Castle Kiril was built of flat gray stone, at the edge of a beech and oak forest for which legend was only a matter of time. There were all the usual castle features: tall pointed turrets that prickled at the tolerant sky, a massive drawbridge capable of shivering ominously whenever it was raised (which was seldom, the kingdom being perpetually at peace), tapestries woven with unicorns and fleurs-de-lis and slightly bored-looking angels. The resident princess, for her first eighteen years, took the castle’s silent hint and did all the customary princess things. In the summer she picnicked by the moat and threw tidbits of fruit or strawberry tart to the moat serpent, who leaped for them high into the air, the silver sunlight breaking into shards around his flashing green scales. In the winter she sat at a heavy oak table and conjugated verbs, her tongue stuck out thoughtfully at the corner of her mouth, and unsubtly tried to badger her Wizard into supplying the subjunctive. In the spring she went a-Maying; in the fall she attended harvest festivals and obligingly gave her autograph to any peasant who happened to ask for it. She even worked a tapestry herself, taking the work in easy stages over five years. It was of the Creation of the Natural World, and if one looked at it from any distance greater than two feet it was hard not to get the impression that the natural world had straightened out considerably since its beginning. But her royal parents were proud of it and caused it to be hung in the Great Hall, a little lopsided so as to compensate for the lean in the Tree of Knowledge.
But when she reached her eighteenth year, the princess—whose name was Kirila—grew discontented. It was not the sighing-by-the-window-and-writing-poetry discontent; she was not that sort of princess. She became moody and short-tempered, and went through a period of issuing decrees by the dozen, many of which later proved contradictory when they got as far as Court test cases.
One spring day, after a strenuous hunt during which Kirila rode as if pursued by the dragon and not the other way around, causing all her ladies to fall off their mounts trying to keep up with her, she clattered up the stone stairs to the top of the highest tower, her riding boots purposefully striking only every other step. Here was the Wizard’s deep-shadowed lair.
“I want to go on a Quest!” Kirila blurted breathlessly. She was panting; her breast heaved under her green velvet doublet and stray tendrils of red hair, the color of copper in sunlight, curled damply on her forehead.
The Wizard looked at her with sad eyes. “A Quest?”
“Yes! Just listen, Wizard—I’ve got it all thought out. Even a Crown Princess hasn’t got very much to do around here that’s really important—you know that’s true!” she asserted, although he hadn’t tried to deny it. She knelt on the floor by his chair, her hands restless and excited on the carved wooden arm. “I want to go on a Quest to discover the Heart of the World!”
The Wizard began to pull at his white beard; there were knots in it. “Wouldn’t consider something less ambitious, I suppose? The Holy Grail, overthrowing Evil, something along those lines?” The hands on the beard trembled a little.
She squared her soft chin. “If I do it, I’m going to do it right. And that means looking for the Heart of the World.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why? Why does it mean looking for the Heart of the World?”
She was taken aback. “Well, because—because if I find it, and know what’s there, at the Heart—” she frowned, looking for words like a man in darkness who knows beyond doubting that he put the candles somewhere, but not just where. She had also always had trouble with the more esoteric uses of the ablative absolute. “-then I’ll know what’s most important, and why—why I should do things. And how.” She nodded several times, pleased with this, and then added, “And what things. It will be a learning experience, as well as an adventure! And if you say it’s all right, part of my education, then Mummy and Daddy won’t object. Much. And anyway, I’m not going to that finishing school!”
The Wizard tried to hide his trembling by pretending to rub goosebumps on his arms. Something in the shadowy corner of the tower room, something the shape of mist under a pewter sky, keened softly. Kirila didn’t notice.
“You’ll do it, won’t you Wizard?” She straightened up and looked at him with hopeful, unabashed pleading.
“Where would you look for it, my Lady?”
She paced to the one small window. Far below, smug fields lay in tidy patchwork on both sides of a portly river. The banks of the river were crowded with columbines and heart’s-ease and yellow buttercups and shamelessly scarlet roses, the blowsy kind with no thorns. Kirila pointed upriver. “To the north, away from the sea. Where the river comes from when it’s still hungry.”
The Wizard stopped rubbing his arms and went back to pulling his beard. “Very wise. The Heart of the World probably doesn’t lie among beach cottages and surf resorts. Probably.”
“Then I can go!” she cried, her young face suddenly so alive that the Wizard turned away, as a man will turn from the stripped heart under the surgeon’s knife. The Wizard had known the princess since her childhood.
“You may go, if you can,” he said gently, but Kirila didn’t hear the second part, any more than she heard the wail of the mist-creature in the corner. But the Wizard heard, and his already pale cheeks turned the color of parchment ashes.
“I’ll take my grandfather’s sword,” she cried, and tugged it down from its oiled-leather straps on the stone wall. It was a beautiful sword, a wide-bladed falchion with an intricately worked pommel the shape of a Brazil nut.
“It’s too heavy for you,” the Wizard said automatically.
“Pooh, I can manage it,” Kirila huffed, awkwardly wielding the weapon with both hands. But however modern her parents had been in matters of liberal education and hunting in a divided skirt and non-sexist children’s literature, she had never been taught sword-play, and in the end she had to leave it home.
She whirled from the room, kissing the Wizard on his ashen nose, and clattered down the steps to see about maps and new riding boots. The Wizard didn’t look after her; he sat for a long time staring into the empty fireplace, his old fingers knotting and unknotting his beard. In the corner, the mist-creature made a noise like branches scraping on a cracked windowpane.
•••
Kirila started her Quest on a blue and gold morning when the summer air shimmered and swooned and preened itself. The whole castle turned out to see her off. There were her parents, with identical tear-stained faces like salty marshmallows; her old nanny, who kept remembering things the princess ought to take, crying, “Naw, wait a minute, me Lady,” and dashing back into the Castle after them; two or three sullen youths who had fancied writing “Royal Consort” after their names; her second cousin, who was a decent chap and tried hard to repress his knowledge of the line of succession governing lost heirs; the ladies-in-waiting, incredulous and tittering; and several small boys who waved flags and dared each other to touch the horse’s knees. The Wizard watched from his tower, blinking, although he wasn’t facing into the sun.
Kirila rode alone. She had staved off all pleas to take a chaperone, body guard, squire, lady-in-waiting, or laundress, relenting only when the Wizard brought her a charmed bat as she kept her vigil in the Courtyard the night before the Quest.
“It will only stay with you until you reach the borders of this kingdom,” he told her solemnly. “Bats have a strong sense of local color. But I’ve put a spell on it, and it will talk with you if you get lonely and want a bit of company.” He saw her begin to frown and added hastily, “Not that it’ll say anything unless you talk first. And never any advice!” He looked at her anxiously; his beard looked like dingy macrame. She took the bat.
It hung now underneath the horse, upside-down, clinging to the saddle girth. Kirila kissed everyone, waved gaily, urged the horse into a trot, rode back to accept a dozen handkerchiefs from the nanny—they were still warm from the clothesline and hadn’t been ironed—and started off again, cantering down the river road with the breeze at her back. The scent of wild flowers rose all around her, and sunlight skipped off the river and ricocheted over the tame hills. She wore a bottle-green velvet doublet and divided hunting skirt, and green velvet ribbons tied a spray of columbine to the horse’s bridle. A new bow and quiver of green-tipped arrows were laced at her back, a little jewelled dagger was stuck jauntily in her belt, and her red hair whipped around her face. There were circles under her eyes from the all-night vigil—usually she went to bed at 10:30—but she had never felt more awake, more alive, more complete than when she glanced back over her shoulder and saw the gray spires of Castle Kiril sinking below the sharp line where the buttercups met the brilliant turquoise sky.