My liege is the most beautiful woman in all the land. No one knows this better than I, her shieldmaiden, who has watched over her since memory has been memory. Her beauty grows with each exchange of sunrise for sunset, and today her shining hair catches the afternoon light and she is as bright as the summer around us. Nothing compares to her: not the net of jewels dancing across the river, nor the smell of honeysuckle on the breeze. At the water’s wild edge she pulls off her tunic and trousers and beckons, hair loose around her shoulders.
“Come, my dearest.” She holds her hand out as she wades in, calf-deep, free of every care in the world. Light plays upon her glowing skin. “Join me.”
It’s a hot day, and the water is inviting, but fear grips me. We’re meant to be at sword practice, except the allure of birdsong drew my liege, giggling, to the ribbon of water lacing the woods around the castle. I cling to the cotton shield of my clothes.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The glitter of the brook gets in my eyes. “I don’t want to.” Then, a lie: “I have to protect you.” I heft the blade fastened at my waist.
My liege is the one person I can’t lie to. She sighs. “You’re afraid of me seeing you.”
“I’m not,” I mumble, wishing my body were smaller, wishing it prickled less with heat.
“My love.” She comes to me, up and out of the river. Water drips and runs down her ankles. “I won’t force you if you don’t want to. But you should. The water’s lovely. I’ve seen all there is to see, anyway.”
She holds my wrist for a heartbeat, then lets it go, slipping back into the water. The shape of her is breathtaking, and I watch her swim against the river’s current like it’s nothing. I can’t be like her. I’m only good for doing what I’m told. So I watch her, one hand on my sword and one hand over my heart, which aches like a loose tooth.
Father is the one who finds us, the captain of the guard. He’s livid; he and his men have spent the last hour combing the castle and its surrounds looking for us. His width takes up most of the space between two trees as he comes at me, spittle flying.
“Why, I’ll be damned! Never in my life—”
I flinch at memories of his palm landing hot against my cheek. But my princess saves me, surging out of the water barefoot and bare-skinned.
“Sir Errol! The fault is mine. I demanded that we come here, and my... protector had no choice but to comply.”
Father stares at her, dripping and golden, and recalibrates his composure.
“Your Highness,” he chides. “It’s hardly seemly for the crown prince to shirk his duties for a spot of midday swimming.”
My liege wrings water from her hair. “Yet the summer’s day is as beautiful as it is rare. Could you not begrudge me one childish fancy, while we are still children?”
Father frowns, but says nothing. My liege finishes dressing, still river-damp, and we head up the path that leads to the castle. Father falls in step with me, taking up the rear, and hisses all cat-like: “Did you forget, boy? Your duty is to guide your king. If you cannot steer him on the right path and away from harm, then you have failed him. Do you understand?”
I nod, even though his statement lacks logic and sense. Father needs someplace to put his anger, and since he cannot lay it upon my liege he has directed it towards me. He pinches my upper arm, twisting hard enough it will purple for a few days. As a reminder. Of my duty.
My liege has arithmancy next; the tutor is waiting in the castle depths. We break from my father’s side and hurry down echoing stone corridors. The princess walks with a broad stride and fists clenched, and I know she has heard—and guessed—what Father did.
“It's nothing,” I say, but her face only tightens further in displeasure.
All of a sudden she brightens and grabs my hand. “Come. There’s something I want to show you.”
“But your lessons—”
“I don’t care about lessons.”
I cannot refuse her. She pulls me to the highest parts of the castle, to its most private regions. Dodging servants, we climb stairs into airy light and slip unnoticed into the queen’s chambers. My liege runs across the wide marble floors and flings a closet open.
“A merchant from over the southern seas came by yesterday. He brought Mother all these. Look!”
Inside is a riot of color and fabric. Silks and feathers and furs spill to the ground. Perfume scents the air. There are a dozen dresses packed jowl to jowl, and my liege pulls them loose one after another and tosses them upon the bed. I stroke the puffy sleeves and sequins in wonder, entranced. Embroidered dragons dance over ruby-red silks and gold threads gleam in the pistils of floral embellishments; there are delicate lace collars and fur trims so fine they are cool to the touch. I run my fingers over this field of decadence and sigh in astonishment. I had no idea such beautiful things could exist.
Laughter breaks me from my reverie; I look up from the queen’s gathered treasures to find my liege wreathed in a dress of the brightest red. Despite being half-grown she already fits her mother’s wardrobe, and as she twirls in the crimson confection the world slows and becomes treacly around me. I have to remember to breathe.
She notices me watching, and pushes me with a laugh. “Go on, you’ve got to pick one, too.”
I hide my wince; my arm is still sore where Father pinched it. I pretend my liege hasn’t seen my reaction and busy myself hesitating over the dresses. She tries to help.
“What about this one? Oh, the gold on that would match your eyes. How’s this?”
In the end I settle on a sheer drape of peacock blue so delicate the light passes through it. Bells and gold coins dangle from its hems.
“Here, allow me—” the princess says, and then her warm hands are undressing me, trading the scratch of cotton and linen for the cool whisper of silk. She fastens the robe’s dozen ribbons around my waist. “There. Wait—no.” She ducks and picks my discarded sword belt from the ground. “You need this.”
I put the weapon on and lean into its comforting weight. My liege glows with delight. “It’s perfect for you. Come, you must see.”
She takes my hand and leads me across the floor of her mother’s room. The queen’s mirror—taller than I am and twice as wide—shows two girls with hands clasped, flushed with excitement and gorgeously wrapped in color. I hardly recognize myself; the shieldmaiden in the mirror is an avatar of possibility, someone I could be, but am not allowed to.
“Look at us,” my liege says. She twirls, and the red dress flares around her like a ring of petals. I grab her hands and we dance the way we used to as children, clumsy and stumbling. The bells on my hem sing in a dozen voices. She’s laughing and I’m laughing, and the peacock silk is honey against my skin, and I feel I might float into the air at any moment. My weight means nothing, and in this unmooring I loosen my jaw and let spill careless words with a smile.
“My beloved, my liege, you are the most beautiful princess in all the land.”
She shrieks, half in embarrassment, half in delight, and pushes me over onto the bed. We land in the nest of dresses, and she looms over me, golden hair spilling into my face. Breathless.
“And you are the most loyal, the most noble protector a princess could hope to have.”
For long seasons we have carried longing in our chests like bird eggs, too timid to handle them, afraid of what might hatch. But this brilliant moment shines with audacity and I, emboldened by its brassiness, lean up to kiss her.
She freezes. I freeze—I’ve been too bold. I’ve crossed a line. Then I realize her terror is not directed at me, but at a more distant source. I turn.
Standing in the doorway, tall and broad and draped in furs, is her father the king.
My liege pushes off the bed—leaps away, really—but the damage is done. The king marches towards us, a column of fury. He who is the Cetus King, savior of men, uniter of the land, and vanquisher of the Blood Witch, bears down on us with all the rage he has. The world crumbles like clay, light and hope splintering into gray dust.
“Father, I—”
“That’s enough.” The king’s anger is familiar enough to lance me through with fear. I should be jumping to my liege’s defense, the way she jumped to mine earlier, but I am frozen, a coward. My liege stands square-shouldered, still fearless, as her father stares her down, twice her size, ruddy at the sorry mess around us. “You are a disgrace to your lineage,” he growls. “To think that I could have raised a son like this—”
“It was only a bit of play,” my liege says, defiant to the last. Thinking to lie her way out of trouble.
“Only a bit of—” The king seizes her by the collar, ruched and elaborate as a pair of lips. Something tears, a seam yielding to the roughness of his fingers. I can’t stand it anymore.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty. It was my idea. My liege had nothing to do with it.”
The king drops his burden and turns on me as my liege mouths my name in horror: my birth name, the name I told her never to call me.
“You,” he says. “I should have known.”
I steel myself for a blow that never comes. Someone like me isn’t worth the king’s effort to punish.
“Of course I should have known,” he says. “A degenerate like you... the nature of your birth... Of course you would only poison my son with your filth. But I gave you a chance. More chances than you deserved. My son loved you. You were his best friend. I was a fool. That foolishness will now be rectified.”
“Father, please,” my liege says, tugging at his sleeve. Still trying to protect me. But she is no longer a child, and her damp eyes no longer have the same pull on her father as they once did.
“You,” he says. “To your chambers. And stay there. I will think of how to deal with you later.”
Mother comes to my cell that night, a warm, dark presence in the guttering lamplight. The guard lets her past the bars without a word. She must have bribed him. Or perhaps they’re friends. Father does not allow me to see her, but she comes to see me anyway, every now and then. She still smells like the kitchen at this hour; I reckon the scent never leaves you. They say I look like her, with my skin and my hair. Too much like her, probably, the way people glance sideways at me. Mother knows about the ways of the world, both the seen and the unseen. Some of the guards call her a witch, but she’s just Mother to me. She was the first one I told. About being a girl.
She hugs me. “My dear child,” she says. “My girl. You have to leave this place. It’s no longer safe for you.”
I nod; my throat is raw and mucus-clogged still. She wipes at my face, then says: “Here, I’ve brought some things for your journey.”
Mother isn’t the sentimental kind—she was never good with words. She’s brought a rough hemp dress in my size, neatly folded. A traveling cloak to match. A bagful of supplies—preserved fruit, dried meats, biscuit, a square of hard cheese. A pouch of coins with a range of patinas betraying their ages.
“What journey?”
“Listen,” Mother says, pressing my palms together. “And listen carefully. There is a witch who lives in the forest to the west, at the foot of Crow Mountain. Do you know the place? Where the poplar bends just so, at the fork in the road? You used to accompany the young master there for training...”
“Young mistress,” I correct her.
Mother smiles and rubs my cheek fondly. I realize she is saying goodbye to me, as well, and my throat swells up again. She pulls something from her pocket, a muslin pouch with a sharp, earthy smell. Inside: strange herbs, glittering stones, other things I cannot name.
“Take this to the witch in the forest, and she will grant you your fondest desire.”
“My fondest desire...” I shake my head. “What I ask for is impossible.”
“Not for her.” She squeezes my bruised arms, and the sadness in her eyes could fell fortresses. “Go. Be swift and silent. Become who you were always meant to be.”
But I am a fool who cannot leave well enough alone, and I had to see her one last time. With the dark as my cover I flit upwards to my liege’s chambers and slip inside unnoticed. They have trained me well. My liege wakes with a soft confusion that turns instantly sharp and needy when she recognizes me.
“My love! Did they hurt you?”
“No,” I say, as she buries her face in my neck. My chest aches. We have loved each other since before we knew our names, yet in retrospect all that time seems like nothing. Why couldn’t we have had one more day? One more week? One more summer? I have so many things I have yet to say to her.
“I’m coming with you,” she says. This after I tell her where I’m going, and why. She’s already climbing out of bed, lighting a candle, everything else forgotten.
“But your duties,” I say.
“Fuck my duties,” she says. “My duties can drown in the bottom of a well.”
“But your father—”
She turns, and the candle outlines the knit of her brow, the twist of her jaw. “My father can drown in a well, too.”
From a chest under her bed she pulls out a dress the soapy color of bluebells. Too coarse for her station, but too fine for a commoner’s everyday wear.
“I stole it from a serving-girl’s cupboard,” she admits. “I suppose it was precious to her. Perhaps. I left some coin for her. She could just get a new one from the market, couldn’t she?”
It takes her no time at all to assemble supplies for a long journey. Food, medicines, a dagger she fastens around her waist. A pouchful of money, more than my mother could have saved in a lifetime. She moves with practiced ease, as though running a routine she has envisioned a thousand times in her mind.
“How long ago did you decide on this?” I ask.
She frowns. “I decided nothing. These preparations were made just in case.”
Before we leave we sneak into the armory and steal weapons. My liege takes a bow and quiver, which she prefers to the blade. To me she hands an iron sword and leather shield. Not the best, but useful, and light enough for travel. Something that might not be missed. Something that will not stand out.
We flee the castle under the auspices of a velvet sky peppered with stars. The moon hangs high and waxy and cold, casting road and rough in gleaming blue. I turn back to look at the place I once thought of as home, but its bulk is impossible to make out in the dark. My liege tugs at my hand and we vanish into the night.
By the time a pink bite of dawn shows on the horizon, the next hamlet over is a foggy smear in our sights. We have run through the night, making quick time, but we have also run ourselves ragged. We have not slept, and the ache in my flesh penetrates my marrow. My liege and I have an argument about what to do. I think we should rest in the woods, hidden from sight. She wants to go into the town and spend the day in a bed, a real bed. I argue that this is foolish and risky, but she wins the argument. Although we are no longer princess and shieldmaiden, in so many ways we are still princess and shieldmaiden. It takes another hour to reach the hamlet, by which time I can no longer feel my feet. I was barely fed while imprisoned, but my liege does not know this.
The hamlet has one inn, which slants in the yellow morning light. To me its facade looks like a leering face. Despite my misgivings we go in. There’s a wide-hipped woman there, cleaning last night’s spills off the tables. She straightens up too fast when she sees us.
“My lady! How may I serve your needs?”
My liege seems startled. “I would like a bed for the night, if you have any.”
“But the night is fresh over... well, I suppose it matters not.” She wipes her hands on her skirts. “What of your servant? Will she share your bed? There’s space yet in the stables...”
My liege freezes, stiffens, then gestures to me. “Let’s go. I’ve changed my mind.”
It was the shoes that gave her away. Thick-soled, made of fine leather, lacking the wear of a wandering adventurer. That, or her cloak, forest-green and sturdy and never patched. The news that the heir to the throne has gone missing will not percolate here until later today, or perhaps even tomorrow, but the memory of a noble lady and her servant will stick in the innkeeper’s mind.
“You were right,” my liege says. “I’m sorry.”
I think of sleeping in the stables, but as I do so the stable boy walks past us, and the leer on his face is the same as the leer on the building, and I change my mind. The world is full of dangers for two young women, particularly two young women like us, and I have a duty to protect my liege.
In the end we rest in the woods like I’d originally suggested, nesting in the moss between two oaks. Nothing will harm us in the wild; nothing ever has. I am my liege’s lucky charm, they used to say. But the truth is the dappled green holds more peace than the hard edges of life in the royal court. Life here is softer and brighter and borderless.
So we travel to the witch’s forest this way, resting in daylight and traveling by moonlight. We ration the supplies we have, hunt for fresh meat, and harvest fruit and mushrooms where we find them. It comes to us without thought, we who have spent so much of our young lives living off the land. As insurance. To toughen us up. They thought to train us for war as men, but they were really training us to live in the world as women. Sometimes we stop to dip our feet in the cold clear of streams. I braid my liege’s hair in ways we have never been allowed. We talk about the names we want to use.
“If the witch would grant us each a new body,” she says, “what kind of body would you like? Me, I think I would like to be tall, still. Perhaps with longer hair. What do you think?”
“You can always grow out your hair, you know.” I brush silken strands from her face, contemplative. The sunlight is warm and slow and sleepiness is overcoming me. The ache of being away from everything I have ever known fades with each day. “I think I would like to be more like my mother.”
“It sounds lovely,” she says, eyelids fluttering into sleep.
By the time we reach the witch’s forest, weeks later, the bruises left by my father have completely faded.
An old woman suns herself on a stone under the crooked poplar, her belongings resting in a grey pile by her side. Legs outstretched, entirely carefree, she offers us a gummy smile as we come up to her. It is late afternoon and my liege and I are exhausted: we sacrificed rest to cover the last ten miles of our journey.
“Why, my dear girls,” she says, “the day is too pleasant to be going about in such a big hurry. Whereabouts are you headed?”
“Grandmother,” I say, with all the respect my mother has taught me, “we are looking for the witch who lives in this forest. Do you know where we might find her?”
“A witch? Ha! Ha! What do you want an old witch for, anyway?”
“To grant us our hearts’ desires,” says my liege.
The old woman scans us up and down with her dark eyes, so deeply hooded and canny. “And what may your hearts’ desires be?”
“Only the freedom to be who we truly are,” I say.
The old woman squints at us, and I feel as though I am made of glass, and she can peer through me like a window, all the way to the depths of my beating heart.
“Hmph,” she says. “Girls these days are so easy to please. In the old days they would ask for a husband or untold riches. Gewgaws and a soft life! But freedom, eh? What a thing to ask for.” She gestures to the thick woods behind her. “Well, the witch’s house lies in the heart of that there forest. See the path yonder, between the oak and the myrtle? Follow it and you will find what you seek. A house with red shingles and yellow ivy over the door. Can’t miss it.” She cackles. “But beware! For those woods are indeed a witch’s wood, and you may find dangers and strange obstacles in your way. Go boldly and go truly, and maybe they’ll leave you alone.”
“Thank you, grandmother,” I say.
“Thank me? Ha! Ha! No need. You have provided me entertainment this day, and that is enough.”
“What a strange character,” says my liege as we walk away. But I don’t think the old woman’s strange at all. She seemed purposeful, as if she talked to us for a reason.
When I turn back to look, the rock under the crooked poplar is cool and empty, as if the woman has simply evaporated. The fields around us wave placidly in the breeze. We are—and perhaps have been—entirely alone. Was the old woman an illusion? Or was she sent to wait for us?
“We should be careful,” I say. I think of all the stories my mother has told me about witches, and what should be done around them. Witches have to be respected. They demand it.
Dimness awaits us in the forest. The trees here seem older, more self-assured, their crowns twisted together and sparing with the light. Moss curls around our feet as we walk in the silence. My liege takes my hand.
“How peaceful it is,” she whispers. “How beautiful. Cool. Not too light, not too dark. Don’t you think?”
“It is peaceful,” I agree. But not because of the light or the breathless air. Here, the whole world feels like it knows what it is doing. Like everything is just right.
We sit for a while and eat the last of our supplies. My liege puts her head in my lap and drinks in the filtered gold descending softly to earth. She smiles at me.
I say: “I could stay here forever. I’ve always liked the forest better than the royal court.”
She shuts her eyes. “A misfortune of birth. Duty and family—if I could, I would shed them like old skin.”
“Are we not here to do that?”
She opens her eyes, blinking into the sunlight. A slight frown crosses her face and she gets up. “We should keep going.”
So we do. We follow the scrubby, winding path through the forest, which is larger than it looked on the outside, because we walk for hours and there is yet more forest waiting for us.
“Are we lost?” wonders my liege.
“I don't think so. There hasn’t yet been a fork in the path.”
“I wonder what these woods have in store for us,” she says. But it isn’t wonder that fills her voice. She sounds tired.
The light grows yellower before it shades into dusk. Soon it will be too dark to travel; the trees are too thickly woven to let in moonlight. Worry creeps into my heart, not because I fear the forest around us, but because I fear we have failed a test, somehow. Something has gone wrong.
My liege asks again: “Are we lost?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we should turn back.”
For the first time I hear uncertainty in her voice. I do not want to turn back. “We should be there soon.”
“If there’s a house ahead, we should see lights,” she says. “I do not see lights. Do you?”
“It’s too early for that. Come on.” Stubbornly, I take the lead, and she falls into step behind me. I pray to the spirits of the air and water that I am not wrong. That something good is coming. We cannot—I will not—turn back.
We are being followed. I first become aware of it as a series of soft sounds, ferns rustling, hot breath that isn’t mine or hers. A low growl like the voice of an angry father.
“We are being followed,” says my liege. “Who’s there? Show yourself.”
A sound; we turn. A black shadow steps out of the brush, winding slyly between the twisted trunks of oak. Wolf-shaped, but not a wolf: a creature the size of a bear, with eyes that glow like a winter’s fire. A smile that belongs on the face of no natural creature.
“Hello, little girls,” it says. “Have you come to feed your uncle wolf?”
I draw my blade. “You are no uncle of ours. Stay back, lest I paint the ground of this forest with your blood.”
“Tsk. How you repay my courtesy with threats of violence! The men who raised you have trained you well, I see.”
“You threatened to eat us,” says my liege.
“Ah!” The wolf laughs. “I never said such a thing! Why would I eat you, little scrapling? The flesh of humans is so unappetizing. Dry and stringy and tasteless. Your desires, on the other hand, are nectar and honey to me. How juicy they are, sweeter than the brightest summer fruit. Give me your wants, little girls. I will eat them from you. They will fill my hungry belly.”
A trickster. Mother has told me about them.
“We’ll do nothing like that,” I spit, before grabbing my liege’s wrist with my free hand. We flee up the path, away from the wolf-not-wolf. My shield bounces upon my back. “Don’t listen to anything it says!”
My legs are burning, but not as badly as my chest. Air hurts my lungs, which can never have enough. My liege stumbles, exhausted, and I pull her forward. I drop my shield. We run some more. Thank the spirits our waterskins are empty and our bags have been lightened. More weight that we do not need. Soon, soon—we just have to reach the witch’s house before our pursuer does—
The wolf lopes beside us, tongue lolling. “Come, now,” it says. “These desires weigh so heavily upon you. Give them to me, and they will trouble you no more.”
“Leave us alone,” I gasp. “We will give you nothing.”
“Are you not tired of running?” the wolf asks. Grinning its sharp-toothed grin. “Your natures are ill-suited to the lives you were born into. Let me take them from you. Do you not wish to live life unburdened?”
Its voice is sweet. It says things so close to the sentiments we have whispered to one another for years, sleeping in the wild under the canopy of stars. To live life unburdened. To be free.
“Give me your desires,” the wolf says. “I will eat them and release your hearts from their weight.”
My liege drags upon my wrist as she slows, footsteps losing speed. She is exhausted from so much running. A lifetime of running.
“Don’t you want to go home?” asks the wolf.
Her wrist breaks from my grip as she stumbles to a stop at last. I turn in alarm to see her doubling over, chest heaving with effort. I grab her again and she pulls away.
“I can’t. I’m tired.”
“Please,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It's too much. Maybe he’s right.”
In the dimness I see that wolf has her already. Its smoky tendrils twine over her calves and ankles and its jaws are locked on her forearm. Am I too late? My liege looks at me, her eyes shining.
“I’m sorry.”
“Aurora,” I say. The name she said she wanted.
“Go on,” she says. “Leave me. Find the witch and claim your heart’s desire.”
Leave her to be eaten. To be picked apart, consumed, and the remains put back together by the wolf. To stand up once again the young prince, child of the Cetus King, heir to the throne of the country. To go home the prodigal son and forget all she has dreamed, to give in to the upbringing that shaped her, to accept the fate placed upon her by duty, family, obligation. To fill the space she was assigned to when she was born.
“No,” I say. “Never.” For a heart can desire many things, and my heart desires most of all to be with her: two women who chose themselves and chose one another. I dart forward and strike, plunging my blade between the wolf’s eyes. I claim my heart’s desire.
The wolf laughs, a rumble through my bones that lightens into evening birdsong and the gossip of leaves in the wind. The shadow dissolves into smoke, and then nothingness. My liege folds in half and crumples as though her strings were cut.
“Aurora,” I whisper, gathering her into my arms. “Aurora?”
She breathes still, pale and delicate. I look up the path and see lamplight peeking from between the trees. The witch’s house. It has been there all along.
I shed everything: sword, bag, all I’d brought. The herb pouch my mother gave me is mysteriously missing. When did I lose it? Could it have been earlier? I carry my liege up the path towards the witch’s house.
The trees part before me and open into a large clearing in which a low-slung cottage waits. Red tiles on the roof, yellow ivy over the door. It looks unbearably pleasant, even in the fast-fading light. An herb garden, a vegetable plot, a pond with cat-rushes and lilies. The door to the cottage is open, and I carry my beloved over its threshold.
“Hello?”
The house is empty, although the hearth is stoked. Bread and fruit sit in a basket on the table. A bundle of herbs hang over each window, and the air is sweetly spiced. A breath of welcome—the cottage has been waiting for us. Already my bones feel lighter. More at ease. Perfectly shaped.
Somehow, none of this surprises me. Somehow, this is exactly what I expected.
I lay my beloved upon the bed, made up with white sheets, large enough for two.
“Rest, my darling,” I say. “We are finally home.”
In the morning I am woken by the yellow sun that slants in through the window. My love is already outside, exploring, exclaiming with delight and wonder. I stretch, and saunter to join her. We have all the time in the world.
“Come look,” she says, pointing at the golden surface of the pond. The light catches her hair like it’s full of stars. I go over and look where she points and there, reflected upon the calm surface, are the two of us. The witch and her beloved, the most beautiful woman in all the land.