The Porcelain Dove (58 page)

The Crow cocked its head at her, impatience clear in every feather. "Oh, mademoiselle, mademoiselle. A crow is not a man, not though he read and speak as fluently as any bishop's clerk in France. Take heart, therefore, and put on your boots. You've a journey before you and some danger to face at the end of it. But you're a brave girl, and you won't be facing it all unsupported."

For answer, the Maid sighed and shrugged and pulled from her pack a pair of cracked leather boots, which she tugged onto her feet. As she swung the pack onto her back, I caught sight of a wand sticking out of it. I knew that wand, me. I couldn't be mistaken—how many wands could there be beribboned like a maypole and crowned with a purple jewel? Yet how came a troupe of bad provincial players to have among their properties a duplicate of the wand of the Fairy Friandise? Wondering, I stared and stared at it, and what with staring and wondering I missed the change of scene, so that the Maid's arrival at the North Wind's palace took me by surprise, as though she'd made the journey by magic in very truth.

Le Destin, it seemed, had kept back his best effects, for the palace of the North Wind was splendid if somber, as one would expect the dwelling of the grim Boreas to be. Bidding the Crow farewell, the Maid entered the stable and offered herself as stableboy to the North
Wind's head groom. There followed a comic scene involving the head groom, the Maid, a dung-fork, and a flatulent horse which had Jean holding his ribs and weeping with merriment. I, too, found it amusing, if a little coarse, especially when the Horse of the North Wind copiously demonstrated why not all foul airs are born in marshes. The Maid was inspired to a stream of scatology that would have shocked the curé, had he been there, into a fit of the vapors.

So easily the Maid found the object of her virgin quest. The stealing of it was not so easily achieved, for the smoke-gray stallion was so wild that even his master the North Wind approached him with respect and a magic bridle. Furthermore, Boreas always cared for the Horse with his own hands, nor would he accept any help in unsaddling or rubbing down or putting away tack. A thousand times the Maid despaired of accomplishing even her first task.

"He's as bad as maître Grisloup," she complained to the Crow. "One brush out of place, one straw too few or too many in the bedding, one blanket left hanging unfolded, and 'tis the back of his hand or the tip of his lash and 'Polish those bits 'till they
shine
, lad!' I'll never catch him napping, not the North Wind."

The Crow bobbed his head thoughtfully. "Then we'll have to catch him waking. How fast is he without the Horse?"

"As fast as he is with, only he can't keep it up long. He's out of training, you know. I've seen him blown and sweating just running across the stable-yard."

"There are kingdoms smaller than the North Wind's stable-yard," said the Crow. "Yet I can run farther and faster if I must. And the Horse. How fast is he?"

"Not so fast as lightning, nor yet so fast as thought. Much faster than a bird in flight or any animal upon four legs." The Maid shrugged. "As fast as the wind, in fact."

The Crow tousled its wings in an irritated way. "I cannot run so fast as that, yet, perhaps if he is over-blown . . . "

"What are you going to do?" asked the Maid.

"'Tis the merest spark of a thought; a breath would extinguish it. Only, should you see a chance, jump on the Horse and hold on for your life." And then it flew away, leaving the Maid puzzled and fretful as before.

The next scene was the stables, with the Maid opening the door to Boreas and the Horse returned from a storm, the pair of them so
blown out they could scarcely raise a breeze between them. Boreas fairly tumbled off the Horse's back, and was leading him into his stall when a playful whickering was heard off-stage. The storm-gray steed stiffened and tasted the air with flaring nostrils.

"Quiet, lad," said Boreas, and tugged impatiently at the magic bridle.

The whickering again, and then the Horse upped so suddenly with his great head that the North Wind lost his grip on the magic bridle. Before he could grab it again, the Maid was on the Horse's back and clinging to his mane like a burr as he reared and wheeled and thundered out of the stable with Boreas cursing and puffing at his heels.

A trim black mare stood at the palace gate, her tail invitingly raised. As soon as she caught sight of the Horse of the North Wind with the Maid on his back, she tossed it flirtatiously, picked up her heels and made for the Southlands, running before the Horse faster than an eagle flies, faster than a hare or a rat or any animal on four legs, though not quite as fast as the wind. Stride by stride, the Horse of the North Wind gained on her, his lungs heaving like an air-pump, sweat and foam streaming from his sides and mouth. When they reached the border of the North Wind's country, the mare's tail was flicking in the Maid's face and her breath was laboring; she was slowing, stumbling, halting to stand, her trembling legs splayed, as the Horse, rampant, reared to mount her.

Poor Horse, to be led so far and then to have his prize snatched so rudely from under his very nose! For the mare disappeared, and suddenly a gigantic Crow was flying up between his forelegs. He came down stiff-legged, jolting the Maid half off his back, whinnied wildly, and stood trembling. If he hadn't been so tired, he'd have bolted again. As it was, after a moment he put down his head and began to pull at the short grass.

A thousand leagues away, Boreas sat cursing and rubbing at a cramp in his leg. As weary as his Horse was, he was wearier still. Yet before he went home to his bath and his bed, there was something he wanted to know. He stood up and called out in a voice of tempest: "Thou, Thief! I clothed thee, I fed thee, I paid thee good gold. Why then hast thou robbed me?"

The Maid stood in her stirrups and replied: "Fury drives me, duty calls me. I have what I need and will fret you no more."

This answer did nothing to appease the North Wind, who raged
and roared until I feared for the Maid; but he was too leg-weary to follow her.

Slowly, to spare the Horse, the Maid rode over land and sea to the island where Alcendre had his dwelling. Before she reached the tower, she drew rein, dismounted, and went to the Horse's mighty head. As the Crow watched from the crupper, she breathed her own breath into the Horse's nostrils and whispered long into the Horse's ears. Then she removed the magic bridle from between the Horse's teeth and hid it in her pack.

"Clever girl," said the Crow approvingly. "I'll be away, then." He spread his wings and crouched ready for flight. "You have the black feather? You've only to blow upon it to call me."

"I know, Pompey," said the Maid. And after a small pause, awkwardly: "I am grateful for your help."

The Crow laughed raucously, hopped into the air, and flapped heavily into the trees.

I started and looked sharply at Jean, who was gazing at the stage like a man enthralled.

"Did you hear that?" I hissed. "She called the Crow 'Pompey.' "

"Chut," said Jean. "Alcendre enters."

A glade before a tall white tower. The Maid sat the Horse with Alcendre at her stirrup, caressing the Horse's flank with one bony hand. It seemed to me he'd aged a hundred years in the space of one act; perhaps 'twas only the monkish robe with which he'd replaced his scarlet suit. He'd changed wigs, too, from black to white, and gummed a wispy beard to his chin. In short, Alcendre was the image of the beggar-wizard down to his clawlike hands and his burning amber eyes.

I remember that I noted this metamorphosis with as little wonder as I'd noted the transformation of a painted scene and two ill-carpentered trees into a real forest. "How skillful," I thought. "How clever." Then I thought nothing more at all. 'Twas as though I'd shrunk to two eyes and a memory, with no room under my cap for judgment or feeling.

The beggar-wizard gave his apprentice a sour look. "Well, girl. Hast got the Horse, I see. Did any man help thee?"

"Only the North Wind himself, Master, and that entirely by chance. May I have the Dove now?"

"One task achieved achieveth naught, as thou know'st full well. Thy second task is to bring to me the Wizard of Norroway's black Cloak."

The Maid bowed, and he hobbled into his tower without further word. When he'd disappeared within, the Maid slid down from the Horse and glared at the closed door, her eyes a little narrowed and her jaws clenched in a look of fury restrained. Gently the Horse nudged her shoulder.

"I pitied him, Horse," she said, stroking his cheek. "I never blamed him for hating my father, not when I learned what cause he had to hate the name of Maindur. How foolish I was to think he'd except me from his hatred."

The next scene was a ship bound for Norroway, with the North Wind blowing vengefully and the Maid seasick, and the crew casting dark looks at her and her Crow. They muttered about witch-boys and they muttered about Jonahs, and the harder the North Wind blew, the louder they muttered. They'd just settled upon throwing both Maid and Crow overboard as a sacrifice to the elements when the North Wind, howling his rage, seized the mainmast and snapped it like a bone.

This was the shipwreck I'd seen the players rehearsing, with the stage tossing and rocking between moments of terrible stillness when it lay in the trough of a wave whose crest hung above it like a rocky gorge before tumbling down upon the deck and shattering into foam. Maid and Crow forgotten, the crew sprang to their stations. Yet Boreas did not go unappeased. The wind swept the Crow up and away; the water claimed the Maid.

Gasping and flailing, she fought the waves and seized upon the top of the mainmast, which chanced to be floating nearby. Miraculously, it bore her up through the storm. More miraculously still, it carried her safely to shore where she washed up at the feet of an ancient man in a rusty black cloak: the Wizard of Norroway.

Stiffly he knelt down beside her, his cloak billowing out behind him in the wind, and bent to raise her in his arms. With some difficulty he sat her up, thumped her on the back, and held her as she began to retch up seawater. When she was done, he wiped her mouth with a corner of his cloak.

"Easy now," said the Wizard gently. "Easy, lass. Lie you still a moment, and when you're feeling better, we'll go up to my house and
I'll get you something to eat. Though you're a strong sorcerer, you're mortal yet."

Thanks to the Maid's weakness and the Wizard's age, they were a tedious while scrambling up the cliff, and perforce stopped often to rest. During one of these halts, the Wizard said, "Fortune was with you, lass. I was expecting an omen, or else I'd not have been here."

The Maid had only strength to shiver and nod and haul herself a little higher up the cliff. But when at last they stood panting at the top, she asked, "Did you get it?"

"Get what, lass?"

"The omen."

"The omen?" The Wizard opened his arms and his rusty, black cloak and folded the Maid within them to nestle by his side. "Yes," he said. "I did."

By this time in my life, I'd met two sorcerers and heard tell of another, and the Wizard of Norroway was like none of them—although in time, I thought Pompey might grow to be as kind and wise. Observing the Wizard tend and teach the Maid, I seemed to see the shadow of the youth he'd been: lean-faced and sharp-eyed as an eagle, fearless as a lion, solitary as a bear. He was old now, a thousand years or more, he said. His magic kept him alive, but he'd not bothered to keep himself young, so that his shoulders stooped like folded wings, his hands were gnarled and spotted, and his plaited hair trailed down his back in seven bleached rope-ends.

"Magic is a strange thing, lass," he told her once. "You can learn all its rules and doctrines, read grammaryes until you're blind, question imps and fairies and kobolds and dwarfs for twice a thousand years, and still magic will surprise you. Any country witch-wife can cast a spell. And not the wisest, oldest, strongest wizard that ever lived can control precisely where 'twill land or how 'twill work itself out."

Young and headstrong, the Maid smiled, sure that her spells would cast true. Old and wise, he smiled back at her. I've often taken comfort in the knowledge that he was right and she was wrong. He was a kind teacher, the Wizard of Norroway. 'Twas no wonder that the Maid grew to love him and to feel the burden of her quest as a grim weight upon her heart.

One day she went to the Wizard's rock above the cold North Sea and blew upon the Crow's black feather. I knew she feared him lost in the storm; as she blew she wept. Yet within a pair of moments he
flew to her call, incongruous over the ocean as a whale in a mountain stream.

"Well, mademoiselle," he croaked as he flopped to earth beside her. "You've waited long to summon me. What news of the cloak?"

Having called the Crow, the Maid seemed loath to speak to him, at least about the Wizard of Norroway's black cloak. First she wanted to know where the Crow had been, and why he'd sent her no word.

"Here and there," said the Crow to her first question, "and I came as soon as you called me. Now. What about the cloak?"

The Maid fidgeted her fingers, a child's trick her mother had often taken her to task for. "There's nothing to tell, Pompey. I can't take it."

"Take heart, mademoiselle. We'll think of something will turn the trick, just as we did with Boreas. And this wizard is mortal, which should make the task easier. Why, you might simply slip it from his shoulders as he sleeps."

"Well, yes; I'd thought of that. But I can't do it." She sounded young for her years, a child protesting the horse is too high, she'll fall off, she knows it.

And 'twas the child the Crow answered, his harsh voice soft as down. "He's been kind to you and you don't want to rob him. I'm glad you feel so, mademoiselle—it does your heart credit. Yet here is a quest to be achieved and you the one fated to achieve it, by blood, by nature, and by training. Do you refuse to take the Wizard's cloak, the Dove will never come to Beauxprés and the wounds of the past must fester on unhealed."

"Then the Dove will not come to Beauxprés. Is that so great a tragedy, Pompey? I am sorry for my mother's sufferings, bien sûr—she is only silly and vain, and those are not mortal sins. But my mother has never been so kind to me as this Wizard of Norroway, so heedful of my thoughts and opinions. When he looks at me, he sees me. Not his own desires and fears: me. He knows my soul more truly than any, save you. I cannot betray him. I will not."