Spindle's End (27 page)

The stranger murmured, “But they have never told her; Sigil, they have never told her,” and many expressions ran over his face like small sharp gusts of wind riffling the surface of a pool: astonishment, dismay, disbelief, disapproval darkening to condemnation; and the man stepped toward Rosie and, to her utter horror, dropped on his knees in front of her. From that position he gently drew up his beautiful and dangerous blade and laid it across his hands, holding it up toward her as if it were a gift. Rosie involuntarily put her hands behind her back.

“It is your name, yes,” he said, looking up at her, the sheen of his skin opalescent in the soft lamplight, the blade in his hands bright as the moon. “But you, dear one, dearest one, you are our princess, the princess we have striven so anxiously to defend, Casta Albinia Allegra Dove Minerva Fidelia Aletta Blythe Domnia Delicia Aurelia Grace Isabel Griselda Gwyneth Pearl Ruby Coral Lily Iris Briar-Rose. And I am your servant Ikor, among the least of your servants, but I was to be your one-and-twentieth godparent, and so I was sent by the queen’s fairy, Sigil, to find you, and to tell you that your long concealment is at an end at last, and we must quickly plan what to do; for she who cursed you seeks you even as I have done—and she will—as I have done—find you, for we can no longer stop her. We have tried, these twenty years, but we have finally failed, and we know it. No fairy—no magician—should have been able to make a searching spell that endured twenty years, but Pernicia did it. It is a great shaggy thing by now, spiny as a holly tree with the errors of twenty years’ looking; and we have teased and pestered and vexed it as we could—the guarded fortresses were not our only means of confusion—but it has gone on looking. When we found that the spell had settled here, in the Gig—we knew what this meant. And so the best we could do at the bitter end is hope to find you first—only a minute first, an hour, a day—or three months. I gladly offer my life to you, but that is not enough.”

Rosie heard what the man said, but she did not—could not—would not—take it in. She seemed to be floating free from her body; her body remained standing in the fire- and lamp-lit kitchen, Katriona beside her and the rain-drenched stranger kneeling at her feet; but she, Rosie, the real Rosie, had gone away, gone away to a safe place where she couldn’t be told horrible, frightening, devastating lies. Dreamily she looked round her; it was a foggy place she stood in—even foggier than Foggy Bottom—and at first she could see nothing clearly. But she heard voices: animals, her animals, her friends, talking, talking robin to fox and deer to badger and otter to vole. They were all talking, talking to each other, using human kinds of words as the swiftest means of communication, all talking together, for tonight all defenses were down:

She
talks
to us!

The stories never said where she fled to!
—this from a very young and foolish rabbit, who was instantly pinned to the ground by the weight of disapproval this thoughtless remark brought him.
Well, of course not,
said a goose, and gave a scornful hiss as she swayed past him and settled nearer the door to the wheelwright’s, wriggling between two sheep and a beaver.

Our
princess!

Rosie laughed, from wherever she was, in the rolling grey fog, and the laughter stirred her from lethargy, and she looked down. She seemed to be wearing a long dress made out of something as grey as the fog, grey and twinkling, but the fog only glittered in the corners of her eyes, whichever way she looked, and the great sweep of skirt that fell round her glittered and winked all over. She could feel the weight of the dress, heavy as cold iron, which made her stiffen her back against it to hold herself straight, like a horse in its first shoes lifting its feet high in surprise.

She thought, this is the sort of dress a princess wears; but I am not a princess. I left all that behind, back in the kitchen, with the man holding his sword and dripping water on the floor. I left it behind. I am a horse-leech, and I wear trousers, not heavy clumsy skirts.

She didn’t want to see the dress, and she put her hands over her eyes; but the weight of it would not go away. She dropped her arms again, already weary of the weight of the sleeves. I left you behind, she said to the dress. I left you behind. I am Rosie, niece and cousin to the two best fairies in the Gig, I live in the wheelwright’s house, Barder’s, who is my friend and my cousin’s husband; I am the friend also of Peony and of—of Narl. I am a horse-leech.

In her mind she glanced once more at the wheelwright’s kitchen, looked at the kneeling man with loathing, but then she looked away from him, at Barder’s kind thoughtful face, Aunt’s sharp clever one, and at last looked at Katriona, at the tearstains still visible on her face, something like the well-known look of love and anxiety there, but now harsh and bleak and almost despairing. I left you behind, Rosie thought wonderingly, and looked down once more at the dress she was involuntarily wearing.

Something, some individual twinkle, moved as she looked, and she reached out her hand, and the spider crept onto her extended finger.
All will be well,
it said, and Rosie said to it,
I know your voice. I know you. Who are you?

The spider didn’t answer.

Rosie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and ducked out of the cold heavy dress and slipped back into her body, still standing in the wheelwright’s kitchen, and instantly she felt the warmth of the fire at her back, and the poised, tingling tension in the room. The animals were still talking:

Ours,
sighed many voices.

Rosie’s eyes were still closed, and among the animals’ voices she heard another voice, and against Rosie’s closed eyelids there seemed to be streaks of lavender and purple and black forming patterns that made Rosie feel dizzy and sick; and then there was another voice, a human voice, a voice that spoke to her of her death and was glad of the prediction.
I have found you at last,
it said.
Found!

But then the voice changed, faltered, lost its malice, and became familiar—familiar and loved and near at hand. It was Katriona’s voice, and it was calling her name, the name she knew, the only name she knew. Rosie. Rosie, Rosie. She opened her eyes, having forgotten that they were shut. The man, Ikor, no longer knelt at her feet, Katriona had her arm round Rosie’s waist, and Aunt stood next to her and held a cup out toward Rosie, saying, “Drink this. How steady is your hand? Shall I help you?”

Rosie fumbled back a step, found her chair again, and sat down. A dog head insinuated itself onto her knee—one of Lord Pren’s tall sighthounds, she could almost remember his name, yes, Hroc—and a half-grown puppy, far too large for the job, plunged into her lap, Ralf. Several mice ran up her trouser leg. Flinx, as if it were an accident, sat on one foot (Rosie could feel him hooking his claws into her boot to stay on), and Fwab perched on her head. She took the cup with one hand and then decided to add the other hand to the other side of it, but she drank without assistance, and as the tonic—she recognised the smell from one of Aunt’s little bottles—slid down her throat she thought of the terrible voice she had just heard, and in her mind it infiltrated the name the man Ikor had just spoken: Casta Albinia Allegra Dove Minerva Fidelia Aletta Blythe Domnia Delicia Aurelia Grace Isabel Griselda Gwyneth Pearl Ruby Lily Iris Briar-Rose. And, looking into Katriona’s face, she understood that it was all true; and understood as well why she had not told her; and bitterly resented it, almost hated her for it, almost hated Katriona. And yet she also knew that she was grateful—humbly, shamingly grateful—to have been just Rosie for almost one-and-twenty years; and she felt that her gratitude was an obligation as heavy as the truth, as heavy as the iron dress.

It’s true,
murmured the animals.

She looked at the four human faces looking at her, and stamped one leg, because the mice tickled; her other foot vibrated with Flinx’s purring. She couldn’t remember him ever purring for her before. She stared at Ikor, leaning now against one wall, an owl standing on a shelf just above him, shining white as he shone black and silver, his hand on the hilt of his great curved sword, compassion and wonder in his face.
What stories,
she said to her friends,
what stories about how you all fed the baby princess? What stories about how she fled across country after her name-day?

Stories, said a number of voices, and Rosie forced herself to remember that animals do not tell stories as humans do. Things told were how to build nests and line dens, how to escape your enemies, how to find or catch your food, and how to do these things while not attracting the wrong sort of attention, which included all human attention.
Why?
said Rosie.
Why did you help her—them?
Katriona had brought her home—brought her here. Katriona had been the one from Foggy Bottom who had gone to the princess’ name-day; Rosie knew how every village, every town, had been allowed to send one person. The others from the Gig—Osib from Treelight, Gleer from Mistweir, Zan from Waybreak, Milly from Smoke River—all of them were only too glad to tell stories of their journey, of the name-day, in spite of what had happened to the princess. Katriona never spoke of it at all; it was Flora who had told her that Foggy Bottom’s representative had been Katriona. Rosie, well acquainted with Katriona’s tenderheartedness and distress at the princess’ plight, had thought she knew why she did not talk about her experience.

Why?
she asked again.
I do not understand. Why did all of you help?

There was a rustle of puzzlement through the animals, but the puzzlement was at her for her question. At last the owl said to her,
We do not know
why.
It was the thing to do. The bad one is bad; the sort of human-bad that . . . leaks, like an old bole in the rain. Those of us who saw this knew this; it was there. Our parents and grandparents, if they were there, knew this. You humans use “we” and “all of you” differently. We did not gather together. We gave the story of the bad human-gathering day to our neighbours, and our neighbours to their neighbours, and they and we did what there was to do. The story now is the way of things. It is done.

You are our princess,
said other voices.
It is now, not then.

Aunt. Of course Aunt knew; for Katriona would have come home with the baby princess—with her, herself, Rosie—and told her what had happened; and Katriona had been barely more than a child herself, fifteen, five years younger than Rosie was now. Barder—she could see that Barder had known as well, and for a moment she had to struggle to forgive the three of them for this, that Barder had known, too, for he would not have learnt till later; they would have told him over her, Rosie’s, head, her unknowing head. Barder must have read something of this in her eyes, for he gave her a funny, twisted little smile, weaker than usual, but the familiar smile the two of them had exchanged many times in the last years, as the two ordinary people in a house that held two fairies, a smile of equal parts love and exasperation.