VOLUME 3
The Tale
-x-
XXXVIII.
Amid the fomentation of DG's impending marriage, suitable to her parents, though surprising, alarming to Azkadellia though pleasing, DG hastened to elaborate as much as she could on the cottage of bone.
"I don't know what it means, Az." The conference with Azkadellia, who understood the magic underlying their actions far better than anyone, was the beginning of DG's first day engaged. "It's a cottage of bone. But if it belonged to a witch, it would be a tower."
Azkadellia's ideas were water, thin, quickly diluted. "I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea. Witches didn't always live in towers, did they?"
"In the oldest stories, maybe not. But imagine it, a house of bone, or even a tower of bone. But things aren't always what they seem. Especially a house. It could be bigger on the inside than it looks. It could be crowded."
The paper containing the single sketch rotated round and round by the insistence of her fingertips.
"There's still something I'm missing, a piece I've lost, can't find, don't know how to find. This is all connected."
"What is?"
"Towers, bones, paths, cottages, the spell, the woman who turns into a crow, the owl hunter. I wish Tutor were here. I'd ask him for advice. Even if I didn't ask him for it, he'd give it anyway."
The thought of dead companions sent her adrift, away from the outline created by charcoal in her hand, to Raw who was far away, who was getting older. And, as if knowing he was about to be thought of, though no particular friend of hers, Zero entered the music room.
"Your father wants to see you," he told Azkadellia. He had just come from visiting Ahamo, had come to relay the message.
Azkadellia's fine mouth tightened, tilted, as up she rose to make good on her promise to speak with her father on matters unknown. Zero lingered, poised near enough the desk to espy the sketch.
"Is this what you've been carrying everywhere? A picture?"
"I'm trying to find out what this place is."
"Looks like a house, though I don't know anyone who would want to live there. Is this a place you've seen before?"
"Never, never… that I can remember."
"The two princesses of the O.Z. have a standing with the gods, the gift of prophesying. Maybe it doesn't exist yet, but it will. Maybe it existed so long ago that you're the only one whose soul is old enough to remember."
She hadn't spent enough minutes congruently with Zero, save for dinner, for tea, if he should happen to be there, when he would hardly speak, to have any understanding of how the world was perceived.
"It's tied in to something else." She hesitated, deciding to risk it, divulging a bit of it. "It's what I need, maybe, to help Glitch feel better." Her gaze intruded on him. "Maybe you, too, though I think the ailments might be a little varying here."
"I've felt an improvement since the healers made me a different elixir. Your conclusion, then, is that this place already exists, or did once. What is it?"
"I already said that I don't—"
"What does your intuition think it is? That's easier to answer."
"A house," the nouns stumbled out of her, "a house that a witch might've lived in. But no established witch lives in a house, not even if the house is made of bones."
"Bones? H'mm." He angled to alter his sight of the stationary landscape. "May I?"
She gave permission for Zero to touch it. He swerved it from horizontal to vertical.
"What's the difference between a portrait and a landscape? You're an art student, Princess. You should know this."
"A landscape's almost always painted horizontal on a canvas." She rotated the picture to visualise the reply. "A portrait is vertical." One of the portraits, of someone's daughter in a white dress, hanging on the pale pink wallpaper with white dusty wreaths, was pointed to. He regarded it briefly.
"I think the problem with this is that you've done it wrong. It goes this way."
He moved it vertical.
"Now what do you see?"
She had seen it from that perspective so many times, but she hadn't looked for a change in the image. Now its depth was off, where she'd put trees in the background, and now the forefront tree became the slice of a river cutting through a valley, and another tree became hills on the horizon. It was an illusion. The image had been correct, all the while, but that she'd only looked at it wrong.
"A house… A house of bone on a hill. Or a cliff. A jagged cliff with wispy, meagre hills behind it. But how—how did you see it and I didn't?"
"I saw it vertically first, and I think you must've shown it to everyone else holding it horizontally, like a landscape. They carried your perspective of it, seeing what you saw. But I hadn't seen it before, until just now, when I walked in. Look at it again. Couldn't it be more than what it is? A hill, a cliff—or the ruins of a tower once standing on a cliff, with the ruins now the foundation of a house of bone? A perfect place for a witch to live."
"Oh my god… You know this place! You know where it is!"
Zero sighed, leaning tiredly against the end of the desk. "It's Bone Hill. It's far outside Poul Mairëad, in County Nayne. It's a far, far ways from here, DG. If you're going to go, you had better pack light, and go quickly, by horses if you can."
So overcome with jubilation, DG dived in to peck his cheek, grabbing his forearm. "Thank you, Zero! Thank you a thousand times!" Elation squeaked out of her as she scurried from the room, less aware that she'd left him behind, unsure, from the beginning, why he'd stayed to speak with her in the first place.
She found Azkadellia waiting in her bedroom, her pale yellow gown a bright ruffle of sunlight in a snowflake-inspired room.
"Az! Az! I have some news! Wait." DG halted, scanning one corner to the other, then Azkadellia anew. "Why are you in my room?"
"I came to speak to you. I have some news myself."
"Ah! You first, if it is good news. You don't mind if I just—? No, of course you don't." DG proceeded to open wardrobe doors, rooting through its contents, shirts and sweaters and trousers, for travelling clothes.
"Well, Father wanted to see me, so I went, and he… He…"
"Spit it out, Az. He what? Wants you to cook dinner tonight? Thinks that shade of yellow doesn't look very good on you? He'd be wrong. What, Az?"
Before DG calculated the length of ten seconds, Azkadellia was weeping, taking a handkerchief out of her sleeve and weeping. The words were broken through her heavy breathing.
"He says I can get married if I want… And I guess I'd better… But, oh, DG… He wouldn't let me do it…"
"Do what?" DG grasped her sister by the arm, stunned with a coldness suddenly pooling near her heart. "What, Az? Seriously…"
"He wouldn't let me marry who I wanted to—he won't let me!"
"Who'd you want to marry that was so awful, even for him? I mean, I love our parents, but Felicitous Mogsberry, really, that's who they would've chosen as a future Consort? Who would've been worse than a Mogsberry worming her way into the House of the Emerald?"
It was a long while, many great gulps and spasms of sobbing, before Azkadellia clutched DG, head on her shoulder, and DG already had her answer.
"You wanted to marry Zero. Oh, for the sake of the stars, Azkadellia, no! Why? Why? It's as insane as me marrying Chessa Cain! Or me—me, marrying Zero! He's known you since you were in baby aprons and—and practically in the womb!"
"Oh, DG, don't you start!"
"Start! Cripes, I didn't even know… I didn't even know you liked him! Loved him! Wanted to—!"
The images defeated her courage. She waved a hand, flouncing them away as hurriedly as possible.
"I don't want to see—to know—oh god, oh god… This is hurting my brain! Az! How could you?"
"I'm… sorry… It's just that… that…"
"What?"
"That it wouldn't matter so much, if I were married to him, would it? No demands, no forever, nothing like that… I wouldn't have to endure too much. And I thought, maybe… But there's no point in it now."
Azkadellia enfolded DG in a timid hug, then dashed from the room, deaf to protests.
"I cannot think about this now. I cannot. I have a trip to plan. To Poul Mairëad. County Nayne. As soon as I find out exactly where that is, I'll find out who's going with me. Guess I can count out Azkadellia, and Zero, by the looks of it. Just as well. I'm talking to myself again. Shut up, DG. Focus!"
Her eyes shut, she breathed deeply, in the centre of her room. For a moment, she attached herself to it, the ever-present spin of the world, and outside the world, to the rotation of suns and moons…
Then she started to laugh.
-x-
XXXIX.
The Queen, fresh from a meeting, but with the blooming energy of the day extinguished, heard from Adviser Madeleine that DG wished to hold a conference. In her office, DG was not the only guest. Wyatt and Glitch and Chessa had joined her.
She listened to her daughter's voice, saw the drawing again, looked it from the angle prescribed by Zero… and couldn't fathom DG's need to leave. Until her cool lavender stare grazed across her old friend.
"Ambrose," she said, "do you think this permissible behaviour for a princess, or for you? I would be glad to send out a team of capable knights, from our very own staff, who would—"
"Please, Mother," intervened DG, embarrassed on her behalf. "This is a family matter. I think we should treat it like one. Besides, I know how to ride—pretty well—and I know what I'm going for. Most importantly," she glanced at Glitch, reaching to his elbow; he looked bewildered, but illuminated; hopeful, but pessimistic, "I have the motivation to do this as quickly as I can."
She was near relenting, already feeling the concern rising in her marrow, but disintegrating into the fright of a parent. DG had made a valid point. Family matters ought to be kept close. Ambrose was better than family, more to her than a brother, too dear to be a cousin, but he was such an extension of their daily activity, even with his extended absences, his life in Issilthrush with Wyatt Cain, that she saw no way but to give in to the ageless lament surging through marrow and veins. "I have a condition, DG."
"A condition? Mother, this isn't about bargaining. I'm capable of going, whether or not you give me your blessing, and at least five hundred plat for expenses… What's your condition?"
By then, Chessa was indicated, and DG had a sinking feeling. Not quite in her marrow, somewhere deeper, graver.
"I will not let you leave this house until you and Chessa are married."
DG exhaled, flapping her lips. Chessa's astonishment was an ill-timed yip, quickly covered by her hand: the apology muffled but delivered. Wyatt shoved his hands into his pockets, tense, attempting disinterest. Glitch looked among them. DG, marrying Chessa… He knew they should've thought of the solution ages before, so simplistic, so endearingly involved, so deliciously deceitful—but it would make DG married—married. The strangeness could not be swabbed from him. While they hesitated, he spoke.
"Fine, your Majesty."
She was startled to hear him, having heard so little from him in the last fortnight.
"It's fine," DG repeated. Her tilt towards Mother threatened in its impertinence. "Is tonight too soon?"
"Do be serious, DG."
"I want to leave tomorrow, so it'll have to be tonight. The sooner we go, the sooner I can come back… Mother, you don't realise the importance of this spell! Think of all the headcases around the realm that might be suffering the same way as poor Glitch! If the O.Z. has the power to remove half their brains, squish all that information into one side of their most important organ, that makes them who they are—and if the O.Z. can do that, and put them back together again, if a little bit broken—then we, Mother, as witches from a line of witches, wielding power that is capable of great darkness and tremendous light—then we have the ability to make these people well again! How would you like it if you had an evil twin running all over the place, making you do things you don't want to do?"
"That is enough, DG!"
"No, I don't know if it is!"
Glitch gestured to her. "No, DG, sweets, it really is enough."
At this urging, DG leaned back, exhaling slowly, till reconnected with herself. "Tonight, Mother, please, if you're going to keep this ultimatum of yours."
At length, the queen consented, wishing that her ring of suitors were about her, so that they might look duly exasperated, and muffle their reproach of the rebellious baby princess in the silent upshot. "All right, tonight, since you have allowed your stubbornness too much influence over your character." But her expression turned shrewd, impressed by DG's cunning, her daring, her willingness not to negotiate. The earmarks of a monarch. Intentionally, she observed Chessa Cain's reaction, and saw the girl pale, subdued. If not aware of DG's impetuous nature, Chessa would soon know it, quite thoroughly. "A private ceremony for the contractual validation, and we will worry about a proper promulgation to the public at a later date, perhaps followed, with any luck, by a proper wedding."
A lump seized Glitch's throat. How he ached inside to grab Wyatt's hand, for the puissance of his spouse to inculcate him. DG, weddings, contract signatures, a hall full of guests, DG frilled in fabrics and ruffles, lost in the fluff of a dress, and lost, in a way, to them. And so willing a bride, it struck him then, too. So willing to enter into it with uncommon celerity, have it done with, so she might instigate the adventure waiting. The cottage of bone on the ruins of a witch's home.
Then, without ado, even as she bowed her head, they were dismissed. "I have a lot of work that must be done, now. DG, I will call upon you later."
This was all the kindness DG expected. It was enough. Mother's displeasure enervated rather than vexed. It would've been more awful, DG reflected aloud as they stepped into the corridor, if Mother hadn't been annoyed. "If she had been impassive and hadn't fought me so much," she sighed, arm linked with Glitch's, but glad for the presence of Chessa and Wyatt, "it would've shown me exactly how determined she is to see me married, after all. I hadn't thought it possible. She's more disturbed by Azkadellia wanting to marry Zero than she is about me marrying a Cain."
Wyatt grunted, about to say something until Chessa quieted him by a faint touch. It was one couple looked upon unfavourably by more than Ahamo and the Queen.
