Winter's Child (15 page)

“He is a fine young man,” Dominic observed one morning. “He has a good pair of eyes and a keen mind.”

We were alone in the room I would always think of as my father’s study. I had been going over a list of the mayors in the principal cities of the realm. My interest in names was coming in handy in a way I’d never anticipated. It made it easier to commit the mayors’ names to memory.

Dominic and I had had several discussions about the best way for me to meet my subjects, but it was actually Kai who suggested the course of action I decided to adopt. Instead of waiting for people to come to me, I would make a tour of the kingdom. Such a journey would be a good way to show my people that I was as interested in them as they were in me.

The fact that the Winter Child had returned at last to take up her duties as queen of the land of ice and snow had caused great excitement throughout the land. Naturally, my people were curious to see what I looked like. Almost none of them had been alive when I’d first set out on my quest.

I had worried that, having fulfilled the vow he’d made to my father, Dominic’s strength would now begin to fade. If anything, it was just the opposite. He seemed to flourish under the responsibility of tutoring me in my new duties. And he genuinely enjoyed the time he spent with Kai.

Kai and I had been given little time alone together since our arrival. This was to be expected, of course, and I was genuinely pleased that Kai had found so much to interest him around the palace and grounds.

As the days went on, however, I found myself lifting my head from my books, as if hoping to hear the sound of his footsteps in the hall. I never did. Instead, I was the one who sought him out. I frequently found him at a window, staring into the distance, lost in his own thoughts.

Though he always turned to me with a smile
when I spoke, there was also always a moment that caused my heart to miss a beat: the moment before he turned, when it was clearest that, though Kai’s body was present, his spirit had traveled far away.

“Are you unhappy here, Kai?” I asked one afternoon. Dominic and I were taking a break from our session.

“Unhappy?” Kai echoed. He turned around quickly. “No, of course not. Why do you ask that?”

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, half wishing I hadn’t spoken. What would I do if he said he was miserable and that he wanted to go home?

You know the answer to that, Deirdre,
I thought. I would have to let him go. I could not hold Kai here against his will.

“Sometimes you seem pleased to be here, other times you seem far away.”

Kai was silent for several moments. “I am far away,” he finally said. “Far away from all that is familiar, far from my home.”

I pulled in a silent breath. “Do you want to go home?”

Kai shook his head swiftly, and I felt myself relax a little. “No,” he said, his tone firm. “I don’t. It’s just ...” He turned to look out the window once again. “You have a true place here, Deirdre. I do not.”

“Not yet,” I said, just as firmly.

“Not yet,” Kai said with a slight smile. He continued to gaze out the window, and I wondered if he was thinking of Grace. I moved to stand beside him, our shoulders just touching.

“Give it time, Kai.”

“I will.” He nodded. He turned to look at me then. “I’m used to being, well, useful, I guess,” he went on. “I love exploring the palace, learning how things work, but the truth is, all I’m doing is satisfying my own curiosity. I’m not
doing
anything. I’m not accomplishing anything. It makes me feel unsettled and ...”

“Useless?” I suggested.

Kai made a face. “I sound like an idiot, don’t I?”

“I think you make perfect sense,” I said. “In fact, I have a proposition for you. Dominic is going to travel with me, as you know. I need someone to run the palace in our absence. I’d like you to have the job.”

“I don’t know anything about running a palace,” Kai protested.

“But you could learn,” I said. “You could figure it out. That’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to be happy here, Kai. I want you to feel that you are needed and that you belong.”

“I want that too,” Kai said. He lifted a hand and placed it on top of mine. “Deirdre, I—”

“Oh, there you are, Your Highness,” Dominic’s voice suddenly said from behind us. Kai and I started, then took a step apart. “And good afternoon, Kai,” Dominic went on. “I am sorry to interrupt, but I’m afraid it’s time for Her Majesty and me to resume our work.”

“Kai has just agreed to run the palace in our absence,” I said as I turned toward Dominic.

“Excellent,” my steward said at once. “That is a
sound choice. I will be happy to answer any questions you have before Her Majesty and I depart.”

“Thank you,” Kai said, his tone wry. “I’m sure I’ll have some.”

“See you at dinner,” I said.

Kai nodded and moved off down the corridor.

“I apologize,” Dominic said quietly as we turned our own steps toward the study. “Perhaps I should not have interrupted.”

“No. It’s all right,” I said.

“Kai is a fine young man,” Dominic said, voicing the opinion he’d shared many times before. “But might I ask what plans Your Highness has in store for him?”

“What makes you think I have plans for him?” I asked, unnerved by the question.
Are my feelings so obvious?
I wondered. “He’s a human being, not a piece of furniture to be moved from room to room. I’m sure Kai has plans for himself.”

“Of course you’re quite right,” Dominic said at once. We had reached the study. He opened the door, then stepped aside to let me enter first. “I should not have inquired. I have overstepped my bounds.”

I waited until we were both inside with the door closed before I replied.

“Of course you should have inquired,” I said. “I know my father relied on you to speak your mind. I do too.”

“It is my pleasure to assist Your Highness to the best of my ability,” Dominic said. He sketched a quick bow.

“Even when I behave like a bad-tempered school-girl?”

“Especially then,” he said with a smile. We looked at each other for a moment, and I thought I saw both joy and sorrow in his eyes.
Somewhere between the two,
I thought,
is where I want to be, just like everyone else.
I just didn’t know how to get there.

“I should help you most when you need it most, Highness,” my steward continued. “Would you like me to aid you now?”

“I’m not sure I know what kind of help to ask for,” I confessed. “It seems my ability to read hearts is deserting me, just when I need it most.”

“I doubt that very much,” Dominic replied. “But if I may ...”

I nodded. “Please, go on.”

“I’m not sure you can read a heart in the way I think you mean,” Dominic continued. “A way that would let you figure out what that heart will decide ahead of time. No one possesses that gift.”

“Then what must I do?”

“Be patient,” Dominic answered. “Learn to trust.”

“Which one of us?” I asked. Dominic smiled. I caught my breath. I recognized that smile. My father’s face had worn it every time I’d solved a difficult puzzle faster than he’d thought I might.

“If you can ask that question, you may need less help than you think you do, Highness,” he replied.

“Dominic,” I said suddenly. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything that lies within my power,” my steward answered promptly.

“Will you stop calling me ‘Majesty’ or ‘Highness,’ at least when we’re alone? I’d like you to call me by a proper name.”

“What name?” Dominic asked, his tone surprised.

“One that you choose,” I replied. “A name that has meaning for you.”

“Why do you ask for this?” Dominic inquired.

“Sometimes I feel that all I have are titles,” I explained. “Your Highness, Your Majesty, the Winter Child. I know I get to choose my own name when my task is done, but in the meantime ... I’ve never really cared for Deirdre,” I admitted. “It’s just another word for sorrow, after all.”

“How do you feel about Beatrice?” Dominic asked.

“Beatrice,” I echoed. I held the name in my mouth, felt the way it rolled over and around my tongue. It started out grandly, then seemed to quiet at the end, like a trumpet call rising and then fading in the clear morning air.

“I like it,” I said. “Why did you choose it?”

“It was my mother’s name,” Dominic explained. A shadow passed across his face. “I always hoped I might have a daughter and pass on the name.”

“But you didn’t,” I said, suddenly struck by the fact that Dominic had lived a long, full life and I knew virtually nothing about it.

“No,” my steward said with a shake of his head.
“I did not. In fact, I never married at all.” He gave a rueful smile as if he had not intended to say so much. “Perhaps I am not the best person to offer advice when it comes to the heart.”

“Nonsense,” I said at once.

“Thank you,” Dominic said softly. He cocked his head, his dark eyes on mine. “The question still remains, though: What are you going to do about Kai?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, matching his honesty with my own. “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.”

“In other words,” Dominic said, “you’ll be just like everyone else.”

Abruptly, my heart began to pound like a hammer inside my chest.

“What?”

“You’ll be like everyone else,” Dominic said once more. “You may be able to tell whether or not Kai’s heart needs mending, but you cannot tell when, or if, it will decide to love. That, you must wait for him to reveal, just like any other girl would.

“Does it please you, to think you might be like everyone else?”

“Do you know,” I said, “I think it does. I’ve never felt like everyone else, not for as long as I can remember. But it might be wonderful to be ordinary.”

“Even if it means that, like many others, you end up being unlucky in love?”

“Even if it means that,” I said. “Which is not to say
I won’t work hard not to be,” I added with a smile.

“I wish you luck.”

“Thank you.” I walked over to the desk and retrieved the paper I had spent the day studying. I handed it to Dominic.

“I will now recite for you the names of all the mayors I am about to meet.”

Two days later I rode out from the castle, leaving Kai behind.

N
INETEEN
Story the Tenth

In Which Grace Makes Several Startling Discoveries

How long did I stay in the old woman’s cottage? I cannot tell. Time seemed to pass strangely there, as if the usual rules didn’t quite apply.

I was sick for many days, so ill and weak that I could hardly get out of bed, let alone go out of doors. As if all the steps that I had taken had conspired to make me lie down. My dunking in the river simply had been the final straw.

Throughout my illness, here are the things that I recall: the touch of the old woman’s hands, the sound of her voice, the never-ending yet always changing scent of flowers. All these things should have been soothing, but somehow they weren’t.

No, that’s not quite right.

They
were
soothing. That was just the problem: so soothing that I ran the risk of forgetting myself. The old woman cared for me as tenderly as if I had
been her granddaughter, and she encouraged me to call her Oma.

Have you ever been a character in one of your own dreams? That’s what my days in the cottage in the forest felt like, as if I were on the outside of a window looking in at myself. But all the while, I knew that something wasn’t right.

“You’re feeling much better, aren’t you, Grace?” the woman remarked as she brushed my hair one morning. This was a ritual she performed both morning and night.

Not even my true oma had done this, or at least not since I was a very small child. My true oma hadn’t held much store in doing things for me; she’d much preferred teaching me to do things for myself.

“It’s no wonder you were all worn out,” the old woman continued. “Walking and walking, day after day with no end in sight, not even knowing if you were going in the right direction. How could you, when you didn’t know where you were going in the first place?

“Tut.”

As she often did when she wished to express disapproval, the old woman made a clucking sound, her tongue hitting against the roof of her mouth. As I’d begun to recover, she’d told me I had rambled during my fever, that I actually had tried to get out of bed, insisting I must keep on walking.

“Falling into that river might be the best thing that ever happened to you.” She finished brushing my
hair and set the brush on the bed beside me.

“The river brought you to me, and now you can stay right where you are. No need to go tramping through the world. You have me to look after you now.”

She stroked her hand along the length of my hair, and then she leaned forward to place her cheek against mine. I wondered what our two faces would look like together, if I could have seen them in a mirror. As far as I could tell, the cottage had none.

“I’ll bet you can’t even remember what it was you were looking for,” the old woman said softly. Her breath felt cool against my cheek. “Or maybe it’s
whom
. Whom were you looking for, Grace? Won’t you tell me?”