Cross the Silver Moon

by Jessica Daw

“Are you ready?” I asked, walking into the gatehouse by the stables. Every inch of the castle was familiar to me, my mental map perfected to a point that I thought I was more likely to forget Vansen, my own native tongue, than that map. It was all so beautiful. We’d done the gatehouse with grass, like the rest of the castle, and then trained an aspen to grow against each wall, branches reaching up the ceiling and spraying out in silver-green leaves that quivered with every breath of air in the room.

  My isbjørn nodded. He wore his blanket of a saddle with a few pouches holding whatever he took when he traveled, traveling squares for food and emergency spells and the like. “Are you wearing all your layers?”

  “Do you think I’m normally this thick around the middle?”

  “Charming as ever, Lena.” As often happened whenever I mentioned my appearance or other things that didn’t seem related, something appeared in his expression I couldn’t read. I thought it probably had to do with the same things I felt, like my isbjørn was in a literal way part of me, just living in a different body. I didn’t always think that—sometimes the workings of his mind were as incomprehensible as the moon, but at times, it seemed like I could look straight into his head and see exactly what he was thinking. This was not one of those moments.

  “Then . . . I suppose it’s time to go?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re not hungry or anything? Did you eat enough?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  My shoulders twitched in an approximation of a shrug. “Fine, I suppose.”

  “Get on, then.”

  “Will Rune be alright while we’re gone?”

  “I’ll only be gone a day or so. He has hay enough to keep him happy until I get back.”

  “And you’ll take care of him.”

  He scowled. “I’ve already promised a thousand times to take care of him.”

  To relieve my grimness and lighten his, I flicked his ear, standing above his head like a fluffy white sentinel. “Don’t worry, I made him promise at least as many times to take care of you.”

  His ear twitched, but his face remained the same. “I am honored to have such a fine horse as my caretaker. Now climb on. We ought to at least try to leave before sunset.”

  “Lord Exaggeration, it’s barely sunrise!”

  “It won’t be any longer if you don’t get on.” He bumped his side against my legs as an emphasis for the last two words.

  “You want me gone that badly?”

  “Lena, you know I don’t like begging. Get on, please.”

  “Thank you,” I said primly, and climbed on. I wore my sealskin pants, as it was so much easier to ride in those than in a skirt. I’d don a skirt when we got close to the Edeleste city walls.

  In the same breath after I got on, we were off.

  My memory was good enough that I’d purposely started with my hood down, and the wind swept my breath from me as we raced away from my castle. I didn’t look back to see the vines I’d trained up the front of it. I knew they were all in a brown sleep, waiting for the bite of the winter to pass. Somehow I always forgot how cold November was.

  Despite the sting of the chill and the wet kisses of softly falling snow, it was exhilarating to ride my isbjørn. Somehow, he ran faster than I remembered, and I remembered him flying fast as a dream.

  We arrived at Edeleste far too soon.

  The isbjørn stopped outside the city walls. It was terribly depressing to realize that the wild freedom of racing over the face of the earth was over, like eating the last bite of the most scrumptious dessert you’ve ever had and knowing that you wouldn’t get any more.

  The best part of the journey had been when we’d come to a river and the isbjørn had told me to get off and showed me how to walk across the water. It had added an hour or two to our journey, but I’d walked on water. Finely ground wood dust and incantations and immense concentration was all it took. The isbjørn had told me I’d taken to it far too easily, and I’d blushed like a schoolgirl and fallen straight into the water, but even being soaking wet hadn’t diminished my excitement.

  Now it was over. For a whole three weeks, the isbjørn wouldn’t teach me anything new. For a whole three weeks I wouldn’t run with him or cook with him or fight with him or read with him . . . and then I’d have a single week, and after that, my future was one terrifying blank.

  “You should put a skirt on,” my isbjørn said.

  I sighed, and slid off his back, digging in my pack. We’d improved on my maid Dagmar’s original enchantment, and now the pack held four or five times the amount it should have. I had not filled the bag anywhere near to capacity, and my fingers found the skirt quickly enough.

  Girded in worn gray wool, I stood by the isbjørn, incapable of looking at him. “We’ll meet here? In three weeks?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw him nod.

  “Early in the morning. The earliest you can come,” I instructed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t forget to feed Rune, and exercise him.”

  “You need to go, Lena. They’ll be waiting for you.” His deep voice was gentle. The words still stung.

  In one move, I fell to my knees and flung my arms around my isbjørn’s neck, head buried in his shoulder. Nothing that one usually said at partings or farewells could make it past the enormous lump in my throat, so I squeezed as hard as I could and said nothing.

  He was just as silent as I, even when I stood, not meeting his eyes before turning and walking away. The walk turned into a run after the first few steps, because only if I ran would I ever be able to leave my isbjørn behind. If I moved too slow, my wailing heart would have convinced me to turn back, forget my pride and duty and everything else.

  I burst through the same gate I’d come through with my isbjørn almost a year earlier to retrieve Rune. I was met with blank surprise from no one but dear cousin-Lord August himself. Tall, broad, handsome, dark-haired and pale-eyed.

  When had I started crying?

  “Helena. You’re here.” For that brief second, he was the August I remembered, face open and achingly familiar, and I threw myself around his neck, sobbing heartily.

  He stiffened. I noticed, and started crying harder, pulling away. “We are not friends anymore, are we?”

  Impress them. The words were the isbjørn’s, were mine, were Mother’s, something I’d heard a hundred times and never paid much attention to. I was doing great so far. Ha.

  “What kind of question is that?” I then noticed how finely he was dressed, black coat with silver runes embroidered at the hems, hair combed back in an elegant queue. He was trying to disappear behind a mask, but I could tell that seeing me had shaken him. Though, to be fair, who wouldn’t have been shaken by a sobbing girl bursting out of the dark onto them?

  Impress them. Never too late to start, I supposed, forcibly yanking my heart into line. I would see my isbjørn again in three weeks and I did not want to report that I’d been a blubbering mess the whole time. That would mean I’d sacrificed time with my isbjørn for nothing. I straightened my back. “I . . . never mind. I’m glad to see my old home. And you, of course. Ladies are wont to become emotional, very sentimental, you know.” My words came out shaky. Neither of us could quite disappear behind a mask, not yet.

  He lifted one heavy eyebrow, nearly disappearing into the fur-lined hood he wore. “You have been known to become emotional. I nearly am emotional myself, I’m so pleased to see you.” He stepped forward and extended his hand to take mine. His voice was nearly steady, but I could see the turmoil in his eyes. There was too much history for us to meet as impartial acquaintances.

  But what else could we do? I stretched forth my gloved right hand, smiling a bit despite his barb that he’d covered with his I’m so pleased to see you that I didn’t buy for half a second. It was strange to see a human face that wasn’t my own, stranger still because I remembered immediately that I’d spent more of my life staring at human faces than at an isbjørn face. With Au
gust’s graceful bow and socially correct kiss, my time with the isbjørn seemed to melt into a dream. I was transported back, to the disaster of the suitors. Time had passed here, but I realized that that would be the first thing people remembered upon seeing me.

  My back straightened further as I pulled my hand from August’s. I almost ignored his proffered arm, to escort me to the palace, but swallowed my irritation and took it. A queen treated enemies as warmly as friends. No matter how much it hurt to think of a best friend becoming an enemy.

  He wasn’t an enemy.

  Was he?

  “Congratulations on your engagement. I am honored that I was invited to attend the ceremony.” Queens lied through their teeth and smiled and sounded natural. I almost pulled it off. Next time I’d do better.

  “No, I am the one who is honored by your presence. Traveling such a distance for your poor cousin, it really is too kind.” He lied through his teeth much better than I’d remembered he could, and his small smile was art. I cursed at him mentally, but kept my smile. I could do it too.

  “I am impatient to meet your future bride. I have not had the fortune to even learn her name.”

  “Yulia. Lovely name, isn’t it? It suits her well.” The words had an undertone of vindictiveness. See, Helena? I found a bride much better than you, he seemed to say.

  “Doubtless,” I murmured. I had never noticed the arrogant way my cousin carried himself. “You must love her very much.”

  “More than anyone else,” he said carelessly. Who was this man?

  “A lucky woman indeed.” I lied too well—he glanced at my face with a smile edged ever so faintly in something unpleasant.

  “I have no doubt you’ll find yourself a partner who, if not equal to my beautiful Yulia, will deserve you. If you can ever overcome your excessive love for independence and marry.”

  Those words ended my patience. “August, I didn’t reject your proposal because I don’t want to marry. I didn’t want to marry you!”

  We reached the doors of the palace, and liveried guards prevented August from answering, those his nostrils were flared with fury. I was grateful then for the spells that alerted them to human presence on the doorstep.

  “I must leave you here, dear cousin. I was on my way to the stables to retrieve my horse and go home. If you’ll excuse me.” He bowed, taking my hand and placing a light kiss on it. Since when did he not live at the palace? I didn’t ask.

  “Good bye, Lord August.” I curtsied, and he was gone.

  Leaving me alone, except with the guards and the ten million people that breathed around me. Turns out humans breathe differently than my isbjørn, shallower and higher-pitched. And they made all sorts of different noises, little coughs and squeaks and distant conversation and I didn’t want any of it.

  Familiarity bathed me, replacing the delicious familiarity of my castle, pushing my time there further into dream. Something that had happened once, to someone else, instead of my perfect, beautiful life.

  It wasn’t time for that sort of weakness. I would see my isbjørn, I would be back at my castle, and I would not think about how short a tiny, flimsy week was.

  Flemming, my least favorite Council member, appeared. His face seemed oddly flat, flatter than usual. The isbjørn’s face had texture to it, dimension. Flemming had a droopy mustache and equally droopy eyes and wrinkles and smelled of mothballs. “His and Her Majesties are expecting you,” he said in a voice trapped in his little human chest.

  I inhaled a gasp. “Father is here?”

  Dislike glimmered dully in Flemming’s small eyes, looking down his nose at me. “His Majesty is attending Lord August’s marriage at the request of the King of Nyput.”

  Suddenly I was impatient. I hadn’t seen Father for so long, my chest ached. “Take me to them, if you please.” Even if emotions were swallowing me, I would drown graceful and queenly as they come.

  Flemming bowed, then he led the way, his gait odd. Did all humans walk so strangely? I could summon my isbjørn’s gait effortlessly to my mind’s eye, the slight sway of his big white body, the ease and power of it all. Two legs were very strange.

  The halls we passed through burst with familiarity, as sharp as if I’d walked them yesterday and every day before and would walk them every day for the rest of my life. Which would be alright, I liked the palace, but not if I was under the Council’s thumb with no future and no isbjørn. This is your chance to win all that, I reminded myself sternly.

  Flemming led me to the state room, the big room with the long table where lots of old people came and talked and talked and talked and never did anything about all the fascinating things they talked about. Today, Father and Mother were there with the gray-haired members of the Council, seated and looking over endless masses of paper sprawled over open books. The typical state of the state room.

  “Lady Helena,” Flemming announced in his all-too-growl-free voice. His mustache did such a poor job of hiding his lack of white fur, it was appalling.

  Father stood with a broad grin, coming to embrace me. I nearly burst into tears for the second time at his familiar face, more weathered for the months that had passed since I’d seen him, but still strong, deep brown eyes still kind. His dark blond hair was longer, in a queue that was less tidy for hours in the stateroom.

  In Father’s embrace, I felt like a child again, and it was the brightest moment in the dark hours of leaving my isbjørn.

  He pulled away, looking at me. “You’re quite a lady,” he said, and we wore twin blinding smiles.

  “I’ve missed you, Papa,” I said, hugging him again.

  “I’ve missed you too, my little Lena.”

  “Have you forgotten me?” Mother asked querulously.

  Father and I both laughed at that. “No, Mother.” I moved away from Father with only a little reluctance and went to where Mother sat on her chair with cushions like clouds. She was elegant and pale as ever, pale blond hair, pale white skin, pale blue eyes. Beautiful and delicate as glass. I hugged her awkwardly, and she patted my arm awkwardly.

  “I hope you had a pleasant time with the shifter,” she said, as if I’d been at a party or away for only a week or two.

  Though I knew I was supposed to respond, words wouldn’t come. How could I describe the most wonderful eleven months of my life in a few socially polite phrases?

  “He treated you well?” Father asked in a very fatherly way.

  “Oh, yes! We argued a great deal, but he taught me so much, and . . .” How could I explain my isbjørn? Suddenly my heart seemed too full, choking off my speech.

  “I hope you didn’t run about like a savage,” Mother said in a way that made it clear she doubted I’d done anything but run about like a savage. “Are you wearing your armor?” she asked, squinting at me.

  “Yes,” I said defensively, annoyed that she’d ask that in front of the whole Council. The stupid stuff was horribly uncomfortable, but I’d been distracted from it by everything else. Isbjørn had insisted I wear it for travel.

  “Hmm. Well, you must be tired from your journey. I had Dagmar make up your room.”

  Excitement filled me at the thought of seeing Dagmar. Still . . . I needed to impress them. My parents, and the Council. Tonight. “I am, but not terribly. I thought perhaps I could help you two with whatever you’re doing. I am eighteen years old and my whole future is dependent on how well I can use this year, and it’s almost over.” My isbjørn had said if I wanted them to make me their heir again, I needed to act like I already was. I didn’t know if I agreed with him, but it came naturally to say what I thought, and it was all true. I didn’t want to waste my time while they sat there, doing Important State Things I wouldn’t understand until I was older. They needed to realize I already was older.

  Flemming, who’d sat without my notice, lifted his head at that. “Do you mean you actually want to learn your duties?”

  I had always wanted to learn my duties, but bringing up the past didn’t seem likely to help m
y case. “Yes.”

  “Of course she does. Have we ever given her the opportunity?” Father asked, and then gestured to a chair. “Sit, please.” Unhesitatingly, I sat. “We are discussing the regulations on Bindings. There have been complaints that the restrictions are too tight and it’s too expensive for common people to even afford marriage Bindings.

  “However, there are also rumors of desperate people being tricked into agreeing to Bindings that turn them into mindless slaves for their masters.”

  “That’s an exaggeration,” one Council member disagreed.

  “It’s a possibility,” Father countered, looking at me.

  Being Bound myself, I was inclined to be more sympathetic to those being tricked, but queens do not make decisions so quickly. “And what conclusions have you drawn?”

  “It’s an ongoing issue, has been as long as Bindings have been around,” Father replied.

  “I understand that,” I said patiently. “What action do you want to take at the given moment?”

  Father’s smile was small, a bare hint, but it was there. Mother looked bored. Flemming’s face was still impassive, but his eyes were on me. That was progress.

  “Now we’re trying to read through all the laws about Binding, trying to make sense of them and categorize them with an eventual goal of bringing them all together so they can be dealt with in a clearer fashion,” Father explained.

  “It’s long and tedious work. You’re tired. Help tomorrow.” I sensed that Flemming was testing me.

  Pinching down a smile, I shook my head. “No. I’ll stay awake as long as the rest of you do. I need to learn this.”

  I saw Flemming pinch down a smile exactly as I had, which surprised me. Right answer. For once, I had given the right answer.

  We stayed and read and discussed and wrote until my head pounded and our candle, despite all its long-lasting magic, gutted itself and left us sitting in the dim glow of firelight.

  Father sighed and stood. Mother stood after him, then the rest of the Council, mumbling to each other as they shuffled out of the room. I stood last, when only Father, Mother, and I remained. I had to want this, want it badly enough to not think about my isbjørn. Oops. Want it badly enough to do it. Nothing to do with my best friend and my beautiful castle and how far away it all was and my sealskin pants hidden under my proper-though-wilted skirt and flying—