ARDDA LIVED IN A COTTAGE in the woods a half day's journey from the village. This arrangement suited Ardda for two reasons. One was because this way she didn't have people hounding her day and night with spur-of-the-moment requests for frivolous wishes: Let me win at cards (a request that frequently came from several people simultaneously); I need a breeze so my laundry will dry faster; we need less breeze for our picnic; make my cake rise; mend my cracked pot; and on and on.... By making people travel half a day to her cottage and half a day back home, Ardda knew that they had at least spent some time thinking about whatever they were asking for.
There was a more important reason why Ardda lived away from the village, however. Though she was sixteen years old, and though she had memories going as far back as when she had been about two years old, she couldn't remember a day when some villager hadn't said—or whispered—"What an ugly girl,"
For Ardda had eyes that were narrow and squinty, a nose that was too big, and hair that was a muddy brown color and hung perfectly straight and limp so that—no matter how clean it was and how she'd fussed with it—she always looked as though someone had just dumped a pail of dirty water over her head.
All of this was nothing. The first thing anybody noticed about Ardda was the purple-colored birthmark that covered half her left cheek. Children were always coming up to her, pointing, and demanding in an accusing voice, "What's that?" Or strangers passing through the village would ask if she'd been burned when she was a baby. Or people would pat her on the head and murmur, "Poor thing."
Often, during Ardda's growing-up years, she would hear the adults whisper to one another, "Such a pity. And she's such a sweet-natured and kind thing." But the young people Ardda's own age were less sympathetic and much, much crueler. No amount of generosity or helpfulness would win them over. They had only stopped openly tormenting her when it became obvious—sometime around her twelfth summer—that she had the ability to change things with her wishes.
One of the things she changed—of course—was the way she looked. She couldn't make a permanent change; in fact, it wasn't even a real change, it was only a glamour: When she leaned over the washbasin in the mornings, she could still see reflected in it the awful purple mark that covered so much of her face and the nose that seemed to cover most of what was left. But she could make other people think they saw a smooth pink cheek, a discreet little nose. She made them see—she wasn't greedy—not luxurious curls, but hair that didn't lie exactly flat against her forehead and down the sides of her face.
But the people knew what she really looked like. She heard them laugh. She heard them mutter, "Who does she think she's fooling?"
She considered a much stronger wish: She considered making them all forget she'd ever been any different than she appeared now.
But then she worried. Should she make her parents and brothers and sisters forget, too? And if they couldn't remember protecting her from the younger children's taunts, how much of her growing-up years would she have to erase from their minds? Should she make everyone believe she'd always been beautiful and they'd always loved her?
In the end she simply let go of the glamour, and—as soon as she was old enough to be on her own—she moved to the cottage in the woods.
That was how Ardda came to be alone one December afternoon of the year she was sixteen. As the snow began to fall thick and fast and Ardda was indoors safe and warm and comfortable, with a fire in the fireplace, a wool shawl around her shoulders, a purring cat on her lap, and a cup of tea in her hand, she heard a thumping sound from outside.
Somebody, she thought—or actually two or three somebodies from the amount of noise—was on her porch. What could have caused anyone to set out in such weather?
Ardda tried to shoo the cat off her lap. But the cat was lazy and comfortable and pretended not to understand, and it clung on to Ardda's skirt so that Ardda had to stand up to prove to the cat that she was serious about wanting it off.
And in all this while, Ardda realized, no one had knocked at the door, but the thumping from the porch continued.
Ardda opened the door and found herself face-to-face with a horse.
"Well, hello," Ardda said, grabbing the horse's bridle because the creature seemed ready to walk right in and make itself at home. "Aren't you a fine fellow? How kind of you to visit, but I'm afraid you can't come in."
The horse shook himself, making the tiny gold bells on his bridle jingle. He had obviously, Ardda thought, run long and hard through the woods. Despite the cold, he was lathered, and he had fresh scratches from bolting through the close-set trees.
"Do you have a master?" Ardda asked. "I see you must."
The horse was a magnificent stallion: big and well cared for—despite the scratches—and beautiful. The reins, the saddle, the decorative trappings all were made of the finest materials and must have cost a fortune.
"Did you leave your master behind?" Ardda asked, thinking maybe something in the woods had startled the horse, causing him to rear and throw his rider. But then Ardda saw that there was blood on the saddle and the reins and on the horse's neck and mane. Not the horse's blood, she surmised, not from the scratches, but as though someone had been injured, and had clung on for as long as possible before falling off.
Ardda forced the horse to bend his neck, to place his head against hers. "Tell me," she whispered, wishing for her mind to open to images from the horse's mind. The horse pictured himself walking through Ardda's open front door into a nice warm stable, fresh straw, fragrant hay, with Ardda herself—the horse fervently hoped—standing there holding a plump, juicy apple.
"Tell me," Ardda repeated, picturing in her own mind the woods, someone's arms around the horse's neck, the horse running.
The horse thought those were scary thoughts. He wanted to think about that warm stable.
Ardda pictured in her mind the small barn that was up against the back of the cottage. She pictured the goats she kept, and the chickens. She pictured herself leading the horse there, and rubbing him down, and giving him an apple. Then she pictured, again, the woods, and running, and the hurt rider.
She got a jumble of pictures: an enormous stable with stall after stall of other horses, a kind two-legs-who-provides-oats, who must be the owner. The horse wasn't clear on faces, but he recognized hands—and the owner had gentle hands, and apples often hidden in pockets. Then the horse was remembering riding through the woods, enjoying the crisp air, the running for the pure joy of running.
And then it got darker, and much colder, and the cold-white-little-things-that-sometimes-melt-and-sometimes-form-a-cold-blanket-on-the-ground started falling, and the two-legs faced him toward home—which the horse pictured as the stable. But other two-legs jumped out of the shadows of the trees and threw sticks-that-fly-and-are-sharp at them.
The horse—with a certain amount of self-satisfaction—pictured himself carrying his two-legs away to safety. But the two-legs was making hurt-sounding noises and leaking red-stuff-that-belongs-inside outside. The horse gave Ardda the image of the two-legs sliding off and falling into a pile of the cold-white-little-things-after-they-haven't-melted-but-have-formed-a-cold-blanket-on-the-ground.
"Good boy," Ardda told the horse. "You are a brave fellow to have gotten away from those bandits." She led him into the barn, rubbed the lather off his back and legs, and threw a blanket over him. It was too soon, after all that running, for him to eat, but she rested her forehead against his and sent him a picture of her presenting him with a whole armful of apples as soon as she came back.
She stopped back in the cottage itself just long enough to gather her cloak, a knife, a small clay cook pot, and some healing herbs.
Then she set out, following the horse's hoof-prints in the snow, and hoped that she would find the injured man before he bled to death from the arrow wounds and before the snow covered up the horse's tracks.
With her cloak wrapped around her and her head down against the wind, Ardda came to a point where—between the failing light and the falling snow—she could no longer make out the horse's hoofprints.
She continued walking in the direction from which the horse seemed to have come.
The snow, though getting deeper by the moment, was not yet deep enough to cover a man lying on the ground, even a man not moving. Periodically she called out into the absolute stillness, "Hello? Hello?" But the snow seemed to eat up all sound, so that she couldn't be sure how close she'd need to be for anyone to hear her—if there was anyone alive to hear her.
All the while she walked, she wished fervently for the snow to stop. But this was a full-blown storm, much slower to turn away or kill in its tracks than some simple picnic-ruining breeze. The storm wouldn't end for hours, and she realized there was no way she could make it back home tonight.
She came to a lean-to, one of several the villagers used when collecting wood every spring and autumn. There'd be no wood now, but it would provide some shelter. She would just go a little beyond, she determined, and then she must give up the search.
It was just as she was turning back that she noticed a lump up ahead. She had seen several lumps, which had all ended up being tree stumps or piles of wind-driven leaves or snowdrifts, and she told herself no, she'd gone far enough, she'd said she'd stop here. But then she told herself how awful she'd feel if she'd come so close only to give up seconds before finding the horse's lost rider. Sure she'd find nothing, she made her way to the lump.
He was still breathing—barely—and he had an arrow shaft sticking out of his shoulder, perilously close to his heart.
A prince, Ardda thought at the sight of his fine clothes and the gold and jewels he wore. Or a very, very wealthy merchant.
But there aren't merchants that wealthy, Ardda decided, even in the port cities. Definitely a prince.
A dying one.
Ardda weighed the necessity of getting him warm against the necessity of tending the wound.
In the end, she laid her hands against the injured shoulder, wished for his health and well-being with all her might, then she took hold of his feet and dragged him along the snowy path, using as much care as she could spare not to bang his head against rocks or tree stumps.
At the lean-to—three walls and a roof made of woven branches—she found broken-off sticks and twigs too small for the wood-gathering expedition to have bothered collecting, and she hastily arranged them into a pile. "Fire," she wished, imagining the warmth of it on her outstretched fingers, seeing in her mind's eye a tiny flame catching, hearing it crackle, smelling the smoke.
Wishing worked best with a physical start. She wouldn't have had to wish nearly so hard if she'd taken the time to at least strike sparks with a flint, but she feared there wasn't time. She feared the young prince might die at any moment. Later on she might decide she'd been wrong, that she should have spent her wishing energy solely on healing; but there was no way to be sure.
Fire leapt from her fingertips, and already—after all her walking in the snowstorm—that little bit of wishing left her exhausted. She used up a few more precious seconds to nurse the fire, to set the clay pot over it, place a handful of snow and the herbs into the pot, and then she turned to the prince.
She wished strength into him, using up nearly all she had left herself to do so. Then she took her knife and cut the arrow out from his flesh. "No bleeding," she wished, having nothing to spare for the pain.
The arrow came out, the prince didn't bleed to death, and Ardda packed the wound with the herbs, then wrapped it all with a length of fabric from her skirt since she hadn't thought to bring fresh cloths from home.
She spent the rest of the long night rubbing his limbs to keep him from losing them to the cold.
By midnight the snow stopped falling, and just after dawn—as she was blowing her breath onto his hands to warm his fingers—the prince opened his eyes.
Perhaps it was her face—or perhaps it was the young man's pain, or the smoke from the fire, or the first dazzling shaft of sunlight through the bare branches—but the prince winced, then kept his eyes closed.
"You will survive," Ardda told him, wish and comfort wrapped together. "You will be fine."
The prince nodded but didn't open his eyes.
He's weak from loss of blood, Ardda thought, and indeed in another moment she could tell by his breathing that he'd fallen back asleep.
But his reaction still hurt.
During the night she'd been pulling the lean-to apart branch by branch to keep the fire alive, but any more of that and the whole thing was likely to fall in on their heads. She changed the prince's bandage, and when that didn't wake him up, she dared to crawl out of the lean-to in search of what wood she could find in the vicinity. This she stacked in a pile close at hand.
He would not survive another night outdoors, she knew. He needed more warmth than this simple fire provided; he needed shelter from the wind, and hot broth to give him strength. She regretted not having the horse; except, of course, the horse had been exhausted and would have balked at traveling through the snow and wind last night. Fighting him, she wouldn't have made it this far. And in any case the prince was obviously in no state to ride.
Thinking of the horse reminded Ardda of the animal's impression of the prince: kind, and gentle, and generous. Not, of course, she told herself, that she was as fond of apples as the horse was.
But as she sat looking at the prince, thinking how handsome he was, she thought that maybe—if he got a chance to know her before he saw what she looked like—maybe his basic goodness would help him disregard her appearance.
So that when he stirred again and his eyelids fluttered once more, Ardda wished the glamour back on herself: a smooth cheek, an easy-to-live-with nose, and—not being greedy—hair that didn't exactly curl but framed her face loosely.
The prince opened his eyes.
"Be strong," Ardda wished at him. "Be well."
His eyes didn't stay open any longer than last time, but he gave a tight smile: acknowledgment that he heard her, and understood, and was trying to be brave.
Her heart melted.
"My name is Ardda," she told him. She clasped his hand. "I have the power of wishes, and I am wishing very hard for you to Get better."
He gave her hand a slight squeeze. "Thank you," he whispered, little more than a movement of his lips.
"I have to leave," she told him, "to get your horse, to bring you back to the safety of my cottage. I am wishing Wild animals away from here. I am wishing you Health."
"Garn," he whispered, which made no sense till he added, "Prince of Imryn," proving Ardda had been right. He put his hand over his heart: a bow if he'd been standing and if he'd had the strength—courtly manners that set Ardda's heart beating faster.
"I'll be back by noon," she wished and promised.
Prince Gam's eyes fluttered open for an instant, too short a time for Ardda to know whether he'd seen her. But she liked to think he had, for he fell back asleep with a smile.
There was not nearly the wind that there had been the night before, and what there was blew at her back. Ardda got to her cottage in good time. Along the way she had tried to decide whether she should construct some sort of litter for the prince that the horse could pull through the snow, but in the end she thought that would take too long and that it was likely to get caught in the snow anyway. She brought a stool, to help Garn mount, fed the horse apples, promised him many more, then clambered onto his back. Then, riding as fast as she dared, she returned to the lean-to.
The fire was down to almost nothing, despite the pile of sticks she had left where Prince Garn could reach them. But the prince was breathing easily, and there were no tracks but her own near him.
"Garn," she said, shaking him awake. "Prince Garn."
"Ardda," he whispered, surprising her that he had remembered. He reached out his hand and brushed her cheek.
Did he remember and wonder? Or was it just tenderness?
"You have to stand." Ardda wished so much strength into him that her own knees became wobbly.
But he stood. He leaned on her shoulder to climb onto the stool. He swayed slightly, and she didn't think he was going to make it. But he gathered himself and swung up onto the horse.
By then Ardda needed the stool herself. She climbed up behind Garn, putting her arms around him to hold on to the reins, though she realized that if he started to fall, there was little she could do.
From this position, there was no way to retrieve the stool—yet another reason, if she was counting, not to let the prince fall off: She'd never get him back on.
She gave the reins a little shake so the horse would walk slowly and started back toward her cottage.
After three days of lying on a pallet in front of Ardda's fireplace—wrapped in all of Ardda's warm blankets so that Ardda herself had to wear her cloak to bed to keep from freezing, spoon-fed Ardda's soup, subjected to Ardda's wishes for well-being, kept clean and dry and safe from the cat—Prince Garn finally could stay awake longer than five minutes at a time.
After four days he was strong enough to sit up by himself.
After six days he could get up out of his makeshift bed.
After ten days he was ready to go home.
"Come with me," he invited Ardda.
She had just brought in an armful of wood. To keep the prince warm day and night, she had burned much more than she had made provision for, and she had been thinking that, eventually, she would have to go out into the woods for more.
He took her hand, which she had wiped on her apron but which was still gritty from the bark, and he kissed it.
She loved his royal manners.
Still, Ardda felt her cheeks get warm. Then she worried. Did they redden at the same rate, she wondered, her natural right cheek and the glamour-affected left?
They must have. Garn smiled at her and said, "My family will love you. You're beautiful, you saved my life, you're kind and sweet and beautiful."
That was two beautiful, Ardda noticed, but didn't let it worry her.
"My father can grant you lands, so you'll be a noble lady, so we can marry. If you're willing," Garn added hastily. He brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek.
Ardda couldn't help but flinch, knowing what the cheek really looked like.
"What?" Garn asked.
"I'm not beautiful," Ardda told him. She only meant that even with the purple mark covered and the nose looking smaller than it really was, her eyes were still squinty and her hair was muddy brown and straight.
But the prince said, "Of course you're beautiful. I thought that from the first moment I saw you, even before I knew how wonderful you were, even before I knew you were going to save my life." But he frowned, slightly, even as he said this, as though trying, trying to remember...
It was time.
"I'm not beautiful," Ardda repeated.
"You are," the prince protested, somewhat weakly, somewhat breathlessly.
"I have the power of wishes," she reminded him. "I have wished a glamour on myself so that you could look at me without wincing."
"Nonsense," Garn said. "I'd love you anyway."
Ardda released the glamour.
Garn winced and looked away.
Ardda waited for him to repeat that he loved her anyway.
And waited.
Ardda closed her eyes.
She said, "I'm the same person I was before. I can keep the glamour. No one else need know."
"I would know," the prince answered.
"Yes," Ardda said.
She could wish for him to love her, but that seemed as wrong as tampering with her family's memories.
In the end, he packed provisions for the trip and said no more of taking her with him.
Ardda had returned the glamour to her face so that he would look at her before he left, but still he would not. Sitting astride his tall horse in her front yard, he looked at his hands on the reins and said, "I couldn't live a lie. Truth is not in what appears to be, but in what really is."
Ardda couldn't argue with that. All she could have said was that sometimes truth has nothing to do with what you can see.
But she didn't say that. She said, instead, "You're absolutely right."
And she cast a glamour on him.
She made him look as though he had pointy ears with tufts of fur at the ends. She covered his face with warts and made his eyes orange.
"Good-bye," she said, waving.
Garn, of course, had no idea what he looked like. He smiled, still not looking directly at her, gave an elegant half-bow, and put his heels to his horse's sides. He'd have a surprise when he got back to court, a surprise that would last for a year, but only a year.
Ardda picked up her cat. "You know," she told the cat, "I've been foolish. Of course everyone in my own village knows what I really look like, but Prince Garn has reminded me that the world is a big place."
The cat said, "Meow," which Ardda took as the most sensible thing anyone had said to her in a long time.
And with that she packed her own provisions and set out, with the cat, the goats, and the chickens. And with big, bright eyes and golden hair that was all luxurious curls—because sometimes you just have to be a little bit greedy.