Chapter 11
Liana
She had to let go of him.
The guards fussed over Amron, his bruises and cuts, and the servants at the palace even more so. In the tumult their arrival caused, he barely managed to catch Liana’s eye and mouth a silent “I’ll find you” before they led him away.
She was left standing in a torchlit courtyard, surrounded by guards. Not a prisoner, but feeling like it.
“Lock her in the servants’ quarters,” the captain of the guard barked. “I’ll interrogate her later.”
Although it was long past midnight, the palace didn’t sleep, but the sounds were muted, the lights soft as they climbed up the back stairs, through the narrow corridors, high up to an empty servant’s bedchamber under the rafters of the palace, with a slanting ceiling and a single bed in the corner.
Some kind soul remembered to feed her, bringing her a fish pie and a jug of water.
Liana paced the bare wooden floor for a while in a tight circle, hoping that Amron would come for her, but the night dragged on and he failed to appear.
The anxiety that kept her awake retreated before her sheer exhaustion, and sometime around the quietest, darkest hour of the night, she crashed on the bed and slept.
· · ·
Liana was dozing, propped against the white stag’s massive flank, when a rusalka touched her shoulder lightly, and she opened her eyes.
The pale face framed by greenish-brown hair was unfamiliar, but the rusalke were like birds, always flocking around her mother—interchangeable, fickle water spirits.
“Come,” the rusalka said, “I want to show you something.”
Liana patted Snijeg’s silken coat. She was waiting for her mother to return, but when Lela wondered off, it could take days—sometimes weeks—before she remembered her half-human offspring.
“Come,” the rusalka urged. “It will be fun.”
Her mother’s retinue had a strange notion of fun.
It was mostly hunting and luring hapless animals and humans into clever traps, but sometimes the rusalke would sing, or the leshy would dance, and Liana would watch open-mouthed, awestruck by the beauty no human, or half-human, eye had ever seen and lived to remember.
Liana rose and followed the rusalka through the undergrowth. At six, she was a true forest creature, light and fast, but she didn’t possess the rusalka’s watery aspect, she couldn’t just glide through the branches and leaves, and the speed soon left her breathless.
“Wait,” she pleaded.
“Just a little further,” the rusalka said. “Come on.”
The rusalka lied, as all rusalke did—it was a long way off. By the time they slowed down, Liana was winded, tired, hungry, and too annoyed to pay attention to the faint pop in her ears and a slight change in temperature and light, as if walking from a sunny patch into a shadow on a summer day.
The dirt road lay before them, winding through the trees like a very long slug. The human road. The rusalka stood on it, her tiny, lily-white feet not quite touching it, and urged Liana forward. “Come on.”
“No. Mother told me I should never go near the humans.”
“Your mother is not here. And I have something amazing to show you.” The rusalka smiled her charming smile. “Something you’ve never seen.”
Liana hesitated. Lela had given her a stern set of instructions, but she was too lazy, too disinterested, too absent ever to enforce them.
“Come,” the rusalka said. “You’ll love it.”
Reluctantly, Liana followed her down the road to a tiny village, a handful of cabins on the edge of the forest. To Liana, who slept in the open when it was dry, and inside caverns or massive tree trunks when it rained, it seemed strange that anyone would want to shut themselves inside a small wooden box.
The rusalka led her behind one of the houses and motioned for her to peer around the corner. Holding her breath, Liana looked.
Two girls sat on a dry, sunlit patch of grass.
Both were auburn-haired, with faces as round as the moon and tiny rosebud lips, one probably as old as Liana, the other slightly older.
Their hair was smooth and clean, free of leaves and branches, tightly braided and tied with red ribbons.
They wore proper clothes, dark brown tunics with colorful belts, yellow and green.
To Liana, they looked wholesome and pristine like newborn fowl.
Liana had never met any girls her own age and, despite caution and fear, the two little creatures attracted her like sweet honey. They chatted in a language of humans, which Liana understood but rarely used.
Forgetting about the rusalka, about the forest at her back, she made one tiny step towards the girls, quiet and light-footed like a young fox.
The girls held something in their hands, two little wooden dolls with woolen hair, dressed in the tiny versions of the girls’ tunics.
Liana, who’d never had any toys other than twigs and leaves and stones, felt her fingers itch with the desire to hold them.
“Hello,” she tried to say, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.
The smaller girl looked up, her eyes widening, and before Liana could clear her throat and try again, the girl let out a shriek so piercing it caused a flock of birds to flee a nearby tree.
Liana flashed a desperate smile, white and sharp on her mud-splattered face.
The bigger girl jumped to her feet, pushing her sister behind her back. “Go away,” she said.
Liana sensed the hostility, but these girls were not dangerous, and she just wanted to see them up close, and maybe touch those dolls they held in their hands.
“I’m Liana,” she tried again, opening her hands to show she was carrying no weapon.
The bigger girl picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at Liana.
She was far too slow and clumsy to hit her, but it hurt nevertheless.
The littler girl was still making noise.
The bigger one threw another stone, and it made Liana angry.
Before the girl could throw a third, Liana rushed at her.
The girl was too slow to even realize what was going on—all it took was one push and one yank.
The girl landed heavily on her behind, and the doll was in Liana’s hands.
“What’s all that noise about?” another voice said, a human grown-up voice.
Liana didn’t stay to see who it belonged to. She turned and dashed down the dirt road and into the forest. The rusalka was nowhere to be seen, she’d probably slipped away as soon as the trouble began. It didn’t matter, Liana knew the forest like the back of her hand.
Or she thought she did. She ran, holding her prize firmly, until the sky began to darken, but she came no nearer to her mother’s lair.
The trees around her loomed huge and unfamiliar, and for the first time in her life, she shivered with cold.
She could hear the forest animals around her, but their chatter was suddenly incomprehensible, a mindless cacophony of chirps and squeaks and howls. She was a stranger in her own forest.
“Rusalka, where are you?” She called the fickle creature. “I don’t enjoy this anymore, take me home.”
The wind rustled in the leaves, but no water spirit answered the call.
“Snijeg?” She called her companion, the white stag. “It’s me, Liana. Come and get me.”
Her mother’s massive stag never failed to answer her call.
She waited for a long time as the air between the trees thickened and the tree roots set traps for her weary legs.
Fear crept into her heart. This was the same forest the rusalka had led her out of, any yet it was completely different.
She now remembered the strange feeling when she first stepped onto the road, the shift in the light, the chill.
If she could only draw aside this curtain of darkness and step back into the warmth, she’d be home.
But the forest remained dull and impenetrable, devoid of any enchantment.
In the end, trembling with exhaustion and fear, Liana sat beside a massive oak tree, hugging the wooden doll, tears streaming down her face. “Mother,” she whispered, “I’m sorry I disobeyed you. Please help me, I don’t know how to get home. Please, Mother.”
An owl hooted, and something small and terrified died nearby. A hedgehog stirred in the heap of dry leaves. Far away, a wolf called his companion. But the Goddess of the Hunt had remained silent.
· · ·
The sound of a key turning in the lock woke her up.
“Amron?” she mumbled, rubbing the cobwebs of sleep out of her eyes.
“No.” The captain stepped into the room, in a uniform so crisp and clean it looked ready for a parade. His expression, though, was far from festive. “My name is Darin, I’m the captain of the King’s Guard.”
Liana uncurled her limbs and rose slowly. The only space where two people might stand upright in the tiny room was beside the door, so she approached him, lifting her head a little to stare at his face. He was only a couple of inches taller than her.
It was uncanny, his face. Weathered by the sun and the wind, with the first wrinkles running across his brow and gathering in the corners of his eyes, but still undoubtedly fetching.
High forehead, sharp cheekbones, straight nose, and a generous mouth: It looked like a chiseled bust of a young god, animated by the soft glow of his green eyes and the gentle wave of his chestnut-honey hair.
It was like looking in a mirror—a mirror that distorted her face, aged it, changed its gender, but still reflected it perfectly. Her face, staring back at her.
“Liana,” the captain said, his voice raw. “Child.”
“Papa,” she whispered.