Grim, page 10
“You...do seek an audience with the princess, don’t you?” asked the young man.
The pinch-faced man took a drink, grinning as he wiped his chin with his sleeve. “Sure, sure. An audience with her riches. After I cut her throat.” Then he handed the wineskin to the young man.
The young man lifted the wineskin to his lips, but this time he did not actually drink.
“Do you think there is a lot of treasure up there?” he asked as he handed the skin to the large man.
“They say there are rooms so filled with gold and jewels that you can’t find the floor.” He took another long drink.
“Is that so? Tell me more.”
And so they passed the wineskin around many more times. Each time, the young man only pretended to drink. Soon the three thieves began to slur their speech and finally to nod off. When he was sure they were all asleep, the young man hid their weapons. Then he opened their bags and searched for the enchanted items.
He found the invisibility cloak first. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it, rough and porous. He found the boots soon after. They looked old, the leather raw and stained, but they had a strange wet sheen to the bottom. He placed them on the glass surface of the mountain and they held fast.
In place of the cloak and boots, he left the wineskin. He didn’t like to steal, even from murderers. Then he put on the boots and began to climb the glass mountain.
The sun reflected off the glass surface with a harsh glare that nearly blinded him. With his added weight, the boots held the slick surface for only a few seconds, so he could not rest as he hiked up the steep incline. It took him the rest of the day, but at last he reached the top, exhausted.
By then it was dark, and the golden castle glinted mutely in the moonlight. He took only a moment to catch his breath before approaching the door. He intended to break this curse tonight.
But when he drew the cloth from his pocket and unrolled it, the key wasn’t there. It must have fallen out when he showed it to the thieves. He could not go back down to retrieve it now. They would probably be awake and eager for revenge.
He banged on the door and shouted until his hand was numb and his throat was sore. But there was no answer. He looked up at the moon and saw that it was nearly midnight.
Maybe he could make another key. After all, the first one didn’t even have teeth. He looked around for something he could fashion into the length and thickness of his little finger. But there were no trees, sticks or even rocks. The glass ground was completely bare.
He looked at the keyhole in the door. He looked at the moon. It was midnight. He looked at his hand. At his little finger.
He inserted his little finger into the keyhole. Nothing happened, so he slowly rotated it. He felt a slight pressure close on his finger. Then there was a sudden clang, and the door opened. His hand came free, covered in blood.
He stood there and stared at the stump where his little finger had been. A bit of white bone poked out from the ragged clump of red-oozing skin and meat. His vision narrowed and it became hard to breathe. He fought against the dark numbness that tried to take him, as he tried to think of a way to stop the bleeding. He looked down and saw that he still held the cloth that the key had come in. He wrapped it around his hand and abruptly the pain vanished and the bleeding stopped. He tied the cloth off with one hand and his teeth so that it stayed in place.
He looked cautiously through the open doorway. It seemed warm and clean inside, with fine tapestries and rugs. But now the young man was not as inclined to trust its safety, so he pulled the invisibility cloak over himself as he stepped inside.
He wandered for a little while through the empty halls of the castle until he heard two voices. He recognized one as the old woman from the cottage, except her tone was now harsh and bitter. Could it be she had deceived him and was the one keeping the princess here?
Then he heard the other voice. It sounded sharp and sweet, like a ripe apple, and it beckoned to him. He drew his invisibility cloak tightly around himself and crept closer.
He came upon a dining room. At one end of the table was the old woman, except now instead of peasant clothes, she wore a gown fit for a queen.
“Where is your hero, then?” she asked. “Dead, I suppose. What a waste.”
The woman at the other end of the table was the loveliest person the young man had ever seen. Her large blue eyes were as clear as a summer sky, and her pale face as gentle as a spring rain. She wore a black feathered gown, and the young man’s heart leaped, for he knew this must be the Raven Princess. As he moved quietly over to her side, her scent, like a crisp evening autumn breeze, filled him with longing. He dropped the ring she had given him into her golden wine goblet and it gave a soft ping.
Her eyes widened and a slow smile spread across her face.
“It appears you are wrong, Mother,” said the princess. “Gentle huntsman, please reveal yourself.”
The young man pulled off his cloak.
The queen looked at him in surprise. “My God, I don’t believe it. He made it.” She glanced at his bandaged hand. “Or most of him, anyway.”
“I have,” said the young man. “And even if you are her mother, you will not prevent me from breaking her curse.”
“Prevent you?” asked the queen. “Why would I do that?”
“Aren’t you keeping her here against her will?”
The queen laughed bitterly. “Getting her to do anything against her will? That’ll be the day.”
“But...”
“Your confusion is understandable,” said the princess. “It was indeed my mother who cursed me all those years ago. But she has sorely repented and dedicated her life to making up for her accidental misdeed.”
“Then...who keeps you here?” asked the young man.
“She keeps herself here,” said the queen.
“This is the only place where the curse can be broken,” said the princess. “So I kept myself here, hoping for your arrival.”
“So how do we break it?”
“Only she can do that,” said the queen. “She must want it broken with her whole heart.”
The young man turned back to the princess. “Don’t you want the curse broken?”
She took his good hand and cupped it between her own. “I have lived most of my life as a raven. The thought of never again soaring through the air was too much for me to bear. I hoped that the right man would give me enough reason to leave it behind.”
“And...has it?”
Her clear blue eyes looked into his. “You are a magnificent man, full of hidden strength. You have shown yourself to be brave and gentle. But even so, I find I cannot relinquish the wonder of flight.”
The queen made a noise of disgust. “Even after all this? You’re hopeless.”
“Then if you love being a raven,” said the young man, “why would you seek to break the curse at all?”
She smiled at him then, but the sadness in her eyes was as deep as the ocean. “Because I am lonely. Other ravens, real ravens, know that I am not like them, and they shun me. I am alone, like no other in this world.”
The young man gazed down at the enchanted cloth wrapped around his maimed hand. Terrible things had happened to him on this quest, it was true. But wondrous things, as well. It was as he had told the yellow-haired giant. This quest had given his life meaning. And now that he had seen some of the strange, fantastic things out in the larger world, he knew he wanted to see more.
“Would it be possible for another to share this curse with you?” he asked.
“Only if that person truly desired it with their whole heart,” said the princess. “And who would do that?”
“If one could fly,” he said, “there would be no limit to the places one could reach, the lands one could explore.”
“That is true....”
“I have heard that far away, there is a land of giants. Can you believe it?”
“I can.”
“And if that is possible, what else might be possible out there in the wide world?”
“I have heard there are many marvels in store for those with the courage and desire to share them.”
“And do you have the courage and desire to share them?” asked the young man. “With me?”
The princess smiled. “I do.”
“Then I wish with all my heart that I could fly away with you as a raven.”
* * *
So the queen was witness to another transformation, just as strange and gruesome as the first. But this one did not fill her with horror. And when it was done, she looked at the two proud ravens, their feathers glistening green-black and blue-black as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Where shall we go first?” asked the female raven.
“There is a family I met along the way,” said the male raven. “I would love for you to meet them.”
“Let us be off, then,” said the female raven. “Try to keep up.”
Then the two flew out through the window, circling high up into a sky that was pink and warm with the sunrise.
* * * * *
THINNER THAN WATER
by Saundra Mitchell
I live in a kingdom surrounded by many lands. Beyond the Eventide Forest, there’s Lycea, where only a queen may reign; still further, Vernal, where the crown princess chooses her consort. They’re as fabled to me as Elysium and Avalon.
I’m the Princess of Flamen, and every night, my father—the king—comes to my bed.
Our people revere him, a man with the weight of the kingdom as his garland, and yet he tends his only child and always has. I hear them talk. I see the pride in their eyes: what a good man, our king. What a lucky people, we. I suppose they think we talk. Perhaps they think I unburden my troubles. His paternal counsel is no doubt wise.
From my balcony, I hear them sing the “Ballad of The Fairest Queen.” Over and again, sixteen years and they’re still not tired. It’s a dirge and the meter doesn’t scan. They don’t care, because it’s a romance. One with tragedy, the best kind, it seems. I don’t need fourteen verses to tell you the tale.
My father, then a prince, picked my mother—then a cheesemonger’s daughter—to be his bride. He loved her; she was beloved. She bore him child, and it took her life. In her last minutes, she made him promise to never again marry unless he found someone as beautiful as she. He swore it, three times, and she died.
Then the king, my grandfather, died of a fever. My father, newly crowned, was alone in the world but for me. At bedtime, when I was a flat-chested, nothing-shaped child, Father sang the ballad to me. His voice was sweeter than the laurel trees in the garden. His eyes, darker than the seas. He rubbed my chest, singing and staring out the window.
I’m older now. He’s not stopped singing, nor rubbing my chest. Tonight, he looks at me. There’s a frightening shade in his gaze. It ties a knot round my throat and makes leather of my tongue. His hand rasps. It catches on the thin silk of my nightdress. Unpleasant heat sinks through the fabric.
As the last note of my mother’s ballad drips from his lips, he stills. His hand rests above my heart. On the round of my breast. My guts turn liquid and churn. Perhaps it’s coincidence (I don’t believe it is) but his forefinger and middle make a V. They frame my nipple.
Inside, I scream. I howl a sound that scrapes the meat from my bones. Inside myself, I’m hollow. Scattered across the plains like sand. Across the sky like stars. I’m worlds away from myself. And yet, a single thread attaches me. My soul is sewn into my skin, and it relays every terrible thing, even at a distance.
“I was a better man with your mother at my side,” my father says, his hand heavy on my breast.
Am I to answer? He’s the king, so I suppose I am. My tongue rattles in my mouth, a dried bean inside a husk. “Were you?”
“Wiser with her counsel. Happier with her affection.”
I pray his hand remains still. “I don’t remember her. All I know is that she was beautiful.”
“And I promised to never marry until I found her equal.”
The song. I clench my teeth together. My eyes are already closed. “I know.”
My father leans over me. His breath skates on my cheek. His stubble burns. I don’t seek his kisses anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I drew his unnatural attention by climbing in his lap when I was little. I sought warmth beneath his arm then. Sometimes even climbed in his bed when I had a nightmare.
Now it’s all nightmares, and I don’t dare move. “Merula,” my father says. “You have bettered her. And I did promise....”
I roll from bed. It startles us both. My father’s left clutching the remains of my heat in the sheets. Lurching for the window, I consider flinging myself out. It’s late. I’m tired. I might have misunderstood him. I take deep, gulping breaths of the night air.
“Are you crying?” he asks.
I’m not. I’m shuddering. Trying to keep my supper in my stomach.
Across the castle walls, I see the good people of Flamen in the fields. They’re nothing but silhouettes, singing and laughing and looking to the stars. They’re illuminated by the streak of meteors and nothing else. There are proposals made on nights like these; couplings, too.
If I were one of those girls, if their fathers came to their beds, I could cry out. There are laws, each one with a punishment. A protection. The village quaestor would hear my plea. And if the quaestor didn’t satisfy my complaint, I’d turn to the praetor. Then the consul.
And if none of them applied our sacred codes, if none stepped in—and I couldn’t believe it would go so far—then the king would hear my complaint.
But I’m already here, in the finest chamber of the palace, trembling before the king. Because of the king. His voice drips like oil; it glides and spreads, until it fills the whole chamber. The walls seem to glisten with it.
“I’ve upset you,” he says disingenuously. “But take some time to consider it, Merula. Across the sea, Haladian royalty marry only sisters and brothers. Their empire was born before memory. No doubt, it’ll outlast it. It’s a wise decision.”
To strike my father would be treason. To spit at him, treason. To argue with him, to raise my voice—to displease him—treason. And that’s a crime punishable by death.
I can stand in my window and wish to be a girl in the fields. I can consider the slate flagstones beneath my window, and whether they would split my head and end me.
But I can’t disagree with the king.
In the executioner’s house, there are unholy devices. Capes full of hooks. Razored helmets. A spiked chair, all metal, that sits in a bed of embers. The executioner heats it till it glows, and only then is the prisoner forced to sit in it.
Death isn’t the worst thing that happens to a traitor in Flamen.
Before dawn breaks, I find Consul Sapiens at his breakfast. He’s elected, both a judge and a scholar. In Flamen, he’s the last voice of the law before my father. Egg-shaped and charming, he’s also one of my favorites in the court. When I was little, he kept a jar of sugared dates for me.
This morning, he pales when I enter his chambers. He moves to stand, covering his mouth to hide the nut cake he chews. “Augusta Merula! Glory and honor to you.”
“Please sit,” I say.
Closing the doors, I slide the bolt into place. A brief longing consumes me, a wish that we followed the Northern custom of covering our walls and floors with tapestries. They’d trap my treasonous words: a guarantee that none but Sapiens would hear them.
Abandoning his breakfast, Sapiens does sit. But it’s at the edge of his bench, not settled into it comfortably.
Wiping his mouth, he looks up at me. A faint, bluish haze has crept into his black eyes. It’s a badge of his age, the same as his balding head and rounding belly. The caul, nonetheless, unsettles me.
“I have nowhere else to turn,” I tell him.
“Oh, Merula,” he says, already coddling me, “what can be so bad as that?”
We’re equals, the two of us. Second only to the king. I whisper now, as I take his hand. And I choose my words carefully. No matter how fond of me Sapiens may be, I break the law when I say, “I think my father’s grown distracted. He loved Mother so much. Everyone says I look just like her, so I understand his confusion....”
I don’t. But politics and plain truth make an unpleasant harmony. The truth must be sweetened, smoothed. Though I wear Mother’s face, I’ve got my father’s political gifts—or so say the consul. I hope it’s true. Before Sapiens can say anything, I push on.
“He’s overcome with grief and thinks he should marry me.”
Flashing flat, yellow teeth, Sapiens laughs.
“Exactly what I thought,” I say. In relief, I slump. “It’s madness. Perhaps after these long years of solitude, it seems sensible. I think he dreams of my mother and misses her.”
“A joke,” he offers.
“If only it were.” Righting myself, I force myself to speak around it. I can’t voice the memory of my father’s hand. Where it rests, the shape it takes. My stomach turns to think of it. Bile burns in my throat, so I rasp when I say, “He means it, Sapiens.”
Sapiens’s hands tremble. He reaches for mine. “Are you certain, dear?”
“Last night, in my chambers, he came to me.”
“As he’s always done.”
The coddling tone makes me hesitate. Yes, as Father’s always done it, but it’s not the way it was before. I force myself to go on; arguing wins me nothing.
“He said the Haladians only marry siblings. That it’s a right and honorable way to maintain an empire.”
The silence isn’t long. Perhaps only the flick of a lash. The length of a breath. Then Sapiens nods.
