I honestly believed he would choose me. Against all wisdom, against all odds. Fool that I was, I trusted him. I looked into his eyes and I thought I saw the truth.
But the truth has many sides to it, doesn’t it?
And the deepest, most terrible truth is this: the number of things we understand will always be dwarfed by the quantity of things that we don’t.
My name is Hannah Dory, and I am… I am what?
I am a girl who has been banished from a castle. I am a girl who lies shivering in a bed in a village that has no real name; it is called only The Bend, after the arc of the river nearby.
I am sick. Whether the sickness is in my body, my mind, or my soul, I don’t know. I lie here in the darkness.
But from my bed, I can hear everything. I can hear the wagons coming from the castle, bringing food for everyone in The Bend. I listen to the neighing of the cart horses, the creak of the wheels, and the joyous shouts from my neighbors. In this matter, at least, the baron was as good as his word.
Your village will have as much as it needs, he’d said, for as long as it needs it.
Today, though, there are no carts. Today I hear something different. The sound comes from very, very far away, but my ears are sharp.
Pealing out over the frozen land, their notes bright and deep, comes the ringing of the castle bells, announcing the joyful news.
The baron has a new bride.
Of course, of course—it could never have been me. But hope is a feeling as wild and uncontrollable as love.
My name is Hannah Dory, and I am eighteen in the year of our Lord 1347. Since the day I was born, my life has been a fight—for the right to food, to freedom, to survival. Such basic needs, and yet none of them came easily.
“Conn,” my mother called. “Go give Sally her oats now, and make sure the chickens haven’t gotten into the flour.”
My name is Hannah Dory, and I am to blame for the death of my sister and the death of Otto Rast. But I have saved my mother, my brother, and everyone else in The Bend.
My mother knelt by the side of my bed with a cup of cool river water infused with Zenna’s herbs. “Drink, Hannah,” she urged. “Please.”
I turned my face to the wall.
My name is Hannah Dory, and I fell in love with my enemy. For a little while, he loved me back.
And then—he let me go.
My name is Hannah Dory, and I am free.
May God have mercy on my soul.
I closed my eyes until the music of the bells faded into nothing.