[Bayern 02] - Enna Burning

by Shannon Hale

  Finn smiled and kissed her hand. Isi rolled her eyes.

  "Oh, you two are impossible."

  Enna laughed. "This coming from the girl who calls her husband 'sweet little bunny boy'?"

  Isi blushed. "That was just once."

  Isi could not hide her longing for Geric. She observed Finn's affection for Enna, and it seemed to make her both happy and sad. Enna returned once from washing in the stream to find Isi holding her belly, laughing and crying at once and not sure why she was doing either.

  Isi's belly doubled in size before they crossed the Bayern border, and so, seemingly, did her aches and complaints. Near the end, they rode half days and then let Isi rest and eat. She alternated between nausea and ravenous hunger.

  "How's your back? How's your belly? Are you well?" Enna asked continually.

  "Hush up for five minutes, will you?" Isi got grumpier and grumpier and insisted on taking more than her fair share of turns lighting their cookfires as her ability with fire improved. Finn seemed to find Enna's overattentiveness and Isi's mood changes completely delightful.

  Enna was anxious to get Isi to Geric and see the baby born healthy, but beyond that, she was hesitant to return to her kingdom and face the consequences of her burning. Perhaps, she thought, Finn and I could see Isi safe home and slip away to the Forest. The thought was disappointing, because now, with the languages of both fire and wind dwelling inside her, Enna was sure she could serve Bayern well. Her hopes of being useful were extinguished by the heavy certainty that she could not be forgiven.

  Once they crossed into Bayern, they followed roads that led them past inns. When Enna could, she sent messages to Geric: "Fourteen days south, Oily Parchment Inn, your wife is expecting"; "Eight days south, the Pinched Nose, Isi is huge"; "Five days south, the Silver Hart, I hope you get at least one of these, because you are soon to be a father whether you are here or not."

  Enna suggested they just settle into an inn until the baby came, but Isi insisted they ride on each morning, determined to make it to the palace and Geric before the baby came. Then, passing by a village just outside the Forest and two days' ride from the capital, she changed her mind.

  "Aah, aaah, ahhh!" She dismounted, grabbed Enna's hand so tightly that she drew blood with her fingernails, walked straight into the nearest cottage, and plopped down on a bed. Enna nodded to the startled cottage dwellers.

  "It's the queen, you see," said Enna. "She's going to have a baby in your house. You don't mind?"

  When the pains really started, Isi jabbered madly in the language of the south, bird tongue, and some curse words that made the cottage owner blush and his wife laugh. The pains came and went for hours, and Isi was red faced and sweaty and tired, and sometimes she cried a little. Just before sundown, a noise made her stop midholler. From outside came the rumbling rhythm of hoofbeats, then the whinnying of a horse who stopped suddenly. The door flung open. It was Geric.

  "Isi, I'm here, I'm here."

  And it was, as well, half the court.

  Geric rushed to Isi's side, palace physicians gathered around the bed, a birth mistress pushed them all away again, the chief steward took command of the cottage kitchen and fire, a hundred-band was heard to position themselves in a defensive posture all around the building, and voices from outside told them that many more people had gathered. Enna sighed, relieved that at least one of her messages had made it to the capital ahead of them.

  When the birth mistress had her way, all but Geric and one capable nurse-mary were shooed from Isi's bed and out the door. Finn took Enna's hand, and they walked into the cutting light of a bright summer evening and the midst of a small crowd. Enna squinted into the setting sun to see what was happening. They were all looking at her.

  Several people, some of them Forest dwellers she had long known, pushed some cut logs up by the door and pressed her to step on top of one. She looked up, afraid to see a noose waiting for her. Talone appeared. The crowd quieted their whispering.

  "Talone, I'm sorry," she said.

  He nodded. "Perhaps this is not the place for such business, but as it is the first time we've seen you for some time, and who knows where you will slip to after this, I have little choice." He raised his voice for the crowd. "Enna of the Forest, for disobeying a war captain and treacherous acts, you are hereby stripped of your title of queen's maiden."

  The crowd murmured, and someone shouted angrily. Enna was not sure if it was directed at her. Talone cleared his throat.

  "I'm certain this is not the queen's wish, but acts must be accounted for. However, we won't stop there. For stubborn bravery and ingenuity in defense of the kingdom, His Highness bids me make you one of Bayern's Own, a member of the king's personal hundred-band."

  "Wait, Talone," she said, "I don't deserve—"

  "Don't interrupt, please." He turned back to the crowd. "She fought in secret, she was captured and imprisoned, and she escaped in time to stop Tira's invading force before they could overwhelm our army and invade the capital." He took her hand and held it aloft. "Never has Bayern seen such a warrior."

  The crowd did not hesitate when it burst into applause and cheers. More hands pushed Finn up beside her, and she saw someone else step up. Her eyes were bleary now, and she had to blink several times before she could make out his face.

  "Razo!"

  "You might've waited for me to heal before you went off again," he said. "Though I see Finn found you all right. Hello there, Finn. Well done."

  "Hello, Razo. Enna loves me, did you hear?"

  Razo laughed. "Of course she does. See, Enna, I told you someday people'd chant our names."

  Enna listened to the calls and did not detect any chanting, so began to say quietly, "Razo, Razo." He punched her shoulder.

  Enna felt strange atop that stump, the cheers of the people touching her like soft slaps, a combination of aggression and love. The village was not far from the field where she had burned a tenth of the army of Tira. A day from there stood the place where she had dragged Leifer's body to the funeral pyre. The heat from the crowd wafted around her, the breeze that touched her skin told her of clapping hands. So much had changed in a year, she felt stretched and twisted like poorly used cloth. After all this, who would she be? Finn squeezed her hand.

  "Go on, Enna-girl," said Razo, "why aren't you smiling? I'd think this would be your scene."

  Enna shrugged. "Maybe I've changed."

  Razo rolled his eyes. "What a lot of rot." He grabbed her hand and held it up. "For Bayern!"

  And the crowd cheered.

  As the sun set, villagers joined in the celebration, lighting fires and warming cider. At last they heard the sharp crack of a baby's first wail. Finn and Enna looked at each other with relief. It was a healthy, loud cry. The birth mistress emerged and signaled that Enna could come, with Razo, Talone, and Finn following.

  Isi's face was streaked with sweat, but her eyes sparkled. Geric's eyes were wet and cheeks pressed with an unvarying smile, and when he held the baby he seemed completely unable to acknowledge that anyone else existed. At last he relinquished his hold and placed the newborn carefully in Enna's eager arms.

  "A boy," said Geric. "After Isi's father—Tusken."

  "If it'd been a girl," said Isi, "we were going to call her Enna-Isilee."

  "Oh, there'll be others," said Enna.

  Geric's eyes widened and he smiled with pure, boylike joy at the thought.

  "How does he look to you?" asked Isi.

  Enna touched his doe-soft skin. "Perfect. Completely perfect."

  She cooed at Tusken, and he looked up at her, almost as if he saw her with his wide, pale eyes. Her heart ached to see such beauty. She touched the healthy folds of skin around the baby's neck, wrists, and thighs, the dark lines crying for life made in his forehead, and thought how people start with wrinkles and end with wrinkles, grow into their skin and then live to grow out of it again.

  Just then, Enna felt at home in her own skin, not stretched or sagged or
scorched. Everything felt right. Outside, the voice of merriment. Inside, a good fire crackled in the hearth, Geric knelt beside Isi's bed kissing her hands, and a healthy baby stared at his new world.

  Enna was glad to have Finn's hand on her own, and that his skin felt right next to hers. She could feel the quiet, good heat in his touch and thought that it was all she would ever need feel. From the Forest, through the window, came a wisp of wind to twine through her hair. She listened to where it touched her neck—a spring, muddy hanks, wasps buzzing, mushrooms climb a pine, a pine needle falls.

  She was home.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  This work was supported in part by an individual artist grant from the Utah Arts Council. I would also like to acknowledge the following superpeople: Victoria Wells Arms, editor extraordinaire, whose first allegiance is always to the characters; Amy Jameson, my very own Anne Sullivan; and the early readers/editors who give wisdom and hope—Dean Hale, Rosi Hayes, and T L. Trent.

  A note about Enna Burning

  from

  SHANNON HALE

  When I began The Goose Girl, I had no intention to write another Bayern book. Bayern was a country I invented to help tell that one story. And obviously The Goose Girl was a stand-alone book. It was based on a fairy tale, and fairy tales don't have sequels, right?

  Sometimes in the process of writing, I discover things about characters that I had never imagined. This happened to me in an early draft of The Goose Girl Ani is trying to reach out to the other animal workers, and she sits beside the hearth to talk to Enna:

  "Why aren't you playing?" said Am, gesturing to the many games of cards and sticks around the room.

  "Oh, the fire," said Enna. Its orange fingers waved specters on the blacks of Enna's eyes. "I get to looking and can't look away. Don't you ever feel like fire is a friendly thing? That it's signaling to you with its flames, offering something?"

  Ani watched not the fire but the play of its light on Enna's face and felt comfort that there were others who listened for language in what was supposed to be mute and who sought out meaning in what was only beautiful.

  It was a strange little moment that I almost cut several times because fire was never brought up again, but it insisted on hanging around as though it whispered, "There's a story here."

  After about the twentieth draft of The Goose Girl, I felt ready to start trying to hunt down an agent and a publisher. Other writers offered the advice to keep writing while trying to sell your first book, so I was eager to start a new one. For the next book, I wanted the chance to deal with a main character much different than Ani. Enna kept coming to mind, and I remembered her moment by the fire. As always happens to me when I come up with a book idea, I started asking myself questions: What would happen to Enna at the end of the first book? What would she do? What would she yearn for? And what would happen to a person who learned the language of fire? The answers to these questions so intrigued me that I had to give Enna her own book.

  A conversation

  with

  SHANNON HALE

  Shannon Hale talks about her

  inspirations, her writing, and her life

  January 2005

  The Goose Girl and Enna Burning are categorized as fantasy novels because of the main fantastical elements: Isi can hear and control the wind and talk with animals, and Enna can hear and control fire. Yet within the novels, these abilities are very believable; readers don't question whether someone can actually do these things. Why do you think this is so?

  That is such a compliment! I've met readers who have read The Goose Girl and not realized it is fantasy. That makes me feel like I've done my job.

  As a reader, I've never been very interested in the kind of magic where someone waves a wand, leaving me ignorant of why it works or how it's done. As a writer, it was important to me to create a magic system that I believed might be possible and that I could get inside of and understand. We know that animals communicate with each other, so from there I wondered, would it be possible that a person could learn an animal's language? And if animals have language, could tree and stone, rain and fire?

  As well, I made a concerted effort that, though everything has a language, its essence doesn't change: an owl is not a wise sage, it's just a bird trying to find a meal; a goose doesn't have much to say; a horse is not interested in political intrigue; the wind is still wind, not burdened with human emotions and needs. Readers would have a much harder time suspending their disbelief if I'd written something even close to this sort of thing:

  "Well, good morning, Ani," said Falada, talking with his mouth full of oats. "Care for some hay?"

  "Ah, you silly horse," said Ani and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.

  "Come play with us!" shouted her swan friend Loopy. "I'll teach you how to do an underwater somersault!"

  "I can't right now, Loopy," said Ani. "But tell your mother I said thanks for the tea cozy!"

  Nature plays an integral role in your novels. Isi and Enna are connected to it through their abilities, and you present the landscape as a character—such as how it influences people's personalities and how it shapes a community. Do you have a special connection to or appreciation of nature?

  I like to think I do. I hope we all do, as we are a part of it. I grew up in Utah, minutes from lakes and forests and deserts and mountains—every kind of nature you could want, except an ocean.

  Are you going to think I'm crazy if I tell you this? I used to try to talk to animals, wild and domestic, trying to make friends and somehow break down the language barrier. I was so sure the lion at the zoo or the deer on the hill would meet my gaze and know that I was a friend. I remember putting my hand on tree trunks and trying (hoping!) I could communicate with a tree, or imagining that the wind had ideas of its own and that a mountain knew I was there. I've had the sense that everything around me is a being, or has a soul. These thoughts always seemed normal to me. As I grew up, I realized that not everyone thought the same. I wonder, had I voiced these thoughts to my mom, would I have ended up in a psychiatrist's office? Probably. And maybe I needed it. Maybe I still do! I've often thought that the urge to spend years toiling over a novel that might never see print is one form of insanity.

  How do you see The Goose Girl and Enna Burning fitting into the fantasy genre?

  I think the fantasy genre (like most genre labeling) is a slippery snake—you can't hold it still to look at the whole thing. I like that about it. I don't think I could define "fantasy" to my own satisfaction; there are so many subgenres and slipstreams and contradictions. I think genres can be as useful as they are harmful. I've read that a genre is a contract with the reader, saying, "This is the kind of story you can expect." That's helpful. But then again, when I ask people what they imagine when they think of fantasy, they say, "Fairies, elves, sorcerers, barbarian swordsmen, ogres, dragons . . ." Well, my books don't have any of those things. The Goose Girl is certainly fairy tale fantasy, but is Enna Burning since it wasn't based on a fairy tale? I think of my books as stories that take place long ago in a place that feels familiar, where things that you may not see every day are possible. That's not a very helpful answer, is it? Maybe I should have pursued that PhD in genre theory.

  You consider yourself a religious and spiritual person. Do you see a relationship between your faith and your subject matter, storylines, and /or how your characters behave and how they resolve their problems?

  I think everything I believe, whether religious, intellectual, emotional, social, etc., must come through my writing in some way. I would be a dishonest person if it didn't. However, my characters don't necessarily believe the same things I do. I love them for that. I think my beliefs probably influence my writing in ways that I don't see, but I know certain beliefs definitely weigh what I write—I believe everyone is free to make choices, bad and good; I believe everyone is noble and full of potential; I believe in hope and the possibilities for happy endings.

&nb
sp; Female power is a running theme throughout your novels. Did this organically evolve out of the stories you set out to tell, or was it intended because you have a desire to convey strong female characters?

  I did not set out to write stories of girl power, though I'm happy to have them read that way. I'm very lucky to be writing after decades of writers have already fought for their genuine, interesting, and varied heroines. I don't have the burden of writing on offense, trying to prove that girls can be main characters, strong and individual. It's a luxury to get to write what I think is true, not make a statement.

  As a reader, I'm bored by books that convey girls as weak and mindless or simply absent. That's not the world that I know. Girls are powerful and always have been. It's frankly mystifying to me that we would be portrayed in any other way.

  Do you see yourself, or anyone you know, in any of your characters?

  I'm certain that bits of me and everyone I know make their way into my characters, though I have never consciously based a character on a real person. (Real people are so complex and very difficult to stuff into a page without their seeming erratic.) I based Isi and Enna's friendship on my friendship with my best friend of fifteen years, and I repurposed elements of my relationship with my husband for both Ani and Geric's and Enna and Finn's relationships. Miri in Princess Academy is burdened with more of my younger self than anyone I've ever written.

  Do your friends and family try to find themselves in your characters?