Ash & Bramble
Shoe looks grim again. “Yes.” He turns to the prince. “Cor, will you help us escape?”
The prince nods. “I could, but it won’t be easy. She calls her men footmen, but they are really armed guardsmen, and there are a lot of them.” He shakes his head. “I could call up my own guard to fight them off, but I’m not sure they can manage it. And she’ll have all the gates that lead out of the city watched and her men ready to pursue.”
“I’ve got a boat,” Shoe says. “If you can get us to it, Cor.” He explains about the shoemaker friend and his Missus and the boat hidden at the bottom of the waterfall and the supplies and how being on the river will throw off the trackers. All of his careful preparations. “Oh,” he adds, remembering something else. He crosses the room to where he left his pack, crouches to dig through it, and pulls out a pair of boots, which he brings to me. “They’re for you.”
They’re beautiful, sturdy boots lined with warm fur. I slide one of them onto my foot. “You made these,” I say to him.
“Yes,” Shoe says.
“Your preparations are all well considered, Shoe,” the prince puts in. “Except there’s one more thing. Lady Penelope, I want to come with you.”
I look up from tying the laces of my new boots. When I meet his keen blue eyes, my breath catches. Should he come? Or is that Story forcing us together? “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Prince Cornelius,” I say slowly. I stand up and stomp my feet on the floor to test the fit of my boots. Perfect.
This time he doesn’t bother using the smile on me. “Call me Cor, won’t you, Lady Penelope?” He gets to his feet; then he glances at Shoe and lowers his voice, though I know Shoe can overhear what he’s saying. “I think we need to find out what happens when you and I are not caught up in Story.” He holds out his hand to me. “I want to test how strong our feelings for each other really are. No false smiles, no masks, no prince and mysterious Lady Ash, just us.”
I step closer and take his hand. It’s big and warm and it makes me feel safe. To me, he’s a lot more charming when he’s not trying to be charming. The irony of that makes me smile.
His eyes light with hope. “So you think it’s worth trying?”
Oh, I still feel that inexorable pull toward him; I can see he feels it too, and it makes me mistrust any connection we share. “We-ell . . . ,” I begin.
I have seen the surface of him—the princely mask he wears for whatever reason—but I have caught only glimpses of the rest of him. He is intelligent and truly noble, I think, and he was unexpectedly kind to the snappish servant girl who dropped her bag of potatoes, and I have seen such gentleness in the way he treats his dogs. And I like the way he left this choice up to me.
I give a decided nod. I do want to discover who Cor really is, instead of who Story wants him to be. “Yes,” I say to him. “It’s worth a try. And you can call me Pen.” I gaze up into his intensely blue eyes. He smiles down at me, and it’s a different, truer smile than the ones he wielded before. I like it.
After a few moments I turn to thank Shoe for the perfect boots, but he is carefully looking away from Cor, and me, apparently finding something infinitely fascinating about the wallpaper beside the door.
PART
THREE
CHAPTER
28
AS NIGHT FALLS, THE FOG ROLLS OUT OF THE FOREST again, flowing over the wall and through the streets of the city like a white river, cresting at the rooftops, smelling of pine and fern, and of snow. Out of the fog rise the slender white towers of the castle; on the central tower the clock’s face is wide and watchful. The streets are swarming with the Godmother’s footmen. Some of those footmen, Shoe knows, have naked tails, some have twitching, furry ears, some have the snouts of pigs; some of them are wearing blue uniforms, some wear nothing but their own fur; they are all armed with short, wickedly sharp knives. The prince’s red-coated guards come out to meet them, and they clash and struggle and are separated by the fog only to come together again. The night echoes with screams and shouts, the sounds of glass breaking and running footsteps, and over it all the clock tolling ceaselessly, roaring booms that shake the ground.
Prince Cor had wanted to wait a day or two before fleeing so he could assemble a few guards and pack his things, and take the dogs back to the castle.
“No,” Shoe says. He feels a knot of urgency tighten in his chest. “She’ll be after us. We have to go now.”
“He’s right,” Pin says, and, leaving the dogs with Pin’s stepmother, they go.
They are three swift shadows passing through the fog. The prince knows the streets well—he often walked the city with his dogs just before curfew, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and cloak to avoid being noticed. They evade the roving bands of footmen and reach the place where the river hurls itself over a cliff to slam into a lake far below. The steep path down to the lake is dark, slicked with ice, and slithering with fog. Freezing spray from the waterfall blows over them, and all three are soaked and shivering by the time they find themselves standing on a pebbly beach surrounded by cliffs; they’ve reached the lake by the only accessible path. From overhead they hear the continued booming of the clock. The sound echoes, as if it is seeking them.
“It should be over here,” Shoe says, and sure enough they find a boat pulled up on the shore. It is a long, slender boat with supplies in packs; there are oars in the middle and a tiller at the stern. They leap in and Cor goes straight to the oars and rows them silently into the darkness of the long lake.
SHOE SPENDS THE entire night crouched in the bow of the boat, his ears pricked for the sound of pursuit, tense with alarm and the absolute certainty that the Godmother’s blue-coated footmen are going to catch them. But there’s only so long that fear can grip; eventually it lets go. The sound of the clock recedes into the distance; the river turns and the city disappears, and all is silent, the river carrying them faster now, the forested banks sliding past dark and quiet. The pounding of his heart slows and the cold air creeps in. He wraps his arms around himself, shivering. As the dawn lightens the sky to the east, Shoe feels the lack of sleep catching up to him.
Pin and Cor are tired too, he can see; their faces look gray in the early morning light and their eyes are shadowed. Pin has the tiller and is keeping the boat in the middle of the river’s current. Cor is at the center of the boat; he’s been rowing to speed them along, but is resting now, the oars pulled up, dripping.
Pin is wearing the warm hooded cloak he’d brought for her in his pack. She looks back at the smooth surface of the river marked by the line of their wake. When she speaks, her voice sounds thin, weary. “I think we’ve done it. We’ve gotten away.”
The knot of urgency tightens in Shoe’s chest again. “No we haven’t.”
Cor glances over his shoulder at Shoe, his eyebrows raised.
“They’re coming,” Shoe tells them. He is certain of that.
“It’s just her footmen,” Pen protests.
She doesn’t remember the Godmother’s fortress, Shoe reminds himself, and the snakelike Overseer or the cruel pig-snouted, goat-footed, wolf-eared guards.
Cor pulls the oars in farther and rolls his shoulders, loosening muscles tired from rowing. “They have to stop to rest sometime,” he says. “We can easily stay ahead of them.”
Shoe shakes his head.
“You’ve fled from them before,” Pin observes.
“So have you, Pin,” Shoe says. “They are the guards at her fortress. Most of them aren’t true men. She makes them out of animals, using her thimble, I think, but they don’t turn all the way. They still have snouts or tails or scales.” He pauses to think. “But her trackers are different. Those were men that she turned partly into hounds, maybe as a punishment.” He remembers the Huntsman’s sadness that the trackers hadn’t been given tails when they’d been changed. “The trackers are intelligent, and they have very keen noses. She has Huntsmen too, and they’re men.”
“We will head for East Oria, the capital city,”
Cor says firmly. “My mother, the queen, is there. A few animal-men armed with knives will be no match for her armies.”
Shoe blinks. It’s the first time he’s considered what might lie beyond the reach of Story. But of course there’s something else to the world. The people of the city, and the slaves in the fortress—they were all taken from somewhere. But that doesn’t mean Cor’s memories of East Oria and a queen are true.
“How far is East Oria from here?” Pin asks.
“I . . . I do not know,” Cor answers slowly, frowning.
Shoe nods to himself. The Godmother’s city won’t be on any map.
Cor’s face brightens. “I do know that East Oria is on the coast. Certainly downstream from here. We can head that direction and go from there. It can’t be too far.” He inspects the blisters that he’s gotten from rowing. “At any rate, we’ll have to leave the river soon; I don’t know how long it’ll take us to get through the forest, but we’ve got supplies enough, and we shouldn’t have any trouble staying ahead of the Godmother’s footmen.”
“We’ll never make it,” Shoe tells them.
“Of course we will,” Cor says.
“No, we won’t,” Shoe insists.
“We have a head start,” Cor says with some stiffness. He’s not used to being contradicted. “They can’t catch us now.”
Another twist in the urgency knot. Shoe takes a deep breath, and repeats his warnings, sterner this time. “She’ll order the footmen to come after us—she probably already has—and they’ll do it without stopping to eat or sleep. They won’t stop until they’ve caught us, or they’ve killed themselves trying. And then more will come.”
Pin is staring at him. “We can’t get away, is that what you’re saying?”
Shoe doesn’t meet her eyes. “They are coming. That’s all I know.” And there’s more. “Cor,” he adds hesitantly, “the Godmother used her magic to bring everyone to the city to play a role in Story. They’ve all been taken away from somewhere else, and their memories erased. She must have brought you there, too.” He braces himself for Cor’s inevitable anger. “It’s possible there’s no such place as East Oria, there’s no queen, and you’re not a prince.”
The boat rocks as Cor straightens and then draws a deep breath to protest. Then he lets it out. “I—” He shakes his head. “I am certain you are wrong. My memories are too clear.”
“Still, it means we can’t be absolutely sure of what’s out there,” Pin says wearily. “It’s hopeless. Why did we even bother to escape, if there’s no escape?”
Shoe offers the only hope he has. “We might find some help. The Huntsman who brought me to the city told me that he and some other rebels have a hiding place in the forest.”
“Rebels?” Pin asks.
“People who have escaped from Story,” Shoe tells her, “and are fighting it. We could join them.”
“You’re sure of this?” Cor pushes. “You know where this hiding place is located?”
“No,” Shoe admits.
“Well then,” Cor decides. “We will still try for East Oria.”
Shoe nods. But the power of Story is bigger than any of them, and the Godmother serves its will with brutal resolve.
It doesn’t really matter which way they go. It doesn’t matter how hard they struggle. Their ending is coming, he is sure of it.
CHAPTER
29
AS LONG AS WE’RE ON THE RIVER, WE DECIDE, WE CAN stay ahead of the Godmother’s footmen and trackers and Huntsmen. I sit at the tiller, keeping us in the fastest part of the river as best I can. Shoe takes a turn at the oars, rowing with the clean efficiency that I’m starting to expect in everything he does. While Shoe rows, Cor digs some blankets out of the supplies, makes a bed in the bow, and goes to sleep.
“My turn,” I say, after Shoe has been rowing for what seems like a long time.
Panting, he rests, lifting the dripping oars from the water so the boat glides silently along. “All right,” he says. He pulls the oars in and, crouching so as not to rock the boat, climbs over a pack to sit on the bench next to me. I take off my long hooded cloak and climb awkwardly to the next seat to take my place at the oars.
As I row, I have my back to the bow and am facing Shoe at the tiller in the stern of the boat. I watch him, and he finds ways to avoid meeting my eyes. Often he looks back along our wake to see if we’re being pursued.
“Rowing is rather boring, isn’t it?” I say, to distract him.
“I’m not bored at all,” he says, and checks over his shoulder again. “And I’ve had enough excitement for a while, anyway.”
I grin at him, and he blinks. “Tell me about the Godmother’s fortress,” I say, and take a stroke.
He frowns.
“Unless you don’t want to think about it,” I put in quickly.
“It’s not a good memory,” he says with half a shrug. “But it’s yours, too. You need to know about it.”
Shoe is a talker, it turns out, telling his story easily, with plenty of details so that I get a picture of what it was like in the Godmother’s fortress. The bleak, gray monotony of the days, the hard work, the lentils and oats they ate, the guards and overseers. I get into a rhythm with the sound of his words and the stroke of the oars.
“None of it is familiar,” I tell him. “It’s all one big blank.” My back aches as I continue to row. “How does she do it? Take away the memories?”
“With her thimble,” Shoe answers. He touches a finger to his forehead. “Some kind of magic.”
I wonder if my own thimble has that kind of magic in it. I shake my head to clear the thought away. “The Pin you’re telling me about—the seamstress. She seems like a completely different person from me.”
His gaze is the green of the forest as he looks at me. “You’re still yourself,” he says quietly.
“I don’t see how you can be so certain of that,” I tell him.
“Well, I am,” he says.
I remember a moment from when we first met, in my Stepmama’s house. “Oh, that’s right; I’d forgotten. You’re stubborn, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t answer, just turns his head to look back at our wake. I study his profile, his fine features, the flush of red over his cheekbones as if he can feel me watching him. I hadn’t realized it before, but Shoe is very handsome, in his own way. I’d been too distracted by Cor’s more bold, flashing good looks. But Shoe . . . he draws my eyes. I wonder what it would be like if he ever smiled. Devastating, probably.
The boat rocks; I glance back to see Cor sitting up in the bow, awake from his nap. “Pen,” he says, his voice rusty with sleep. “You shouldn’t be doing that.”
“It was my turn.” I pause, the oar handles smooth under my hands.
“You’re a lady,” Cor protests. He gets to his feet, crouching in the bow as if he’s going to make his way back to where I’m sitting. “It’s not appropriate for you to row when Shoe and I can do it for you. And your hands will be blistered.”
“I already have blisters on my hands,” I tell him. Actually I have calluses from working as a maid in my stepmother’s house.
“Tell her, Shoe,” Cor says.
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Shoe says. He is straightening the tiller to keep us in the middle of the current.
“Exactly,” I say. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t take my turn.” I smile at him. “But you’re welcome to take yours now.”
We rearrange ourselves so that it’s me at the tiller, Cor at the oars, and Shoe asleep in the bow. All I can see of him is the top of his head and a hunched shoulder.
I watch the thickly forested banks slide past us under a lowering gray sky. I watch Cor, too. He has taken off his leather coat to row so I get to admire his broad shoulders as he reaches forward to take each stroke.
In turn, he studies me. I’ve pulled up the hood of my cape, so he must not be able to see much of my face, just shadows.
“You feel it too, don’t you, Pen?” he asks
. “That you and I are meant to be together?”
I look down at the smooth wood of the tiller. “I do feel a pull,” I admit. “But I suspect that it’s Story at work.” I look up, and his blue eyes are so intense. “What do you think?”
“I know that we are far from the city now,” he says, lifting the oars from the water and taking another stroke, “and I still feel drawn to you.”
I feel it too. Does Story have power this far away from the Godmother’s city? Is what I feel for him real, true? Is it more than just simple attraction? “I want to . . . ,” I begin, and then study my callused fingertips. “I want to . . . to”—to love you—“to care for you, Cor. But . . .”
This is not like me, to be so hesitant. I shake my head.
“Things are too uncertain,” Cor says, his deep voice gentle.
“Yes,” I say, relieved. “I need more time.”
“We may not have much time,” he says.
“I know.” But I need to figure out who I am. I need to be certain before I can truly love someone else.
Another long silence, and the awkwardness grows.
“Shoe still calls you Pin, have you noticed?” Cor asks suddenly.
“Yes,” I answer. I am not sure whether it bothers me or not.
“He is in love with Pin,” Cor goes on.
My heart lurches. Shoe? In love with me? I can’t help but think of our kiss in the hallway. I gather my wits. “No,” I say, with much more certainty than I feel. “He’s in love with the girl he told me about, the Pin who escaped with him from the Godmother’s fortress, not with me. I am Pen now.” And despite Shoe’s stubbornness on this point, he does not know Pen very well at all.