Ash & Bramble
Cor gives a satisfied nod, as if I have told him something he wanted to hear.
From the shadow of my hood, I study him. His mouth curves in a smile that looks almost smug. I don’t like it. “Did Shoe tell you that he loves Pin?”
“Yes,” Cor admits. He leans forward to take another stroke, the oars rattling in the oarlocks.
“Hmmm,” I murmur.
Cor’s shoulders stiffen. He pauses in his rowing and gives me a half bow—so princely polite. “You are right, of course, Pen. I should not have told you. Shoe told me in confidence, and I have betrayed that confidence. I will apologize to him at the first opportunity.”
I find myself smiling. There’s something endearing about his formality, his exquisite sense of honor. It’s almost a shield for him, but I’m starting to get a good idea of the kind of man hiding behind it. A proud man who can admit when he’s wrong. That makes him even more likeable to me.
Cor is about to say something else when I hold up my hand, silencing him. From ahead I can hear the faintest roaring sound. I cock my head, listening.
Cor hears it too. “What is that?”
In the bow, Shoe sits up, shedding the blankets, looking ahead. His sandy hair is tousled from sleep. “It’s a waterfall,” he says.
“We’ll have to get off the river,” Cor says, and starts rowing hard. Steering with the tiller, I take us out of the current and closer to the bank until we find a place to land. Shoe and Cor go first, and between them they pull the boat up; then I climb over the packed supplies and onto the rocky shore.
Hurrying, we unload the supplies and stuff them into the two knapsacks; Shoe rolls the blankets and straps them on, too. We don’t talk, and our fingers fumble with haste. Once we’re ready, Shoe shoves the lightened boat out into the river current again. “So it won’t give away where we landed,” he explains.
“Which way?” I ask. The riverbank is steep here, leading up like the side of a mountain, forested with pine trees spaced closely together, and choked below with brambles and ferns and other bushes. What looks like a path—it’s a gap in the trees, anyway—leads straight up the hill, away from the river.
Cor is handing one of the packs to Shoe; then he slings the bigger pack over his shoulders. I have two water bottles to carry. “We’d better follow the river,” Cor says, pointing. “The coast must be farther in that direction—as the river flows.”
Shoe shrugs—I can see that he thinks it doesn’t matter which way we go.
“Lead on, Cor,” I say. We set off into the forest.
The farther we go, the denser the bushes become. There are brambles, too, and they tangle in my skirt and cloak, slowing me down. The pine trees crowd closer together; their thick branches cut off the light, so it is too dim to see the roots that reach up to grab my feet, tripping me. Cor is the biggest and strongest, so he goes first, breaking a path, Shoe trudging behind him with his head down. I rip the hem of my cloak out of yet another clump of brambles and wade through a waist-high stand of ferns.
I find myself watching Shoe. He is not so tall and broad as Cor, but he’s slim and straight, and he stops sometimes to hold a branch out of my way, or checks over his shoulder to see that I’m keeping up, and I catch glimpses of his forest-green eyes. He is all grim purpose, no smiling, no flirtatious glances. Yet he loves me, Cor says. Or he loves Pin, I remind myself. The girl that I was. As I walk, I turn that idea over in my mind, and I’m not sure what to make of it.
After an afternoon of struggling, Cor pauses, and I catch up to him, panting. Shoe is looking back the way we came, then at the hill. I can see it too—the worst of the undergrowth has been ahead of us, so without quite realizing it we’ve been heading away from the river, uphill. We’ve been forced back around to the same path that led away from the river.
“The forest wants us to go that way,” Shoe says, pointing.
“The forest?” Cor asks, his voice sharp with doubt. “It’s some kind of magic?”
“I don’t know,” Shoe says. “Probably.”
Cor’s face creases with a frown. “The Godmother’s magic,” he pronounces.
“I don’t think it is,” Shoe contradicts.
“Nevertheless,” Cor says, “we continue along the river.”
And back we go down the hill, floundering through the grasping brambles, twisting our ankles on roots, squeezing through the narrow gaps between trees. We have the river in sight again—flowing gray and swift in gaps between the trees—when, just ahead of me, Shoe freezes.
“Cor,” he whispers.
Cor turns.
“Get down.” Pulling me with him, Shoe crouches among the ferns.
“What is it?” I whisper. Shoe shakes his head and reaches out to put his hand over my mouth. I can feel the calluses on his palm against my face.
Cor has hidden himself too.
Then I hear it and I freeze like a terrified rabbit. The knock and splash of oars and a harsh command. My eyes widen. I glance at Shoe and he nods, taking his hand away. Through the ferns and trees I see, on the river, a low boat crowded with men. Some of them wear the expected blue coats. Some are man-shaped, but I catch glimpses of furred naked backs and animal faces. They lean forward, eager, scanning the river banks. The Godmother’s footmen. Another boat passes, and then another.
Then they are gone. Slowly we get to our feet.
“We follow the path,” I say, knowing that Shoe is thinking the same thing.
Cor glances aside at Shoe. “We will do what the forest wants. Perhaps once we get away from the river we can turn toward East Oria again.”
Now it is Shoe who leads the way up the steep hill, then along a ridge, and down the other side until we reach a valley. By this time twilight is coming on and the path is growing dim before our feet. Shoe leads us steadily on.
I am the only one of the three of us who didn’t get to sleep in the boat and I am growing more and more tired, the straps from the heavy water bottles cutting into my shoulders, my stomach aching with emptiness.
Cor glances back at me, then stops; I stumble to a stop, too. “You’re exhausted,” he says, taking my hand.
Shoe goes on for a few steps, then pauses and looks back. “We have to go on,” he says, his voice rough.
“We will rest here,” Cor says. He slings the pack from his back. “It will soon grow too dark to see the path, anyway.”
We settle in a circle and eat some of the food from the packs—cheese and bread and dried apple slices—and I pass around one of the water bottles. The night falls like a heavy curtain, completely dark, no moon and no stars. The air grows colder and damper and has a taste like metal.
“Pin,” comes Shoe’s voice out of the darkness.
“Her name is Pen,” Cor corrects.
Shoe ignores him. I hear him shift and lean closer to me. “I’ve been thinking about your thimble.”
I reach into my cloak pocket and pull it out. As always, it warms at my touch. When I confronted the Godmother it glowed with heat. Testing, I clench it in my fist and think warmth and light. I catch my breath as my hand begins to glow as if I’m holding a star. I cup it in my palms and look up to see Shoe’s and Cor’s faces, eyes wide in our bubble of warm, golden light.
“Magic,” Cor says, surprised.
Shoe nods. “The Godmother’s thimble is ice, and yours is fire, Pin. Hers takes memories away. I’m wondering if yours could give them back.”
“Oh,” I breathe. “That’s an excellent thought.” I gaze down at the glowing thimble in my hands. Its warmth spreads through me. The night feels suddenly less damp and hopeless.
“You could try it and see if Cor’s memories are real,” Shoe goes on, “and then we’d know if East Oria is somewhere we can escape to.” He shrugs. “If it’s all right with you, Cor, that is.”
“Yes, I’m willing, of course,” Cor says. “How does it work?”
“The Godmother touches the thimble here,” Shoe says, pointing to his own forehead. He shivers. “I d
on’t know how she does it beyond that.”
I give a decided nod. “We might as well try it.” I slip the glowing thimble onto my finger and turn to Cor. He leans forward, then closer and touches his lips to mine. “For luck,” he says softly, and pulls back again.
“Keep still,” I order, but my lips tingle from his kiss. I raise my hand and gently brush aside a curl of his dark hair and place my thimble against his forehead. He closes his eyes.
Who are you, really, Cor? I find myself thinking. Are you just a prince, or are you something more?
As if in answer to my thought, the thimble blazes, a flash that scorches through me and into Cor. He flinches back and darkness falls again.
I blink the shadows out of my eyes and ask the thimble for light. As it begins to glow again, I see Cor rubbing his forehead and frowning.
“That was . . .” He pauses to clear his throat. “That was very odd.”
“Did it work?” Shoe asks.
“I . . .” He blinks again. “Yes, I believe it did.”
I hold my breath.
“My name is Cornelius,” Cor says slowly, “and I am a prince of the realm, and my mother, the queen, lives in East Oria.”
“You remembered that before,” Shoe points out.
“Yes. But that is not all.” Cor glances aside at Shoe, and I see that trace of haughtiness again. “I remember being taken from East Oria. I was on a hunt. The Godmother’s footmen ambushed me and imprisoned me—and my dogs—in a carriage and brought me to her city. I remember the Godmother using her thimble—she must have ripped away my memory of being taken.”
“She needed a prince for Story,” Shoe says, “so she went and got a prince.”
“Apparently,” Cor says, still looking dazed. “Just as she found a shoemaker when she needed one, and the other servants who do her work for her.”
The thimble’s glow is fading. I want to think more about this, but I can’t stay awake. I’m weary down to my bones. I slip the thimble into my pocket again and curl on my side on the pine-needly ground. As I drift into sleep, I catch bits and pieces of Cor and Shoe’s conversation, something about the Godmother’s half-animal, half-man footmen.
“It’s a cruel thing to do to a dog,” I hear Cor’s deep voice say. “Dogs are perfectly content and complete in what they are. It’s terrible to take that away from them.”
“You know dogs very well,” Shoe’s lighter voice says.
“Better than people, I sometimes think.” Cor’s voice is rueful.
There is a long pause, and I drift closer to sleep.
Cor’s deep voice drags me back to the surface again. “Shoe,” he says formally. “I owe you an apology.”
Shoe makes a sleepy, questioning noise.
“Yes. You told me that you were in love with Pen when she was Pin, and, well, I betrayed your trust.”
There is a silence. When he speaks, Shoe’s voice is muffled. “You told her?”
“Yes, I did. It was not . . . well, it was not noble of me. I’ve been taught better. Again, I am sorry.”
A weary sigh from Shoe. “It’s all right, Cor.”
“Thank you,” Cor says stiffly.
Then silence.
A HAND ON my shoulder wakes me. It is still dark, and I can tell from my gritty eyes that I haven’t been asleep for very long. A blanket is over my shoulders and a coat is under my head, a pillow. The coat is leather—it must be Cor’s.
“All right,” Cor is saying from the darkness.
“I’m sorry, Pin,” Shoe says softly. It is his hand that shook me awake. “The forest has given us a path again. We have to go on.”
I sit up, rubbing my eyes. At first I can’t see anything, but Shoe’s hand bumps my face, and then he gently takes my chin and turns my head so I am looking in the right direction. Something on the ground—like a scattering of pearl buttons on black velvet—is glowing, leading into the darkness.
“Mushrooms,” Shoe whispers. “They’re marking the path.”
I gather up my water bottles; I can hear Shoe and Cor packing up the supplies and Cor putting his coat on again. Shoe gets out a rope for us to hold in a line, first Cor, then Shoe, and then me. We are about to step onto the path again when, from far behind us, comes the faint echo of a howl.
“How far, do you think?” comes Shoe’s voice out of the darkness.
“At the river,” Cor answers. “They must have found the path.”
My heart gives a stutter of fright, and then the rope jerks and we are off on the mushroom-marked trail.
We stumble along for the rest of the night. The air grows icy, and my hands are too numb with cold to grip the rope. After I’ve dropped it for the third time, Shoe takes my hand and pulls me behind him. In my other hand I hold the thimble, drawing strength from it. I consider using it to show our way, but its light could betray us to our pursuers, so I keep it clenched in my fist. On and on we go. I look back and see that the mushrooms marking our trail go dark after we have passed.
At last the sky grows pale with dawn. The forest takes shape around us—dark pine trees with moss clinging to every branch, more ferns and bushes. My legs feel heavy and sore as we crest a ridge. Cor keeps going, leading us. Shoe and I pause and, panting, we look back in the direction we’ve come. Behind us, dense white fog is flowing down the hill, slithering among the trees, gathering in the valley below.
Shoe’s face is drawn and pale, his eyes smudged with weariness. I probably don’t look any better. I dredge up a grin. “I suppose the fog will confound the trackers, don’t you?”
“For a little while, maybe,” he says.
As if in answer, a howl echoes from the valley. Another one answers, and then another. My stomach clenches. “That was closer than last night.”
Shoe nods. He still has my hand in his. He steps closer. “Pin, if we don’t—”
“But we will,” I interrupt. He wants to say one last thing before we are captured, and I can’t bear to hear it.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You thought—when you were Pin, I mean—you thought there was something Before the Godmother’s fortress, and you thought we could escape back to it. But I don’t think we can. It’s like . . .” He shakes his head. “Circles within circles. You climb over one wall, only to find yourself in a new prison.”
“What?” I blink. “Are you saying this is all pointless? All this struggle, this pain?” Suddenly I am angry with him. “Are we just supposed to let go? To give up hope and let it take us?”
“I don’t know,” he answers. “We have to figure some way out that isn’t escape.”
“There is no other way,” I insist. “We have to keep going. At least we know that East Oria is real—it’s out there. And . . .” I don’t know why my heart starts pounding. “And I want you to stop calling me Pin. I’m not that girl anymore. My name is Pen.”
He gives me a searching look. “Yes, all right,” he says quietly. “Pen.”
I think he understands what I mean by this.
CHAPTER
30
ALL DAY, THE HOWLS OF THE TRACKERS GET CLOSER. COR pauses and pulls cheese and apples out of his pack, and they eat while walking. Shoe feels his shoulders hunching with every echoing howl, and he can’t help but think about the ending that is waiting for him when they are caught—and if they keep trying to escape to East Oria they will be caught, he doesn’t have any doubt about that. It will be the icy wind, the post, the pig-snouted guard taking practice swings with the whip. The Godmother waving a languid hand, her smile of triumph as they begin. And then trying to count how many lashes he’s had so he’ll know when it is over, and losing the number in a haze of blood and pain, realizing that this time they’re not going to stop. Not until he is dead.
For Pin it will be just as bad. No, Pen. He shakes his head and trudges on. The Godmother will take her memories again, he guesses, and Cor’s, and she will become the blank-faced bride of an equally empty-headed prince. She’ll be chewed up by the relen
tlessly turning gears of Story, and the shimmering, sharp flame of a girl that he knows will be no more.
Ahead of him Pen trips over a root, going to her knees. Two shuffling steps and he catches up in time to help her to her feet.
“Drat this dress,” she says. Her face is stark white; her eyes are so shadowed they look bruised.
Ahead, Cor pauses and looks back. “Come on,” he shouts. “They’re coming.”
“Yes, we noticed,” Pen mutters, and this time she doesn’t smile.
Without speaking Shoe takes her hand and they stumble on.
Cor’s confession last night had shaken him—Pen knows that he loves her. But he can’t bring himself to speak to her about it; it’s like a loud, silent thing hanging between them, his keen awareness of her every breath, her every glance at him. With every step, he feels the urgency of their situation, and of needing to tell her. Pen, you are Pin too, and I love you.
But he can’t. It wouldn’t fair to burden her with it, not now. Pen thinks she doesn’t know him; to her, he’s practically a stranger, still. Doubtless she thinks much more about handsome Cor than about him.
So he’ll have to love her—and stay silent until their ending catches up with them.
Overhead the sky is covered with dense gray clouds; the air gets colder until they are breathing out puffs of steam with every step. The clouds lower, hovering just above the tops of the pine trees, and it begins to snow, fat white flakes that fall so thickly that he can hardly see Cor’s dark shape ahead of them. Within a few minutes the path is covered; a layer of white covers the trees. Blinking snowflakes from his lashes, Shoe checks the way they’ve come. Their footprints look black against the snow, a clear path for the trackers to follow.
Pen sees it too. “Oh, curse it,” she says wearily. The shoulders and hood of her cloak are dusted with snow, and she is shivering.
“Maybe not,” Shoe realizes. “The trackers won’t smell as keenly in the snow. Can you use the thimble?”
She looks blankly at him; she’s too tired to think.
“To erase the trail we’re leaving,” he explains.