“We need to get more into her. She looks like she hasn’t eaten for days.” Rivka, in her exploration of the room, had found a side entrance that led into a small galley-style kitchen. She was opening cabinet doors and peering inside jars, looking for anything suitable.
“Riv--” Shulamit studied the body of her runaway sweetheart with a growing sense of understanding. “I think -- it’s like the holy women. Part of her -- most of her’s been turned to stone, but her head and this bit of her neck are still awake.” She lifted one of Aviva’s hands from the rug, and it came up much more easily than she had anticipated. “And where she’s stone, it’s not heavy like real stone. It’s as light as if she were hollow.”
“I found broth. Here. She’ll need it to get strong again.” Rivka brought over a drinking vessel she had found in the kitchen, filled with a broth that, from the smell of it, had been made from lamb or goat. “It’s not hot, but that’s not important.”
Shulamit kept feeding her the nourishing liquid. “If that’s the sorcerer over there, and she’s been mostly turned to stone, I bet he cursed her before he died, but then died before the curse was complete.”
“That makes sense.” Rivka kept looking all around the room. “I hope there’s another bottle of that curse blight Tamar kept talking about. The one he’s holding is nearly empty, and I don’t know how we’re going to turn that entire courtyard of women plus your stone girlfriend over there back into regular human beings, with barely a full drop left.”
“There’s got to be another one somewhere around here.”
“Why?”
“Because... bah.” Shulamit had nearly said something as inane as Because I’m the queen. She was frantic with worry over Aviva, and since she still didn’t know why Aviva had left in the first place, she was also filled with anxiety about whether or not Aviva wanted anything to do with her once she had nursed her back to health.
She tried to reassure herself by thinking of the happy look in Aviva’s eyes when she had recognized Shulamit and realized she was real, but hey, maybe she was just happy to be rescued. Right now that was more important, anyway. Even if she didn’t want to talk to her after she was safe, there was no way Shulamit would ever just leave her there.
They remained there for quite some time -- Shulamit feeding Aviva meat broth or tangerine juice or water from Rivka's canteen, then letting her rest; Rivka stalking about the room, poring over old books and peeping in every cubbyhole she could find; and Dragon resting in the corner of the room.
Then, weakly, from Aviva’s mouth, came, “Thank you.”
Sun rose on Shulamit’s face. “Aviva! I--”
“I can’t move,” said Aviva.
“I think the sorcerer turned you to stone,” said Shulamit. “I mean -- that man over there -- the dead one. Was he the sorcerer?”
“Yes, that was the bird man,” said Aviva. “He’s dead because he went hunting in the wrong forest, and the trees... rose up and swallowed him whole.”
“I missed hearing you do that. But I still don’t understand.”
Aviva glanced down at her torn clothing, then back up at Shulamit -- who had been trying to ignore the flesh exposed by the tears, especially since it was now disturbingly stone. “I came here as his hired cook and chambermaid. But he was an awful man, always looking for the next woman to pester. I knew that someday he’d try to force himself on me. So every morning after I bathed, I ground a fatal herb and spread it across my bosom. I knew that’s where he’d start. Everyone seems to start there, with me... I guess it’s only natural, with their size.”
Shulamit flushed and wanted to cover her face with her hands because she fit neatly into that category herself, but she suppressed the impulse. “So, he ripped open your clothes, and...?”
“Got a mouthful of poison for his trouble,” said Aviva. “He screamed at me that I was a witch, and drank the whole bottle of curse blight trying to save himself. But I’m not a witch, and herbs aren’t magic. It wasn’t a curse. It was just a poisonous plant. The curse blight did nothing. So he cursed me, but he had his final seizure and died before the curse finished. And then I must have fallen asleep because I couldn’t move, and I’ve had nothing to eat or drink in days. Oh, Lord, I’m so weak!”
Shulamit quickly fed her more broth, then began peeling a tangerine for her. “Aviva, I’m a terrible person for not waiting to ask this, but I’m going to explode if I don’t know. Why did you leave the palace? What did I do?”
Aviva closed her eyes, and her face contorted with painful memory. “It had nothing to do with you. Nathan said he’d pay for my mother to have surgery that would make her nearly well again if I left the palace and never spoke to you again. I’m so sorry! That’s why I was such a cactus those last few days. I had to do it. She’s my mother.”
“Nathan? The captain of Aba’s guard?”
Aviva nodded. “He thought I was too lowborn to be seen... amusing you.” She looked as if she wanted to crawl into a hole.
“He’s a fool. And where did he get the money to pay for that surgery, anyway? He has seven children!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Aviva. “I just know it was a bag of old coins with a picture of your great-grandfather on them.”
Shulamit’s mouth dropped open. For several seconds she was unable to speak. Then she squeaked out, “I can’t believe it. Rivka! Hey, Riv!” For a moment, she had forgotten to keep Rivka’s identity private, but then she recovered.
Rivka bounded over, the curse-blight bottle in her hand. “Nu?”
“Remember that money I was telling you about? The money stolen from my father’s treasury? Apparently, the captain of the guard took it, and used it to -- What insolence! What betrayal! Aviva--”
“I didn’t know!” Aviva protested.
“Not you,” Shulamit reassured her hastily. “You did what you had to.”
“Well, I certainly reject my promise to him, now that I know the money wasn’t his to give.”
“Good, because I’m taking you back! I mean -- will you -- I know I--”
“Mint is cold and can resist the sun’s heat by the strength of her convictions,” said Aviva, “but mint is a plant, and plants wither and die without the sun.” She looked up at Shulamit lovingly. “I hated it. I had to, but I hated it. I always wanted to stay with you.”
“If Nathan were here right now, I’d fire him right on the spot! I want Riv to take his place anyway, but even though I’m queen, it’s still hard to stand up to those guards sometimes! This will give me a good reason. Oh,” she suddenly realized. “Aviva, this is Riv, the new captain of my royal guard.”
“Hello,” said Aviva. “I’m a cook, made of stone. Nice to meet you.”
“Charmed,” said Rivka, bowing.
“I’m sorry to call you Your Majesty,” said Aviva, her face suddenly growing solemn.
“Then don’t,” urged Shulamit, taking one stone hand in hers, even though she knew Aviva probably couldn’t feel it. “I’m always just your Shulamit.”
“I’m grateful for that -- that you can still say that after the way I left.”
“You left because you were too good a person to let your mother go on in anguish and your father in a lifetime of service simply so you could be happy. How am I supposed to not love you more for being that kind of person?”
Aviva smiled briefly, and then her face grew cloudy again. “But, Shulamit, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry to call you Your Majesty instead of Your Highness.”
Shulamit’s face fell. “Oh.”
“I cried for you. While all of Perach mourned our king, I mourned Shulamit’s father. I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe your mother and father would come to the palace to live with us,” Shulamit suggested. “My parents are both gone. In fact, I have very few people in the word that I like right now. You, and Riv, and sometimes my ladies-in-waiting when they aren’t being tiresome.”
“I hope you’ll like them,” said Aviva, smilin
g at the idea.
Then Aviva wanted to know how Shulamit and Rivka had come to the fortress, so they told her about the holy women who had been turned to stone. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if we can’t find another bottle of curse blight,” said Rivka.
“That’s the only one,” Aviva affirmed sadly. “And if he’d had more, he would have drained them too. He shouldn’t have touched me...”
Shulamit was thinking again. “Aviva, is the magic in that bottle very strong?”
“The strongest,” said Aviva. “It hardly takes any.”
“But how would we get it spread across eighteen or nineteen grown women? Not to mention you there?” Rivka put her hands on her hips and sighed.
“There’s that basin of holy water on the roof,” suggested the queen. “If the magic is powerful enough, we could put the bottle at the bottom of the basin, and then... if Sister Tamar lets us... we could knock down the front of the basin. The water would spill down into the courtyard, and--”
“--soak all the women at once. I think it could work!” said Rivka.
“Can you smash the basin?”
The warrior shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know. I’ll try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to carry it down the stairs in buckets one at a time.”
“At least we have a place to start.”
“Now that we have a plan, are we ready to get out of here?” Rivka put the crystal vial deep inside her clothing where it would be safe.
Dragon made a show of flapping her wings, to show that they weren’t strong enough yet.
“Flying can’t be the only way in or out of this room,” said Rivka. “Unless these two have wings I don’t see.” She was pointing at the dead body and the mostly stone woman.
“Oh, there are stairs back down into the rest of the fortress,” said Aviva. “They come out of the rock on his command. All the stones of this place obey him.”
“That explains the rock walkway shooting honey and birdseed at us on the way in,” said Shulamit.
“That doesn’t do us any good. He can’t command anymore.” Rivka paced the room.
“It wasn’t so much a command,” Aviva explained, “as him putting his hand on the wall in the right place.”
“He’s still got hands,” Shulamit remarked.
Rivka took a hold of the sorcerer’s lifeless wrist and dragged him over to the wall. “Where?”
“Higher.”
Rivka hoisted him up, while Shulamit marveled at her ability to play with a dead body without flinching. “Here?”
“Right where that crack is, between the two smaller rocks.”
Rivka pressed the dead man’s fist against the spot.
There was a low rumble. Far away, there was the sound of something crashing to the ground. Then the floor began to vibrate disconcertingly.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” said Aviva.
“The stone!” Shulamit cried with alarm. “It obeys his command, but now it can tell he’s dead.”
Rivka steadied herself as the room started to shake. “It didn’t know before?”
“No, he died on the rug so his dead body hadn’t touched the stone.” Shulamit dragged Aviva out of the way of a falling piece of rocky ceiling. “All those enchantments and traps--”
Rivka’s eyes flared in horror. “I bet he set this whole place to collapse if something happened to him!”
Chapter 15: Is It Here That I Learn Fear?
“Hurry, Shula! Dragon!” Rivka ran over to Aviva and hefted the poor girl over her shoulder, then followed the queen to the beast. With the three of them on her back, the dragon scrabbled around the room on foot, trying her best to dodge falling rocks. Her wings flapped at her sides, trying to gain elevation.
“It’s not working!” Shulamit burst into tears.
“Why is your dragon broken?” Aviva asked calmly.
“Dragon,” Rivka muttered with her eyes closed. “You might just have to jump out the window and hope your wings figure it out before we hit the ground.”
And a minute later, she had to, because the walls began to crash down around them. As Dragon burst through the open window just before the room was reduced to rubble, all four pairs of eyes -- the beast’s included -- were screwed shut. But they stopped falling, and close to the ground the dragon’s wings found a little strength. It was just enough to cushion their landing. Quickly, she transformed back into a horse and galloped away from the exploding pile of debris. Shulamit felt the oddly light bulk of Aviva behind her and leaned back slightly, keeping her safe between her own body and Rivka’s. She could feel Rivka's knuckles digging into her back from where she had her arms around Aviva, but it was easier to endure that than think about what would happen if they let Aviva fall.
The horse couldn’t go far on the rocky ground, but they managed to make it far enough away that the sorcerer’s magic no longer touched the rocks. With her hooves precariously pawing at the uneven ground, she stood in place as Shulamit and Rivka craned their necks around to watch the final destruction of the sorcerer’s fortress.
“So that’s that,” said Rivka flatly, still holding Aviva tightly in both arms since she couldn't very well straddle a horse securely in her condition. “I hope what magic we found will work, because it’s all we’ve got, for now.”
“If she can’t fly, does that mean we’re stuck here?” asked Shulamit.
Rivka nodded. “But I think it’s safe to camp. I’m used to the wild, and this is just like any other wild place, with that schreckliches chazzer gone.” She looked over Aviva with wide eyes and a slowly nodding head. “To think of such a thing--”
“I had to do something,” said Aviva firmly. “God made many plants and many creatures that taste of death. I merely copied a good defense.”
“Like a lantana,” Shulamit said, smiling flirtatiously as she played lovingly with Aviva’s hair.
Rivka hopped down from the horse. “Come on. Let’s set up camp.”
Dragon transformed again, and Shulamit and Rivka placed the paralyzed Aviva against the curves of her cool, scaly flesh. “I know you’re stone right now, but I’m afraid you’d chip if we set you up against those rocks,” Rivka explained.
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Please,” said Rivka. “I’m no noble. And who said anything about lady?”
“Shulamit called you Rivka.”
Rivka huffed. “Okay, fine. But keep it to yourself. I’m Riv.” She wandered off suddenly into the distant rocks, her boots crunching on gravel.
“Your new captain is made of thunder,” said Aviva. “Now she’s going away to rain by herself. She doesn’t want to get us wet.”
“She has a lot to thunder about,” explained Shulamit. “And I don’t think she’s trying to protect us from what’s on her mind. There’s something she’s ashamed about, and she probably doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone.” Shulamit was thinking about the things the empty suit of armor said to Rivka back in the fortress, about how her impetuous, almost mindless bravery could have cost her the man to whom she had given her heart.
“How did you meet her?”
Shulamit covered her face with her hand. “There are things I’m ashamed about. Oh, Lord, Aviva... the things you missed. Never mind. Your mother’s doing better, then?”
“Mostly,” said Aviva. “She can walk now -- can you believe it? We got her a cane and she can get around everywhere -- the fields, the forests, or over to the neighbors’ houses to tutor their children. You should have seen her face when we went out to the lake and she was picking ripe sea grapes to eat off the trees, just like in the old days. She can even go to the marketplace with Aba. He’s so happy that he can go out and sell his clothing at the market again.”
They continued talking until Aviva -- who was still recuperating from nearly starving to death -- was tired, and Shulamit held her until she fell asleep. Then the queen carefully extricated herself from the tangle of stone woman and scaly dragon flesh and went to fi
nd Rivka.
Shulamit walked with quiet steps down the rocks to where Rivka was standing, staring out over the cliff face at a magnificent landscape illuminated by the liquid gold of another sunset. She was careful to announce her presence when she was still a safe distance away, so that Rivka, ever the warrior, wouldn’t hear her footfalls and unsheathe her sword in alarm.
Rivka turned to meet her.”Nu? Is Aviva unwell?”
“She’s asleep.” Shulamit stepped up beside her to gaze out across the trees in the valley below. “I’m sorry. I know you probably want to be alone right now.”
Rivka nodded. “I’m just trying to figure it all out.”
“I wish I could be as brave as you are.”
“Is it really bravery, though? Or just stupidity? Maybe I’m just too foolish to think of what could go wrong.”
“Too much thinking of what could go wrong is what keeps me cowardly,” said Shulamit.
“Remember when the crystal ball exploded? There I was, about to put my hands on it. What if it killed us?”
“Remember when Dragon jumped out the window? We all could have died, but it was our only choice. If she had held back and thought about crash-landing, our deaths would have been certain.” Shulamit paused.
“The fortress never would have collapsed if I hadn’t put the dead man’s hand to the wall.”
“You didn’t know it would do anything bad,” Shulamit pointed out. “Don’t blame yourself for not thinking of things you had no way of knowing. It’s the same with what happened to you up north. You didn’t know Isaac was anywhere near your uncle.”
“You may be right, little Queenling. How does one as young as you speak such logic?”
“I don’t really know anything,” said Shulamit, “not really. I just badly need you back, the way you were. You’re the strong, confident, brave woman I’m not, and I have so few people to turn to right now.”
Rivka’s expression softened, and she blinked several times, making the idea flash into Shulamit’s mind that she might be holding back tears. “I guess... even if I’m partially to blame for Isaac… and then I couldn’t save him... I can only try to make up for it. I can’t change it, and I can’t stand still in this one spot forever.”
The Second Mango (The Mangoverse Book 1) Page 11