| Chapter 2 |
“Greetings...” said a small shrill voice, from somewhere above her head. Was that an actual word? If someone was indeed speaking to her, it was in a very odd dialect.
Probably a bird, she decided. She didn’t raise her head or take her hands away from her face. “Go away!” she mumbled through chattering teeth.
“Greetings?” said the bird again, with a questioning lilt to the second part of the word.
Stiffly she spread her fingers apart and looked through the gap with one reluctant eye. There was nothing to see – it was still nighttime, still dark, cold and damp.
“Up here. I say Greetings! for the third time!”
She tilted her head back. Perched on a branch of the thicket around her, there was a small shape silhouetted against the faint light of the sky. She had caught a glimpse of the fingernail moon earlier, but clouds now hid what little light the moon provided.
A talking bird? She responded mockingly in a croak, “Oh... I beg your pardon. Greetings!” Greetings to madness – greetings to the onset of delusion.
“Pardon me, I am here not to entertain.”
Entertain? Good Goddess! She flung her hands outward in exasperation.
“In fact, I do not care to be here at all.” Now the thin voice held annoyance.
“I do not care for this nightmare! ... A talking bird!” she groaned, dropping her head back into her hands.
“Not a bird,” snapped the voice. “I am a visitor to this forest. I am seeking a royal personage. I suspect you are she, as I have not found anyone else fitting the description.”
She looked up again. The shape glowed a little and she thought she was seeing a small, furry creature with stick-like legs and arms. The face was sharp-featured, with piercing eyes.
How bizarre!... it was obviously a nightmare. Was that better or worse than the despair of her current reality?
“I am a princess of sorts. Who dares to ask?”
“I am called Keet, a visitor – as I said – to this inhospitable forest.” Now it (or possibly he) took out a small piece of parchment, unrolling it and peering at it in the gloom... a checklist, it seemed.
“Small for a human... hmmm... not a child...” he mumbled. And...
“Blackish hair... impossible to tell!” The piercing eyes skewered her and then went back to the list. “Pale skin, crooked teeth... perhaps... Your name?”
“Scylla of Rellant,” she proclaimed grandly, although she was filthy, damp, weak with hunger, and shivering in the shrubbery. “I am the only princess of this realm. I have been lost in the forest now for two days and three nights.”
Keet consulted the parchment. “...two days, three nights... Ah, yes... Why?”
“They are hunting me, like an animal!”
“Who is?”
“I do not know! My handmaid woke me up in the middle of the night. She said...”
The creature waited silently.
“She said... it’s an attack... They’re killing everyone! Run! Run!” Scylla gasped in remembered horror. “She dragged me out of bed and pushed me out the side door with nothing but this servant’s cloak to wrap around my nightclothes.”
“So you ran?” Keet prompted.
“I heard screams, terrible sounds... of course I ran.” Confused and frightened, she had run blindly into the forest – anywhere to get away from the danger.
Her odd companion shifted a little on his perch. The branches swayed. Was there a hint of light in the sky, the first suggestion of dawn? “There is not much time. Please continue!”
“We were at the hunting lodge for a week’s holiday at summer’s end. My father the king came to hunt. Queen Maris came too, with her entourage, and my twin half-brothers the princes. It is the first time they came to hunt with our father, now they are nine years old.” They had been even more tiresome than usual in the days leading up to the excursion, wild with excitement.
“Is this your mother the queen?”
Her face twisted. “No, I am the king’s daughter from his first marriage. I did not wish to go to the hunting lodge, but my father insisted. Even though everyone else would prefer I wasn’t there – including me!” Unloved and unloving – that was what she was. Even Sorrell had pushed her out the door alone.
“I have been sent to find a princess who is the offspring of King Tobin and his first Queen, Clerryn. Are there any others? If not, I presume you are the one I seek.”
She shifted position. She had scraped together leaves and branches to avoid sitting on the damp ground, but it was not comfortable. Her strength was draining away, the chill of the night reaching her very bones. “I am Princess Scylla, did I not already say so?... Can I wake up now?” she mumbled to herself, waiting for the dream to end. She would wake up in her bed, back in the hunting lodge or, even better, back in the castle. Surely!
The creature, Keet, gave a snuffling sort of a laugh.
“I regret to tell you, Princess Scylla, you are awake. You are cold, hungry and... have you had any water?”
“A little.”
“You giants!” he jeered. “You are so large and yet so frail! Well, I will do my best!”
Scylla had licked water from leaves when there was dew. She could not bring herself to drink water from a muddy trickle. And she was cold, right to the bone. She had hidden in hollows and thickets throughout two long days and stumbled on through the darkness each night. Some hours ago she had crouched in the shadow of a large tree, while a dozen paces away on a deer path, men conferred in low voices. She had heard her name – she was the one they were hunting. She put her fingers in her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. Was there not some portal... somewhere? ... A door she could fling open and crawl through, out of this horrid dream and back to her castle chambers and her gardens on the wall?
But there was none. All she could do was make herself small and silent until the group of hunters moved off, then crawl away in the opposite direction. After what seemed like endless hours she had found refuge in the shelter of a large boulder, behind this thorny thicket.
Her clothing was wet, torn and filthy. She was scratched and aching, one ankle throbbing from having stepped in a hole yesterday.
“I am doomed,” she said out loud. “Doomed to this waking nightmare... of murder, starvation, cold, damp... and now even stranger... a talking creature! What did I do to deserve this? Is it because I despise the queen? I despise her whole household, even her twin brats. There is only my handmaid, but why did she send me away alone?”
There was no answer from Keet. When she looked up, the creature had changed position, standing up on the swaying branches. He looked peculiar – as if he was made from thin sticks – but he seemed very agile. The sky was growing lighter. Dawn would be upon her soon. Maybe she would just stay and rest under the thicket... curl up and sleep for a while.
“Truly, I cannot understand what you are,” she confessed to the creature. “An imaginary being supplied by a desperate mind, I suppose... But I am glad that I’m not alone.”
He shook his head in annoyance. “I am sent here due to this undesirable occurrence.” He gestured vaguely around at the forest, before rolling up the piece of parchment and thrusting it somewhere into his... was it clothing or fur? “Might I ask whether you have plans to catch or injure me?”
“It had not occurred to me to do either,” she said, insulted.
“I warn you not to try.”
“You need not worry,” she snapped. She would sooner have picked up a snake, and what benefit was there in trying to kill the creature?
“I have been sent to intercede in this hunt, shall we say. There are those who feel the realm is taking a dangerous turn... for more than this realm. Now, you...you are beginning to circle back towards the place you began, but it is dangerous to go that way. You have eluded the hunt so far.” He flitted to the ground, lightly on his sticklike limbs. He was no more than a foot tall when he was standing, but it was hard to see him in the early dawn.
“There is the moon,” he pointed out. The princess blinked at the glow of the waxing moon visible through the trees. A few stars twinkled through the thinning cloud cover as if they bent an ear to listen.
“The clouds are going and you will be able to see... proceed in that direction. I will endeavor to mislead the hunters as they’ve brought in dogs.”
She stared at his shadowy shape as he moved restlessly around under the bushes. Into her mind flashed an image of being torn apart by sharp teeth and she froze in horror.
“Give me one of your stockings! I will use it to drag your scent in confusing directions.”
She stared numbly at him.
He became irritated again. “I am very fast... they won’t catch me! Give me one of your stockings. Get up and start walking! That way!”
She took off her leather slipper, which was soggy and ruined by her many hours in the forest. Then she peeled off the damp stocking. Keet snatched it from her and jumped back out of reach, then wound it around his neck and body. He now looked like a wooly thing on stick legs. Possibly even a spider.
Again he pointed at the moon. “You will die if you stay there! Get up,” he said. “Go that way!” Then he darted up into the branches and she lost sight of him almost instantly.
He was gone. Why had he gone? Now she was all alone again.
Not that he had ever actually been there, she told herself sternly. He was just an illusion to her sadly disturbed mind.
She put the slipper back on. Then because there was nothing else to do, she crawled stiffly out of the thicket, avoiding the thorns. Numb and cold, she fumbled her way upright. Maybe walking would help to warm her, even though she was convinced now that this nightmare would never end. She was doomed.
The sky lightened into the deep blue of dawn. She kept going – what else was there to do? She sobbed without tears because there were no more tears to run down her cold dirty cheeks. When she fell down, she hauled herself up again, although the ankle she had injured yesterday was swollen and throbbing.
“What did I do?” she chattered to herself. “What did I do to deserve this?”
But there was no answer, not from the dark indigo sky above her, not from the rustling leaves above her, not from the looming shapes of the forest around her, and nothing from the peculiar little creature that had appeared to her.
Eventually, she tripped over a moss-covered rock, fell flat and had no energy left to rise again. All she could do was lie there with her nose in the earthy dampness of the forest floor and wonder how long she could survive this state of misery.
But what did it matter? Life at court had been unpleasant at best, rife with humiliation and insult.
Last summer, when she turned seventeen, Queen Maris had instigated a search for some man of decent birth to wed her. So far, no one had agreed or even turned up to take a look at her.
“You’re not at all attractive,” said the queen, coldly staring down at her one day in the springtime. “Very thin... small... Your eyes are too close together and your face is too long. And those big crooked teeth! Unfortunately, you have inherited your father’s looks, which is fine for him as he is king! For an unstable young woman, however...! And this is not a kingdom of great wealth or import, or... or... even any strategic interest at all in the greater world. You may very well remain here, unwanted by any man...” Or anyone else, although the queen left that unsaid.
What could a lonely, unloved princess do? What would a real princess do, faced with the tatters of her existence?
Get up! she told herself as she had done so many times. She would have to find another hiding spot in which to rest, somewhere that offered more protection. Maybe this time she wouldn’t wake. Maybe the nightmare would end. Please, Goddess, she whispered.
She grasped the trunk of a sapling and hauled herself up yet again.
Off she went, stumbling along in the dark. Branches whipped at her, little wild things scuttled away through the leaves. Birds jeered as she passed.
Time drifted. She kept her focus on the moon, because what else was there to do?
There was only death awaiting her.
And she was waiting for death.
She stumbled out onto a wider path. She didn’t even wonder which way to go. She followed the path, or was it a road?
“Princess Scylla! Princess!” She suddenly became aware that an oddly shrill and familiar voice was calling her name.
“Who... who is it?” she mumbled thickly. She blinked at the dark path ahead of her.
“Up here! It is I, Keet!”
“Who... oh, you.” She stopped. Perched on a branch on an overhanging tree was the strange little stick man who had taken her stocking... what an odd dream that had been. And yet, even an imaginary companion was better than nothing. At least in the dream, he had told her which way to go and offered to mislead the hunters and their dogs.
“Yes, I!” His voice rose to a disagreeable shriek. “Wrong way – wrong way! This road will take you nowhere you want to go! Turn around, you stupid creature!”
There was some light now although the sun itself was not yet visible through the trees. She strained to see the mean little creature, where he sat on the small branch swaying back and forth. He did not have her stocking – which was a shame because she was so cold.
“Go that way!” he was pointing with one arm. The other seemed to be pulled up close to his body.
“What’s wrong with your arm?”
He glared down at her with the piercing eyes she remembered. “A hawk attacked me, while I was in pursuit of assistance to this goddess-forsaken realm! Do us both a favor and go that way – have you no sense of self-preservation at all?” He began to bounce the branch up and down in impotent fury, then in a blur of twiggy motion, descended through the branches and leaped lightly to the ground.
A stream of angry gibberish flew from his mouth. For a moment he danced around, hugging his injured arm. Was he in pain? She watched him, fascinated, until he stopped.
“I cannot understand a word you’re saying!” Scylla could barely understand her own words – her tongue was thick and her face numb with the cold and damp.
Keet picked up a stick in his good hand and danced toward her, waving it threateningly.
“Oh!” she gasped and backed away.
“That way! That way!” Keet screamed at her in the shrill little voice.
“You stay away from me, you... you... whatever you are!” she snapped, but retreated, staggered around and set off in the direction she had come.
His screams died away and she did not bother trying to make sense of any of it. Pain, cold, weakness, thirst... it was all there was. Her head felt like it was about to burst, her ears were ringing, and she couldn’t think anymore.
Thunk! That was the tap of the stick she was using as support. Then there was a scuff – that was her right foot – and another scuff – that was her left foot. She kept going, just because the thunk, scuff, scuff was a more attractive sound than silence.
Then suddenly, like a slap in the face, there was light... buildings... and yelling men.
The hunters had found her!
They were running at her. Their shadows loomed. She shrank back, tried to run, stumbled and fell.
This time her skull hit a rock with a hard impact, and Death – welcome Death – closed in and brought the blessed relief of nothingness.
***
The hunters had been standing before the smithy in the small village. Two long days and three nights had gone and the group was gathering in the early morning for yet another day of searching. Some were grousing that there was no point in further hunting for the missing princess. But when their leader came out the door and laid his grim glance upon them, they shut up. Tersely he gave them directions for the morning’s search.
There was a shrill birdcall from the forest. It was repeated.
One of the men turned his head at the sound and to his astonishment saw a shambling form emerging f
rom the gloom of the narrow forest road. It moved slowly towards them.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s that... is that the princess...?”
They all ran towards her as if to prevent her from escaping.
The slight form in the dark cloak shrank back, shuddered and tried to run. She tripped, fell hard, and half rolled over to lie motionless – just a shadow on the road in the early dawn.
***
Death was upon her. Scylla’s mind rolled with it. Sometimes she thought she heard the forest trees swaying above her with the wind. She was wrapped in icy blankets and could not move. Apparitions moved around her, and the wind roared.
Death, if that’s what it was, was not entirely pleasant. She was not truly free to soar. Sometimes she was free, her mind floating freely through the night, flying with the wind, only to thud back into the icy blankets.
Some fluid entered her mouth, but as the dead do not drink, she closed her throat and let it run out again. She could see nothing except something that might have been flickering flames. But how could it be, when there was no warmth at all?
She did not regret her death. But there were so many things she had not had the chance to do, in her short and unpleasant life. A feeling of sadness remained – sadness and disappointment.
The flames, she thought suddenly, must indicate that she had gone to the earthen hell. It seemed unfair. Her sins had been so small, so insignificant. Surely.
“She won’t drink the tea,” said a rasping voice, suddenly, loudly from close by.
“The dead don’t drink,” she said in response – or tried to. She suspected her mouth had said nothing more than “dddddddd...”
“She has to drink, she’s dehydrated.” Another voice was coming through the darkness as if he spoke underwater, bubbling. “She’s nothing but skin and bone – even thinner than she was before.”
Something floated across her vision. Right above her hovered several disembodied faces. Four, she counted. Where had they come from?
“Izz zis h-h-h-h-hell?”
“Is she saying something?” That was the voice beside her, the one that was agitated. He was much older than the others, and his eyes bulged.
A Princess of Sorts Page 3