“I hate you,” said twelve-year-old Kania, through gritted teeth, to ten-year-old Marra. “I hate you and I hope you die.”
Marra carried the knowledge that her sister hated her snugged up under her ribs. It did not touch her heart, but it seemed to fill her lungs, and sometimes when she tried to take a deep breath, it caught on her sister’s words and left her breathless.
She did not talk to anyone about it. There was no point. Her father was not unkind, but he was mostly absent, even if he was physically present. At best he would have patted her awkwardly on the back and sent her to the kitchen for a treat, as if she were very small. And her mother, the queen, would have said, “Don’t be absurd, your sister loves you,” in a distracted voice, opening the latest dispatch from her spymasters, making the political decisions to keep the kingdom from falling into ruin.
When Prince Vorling was betrothed to Damia, the household rejoiced. Marra’s family ruled a small city-state with the misfortune to house the only deep harbor along the coast of two rival kingdoms. Both those kingdoms wanted that harbor, and either one could have rolled over the city and taken it with hardly a moment’s effort. Marra’s mother had kept them balancing between two knives for a long time.
But now Prince Vorling, of the Northern Kingdom, would marry Damia and thus cement an alliance between them. If the Southern Kingdom tried to take the harbor, the Northern Kingdom would defend it. Damia’s first son would sit someday upon the Northern throne, and her second (if she had one) would rule the harbor city.
It was, perhaps, a trifle odd to expend a firstborn son on so small a thing as the Harbor Kingdom, but it was said that the royal family of the North had grown thin blooded and had married too many close cousins over the centuries. They were protected by powerful magic, but magic could not fix blood, so the kings looked to marry outside their borders. By sealing the Harbor Kingdom and its shipping port to them by marriage, the Northern Kingdom enriched their blood and their coffers at a single stroke.
“At last,” said Marra’s father. “At last, we will be safe.” Her mother nodded. Now the Southern Kingdom would not dare to attack them, and the Northern Kingdom would no longer need to.
It was only Marra who cried. “But I don’t want you to go!” she sobbed, clinging to Damia’s waist. “You’re going away!”
Damia laughed. “It will be all right,” she said. “I’ll come visit. Or you’ll come visit me.”
“But you won’t be here!”
“Stop it,” said her mother, thin lipped, pulling her daughter away from her stepdaughter. “Don’t be selfish, Marra.”
“Marra’s just bitter because she doesn’t have a prince,” said Kania, taunting.
The unfairness of this made Marra cry harder. She was twelve and she knew that she was too old to throw a tantrum, but she felt one coming on anyway.
The nurse was fetched to take her away, and that meant that Marra did not see Damia leave, with all the pomp and ceremony of a bride going to her bridegroom’s kingdom.
She was watching five months later, though, when Damia’s body was brought home in state.
There was a black wagon pulled by six black horses, flanked by riders dressed in mourning bands. There were three black carriages before and after the wagon, the curtains drawn. Their horses, too, were black. They had black bridles and black saddles and black barding.
It struck Marra, watching, as an extravagance of grief. Someone wanted the world to know how sad he could afford to be.
“A fall,” said the whispers. “The prince is heartbroken. They say she was carrying his child.”
Marra shook her head. It was not possible. The world could not be so poorly ordered that Damia could be allowed to die.
She did not cry, because she did not believe that Damia was dead.
It seemed very strange that everyone else did believe it. They ran back and forth, sometimes weeping, more often planning the details of the funeral.
Marra crept into the chapel that night. If she could prove that the body lying there was not Damia, then all the foolishness of funerals could be set aside.
The shrouded figure smelled strongly of camphor. There was a death mask atop the shroud. It was Damia, her face composed.
Marra stared at the figure for a little while and thought that it had been several days since they had heard of Damia’s death. They had been cool days, but not cold. The camphor could not quite chase out the scent of decay.
If she tried to push aside the death mask and tear off the shroud, she would see a rotting corpse. Who knew what it would look like?
I was thinking like a little child, she thought angrily. Thinking that I would be able to tell if it was Damia. It could be anyone under there at all.
Even her.
She crept away and left the shroud undisturbed.
The funeral was lavish but rushed. The riders that the prince had sent were better dressed than Marra’s mother and father. Marra resented her parents for being shabby and resented the prince for making it obvious.
They lowered the body into the ground. It could have been Damia. It could have been anyone. Marra’s father wept, and Marra’s mother stared straight ahead, her knuckles white where they gripped her cane.
Days followed, one after another, chasing each other into weeks. Marra came to believe that it had been Damia, mostly because everyone else seemed to believe it, but by then it seemed too late to mourn, and anyway, how could such a thing be possible?
She tried, once, to say something to Kania.
“Of course she’s dead,” said her sister shortly. “She’s been dead for months.”
“Has she?” asked Marra. “I mean—she has. But … dead! Really? Does it make any sense to you?”
Kania stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It doesn’t have to make sense. People just die, that’s all.”
“I guess,” said Marra. She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I mean … everybody says she is.”
“They wouldn’t lie about it,” said Kania. “Marrying the prince meant that we were going to be safe. If Damia’s dead, then the prince will marry someone else and we’ll be in danger again.”
Marra said nothing. She had not thought of that, either.
I must start to think like a grown-up. Kania is doing it better than I am.
The two years between them seemed suddenly vast, full of things that Marra knew but had never thought about.
Kania sighed. She reached over and hugged Marra with one arm. “I miss her, too,” she said.
Marra accepted the hug, though she knew her sister hated her. Hate, like love, was apparently complicated.
* * *
The edge of the blistered land was before her. Marra looked at it for nearly a minute, thinking.
It was strange how clear the edge was. It looked like the shadow cast by a cloud. This bit here was dark and that bit was bright. It took a moment or two for wind blowing from one side to reach the other.
She could hear the crows calling back and forth. The ones on the outside sounded like normal crows—Awk! Awk! Awk!
The ones over her head sounded like Gah-ha-hawk! Gah-ha-hawk!
She wondered if the outside crows hated the crows of the blistered land the way that the villagers outside hated the people inside. They had warned her against going inside.
“They’ll kill you soon as look at you,” one man had said, leaning against the fence. A second man—his friend or his brother, Marra wasn’t sure—nodded in time. “It’s creeping,” the second man said. “Gets a little bigger every year.”
The first one nodded. “There’s trees that used to be on this side that are on that side now.” He spat. “Full of cannibals. You go in there, they’ll eat you and lick out your bones.”
“Ain’t no reason to go in,” said the second one. “Not for canny folk.”
They looked at her suspiciously. The first one spat again, near her feet.
Marra had found that the people inside were much more welcoming. They had shared their fire and given her the best directions they could offer.
I was worried about the wrong things.