“Sometimes I want to,” said Esa. “I used to want it more, and the prince was nice enough. But things are getting better here, and I don’t want to leave my family or make them leave the mountain.”
Gerti was sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees. “You know Olana’s book of tales? There’s a story in it about a girl who meets a prince and falls in love with him on the spot, and all her dreams come true when he pulls her onto his horse and they ride off to the palace. I thought when I met him it might be like that.” Gerti shrugged. “Steffan was pretty nice, I guess, but . . .” She shrugged again.
“I want to,” said Liana. “I want to wear ball gowns and live in a palace.”
Miri frowned. Liana did look as lovely as Miri imagined a princess should, but she thought Steffan deserved better.
Several other girls admitted proudly or shyly that they, too, still hoped to be the princess. Tonna had even begun to wear her hair twisted up all the time.
“Didn’t you hear Olana?” said Bena, apparently angry that Liana disagreed with her yet again. “It won’t be one long ball. It’ll be boring work, long days talking to people you don’t care about, and married to a dull boy with a fancy title. I can’t believe after all our lessons in History, knowing about all the assassinations and political plots and wars and barren queens, that anyone would want to be a princess.”
“Well, I do,” said Liana. “My reign would be different. It would be fun.”
Katar looked at Miri for the briefest moment but did not voice her opinion. Miri knew Katar did not care about the work or the gowns, loving Steffan, or missing home. She simply wanted to be chosen and given the chance to leave.
“Do you want to, Miri?” asked Britta.
Miri blew out her lips. There was no hearth in the chapel, and she watched her breath turn white against the cold air. She wanted to form a village academy and feel at home on the mountain, she wanted to be with her pa and Marda, and she thought she wanted to be with Peder. If that was what he wanted. She knew those things, yet she could not let go of the idea of being a princess, not after all the hoping and wondering. So she said, “It seems strange to still think about this, after the bandits and everything. It seems like the world has changed and we shouldn’t still be talking about things like marrying a prince.”
“Whether we want to or not,” said Esa, “if he chooses us, would we be able to refuse?”
After months of bowing to their desires, Olana dug in her heels and insisted on reviewing some princess subjects. “My purpose is to ready you for the prince’s next visit, and at the very least we must rehearse our curtsies and dances.”
“Tutor Olana,” said Miri, “it doesn’t seem very effective to keep dancing by ourselves. Some of the village boys might be willing to learn the dances and practice with us.”
So when spring holiday again lit the mountain with bonfires and music, the village enjoyed its first ball. Miri wore her chapel skirt and her hair loose and smiled at Peder when the drums and yipper began playing. That night he was not the distant, uncertain boy who sometimes passed by without a word—that night he was Peder, her best friend. He asked her for the first dance.
The lowlander dances did not separate partners with a ribbon, and Miri found herself holding Peder’s hand for the first time since they were tiny children. He pressed his fingers against her lower back and led her through a promenade, and they conversed so easily that Miri laughed to remember her awkward exchanges with Steffan.
The talking hushed when they moved through the positions of “Lady of Water,” a short dance that required partners to face each other, their palms pressed together, their faces just a breath apart. Peder swallowed and looked at his feet and over her head. But midway through the dance, he relaxed and met her eyes.
Miri’s heart buzzed. She wished she could say something just right. The future loomed before her, and she felt as though the prince stood between them, keeping them one step apart.
“What are you thinking?” asked Peder.
“I was thinking of the prince, when he comes back . . . ,” she said, then wished she had not. Peder’s smile was gone.
“Are you angry?” Miri whispered, and he shrugged. When the drum and yipper stopped playing, Peder walked away.
“He thinks you want to marry the prince,” said Britta at her side.
“I know,” said Miri. She instinctively put her hand in her pocket, but she had lost the linder hawk down the cliff.
The matter of the princess still felt unsettled inside her, a silty streambed that shifts underfoot. She did not understand why Steffan had left, but he had liked her best. He had said so. If he returned and asked her to go with him to Asland, to be a princess, to give her family that house in the painting, how could she say no? Steffan was nice. Miri could imagine becoming friends, even dear friends. She would find ways to make him laugh, and he would show her all of Danland. And perhaps she would be happy.
But the nearer his return, the tighter Miri felt herself clinging to Mount Eskel as she had to that tree root on the cliff. The mountain was home. Her pa was home. And Peder . . . She allowed herself to hope for Peder. Her wishes were too big for a hillside of miri flowers.
n
Chapter Twenty-five
Plumb line is swinging
Spring hawk is winging
Eskel is singing
n
The first morning that dawned free of frost, Miri and Britta sat on the large boulder beside Miri’s house, watching the west road.
“I’m so tired of waiting and wondering,” said Miri. “I want to do something new. I wish I could teach you quarry-speech.”
“You’re in a mood lately to teach everything,” said Britta. “I’ll bet I haven’t been up here long enough to get drenched in linder, but there might be something I can help you do. You once said lowlanders were supposed to be good with gardens.” The corners of her eyes crinkled with her smile.
They cleared some ground of rubble rock until their nails were chipped and fingers sore. Britta showed her how to loosen the soil and make furrows in the earth to catch water runoff. She dipped her finger into the dirt and plopped in a seed.
“This will be a pea vine, if it has a chance to grow.”
Miri had never eaten a fresh pea, and Britta said they tasted like a spring morning. They planted the rest of the seeds Britta had brought from the lowlands and talked about the fresh things they would eat all summer. Neither of them mentioned that the prince would come soon and someone would not be there to eat squash and cherry tomatoes.
That afternoon, the pounding in the quarry paused at the sound of trumpets.
“Prince Steffan of Danland returned last night to the princess’s academy!” shouted a messenger from the bed of a wagon. “All academy girls are requested to attend him this day.”
Miri and Britta readied themselves, taking extra care to wash their faces and comb their hair.
“Who do you think he’ll pick?” asked Miri.
Britta just shrugged. She seemed too nervous to speak.
Miri’s father watched them in silence, and Marda brushed off the tabletop again and again. Miri knew they were not anxious for a house in the lowlands with a beautiful garden or clothing made from expensive cloth or silver forks for their food. They just wanted Miri home again soon. Miri paused to feel the goodness of that thought—her pa wanted her home. She believed that now, and it made her feel as if she were still wearing the silver gown.
After the bandit attack, the parents would not let their daughters far from sight, so thirty quarry workers accompanied the academy girls. The girls scarcely spoke, and no one laughed or skipped or hurled stones over the cliff’s edge. Miri walked with Britta, Esa, and Frid, and after a moment Britta managed to catch Katar’s hand as well.
“And we’ll all still be friends,” s
aid Miri, “no matter who is princess.”
They all agreed. Britta only nodded. Miri wondered if Britta might be sick again.
Word of the bandits must have reached the capital, as the academy was surrounded by soldiers. The quarriers joined them.
Inside the academy there were no tapestries or chandeliers, no wardrobe of gowns. One woman in a neat, green dress greeted them at the door and led them into the nearly bare dining hall. Miri tried to flatten a crumple in her wool shirt and noticed other girls arranging their clothing or smoothing down loose hairs.
“Prince Steffan will attend you in just a few minutes,” said the woman. “Please wait here.”
“I don’t understand,” Esa whispered to the girls near her. “If we’re not going to dance and curtsy and converse again, why didn’t he choose someone before?”
Frid shrugged. “Maybe he was too cold to think straight. My grandfather gets soggy-brained in the winter.”
“Or maybe you shouldn’t have arm-wrestled him, Frid,” Miri whispered back. “The first rule of Poise states, ‘Never pick up your dance partner and toss him across the floor.’”
“Oh, I can’t, I just can’t,” Britta said suddenly, and ran out.
Miri glanced at the doorway where the prince would enter, but she did not hesitate to follow after Britta.
Britta dashed down the academy steps and plopped herself behind a large boulder.
“What’s happened?” Miri sat beside her. “You look sick again, Britta. Do you want me to fetch Knut?”
Britta shook her head. She sucked her bottom lip as if desperate to keep herself from crying.
“What is it?” asked Miri.
Britta plucked at her clothes, rubbed her fore-head, tugged her ear, and seemed overwhelmed by agitation. “I can’t see the prince. I can’t let him see me! I know him.”
Miri blinked. “You know the prince?”
Britta whimpered and put her face in her hands. Her voice came out muffled. “I hate this, Miri. I should’ve told you before, but whenever I thought about it I felt so ill and embarrassed and horrified and—”
“You know the prince.”
Britta nodded. “My father wasn’t a merchant. He was . . . is . . . a nobleman. And I grew up with Steffan, with the prince, at least for part of each year, because he would summer in an estate near my home, and he was adventuresome and kind, and all the other boys were so stuffy, so he said he liked to be with me. We used to play this game where we were poor folk who could eat only what we could find, and we’d scavenge the gardens for anything edible—green tomatoes, berries, pansy flowers. We’d dig up baby carrots and eat them unwashed as though we were starving.”
Britta stopped and looked at Miri with concern in her mild brown eyes. “I wonder if that seems rude to you, Steffan and I playing at being starved.”
“No,” said Miri. “I guess your life was very different then.”
Britta nodded. “It was different—not better than here, not worse. I haven’t missed any of it really, except not feeling so cold in the winter and not being hungry. And I haven’t missed anybody much, except Steffan.” She sighed and put her hands over her eyes. “My father had hoped we’d wed. Whenever Father talked about it I just wanted to curl up and hide, but I did dream. . . . Steffan never said anything, and of course I never had a real chance because the priests choose where the princess will be found. But when I was old enough to think about it, I’d hoped he . . . hoped that . . .”
“That he loved you back.”
Britta looked up. Her eyes were glassy. “If you knew my father, you would probably tremble to imagine his reaction when he heard the priests’ divination named a place where he owned no land, far away from any of his friends or connections. I certainly hid from him for a week. That was a bad time.” Britta shuddered. “But he refused to give up. He somehow discovered the name of a family on Mount Eskel and sent me on a trader’s wagon with an order to claim that he was dead and that I was related to the family. Then his daughter really would be a girl who lived on Mount Eskel.”
“And so you are,” said Miri quietly.
“I’m so sorry, Miri. You must think I’ve been such a liar. I was mortified that my family had such ridiculous hopes, and I thought you’d hate me for being a rich lowlander, or just for being so foolish. In truth, I was a little glad to come up here. I’ve long believed my parents cared about me only if I could tie them to the throne.”
“You really are Lady Britta.”
“Please don’t call me that!”
Miri frowned. “But if you knew that the prince would choose you . . .”
“But he won’t!” Britta leapt to her feet and paced around the stones. “For a year, I’ve been terrified of the day Steffan arrived, and he’d see me pretending to be a Mount Eskel girl, and he’d say, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I’d say, ‘I came chasing after you because I want to marry you. . . .’ Aah! Can you imagine, Miri? He’ll detest me then, or laugh in my face, or pretend he doesn’t know me.”
“And if he doesn’t detest you or laugh or—”
“No, don’t say that. I have to believe it won’t happen. Whenever I try to hope, it hurts so much. For months, it seemed no one here liked me a whit, and all I had to look forward to was making a fool of myself in front of the boy I’ve been in love with for years. And then when I got to know all the girls at the academy, and I realized how much smarter and prettier you all are than I am, his choice seemed obvious.”
“You know him, and you really think he’d choose me over you?”
Britta stopped pacing. “Of course. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known, and a year ago you couldn’t even read. You’re clever and funny—why wouldn’t anyone want to marry you? I want you to know that I’ve been preparing myself all year for the time when he doesn’t pick me. It’ll hurt, a little, but I really will be happy when it’s you.”
“I . . .” Could he really? Miri looked out to the chain of mountains, blue, purple, gray, and glanced over her shoulder to the tip of the road that led home. The dream of the house with the garden felt like candle smoke—shifting, lovely, but almost gone. “I don’t want to be the princess.”
“Miri,” said Britta, sounding exasperated.
“I don’t. I really don’t. What a relief to know that now! It wouldn’t be fair, Britta. Like you said once, the princess should be someone who would be really, really happy. Someone who loves Steffan.”
“Miri! Britta!” Esa called from the steps of the academy. “Are you out here? Olana said to find you. The prince is about to come see us.”
Britta put a hand to her stomach and groaned. “I can’t do it, Miri. I think I might actually die.”
Miri laughed, and laughing felt like precisely the best thing to do. She pulled Britta to her feet and hugged her hard.
“What’s so funny?” asked Britta, starting to smile just at the sound of Miri’s laugh.
“You are. Britta, you survived Olana, Katar, two mountain winters, and a wolf pack of bandits. You might throw up, but you won’t die now. Though if you’re going to throw up, do it here. It’ll be a tad more embarrassing in the middle of your curtsy.”
Britta’s face went ashen. “Do you think I might . . . ?”
Miri laughed again and tugged her arms. “Come on, let’s go see your prince.”
They rushed into the dining hall just as Steffan emerged from the far door. His eyes scanned the room expectantly, and when they stopped on Britta, he took a half step backward. He smiled, then he smiled larger, then he grinned. His shoulders relaxed, and Miri half expected him to do something boyish and outrageous, like leap for joy or gallop to her side. Instead, he bowed, grand and low.
Steffan broke his gaze from Britta and walked around the room, nodding at each girl. When he came to Britta, he stopped. Miri never
would have believed it possible, but all his careful poise vanished. He bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet.
“Good afternoon to you, miss. I don’t believe we were introduced at my last visit.”
“My name is Britta, Your Highness,” she said with a perfect curtsy, though her voice caught a little. “Britta Paweldaughter.”
“It is my pleasure to meet you, Britta Paweldaughter.” The prince bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. With his mouth over her hand, he said softly, “I’m Steffan.”
“A pleasure, sir. Steffan.” Her face could not bear the solemnity. She smiled with such ardor that Miri’s own heart beat faster just to see her.
Steffan continued on, greeting the rest of the girls, then conversed quietly with the woman in the green dress. She nodded and motioned a priest in from the corridor. In his dark brown shirt and white cap, the priest reminded Miri of Mount Eskel’s peak in early spring.
“Prince Steffan, heir to the throne of Danland, has selected his chosen princess,” said the woman. “Britta Paweldaughter, please come forward.”
Britta began to shake even harder, and her ruddy cheeks all but drained of color. Miri was afraid she might fall over or faint, and she put her arm around her and walked her across the room. Steffan rushed forward and took her other arm.
“Are you all right, Britta?” he whispered. “Do you need to sit down?”
Britta shook her head. Miri waited to one side as Britta and Steffan stood before the priest.
“I choose Britta Paweldaughter as betrothed to the throne,” said Steffan.
“And does she accept?” the priest asked.
“I accept Steffan Sabetson as my betrothed.” Britta took a deep breath, as if she had been holding it for a long time.
The priest spoke a lengthy discourse for the ritual of betrothal binding, including naming all the kings and queens from King Dan on down. Miri noticed that he missed one in the middle, and she tilted her head and looked back at the girls. Others had apparently noticed, too, and tittered about it. The priest stopped, corrected himself, and continued on.