by M. A. Larson
“Mirrors show what our eyes cannot see. Mirrors reveal the truth.”
There was something more to this new person in the mirror than her hair. Something unseeable. Something had changed deep inside the girl in the spiderweb dress. She looked, somehow, more herself, like the wolf pup that has learned to hunt its own meal.
“You get to decide who you want to be. No one else.”
“SHE WOULD’VE BEEN on her third pheasant by now,” said Basil. “Nothing made her hungrier than a lecture on the mechanics of the spinning wheel.”
He and Demetra and Evie sat in their usual place in the Dining Hall, only now there were noticeable holes in the blue around them. Others companies were thinner as well. Discharges had increased since Hessekel and Gisela became the first to go, but none stung quite like Anisette’s.
“I love to spin,” he continued, “but bloody hell, how many times can he show us how to hang a distaff?”
“I heard some girls nattering in the privy this afternoon—I think they were from Goosegirl Company. They said every peasant sent away puts them closer to being Warrior Princess,” said Demetra. She pushed her plate away with distaste. “I wanted to throttle them.”
Evie glanced down the table at Malora. My sister. But thinking it didn’t make it any less ludicrous. She supposed they had a connection now that hadn’t existed before, but even her talk with Princess Hazelbranch hadn’t blunted her animosity. It also hadn’t answered the one question she now feared the Fates would leave forever unanswered: why?
“Evie! Evie, you must see this!” It was Maggie, charging toward them with a leather-bound book.
“There you are,” said Basil. “We looked all over for you.”
Maggie sat next to Evie and shoved cutlery and dishware aside to clear a place for the book. “I didn’t want to disrupt you kingsbloods now that I’m the only commoner left.”
She was still smiling, but pointedly didn’t look any of them in the eye. Evie glanced to Demetra and Basil. Their confused expressions confirmed that they had noticed as well.
“I remembered something I read long ago about curses and their cures, so I decided to go to the Archives to see if I could find any more about it. It’s absolutely incredible down there. They must have copies of every book and scroll ever written.”
The three of them exchanged another uneasy glance. She seemed to be taking Anisette’s dismissal rather . . . strangely.
“And that’s when I found this.” She placed a hand on the warped cover. “It’s about Forbes. Or his portrait, rather.”
“Really?” said Evie.
“Listen to this . . .” She skimmed the pages until she found the passage she was looking for. “‘The confusion caused by its derangement will lead the mind of the cursed to seek to explain the unexplainable. Often it is not the object itself that provides the cure, but a small, seemingly insignificant aspect of the object. Yet the cursed mind clings to that which is plainly manifest before it.’” She turned to Evie with wide, expectant eyes.
“Urm . . . what?”
“It’s like that girl Volf told us about,” said Demetra. “Princess Dalfsen—”
“Dallefsen,” said Basil.
“Right, Dallefsen. Remember, Eves? She searched the land for the perfect bite of bread, convinced it would restore her sight, but in the end it wasn’t the bread at all . . .”
“It was the knife she’d used to cut it,” said Evie.
“Exactly!” said Maggie. “Perhaps your hair is the same shade as the girl Forbes saw in the portrait. Or the way you smelled reminded him of the room where it was kept. You weren’t the cure, something about you was.”
“So . . . it wasn’t really me in the portrait?”
“Of course not! Forbes was so dazzled by his recovery he convinced himself it was you that cured him, when it could have just been a fly sitting on your shoulder, or any number of other things.”
Evie weighed the book’s assertion against Forbes’s theory. One made sense—he only thought she was the cure. The other required strange leaps in logic and time. “Oh, Maggie, you’ve no idea what this means!” she said, pulling her friend into a tight embrace.
“It means Forbes is nothing to you,” said Demetra. “We’ve all seen how you agonize over him, like you’re somehow responsible for every crude, boorish thing he does. But, Evie . . . he’s meaningless to you now.”
“And you’re meaningless to him, he just doesn’t know it yet,” added Basil.
Shivers raced across her skin. She felt lighter than she had before. “With Anisette going,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief, “and the Helpless Maiden looming, and finding out I’m sisters with her . . . this really is the best news. It gives me one less thing to worry about.” She kissed Maggie’s cheek. “Thank you.”
“You should go over there and shove that book in his stupid face,” said Basil with a cheeky grin.
Evie smiled deviously. It was a thrilling prospect, finally cutting herself free from him. But as she was considering it, she noticed Lieutenant Volf shuffling to the exit. “I’ll be right back. There’s another box I’d like to see if I can tick . . .”
She rose and hurried after him, ignoring the glares from Malora and Sage as she passed. The bracing night air struck her the instant she pushed through the door. Her eyes followed twin trails through the snow on the cobblestones, and there was Volf, trudging into the fog beyond the light of the Dining Hall’s torches with an apple in his hand.
“Lieutenant?” Breath streamed from her mouth.
He turned, his face drawn and ancient. In the torchlight, his wrinkles seemed to be etched even deeper. “Well? What is it? I have a date with a warm fire and some even warmer brandy.”
“Do you know of a place called Saudade?”
He blinked, then let out a wheezing chuckle. She had never seen him smile before, and it looked so painful, she didn’t want to see it again. “Saudade, did you say? There’s an old one.”
“So you do know it?”
“Saudade is a mythical water kingdom. A fiction. It doesn’t exist.”
She frowned in confusion. The word that had haunted her for so long was only a myth?
“According to legend, Saudade was looked upon with disfavor by the Fates, who sought to destroy it at every opportunity. When finally they succeeded, the kingdom burst apart into the Great Tide that washed the world clean, ushering in the Age of Kings. It’s yet another fairy’s flight of fancy,” he said with disgust. “Really, child, have I taught you nothing? You mustn’t believe a word you read in those stories.”
“I didn’t read it. I saw it. Here.” She pulled the dragon scale from inside her dress.
“Ah,” he said with a nod. “Dragon’s blood. Only marginally more reliable than fairies.”
“There was a vision. It said I would be Princess of Saudade.”
He clucked with disapproval. “Tell me, my dear, how many decisions have you made today since reveille? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands, even? And how many more will you make tomorrow? Dragon’s blood will show you the possible, that much is true, but only if every decision you make falls precisely into place. If even a single choice is different, your vision will have no more truth in it than the brandy I am off to drink.” He began to turn toward the dark of campus. “Good night, Cadet—”
“I’ve dreamt of it as well. More than once.”
His eyes, usually so aloof, sparkled in the firelight with something like sympathy. “And did these dreams occur before or after the dragon’s blood put the word in your head?”
She said nothing, because his implication was correct. She had first heard the word in the blood, and all the dreams had followed.
“Princess Snow White once ate an apple that had been poisoned by a witch. That does not mean there is poison in this.” He held up his apple. “Do you understand what I’m sayin
g? Simply because there is magic in the world does not mean everything is magical.” A cough rattled from deep in his lungs as he turned and trudged up the cobblestone path, disappearing into the foggy night.
Evie stood beneath the crystal flakes blowing off the Dining Hall’s roof, replaying the conversation in her mind again and again until she had satisfied herself with what he had said. Then, she took a deep, cleansing breath and looked up to the clouds. A smile broke across her face, then spread to her eyes.
“It doesn’t exist,” she said softly. And a second lingering riddle floated from her shoulders and vanished into the night.
Even the Fairy Drillsergeant noticed the change in Evie after that. Without those twin mysteries troubling her mind, she was free to focus on the one thing she really wanted, the singular reason she had returned to the Academy with her sister: to battle witches. The scale she wore no longer held power over her. It was simply a reminder of the family that she so dearly loved. It contained lies and visions and other troubles she needn’t bother with, so she ignored the blood and kept the scale close to her heart. Each time she began a drill, she repeated a silent promise that she would do her best to honor her father, her mother, and her sister . . . those of the dragon variety. She always included a plea to the Fates that her sister might be safe and warm and happily eating roasted bear in the family cave with their mother. And she quickly became one of the most dedicated, disciplined cadets in the entire company.
As for her new human sister, the revelations of Beatrice’s office held an unintended consequence that suited Evie well. She and Malora worked hard to stay clear of each other, as if acknowledging the other’s existence would make the whole sordid thing real.
Saudade meant nothing, and the portrait in Forbes’s childhood castle meant nothing. She was free.
She began to excel in other areas as well. She could now turn raw, brittle stalks of flax into linen in less than five minutes, beating, combing, and spinning the fibers with remarkable efficiency. She stayed awake long after dark, retraining herself to pinch a needle with fingers that had only become more rigid and numb since their plunge into the boiling cauldron. Her ball gown was nearly finished, a strange design, though beautiful in its own way, with reds and oranges swirling around the body like flame.
Together, Evie and her friends survived cut after cut. They soon became inured to those dramatic moments when an instructor would halt an exercise, point to a cadet, and end her dream of becoming a princess. The bunks in the barracks began to empty, and the constant threat of snow didn’t help to warm any of their hearts. Still, Evie had managed to become one of Ironbone Company’s surprising successes. Maggie, Demetra, and Basil excelled as well. Though they never spoke of their prospects in the Helpless Maiden, perhaps out of some superstitious fear that it might put them on the next coach out, each of them could see in the others a new toughness. A toughness rooted in those four magical virtues every princess needed: courage, compassion, kindness, and discipline.
Though she felt faster, smarter, and more self-assured in virtually every way, one weekly event tested her patience. After exceedingly dry sessions with Princess Doberan in the stables, where cadets learned the art of animal husbandry, Evie and Maggie would leave the others and make their way to the Piper of Hamelin Ballroom, a grand structure of cut stone, white as chalk, flanked by dangling willows. Inside, the ballroom was immense, layered with seven tiers of polished oak flooring arranged like a stream flowing from pool to pool. A minstrels’ gallery ringed the entire hall. Here, she and the other Grand Ball competitors were shown the fundamental principles of dance.
Evie spent those hours with one hand inside Remington’s and another on his shoulder, but she wasn’t allowed to say more than a few words to him. All communication was done through glances, for Sir Osdorf, the Knight of Jasmine Pass, allowed absolutely no conversation during his instruction. How are we meant to be partners if we can’t even talk? she thought, tripping over the hem of her dress once again. Remington was good about not laughing, though she had caught the mirth in his eyes more than once.
Still, all things considered, the weeks following her introduction—or reintroduction—to Countess Hardcastle were some of the best she had had at the Academy. And it was with contentment and a measure of pride that she lay down in her bunk, like all the other cadets, and drifted off to sleep the night she was awoken by the croaking of a frog.
She hadn’t noticed at first. None of them had. The guttural grunt had simply blended into the fabric of dreams. But after a particularly loud croak, Evie’s eyes popped open. She waited in the dark, unmoving, to see if the sound would come again, but all she heard was the soft rhythm of Maggie’s breathing. She was just about to close her eyes when the frog croaked again. She sat up and quietly drew back her blanket. There it was, sitting on the ledge between her bunk and the one that had belonged to Anisette. The window was partially cracked to allow fresh air. That was where the frog had entered.
And it was looking right at her.
She crept out of her bunk with the soft creak of wood and went to the window, but the frog leapt into the night before she got there. She pushed the window open and saw it sitting on the frosted grass staring back at her.
I must be mad, she thought. I could swear that frog wants me to follow it.
She glanced around the barracks, though it was difficult to see anything in the darkness. All sounded quiet. She eased onto the stone ledge and climbed through. As she dropped to the ground, she held her breath and pressed her back against the barracks.
Someone’s awake. And they’ve seen me.
It had been the flutter of a sheet, perhaps, or some other movement across the room. Or maybe it was only the shadows playing tricks. The frog let loose another rumbling croak, then turned and flopped away past the other barracks.
She took a deep breath, then hurried after it. What am I doing? Though the moon was only a muted dot in the sky illuminating the blue edges of the clouds, she tried to stay low. If any member of staff saw her, she would almost certainly find herself in the Headmistress’s office, and then on the first coach out.
She tracked the frog by streaks in the snow and its chirping song. After several minutes, she realized exactly where it was going: the Grennilieu Bog, a restricted area of campus used only for specific training exercises.
“This is madness,” she whispered. Especially if someone really has seen me leaving. “Is there something you want?”
The frog took a final, lazy hop, then flopped around to face her. The membrane beneath its throat distended with a low chirrup. She studied the creature with rising panic. What am I doing out here with a bloody frog?
It called again, more loudly this time. And then the croaks kept coming, each more insistent than the last, the frog’s vocal sac swelling bigger and bigger. Evie’s eyes went wide with horror as its head bent back at an unusual angle, forced that way by a dangerously inflated throat, which looked like a swamp bubble ready to pop.
“Please!” she said. “Stop doing that!”
The grating rasp went on, and the frog’s throat continued to expand. Evie was certain the whole campus could hear. She eased away, ready to scramble back to her barracks, but her foot tangled in the knobby root of a fig tree. She fell to the ground, and that was when the membrane swept up from the frog’s stomach and washed over the head of . . .
“Remington!”
He stood, pulling the cloak that had been a frog’s throat back from his shoulders. “Not bad, eh? My great-grandfather was the original Frog King. Taught me all the cheeky family secrets.”
“You’re . . . a frog?”
“At times. But no one knows that other than my great-grandfather and my brother. And now you. So,” he said, extending his hand, “come with me before we add to that list.”
He pulled her to her feet and led her into the bog. They passed decayed trees, fallen and e
aten away, turbid waters gurgling with mud, and dangling moss so long and thick it looked like the branches were melting. She stopped, suddenly, and looked back.
“What is it?”
She listened for another moment, but thought it must have been her imagination. “We really shouldn’t be out here.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “It’s so bloody difficult to have a proper chat in this place. I stand face-to-face with you in the ballroom and can’t even ask about the weather.” A chill ran through her, less from the biting air and more because she’d been on his mind. “I never got to tell you how sorry I was for what happened in the castle.”
She frowned, trying to understand what he was referring to, and when she did, her hand slid free. “You mean with Malora.”
“I tried to find you afterward, but you didn’t even have the decency to leave a trail of crumbs. Then I saw you with that dragon, and—”
“Could we talk about something else?”
“Better yet, let’s do something else. Come on.”
He swung over a deadfall and disappeared into the darkness. She did the same and found him standing at the edge of a great, glassy pool of water, dotted with dozens of lily pads, each as big as a carriage wheel. He raised his eyebrows, then started to step into the water.
“What are you doing?” she said, putting her hands against his chest. He took her wrists and pulled her out with him. Her breath caught and she cringed for the splash of icy water, but it didn’t come. They were standing on one of the lily pads. It gave a bit beneath her feet, but supported both of them without buckling.
“Stoneflower lily pads. They can hold a horse if need be. It’s how Sir Isaac escaped the dragon in the Battle of Innisglen. Learned that at Pennyroyal Academy.” He folded his fingers between hers and pulled her to the next one. “Come on, trust me—”