Chapter 5
What is this place? I ask as we descend a once-grand stairway into pitch blackness. The Raven King snaps his fingers. A single torch flares to life in a sconce ahead of us. He plucks it from the wall.
My family’s crypt.
Unease prickles the back of my neck.
There’s nothing down here to harm you, the dream-king says reassuringly.
How do you know? I ask him. You said you haven’t been here in a while.
Everything down here is dead.
His words are proven a lie moments later. An eerie, high-pitched whine sends chills racing down my spine. I cower against his side. He tugs me closer, flattening his palm between my shoulder blades.
Brace yourself, Rowena.
I squeeze my eyes shut and press my face into the fine wool of his jacket, my heartbeat galloping as hundreds of wings beat the air. Bats. I shudder and cling to him. He curls his free arm around my back.
They’re gone, he says a moment later. Let’s keep moving.
Carved stone sarcophagi line the walls. The king passes me the torch and places both hands on the lid of one. With a grunt, he shoves. The grave gives up its secrets with a noisy scrape. Old air tinged with the lingering scent of stale decay wafts past my nostrils before dissipating.
Nothing, he says with evident disappointment. I don’t quite have the courage to look into the coffins. He diligently checks each one. When the final grave has been disturbed, his shoulders slump.
There is only one other place it can be, he says despondently. I was afraid of that.
Where?
Inside the River Witch’s hut. Her hold over me will strengthen again if I go back. I won’t be able to assume human form anymore.
Not even in dreams?
A small smile curves his lips. Not even then. I have been fighting the compulsion to return to her ever since you found me shot through with an arrow. I must find it quickly. I won’t get another opportunity. Will you help me, Rowena?
Yes. I would do anything for this man. I’m not sure how or why it happened, but he has taken hold of my heart. Until now, my life has been thoroughly mundane. I didn’t know it at the time. His arrival signaled the beginning of a fantastical adventure. I must see this through.
He kisses me again. Liquid warmth coils in my low belly. I rise on tiptoes, wanting more. He gathers me into his arms and leaps into the air. Wings like shadows sprout from his back. Together, we soar.
I awaken abruptly, bolting upright as the rooster crows loudly outside. Not late yet. I throw the bedcovers aside and set my feet on cold wood. The raven makes an indignant noise.
“Mum?”
There’s no sign of her. Worried, I check the yard first, crunching out into the first snowfall of the year. She isn’t there, so I go around front and stare down the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
Nothing. Only my footprints in the fresh-fallen snow. There would have been tracks if she had come back.
I take care of my chores and make myself breakfast, though worry steals my appetite. While I’m waiting for the oats to boil, I notice a scurrying movement from the corner of my eye. Startled, I gasp, then press my palm to my chest as I realize what it is.
“Only a mouse,” I mutter to the raven. “They like to come inside when it starts getting cold.”
The raven flaps his wings and half-hops, half-soars over to the table. There’s a scuffle as I try to shoo him away. I’m distracted by the oats boiling over. After a minute or two of chaos, I have salvaged my breakfast and the mouse is hanging by its tail from the raven’s beak.
“Don’t eat it,” I warn. “I’ll take it out to the woods.”
Instead, the raven carries it over to my mother’s bed. He lands in the center and sets it down.
“No, not there!” I scold. “What are you thinking, putting a mouse in her bed?” My mother has the sole bedroom in our cottage.
The alcove is barely wide enough to fit a bed, with baskets to store her personal belongings underneath.
If it gets under there, I’ll have a devil of a time catching it. “Come here, you little...”
Quick as a hawk striking from the sky, I scoop the tiny creature into my cupped hands. She squeaks, trembling. The raven stares at me with beady eyes.
“Out you go,” I tell the pest. The frightened thing scratches, digging its nose into the crack trying to escape. When I get to the door, however, I stare at it. I need one hand to open the latch.
“A little help would be nice,” I call to the raven, uselessly. What is he going to do with wings? He flaps down from the bed and stalks over to me, extending his good wing across the jamb as if to block me from exiting.
I nudge him aside with the toe of my boot. “You’re not helping here. Move.”
The mouse nips the heel of my palm. I yelp and drop the poor thing, shaking my hand where a dot of blood wells.
It scurries straight back to the bedroom.
Odd.
A mouse would usually run anywhere it could find safety. An expanse of open flooring wouldn’t be its first choice. Puzzled, I tiptoe after it.
The raven abandons his post and runs after our unwanted guest.
“This is weird,” I mutter. “Weirder than the witch. Weirder than the basket of apples.”
When I duck inside Mum’s alcove, the rodent is in the center of the bed, trembling.
The raven flaps hard and jumps onto the coverlet. He moves to the little creature and stands over it. Staring me down.
Protecting…the mouse?
Comprehension dawns.
The apples. The bite she got. My strange impression that she was shrinking.
“Shit,” I breathe. “You’re Mum.”
I swear the mouse nods. The raven watches as I offer my open palm. Sure enough, the mouse climbs trustingly into the center, her nose quivering. She looks terrified. I would be, too, if I’d been transformed into a small and vulnerable creature.
My thoughts run wild.
“You,” I point at the raven accusingly. “Those dreams were actually happening, weren’t they?”
His ebony beak opens. A rough caw that could be a yes if all of this wasn’t utterly insane.
“You really are a cursed prince, or a king, or…something.”
He hops toward me.
“That means you watched me—” I gulp. “You know. I can’t say that in front of Mum. Except that she’s a mouse.”
Hysterical laughter bubbles up.
“What am I going to do?” I exhale, trying to calm my whirling thoughts. “When Mum told me our fates were entwined, I didn’t imagine this,” I scold the Raven King. “I made a joke.”
Or accidentally willed this into existence. Who knows how fae magic works? I certainly don’t wield it.
One thing is certain. We can’t stay here.
Without Mum’s ability to make tonics and heal the villagers, we have no way to support ourselves.
Besides, the Raven King said he couldn’t resist the compulsion to return to the witch for much longer.
He can’t quite fly yet, but soon, he’ll be forced to leave us.
Panic grips me. The witch knows where we live. Mum and I will be sitting ducks alone in this cottage.
“We have to leave,” I tell the raven, my voice oddly calm. He walks to me. I hold out my arm and let him clamber up to my shoulder. “Where will we go? Is there anyone who can help us?”
The raven jumps off, his wing smacking my cheek. He flies to a framed map of the Five Realms, his beak poking a hole in the symbol for Montrace Castle.
Startled laughter bursts out of me.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” I hold mouse-Mum higher. “I’ll just bring my pet raven and a random rodent for an audience with the king and queen of Montrace. Brilliant plan.”
I drop heavily into a chair. Despondent, I point again to the map and ask the Raven King, “Where do you hail from? Can you remember that much?”
The raven studies the map for a minute before launching himself into the air. He can’t get more than a few feet off the ground, but it’s high enough to make a tear in the paper.
I get to my feet.
“Aisendelle,” I breathe. “That’s impossible, they haven’t had a king in over a century…” I trail off to gape at him. “You’re saying you’re the lost king of Aisendelle?”
A short, rough caw is my answer.
“I ought to take a nap so we can carry on a proper conversation in the dreamscape,” I tell him, but the bird hops to my coat hanging from a peg and tugs on the hem. “I see. You want to leave now?”
This is madness. Yet the dreams were real.
The man I met in that dreamscape intrigues me.
That alone wouldn’t be enough to make me flee my home on what is undoubtedly a fool’s mission, but if there is any way to get my mother back, I have to try.
Her predicament is all my fault. She was the only one to forgive me after my terrible mistake, and she is my Mum. My only family. I love her.
I really regret breaking that hand mirror. Maybe I got all the bad luck out of the way already. It’s hard to imagine how things could get worse.
I bundle up in a warm shawl and drop mouse-Mum into my pocket. With the Raven King on my shoulder, we set out into the crisp winter morning.
Our first visit is to the neighbors to request their help in caring for our chickens, with the eggs as payment, while we’re away.
I make the raven sit on a fence post out of sight while I make the arrangements, just in case I ever need to return to this village.
When they ask where my mother is, I tell them that she has fallen ill and I’m going to fetch a doctor from the city.
They don’t appear convinced. I’m certainly not improving their impression of me as an apprentice healer who can’t even cure her own mother.
Never mind that, now. I have a curse to break.
The journey to Montrace Castle takes days. I’ve never been this far from home before. We hitch rides where we can, which isn’t often–many travelers are suspicious of my raven companion and don’t stop to offer.
I sleep in hedgerows and awaken with frozen toes and ears. The Raven King talks to me in dreams, what little I can actually sleep.