Carole wasn’t the only hungry one in the neighborhood. Bright eyes watched and a stomach that could have been mistaken for a bear growled from within the forest as the girls hopped from the chariot and unhitched Anastasia. The swan had worn the harness for so long that her feathers were rubbed away beneath it, a circumstance that led to a lot of hissing and fussing.
“I suppose that will leave some ghastly calluses on my alabaster skin when I resume my true form,” she fretted.
“Maybe you could wear another kind of harness to cover them up—something in gold with emeralds or pearls, maybe—and start a new fashion.”
Bronwyn nodded wisely. “Since I look so fetching in armor, all the court ladies have affected it recently.”
“I think,” the swan said shortly, “that there is no time like the present to begin my journey. I shall be gone but a day or two.” Then she folded her half-furled wings and asked kindly, “But how thoughtless I am! You children must be very hungry. You’ll be famished before your people can fetch you. However will you survive till then?”
“We won’t even notice starving,” Bronwyn promised. “We’ll have our minds upon affairs of state. I shall solicit the commoner’s viewpoint from Carole.”
“Thanks awfully,” Carole said.
“There are those tasty plants in the bottoms of pools, you know,” the swan said. “I could pull some up for you before I go.”
“Er—never mind,” Carole said, and shrugged. “We can always fish, and there’re berries this time of year, bound to be. Oh, and I almost forgot. I’ve some biscuits in my…” she dug into her still damp pockets and extracted a shapeless lump of mush which stuck to her fingers. “Well, they’re a bit soggy, but we can manage.”
“Yes,” Bronwyn agreed brightly, though she’d never fished nor eaten berries off the bush and had no idea how anyone could eat such things. “We shall roast them on a spit inside my helmet, as I’ve done so often when in the field with Father. I know exactly how to do it.”
“Don’t worry.” Carole almost laughed at the puzzled note in Bronwyn’s voice. “We’ll figure it out. You just fly for help, Your Highness, and never mind us.”
“Very well. Stay in this precise place so your people can locate you from my directions.”
“We will,” Carole promised, regarding ruefully the pasty mess on her hands. “I want to be home for a real supper tomorrow.”
The girls watched quietly as the great swan fanned her wings and swept skyward, above the spiring trees, momentarily eclipsing the sun with her body.
But she had no sooner cleared the beach and topped the first line of trees in the forest behind where Bronwyn and Carole stood when something sparkled briefly against the green, and spun upward, like a shooting star in reverse, and Anastasia cried out with swan’s eerie trumpeting. One wing flapping feebly, the other crumpled against her body, she tumbled crazily, plummeting into the woods.
Bronwyn and Carole exchanged a brief startled glance. Then Bronwyn clamped on her helmet, grabbed up her shield and sword, and sprinted into the woods, Carole close on her heels.
They were only just in time to avert a tragedy, though to whom the tragedy would have occurred was far from certain. Anastasia leaned lopsidedly in a small clearing, the hilt of a dagger buried in one shoulder, a ruby ribbon trickling from it. The injured shoulder was the only part of her that was still.
Her beak slashed, stabbed, darted, and snaked back to strike again while her good wing whipped up and down, scattering fall leaves and dirt with each beat. She hissed hideously and no wonder. A plumpish, swarthy boy with black hair and a gleefully ravenous expression on his face worried her like a cat teasing an oversized sparrow.
He feinted, jabbed, circled her—always avoiding the powerful uninjured wing and grabbing, when he thought he could get away with it, at the knife in the wound.
Bronwyn strode forward and simply pushed the boy off his feet, planting her sword point calmly in his gullet. “Hold knave, or by my grandfather’s noble bones I’ll spit you as I did the Black Knight when last he trifled with a friend of mine.”
The boy didn’t know who Bronwyn’s grandfather was nor to which black knight she referred, but he did know when he was in trouble.
“Spare me, great lady! Spare this poor hungry gypsy boy. I’ll give you a share of the meat. Just don’t kill me before I’ve had my last meal, I beg you. Surely such a magnificent lady as you wouldn’t kill a man when his belly’s rumbling?”
Bronwyn tried to look fierce, because after all, Anastasia was an ally and one ought to defend one’s allies, but then, a person could certainly see the boy’s point about eating too. She appealed mutely to Carole. The gypsy caught the look that passed between them and shifted tack.
“Sweet maiden,” he said, squirming to try to capture the witch with his large soulful eyes. “You must not allow your friend to slay me. Why, I hold the key to your fortune. Without me, you never will learn of the beautiful hall you shall someday live in nor the handsome stranger who will come into your life.” The stranger he had in mind, actually, was himself. He thought it unwise to mention that if she succumbed to his blandishments he intended to be out of her life as fast as he was in it, though he still hoped to make off with some of that swan first.
Carole gave him a withering look, turned her nose up and knelt beside the swan. She examined the dagger and entrance wound from all angles. Anastasia looked at her so expectantly that she felt compelled to make some comment.
“Stab wound,” she said with what she hoped was a certain air of witchy professional proficiency.
Anastasia closed her eyes momentarily, as if relieved. Carole was glad the swan was relieved and wished she were. People tended to expect a great deal of witches in difficult situations, even when one hadn’t had time to learn everything there was to know about one’s own powers, much less one’s mother’s and grandmother’s powers. A person just couldn’t help it under such trying circumstances if there were certain deficiencies in one’s competence.
Carole was quite adept at dancing things about and could even do some housework more or less magically this way, making threads dance through needles and needles dance through cloth or dishes through dishwater. In that way her magic roughly paralleled her mother’s hearthcrafting talent. But Mother hadn’t gotten around to showing her what all the powders in her medicine pouch were for, or any of the medicinal arts for which Great-Granny Brown was so well known. Witch from a long line of witches she was, but Carole still couldn’t tell mugwort from wolfsbane. She abandoned at once the idea of dancing the knife out of Anastasia’s wound when she considered what a mess the blade would made cutting capers in the poor swan’s shoulder.
Nevertheless, someone had to do something—and quickly. If only the unicorn’s blessing were still fresh in the river water, the water alone would cure anything. Even then, though, they’d still have to get the knife out of the wound.
Suppressing the niggling idea that one reason she hadn’t learned the healing arts yet was that she was secretly a trifle squeamish, Carole called to her cousin with all the authority suited to the witch in charge of the case. “Bronwyn, leave that little weasel alone for a moment, won’t you, and pull this out of Her Highness. You’re stronger than I am and it ought to come out all in one pull so it won’t hurt so much.”
Bronwyn handed her the sword, still pointed at the boy’s throat, and said, “He must not escape. He is doubtlessly an enemy spy sent to kill enchanted royalty.”
“What royalty?” the boy demanded, sitting halfway up as the blade retreated during the transfer. He lay down again rather quickly as the blade wobbled back into position against his throat. “I harmed no royalty. Just that swan there. They taste like chicken. Ask anyone.”
Bronwyn meanwhile laid down her shield, put both hands on the dagger hilt and pulled. Anastasia gave a long indrawn hiss. She glanced quickly at the blood welling from the dagger hole and flopped her head down, drawing a weary wing over it with one brief willful movement before her entire body toppled over onto her good side.
The gypsy boy laughed a short, nervous laugh. “You have been making sport with me, pretending to be upset and finishing her off yourselves! Ah, well. I am not a greedy man. Are you going to carve or shall I?”
The laugh turned into a cough as Carole pressed forward. “I will, if you don’t belt up.”
The boy’s eyes widened with dismay. “But you are serious! That swan is some kind of friend of yours. Ah, forgive me. It is just my luck that the first drumstick I meet has friends in high places.”
“She’s a princess,” Carole said, and even though she hadn’t been particularly impressed with Anastasia’s claim, she wanted the boy to be. “She was going to help us get out of here and even get Bronwyn’s curse removed when you butted in.”
“Princess? Bronwyn? Curse? Say, you do not mean—she cannot be—” He sat up as far as the sword point would permit and squinted at Bronwyn and the swan, then back at Carole, recognition and a wide white smile dawning on his dusky face. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “What great good fortune to meet together on the same day Bronwyn the Bald-Faced Liar and Magda Brown’s witchling! And what luck for you, pretty ladies. For today the stars have smiled upon you and led you if not quite out of the wilderness at least into the protection of Jack the Gypsy.”
* * *
Later, leaning back on his elbows and toasting his feet by a cozy fire, Jack rubbed his stomach and sighed. “How clever you are to whistle the fishes from the river, Lady Carole. Though I practically had to force myself to eat, you understand, so shattered was I to realize I had harmed that wonderful swan-princess. It was only because I was so hungry, you know. Berries alone are not food enough for a man, and my snares have yielded little. Otherwise, I would not have touched your friend. I am very fond of animals. They all like me. Perhaps they know that my own grandfather was once a bear, bewitched into that guise by the same evil man who has cursed the Princess Bronwyn.” He shrugged. “For whatever reason, beasts and I understand each other. As I say, they like me. And it is a very good thing for us that fishes like you.”
Carole blushed under his rather self-consciously smoldering gaze. Though he looked a bit younger than she and also as if his recent experience was the only one he had ever had with hunger in his entire life, he was undeniably handsome, with his dark curls and merry grin. She was gratified she had thought of whistling the fish out of the river, where Jack and Bronwyn could catch, kill, and clean them. Jack had a dry tinder box and was an expert fire builder (“If there’s one thing gypsies know about, it’s campfires,” he’d assured them) they were all soon comfortably full of fish and relatively warm.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said modestly. “Just a little trick I do. And I shouldn’t worry too much about Anastasia. She’s just sleeping now. I’m sure of it. I don’t think the wound is as bad as we thought. Probably the fall just knocked the wind out of her.”
“Still,” Jack said, “Never will I forgive myself if her injury proves permanent. To think that I struck down the only creature who could lift the curse of Bronwyn the—the so-beautiful Princess Bronwyn—”
“And it doesn’t bother you nearly as much that you prevented us from being rescued, I suppose,” Bronwyn said. She was not about to be fooled by his flattery now. She’d heard what he called her earlier and besides, it wasn’t hard for anyone as familiar with falsehood as she to know one when she heard one.
“Never fear, dear lady. Have I not said luck has smiled upon you and sent you to me? I like you. I take you under my protection. There is nothing more with which to concern yourselves. We have fire, we have fish, we have the great outdoors…”
“We have winter coming,” Carole said. He was, after all, only a boy, no matter how nice-looking.
“That should not be troublesome to Master Jack,” Bronwyn said sweetly. “He knows everything—who you are, who I am and all of the fond nicknames by which my subjects call me. Surely he knows—”
“Ah, my dear Princess, I see I have offended you!” With the graceful leap of a well-fed housecat who knows on which side its bread is buttered, the boy flowed to his feet and back down on his knee in front of her. “Had your garment a hem I would assuredly kiss it but under the circumstances,” he looked significantly at her grubby bare knees between the mid-thigh hem of her under-tunic and the top of her sandal laces. “Well, yes, anyway. The name given you by those who have never seen your towering loveliness nor felt the tremendous power of your charming blade came to my tongue only because since I first heard it while listening to my father and grandmother talk at night behind the curtains of our wagon, the idea of the beautiful princess whose lies put those of a gypsy to shame has burned in my imagination as one to cherish.”
Carole giggled. “Cousin, it sounds to me as if you’ve met your match.”
“Surely not!” Bronwyn replied, blushing till her freckles were joined in a uniform shade of peach.
“And Lady Carole,” Jack said, “How can you fail to recognize me? We two played together among the tents of my people when we were but infants? Your parents and mine fought brave battles together and it is well known among my folk that the only women in Argonia as darkly beautiful as gypsies are the bewitching Brown sorceresses. Who else should I think you are when I know you are no woman of my tribe and yet look enough like me that you could be my cousin as well as the Princess Bronwyn’s?”
“Too bad you didn’t figure all this out before you knifed Anastasia,” Carole said. She remembered her father’s songs about those battles Jack spoke of. What the gypsy boy wasn’t mentioning was that Carole’s folks and his had been on opposite sides in at least one of those battles.
He shrugged. “As you say, it is a little wound. It will surely mend.”
“Don’t tease, Carole,” Bronwyn said. “Think how good it was of Jack to come to these woods specifically with the idea of protecting us and helping us in our quest to end my curse.”
Jack waggled a finger, still slick with fish grease, at her. “How alike all you ladies are, even princesses and witches, to think that a prince of the gypsies has no better business than to wait around in the woods to help you. I was here on another matter altogether.…”
“Wait a minute,” Carole said. “Don’t tell me you’re royalty too?” She was beginning to feel very left out.
“Oh, yes, dear ladies. My grandmother Xenobia is Queen of the Gypsies and my grandfather is none other than the rightful Crown Prince of Ablemarle, the Prince H. David Worthyman. My father, his heir, is prince of gypsies and Ablemarle both. I am to succeed him, after I—”
“How can it be, Prince Jack,” Bronwyn asked, suspicion darkening her tone again, “that you are our friend and your grandfather too and he a Prince of Ablemarle when Worthyman the Worthless, Ablemarle’s King, is now such a great good friend of my father that my father and his army journey into the Gulf on ships to meet Ablemarle’s army half way?”
Jack, not yet used to Bronwyn’s phrasing, looked puzzled, but Carole reminded him sternly, “We are at war with Ablemarle, in case you’d forgotten. You’re not a spy, are you?”
He laughed with somewhat strained heartiness. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, dear ladies! My grandfather, I tell you, is the good, legitimate prince of Ablemarle, who should be King instead of his worthless brother on the throne. That is why my grandfather is even now fighting at the side of your own papa, Princess, and my father as well. I will go to join them as soon as I have passed to manhood and resumed my rightful position as prince.”
“And when and how does that happen?” Carole asked, yawning. She was getting bored with these two blowhards.
“Why, it is happening right now, Carole! Even as you look at me, even as I sit here beside you, protecting you from great dangers, I am fulfilling also my obligation to my people, to show them I am worthy of becoming not only a man of our tribe, but a prince as well.”
“How convenient.” Carole yawned again. But Bronwyn’s green eyes were big with fascination. She very much enjoyed listening to someone even more full of wild stories than she was.
“It seems to me it must be terrifically hard,” she said, watching him rub his full belly and settle back again beside the fire.
“Oh, yes, my princess. Yes, indeed. For to gain these honors, I must bide here in the wilderness, unaided by my people, and prove my courage and cunning by—er—doing a great deed. Preferably several.” He chose not to be more specific, in the interests of the picture of himself and his people he wished to present to his illustrious hostesses. Actually, the rules of his manhood test said he was supposed to go into the wilderness unaided and somehow or other make a profit, in gold, on whatever he did. Since this part of the country was relatively uninhabited, there were few purses from which even the most accomplished gypsy could profit, which was what made it such a difficult trial. A future King of the Gypsies was, however, expected to overcome such piddling obstacles.
As if the task wasn’t hard enough of itself, Jack had been left with nothing but his clothing, dagger, flint, steel, and tinderbox, plus his wits, and his considerable appetite, while his formidable grandmother led his mother and the rest of the tribe south for the winter, promising to return for what was left of him on their way to the eastern coast for the spring smuggling season.
Bronwyn and Jack yammered on about responsibilities to one’s people, he making pronouncements, she saying the opposite of what a princess would normally say, followed by Jack trying to figure out what she meant. Carole couldn’t think of much to add so she whistled sticks into piles or danced leaves into pyramids or plaited her hair without touching it, which was tricky. Every so often she rose to see how Anastasia was faring. She was always the same. Sleeping. Head under wing. Bleeding stopped.
As the sun set, the wind rose, and Carole’s appetite began plaguing her again. “I’m hungry,” she announced.
“And then my mama rides this trick horse in between the wagons, see, and they just leap the campfire. Everyone is always amazed at how easily…” Jack was saying.
“Just like my war horse, Hailing Hooves, I’ll wager. He can do that, only a lot better,” Bronwyn answered.
Carole cleared her throat. “Is anyone else hungry? I think I’ll go see about some fish.” She had a totally un-magical premonition she was going to get very tired of fish before they got out of this situation unless someone else had some idea how to get food. The idea of singing to a rabbit or a bird and then killing it was distasteful. And she was not only hungry, but cold in spite of her cloak, which she’d reclaimed from Bronwyn. Now that the princess was dry, she didn’t seem to mind the cold any more than Jack did. Carole supposed that was because even though Bronwyn was palace-bred, she was still of frost giant lineage, and who ever heard of a frost giant minding a little chill? And gypsies were used to the wide-open spaces that gave Carole the odd feeling she was emptying out everything that was important about her into them. She wanted her own bed between the walls of her own room with her own pillow and the yellow-bordered brown wool blanket mother had woven just for her.
As she rose to her feet and shook the numbness from one leg, Jack and Bronwyn nodded absently at her and waved, not seeming to hear what she’d said, probably because each of them had had twice as much fish as she before. She slogged back through the bushes to the gravelly river beach and hunkered down beside the water. The river seemed strange now that it just sort of rushed and didn’t say anything in particular. Though she thought when she listened closely she could make out a word here and there and even, perhaps, something of a rhythm. But it was only a whisper. Probably the glacier and the mountain filtered out the spell.
It was chilly with no trees to shield her from the wind as she squatted, her skirts whipping about her in the shadow of the great mountain, extending on both sides into the glacier-spiked range. Goosebumps pimpled her arms and she whistled her fishing song slowly—not the jig she’d trilled at lunch but a melancholy air. She usually used the first song when she fished with Dad. He liked that tune. Her talent tickled him, being so much like his own. Mum was always wanting her to learn to do practical things with it like washing dishes and churning butter, but even Mum never turned down a nice mess of fish to fry.
By the end of the first bar, a silvery fish undulated to the top of the milky water, flopped up and onto the bank where it writhed along with her tune. In a short time another did likewise, and another, and she was about to call her lazy companions and demand that if they wanted to share in the catch they’d have to come help kill and dress the dish—when she realized that her tune was not unaccompanied.
A harp? No, a flute—no, perhaps it was a lute, playing the tune way off downstream, so far away that Carole knew no amount of looking or casual strolling away from camp would reveal the musician. Still, she longed to try. She wouldn’t be missed surely, the way Bronwyn and Jack were carrying on. As for the fish—
Bronwyn burst out of the woods waving both arms exultingly. Jack walked behind her at a more dignified pace, a grin on his face. “She’s asleep! She’s asleep!” Bronwyn was shouting. “Carole, come quick! Anastasia is fast asleep.”
The music was drowned out in the commotion and Carole scowled at them. “You don’t have to yell, do you? Someone else is here and they’re playing my song back to me.” She cupped her ear, but the music was gone. “You scared them away.”
“Well, I’ll just go tell Anastasia to wake up again, if that’s how you’re going to be,” Bronwyn huffed.
“What? Anastasia to—oh. Oh! She woke up? Why didn’t you say so?”
The three of them turned back towards where Anastasia waited, no longer fainting but sore and silent. Jack was silent now too, and he frowned importantly, as if he was considering a far weightier matter than the preparation of fish. Carole picked up Bronwyn’s helmet and headed for the river.
“Where are you going?” he asked gravely.
“I thought Anastasia might like a drink before we turn in.”
He shook his head slowly and said portentously, “I would not do that if I were you, Carole. It is not good to go to the river now.”
“Not good? What do you mean not good? We’ve been at the river all day.”
Jack lowered his voice and walked towards her slowly, flaring the fingers of both hands dramatically. “That music you hear could be the river men, calling you. They like young girls. They have castles at the bottoms of the rivers and are armed with pitchforks, like angry farmers.” He shuddered. The lore about the river men was only hearsay, but angry farmers were a fact of gypsy life.
“Oh, very well,” Carole said, though she privately thought river men sounded interesting, and that if they had been the ones playing, she’d like to meet them, whatever Jack said. But he sounded serious, though she was sure he was exaggerating because he liked scaring her. Anyway, she was too tired to argue. So she whistled up a pile of leaves for a bed for the three of them and another for cover. Bronwyn and Jack fell quickly asleep and shortly afterwards, she heard Anastasia struggle upright and limp toward the river, and thought the swan must be feeling better if she felt like swimming. Perhaps she’d be well enough to fly again soon.
The music that woke her in the middle of the night wasn’t one of her tunes, and it wasn’t instrumental. This time she heard a voice—a wonderfully familiar voice, but she couldn’t make out just who.
She sat up in a cold mist. The river was pouring it out in thick billows, so that she had trouble picking her way down to the shore. She couldn’t see Anastasia, but then, she couldn’t see much of anything. All she could do was feel the frosty night air and hear the music cutting across it.
She wanted to call out to whomever was singing and ask them to come closer, and to tell them she was lost, but she was afraid Jack would wake up and scare them away again. The music seemed to come from right down the middle of the river. Perhaps the musicians were camped on a sandbar? Cautiously she waded out, too intent on the music to realize that once her legs were in the water they were no longer cold, that in fact the deeper into the water she got, not only the better could she hear the music but the better she felt all over. It wasn’t until she inadvertently stepped in a hole and ducked her head under completely that she found that she could, by some trick of acoustics, hear the music amplified under water. The voice didn’t belong to any river man or men. It was her mother’s familiar husky voice and she was singing to Carole to come to her, downstream, to meet her. Carole began to swim as she’d never before known she could.
Though still asleep, Bronwyn had been aware when Carole left the leaf pile, leaves rustling the way they do, but had assumed her cousin had only had to avail herself of the privacy of the woods for the usual reasons. It was a dream, not Carole, that actually woke her. The dream was of her mother calling her, singing to her, and though Bronwyn couldn’t remember why, the song made her sad and filled her again with the hurt and longing she hadn’t been able to speak of at the time of her exile. Sniffling clandestinely, Bronwyn stretched out her hand to touch her shield, and stroked it for comfort, as she always did when she felt bad.
The dream singing faded, and with it the recollection of most of the sadness, though traces of both the feeling and a faint echo of the music lingered. She lay with her cheek pressed against the carved wood of the shield and listened for Carole to return, or maybe to holler that a bear was after her and would Bronwyn be so kind as to get up and save her? The red wood was polished smooth by years of handling, and Bronwyn almost thought she could smell the ale-and-tobacco smell of her father’s hands on it. It made her feel close to him, and safe, as it had since she was a baby. The wood was of the rowan, not only her last name but the symbol of her family and anathema to magic. Sort of magic in its own way, really, in that it had the power to repel spells set against it. Too bad she hadn’t had it when the sorcerer cursed her—or when Carole marched her into the river, for that matter. She almost fell asleep again holding onto it, still hearing the whispery music and watching the mist weave through the trees.
Jack sat up and rubbed his eyes, scattering the leaves willy-nilly. “Mama?” he asked, in a very young voice, then added something plaintive and muffled in what must have been the gypsy tongue. Before it dawned on Bronwyn that he was not talking to her, he stood up and headed for the river, plowing right through the bushes and not seeming to mind when they slapped his face and soaked him with the touch of their leaves, which were wet with accumulated dew and mist. Bronwyn knew exactly how wet, because of course she had to follow him. Sleepwalking like that, he might do the same thing she’d done, and walk right into the river, in which case they would both get a great deal wetter.
She caught up with him quickly, grabbing him just as his left foot touched the water. When she put her hand on his shoulder to pull him back, he turned and blinked at her.
“See here, my friend, I know it’s a wonderful time of night to go wading but—” she got no farther. The rush of water being swished aside from its normal course was immediately followed by Anastasia’s black form streaking from the mist. She fluttered toward them awkwardly with one wing only partially extended. Her voice was as shrill as the head chambermaid’s after an unfortunate battle Bronwyn had once had with her new bed-curtains.
“Princess Bronwyn! Ah, Bronwyn! Do not try to save her. She went of her own accord—she—she swam. I could do nothing to stop her, to warn her. You must save yourself! Plug your ears! Do not listen to the sirens! Ah, they are terrible, I tell you, terrible. One of them tried even to seduce my old master. No one can—watch the boy!”
While the swan was carrying on, Jack had pulled his sleeve loose from Bronwyn’s grip and was wading shin-deep into the river. Glad that she didn’t sleep in her armor, Bronwyn waded out after him, and plucked him out again, half carrying him back to shore. He didn’t struggle, but looked puzzled. “What are you doing?” he asked in a normal voice.
“Sirens!” Anastasia said. “They have the girl.”
“But you,” Bronwyn told him, holding him in her shield arm and indicating his wet trouser legs with a wave of her sword hand, “Are much too clever to be fooled the same way.”
“I am always a fool for a beautiful woman,” he said, trying to look smoldering again but mostly looking sleepy and making no attempt to extricate himself from her one-armed embrace. “But if in spite of my warnings, the Lady Carole has fallen for this fish music and even I was taken in by the spell, how did you escape?”
“Overwhelming force of personality and superior intellect,” she said, nodding meaningfully towards her shield, and dumped him in the boat, climbing in beside him.
For a moment he looked from her to her shield and back again. Then he smiled broadly, “Ah!” he said. “A secret weapon. But of course, my Princess would have a secret weapon.” He scooted closer to her shield arm. “Never fear, Your Highness, between your size and that wondrous shield and my cleverness, we shall free Carole from those fish women. And when we have saved Carole, we will make the sirens give us all the sunken treasure they have too.”
“You silly little thug, you have no idea what you’re saying!” Anastasia flapped up beside them. “They are the most hideously dangerous creatures! You will all be killed and I will not be able to help you at all and—oh, wait!” She interrupted herself as the boat bobbed off down the river. “Do wait until I’m healed. I can’t even tow you now but…” But the boat pulled slowly away from her, picking up momentum as the current caught it.
The swan found she could swim a little faster. “Very well, I too shall come. Perhaps the hussies will be afraid to try anything if they see that I am with you, I who know their wicked wiles for the disgraceful tricks they are. Only—wait!” But the boat was already rounding the next curve. Sighing, Anastasia made a sort of hopping swoop to the center of the river, where the current was strongest. She might become separated from the children, but it was impossible for her to get lost. The sirens could be nowhere but in the sea and into the sea the river was inexorably emptying both her and the little boat.