Just then, Ani could feel her own heartbeat pounding against her ribs.
“I wish I had known somehow who you were and set things right,” said Geric, “and spared you the horrors of yesterday. When I walked in and saw that man holding you with a knife to your throat...”
He shut his eyes as though against the image. Ani had an impulse to kiss his eyelids but quickly spoke instead.
“How’s your...” She pointed to his side.
Geric opened his eyes, looked to see what Ani was indicating, and put a hand over his side. “Bandaged. Pulsing with my heart like the wound is a living thing, but certainly healing. Thank you.”
“I want to thank you for stepping in to save Talone,” said Ani.
“He seems to be a noble man and a fine soldier.”
“Yes, he’s been more than good to me. It was a relief for us to find each other after the massacre and not feel alone.”
“You spoke with fire about him there before my father, and he risked a lot to see you safe.” He looked at her, and the clarity of his dark eyes struck her heart with a sensation of a wound touched. “Does he care for you?”
“I’m sure of it,” she said. “He’s been more than good to me.
A wrinkle formed between his eyes. “Is it possible that Talone might ask your hand, and that you might want to give it?”
“Oh, no, he won’t, I mean, I don’t. He’s as dear as a father, and I’m the child he protects, that’s all.”
“Oh,” said Geric with a soft exhale. He examined the hilt of his sword, and his lips appeared to fight a smile. “We’ve been friends, Isi, and I feel I know you, but I don’t want to presume anything anymore. This marriage was arranged without your consent, and if you have any hesitation about me, I will understand.”
She took his hand. “When Ungolad fought you, it was horrible, Geric, and I thought, if he won, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I’ve missed you these months.”
Geric breathed out as though he had been holding his breath, and he grinned with relief. Ani could not help grinning back, and they laughed lightly at nothing. He looked down at her hand and turned it palm up, running his fingers over the creases and merging his fingers with hers. She leaned her head against his shoulder with a familiarity that surprised her.
“You were amazing in there,” said Geric. “You were—I can scarcely believe how lucky I am. Growing up, I tried to imagine what my mysterious betrothed princess would be like, and I’d think, I hope she’s clever, and I hope we have things to say to each other, and I wouldn’t cry if she was a beauty as well. But I never imagined that I could marry a girl who was all those things and knew Bayern’s needs better than I, who would truly be a partner on the throne. What this kingdom sorely misses is a queen, and you are exactly what they, and I, what we all need.”
Her stomach tingled pleasantly. “Am I really?”
“You are everything and more, Isi.”
“I’d like to be.”
“Then,” said Geric, his brow wrinkling, his voice anxious and tender, “will you have me?”
“Yes.” She smiled and laughed. “Yes, of course, yes.”
He smiled slowly and broadly. “I say good. Good and good. I was afraid I’d lost you forever after I wrote you that note, and when I saw you at wintermoon, well, you know I felt as though I’d had a dart thrown into my heart. I think that Selia could tell, and she didn’t like it one bit.”
“Nor did I.”
“So much has happened since we last spoke, what with secret identities and a horde of animal-keepers shouting your name, and what about that, that wind? You’ve a story I want to hear, goose girl.”
“And you have things to tell me, Sir Guard.”
“Well then, the first thing I would like to tell you, my lady, and I’d better tell it quickly because my heart is likely to break through my rib cage any moment, the first thing is that I love you. And the second thing is that, as much as I honor your former profession, I don’t think your geese care much for your betrothed, and I hope they hadn’t any plans on sharing our bed.”
“Oh, but think what use they’d be,” said Ani. “They’d encourage snooping maids to stay away from our bedroom, and on particularly busy days we could stick hats on them and let them receive some of our supplicants.”
“Ah, yes, excellent point.”
He smiled, and all signs of worry disappeared from his face. With happy enthusiasm, he stood up, his hand on his sword hilt, and shouted, “I, Geric-Sinath of Gerhard, declare right now that you’re beautiful and you’re perfect and I’ll slay any man who tries to take you from my side. Goose girl, may I kiss you?”
She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.
Their embrace was interrupted by a young page clearing his throat. Ani looked down, but Geric did not seem embarrassed at all.
“Are they ready?” he said as though he had been expecting the interruption.
The pageboy nodded and bade them follow, taking two steps for their every one like a short-legged dog. He stopped before the door to the dining hall, his hand gesturing that they should enter. Geric was grinning madly.
“What is it?” said Ani.
“You’ll see.”
The doors opened.
“Welcome, daughter,” said the king.
There was a kind of silence in the room because no one spoke, but a silence that betrayed the truth of one hundred hearts beating, one hundred mouths breathing, one hundred hands that held themselves, fisted, before their chests. The king’s guard and the captains of the royal army and of every hundred-band stood at attention, their fists showing loyalty, their heads inclined respectfully.
“Captains,” said Geric, “Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, first daughter of Kildenree, she who ended our war before the javelin was thrown.”
The captains banged their javelins against the ground.
“Oh, my,” said Ani.
“We’re supposed to walk among them,” said Geric.
She placed her hand on his forearm and they walked past the lines, and Ani noticed with relief that there were mostly the signs of gratitude in their eyes and not the bitterness she had feared for this girl who had stopped their war.
In the center of the room, between two groups of worn and experienced captains of hundred-bands, stood a strange group of soldiers. They held javelins firmly in right hands, and on their arms hung freshly painted shields bearing the images of two trees—one green and one yellow.
They looked forward with proud and stoic expressions, but Finn smiled so broadly that his lips slid tight to show his teeth, and he looked at Ani and grinned wider. Razo stared ahead, his eyes unblinking, and cried freely. Offo was solemn, but his javelin trembled in his hand. Ratger stood by also, his palace guard tunic worn openly, and Conrad’s calmness was betrayed by a slim smile. Enna and the other girls stood at their far end, each holding a larger shield in both hands.
“We’re debating between calling ourselves the Forest-band or the yellow-band,” said Enna. “What do you think?”
Geric and Ani spoke over each other. “The yellow-band, definitely,” he said.
“Oh, the Forest-band, for pity’s sake,” she said.
They strolled through the rows of captains and bade them relax, and the presentation became a supper. Talone left his sickbed to sit at Ani’s right for a while, and they drank to his health. After a drink he showed some vigor and related the story of when he had first met Ani, a child asleep on the shore of the swan pond who had tried to run away.
The captains ate and laughed and traded stories with Geric, so content as to never leave. One taught Razo how to throw a javelin straight and far, one taught Enna the song of a tale she had never heard. Ani tried to teach them all how to greet several different species of birds in their own tongue, and they clicked and trumpeted and moaned in their throats until they thought they could n
ever stop laughing. The hours stretched out and the kitchen-hands brought new trays of hot food and then, at Geric’s insistence, the kitchen-hands stayed and ate as well. The light from the windows faded to the pulsing blue of evening, and no one left.
There was no hurry. There would be time for the captains to announce to their troops the end of the unfought war and bid them all home with their wives. There would be time to return to the workers’ settlements in the city and see them all with javelins and shields, and to see Talone, healed and well, commanding a hundred-band of the king’s own. And a wedding in the market-square in the Thumbprint of the Gods where the javelin dancers came at festivals and where all could witness, noble and city-dweller and Forest dweller alike, the marriage of their future king and queen. Gilsa, too, there and at last rewarded.
There would be time to take down the white horse head from the west gate and have a burial, belated and quiet, Falada laid to rest under the beech tree by the goose pond, and over that spot a monument laid, a carving in white stone of a colt and a girl seemingly too young for such adventures so far from home.
And there would be time to spend in the stables in late spring, befriending the loose-gaited stable-master and aiding a mare to foal. And when the colt, nothing but a bundle of legs and wet fur as black as Enna’s hair, fell into her arms, Ani might hear a name.
The End
A conversation
With
Shannon Hale
Shannon Hale talks about her
inspirations/ her writing/ and her life
Interviewer: You’ve mentioned having to read many staid books in graduate school that didn’t ignite your imagination or stimulate much emotion. But, as you’ve noted, reading these books inspired you to write something that you would want to read. The Goose Girl is the novel that came out of that experience. What about this book appeals to you as a reader?
Shannon: Yes, for most of my college years I read only what was assigned in class (I didn’t have time for anything else!). I certainly don’t mean to belittle those books or writers—most of what I read was beautifully written or historically important. But after a while, it all started to feel the same to me, and I often wasn’t drawn into the story or captivated by the characters as I had been by the kind of books I loved as a kid. By my second year of graduate school, I was craving a book that created a world where I wanted to be. I longed for a rousing story that would give me reasons to turn the pages besides just completing an assignment. I wanted the writers to imbue their characters with skills and resources that would give them a fighting chance to succeed, not just doom them to bleakness and failure. Something fun. Something with hope, but not an easy, obvious happy ending (those drive me batty). Adventure. Romance. Fantasy. I love these things. As a reader, I also don’t want to have to sacrifice quality writing for a compelling story.
The Goose Girl, as well as your other two novels—Enna Burning and Princess Academy—transcend time yet are rooted in a concrete past. Why did you choose these time periods and settings?
I wanted the settings to feel like real places, places where we’ve been before, places that could exist but don’t. To me, it makes the story feel as though it’s starting in a distant fairy tale then bursting through into reality. When you place a story in a real location, there’s always the danger that a reader can dismiss the story as just being about Texas or Mexico or fourteenth-century Italy. A mythical place, an invented realm, has a universal appeal. Anyone can inhabit it—including the reader.
I do like to base the settings on real places, albeit very loosely. Like many Americans, I’m a true mutt, and I tend to use my settings to explore countries that are a part of my heritage. Bayern was partly inspired by Germany, and Danland in Princess Academy is a nod to my Scandinavian ancestry.
Any plans to write a contemporary story?
I’ve written dozens of contemporary short stories and a middle-grade novel to practice writing (all unpublished—for which blessing readers everywhere should sigh in relief). Over the past five years, I’ve been writing a contemporary novel for adults that I really like, though at this pace who knows when it will be finished. I find it’s loads of fun to be able to make contemporary references and use words like "hand lotion,” "yoga,” "Barbie doll,” "plumber’s bum.” Very freeing. I find it more challenging to write about a faraway land a long time ago, when all my words and references, all my metaphors, are limited to what is in the main character’s realm of experience. But I love falling into the faraway and long ago stuff, and so that’s where my imagination mostly takes me.
What is your favorite fairy tale?
“The Goose Girl" was always one of my favorites, and certainly my most favorite of the tales that have never been made into films. I was always intrigued by the story—frustrated with the princess and eager to understand more about Falada and the wind. I tend to favor fairy tales with a good douse of mystery and enchantment, the kind of story that keeps me up wondering "why?” and "how?” and "what next?”
Any other favorite tales that might inspire a future book?
Yes! But I won’t reveal them.
The Goose Girl and Enna Burning are categorized as fantasy novels because of the main fantastical elements: Isi can hear and control the wind and talk with animals, and Enna can hear and control fire. Yet within the novels, these abilities are very believable; readers don’t question whether someone can actually do these things. Why do you think this is so?
That is such a compliment! I’ve met readers who have read The Goose Girl and not realized it is fantasy. That makes me feel like I’ve done my job.
As a reader, I’ve never been very interested in the kind of magic where someone waves a wand, leaving me ignorant of why it works or how it’s done. As a writer, it was important to me to create a magic system that I believed might be possible and that I could get inside of and understand. We know that animals communicate with each other, so from there I wondered, would it be possible that a person could learn an animal’s language? And if animals have language, could tree and stone, rain and fire?
As well, I made a concerted effort that, though everything has a language, its essence doesn’t change: an owl is not a wise sage, it’s just a bird trying to find a meal; a goose doesn’t have much to say; a horse is not interested in political intrigue; the wind is still wind, not burdened with human emotions and needs. Readers would have a much harder time suspending their disbelief if I’d written something even close to this sort of thing:
“Well, good morning, Ani,” said Falada, talking with his mouth full of oats. “Care for some hay?”
“Ah, you silly horse,” said Ani and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.
“Come play with us!" shouted her swan friend Loopy. “I’ll teach you how to do an underwater somersault!”
“I can’t right now, Loopy,” said Ani. “But tell your mother I said thanks for the tea cozy!”
Nature plays an integral role in your novels. Isi and Enna are connected to it through their abilities, and you present the landscape as a character—such as how it influences people’s personalities and how it shapes a community. Do you have a special connection to or appreciation of nature?
I like to think I do. I hope we all do, as we are a part of it. I grew up in Utah, minutes from lakes and forests and deserts and mountains—every kind of nature you could want, except an ocean.
Are you going to think I’m crazy if I tell you this? I used to try to talk to animals, wild and domestic, trying to make friends and somehow break down the language barrier. I was so sure the lion at the zoo or the deer on the hill would meet my gaze and know that I was a friend. I remember putting my hand on tree trunks and trying (hoping!) I could communicate with a tree, or imagining that the wind had ideas of its own and that a mountain knew I was there. I’ve had the sense that everything around me is a being, or has a soul. These thoughts always seemed normal to me. As I grew up, I realized that not everyone thought the same. I wonder,
had I voiced these thoughts to my mom, would I have ended up in a psychiatrist’s office? Probably. And maybe I needed it. Maybe I still do! I’ve often thought that the urge to spend years toiling over a novel that might never see print is one form of insanity.
You’ve said that when you sat down to write The Goose Girl, you just wrote the story you wanted to tell and that you had no thoughts about what age you were writing for, or what genre you were writing in. Were you surprised that it’s been categorized as young adult fantasy? Did this decision affect your subsequent writing—were you more conscious of your audience when you wrote Enna Burning?
While writing The Goose Girl, I had two readers I wanted to satisfy—myself from ages ten to sixteen (the ages when reading was the most fun for me) and myself now. I wasn’t surprised that the book could be young adult, but I never imagined it would be only that. I was afraid that the "children’s book" branding would turn off some readers. I know now that many adults like me go to the YA shelf looking for the really good stuff! I had already begun Enna Burning when Bloomsbury Children’s bought The Goose Girl, so I didn’t have the YA label in mind for the all-important outlining and first draft phase.
Although I did several rounds of rewrites with my editor for both books, I was surprised and pleased that during that process she didn’t ask me to make it "younger,” except for shaving a couple of years off Ani’s and Enna’s ages. I don’t like to write about sex, gratuitous violence, or such, so I think my writing naturally seems suited for younger audiences. Truthfully, I wasn’t even aware that there were young adult publishers when I was writing these books; I supposed that most of those books trickled down from adult publishing. I’ve been delighted to learn what a vibrant, varied, voracious field it has become, especially in the last couple of decades.