Chapter Fourteen
Lizzie
T he coach continued bumping over miles and miles of road as the afternoon wore on. With the windows covered, it was difficult to tell exactly where they were, but from the direction of the vehicles on the road when they started, and the fact that they had made no sudden, sharp turns, Lizzie was fairly certain they were moving south.
It makes sense. If they are trying to hold me for ransom, they would want to be closer to Nedra. On the bright side, I suppose I can be thankful that I haven’t had to walk this far.
She paused at the thought. Kai was forever talking about finding the bright side—something that Freddy had done often as well.
No. We are not thinking about Freddy. Freddy is gone. And besides, I’m married to Kai now. How would it make him feel to know that I’m thinking about a different man?
That thought brought a fresh wave of panicky feeling. Not because of how Kai might feel, but the fact that she was even the slightest bit concerned about Kai’s reaction meant that Lizzie had begun to develop some amount of affection.
The ice around her heart was starting to crack, and feelings were coming through.
No. I can’t. I can’t care about Kai. He’s a business partner; nothing else. He didn’t even want to marry me, but Father forced his hand. Eventually he will come to resent that, and his true colors will show. I will not allow myself to be hurt when that happens. No feelings, no pain.
“Hey there, you okay, Eliza?”
Lizzie opened her eyes to find Pixie leaning over her. “I’m fine.”
“You just were twisting your hands like you were trying to make bread dough out of your skirt, which seems like an odd thing to do. Are you scared? You don’t have to be scared. I’ll take care of you.” Pixie patted her hands, the action reminding her of Mormor and Norva. “Ma doesn’t do anything I don’t want her to, and I don’t want her to hurt you. I like you, even if you’re an un-princess.”
Her equanimity had returned, and Lizzie was able to pull up her manners. “Thank you.”
“Hey, if you’re an un-princess because you got married to a not-prince, where is he? Why wasn’t he with you?”
She pressed her lips together at the mention of Kai. “He was at the river harvesting clay for the potter.”
“Peters the potter?” Pixie giggled. “I like his name almost as much as Pixie Pocket. What’s his name? Your not-prince, not the potter.”
“Kai.”
“Kai the guy. It’s a pretty good name. What does he look like?”
The little girl’s line of questioning was not at all helpful in Lizzie’s efforts to shove all thoughts of Kai far away into the darkness where the feelings couldn’t germinate and grow. “He’s a little taller than me. He has blue eyes and dark hair and a ridiculous scruffy beard.”
“Does it tickle when he kisses you?”
The innocent questions surprised her so much that Lizzie breathed wrong and ended up in a coughing fit. Pixie patted her back. “It’s alright. My ma’s hat tickles me when she kisses my cheek, too. I don’t understand why people like beards.”
“No, that’s not—he doesn’t kiss me.” Lizzie wasn’t sure why she was telling the child this, only that it seemed a very good reminder to her weakening heart.
Pixie gasped. “He doesn’t? But why did he marry you if he’s not going to kiss you? No wonder the king said he couldn’t be a prince! But don’t worry,” she added after a moment. “If you’re on your wedding trip, I’m sure that it will happen sooner or later. Though, I suppose it might be a little more difficult now that we’re going to hold you for ransom and Kai is left behind in Todden. But maybe he’ll come after you. That would be very romantic. He could come after you and then kiss you and then your father would re-make you into a princess and we could still get a ransom.”
Lizzie shook her head. “We’re not on a wedding trip. I told you that my father made me get married because he was angry. I didn’t want to do it, so I ran away. I went all the way to Norditch.”
“Norditch? By yourself? But then why is Kai with you now?”
“He came looking for me.”
“Even though he hadn’t kissed you yet?”
She shrugged, repeating the narrative that she had used to make sense of his actions over the long weeks of travel. “I suppose it was worth it to him to have a princess for a wife. He’s a wandering minstrel.”
Pixie waved her knife in front of her. “But you said you were an un-princess now. That doesn’t make sense. Why would Kai go all the way to Norditch for an un-princess if he didn’t want to kiss you? I bet he will when he finds you. You just have to be careful of the beard.”
The coach rolled to a stop and the door flew open before Lizzie had a chance to answer. It was just as well, as the last thing she needed to be doing was thinking about Kai or what it would be like to kiss his bearded face, or trying to puzzle out why he would cross all of Eukarya for a woman he didn’t know.
No feelings, no pain.
“Come on out, princess. It’s time for bed.” The broad woman, who Lizzie realized now must be Pixie’s mother, stuck her head inside.
Pixie hopped out first, jumping lightly to the ground and twirling her knife in her hand. “She’s an un-princess, her name is Eliza, and she’s going to sleep with me and the animals.”
Lizzie was seized by the upper arm as soon as her foot hit the ground. “Hatcher, tie up her hands and legs, but leave the feet loose enough she can walk. We don’t want to have to carry her around to do her business.”
“Aye, Thera.” A grizzled man with a scar running down the side of his face stepped forward and began wrapping a length of itchy rope around her wrists, tying her hands together in front of her.
Thera folded her arms and glared down at Pixie. “She’s not another one of your pets.”
“Of course not,” Pixie scoffed. “If she were, I would have chosen her name myself and I wouldn’t have picked something stuffy and boring like ‘Eliza.’ I would have called her something like Blondie or Pearl. I like her, and she’s not even a princess so it doesn’t matter.”
Thera turned her glare to Lizzie, who shrugged. “My father disowned me.”
It was true enough.
“Well, if that’s the case I’m sure we can find some other use for you. You’re pretty enough, anyway.”
“Come on, Eliza.” Pixie wrapped her hand around one of Lizzie’s arms, just above where the ropes were tied.
“Pixie,” Thera warned.
“She’s staying with me.” Again the little girl stomped her feet, and her voice rose in pitch. “She’s my friend and she’s staying with me.”
Lizzie expected a battle of wills to ensue, but Thera gave in with a sigh.
“Thank you, Ma!” Pixie let go of her long enough to skip around her mother in a circle and kiss the back of her hand before pulling Lizzie off towards a dark, rundown building.
Despite its dubious exterior, the inside of the building was a clean and cozy barn. The center aisle was lined with four stalls on each side. Pixie skipped down the aisle, greeting each occupant with a cube of sugar she produced from somewhere on her person and soft, cooing words. There were five horses, four of which Lizzie recognized as the animals that had been pulling their vehicles that day, and two gray donkeys. She trailed behind Pixie, watching but not participating, until they reached the final stall.
“Oh, there’s my Drizzle,” Pixie cooed as she held out a sugar cube on her flat hand.
A large animal with tall, thin antlers leaned its head over the stall door. It was covered in thick brown fur that looked soft and warm, and its wide face reminded her more of a cow, rather than the thin, angular faces of the deer she was used to seeing in Nedra.
“What is that?” she whispered.
Pixie answered proudly, running her hands up and down Drizzle’s neck. “This is Drizzle. He’s a reindeer. Ma brought him back from Norditch and thought he might fetch a good price, but it turns out no one has any use for such a big deer, other than to want to eat him, which I won’t allow. I think it would be grand to get a whole bunch and have them pull a sled, but it doesn’t get cold enough for that much snow unless you’re in one of the northern countries. Ma doesn’t want to move, so it’s just Drizzle for now. Do you want to pet him?”
Lizzie stepped forward, holding out tentative hands. They were still tied together, and Pixie grabbed both and smashed them against the side of Drizzle’s neck. “He won’t bite you, see?”
She stroked the fur, which was a little coarser than she had expected. The reindeer sniffed at her shoulder and tossed his head. Lizzie took a step back. “I wanted to see a reindeer,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Pixie had already retreated halfway down the aisle, heading for a pile of hay in the corner.
“I went to Norditch to see a reindeer.”
“Did you?”
“No. Kai found me before I could.”
“Well, that was rude of him.” Pixie grabbed an armful of blankets that had been thrown over the sides of one of the stalls. She tossed one to Lizzie. “But I still think it was very nice of him to go all that way to get you. And now you have gotten to see a reindeer, so it all works out. Did you know, one time when we were in Cabriole, I saw a lady with a reindeer pin…”
Lizzie sank into the hay beside the little girl and tried to spread the blanket over herself. She only vaguely registered Pixie’s story as she recalled another day, years ago:
Freddy wrinkled his nose at her. “Norditch? Why would you go there?”
She held up her hand and began to tick off the reasons, taking mischievous joy in teasing him. “It’s far away. I love ice skating, and you can do it nearly year-round there. I hear the fishing is pretty great.”
“You’ve never fished a day in your life.”
“And they have reindeer.”
It was hard to keep her face straight, and Freddy, like always, seemed to see right through her. He nodded slowly. “Hmm, yes. I know how much you love reindeer.”
Lizzie bit her lip, trying and failing to keep the smile at bay. “Some might say they’re better than people.”
“It’s true. But you know you can see them here in Kysta?”
“You don’t have reindeer, Freddy.”
His blue eyes sparkled with mirth, and she found herself unable to look away. “Then how do you explain the other day when a storm came through and my mother told me, ‘Look at the rain, dear.’”
“...and then, of course, she demanded that I give her pin back, but what could I do? I had already swallowed it, and nobody wants to have a swallowed-up pin from either end…”
Lizzie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and squeezed them shut, trying to banish the memory of that clear blue gaze.
It doesn’t matter how much Kai’s eyes sparkle when he laughs.
Her eyes flew open.
No. Not Kai. That was Freddy. My brain keeps trying to mix them together. Why can’t they just let me be?
“...but once I got it cleaned up, it was just as shiny and sparkly as before, and Ma was able to sell it for a whole silver, which she let me keep on account of having to do all the hard work.” Pixie paused to take a breath. “Do you hear something?”
She sat up and listened. Sure enough, a low scratching sound came from the door at the back of the barn, as if someone were fiddling around with the latch.
Pixie drew her knife. “Stay here.” In one fluid motion, she hopped from her back to her feet and started creeping towards the window.
Lizzie was absolutely unprepared to fight, especially with her hands and legs bound, but it felt wrong somehow to let the little girl go off on her own. She followed, picking up a long-handed brush and holding it in front of her like a club
Pixie was crouched in the shadows beside the door, waiting with her knife drawn. The rattling continued for a few more moments, then stopped. Slowly, the door swung upon with a low creak. A shadowed silhouette appeared in the doorway. She lifted the brush higher.
“Lizzie?”