Beauty

There ought to be a law that princesses must be pretty.

I mean, what use are mages and their arts if they can’t make up a spell to fix nature’s mistakes?

o0o

Is that the last thing I wrote in this journal?

So much has happened since I penned that, I don’t know if I ought to laugh or run howling to the mountains.

But still, I didn’t write that so long ago that I don’t still feel twinges of what I felt then.

Just consider the three of us. My older brother Alaraec and my younger sister Oria are both gorgeous: tall, gray-eyed, with long, ordered pale locks just like Father’s. Not that they care. They could have been born squat as pillows, with noses like spoiled potatoes, and squinty crescent eyes like mine that look like you’re laughing even when you’re not, and they wouldn’t have cared, because my brother is too busy learning kingship and my sister’s greatest desire is to go learn magic at the Dyranarya Academy, on the plateau in Western Sartor, as soon as she turns fourteen.

That left me, the one who minded very much having a face as round as a full moon with a body shaped like one of the practice lances down in the courtyard.

Hair? No, I didn’t get the blond locks, or Mother’s wonderful auburn, which I like much better than lemon-colored. My hair—alone in the family--is too dark and dull for blond, but too dull and washed out to be brown.

So did I get any sympathy?

“Stay away from mirrors,” my brother said impatiently.

“Can you reach me that book? And where’s the inkpot?” my sister said. “And why would you want to be pretty anyway? Boys are disgusting.”

Father: “You are all beautiful to me.”

Mother? Her eyes teared up as she tried to smile. “Oh, Elestra, you remind me so much of my mother, and I thought she was the most beautiful person in the world.”

That made me feel like I deserved a squashed potato nose.

So how about friends? They take dainty, beautiful Tara Savona seriously . . . they even take seriously my curvy, sweet-faced Tlanth cousin, who everyone calls Kitten because everything she does is cute, even sleep. Me? What could good old platter-faced, stick-figured Elestra be but funny?

Last New Year’s is a fine example. One snowy morning we were all practicing that new dance from Sartor, and in came Tara, looking more beautiful than ever with her huge sky-colored eyes full of tears and her perfect lips trembling. As usual everyone stopped dancing and rushed to her, murmuring sympathetic questions, to which she cried, as she had so many times ever since we were small, "My mother is so cruel!"

Everyone knows that Tara's mother, the Duchess of Savona, has a temper like a thunderstorm, and Tara and Lady Tamara fight a lot. And doesn’t Tara look stunning when she cries!

As always the girls cooed and fussed, petting her, stroking her beautiful golden hair, and the three handsomest boys in the kingdom tripped over one another offering to fetch her a fan, a glass of wine, whatever she liked.

"No . . . no . . ." she says in a fluttering voice, sinking gracefully onto a pillow. “I’ll survive.”

Of course whatever was happening is over, and the rest of the gathering is devoted to cheering her up.

A month after that my cousin Kitten comes drooping in, her little hands wringing, her rosebud mouth downturned and says, “We have to go back to Tlanth, and it’s soooooo boring there. Won’t anyone come and visit me?”

Every single boy, and half the girls, scramble up, promising to get permission to ride to the mountains at once.

But what happens not a week later, when I fall off my horse into a snow bank, nearly breaking my neck? I know I didn’t look pretty. I stood there shivering, my hair hanging down in a hank that looked like a soggy birdnest, my nose purple with cold.

They all laughed. Laughed! I could just see myself, and I knew if I attempted to cry or wring my hands they’d laugh harder, because I’d look even more laughable, so I said, “Anyone want to dance?”

After which the fellows all walloped me on the back so hard my eyes nearly popped out, saying things like “That’s the spirit, Elestra! Get right up and teach that mare who’s the princess!” And the girls laughed and said, “That Princess Elestra! She’s so funny, but she’s got guts!”

Guts.

Tara and Kitten get glory, and I get left with guts.

So the final blow happened just after I wrote that about laws and pretty princesses. It was a couple evenings following Midsummer’s Eve (ruined by a four-day rainstorm which pleased the farmers, but no one else) and Tara announced one morning that, as the weather made outside sport impossible, she would stage a play. She’d find one during the day and choose the parts that evening.

Evening came, and she said, “We’ll do Jaja the Pirate Queen. Lots of action so the boys will come to watch, and lots of good parts for us girls.”

“I know that play really well,” I exclaimed in delight. “In fact, my tutor made me translate Jaja’s speeches into rhyming Sartoran verse, and I still know ‘em by heart.” For the briefest time I envisioned myself playing the great Jaja, who defeated the evil Brotherhood of Blood pirate fleet—until Tara exchanged looks with all the others and said, sweetly, “But Elestra, this isn’t a comedy.”

A comedy. How they laughed! It wasn’t even mean laughter, so at least I could feel like a victim, which always excuses self-pity (at least to the victim).

No, it was good-natured laughter because of course good ol’ Elestra has guts. She’s funny! You mean funny-looking, I thought, fighting hard against tears.

So I sat there pretending to grin until Tara had handed out all the parts. And what did I get? “We never have enough boys who want to memorize, and you look quite gallant dressed as a boy, Elestra!”

‘Gallant’. She meant, and everyone knew she meant, I have no figure, so I can wear the tight waistcoat currently in fashion for the men.

I fled, holding back the tears all right until I almost crashed into Mama, who was just coming out of Oria’s rooms with an armload of magic books. She frowned, looking anxiously into my face, and said, “Are you all right, sweeting?”

What could I say? “Rotten mood,” I managed.

Mama looked understanding at once. “Go take a ride, or get in some sword practice,” she said with rueful sympathy. “I’m afraid you got those moods from me, and nothing ever worked but exercise.”

I didn’t say that I’d already had a long bout with the sword master that day, and then I took a long ride, just so I could be calm when Tara picked her players at her evening party. I nodded, tried to smile, and stumbled to the one place no one ever gathered in all of Athanarel Palace outside of Court functions: the throne room.

Now, I have to pause and describe the throne room. Someone reading my journal years hence might assume it was a terrible room, but it wasn’t. High windows all around let in the light directly during winter and obliquely during summer, the floor was new tile with patterns of vines and blossoms and birds overlaying the very faint peachy tones of a rising sun, as the outer doors opened to the east.

The most important part was the dais, on which there was no throne, but a great goldenwood tree reaching up three stories, the goldy-silver leaves brushing the dome of glass that my parents had made when that tree so suddenly took root.

‘Suddenly’ because it really wasn’t a tree at all, but a person. To be exact, Lord Flauvic Merindar, who had tried to kill both my parents in a bid to take over the kingdom. It wasn’t they who stopped him, it was the mysterious Hill Folk, who looked to me almost like trees the one time I briefly glimpsed them, high in the mountains behind Uncle Bran's castle in Tlanth.

No one knew if Flauvic had lost his humanness when he became a tree. Mama insisted he could hear, and she admitted to me once that for a year or two after she was crowned queen, when she was in a snippy mood she used to go in and lecture that great, beautiful tree on events inside the kingdom—showing that malicious politics and evil mages never win—but after the horrible war swept across the world just after Oria was born, she said she no longer had the heart for lecturing.

And so the tree stood there for years and years, silently presiding over Court petitions and decisions, but otherwise left in peace.

Until that night.

As soon as I fumbled my way into that dark room to be alone a hand clapped over my mouth, pressing hard, and another snapped round my waist. A very strong one.

A soft voice murmured close to my ear, “I had hoped for your mother, but you’ll do.”

Have you ever pricked your finger on a rose thorn? That shooting pang that lances up your finger was akin to the one that lanced through my entire body. I gasped. Or tried to. The hand over my face tightened so I could scarcely draw breath.

The arm round my middle had taken care to pinion both my arms so all I could do was ineffectually waggle my hands. So I strained my eyes to either side, and discovered that the ghostly pale branches of the Flauvic tree no longer arched overhead.

Lord Flauvic Merindar was a man again.

And I was his prisoner.

“I don’t want to have to kill you,” he murmured. “Don’t fight.”

I knew from Mama’s stories about that last terrible day that he would mean exactly what he said. I stopped struggling, and he lifted the one hand away from my mouth.

“Come along.”

“What?”

He still held my arm in a tight grip. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, just the outline of a head and shoulders, and the glint of blue on steel: a knife.

Was he twenty, as he had been when he tried to take the kingdom, or was he closer to forty? Either way, being a tree hadn’t weakened him a mite.

“Come along,” he repeated. And then he whispered some sort of spell, and the back of my neck prickled. A knife didn’t scare me nearly as much as magic did: just before he was made into a tree he had transformed everyone in Athanarel, except for my parents, into stone statues. And one of these he’d tipped over to break into bits. That one had never been transformed back.

The air around me seemed to shimmer now, as if I floated underwater, looking up at the world through the wavering surface.

Out we walked, Flauvic’s assurance reminding me that he knew his way around Athanarel, which, after all, probably hadn’t changed much in twenty years. Rain fell softly, silvery in front of windows, a gray mist elsewhere. My heart thumped with hope when I spotted sentries standing at their posts in the alcoves along the roof. Surely they would see us?

No. They stared out, not asleep, and not ensorcelled, either. One’s gaze even swept right past us. I could see his eyes in the torchlight, but he obviously didn’t see me. It was as if we were invisible—and then I realized what sort of spell Flauvic had cast, one to make others look right past us. The rain helped.

On we walked, past the stable, to the garden, and then through it, both of us now soaking wet, though the air was not cold.

Flauvic did not speak and presently I remembered something my sister had said about magic. He was concentrating on holding his spell, something I only vaguely understand: a bit like holding the reins of a wild horse who might throw you at any moment, only the reins are invisible, and you hold them with your mind.

Could I break away? How long it would take him to lay that nasty stone spell on me? We would be reaching the border of the garden soon, and the forestland beyond, which was only patrolled at dawn and sunset. It was time to act.

I was about to reach for that knife when my slipper hooked firmly under a trailing root and down I flopped, full length into the mud. When I tried to get up, there was the knife, pressed against my neck.

“I expect the time has come to negotiate,” Flauvic said. His voice was still soft, but I heard a tremor of laughter.

“If you surrender now, I won’t be too hard on you,” I croaked, hoping for a moment he’d think the ridiculous Princess Elestra so ridiculous he’d leave me behind in disgust.

He snorted a laugh, but then reverted right back to his subject. “This is what I had in mind. You come along without putting me to trouble, and I will contrive the journey in comfort.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.” It was hard to sound defiant with the side of my face squished into muddy moss.

“I regret the necessity,” he returned, “but I require a hostage. Just to the border. And you are it.”

The border?

“Well? What shall it be? Comfort or duress?” he asked. He added, with polite regret, “I feel obliged to reiterate that you’re going either way.”

I sighed. A small insect nearly jumped into my mouth. “Pah! Pleh! Foogh!” I spat. “So you’re asking my parole. Just to the border. And then you’ll let me be?”

“Correct.” Now he really was laughing.

I sighed again—with my mouth shut. Well? Obviously no one had seen us go. It was night, and I wouldn’t be missed until morning since I never bade my maid to stay up for me. In fact, I might not even be missed then, since I often breakfasted in my room over a book. But. There was the reason why I’d been alone in the first place . . . what if I, somehow, in some way, managed to turn the situation round and capture the Wicked Flauvic? They’d notice me then, and not just for being funny looking!

I nodded once. “I’ll do it.”

“I have your word, then?”

“Yes!” Figures! Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.

Flauvic put away the knife (I was blinking moss out of my eyes and didn’t see where) and reached down to help me up, but I flung away his hand and got to my feet on my own. I tried to mop the worst of the mud from my gown—which had been a delicate shade of rose, and was now the same blotchy brown as my hair--as I began walking.

That was a dreary march, through a dark forest during rain. Despite the care with which I stepped I still managed to trip over unseen tree roots and small stones. From the sound of his breathing (I still couldn’t see him, of course) Flauvic had much the same trouble. But we kept on.

It was not long after the midnight bell had tolled once, sending pleasant echoes down the river valley, that I realized he wasn’t just walking, he had a destination in mind. I don’t know what landmarks he found in that darkness, but he’d stop occasionally, pace around, and then set off in one direction or another.

I struggled after, yawning profusely, and wishing I hadn’t been so stupidly excited about Tara’s stupid play that I’d skipped my stupid supper. The play and its problems seemed impossibly remote now, but my growling stomach was right there with me.

Abruptly we stopped.

“It’s gone.” I don’t think he was aware that he’d spoken.

We stood before a ruin, an old house whose timbers had long ago been burned, leaving only the stone walls and chimney. I recognized it then, for we’d ridden round it often enough when I was small.

“That was used as a guardhouse by the enemy in the war,” I said. “My father led a raid. Burned it. No one has been here since.” Except children, of course, pretending to be on adventures. Then the question slipped out, “What did you expect to find?”

“Not a ruin,” was the answer. He wasn’t laughing, either.

We walked on. My heartbeat had quickened because I now knew where we were, except what could I do about it?

Leave a trail, of course.

As we walked I used my off-hand to work one of the white ribbons from the seam down my sleeve, and when it was free, I let the ribbon slip down the side of my skirt onto the ground, end first, so it would point the way we walked. Flauvic appeared not to notice.

Triumph kept me awake, until at last we emerged on the ridge above the estuary opening to the sea. Below lay a small village, one we’d often seen when riding by. Most of the folk were fishers, but some tended sheep on the hills all along the wide, slow waterway.

Our eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness under the leafy canopy that it almost seemed light; I could make out the shapes of houses, and the river, which reflected the dark sky. Sheep on the other side of the river formed little white mounds, like snow.

A break in the clouds filled the valley with faint blue starlight, and Flauvic used it to guide us to a clump of thick willow, under which we sat on long, damp grass. Despite the warmth of summer I felt chilled, and wrapped my silk skirts about me as best I could. Would he sleep?

My eyelids drooped, I slid into dreams . . . which were broken by Flauvic’s voice.

“Let’s move on.”

I was still, cold, hungry, and in a very bad mood as I followed Flauvic down a sheep trail to the village. Dawn was not far off; the faintest lifting of darkness just made it possible to see.

Blue light, faint and dreary, was spreading westward when we reached the outskirts of the village. Light glowed in windows, and some people were up and about, feeding animals, getting fishing and cargo boats prepared. Flauvic made his way to an inn, which was a low, L-shaped building next to the bank.

The light was now strong enough for me to make out Flauvic’s shape, and as we stepped inside the inn hope made my heart thump: wouldn’t we look suspicious, me dressed in a muddy rose silk evening gown, and he dressed in black, wearing instead of the current fine shirt, embroidered waistcoat and open coat over loose trousers, a long fitted tunic and narrow trousers twenty years out of fashion?

“Wait here,” he said, leaving me standing beside the stable.

I thought about running, then I thought about how quickly he’d catch up, and sat down instead. I was too hungry and tired to be heroic. Papa had been gone for close to a month, riding patrol along the eastern border where there’d been reports of more Norsundrian warriors turned brigand, so Mama was in charge of the kingdom. If she didn’t find my ribbon, and us, then I could effect my stunning capture later, after I’d had something to eat.

So I sat down on an old wooden stile. The smell of hay was strong on the cool air, the only sounds those of animals stirring.

The sun had topped the hill we’d just descended, sending great slants of golden light, when Flauvic and a maidservant emerged from inside.

I stared at Flauvic in that golden light and got a shock. He stood there in his black velvet, old-fashioned black velvet, which had to be exactly as sodden and muddy as my clothes, but he didn’t look it. And you didn’t notice his clothes anyhow. What that maid (and I) stared at was a beautiful wide-eyed face, a gentle smile, and long, long golden hair. He wore his hair far longer than anyone did now, but instead of looking silly, or even strange, he was so eye-smitingly beautiful he looked like he’d just stepped out of a portrait.

He bent and kissed the maid’s hand, the way aristocrats had in my parents’ day, and her face went purple and she giggled.

“Thank you, dear lady,” he said.

The maid mumbled something, thrust a basket at him, completely ignoring me, and whisked herself back inside.

Flauvic glanced my way, then headed inside the stable. I heard his voice speaking to the stable hands on duty: “Torna sent me to you for two mounts. We need to ride to Mardgar today. We’ll arrange to have them sent back.”

Not long after we were mounted on two big draft horses, with worn saddle pads strapped on somehow. As we rode away, I glimpsed a trio of maidservants in the windows, their heads turning as Flauvic moved up the pathway.

“That,” I said, “was disgusting.”

Flauvic smiled.

“You,” I said distinctly, “are disgusting.”

He just laughed.

We rode toward the south, which would lead to the great port city of Mardgar, but only until we were out of the village, and then Flauvic turned his great, shaggy beast eastward beyond a hill dotted with wild rosebushes and starliss, and then we began to ride north.

North.

My warm inward vision of my mother leading a huge force, finding my ribbon, finding the village, hearing about our trip south, and then surrounding us (to Flauvic’s infinite chagrin) vanished like smoke.

As Flauvic and I rode into increasingly wild territory, I realized I was on my own.

By noon we’d finished the food in the basket. Hot, fresh bread, sharp aged cheese, and a fine selection of fresh peaches had been nice while they lasted, but both of us were again hungry; I hadn’t eaten the day before, and it had been twenty years for him.

Nightfall brought clouds rolling like gray bowls out of the west. I smelled rain on the wind.

“We’d better stop and find shelter,” I suggested finally, when Flauvic kept riding, scanning always ahead, never up.

He looked over at me, frowning slightly.

“I can see it’s been a while since you camped out in the woods,” I commented.

“I’ve never camped in the woods.”

“No, you were much too finicky for that, weren’t you?” I said. “Well, I have, and I tell you we’re going to have a much worse night than last night from the looks of those clouds. And I’d as soon use the last of the light to find something to eat, since you neglected to provide us with supper.”

He glanced around, his eyebrows faintly puckered as if he was bewildered. What did he see? Trees, grass, shrubs, some birds darting hither and yon on unimaginable business?

“I saw some old rows of wild vegetables just back there,” I said. “Someone probably had a cottage of some sort around here; there’s the remains of an apple orchard, all overgrown. We could have carrots, and apples, and chestnuts as well. Not fancy, but filling,” I said.

To my surprise, he slid off his horse. “Show me.”

And so I did, after we’d done our best for the horses, and left them cropping soft, sweet summer grass. I taught him how to find carrot tops, and told him about apples (ripe and non ripe, and what the latter did to your innards if you weren’t careful). How to find the good chestnuts.

While we were gathering those we spotted the cottage, or the remains of one: it was just the shell of a stone house, built into the side of a cliff with a stream running just above, making a waterfall not ten steps from the door. The slate roof had been laid well, and so it kept the rain off us when the storm burst after an introductory clap of thunder.

Water roared around us, sending brown streams rushing round both sides of the house to tumble down the path back into the stream. I thought about my mother once being alone with him while a storm burst overhead, and reflected how very strange life can be.

“Why did you say I am disgusting?” he asked.

I turned. Yes, there he was, looking like someone’s idea of a dream prince, his beautiful profile dimly outlined against the darker stone of the cottage wall.

He was handsome, all right—I’d never seen anyone half so attractive—but between that and any appreciation I might feel was the matter of his past, and our present.

So I looked away. “If you have to ask, there’s no use explaining,” I stated.

“Humor me. We’re not going anywhere.”

“What I think about your behavior with that maid won’t put you in any good humor.”

“But I didn’t do anything except ask for a basket of food, and mounts to borrow.”

“Oh, and what was that with the hand kissing?”

“Don’t they do it any more?” His tone had changed somehow.

I glanced over, but all I could see was his dim profile, no expression. His voice was soft, and trained for singing, and far too controlled to trust for revealing any true emotion.

“No.” I stretched. “They don’t. I’m going to sleep,” I added, drawing my knees up and crossing my arms on them. I laid my cheek on my arms, facing the other way.

The rain increased unexpectedly, then just as unexpectedly ended, leaving around us the drip and trickle of water from eaves and branches.

He said—abruptly, as if I’d spoken—“They do it in their own heads. The flirting, I mean. They look at me, and bridle, and grin, and it seems there’s a romance going on inside their skulls, not mine. They want to possess my face, without any interest in my mind. It’s been that way ever since I was little.”

“Being pretty must be too big a burden to bear,” I drawled, in my nastiest tone.

He didn’t speak again until morning.

He was awake first, carrying the saddle gear (which we’d brought inside) out to the horses, who seemed much refreshed for their night. An apple each and we were off, riding north, Flauvic looking exactly the same as ever, me feeling itchy and gritty and longing for a bath, and feeling just as itchy and gritty inside. I now hated the sight of my rose silk dress; looking down, I realized one sleeve had a ribbon and one didn’t.

Time to try leaving another. But after dark.

As for the inward feeling, I remembered my hateful comment, and how Mama had always told us that sarcasm was a particularly poisonous weapon—and unworthy. I squared my shoulders and muttered, not very graciously, “I apologize for what I said.”

He didn’t respond immediately.

Presently he looked over in the pure morning light and said, “Tell me about your parents.”

“What is there to tell? My father is the king, my mother the queen, they work hard, they laugh a lot, they have us three as well as the kingdom.”

“What,” he asked after a time, “can you tell me about my family?”

“You mean you don’t know? I thought you could understand things you heard while you were a tree.”

“Not in the early days. Voices were too quick, and—” He broke off and shrugged. “I only really began to hear voices in the past few years. This year I began to distinguish who they were.”

“Well, that would explain your not hearing my mother, who said she used to go in and talk to you. Lecture you, actually.”

He smiled over at the water. “I remember hearing the sound of her voice. I always did like it. Even when she was angry, she always seemed to be on the verge of laughter.”

Hearing him talk about my mother—who hated him with enthusiasm—made me feel peculiar. “Well, your mother took poison after her plot to take the kingdom failed. Your sister tried to poison my father, and then she went south to some cousins of yours. If my parents ever heard anything more about her, they didn’t tell us. And then they had the war taking up their attention.”

“The war,” he repeated, looking at a line of pale-barked birch trees, their leaves brightening to yellow, along a ridge. “It was silent around me for a long time. Sometimes warriors tramped through, but all I recall are the seasons of silence, and feeling the light change.”

“We had to evacuate. They never really stayed here, but tramped through on their ways to the bigger countries west and north or to the south, though sometimes they chased our people for sport, and of course they forced us to supply them with goods and horses—when they could find us. That was the first year. The second year some tried to stay, to take over, and they chased my father for a long time, especially when they found out he used to guide some really famous people they had on their wanted list. He took them through the mountains to some others, who then took them south to morvende caves to be hidden.”

“Do you remember any of that?”

“I was too small. I just remember how much fun it was up at Tlanth, with Uncle Bran and Aunt Nee and Kitten. My brother worried about Papa, I know. My sister was just a baby.”

He didn’t answer that. Fine. I didn’t want to go into detail anyway.

We rode for a time, picking our way across a low, flat river that rushed over stones, and it was midafternoon, and I’d been lost in memories of summers at Tlanth, when Flauvic said, “What happened to my lands? I could never quite make that out.”

“Papa holds Merindar,” I said. “As far as I know.”

Silence. I realized, then, what it all meant: that he had come back after twenty years to a family either gone or dead, his land gone, and—

“Someone said,” I ventured, “that you’d learned that black magic nastiness at the court of Sles Adran.”

He looked quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed to two golden gleams, reflecting light that sparkled along the river beside us.

“You should know that King Bartal was deposed. His allies from Norsunder didn’t protect him.”

When he said nothing, I recited, like I had when I was learning lessons from my governess, “The new king took over the kingdom to the west, too. And he rules without any aid of mages. Doesn’t trust them, some say.”

Silence.

“So, uh, if you were thinking of going that way—Sles Adran lying west and north—”

“I was thinking,” he said, “of finding some sort of civilization so that we might achieve a hot meal.”

“From someone who will do all the flirting inside her head while you just stand there and smile?”

He looked over at me. “Probably. Why does that bother you?”

I shifted on my horse, who retaliated by tossing her head and snorting. “I think it’s awful to behave that way. Use people.”

“People who let themselves be used get what they deserve,” he retorted.

I was fidgeting with that ribbon as my mind floundered around fighting against his words. I finally said, “Using people just because you can—oh, if you don’t know how reprehensible it is, then there’s no use in my saying anything.”

“No. There isn’t.” His gaze shifted down to my hands. “And if you drop that ribbon here, we’ll just head east. The direction matters little.”

My cheeks burned, but not as hot as the fire inside me. I tossed my tangled braids back and snapped, “How superior you are! I wonder just how long your smug ‘Because I can’ would last if you met someone prettier than you are, or meaner, or more hateful. Wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place, if ruled by those like you!”

“Isn’t it? Despite all the moral self-praise, don’t those who are smart and strong take over, and rule those who aren’t?”

“No,” I said, my mind careening wildly. I wished I knew my history as well as my brother did, but unfortunately my reading tended to be the records of princesses like me, and not a lot about the doings of courts.

“Take your father, now. Did he hand off my lands to the poor? No, he took them.”

“Holds them,” I corrected. “Holds. That’s what he says. There’s a steward—whose mother was one of the cooks, by the way—but no one lives in the house, except a few servants my mother hired, because all yours vanished after your mother tried to take the kingdom.”

He said derisively, “So it just sits there . . . for what? A deserving recipient to come along, someone perhaps from a suitable humble background? While you all live in peace and plenty, protected by the great kings all around you, after they won the war.”

I thought of the seasons when the brigands came down to raid, and burn, and kill, and my father riding off to scour the hills yet again, sometimes with my mother watching him ride away, her face tense with apprehension. A few times over the past years she couldn’t bear it and rode with him, and then my brother paced his rooms late at night; like my father, he expresses his feelings not in words or in face, but in action.

“I wish it were so,” I said fervently. And then glared at him. “I wish. And what is so wrong with peace and plenty, as long as there is plenty for everyone?”

He studied me for a time, his lips compressed, and then said, “I was going to point out that those who have never known worry or want are usually the first ones with moral platitudes. But how could you possibly have known either?”

“I’ve never known want,” I said. “There’s always a warm fire, and enough to eat, and someone there if I wake in the night. But worry, yes. Did you really think that a war just ends?” I snapped my fingers, and the mare whickered at me in reproach. “Like that? As soon as they knew they were losing, most of Norsunder’s forces ran for the hills, taking everything they could get. There are some of them still hiding up that way even now.” I pointed north and east, toward the mountains. “Over there is where my father is riding this month, trying to keep the borders safe. I know worry, because we grew up aware that a brigand with a sword wouldn’t care if he kills a king or a cook.”

Flauvic said derisively, “I take it forming a militia and patrolling for themselves is too war-like for your contented peasantry?”

I sighed, about to smack out a nasty answer, but my own words came back as if to mock me: Because I can.

I’d been raised with a brother and sister, and so I knew the difference between sarcasm for the sake of prolonging an argument and sarcasm that masks a desire—perhaps a need—to know the truth. He wanted to know the truth.

So I forced myself tell it. “Oh, there was a wonderful militia for a few years. I remember going to see a review in Tlanth, when I was little, where there still actually is one, but my Uncle Bran practices with them every year. In other places, after several years of quiet, people acted like people usually do, my mother told me: it was always the wrong time, or they didn’t feel well enough for drill, or business claimed them. When my father goes himself, everyone suddenly starts practicing and patrolling again.”

Flauvic said nothing, just stared straight ahead, where several long-tailed birds streamed just above the treetops, scolding and squawking.

Thinking of my father brought me back to my own situation again. What use is a hostage unless there’s someone to threaten? Was Flauvic really going to stick that knife at my neck if either of my parents somehow found our trail, and threaten to kill me unless he was safely seen to the border?

“Your knife,” I said, picking long-dried moss off my gown. “I sure don’t remember seeing it sticking out of your tree. But then your clothes weren’t hanging from the branches, either. Did they stay invisible somewhere, or what?”

“Invisible isn’t quite the right word,” he said, casting me a glance that was very hard to interpret, as one of his fingers made a subtle motion toward the other wrist. Aha: a wrist sheath. “It’s more like they stayed outside of time. As for me, I seem to have aged as a tree ages, which is far slower than we do as humans.”

“You look twenty to me,” I said, thinking about that knife in the wrist sheath, and how I might get it if, at the border, he suddenly turned . . . what? Would he truly try to kill me?

I caught a speculative glance from his light eyes, then he lifted a shoulder. “Age doesn’t appear to hold much meaning any more.” Yes, he was alone, and I strongly suspect he was only beginning to understand what it meant.

“Look at those delicious blackberries!” I said, pointing to shrubs along a very old, mossy stone wall. When in doubt, be ridiculous, that was my usual habit. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. You have to realize that the old rules concerning the proper abduction of princesses might have included starving them, but I assure you, modern abductions are different.”

Flauvic smiled a little as he slid off his horse. We soon sat on the wall, my lap full of blackberries. Who cared about stains? The gown was ruined anyway.

The sun shone, the wind carried the scents of herbs and roses, and the horses cropped peacefully at clover along the roadside.

“So what was it like being a tree?” I asked. “Can you speak with them now?”

He laughed. “If trees speak, it’s more than I know.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

He tipped back his head, looking at the white lambkin cloud-puffs marching across the sky. Then he looked at me. “It seems absurd to try to put that experience into words.”

“Not at all. It’s interesting,” I said. “And when I get home, my sister, who studies magic, will ask first thing, ‘Did he talk about what it’s like to be a tree?’ She won’t care about anything else.”

“Tell her you hear the Hill Folk singing. Distance doesn’t appear to mean much, though I can’t explain how or why. You feel the rhythm of the seasons, you are sensitive to the turns of light, north during winter’s cold, and then south again, strong light that sends your roots deep down into the water running below the ground.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t hear words for some time, as I told you. Of late I could. Your friend Tara was in the throne room often, did you know that? She sounded to me like an insect, whine, whine, though she was there to flirt in private.”

“She’s very beautiful,” I muttered. “They all compete to be with her.”

He made an elegant gesture of dismissal. “I couldn’t see her, so I wondered why they came with her. Do you know that her only subject of interest is herself? Doesn’t she ever think about anything else?”

I thought. “No, but then her admirers consider her just as fascinating as she does.”

“Do they? It seems to me she doesn’t keep them long.”

“At least she has some—“ I began, then I shut my mouth so fast my teeth clicked. I was not, not, not going to tell the Evil Flauvic that I’d never had one, was unlikely to ever have one.

He said, quite abruptly, “Did King Bartal find out I was a tree?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

He looked over at me. His hands had managed to stay clean, and his mouth, whereas my fingers were stained with berries, and I was sure my mouth was purple.

“Tell me the rest,” he said. “It’s not like I’ll ever see him again, if what you say about him being deposed is true.”

“He laughed.” The day before I would have said it triumphantly, but now it embarrassed me, and so I busied myself with brushing at the purple blotches on my gown. It looked quite terrible, of course. I added, “In case you think I’m making it up, you could find your own great-uncle, who was still ambassador, before my father recalled him. He told us King Bartal laughed so loud the whole court laughed, and then he said, ‘If he’s a tree, no doubt he’s a pretty one.’”

Flauvic’s face showed no expression whatever, but I thought about what it meant: no one, during those twenty years, had come to try to disenchant him. Not one of his long-ago allies had even shown up, and it wasn’t as if we had any formidable magical protections or traps. He wasn’t just alone, his world had passed by, leaving him twenty years’ distant in memory.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We began riding again, along old cart paths winding through the great, gnarled trees we encountered more frequently now. When we crossed the good roads he always turned onto pathways, always to the north and west, and though he looked around, sometimes watching the progress of flocks of birds above the treetops, other times studying the hazy purple mountaintops on the horizon, he didn’t speak.

I didn’t speak either. It was fun to bait the Evil Flauvic when I was angry with him, but when I wasn’t, I found I had to look away, or I was far too aware of the light on his long golden hair, the shape of his shoulders, the sound of his breathing, even. What was it like, to inspire desire simply by existing? I’d been watching Tara exert that power for a couple years now, and I can’t count how many nights I spent in smoldering envy, but I thought: if everywhere you go everyone watches you, and wants you, can you truly be yourself?

“What are you thinking?” he asked suddenly, as the light began to slant, weaving long tree-shadows to the right.

“What’s it really like to always be the prettiest person in a room? Does it mean you’re always acting, as if in a play, because no one stops looking at you?”

“Life is a play, isn’t it?”

I sighed. Obviously I wasn’t going to get a real answer. “I guess it might be for those who act that way.”

“’Act’. How many good people do you really know? I discount those who mouth out platitudes for the edification of the young, and who truly are ‘good’, whatever that means?”

What a strange subject, and from so strange a person! “Everyone I know is a mixture, some with more good than bad, and it varies on different days,” I said, thinking hard, as I watched without any real comprehension some birds flap into the sky from the trees just ahead, scolding and squawking. “My mother told me once she has more than her share of the howling wolf emotions, but she learned that trying to make the good choice—acting good, I guess you might say—made her actually feel good after. Maybe it’s that way for a lot of people. You don’t think much of Tara—and sometimes neither do I—but I happen to know she’s very good to animals, and it’s not like they can talk to praise her in company. I think she’s good to them because she loves them.”

“What if feeling good comes only after you destroy someone you hate?”

“That’s not good, that’s triumph,” I stated. And at the derisive glance he sent me, I felt my face go red, and I stared straight ahead at my mare’s hairy ears, which were canted forward. “Well, so I’ve read. Put it this way, I don’t know anyone who would feel good after—”

Birds? Squawking? Mare’s ears canted, listening for—

Danger?

I realized something was wrong a heartbeat before three men crashed from the shrubs, running hard. They saw us the same moment we saw them, then two of them veered straight for the horses.

Mine danced back, tossing her head; the man snatched the reins and jerked her violently round with one hand and reached for me with the other. One moment I saw a big hand with short, filthy nails reaching for me, then I rolled off the back of the horse—something my brother and I had practiced years ago, after reading stories about the feats of the western plains riders.

I brought my hands up—and realized the fellow wasn’t the least interested in me, only in the horse. He was trying to mount, but my mare had decided she didn’t like this new rider, and she was dancing about, shifting her huge body with all the agility of a hill pony.

I was still slightly dizzy from the roll and drop, but I turned at the sound of harsh voices, to see the other two men arguing over the other horse. One man held her by the reins, the other man swung a sword back and forth as he yelled.

“ . . . run . . . coast . . . boat . . .”

I realized they were talking in a form of Sartoran, not the kind they supposedly spoke at the court in Eidervaen, but discernable if I concentrated.

“Right now,” the other said.

Where was Flauvic?

He was lying on the other side of a scattering of rocks, with the sword-swinger’s boot planted in the middle of his back.

“. . . money,” said the one holding his horse, and they both turned and glared at me.

I glanced from Flauvic, whose body was stiff with tension, back at the men. From the look of their haggard faces they were about my father’s age, considerably more dirty and disheveled even than I was. They had to be brigands, maybe even former Norsundrians, and they did not mean us well.

“I want to go hoooooome,” I screamed, and knuckled my eyes.

“What did she say?” demanded one.

“Shut her up. We can search them afterward,” the other said, in slow, forced words as the mare fought to free herself. His speech was slow enough for me to follow.

I ran around in a circle, stumbled, bent down to the ground to grab a handful of dirt, all the while yelling—hoping that running brigands meant some kind of pursuit. The two were busy with the horses, so the one with the sword lifted his foot off Flauvic’s back and came at me.

That was all Flauvic needed. He was up, the knife out, in the time it took for me to swing my arm and let fly with the dirt straight into the sword-swinger’s face.

He howled in rage, chopping in front of him with the sword, but by then I’d whirled, just the way the armsmaster at home taught me, and used my momentum to kick sideways at his kneecap.

The howls increased, rage turning to pain, as he stumbled. I kept whirling, almost tripped on my skirt, and smacked my heel straight into his gut. He fell, hard.

When I turned both horses were free, the man with the club was down, bleeding at the throat, and the other circled around Flauvic, holding a knife longer and more lethal than the one Flauvic had.

They both twitched glances my way.

The brigand’s glance dismissed me. Flauvic’s was longer, flickering down to the groaning man on the ground, then up, widening. He stepped sideways, with a slow, deliberate pace. I understood immediately, and while the brigand could still see me, I bent over with my face covered by my hands, but I watched between my fingers.

As soon as his shoulder was turned to me, I bent down, picked up a good-sized flat stone. And when Flauvic attacked, causing the other to block and try to stab, I ran up in my slippered feet and bashed the stone just under the brigand’s ear. He dropped with a thud, his knife clattering on the rubble.

Flauvic and I were both breathing hard as we gathered all the weapons, including the club, and I noticed his hands were shaking exactly as badly as mine were.

“You didn’t mention that.” He tipped his head sideways.

He leaned a little to one side, wincing; I hadn’t seen his first fight, but it was clear he’d gotten hurt.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t have to find out the nasty way,” I returned, puffing like a bellows. “My parents made sure we all got trained, from the time we could walk—”

Now we could both hear it: the thud of horsehooves and the crashing of brush.

We looked up, then at one another.

Pursuit! Someone on my side?

A moment later four horses crashed through a scree of ferns on the other side of the churned-up ground, and plunged to a stop. I looked up, expecting to see the helms and tunics of the border riders. I didn’t expect the fourth rider: I gaped at the sight of my father’s silver-streaked hair.

His gray eyes went wide in dismay, and then narrowed.

“Here they are, sire,” shouted one of the riders. “All three of them. And—” The man, a very young man, about my brother’s age, straightened up, staring at me in my rose-colored evening gown with its decorative mud-splotches and blackberry stains.

“Permit me to introduce you to my daughter, Princess Elestra,” Father said, smiling just a little as he dismounted.

The riders all stared at me, then: “Did you do that?” asked another, a gloved hand pointing at the groaner. The other two lay still, one breathing, one not.

“I—ah—” I looked around witlessly, seeing the two horses, still flicking their tails in irritation, the brigands’ weapons on the ground, and—

And a glimpse of a pale face beyond the shrubs across the clearing. For a long, strange moment I stared into Flauvic’s golden eyes, and then I turned away, and whooshed out a sigh, and said, “Well, yes. Most of it was an accident, though,” I began babbling, my voice suddenly going high. Why were my eyes burning and my throat closing? I was safe! “You see, they wanted the horses, and argued, and—”

“Never say too much,” my father murmured, closing his arms around me.

Before anyone else could either move or speak, there came the sound of more horsehooves, this time from the cart path. We all looked up (the border riders putting their hands to their weapons, my father standing there with his arms around me, but I heard his breathing go still) and up rode a neat formation of castle guards in their fine blue tunics and chain mail—with my mother at the lead!

“There you are!” she exclaimed, pulling up her horse. Then her triumph changed to amazement. “Danric?”

“Hello, Mel. We’ve been chasing these three just this side of the river,” Father said, and I could hear his smile in his voice as he pointed at the brigands. “I take it you were not on the same mission?”

“Elestra—Flauvic—” Mama said, still on her horse. She put her fists on her hips and glared around. “Where’s that sneaking, lying skunk of a Merindar, anyway?”

Father laughed, then said, “I can see that there are a number of questions that must be answered. I suggest we postpone the necessary exchanges until we have reached a place of more comfort. In the meantime . . .” He issued orders in a rapid voice, and the brigands were taken in one direction and the two big plow-mares in another.

Those not assigned to dealing with the brigands fell into formation behind, and Papa pulled me up onto his big war horse. “I’m awfully grubby,” I warned, giving in at last to the compelling temptation to look behind me, to see if Flauvic was still there.

He wasn’t.

But I could still see that look, that heart-still look, that he had given me, as if he were still before me.

“I’ll live,” Papa said, still sounding amused.

Mama, of course, couldn’t wait. Her favorite mare danced a little, greeting Papa’s horse with a snort and an ear-flick as Mama said, “What happened, Elestra? The servants went crazy after they trooped in at dawn to do the throne room floors and found there was no tree—and right after that your maid came in pounding on my door to say you weren’t in your room. I figured the worst when one of my search-parties found your ribbon, and the girl from the inn down at Rivertown was brought in with the story about a lady and a golden-haired fellow riding for Mardgar.”

“You rode all the way to Mardgar and then north?” I asked, speaking just one of the questions flitting through my mind like fire-singed moths.

“Of course not,” she exclaimed, sounding indignant. “This is Flauvic, after all. Oh, I did send a party to Mardgar, just in case, but I figured he took all that care to mention a southern port if he meant to ride north. And I see I was right.”

“But—how did you find the right track?”

“Well, I didn’t, really. We got hailed by some people in the village just east of here, saying that they’d been robbed this morning by three fellows, and the track was clear for a time—” She stopped, looking at Papa with her brow furrowed. “You were chasing those three?”

“For two days,” he said. “They’re the last of a gang that has been marauding on both sides of the border since spring. They had been clever enough to elude us until Elestra decided to step in, apparently.”

I felt my face heat up.

Mama turned to me. “I gather Flauvic abandoned you as soon as he sniffed the river?” She pointed to the west, and I realized how close to the border we were—and then I realized that we’d been riding parallel to the border probably since morning.

Why?

To answer her I mumbled something inarticulate, and Mama sighed. “And I had been thinking up the choicest insults with which to benefit his pretty ears, and now no one will get to hear them!”

“You shall entertain us with them when we reach the garrison at Kalna,” Papa said. “No use in letting them go to waste.”

Mama opened her mouth, looked from me to him, closed her mouth, raised her expressive brows, then laughed. “And so you shall. Tell you what. I’ll ride ahead and see to it we get a good meal, and not just garrison soup."

How did they do that? All my life they had looked at one another, no words spoken, and somehow they communicated something. I sighed as Mama clucked to her horse and rode on ahead, waving on half her escort as accompaniment.

Papa waited until we’d turned off the cart path onto the main road, wide and well-paved with flat stone.

“I take it you had a reason to let him go,” Papa murmured.

Remember that comment about the thorn-pang? I got another one, sharp and cold.

“You saw him?” I managed.

“I may be aging, but I am not quite decrepit enough to miss the sight of long hair the color of gold coins behind a hedge of hemlock. Or the distinct print of shoes made in the manner of my younger days.”

“You didn’t say anything,” I muttered, blushing again.

“I figured you must have your reasons. What happened?”

I told him, as we rode slowly down toward Kalna, whose towers were just visible above the treetops in the east. Papa must have signalled to his border riders, as they maintained a discreet distance behind us.

By the time I was done all the rapid emotions I’d sustained that day drained away, leaving me tired, and hungry, and once again my eyelids burned and my throat as well. Tears? Not me! Not good ol’ Elestra, the Princess with Guts!

“I don’t know why I did it,” I said finally, mopping my stinging eyes with my filthy gown. “It just seemed . . . right.”

Papa said nothing for a time, as we clopped steadily toward the town, and Mama, and good food and a bath and something—anything—to wear beside this horrid gown.

Before he spoke he caressed my cheek with his callused thumb, then murmured, “There was a moment in my own career when I was pursuing a fugitive in a river town, and I chose to ride on past. It seemed right at the time. Instinct proved to be a better guide than, ah, the demands of current events.”

“Papa.” I turned around, and then grimaced. “You’re talking about Mama.”

He smiled.

“You can’t possibly mean I did it out of, well, romance.”

“No, not any more than I did. It seemed fair, and right, to give my fugitive a chance at freedom.”

I sighed. “But if he goes on and does anything horrid, isn’t it my fault?”

Papa waited even longer before he answered. The walls were in view, down the road past squares of ripening corn and shooting barley when at last he said, “The Merindars were never known for their laughter or inner grace, for their generosity of spirit, for their earnest attempts to see the greater truth in the world, and try to abide by it.”

“No,” I said, wondering what he was talking about—and then I blushed yet again.

“You mean me.”

“He spent a whole day with you, I understand. He could have ridden over the border at dawn.”

“But most of the time we just argued.”

Papa laughed, and hugged me tight for a moment, just like he had when I was small, and asked to go riding with him. Then he said, “You know, when people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.”

Beauty. That’s what he said.

Is it true, or is it just Papa trying to make me feel better?

I don’t know. I’m home, of course, and things are back to normal (they waited on the play—I’m busy learning my lines as the Gallant Prince) and I keep thinking about what happened.

But I am not languishing at a window, or watching the northern road.

Because I know he’ll be back.