaned my forehead against the mullioned glass and wished for Lady Mother to approve of me no matter what I did and for me to want to do nothing but what she would approve of.

  I caught a whiff of peonies, which wouldn’t bloom for months. Behind me, I heard crackling, as if fat had been thrown on a fire—but the fireplace was empty. We Lakti lit no home fires after winter ended.

  I jumped off the window seat. A twirl of rainbow-colored light sparkled from the floor to the ceiling, between me and the table. I pressed back against the window and shaded my eyes. My heart pounded in my ears. A fairy? Or something else?

  Couldn’t be a fairy.

  Within the swirl I saw a figure, shaped like a person, the size of a grown-up.

  The light faded around the figure, and there she was, even taller than Lady Mother, very slender, with white hair caught up in a silver net and the papery skin of the old. Her face calmed me. Maybe it was the smile lines around her mouth, although she wasn’t smiling. She just watched me, appraising me, as Lady Mother did, her copper-brown eyes intent.

  I gathered my courage. “Are you a fairy, or something terrible?” Perhaps a monster from Old Lakti, where we Lakti had lived before the creatures appeared there.

  “I am the fairy Halina.” Her ringing voice echoed off the stones. Lina lina lina.

  “But fairies don’t appear to the Lakti.” They’d stopped when we conquered the Bamarre, who had taken us in after we’d fled our kingdom.

  “This fairy is appearing to you.”

  “Why?”

  Now she did smile. “Do you always have a reason for speaking?”

  My bones thrummed with excitement. I grinned. A fairy!

  Her smile widened.

  I remembered she’d asked a question. I nodded. “But I don’t always have anything to say.” Sometimes I just told Father—not Lady Mother—whatever came into my mind. I had a reason, though: because he listened and thought about every word.

  “This fairy has a reason today.” She bent down so her face was inches from mine, and I noticed her long gray eyelashes. “It is to warn you against wishing to change yourself from what you most are, a person who despises a cage.”

  I found myself arguing. With a fairy! “It would be easier if I felt cozy in a cage.”

  She straightened again. “Nonetheless, that is your nature.”

  “If I have to stay the same, can you cast a spell and make Lady Mother always think well of me?”

  She raised a hand, palm up. “Even fairies bungle that sort of thing . . . and no one else can do it in the slightest.”

  Too bad. A polite child, I said, “It’s nice to meet you anyway.” I added, “Can you hear my thoughts?” I formed a clear one, the wish to be able to turn into a blur of light, too.

  “This fairy can hear—so long as I’m listening.” She frowned. “Only we are creatures of light.”

  Had I offended her? “Sorry!” Might she turn me into a toad? “Did you make yourself look the way you do to talk to me?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you often listen to my thoughts?” What had she heard?

  “This fairy has other matters to attend to.”

  Whew!

  “I know when to listen.”

  When? Which thoughts would catch her attention?

  She went on. “For the most part, your thoughts are your own. You enjoy poetry, don’t you?”

  I hesitated. I’d learned that most of the Bamarre loved poems and most of the Lakti sneered at them. “Yes.”

  She placed her hand on my head, her touch so light I barely felt it through my blanket of hair. “Good. Fairies love poetry.”

  “Is that why you visited me?”

  “It’s one reason. And to tell you that you are marvelous as you are.”

  Not even Father had ever called me marvelous. I bounced on my toes in excitement. A fairy approved of me, even though I couldn’t orate, even though I didn’t always measure up.

  She began to shimmer and glow again, but her voice remained round and ringing. “Look at the south wall.”

  The wall hanging vanished, and the stones behind it lit up as if the sun were shining on them. A mountainscape appeared. I saw snowy summits above forested slopes. The air smelled fresh and sharp. My hair streamed behind me in a blowing wind, as if I stood on a summit, too. A bird, black against the bright sky, rose from behind a peak.

  Not a bird! A dragon, belching fire!

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER A MOMENT, the dragon dived below the ridge, and the scene faded. I turned. Halina had disappeared.

  Breathing hard, I sat in the window seat. The mountains must have been the Eskerns, which were in the south, dividing New Lakti, where we lived now, from Old Lakti, our former home. The dragon must have been one of the monsters in Old Lakti, where ogres, gryphons, and specters also lived. Were they coming here?

  “Halina, come back!” I squeezed my eyes shut and thought, shouting in my mind, Tell me what this means! Why did you show it to me?

  I opened my eyes. Dust motes slanted in from the windows. A crow cawed outside. Had I just imagined the fairy?

  My back heated. I whipped around. The wall went bright again, then darkened. Clearly, in my mind, I heard her voice. The monsters can’t leave Old Lakti. Fairies made sure of that.

  Good. But why did she show me that scene? I decided that fairies were mysterious.

  I looked down at myself to see if her touch had changed me. Nothing I could see. I considered my interior self, and decided my insides were the same as ever, too.

  If the fairy thought well of me, she thought well of my peregrinating, so I left the chamber, intending to go to town, but there was Annet, who’d been sent to fetch me to supper. On the way to the great hall, I imagined telling Lady Mother about Halina. I would have done so if she’d asked me a single question. However, she didn’t, and I had been taught to stay silent in the hall unless speech was requested.

  She always came to me in the evening, my favorite time of day with her, because she was more at ease then. She’d tell me tales of Old Lakti or we’d play Nine Men’s Morris.

  That night it was to be Nine Men’s Morris. When she came in, Annet opened the chest next to my bed, which held the game board and the black or gray stone “men.”

  “Lady Mother?” I hoped she’d believe me. “After you left me in the tower the second time, when you let the door stay open . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “. . . a fairy appeared.”

  The lid of the chest clattered to the floor. Annet wasn’t usually clumsy.

  “Her name is Halina. She was a whirl of light until she took a human shape and looked like an old lady.” I peeked at Lady Mother, and then stared.

  She sat heavily on my bed, clasping her hands, knuckles jutting white. Her nose reddened, nostrils flaring. If she were
anyone else, I would have thought she was about to cry.

  For the second time that day, I hugged her. “Can’t it be good? That the fairies visited a Lakti?”

  She cupped my face in her hands. “You must never tell anyone you saw a fairy. If one comes to you again, let me know—me, and no one else.” She released me, and I sat next to her on the bed. “Do you understand, Perry?”

  I nodded. “Why can’t I tell?”

  “Because I am your mother.”

  I’d heard other castle parents say just these words to their children, but Lady Mother had never said them to me. I treasured the phrase, as if I were the child of Lady Mother’s body.

  I ventured another question. “Why are you sad?”

  “Why would I be sad? What did the fairy say?”

  “Can I tell?” Meaning that Annet would hear.

  “Go ahead.”

  I told everything and finished with the mountain scene on the wall. “Then she vanished. When I thought I might have imagined her, the wall lit up again, not with mountains or monsters, just light.”

  Annet put the Nine Men’s Morris game on the bed next to us.

  “We won’t play. Tonight I’ll brush your hair, Perry.”

  Astonished, I sat at my vanity table. Lady Mother took up the brush. How gentle she was! She worked patiently at my tangles without pulling. Neither of us spoke, and Annet, who had to ask permission to address Lady Mother, was silent too. In the mirror, I saw the sadness fade from Lady Mother’s face, replaced by a look of peace.

  Later that night, Annet sat on the edge of my bed. I slid away uneasily.

  But she smiled. Ordinarily, her smile was stiff, displayed only when called for. Tonight I saw humor in it and—could it be?—affection.

  Not trusting her, I didn’t smile back.

  She stroked a handful of hair off my forehead. Then, to my amazement, she pushed her green tassel aside and kissed the scabs on my forehead.

  “Because a fairy visited me?”

  “It’s a wonderful thing.”

  “Has one ever appeared to you?”

  “No.”

  “Not yet.” She was a Bamarre, so a fairy could visit her anytime. What was strange was that Halina had picked me.

  “They don’t come to many of us.”

  I understood this the only way I could. Fairies visited few of them—the Bamarre.

  “And hardly ever come. I don’t know if there’s been a visitation in a hundred years.”

  “Why do you think Lady Mother said I can’t tell anyone?”

  “Lady Klausine doesn’t confide in me.”

  True. “Why else did you kiss me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Because I said I wanted to be a Bamarre?”

  “No.” Pause. “Maybe. It’s good if you notice the differences between being a Lakti and being a Bamarre—if you notice in your own way. And I liked the vision the fairy showed you.”

  I quoted the Bamarre greeting: “Soon, across the Eskerns.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do people say that?” I was enjoying this rare openness between us.

  She took a long breath. “The saying means we want to live in Old Lakti.”

  “With monsters?” But the Bamarre were weak! And cowardly. After only a few battles, we’d wrested the kingdom from them, and they’d rebelled just once, more than a century ago.

  She shrugged. “Free. It’s just a saying.”

  I’d be free when I grew up, but Annet would still have to be a servant.

  “Do you remember your history and ours?” she asked.

  “I do.” We’d left Old Lakti when the monsters arrived out of nothing. We’d crossed the Eskern Pass. The monsters hadn’t pursued us, had seemed unable to, and the Bamarre had taken us in. “It’s our nature to conquer,” I said, as I’d been taught.

  “Was letting the Lakti in weakness or kindness on our part? We could easily have kept them out.”

  The pass was narrow. They certainly could have turned my ancestors away. I’d also been taught that the Bamarre had been weak to give us a safe haven. They’d known we were warriors.

  But they may have been both weak and kind. “Maybe they thought it would be their fault if everyone died.”

  “Exactly.” The tartness returned to her voice. “Which may be why fairies don’t visit the Lakti. Fairies prefer kindness to cruelty.” She went to the small table where she often used my ink and my quill to write I didn’t know what.

  Tonight I was curious. “What are you writing?”

  “A letter to our—my parents.”

  “Our?”

  She was silent a moment. “I meant my.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “In Gavrel.”

  I knew my geography. Gavrel was a village in the east.

  “Go to sleep.”

  I didn’t speak to anyone about Halina, but I thought about her often. Would she visit me again? When? Most of all, why had she picked me?

  For a week I was spared further declaiming lessons, almost long enough to persuade me that bolting had been a good idea. But instruction resumed, although Lady Mother moved my lessons in every subject, not merely oration, from the tower to the library, a bright room with tall windows that looked out on the castle’s inner courtyard. When Annet and I arrived there, Willem sat at a table, next to Lady Mother.

  I smiled so widely my cheeks hurt. “Willem!”

  He nodded at me. I dimmed my smile because he looked sad. I wondered if he could hear well enough to have heard his name.

  My smile expanded again. I couldn’t help it.

  Lady Mother gestured for me to sit across from them and slid the boils speech to me. “Speak, Peregrine, loud enough for Willem to hear.” To him, she shouted, “Raise your hand when you can hear. Can you hear me?”

  He raised his hand.

  Oh. I was supposed to satisfy Lady Mother and make Willem hear, and if I failed, I’d have failed them both.

  In an ordinary voice, she said, “Begin.”

  I wished I had something more delightful to read. In a louder voice than I’d achieved the last time—because this was for Willem—I said, “A plague . . .”

  His hand stayed down.

  I tried again. “A plague of . . .”

  His hand remained where it was.

  I roared, “A plague of furuncles spread . . .”

  His hand shot up. I feared that the boils might remind him of the bumps people got when they had the pox, but his expression brightened.

  I continued to boom. “. . . across the male population of New Lakti, a dreadful scourge, affecting the elbow. No one”—it dawned on me that boils might be the subject Willem would enjoy most—“was spared. King Skurd contracted . . .”

  Lady Mother leaned back in her chair and nodded.

  I went on, now wishing that the details about the boils were bloodier, more pus-filled, but those details there were I emphasized with hand gestures and facial expressions of disgust.

  When I finished, Willem declaimed a different piece, this one about a recent battle my father and his had fought. Though he couldn’t hear well, his speaking style had energy and feeling. At the end, Lady Mother had him join me on my side of the table so I could declaim his piece along with him.

  I had trouble reading aloud something I’d never read before, but I stumbled along, and his voice covered my errors. After a few sentences I caught the flow, like a pebble in a current. My pitch rose and fell with Willem’s, and I felt his voice reverberate in my chest. When we reached the end, he bowed to me. I curtsied. What I cared most about was his glad face.

  Lady Mother never brought Willem to another lesson, but I had cleared the oratory hurdle. Though I didn’t excel, I could force my voice out and muster a degree of expression.

  And Willem and I were friends again. Even better, his hearing gradually sharpened until at last it was almost as keen as before the pox.

  Lady Mother noticed our attempts to be toge
ther and our longing looks. A week after we’d declaimed, in the corridor on the way to breakfast, she said, “Willem will never be a match for you, Perry. You’ll do better.”

  “He’s no match for me now. I best him in all our sports.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Her meaning exploded in my mind. “To marry?”

  She smiled. “There’s plenty of time to worry about that.”

  I pulled my hand out of hers and ran half the length of the corridor and back to dispel my embarrassment.

  When I reached her again, she retied the bow that held my hair at the nape of my neck. More to herself than to me, she said, “You are pretty enough. We Lakti are too sensible to require an utter beauty. And your hair is an astonishment.”

  Later, in swordplay against Willem, loyalty caught up with me. Here on the field, I could defeat him, but in every other way he was at least my equal. If I had to marry someday, no one would be better than Willem.

  Later in the spring, when the peonies bloomed, I was forever catching their scent and thinking Halina had come back. I’d wheel about and look for her rainbow light.

  But after the flowers wilted, the reminders ceased. However, I did follow Annet’s advice to study the Bamarre, especially Annet herself, since she was my closest exemplar.

  I became confused. Were Annet’s gestures neat and economical because she was a Bamarre or because she was Annet? Did she choose her dull embroidery colors for either of those reasons, or because she had been instructed to do so? She said the latter, which led me to wonder if these were the only threads she had leave to use.

  I asked myself if, without her tassel, Annet would be just like any female Lakti.

  Probably not. It wasn’t that she was short, or anything physical. Both the Lakti and the Bamarre were short or tall, thin or stocky, pale or dark. Yes, we were brave and the Bamarre were cowards, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at a person. Still, there was a difference, though I finally gave up trying to name it.

  Certain she wouldn’t be betrayed, Annet had revealed my origins to the castle’s Bamarre servants, who treated me with a degree more warmth than they bestowed on the other Lakti: bows and curtsies a bit deeper, eye smiles as well as mouth smiles, a word or two when a nod would have sufficed. Lady Mother seemed unaware of their special regard, but Father saw.