Bronwyn's Bane Read online

  Jack waggled a finger, still slick with fish grease, at her. “How alike all you ladies are, even princesses and witches, to think that a prince of the gypsies has no better business than to wait around in the woods to help you. I was here on another matter altogether.…”

  “Wait a minute,” Carole said. “Don’t tell me you’re royalty too?” She was beginning to feel very left out.

  “Oh, yes, dear ladies. My grandmother Xenobia is Queen of the Gypsies and my grandfather is none other than the rightful Crown Prince of Ablemarle, the Prince H. David Worthyman. My father, his heir, is prince of gypsies and Ablemarle both. I am to succeed him, after I—”

  “How can it be, Prince Jack,” Bronwyn asked, suspicion darkening her tone again, “that you are our friend and your grandfather too and he a Prince of Ablemarle when Worthyman the Worthless, Ablemarle’s King, is now such a great good friend of my father that my father and his army journey into the Gulf on ships to meet Ablemarle’s army half way?”

  Jack, not yet used to Bronwyn’s phrasing, looked puzzled, but Carole reminded him sternly, “We are at war with Ablemarle, in case you’d forgotten. You’re not a spy, are you?”

  He laughed with somewhat strained heartiness. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, dear ladies! My grandfather, I tell you, is the good, legitimate prince of Ablemarle, who should be King instead of his worthless brother on the throne. That is why my grandfather is even now fighting at the side of your own papa, Princess, and my father as well. I will go to join them as soon as I have passed to manhood and resumed my rightful position as prince.”

  “And when and how does that happen?” Carole asked, yawning. She was getting bored with these two blowhards.

  “Why, it is happening right now, Carole! Even as you look at me, even as I sit here beside you, protecting you from great dangers, I am fulfilling also my obligation to my people, to show them I am worthy of becoming not only a man of our tribe, but a prince as well.”

  “How convenient.” Carole yawned again. But Bronwyn’s green eyes were big with fascination. She very much enjoyed listening to someone even more full of wild stories than she was.

  “It seems to me it must be terrifically hard,” she said, watching him rub his full belly and settle back again beside the fire.

  “Oh, yes, my princess. Yes, indeed. For to gain these honors, I must bide here in the wilderness, unaided by my people, and prove my courage and cunning by—er—doing a great deed. Preferably several.” He chose not to be more specific, in the interests of the picture of himself and his people he wished to present to his illustrious hostesses. Actually, the rules of his manhood test said he was supposed to go into the wilderness unaided and somehow or other make a profit, in gold, on whatever he did. Since this part of the country was relatively uninhabited, there were few purses from which even the most accomplished gypsy could profit, which was what made it such a difficult trial. A future King of the Gypsies was, however, expected to overcome such piddling obstacles.

  As if the task wasn’t hard enough of itself, Jack had been left with nothing but his clothing, dagger, flint, steel, and tinderbox, plus his wits, and his considerable appetite, while his formidable grandmother led his mother and the rest of the tribe south for the winter, promising to return for what was left of him on their way to the eastern coast for the spring smuggling season.

  Bronwyn and Jack yammered on about responsibilities to one’s people, he making pronouncements, she saying the opposite of what a princess would normally say, followed by Jack trying to figure out what she meant. Carole couldn’t think of much to add so she whistled sticks into piles or danced leaves into pyramids or plaited her hair without touching it, which was tricky. Every so often she rose to see how Anastasia was faring. She was always the same. Sleeping. Head under wing. Bleeding stopped.

  As the sun set, the wind rose, and Carole’s appetite began plaguing her again. “I’m hungry,” she announced.

  “And then my mama rides this trick horse in between the wagons, see, and they just leap the campfire. Everyone is always amazed at how easily…” Jack was saying.

  “Just like my war horse, Hailing Hooves, I’ll wager. He can do that, only a lot better,” Bronwyn answered.

  Carole cleared her throat. “Is anyone else hungry? I think I’ll go see about some fish.” She had a totally un-magical premonition she was going to get very tired of fish before they got out of this situation unless someone else had some idea how to get food. The idea of singing to a rabbit or a bird and then killing it was distasteful. And she was not only hungry, but cold in spite of her cloak, which she’d reclaimed from Bronwyn. Now that the princess was dry, she didn’t seem to mind the cold any more than Jack did. Carole supposed that was because even though Bronwyn was palace-bred, she was still of frost giant lineage, and who ever heard of a frost giant minding a little chill? And gypsies were used to the wide-open spaces that gave Carole the odd feeling she was emptying out everything that was important about her into them. She wanted her own bed between the walls of her own room with her own pillow and the yellow-bordered brown wool blanket mother had woven just for her.

  As she rose to her feet and shook the numbness from one leg, Jack and Bronwyn nodded absently at her and waved, not seeming to hear what she’d said, probably because each of them had had twice as much fish as she before. She slogged back through the bushes to the gravelly river beach and hunkered down beside the water. The river seemed strange now that it just sort of rushed and didn’t say anything in particular. Though she thought when she listened closely she could make out a word here and there and even, perhaps, something of a rhythm. But it was only a whisper. Probably the glacier and the mountain filtered out the spell.

  It was chilly with no trees to shield her from the wind as she squatted, her skirts whipping about her in the shadow of the great mountain, extending on both sides into the glacier-spiked range. Goosebumps pimpled her arms and she whistled her fishing song slowly—not the jig she’d trilled at lunch but a melancholy air. She usually used the first song when she fished with Dad. He liked that tune. Her talent tickled him, being so much like his own. Mum was always wanting her to learn to do practical things with it like washing dishes and churning butter, but even Mum never turned down a nice mess of fish to fry.

  By the end of the first bar, a silvery fish undulated to the top of the milky water, flopped up and onto the bank where it writhed along with her tune. In a short time another did likewise, and another, and she was about to call her lazy companions and demand that if they wanted to share in the catch they’d have to come help kill and dress the dish—when she realized that her tune was not unaccompanied.

  A harp? No, a flute—no, perhaps it was a lute, playing the tune way off downstream, so far away that Carole knew no amount of looking or casual strolling away from camp would reveal the musician. Still, she longed to try. She wouldn’t be missed surely, the way Bronwyn and Jack were carrying on. As for the fish—

  Bronwyn burst out of the woods waving both arms exultingly. Jack walked behind her at a more dignified pace, a grin on his face. “She’s asleep! She’s asleep!” Bronwyn was shouting. “Carole, come quick! Anastasia is fast asleep.”

  The music was drowned out in the commotion and Carole scowled at them. “You don’t have to yell, do you? Someone else is here and they’re playing my song back to me.” She cupped her ear, but the music was gone. “You scared them away.”

  “Well, I’ll just go tell Anastasia to wake up again, if that’s how you’re going to be,” Bronwyn huffed.

  “What? Anastasia to—oh. Oh! She woke up? Why didn’t you say so?”

  The three of them turned back towards where Anastasia waited, no longer fainting but sore and silent. Jack was silent now too, and he frowned importantly, as if he was considering a far weightier matter than the preparation of fish. Carole picked up Bronwyn’s helmet and headed for the river.

  “Where are you going?” he asked gravely.

  “I thought Anastasia
might like a drink before we turn in.”

  He shook his head slowly and said portentously, “I would not do that if I were you, Carole. It is not good to go to the river now.”

  “Not good? What do you mean not good? We’ve been at the river all day.”

  Jack lowered his voice and walked towards her slowly, flaring the fingers of both hands dramatically. “That music you hear could be the river men, calling you. They like young girls. They have castles at the bottoms of the rivers and are armed with pitchforks, like angry farmers.” He shuddered. The lore about the river men was only hearsay, but angry farmers were a fact of gypsy life.

  “Oh, very well,” Carole said, though she privately thought river men sounded interesting, and that if they had been the ones playing, she’d like to meet them, whatever Jack said. But he sounded serious, though she was sure he was exaggerating because he liked scaring her. Anyway, she was too tired to argue. So she whistled up a pile of leaves for a bed for the three of them and another for cover. Bronwyn and Jack fell quickly asleep and shortly afterwards, she heard Anastasia struggle upright and limp toward the river, and thought the swan must be feeling better if she felt like swimming. Perhaps she’d be well enough to fly again soon.

  The music that woke her in the middle of the night wasn’t one of her tunes, and it wasn’t instrumental. This time she heard a voice—a wonderfully familiar voice, but she couldn’t make out just who.

  She sat up in a cold mist. The river was pouring it out in thick billows, so that she had trouble picking her way down to the shore. She couldn’t see Anastasia, but then, she couldn’t see much of anything. All she could do was feel the frosty night air and hear the music cutting across it.

  She wanted to call out to whomever was singing and ask them to come closer, and to tell them she was lost, but she was afraid Jack would wake up and scare them away again. The music seemed to come from right down the middle of the river. Perhaps the musicians were camped on a sandbar? Cautiously she waded out, too intent on the music to realize that once her legs were in the water they were no longer cold, that in fact the deeper into the water she got, not only the better could she hear the music but the better she felt all over. It wasn’t until she inadvertently stepped in a hole and ducked her head under completely that she found that she could, by some trick of acoustics, hear the music amplified under water. The voice didn’t belong to any river man or men. It was her mother’s familiar husky voice and she was singing to Carole to come to her, downstream, to meet her. Carole began to swim as she’d never before known she could.

  Though still asleep, Bronwyn had been aware when Carole left the leaf pile, leaves rustling the way they do, but had assumed her cousin had only had to avail herself of the privacy of the woods for the usual reasons. It was a dream, not Carole, that actually woke her. The dream was of her mother calling her, singing to her, and though Bronwyn couldn’t remember why, the song made her sad and filled her again with the hurt and longing she hadn’t been able to speak of at the time of her exile. Sniffling clandestinely, Bronwyn stretched out her hand to touch her shield, and stroked it for comfort, as she always did when she felt bad.

  The dream singing faded, and with it the recollection of most of the sadness, though traces of both the feeling and a faint echo of the music lingered. She lay with her cheek pressed against the carved wood of the shield and listened for Carole to return, or maybe to holler that a bear was after her and would Bronwyn be so kind as to get up and save her? The red wood was polished smooth by years of handling, and Bronwyn almost thought she could smell the ale-and-tobacco smell of her father’s hands on it. It made her feel close to him, and safe, as it had since she was a baby. The wood was of the rowan, not only her last name but the symbol of her family and anathema to magic. Sort of magic in its own way, really, in that it had the power to repel spells set against it. Too bad she hadn’t had it when the sorcerer cursed her—or when Carole marched her into the river, for that matter. She almost fell asleep again holding onto it, still hearing the whispery music and watching the mist weave through the trees.

  Jack sat up and rubbed his eyes, scattering the leaves willy-nilly. “Mama?” he asked, in a very young voice, then added something plaintive and muffled in what must have been the gypsy tongue. Before it dawned on Bronwyn that he was not talking to her, he stood up and headed for the river, plowing right through the bushes and not seeming to mind when they slapped his face and soaked him with the touch of their leaves, which were wet with accumulated dew and mist. Bronwyn knew exactly how wet, because of course she had to follow him. Sleepwalking like that, he might do the same thing she’d done, and walk right into the river, in which case they would both get a great deal wetter.

  She caught up with him quickly, grabbing him just as his left foot touched the water. When she put her hand on his shoulder to pull him back, he turned and blinked at her.

  “See here, my friend, I know it’s a wonderful time of night to go wading but—” she got no farther. The rush of water being swished aside from its normal course was immediately followed by Anastasia’s black form streaking from the mist. She fluttered toward them awkwardly with one wing only partially extended. Her voice was as shrill as the head chambermaid’s after an unfortunate battle Bronwyn had once had with her new bed-curtains.

  “Princess Bronwyn! Ah, Bronwyn! Do not try to save her. She went of her own accord—she—she swam. I could do nothing to stop her, to warn her. You must save yourself! Plug your ears! Do not listen to the sirens! Ah, they are terrible, I tell you, terrible. One of them tried even to seduce my old master. No one can—watch the boy!”

  While the swan was carrying on, Jack had pulled his sleeve loose from Bronwyn’s grip and was wading shin-deep into the river. Glad that she didn’t sleep in her armor, Bronwyn waded out after him, and plucked him out again, half carrying him back to shore. He didn’t struggle, but looked puzzled. “What are you doing?” he asked in a normal voice.

  “Sirens!” Anastasia said. “They have the girl.”

  “But you,” Bronwyn told him, holding him in her shield arm and indicating his wet trouser legs with a wave of her sword hand, “Are much too clever to be fooled the same way.”

  “I am always a fool for a beautiful woman,” he said, trying to look smoldering again but mostly looking sleepy and making no attempt to extricate himself from her one-armed embrace. “But if in spite of my warnings, the Lady Carole has fallen for this fish music and even I was taken in by the spell, how did you escape?”

  “Overwhelming force of personality and superior intellect,” she said, nodding meaningfully towards her shield, and dumped him in the boat, climbing in beside him.

  For a moment he looked from her to her shield and back again. Then he smiled broadly, “Ah!” he said. “A secret weapon. But of course, my Princess would have a secret weapon.” He scooted closer to her shield arm. “Never fear, Your Highness, between your size and that wondrous shield and my cleverness, we shall free Carole from those fish women. And when we have saved Carole, we will make the sirens give us all the sunken treasure they have too.”

  “You silly little thug, you have no idea what you’re saying!” Anastasia flapped up beside them. “They are the most hideously dangerous creatures! You will all be killed and I will not be able to help you at all and—oh, wait!” She interrupted herself as the boat bobbed off down the river. “Do wait until I’m healed. I can’t even tow you now but…” But the boat pulled slowly away from her, picking up momentum as the current caught it.

  The swan found she could swim a little faster. “Very well, I too shall come. Perhaps the hussies will be afraid to try anything if they see that I am with you, I who know their wicked wiles for the disgraceful tricks they are. Only—wait!” But the boat was already rounding the next curve. Sighing, Anastasia made a sort of hopping swoop to the center of the river, where the current was strongest. She might become separated from the children, but it was impossible for her to get lost. The sirens could be no
where but in the sea and into the sea the river was inexorably emptying both her and the little boat.

  Chapter 4

  As for Carole, she was, with one part of her mind at least, not surprised to see mermaids waiting for her instead of her mother. Though she had felt compelled to investigate the song, she told herself she was more curious than anything and was not as completely taken in by the charm of the music as a mermaid’s usual audience was supposed to be.

  The sirens, on the other hand, seemed astounded to see her.

  They lolled in the shallows just offshore where the river widened into the sea.

  “Why, Cordelia, look!” the green-haired one cried, pointing from her seat atop one hump of a half-submerged, silver-spotted sea serpent. “It’s a little split-tailed child!”

  “And a girl child at that.” Her friend, whose hair was light purple, sounded disappointed.

  Since the mermaids had stopped singing, Carole was able to swim to shore and greet them while standing on her own two feet. She didn’t think they’d drown her, after what Father had told her, but one never knew.

  The first mermaid who’d spoken looked just like the one described in Dad’s song, as a matter of fact. “Hello,” Carole said, not knowing what else to say. “Are there lots of green-haired mermaids or are you Lorelei, the one my father knows?”

  “Who’s your father?” the purple-haired one asked. “I told you we never should have let that ship go, sister,” she added to her green-haired companion. “Those men are carrying tales to their children about how easily duped you were, and now here’s one of the little eels come to take advantage of our good nature.”

  “What do you mean, come to take advantage?” Carole asked. “I was just minding my own business and you called me, sounding like my mother. I knew it was you because my mother’s in Queenston and Dad tells all about how you sound like other people in the song he sings about him and Mama rescuing the Queen from the wizard.”