“Let’s get a move on,” he barked to cover up his momentary weakness, gesturing toward the forest. Within the maze of trees and brambles, a winding onyx trail led to the market some quarter-league away. “Crony wants us to open shop today and carry over stock. We’re already late, and the garden still needs your attention.”
Furrowing her eyebrows, almost transparent against her discolored skin, Stain nodded. She dunked her entire head into the sink’s water—reserves from the Crystal Lake that Luce kept filled for her. She jerked up and gasped at the chill. Shimmery streams slicked her furred scalp then ran into her face. Glistening droplets clung to her extensive lashes. Drying off with her sleeve, she left a blotch of gray from yesterday’s clay upon the muslin. After smearing on more sun protectant, she wriggled into some gloves and grabbed a handful of breakfast, opting for the dried, leathery bites of quail and shriveled apple from a cracked bowl.
Popping some food into her mouth, Stain hastened across the threshold. An eager whinny lanced the thick air and the girl’s stunning smile returned, even brighter, as the Pegasus cantered out from the trees and into the yard.
Ears back, the beast snorted at Luce and Crony while he sauntered over to Stain, stirring clouds of ash beneath his hooves. He halted, towering above the girl, wings folded to his sides . . . waiting. He scolded her with his eyes and she chuffed a soundless laugh before offering a few pieces of apple.
Scorch nuzzled the snack and twitched his tail contentedly as she reached up to scrub behind his right ear with gloved knuckles. The embers in his mane cast light along her ashen complexion and his black coat, resembling stars against stormy skies. A fitting analogy, as they often seemed to be two constellations having a conversation imperceptible to those tied to earth.
A grumpy frown clouded Luce’s features. “Well, so much for her not getting distracted. What . . . does he sleep in the trees now?’ He looked up at the branches. “Surely there’s a horse-sized nest up there somewhere.”
“If so, we be in good fortune. Poached Pegasus eggs be a delicacy.”
Luce rolled his eyes.
Crony laughed within herself. She couldn’t decide if the sylph’s dislike of the winged horse stemmed from having to share the attentions of their ward, or if he envied Scorch’s wings. She imagined a bit of both. Either way, Luce’s discomfort provided her hours of endless amusement.
Many in the ravine had tried to capture the stallion, but he always broke free, leaving behind a trail of fire-crisped corpses. In deference to their lives, the denizens had finally learned to let him be. Only Stain could get near him. She’d told Crony that deep within Scorch’s coal-black heart thrived a gentle diamond, precious and rare, and she would one day mine it.
Pulling away from Scorch, Stain made a sign for the sun aimed in Luce and Crony’s direction.
Luce nodded. Crony had taught him the language—how to read the letters and signals Stain formed with her hands. Crony knew it from centuries before, when Nerezeth and Eldoria had been allies. It was a lost language, once universal to both kingdoms—a way of communicating silently across short distances. Back then, drasilisks consumed the night skies. The nocturnal creatures were half-blind and like bats, and relied upon keen hearing and echolocation to find their human prey. The two kingdoms had combined their infantries and used hand communications for strategizing and at last defeated the winged, serpentine plague by working together.
Few knew how to cipher the signals now, just as few remembered a time when Eldoria and Nerezeth coexisted in harmony. But Crony remembered—as only those who were dead or immortal would.
Someone in Eldoria had thought to teach the princess the old language, and Crony was grateful. It was the only way she’d managed to gain the girl’s trust.
After making another sign for water, Stain knelt at the horse’s ember-fringed fetlocks and ran her gloves across the drooping flowers as the Pegasus stretched his neck to nibble the wetness from her scalp.
Luce crouched down. Swatting at the swish of ash stirred by Scorch’s pawing front hoof, he took the waterskin from his waist and held it next to a limp sprig of larkspur.
Stain wrinkled her nose, preparing herself. Removing a glove, she dug her fingers—tips lit to a golden glow—into the ashes. Then she called up the dormant seeds of columbine, larkspur, and bleeding heart left over from centuries before.
Scorch shook his mane, graceful legs and silver hooves dancing as the sooty groundcover blinked with a flash of light. Luce added water from the canteen and four new blooms burst from the ground while the existing flowers grew bigger and brighter.
“Well done, child.” Crony patted Stain’s tense shoulder.
The girl snapped her head in acknowledgment, too intent on riding out the pain to meet the witch’s gaze.
The princess’s ability to rouse life from seeds buried far beneath the earth, so far below they should’ve been dead long ago, was inexplicable in the beginning. Crony couldn’t understand how someone, formed and revered by the night, could harbor sunlight in her hands. But after watching the girl’s memory of when she opened a very special letter written in gold on black parchment, the witch had a hypothesis that involved the prince himself. And if she was right, there was a connection between the two already in place.
Taking a measured breath, Stain gathered a bouquet of the fullest blooms and held them up to Crony. Fresh, for the vases, she signed with her shimmery-gilded hand.
Crony cupped the girl’s chin. “Thank ye, wee one. Always nice to have some frippery for me windows.” She took the flowers and limped toward the doorway, then turned. “Ye both should be on yer way.”
Stain stood and dusted off her palm, allowing Scorch to nuzzle it. The glow faded from her fingertips, as if he absorbed it. Crony had never asked, but it was clear. Somehow the horse was able to ease her pain.
Luce offered Stain a leather pouch for market. Not to be forgotten, Scorch nudged between them, wings spread high—each feather’s barbs studded with orange cinders.
Luce grumbled something under his breath that made Stain shake her head affectionately, then the three started toward the thickening trees bordering Crony’s plot.
Stain absently tugged at the talisman around her neck. It was the girl’s ritual, to touch it each time she ventured away. May-let she sought security, reassurance that the key to her skeletal home wouldn’t vanish like the past and family she couldn’t remember.
Stain believed her amnesia was a result of the abuse someone had dealt her when they left her for dead inside the ravine. Crony nurtured the lie, though oft wondered if the princess would forgive them if she ever learned the truth of her guardians’ contributions to the ills that had befallen her family—of the roles they had played in her personal tragedies. Then Crony would ask herself when it was that she had started to care.
Stain waved good-bye before stepping with Luce along the glittering trail of embers left within Scorch’s trotting wake, into the brambles and trees, leather pouches dangling from their hands.
Crony buried her serpentine nose in the flower bouquet, inhaling. Soon, she would be seeing the girl leave for the last time, if she could find a means to get her to the castle. The true princess must be there to greet the prince so all could fall into place for the prophecy. But Crony couldn’t convince Stain to go, nor could she have Luce do the same. It had to be Stain’s own decision some way. Yet she feared it was dangerous for the girl to make the journey and face Griselda alone without her memories. The Eldorians believed they already had their princess, and Stain no longer fit the description. The impossibility of the riddle vexed Crony’s ancient mind.
She stepped into her bedroom and bent over the cedar chest at the base of a black elm’s trunk, where she and Luce kept their stolen weapons and enchanted items. Opening the lid, she searched for a small, scaly box with black hinges. She’d chosen to craft it of drasilisk hide due to its indestructible quality. The words princess - resolution were scribbled across one particularly large and pale scale in black ink. As she searched, a needle, partly embedded in a dead man’s tunic still needing hemmed, pierced Crony’s thumb. A driblet of dark blood welled at the site.
The witch cursed. There was a time her hide would’ve bent something so benign as a needle in half. Upon blotting the wound to steep the flow, she found the box she sought, but a drop of blood had fallen upon the “s” in the word resolution and smeared it to resemble revolution.
She decided it didn’t matter. Luce would know what the box was for when the time came. She lifted the lid and drew out the princess’s glass book of memories. Crony knew every aspect of her childhood now, and Luce knew all that the witch had chosen to share.