by Taryn Tyler
I raised an eyebrow, catching Rose's eye.
“What?” she asked.
I grinned. “He's right. You open doors for wolves, talk to ghosts, light fires in the wood. You court danger every day.”
“I don't think that's what he meant.” Rose fingered the wooden clasp on her cloak, feeling the rose engraving. The engraving of a single rose. The same as the string of pearls. The same as the amethyst ring.
“I meant that she's a greater danger than anything else.”
“Because she's a witch?” I turned toward him, anger taking precedent over my curiosity about the necklace and the clasp. “Rose would never --”
But he had already scurried off through the heather. The snow spread apart, falling from the tall purple plants in a long winding line as he scurried past them, already too far away to hear me.
It was past nightfall when we reached Copshire. The shops and markets were all closed. I wanted to sleep out on the moor but Rose said we would freeze to death. I reminded her that she could light us a fire bright enough to make it seem like summer but she said it would draw too much attention to me so we knocked on tavern doors until we found one willing to give us a room in exchange for firewood. It was a small tavern near the edges of town, a long walk from most of the markets, but there were few rats and the landladies gave us a room to ourselves.
I lay awake most of the night, listening to the rise and fall of the conversations in the hall below us. Murmurs turned to anger or excitement then softened again, almost masked by the scuffling of tables and chairs. Rats scurried. The stairs creaked as new guests were shown to their rooms. Dishes clinked in the kitchen. Rose slept in the bed beside me with her head rested against my shoulder. I wished we had our loft. The mattress was hard and we had to huddle close together to keep from falling off the sides.
“Don't look so nervous.” Rose whispered to me the next morning as we pushed our way through the hall, looking for a table to eat our porridge at. But it was hard not to look nervous when I was. I had been to town before. I had even been inside taverns while Papa discussed prison penalties and guild taxes with the local authorities, but I had never been pushed or shoved or stepped on or whistled at so many times in a single morning. I bit my lip and tucked a piece of hair back into my scarf. Rose had insisted I wear it in case anyone knew that the old king's daughter was short and thin with big eyes and inkblack hair. But I was supposed to be dead. No one was likely to recognize me even if I hadn't had my cloak on to cover the strands of black that poured out over my back where the scarf couldn't reach.
We eventually found a table nearer the center of the room than I would have liked. I brushed crumbs off the warped wooden surface and sat down.
Rose sat down across from me. “We should sell the wood first.” She had to shout in order to be heard over the noise of the cooks and patrons, packed like strings of salted venison around us. “It will be easier to find everything we need if we have coins instead of wood to trade with.”
I nodded. A baby started to cry. One of the landladies shouted at someone not to spill beer on the floor, already soaked with melted snow. Someone whistled. I poked at my porridge but it was already cold and crusted around the sides, lumpier than any concoction I had ever tried to make. I waited while Rose gobbled down hers faster than she could taste it then we stepped out into the streets, tugging our load of firewood behind us.
The streets weren't much quieter than the tavern but at least there was room to walk and the crisp chill in the air masked some of the rank scent of human sweat.
It took us an hour to find the market, then the rest of the morning to find buyers for the wood. Rose and I both held our breath when we saw a soldier follow us from around the corner. He made straight for us but all he wanted was a fee for using the market. We hadn't sold enough wood yet to pay it. He offered to let us stay for a kiss each. Rose offered to light his hair on fire. He stopped talking, tried to look her in the eye but couldn't quite manage it, then said that since we didn't have much to sell the three pennies we had offered would be enough. Just for this once. He took the money and left, moving through the crowd as fast as he could without running.
By the time we had sold all the wood our fingers and noses were red with cold, our stomachs gurgling for food, and our feet sore from standing still. Rose wanted to head for a tavern for some hot cider but I said we had better buy what we had come for first.
We started in the dyers district where we bought a whole basket of thread and seven yards of pale blue fabric. Next we went to the granary for three sacks of flour --the only food we couldn't grow or hunt or collect for ourselves in the wood. We went to the smithy next but we didn't have enough left for a kettle or a new ax.
I passed the bookshops and silver smiths with a wistful eye. Papa had given me all of Mama's silver long before Lucille had come to the manor. She had hated seeing me in it. I wondered if she had melted it all down after I had gone or if she kept it and wore it herself. I wrapped my fingers around my knife hilt as Rose and I ducked past a pair of soldiers out on patrol. They didn't even turn their heads.
It was dusk by the time we arrived back at the tavern. Rose and I were both dazed and dreary eyed, our feet dragging like the sled behind us. I considered going straight upstairs and throwing myself onto the small, hard bed but my stomach had long since stopped gurgling and started screeching for food. Rose headed for the kitchens to see what she could find us while I pushed through the crowd for a place to sit.
The tavern was almost louder than it had been at breakfast. There was twice as much beer and three times as many whistles. Two separate songs had broken out on opposite sides of the hall, tangling together so that I couldn't tell what they were even if they hadn't been toneless sounds almost screamed from large bellies and red beardcovered faces. I spotted a table towards the edge of the hall. It only had one bench but Rose and I could squeeze onto it together. I stepped around a pool of melted snow and spilled stew and headed toward it. “He had red fur and eyes that looked almost human.”
The words jumped at me from out of the noise, smooth and clear. I stopped, dead still. A fist tightened itself in my belly. My hunger vanished all at once. The few bites of porridge I had swallowed this morning swished and swelled inside my stomach.
“I've never seen red bears this far north, Boris.” Another voice said.
Boris laughed. The same rich, charming laughter that had filtered over so many dinners in the manor after he and Lucille had come to live there. If I hadn't heard it before I might have thought it was pleasant. Friendly even. “Do you think I would make up an animal that got away from me? He was out on the heath almost a moon ago
--too close to the town for safety-- so Beor here and I went out to catch him. Clever bugger he was. Gave us the slip right out in the open. I swear his eyes were almost human.”
“Beor's?”
“The bear's.”
“You only say that because he gave you the slip.”
I sighted the three men circled around a large table by the fire. Then I realized what they were talking about. The red bear. Our red bear with fur the color of Rose's curls. I had seen the hint of humanity in his eyes too, hidden in the corners as if his animal instincts had pushed it aside. But even his animal eyes had been gentle. There was no reason to fear him being close to the Copshire. I stepped closer to listen. The rush of my heartbeat was almost enough to drown out the noise of the tavern.
“A red bear.” The larger of Boris's companions mused. “Could he have been the red witch's familiar? Perhaps she can change her form.” Beor shook his head. “She never leaves the wood, right Boris?”
But Boris wasn't listening. He was staring straight ahead with a crooked half smile on his lips. He set his beer tankard down and ran his fingers through his brown curls. His amber eyes danced.
His companions chuckled on either side of him. “Boris never could talk hunting when a girl was near.”
I followed the direction of Boris
's gaze to see Rose, pushing her way toward me in her blood red cloak with two bowls of stew in her hands.
My blood turned to ice in my veins, too cold to even let me shiver.
Rose smiled at me, raising the bowls with a questioning look.
I shook my head, forcing myself to move. I turned and headed toward the staircase. The crowd seemed to fight my every move, someone always standing where I needed to put my foot next. If they would only hold still the way the trees did. I kept my head down, swiveling and dodging my way toward the stairs.
Rose caught up to me. “What's the matter?” Her nose scrunched into confusion. She turned her face toward the crowd, then back to me. “Did someone recognize you?”
I shook my head. “I recognized someone.” If anyone would tell Lucille that I was still alive it would be Boris. I hated to think what would happen to Hans if she knew. What would happen to me.
And I didn't like the way he had been staring at Rose.
We ate our stew --thin and salty with more turnips than beef and more broth that turnips-- in our room, hunched on the floor next to the bed, and left at the first sign of light. I had slept worse that night than the night before, getting up every hour to make sure the door was still latched, but Rose tripped twice trying to keep up with me as we dragged our sled through the pale gray streets. We passed beggars and drunkards, half frozen, on the side of the road. There were a few smithies and bakeries with furnaces lit but the rest of the buildings were quiet except for the scurrying of rats and stray cats.
We reached the heath but I still felt a shadow behind me, always watching me, always just out of sight. “No one will find you.” Rose promised over and over but I still kept looking back, jumping at the sounds of animals scurrying through the heather.
Lucille would find me. How could I have ever believed she wouldn't? One day she would find me and she would eat my heart the way she had eaten the lost girl her soldiers had brought in from out of the rain.
It was dusk when we reached the edge of the forest. I still felt eyes on me but perhaps that was only the villagers, watching us step into the shelter of the trees.
It was warmer in the wood without the wind biting and clawing at our faces as it had out on the heath. I trudged alongside Rose, listening to the welcoming rustle of the leaves overhead, the constant scurry of the animals in the bushes. It was good to be home again but the haven seemed different now. Tainted. Breached. I resisted the urge to swivel my head around and try to peer into the trees behind me.
Rose stopped suddenly beside me. She grabbed my hand. “Did you see that?”
We crept toward the rustling. Careful. Soundless. There, sitting on a fallen branch, was our hobgoblin friend. He had the pearl necklace pulled out of his shirt, the gold insignia held up to the last of the woodland light.
Rose fingered her clasp.
The hobgoblin looked up. “You.” He stuffed the necklace back into his shirt. “What are you two clumsy clogs gawking at? Go away and leave a fellow in peace.”
“What is that?” Rose asked. “Where did you get it?”
The hobgoblin didn't answer. He jumped to his feet then turned and darted off into the snow.
“Come back.” Rose called after him but he didn't stop. She cursed. “If he had told us his name I could make him stop. Curse his cleverness.”
We left the sled and darted after him, following the long slither of footprints in the snow. We were faster than him but he was defter at moving through the trees. We split up, trying to trap him between us but he weaved back and forth, crawling under tree roots and hiding beneath the thin, brittle windings of the shrubbery. I craned my neck, looking for the limp shifting of the snow, the tiny trail of footprints, the movement of thorns and dead leaves. The hobgoblin made it halfway up an oak before I spotted him clinging to the wide bark covered cylinder with his little smudged hands.
I darted after him, one foot pounding after the other. My heart pumped heat to the surface of my skin. The cold death kiss of the wind sliced across my face. Nothing would ever catch me so long as I kept moving. Nothing could touch me. Not even Lucille.
I stopped. Rose stepped out of the trees a few paces away. The hobgoblin stood between us, backing toward a tree trunk. His big round eyes wobbled from Rose to me to Rose again. He clutched the pearls tight in both hands.
“Tell me where you got the necklace.” Rose said.
The hobgoblin snarled. His face wrinkled with an almost animal ferocity. “It's mine.”
“Where did you get it?” Rose asked again. “Where did you get the amethyst ring and the gold coin? What does the insignia mean? Why did Gran carve it on my cloak?”
I felt something move behind us. A shadow blocked the streams of sunlight pouring in through the canopy. Phantom shivers of pain swept through me. I reached for my knife hilt. “Rose.”
The hobgoblin took another step back. His eyes bulged. His thin little limbs shivered with fear.
“Tell me.” Rose demanded.
A growl sounded behind us, soft and quiet but deep like the roots of the trees. Like the morning call of a soldier's drum. I gripped my knife, trying to ignore the phantom pains in my foot and shoulder. I bit my lip to keep from crying out and tasted the warm, familiar salt trickle of blood.
The hobgoblin backed further and further away. He had almost reached the tree now. He pulled the pearls up over his neck and threw them into the air with as much force as his grubby little fist could give. “Here. Take them.”
Rose and I both turned as the necklace soared past us. A mass of red fur stood in the snow, towering over us on two legs. The red bear raised his front claws. He shook his thick, massive neck and sharp jagged teeth at the hobgoblin.
As if the little man could have done anything to hurt us.
The pearls struck the bear across his snout. Suddenly he was shorter. Suddenly he had less fur. Suddenly his neck was smaller and his limbs were thin. The necklace landed in the snow, inches from the pale, round, naked toes of a human foot. A young man with hair the same amber red as Rose's blinked at me.
“Hello.” He said. “I'm Otto. Could I please get some clothes? It is very cold.”
Rose
I snatched the pearls up out of the snow. I could hear the hobgoblin behind me, scampering off into the wood. Otto –the bear who wasn't a bear anymore –stared at me, shivering. I peeled my cloak off of my shoulders and handed it to him. He clutched it around his shoulders, still staring at me, still shivering.
“ You were a bear.” I said.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. Uncertainly. “I remember . . . steel. Iron. Heat. A rich, sultry smoke. The queen from the north did this. The witch queen. Lucille.”
I looked at Snow then back at the man who had been a bear. His teeth started to chatter in the cold. His nose was red.
“Come with us.” Snow said.
We made our way back to the path to fetch the sled we'd abandoned in the chase then went home. It was dusk when we reached the cottage. The stool and chair and china cabinet blended into the dark shadows of the room. Otto swiveled around, taking in every corner as if he were trying to memorize it.
“I know this place.” He said “It's . . . home.”
I hummed, lighting the logs already set in the fireplace and sat our guest down on the stool next to it. He looked up at me, staring. Snow filled a kettle and set it over the fire.
“It must have been a long time ago.” Otto said. “You had only just been born. How old are you?”
He was babbling, mad from the cold or the transformation or both. “Seventeen.” I answered.
“Seventeen. I was –a bear you said? --for seventeen years.” He twitched his nose and scratched behind his ear. “Was I a savage bear?”
“Don't you remember?” Snow sat on the chair across from him and folded her hands in her lap.
Otto shook his head. “No.” He stopped, then looked around the room, his eyes quizzical, confused. “Yes . . . I don't know. Some of it . . .
I think. Mostly I just remember . . . before.”
“What was before?” I asked so he could grasp something that made sense to him. “How did the queen turn you into a bear?”
Otto closed his eyes. “A castle. Stone cliffs. Fierce, howling wind. I remember . . . there were two witches in the north. One was beautiful. The other was wise.”
I glanced at Snow. Was she ready to hear how Lucille had left another life in ruins? She sat where she was. Still. Unblinking.
“The beautiful witch came to my christening feasts.” Otto continued. “She danced before the king and queen. She opened up the skies and created lightening with her voice, then blew the clouds away so that the night was clear again. Her laughter was warm and her hands were soft and all the court was enamored of her powers.
“The wise witch came to the feasts too, but she didn't dine and dance with the guests. She drifted through the kitchens, sprinkling blessings into the dishes. She wandered the gardens, singing to the plants. She sat in the attic, spinning while she told tales to anyone who would listen.
“I was the king and queen's first born and a son. The feasts lasted months. I learned to crawl with the celebrations still tumbling around me. One afternoon I climbed out of my crib and padded my way past the silken slippers of dancing lords and the rushing scamper of the servants' feet out into the garden. The wise witch found me trying to grab tadpoles out of the pond. She brought me back to my mother. The king and queen were so grateful that they made her my nurse.
“I loved her instantly. I sat on her knee while she spun, listening to her sing and tell stories. So many songs. About so many things. Spiders. Ghosts. Rivers. Some of them would frighten me but then Nurse would laugh. The corners of her eyes would crinkle and I knew that no matter what monsters lay in wait for me I would have the strength to fight them. Only . . . I didn't. Not in the end.”
Otto told us how he had grown up in the castle, learning to hunt and fence and fish. He told us that he would creep out of bed at night to watch his mother and father dance in the feasting halls. He told us that he was a good horseman but a poor falconer, that he used to steal lemons from his father's groves, and that he was betrothed to a princess with freckles and soft lips from the east who visited every Christmas. He told us that when he was sixteen, against everyone's expectation, his mother gave birth to a young princess and the feasts began again.