Fool’s Quest

I was bundled warmly against the cold, enthroned like a queen in the bed of an open sleigh I did not recognize. It was a marvelous sleigh. Two white horses in red-and-silver harness waited stoically to pull it. To either side of the driver’s seat, cleverly wrought iron hangers held lanterns with glass sides and worked iron scrolls as decorations. They illuminated the cushioned seat for the driver and a passenger, and the gracefully curved edges of the sleigh’s bed. I reached out, thinking to run my hand over the finely polished wood. I could not. I was rolled and wrapped and weighted with blankets and furs that bound my sleepy body as effectively as knotted ropes. The sleigh was drawn up at the edge of the carriageway that served the once-grand doors of Withywoods. Those doors were caved in now, broken and useless.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of cobwebs. I should be doing something! I needed to do something, but my body felt heavy and soft, like bags of wet laundry. I could not remember how I had been returned to Withywoods, let alone dressed in a heavy fur robe and bundled into a sleigh. As if I were backtracking my day, trying to find a lost glove, I set what I could remember in order. I’d been in the schoolroom with the other children. Steward Revel, dying as he warned us to run. I’d hidden the other children in the secret passage in the walls of Withywoods, only to have the door closed to me. Fleeing with Perseverance. He’d been shot. I’d been captured. And I had been so happy to be captured. I recalled no more than that. But somehow I’d been brought back to Withywoods, buttoned into a heavy fur coat, and swaddled into a dozen blankets. And now I was here, in a sleigh, watching my stables burn.

I turned my eyes away from the leaping orange flames of the burning stable and looked toward the manor. People, all the people I had known my whole life, were gathered in front of the tall doors of Withywoods. They weren’t dressed for the snow. They wore the clothes they had donned that morning for the day’s work inside the manor. They huddled together, hugging themselves or clinging to one another for warmth. I saw several shorter figures and finally my blurry vision made out that they were the children I had earlier concealed. Against my stern admonition, they had come out and betrayed themselves. My slow thoughts put together the burning stable and the hidden children. Perhaps they had been wise to come out. Perhaps the raiders would burn the house next.

The raiders. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, fighting for clarity of vision and thought.

This attack made no sense to me. We had no enemies that I knew of. We were far inland in the duchy of Buck, and the Six Duchies were not at war with anyone. Yet these foreigners had come and attacked us. They had battered their way into our halls.

Why?

Because they wanted me.

The thought made no sense, and yet it seemed to be true. These attackers had come to steal me. Armed men on horseback had run me down. Run us down. Oh, Perseverance. His own blood leaking between his fingers. Was he dead or hiding? How had I ended here, back at Withywoods? One of the men had seized me and dragged me back. The woman who seemed to be in charge of this raid had rejoiced at finding me, and told me that she was taking me home, to where I belonged. I frowned. I’d felt so happy at those words. So cherished. What had been wrong with me? The fog man had greeted me and welcomed me as his brother.

Even though I was a girl. I had not told them that. I had been so suffused with happiness to see them that I could scarcely speak. I had opened my arms to the fog man, and to the plump, motherly woman who had rescued me from the raider who had been choking me. But after that . . . I remembered a warm whiteness. That was all. The memory made no sense but it still filled me with shame. I’d embraced the woman who had brought these killers to my home.

I turned my head slowly. I felt as if I could not do anything quickly. I could not move quickly or think quickly. I had taken a bad fall, I remembered slowly. From a running horse. Had I struck my head? Was that what was wrong with me?

My unseeing eyes had been focused on the burning stables. Two men approached it now, carrying something. Withywoods men, dressed in our yellow and green, in their best clothes. For a Winterfest eve that had become a winter slaughter. I recognized one as Lin, our shepherd. They were carrying something between them. Something that sagged. A body. Around the burning stables, the snow had melted to slush. They trudged on. Closer and closer. Would they walk right into the flames? But as they drew closer, they halted. “One, two, three!” Lin’s voice cracked on the count as they swung the body and then, on three, they let go. It flew into the red mouth of the burning building. They turned. Like puppets traipsing across a stage, they walked away from the flames.