Falada, she said.
She remembered the last word Falada had spoken to her, in the forest, when she had lost the handkerchief and turned her back to the river. Princess, he had said. He had always called her Princess. She missed him sorely and strained to hear him again, not with her ears, but with that part of her inside where his voice had always come, and from where she had been able to respond.
Falada, she said.
And because she was straining, she heard the brush of that final word again.
Princess.
The resonance of Falada’s voice came softly, an echo of what was once spoken, like the voice of the sea from a shell. They faced each other thus in silent conversation, the shivering once princess and the mounted head of her steed, dead speaking with dead.
A breeze wound up her skirt, touched her cheek, and chilled her where tears had left wetness. Ani wiped her cheeks and reached for a second time with her mind to hear herself named, yearning for the comfort of Falada’s voice.
Falada, she said.
Princess.
Ani started. She had been expecting to hear that word, but this time the tone did not carry the distant echo of Falada. A new voice.
She struggled to hear once more.
The winter breeze still brushed against her cheek, and again she heard her name—Princess—and what had laid on her tongue since the morning of her birth now loosened.
Ani pulled her scarf tighter and shivered. It is true after all. Even the wind has a language.
The voice of the wind entered that same place inside her where she had always heard Falada’s, though its tones were unlike. It was an icy finger of thought, a rush of words that expected no response, as indifferent to her as to a tree. It was beautiful. There in the cold, blue shadow of winter night, Ani cried for Falada, and for the beauty of the language of the wind, and for the reminder of who she was.
Princess. Ani felt the wind and heard it identify her again. Then it lifted from her skin and slipped through the gate and out into the open pasture.
Ani returned every day. Conrad thought she visited that spot to check if the snow ever lifted enough from the pasture to allow grazing for the geese. But she stood before that portal and never noticed the winter world that lay on the other side. She looked up, spoke her horse’s name, and strained to hear the response.
Falada.
Princess.
And when a breeze touched her skin, in place of the memory of Falada’s last word, she heard the wind call her Princess.
She longed to talk to Falada in truth, to tell him that she had been lost in the Forest and that she had not meant to leave him. That she had tried. She wanted to say that the guards had seen her, chased her across the palace grounds and once at a festival, but she had begged help from strangers and birds and from a friend, and been freed. Ani smiled to herself, remembering that Falada in life would not have concerned himself much about any of the doings of people. But he would have listened. And he would have flicked her with his tail and nibbled on her hair to cheer her up.
She wanted to tell him how his last word resonated from the dead, and when all living things were dimmed by winter, she was able to hear it, and hearing it again taught her how to hear the wind.
She wanted to ask him if horses understood the wind.
His glass eyes looked at nothing. His mane was stiff, glued by the knacker to sit perfectly smooth in wind or stillness. She knew he was gone, that what she heard was only an echo. But that echo had reminded her how to listen deeper than her bones, to listen for what no one else heard. And as the days passed, and she learned how to listen, when the wind touched her skin she began to hear much more than just her name.
It was a few weeks after wintermoon, and the days were beginning to stretch themselves out like a cat that is tired of sleeping. The sun burned holes into the frost and ice in a brief abeyance from winter, and for a few days the patches of gray winter grass livened into green. Conrad and Ani took advantage of the window of warmth and herded the geese into the pasture for the afternoon. The geese shook their feathers in the sun and ran from the arch to the pasture, waddling dangerously in their haste and honking that though winter was not over yet, at least there were green things to eat again. Ani turned to Conrad to laugh, but his expression muted her.
Conrad had been in a foul mood of late. One winter night he had told other workers, in mocking tones, how Ani believed she could speak to the geese. But instead of laughing at her, Enna and the other chicken-keepers began to ask her advice, and soon even Razo pleaded help with a naughty magpie who pestered his prize ram. Ani noticed now that whenever one of the keepers came to her with a question, Conrad sat back and watched her darkly.
“Don’t mind Conrad,” Enna had said. “Back home, he’s the youngest of seven kids. I suspect the geese’re all he’s ever had of his own and he’s jealous of you. He’s just a boy, and fifteen, and needs to grow up. Give him time.”
After the geese passed under the arch, Ani stopped and looked up. She spoke Falada’s name and received her own, and the wind that came up off the stream touched her. Stream, it spoke. Cold, ice, geese moving toward stream. Stones. Princess. She was filled with the haunting, wonderful mystery of its language, and she stood enthralled, sensing the words it spoke.
“The wind. I can hear, but I can’t speak.”
“What?” Conrad was watching her, his lips tucked out in a cautious frown.
Ani looked away self-consciously. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Who then? The horse head?”
She shrugged and passed through the gate. Conrad followed without a word. It was not unusual for Conrad to spend a day in silence, but that day he did not visit his friends in near pastures or wander into the wood. He was always nearby, watching. When the afternoon clouded over, he stood and began to herd the geese, then stopped.
“Why do I bother? They respond to you and your little noises like you’re their mother. You might as well gather your own little goslings.”
He took his staff and strode off toward the city.
Conrad continued to be sullen. On the days when sufficient sun broke through the winter sky to be out of doors, Conrad always sat close enough to the beech tree to stay in Ani’s view. Though she longed to listen to the wind and try to speak back, his stare stopped her.
“She’s not normal,” Ani heard Conrad say to Razo as she passed by his open door on the way to the hall. “She stands under that horse head like he’s looking at her, and it’s not that she’s so good with the geese, but she actually thinks she’s talking to them. Someone like that shouldn’t be allowed to keep the king’s geese.”
“Ah, sit on it, Conrad,” said Razo. “Everyone thinks you’re green because she’s a better goose-keeper than you.”
“I am not.” He sounded like a little boy on the brink of a tantrum.
The next morning dawned icy. Ani had taken her turn at the bathhouse the night before, and she woke shivering, her hair still wet on her pillow. She stayed in her room all morning, trying to comb out the coldness. When near-noon arrived with enough sun to take out the geese, Ani stuffed her damp locks into her hat and met Conrad.
She stood near her tree most of the day, walking in circles to warm her blood, listening to the wind as it spoke through the beech branches of cold that was still to come before the world brightened into spring.
Ani marveled at the words that she began to hear so clearly now. It was nothing like learning bird speech, listening to the sounds, watching the movements, and practicing again and again to get it just right. Not like horse speech, that came slowly and easily as the colt grew, words like a voice in her mind, clear as her own thoughts. The wind blew understanding. It spoke in images, repeating where it had been with each new touch. It required concentration to hear it and to untangle the images into meanings.
A breeze lifted up to the beech from the woods beyond the stream, rustling of evergreens, owls, and deer and a private spot not too di
stant where sunlight streaked through the trees. Ani shivered, threw a glance at Conrad, who sat on a stone glumly watching the clouds, and told the geese to stay by the pond. She hoped they would obey.
Ani hopped across a narrow waist of the stream and found the little space, a small room of warmth inside a birch copse. She sat on a rock, took off her hat, and let her hair fall loose. She scratched her head with a pleased scowl, closed her eyes, and let the sun soak up the dampness and cold, willing winter to drain out of her bones.
An errant breeze sneaked through the trees and touched her bare neck, whispering of what it had seen—a fox, a pine, a secret spring. Ani considered the breeze by her ear, then thought of her hair long and damp at her back and, with a sentiment, suggested it take that path.
Ani opened her eyes, her muscles tight in surprise and wonder. The breeze moved between her neck and her hair, wrapping itself around her locks like ivy on an oak and passing among the hairs delicately, lifting them one by one, blowing on a strand like a careful maid dusting. Ani felt the wetness loosened and taken into the air. She sat very still, afraid to think or move and lose the wonder. Somehow, she had spoken to the wind.
“Yellow girl.”
She stood and whirled around. Conrad was standing between the trees. His eyes were on her hair. With a start, she put a hand to her head and felt the hairs still tossed on the breeze, though the air around her was still.
“What are you?” he said.
Ani hurriedly wrapped her dried hair around her head and secured it with her hat. She spoke silently to the breeze that still plucked at her hat ribbon, suggesting a new course for it to wander. It snaked down her arm and left the copse.
“The goose girl,” she said.
Conrad laughed. “You don’t come from here. You aren’t natural.”
“Conrad, don’t say anything to anyone about my hair. If you understood—”
“It’s not fair. They think you’re the queen of geese or something and I’m just a dumb boy who couldn’t do it by himself. But you’re not even one of us.”
He ran back to the pasture.
That night, a light snow fell. The mood in the hall was gloomy as the workers contemplated potatoes like warmed rocks, skimmed milk, and wrinkled, winter apples dry as cork. No cheese, no sugar for sweet breads, and no wintermoon to look forward to. The wind shook the windowpanes. Spring seemed as far away as the ocean.
The workers began to talk of home, exchanging stories of the hopelessness of pulling a livelihood out of the evergreens and ferns and spongy soil. There had been news of sick siblings last marketday. There were widowed mothers and widower fathers and donkeys too old to keep pulling a cart to market.
“My wages are a last chance,” said Razo, his head bowed as he contemplated the fleabites on his arm. “Of course, they have been now for three years.”
Some chuckled, nodding their heads.
“I make more chasing sheep,” said one boy, “than my da pulls in all year.”
“I think the marketgoers buy my ma’s weed hats out of pity.”
“I know about that. You’ve seen our family’s rugs.”
Bettin pulled chicken feathers from Enna’s hair. “One winter harder than this one, and they’ll have to leave the house and come to the city.”
All grew quiet at that. Images of the city passed as a collective thought, houses shoved in any corner, stories piled on top of wobbly stories, the whole place stinking and sweltering in the summer, children playing in the streets, splashing in downhill trickles of dirty water. Ani shuddered. The city was as beautiful as a birthday cake from afar. It was not so friendly when one was out of luck. She glanced out the window toward her little room. It had never felt like a home, but it felt safer than any place she had known.
Maybe after I return to Kildenree and all is set to right, she thought, I’ll come back here again and be queen after all. She had no desire to wed the boy prince she had seen at wintermoon, but as queen she could do something to better the ugliness she had seen in the city. And perhaps, she thought wryly, by the time I come back he might’ve grown up some.
“Isi, what does your family sell?” said a girl next to Ani. Her clothes emanated clover and clean animal.
“I don’t know what they’re doing now,” said Ani.
Conrad leaned back, put his boots on the table with two thuds, and laughed roughly.
“You don’t know what they’re doing now,” he said. “Very good.”
The attention spun to him. Ani held her breath.
“You know, Conrad,” said Razo, knocking Conrad’s feet off the table, “lately you’ve come close to being a genuine imbecile.”
“What? She’s fooled you all? Your beloved goose girl’s not from the Forest. She’s not from here at all.” His voice drove higher, mocking. “Oh, you’ve such milky skin. Your eyes’re almost green. What’s wrong with my duck, goose girl? What’s the matter with this pig? Go ask the stuffed horse when it’s going to rain next.”
“Conrad,” said Ani, “this isn’t going to help. Please.”
He looked around as though wishing that someone would come to his side. “I can’t believe no one else sees it. She’s not one of us. She’s been playing us all along. I’ve seen her out there combing her hair down to her knees like a precious little queen. She’s the one those guards’re looking for.”
He stood up, and Ani started back.
“She’s a yellow girl,” he said.
The workers were silent, staring at her, the room tense as a saddled stallion.
“Isi,” said someone.
Ani thought, I’d best do something or they’ll hang me on a wall like Falada. She stood up.
“What you’re saying isn’t right. I’m sorry I’ve come here and made you think I’ve taken what was yours, but you don’t have to make everyone hate me for them to like you.”
“Yeah, so shut it, Conrad,” said Enna.
Ani winced. “Enna means that you should let this go, all right? None of us wants to choose sides in this hall.”
Conrad ignored her. “You don’t know, Enna. I’ve seen her....”
“So’ve I,” said Enna. “So just drop your ugly jealousies and eat your cold potato before I cram it in your gullet.”
Conrad’s face burned red, and he slammed his fist on the table. Razo and Beier stepped up beside him and gently held his arms. Conrad flinched but kept his eyes on Ani.
“Then tell me, Enna, why she’s always hiding. Always with a hat or scarf. Why doesn’t she just take off that scarf now and prove it?”
“Yes, Enna, you know me. Tell them.” Ani looked at Enna and waited for her to speak. It felt good to take this risk and to trust another person again. But when Enna looked up, her eyes were sad and mouth drawn. Oh no, thought Ani, panic twisting her stomach, I was wrong to trust her. She’s going to betray me.
“Come on, then, Enna,” said Razo, “what’ve you got to say? Why not let Ani just take off her scarf and prove it so we can get Conrad to bed? I think it’s plain that the city’s getting into his head this winter.”
“You sops.” Enna sighed painfully, and her gaze could barely be raised to Ani’s, as though weighted by shame. “I’m sorry, Isi, but I think they should know.” She sighed again. “Isi’s hair got burned off in a fire just before she came here. She’s embarrassed, poor duck. And I’m not going to let her take off her hat just to put Conrad straight.”
Ani widened her eyes and looked down, masking an unexpected desire to laugh. Enna put a protective hand on her shoulder, and the workers began to avert their eyes and poke at their cold potatoes with sudden interest.
Conrad stood still a moment, wavering between action and anger. “I’ll prove it,” he said. No one responded. He stomped out of the hall.
Ani touched Enna’s hand on her shoulder.
“How many times’ll you save me?” she whispered.
“If you were a better liar, I wouldn’t have to,” said Enna.
“I know, I
know, I’ll have to work on it. But I knew you’d be good enough for both of us.” Her smile tightened. “He saw me with my hair down, Enna.”
“No one’ll believe him. Who’s he going to tell? Let’s just keep you safe until we can get you on your way come spring. Until then, I’m glad you’ll let me be your guard goose.”
It was sunny the next day, and the next, and Ani herded the geese to the pasture. Conrad followed from a ways behind and shouted mock encouragement.
“Nicely done, goose girl.”
“Keep them together, there.”
“Watch that gander, goose girl, that he doesn’t bite your precious rump.”
She wandered the pasture, checking for the occasional egg the geese would lay by the pond or hidden in the arc of river birch roots. Of a sudden he stood before her. She held her staff in front of her.
“You’ve got to leave me alone,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t tell the truth to the others. I can’t. I wish I could.”
“Give me a strand of your hair.” He stepped toward her, his hands outstretched.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
A bit of wind slipped off her hat ribbon and grazed against his chin. She saw goose bumps rise on his neck.
“Leave me be, and I promise before long you won’t have to see me anymore.”
He shook his head but backed away.
The next afternoon, Ani looked up from reading one of Geric’s books to find herself alone. Conrad was nowhere in sight. She felt calmness settle into her like rain dropped from the beech. At last, she thought, he’s tired of watching me and gone away. The geese, happily paired and foraging for fresh plants, ignored her presence. A spot of sun broke through the sky and cast shadows of the branches on the ground around her, a map of forking roads.
She took off her hat and scratched her scalp and neck. She rarely uncovered her hair, even when no person was near enough to see, but she felt restlessly safe, and tired of bindings, and ready to make things happen. A breeze rapped on her forehead, and Ani encouraged it to go down, lift up the tips of her hair off the ground, and tickle them in the air.