Books of Bayern Series Bundle

by Shannon Hale

  “Some yellow girl from Kildenree. A princess, I guess. Can’t imagine His Royal would marry anything less.”

  “She’s a princess,” said Enna. “I laid my very own eyes on her expensive skin.”

  The eaters around lifted heads and quieted down.

  “Why didn’t you tell about it before, Enna-girl?”

  “Yeah, you got secrets as dark as your mop?”

  “I did tell about it to those who shut up and listened, so shut it now and I’ll tell. It was two weeks or so ago, and I was heading to the apothecary near the city gate for what I thought was a sick chicken, and the streets were all lined with people. Everybody was talking about her. No one had known when they would come, you know, with them traveling so far, and never did send a messenger forward, I heard someone say.”

  “And those Kildenrees, or Kildenreans, or whatever, came marching in with their own little army, I’m guessing.”

  “Not really. Just twenty men or so, and more horses. The princess rode a big white horse with all the trappings.”

  Ani felt her heart beating in her stomach. Falada. He was alive, then. She wanted to grab Enna’s arms and beg her for every detail. She sat on her hands.

  “And I don’t know much about horses, but I heard some men talking by me, and they said it was a cursed good horse, and that she didn’t know how to ride him right, and that she probably rode some docile puppy horse through the Forest and mounted the fine steed last minute just for show and all.”

  Ani smiled.

  “Just like a princess,” said Conrad. “But enough of horses, what’d the girl look like?”

  “She’s not for you, Conrad,” said his neighbor, who promptly got an elbow in the ribs.

  “Pretty, I guess,” said Enna. “Light hair, not so much a real yellow as washed-out brown, like Conrad’s bathwater. She was wearing a dress showy enough for a princess, silvery and sparkling with a neck almost this low.” Enna pointed to a spot four finger widths from the hollow of her throat. One girl laughed and another sighed. Ani placed a hand on her chest and felt her cheeks warm. On her, the dress had fallen slightly lower.

  A girl laughed and pointed at Ani. “I think the goose girl’s dreaming she’s the princess.”

  Enna put an arm around her shoulder and shook her amiably. “Who wants to be a snooty, lace-necked royal and miss tending the geese? Right, little sister?”

  “No, that’s right, I wasn’t thinking that,” said Ani. “Um, did you hear anything they said? The princess or her guards?”

  “Mmm, no, I don’t think so. There was one guard, a big man with two braids the color of bad milk hanging down each shoulder, that rode up with her, and they leaned in close and talked, looking down at us, around at the city, passing judgment on everybody and everything they saw, I guessed. A bit boorish. I’d imagined princesses were supposed to sit up straight and look stoic, if you know what I mean.”

  Ani nodded.

  “That’s it, really. A lot of horses, a few wagons, twenty scruffy guards, and a princess in a gaudy dress showing enough bosom for a tavern girl.”

  A tall girl grumbled. “Tatto said that she takes one of her own guards wherever she goes, to go eat, to the gardens, like she doesn’t trust the palace guards. And she’s never left the palace grounds, afraid to dirty her tiny foot on our Bayern stones.”

  “I heard she’s had ten new dresses made since she arrived,” said another girl, “and that’s a fact, because my aunt’s friend’s a seamstress in the city and she knows the palace dress-mistress.”

  “They say she never goes riding or into the city, but stays holed up with her Kildenrean friends and they whisper to each other in that whiny accent.”

  Several nodded. “That’s how Kildenreans are,” said one.

  Ani began to nod, then stopped. If I were where I was supposed to be, I never would have met the workers of the west settlement. I’d be the yellow girl from Kildenree, with the whiny accent and pompous manner. Just then, that seemed a pitiable fate.

  The door swung open with force, its knob thumping against the wall. Razo, a short boy with a dark, defiant head of hair and an expressive face that was grim and severe then, stood with hands in fists. Beier stood behind him, holding their unused staffs. Their hair and shoulders were dripping with a gray slop.

  “Enna,” said Razo, his voice trembling with warning.

  Enna just laughed. “You’re welcome, boys.” She raised her water mug in salute. Others raised theirs, too, in a cheer heavy with laughter that did not completely break until the hour for bed.

  Chapter 9

  The days dawned with a frail morning chill and filled out with mild breezes. Autumn’s newness hummed in the air. The geese sensed the coming change, and pairs strolled together, leaving their grown goslings solitary. Occasionally one bird interrupted its browsing to stare up at a breeze, smelling what news it brought, calling out to its brothers and sisters, The first gust of autumn is here.

  Or so Ani imagined. She passed most of the day under her beech tree, her gaggle at a safe distance. She watched and she listened. Geese made so much more noise than swans, she wondered how she would ever be able to single out the sounds, let alone assign their meanings. This time she had no aunt to guide her. Some bird tongues were so similar that going from one to the other was like switching between her Bayern and Kildenrean accents. But goose was unlike any bird tongue she had learned. She leaned forward, cocking her head like a robin to a worm in the ground. Prattle, prattle, honk, honk, hiss—the sounds were as meaningless as the rustling of dry leaves.

  At night Ani felt exhausted, but often she could not sleep, not for hours, the darkness behind her eyelids promising dreams. Adon’s middle split by a sword tip. Talone yelling, yelling. Ungolad’s hand on her boot.

  Lying on her bed, she could see the dark intimation of the southernmost palace spire and on certain nights a dim star of a candle flame that winked in one window. She watched it until she slept. That point of light spoke of someone else awake, someone thoughtful, someone alone. Sometimes in her dreams, her mind wandered those foreign palace halls, tripping over carpets too fine to be pressed by her dirty boot, losing herself in passages too elaborate for her goose girl brain. She was often searching for something, Falada or Selia, and when she found them, she stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do. Sometimes instead of searching, she was running. A hand seized her ankle.

  In the mornings, Ani dressed her bruised, goose-bitten body and breakfasted in silence. The girl Enna sought her out from time to time, and Ani tried to respond with friendly attentiveness. Ani felt as dumb at conversation as she had over Gilsa’s cooking pot that day she prepared the lunch, the contents turning blacker and smelling fouler despite her anxious attempts. She had no practice at making friends. And, she discovered, her own trust had been drained dry.

  One new autumn morning, over a week after Ani had arrived in the city, they found one of Conrad’s strays. Ani saw him first, just a white mark beside the pond. She thought it might be a washed-out bit of wood pushed ashore by the night water, or a forgotten shirt, though she had yet to see a Bayern wear plain white. Ani was so absorbed with the distant figure that she was not prepared to defend herself against a particularly aggressive gander that, after passing through the pasture gate, took a moment to extend his thin neck and nip her on the rear.

  “Stop it. Oh, just stop it, all of you.” Ani rubbed the spot with the heel of her hand, and Conrad laughed.

  “You’ve got a few friendly goose pals, I guess,” he said.

  Ani glowered. “Yes, I guess.”

  The lone gander did not move when the gaggle arrived at the water’s edge. He squeaked a greeting, and some geese gathered around him, chattering over one another and prodding his side with their beaks.

  “One of the three,” said Conrad. “He’s been gone two weeks.”

  The gander raised his head at Conrad but seemed too tired to stand. Several feathers hung loose, giving the appearance of a poor
ly stuffed pillow. Ani stepped forward, intending to check him for bites or scratches. A large goose turned her back on the gander and hissed at Ani, the top of her beak raised threateningly, her pink tongue trembling. Ani’s bruises throbbed at the sound.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll stay away. Take care of your own, because I’ve no more good skin to give over to another bruise.”

  Ani sat under her tree and gazed up at the palace. The warm morning lulled her, and she rested her head against the tree and tried to imagine how to free Falada from the palace stables and, after that, how to get home again.

  A rumble of hoofbeats broke her daydream apart. A group of horsemen outfitted for hunting cantered down the goose pasture. Several veered their horses to pass right through the middle of the flock and sent the geese flurrying with a cacophonous chorus of honks and a beating of wings to strike speed into their flat feet. Ani lowered her head and peered at the horsemen from under her hat brim, wary of any familiar faces or light-colored hair. There was no need. The nobles on their grand horses never turned an idle eye on the goose girl. They leaped their mounts across the goose pasture stream and entered the woods on the other side. None of their horses was white.

  The beech shadow had moved, and the sun was heating Ani’s cheeks. She stepped into its northern shadow. There was the gander, still in his same spot, though alone now, the others having left him when fleeing the hooves. He raised his head at her with a little more energy and opened his beak slightly. Ani was not sure if it was meant to be a hiss.

  The gander slowly stood and took an awkward step. He stopped. He leaned his body forward and let the momentum pull him into a few sloppy strides.

  “Are you using your last, dying strength to attack me?” she said. “Now, that would be silly.”

  The gander still stumbled forward and, gaining her folded leg, sat down hard by it, his body close up against her ankle. Ani held very still.

  “Did you have a long journey?” She pulled up a handful of grass that was turning to seed and held it near his head. He looked at it for a moment, then lowered his beak and nibbled it out of her palm. It tickled, and Ani concentrated on not twitching her hand.

  “Oh, I see, you want to be babied. Mmm. Seeing as how I’m not doing anything else, I’ll oblige. But this means I’ve the right to name you, and your name’ll be Jok, after that old tale of the wanderer that always returns.”

  He nibbled again but made no noises. She thought she could hear his labored breathing.

  “Poor gosling. It hurts to be lost. And worse to be home with no kind of homecoming. You’re my good-luck bird, Jok. I’ll be lucky if I can do as well as you when all this’s done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all.”

  He finished the last blade of grass from her palm, and when she did not immediately pull up another handful, Jok looked at her and gave a gentle honk. She had torn another fistful of grass and let him pick each blade from her palm before she realized that she had understood. He had asked for more.

  That evening, Ani carried Jok home under her arm. After they locked the rest of the geese in their pen, Ani examined the animal and found three claw marks across his thigh, one of them deep, the pink flesh swollen around the wound.

  “I’m taking him to Ideca to see about a salve.”

  “However you want,” said Conrad.

  Ideca had a dark and pungent balm, “good enough for anybody’s scratch, goose, cow, or girl,” and Ani held Jok steady while Ideca worked it under the feathers into the deepest cut. Her languid eyes brightened a little while she handled the animal.

  “This should be Conrad helping you. The boy can’t be coerced into lifting a finger after his geese are penned. I shouldn’t say what I think around you, mmm, since you goose-keepers are no doubt tighter than knots already.”

  “He doesn’t talk much,” said Ani.

  “He’s probably shy of you.” Ideca looked her over with similar attention that she gave the goose. “You’re a pretty one. I guess you know that, since you wear that hat dawn to dusk, protecting your skin even from the weak light of the moon. Some of this Forest lot got plans to keep them in the city. Guess yours is the hope you’ll marry a nobleman, mmm?”

  Ani took Jok to her room, her face still burning from Ideca’s comments.

  Jok slept that night on Ani’s bed between her feet. In the morning she jabbered at him and he jabbered back, and some of it made sense. She fed him brown bread from the breakfast table. Razo joshed that the goose girl had found her mate and asked Conrad if he had his eye on a particular goose, for which Razo got a slap upside the head. The familiarity of the exchange gave Ani a smile. She brought Jok to Ideca for more salve that night, and the next, and his cut healed. Soon, Ani admitted to herself that she let the goose sleep on her bed not for his own sake, but for the comfort the creature gave her against the dark dream of running.

  Ani woke to Jok squawking in her ear that the sun had risen and it was time to eat. She imitated the sound to him, and he repeated it again in their practiced back-and-forth game of noises. Finally she answered him, tentatively, with what she thought was an affirmation, that yes, it was time for eating. Ani guessed she understood more than what she could even try to say, and when Jok gave no response, she groaned to herself. The goose made a deep noise, which Ani thought might be a mock of her own, and they groaned nonsensically to each other on the way to breakfast.

  Herding the geese down the avenue that morning proved to be a task fit for a battalion of goose girls. There was more traffic than usual. A gaggle of children playing chase mixed themselves into the gaggle of geese, and Ani left her post at the head to round up strays. She had been trying words on the geese and had begun to see them respond. At least, they were less inclined to bite her legs when she tried to speak their tongue.

  Ani clucked and honked at the scattered geese, and Conrad rolled his eyes.

  “Thinks she’s a goose,” he said.

  “At least it works,” she said.

  Conrad made mock goose noises back at her until he saw something up ahead that quieted him. His expression changed, suggesting eagerness, and Ani peered ahead to see what he saw.

  Two street cats, crouching, tails twitching, one perched on the rim of a wagon, the other underneath, muscles poised and eyes fixed on the nearest goose. And Ani was too far away to draw back the lead geese with her crook.

  She made a noise she had heard them use before, a warning word she thought meant “dog.” The geese, quick as instinct, turned their backs and huddled together, and the ganders, with strong wings raised, heads low to the ground, twenty throats hissing as one, rushed the beasts. The cats drew in their claws, hissed once in return, and loped away into the dirty streets.

  Ani and Conrad flocked the geese safely through the arch and down the slope. Once the lead goose passed through the archway, Ani turned to Conrad with anger that she still felt.

  “You could’ve warned,” said Ani. “You wanted to see me fail, sacrifice a goose to see me be an imbecile.”

  “If you’re so much better at goose-keeping, then go to.” Conrad marched away, crossed the stream, and spent the day on the far side, out of sight.

  Later that same day, Ani saw a single horseman. When he rode through the arch, Ani glanced up, and then, seeing that his horse was a bay, she returned her attention to the pair of geese that had approached Jok. She had to concentrate, for geese talked over one another like old men who had lost their hearing, and while they did not employ as much movement as swans did in their language, there were still neck bobbings and beak liftings and tail waggings to add to the meanings. Ani guessed they were asking Jok about his journey and he was informing them of the many adventures of a rogue goose.

  After a few moments, she remembered the horseman and glanced up to the gate, but she was startled to see that he had disappeared. He was not on the far ends of the goose pasture by either of the lines of hedges, and she would have noticed had he
ridden past her and crossed the stream.

  The inarticulate thumping of hooves roused her to her feet, and Jok from her lap, honking resentfully. The man had jumped his horse over the hedges to the north and was racing across her field. He wrenched the reins, but the horse continued to run. The man pulled harder, and the horse bucked at the tension, his back arched, his neck bent low. The horse heaved and twisted and dumped the rider from the saddle. The horse bucked again for good measure, then trotted to a halt.

  The man leaped up, grabbed the reins, and swung himself into the saddle. The bay seemed to consider bucking again but instead stood still, his body heavy, unmovable, his legs stiff. Ani recognized the stance. She had seen Falada act in like manner when a stable-hand had tried to ride him. Her breath escaped quickly through her lips in a quiet laugh.

  “Mule,” said the man. He swung himself off the unyielding horse. The moment his boot touched soil, the animal was wild again, rearing up on his mighty back legs, swinging his head like a banner in strong wind, ripping the reins from the man’s hands. The horse knocked him aside with a sudden lurch and raced across the pasture, stopping before the line of hedges on the south side. The man tore a clump of grass and threw it back at the ground.

  Ani jogged up the slope toward the bay. “Stay,” she said to the man as she passed, her hand out, like an order given to a dog. He noticed her for the first time, and his face flushed.

  “Oh, um, lady, I don’t recommend whatever it is you have in mind.”

  She ignored him. The bay paced near the hedges, his ears pinned back to his neck, his steps stiff and long. When she neared, his outer ear opened to her and the muscles of his neck flinched at the new annoyance.

  Ani advanced, her shoulders straight, her head high, her eyes locked on to his.

  “Look at me,” she said quietly. “Some riders are beneath you, aren’t they? I want to be your equal. I want to meet you.”

  The horse pranced. He held his tail high and pounded a half circle around her, but to the side was the wall, to the back was the hedge, and on the far side sat the irritating rider. The bay seemed to find Ani more interesting and stopped near her. She smiled. He had that look Falada sometimes wore, one ear stiff and one relaxed, his back leg crooked as though he wanted her to think he did not care a thimbleful of oats about her. Ani turned her back and looked down, playing at the same game.