by Jane Yolen
“I have to stay here,” he told me, “but you can leave, child. And I will show you how. However, you must first vow to do me one small thing before you go back into the Light.” He said it with a guileless smile, as if swearing a vow was of no real consequence, just a few words, hand over the heart, fingers crossed in the game sign.
I was suddenly back to not trusting him. Did he truly believe the Shouting Fey were so stupid, we’d no knowledge of what a spoken vow was? It was a solemn Oath. And I knew all about Oaths and Biddings. After Father had stopped Necrops from making Carnell swear, Great-aunt Gilda had stepped in. A stickler for the Old Ways, she taught us all she knew about Oath-taking, swearing, vows, and magick. We were well schooled in that, my brothers, sisters, cousins, and I. I was not yet up on everything I needed to know about Shouting, but about Oaths, I certainly knew the consequences of breaking them.
But then I had another thought. Perhaps this awful Dry Voice prince simply didn’t care what I did or didn’t know. He just wanted me to swear without telling me what the Oath was about.
If I gave him my Oath, it would be unbreakable. If I didn’t do what I swore to, I’d burst into a thousand stars—like motes of sunlight—and be gone.
For a moment, I thought of poor, young Goldenrod, the fey Uncle I’d never known, becoming motes of light on the path. I shivered, and not with the cold. If I swore the Oath and then failed to do his Bidding, the only thing that would save me from such a fate would be the death of the Oath-maker before me, and he, that crafty prince, looked very much alive.
No, I didn’t trust him at all now.
If I burst apart into a thousand stars, I’d never see Father or Mother or any of my brothers or sisters, not to mention the Aunts and all the cousins ever again. Though I wasn’t sure never seeing whiny, whey-faced Mallow again would be a burden. I still had time, I hoped, to get back to the christening. But if I burst into stars here, I’d put them all in horrible danger besides. Or maybe not. If I ceased to exist, maybe the Bidding by the king couldn’t include me and the Family would be saved.
Oh, it was a puzzle.
But, I thought, what if Prince Dry Voice’s Bidding is unspeakable? Unconscionable? What if it’s something that benefits only an Unseelie lord, not a thirteen-year-old daughter of the Shouting Fey? There were lots of things the prince might ask me to do that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t murder someone for him. I couldn’t cheat someone in his name. I couldn’t hurt a child. Or a dog, for that matter. Though snakes . . . well, I could hurt snakes if I had to.
The problem with that kind of horrible thinking is that once you start, it’s hard to stop.
I went round and round in my head on this, and my eyelids started trembling with unshed tears. My fingers twitched. I had so many ifs and buts and howevers and mights, I could hardly breathe, hardly remember them all.
Then, at the lowest part of my thoughts, came this notion: If he wants me to do something terrible, I could always choose to burst into those thousand stars. That would be the heroic thing to do. Though, of course, Father would never know that I’d been a hero. And Mother and the Aunts would never know I’d mastered the Shout, the one that killed Gargle.
So then I began to mourn Gargle, who was simply carrying me carefully to his master. Had made no threats to me. Had not otherwise harmed me. And I’d murdered him with a calculated Shout.
That was it! A Shout! How could I have been so stupid, so thick? Not even fear or anger or exhaustion was an excuse.
I could beg for time, could bargain for time, could ask to sleep on the decision. In the morning, when I’d have a new chance at another Shout, I could gather my strength, Shout—and get rid of the prince and his henchman Grey. I’d figure a way out of the cave and—
Oh, the Curse of thinking too much! Father had always urged me to think, but this was overmuch, because suddenly I had the worst thought of all: The Shout hadn’t affected the Unseelie pair before, and surely they’d been close enough when I Shouted poor Gargle into an early grave. Yes, the Shout had been Wort specific, but it had been my first Great Shout ever, and surely there would have been leaks all around the edges. Even when the Aunts Shouted, leakage was a problem. Something Father called “collateral damage,” a phrase from one of the books on human wars that he had read.
So I gave this problem careful thought: The prince and Grey seem entirely untouched by the Shout that killed poor Gargle. If I give a Shout tomorrow and it bothers neither of them, Grey will surely cut off my head, and that wouldn’t be half as epic or heroic as bursting into a thousand stars. And—
And then, all unaccountably, I began to weep and couldn’t stop. I wept from exhaustion and fear, my nose running so with snot that I had to wipe it away with the corner of my skirt. Well, Solange’s skirt.
So much for heroism.
So much for begging for time.
The prince turned away in disgust and called out, “Grey, come here!”
And Grey—his hand on his sword and the sword already halfway out of its sheath—left his shadow and came at the prince’s call.
“Tell her,” the prince commanded, either moved by my tears, or embarrassed, or disgusted. It was hard to tell.
“My lord?” Hand still on sword, no longer a shadow, Grey looked puzzled.
“Tell her my story.” The prince’s voice sounded defeated. No, not defeated, just infinitely tired and suddenly old.
Grey nodded, but only a finger-width’s worth. If I hadn’t been staring fixedly at him, I might not have noticed.
He turned his back on the prince and looked right at me and began.
“This is the tale of the Unseelie Prince Orybon the Recluded, the shut-away. Orybon the Restless, sometimes mistranslated by his enemies as ‘the Reckless,’ but he was never such a one. And he is now occasionally called by me ‘the Recluse.’ He was, in fact, the firstborn of the mighty King Oberon and Queen Mab and—”
“Do not add all your footnotes and furbelows,” the prince said tetchily. “Just tell it plain. She is a child, not a professor at the university.”
Grey nodded again; this time a tiny smile seemed to play around his lips. The first I’d seen from him, though it might simply have been a trick of the candlelight. It changed his face, softened it for a moment. He continued.
“Orybon was from birth pledged to the Seelie princess Maeve and—as was the custom among royals of the day—she was sent to live in his parents’ castle, where he was to become her friend long before he was to become her wedded lord. A quaint custom and much abused amongst the upper classes of the Unseelie Court, but not by us.”
I wondered what “us” he meant. The royal family? Or just Prince Orybon and himself? Perhaps it was what Father called “claiming the high ground” whenever my sisters started squabbling and I was about to join in. But as I said nothing of this aloud, Grey continued, though he looked at me oddly, almost as if he could read my thoughts.
“And so it happened,” he said, turning slightly away from me, “that Ory and May, as they called one another, became fast friends. They fished in the ponds together for golden trout, plaited willow wands into hoops, which she twined with ribands, and read together by the hearth fire such works as the roundels of the poet Oviticus, and the hero tales of Anwyn and Astrodel and . . .”
For a moment I stopped listening and considered this. If they had willow wands and fished in ponds, they had to be living above ground, not below. Or at least they had to have access to the up above. I must have made a quick intake of breath at this revelation, because Grey had turned back to stare at me.
But the prince had also moved, rather uneasily, in his chair, then leaned forward and glared at Grey. “Now you are condescending to her. Telling her faerie tales. We didn’t read to one another, certainly not poncy poetry. Pudding Alice is not a baby. She is, by the gods, a princess of the fey. Literate by th
e sound of her speech, and smart, too. Just . . . get . . . on . . . with it!” He spoke the last as if his teeth had snapped together and he had to push the words out through them, which took a lot of effort.
I didn’t bother to show by even the slightest twitch of my lips how funny I thought their quarreling was. However, while they were picking at each other, they weren’t picking on me. Besides, I was actually enjoying the story the way Grey told it, both the professorial footnotes and the references to childish things, not that I was going to tell either one of them that. The story was incredibly romantic, too, just as I thought it might be. Besides, I was learning a lot more about both men as the telling went on.
Grey bowed, though it looked suspiciously as if he were mocking the prince.
Mocking him?
Suddenly I realized that these two had been imprisoned together for so many years, any family love had turned to stone, much as the walls around them. They’d become each other’s bonds, burdens, scapegoats. They hated each other even while professing love. They would do anything to win free of the cave—and each other. And here I was, not really a girl or a princess or anything else to them except the hope of, and the possible means of, their final escape.
Just as my Aunts and Mother had at one time thought me to be the One to solve their great problem, so now did Prince Orybon and Grey.
Think, Gorse, think! I had realized the most important thing of all: the two princes needed me as much as I needed them. Or more! And I’d only have their trust as long as they believed that I could effect their escape. So I knew that I had to feign interest, whether I had any or not.
Just listen, I reminded myself. Everything I learned about them would be something more that might eventually be of use in my own escape, whether it was to be by climbing the stone walls, flying away through the stone corridors once my wing healed, or killing them both with a Shout. Possibly a combination of all three.
I could almost hear Father’s voice saying, “Well thought out, Gorse,” and so congratulating myself, I managed to miss the next sentence or two of Grey’s tale. I only hoped they hadn’t been important sentences, only more footnotes and furbelows, whatever those were.
“Maeve,” Grey was saying, “had been a lovely child and grew into an even lovelier woman with white-gold hair, porcelain skin, and a voice that sounded like larks ascending into the dawn.
“Orybon, on the other hand, grew into his one great gift, the gift of True Cursing. He began with Curses that lasted an hour, then a day, a week, a month, a year. He practiced on roses, butterflies, brachet hounds; he tried them out on serving wenches, changelings, even a fifth cousin or two. But discreetly, always discreetly. Until, by his twentieth year, he had become quite proficient at the Making and Directing of Cursing, though not—I hasten to add—at love.”
“Do not hasten on my account,” said the prince.
“But I do everything on your account,” said Grey. “And without recompense, as you know.”
I wanted to ask what recompense was. I wanted to know what Maeve thought of her friend’s gift. I wanted to know what kind of Curses the prince made. Were they simple Transformations, such as boy into bird, that ended by morning? Were they Malform Wishes: such as a nose like a turkey’s? Were they Generational Gestures: one’s family would henceforth all be born with webbed fingers and toes? Were they Curses only against the fey, or were some against humans? Would they put someone to sleep for a hundred years or bury them deep beneath the earth or send them to the moon? And most important—did the Curses last?
But I didn’t dare interrupt the flow of the story. If I did, I might get Cursed by Orybon himself, for that—I now knew—was Prince Dry Voice’s true name.
Grey had already restarted the story, hardly slowed by his cousin’s interruptions or my silent speculations.
“In fact, Orybon became so enraptured by Cursing, he paid too little attention to the ever-lovely Maeve, growing apace into her great beauty, and, in that way, ended up becoming Cursed himself. For women like to be wooed and won, not taken for granted and married as a matter of course.”
“That much is false, cousin. Besides, what do you know of love and marriage, you would-be priest, you voluntary oblate, you dried-up raisin? If we were not between these Cursed stone walls, I would have you changed into a centipede in no time.” Prince Orybon’s whisper grated with anger, and he stood and began to pace.
I didn’t show for an instant what I’d just heard and understood. Not a twitch. But I trembled with excitement. That the prince could do glamours down in the cave, that much I already knew. But no other magick! It was an odd thought. The cave, evidently, could augment some magick, like my Shout. And dampen down other things. And the whole place throbbed with Old Magick, reeked of it—though evidently not his. I had to think about that. I was careful not to smile, but from that moment on, I sharpened my listening skills.
Grey had shrugged off his cousin’s poisonous name-calling easily, and simply went on with the telling of the story.
“The princess turned instead to Orybon’s younger brother, the not quite so handsome but always attentive Lord Fergus. There was even a youngest brother, but he was of no account in the story since he’d already been exchanged for the youngest Seelie prince—me—and now resided in the Seelie Court, as I did in the Unseelie . . .”
I stopped listening and thought frantically: Fergus? Is Fergus an ordinary name amongst the Highborns? And is, perhaps, Maeve really Banshee’s true name? I think my jaw dropped, so I quickly put my hand to my chin to disguise my surprise, pretending to yawn. But all the while I was thinking, Is this, then, a story about the creation of the Shouting Fey? Were we once all Unseelie folk? I shuddered, then thought, Is this why Prince Orybon needs a Shouter to help him? Someone from his own Family? I shuddered again thinking this, but I had to face facts. If Grey’s story was true, Prince Orybon was my Great-grand-uncle, which made him the only true blood Uncle I’d ever known.
I no longer tried to remain still, unemotional, unreadable. In fact I was suddenly like a dog on point, my attention fully caught by the tale. I didn’t even care if the prince or Grey noticed me noticing, as I leaned toward Grey to encourage his telling.
He went on, seemingly without noticing me at all, his fingers now laced together and his eyes on his hands.
“They met, Fergus and Maeve, in hallways on their way to one room or another, on the castle allure gazing at the stars, sitting in the Great Hall and passing pleasantries, wandering down country lanes under the bending trees. She played her lute and sang in that glorious voice, and Fergus applauded. He always applauded. He did not disguise his obsession with her.
“All the while, Orybon was practicing his Curses—on honeybees and walnut trees; on sheep in sheepcotes and cattle in the field; on shepherdesses, milkmaids, even a page boy or two.
“One day, Orybon came upon his intended, Maeve, and his brother Fergus strolling in the arbor where the pungent dark grapes were all but bursting their skins. Fergus and Maeve had clearly just exchanged a first kiss and were still stunned by the heat of it.”
“They had not kissed!” Orybon turned and roared. It was an awful sound. Then in a quieter voice, he added, “They may have been about to.”
Grey houghed through his nose like a horse and looked up at the prince. “You do not know what had come before, cousin. The kiss you interrupted may have been a second kiss. Or a third. It may have included an embrace. A tongue. A promise. A . . .”
It was clearly an old argument between them. I left them to it, heading for the fire, and thinking, Oh, Great-grandfather Fergus, what you have loosed . . . ?
Seething in their individual anger over something that had happened so far in the past neither one of them could ever know the truth of it, the cousins looked away from one another. The story each told himself over and over had become more real than what had actual
ly happened. I wondered idly why Orybon hadn’t given me his own version without Grey’s, and then realized that it was more important for him to needle Grey this way than simply tell me the tale as he remembered it.
That made me ask myself, Had I ever been so obstinate and ornery with my own Family? I’d certainly never been very attentive, hiding away in the library and reading books instead of having little more than the politest of conversations. Or hurrying away to my disguised meadow to be out of earshot of their tiffs. But I never would have Cursed them. Not even if that had been my one true gift.
Family, Father always said, is what is left when everything else is gone.
So I waited the cousins out, and finally Grey began again. So I returned to listen and watch him tell the tale.
“When Orybon saw the way the two looked at each other, he knew all that he had to know. He forgot about Cursing honeybees and walnut trees and the like. Raising his right hand, he spoke in a voice that was low but not at all careful.”
The prince interrupted. “I am always careful.”
Grey looked at him, smiled slowly, then looked at me. “Make up your own mind, Pudding,” he said. “This is what the careful Prince Orybon said in his Curse:
“‘Your greatest gift, woman,
shall be your special Curse.
’Twill put neither friendship nor money in your purse.
If he can still adore you as you sing him to his death,
You’ll find that he will Curse you
with his final, final breath.’”
It was certainly a Curse that had lasted for centuries, though I didn’t think much of Orybon’s rhymes, probably because the Under the Hill fey back then had already been losing their ability to make spells in rhyme. Great-aunt Gilda’s spell lyrics were certainly more elegant. Aunt Galda’s more direct. And Aunt Gardenia’s a lot more singable. Still, I had to admit that Prince Orybon’s Curse, whatever its rhythmic flaws, had worked, because May became Banshee, and that Curse must have been what sent her off into the world Above the Hill with Fergus, where they had their daughters, one of whom became my Great-aunt Gilda and another who my Grandmother and . . .