by Shannon Hale
The caiman was large, and the week’s fishing had been good, providing enough food that Hanna turned no one away. Miri spotted Dogface and stopped by the farthest fire.
The mood was breezy and fair. Dogface passed around swill.
“Meat on the spit, and don’t you know,” Dogface sang out.
“Your lips are sweet, your voice is low,” several sang back.
“Love in your eyes gives me a thirst,” Dogface sang, sitting by a village woman, who laughed with her mouth wide.
“But the meat’s ready so I’ll eat first!” others sang back.
Miri had never heard this song, but apparently everyone in the village knew it—even Dogface.
Miri angled away from him, hurriedly roasting two pieces of meat before heading back to Astrid.
She stopped short at the door.
Astrid was wearing one of Britta’s dresses. Peach-colored silk, it fitted at her chest, flowed out at her hips, and settled smooth as sand at her feet.
Miri took a step back, trying to slip away, but her bare foot made a soft sucking sound in the wet ground. Astrid spun around.
“Sorry,” Miri said.
Astrid’s cheeks turned red.
“It’s a Storan design,” said Miri. “That piece of white silk hanging from the front of the waist is supposed to look like an apron. The Storan noblewomen apparently like to resemble hardworking commoner women, except the fabric is silk, so they clearly aren’t doing any work at all. It’s pretty, though, and Danlandian noble ladies have started to adopt the style.”
Miri pressed her lips together. She was in the habit of turning everything into a lesson, but right then Astrid did not need to know fashion history. Miri waited to see what words Astrid might offer the silence.
Finally Astrid asked, “It would be me, wouldn’t it?”
“What would?”
“If Felissa married him, he’d tell her what to do and how to think and she’d just shrivel up. Sus wouldn’t let anyone push her around, but she won’t reach betrothal age for years. Anyway, I’m not going to let my little sisters marry some old man because I’m too much of a coward. But … I hate this, Miri. I hate it!”
“So do I,” said Miri.
“There’s a couple in the village, Ceki and Lans. When she was making baskets, he’d come up from behind to put his arm around her waist and kiss her cheek. When he went off in his boat, she’d watch him till he was out of sight as if she just liked the look of him. They had two little boys. When I was little, I used to play with some of the village children and wonder which would be my Lans. Then Ma got sick, I was taking care of my sisters, and I didn’t have time to think about that. But even now I still catch myself thinking, someday I’ll have a Lans. Someday I’ll have a choice.”
“You do have a choice,” Miri said.
“Not really. Do I refuse King Fader and let him come for all of Danland and us too? Do I let one of my little sisters carry the burden and marry a stranger?”
“Maybe you’ll like him.”
“Maybe.”
Miri had attended a princess academy. She might have married Steffan, who was a prince and a good person besides. But even so, she would have been miserable as his bride, giving up Peder, leaving Mount Eskel forever, becoming a lowlander queen. And what if King Fader was no Steffan? What if he was horrible?
“You don’t have to decide anything right now,” Miri said.
Astrid nodded. From nearby came the croaking of a frog, thin and raspy, like a sickly cough. The frog called and called and nothing answered.
Written Winter Week Ten
Never received
Dearest Miri,
The winter seems thicker than usual, cold and angry. Sorrow strikes Pa of a sudden, and he cannot hide tears fast enough before I see. I think your absence reminds him of Ma’s. Peder’s pa is still upset that he left. I worry that he will not approve your betrothal.
With no word these past months, I cannot help but worry that you are in trouble.
Sweyn is still here. His anvil will arrive with the traders in the spring, and he and Frid plan to start a forge. They go for walks in the snow. They hold hands.
Gerti plays her lute each rest day. The music is like sunshine. I have seen Doter fetch Gerti to go to someone’s house if there’s illness or sadness. I think about asking Gerti to play for Pa.
Esa is teaching the women what she learned of doctoring, besides running the village school. Something she said worried the village council. Since the king owns our land, he could take it back anytime he wants. The council talked of working harder in the quarry, trying to make enough money to buy our land from the king. But if he might sell to us, would he not rather sell to someone with more money than we could scrape together?
I do not understand kings and what they might do. But I do not feel safe.
Today I killed a rabbit for our stew. It was good to have meat. But. Well. You know.
Your sister,
Marda
Written Winter Week Ten
Never received
Dear Peder,
Lesser Alva does not understand winter. The swamp looks up at the clouds and laughs at the idea of snow. Nothing falls but rain, and thankfully we have a good roof and food stores. So in the rain, we study.
It is as if Sus was starving and just realized there was food in the world. She wants me to serve up everything I have ever learned. Astrid listens too but she still resists. I think she is afraid the prize for doing well might be marrying an old, thrice-wed king.
Felissa’s mind works differently than her sisters’. She has not fully grasped reading, but the lessons on Poise and Etiquette come naturally. Despite a head full of snarls and muddy feet, I can easily imagine her holding her own alongside the noble ladies of the court.
Though you probably will not get this letter before spring, I imagine you reading it in your house by the window, snow to the sill. I am glad that you are home if I cannot be. Will you remember to slay the winter rabbits for Marda? I am afraid my pa will forget.
I am surprised by how much I miss a Mount Eskel winter. It is a relief not to be freezing day and night. But winter on Mount Eskel is a deep breath, an extra hour, a pause, little work and a lot of stories and songs.
I miss you more than winter. You know that, but I want to say it again and again in case this is the time my words will actually reach you. I miss you, Peder. I miss you.
Miri
Written Winter Week Twelve
Never received
Dear Marda,
My first day out here, a snake bit me. Every time I step into water since, I am flinching against snakebites. And caiman bites. I am exhausted trying to look for all the biting things.
All the same, I think my eyes have grown used to the normal movement of the swamp, as Felissa thought they would—ripples on water, flights of insects, breeze moving the reeds. It is easier now to detect the irregular movements that might be a snake or caiman.
I am so much less afraid than I was that I even learned to swim. The water is chilly—well, for Lesser Alva anyway. But my muscles warmed as I fought the water. Swimming is almost drowning but not, over and over again. I like not drowning very much.
I think of you every day.
Miri
Written Winter Week Thirteen
Never received
Dear Miri,
If I do not hear from you soon, I will march to Lesser Alva myself. In all these months I have received only two letters from you and both were washed out with water, the ink running and mostly illegible. I know you were alive to write them but not much else. Surely if you were not well, the guards or servants of the king’s cousins would travel to Asland to alert us. Still, I worry.
Please write me a dozen times and promise the traders pure gold for delivery. I would gladly give them the rings from my fingers and the shoes from my feet, as they say.
Though I do not know why they would want the shoes from my feet. They would most like
ly not fit. There, I have ruined a perfectly good idiom by being too practical. Clearly I am in need of my Miri.
Yours frantically,
Britta
Chapter Fourteen
A lost word of letters
Is no loss if not found
A lost letter of words
Is a loss most profound
Winter rains assaulted the swamp, wrinkling the mud, boiling the lake, thundering through the reeds. Entire days the girls barely left the little linder house. Whenever Miri ventured to the outhouse, she got well churned and poached. One slip in the thickening mud and she might have rolled into the turbulent and dangerous water. The rain, as Sus said, erased things. In years past, with no food stores, the girls had spent the stormiest days hungry, staring out the window. At least now they had food and books.
As spring broke, the lake rose up to meet them, lapping just a few feet from the linder house. The village islands drifted farther from shore. Snows and ice on Mount Eskel had begun to melt in the sunshine, dripping down, rolling through the hills and valleys, eventually finding Miri in Lesser Alva.
The longer the days, the more Miri’s heart quickened. Surely time was running out. She did not know what information would help the girls the most when they left the swamp. After all, she’d had no idea that reading a little book called Commerce at the princess academy would change her entire village. So she just taught them everything she could think of.
“Master Filippus believes that three disciplines define us as humans,” Miri said while they walked to the peat pits. “History, Philosophy, and Poetry. History is human memory, the examination of what came before us. Philosophy is human reason, or an attempt to make sense of what is. Poetry is human imagination, seeking to express what is, even while dreaming of what might be. History, Philosophy, and Poetry—that’s what sets humans apart from animals.”
“And animals don’t wear clothes,” said Felissa.
“Right, there’s also the clothes thing,” said Miri.
While cutting bricks of mud-like peat from the pits, the girls listed things people did that animals did not, including cooking their food, shaving mustaches, and refraining from sniffing one another’s rear ends.
Dried peat looked and felt like dirt, yet it burned as well as wood, emitting a scorched earthy smell. When she returned to the Queen’s Castle library, Miri meant to research why peat burned. If she ever returned.
They lay their peat bricks on old reed mats and began to drag them back to the house.
“Miri?” A young girl with mud to her elbows ran after her. She pulled a crumpled, water-stained envelope from inside her shirt. “My pa found this letter in Jeffers’s house. I think you can read, yes?”
Miri took the envelope. Her heart leaped when she recognized the handwriting.
“It’s addressed to me. Thank you.”
Miri gave the girl a small coin.
The girl glanced at where the girls were walking ahead. “Um, did the stone house sisters kill their mother?”
“What? No! Their mother had the swamp fever.”
The little girl nodded. “That makes more sense.” And she ran off.
In all her months in Lesser Alva, Miri had received only four letters: from the chief delegate, Katar, and on that first trade day long ago, from Peder and Marda. She’d begun to suspect that even with Jeffers gone, Gunnar the trader had continued to steal her letters. She could not fathom why, as she had coins now to pay for their delivery.
Miri tore open the letter. Reading Peder’s words was like drinking cold well water on a scorching day.
Miri
I have been here for two months now and still no luck. I cannot get to Britta. But I am trying. I have to believe that you are fine, though I have had no word. I do not like that you are farther than a quarry-shout away. Please be careful.
Peder
Was Peder in Asland? And if so, why could he not get to Britta? What was happening?
Miri was so gripped by thoughts as she walked that she did not notice the newcomers in the village till she had nearly passed by the main island.
Among the reed roofs she spotted a glint of metal helmets. The shake of a bright red tassel. Three dozen tall men.
Soldiers. Katar had written that someone would come to fetch them to Asland. Miri surprised herself by feeling regret seep from her heart through her ribs like the mud between her toes.
But … Felissa could not read well, and Astrid refused to practice a curtsy, and none of them wanted to marry King Fader anyway, and if Miri failed, she would not win Mount Eskel for her village, and the country would not be safe from Stora …
But … Peder was waiting for her. And Marda and Pa. It would be such a relief to turn her back on everything and run home after all …
But … the sisters. She would miss the sisters.
Miri dragged her load of peat back to the house, dropping it just outside. She brushed off her clothes and started toward the village. Why hadn’t the royal guards come directly to the linder house? Most were talking to villagers on the main island, others punting in boats off the far shore. Suddenly one was chasing after a fleeing woman. He leaped and pulled her down.
The violence of the action shocked Miri. Then she registered the uniforms: close-fitting, hammered iron helmets with peaked tops; stuffed leather vests; round wooden shields crossed with strips of iron. Their beards were often black, but the hair on their heads was dyed yellowish-white, hanging long beneath their helmets. Those were not Danlandian soldiers.
Miri walked casually back to the house, forcing her trembling legs not to run and draw notice. The moment she stepped onto the linder threshold, the sisters hurried to her, perhaps sensing her confusion and concern.
“It’s begun,” Miri said. “The war. It’s already here.”
Chapter Fifteen
The dead cannot sleep long when the moon is round
The dead toss and turn deep in the muddy ground
The dead never rest well in the living house
The dead hear the secrets the owl tells the mouse
The four girls stood at the window, staring toward the village. The glint of sunlight on metal helmets was bright and strange among the reed roofs.
“We have to get out of here,” said Miri. “Someone may have already told the soldiers you are the king’s cousins. That’s enough to get you noticed. And history shows that it’s never a good thing when invading soldiers notice you.”
She stuffed the flat bread they’d baked at the village’s clay ovens into her bag, along with her three books and their remaining coins.
“We’ll walk to the Greater Alva port. Hopefully I’ve saved enough to buy us passage to Asland. The king needs to know Storan soldiers are in Lesser Alva. And I need to keep you safe.”
Astrid shook her head. “You used to say traveling to Asland was too dangerous, but now—”
“Now it’s more dangerous to stay. Please.”
Sus was wrapping her blanket around her shoulders like a cloak but Felissa just stood there, looking at Astrid.
“You don’t want to go,” Felissa said, her smile sympathetic. Her ability with linder-wisdom had increased more than her sisters’, and she seemed able to detect even the subtlest emotions.
“This is our home,” said Astrid. “Soldiers are just one more swamp danger.”
“Soldiers are far more dangerous than caimans,” said Miri.
“History is full of royals getting beheaded,” said Sus. “And we’re royal, whether we want to be or not.”
“So we run off? Abandon our mother’s house forever?” Astrid was speaking to Felissa alone. “No one in the village cared a handful of grain about us. Why should the soldiers be any different? We stay.”
She turned up that last word till it was almost a question. Felissa’s smile was nervous, her forehead creased.
“None of you are feeling very certain about anything,” Felissa whispered. “Except Miri. She’s afraid. She’s seen, perh
aps, what soldiers with muskets and swords can do.”
Miri nodded.
“Felissa—” Astrid started.
“I think we should go,” Felissa whispered.
Astrid blinked as if she’d been slapped. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, grabbed the waterskin, and hurried to the rain barrel to fill it.
Felissa did not lose her small smile, but she took several deep breaths.
“We’ll leave the letters and the painting and Ma’s things in the attic,” Felissa said. “Because we will come back.”
Miri did not say how she too had left home determined to return.
They did not dare wait for full night. Surely the soldiers would come investigate the strange stone house. They shouldered their light bags and left the door, as always, dangling open on its warped hinges.
Trying to keep reed beds and tall brush between them and the village, they climbed the slope and entered the woods.
The sun was setting, and beneath the forest canopy night fell hard. In the absence of light, the noise in the swamp seemed deafening. Croaks and calls, rhythmic buzzing, high-pitched diving of flies and urgent, pitiable-sounding pleas from other insects. A nightbird singing, a screech, the crunch of something feasting. Miri startled at a squelch different from the rest. She looked back often.
She thought it safer to avoid the road, so they kept in the trees, moving turtle-slow, scrambling beneath limbs only to trip over others. At that pace, they would run out of water long before getting out of the woods, and then there would still be another full day of walking to reach Greater Alva.
“Which way is the road?” Miri whispered. She was no longer certain if they were traveling in a straight line.
Astrid pointed. “Should we …”
“Not yet,” Sus whispered.
“We’re still too close to the village,” Miri agreed.
They kept stumbling forward. Now that they’d left the swamp far behind, their passage was louder than the sounds of night.