“Stonebird stole me.”
Hami had dived in the lake for four years, then been shut in the dungeon for three. She was now nineteen.
“But because I was in Stonebird’s dungeon, I found you,” Hami said to me. “There’s no way I will die now. I’m going to survive!” She embraced me again.
It was as the prince had said: Hami had been sold by our father, stolen by Stonebird, gone blind, and been imprisoned in the dungeon—yet she wished to live. Seeing her, I knew that I could do the same. I had found her. I had a roof over my head. Potatoes to eat. The potatoes meant a potato patch waited under the snow.
“That’s the spirit!” the prince said. “We can’t die in a place like this! I’ve got to make a trip to the north shore. Long ago, I made a promise to someone there.” He nodded determinedly.
It was the first day of the New Year, and it was a day filled with hope.
The weather cleared only on the morning of New Year’s Day. From then on, every day the sky was overcast, and snow floated down.
The prince and I made trips to the cliffs on the north shore of the lake.
The first day we stood atop the cliffs, we saw Stonebird fly away on her broom, holding a tube-shaped object. The tube had to be the rolled-up spell-tapestry, now complete. Where had she taken it? We never spotted her again.
The next day, the birds that had circled Stonebird’s mansion so noisily disappeared. Not one remained. They seemed to have understood that Stonebird would never return. Now that her spell was complete, she had no use for the lake.
I climbed down from the northern cliffs and searched for the pin I had hidden near the air hole.
“Be careful. There’s nothing but thick ice below. If you slip and fall, you could hurt yourself badly.”
The prince tied a rope around me made of old rags.
On the third day, I found the pin. I also found the carved comb.
Since my sister had lived for a time in the capital, she knew the geography of our area well.
“This lake sits east of the capital. To get there requires half a day—no, a whole day, in this snow. In the capital you can sell these items for a high price, but you have barely eaten, and the journey will be hard. Before the capital there’s a large village. How about selling the things there?”
The prince and I trudged through the snow to that village. My sister had been right; it was tough going. When we finally reached the village, it had taken us half a day, and we could barely move our legs from exhaustion.
To me, the village might well have been the capital. It bustled with activity. It probably served as a fortification in times of battle; its residents and passing travelers seemed rough. A group of bandits called “Wolves’ Teeth” sometimes attacked here, we learned. A rich resident had been robbed just recently. The prince and I checked the large, central square of the village but doubted we could sell baubles there; the gazes of the men were so threatening that we thought we might get robbed ourselves.
We quietly showed our goods to women who looked well off. After several had passed us by, a woman who had a servant with her stopped. She showed interest in both the pin and the comb.
“Perhaps this one.” She reached for the pin. The prince told her that it had been a weapon years ago, but she seemed to want it for her hair. Suddenly, I did not wish to part with it. I had fought off the loathsome otter beast with this pin. It symbolized how I had fought for my life.
“The comb looks much nicer on you,” I told the woman. I slid the comb, made of black animal horn and sparkling jewels, into the woman’s red hair. The prince seemed to sense my attachment to the pin and nodded, agreeing. The woman bought the comb.
“We can live on this much money for a while,” the prince said. The amount we had received was less than my sister thought the comb would fetch, but we had done well for amateurs.
We drank hot soup at a street stall, and then bought all the provisions we could carry and headed back to the hut. When we arrived, late at night, my sister greeted us with a look of relief.
We couldn’t really eat to our hearts’ content, but we now had enough food not to starve. The next supply we needed was firewood. The prince and I returned to the forest we had passed through on our way to the village and gathered branches we thought would burn. This became our routine.
On clearer days, the prince would also build a fire atop the north cliffs. He did not say why, but when he lit the fire, he would get a happy, faraway look in his eyes. I could not understand why he would waste our firewood this way, but my sister said to let him do as he liked.
Stonebird did not reappear. The witch had definitely abandoned her lakeside mansion.
Chapter Twelve
“The Moon Is on the Left”
PART FOUR
Several days passed after that. On nicer days the prince kept lighting his fires. We soon found that we could not collect enough firewood. I resolved to ask him to stop making the fires.
Then one day while he was out, we heard sounds approach.
“Is that a horse?” My sister tilted her head and listened.
I flew to a crack between the boards that we had used to seal the windows of the hut. As Hami had known, a horse was coming. Several horses, in fact. The men who rode them carried swords at their waists.
I grabbed my pin with one hand and stuck it in the string I used for a belt. In my other hand, I gripped our largest piece of firewood. I stood with Hami behind me.
“Hami, Adi.”
We heard a man speak. I thought the prince had been caught by bandits, and I stiffened. Behind me, my sister put her hand to my shoulder.
“It’s all right, Adi. It’s the prince and he doesn’t sound upset.”
When we opened the door, the prince stood next to a tall man clad in heavy furs, who had a large sword.
“I have someone for you to meet,” the prince told us. “This is my one ally in the world. His name is Wolf Tooth.”
“The bandit!?” I asked, alarmed. I gripped the firewood again.
“Adi, don’t be frightened. This man is the one who was ‘useless’ to Stonebird years ago. He’s the child who got thrown out of the mansion!” The prince laughed merrily. I had never heard his voice so light.
“Aye, I was ‘useless,’ it’s true,” Wolf Tooth replied. “But I lived in that mansion. I’m one of you. You did well to survive that place. And you, my friend, did well to remember our promise!” Wolf Tooth used his large arm to clap the prince on the shoulder.
The prince, who came up only to Wolf Tooth’s ear, nearly lost his balance. “You’re the one who did well, recalling plans we made as children!” he answered. Tears pooled in his eyes.
“Let’s tell our story someplace warmer,” Wolf Tooth suggested. “You’re a wretched sight! But you made it out after all. That’s something.”
Wolf Tooth waved to beckon us out.
Taking only my pin, I left the hut with my sister.
Wolf Tooth’s headquarters were in the capital, inside an outer wall. The area was more prosperous than any we had seen so far, yet it still had many poor people. When you opened an old wooden door in one wall, a courtyard appeared surrounded by buildings with several balconies. The buildings formed a U shape. Some wall-dwellings seemed to have five stories, others seven. Wolf Tooth’s underlings lived here by the dozens, including some with families. The shouts of children echoed in the courtyard.
“My official business here is meat vending,” Wolf Tooth explained. “My men and I buy game from mountain hunters and sell it at markets, or we supply it to butchers. As we travel to buy our meat, we also relieve certain people of their riches.”
Wolf Tooth told us that since he ran a legitimate business, he had never been suspected of the robberies. As we sat in his warm rooms, with a huge fireplace and furniture as impressive as Stonebird’s, Wolf Tooth laughed merrily. On the surface, he seemed to live much like a well-to-do merchant.
Having bathed, changed into warm clothes, and
eaten till my stomach nearly burst, I listened to him and the prince in a reverie. I fingered my new dress constantly; I had never encountered such soft fabric. I couldn’t believe I was wearing such a garment, the color of sunset. Moments before, I hadn’t even recognized myself in the mirror. I’d frozen when I was given fur slippers to wear with the dress. Could I really put them on?
The woman who brought me the dress said, “Next time I’ll cut your hair.” I must have looked as bedraggled as a stray kitten.
“Stonebird purchased me as a child and trained me to dive like you, but I swam like a rock,” Wolf Tooth continued. “I really was useless. Not half a year passed before she threw me out.”
He sheepishly added that he still couldn’t swim.
“When I learned I would be cast out of the mansion, I made the prince promise me that if he got out too, he would send a smoke signal from the top of that cliff. And I promised I would go meet him.” Wolf Tooth laughed. “Of course, I had no idea if I would even survive!”
“I’m amazed you remembered those vows between boys,” the prince said to Wolf Tooth. The prince’s eyes were red. He had been crying since the two were reunited.
“If you hadn’t fished me out of the lake when I worked for Stonebird, I would have drowned!” Wolf Tooth replied. “A man never forgets the one who saved his life.
“But to tell the truth, those days had started to slip from my mind. I go to the village west of the lake to pick up news sometimes, as soldiers from other countries gather there. I never go to the lake itself, but I have a habit of glancing at it. When I saw the smoke rise to the sky today, my memories came rushing back. I doubted my own good sense, but I went to the cliff to investigate, and I’m glad I did!”
Wolf Tooth did not have to explain why he had become a bandit. He had been a child with no home, who was sold. One could easily imagine what had happened. I envied him the cleverness that had changed his hard life.
The prince spoke to him of Stonebird’s spell.
“Has she been casting it all these years, then?” Wolf Tooth asked, surprised.
Wolf Tooth came by his name honestly; when he spoke, he showed a set of brilliant teeth.
Everyone in the room wanted nothing more now than to break Stonebird’s spell.
“Is she still in her mansion, then?” Wolf Tooth asked.
I shook my head. “She’s gone. She abandoned it. Even the birds have left.”
“Where’s that witch hiding then?” Wolf Tooth groaned. “It’ll be a job to find her, it will. We might have a chance at the coronation—there’ll be information about it beforehand. But it’s nearly impossible to slip into the castle.”
Wolf Tooth told us about the castle’s corps of magicians. They used their powers to keep the entire castle hidden. No one knew where it was, even longtime residents of the capital. When Stonebird had said the prince could not reach the castle alone, she had known this. Even she wasn’t able to come and go at will; on the last day of each year, the magic that hid the castle weakened, and that’s how she’d been able to meet her son’s ghost.
Wolf Tooth told us that he would seek out some gossip. Nothing is as unreliable as gossip, of course, but there’s often truth hiding in it. Yet an antidote to Stonebird’s spell would be hard to come by. We were as stuck as we had been before.
Our dilemma burdened us, but the days still passed. The window of the room my sister and I shared looked out over city streets. Before, I had wakened to the cries of raucous birds, but now human voices and horse carts roused me. I helped with cleaning and cooking in Wolf Tooth’s house, yet I still had time on my hands. My sister thought often of the furrier who had trained her, and, though we never exactly set out to find him, she and the prince and I took many walks around the capital. We sometimes joined Wolf Tooth’s partners in practicing combat and archery techniques in the courtyard. The prince drilled with a sword, and I used my special pin.
One day, I watched a boy practice in the courtyard using blow darts. About five years of age, he had just learned to hit his farthest target.
“That’s the way!” said Wolf Tooth, who watched him with me. “Even some adults can’t do that.”
The boy’s face flushed, and he ran from the courtyard, seeming embarrassed. But he returned shortly, tugging his mother’s hand. The boy demonstrated his skills again, and his young mother embraced him, her whole face beaming.
It seemed so natural that a child would want his mother to see what he could do. And for a mother to admire her child.
“I bet you anything Stonebird will come see her son at the coronation,” I blurted out. “She’ll want to see his ghost come back to life.”
I thought of the way I had heard Stonebird speak to her son. Her voice had grown thick with affection.
“You think she’ll come to the ceremony, then?” Wolf Tooth responded. “Even a witch can’t get in easily, especially at a coronation. No one enters without an invitation.”
“I’ll bet she can get one,” I told him. “The coronation itself is happening because of her spell. She might have stitched herself into the tapestry.”
“You’re right,” Wolf Tooth said, nodding. “She spent twenty years on that spell. She must have made herself part of it, in a role that would guarantee an invitation.”
“I’m sure she has a cover, like you,” the prince told Wolf Tooth. “A public role that rouses no suspicion, which would get her invited.”
“And she could have a base besides the lake,” Wolf Tooth added, nodding now with certainty.
We’d wondered that too. But there was still no way for us to find her.
A royal proclamation soon announced the coronation.
Rumors spread like wildfire.
“A tapestry appeared in the castle storehouse. They say it shows a coronation!”
“The king and queen in the tapestry look exactly like the real king and queen!”
“They say the prince who disappeared at birth will return at the ceremony!”
“He’ll appear when the moon shines through the window above the throne, on the left!”
“He has spent all of these years in the land of the fairies. A fortune-teller predicted he would not grow up well in this country.”
“No, they say he’s dwelt in the land of ice on the far side of the sea!”
“He must be so clever, kind, and handsome!”
“The king and queen can’t wait to see him!”
“The tapestry will be displayed all over the capital!”
Rumors of the tapestry display were true. Several days before the coronation, we learned the tapestry would be carried to each of the capital’s main squares for public viewing. The residents of the capital, who never got to see inside the castle itself, awaited the display eagerly.
With little progress in our planning, the day of the tapestry display arrived.
The prince, my sister and I walked to a nearby square to wait. It seemed everyone in the city had turned out. “I won’t be able to see it anyway!” my sister moaned, but she still came with us. We stood together, as crowds nearly squashed us straining for a glimpse.
The tapestry had been mounted on a wooden frame, which now appeared in the square held by two soldiers. Twenty guards stood around it, with spears at the ready. The townspeople gathered around the spearmen. It seemed nearly impossible to get a close look at the tapestry, but my sharp eyes served me well even here.
The moon shone through the window to the left of the throne. The embroidered people in the scene, no matter how small, were meticulously detailed: some even had moles. Stonebird must be among them, I thought, but as I searched for her, the soldiers holding the frame, along with the guards, left the square.
The onlookers scrambled to follow them, as a voice called out.
“Hami! Hami, is that you?”
A white-haired, red-faced, portly man gazed at my sister and her unseeing eyes.
“Sir!” My sister raised her hand toward him.
“Ha
mi, you’re alive! But your eyes—” The man took my sister’s hand. Before she could say a word, he continued. “The furrier and his wife worried terribly. You’ve come at a bad time for them, but your being here will lift their spirits. Come, let’s go to them at once!”
The man began to walk. As we kept pace with him, my sister introduced him as the furrier’s supervisor of workers.
“You say it’s a bad time,” she said. “Has something happened at the shop?”
“The master is overwhelmed,” he replied. “The reason has to do with that tapestry!” He glared toward the cloth as the procession left the square. Then, showing us to the shop, he explained.
The furrier my sister worked for had recently gained permission to enter the castle. He had agreed to make the mantle, or cloak, for the queen to wear to the coronation. Using the best fur in his shop, he had created and delivered a fine mantle as requested. The queen was pleased at first, but the day before the tapestry display, he had been ordered to remake the mantle from scratch.
Belief in the tapestry had swelled as people realized that even moles on the invited guests were embroidered exactly. The king now desired that everyone attending the coronation look exactly as in the tapestry. The queen’s mantle in the tapestry appeared black with a shiny finish. The furrier had been told to make an exact replica. The supervisor had come to view the tapestry today to confirm the shade of black.
The queen shown in the tapestry appeared larger than the other participants, and she definitely wore a black mantle. It had pearl-like objects on it that sparkled like stars at night. I had seen this myself.
“The first mantle we delivered was premium sable, in a rich brown-black,” the supervisor explained. “A darker mantle than that will be impossible to create. The scattering of pearls we can handle. But even if we order furs from other shops, none will be large enough. The master is beside himself.”
Temple Alley Summer Page 15