by Rebecca Hahn
And as I step alone into this cell and I hear that sharp, sweet clang of the door and the clunking of the padlock and the stomps of the soldiers moving off up the stairs, I’m not protesting. I’m not thinking of ways to chop the king into little bits. I’m not seething in my anger or wallowing in my despair.
I’m scarce upset at all.
I sit myself down on the thin, hard bed and look up into the thin, hard light streaking through the window at the top of the cell, and I listen to the lady’s song until the day is a pile of dense, uncountable minutes. I pee in the bucket when I need to, and I eat when they give me food, and when the light softens and disintegrates, I slip underneath the covers and fall instantly asleep.
I am dreaming I am winged.
The sun sweeps across my back, and I lift my beak to drink it in, dazzle in it.
I can go anywhere. I can do anything. The quickest fleeing prey and the strongest leaping predator must stop short and tremble when I scream.
And how I scream!
It gathers in my every feather, in the tips of my talons and the edges of my wings. It smolders in my lungs until I roll it along my throat and out over my tongue. It’s in the heavy downbeats of my wings. It’s in the air that whistles past my ears, and far below, it’s in the mountaintop that blurs and shifts as I shoot forward and sharply twist, chasing bursts of wind.
The world is my scream.
It’s a disappearing thing, isn’t it? It’s the letting go of everything you’ve ever been and turning into something that doesn’t care about the future or the past, but only this one moment, only this one flight and swoop and cry.
Something that doesn’t care about the people she doesn’t have or the people she’s driven away. Something that doesn’t wonder if they are right about her ruining everything.
Because if you want it this much, if it calls to you this strongly, maybe you aren’t even half human. Because if they killed your mother because of you, and your Gramps lost everything because of you and died alone because of you, maybe it’s time you stopped thinking about what you think they owe you.
Maybe it’s time you start thinking about disappearing in truth.
Eleven
I COUNT THE DAYS this way.
The first day, I scramble up the rocky back wall, gripping tight with my fingers and my bare toes, leaping to grab the bars of the window. I pull. I yell. I shake them, but they don’t even rattle. I stare out at the brown dirt street until my arms grow numb and I can’t hold on any longer.
The second day, I keep a knife from the food they give me, and I dig away at the corner of my cell behind the bed, where the ground is soft and fine.
The third day, I keep on digging.
And the fourth.
And the fifth.
And the sixth.
On the seventh day the knife snaps, and the hole I’ve made is only big enough to fit my head and shoulders.
On the eighth day I throw a fit, a crazed, shrieking fit that brings the guards running to make sure I’m not dying or some such. They call for a doctor, and when he says the light isn’t bright enough in my cell, they take me out into the hall and up the stairs and through the prison’s main room, and I’m blinking in the sun when they open the door.
The guards have me by both arms, held tight, and I’m shouting nonsense still, pulling this way and that.
When we’re full in the street and the doctor is leading us up the road toward his house, I go limp, and the guards stop in their surprise, and before they’ve a chance to tighten their holds again, I’ve torn away from them and am running back down the street toward the city gates.
I run maybe a hundred steps before they have me again, and I’m back in my cell two minutes later.
The ninth day, I sit and look at my hands and eat no food until my head is filled with dizzy black spots and my throat is closed and dry.
The tenth day, the queen comes to visit me, and she gives me the key.
Twelve
SHE COMES to tell me that the king is saying he’ll kill me this very week.
“I’ve held him back as long as I can, Marni,” she says. “But he’s saying he can’t afford to wait any longer. It’s almost spring, and the farmers need to be planting.” She’s come all unannounced, scooting through the door the guard held open for her, waiting until he closed it again before she threw back the dull gray cloak from her head. I reckon there aren’t many who know she’s come to visit me. I reckon the king himself doesn’t know.
I’ve felt the weather changing, even in my stone cell. The air is defrosting; the light from the window is growing warmer, softer day by day. Only tonight there’s a bite again in the drafts that circle always through the prison. Tonight the stones are freezing to the touch.
“What are the lords and the ladies saying about it?” I say it low. I almost don’t want to know, but I can’t help but ask. I think of Susanna and Hettie, how they’d grasp my hand, giggling with me over some nonsense. I think of the lords who courted me before Lord Edgar, how they listened to what I said as if they cared, pulled back my chairs, asked after my health.
I don’t think of Edgar or of Sylvie or of Emmy. I wouldn’t think of the queen except here she is, her perfect hair tousled by the cloak, dark circles under her eyes.
“They don’t say much,” she says. “They’re scared, Marni. The woods . . .” She loses the sentence. I see her look down at her hands where she’s holding them, properly folded as always, in her lap. I see her shift them, grip them the tighter.
“I thought it was only a fairy tale. I thought the whole country had lost its mind.”
We’re sitting side by side on my mattress. She’s brought me a new blanket, and I’ve wrapped it round myself. It’s keeping out some of the evening’s chill.
“How close are they now?” I ask.
“Every day,” she says. “Every day they are ten rows closer. We fall asleep each night hoping the city will still be ours in the morning. We think—we wonder whether the king will get around to killing you before they arrive.”
Hearing it out loud, so simple, my mind goes blank in panic.
She notices something about the way I look, or maybe I make a sound without realizing it, because she reaches over and takes my hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
I shake my head. “Seems I’ve been waiting for it my whole life. Seems I should be ready for it by now. Only—I thought my Gramps would be here as well. Not that I wish he was, not to go to the axe with me, but being alone, you see. Being alone at the very end.” Like he was, I think, and then I can’t say any more.
“I’ll be there,” she says, “though I suspect that’s not a great comfort.”
We sit in silence for a bit. There are a thousand things I could tell the queen, a thousand words of thanks and a thousand accusations. I could tell her of the vengeance, the one I scarce feel anymore, though it’s still clasped tight to my wrist. I could tell her of the lady’s voice, and those sparkling eyes that so fill my head these days I can hardly care about being locked up or worry about my death. I’m only longing to get back to the woods.
“There are things in the gardens now, and all along the river,” the queen says abruptly, in a different tone of voice. “Little men who disappear when you look at them straight on. Wisps of smoke where there is no fire. And voices, singing songs or chanting rhymes, with words not one of us understands, but they make our skin crawl. Things that aren’t supposed to exist, you know?”
I’ve turned to stare at her.
She shrugs. “You’ll think I’m making it up, but it’s true. It feels less and less like the world is ours. I’m starting to think I dreamed up things like fields and meadows. I’m starting to think the woods have already taken over.”
“Aunt,” I say, “there are things in the castle gardens?”
“Yes, and near the river. And no one dares go into the flower garden now, not with that monstrous plant—why, you might
know what it is. It’s all vines and little blue flowers, carpeting the ground. It’s spread from one end of the garden to the other. There’s no room left for other plants.”
“That’s the dragon flower,” I say. “Nobody plants it. It just grows.”
“Yes.” She nods. “I daresay nobody would plant it, when it takes over everything so.”
“It never has before.”
“I suppose it’s never tangled up a gardener so much that she broke her leg and had to be hacked free with axes, either.”
“No,” I say.
“She said she was following the pretty blue lights, that they were leading her from one step to the next.” She shakes her head. “Poor thing.”
I don’t ask the gardener’s name, but I reckon I don’t need to. It was only a few weeks ago that I was telling Emmy she should get out to the flowers soon, and with me locked away, she’ll be feeling it’s her duty to take care of the garden.
“Tell her to leave it alone,” I say.
“The gardener?”
“If you can get a word with her, tell her it’s all right, that she can let it be. Tell her I said so.”
“I will,” the queen says. Moonlight has begun to seep into the cell. It falls across our knees and turns the queen’s rough cloak into silk. She raises a silver-edged eyebrow at me. “Is there anyone else you’d like me to take a message to?”
“No,” I say at once; then, “Yes. Tell Sylvie she’s not to fret.”
The queen laughs, and it’s the same laugh I’ve heard a hundred times before, incandescent. I stare at her. I always thought she’d created that laugh to seem ever happy and sociable, as if none of the court’s cruel gossip could get to her. But what reason would she have to laugh that way now if it weren’t real? “I’ll tell her, dear,” she says, “but I don’t think it’ll make any difference.” She stands, and I look up at her numbly. She says, “It’s late, and if I don’t get back soon, Roddy will wonder where I am.”
I whisper, “Don’t go.”
She looks down at me. You know that way a person can look when she’s done with pretending anything anymore, when she’s letting you see what all the years of worry and struggle have done to her—you know how, when there’s nothing but this one moment before it all goes away, so there’s nothing left to do or say or hope for, and you’re bare to the storm—that’s how she’s looking at me, and I reckon that’s how I’m looking at her.
“Do you want me to take any word back to him?” she says, and the moment, if it was such a moment, is over.
“No,” I say, “I’ve nothing to say to any him.”
“Well,” says the queen, “I have a message for you, if you’ll hear it.”
I look at her, startled. “From him?” I would have thought he’d be forgetting me as fast as he could, now the king had won.
“He would have brought it himself, but he’s watched even more closely than I am these days. Here, stand up, Marni.”
I let her pull me to my feet. I’ve not the energy to fight the queen, not when she’s got that purpose in her voice and is tossing her little head in such a way. She looks downright regal.
When I’m standing, she grasps both my hands. “He sends his love,” she says, and I swear there’s an evil glint in her eyes.
I’m about to snap at her—how dare he send his love? Does he think that’s like to make me happy? But then she’s wrapped one arm around my shoulders, and she’s whispering in my ear: “Along with this.” And she’s slipping a hard, cold key from her sleeve into my nearest hand. “I may have been wrong about the woods,” she continues, only just loud enough for me to hear, “but they are not going to kill a lovely young woman out of misguided superstition. Whatever the reason for the griffins and the phoenixes and the shy little men and everything, it’s not you, Marni.” Then she folds my fist around the key and steps back, and I’ve just the strength of mind to bury it in my skirts as she calls for the guard.
The door is clanking open when she says, “I daresay I’ll ask the guard to walk me back to the castle. It’s long past sunset, and I could use the assistance.”
“Go safe, lady,” I manage, and she scoots out into the corridor. I see her wink at me, and then she’s gone. The padlock clunks back into place; the guard’s boots clomp off down the hall. I wait one minute. Two. I go to the door, peer into the dark of the prison. I listen hard. Nothing.
In a flash, I stretch my arms through the bars and get the key in the lock, and then I’m taking the lock off, as quiet as I can, and placing it down on the floor and swinging the door open, smooth, smooth, smooth. I leave it to hang, and I pad my way down the hallway, up the stone steps. The queen’s blanket is still around my shoulders, and I wish I’d left it behind to free my arms, but I dare not leave it here. They’ll see it, a minute before they see the empty cell, and that’s a minute I might need.
The main floor of the prison is empty too. I don’t know how she’s managed that; could be that only the cells are staffed this late at night. It doesn’t matter; all I care is that not five minutes after the queen leaves me in my cell, I’m running down the city streets, and luck is with me for once, because the moon has been swallowed up by a whole fleet of clouds and everywhere is shadows.
PART THREE
One
IN THIS STORY, the dragon was a man.
Don’t ask me how that works, but he was a man; he came riding up on a great black horse as a girl was collecting berries and roots and such in a basket to bring back to her ailing mother and four younger siblings.
This was back when the woods were everywhere, and one of this girl’s little sisters was just old enough to be playing about outdoors, and the girl had noticed how the fairies and the spirits swooped around more when her sister was nearby.
Well, and the girl was worried about the child’s getting snatched away by the forest folk. When the dragon rode up, fire in his eyes, she dropped her basket and held the point of her little gathering knife against her chest, so that he pulled up his mare and stared at her, sitting still, so as not to startle her none.
“You’ll be wanting to take me away,” the girl said.
“I reckon I will,” said the dragon. “Now, don’t you go and do nothing foolish.”
“I won’t if you won’t,” she said.
And the dragon he shook his head because now there wasn’t nothing he wanted more in the world than this girl.
“You’re not understanding me,” she said. “I mean I’ll go with you, and gladly, and stay as long as you’d like.”
“Good, then,” said the dragon as cautiously as a dragon could.
“But you and your folk will leave my family alone, and my people alone, and you’ll pull back your trees so that we’ve space and sky and land to call our own.”
He might have laughed at this; some people say he did.
“I mean it!” she said, and held the knife tight against her skin. The blood beaded there, and her chest fell up and down with her breathing, and there was such life in her; the dragon had never seen such passion, such spark. How could he let this one get away?
“I so swear,” he said, and moved to pull her up onto his horse.
The girl kept the knife steady. “Not for a hundred hundred years,” she said.
“Not for a hundred hundred years,” he said, and what is that to a dragon anyway?
The girl threw her knife down next to her basket, and she ran and jumped up on the horse behind the dragon, and he took her away all for himself.
And the woods gave up the space and the sky and the land to the people, and they began to look around and blink their eyes and see one another, how many they were, and that was the beginning of our country.
The thing with this story is, who would have told it if it were true? It was only the girl and the dragon that day, and no one to hear them speak.
But others like it for the cleverness of the girl and the love in her heart, and they say it explains why the woods have been moving the
mselves in: our hundred hundred years are up, and the dragon’s coming back to take what’s always been his, and was ours only as long as the girl’s bargain held firm.
Oh, and I forgot to mention—didn’t I?—that when the girl’s family found her basket and its contents strewn over the forest floor, they found a patch of flowers, too, growing all through the basket weaving and around the berries and over and under the roots. The knife was well buried beneath the creeping green vines and hidden by the bright blue blossoms.
In that story, it’s how the dragon flower got its name, and depending on the teller, it was either a promise that he would keep his end of the deal, or a threat that one far-off day he’d be back, or just something the ground couldn’t help but send up when the drops of the girl’s bright blood fell and mixed with the leaves and dirt of the dragon’s woods. The girl’s brave heart and that dragon’s harsh will, they say, made themselves a flower garden.
Two
I GO TO THE WOODS, of course. Once I’m out the southern gates, I circle round and run north. The air grows cold and colder with each step. Soon I’m over the river and running across the open hills, and just as I see the first line of the trees—a dark mass on the horizon, closer, sure as sure, than ten long mornings ago—I catch the first sharp snowflake on my nose. For a second I don’t know what it is, and I stop there in a valley between two hills and I touch it, the cold, wet sting. Then another falls into my hair, and as I lift my head, a soft flake lands on my tongue. I breathe it in, swallow. It tastes like something I’ve forgotten, a dream I used to have of impossible things.