The Perilous Crossing Read online

  “Who has made plans?” the woman says.

  “I have,” Cora says, and she holds a roll of parchment tied with a string so that all the people can see it. “If we are to defeat King Willis, we must have a plan.” She unties the string and rolls the parchment out on a nearby table. The people huddle around her, though not everyone can see, for it is a small table, and there are more people than Cora might have expected. This will be good for her plan.

  “What we must first do,” Cora says, “is return to our duties in the village.” She points to the baker. “You, Bertie, must bake bread.” She points to the village gardener. “And you, Garron, must tend to the vegetables.” She looks around at the people, meeting as many eyes as she can. “We must eat to gain our strength. We must survive.”

  “But without the children...” a woman from the back says. She is wrinkled and slumped. This woman, you see, had twelve children, and they have all gone missing, except for the oldest one, who is not much of a boy any longer. He remains at the castle, undiscovered. He brings her what he can, but it is not so often as it once was.

  “Yes, without the children,” Cora says. “Without the children, our work will be harder. But we must help one another. We must share generously with our fellow villagers.”

  Perhaps Cora knows what words such as these might do for the people of Fairendale. Perhaps she has no idea. It matters not. When they hear the words, it is with a sense of community, a sense of brotherly and sisterly affection, a sense of family. While it is true that Fairendale, in the days before the roundup, boasted of good relationships, in the days after, the people have taken to their beds and hardly see one another. They hardly remember their fellow villagers’ names. They hardly know how to live.

  It is with a gratefulness of greater depth than words can express that the people turn their faces back to their leader, this woman with scarlet hair and white skin and eyes that hold them fast in the waters of peace and courage and, mostly, hope.

  Cora directs them to the plans laid out on parchment—a strengthening time, a stealing time, a training time, and, when all the pieces have fallen into place, an attacking time.

  “There is a time,” Cora says, ending her speech, “for everything.”

  The people are silent for some moments, hardly daring to breathe. They do not know if they can do what is asked of them to do. Waiting for so many days? How is it possible to go about life as if nothing has changed, when the streets and their homes do not vibrate with the laughter and presence of their children? How can they bear to tend their gardens and their bakeries and their shoe-making shops, all the pieces of village life, without the children watching and learning and, as they can, helping? How is it that they might do nothing, absolutely nothing, to save their children when they do not yet know where their children sleep or if they live or whether they are forever lost? Is it not dire to immediately begin the search for their children?

  “Will it work?” a woman close to Cora whispers. Cora knows her to be the baker’s wife. “Will your plan work?”

  “One can never know whether a plan will work in its entirety,” Cora says. “One must simply try. And hope. And, perhaps, try again.”

  The villagers, of course, know this. They have lived more than enough years to have learned about trying and failing and trying again, and yet it is astounding what one can forget in the grip of tragedy. This is a tragedy of the highest order for the people of Fairendale, I am sure we can all agree.

  Bertie’s bald head glows in the candlelight. He nods it. “Yes,” he says. “We must try.”

  “We must plan for food,” Cora says, nodding toward him.

  “I will need wheat,” he says.

  “Perhaps the wheat is not so very badly ruined,” says Garron, the gruff man in a red tunic. He would do anything to save his three boys. “It is a hearty strain.”

  “We will harvest at first light,” Cora says. “Whatever we can. We will all work together.”

  The people murmur around them.

  “Garron, you will lead us in mending the gardens,” Cora says. “With our help, perhaps it can be nurtured back to its former abundance.”

  “It has been many days,” Garron says. “The wheat might be saved, but the rest, I fear, might be lost. And without new seeds from the castle...” He does not go on.

  Cora tries not to think what that might mean. The people could not survive on just wheat. “We will do what we can,” she says.

  “And if your plan does not work?” says the woman with twelve children. She has watery blue eyes and a sagging chin.

  “Then we will plan again,” Cora says.

  “We will not give up?” says the woman in a child’s red cloak.

  “No,” Cora says. “We will not rest until our children are returned to us.”

  At this, the villagers nod their heads. Yes. They will fight for their children until their children return home. This is, after all, what parents do.

  The room grows quiet again. Someone sniffs in the back.

  “We will meet at the gardens at first light,” Cora says.

  The people nod.

  “You must file out one by one,” Cora says. “In case there are watching eyes.”

  There are no watching eyes, of course, for the kingdom is much too concerned with the shoe that was found in the forest. But it is never a bad idea to exercise caution in the most dangerous of situations.

  Cora is the last one in the room. She looks over her plans, wavering in the candlelight, and then she rolls up the parchment, ties the string around it and slips out of the underground meeting place. The lights in the village homes flicker out, one by one, until the whole world goes dark.

  SHOULD the townspeople have looked, on stepping out of their secret meeting place, toward the dark wood, and should they have extraordinary night vision, they might have seen a small boy, standing at the edge of the forest. They might have seen him lift his head back to stare at the moon, a small sliver in the sky, almost not there at all, which, of course, makes the night darker than it would be were the moon full and white. They might have seen him take one small step forward and then stop. Another step forward and another stop. Another step, but this one back.

  Do you see him? He is, perhaps, slightly hard to see, for he is dressed in a black robe, the robe his mother ordered specially when one was needed for a special princely presentation when he was a boy of six. So it is a bit tight and a bit more short. His breeches are made of the finest cloth, though on a black night like this, one cannot tell. His boots, laced up to the calf, are black as well, so he appears, you see, invisible. Upon leaving the castle, he thought this black night would serve him well, but as he stands before the woods he has never entered but has heard about in fearful tales, he does not so much like the small moon and its not-shining.

  Prince Virgil is faced with the most complicated of decisions. Should he enter, for the sake of finding his friends? Should he risk his life and the ire of the fairies, who are known to take anyone who wanders the woods when the sun has vanished, with his trespassing, though he does not know if his friends wait inside? Should he return back home, back to his warm bed, back to the fire that waits to not only warm but also to light his chambers?

  He does not feel like a brave boy. A brave boy would have no trouble stepping within the cover of trees. But Prince Virgil, a very decidedly not-brave boy, waits. Stares. Feels a heart flipping wildly in his chest.

  And then, alas, a creature from within the dark woods, growls. Another creature howls. And yet another hoots, and as Prince Virgil stares, the dark forest fills with eyes. And so he turns. He flees. He leaves his friends to their fate, which is, perhaps, as it should be.

  Prince Virgil runs for his very life, for he does not know whether the creatures within the wood follow him. He does not look back. He stumbles on the path, numerous times, but then he sees the bridge, and he has only to cross it to be safe from whatever may have followed him. He has only to make it to that bridge, a
nd whatever evil pursues him will not cross. He knows this from stories his mother used to tell him as a young boy. So though he is tired, for he runs harder than he has ever run before, Prince Virgil summons enough energy to run even harder. Fear, as it happens, is an excellent motivator.

  Somewhere above our prince a bird watches, flying along with him, its wings keeping time with the steps of our prince, who appears, at a distance, like an oversized bird himself, for his black cape flaps behind him like great, magnificent wings.

  Prince Virgil is terrified of birds. It was a bird, you see, who tore out the eyes of his grandfather and hastened the former king’s death. Might this bird be the very one that visited his grandfather on a night much like this one? Might this bird be a foe? Might this bird be flying for blood?

  Fortunately, our prince does not see this bird. Fortunately, it is too high in the black sky. Fortunately, it does not speak its ominous cry.

  So it is a mystery what trips up Prince Virgil’s steps on the bridge. Is it a rock? A hand? Another bird, waiting?

  What is happening now, dear reader? Could that be Prince Virgil’s head, careening toward stone? Could that be his body spread flat on the ground, as if he has spent every ounce of his being on this terrified run? Could that be a bird, perched on his back, while his cheek presses stone?

  Why, yes. Yes it is.

  Fortune

  GREYSON had always been a merry boy, from the time he was born. He was a child who helped wherever he might, cooking with his mother in the kitchen or running to fetch his father on the nights he got caught in conversation with the other men in the village and supper sat on the table, growing cold. Greyson loved running through the streets and watching the girls do their magic and seeing the blacksmith and the baker and the shoemaker work. He especially liked watching the bookmaker. Though his home did not have many books, Greyson loved stories and so watching stories be made, bound together as a book, was of great entertainment.

  Because he was an only child, Greyson had to help both his father and his mother, though his father was a soldier and only needed his sword shined every now and again. Sometimes he would try on his father’s armor, and his father would laugh heartily at the tiny bit of boy and the large bit of steel.

  Every evening Greyson and his parents would sit around the fireside while his mother told stories of distant lands and magic and the mermaids of the Violet Sea. He always tried to spy the mermaid’s tail at the very moment the sky flashed golden, for he was one who believed in the fortune of such a sight at such a time. Alas, he never did see it. And this is why Greyson believed that he, perhaps, was not one of those that fortune smiles upon, for not only had he never seen a mermaid’s tale at sunset, but he was also always skinning his knees and catching colds and burning supper. His parents shook their heads and laughed, ruffling his sandy hair and calling him their clumsy lad. He did not think this was funny, of course, as I am sure no child would, but he tried not to let it bother him much. In the space between stories and sleep, his mother whispered that one day he would outgrow it. And he believed her.

  He was a friend of all, calling the adults by name, greeting respectfully, patting the younger children on their heads. The children would always come running when Greyson emerged into the streets, for he kept his pockets full of the special candies his father brought home from his travels. His father was captain of the king’s guard, and in those days there were many travels, for the kingdom of Fairendale was still repairing the damage done by the Great Battle, though it had been nearly eighty-three years since King Sebastien marched the men of all the lands toward death. All those men of King Sebastien’s were mysteriously lost, and the other kingdoms were not so happy to have given up their most strapping young men. Greyson’s father was a peacemaker, though, and this is what kept the other lands from storming Fairendale’s castle. He brought with him seeds from the flowers of Fairendale, for its beauty was widely told and celebrated.

  Because of his father’s position within the palace, Greyson and his family were well cared for. They had more than enough food and clothes and medicine. Greyson tried to share whenever he could, though he had heard stories of the prince who had been banished from the castle for doing just that. Greyson thought it a very sad story and asked that his father never tell it again, and his father never had. Even so, Greyson could not forget it.

  In the kingdom of Fairendale, as it existed when Greyson was a boy, a person could be punished for sharing what excess he had. So Greyson grew discreet about it. The children, then, would gather round him, and he would wave them away, and just before their going, he would slip the leader, who would share with the rest, a bag of candy or some cookies his mother had made or one of the baker’s famous bon bons. They would walk away with it hidden in their tunic, and he knew they would savor it later.

  Most days, when Greyson finished his household chores, he would wander the streets in search of his father and find him talking with the men of the village in the watering hole, which served some kind of drink that smelled sour and tasted even worse. Greyson’s father usually had a tall glass of it in front of him. He dressed always in black, a cape gathered round his shoulders. It was not often that Greyson saw his father in his armor.

  There Greyson would sit, listening to his father and the men of Fairendale tell the kingdom’s stories.

  Greyson was not born the day King Sebastien moved into town, but most of the stories told by the villagers were about The Good King Brendon, the king Sebastien had defeated when he invaded the land, the king the people of Fairendale had all loved dearly. In fact, one could never hear The Good King Brendon’s name without “The Good” preceding it. So King Brendon became The Good King Brendon in all the history stories. They were stories told throughout the generations, since none of those who lived at this time in our story had been alive when The Good King Brendon ruled the throne. He was known as the wisest and kindest and bravest of all kings. And though the people told these stories of the good king for the hope they held, they did not look so hopeful at the end of them, only despondent. This made Greyson sad. So he and his father would walk home sad, and his mother would say, “Why are my men so sad?” and she would ruffle their hair and move into the kitchen, where she had baked some kind of surprise while they were out telling and listening to stories. They would sit around the table eating apple pie or cinnamon cookies or cream puffs, and Greyson would think that even though he had never seen a mermaid’s tail at sunset, he was the most fortunate person in all the world.

  Until the day it all changed.

  Gone

  IT is now early morning, though the children and Arthur and Maude have no way of knowing this. They gather around a breakfast table, for they do not know the hour or the day, only that their bellies rumble from hunger. They know, simply, that they have woken, that this is, perhaps, the last day they will live, for water has not been summoned by Mercy since their sleeping. It appears as though Mercy’s powers are waning ever more. But perhaps everything is not as it appears.

  The children, in truth, did not sleep well in the night. Neither did Arthur or Maude. It seems that knowing one will wake to a day that could be one’s very last does not make it easy to sleep. The children feel they should have celebrated, perhaps, for a last night alive is a thing to celebrate, is it not?

  But they have drawn together at a breakfast table that must be larger than any we have ever seen, for there are twenty-six of them seated around it. They do not speak, nor do they look at one another. The mood, as it happens, is quite sullen.

  The curve of Maude’s back straightens slightly. “Shall we turn the last of our possessions into bread?” she says. She knows they will no longer need what few possessions they have, particularly if this is their last day living.

  Arthur nods. And then, poor man, his face crumbles, the stubbly growth on his cheeks and chin shaking, and he says, “I am sorry children. I am sorry there was not another way.”

  Hazel’s cheeks, despite t
he hunger, have remained rosy red. She feels this loss the most, perhaps, for if her brother were here, if he had come with them, they might have had enough magic left to flee once more. But her magic is little more than a child’s tricks now. She tried, this morning, one last time, and she got nothing for her efforts. Alas, she is too hungry to be of much use, and, what is more, her magic is significantly weakened without her brother’s. She would be at a disadvantage even if she had a full belly.

  Where is her brother? Has magic saved him? Is he on his way to find her? Theo always had the greatest plans, more like Arthur than Maude. Hazel wishes, for the thousandth time, that her brother had simply followed her into the woods, instead of trying to save a handful of children. Look how many would perish at his choice.

  This is how sadness turns to anger, you see. Hazel wishes her brother were here for the simple fact that she loves him. But brooding on his missing piece sets her to pondering the circumstances that led to his disappearance. Theo saw some children in need, and, rather than moving toward the woods where they had a hope of safety and togetherness, he moved toward the younger children. Heroic, but foolish. And now they will all perish.

  A couple of the children sniffle, though no one speaks still.

  Mercy coughs into her hand, as if clearing her throat for something important she has to say. Hazel looks at her friend. Mercy’s green eyes are glazed, the way they get when she has done much thinking. Her scarlet hair is not so vibrant as it was before they entered this underground home. Starvation shows in many different places.

  “I could do something,” Mercy says.

  The words startle everyone gathered around the table. Maude is still breaking off tiny chunks of bread, passing it around, for there is not much. But the children do not reach for their pieces. They look, instead, to Mercy.