* * *
THE PAIR TRUDGED along until they were forced to stop at a hill that looked like it had grown out of nowhere. A pimple of earth, covered in moss and vines just like the ground below them.
To May, the hill looked as wide as it was tall. “Can you fly up above it?” she said, pointing. “Can you tell whether it will be easier to climb over it or to go around?”
“A fine idea.” Swig took flight.
May watched as he drew an invisible circle in the sky. When he reached the airspace to her left he plummeted until she lost sight of him. She covered her mouth, suppressing a gasp. “No,” she said. “Swig wouldn’t leave me behind.”
The words barely left her mouth when a flash of orange shot up from where the parrot had disappeared. Wings flapped toward her, this time in a straight line.
Swig landed, feathers ruffled and out of breath. “A light,” he said. “I saw light—coming from the side of the hill.”
May blinked. “Light from inside the earth must have been made by living creatures. We’re not alone out here!” She grasped the tips of Swig’s wings. They danced around in a circle.
“I’m too heavy for you to fly back with me,” she said. “That’s never worked.”
“But we can walk around the hill to the source of the light.”
They felt along the hillside until they reached its westmost side. They slowed when they noticed a faint glow.
May piled several flat stones, one on top the other, and stepped up. “You didn’t tell me there was a window. Could this be someone’s house?”
Swig beat his wings, gently enough to stay aloft while he looked past May’s shoulder. “I hadn’t inspected this closely. I didn’t want you to worry, so I flew back as quickly as—”
He and May simultaneously gasped as the shadow of a person came into view. A shriveled hand, that hadn’t felt the sun in decades, picked up a wand. Sour sounds—words that May couldn’t quite make out—escaped a tangle of skin and gums.
May’s heart stuttered. She’d seen many things as a pirate but nothing as frightening as this. She pulled her eyes away from the crone and scanned the rest of the room. A frail woman regarded the crone with great interest. She didn’t seem frightened at all. Coils of gray stuck out from a heavy braided bun tied at the top of her head. The woman sat with her hands folded across her lap, which was covered with an apron that frayed at the edges. The dress underneath spilled alongside a tree stump.
The eavesdropping pair exchanged glances. As if their look confirmed an agreement, they pressed in closer toward the window. May slipped and toppled forward. Her nose crunched against a sheet of glass.
Flotsam. She blushed, grateful that the word screamed inside her head where no one could hear it. The impact of nose to glass had barely made a sound, but it was strong enough to push the glass toward the interior of the room, opening the window just a crack.
“The king still lives, eh nurse?”
“He does. Is it possible your enchantment failed?”
“It would have worked by now if the flour sack hadn’t been stolen!” All listening jumped at the crone’s rage. May dug her fingers in the side of the house to keep from slipping again.
“Who would have expected pirates to invade your home?”
Mucous dripped from the crone’s nose. “Nothing’s more disgusting than a pirate,” she said, wiping her nose. A thread of snot stretched from the end of her nose to where the tips of her fingers clutched the wand.
“But I can’t believe no one has called the child by her given name. You wrote it on the babe’s forehead in blood. It should have happened by now.”
This time, instead of stuttering, May’s heart stopped. Pirates. A sack of flour. A baby—stolen. A king. An old witch with a wand and everything…discussing her!
“Perhaps her captors were too stupid to read.” The crone wiped her nose again. “Those idiots ruined my plans!” She danced around the room as she mocked the pirates. “All any one of them had to do was wait until her sixteenth birthday and say her name, to her, in front of a witness. Is that asking so much?”
“That would have been a suitable replacement for what you and I intended to do when she was of age. It would have worked, had we managed to keep her hidden inside the sack.”
“Then the king would fall over dead, and the princess would assume her true form and take the throne. As her counsellors, we could have ruled the land.”
“Instead, he stands in our way—”
“With the kingdom ruined.”
“It’s as bad as if he’d broken the enchantment by saying her name to her himself.”
“You’re sure he doesn’t know—” The crone’s eyes darkened, her gaze pointed and cruel.
Hands flew up from the nurse’s apron. “I’ve kept the secret all this time, never revealing her name to his highness.”
The crone exhaled a stale breath. “And yet the child’s still missing. Likely still among those disgusting, filthy pirates.”
The nurse held out her arms as if cradling a doll. “And still the size of a baby.” She shook her head. “Poor, dear, Maya.”