The Orphan's Tales Read online

  CONTENTS

  IN THE NIGHT GARDEN

  IN THE CITIES OF COIN AND SPICE

  About the Author

  Also by Catherynne M. Valente

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  The Book of the Steppe

  Prelude

  The Tale of the Prince and the Goose

  In the Garden

  The Tale of the Prince and the Goose, Continued

  The Witch’s Tale

  Grandmother’s Tale

  The Horsewoman’s Tale

  Grandmother’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  Grandmother’s Tale, Continued

  Grandmother’s Tale, Continued

  The Wolf’s Tale

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Wolf’s Tale, Continued

  Grandmother’s Tale, Continued

  In the Garden

  Grandmother’s Tale, Continued

  Out of the Garden

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Nursemaid’s Tale

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Other Prince’s Tale

  In the Garden

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  Tavern-Keeper’s Tale

  The Tale of the Harpoon And the Heron

  The Star’s Tale

  The Tale of the Harpoon And the Heron, Continued

  The Tavern-Keeper’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Discourse of the Marsh King

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Leucrotta’s Tale

  The Beast-Maiden’s Tale

  The Leucrotta’s Tale, Continued

  In the Tower

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Wizard’s Tale

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Wizard’s Tale, Continued

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Witch’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The Gosling’s Tale

  The Firebird’s Tale

  The Gardener’s Tale

  The Tale of the Boy Who Found Death

  The Gardener’s Tale, Continued

  The Firebird’s Tale, Continued

  The Gosling’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Continued

  The King’s Tale

  The Tale of the Eight-Chambered Heart

  The King’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Prince And the Goose, Concluded

  Into the Dawn

  The Book of the Sea

  In the Palace

  In the Garden

  The Pale Girl’s Tale

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale

  The City’s Tale

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Assassin’s Tale

  The Tale of the Black Papess

  The Necromancer’s Tale

  The Tale of the Man Dressed in the Moon

  The Necromancer’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Black Papess, Continued

  The Assassin’s Tale, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Tale of the Good Trick

  The Tale of the Loon, the Otter, And the Star

  The Tale of the Ship, the Canoe, And the Raft

  The Tale of the Loon, the Otter, And the Star, Continued

  The Tale of the Good Trick, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Good Trick, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Tale of the Griffin And the King

  The Monopod’s Tale

  The Tale of the Griffin And the King, Continued

  The Tale of the Griffin And the Anchorite

  The Tale of the Griffin And the King, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Tale of the Satyr And the Selkie

  The Tale of the Skin

  The Tale of the Satyr And the Selkie, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Second Griffin’s Tale

  The Anchorite’s Tale

  The Second Griffin’s Tale, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Second Griffin’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of Saint Sigrid, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Game

  The Net-Weaver’s Tale, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Magyr’s Tale

  The Tale of the Crew

  The Magyr’s Tale, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Net-Weaver’s Second Tale

  The Skin-Peddler’s Tale

  The Net-Weaver’s Second Tale, Continued

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  In the Garden

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Continued

  The Tale of the Captain And the Crone

  The Pale Girl’s Tale, Concluded

  In the Garden

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  For Sarah, who,

  when she was very young,

  wanted a Garden

  PRELUDE

  ONCE THERE WAS A CHILD WHOSE FACE WAS LIKE THE NEW MOON SHINING on cypress trees and the feathers of waterbirds. She was a strange child, full of secrets. She would sit alone in the great Palace Garden on winter nights, pressing her hands into the snow and watching it melt under her heat. She wore a crown of garlic greens and wisteria; she drank from the silver fountains studded with lapis; she ate cold pears under a canopy of pines on rainy afternoons.

  Now this child had a strange and wonderful birthmark, in that her eyelids and the flesh around her eyes were stained a deep indigo-black, like ink pooled in china pots. It gave her the mysterious, taciturn look of an owl on ivory rafters, or a raccoon drinking from the swift-flowing river. It colored her eyes such that when she was grown she would never have to smoke her eyelashes with kohl.

  For this mark she was feared, and from her earliest days, the girl was abandoned to wander the Garden around the many-towered Palace. Her parents regarded her with trepidation and terror, wondering if her deformity reflected poorly on their virtue. The other nobles firmly believed she was a demon, sent to destroy the glittering court. Their children, who often roamed the Garden like a flock of wild geese, kept away from her, lest she curse them with her terrible powers. The Sultan could not deci
de—after all, if she were a demon, it would not do to offend her infernal kin by doing away with her like so much cut grass. In the end, all preferred that she simply remain silent and far away, so that none would have to confront the dilemma.

  And so it went like this for many years, while thirteen summers like fat orange roses sprang and withered.

  But one day another child came near to her, though not too near, hesitant as a deer about to bolt into the shadows. His face was like a winter sun, his form like a river reed. He stood before the girl in her tattered silk dress and shabby cloak which had once been white, and touched her eyelids with his sweet-scented forefinger. She found, to her surprise, that she endured his touch, for she was lonely and ever full of sorrow.

  “Are you really a spirit? A very wicked spirit? Why are your eyes dark like that, like the lake before the dawn?” The pretty boy-child cocked his head to one side, an ibis in midstream. The girl said nothing.

  “I am not afraid of you!” The boy stood his ground but his voice broke hoarsely. The girl continued to stare at him while the willow trees wavered in the east wind. When she spoke her voice was the low hum of cicadas in the far-misted hills.

  “Why not?”

  “I am very brave. One day I will be a great General and wear a scarlet cloak.” At this there was almost a smile on the girl’s pale lips.

  “And you have come to slay the great girl-demon who haunts the Garden?” she whispered.

  “Oh, no, I…” The boy spread his hands, feeling suddenly that he had shown very bad form somewhere along the way.

  “No one has spoken so many words to me since I saw the winter snows through a warm window draped in furs.” The girl stared again, impossibly still. All at once, a tiny light stole through her dusky eyes and she seemed to make a decision within herself. “Shall I tell you the truth, then? Tell you my secret? You of all the children who wear ruby rings and smell of olive soap?” Her voice had gone so quiet it was almost without breath.

  “I asked, didn’t I? I can keep secrets. My sister says I am very good at it, like the King of the Thieves in the nursery story.” There was another long silence, as clouds covered the sun. And the girl began to speak very softly, almost afraid to hear her own voice.

  “On an evening, when I was a very small child, an old woman came to the great silver gate, and twisting her hands among the rose roots told me this: I was not born with this mark. A spirit came into my cradle on the seventh day of the seventh month of my life, and while my mother slept in her snow white bed, the spirit touched my face, and left there many tales and spells, like the tattoos of sailors. The verses and songs were so great in number and so closely written that they appeared as one long, unbroken streak of jet on my eyelids. But they are the words of the river and the marsh, the lake and the wind. Together they make a great magic, and when the tales are all read out, and heard end to shining end, to the last syllable, the spirit will return and judge me.

  “After the old woman vanished into the blue-faced night, I spent each day hidden in a thicket of jasmine and oleander, trying to read what I could in a cast-off bronze mirror, or in the reflections of the Garden pools. But it is difficult; I must read them backwards, and I can only read one eye at a time.” She stopped, and the last was no louder than a spider weaving its opaline threads.

  “And there is no one to listen.”

  The boy stared. He looked closely and could see wavering lines in the solid black of her eyelid, hints of alphabets and letters he could not imagine. The closer he looked, the more the shapes seemed to leap at him, clutch at him, until he was quite dizzy.

  He licked his lips. They were all whispers now, the two of them, conspirators and thieves. The other children had all gone, and they stood alone under the braided whips of a gnarled willow.

  “Tell me? Tell me one of the tales from your eyelids. Please. Just one.” He was terrified that she would rebuke him and run, like the hound which is often beaten. But she only continued to look at him with those strange, dark eyes.

  “You are kind to me when no one else will come near. And my tales are all I have to give as thanks. But you must come away from the open Garden, into my hiding place, for I would have no one else know. You would surely be punished, and they would take my mirror and my knife, which are all I own, and lock me away to keep the demon spirit from hollowing their fine house.”

  And so they crept away from the yellow-tinged willow, across the endless rows of roses. They ducked under an arch of chestnut blossoms and were suddenly enveloped in a bower of white petals, the perfume touching them like hands. Red branches had thatched themselves into a kind of low roof, and there was ample room on the soft, compact earth thatched with leaves for them both to sit.

  “I will tell you the first tale I was able to read, from the crease of my left eyelid.”

  The boy sat very still, listening like a silk-eared hare deep in the forest.

  “Once in a far away there was a restless Prince, who was not satisfied by his father’s riches, or the beauty of the Palace women, or the diversions of the banquet hall. This Prince was called Leander, after the tawny lion that bounds across the steppes like a fearful wind. One night he crept out of the vine-covered walls of the great Castle like a hawk on the hunt, to find a quest and silence the gnaw of discontent in his breast…”

  NOW THE PRINCE STOLE INTO THE NIGHT, THE shadows wrapping around him like slippery river eels, and his footfalls were black and soundless on the pine needles. He journeyed through the Forest, stars flooding overhead as though they had burst through some gilded dam, having no particular plan except to get as far from the Palace as possible before the sun rose up and his father’s hounds were set on his scent. The trees made a roof of many tiles over his head, a scented mosaic studded with blue clouds. For the first time in his young life, the Prince felt a fierce kind of happiness, rimmed with light.

  As dawn swept up behind him like a clever thief, he rested against the trunk of a great baobab, leaning his head against the knotted wood. He breakfasted on cheese and dried meat he had stolen from the kitchens. The salt of the meat was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and he slept for a few hours under the sky which bloomed in the colors of wisteria and lilies.

  Traveling on, it was not long before he came to a little hut in a pleasant meadow with a thatched roof and a well-made wooden door, round with solid brass studs. The chimney smoked cheerily, smelling of sage and cedar. Milling around the house was a flock of gray-feathered geese, circling like cirrus clouds, ethereal and wild. They were very fine animals and beautiful, squawking and ruffling their feathers under the curling eaves of camphor and fresh straw.

  Now the Prince was young and resourceful, but not very wise, and he had taken only a little food from the kitchens and a few apples from the orchards. He had assumed that he could forage easily, for the whole world must be as fertile as his father’s lands, and all trees must be as full of jeweled fruit, all animals as docile and savory, all peasants as agreeable and generous. It was beginning to be clear that this might not be the case, and his stomach growled noisily. He resolved to replenish his pack before he went further. There were, after all, so many geese, and certainly whatever warm and festive creatures dwelt in that fine hut, they would not even notice if one of the long-necked animals disappeared.

  The Prince had been trained to hunt and sneak from his earliest childhood, and he crept silently on well-muscled thighs from his hiding place. He stole behind a great plow and waited among the high summer grasses, searching for the right moment, controlling his breathing and slowing his hammering heart. The midmorning sun was hot on his neck. His hair crawled with sweat, trickling down into his collar, but he did not move at all until, finally, one of the lovely geese wandered away from the pack, peering around the blade of the plow and fixing him with wide black eyes. Her gaze was very strange, endless and deep as the autumn moon, pupilless and knowing.

  But swift as a sleek wolf, the Prince escaped her gaze. He
caught her slender neck in his hand and snapped it, the sound no louder than a twig caught underfoot. He rose from the dry grass and moved back towards the tree line, but the geese had noticed that one of their number was missing, and sent up a great alarm, terrible and piercing.

  The door of the hut flew open and out stomped a fearful woman, a flurry of streaming gray hair and glinting axe blade. Her face was wide and flat, covered with horrible and arcane markings, great black tattoos and scars cutting across her features so that it was impossible to tell if she had once been beautiful. She wore a wide leather belt studded with silver, two long knives glittering at her hips. She screamed horribly and the sound of it shook the cypresses and the oaks, vibrating in the air like a shattered flute.

  “What have you done? What have you done? Awful, awful boy!—Villain, demon!” She screeched again, higher and shriller than any owl, and the geese joined her, keening and wailing. Their howls gouged at the air, at the rich red earth, a sound both monstrous and alien, full of inhuman, bottomless grief. It dug at his ears like claws.

  Finally, the woman quieted and simply shook her great head, weeping. The Prince stood, stunned, more chagrined over his lack of stealth than her rage. She was, after all, only a woman, and it was only a bird. She was dwarfish and no longer young, and he knew he had nothing to fear from her. He clutched the bird’s corpse behind his back, hoping his broad chest and arms would hide it.

  “I have only just stumbled upon your house, Lady. I meant no offense.” The wretched woman loosed her awful scream again, and her eyes grew hideously large. He had not noticed their yellowish cast before, but it was certainly there now, feral and sickly.

  “You lie, you lie! You have killed my goose, my beautiful bird, my child! She was mine and you broke her neck! My darling, my child!” She broke into bitter weeping. The Prince could not understand. He drew the goose’s body from behind his back to hold it out to the crone.

  But in his fist he held not a bird, but a radiant young woman, small and delicate as a crane poised in the water, long black hair like a coiled serpent winding around his hand, for he clutched her at the root of the braided mane. She was clothed in diaphanous rags which barely covered her shimmering limbs. And her long, smooth neck was neatly broken.