by Shannon Hale
“But the horse, ah, Ani, I will tell you a story. Several years ago, I helped a friend with his foaling mare, and the little colt fell into my arms. I heard him, just after he tumbled out, emit a mournful little sound, something like ‘Yulee.’ His name. Horses are born with their own name on their tongue, you see? I repeated it back to him, and he heard me, and ever since he can hear me and I can hear him. It’s a horse’s way to give you the key to their speech once and never repeat it. I’ve tried the same with a calf and a litter of kittens and a kid-goat, but only the colt has responded. What do you think of that?”
“I would like a horse friend,” said Ani. “Very much.” Perhaps a horse would not hit her with play swords, like her little brother, or treat her like a glass vase and then whisper behind her back, like the other palace children.
The aunt shook her head. “You’re too young. Sometime, some year, when you’re older and you can go to the stables and your mother will not question why. For now, you must listen to your winged friends.”
Ani was eager to learn the voice of every bird that nested on the palace grounds, but the swan pond drew her return day after day. She loved to watch them swim so slowly that the water hardly rippled and watch every silent, mild movement shimmer into meaning. Soon her throat and tongue could make nearly all the sounds of the swans, and she trumpeted gleefully.
“Hush a moment, Ani,” said the aunt.
The key-mistress and her daughter, Selia, passed by the pond on the walk to the gardens. The aunt waved, and the key-mistress nodded. Her little girl was pretty and poised, with hair already to her waist. She walked with hands clasped in front and eyes centered on the path ahead. As a little girl she had been prone to violent tantrums, notorious for turning all shades of pink and purple and for kicking the floor like a landed fish. But she was seven now and prim as a court lady.
“Hello, Crown Princess,” said Selia. “We are going to the gardens. Come for tea sometime.”
“Um, yes, thank you.” Ani was not used to being addressed by other children, and besides, this strange little girl had always made her feel uneasy—at once willing to do whatever Selia asked and eager to escape her notice. The same way, in fact, that she felt around her mother. The aunt raised one eyebrow in the blue shadow of her hat and watched the pair stroll away.
“That one has the gift of people-speaking,” she said. “It can be powerful. Mark me and watch her.”
Ani watched the serious little girl stroll away and tried to remember. People-speaking. That one has.
That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her window to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She began to see the world as a bird sees bars, and she scratched her arms beneath her sleeves.
The aunt took Ani to the shore of the swan pond where the lazy-armed trees dipped themselves into their own reflections and the aspens’ hard little leaves shook in the wind with a noise like snapping fingers. The aunt pointed north, where few people lived and trees grew thick and prickly green all year, and where the girl could not follow.
“I’m going home,” she said. She kissed Ani’s forehead, but her eyes did not leave the purple horizon. “Don’t forget all you have learned. If your mother discovers what I have taught you, she will take it away. I know her. The only thing she has ever wanted is shiny and fits around her brow. Still, you are better off with her, gosling. I would not wish my solitude on you. Stay and learn to be happy.”
The princess sat on a stone, rested her arm on the back of a swan, and thought how her chest felt like a gutted walnut shell, and wondered if that sensation might last forever. She watched her aunt walk away, disappearing into a tiny spot of green that the eye tricked into a shadow of a rock a long way in the distance.
The next morning, Ani was dismayed to see she had been given a new companion, a weak-hearted nurse-mary with skin like sour milk. They were not to go to the pond because “the young crown princess might fall in and drown, with her face bloated and purple like a sauced plum, would you like that?”
Despite her aunt’s cautions, Ani was certain if she explained to the nurse-mary that she just wanted to speak with the swans, then it would be all right. When the woman’s eyes widened, Ani mistook it for eagerness.
“I can understand what they say,” Ani said. “I’ll teach you how, too, if you like.”
The nurse-mary rose from the garden bench, gasping, and tossed bits of grass in the air before her to shake loose the evil.
“You’ll curse yourself. People don’t speak to animals, and it’s not such a clever game to say you do.”
Ani overheard the nurse-mary report to the queen in hushed, hurried tones that made Ani feel she had done something unspeakably bad. Thereafter, outings were limited to the gardens and the nursery porch. Her mother looked at her now with a distant, disapproving frown, and Ani resolved to keep to herself until her aunt would return and carry her off into the freedom of the mountains. Long hours she spent watching the purple horizon, willing her aunt to walk back out of it with welcoming arms.
She missed the sound of bird words, and the feeling that came, like a cricket leaping inside her chest, when she heard and understood. In her world of cold marble floors and aged tutors and whispering children, only the animal-speaking felt like her own thing and the pond her own place. Once or twice when the nurse-mary was bedded with a head cold, Ani escaped the nursery porch and ran to practice with the swans. As she approached, two gardeners stepped between her and the pond.
“Can’t come around here, Crown Princess,” said the hard-skinned man. “Dangerous.”
When she tried to slip into the mews to converse with the hawks, the hunt-master carefully escorted her out with a firm grip on her collar.
“Sorry, Crown Princess,” he said. “The queen was clear that you were not to play near my birds.”
She tried many times in the two years she waited for her aunt’s return, and each time someone stopped her. It felt like dreams when she ran but could not move. Sometimes in secret, Ani lay on her belly and tried to mimic her puppy Lindy’s whines and growls.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Can you understand me, Lindy?”
The nurse-mary must have overheard, for when Ani returned from her tutor’s apartment one afternoon, the puppy was gone and her mother stood in the center of the nursery, waiting.
“He is in the kennels now,” said the queen. “I think it best that you no longer keep pets.”
“I want Lindy back.” Ani was hurt and angry, and she spoke louder than she ever had before. “You give him back.”
The queen slapped Ani’s mouth.
“That tone is unacceptable. This fantasy has gone unchecked for too long. If I had known that woman was teaching you those mad ideas she had when we were children, I would have sent her running from this city without her pack. It is time you learn your place, Crown Princess. You will be the next queen, and your people will not trust a queen who makes up stories and seems to talk to wild beasts.”
Ani did not answer. She was holding her stinging mouth and staring at the purple horizon.
The queen turned to go, then paused before the door. “I came to tell you. We received word today that your aunt passed away this winter. I am sorry if this hurts you.”
Ani watched her mother’s back walk away and felt her seven-year-old world tumble like a hatchling from a tree.
That evening her parents held a ball. The nurse-marys stood in the nursery doorway and smiled toward the music that came down the corridor like a sigh. The wet nurse held the new princess, Susena-Ofelienna, to her breast and spoke of skirts and slippers. A young, pretty nurse-mary held Napralina-Victery to her shoulder and whispered about men and secret things.
Every word they spoke seemed to empty Ani more, like buckets dipped into a shallow well. She pretended great interest in building a city of many towers with her pale wo
od bricks, and when the nurse-marys wandered into the corridor for a closer look, Ani slipped out the nursery porch to run away.
The light that came from behind pushed her shadow forward, a very thin giantess stretching across the lawn, her head pointing to the pond. She ran on the damp night grass and felt the breeze go right through her nightgown. It was early spring and still cold at night.
She reached the pond and looked back to where the pink marble ballroom gazed brilliantly out at the night, the glass and walls trapping the music in. The people inside looked beautiful, graceful, and completely at ease in their place. It helped her resolve to realize that she was nothing like them. But when she turned her back to the lights, she saw that the night was so dark, the stables did not exist. She could not see the stars. The world felt as high as the depthless night sky and deeper than she could know. She understood, suddenly and keenly, that she was too small to run away, and she sat on the damp ground and cried.
The water lipped the pond’s sandy side. The swans slept, blue and silver in the night. One swan roused at Ani’s sob and greeted her, then nested in the sand near her feet. I am tired, Ani told her, and lost from my herd. The swan words she spoke sounded to her human ears like the mournful wail of a child. Sleep here, was the bird’s simple reply. Ani lay down and, putting one arm over her face as though it were a wing, tried to shut out the world where she did not belong.
She awoke when two strong hands lifted her.
“Crown Princess, are you all right?”
She wondered why the world was so black, then realized her eyes were still closed. Her lids seemed too thick to open. She let her head fall against the man’s shoulder and smelled the strong goat milk soap of his clothing. He was carrying her away.
“Who are you?”
“Talone, Watcher of the East Gate. You were asleep with the swans and would not rouse.”
Ani creaked open one eyelid and saw that the sky above the mountains was eggshell pale. She looked at the man and was about to ask a question when she shuddered again, from her bones to her skin.
“Are you hurt, Crown Princess?”
“I’m cold.”
He pulled his cloak off his shoulders and wrapped it around her, and the warmth lured her back into a fevered sleep.
It was three weeks before she was well enough that the lines on the physicians’ faces relaxed into wrinkles and the youngest nurse-mary did not exclaim whenever Ani opened her eyes. Long after the fever, her name was often replaced with “that delicate child.” She was kept indoors. She was never alone. She breakfasted in bed and supped on a couch and never laced her own boot. The incident with the swans was mentioned only in secret tones.
“We almost lost a future queen.”
“And not just to death, but to wildness.”
“What shall we do with her?” said the nursery-mistress.
The queen looked down at Ani, who lay sleepily awake, her eyes half-open, her ears pricked for the judgment that would fall from her mother’s powerful mouth onto her head. Somehow by getting sick, Ani felt she had badly betrayed this woman, and remorse pricked at her with the fever chills. The queen was like some terribly beautiful bird whose language she did not yet understand, and she felt her thin body fill with the desire to understand, and to please.
The queen squinted, briefly creating spider leg–thin lines around her eyes. She laid a cool hand on Ani’s forehead. The gesture was almost motherly.
“Keep her resting,” said the queen, “and away from birds.”
Chapter 2
Ani set down the cold remains of her peppermint tea and hoped she was still smiling. The view from the window tugged at her attention, teasing her with indistinct movements in the direction of the stables, brown spots that might have been horses running. But she kept her eyes firmly on the brown freckle on the key-mistress’s upper right cheek.
“Let me express again, Crown Princess, how honored we are that you accepted our invitation this afternoon. I hope the meal was to your liking.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Ani.
“I have begged my daughter for some months to invite you to our apartments. You have grown as tall as your mother, save her, though not quite as pretty, and I wonder, since you seem to always be quite busy, if you have yet learned what duties are most important to your station?”
“Um, thank you, yes.” Ani winced. The key-mistress had been waiting months for this afternoon because Ani had taken great pains to escape it. This kind of thing was, apparently, supposed to be social and relaxing. But like every visit and tea and party Ani attended, she was aware that others expected the crown princess to act, speak, and think as queenly as her mother, a feat that for her, Ani was certain, was as likely as her blowing down the wind. “Yes,” she said again, and winced again, conscious of just how dim she sounded.
Silence hovered between them like a tired moth. Clearly she was expected to say something else, but panic at having to speak stole thoughts from her head. She glanced at Selia, but her lady-in-waiting’s serene demeanor gave no clues as to how to respond. Selia often reminded Ani of a cat, seemingly bored yet taking everything in with her lazy gaze. At age eighteen, Selia was two years Ani’s senior, four fingers shorter, and her long hair was one pale shade darker than Ani’s yellow. In appearance, they were almost as alike as sisters.
Her eyes lingered a moment on Selia, and she found herself thinking, She would be better at playing princess than I am. The thought stung. Ani wanted so badly to do it right, to be regal and clever and powerful. But too often her only truly happy moments were the bursts of freedom, stolen afternoons on her horse’s back, brief, breathtaking rides past the stables to where the gardens turned wild, her lungs stinging with the cold, her muscles trembling with the hard ride. It had been nearly ten years since she had last thought of running away, staring out at the too big night from the shores of the swan pond. She would never try again. She was the crown princess, and she was determined to one day make a decent queen.
The key-mistress cleared her throat, and Ani looked back, thankful her hostess had taken it upon herself to crack the silence. “I hope I don’t show presumption to say that you have been more than mistress to my Selia since the queen your mother chose her to be the first—and might I dare to say, most honored—member of your retinue, but you have also been her friend.”
“Yes.” Ani readjusted her hands in her lap and fought for something new to say. She only smiled again and said, “Thank you.”
“Crown Princess, you look as though you wish to ask for something,” said Selia. Ani turned to her gratefully and nodded. Selia lifted the pot. “More tea?”
“Oh, yes, um, thank you.”
Selia filled her cup, and the key-mistress looked down at her own, mumbling, “Tea, yes.”
“Actually,” said Ani, and her heart pounded at having to speak out, “actually, if you do not mind, my father and I are to go riding today, and so, you see, I had best go soon.”
“Oh.” The key-mistress glanced at her daughter and gave one shake of her head.
Selia touched Ani’s hand. “Crown Princess, Mother has been looking forward to this visit for a fortnight.”
At once Ani felt Selia’s words burn her cheeks red, and she looked down. I’ve fouled up again, thought Ani. “I’m sorry.” She sipped her tea. It was too hot, and she felt her heart beat in her burned tongue.
“Riding,” said the key-mistress.
“Yes, Mother, I told you. She finds time to ride almost every day.”
“Yes, rides a stallion, I believe. Do you not think, Crown Princess, that it is inappropriate for a princess to ride a stallion? Should you not ride a nice, gentle mare or gelding? Are you not afraid that you will break your crown?” The key-mistress turned to her daughter. “That was a pun, dear. Break your crown.”
Selia laughed her high, lovely laugh.
Something about that exchange burned Ani’s pride like her tongue. She set down her cup and stammered an awkward reply
.
“Yes, well, I do ride a stallion, and if my father, the king, thinks it is inappropriate, he will tell me so. At any rate, thank you for the tea and the dinner. I must go. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
She stood up. Selia looked up at her and blinked, unaccustomed, it seemed, to even that much of an outburst from her mistress. It took the key-mistress a few moments to refurbish herself with words.
“Yes, yes, off you go, Crown Princess. For the best. It is, you know, inappropriate to keep the king waiting.”
They exited the key-mistress’s apartments and walked briskly down the corridor. Selia’s heels made her nearly as tall as Ani, and they clicked on the tile floor like a cat’s claws grown unchecked.
“Are you all right?” said Selia.
Ani let out a breath and laughed a little. “I don’t know why I let myself panic like that.”
“I know. But I thought it would be good for you to practice.”
“You are right, Selia, I know you are. I hate the way I get so muddled and say everything wrong and take everything wrong.”
“And as you are to be queen one day, you have to learn now how to converse pleasantly with people you don’t care about.”
“Oh, it’s not that I don’t care about her, or anyone else.” Ani thought perhaps it was that she cared too much. She was constantly worried about what others thought of her, and how every word she spoke could condemn her further. Ani thought how to explain that to Selia and decided that she could not. Selia’s ease with strangers and friends alike made Ani sure she would not understand. Besides, Ani was eager to shrug off the unpleasant feelings of another failure.
She felt herself relax a little when they passed under an arch and outside. It was an afternoon in winter, the sun bright and the air like early morning, new and wet with coming snow. When they approached the stables, Selia curtsied and walked to the gardens as she often did when Ani went riding. The lady-in-waiting was allergic to horses. Or so she said. Once, from a distance, Ani had witnessed Selia willingly entering a stable holding hands with an unknown man. But Ani had refused to inquire. She, too, had her secrets.