The Queen and the Cure

by Amy Harmon

  “Kjell,” Sasha reproved, putting a warning hand on his shoulder.

  “Sasha, step back,” he demanded, refusing to yield. Sasha dropped her hand, but she didn’t retreat.

  “Sasha was sold in Firi as a slave. She was brought to Quondoon. She was mistreated and abused. The people tried to kill her.” Kjell pinned Padrig with his gaze, his voice deceptively calm. “Where were you?”

  Padrig made no move to protect or defend himself, though his eyes beseeched, and he swallowed visibly.

  “Kjell.” This time it was Tiras who reprimanded him, but Kjell did not lower his blade. There was something terribly wrong, and Sasha had become very still at his back, her breathing shallow.

  “You knew who Sasha was, yet you didn’t tell her. And then you left her.”

  “I did not leave her, not the way you think,” Padrig denied, shaking his head.

  “Let him explain, Kjell,” Sasha implored quietly.

  Padrig took a deep breath, his eyes lingering briefly on the king, asking for permission to carry on. When Tiras inclined his head, urging him on, Padrig continued.

  “I went to Lord Firi. I thought he would receive me. He knew Lord Pierce and Lady Sareca of Kilmorda, and he had a daughter of his own.”

  Padrig paused, and his mouth tightened with memory.

  “Lord Firi was very ill. He could not see me, so I was given an audience with his daughter, Lady Ariel of Firi.”

  The name was like a gong in the great hall, echoing and ear-splitting, and Padrig seemed to expect this response, for he stopped and waited, allowing his announcement to sink in.

  “I told Lady Firi that if his lordship would provide us sanctuary, I would give him something in return.” Padrig hesitated once more, his gaze sweeping the women and men who gaped at him, their ears still ringing.

  “What did you offer him?” the king pressed.

  “I have a . . . gift, and I was willing to share it with him.” He paused again, letting his meaning become clear.

  “The Gifted have nothing to fear in my kingdom. What is your gift, Padrig?” Tiras asked, impatient.

  “I am called the Star Maker,” Padrig said carefully, his stare riveted on Sasha. She gasped and Kjell felt ill.

  “You are a Spinner,” Sasha said, delighted. “Just like the story.”

  “They weren’t stories, Saoirse.” Padrig shook his head. “I gave you the stories so you wouldn’t be so afraid, and so when the time came, you would recognize the past.”

  “You took her memories,” Kjell said, his realization dawning.

  “Yes,” Padrig admitted.

  “You took them? Why?” Sasha asked, dazed.

  “To keep you safe,” Padrig pleaded. “Only to keep you safe. But I failed.”

  “Clearly,” Kjell snarled. Padrig inclined his head in shameful acknowledgment, even as he continued his tale.

  “Lord Firi needed a Healer. I could not give him that. But I told his daughter that I could give him a sort of immortality. I could take his memories, the very essence of who he was, and I could place his consciousness among the stars.”

  The group was silent, marveling at his claim, lost in his story.

  “When Lady Firi realized what I could do, she demanded that I show her.” Padrig shook his head regretfully. “So I did. I was trying to convince her to help. I was desperate. I told her about Saoirse. I thought she might know of her—both daughters of neighboring lords.”

  “What did she do?” Kjell asked, unable to even speak Ariel of Firi’s name. His heart was a cauldron in his chest, spilling heat into his stomach and his limbs, scalding him.

  “There is enormous power in memory,” Padrig prefaced. “Memories provide great knowledge. I pointed out the stars of the great kings to Lady Firi. Then I called down Saoirse’s memories, the newest star in the sky, and held it in my hands. I showed Lady Firi the smallest wisp of a memory so she would understand what I offered her father.”

  “She didn’t want to help her father.” Queen Lark’s tone was flat, but her eyes gleamed.

  “No,” Padrig whispered. “She didn’t. She wanted me to give her the stars. All of them. She wanted me to open them up, to let her see each one. She wanted the knowledge in the memories for herself.”

  “What did you show her? Which memory?” Kjell asked, a terrible knowing seeping into his skin.

  “It was you, Healer. Saoirse has had dreams of you since she was a child. Because of that, her memories and her visions are intertwined, past and future, interconnected and indistinguishable. When I withdrew the strand of light, it was your face Lady Firi and I saw. You were kneeling over the king. The king appeared to be dead, and you were mourning.”

  The shock rippled through the gathering, and Kjell was not the only one who reached for something to hold onto.

  “But I healed him!” Kjell protested.

  “Yes,” Padrig murmured. “Yes. But memories—and visions—are like that. They are pieces and parts. Lady Firi and I only saw that small glimpse.”

  “She thought Tiras would die,” Kjell breathed.

  “Lady Firi was certain you would be the next king. She demanded to see all of Saoirse’s memories. But I refused.” Padrig shuddered, reliving the decision. “I released Saoirse’s star, sending it back to the heavens. Lady Firi was enraged. She put me in the dungeons, determined to break me.”

  “And Sasha was left alone, with no memory of who she was,” Lark said, supplying the culminating piece.

  “Yes,” Padrig said, his expression tragic. “When Lady Firi went to Jeru City, the dungeons were emptied. I was released. But Saoirse was gone. I thought Lady Firi had her killed. But maybe she supposed she was of little threat—or consequence— without her memories.”

  “I want them back,” Sasha demanded abruptly, her voice shaking, her eyes shimmering. She had listened in stunned silence, and her sudden demand drew the attention of the gathering. The Spinner stepped toward her, apology etched in every line of his face.

  “And I will give them to you,” Padrig said, bowing slightly before her.

  “I want to see your gift,” Tiras commanded, his voice still awestruck at the Spinner’s revelations. “I want you to show us what you showed Ariel of Firi. And then you will return what you have taken from Lady Saoirse.”

  Padrig swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Majesty. But I will need to see the sky, and we will want to be unobserved.” His eyes shifted briefly to Kjell, perhaps because he sensed Kjell’s animosity and distrust, perhaps because he simply feared his size and his blade, but Kjell took note. And his apprehension grew.

  King Tiras led them from the great hall and into the gardens, fragrant and quiet in the deepening night. Sasha moved as if she were walking to her own execution. Kjell escorted her like he wielded the axe. Queen Lark pressed soothing thoughts upon them, telling a rhyme that was more a blessing than a cure. Dismissing the guard to stand at each entrance to discourage someone happening upon the royal party, Tiras commanded Kjell and the women to stand back. Then he bade the Spinner to proceed.

  Without warning, much the way Tiras changed or Kjell healed, Padrig simply exerted his will, calling on something inside of himself. Throwing back his head to better see his canvas, he lifted his hands toward the sky and, with the tips of his fingers, he began moving the stars.

  “There she is,” Padrig breathed, and he paused, pointing at a winking light. As if he drew water from a well, he began pulling the star toward him, hand over hand, until it began to fall on its own, gaining momentum. The light grew closer and closer, brighter and brighter, making the group wince and step back.

  With hands outstretched to catch it, he drew the star to him without ever touching it at all. It hovered above his palms, a tiny universe of light, an irresistible globe of forbidden fruit.

  “This is yours, Lady Saoirse,” he said humbly, and his audience stared, awestruck. Such power and light would have been irresistible to a woman like Ariel of Firi. The Star Maker had condemned himself, an
d Sasha, the moment he had raised his hands to the heavens.

  “Show us what Lady Firi saw,” Kjell demanded.

  “I can’t. When I withdraw a strand of light, a memory, I don’t know what it is. And once the memory is shared this way, unlike in our thoughts, it disappears. I cannot call it back.”

  “Then show us something else,” Sasha urged. Kjell sensed her awe but also her trepidation. The orb belonged to her, but she had no way of knowing what it contained.

  “As you wish.”

  Padrig turned his palm, cupping the glowing orb above his left hand. With his right, he pinched the surface of the light between his finger and his thumb and withdrew a tendril from the whole, pulling it free. With a little flick of his wrist, he released it into the air. The tendril shimmered and stretched, flattening out into a sheen so thin, the air rippled with it.

  “Watch,” Padrig breathed.

  A woman appeared on the glassy surface, staring back at them as though she saw them too. Her hair was as scarlet as Sasha’s, her skin as freckled and pale, but her eyes were blue and her mouth was pinched in worry.

  “Lady Kilmorda,” Queen Lark cried.

  “My mother?” Sasha asked.

  “Yes,” Padrig verified, and then he was silent as the memory unfolded before them.

  “They are just dreams, Saoirse,” the woman said. “Just stories. You love stories. You can tell me, but you can’t tell anyone else, do you understand? The servants will talk. They will say you are Gifted. That you see things. And I won’t be able to keep you safe.”

  “Like Lady Meshara?” a childish voice—disembodied and echoing like it came from inside a huge iron pot—inquired.

  The woman nodded, her eyes terrified, and she reached out and smoothed the hair of the little girl whose eyes they saw through.

  “I can almost feel her hand,” Sasha whispered, touching a lock of her hair.

  “The memory is gone, but the feeling remains in your heart.” Padrig affirmed, and the memory winked away, finished.

  “She knew what happened to my mother.” Lark’s mouth trembled, and she reached for the king’s hand.

  “Yes. That is why Lord Kilmorda sent Saoirse to Dendar, beyond the reaches of King Zoltev and his zealots,” Padrig explained.

  “They sent me away?” Sasha cried.

  “You were a child when you came to Dendar. When Dendar became too dangerous, you were sent back to your family in Kilmorda. I went with you. We didn’t know that eventually, Kilmorda, across the Jeruvian Sea would also be overrun. All I could do was get you out. I saved you in Kilmorda, but I failed in Firi.”

  “Please . . . show me more.” Sasha’s eyes were glued to the orb, hypnotized by its light, hungry for answers.

  “You won’t be able to keep these memories we watch. I need to put them back in your mind,” Padrig warned.

  “Just one more,” Sasha begged. “Seeing them is its own memory.”

  Again Padrig extracted the thinnest thread of light and let it go. Instead of a mother’s face and words of distress, the image they saw was of endless green grass in a field speckled with yellow blooms. In the distance, a strip of deep blue sat above the green and above that, an endless sky. Harmony limned the image, as if the memory was one of contentment. A tall man with shoulders so wide and hips so slim he resembled a cross, stood a ways off, his hands on a staff, his greying head tilted to the breeze.

  “That is not Kilmorda,” the queen said softly, her eyes riveted to the scene.

  “No . . . it is the Valley of Caarn.” Padrig exhaled, staring with great longing at the image that was already dissipating.

  “Was that my father?” Sasha asked, her voice soft, her eyes troubled.

  “No. That was King Aren of Dendar.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sasha said, shaking her head in confusion. Kjell didn’t understand either, and the pulsing, impossible light in the Spinner’s hands was beginning to blind him.

  “What aren’t you telling us?” Kjell’s anger erupted, cauterizing his fear.

  “I can tell you the story, everything that I know, every jot and tittle. Or Sasha can remember it for herself,” Padrig urged quietly.

  “She needs to know, Kjell,” Tiras said gently. “Those memories belong to her. She deserves to have them back.”

  “It is up to you,” Padrig said to Sasha, moving so he stood directly in front of her, hands outstretched, the ball of light between them.

  “Do you want to remember?” Kjell asked Sasha, looking away from the orb and searching her eyes.

  “She must,” Padrig insisted. “It is the only way.”

  “She doesn’t have to do a bloody thing,” Kjell bellowed, and Padrig grew silent, cowed by Kjell’s adamancy.

  “Will who I was change who I am?” Sasha asked, though her eyes still held Kjell’s.

  “You will lose nothing,” Padrig reassured. “There are memories that will hurt. There are memories you won’t want in your head. But with the joy comes the sorrow, and I can’t separate one from the other.”

  Sasha took Kjell’s hand and he quaked, wishing he could scoop her up and take her away, the Sasha who loved him, who had accepted her lot with clear eyes and a compassionate heart.

  “I am ready,” she said, and Padrig wilted a little, his relief evident. He closed the space between them and gently, as though he placed a crown on her head, he brought the orb down over Sasha’s hair. The light was absorbed into the crimson strands, soaking into her scalp, making her tresses glow like fire. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a heartbeat she was a glimmering statue, completely still, immersed in all that had been taken from her.

  Then her legs buckled and a keening tore from her throat. Kjell caught her up, his sword clattering to the cobblestones.

  “What have you done?” Kjell cried. Sasha jerked in his arms, her hands pressed to her eyes, and the keening became a tortured scream.

  “She is remembering,” Padrig mourned. “She is remembering, and some memories are painful.”

  “May the Creator damn you,” Kjell roared.

  “There was no way around it, Healer.” Padrig had begun to weep. “She is not just Saoirse of Kilmorda. She is not simply the daughter of a lord.”

  Padrig laid his hands on her head and pulled the memories from her mind, coaxing them upward, spinning them into a great, glowing orb. Then he released the sphere, and it floated up into the sky and joined the stars, bright and shimmering, safe from discovery, shining down on the girl who no longer knew who she was.

  Images melded one into the other, and the star that had risen into the sky returned again, settling upon her. Pictures flashing, flickering, upside down and inside out. They bounced and wavered, then shifted again. Womanly fears became childish dreams, girlish longing became survivor’s pain. Kjell became a liberator, and a king became a tree, Sasha became a slave, and a girl became a queen.

  Nothing fit and nothing matched. She shook her head and looked again, allowing the sediment of memory to sink into place, creating a path she could follow from beginning to end.

  Her father’s sightless eyes, her mother’s broken body.

  Running.

  Padrig pulling on her hand and urging her forward.

  She’d known the birdmen were coming, but her visions had become confusing bits of reoccurring history, and she’d stopped being able to tell what was Dendar and what was Kilmorda, what was long ago and what was recent past.

  What was now and what was then?

  “Then” was a white horse with blue eyes she wanted so badly to ride, a bed that was too big, and a world surrounded by people far too tall. Her mother’s scent, her mother’s hands, her mother’s hair all reminded her of rose petals, fragrant, soft, and red.

  “Then” was her mother’s fear. Or maybe that was now. Had her mother always been afraid? “Then” was her father’s stories and the books he helped her read.

  “How does the story end, Saoirse?” he would say. Together they would spin visions
into fairytales, complete with happy endings.

  She believed in happy endings.

  A woman named Meshara held her hand and asked her how many summers she had. “I have seven summers,” she said, and the woman smiled. “You are so tall. But you are not so much older than my Lark. You will be great friends one day.”

  One day. But not then.

  “Then” was the sands of Kilmorda, the blue of the sea, the ships that brought treasures from Porta, Dendar and Willa, places she promised herself she would one day go.

  One day became that day.

  A trip across the Jeruvian Sea, her belly tossing and her mind weak, wanting her mother and cursing the things she saw. She saw him, the Healer with the dark hair and the sad, blue eyes. She saw him breathe life back into a child, small and dark, whistling like a bird, and she begged him to find her on the water and ease her heaving stomach and broken heart.

  Dendar. Then moved into later, and later creeped closer to now, yet still stayed so far away.

  Dendar was rarely cold, but it rained the way she cried for home. It rained and rained, until finally . . . it stopped. She stopped. Home became a castle named Caarn in a valley that smelled of earth and grain and sky. The trees were sentries, safe and tall, monuments to a people who didn’t cut them down but bade them move. And move they did, upending their giant roots, finding a new place to grow, and circling the valley while leaving room for those who would eventually join them.

  In the castle, she befriended a king, a patient guardian and kind protector to a lonely girl. He loved the forests and named the trees, and he took her with him when he walked among them.

  “This is my grandfather,” he sighed, patting an old tree with sprawling roots. He wiggled his fingers and his nails became soft and green. They grew, twining up his arms in clinging vines.

  “Someday I will come here too,” he said to the forest.

  “Will I?” she asked, wishing.

  “No, Saoirse. You are not a Spinner. Your gift is to see.”