In the Forests of Serre

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I do,” Sidonie said tersely, and ripped an arm’s length of lace free with one pull. She heard Auri swallow and scrutinized her suddenly, silently a moment, her eyes narrowed Auri wore her pretty chestnut hair in an untidy bundle at her neck; a ribbon here and there at wrist and pocket were her only adornments besides the brightly embroidered cloth that her mother had given her. She wore that around her neck, sometimes over her head. It reminded Sidonie of the tapestries on the palace walls, all golds and reds and forest hues. Auri shifted under Sidonie’s gaze, beginning to look panicked, as though she expected to be sent on an errand to the witch.

  “My lady?” she queried nervously, and Sidonie loosed her, gave another pull to the lace, then shifted her attention to Auri’s feet.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  “Yes, my—” Her voice died before she finished; she reached down with shaking fingers to untie a pair of satin ribbons around her ankles. She stepped out of the slippers; the princess, kicking off her own shoes, stepped into them.

  “Good,” she said, and stepped back out. “The boots you travelled in—I want them.”

  “Yes—”

  “And your scarf.”

  Auri touched it speechlessly. The touch was gentle, a caress; in the girl’s silence Sidonie heard a reluctance to argue. She sighed, her own white, stiff face loosening; she dropped the skirt and put both hands on Auri’s shoulders.

  “I know that your mother, who is far away in Dacia, made it for you. I’ll bring it back to you. I promise.”

  She felt the girl tremble in her hands. “No, you won’t. Not if you’re going to look for Brume. You’ll never come back.”

  “She has something I need. She stole it from the prince.”

  “Let him get it back—he knows how to deal with her!”

  Sidonie picked up the skirt again. “He didn’t bargain any too well when he saw her last.”

  “But how can you talk to her? You’re not from Serre. You won’t know how to speak to her, or what’s dangerous and what’s not. You don’t know not to go into her cottage, or not to drink or eat anything she offers, or not to touch her chickens even if they’re tangled in brambles, or not to trust the witch even if she looks like the most beautiful woman in the world. You’re a stranger here; you weren’t born to deal with the likes of Brume.”

  “Everyone,” Sidonie said between her teeth as she bit through a knot in the thread, “is a stranger when they’re born. Tell me what else I don’t know.”

  “My lady, the king will be beside himself if he finds you gone. And what will the prince say? And how will you get out of the palace anyway?”

  “What you don’t know you won’t have to tell. Go on about Brume. How should I speak to her?”

  “Just say no,” Auri answered miserably, “to everything she wants.”

  “But I have to give her something in exchange for what I want.” Auri didn’t answer. Sidonie watched her raise both hands, cover her eyes with them, as though she were already envisioning an absence of princess. “That bad, is she?” Sidonie guessed.

  “Yes,” Auri whispered.

  In spite of all her resolve, the princess felt her hands chill—a tiny, viper-strike of terror bit deep within her. But which she asked herself, would she rather face? Brume at the end of a very brief life? Or a long and loveless marriage to a man who gave his heart away because it was too much trouble to keep?

  She said firmly, tearing a lace bow off the front of the hem, “Auri, go and get your boots, and then help me with my hair. Leave your scarf here. I will bring it back to you. I am going to write a note to the queen. You will give it to her several hours after the king has returned. Not before, and not until dark. Do you understand?” Auri nodded wordlessly, untying the cloth. “And don’t tell anyone,” Sidonie added fiercely. “Not until you have given the note to the queen. Then, you can say whatever you want if you are questioned.”

  “I can tell the King of Serre that you have gone to be eaten by Brume.”

  Sidonie paused at that. “Or,” she suggested, “you can hide under my bed.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  Dressed in the rumpled, laceless dark skirt, her plainest bodice, Auri’s boots, and Auri’s scarf over hair wound ruthlessly into a knot, she looked at herself in the mirror, and then at Auri. “What do I look like?”

  Auri eyed her glumly. “Like a princess in scuffed boots. Whatever it was the prince left with Brume, let it stay there. It can’t be worth—”

  “Oh, it’s worth,” Sidonie said, her voice shaking. “It’s worth, to me. I am not doing this for Ronan, but for myself.”

  The door opened; both their faces went blank with apprehension. A guard threw the door wide for the prince who, appearing so suddenly, startled even Sidonie with his broad, muscular bulk, his face so ambiguously like his fathers. Belatedly, Sidonie thought to curtsey; she nearly fell over in Auri’s boots.

  He gave her frozen, downcast face a cursory glance and asked, “Where is the princess?”

  “My lord,” Sidonie said gruffly, since Auri seemed incapable of speech, “I believe she is with the queen.”

  “I have just left the queen.”

  “Then she must be with her attendants in their chambers. I will summon her for you.”

  “No. Tell her to remain there until my father returns. I’ll come for her then.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Sidonie curtsied again. He left in a cluster of guards; she made her escape, turning the opposite way down the sparsely guarded hall, while Auri, left in the empty chamber to her own devices, made herself, the princess guessed, as scarce as possible.

  With the luck that sprang out of desperation, Sidonie found her way again to the unused tower, spiraled down the steps to the bottom, and hid there until dusk.

  The torches along the walls had been lit against the night before Sidonie felt the pulse beneath her feet of many horses moving quickly into the yard. In the turmoil of dark and fire, of sweating animals, weary warriors, servants and stablers, one plainly dressed figure clinging to the shadows along the walls went unnoticed. The guards were watching the company filling the yard; they did not see what they did not expect: someone going instead of coming. The princess did not stop where the road ran beneath the falls. The rising moon had not yet illumined the face of the cliff; she wanted to reach the bottom before it stripped the shadow off her and gave the watchers on the wall something to see.

  She remembered, half-way down the road, what else she had to fear besides the witch.

  There was Gyre, the renegade wizard who had tried to steal Ronan’s life. And there was the strange, nameless apparition suddenly haunting the forest, frightening even the King of Serre, invisible as wind when it chose to be, whose glance was like a raw, blinding weal left by a shard of ice. Sidonie felt her skin shrink; she wanted to make herself small, creep behind something, under something just to avoid the memory of it. Of the three, witch, wizard, and monster, she decided that she would prefer encountering Brume. She could not outwit the wizard, or outrun the monster. The witch, with her chickens, her stew pot, and her unending hunger seemed at least remotely comprehensible.

  The princess met none of them along the road. Standing at the bottom of the falls with the moon looking over the cliff at her and the impenetrable dark within the trees beginning to fray into a lace-work of moon-shadow, she wondered which way to go next.

  Anywhere, prudence warned her, rather than stand there at the end of the road waiting for an enraged Ferus to catch up with her. She forced herself toward the huge, ancient trees, motionless and frosted with moonlight. What, she mused, did it mean to lose a heart? To leave it somewhere, walk away from it, find no reason to return for it? She remembered the disheveled, wild-eyed young man who had run out of the trees into her life so long ago. The grief and torment in his face had been the measure of the burden he had yielded to the witch.

  No wonder he refused to go back for it.

  “I am sorry,”
she whispered to the prince in the palace high above, who even now must have that cold, stubborn look dawning in his eyes of a man determined not to be thwarted by a recalcitrant possession. “But I cannot live without your heart.”

  Something moved in a cross-hatch of moonlight and shadow ahead of her and she froze. Pale light struck a star of gold, and then pelt as bright as Ronan’s hair. And then an eye and a sharp tooth and Sidonie breathed again. A fox. Two foxes—no three—were padding through the trees ahead of her. They scented her, stopped to look. Her breath caught again. They all turned toward her, as though they had been searching for her, and all of them were crowned.

  She closed her eyes, opened them, but the small gold crowns, tilted rakishly behind the pricked ears, had not vanished. They came up to her, sat together in a row, gazing at her. After a moment, she curtsied, so not to offend them in case they took their crowns seriously.

  They did, apparently; three heads nodded simultaneously back at her. Then the one in the middle spoke in a courteous, mellifluous voice, and she resisted an impulse to sit down suddenly in the bracken.

  “We are three princes, my lady, who have been turned by fate and the misfortune of our careless lives into foxes. To break the spell and atone for our foolishness, we must stop each human we meet in the forest and ask in what way we might serve.”

  “How did you—how do you know—”

  “In our spellbound, magical forms we see what in our earlier lives we would have been blind to. Worn boots and simple dress do not disguise you. Tell us how we can serve you.”

  She caught the undertones of eagerness and desperation within the dulcet voice, and could not help asking, “How many humans do you have to help before you regain your true bodies?”

  “We do not know, my lady. Every human we meet might be the one who turns us human again. Please tell us what we can do for you.”

  “You can help me find Brume.”

  They gazed at her silently again, eyes dark and moon-shot. Then they looked at one another. One loosed a strangled whimper and they all sprang up and then away, slinking low to the ground, noses toward the nearest pool of darkness, tails between their legs.

  She stared after them, dumbfounded and suddenly overwhelmed with the temptation to turn and slink back to the palace herself, rather than face what they feared more than the spell that bound them. But she heard herself cry, “Wait. Come back! I might be the last! I might turn you human!”

  “They panic so easily,” someone commented behind her. “Feckless men make feckless foxes.” Sidonie jumped, and nearly took off after them. “Don’t be afraid, child,” the voice added. “I’ll help you.”

  She turned slowly, looked this way and that and then down. A tiny, bent old woman, made of twigs and spider-web it seemed, smiled up at her. Her eyes looked the color of the moon, so old they were. She held a basket filled with some strange, pale, pungent flowers. “Moondrops, I call them,” she explained as Sidonie sneezed. “They only bloom at night, and for only seven days a month. They keep ogres away, and sprites and trolls, such things that might disturb an old woman alone in her cottage.”

  “I can understand why,” Sidonie said stuffily. “Do they guard against witches?”

  “Nothing will guard against Brume when she’s of a mind.”

  “Was it Brume who turned the princes into foxes? Is that why they ran?”

  The old woman shook her head. “Brume wouldn’t work such a spell. Why would she bother to reform anybody?”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. Those foxes have been around as long as I have.” She dropped a bloom into her basket. “I should ask what dire straits a young and unprotected maiden might find herself in to go seeking that abominable witch.”

  “I—”

  “But I won’t. I’ll only ask you for something in return for my help.” The crone paused, still smiling, head crooked expectantly for Sidonie’s reply.

  “What?” Sidonie asked cautiously, wondering if she might be asked to sneeze the night away picking flowers.

  “That lovely scarf you wear over your hair. My daughter has so few bright things of her own. Let me give it to her. I’ll take you to Brume. I know where she likes to sleep; I’ve seen her cottage many times.”

  Sidonie’s fingers closed on the knot at her throat. “I wish I could give it to you, but I can’t. It isn’t mine to give, and I promised to return it.”

  The sudden bark of laughter the woman gave startled Sidonie; it sounded like a fox’s noise. “Return? From that witch’s house? She’ll make a quick meal of you, and why should she have the scarf as well?”

  Sidonie swallowed, her fingers tight around the knot; she backed a step. “I’m sorry—”

  “If you won’t, you won’t,” the woman said shortly. “Mind your feet, you’re stepping in the flowers.”

  Sidonie shifted hastily, smelling them. “Is there anything else you want?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t promise to bring the boots back.”

  “No.”

  “Can’t you just point me in one direction or another? Please?”

  The old woman, bent over the crushed moondrops, pointed in one direction, then another. Sidonie sighed noiselessly.

  “Are you certain—”

  “Nothing,” the woman said without turning. She said nothing more. Sidonie left her finally, a smell acrid enough to discourage the King of Trolls wafting from her boot soles as she walked.

  It seemed to discourage the entire forest; nothing accosted her again for a very long time. She walked for hours, it seemed, though the moon hardly seemed to move. The forest’s night must be longer than the moon’s, she thought wearily. She paused to scoop up a handful of water that tasted of frogs and moss and wondered if she were walking in circles through the unchanging trees. If not, she must be half-way to Dacia by now. Surely a witch with wits enough to trap a prince would know when a meal was trying to put itself under her nose. Maybe, Sidonie thought finally, the witch knows that I’m searching for her. Perhaps the cottage of bone was running silently away from her at every step she took toward it. Perhaps Brume did not want to give up Ronan’s heart.

  She slumped against a tree, cold, hungry, and exhausted; she saw with despair that the moon, its face tilted to one side, was peering down at the other side of the forest now. It would set and plunge the trees into deep night, leaving Sidonie with nothing to do but wait for sunrise. She would be forced to search for the witch and elude the hunting king at the same time. And Ronan, too, very likely; she would have to find his heart before he found her. She would never get another chance, if they found her first. She would become queen of her own prison, like Calandra. She would forget that once she had glimpsed the love and sorrow, the despair and wonder that Ronan had abandoned to the witch; she would come to think, like he did, that she could live without.

  Tears scalded her eyes, glittered in the dying moonlight as they fell.

  A sweet, haunting voice said above her head, “I will take you to Brume.”

  She looked up and saw the firebird.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The queen sent for her son some time after supper. One thing and another delayed Ronan: his father’s return, Ferus demanding his son’s immediate presence, renewed suspicions for no reason other than that the king had not laid eyes on Ronan for a day and in a day anything could happen. Nothing had that Ronan could see. King and warriors had come back unscathed; the terrified company from Dacia ringing the outer walls remained unmolested. Even so, the wizard had once blinded the king in his remaining eye, and the king no longer trusted it. The test he devised for Ronan left the prince limping. But Ferus was satisfied and Ronan held no grudges: in matters concerning Serre, better to be safe than sorry.

  So it was nearly midnight when he finally went to see Calandra. He expected her to be asleep, and would not have wakened her. But she was pacing among her bright tapestries, her long hair unbraided and rippling down her silks, her eyes as wi
ntry as he had ever seen them.

  She saw the hesitation in his step; her mouth tightened.

  “I’m sorry to be so late,” Ronan said. “I have been with my father.”

  “So I see.”

  He waited politely for her to sit so that he could rest his aching leg. But she only handed him a note in passing and continued pacing.

  “Read it.”

  He opened the thick paper with the broken seal he did not recognize.

  I have gone, it said without preamble, to find Brume and persuade her to return the prince’s heart. The prince blinked. It was inconceivable; therefore it could not be true. You will not receive this until I have been gone for many hours.

  He glanced up bewilderedly. He had not seen the princess at supper, but then he hadn’t come for her, either, as he had said he would. He assumed she would be with her attendants, waiting for him.

  “No one,” the queen said, “can find her in the palace. Read.”

  “Preposterous,” he breathed, but finished the note. Ronan may be able to live quite happily without his heart, but I cannot. If I do not return, I will be sorry, but not as sorry as I will be if I return without. My attendants can tell you nothing. No one knows how or where I have gone. I will try to come back. Sidonie.

  Ronan stared at his mother. “I don’t believe this,” he said blankly. “Do you believe this?”

  “Yes.”

  “That she went off on her own looking for Brume? Nobody goes looking for Brume! Most certainly not a princess from Dacia who wouldn’t know Brume from a goose-girl. And how could she get out of the palace again? She’s hiding somewhere. Question her attendants. Who brought this to you?”

  “Sit down,” the queen said, and he realized that he was trembling, precariously balanced on his injured leg. He sat a moment before he might have fallen.

  “Does my father know?”

  “Have you heard him shout?”

  He remembered then that he had been with the king himself all evening. “You didn’t tell him,” he breathed incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell him? We could have gone after her immediately; how far do you think she could have gotten, alone in the forest?”