Chapter Ten Idris
Chapter Ten
Idris
The weather forces Abram and me to return in the early evening, pelted by hail and with no sign of Jay. Father pretends not to notice I was out—an impressive feat when I am soaked to the skin and dripping puddles. His own search yielded nothing. Jay has just vanished.
No one suggests assigning another person to watch over me that night. I barely seem to lie down before I fall asleep. I dream like a fever and wake before I’ve begun to catch my breath.
It’s still drizzling outside, but the worst of it seems to have again shifted to the southern horizon. I take toast from the kitchen so I don’t have to see Father in the breakfast room. “No news of Jay?” I ask Ruth while I slather it in butter.
She shakes her head. “No, sir.”
I tear off a bit of crust and toss it down to True. “I’ll be out on a walk if anyone asks.”
My feet ache. All of me aches, actually.
A dry heaviness weighs in my head, like the aftereffects of a nightmare.
I want to curl up in bed again, but I have a feeling I would just end up twitchy and irritated, and then I’d start thinking about Jay, becoming more and more anxious … It is better to walk.
My thoughts turn to Kit as I head through town.
It seems my family isn’t the only one dealing with enchantments.
The cravat—the one I gave Kit and she gave me—is still tied around my palm.
When she approached me yesterday and she was only Catharine, I had been confused.
My vague suspicion seemed delusional. Then she spoke my words back to me, and the air around us changed.
Her stillness as she bent over me, her breath held, answered without sound or movement.
Kit. I had been indifferent about Catharine’s closeness—but when it was Kit, everything sharpened.
I felt with surprising fierceness exactly how near she was, exactly where her fingers rested on the cravat over my skin.
I shake away the feeling. It was a strange moment, nothing more.
While I don’t think I can handle another full search for Jay today, the least I can do is poke around for something that might help the princesses. The best source of folklore isn’t in our archives or the library—it’s Merlin Muir.
As usual, he’s outside the Stromwell Hotel, smoking a pipe and chatting with people on their way in from their nightly work or out to their day’s tasks.
He’s finishing up a story about the finfolk as I walk up—some cautionary tale for a pretty local girl who appears to be on her way to gather kelp, judging by the woven basket at her side.
It’s a story I don’t recognize, and I wonder whether Abram knows it.
Perhaps I should have told Abram where I was going. He might have wanted to come along.
A foggy image rises in my mind. I am in a boat, and someone sinks into the space ahead of me. A dark shadow.
My pulse is pounding suddenly. I try to shake it off—this fragment of a nightmare.
Yesterday, I told Abram what I was able to piece together from Kit. He had a great interest in it all, but he’d been distracted by the search for Jay. He will probably want to go looking again today. Maybe I should be doing that, too, rather than seeking stories.
“So don’t you be turning your back to the ocean,” Mr. Muir concludes, “especially not when you’re between the tide lines.”
The young woman nods seriously. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, you can be sure.” He gives her an approving salute with his pipe. She leaves a coin on the table—”For your next round of pleenk—and nothing stronger, hear? It’s barely sunup!”—and goes on her way.
“Good morning, Princeling,” Mr. Muir calls to me. With a wave to the dark clouds, he smiles. “What lovely weather we’ve had, aye?”
“Indeed.” I take a seat on the bench beside him. My legs feel instantly relieved. “Has everyone made it off the water safely?”
“No one harmed last night, not that I’ve heard. And no one’s coming from the mainland if they have any sense. Wisest to wait it out.” He takes a draw on his pipe and leans back. “Have you brought some stories to trade?”
“One, maybe.” I rub my knees while True settles protectively in front of me. “It’s a bit of a story, a bit of a question.”
“Let’s hear it, then.” Mr. Muir faces the busy harbor and sea beyond, ready to listen.
I think for a moment. Kit was only able to convey the barest part of whatever is happening to her and her sister.
Someone has put a spell on them that’s switched their bodies, but why and how is something only they know.
Maybe the background of it isn’t so important—maybe it’s just the way out that matters.
To weave it into a story for Mr. Muir, I have to fill in the gaps I don’t know.
And I need to make sure it’s unrecognizable, just in case Mr. Muir takes this tale and spreads it around.
I don’t know how it’d get back to King Byrne, but it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
“There was once a rich miller up near Bursey,” I begin. “He had a natural daughter and a stepdaughter, one perfectly proper and one with wild simmering just under the surface.”
I go from there, feeling my way through this retelling of a barely told tale.
The daughter can spin the finest wool, but the stepdaughter can sing to the water, and the water listens.
She is the secret to the family’s prosperity, and the miller cannot bear it.
Jealousy and resentment consume him, because his proper daughter should be the one with the power to make the water flow.
So he conspires with the henwife, who weaves a spell to switch the girls’ bodies.
Then the natural daughter will be able to sing to the water, and the stepdaughter will be trapped in a normal body.
The miller expects the girls will accept the change submissively, but instead they run away to seek their own fortune.
I trail off at this point.
Mr. Muir takes the pipe out of his mouth. “How’d they break the curse, then?”
“Curse?” I ask, surprised.
“Curse, spell.” Mr. Muir shrugs. “Seems it was meant to do harm to the stepdaughter more than it was meant to elevate the natural one. Either way, the harm’s done to someone. Sounds like a curse to me.”
“Yes, well.” My thoughts turn. My curse and Kit’s came so close together. Could there be a link between them? “That’s as far as I’ve got. How would you expect it to go from there?”
Mr. Muir tilts his head, considering. People pass by, calling friendly greetings. Some stop to water their horses at the trough in front of us. The cathedral may be at the center of the city, but this spot is the pulse. Anyone from the main harbor or the eastern land has to pass through here.
“Tricky one, this,” Mr. Muir muses. “You hear of a body being warped or changed, but not so often of two souls swapped.”
“That’s what I wondered.” I bend to give True’s head a scratch. “I hadn’t heard of anything like this before, and I thought maybe you would have.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Muir lifts a hand to a passerby. To me, he says, “Not sure I have one that fits exactly.”
Uncertainty coils in my gut. If even Mr. Muir doesn’t know, how can I hope to find a solution? I can’t unravel my own curse. How will I help Kit? I wish again that I had brought Abram along. He would know the right questions to ask, the right places to prod for answers.
“If I were one of the miller’s daughters,” Mr. Muir says thoughtfully, “I’d take myself to wherever the magic comes from.
Follow the water to its source, so to speak.
Maybe literally. Have a chat with the Hidden Folk, or trows, or whoever roams that part of the land.
Bursey, you say? Perhaps the trolls, if you could make a good enough trade for their favor. ”
I pause. “I’m not sure who rules magic there.”
“Not Bursey, then?” Mr. Muir lifts one bushy eyebrow.
My face heats. “Not exactly.”
Mr. Muir turns his gaze back to the sea. “Hmm.”
I scratch my neck, trying to ignore my blunder.
I don’t know the stories of the south so well.
It’s so far from the water, it’s hard to believe the Hidden Folk are active there—especially when they are withdrawing even from our islands.
But if Kit’s curse and mine happened less than a week apart, it is too strange to be a coincidence.
Maybe if I learned how to stay awake while I dance, I could ply the Hidden Folk with questions. I could even ask Speir. Frustration crawls under my skin. I have access to perhaps one of the last pockets of magic, and I can’t even use it.
“You let me know when you find out the end,” Mr. Muir says, reaching down to rub True’s ears. “I’ll be curious to see how they get out of this one.”
“Right, I will.” I rise, still thinking. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Muir.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Not sure how my musing helps, but happy to do it any time you need.” His expression changes, a little serious, a little concerned. “Take care of yourself, Princeling.”
I nod, absent.
“Hello, lass,” Mr. Muir calls. “Pleased to see a new bonny face around these parts.”
I glance in the direction he’s facing and start in surprise.
It’s Catharine. Or—Kit, in Catharine’s body.
She’s wearing a plain dress, with a simple straw bonnet, but even so she’s turned a few heads on the street. Strangers aren’t particularly rare in a city so full of trade, but normally they are men.
“This one’s our prince,” Mr. Muir says, pointing. “Very eligible.”
“Mr. Muir!” I snap, mortified. My whole face burns.
Kit bobs a curtsy. “Good morning, Idris, erm, Prince Idris.”
“Good morning,” I reply.
True trots across to her and nuzzles her hand.
“Hmm, so you know each other?” Mr. Muir motions me to go. “Show the new lass around the city then, why don’t you? Give her a bit of our island hospitality.”
I shoot him an annoyed look but follow True to Kit’s side. “Sorry about him,” I mutter.
She shrugs, not exactly looking at me. Embarrassed, too, I think.
I clear my throat. “Is there, ah, something you need in town? Maybe I can help.”