Books of Bayern Series Bundle

by Shannon Hale

  Maybe after I return to Kildenree and all is set to right, she thought, I’ll come back here again and be queen after all. She had no desire to wed the boy prince she had seen at wintermoon, but as queen she could do something to better the ugliness she had seen in the city. And perhaps, she thought wryly, by the time I come back he might’ve grown up some.

  “Isi, what does your family sell?” said a girl next to Ani. Her clothes emanated clover and clean animal.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing now,” said Ani.

  Conrad leaned back, put his boots on the table with two thuds, and laughed roughly.

  “You don’t know what they’re doing now,” he said. “Very good.”

  The attention spun to him. Ani held her breath.

  “You know, Conrad,” said Razo, knocking Conrad’s feet off the table, “lately you’ve come close to being a genuine imbecile.”

  “What? She’s fooled you all? Your beloved goose girl’s not from the Forest. She’s not from here at all.” His voice drove higher, mocking. “Oh, you’ve such milky skin. Your eyes’re almost green. What’s wrong with my duck, goose girl? What’s the matter with this pig? Go ask the stuffed horse when it’s going to rain next.”

  “Conrad,” said Ani, “this isn’t going to help. Please.”

  He looked around as though wishing that someone would come to his side. “I can’t believe no one else sees it. She’s not one of us. She’s been playing us all along. I’ve seen her out there combing her hair down to her knees like a precious little queen. She’s the one those guards’re looking for.”

  He stood up, and Ani started back.

  “She’s a yellow girl,” he said.

  The workers were silent, staring at her, the room tense as a saddled stallion.

  “Isi,” said someone.

  Ani thought, I’d best do something or they’ll hang me on a wall like Falada. She stood up.

  “What you’re saying isn’t right. I’m sorry I’ve come here and made you think I’ve taken what was yours, but you don’t have to make everyone hate me for them to like you.”

  “Yeah, so shut it, Conrad,” said Enna.

  Ani winced. “Enna means that you should let this go, all right? None of us wants to choose sides in this hall.”

  Conrad ignored her. “You don’t know, Enna. I’ve seen her. . . .”

  “So’ve I,” said Enna. “So just drop your ugly jealousies and eat your cold potato before I cram it in your gullet.”

  Conrad’s face burned red, and he slammed his fist on the table. Razo and Beier stepped up beside him and gently held his arms. Conrad flinched but kept his eyes on Ani.

  “Then tell me, Enna, why she’s always hiding. Always with a hat or scarf. Why doesn’t she just take off that scarf now and prove it?”

  “Yes, Enna, you know me. Tell them.” Ani looked at Enna and waited for her to speak. It felt good to take this risk and to trust another person again. But when Enna looked up, her eyes were sad and mouth drawn. Oh no, thought Ani, panic twisting her stomach, I was wrong to trust her. She’s going to betray me.

  “Come on, then, Enna,” said Razo, “what’ve you got to say? Why not let Isi just take off her scarf and prove it so we can get Conrad to bed? I think it’s plain that the city’s getting into his head this winter.”

  “You sops.” Enna sighed painfully, and her gaze could barely be raised to Ani’s, as though weighted by shame. “I’m sorry, Isi, but I think they should know.” She sighed again. “Isi’s hair got burned off in a fire just before she came here. She’s embarrassed, poor duck. And I’m not going to let her take off her hat just to put Conrad straight.”

  Ani widened her eyes and looked down, masking an unexpected desire to laugh. Enna put a protective hand on her shoulder, and the workers began to avert their eyes and poke at their cold potatoes with sudden interest.

  Conrad stood still a moment, wavering between action and anger. “I’ll prove it,” he said. No one responded. He stomped out of the hall.

  Ani touched Enna’s hand on her shoulder.

  “How many times’ll you save me?” she whispered.

  “If you were a better liar, I wouldn’t have to,” said Enna.

  “I know, I know, I’ll have to work on it. But I knew you’d be good enough for both of us.” Her smile tightened. “He saw me with my hair down, Enna.”

  “No one’ll believe him. Who’s he going to tell? Let’s just keep you safe until we can get you on your way come spring. Until then, I’m glad you’ll let me be your guard goose.”

  It was sunny the next day, and the next, and Ani herded the geese to the pasture. Conrad followed from a ways behind and shouted mock encouragement.

  “Nicely done, goose girl.”

  “Keep them together, there.”

  “Watch that gander, goose girl, that he doesn’t bite your precious rump.”

  She wandered the pasture, checking for the occasional egg the geese would lay by the pond or hidden in the arc of river birch roots. Of a sudden he stood before her. She held her staff in front of her.

  “You’ve got to leave me alone,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t tell the truth to the others. I can’t. I wish I could.”

  “Give me a strand of your hair.” He stepped toward her, his hands outstretched.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  A bit of wind slipped off her hat ribbon and grazed against his chin. She saw goose bumps rise on his neck.

  “Leave me be, and I promise before long you won’t have to see me anymore.”

  He shook his head but backed away.

  The next afternoon, Ani looked up from reading one of Geric’s books to find herself alone. Conrad was nowhere in sight. She felt calmness settle into her like rain dropped from the beech. At last, she thought, he’s tired of watching me and gone away. The geese, happily paired and foraging for fresh plants, ignored her presence. A spot of sun broke through the sky and cast shadows of the branches on the ground around her, a map of forking roads.

  She took off her hat and scratched her scalp and neck. She rarely uncovered her hair, even when no person was near enough to see, but she felt restlessly safe, and tired of bindings, and ready to make things happen. A breeze rapped on her forehead, and Ani encouraged it to go down, lift up the tips of her hair off the ground, and tickle them in the air.

  She had not communicated with the wind in many days, conscious always of Conrad’s gaze. The exercise delighted her. Tendrils of wind rose up her arms like candle smoke in still air, sought out the roots of her hair, and wound through them. She practiced sending the wind this way and that, noting that it did not always respond. Sometimes it was already set on one course and would not change. Sometimes it was too thin and slow to do more than loosen into still air, or so strong that it barely touched her skin before pushing itself away. Unlike a bird or horse, the wind was passionless; not thoughtful or playful, but often persuadable.

  The shadow of the tree darkened. She saw the shadow of a hand reach toward her wind-lifted hair. Ani grouped the wind that touched her into one thought and begged it to fly away, behind her, toward the lunging shadow. She felt it leave her skin.

  She turned to see Conrad chase his orange cap away from the tree. The breeze tossed the cap farther, always ahead, always a little faster. Ani watched him run and braided her wind-combed hair into a tight hoop on top of her head like a crown of gold. By the time Conrad caught his cap off the upper branches of the far pasture hedge and strode back again, Ani had replaced her hat with the ribbon firmly tied and was reading again. She could not keep her smile down.

  “You’re a demon, girl,” he said.

  “Goose girl,” she said.

  After that day, Conrad would not stand so near that she could put out her arm and touch him. When the workers in the hall made clear that they did not care to listen to his grumbling, he sat alone, holding sticks in the fire until they smoked and turned black.

  Ani placed her raisin bun beside him
. Conrad took it and ate it with a kind of acknowledged defeat, but when he glanced up, she saw that his boyish face was still disturbed by lines of anger.

  Chapter 16

  Two months from wintermoon dawned brightly, and the workers, sequestered for over a week by icy rain and winds, left their rooms and stretched in the sunlight, glad for one morning to be taking their animals out to the fields again. The geese were as anxious as Ani to leave shelter and get soil beneath their feet, and they squawked cheerfully all the way.

  She stopped in the shadowy corner of the wall and greeted Falada. His mane was still damp, though his hide fared well in the wild weather. His glass eyes looked indifferently at the stones of the city.

  Falada, she said.

  Princess.

  Conrad was still disregarding her presence. Occasionally he dropped his despondency enough to tease the geese, chasing them for tail feathers or honking nonsensically. He stayed by the wall that morning, leaning against the gateway and combing his ragged, self-cut hair with his fingers.

  Ani sat under the beech and listened to the wind. It sought out trees, running around their trunks and weaving through their branches, the way a cat arches under a hand, seeking a good scratch. When it touched her skin, she could feel the rumbling, wispy voice that let images of its wanderings whisper out into sound. Not speaking to her, but just speaking, its existence alone a language.

  A spider’s web, sang the wind, the stream, the stream, the tattered cattails of autumn, the slender birch trunks, the wood. Men in the wood. Five men in the wood. Coming toward the stream, toward the geese and the beech and the princess.

  Ani stood up, pulling on a cool, gray branch to support her weight. Five men in the wood. No image of horses came on the wind, so they could not be nobles coming back from a predawn ride. Five was too many to be workers away from their keeps. She strained her sight toward the dark copses and light spots across the stream, looking for movement. A wild pheasant beat its wings, an agonizing sound against the tense silence. Nothing else.

  Then she spotted figures, dark, crouched, moving from one shadow to the next. They stopped.

  “Conrad,” she said, afraid to shout. He did not look up from his musings by the pasture archway. “Conrad.” She did not know if he could hear her or if he ignored her.

  She looked back, and the figures were moving again, nearing the line of birches that bordered the stream banks. Again, they stopped. She saw a glint of metal winking like an ominous star.

  Danger, Ani told the geese. Danger by the stream.

  She used the word for “bear,” a beast of size and fear, not “dog” or “cat,” which the ganders would be tempted to turn and face. As one, the birds scurried away from the stream, making a group like a pond of milk in the middle of the pasture. Conrad looked to the noise of forty-eight geese honking and flapping their wings in ado. His eyes lifted to the stream, and when he saw, he turned into the arch and disappeared.

  Ani ran to the head of the flock and placed herself between her charges and the approaching men. They wore leather of different makes and different animals, mismatched vests, jerkins, caps, and leggings, and leather-sheathed knives. Three bore poles tipped with wire loops, perfect for hooking goosenecks, and two dragged large, empty sacks. There was no temper in their miens. They met Ani’s eyes and did not slow their advance.

  “These geese aren’t for you,” said Ani.

  One grunted. They were nearer.

  “These’re the king’s geese. I won’t let you take them.”

  One acknowledged her. “Move aside, goose girl, or we’ll have to knock you aside.”

  Ani stood firm and held her crook with both hands. She felt as ridiculous as a gander facing a bear, but she did not move. She had decided that she would not run. The geese squawked behind her.

  The first man reached her. He slammed his pole down on her and cracked her staff in two with a sound like near thunder. Her knees folded, and she fell to the ground.

  Run, she told the geese.

  They did not run. The ganders had circled the geese and made terrific noises of defense, their heads lowered and menacing. The men paid no mind. With their long poles they snared the birds by the necks and pulled them in like fish on a line, bagging them without a bite. Ani watched. Her face was pressed to the ground. One of the thieves stood above her and held the end of his staff to her throat. She swallowed against the pressure that made her dizzy and stomach sick. There was a creeper breeze nosing around the ground. It crawled over her arm and bare hands.

  Up there, she urged, that man, his hat, something.

  The breeze spiraled up to the man, probing his head with its brisk fingers, and slipped the cap off his head with a brief gust. The hat fell to the ground. The thief glanced down, unconcerned. The geese were honking anger and fear as nearly a fourth of their number was stuffed into the bags.

  Ani concentrated on all the air that stirred on her skin, willing it to come together. Passing breezes joined, curious, wrapped together like crude wool folding into a ball. More, Ani pleaded. The breezes built up to a wind, flowing over her and on the grass in an ardent circle, building, like a finger-spun whirlpool in still water, like a beast pacing before attack.

  “Let me go,” said Ani. Her voice barely escaped the force on her throat. “These are the king’s geese. They’re protected.”

  The man did not glance at his prisoner, but he frowned slightly.

  The circle of wind felt restless now, swooshing around her head, picking at the tiny hairs on her face and hands, waiting for an idea to lead it. She gave it a suggestion to move away a little and tear into the ground. It followed. Still making contact with her outstretched hand, the mob of wind swirled and bit at the ground, pulling loose dirt and pebbles into its body until it looked to be a short, dark creature spinning on itself. The thief heard gusting and turned his eyes, then his head, then his whole self, unbelieving and unexpectedly afraid.

  “Libert, Odlef, look, will you,” he said.

  The men turned their backs on the geese and saw dirt-filled wind grown as tall and wide as the beech at its back.

  “A trick,” said one. “A sorcerer’s shabby trick.”

  “A trick,” said another. His face betrayed honest dread.

  Ani’s thought pushed the wind from the ground to hit the first man in the face. His eyes filled with dirt, his cheeks were pelted with small rocks, stinging like bees. He dropped his pole and threw his arms around his head.

  The wind continued forward and reached the other four, rushing at their eyes, swarming around them, pushing them together as though they were the prey caught in a sack. The geese exploded into an attack, biting the thieves’ ankles and calves below the isolated windstorm. The men, blinded by dust, confused the wind and the geese until it all seemed one monster, screaming in their ears, shoving them with stinging hands and biting their legs. More birds escaped from the forsaken sacks and attacked. The men, swatting at nothing like old women afraid of wasps, fled the pasture at a run. By the time they reached the stream, they had outpaced the geese and the wind had lost its ammunition and dispersed into wisps, but they still ran.

  Ani sat up slowly, watching until the wood shadows swallowed sight of their retreat. Her skin tingled. Three poles and two inert sacks lay on the ground like battle corpses. The geese ran in circles and toward the stream, some posted on the near shore barking at the woods while others trumpeted victory. She rubbed her sore neck but honked happily with her geese.

  The sound of running boots jerked her to her feet. Conrad raced through the arch, followed by three of the boys who worked in the field to the north. They halted when they saw Ani standing alone, dozens of angry geese running around and dozens shouting at the stream. They glanced at the broken crook that lay at her feet.

  “Where are they?” said Conrad. He saw the goose-nabbing poles and bags, and relief crossed his face at the evidence that he had not fetched the other boys for nothing.

  “Gone.” Ani laug
hed deep in her chest, wondering how she might explain.

  “Your staff,” said the boy named Sifrid. He picked up the two pieces and held them as testimony to the others. “You were attacked.”

  “Yes,” she said. They waited, and she cleared her throat. “I defended myself, and then the geese chased them away.”

  All four boys stared at her, their mouths slightly open.

  “How, how many were there?” said one.

  “Five,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  One of the boys grinned. “The goose girl drove off the thieves. How about that?”

  Another laughed good-naturedly and gripped his shepherd’s crook. “I thought I’d have to fight when Conrad came running with tales of leather-donned men prowling in the wood. Thanks for saving me a sweat.” He punched her lightly on the arm.

  “You’re hurt,” said Sifrid, pointing at her throat.

  “I’m all right.” She could feel her heart beating on the spot where the thief’s pole had held her to the ground.

  “We’d best get back in case the thieves decide to swallow their first defeat and try another keeper’s flock.”

  “If they attack, we’ll come get you.”

  “Yes, we’ll yell, ‘Help, help us, goose girl, and bring the Terrifying Legion of Warrior-Geese.’”

  “How about the Bandits of a Thousand Feathers?”

  The three jogged away, giddy, jawing over the event and planning to stop briefly at the hall to recount the story to Mistress Ideca.

  “Thanks for getting help, Conrad,” said Ani. “I thought at first that you’d left me alone.”

  “I’m no coward,” said Conrad.

  “Of course not, that’s not what I meant.” Ani shook her head in frustration. She could understand the wind and speak with birds, but humans still eluded her. That was her mother’s gift, after all. And Selia’s.