The Forgotten Sisters (14 page)

“You don't want to go,” Felissa said, her smile sympathetic. Her ability with linder-wisdom had increased more than her sisters', and she seemed able to detect even the subtlest emotions.

“This is our home,” said Astrid. “Soldiers are just one more swamp danger.”

“Soldiers are far more dangerous than caimans,” said Miri.

“History is full of royals getting beheaded,” said Sus. “And we're royal, whether we want to be or not.”

“So we run off? Abandon our mother's house forever?” Astrid was speaking to Felissa alone. “No one in the village cared a handful of grain about us. Why should the soldiers be any different? We stay.”

She turned up that last word till it was almost a question. Felissa's smile was nervous, her forehead creased.

“None of you are feeling very certain about anything,” Felissa whispered. “Except Miri. She's afraid. She's seen, perhaps, what soldiers with muskets and swords can do.”

Miri nodded.

“Felissa—” Astrid started.

“I think we should go,” Felissa whispered.

Astrid blinked as if she'd been slapped. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, grabbed the waterskin, and hurried to the rain barrel to fill it.

Felissa did not lose her small smile, but she took several deep breaths.

“We'll leave the letters and the painting and Ma's things in the attic,” Felissa said. “Because we
will
come back.”

Miri did not say how she too had left home determined to return.

They did not dare wait for full night. Surely the soldiers would come investigate the strange stone house. They shouldered their light bags and left the door, as always, dangling open on its warped hinges.

Trying to keep reed beds and tall brush between them and the village, they climbed the slope and entered the woods.

The sun was setting, and beneath the forest canopy night fell hard. In the absence of light, the noise in the swamp seemed deafening. Croaks and calls, rhythmic buzzing, high-pitched diving of flies and urgent, pitiable-sounding pleas from other insects. A nightbird singing, a screech, the crunch of something feasting. Miri startled at a squelch different from the rest. She looked back often.

She thought it safer to avoid the road, so they kept in
the trees, moving turtle-slow, scrambling beneath limbs only to trip over others. At that pace, they would run out of water long before getting out of the woods, and then there would still be another full day of walking to reach Greater Alva.

“Which way is the road?” Miri whispered. She was no longer certain if they were traveling in a straight line.

Astrid pointed. “Should we …”

“Not yet,” Sus whispered.

“We're still too close to the village,” Miri agreed.

They kept stumbling forward. Now that they'd left the swamp far behind, their passage was louder than the sounds of night.

“I think … ,” Astrid whispered.

“Not yet,” Sus said again.

But their slow speed was agonizing. Miri led them through the trees and to the narrow road. They'd only taken a few steps along the packed earth when a voice shouted, “Stop!”

Miri could feel Astrid tense to run, but she grabbed her arm.

“It's no use,” she whispered.

The soldier reached them in moments, carrying a lantern in one hand, a buzz of light behind glass. In his other hand, a pistol.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Hunting,” Astrid said. “Night is the best time for catching frogs. They shout out their location.”

“Then what are you doing on the road to Greater Alva?” asked the soldier.

“Chasing a frog,” said Sus. “Obviously.”

The soldier glared, his frown lined with shadow from the bright light of the lantern. He looked over Miri's pack, the blankets they carried around their shoulders, and bags of food in their hands.

“Back to the village,” he said, pointing with his pistol.

They followed him in silence. Miri was dismayed to see how little distance they'd managed to cover fighting their way through the woods. In minutes the path spilled back out onto the rise over the swamp. The soldier with the lantern whistled, a long series of notes without a tune.

Two more soldiers approached. The soldier with the lantern addressed one who wore a chain mail vest.

“Marshal, I found them on the road,” said the soldier with the lantern.

“Runaways?” asked the marshal. Storan swords were as thick and as long as a man's arm, the hilts wrapped in leather, but the marshal's hilt was tipped with green tassels.

“They say they were frog hunting.”

The marshal laughed. He had a wide mouth with lots of teeth. “Planning to walk to Greater Alva? We just saved your lives. You would have run out of water and been picked apart by coyotes.”

How did he know so much about that small Danlandian path?

“You girls live in that stone house, don't you?” asked one of the soldiers as they walked that way.

He had a long, thin nose. Miri recognized him as one of the hired guards the day she and the girls had played bandits. When she'd asked for an escort to Asland, he'd said he was not going there. Of course, he'd probably paid the traders to accompany them. Disguised as trader guards, they could freely scout the area for Stora. Had any of her missing letters gone to Stora? What did the enemy know of the sisters?

“What is that stone house anyway?” asked the soldier.

“Rumor is it used to belong to the noble family of Lesser Alva,” Miri said, thinking of the stone minister's house—the linder house that had once housed Mount Eskel's only nobility, long abandoned.

Miri could hear the soldiers slip and stumble, and the corners of her mouth twitched with a smile. Even in the dark, her feet knew how to avoid the deep parts, how much pressure to place on each step.

“I didn't think Lesser Alva was so rustic,” he said. “I'd heard a branch of the royal family lived here.”

“Does this
look
like the kind of place royalty would live?” Astrid said.

In Astrid's words, Miri heard the echo of her own tone that first day in Lesser Alva.
Why do you live here? You're royalty
. She blushed in the dark.

“Marshal, seems like a good shelter,” another soldier said as the house neared, the white stones ghostly in the moonlight. “Those reed houses are built so low we can't stand up inside.”

“It's far from the rest of the village,” said the marshal, “but—”

“Yes, no one wants us too close,” Miri interrupted, hanging her head sadly. “It's kind of you to walk us home, even though …”

“What? Who doesn't want you close?”

“The villagers,” she said. “They're afraid.”

“Of four little girls?” A soldier laughed.

“Well … you know about the linder house, right?” Miri said, thinking madly. “You have linder stone in Stora? You've heard the stories of a house built of linder where no one wants to go?”

“It's not so bad, sleeping in a house of ghosts,” Sus whispered. “It's cold, but you get used to the whispering.”

Miri bit her lip, unsure if Sus had gone too far. From the book of tales, Miri had read the girls a story about a house on a mountain where ghosts lived.

“Have you ever noticed how plugging your ears makes the whispers even louder?” Astrid asked Sus.

Sus nodded solemnly. “As if the ghosts were talking right inside my head.”

Miri expected the soldiers to laugh, but under the moonlight their faces were stern. One gripped the lantern so tightly it shook.

“There used to be five of us, but our other sister never woke up,” said Miri. “Though her eyes were wide open, she slept and slept until one day her heart stopped.”

Two of the soldiers halted and just stood there in the mud, staring at the linder house.

“Looks fine to me,” the marshal said.

The girls entered the house and turned to face the soldiers.

“You may come in,” Astrid told the marshal.

Just a little closer
, Miri silently pleaded. She glanced at the girls and knew they were also hoping he would enter the linder walls, where they could sense his emotions.

The marshal put his foot on the threshold.

“Afraid,” Felissa said.

The marshal spooked. “What did you say?”

“You're afraid,” Felissa whispered, so his soldiers would not hear. “That's what the ghosts are telling me. They say it's all right to be afraid. Fear is your heart telling you you're not safe, and a man should always listen to his heart.”

That last bit was a line from the story. Miri pressed her lips together, fighting a smile.

“Afraid and thirsty,” said Felissa, her eyes closed. “Your wet feet bother you, you have an itch between your shoulder blades that you fear is a spider beneath your jacket but you refuse to scratch it and show weakness.”

The marshal backed out of the threshold, his hands in fists. “I'll knock this cursed place down!”

“And free the ghosts?” Miri said quickly. “The house holds them prisoner. We are the unwanted, motherless girls, condemned to sleep here and be their caretakers, and so keep them away from the village.”

“Unless, sir, you are offering to free us from this burden and sleep here yourself?” Sus smiled hopefully.

The marshal kept backing up. “It's too far from the village. I have my responsibilities. Don't let me catch you near the road to Greater Alva again, or I'll dispatch my longbowman and ask questions later. You just … just stay here.”

He cleared his throat and walked away, casting one
glance backward. The girls stood in the doorway, arms at their sides, faces void of expression, and watched him go as if they themselves were the ghosts. When he was almost out of sight, he reached his arm over his shoulder and scratched furiously at his back.

It was very hard to keep from laughing.

“That was risky,” Miri whispered. “They might've killed us just for being creepy.”

Sus shook her head. “They'll just think we're witches. Storans believe in witches and honor them—from a distance anyway. I read it in your book.”

But that night Miri had barely fallen asleep when she woke up sweating after a dream. Again of the redheaded twins: one was crying, the other sullen in the corner. In the dark, her joke on the Storans seemed unnervingly real. The little linder house felt crowded with ghosts.

No singing came from the village that night. Only more tuneless whistling, like the call of some foreign bird.

In silence soul speaks to soul

As swans speak to the still lake

Merging swift and plunging past

No mark but the rippling wake

The next few days, Miri and the girls spent most of their time hunting for food while throwing glances toward the village. They stretched their stores of beans, peas, salt meat, and grain in case the traders did not return, but the thrown glances also took up a great deal of time. Miri could not help it. She felt as if there were a bear sleeping in the corner, and any moment it might wake up and notice them.

When Miri could stand it no longer, she put on her dirtiest and most inconspicuous silk clothes and walked into the village.

Soldiers were everywhere on the islands as well as one standing in the back of each reed boat, keeping an eye on the fishers as they cast nets and thrust spears.

But Fat Hofer was still positioned between Jeffers's house and the chapel, his hat low over his eyes. Inside Jeffers's house, Miri spotted a Storan soldier at the table looking over papers.

Miri sat beside Fat Hofer and set down a bundle of salt meat wrapped in leaves. He took it without looking and slipped it into the bag hanging around his neck.

“Has anyone told the soldiers who the stone house sisters are?” she asked softly.

Fat Hofer shook his head. “Few have ever known they are royal relatives. Jeffers made up stories to keep them isolated.”

Miri met eyes with a curly-haired villager. He held her gaze a moment before squinting and looking back down at the reed roots he was peeling. All it would take was one person who did know the truth willing to exchange information for favors with the occupying soldiers.

“When the soldiers came, did anyone fight back?” Miri asked.

“Briefly,” he said. “Their marshal held up his lantern and threatened to break it against the island.”

Miri nodded. Loose fire would consume the dry reeds in moments.

“I heard them talk of Eris,” he whispered. “My guess is Stora invaded Eris first and now Danland.”

“You're not from Lesser Alva originally, are you?”

“Now that kind of information has a very high price, Lady Miri of Asland.”

“I'll trade you my story for yours.” Miri scooted closer so she could speak quietly. She told him about a mother who'd been fat with her and working in a quarry when she fell and birthed her baby early. She'd known she was dying, but her mother still refused to put her new baby down. The telling made the story almost tangible, a screen that enclosed them in a safe space away from pacing enemy soldiers. So she went on and described Mount Eskel, the princess academy, Britta and Steffan and bandits. She told him about Asland and the Queen's Castle and revolution. She explained how her whole self hungered to learn everything, but how all that knowledge stuffed itself between her and her home till she seemed so far away she was beginning to doubt she could ever return. And that thought nearly dissolved her bones into tears.

Miri finally stopped and waited. The story had no ending yet, and its loose threads shivered there, seeming to ask, what next?

Fat Hofer's jaw was stern, and Miri believed he would not make the trade. When he spoke, his words came quickly, his tone unusually clumsy.

“There was a girl from Eris who got with child when
she was young and unmarried. When her son was born without feet, her father tried to drown him, but the girl saved him and ran away. She raised her son on a boat made of reeds. Years later she drowned in a storm and the boat with her, but the son escaped a second drowning and crawled his way to the main village of Lesser Alva. He begged for scraps of food, waiting to die too. But he was good at listening and uncovered a hundred secrets that needed to be spoken.” He cleared his throat and added, “The end.”