Evren’s watch stopped working after they passed over a worn stone bridge and a swift river Jocasta called the Idle without a trace of irony in her voice. After that they had no notion of how long the journey took. The prince thought three hours; Evren said five. Omar claimed the time could not be measured here. Many in the caravan had tried keeping track of the seconds, but all counts were wildly different. The forest denied them any ability to know how far they had gone or how much farther they had to go. They would arrive when it wanted them to arrive.
At last the trees parted to reveal a gentle slope down into a village of stone and thatch cottages. The sky overhead was overcast, as if the sun had only just now dipped below the fat, dark clouds on the horizon. The caravan passed through silent farmland and into the center of the village, where the buildings were larger and shingled. They were followed by a gaggle of children and adults, the children squealing in excitement and the adults beaming, waving, excited in their own way. The prince had expected less from the village. Peasants, first of all, in rough-spun clothing with dirty faces and bad teeth. In reality, the villagers’ clothes were quite fine, they were clean, andthe smiles he could see were better than his own. Despite the overcast skies, the mood was anything but gloomy. Perhaps this was how they lived.
And if the forest had felt like an untamed, gloom-flashing magic, the buildings, the people, and the very blades of grass of Greymist Fair all formed a complex living web of magic that made the prince’s hair stand on end. Magic vibrated in his heart like a tuning fork.
He loved it.
Two
Greymist Fair had one inn, the largest of all the buildings save for the manor house on the eastern rise. The inn was three stories of stone and wood, one side grown over with wine-red roses, and it was run by a sweet elderly couple for whom the prince dearly wanted to grant a wish or two.
“A wish?” said the woman, blinking her watery eyes behind the thick lenses of her eyeglasses. “Oh, my dear, I don’t need any wishes at my age. I’ve got all I want.”
“Nothing?” the prince said. “I don’t see any grandchildren. What about a little one you can spoil to your heart’s content?”
“And who would take care of the poor thing after we were gone? Quite a terrible idea, to bring about a child with the knowledge that you’ll abandon it.”
“Ask for youth, then,” suggested the prince. “Who wouldn’t want to be young again?”
She laughed. “My mother used to say youth is for the young. When you’re my age, you’re too cautious to put that body to good use.”
“Surely, though, it could help with the pains?” asked the prince. “Your eyes, even? Wouldn’t you like to be able to see well again?”
“I’ve never seen well,” the woman said patiently. “And pains—well,mypains, anyway—are symbols of a life well lived. They are part of me now, like the color of my hair or the shape of my fingers. Maybe if they were caused by some disease, or if they were unbearable, or if I was going to die before my time... But no, my dear, my pains are mine, and I’ve come to terms with them.” She laughed. “Besides, the tinctures Luther gives me work perfectly well. He’s quite a good doctor.”
“But... dying...” the prince continued weakly.
She patted his arm. “We all face death in the end. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The prince couldn’t think of anything to say. If he could wish himself free of death, he’d have done it long ago.
“If she doesn’t take one, I’m afraid I can’t, either.” The woman’s husband, sweeping the inn’s front steps, winked at her. “Can’t let her take all the glory, can I? Besides, I’m not all that good at riddles.”
The prince was baffled. No one had ever refused him before; they had all at leasttriedthe riddle.
The caravan settled in the grassy field behind the inn. Many of the others in the caravan chose to stay in rooms at the inn, accepting the innkeepers’ hospitality in exchange for a week’s worth of entertainment, several brand-new, very expensive rugs, and a chest full of spices from distant lands. Others chose to sleep in their carts and wagons, citing habit rather than the obvious aim of theft prevention.
That very night the theatrical and musical performers set up a show in the square that drew the entire village. The story was about a woman whose children were all eaten by a wolf. While the wolf slept off his meal, the woman cut him open, freeing the children from his stomach, and replacing them with stones. The wolf died at the end, of course—there were children in the audience, so the troupe wasn’t going to perform any sad endings tonight—but the prince still thought it was a bit of a grim story for the occasion.
Yet not one of the villagers seemed to mind. If anything, they cheered harder than he expected when the wolf fell to his death.
“Understanding your audience is the key to a good performance,” Jocasta said, a twinkle in her eye. “Even the babes here understand and fear death. They always like to see it defeated.”
The prince wasn’t sure that was the reason they cheered, though. Deathwasn’tdefeated; it was only fed a different victim.
The prince, standing on the edge of the crowd with Evren, spent much of the time scanning the audience, watching faces the way he did when he performed magic. The villagers’ reactions were surprisingly similar: anticipation, a little worry, then shock, wonder, joy.
“Don’t sulk,” Evren said, reading the prince’s mind in his magicless way. “If you want to be the one who gives them these feelings, why don’t you volunteer to help with the show?”
But the prince’s problem wasn’t just thathewanted to be the one to give them joy; he wantedmagicto be what gave them joy. He wanted everyone else to love it as much as he did.
A face in the crowd caught the prince’s eye. She was young and beautiful and had a small girl on her lap who looked very much like her. A little sister, perhaps? The young woman’s long gold-brown hair was gathered to one side of her neck and tied with a red ribbon, and blood-red skirts fanned on the ground around her. There were splotches of color throughout the audience, illuminated by the lamps and torches, but she was the brightest of them. She seemed to be enjoying the show, but not wholly engrossed in it, the way others were.Shewould be one to really appreciate magic.
The prince waited until the performance ended and the crowd rose to disperse, then cut through the gathering to where the woman had been sitting. When he got there, though, she and the little girl were gone.
“Who was the woman in the red skirts?” the prince asked the innkeepers later that night.
The old man, carrying three mugs and a set of grease-smeared plates back to the kitchen, stopped and thought for a moment. “You mean Hilda? Some of the other girls have gotten the idea in their heads to wear bright colors, but she’s the only one with red skirts, far as I know.”
