Other Earths (collection)

When the gingerbread was in the oven, her grandmother had said, “Now you tell it back to me.” Csilla had repeated it, again and again. She had named one of the gingerbread men Herman, and while her grandmother had sat by the stove, listening and correcting her if she made any mistakes, she had slowly eaten Herman, starting with the feet.

“The king thought she would be safer there, especially after what had happened to the queen. But Herman died, so she couldn’t marry him any more. And then …”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Mad’r. “What happened to Princess Erzs’bet?”

Moonlight glimmered through the branches. Erzs’bet tried to avoid tripping over shadows on the path: rocks, or perhaps roots. In summer, the landgravine would go with her ladies to the forest. They would sit by a stream, gossiping and listening to one of the traveling minstrels that came to the Wartburg during the summer months, strumming his lute and singing about the landgravine’s hair. The landgravine, dressed rather implausibly as Flora, would lean back against her cushions with the satisfied smile that Erzs’bet always found so unsettling. She remembered the forest as a series of sunlit glades. This was not the same forest. There was a constant rustling and scurrying in the bushes around her. She smelled fallen leaves, and mushrooms and the cold smell that meant winter was coming.

She clutched M’rta’s cloak. “Are you sure this is the right way to Erfurt?”

The rustling and scurrying stopped, and the forest waited, unaccustomed to this new sound.

“We can ask the travelers ahead. I see a fire through the trees. Come on, Erszike.”

“I thought we were trying to avoid other travelers …” But M’rta was already ahead of her, walking toward the fire.

Hurrying to catch up, Erzs’bet stumbled over a shadow that turned out to be a rock. When she found her footing again and looked around her, she was standing in a clearing. The travelers were sitting around a fire at its center.

Once, Erzs’bet had gone to Erfurt with the landgravine, to a fair celebrating the new windows of the Abbey, which showed the Virgin and Saint Anne. On the road through the forest she had seen merchants, their wagons filled with glass vessels from Venice, brocades and damasks from the weavers of Flanders, holy relics from Rome. As the landgravine’s procession had drawn closer to the town, it had passed farmers carrying dried meat and heads of cabbage in nets. She had seen their wives and daughters walking beside them, their baskets filled with goose eggs, honeycombs dripping with brown honey, walnuts. Often the road ahead of the procession was blocked by travelers and sheep, who must be moved aside to let the landgravine pass.

These travelers were not like those she had seen going to the fair. On one side of the fire crouched a woman with white hair like a bird’s nest, whose legs were so twisted that she could scarcely have walked along the forest road. Yet surely Erzs’bet had seen her begging in front of the Abbey. And wasn’t that the scullery girl from the castle, still in her apron? Beside the scullery girl sat a man surrounded by children, from a baby to a girl almost as old as Erzs’bet who was holding the baby in her arms. They were dressed in rags, and the baby’s mouth was surrounded by sores. She had seen the man before as well; he had been the Devil in the play at the fair. She had seen him afterward juggling colored balls, while the boy who sat beside him, with the dirty cap on his head, had walked on his hands. The landgravine had forbidden her to watch such a vulgar spectacle.

“Hello, sister,” said M’rta.

“Hello yourself,” said a woman who was standing in the shadows beyond the firelight. “I see you’ve brought the girl.”

Beside the children sat a peddler, who grinned at her without teeth. Out of his sack spilled bottles of ointment and what looked like a mandrake root. And then she noticed that the baby’s curls, which at first had seemed yellow, were the color of spring leaves.

“Is that the way to talk to a princess? Where are your manners?” M’rta turned to Erzs’bet. “You’ll have to forgive her, Erszike. My sister is a queen in her own right, although her nation does not belong to the Holy Roman Empire.”

M’rta had a sister? A sister dressed in gray, like the habit of a nun. A sister whose hair cascaded over her shoulders like ivy.

“Where have you brought me?” She was surprised to hear her voice, so frightened. Her eyes stung from looking around the fire. She rubbed them. The woman’s hair was still green. “Is this a meeting of witches?”

“The Inquisitor would tell you so,” said the woman in gray. Surely Erzs’bet had seen her before. She remembered the mouth, with lines of laughter around it, and the nose, as thin and sharp as a knife. But where?

She felt M’rta’s arms around her, as comforting as when she was a child. “Erszike, these are the T̈nd’r, and my sister Cec’lia is their queen.”