The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse (2 page)

Chapter Two

THE QUEEN WAS DYING AND EVERYONE KNEW IT.

But as usual, nothing had changed.

Aon Greenlaw sat on a rock at the western border of Emberfell. She stared at her hometown, where revelry filled the streets. Everywhere she looked, people danced and sang merrily to the reels played by the musicians stationed at every corner. Colorful silk banners zigzagged from rooftop to rooftop. Even here, at the farthest edge of town, she could smell the freshly baked cream puffs that the village bakery made only for special occasions.

Special?
Aon thought.
It's not right
. This was something Aon thought often. But she only ever
thought
it. Saying that—or anything like it—would prompt her father to repeat the same thing he always said.

“The queen wants her people to be happy,” he would say, and then he'd playfully trace a star on her cheek, connecting her freckles with his finger. That was all anyone said when Aon questioned the joy that filled the land. “That's what every monarch has wanted for a thousand years. It would be disrespectful not to honor their wishes.”

And although Aon was told this anytime someone died, or poor weather ended a picnic, or she had any reason to possibly be sad, she had a hard time believing that anyone—queen or not—would want people to be happy that she was dying.

Three days earlier, when she'd first heard of the queen's illness, Aon had gone to bed. She'd pretended to have the flu, but really, she was sick with grief. The queen had always been good. She didn't deserve to die. And then there was Princess Jeniah, only a month older than Aon. What would it be like to rule the Monarchy at this age? How must the princess have been feeling?

But Aon kept these questions to herself. She had no choice. The Monarchy had always been a rich and thriving land and its people a happy and peaceful populace. She'd learned long ago not to express melancholy or even discuss it. To admit to anyone that she was sad about the queen would mean admitting the very worst thing about herself, the thing she never wanted anyone to know.

That deep, deep down, in ways she couldn't understand, Aon was broken.

She
wanted
to be happy all the time like everyone else. She wanted to give in to bliss and rest in the knowledge that their monarch kept them all safe and prosperous. But while Aon could fool everyone else into thinking she was just like them, she would never be able to fool herself.

So, all day long, as Emberfell prepared to celebrate Tower Rise, Aon had played her part. She'd thrown herself into the merriment. She'd danced joyously. She'd laughed as her neighbor friends wove her long, blond hair into a braid that circled her head. She'd appeared, for all to see, thoroughly and unquestionably happy. Until at last, as the sun started to set and the excitement in Emberfell hit a fever pitch, she seized her chance and quietly slipped away. She took the western path to the one place where she felt whole and well and normal.

With her back to the town, Aon took a deep breath and stared into the maw of Dreadwillow Carse.

In all other directions, the edges of the village gently faded into the picturesque landscapes beyond. Brown earth gave way to green grass and thick trees. The change was so gentle, it was hard to tell where Emberfell ended and the world beyond began.

But along the west side, which butted up against the black marsh, there was no mistaking where the village stopped. A pronounced dark line marked Emberfell's border, as if the ground had been scorched by an invisible wall of flame.

From an early age, all in Emberfell were advised to stay away from the Carse. The warning was scarcely needed. One look into the unforgiving blackness sent unwary travelers scurrying. Most in Emberfell saw the Carse as a blight to be endured.

Aon saw it as something else: a remedy.

Clutching a long, unlit candle in her sweaty hand, she inched forward. Her toes just grazed the black border. A tingly mix of excitement and fear buzzed through her. The terrifying thrill of standing at the edge of a cliff, the dizziness of climbing the tallest hill, and the pain of a deep wound that felt like it could never be healed all wrestled inside her. And eagerness. Aon also felt eager.

Everything—the hair on the back of her neck, the knot in the pit of her stomach—
begged
Aon not to move forward. The Carse had this effect on anyone who passed by. But Aon wasn't like anyone else. She alone could ignore that feeling. She lit the candle and walked cautiously onto the black ground beyond.

One .
. .
two . . . three . . .
She counted the steps in her head like always.

The earth in Dreadwillow Carse gave slightly. The moist soil rushed in to meet her feet and crept up the edges of her boots. She trod softly, fearing her steps would convince the mire to swallow her whole.

Thirteen . . . fourteen . . . fifteen . . .

With each step, a weight pulled at Aon's shoulders, like the heavy wool cerements the people of Emberfell wrapped around the dead. Something slick and thorny took purchase in her chest. The sadness she felt over the queen consumed her, drowning out Emberfell's raucous celebration in the distance.

Twenty-one . . . twenty-two . . . twenty-three . . .
Aon paused as something slithered at her ankles. A tangle of mirebramble, the carnivorous vines known for pulling anything that moved down into the Carse's muck, froze near her heels. She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth impatiently. When she refused to move, the vines slid off in search of other prey. Aon continued.

Twenty-four . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . .
The farthest she'd ever gone before was thirty-two steps. But today she needed to go farther. She
needed
to.

Today is the day
, she promised herself as she had so many times before.
Today I learn what
really
happened to Mother
.

A hint of something rank—spoiled milk maybe?—hung in the air. Dreadwillow trees lined the path, their branches with teardrop-shaped leaves drooping under the burden of festering, black moss. They brushed Aon's shoulders as she passed beneath. Each touch sapped her of hope and convinced her she'd never leave.

What a change it was to shrug off the burden of joy! At home, she had all the food she could ever want, comforts that would be lavish and shameful were they not afforded to everyone in the land. Every monarch had seen to it that the people wanted for nothing and suffered no indignities.

Yet it was here, giving in to her worry and sorrow, where Aon felt less broken. No one would understand her sadness. She could not understand their glee.

Aon stopped at a hook-shaped rock that poked up out of the ground. In all her previous visits to the Carse, she'd never gone farther than this. She'd never been able to. Here, at this spot, she was filled with alarm and exhaustion.
Just a few more steps
, she coaxed herself. But her legs failed to obey. Resigned, Aon closed her eyes and listened. After several moments of silence, she heard it.

There were no words. Just a light tune that trilled from somewhere in the darkest depths of the Carse. A sad, haunting waltz. It was almost like singing. But it couldn't be. No one lived here. A trick of the wind in the trees, she'd always told herself.

Aon let her head roll back and her arms hang limply at her sides. When she heard that song, she felt as if she'd been turned into a stream. She wanted just to stand there and pour herself into the song, itself a melodic river. They would fill each other.

A viscous mist rose off the dark-watered bog on either side of her path. The giddiness Aon felt at being able to express her sadness vanished, replaced swiftly by terror. This always happened. The longer she stayed inside the Carse, the sorrow turned to fear. The comfort she found in the strange music failed her. Now the music sounded shrill and discordant. She turned and hurried back out of the swamp.

As she stepped across the border onto the path outside Emberfell, Aon's misery melted away. Her mind cleared. As always, the haunting dirge vanished. A pang hiccupped inside her, and she felt as if something very, very valuable had been ripped from her head. Or her heart.

She took three deep breaths. Each inhalation brought her calm; each exhalation took away a little more terror. In moments, she went back to being who she believed she was: a slightly broken girl.

A chorus of bells rang out. Aon shot a glance at Emberfell. Almost immediately, the dancing and merriment stopped as the whole town scrambled about. It was later than she thought. Wiping away any telltale tears, Aon wended her way through the town and headed for the village's east side. Outside the mayor's house, she tapped the base of the tall glass statue of Queen Sula that watched over Emberfell with arms extended, welcoming all. Everyone who passed the statue touched the base for luck and made a wish. Aon always wished not to be caught going into the Carse.

Turning onto the street where she lived, Aon could just make out the outline of her father. He was leaning on his crutch in front of their house at the end of the lane.

Aon's father hobbled forward, holding a small tin lantern. The fire within cast shadows like cobwebs across his jovial face. As he reached out to hug his daughter, he nearly fell. Aon chided him gently. “You should be sitting.”

Her father pointed up and down the street. All the town's families stood outside their homes, holding lanterns. “If I sit, I can't hold it high enough for our new queen to see. And we don't want that, do we?”

Aon kissed her father's hand. No one, she often thought, loved the Monarchy more than her father. He would do anything to please his queen.

The cry of a horn echoed down the streets of Emberfell. “It's time,” Father said.

Aon bent over and picked up a cube of blue glass at her father's feet. For days, he had collected scraps of broken glass. He'd made the cube using tree sap to bind the pieces together and shield the sharp edges. When the horn sounded again, Aon slid the cube over the lantern. Father lifted it high over his head. Everyone in Emberfell placed similar domes of blue glass over their lights. The village immediately got darker.

A cheer rang out from the crowd. Aon turned her gaze southwest. Nine Towers had become a distant silhouette. The queen and the princess were no doubt at the very top of Lithe Tower.

Aon stared into their lantern. While everyone else's light shone a solid blue, her father's cube twinkled with dozens of azures and sapphires and cobalts, and more blues than she could count. It didn't burn the brightest, but it was certainly the most beautiful.

“So?” Father asked. “Do you think Princess Jeniah will be happy?”

Aon wondered, as she often did, if her father ever suspected. Could he squint at her, even now in the dim light, and see not his daughter but an ungrateful girl with imperfect joy? She believed that if he could, she might go to Dreadwillow Carse and never return. The shame would be that terrible.

Aon smiled, because she knew she was supposed to, and she squeezed her father's hand. “Aren't we all?”

Chapter Three

THE LIBRARY THAT TOOK UP THE MAJORITY OF SORIN
TOWER WAS
said to be the finest in the land. Some of the servants joked that there were so many books in the library, the queen could have used them to build a tenth tower. It was here that the sum of all the Monarchy's knowledge was kept. It was also here that Jeniah had resolved to discover the secret of Dreadwillow Carse. Arms shaking under the weight of the books she'd gathered, the princess wove her way through the stacks. She scanned the spines, searching for any titles that could help in her quest.

The History of Napkin Folding
? No.
A Compendium of Tax Tables
? Definitely not.

Making her way toward her favorite table—the one near the stained-glass window with an image of one of her ancestors, King Isaar—Jeniah paused to glance at the library's collection of fairy tales. She smiled to herself. She missed the days when her mother had taught her their language by having Jeniah read her a story each night before bed.

Some children read storybooks and dreamt of being princesses and princes. In those stories, royalty was often brave. They took journeys that made them the heroes the people of the land needed. But a real princess or prince would read the same books and think,
My life's not like that at all
.

So what did princesses dream of?

For Jeniah, it was magic.

Tales of powerful wizards casting spells had captured her imagination from a young age. From the moment she first knew she would be queen one day, Jeniah hoped to discover that magic really was possible. Then, she wouldn't
need
to know how to rule. Magic would mean she would always do what was right.

But Jeniah had been raised to believe that magic was a lie.
A clever fiction
, her last tutor, Miss Dellers, had called it.
An illusion that beguiles even as it burns
.

And it wasn't only Miss Dellers. Over the years, Jeniah had been instructed by seven different tutors—all exemplary scholars in their fields—and they'd all said the same thing. No matter the lesson—and the subject matters ranged from etiquette to advanced mathematics—the conversation almost always turned to the idea of magic. Jeniah made sure of that.

But the scholars all agreed. Magic was a lovely idea and nothing more.

And yet . . .

Of all the questions that fought for attention in Jeniah's mind following her trip up Lithe Tower, the most powerful proved to be this: What could possibly topple the entire Monarchy should a monarch step a single foot inside the Carse?

Magic. That had to be it.

If there was magic in her Monarchy—or the Carse—then Jeniah needed to know about it. Magic, she felt, would make her a great queen. And maybe, just maybe, it could save her mother.

Jeniah had known about the Carse all her life. It had never been more than a fable to her, a scary story the royals told one another on the darkest of nights. But even though curiosity ran through Jeniah as if it were her very blood, she'd never before felt the need to learn more about the desolate place. That had changed. Why?

Because last night, she had
seen
it.

The Carse, the warning . . . They had only ever been words. Now, it was all real. Now, there were
consequences
. Now, the sight of the twisted, black, and impenetrable bog burned in Jeniah's memory. Each time the image invaded her thoughts, questions—like flaming arrows in the night—accompanied it.

Every future monarch had first been taken to Lithe Tower, just as Jeniah had. Been shown the Monarchy, as she had. And, no doubt, been reminded never to enter Dreadwillow Carse. And for more than a thousand years, the Monarchy had endured and thrived. Each monarch had obeyed.

Yet since seeing the Carse, Jeniah had been unable to stop the deluge of questions that occupied her thoughts. This vexed the princess. Questions without ready answers were new to Jeniah. Growing up, she'd had very little to wonder about. From an early age, she had been spoon-fed all she needed to know. If her mother told her something, it was true. A queen was not to be disputed. If a tutor taught Jeniah history, she could rely on the account, as her mother had chosen the tutor.

So, it was very strange for Jeniah to suddenly find her brain exploding with queries and quandaries and the notion that there were things to know that weren't just going to be imparted to her, as had been her experience. Things she
shouldn't
know . . . but felt she
needed
to.

Where had the decree come from? Had anyone ever questioned it? Were others' inquiries as swiftly silenced as Jeniah's had been? Had any of her ancestors, stalwart and beloved leaders to the last, ever
tried
to learn more? Had Jeniah's mother, who had never accepted any answer she didn't like, ever once sought the truth?

Jeniah had tried to shake off her doubts. She'd promised her mother she would never go to Dreadwillow Carse. That was what it took to be queen. But ignoring questions didn't banish them. She knew there was only one thing to cure this sickness of curiosity. Just one sure tonic.

Answers
.

So, that morning, she'd thrown herself into the books. She'd climbed countless stairs, visiting each of Sorin Tower's twenty floors to recover the dustiest, most ancient tomes the mammoth library held. She'd curled up in different corners, resting books on her raised knees, and struggled to translate forgotten languages she barely recognized. She'd pored over ancient scrolls so brittle and faded, she hadn't dared sneeze and risk scattering them to dust. In everything she'd read thus far, in everything she'd learned, only one fact seemed to hold true.

The Carse didn't exist.

Not officially, anyway. No history revealed its origin. No royal biography mentioned its significance. In all, Jeniah examined nearly eighty texts—some rumored to be as old as the land itself—and only three mentioned the Carse. Those three tomes told her what she already knew:
if any monarch enters Dreadwillow Carse, then the Monarchy will fall.

Exhausted after hours of reading, Jeniah slumped over a table. She'd just closed her bleary eyes when a thunderous crack announced the opening of the library door. She looked up, startled. She'd asked the servants not to disturb her. So who would possibly . . . ?

A short, round man with sickly pale skin bounded into the room. The princess blinked at the sight. The man wore ratty old furs tied to him with frayed bits of rope. Jeniah almost couldn't see his face for the salt-and-pepper hair that engulfed his head. His bare feet were coated in an inch of oily black mud that squished with every step he took. A weathered leather glove covered most of his outstretched left forearm. A sleek falcon with feathers that matched the man's hair color gripped the glove with shiny white talons.

Was this . . . ? It couldn't be.

In her drive to learn all she could about the Carse, Jeniah had forgotten about the new tutor her mother had promised. And even if she had remembered to expect him, nothing could have prepared her to expect . . .
this
.

The man, who had a distinct waddle when he walked, stopped next to Jeniah. A strong odor of lavender and sulfur hovered about him. He smiled broadly, revealing crooked teeth, one of which was framed with a thin strip of gold. “You must be Jeniah.”

The princess's eyes narrowed. Typically, anyone who approached her did so with a bow. Called her “Your Highness.” At the very least, referred to her as
Princess
Jeniah. She'd never really liked the formality. But its absence was peculiar.

The man flicked his wrist. The falcon cawed, flew into the air, and perched atop the nearest bookcase. “I believe you're expecting me.”

No
, the princess thought.
No, I really wasn't
. But she nodded hesitantly. “You're my new tutor.”

When the man squinted at this, his eyebrows swallowed his eyes. “If you like.”

Jeniah started to wonder if an intruder had entered the castle. Her past teachers had worn the long, flowing robes of a scholar. They'd carried sacks full of books, assorted quills, and dioramas depicting key events in the history of the Monarchy. This man had nothing. Except his glove. And the bird.

“I don't believe,” she said, eyeing the falcon above, “that animals are allowed in the library.”

“And why not?” the man demanded, scratching his thick beard. “Gerheart up there? He has as much right to learn as anyone.”

“But he can't read.”

“Reading,” the man said, pulling up a chair, “is just
one
way of learning. For example, my name is Skonas. There, you learned something by hearing. True?”

Jeniah found herself gripping the sides of her chair tightly. What sort of tutor was this? “My mother said you would teach me how to be queen,” she said, sitting up straight.

“Did she? I don't recall that being in the job description.”

“Well, then why are you here?”

Skonas rubbed his hands together. “I am here to teach you three lessons. You will then use those lessons to set yourself a fourth and final lesson.”

“And . . . and then I'll know how to be queen?”

Skonas sniffed. “Is that important?”

Jeniah's heart fell. He wasn't making any sense. This odd man did not seem capable of teaching her anything, let alone how to rule her people. Clearly the queen, in her weakened state, had not been very diligent in choosing her daughter's new tutor.

“This is your first lesson. It's—” Skonas paused as Jeniah scrambled to take out a piece of parchment and dip her quill in an inkwell. He gave her the most curious look, as if he had no idea what she was doing. Then he turned his back and continued. “It's the lesson from which all other lessons spring: you are your own best teacher. Repeat that.”

Jeniah's brow furrowed, but she obeyed. “I am my own best teacher.”

Skonas spun around. “Do you believe that?”

“Do I believe what?”

“That you are your own best teacher.”

Jeniah looked down at the parchment and quill. She found herself longing for Miss Dellers. Things were much clearer with the stately woman. Miss Dellers spoke only to impart important knowledge. Jeniah had no idea if any of what Skonas was saying was worth writing down.

“If that were true,” she said slowly, “you'd be out of a job. Wouldn't you?”

Skonas cackled. “Very astute,” he said. “Strangely clever. You're beginning well.” But he didn't answer her question.

Sighing, she dipped her quill into the inkwell again. But before she could write a single word, Skonas snatched her parchment away.

“What are you doing?” he asked, holding the page at arm's length as if it were poisonous.

“I'm writing that down. I write down all my lessons. And if all other lessons come from the first lesson,” Jeniah reasoned, “it must be the most important.”

Skonas looked amused. “Yes, I can see why you'd think that.”

“So it's true?”

“No.”

Skonas crumpled up the parchment and tossed it aside. Jeniah balled her fists.

“No,” the teacher repeated, “it is not the most important lesson. The most important is the fourth. And when we get to that point—
if
we get to that point—there will be no need to write it down.”

Jeniah tossed her quill aside, exasperated. “And why is that?”

Skonas paused. Then he leaned forward and looked deeply into the girl's eyes. The princess felt her pulse pound in her throat. She'd already resolved to dismiss everything the man had said. But that look in his eyes . . . The same instinct that fueled her curiosity about Dreadwillow Carse now told her one thing: Skonas was about to speak an irrefutable truth.

“Because it will be imprinted on your soul.”

As Jeniah pondered his meaning, the teacher pursed his lips and whistled. Gerheart called in return and then swooped down, landing on Skonas's gloved arm. Skonas nodded to the princess and turned to the door.

“Where are you going?” Jeniah asked.

“We're done for today.” Skonas exited without another word.