Rose & Thorn

by Sarah Prineas

  She and my father were part of my story, I realized. The very beginning of it. I felt vaguely disappointed that they didn’t seem all that happy to see me. Maybe they just needed time to get used to the idea. “I have so many questions,” I said to my mother.

  “I suppose you do,” she said faintly.

  “You must have known the Penwitch,” I said.

  She blinked. “The Penwitch?” she asked, and stepped from the platform, then started across the room.

  I started to explain. “She was—” I stopped in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor. The Penwitch had, maybe, stolen me away from my parents before bringing me to Shoe. But the Penwitch had been good. Hadn’t she? She’d been fighting against Story. I knew Shoe had been good.

  I didn’t know what it meant, except that being returned to my parents was, perhaps, more complicated than I’d realized. This castle was a very strange place, I could see that much. I would have to be careful, as Timothy had said. And I needed to see Griff and Quirk so we could try to figure out what was going on.

  My mother had paused four steps ahead of me and stood there without looking back. I hurried to her side and we continued to the door, where I looked for Timothy but didn’t see her, to my dismay. We were met by the Keeper and Sally and Dolly, who curtsied to my mother, and then to me. “Nah then, m’lady,” the Keeper said, baring her teeth in a smile. “Y’r friend Tim’thy is a’ well. She went t’ see the little man.”

  I nodded, relieved.

  “This is . . . ,” my mother started, then glanced up at me and blinked, as if remembering who I was. “This is Rose.”

  “Apparently I’m supposed to be settled,” I said to the Keeper, smiling back at her.

  “Th’ pink room, m’lady?” the Keeper asked.

  “Oh,” my mother said, with another one of her blinks. “Yes, that will do.”

  The Keeper’s keys jingled as she turned and led us, with the two maids trailing behind, up the curved stairway and along a corridor, through a door that led to another stairway that wound up inside one of the castle towers.

  “Thisss is a sitting room,” Sally hissed as we passed through one room. But we didn’t stop; instead we went up another flight of winding stairs to an arched doorway.

  The room inside was round, the shape of the tower, and it was called the pink room for a good reason.

  I stepped in, and my feet sank into the pink carpet. A high bed had a pink velvet canopy and spread, all edged with gold, and faded tapestries stitched with pink flowers covered the walls.

  It was the same color pink, I realized, as my rose.

  The air of the room was chilly, and smelled of dust and mold.

  Behind me, the Keeper was giving orders to Sally and Dolly about cleaning and building a fire and airing out the bed.

  In one corner of the room was a cradle encrusted with lace. My mother had drifted over to it.

  I went to join her. “Was this . . . when I was a baby, was this my cradle?”

  My mother flinched, as if startled. “This was my baby’s cradle. The witch stole her away. My Rosebud. My little Rose.”

  “Why did the witch take me?” I asked.

  “She took my baby,” my mother corrected. Her face contorted. “The witch was evil.”

  “I don’t think she was,” I said gently.

  My mother’s beringed hands clenched into jeweled fists. “She stole my baby.” Her voice rose in anguish. “My baby!”

  It had been a long time ago. Almost seventeen years. But my mother’s grief seemed immediate. She didn’t seem to quite realize that I was that baby, grown up.

  “Nah then,” said the Keeper, jingling up to us. Gently she took my mother’s arm. “It’s time f’r your med’cine an’ a nap, m’lady. Come ’long nah.” Docile, my mother allowed the Keeper to lead her out the door.

  I looked around the room. Dolly was at the hearth building a fire; Sally had gone out on one of the Keeper’s errands. So much pink. It was cloying, stuffy. “Dolly,” I said briskly, “I’d like to check on my friend, the small man, to be sure he’s all right. Will you take me to him?”

  Dolly, kneeling at the hearth, blinked up at me with round black eyes.

  Before she could answer, there was a clatter of footsteps at the door. Dolly leaped up to open it, then sank into a low curtsy as two young women sailed into the room, followed by Timothy. The two women were both entirely human—no fur or fangs to be seen—and they wore dresses similar to Timothy’s, so I knew they were ladies, not servants. As one they dipped into curtsies, then rose and stood beside each other as if presenting themselves for an inspection.

  Timothy stood to the side. I glanced at her and raised my eyebrows; she answered with a shrug.

  “Greetings, Lady Rose,” one of the ladies said primly. She was very tall and had bony shoulders and brown hair, carefully curled; the other was shorter, plumper, red cheeked, and red haired. They were both very elegant. “I am Miss Amity,” said the tall one in a high-pitched, nasal voice, “and this is Miss Olive. We are your ladies-in-waiting.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Hello. What are you waiting for?”

  Miss Amity wrinkled her nose. “We wait upon you, Lady Rose. The three of us are to be your companions.”

  Timothy, who still had her most unladylike sword hanging from her belt, crossed her arms and scowled.

  “We are skilled in all the proper accomplishments,” added Miss Olive, ignoring Timothy, and bestowing me with an ingratiating smile. “Embroidery, playing the harp, deportment, tatting, engaging in delightful conversation, painting with watercolors . . .”

  “Playing cards,” Miss Amity continued, “dancing, serving tea, behaving with perfect etiquette, and conveying only the most delectable pieces of gossip.”

  I couldn’t do any of those things. I didn’t even know what deportment was. Or tatting.

  Timothy lifted her chin. “And I shall teach you proper etiquette with the sword,” she said in a falsely mincing voice. “You must try not to get your opponent’s blood on your dancing slippers.”

  “Oh really,” said Miss Amity scornfully. Miss Olive looked down her nose.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” I said quickly, even though it wasn’t really. I was starting to get very worried about Quirk, and I wanted to talk further with Griff, too. I was sure he had some ideas about why we were here. “I need to find my friend. He was nearly frozen when we arrived last night, and I want to be sure that he is all right.”

  Miss Amity shifted subtly, so that she was blocking the door. “I was instructed by the Keeper to assure you that your servant has been seen by a healer.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, not bothering to inform her that Quirk wasn’t my servant. “But I’d like to see him for myself.” I smiled at them. “It’s all right; Miss Timothy will come with me, and you can stay here.”

  The Misses exchanged a glance. “It is our duty to serve as your companions,” Miss Amity said with a sniff.

  Miss Olive pulled a packet from a beaded purse she had looped over her wrist. “Perhaps a game of cards, instead?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, beginning to feel a bit desperate. “I’m going to visit Quirk.” I started for the door, and I would have knocked Miss Amity over, but she scurried out of my way. “If you’ll wait here,” I said quickly, “I’ll be back very soon, all right?” And without waiting for their answer, I opened the door. Facing me was an older woman—another fine lady—and the Keeper, and Sally, and a man carrying several bolts of pink cloth, and a plainly dressed woman holding a basket.

  “Ah, Lady Rose,” exclaimed the lady, sailing into the room. The others crowded in behind her, forcing me back inside.

  Timothy stepped up beside me, her hand on her sword. “I could take them, easily,” she hissed.

  “No!” I said, shocked. I turned to face her. She looked so incongruously fierce in her pretty pink dress, a scowl on her face. “It’s all right. Really.”

  Timothy huffed out a
disgusted breath and went to stand near the door.

  The fine lady was Miss Abigail, one of my mother’s ladies-in-waiting, and she’d brought a dressmaker who would measure me and help me pick out ribbons and cloth, and new shoes, and stockings, and a reticule, whatever that was, and lace.

  And unless I let Timothy have her bloodbath, I was not going to be allowed to visit Quirk, or talk to Griff, evidently.

  Well, we would just see about that.

  I SPENT THE rest of the day being measured for new dresses and underclothes, playing cards with the Misses, trading eye rolls with Timothy, and finding out that delightful conversation was also extremely dull, and then being primped and put into another dress—a proper evening gown, I was told. The ladies-in-waiting, including Timothy, were whisked away, and I was sent to eat a very awkward dinner with my formal father and abstracted mother, both of whom behaved as if the other did not exist.

  At the table, my mother mechanically took one tiny bite after another without speaking, but after a long silence my father said something interesting.

  “I am surprised, Rose, that you were not returned to us sooner.” He paused to fork up a bite of meat, chewed, swallowed, and then continued. “We sent servants to find you. To bring you home in time.”

  “In time for what?” I asked.

  “For your sixteenth birthday,” my father said.

  I’d been sixteen for at least six months. Maybe longer. “Well, I never saw the servants you sent,” I said. Because Shoe and I had never seen anyone.

  “They must have expired,” my father said.

  I blinked. What?

  Seeing my confusion, my father continued. “They were given an order. They would obey it unto death. If they didn’t find you in time”—he shrugged and took another bite—“they expired.”

  And then I remembered—the dead body in the clearing in our valley, with the vultures. The man had been wearing blue; his hands had been more like claws. He must have been one of the castle’s servants. A cold feeling gathered in my stomach. “How would they die, exactly?”

  “As I said.” My father took a sip of wine from a crystal goblet. “Unto death.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  My father stared at me without blinking, as if I was being stupid.

  At last my mother spoke. Her voice was without inflection. “Once the servants left the castle, they could not stop to eat or sleep until their orders were fulfilled.”

  “Unto death,” my father repeated. “If they fail, they die.”

  Oh. I wondered how long the servant had blundered at the edges of the magical boundary around our valley, slowly starving to death. Or maybe the lack of sleep had killed him first. And then the boundary had broken, and he’d stumbled in far enough to fall down in that clearing and die.

  It was awful. I put down my silver fork and stared at my plate, at my half-eaten dinner.

  My mother and father continued to eat without speaking.

  After dinner, feeling very subdued, I let Sally and Dolly lead me back to my bedroom, put me into a lacy nightgown, and tuck me into the bed with its swags of pink velvet.

  As soon as they went out, leaving me alone, I climbed down from the bed and found a robe and my toe-pinching slippers and settled on the cushioned window seat. The land outside the window was completely dark. It was odd, I thought, that no one lived nearby. The castle was so isolated. My parents were so strange, with their blankness, their masklike faces. And the servants, half animal, half obedience unto death.

  At last, when I guessed that most of the castle was asleep, I took a candle and went down the winding stairs of my tower. The corridors were shadowed and deserted. I crept along their edges like a mouse until I came to a door that I’d noted when going down to dinner. Servants had been coming out of it then; I went into it now, passing down a much barer corridor, coming out at last into the kitchen, which I remembered from . . . was it only the night before? My goodness.

  It was mostly empty, the fires banked, with a lingering smell of the roast we’d eaten for dinner. On a stool at the scarred table sat the Keeper, drinking tea with an enormous man wearing an apron, who had nubs of horns at his hairline. Seeing me, the Keeper got to her feet.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said, before she could say anything. “I’m looking for my friend Griff. Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Well nah, Lady Rose,” she started.

  “Please,” I interrupted. “I really do need to see him.”

  She was shaking her head.

  So I added, “A lady ought to look after her servants. I need to be sure my servants are well settled.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “A’right, m’lady. Come ’long. He’s in th’ stable.”

  With a sigh of relief, I followed her out of the kitchen, across the courtyard, to an outbuilding. She pointed at it, then bobbed a curtsy and went back toward the castle.

  Lantern light spilled from the stable door. I padded over the smooth paving stones and peeked in. It had a large central room with a hay-strewn floor. Griff was alone in the middle of it. His coat was off and the sleeves of his ragged shirt were rolled up, and he had his knife in one hand, its sheath in the other. The knife was held back against his wrist; he spun and it flicked out to stab air, then he ducked and turned smoothly to block an imaginary thrust with the sheath. He was all deadly grace. Dark. Honed. Dangerous.

  Oh, he was sparring. Practicing.

  Because he was Griff, he could hardly fail to notice me there, lurking in the doorway. He spun, knife at the ready.

  “Hello, Griff,” I said awkwardly, stepping further into the light.

  Seeing it was me, he straightened and sheathed the knife, one clean motion, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Suddenly I was very glad to see him.

  He observed me with his usual keenness. “You’ve had to sneak out.”

  “Yes,” I said, and I wanted to tell him all about the waiting ladies and Timothy, and the pink room and my odd parents and the unto death, but first things first. “How is Quirk?”

  “Come and sit down,” he said. While I settled myself on a hay bale, Griff rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and put on his long coat again. Then he answered my question. “He’s not well. Asleep, and still feverish.”

  “Oh,” I said faintly. “Is somebody looking after him?”

  “Healer’s assistant,” Griff told me. “And Timothy’s checking on him every hour.”

  We were silent for a few minutes while I worried about Quirk, and Griff went to lean a shoulder against the frame of a door that led to another room in the stable, where he stared down at the hay-strewn floor.

  “This is a very strange place,” I said at last.

  Griff looked up at me and nodded. “Have you figured out what it is?”

  I hadn’t had a chance to really think it through. But now I did. My oddly blank parents. The animal servants. Timothy’s warning. The fact that the Penwitch had stolen me away from here and brought me to Shoe. “Oh,” I said, and felt stupid for not realizing it before. “This must be a place of Story.” I frowned. “But the Forest brought us here, and it’s Story’s enemy. Why would it do that?”

  “The Forest didn’t bring us here,” Griff corrected. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thimble. It glinted in the lantern light as if winking at me. “This did.”

  “Quirk knows a lot more about all of this than we do. He knew the thimble had some kind of power,” I said.

  Griff nodded.

  “I don’t suppose he told you about it, did he?” I asked.

  “No” was Griff’s unadorned answer.

  Of course not. I turned my hand and looked down at the rose that bloomed on the pale skin of my wrist. “I thought that Story’s place of power was the City. I thought we’d be free of it once we got out of the Forest. Why is it here, too, in this castle?”

  “It must have escaped.”

  “How?” I ask
ed.

  Griff opened his mouth as if he was about to answer, but instead he shoved the thimble back into his coat pocket and looked away.

  “I wish you would tell me what you know,” I said softly.

  “I don’t know much more than you do.” Griff was staring down at the floor again. “But I can tell you this. In the City, we Watchers were trained to watch for signs that Story was rising again. One of its devices would appear, or a few people would be cursed, and Story would start to take shape around them, forcing them to act their part. All the Lord Protector’s rules . . .” He gave a half shrug. “They were supposed to prevent Story from gaining power.”

  “Oh, I see,” I interrupted. “Story’s been thwarted in the City, so it escaped somehow and established itself here, outside the Forest.”

  Griff nodded. “There’s a story that’s supposed to happen here.”

  “One that’s been told and retold, so that it gives Story even more power,” I added. “And now it wants to retell it again.”

  “Yes. My father would know which one it is; he had his book of notes on Story’s devices and plots. This story—” He glanced swiftly up at me. “It’s something about a beautiful girl.”

  Me, unfortunately. “Shoe never told me about any of this. What should I do?” I wondered. “Or not do?”

  Griff remained silent, pensive.

  “And what about you?” I asked. “And Quirk and Timothy? Does Story have plans for you?”

  Griff shook his head, as if he’d used up his allotment of words for the night.

  “My parents are part of it, too.” Feeling suddenly afraid, I pulled up my legs and wrapped my arms around my knees. “We have to get away from here.”

  “Quirk,” Griff said, under his breath.

  Yes, he was right. We couldn’t leave until Quirk was better. “I don’t think escaping is going to be easy.”

  “I don’t either,” Griff said.

  “Now that Story’s got us here, it’s not going to let us leave. They’ve got me surrounded by ladies and servants and they’re very . . . sticky.” I shrugged. “I don’t even know if I can get away again to see you, or Quirk. And I’m sure they’d come after us if we tried to escape.”