Ash & Bramble

  The rest of the night is a misery. When he falls, the guards kick him and drag him to his feet again, and they run on. As a gray dawn breaks, they stop to rest in a clearing surrounded by snow-covered pine trees. The guards slump on the ground, panting, and Cor is allowed to sit. He’s given some dried meat and bread to eat, but they make Owen stand in the middle of the clearing. He closes his eyes, concentrating on staying on his feet, shaking with weariness and cold. Even his feet are numb inside the sturdy boots he made while a slave in the fortress.

  If only he’d had time to send a message to his mum and dad, telling them he was still alive. It’s too late for that now. And Pen. He’d been waiting, letting her find herself again.

  I love you, Pen. He should have said it. Story pushes people together, but it is obedience and fear that oils its gears, not real, true love. If only he’d said it, and if Pen felt it too . . .

  But it’s too late.

  The guards finish their break and drag him into a run again, and it should be more misery, but something has shifted. He feels distant from himself, as if he’s stepped back and is watching this poor, stupid shoemaker caught up in something that is way, way too powerful for him to resist. It’s always been too big for him; he was just too dumb to realize it. His ending is rushing toward him with massive inevitability. There’s nothing he can do to change any of it, he can only go on for as long as he is able. And so he shuffles on, not hearing the taunts of the guards or feeling their blows. He doesn’t even feel the cold anymore.

  At last they come down a steep, forested hillside to the river. Some of the guards must be the footmen the Godmother sent after him and Pen and Cor from the city, because they know a boat is waiting on the bank. When they find it, they shove him into the bottom of the boat. The guards jump in, settle Cor with a blanket, then push off from the shore and start paddling upstream.

  Slowly Owen comes back to himself, feels the icy bite of the cold again, the ache of his bound arms, the bruises from the guards’ blows. Shivering, he lifts his face out of the freezing water that is pooled in the bottom of the boat and rests his aching head against the wooden side. He can hear the river rushing past, just under the keel. From where he’s lying he can see two guards perched on a thwart, grunting as they dig their paddles into the water. Sitting against the other side of the boat, not an arm span away, is Cor.

  The prince glances aside at the guards, then leans forward. “You all right?” he breathes.

  Owen closes his eyes. “Well enough,” he whispers. Things could be worse. He could be dead already.

  “After we were captured, the guards took us and fled the fortress,” Cor goes on. “They’d lost the battle; Pen and the others must have won.”

  Owen nods. Yes, he’s figured that out.

  Cor falls silent. Exhausted, Owen feels sleep creeping up on him.

  “Listen,” Cor whispers. “I think I can get us out of this.”

  Owen opens his eyes. “I doubt it.”

  “Why not let Story have its way?” Cor reasons. “It couldn’t be worse than this. Once it has the ending it wants, and Pen and I are together, I can convince the Godmother to let you live, too. I am a prince, after all; my demands should mean something to her.”

  Owen gives his head a weary shake.

  “Why not?” Cor persists. “Pen and I could be happy with each other. I know you don’t want to lose her, but at least you’d be alive.”

  “No,” Owen says. “Pen wouldn’t want that.” He casts a quick look to be sure the guards are still distracted. “She doesn’t want that ending—she said so, back at her stepmother’s house—you heard her. She doesn’t believe that love is destined or meant to be, she wants to choose it for herself.” He meets Cor’s gaze, willing him to understand. “Cor, you know her.”

  Cor raises his bound hands to rub his forehead. “No,” he says soberly, wincing. “I think you know her.”

  “She knows there’s no happily-ever-after for any of us. Now that we’ve been taken, she’ll know exactly what she has to do to break the story she’s in.” He knows what that means for him, too, but he still knows it’s the right thing for her to do. “Story needs her to come to the city to play the role it assigned her. You’ll see,” he assures Cor. “Pen knows she has to stay away. She won’t come after us.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  “WE HAVE TO GO AFTER THEM,” I ANNOUNCE.

  Templeton and Zel and the Huntsman are sitting around the hearth in a wide, high-ceilinged bedroom that must be the Godmother’s, because it is decorated with swags of lace and blue silk that look incongruous against the stone walls. Somebody must have raided the Godmother’s supplies; on a low table they’ve laid out wine and cheese and coffee, dried fruit and three kinds of nuts. The Huntsman’s two trackers are stretched out before the fire sharing a bone.

  They all stare at me where I’m standing in the doorway; I’m holding my staff and a knapsack that I’ve loaded with supplies.

  Templeton swallows down a mouthful of cheese. She points with her chin at the window. “Pen, we’re all worried about the boys, but it’s the middle of the night.”

  “I know what time it is,” I snap.

  She raises her eyebrows and holds up her hands, as if in surrender.

  “As long as you are away from the city, your story can’t continue,” the Huntsman points out.

  “I know that! But she will kill him!” I take a shaky breath. “Sorry. I know—” I have to stop and clear my throat. “I know that the last thing I should do is go after them. I know that Story is weakened if my own story doesn’t play out, and I know that I should stay here while you bring the battle to the city. Do you think I haven’t thought that through?” I take a second deep breath to steady myself. “But I have to go after them.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Templeton puts in, getting to her feet, “which him is it that you’re so worried about?”

  “What?!” I shake my head. “I’m worried about both of them, of course.”

  “Of course,” Templeton repeats. She rubs the scar that slashes across her cheek; then she and Zel exchange a speaking look. “It’s only that you said ‘she will kill him,’ and Story is pushing you and the prince together—we saw you going into the forest with him before we invaded the fortress.”

  I am not the blushing kind, I realize. I am the biting kind. “Yes, Templeton, I kissed the prince.”

  “So it’s Cor you’re worried about,” Templeton pushes.

  I shake my head in frustration. “What does it matter? We have to go after them. Now.”

  “It matters a lot,” Templeton says.

  I am about to snap again, when the Huntsman interrupts. “Pen,” he chides. “Tempy.” Then he falls silent. “Let’s just think about this.”

  “Yes, a little thinking would be good,” Templeton says. “Before we all run off without a plan to rescue the boys, let’s think. What does the Godmother want?”

  “To serve Story, obviously,” I say. I drop my knapsack on the floor and take three nervous paces into the room. “She’ll use her thimble on me so I’ll forget Owen and then she’ll kill him and turn me into a happy-puppet who will marry the prince and live in the castle and smile for the rest of her life until she rips all of her hair out and dies.”

  “She just did it again, did you notice?” Templeton asks. Zel and the Huntsman nod.

  “What did I do?” I ask, looking wildly around at them.

  “Pen,” Templeton asks with surprising gentleness, “are you aware that you are in love with Owen?”

  “I’m not in love with Owen,” I say. They all stare at me. Then I say it again slowly to convince them. “I am not. In love. With Owen.” Zel cocks her head in a questioning way, so I add, “I just . . . I just can’t stand the thought that the Godmother is going to kill him. She detests Owen, and she’s not likely to kill Cor—he is a prince, after all. . . .”

  “All right, if you insist,” Templeton says. Zel rolls her ey
es. “Here’s what we know about the Godmother,” Templeton goes on. “She is clever. She knows that this story—your story, Pen—is crucial. For years Story’s power has been growing. You’re the daughter of the Witch who opposed it for so long. If Story can force you into an ending, its power will never be broken. The Godmother must be under nearly unbearable pressure to complete your happily-ever-after. Soon she will know that she has lost this fortress and all the slaves she’s got working for Story, and she will guess that we are coming to the city. She will want to have all the pieces in place for her ending. She needs you. And as long as she thinks she might find a use for Owen, she won’t kill him. Or Cor, for that matter.”

  The Huntsman nods. “That’s right. The Godmother will keep them on hand, just in case she needs them.”

  I take a moment to think about this. “All right,” I say slowly. “This makes sense. But I’m coming. And we’re leaving in the morning.”

  WE DON’T BOTHER with sleep. I spend hours with the blank-faced people in the tower, using the thimble to restore their Befores. Some of them are frozen with shock and fright, but some are able to come fully back to themselves. We find them clothes and invite them to fight Story with us. We are joined by the lead Jack, who won’t put down his ax, and the slave with the spinning wheel, who wants to be called Spinner because she doesn’t like the word spinster, and many of the other slaves. We make sure everybody has supplies to carry and some sort of weapon.

  Nobody so much as looks at me cross-eyed, and as the night sky lightens to gray we’re ready to head out, climbing through the gap in the wall left by the broken spell. With the former slaves, including four of the spryer seamstresses, we have about seventy fighters. Not many, but if Tobias has gathered Natters and the Missus and they’ve rallied the people inside the city, it might be enough.

  There shouldn’t be any road through the forest—the Godmother has traveled here through magic—but as we step through the gap we find a wide path before us, unmarked by wagon wheels, smooth, dry, and edged with snow.

  “The forest,” the Huntsman says with a shrug. “It’s no friend of the Godmother’s, as you know.”

  I nod and set the pace, using my staff as a walking stick, the knapsack heavy on my shoulders; I’m wearing Owen’s coat, the one he borrowed from the Huntsman, with the sleeves rolled up.

  The Godmother is cruel, and her footmen are worse. Cor, I figure, is safe because he is a prince, and useful to her. Owen, though. I remember how the Godmother looked at him—with fury and venom and the promise of a special ending. I can’t bear to think what might be happening to him at this moment. Instead I call up a better memory, a conversation we had in the rebels’ cave.

  We were sitting on the sandy floor with our backs against the cave wall; we had bread and a pot of raspberry jam, and we were sharing a tin cup of tea. Owen was still Shoe at that point; I hadn’t given his Before back yet. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open because we’d arrived there late the previous night, and he’d been up at dawn to scout the forest with Tobias.

  “Why does Story have so much power?” I wondered. I’d been thinking a lot about that, about where its power came from. If we could identify its source, we might be able to block it, somehow.

  Shoe took a drink of tea, then passed me the cup. My fingers warmed where they touched his. “It’s because people are afraid.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Because there’s just one ending.”

  “Happily ever after,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Death. Death is the real ending.”

  I loaded another spoonful of jam on my bread and thought. Stories, I figured, offered people different endings—not death, but the possibility for happiness in the time that we have to live. That is why we like getting caught up in stories. They are bigger than we are. They help us understand the shape of our lives and the nature of our own endings.

  “Story’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said aloud. “Story doesn’t want power. It’s not evil, necessarily. Endings are just what Story does. That’s its nature.”

  Shoe’s head was tipped back against the wall and his eyes were closed. I nudged him. His eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “We need stories, don’t we?” I asked.

  “Um. Yes,” he said. “I think we do.”

  “Well, that’s irony for you,” I said.

  For just an instant, Shoe looked stricken, but before I could ask him why he nodded and said, “Everything about this is ironic, Pen.”

  “It is!” I exclaimed. “We’re fighting Story, Shoe, but its power comes from us. We’ve given it too much power, and we have to take some of it back. We have to make our own choices.”

  I know Owen. Bone-deep, I know him. I know that he’s thought all along that Story’s ending for him is not happiness, but death. He’s struggled against Story and tried to break it, but it’s too big for him. And no matter how desperately I want to help, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do about it.

  THANKS TO THE forest’s wide, smooth path, and our fear that Story is still turning, we make good time, hiking along the river, and then camping for the night.

  “Stop pacing, Pen,” Templeton says from where she’s sitting on the ground by the campfire. Zel leans against her shoulder, eyes closed. The Huntsman crouches next to them, cooking our dinner in a pan. The trackers are curled together asleep, as close to the fire as they can get; other fires burn in the clearing.

  I stand with hands fisted on my hips, staring out at the forest. It surrounds us, almost as if the trees are embracing us, keeping us safe. I wonder how far from the city we are. Surely we’ll get there tomorrow. Where is he, right now? Is he still alive?

  “Come now, Pen,” the Huntsman adds.

  I turn back to them. Seeking comfort, I take out my thimble, holding it in my hand.

  Which reminds me of something I might not have another chance to do. “Do you want me to give back your Befores?” I ask them.

  “No,” Templeton says immediately, with a shrug that wakes Zel, who raises her head, blinking. “I love Zel,” she goes on. “I don’t want to know about anything that happened before her.”

  “Here,” the Huntsman says, and holds out a tin plate of potatoes and bacon.

  Taking it, and the fork he hands me, I sit across the fire from them. As I settle on the ground, I feel suddenly how weary I am. “How can you be so sure?” I ask.

  Templeton rubs her blunt nose. “What, about loving her?” Zel smiles sleepily. “Love is pretty simple, Pen.”

  “No it isn’t,” I say. I take a bite of potatoes. They’re peppery and hot. “I mean, if you don’t know who you are, how can you love somebody else?”

  Templeton starts to answer, but Zel reaches over and places a slim finger on her lips. Templeton falls silent. Turning to me, Zel puts one hand on her breast, over her heart; she puts the other hand over Templeton’s heart. Bringing her hands together, she kisses them tenderly.

  “See?” Templeton says. “Simple.”

  For them, maybe. Not for me.

  “I don’t want to know either,” the Huntsman puts in. The firelight gleams on his bald head. He forks up a last bite of potatoes. “Figure I’ve got enough to think about right here, really.”

  Maybe they’re right. There’s my mother—the Witch—and my thimble, and I want to know what those things mean for me. But maybe all that doesn’t matter, and who I was—Pin, or Pen, or someone with another Before—is less important than who I am now, what I choose to do now.

  Maybe . . .

  And maybe the person I am becoming can choose love.

  THE NEXT DAY we continue through the forest until we hear a roaring in the distance. Coming around a bend, we see the waterfall slamming into the river with the city high on the cliff beyond. The sun is setting, and the waterfall looks like a veil of lace, and the white stone of the castle in the distance is tinged pink and gilded at its edges.

  Then the sun
drops out of the sky and the hollow boom of the castle clock rolls out—it is the sound of a gravedigger knocking on a tomb door.

  CHAPTER

  39

  SNAKES OF FOG WRITHE AROUND OUR FEET AS IF THE FOREST is impatient to begin. We will not wait until morning.

  Surely the Godmother knows we are here, so we must be like a knife fight—strike first and fast, without warning. Quickly, in a dark clearing—we dare not show any lights—I give out orders. “When the fog rises,” I tell the Jack and Spinner, “you’ll lead an attack on the city gates closest to the lake.” It’s the main assault, I tell them, and it will prompt the rebels inside the city to start fighting too. That’s the message Tobias took to the Missus and her people, and we’ve spoken to a messenger he sent to meet us. They are ready.

  “Righty-o,” says the Jack, hefting his ax, and he and Spinner lead the bulk of our force through the trees toward the city.

  The Huntsman, Templeton, Zel, and I make our way along the pebbly bank of the lake. We are guided through the darkness by the sound of the waterfall and by the feel of spray on our faces. We find the steep stone stairway and start up it. The steps are slippery, and my fingers are numb with cold as I steady myself with my staff and continue climbing.

  At the top, the stone steps turn into a narrow path, which then leads to an alley between what smells like a tannery and some kind of warehouse. The night is still and dark; the fog is thickening, and soon the attack outside the gates will begin. We have to get into place by then. At the edge of the alley, I stop with the others behind me and peer into the dark street, which is lined by shuttered shops.

  “Tsssst,” hisses a voice.

  Templeton makes a quick move toward her sword, but I hold up a hand, stopping her. “Who’s there?” I whisper.

  From out of the shadows steps an old woman, nearly as wide as she is tall. She pauses and looks me up and down. “You’re Shoe’s Pen, are you?”

  “I’m my own Pen, thank you,” I answer.