Pennyroyal Academy (2 page)

I made it. A miracle's happened and I'm still alive.

Her legs buckled and she dropped to the pebbly shore. She forced herself onto her back, filling her lungs with the night until her panic began to recede. As she lay there, astonished to be alive, a strange thought crossed her mind. This night sky, a pale swipe of purple-white across a black field of untold numbers of stars, was the single most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Crickets chirped rhythmically from the trees. The choking mold stench was gone. Somehow, she really was alive.

“Here . . .” came a weak voice from farther down the gurgling river. She sat up. The horse stood at the waterline nuzzling a dark figure. It was the boy, arms still bound behind him, lying facedown in the sand, his legs dangling in the current. She went to him, but her fingers were too stiff and sore to grip the crude knot. She tried pulling on the rope, and it suddenly crumbled away like it was a thousand years old.

The boy, battered and weak, pushed himself over, too dazed to drag his legs free of the water. His teeth chattered, his whole body shuddering in the steady night breeze. “You must be . . . f-frozen solid . . .”

The girl, barefoot, sodden to the bone, and wearing only a thin covering of spiderwebs, said nothing.

“What . . . what's your n-name?”

Her eyes fell to the rocks. “I don't have one.”

T
HE GIRL STARED,
not at the fire, but above it, where orange sparks wisped into the night sky to join the stars. The soft crackle of burning wood and the comforting smell of flame reminded her of home, somewhere that now seemed like one of the distant galaxies floating in the blackness above. She had always had an affinity for fire, though she had never quite learned to make one. Her father tried to teach her, and her sister could do it easily, but the best she could manage was a faint thread of smoke. Now that the tendons in her fingers had loosened, she picked up another branch and laid it on the pile, then watched as the fire claimed it.

“Has anyone told you you're a delightful conversationalist?” said the boy, watching her through the fire with big, amused eyes. She didn't respond. “No, I expect they haven't.”

In the calm of the night, far from the border of the enchanted forest, the girl noticed something about her companion. The way only half his mouth smiled, the brightness in his eyes, the sense of constant amusement about him . . . It all added up to someone who very much enjoyed being alive, and all because he had had the good fortune to be born as himself.

“You can finish with the wood now. There are bandits out there.” He lifted a cast-iron skillet from the fire and slid two bubbling eggs onto a pewter plate, which he handed to her. She shoveled them into her mouth, so hungry that she didn't even mind the quick scald as the yolks broke. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, he took a few more out of a silk sack and cracked them into the pan. She had refused when he had offered her clothes, but food she could not resist.

“For your memoirs, my name is Remington. Of Brentano, in the Western Kingdoms.”

She licked the yolk from her fingers. He sighed, though the grin never left his face. His attempts to draw her out thus far had all ended this way. She hadn't helped him clear brush or build the fire or even gather cordgrass for his horse. She just watched him with mild suspicion as he worked.

“Are there more like you?” she asked.

“Pardon?” he laughed. She looked to the fire in embarrassment. Her thoughts somehow seemed inferior next to the smooth polish of his words. His voice was deep and refined, and that, too, made her feel uncomfortable. “Are there more like me? Well, according to most girls I've met, no.” When she didn't oblige him with a laugh, he softened his demeanor. “What were you doing out there by yourself anyway? Enchanted forests and barefoot girls don't have a particularly warm history.”

She set her plate in the dirt and studied him. Could she trust him? She already had several times. And here she was, alive and filling her belly. Perhaps he had earned the right to be trusted again. She reached into her tangled mass of webs, pulled out a rain-warped parchment, and handed it to him.

“I'm looking for her.”

He unfolded the parchment. It was a hand-painted notice depicting a girl in a golden dress standing before a castle in a heroic pose. In ornate script, it read:

Pennyroyal Academy

Seeking bold, courageous youths to become tomorrow's princesses and knights

Blood restrictions lifted—Come one, come all!

“These bloody things are everywhere. They really are desperate, aren't they? It's not to say you wouldn't make a fine princess, only that they've never recruited this aggressively before.”

“So you know her?”

“I . . . suppose you could say that. You're really quite lucky I came along to rescue you—”

“Hang on,
you
rescued
me
?”

He fought away a smile, but was only partly successful. “We'll ride to Marburg together. I'm headed to the Academy myself to train as a knight.”

She leapt to her feet, snatching the parchment from his hands. “You're a knight?”

“No,” he said, looking at his suddenly empty fingers, “which is why I'm enlisting. Look, you're not terribly gracious, are you?”

She folded the parchment, scowling at him. He shook his head and took the skillet off the fire. He plated the eggs and prepared to eat, then, with a sigh, offered this serving to her as well. Her mother had told her from her earliest memories to steer clear of knights, just as her father had warned her against witches. Remington insisted he wasn't a knight—yet—but even the mention of the word made her nervous. She kept a suspicious eye on him as she took the offered eggs and sat back down.

He stood and stretched, then walked to the tree where his horse was tied and started unclasping something from the saddle. He was tall and lean, with the effortless bearing of an athlete who trusted his body to always do what he asked.
And he intends to be a knight,
she thought.
I should have left him in that cage.

“I'm quite happy to see someone like you enlisting,” he said. “The world is far too
unsettled
to be worrying about the color of one's blood, don't you think?” He brought back a small bedroll and tossed it to the dirt next to her. “It's a bit damp, but the fire should sort that out.”

He collected the empty plates and set them in front of his horse to lick clean, though she had already done a good job of that. Then he took off his doublet and lay down on the other side of the fire, bunching it up beneath his head. “We ride at first light. Try to get some sleep.”

Surrounded by the steady song of crickets, she looked to the stars, confused and exhausted. Her eyes were raw. All she wanted was sleep. But now she was even less certain whether she should trust him. She glanced into the depthless black of the forest. Perhaps she should continue her journey alone . . .

“What if she finds us?” she said. She hadn't meant to actually speak the words, but there they were. Remington propped himself onto an elbow and looked over at her. “I can't do that again. Her eyes . . . It was like she was looking
inside
me.”

His smile was gone. He looked as earnest as he had in the cage. “That was a wood witch. They rarely leave the enchanted forest. Once we crossed that river, we were safe. Relatively speaking.” She looked away, embarrassed by what she had said, but also comforted by his words.

Within a few minutes, the crackle of the dying fire sent him to sleep and she was alone again. She found a flat sandstone boulder and perched in the dark, thinking. But every thought inevitably led straight back to that cottage. She was safe now, but didn't feel it. The fear echoed on.

She slipped the necklace over her head and studied it under the faint light of the rising moon. A coat of dried mud covered its convex side. She licked her thumb and rubbed it away. Underneath, a smear of dried black stained the scale from edge to edge. And something in that stain, a faint shimmer, caught her eye. She tilted the scale to catch the moonlight and it happened again. The stain itself seemed to be moving.

She lifted the necklace higher to catch the moon's beams and realized it wasn't just the illusion of movement. The stain was shimmering in the light like a vein of gold. And as she lowered it to her eye, it began to swirl and pulse, the blackness moving faster and faster until she could see nothing else—

Suddenly she was plunging through an endless void. She couldn't breathe, couldn't tell up from down. The disorientation was so intense she began to feel ill.

Then, at the bottom of the sickening gyre, an image came into focus. It was the shore of a vast sea, pink with low sun. Someone stood there amidst the crashing waves and scavenging birds. It was Remington. And he held her face in his hands.

“You are the one true Princess of Saudade. I would willingly give my life to see it so.” He gently pulled her closer. She parted her lips . . .

Her stomach lurched and everything went black again, but the spiral quickly settled into another image. A crumbling tower in the midst of an endless forest, pelted with rain. A woman in a tunic dress of imperial violet was in great distress. Some unseen magic was forcing her to her knees, her eyes clenched in pain. The girl turned to find the source and a monstrous witch loomed behind her, face obscured beneath a cowled cloak. She stood no less than ten feet, and the sight of her filled the girl's heart with hopelessness and despair. A long, bony arm rose up, and the woman in violet screamed. The girl wanted to go to her, but found she couldn't move, could only watch as the witch forced the woman's head to the stone in a bow of forced subjugation.

The cloaked witch thrust her glaucous arms skyward and the air filled with witches. Hundreds of them, black robes flapping, dispatched to all corners of the land . . .

The girl tore the scale from her eye. Her breath came fast and shallow, a stark contrast to the boy's rhythmic snores, the peaceful thrum of the crickets. It took her a moment to realize that what she had seen wasn't real. Still, the overwhelming feeling of dread lingered. Another wolf's howl echoed in the distance, reminding her that even though she had escaped the enchanted forest, the bad things of the world lurked everywhere.

She perched on the stone all through the night, watching the fire fade from orange to red to black. She tried to force her thoughts to her family, to her home, to anything but the monstrous witch and the unseen horrors lurking beneath that hood.

Finally, the sky grayed to a dim, sleepy blue, and the girl remembered something else from her vision. Not nearly as haunting, but equally as startling. She glanced at Remington, whose arms and legs sprawled everywhere like a giant had tossed him aside.
Why on earth would I want to kiss him? A sworn knight, or soon to be.

“What, no breakfast? No tea? What have you been doing all morning?” She jerked her eyes away. She had been staring at him, and couldn't say how long, but now he was awake. He sat up, his face slow and sleepy. She looked away again when she found her eyes resting comfortably on his lips.

Remington made quick work of camp, and they rode hard through the morning. Now that she need not worry about the trees trying to kill her, the forest became monotonous, the ride quite exhausting. She clung to his waist, struggling to fight off the sleep that hadn't come the night before.

As the sun rose behind the dim green canopy, the air grew thinner in her lungs. They had been climbing gradually throughout the morning, sometimes up long, slow inclines coated with bracken, other times along steep switchbacks of crumbling basanite or limestone. But nowhere in their journey had the pines cleared enough to give a sense of where they actually were. Finally, after a valiant fight, her eyes fell closed. She drifted for what could have been minutes or hours, never really sleeping, always aware of the crunch of leaves under the horse's hooves.

“Ah, there she is. Pretty as I left her,” said Remington. The girl opened her eyes, but couldn't make sense of what lay before her.

They were in high forest country that ended abruptly at a sheer drop. Beyond that, the world fell away into a deep valley feathered with millions of pines and furs. A thin, crooked ridge formed a natural bridge to another mountain forest, splitting the valley in two. The horse stepped onto the narrow trail, but the girl didn't even notice the vertiginous cliffs on either side of her. Because there, at the far end of the ridge, an immense fortress of stone seemed to grow out of the mountain itself. Walls of bone-white limestone, forty feet tall and marred by moss and water stains, encased towering spires where brilliant purple banners danced in the wind. Every surface was topped with battlements as jagged as the ridges of a dragon's back. Beyond the majestic kingdom, another sea of black-green forest rolled away to the ends of the world.

“What is that?” she said, her voice dry and feeble.

“Marburg, jewel of the mountain kingdoms.”

Eventually, they reached the end of the trail. The horse stopped at a stony ledge that fell thousands of feet to an unseen bottom. Remington waved an arm, signaling someone in the gatehouse. A tremendous crack echoed across the twin valleys and an enormous wooden bridge began to lower across the chasm. Its timbers groaned under their own weight until it slammed to the ground.
This is how a mouse must feel in the home of a giant.

The horse clopped onto the drawbridge. Now there was nothing beneath them but open sky and, after a very long drop, a sudden end. Two massive pine doors began to creak apart, broken shafts of arrows still lodged in them from foregone wars, and a previously unknown part of the world opened up before the girl's eyes.

The kingdom, Marburg he had called it, was alive. Ragged-clothed peasants crisscrossed bustling streets. Merchants shouted prices and counteroffers. Mothers chased filthy children who chased even filthier pigs. Woodsmen hauled giant logs. Stoic guardsmen in glinting silver armor stood watch, their spears piercing high into the air. Music poured from unseen windows. And the smells! Burning wood and freshly cut grass and mud and flowers and roasted duck. White plaster structures latticed by dark brown timbers jutted up on either side of the high street, and thatched-roofed cottages squatted down near the mud.