Palace of Mirrors, Page 2

  Of course, I can’t tell Harper that. I’m not even sure I believe it myself. Maybe it is physically possible for a dog to jump like that. Maybe there was never anybody there except a dumb dog. Maybe I’m the coward who’s scared of shadows.

  “Maybe someone was following us,” I say, even though it’s illogical. The shadow was ahead of us on the path, like someone was lying in wait.

  Harper just shakes his head.

  “Who’d bother following us? We’re not anybody important.”

  “I—” I have to choke back the words. It’s strange how badly I want to tell Harper everything all of a sudden. Partly just to wipe that smirk off his freckled face, to make him know that I’m important. Partly because . . . I don’t know. We’re best friends. It almost feels like I’m lying to him, not telling. I want him to take my fear and the shadow seriously. I want him to take me seriously.

  “You were really scared, weren’t you?” Harper says softly. He stands up, brushes the dirt from his breeches. He steps a little closer, and I remember again that he’s a boy and I’m a girl. This is so weird. It wasn’t that long ago that we used to arm-wrestle and play leapfrog and chase and tackle, and it didn’t mean a thing. But now I can see that he’s thinking about putting his arm around my shoulder, to comfort me. He lifts his arm a hairsbreadth, lowers it again. Chickening out. For now.

  “Really,” he says huskily, “if there was any danger, if someone was following us . . . I’d protect you.”

  “With what?” I say. “Your harp?” I’m just trying to make a joke, trying to make it not so weird that he’s standing so close, that he’s offering to protect the same person he used to tackle and wrestle and pummel. But he recoils, just like I’ve punched him. The expression on his face crumbles. That was the worst thing I could have said to him. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone in my entire life.

  Harper drops his fishing pole.

  “You know what? I don’t think I feel like fishing today,” he says. “Maybe I’ll just go back to bed. To sleep. Maybe I’ll just sleep until noon, and then I’ll spend my every waking hour playing that stupid harp!”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. But he’s already stalking away from me, throwing up clumps of mud up from his heels with every angry step.

  I pick up Harper’s fishing pole, and then I just stand there. I’m too scared to move. But I’m not afraid of shadows and phantom men and enemies anymore. I’m afraid that Harper will never forgive me.

  3

  Eventually I force myself to walk the rest of the way to the pond. I cast both fishing lines and reel in big ugly catfish, smaller sunfish, humble monkfish. I’m having an incredibly lucky fishing day, but it’s no good without Harper. Still, when I’m done, I divide the fish into two baskets. I leave one of the baskets with his pole propped against the door of the hut he shares with his mother. I can hear ripples of harp music coming from inside. I rap hard against the door—pound, Pound, POUND!—then dash away.

  Nobody jumps out at me from behind any of the trees, neither dog nor human. Nobody reaches out to drag me into the bushes and muffle my mouth, bind my arms, stab my heart. Nobody even glances at me twice.

  “How was the fishing?” Nanny asks, when I shove my way into our cottage.

  “Fine,” I say.

  It’s funny. I used to tell Nanny practically every thought that flitted across my mind. I told her what kind of dress I wanted to wear to my coronation; I told her every single time I got a mosquito bite, and exactly how messy each mosquito looked when I squashed it. I told her how my quill pen squirmed in my hand and shot out blots of ink when I least expected it, and how Sir Stephen couldn’t possibly expect me to memorize twenty pages of A Royal Guide to Governance, not when just one page of the book put me to sleep. But lately my jaw seems to lock up even when there’s something I really want her to know. And I don’t want her to know what I said to Harper. Because of that, I also don’t tell her about the shadow I saw on the path, the dog that was thrown (or jumped) at me, the possibility that my enemies know where I am.

  Am I foolish? Foolhardy? Or just “keeping my own counsel,” as royals are advised to do in the addendum to Rule Three of the Royal Code?

  “Have you forgotten what to do with fresh-caught fish?” Nanny asks.

  I realize I’ve been just standing there, staring at Nanny as she cuts up potatoes for the expected fish stew.

  “Uh, no. Sorry. I was just . . . thinking. I’ll get the knife.”

  We have a special knife for scaling and deboning fish. I take it down from a hook near the fireplace and carry the basket of fish back outside. The wooden knife handle feels cool in my hand as I make the first slash through fish skin.

  I could defend myself if someone jumped out at me now, I think. There’s no need to tell Nanny or Harper or anyone else about what I saw, what I suspect. I can take care of myself.

  The knife slides across the slippery fish, and before I can stop it, the blade nicks my thumb.

  “Ow! Blast the dark one’s sneezes!” I shout, which is the worst curse I’ve learned from Harper. I drop the fish and the knife and clutch my bleeding thumb in my apron. Nanny appears instantly in the doorway of our cottage. She’s got her own knife held high over her head, clasped in both hands, ready to attack.

  “I cut myself,” I say sheepishly. I peel back the apron and look. The wound has already stopped bleeding. “Just a little.”

  Nanny lowers her knife instantly.

  “You were screaming like a stuck pig,” she says. She walks briskly over and inspects my thumb. “Humph. Doesn’t look much worse than one of those paper cuts you get from all that reading.”

  I’m staring at the wound too—it is worse than a paper cut. (Really. I wouldn’t scream over a paper cut.) But out of the corner of my eye I can see that Nanny’s trembling. There’s a quaver in her voice, too, that she’s trying to hide with brusqueness. My mind flashes back to the image of her standing in the doorway, knife held aloft, her normally gentle face twisted into a fierce expression. A murderous expression.

  Nanny’s scared of something too.

  “Why’d you do that?” I ask.

  “Do what?” Her voice is still a little wobbly. She’s actually scanning the woods around the cottage, as if she still believes there’s some great danger out there.

  I take the knife from her hand, and do an imitation of her pose. I could be an illustration in one of my books: “Warrior with Weapon Ready.” Except the warriors in the illustrations never wear dresses and aprons.

  “The way you were screaming, I thought you were being attacked by a wild boar,” she says lightly. Too lightly. “I thought I’d kill it, and then the whole village could feast on pork chops.”

  I don’t believe her. She’s so tenderhearted about animals that if I ever really got attacked by a wild boar, she’d probably scold me for provoking it. And wild boars are low to the ground. You don’t hold your knife that high to fend off a wild boar.

  You hold your knife that high to fend off a human.

  Nanny has always been the one who’s not worried about my fate. Sometimes, when they think I’m not listening—when they think I’m fully engrossed in Court Protocol for Everyday Use, or when they think I’ve fallen asleep in my corner of the room—I can hear her and Sir Stephen whispering about current conditions in the countryside, the suspected movements of our enemies, the various speculations about what might happen next. There are advantages to living in a tiny cottage. When Sir Stephen comes for his weekly visits, there’s nowhere for him to stay except in the same room as Nanny and me. And there’s nowhere for him and Nanny to go to whisper in private. Unfortunately, Sir Stephen always has all the interesting information, but he whispers so softly that I usually hear only Nanny’s side of the conversation. And she always says things like “Well, no matter how hard they try, they’ll never find Cecilia here” and “Who would think to look in this village? Why, I’d wager we’re not even named on most of the maps i
n the kingdom.”

  But now, if Nanny’s scared too . . .

  Something’s changed. I can see it in Nanny’s eyes, that there’s some new threat, some new turn of events. Maybe she’s heard news from Sir Stephen, or rumors from down in the village.

  “Tell me,” I demand. “Tell me the truth.” I will my voice to sound imperial and queenly, truly royal. I picture myself with a crown on my head, a ramrod-straight spine, a fur-lined robe engulfing my body. I want that kind of voice. But it’s my usual voice that comes out, just a little squeakier and whinier. I sound like a spoiled little child begging for penny candy at the village store.

  “I’ll tell you to wash and bandage that cut, I will,” she says, half laughing. But she trumps up an excuse to stay outside, pretending to weed the already weed-free vegetable garden while I finish cutting up the fish. She doesn’t leave me alone the rest of the day.

  And so there’s really no need to tell her about the shadow and the dog, about my own fears and worries and mistakes.

  Is there?

  4

  After I’m done cutting up the fish and the stew is bubbling in its pot over the fire, I bury the fish bones in the garden for fertilizer. Then I feed the chickens and gather eggs and bring in firewood and do my usual other dozens and dozens of chores, all under Nanny’s watchful eye. And then somehow it’s late afternoon, time to bring the cow in from the pasture. I can practically see Nanny deliberating about this, trying to decide if it’s safe to let me go. Just as I’m about to make another embarrassing plea—“Please tell me what’s going on! Please! You have to!”—she surprises me by asking, “Harper will be going after his mam’s cow today, won’t he?”

  “He always does,” I say.

  Nanny takes the last split log from my arms.

  “Then run on now and meet him at the path. You two go together, you hear?”

  We always do. Going after the cows is one of my favorite chores. Harper’s always in a good mood, because he’s done with his music practice for the day. And for me it’s the moment that divides my day as hardworking, ragged peasant girl from my evening as secret princess poring over gilded texts. The studying is no easier than the chores, but it’s more promising. Each page I turn whispers, Someday . . . Someday . . . And though I can’t tell Harper about it, of course, sometimes when we’re going after the cows together, I figure out a way to share some of the interesting tidbits I’ve learned: “Did you know that the tallest waterfall in our kingdom is equal to the height of fifty men, standing one on top of the other?” “Did you know that King Guilgelbert the Fourth never wore his crown, because it made his head itch too much?” I always pass off the knowledge as something Nanny has told me, or something I’ve heard down at the village store. And Harper tells me what he’s heard: that the Riddlings’ ewe gave birth to a lamb with two heads, that One-Eyed Jack at the gristmill jumped into the river from the top of the waterwheel just to prove it could be done.

  I can’t tell Nanny that Harper might not want to get the cows with me today, after what I said to him this morning. The thought is too piercing.

  “Run along,” Nanny urges again, as if she’s afraid that Harper might pass on by our cottage without stopping.

  Today he might.

  I whirl around and rush down to the place where the path from our cottage meets the path from the village. The village path is wide and deeply rutted by wagons and all the horses, cows, goats, sheep—and, oh yeah, humans—who have traveled over it. The path from our cottage is barely a space between trees. In fact you have to weave right, then left, then right, then left, over and over again. It’s so complicated that Nanny named our cow Dancer in hopes of encouraging her to dodge the trees gracefully instead of balking at every new tree trunk looming before her face.

  “But it’s just a name,” I can remember complaining when I was younger. “Cows don’t understand words like that.”

  “Never underestimate the power of a well-chosen word,” Nanny shot back. “Or the intelligence of a well-chosen cow.”

  Never mind the cow—I’m wishing that I’d chosen my words more wisely this morning. Harper isn’t waiting for me down at the bottom of the hill, where the paths meet. I stand there for a few moments, remembering the shattered look on his face this morning. My own mocking words echo again in my mind.

  With what? Your harp?

  I blush red, embarrassed and ashamed. It was such a stupid, cruel thing to say. It didn’t even make sense—he wasn’t carrying his harp this morning, just the fishing pole.

  I push the memory back to a few seconds before I opened my big mouth: to the moment when he was almost ready to put his arm around my shoulder, to comfort me. The expression on his face then . . . well, his face was still covered with freckles, of course, and his sandy hair was sticking up in all directions, as usual, and he had a little brush of mud across his cheek (probably flung there by that accursed Pugsy’s paws). But somehow, even with the freckles and the messy hair and the mud, he’d almost looked romantic, almost like one of the courtiers bowing to their ladies in one of my royal books.

  Romantic? A courtier? Harper? Now, that was ridiculous.

  Annoyed with myself I stalk out into the center of the path to the pasture, turn toward the village, and bellow, “Harper?”

  No answer.

  “Fine. Be that way,” I mutter.

  I stomp off toward the pasture. Dancer and Harper’s cow, Glissando, are the last ones left there, standing in the buttercups chewing their cud. (Harper’s mother named the cow, obviously. Harper usually calls her Grease.) Seeing Glissando/Grease makes my heart do an odd little plunge. Maybe I should have waited for Harper just a little longer. Or maybe he was so mad at me this morning that he ran off and joined the army. Maybe I’ll never see him again. Ever.

  “Come on, Dancer,” I say in a choked voice, slapping her rump. “Time to go home.”

  The trip back down the path seems to take three times longer than usual. The shadows are starting to creep across the path, and I shiver, remembering how Nanny was so insistent about wanting me to walk with Harper.

  It’s not my fault he didn’t show up. What was I supposed to do—issue a royal decree demanding his presence? That wouldn’t have helped!

  Except, maybe it would have, because then I could just explain to Harper about who I really am, and why I did have reason to be worried this morning, and maybe, just maybe, he could understand how I could have been so mean to him, by mistake. . . .

  Dancer flicks her tail in my face, as if trying to alert me to a dark figure standing ahead of us on the path, almost exactly where I need to turn off for our cottage.

  “Thanks, Dancer,” I mutter. “You’re a great guard cow.”

  It’s not like I can plunge into the woods and hide, not with an eight-hundred-pound cow strolling beside me. I wish I’d brought the fish knife with me. I wish Dancer were a steed I could hop onto and gallop away. I wish Harper were with me, with or without the harp.

  Then the dark figure moves, and turns into someone familiar: Harper.

  “What—you didn’t even wait for me?” he shouts at me indignantly.

  “I—I thought you weren’t coming,” I stammer. “You were so late.”

  “Mam made me practice extra, because I kept messing up,” Harper says. He glares at me, and even in the dying light I can see the fury in his eyes. “I wasn’t that late.”

  He’s right. On a normal day I would have stood there where the paths split forever, if that was what it took to get to walk to the pasture with Harper. He’s had to practice extra before. And I’ve never minded leaning against a tree, waiting. Sometimes I braid flowers into my hair, or fill my apron pockets with acorns to throw, or just ponder which new fascinating fact to share with Harper. Once or twice I’ve even walked down to the village myself to fetch him, freeing him from his musical torture with the excuse, “Really, Mrs. Sutton, the sky’s getting so dark, and Nanny says her bones feel the rain coming—don’t you think we should
bring the cows home before it storms?” Harper loves it when I do that.

  “I’m sorry. Today—it just—I—,” I sputter.

  “Never mind,” Harper says, brushing past Dancer and me.

  “Wait! I—”

  “Grease is going to founder on all that grass if I don’t get there soon,” Harper says impatiently. And then he takes off running, his bare feet slapping hard against the dirt.

  I think about tying Dancer to a tree and chasing after him, or just standing there for another eternity and ambushing him when he comes back with Grease. But what am I supposed to say? How can I excuse myself? How can he understand anything if he doesn’t know that I’m the true princess?

  How can I stand here in the near dark, alone, when I know someone might be lurking in the trees, ready to get rid of the true princess?

  5

  The Great Xenotobian War started because of a dispute over a shipment of tacks.

  The Second Sachian War began after King Gertruvian the Third overheard King Leolyle of Sachia insulting his wife’s taste in flower decorations.

  As for the Alterian War—there’s been only one so far, and, admittedly, it wasn’t all that great, but still—it started mostly because King Gustando was a little sensitive about his height, and the Alterian ambassador mockingly suggested that he should wear shoes with a thicker sole and heel.

  I used to giggle over those details. Even when Sir Stephen stared disapprovingly at me and intoned, “The art of foreign relations is a delicate thing. One must learn from the past, rather than mock one’s ancestors,” I could do little more than duck my head and hope he couldn’t see that I was still laughing. What kind of idiots fight over tacks? Who cares about flower decorations or shoes?

  But now, spooning up Nanny’s delicious fish stew without even tasting it, I’ve lost my sense of humor. I keep thinking, How can Harper and I be fighting over a musical instrument?