Quatrain (31 page)

“Of course,” Cressida said. “Come with me, Princess. We shall make you a beautiful gown out of the bounty of the forest.”

Soon enough I was cutting and basting a dress from the strangest cloth I had ever seen. It was red as ripe raspberries, thin as lace, a light, rippling fabric that spilled like rainwater over my hands. I couldn’t detect the weave at all; it was more like fine paper, pressed from a slurry of raw materials. When I held it up to determine where to cut, it draped across my body like dampened silk.

It might actually be indecent to wear a dress like this, but, oh, I was going to make it anyway.

Cressida had taken me to a work site that was little more than a clearing along the side of the road. Planks were set up as tables under a broad canopy, and near them sat trunks of fabric, baskets of thread and needles, and boxes of accessories like ribbons and buttons. Three other aliora were already in place, stitching at their billows of fabric, giggling with each other as they worked, eyeing me with curiosity that was nicely tempered by welcome. Not one of them, as far as I could tell, spoke a language I could understand.

The needles, I quickly learned, were shaped from bone and not nearly as easy to ply as the metal ones I used back home. In fact, I snapped two of them in half before I got the trick of holding them. The red fabric was oddly forgiving, not only hiding my uneven stitches but seeming to heal any holes I made by pushing the needle through with too much vigor.

In about an hour of sewing, I hadn’t quite gotten bored yet, when the girls around me started fluttering and giggling. I looked up to see a cohort of young men striding by in the direction of Rowena’s house, laughing together over some unexplained joke. Most of them were helping carry an assortment of logs and branches—items scavenged from the forest floor, I was guessing, since none of them was carrying an axe.

Well, of course not. None of them could abide the touch of metal.

When they spotted the girls, of one accord they tossed down their burdens and came splashing through the grass to join us under our canopy. I suppose Cressida introduced me—at any rate, she pointed in my direction and uttered some incomprehensible syllables—for everyone turned to appraise me and offer some version of a smile.

One of the young men broke off from the others and came to kneel beside me. “So you’re Princess Zara!” he exclaimed. “Jaxon said we should be expecting you.”

I stared down at him. He was slim and white-haired and gave an impression of springiness; I had the fanciful notion that he had just transmogrified from a birch. His eyes were black as soil and his smile was bright as noon. “You speak my language,” I said stupidly.

He laughed. “I do. I learned it from Jaxon Halsing and some of the other humans who have come to live among us. I have a great curiosity about the world of men, even though I know the land beyond our borders is dangerous to folk like me.”

“I would like to think aliora could travel through the region and encounter no harm,” I said. “But it has only been twenty years since they were captured in the forest and sold in Faelyn Market. You are better off to stay where you are.”

“Particularly if the best of the eight provinces comes here to visit
me
,” he replied.

I smiled. “You mean me? I’m not sure I would say I am even the best of Auburn.”

“Then Auburn and the other seven provinces must be magnificent indeed,” he said. “And I will be tempted to set out and see them all.”

This was flirting; this was the first thing in Alora that actually seemed familiar to me. I pressed my hand to my heart. “Oh, you mustn’t be so rash,” I said. “I take back what I said before. I am the very crown jewel that Auburn has to offer. You would never meet another young lady as attractive or as accomplished as I am.”

He laughed and, shaking back his white-blond hair, he settled more comfortably on his heels. “I am Royven,” he said. “Rowena is my mother.”

I could feel my eyes grow huge. “And Jaxon is your father? Are we cousins?” Or relatives in some complicated fashion that I could not quite determine at the moment.

“No, no, my father died before my mother married your uncle.”

I inspected him more closely. His face was baby-smooth; I couldn’t remember if aliora ever needed to shave, but this one certainly never had. “I would have guessed you were my age or younger,” I said. “But I know they were married before I was born.”

“Aliora age differently from humans,” Royven replied. “I have been alive for twenty-seven years, but I might live to be two hundred. I am a man, but I am still considered young.”

“Two hundred years!” I exclaimed. “It’s rare for a human to live past seventy-five.”

Royven raised his eyebrows. They were as pale as his hair, expressive and nicely shaped. “A human who resides in Alora might live twice as long. There are tales of men and women who wandered across the borders and chose to stay, and whose lives extended to a hundred and fifty years.”

I couldn’t decide if such an idea was abhorrent or attractive. “I wouldn’t mind living so long,” I said cautiously, “if I was healthy and strong. But if I were as old and bent over and crabby as the apothecary’s mother, who is always complaining about her aches and pains, I don’t believe I would enjoy those extra years.”

Royven smiled again. “Ah, but there is no pain and sickness in Alora, didn’t you know? Age comes like a faithful friend and guides you a little farther along a familiar trail. You grow thinner, perhaps—you lose a little strength. You sleep longer in the mornings and nap in the afternoons. Then one day your afternoon nap comes only a few minutes after you rise from your nighttime slumbers, and after that you do not bother to wake again. In Alora, neither death nor old age is a thing to fear.”

Until Dirkson of Tregonia started displaying hostility, death had pretty much never crossed my mind, and I certainly hadn’t wasted much energy thinking about what kind of horrors old age might hold. “Well, that sounds very peaceful,” I said.

“Wouldn’t that be a reason to want to live in Alora for the rest of your life?” he asked.

Cressida spoke sharply. “Royven,” she said. “No more of such talk.”

I looked blankly between them. I was still trying to come to grips with the notion that I might someday age and die. It hadn’t occurred to me that Royven might be deliberately trying to paint a picture of Alora that was so alluring I wouldn’t want to leave.

Maybe the aliora were seductive in ways that I hadn’t considered yet. Maybe it wasn’t just their touch, their serenity, that was so beguiling. Maybe they were not just hoping I would be bewitched by the peaceful beauty of the kingdom. Maybe they would actively try to convince me to stay.

Not Cressida, however. She stood over Royven, her arms crossed, her sad face drawn into a frown. “Zara has no intention of lingering in Alora one minute longer than she must,” Cressida said. “We should not hope she wishes to.”

Royven came to his feet and placed a hand on Cressida’s arm as if to reassure her. Among humans, such casual affection was rare, unless you were with a blood relation. But I had noticed that the aliora touched each other all the time. “I only said what I was thinking,” Royven said.

“You should not think such things around Zara,” she replied.

He smiled at her winningly. “How can I not?” he said. “Wouldn’t it be delightful if she chose to stay here the rest of her life?”

“Don’t be alarmed,” I said to Cressida. “My heart is back at Castle Auburn. I couldn’t live here without my heart.”

“I lived in Auburn a long time without mine,” she replied.

Royven gave her a warm hug. “Be at peace,” he said against her cheek. “Everything will unfold as it should.”

It occurred to me to wonder if Royven’s idea of what
should
be matched my own. But then he turned and smiled at me, and I forgot to worry about it. “Maybe I’ll see you at dinner tonight,” he said, then skipped off to join his companions.

I looked after him for a while before resuming work on my new gown. I have to say, sewing had lost its appeal somehow. I made only a few more stitches before I laid aside the cloth and went to look for other entertainment.

Royven indeed joined us for dinner that night, as did the former hunter Jed Cortay. In some respects, Jed was a physical match for Jaxon, because they were both burly men with full beards and the hearty self-sufficiency of the born outdoorsman. Jed was rougher-edged than Jaxon, though, not a nobleman as Jaxon had been. I imagined him growing up in some small cottage with six or seven siblings underfoot, fighting for attention and extra scraps of food. But none of that showed in his face now. He was smiling and gentle; his speech was unfailingly courteous. He showed Rowena a painting he had completed on the curved inner surface of an eggshell. The egg was so huge I could hardly conceive of what kind of bird had produced it, and I spent more time fretting over that mystery than admiring the delicacy that had been required to produce such a fine work of art on such a fragile surface.

Then I spent a little time wondering about the potency of the magic that could turn an uncouth, unlettered country man into a quiet, compliant artist whose smile was so perpetual that, at times, I expected him to drool.

“You look like someone with weighty issues on her mind,” Royven said to me at one point late in the meal.

I managed a smile—a much less fatuous one than Jed’s, may I say. “I am thinking about my family and wondering if they are well,” I said. It was only partially a lie; thoughts of Keesen and my parents were always just at the back of my mind. “I wish I knew how the war was progressing.”

“Try not to fret,” Royven said softly. “Events will occur as they will, and you cannot control them. Even if you know what’s happening, you cannot change them.”

“I still want to know,” I said.

“Your friend Orlain will come with news in a few more days,” Jaxon promised.

“Nine days,” I said. “A great deal can happen during that time.”

Still, I did not want my edgy mood to taint their own tranquility, so I made an effort to be cheerful for the remainder of the meal. And it was an effort—I was glad when it was time for all of us to scatter to our rooms. As soon as I had seated myself on my bed, I opened the case with the twenty-nine potions remaining, and I quickly picked one and downed the contents.

The prosaic, familiar scents briefly made me intensely homesick, and for a moment I curled up on my bed and cried. But soon enough, the philter had its intended effect. It cheered me up; it drew the happier images to the surface of my mind like some kind of wicking material that acted upon memory. With that taste in my mouth, I could not be sad. Everything I cherished seemed still within reach.

But it was starting to be clear to me that I was not immune to the spell of Alora—indeed, if someone like Jed Cortay could be made over by forest magic, anyone was susceptible. I would have to carefully guard against its pervasive sweetness; I would have to remember that I belonged in the world of men.

Orlain would remind me, when he returned. I separated out eight more vials and arranged them on the round, flat stone that served as my nightstand. When I had finished off these eight bottles, Orlain would be back. It would be easy to lose a sense of time here in Alora, I suspected, but these bottles would help me keep track. My mind would be clear, no matter how long I stayed.