Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)
Read Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) Online
Authors: Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Tags: #FIC042080, #FIC009000, #Magic—Fiction, #FIC009020
© 2014 by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6357-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Book design by Paul Higdon
Cover illustration by William Graf
Author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency
This one is for Tom, Jimmy, and
Peter.
T
HEY
SAY
ALL
THE
OLD
STORIES
—all the
true
stories—are about blood. This simply is not so.
All the true stories are about love. And blood. The two so often go hand in hand, they’re difficult to separate, but it is important not to divide the one from the other, or the story becomes unbalanced and is no longer true. That is why this is a story about blood and love, and the many things that lie between.
For Foxbrush, this story began on the worst day of his life to date.
Foxbrush’s father had insisted that his mother allow their son to travel with him to the court of Foxbrush’s uncle, the king, to be properly presented. Foxbrush, a shy, unprepossessing child, considered this visit (and the coinciding obligation to Talk to People) a terror of nightmarish proportions and trembled in the seat of his father’s carriage all the way to the Eldest’s House.
Upon arrival, he was separated from his father and shuffled into step behind an elegant footman, who led him down strange halls and passages.
His young mind, bewildered by the grandeur around him that far outmatched anything he’d known in his mother’s remote mountain home, retreated further into itself. Many of the halls they passed through were not closed in by walls but open to the elements, tall pillars supporting the roof overhead after the fashion of Southlander architecture. The sounds and smells of the Eldest’s House assailed Foxbrush from every side. Rather than see too much, he watched the footman’s feet treading across the white marble floor.
Those feet stopped. Foxbrush stopped.
“Here you are, young sir,” said the footman, opening a door.
A blast of children’s laughter assaulted Foxbrush’s ears. His eyes grew owlishly large. “Please,” he said, “I’d rather not.”
But the footman placed a hand on Foxbrush’s shoulder and pushed him inside. The door shut. Foxbrush was trapped.
The room was spacious, with a great many tall, open windows all around through which breezes blew, wafting colorful curtains like circus flags. And wafting more colorfully still was an army of children, all in gorgeous clothes, laughing so that their teeth flashed.
Foxbrush, who had little experience with anyone his own age, backed up against the door and held on to his hat as a final defense against the oncoming hordes.
No one paid him any heed; they were busy about their games. After several minutes of terrified observation, Foxbrush thought he began to discern some sort of pattern in the antics before him. One boy stood in the center of the room with, of all things, a curtain pulled down from one of the windows wrapped around his shoulders. Through his terror, Foxbrush recognized his cousin Leo, whom he had known since infancy. Leo held the fallen curtain rod in both hands and shouted:
“Warriors, to me! To me! Twelve warriors!”
Four children, boys and girls, separated from the group and flocked around him, a number that seemed to satisfy the curtain wearer. They were all younger than Leo.
Little ones,
Foxbrush thought from the superior vantage of eight years. They looked up to their leader with awe-filled eyes, ready to do his bidding.
“Shadow Hand!” Leo called across the room. “Are you ready to fight?”
On the other side of the room, another cluster of children crouched in noisy council. One of them stood, and she was the most unusual person Foxbrush could ever remember seeing. Her hair was bright red. And curly! She might as well have been some otherworldly being here among the dark-skinned Southlanders.
She was armed with an unclothed rag doll, which she brandished menacingly. “I am King Shadow Hand of Here and There! And I will slay you, fiend of darkness! Slay you and save my fickle fleeting Fair from your evil mound!”
The curtain-clad Leo frowned. “Hold on,” he said, and all his miniature warriors caught their breath. “What’s a fickle fleeting Fair?”
“You know,” said the red-haired girl. “The maiden King Shadow Hand saves. The one he holds on to.”
“I don’t remember that,” said her foe.
“It’s true,” the girl-king replied.
“I remember him losing his hands. I remember him bargaining with the Faerie queen. I remember him fighting the twelve warriors. I don’t remember a maiden.”
The red-haired girl dropped her rag doll weapon and crossed the room to a pile of books left strewn and open upon the ground. It was enough to make Foxbrush recoil in horror: The spines would be all bent and broken, the pages torn by these uncivilized ruffians! But the girl shoved several aside with her foot until she pulled from the wreckage a once fine illustrated copy of
Eanrin’s Rhymes for Children
and opened it to a dog-eared page.
“See?” she said, turning to Leo and pointing to a certain woodcut, which may or may not have been intended for young eyes. It depicted a king with a fierce black beard and a noble face clinging to a rather buxom young woman who was—as far as Foxbrush could discern—melting.
Foxbrush shuddered, but the girl strode across the room to her opponent.
“See? There’s the fickle fleeting Fiery Fair that Shadow Hand is trying to rescue.”
“I don’t remember that bit,” Leo said, frowning with the determination of one who never could remember anything he did not wish to.
The girl, undaunted, read for all the listeners in the room.
“Oh, Shadow Hand of Here and There
The stone of ancients kills
To free his fiery, fickle Fair
From death beneath the hills!”
She finished and shut the book with a bang that made Foxbrush startle. “We need a fickle Fair for me to rescue from you.”
Leo rolled his eyes, then turned to those gathered round. “So who wants to be the damsel in distress?” he asked.
The children exchanged glances. A demotion from warrior to damsel was none too keenly desired. Even the little girls, their braided hair coming all undone, shook their heads.
“There you have it,” said Leo, smugly lifting his curtain rod. “No one wants to be her, so we’ll play without her.”
“No we won’t,” said the girl-king, her voice so final that even the intrepid Leo blinked and lost some of his smug. She turned and surveyed the room like a hawk selecting which hopping young rabbit she might wish to snatch. Her gaze fell at last upon Foxbrush by the door.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Um,” said Foxbrush. That strange stare of hers pinned him to the wall. He’d never seen blue eyes before. He was not naturally a superstitious child. Nevertheless, as the girl-king descended upon him, her eyes full of ruling intensity . . . well, even Foxbrush wondered if, in that moment, he had fallen under a bewitchment.
“Do you want to be the fickle Fair?” she said, drawing near to him.
Foxbrush shook his head. “I . . . I’d rather not,” he said.
She looked him up and down, appraising his worth. “Why not?” she demanded. “You’d be good at it.”
Foxbrush couldn’t break her fearful gaze. Shrinking into himself, he said, “I might tear my shirt.”
The flame-headed girl narrowed her eyes. Then she reached out, grabbed hold of the button at his collar, and yanked. It took a couple of hard pulls, but it came away in her hand at last with a satisfying rip.
Foxbrush gasped.
“There,” said the girl-king. “It’s torn already. Come play with us.”
In that moment, realization washed over young Foxbrush; realization that this girl could make him do whatever she wanted him to. And, more horribly still, he wouldn’t entirely mind doing it.
He loved her at once for reasons he could not then understand.
So you see? Blood and love—the ingredients of every true story.
“All right,” you say, “I see the love. But where’s the blood? Give us blood!”
Don’t worry, dear reader. We’ll come to the blood soon enough.
