Ash & Bramble (25 page)

This time he doesn't bother using the smile on me. “Call me Cor, won't you, Lady Penelope?” He gets to his feet; then he glances at Shoe and lowers his voice, though I know Shoe can overhear what he's saying. “I think we need to find out what happens when you and I are not caught up in Story.” He holds out his hand to me. “I want to test how strong our feelings for each other really are. No false smiles, no masks, no prince and mysterious Lady Ash, just us.”

I step closer and take his hand. It's big and warm and it makes me feel safe. To me, he's a lot more charming when he's not trying to be charming. The irony of that makes me smile.

His eyes light with hope. “So you think it's worth trying?”

Oh, I still feel that inexorable pull toward him; I can see he feels it too, and it makes me mistrust any connection we share. “We-ell . . . ,” I begin.

I have seen the surface of him—the princely mask he wears for whatever reason—but I have caught only glimpses of the rest of him. He is intelligent and truly noble, I think, and he was unexpectedly kind to the snappish servant girl who dropped her bag of potatoes, and I have seen such gentleness in the way he treats his dogs. And I like the way he left this choice up to me.

I give a decided nod. I do want to discover who Cor really is, instead of who Story wants him to be. “Yes,” I say to him. “It's worth a try. And you can call me Pen.” I gaze up into his
intensely blue eyes. He smiles down at me, and it's a different, truer smile than the ones he wielded before. I like it.

After a few moments I turn to thank Shoe for the perfect boots, but he is carefully looking away from Cor, and me, apparently finding something infinitely fascinating about the wallpaper beside the door.

A
S NIGHT FALLS, THE FOG ROLLS OUT OF THE FOREST
again, flowing over the wall and through the streets of the city like a white river, cresting at the rooftops, smelling of pine and fern, and of snow. Out of the fog rise the slender white towers of the castle; on the central tower the clock's face is wide and watchful. The streets are swarming with the Godmother's footmen. Some of those footmen, Shoe knows, have naked tails, some have twitching, furry ears, some have the snouts of pigs; some of them are wearing blue uniforms, some wear nothing but their own fur; they are all armed with short, wickedly sharp knives. The prince's red-coated guards come out to meet them, and they clash and struggle and are separated by the fog only to come together again. The night echoes with screams and shouts, the sounds of glass breaking
and running footsteps, and over it all the clock tolling ceaselessly, roaring booms that shake the ground.

Prince Cor had wanted to wait a day or two before fleeing so he could assemble a few guards and pack his things, and take the dogs back to the castle.

“No,” Shoe says. He feels a knot of urgency tighten in his chest. “She'll be after us. We have to go
now
.”

“He's right,” Pin says, and, leaving the dogs with Pin's stepmother, they go.

They are three swift shadows passing through the fog. The prince knows the streets well—he often walked the city with his dogs just before curfew, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and cloak to avoid being noticed. They evade the roving bands of footmen and reach the place where the river hurls itself over a cliff to slam into a lake far below. The steep path down to the lake is dark, slicked with ice, and slithering with fog. Freezing spray from the waterfall blows over them, and all three are soaked and shivering by the time they find themselves standing on a pebbly beach surrounded by cliffs; they've reached the lake by the only accessible path. From overhead they hear the continued booming of the clock. The sound echoes, as if it is seeking them.

“It should be over here,” Shoe says, and sure enough they find a boat pulled up on the shore. It is a long, slender boat with supplies in packs; there are oars in the middle and a tiller at the stern. They leap in and Cor goes straight to the oars and rows them silently into the darkness of the long lake.

S
HOE SPENDS THE
entire night crouched in the bow of the boat, his ears pricked for the sound of pursuit, tense with alarm and the absolute certainty that the Godmother's blue-coated footmen are going to catch them. But there's only so long that fear can grip; eventually it lets go. The sound of the clock recedes into the distance; the river turns and the city disappears, and all is silent, the river carrying them faster now, the forested banks sliding past dark and quiet. The pounding of his heart slows and the cold air creeps in. He wraps his arms around himself, shivering. As the dawn lightens the sky to the east, Shoe feels the lack of sleep catching up to him.

Pin and Cor are tired too, he can see; their faces look gray in the early morning light and their eyes are shadowed. Pin has the tiller and is keeping the boat in the middle of the river's current. Cor is at the center of the boat; he's been rowing to speed them along, but is resting now, the oars pulled up, dripping.

Pin is wearing the warm hooded cloak he'd brought for her in his pack. She looks back at the smooth surface of the river marked by the line of their wake. When she speaks, her voice sounds thin, weary. “I think we've done it. We've gotten away.”

The knot of urgency tightens in Shoe's chest again. “No we haven't.”

Cor glances over his shoulder at Shoe, his eyebrows raised.

“They're coming,” Shoe tells them. He is certain of that.

“It's just her footmen,” Pen protests.

She doesn't remember the Godmother's fortress, Shoe reminds himself, and the snakelike Overseer or the cruel pig-snouted, goat-footed, wolf-eared guards.

Cor pulls the oars in farther and rolls his shoulders, loosening muscles tired from rowing. “They have to stop to rest sometime,” he says. “We can easily stay ahead of them.”

Shoe shakes his head.

“You've fled from them before,” Pin observes.

“So have you, Pin,” Shoe says. “They are the guards at her fortress. Most of them aren't true men. She makes them out of animals, using her thimble, I think, but they don't turn all the way. They still have snouts or tails or scales.” He pauses to think. “But her trackers are different. Those were men that she turned partly into hounds, maybe as a punishment.” He remembers the Huntsman's sadness that the trackers hadn't been given tails when they'd been changed. “The trackers are intelligent, and they have very keen noses. She has Huntsmen too, and they're men.”

“We will head for East Oria, the capital city,” Cor says firmly. “My mother, the queen, is there. A few animal-men armed with knives will be no match for her armies.”

Shoe blinks. It's the first time he's considered what might lie beyond the reach of Story. But of course there's something else to the world. The people of the city, and the slaves in the fortress—they were all taken from somewhere. But that doesn't mean Cor's memories of East Oria and a queen are true.

“How far is East Oria from here?” Pin asks.

“I . . . I do not know,” Cor answers slowly, frowning.

Shoe nods to himself. The Godmother's city won't be on any map.

Cor's face brightens. “I do know that East Oria is on the coast. Certainly downstream from here. We can head that direction and go from there. It can't be too far.” He inspects the blisters that he's gotten from rowing. “At any rate, we'll have to leave the river soon; I don't know how long it'll take us to get through the forest, but we've got supplies enough, and we shouldn't have any trouble staying ahead of the Godmother's footmen.”

“We'll never make it,” Shoe tells them.

“Of course we will,” Cor says.

“No, we won't,” Shoe insists.

“We have a head start,” Cor says with some stiffness. He's not used to being contradicted. “They can't catch us now.”

Another twist in the urgency knot. Shoe takes a deep breath, and repeats his warnings, sterner this time. “She'll order the footmen to come after us—she probably already has—and they'll do it without stopping to eat or sleep. They won't stop until they've caught us, or they've killed themselves trying. And then more will come.”

Pin is staring at him. “We can't get away, is that what you're saying?”

Shoe doesn't meet her eyes. “They are coming. That's all I know.” And there's more. “Cor,” he adds hesitantly,
“the Godmother used her magic to bring everyone to the city to play a role in Story. They've all been taken away from somewhere else, and their memories erased. She must have brought you there, too.” He braces himself for Cor's inevitable anger. “It's possible there's no such place as East Oria, there's no queen, and you're not a prince.”

The boat rocks as Cor straightens and then draws a deep breath to protest. Then he lets it out. “I—” He shakes his head. “I am certain you are wrong. My memories are too clear.”

“Still, it means we can't be absolutely sure of what's out there,” Pin says wearily. “It's hopeless. Why did we even bother to escape, if there's no escape?”

Shoe offers the only hope he has. “We might find some help. The Huntsman who brought me to the city told me that he and some other rebels have a hiding place in the forest.”

“Rebels?” Pin asks.

“People who have escaped from Story,” Shoe tells her, “and are fighting it. We could join them.”

“You're sure of this?” Cor pushes. “You know where this hiding place is located?”

“No,” Shoe admits.

“Well then,” Cor decides. “We will still try for East Oria.”

Shoe nods. But the power of Story is bigger than any of them, and the Godmother serves its will with brutal resolve.

It doesn't really matter which way they go. It doesn't matter how hard they struggle. Their ending is coming, he is sure of it.

A
S LONG AS WE'RE ON THE RIVER, WE DECIDE, WE CAN
stay ahead of the Godmother's footmen and trackers and Huntsmen. I sit at the tiller, keeping us in the fastest part of the river as best I can. Shoe takes a turn at the oars, rowing with the clean efficiency that I'm starting to expect in everything he does. While Shoe rows, Cor digs some blankets out of the supplies, makes a bed in the bow, and goes to sleep.

“My turn,” I say, after Shoe has been rowing for what seems like a long time.

Panting, he rests, lifting the dripping oars from the water so the boat glides silently along. “All right,” he says. He pulls the oars in and, crouching so as not to rock the boat, climbs over a pack to sit on the bench next to me. I take off my long hooded cloak and climb awkwardly to the
next seat to take my place at the oars.

As I row, I have my back to the bow and am facing Shoe at the tiller in the stern of the boat. I watch him, and he finds ways to avoid meeting my eyes. Often he looks back along our wake to see if we're being pursued.

“Rowing is rather boring, isn't it?” I say, to distract him.

“I'm not bored at all,” he says, and checks over his shoulder again. “And I've had enough excitement for a while, anyway.”

I grin at him, and he blinks. “Tell me about the Godmother's fortress,” I say, and take a stroke.

He frowns.

“Unless you don't want to think about it,” I put in quickly.

“It's not a good memory,” he says with half a shrug. “But it's yours, too. You need to know about it.”

Shoe is a talker, it turns out, telling his story easily, with plenty of details so that I get a picture of what it was like in the Godmother's fortress. The bleak, gray monotony of the days, the hard work, the lentils and oats they ate, the guards and overseers. I get into a rhythm with the sound of his words and the stroke of the oars.

“None of it is familiar,” I tell him. “It's all one big blank.” My back aches as I continue to row. “How does she do it? Take away the memories?”

“With her thimble,” Shoe answers. He touches a finger to his forehead. “Some kind of magic.”

I wonder if my own thimble has that kind of magic in it.
I shake my head to clear the thought away. “The Pin you're telling me about—the seamstress. She seems like a completely different person from me.”

His gaze is the green of the forest as he looks at me. “You're still yourself,” he says quietly.

“I don't see how you can be so certain of that,” I tell him.

“Well, I am,” he says.

I remember a moment from when we first met, in my Stepmama's house. “Oh, that's right; I'd forgotten. You're stubborn, aren't you?”

He doesn't answer, just turns his head to look back at our wake. I study his profile, his fine features, the flush of red over his cheekbones as if he can feel me watching him. I hadn't realized it before, but Shoe is very handsome, in his own way. I'd been too distracted by Cor's more bold, flashing good looks. But Shoe . . . he draws my eyes. I wonder what it would be like if he ever smiled. Devastating, probably.

The boat rocks; I glance back to see Cor sitting up in the bow, awake from his nap. “Pen,” he says, his voice rusty with sleep. “You shouldn't be doing that.”

“It was my turn.” I pause, the oar handles smooth under my hands.

“You're a lady,” Cor protests. He gets to his feet, crouching in the bow as if he's going to make his way back to where I'm sitting. “It's not appropriate for you to row when Shoe and I can do it for you. And your hands will be blistered.”

“I already have blisters on my hands,” I tell him. Actually
I have calluses from working as a maid in my stepmother's house.

“Tell her, Shoe,” Cor says.

“I don't see why she shouldn't,” Shoe says. He is straightening the tiller to keep us in the middle of the current.

“Exactly,” I say. “There's no reason I shouldn't take my turn.” I smile at him. “But you're welcome to take yours now.”

We rearrange ourselves so that it's me at the tiller, Cor at the oars, and Shoe asleep in the bow. All I can see of him is the top of his head and a hunched shoulder.

I watch the thickly forested banks slide past us under a lowering gray sky. I watch Cor, too. He has taken off his leather coat to row so I get to admire his broad shoulders as he reaches forward to take each stroke.

In turn, he studies me. I've pulled up the hood of my cape, so he must not be able to see much of my face, just shadows.

“You feel it too, don't you, Pen?” he asks. “That you and I are meant to be together?”

I look down at the smooth wood of the tiller. “I do feel a pull,” I admit. “But I suspect that it's Story at work.” I look up, and his blue eyes are so intense. “What do you think?”

“I know that we are far from the city now,” he says, lifting the oars from the water and taking another stroke, “and I still feel drawn to you.”

I feel it too.
Does
Story have power this far away from the
Godmother's city? Is what I feel for him real, true? Is it more than just simple attraction? “I want to . . . ,” I begin, and then study my callused fingertips. “I want to . . . to”—to
love you
—“to care for you, Cor. But . . .”

This is not like me, to be so hesitant. I shake my head.

“Things are too uncertain,” Cor says, his deep voice gentle.

“Yes,” I say, relieved. “I need more time.”

“We may not have much time,” he says.

“I know.” But I need to figure out who I am. I need to be certain before I can truly love someone else.

Another long silence, and the awkwardness grows.

“Shoe still calls you Pin, have you noticed?” Cor asks suddenly.

“Yes,” I answer. I am not sure whether it bothers me or not.

“He is in love with Pin,” Cor goes on.

My heart lurches. Shoe? In love with
me
? I can't help but think of our kiss in the hallway. I gather my wits. “No,” I say, with much more certainty than I feel. “He's in love with the girl he told me about, the Pin who escaped with him from the Godmother's fortress, not with me. I am Pen now.” And despite Shoe's stubbornness on this point, he does not know Pen very well at all.

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.