Chapter 1–The Day After the Wedding
Ava was sleeping in for the first time in twelve years. My life has suddenly become good, she thought, half-consciously. It was a miracle that things had become so incredibly wonderful, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. She decided that it was better not to reflect too hard on her unexpected good fortune, as if thinking about it would spoil it somehow. Still, she knew at the back of her mind that her life might not continue in the same lovely vein that it had in the last few months. Undoubtedly some crisis would come along to make her existence stressful and tiresome again, but maybe it wouldn’t happen until she was old and gray.
“Are you going to tell him about us?”
A fat gray and pink bird with a black cap and beak perched on Ava’s nightstand.
“I need to think about it.” Ava rolled away from the bird, lolling over her new silk sheets. They had been made specially for the wedding and were frost-gray with embroidered silver oak boughs and acorns. She picked her head up and let it sink into the pillows again. “I’m tired from all the dancing last night.”
“Hmm, yes, dancing. If you don’t tell your husband, it will be trouble. Let’s get this over with.” The bird was Mr. Bullfinch, the first and most senior of the bullfinches. (Because he was first, he had been named without a lot of thought or effort.) “As you are a princess now, I will refrain from pulling your hair, the way I used to.”
Ava yawned. “Yes, thank you.”
“Good morning Ava, or should I say, Princess Ava of Cedria! I am thinking that, for now, it might be better if you don’t tell him.” It was Chief, the Head Mouse. He was standing on one of the gilded apples carved into her ebony bed frame.
The finch harrumphed, puffed out his feathers and looked furtively over his back at Ava, then started twittering softly at Chief, who squeaked back. It could have been the Cedrian language, but Ava couldn’t make any of it out. She just lay there, staring, while the two animals chattered softly at each other. At one point, Chief gestured towards her with his pink paw, making some significant point to which she herself was not privy. She always disliked it when the grownups whispered amongst themselves, when she was younger, but she had never felt like there was much to be done about it. Now that she was a grown woman she thought she had a right to interject.
“You two! If you don’t want me to know what you’re talking about, please go outside.”
Mr. Bullfinch smoothed his feathers down and Chief nodded apologetically.
“We are sorry, Princess,” said Mr. Bullfinch. “We were discussing the matter of our future relations with the rest of your family. And with the human family in general, I should say.”
“I see. Oh, ‘Ava’ is fine. I’m not sure a bunch of animals need a princess, anyway.”
“We owe everything to you,” said Mr. Bullfinch. “Your royal claim over us is, I would say, more legitimate than that of most rulers over their subjects.”
“You’re a very important part of our lives, at the least, so we have to abide by your decisions,” said Chief. “Which brings us to the question at hand. We didn’t want to hassle you about it before your wedding, but we don’t know if we can trust Prince Inric,” the mouse explained. “I mean no disrespect, he seems like a fine human. But we must be cautious. We don’t want to end up as slaves, or on a dissection table.”
“Inric would never do anything like that!”
“That’s right, if you trust him, we can trust him,” Mr. Bullfinch countered. “And it might be useful to have another human ally.”
“Yes, I’m sure he’ll love you as I do!” Ava felt it necessary to say.
“Even if he’s a moral paragon,” Chief countered, “as you two seem to think, he could still make trouble for us. What if his natural curiosity gets the better of him? Is he capable of seeing us as men?”
In fact, Ava herself found it a bit jarring when her friends referred to themselves as “men.” A lesser woman, she thought, might have giggled. She got up and rubbed her eyes.
“Fellows, I won’t let anyone hurt you! Please calm down! I’m sure we can make everyone happy. Why don’t we enjoy our first morning in the palace! I’m going down to breakfast. They have anything you might want, or so I’m told.”
Mr. Bullfinch saluted with one black-and-white striped wing. “Grab some petit-fours for my finches!”
Chief bowed. “And some smoked salmon!”
“When can we expect your first egg?” another young Bullfinch jeered from the window.
Ava laughed. “I’ll have your head for that!”
Prince Inric had told her to sleep as long as she wanted. Breakfast would be on the table. Their new bedroom had been refurbished for the wedding with the great canopied bed and a splendid modern garderobe with ornate Ginevrian tilework and real bathtub of glossy porcelain. Best of all, the room had west-facing windows and a west-facing balcony, so the morning sun wouldn’t wake them. In Ava’s visions of the future, she spent a lot of time watching the sunset with Inric on the balcony and expected to see very little of the morning.
She had already explained to the servants that she preferred to be alone when she got up. She went to the armoire (inlaid with the rare pearly shagreen of the nacre shark) and looked at her dresses. There were about twenty of them, all dripping with seed pearls, cloth-of-gold and velvet, and they were all quite glorious and inappropriate for something as prosaic as breakfast. She didn’t want to drag her frills in the jam. She picked out the most sensible of them, a short-sleeved affair made of pewter-colored velvet.
The dining room was empty save for the King, his advisors the lords Eks, Igreq and Zed, and Inric. They were all conversing gravely. Inric barely looked at Ava, just nodded without so much as a smile. This seemed inauspicious. Then again, she had had little experience with men and how they behaved when five of them were gathered together. She wasn’t sure if it would be polite to start eating, and stood twiddling her thumbs for a few minutes.
Inric finally noticed her again and said “Oh! I’m sorry! Have something to eat!”
“I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Nonsense. If you don’t see what you want, just ask the servants and they’ll have the cook fix it up for you.” And then he went right back to talking to the King.
The table was laden with fat, lightly-charred sausages, smoked trout, two different kinds of smoked salmon, biscuits, iced cakes, raspberry jam, and asparagus quiche. There looked to be enough to feed a small army. Ava grabbed a plate, wondering how exactly she was going to convey some of these dainties to her friends upstairs. She didn’t want to stick it in her sleeves, or down her blouse. Better not to worry about that on an empty stomach, she thought, sat down and started munching. In all that time, Inric, the King and the counselors never once looked her way. Must be important, she thought. She reminded herself that it was unreasonable to expect attention all the time, especially after the hustle and bustle that led up to the wedding.
Suddenly the King shouted “THAT IS A SLANDER!”
Ava jumped, knocked over a silver cream pitcher, and reflexively began wiping up the cream.
“Well…it is, in fact, true,” Prince Inric replied in a simmering tone. “Three hundred years ago there were Karst enclaves in the south of Cedria, and we murdered some of them and drove some of them into the sea. And, you know, everyone in this room probably has some Karstish blood. That being said–”
“Yes, yes. Did you learn that from your tutor? I knew he was no good–”
“That being said, I imagine Karstland is just using this as a pretext to threaten us. They would like to capture Wentletrap because they don’t have any southern seaports of their own, and if they did, they could take the Cocodrylles and attack Alcyone. But they’ll say anything, of course–that we’re too backwards, that we’re too progressive, that we’re too godless, that we’re too zealous–”
“Too zealous, hah! They’re the ones who bury newborn babes under the floors of their churches–” interjected the King.
“Yes, they are terrible, I’m not sure they still do that, though, they are human, like us–”
“They are not human–”
“Would you listen?!”
“Oh to the devil with you…if your poor mother could hear this–”
“THAT BEING SAID,” the Prince continued, “Karstland is a cruel nation, and they’ve already taken half of Quercia. If they broke through Quercia it would be a catastrophe. They would run roughshod over us. I consider the security of our nation to be of more consequence than their ancient claims and treaties. With that in mind–”
“Yes, they are cruel, they are worse than wolves!”
“With that in mind, I am going to Quercia to fight.”
Ava froze.
“My only son?!” stammered the King. The three lords winced at each other.
“That’s right, father. Excuse me, I need to talk to my wife now.”
Inric took Ava’s hand (luckily not the one that was palming a napkin full of smoked salmon) and led her upstairs.
“You’re leaving.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would come to this. We only just got word that the Karst army had taken Akkorad--”
“That’s the…capital of Quercia?”
“That’s right. If Karstland occupies Quercia it’s only a matter of time until we are overrun ourselves.”
Ava stood by the window. The birds had decamped to the flowering cherry outside, and the mice had all disappeared into their dark corners.
Inric started gathering the books and papers scattered about the room. They were manuals of chemistry and metallurgy, mostly, and plans for cannons and war machines. (Inric had designed and built several of them. A large hole in the eastern wall of the castle, patched with gaily painted plywood, testified to their effectiveness.)
“The Quercians could use someone like me. Many of them are still fighting with bows and swords, or so I hear.”
“Can’t we, I mean, Cedria, just send them aid?”
“We have no aid to send! We’re a small kingdom, and my father squandered about half of the royal fortune on our wedding, after I told him not to.”
“Mm…six hundred guests seemed like a lot.”
“Yes, it was, and he thought he was doing us a favor! Damn it! I’m sorry. Don’t let me color your attitude towards the king, he’s a good man and you’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“He’s always been kind to me,” Ava said. It was true that the king had been pleasant enough in the three or four times they had spoken.
“I want you to pack a bag with only the things you need, so you can get out of the capital if the Karstlanders lay siege. But I hope it won’t come to that. And…oh, I need you to help me with one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I need you to deal with the Green Bonnets for me.”
“The revolutionaries?”
They had, in fact, spent a lot of time discussing the future of the royal family. Inric had made a convincing case that the monarchy was obsolete, and that he, personally, did not want to be a king, and that several countries to their north had already become republics with minimal bloodshed, and it all seemed reasonable enough to Ava, who honestly did not foresee herself being a princess for the rest of her life. Inric had also amused her by regaling her with accounts of his arguments with “Roman Candle,” the Green Bonnets’ sanctimonious leader.
“That’s right. I need to let them know I’m still their man.”
“I’ve…never met any of them…”
“And if something happens to me, they will have to go through you.”
“Are you serious?!”
“—or they will likely throw in with Karstland and we will be overrun for certain, and our children will have to grow up speaking Karstana, if we have children at all, and if we haven’t been tortured to death!”
Ava sat down on the bed.
“Look, you don’t have to speak to Roman Candle in person. Just write him a nice letter and figure out how to get it to him as discreetly as possible. Make sure to play up the cruelty of the Karstlanders. And put it under a false name. I’m ‘Bottle Rocket,’ so you can be–”
“Catherine Wheel.”
“Yes, that’s very good! And do not, under any circumstances, let my father find out.”
“Might it be better if you told your father?”
“No, I told you, the king will be just fine, he’ll live out the rest of his days and after that I’ll resign and nobody will be the wiser. Everyone knows the days of kings are coming to an end, everyone but him. Efven the Three Lords’ll tell you it’s true if you press them on it, not that I’d recommend you do that. I’d like to protect my old man. If he finds out he’ll be livid.”
Ava made a noise.
“Please don’t do that! You can handle this. All you have to do is write Roman Candle a message. You’re a fine writer.”
Ava was silent.
“I hate that I have to leave you here. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
She looked at his handsome, square face, saw terror in his black eyes and immediately regretted her protestations.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, as he knelt down and put his head against her chest. She ran her hand through his short, straight hair.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said. “I may not even have to fight. In the meanwhile, enjoy the palace! Make some friends! Talk to the king, he’ll be lonely and he likes you. He’s a good man, political leanings aside.”
“I’ll try.”
“You could try to patch things up between you and your stepsisters,” he offered.
“Hmm.”
“Think of it as an exciting challenge. Remember when I told you that being Princess was just a ceremonial position and you’d hardly have to do anything?”
“That’s what you said.”
“Well, I was mistaken.”
He stared silently out the window for a moment.
She wondered, for one moment, whether she should tell him about the birds and mice now, and her strange power over them, and whether this might encourage him to stay. Undoubtedly there were a few of them hanging around right now, outside the window or under the floorboards, and she could ask them to present themselves as proof. She reminded herself that her friends hadn’t come to any agreement as to whether her husband should be told, and he seemed to be in a great hurry.
Inric began rummaging in his cabinets, pulling out telescopes and antique pistols, looking at them fondly and packing them neatly away.
“I’m afraid I’m not going to be very well prepared,” he sighed. “I need to stay in communication with the Three Lords. I’m good at chemistry and blowing things up but they are more skilled in the art of war. Also, they know the land of Quercia better than I do, and I’ve barely even spoken to them about this yet…”
“If I can help in any way…oh, nevermind,” Ava faltered.
“No, I want to hear it.”
“Well…I just had a funny idea. You could write me love letters, but they wouldn’t really be love letters, they would be code, and I could relay them to the Lords. You could use my strands of hair to mean rivers, and eyes to mean cities…”
“And mountains would be indicated by descriptions of your luscious–haha, yes, I get the idea. You wouldn’t be embarrassed?”
“I’d know you weren’t really talking about me. You don’t seem to be one for mushy love letters.”
“Yes, this might work. If the Karstlanders got ahold of one of the messages they probably wouldn’t suspect anything. They won’t even know it’s from me. If I leave tomorrow morning I’ll have a few hours to hash the code out with the Lords. It’s an excellent idea! You see? You are really quite good at this stuff.”
Inric went off to talk to the Three Lords and to Tiercel, his retainer, and Ava was left alone for several hours. She ordered any mice that might be around to go busy themselves elsewhere. (There was a faint skittering under the floorboards after she said that.)
She stared at the carved oak leaves on the bedframe. She had known, on a purely intellectual level, that things wouldn’t always be as good as they were when she and Inric first met, but she really hadn’t expected things to go this wrong so soon.
She wondered if it was possible to summon her Godmother again. Perhaps all disaster could be averted. She had a feeling, however, that to try and call such a powerful being, in the presence of her husband, would be presumptuous. Then again, the fate of the entire kingdom was at stake. Shouldn’t such a creature be more likely to intervene, in this case? But…it was Ava’s own personal Godmother, and not the Godmother of all of Cedria. Which raised another intriguing question–did this fairy represent God in some way, or was she a Godmother in name only? Ava wasn’t ignorant enough to believe that God played favorites with nations, but the strangeness of the events surrounding the ball hinted that sometimes he played favorites with individuals. It was all so mysterious. Ava found herself wishing that magic was more like alchemy, of which Inric was an enthusiastic proponent. With alchemy one knew what one was getting.
Ava looked vacantly into the center of the bedroom, hoping for a sign. The room, beautiful though it was, remained still and ordinary.
That night Ava and the Prince had supper sent up to their room, as it would be their last time together for a while. Ava suggested that maybe they should have dinner with the king, and that he’d want to see his son one more time, but Inric thought the king was in a bad mood and would like to be left alone to fume. The servants brought in a silver tray with four little quails marinated in olive oil and lemon, and wild mushroom risotto, and a bottle of white wine. After dinner, lying in bed, Ava said “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I think I’m just going to go insane.”
“You managed to survive all this time living with your stepmother,” the Prince told her. “I’m sure you’ll be alright.” He thought for a moment. “Have you seen every room of the castle yet?”
“Not hardly, just our room, the ballroom, dining room and the kitchen.” (Ava had spent the weeks before the wedding in a guesthouse on the castle grounds.)
“After I leave, why don’t you go poke around? I think it’ll cheer you up a little. Leave my father’s room alone, of course. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention…if you’re in the hallways at night, on the north side, there’s a ghost.”
She grinned. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it.”
She studied his face for signs of insincerity. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Everyone in the palace knows about it. But they don’t tell outsiders because, let’s just say, it doesn’t sound very scary when you describe it.”
He lay silent, smirking faintly, for some seconds.
“Are you going to describe it for me, then?” Ava demanded.
“Er. It’s called the ‘Head Bouncer.’”
“Huh,” said Ava. “It sounds like someone who keeps the peace at a tavern, or something.”
“Yes, that’s not what it is, though,” Inric went on. “It’s a man, in gray clothes, normal height. He holds his arms and legs close together, like so–” he demonstrated, “and sort of loops down the hallway like this, head over feet, feet over head…and you can never see his face clearly because he’s moving so fast. He kind of…comes out of the darkness at one end of the hallway and loops off into the darkness at the other end.” Inric made a rolling gesture with his index finger.
“That doesn’t sound very scary,” Ava said.
“Yes, everyone says that. But it’s horrible if you actually see it.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Only once, when I was little. They say if you see the Head Bouncer it means bad luck is coming.”
“And was it?”
“I mean, if you consider that every bad thing that happens to you after you see the ghost is part of the bad luck. My mother died about five months after I saw him. I still won’t go in that hallway at night if I can help it!”
“I suspect that you are joking with me, trying to take my mind off things.”
“I am trying to take your mind off things,” he admitted. “How about you and your house? I bet it was haunted, too. As haunted as the day is long.”
“No, I don’t think it was. It was just an ordinary country house. If you saw it from the outside, you wouldn’t think there was anything odd about it.”
“Nothing at all? Your stepmother didn’t keep a secret dungeon or anything?”
“Oh…well, there was one strange thing. We had two dumbwaiters–”
“Dumbwaiters, haha.”
“Shush. We had two, but one of them opened on my stepmother’s bedroom–”
“And you didn’t know where it went?”
“Exactly. And I was forbidden to use it, or go near it, or think about it.”
“Did you think about it?”
“All the time. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I could hear it moving. It was only me, my stepsisters and stepmother in the house, so I think one of them must have been riding in it, pulling themselves along with the ropes. Up and down, up and down.”
“For fun?”
“That’s the really strange thing! None of them were the kind who would do that stuff for fun…my stepsisters wouldn’t do it, they were much too old for such silly stuff, and I never heard any yelling or giggling, the way you would if they were joyriding. And the idea of my stepmother riding in a dumbwaiter for thrills is just absurd.”
“Maybe you’re not giving her enough credit. Maybe she still has some hidden reserves of joy locked away in her musty old brain.”
“No, not a chance. There must have been something down there, something important or useful. But that doesn’t make sense either…in all that time, I never saw her working, and her only hobby seemed to be grooming my stepsisters for marriage. After my father died, some of his old friends came to her, asking her if she wanted to start some business or other. There was a man who thought we could convert part of the house to a brewery, a lady who wanted to turn part of our land into an orchard, but she would have none of it, nothing that required any effort on her part. Thinking back, all she did was sulk.”
“And mess around with the dumbwaiter.”
“And mess around with the dumbwaiter. Why are we talking about this now?”
“You’re right, maybe we shouldn’t spend our last night together jawing about dumbwaiters,” he remarked, and kissed her.
She threw her arm around the back of his head and they tried their hardest to forget about the war.
The following morning, Inric left quietly. He was trying to avoid looking like a prince, so he dressed as a commoner and rode Mothbit, the old gray gelding he’d ridden when he was ten. Following some ways behind him was Tiercel, also in civilian clothes, a few more handpicked soldiers, and two carts disguised as ordinary farmers’ carts, one concealing his portable chemistry laboratory and one containing his favorite cannons and other ordinance.
“Everyone in the palace knows where I’m going,” he explained to Ava before he left, “but don’t tell anyone from the town, if you can help it. If the Karstlanders know what I’m up to, they might take it as a declaration of war.”
“I don’t plan on talking to anyone,” Ava said. “Who would I talk to.”
The prince sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that! Can you try not to be lonely, for my sake?”
“Whatever you want,” Ava told him.
He wiped his eyes.
“Uh-oh, is he crying?” jeered Tiercel from his horse. Inric turned and gave him the finger.
Ava laughed in spite of herself and then kissed him farewell.
After watching Inric until he disappeared from sight, Ava went to sit in the courtyard garden. Ask me not to be lonely?! I’ll be lonely if I want. I’m used to being lonely, she thought, grabbing a handful of foliage and flinging it on the ground. Chief and Mr. Bullfinch were already waiting for her in the artificial fern grotto that they had agreed to meet in when they wanted to speak to her outside. It was quiet, seldom-visited and, at this time of year, concealed by a curtain of wisteria.
They had, of course, heard everything. Ava assured them that there was no imminent siege and that, most likely, the war would not affect them at all.
Chief, standing on his hind legs, spoke first.
“What a mess! Poor Ava! Have you tried summoning your Godmother?”
“I…thought about it. But you know, I didn’t summon her the first time, she just appeared.”
“And what were you doing when she appeared? Did you say any special words or perform any arcane actions?”
“I don’t think I have ever performed any arcane actions.”
“But you made us.”
“That just happened.” She thought back to that glorious night when the godmother materialized in front of her like a hallucination of a monstrous butterfly. “I…somehow I don’t think my Godmother can be called, she came when she thought it necessary. I was crying in the garden…maybe if I cry some more…” She thought about how Inric might never return and how she was left all alone with strange people and the Karstlanders bearing down and burst into tears.
“Oh…Dear Ava, don’t cry! It’ll be alright, I’m sure. In the meanwhile we’ll help you in any way we can.” He gestured towards his comrades, five or six of the burliest male mice.
Mr. Bullfinch flew up and perched on her finger. “You can depend on the bullfinches!”
“I know.” She wiped away a tear. “You are so good to me.”
“Anything for you!” squeaked Chief.
Ava blushed. Crying all morning (and what’s more, seeing Inric cry) had already made her tired. She forced a smile and cleared her throat.
“Well, er, yes. We must all do our part! Mr. Bullfinch, please bring me the daily report!” This was a finch tradition, dating back from Ava’s early childhood when the brotherhood of mice and finches first came to be.
Mr. Bullfinch fluttered over to the moss-covered plinth in the center of the grotto and began.
“On this fine day in March, the mice finished transcribing NEW PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY and have now started copying THE MODERN HOMUNCULUS, OR, THE ROMANCE OF THE MANDRAKE, onto standard mouse-sized paper.”
“I didn’t think much of that book, I’m not sure you should bother with it,” Ava remarked.
“It may not be your cup of tea,” explained Mr. Bullfinch gently, “but it’s wildly popular and influential.”
“It’s bombastic and doesn’t make any sense.”
“The mouse library is supposed to be a complete catalog of the classics that form the basis of human civilization, not just books of natural history and funny poems.”
“Touche. What else is going on?”
“Work on the finch clubhouse in the royal forest continues apace. We anticipate that it will be about the size of a large squirrel’s drey and will resemble one from the outside. Inside, it will contain a meeting hall and a granary underneath. The meeting hall will be resplendent with bits of polished glass. I spoke to Rosecloud, the architect, about your concerns as to using real gems, and he was most understanding. He is also having second thoughts about using real candles.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“We will, of course, defer to your judgment in all matters of fire safety.”
“Yes, thank you! I must poke my head in there when you are ready to show it to me.”
“What else, hmm. Mr. and Mrs. Shortwhiskers have welcomed three boys and a girl into their family of twenty. There are no new bullfinches as it is too early in the year for nest-building.”
“If I don’t see Mr. and Mrs. Shortwhiskers, please congratulate them on my behalf.”
“Let’s see…The pair of foxes in the royal forest has had four kits. One of our mouse hunters, Mr. Earnotch, has proposed assassinating the lot of them with poison. I assumed that you would ask us to show mercy, but he told me to ask you and to consider what danger they pose to your people.”
“For now, I think you should just avoid them. There’s going to be fox hunts anyway.”
Ava always felt tender hearted towards the foxes, but she knew her friends had no reason to share her sentiments. She also knew this Mr. Earnotch to be an excellent but somewhat bloodthirsty character.
“And now,” added Mr. Bullfinch, “Chief and I would like to discuss some matters with you in private.” The other mice and finches skittered or flew off.
Chief stepped forward, combing back the fur on his head with his little pink paws.
“Have you made any progress towards the matter of…freeing us?”
Ava sighed. This conundrum had been weighing on her conscience for the last few years. Not for the first time she wished she had a better understanding of her peculiar abilities.
“You have, how shall I put this delicately, come of age–” Mr. Bullfinch explained.
“And you are not going to live forever,” Chief put in bluntly. “What will happen to us?”
“I am not going to die for years and years,” Ava said, gritting her teeth. (She almost said “unless the Karstlanders kill me,” but thought better of it. More likely the Karstlanders would imprison her or send her into exile, which might make it difficult to stay close to her friends.) “I’m going to have some time on my hands,” she continued. “I’ll have access to the royal library, not to mention the ability to lift and move large books. I’ll be talking to the Three Lords. I can see if I can find anything useful. I can’t make any promises, though.”
“We appreciate it,” Chief told her. He paused for a moment. “You know, I was thinking back to your wedding party the other night.” (She had given some of the mice and finches permission to attend, and even to ride in her pockets, as long as they remained discreet.) “Yes, it would be useful if your Godmother could be summoned again, for all our sakes. Remember what the Princess of Pinacia said?”
“Ah, yes, that was an uncomfortable exchange,” said Ava. “She called me a sweet, innocent young thing.”
“But I think there might be something to it,” remarked Chief.
“How so?”
As it turned out, in the past several months, the story of Ava’s escape from her terrible family had become a source of gossip and excitement, not just in Cedria, but in all the nearby kingdoms. Of course the odd details about the Godmother and the various enchantments were left out, because they were known only to Ava, but a sort of narrative had emerged–a story of a saintly and put-upon young maiden who was rescued by a noble prince as an act of divine mercy. That is to say, Ava’s lot had improved so spectacularly because she deserved it. Here was a poor girl who had never so much as spoken unkind words about her vile stepfamily and accepted whatever drudgery they heaped on her with a smiling face and a spring in her step. Of course such an unselfish being would be snapped up by a passing prince!
“Perhaps the Godmother is attracted to goodness,” Chief observed.
“You say that,” Ava laughed, “but I never actually had any choice. If I didn’t do what I was told, it would make more trouble for me.”
“But you went through the motions of goodness, at least! Maybe that’s enough!”
“Surely it doesn’t work that way,” Ava said, doubtfully.
“Now that you have so much free time,” Chief said, “you could practice being good. It’s worth a try.”
“Now, “being good” doesn’t mean the same thing for a princess that it does for a servant,” cut in Mr. Bullfinch. “Inric told you it was important to cultivate good relations with your fellow royals.”
“He also told me I wouldn’t have to do Princess Things much longer,” Ava said sullenly.
“Indeed. Circumstances have changed, have they not?”
As she was leaving the garden, one of her maidservants ran up to her and said “Princess, your sister Jessamine is here! If you like, I could tell her to go away. Oh, what cute little animals!”
“This is a perfect chance to practice being good!” Chief whispered in her ear, then jumped off of her shoulder and disappeared into the bushes.
“Remember, be queenly!” Mr. Bullfinch whispered in her other ear, and flitted away.
Ava forced a smile.
“It’s alright, show her in.”
“Your majesty!” Jessamine ran up and curtseyed, followed by her two parasol-wielding maids.
Ava laughed nervously.
“Just plain Ava is fine. Ah…how are you getting on?”
Jessamine looked serious. “I heard about Inric leaving! And the war! You must be beside yourself.”
“I don’t…think so…?” Ava wondered what it meant to be beside oneself, exactly? Complete paralysis?
“Good old Ava, always so stoic! You don’t have to bear this burden alone, you know. I’m always here, if you need a shoulder to cry on.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Have you had lunch yet? Why don’t you come to my house! It’s only a few blocks away, we can walk! Oh, of course, you might have to worry about being recognized. The public can be so troublesome!”
“I don’t worry about it, I’ll just put my hood up.”
Her other sister was on a junket to the court of Pinacia, but Jessamine had rented a fine townhouse in a neighborhood directly adjacent to the palace grounds. (Ava had given her a generous stipend. She was, after all, family.) It had a plaster facade with white columns and gold and pink trim. Jessamine and Ava were greeted by a doorman in opulent livery covered with gold tassels, and several maidservants curtsied as they entered the drawing room, which resembled a rococo explosion. A flock of Jessamine’s friends, dressed in bright frills, languished on the furniture.
“Jess! There you are!” one of them cried. “We were waiting for you! We’re playing Backhanded Blackhearts! Ava, you outrank us, so you can play the red Jacks, and also count the twos.”
Ava shuddered inwardly. Backhanded Blackhearts was a complicated card game that usually ran four or five hours. One was somehow expected to pay attention to the rules and exchange gossip at the same time. Ava thought back to Inric’s words and steeled herself for martyrdom by boredom.
“Do you think the Karstlanders are going to invade?” one of Jessamine’s friends asked Ava breathlessly.
“Inric told me that he believes it won’t come to that,” Ava assured her, and thus satisfied, the girls went on with their game and the subject didn’t come up again.
Some hours later, when the interminable game seemed to be at a stalemate, Jessamine clapped her hands and said “Let’s remember our place and stop for the day! We’ll leave the card table just as it is.”
Jessamine took Ava aside on to the verandah. “You looked so sad, I thought I should cut our game short.”
“No, I was enjoying it,” Ava managed, while she secretly wondered if the essence of “making friends” was anything more than lying.
“I know it must be hard on you, missing your prince. So I notice you haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room. Out with it!”
“Out with what?”
“Oh…you know!”
“I really don’t.”
“Alright, well, I’ll start, then!” Much to Ava’s surprise she dropped to her knees on the verandah, clasped her dainty fingers and said “I am so, so, SORRY!”
“Um…you really don’t have to do that.”
“I do, I do! I wanted to tell you before the wedding, but you seemed so busy, I didn’t get the chance.” Her face bore quite a convincing pantomime of penance and regret. “Mother was terrible to all of us, you know? She had such high hopes for sis and I, and we were always on edge and we took it out on you. Please forgive me!”
“I forgive you.” It was surprisingly easy to say. Ava suddenly had a brief and rather appealing vision of being good friends with her stepsister, and with her stepsister’s maids, and friends with her own ladies-in-waiting. Maybe she could even learn to like card games and racquetball. Life at court! Inric told her to enjoy it…
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” gushed Jessamine. “You must let me do whatever I can to cheer you up in this difficult time!”
“Mm. Yes, it’s hard…”
“But, you know, our new life has its own charms. Men come and go, they fight and do whatever it is they do! They say you have to learn to live without them, most of the time. Look, you only have to please them a little, and they’ll keep you in high style.”
“Funny, I thought it was the other way around.”
“How do you mean?”
“You make yourself up to get their attention.”
“Oh, Ava, you’re so sweet.”
Ava suddenly felt her feelings of magnanimity draining away again. So sweet. She had been thinking that once she was married, her stepsister would stop being patronizing. She looked at the clock. “It’s been delightful, sister! But I have some very important princess business to attend to.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Ava remembered the dumbwaiter.
“Say, Jess, do you…do you know why Mama was riding in the dumbwaiter?”
Jess looked at her as if she’d grown an elephant’s trunk.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said, slowly.
“Ah, nevermind. Thanks, sister.”
Ava put her hood up again and stepped out into the street.
On the walk home Ava thought about what she should have said to Jessamine, instead of stammering. Not for the first time, she wished she had the perfect comeback and fancied that if she could say it, her stepsister might just evaporate into the air. Naive, am I? Just because I’m not afflicted with an undesirable surplus of experience…
She remembered that she was still supposed to be Being Nice.
A fat raindrop hit her head, more and more came and she was quickly soaked to the bone. She was starting to see the wisdom of bringing an attendant along everywhere. Someone to hold the umbrella…
Ava went back to her bedroom, dodging the ever-present servants. No, she didn’t need help changing her clothes. No, it was too early for wine. Then she felt guilty for being brusque with them. Inric had told her to make friends but she wasn’t sure how one was supposed to make friends with people whose very livelihood depended on obeying her.
The bedroom was much emptier without Inric’s things strewn about. The only significant possession he had left was his old automaton, Silly Illy, a toy which he had acquired and named when he was six. It was about three feet tall, made of polished glass and copper and shaped like a small featureless man sitting at a desk. There was a hatch in its back concealing a grid of small buttons and drums by which one could program a series of actions. It originally had a detachable ceramic head of a leering clown, which Inric disliked, and so he had replaced it with a succession of less expressive heads. Its current head was a small winter squash. Ava noticed that there was a piece of clean paper in front of him, and that his glass pen had been refilled. She turned the ivory key in his back until it could no longer twist.
Silly Illy straightened and lifted the glass pen, then began to write-
“Dear Ava, be happy, I will return! I love you, Inric.”
Her throat tightened again. She took the paper and tacked it to the wall next to the bed.
She wondered if her stepsister was right, and if looking over her newfound riches would dispel her melancholy. She opened the armoire to purview her fabulous dresses–there was one that looked like it was woven of mercury, and one with gold and red stripes on the hems, so that it appeared that th skirt and sleeves were on fire. She tried it on and posed in front of the mirror. She took it off and looked at one of the more elaborate dresses. It was of plush velvet with puffy sleeves and its skirts were bulked and bustled with whalebone, so that when she put it on she resembled a large rectangle. She had seen portraits of famous Alcyonese queens that looked like this. It was very imposing. The object, she assumed, was to look more like a machine than a woman. Then she went to her black-lacquered cabinet and pulled out one of the jewelry boxes that had been bestowed upon her before the wedding. This particular box had come from a distant land far to the east. It was round, made of some hard tawny wood and the lid was adorned with a relief, in some glossy black alloy, of two ravens fighting. She lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a round pearl the size of a plum, colored like a sunset after a storm. She rolled it around in her palm and passed it from hand to hand, then put it back in its box. A thorough examination of the contents of the cabinet revealed more wonders–an immense ruby carved into the shape of a crouching tiger cub, a brooch in the form of an articulated silver fish completely crusted with small diamonds, and all manner of golden bracelets, rings, long necklaces, earrings, chokers, diadems, and a wonderful dagger with a jade handle carved into the semblance of a green frog. Ava put on one of the golden chokers, one or two rings on each of her ten fingers, and as many earrings as her ears would allow, then stood in front of the mirror. She looked like a queen, she thought, ready to give orders and send men off to their deaths. Except for her messy black hair. Queens always had very carefully coiffed hair. Maybe these things are enough to keep me happy until Inric comes back, she mused. Then an image came into her head of Karst soldiers rummaging and snuffling about in the jewelry like pigs, trying on the diadems and seeing how they complemented their brutish features. It was really sort of amusing. The next thing that came to mind, of Karst soldiers bayonetting the servants, was rather less so…
She took the jewelry off and carefully put it away, and changed back into the more modest dress.
She poked her head out the window. The rain had slowed to a light misty drizzle. Mr. Bullfinch usually spent much of the day in the cherry tree outside, chatting with members of the finch council. He was there now, ignoring the rain and picking at the cherries.
“Can you help me write a letter to the Green Bonnets?” she asked, and sat down at Inric’s writing desk.
“Why certainly,” replied Mr. Bullfinch. “We can write a first draft on regular paper, then when we’ve got it polished to our satisfaction we can copy it onto very thin parchment. It needs to be fine enough that we can fold it up and put it in the harness.” (The mice had made a few of these “bird harnesses” so the finches could carry objects easily. They were of soft leather dyed bullfinch-pink, to make them less conspicuous.)
Ava picked up the pen. “I’m all ready. Here, I’ll read it off as I write.”
“‘My trusted friend–’…What does their leader call himself again?”
“Mr. Roman Candle.”
“‘My Dear Roman Candle,
You will have heard by now that the Karst army has invaded Quercia and that Mr. Bottle Rocket has gone. He would have liked to confer with you more before he left, but time was of the essence. He hopes that his services will be valuable to our allies. In the meantime, I, Catherine Wheel, will represent him and speak to you in his stead. He realizes this arrangement is less than ideal, but if the Karstlanders were to attack our fair country, it would be very bad–”
“Play up the cruelty of the Karstlanders,” said the finch. “Talk about the atrocities.”
“The ravages of the Karstlanders are infamous,” wrote Ava. “From Quercia come reports of men, women and children impaled on stakes, and other enormities. I would like you to know–”
“‘I would like you to know’ sounds a little wishy-washy,” The finch cut in. “Also take out the ‘I hope’ a few sentences back. We want to sound as firm as possible.”
Ava scratched the lines out and continued–
“‘We have not abandoned the cause! Be patient! Refrain from violence against our fellow countrymen, and in the fullness of time, the Republic of Cedria will be a good place to live–’”
“‘The envy of the world!’” amended the finch.
Ava scratched out “a good place to live” and wrote in “the envy of the world.”
“‘In the meanwhile,’” Ava went on, “‘be subtle and discreet. There is nothing to be gained at this point by going against the king. Disregard any promises that the Karstlanders may make! At best, they would make a puppet and proxy of the Green Bonnets. At worst, they will kill you–’”
“‘Tear you limb from limb!’” corrected the finch.
“‘At worst, they will tear you limb from limb. In the event that Bottle Rocket does not return, I will assume his duties.
Your comrade as always,
Catherine Wheel.”
“I hope that’s enough to satisfy them,” Ava said doubtfully.
“Have you ever met their leader?” asked Mr. Bullfinch.
“No. Inric’s had dealings with him and he said he admired the man’s ideals but didn’t like him much personally. He said a lot of the Green Bonnets were ‘Amirites,’ which meant that they didn’t respect the Pope and had sticks up their behinds.”
“Literally?”
Ava snorted. “I didn’t ask.”
Ava folded the message down and rolled it into a tight pellet. She pulled up a loose floorboard and got out one of the locked boxes where she kept spare accoutrements for her friends. Inside were assorted mouse-sized tools and two of the little bird harnesses. She slipped the message into the tube.
“I can take the message myself,” said Mr. Bullfinch. “I’ve been hanging around the castle all day and wouldn’t mind a stretch of the wings.” He poked his head out the window. “The rain seems to have stopped for the moment.”
“Do you remember where the Green Bonnets meet these days?” Ava asked as she carefully slipped the harness straps over his feathery shoulders.
“The white brick house on the corner of Middle Street and Lilac,” he said.
“That’s right. And try not to be seen. Everyone knows I associate with birds.”
Shortly after Mr. Bullfinch flew away, it began thundering again. Ava hurriedly closed the windows as large round raindrops started to hit them. She hoped the finch’s message wouldn’t become waterlogged and unreadable. She had packed it tightly enough, she thought. The Bullfinches themselves didn’t seem much bothered by weather, and if the rain got too bad she trusted him to take appropriate shelter somewhere. He was a grownup, after all.
This seemed like a good time to explore the castle, as many of the servants would be busy making dinner. Inric had left his old oil lamp on the writing desk. It was a lovely thing of ruby glass in a silver cage. He said he used to take it and roam the woods at night when he was a child. Ava lit it and slipped out the door into the stone corridor.
The corridor ran north-south and had several windows of gold-tinted glass that faced into a large courtyard with a fountain and neatly trimmed olive trees with ornate lanterns in their boughs. (Ava thought back to the night she met Inric. First they were dancing in the ballroom, then he suggested they retreat to the courtyard, then he asked her if she wanted to get out of the castle entirely, and they sneaked off to the most distant end of the garden.)
This was the new, modern wing of the castle. It was well kept-up, the bricks cleaned, the cracks repaired. Ava looked southwards down the corridor. At the end was a marble bench where two fat courtiers sat chattering to each other. They looked vaguely familiar. Ava had probably been introduced to them at some point, and had forgotten their names. If she walked in their direction they would surely make an exaggerated show of deference, followed by a torrent of small talk. Or she could ask them what they thought about the war, and get an earful of patronizing blather. Or they might ask her what she thought of the war, and she could fill their ears with patronizing blather. Perhaps I should go look for that ghost, Ava thought. She turned left into the darkness at the other end of the hallway and the two courtiers didn’t so much as glance up.
Ava went from door to door. Most of the doors were unlocked, but didn’t appear to conceal anything very exciting. The north wing of the castle seemed to consist mostly of bare stone blocks, empty rooms and dusty sheet-shrouded furniture. The only exception was one door, black, marked with a gilded orchid. She thought she could hear faint, high-pitched talking on the other side. The door opened onto a dilapidated solarium full of dead plants. It must have been wonderful, it was all glass and brass fittings and scrollwork, but several of the glass panels had been shattered and the rain poured in. The place smelled like mold. Something pink and black flitted out from behind a withered potted palm. It was a bullfinch, one that Ava didn’t recognize.
“Oh, it’s you!” it said. “We thought you were one of the servants so we all hid.” Several more finches and a couple of mice hopped out from their hiding places. “How do you like this room? We thought it was nice.”
“I agree,” Ava told them. “Maybe I can get it fixed up someday. Just try to stay out of sight, for now. Tell me, have you seen any ghosts?”
“Human ghosts?” asked the finch.
“Well, any kind, I guess,” said Ava.
“No, not one!” the finch answered.
“Alright, carry on, then,” Ava told them, and shut the door. She was happy to see that her friends were enjoying the castle and engaged in their own mysterious business. It would surely be better for everyone if they learned to do without her.