The gatekeeper’s eyes widened. “Prince Emory!” he said.
Emory flourished a hand in Ama’s direction, and she imagined how she must appear—day-old braids falling into tangles, dirt-stiffened men’s clothing, a wildcat’s face peering out from her shirt.
Emory said, “I left as a prince. I return as king.”
The gatekeeper’s eyes flashed over Ama and then, with deference, away. “My king,” he said, and then he slammed shut the small opening.
Moments later the great door swung, preceded by a clattering of bars and locks. The gatekeeper, no taller than a child, and wispy as the grasses in the field where Ama had found Sorrow, bowed low, his face brushing his own knees. “My king,” he said again, and then, angling his bow in Ama’s direction, “My queen-in-waiting.”
Ama bowed her head in return, which seemed to flummox the gatekeeper, who bowed even lower, to which Ama nodded her head again, which prompted the gatekeeper to bow so low that Ama feared he may snap in half, so she raised her chin this time instead of lowering it, which seemed to please the gatekeeper, who returned to standing.
“Welcome home,” he said, and stood to the side, gesturing for them to precede him through the gate and into Harding.
Ama’s Bath
Stepping through the gate, hearing it thud closed behind them, was but the first step to the castle. From the hill, Ama had seen the vast labyrinth of structures that surrounded Emory’s home, and the cobbled roads that twisted between them proved as circuitous as they had seemed from outside.
Emory had handed the lynx pelt to the gatekeeper, who promised it would be delivered to the queen, and then he reseated Ama, and the lynx kit with her, atop Reynard. Emory mounted himself behind Ama, and he prodded Reynard with his heels. Reynard, eager to get home to bed and oats, obligingly trotted forward.
Everywhere, faces peered out at them—at their returning king, yes, but, Ama knew, at her, as well, the stranger Emory had brought home with him, like a souvenir from a strange land.
The farther they traveled into the heart of the village, the more the sensation of being a thing on display intensified, for everywhere eyes were upon her—from the open windows and doorways of thatched-roof village homes; from market stands, as customers and vendors alike stretched their necks in her direction; from the faces of beggar children, following behind Reynard until Ama voiced her concern that the children would get lost, this far away from their parents, and Emory told them, gruffly, to be on their way.
Hands reached out to touch Reynard’s coat, Emory’s boot, Ama’s bare foot. She wanted to be like Sorrow, who had pulled her head down into Ama’s shirt; she wanted to tuck herself away inside of someone else, to disappear. And so she hunched back into Emory’s arms, was grateful that he was steering the way and not she; she closed her eyes for minutes at a time, reopening them only to check their progress to the castle, willing herself to be numb, invisible.
At last they reached the magnificent central structure, which had its own walls, these made, as was the castle itself, of glossy black stone. It was dark by the time they arrived there, and lit torches cast their orange reflections all along the parapets. Where the torchlight did not reach, the castle walls fell into inky shadow.
Inside the castle wall, Emory dismounted, helped Ama down, and handed Reynard’s reins to a waiting boy. He slapped the horse’s haunch, said “Well done” to the horse and “Treat him well” to the boy.
Ama was sorry to see Reynard’s hind end walking away from her, but she did not have time to think long on it, for a bouquet of ladies descended upon them, curtsying and giggling, and they surrounded Ama. Sorrow poked her head out of Ama’s neckline, saw the crowd of girls, and hissed her displeasure.
A girl in a pink dress squealed with fright, and several others collapsed into laughter upon finding that their queen-in-waiting had a wildcat in her shirt.
“Enough, enough,” Emory scowled, and the twittering and giggling trailed off and stopped.
“My queen,” Emory said, with a formal bow to Ama, “I deliver you to your ladies, who will take you to your room and see you washed and dressed.”
Panic sent Ama’s heart racing. “You are leaving me?” she said. “Please, do not leave me.”
“Dear heart,” Emory said, his mouth spreading in a handsome grin, “we shall be together again soon. Grant me leave so that I may return to you smelling and looking fresh, as you deserve me.”
At this, the bevy of ladies were set atwitter once more, and there was nothing for Ama to do but drop a clumsy curtsy, one hand clutching Sorrow, the other waving aimlessly at her side, as she had no skirt.
Then Emory bowed again, and, flanked by men who Ama had not noticed before, he took his leave of her, giving Ama to the women.
The castle was cold. So much stone, such high ceilings. Ama, surrounded by the ladies, made her way through the front hall, up one staircase, down another long passage, and up a second set of stairs. Soon she lost all sense of where she was, the route through the castle as labyrinthine as the road through the village of Harding had been.
There were too many branching hallways for Ama to keep track, and doorways, some yawning open, others shuttered closed by iron-girded doors; there were tapestries on the walls that seemed to tell stories—down this hall, a series of hangings that depicted men in armor, astride horses, lances in hand, meeting in battle, and, in the final hanging, just before the corridor turned, one of the knights skewered by the other’s weapon, red petaling out from his back, his iron-helmeted head slumped sideways.
Up a short flight of stairs and down the long stretch of the next hall, Ama slowly passed another tapestry story: this one began with a man on a horse, alone, a bright-orange sun woven into the background. It could have been any noble-born man; the horse, dappled gray and high-hooved, pranced up a gilded road, and the man was dressed in finery, chin high, cheeks red with health. The progression of wall hangings showed his route down the road, as the sun set behind him and the full moon rose in its place, and as the seasons shifted, too, from golden summer to frosty winter. Nothing happened, really, in these images; though the world around him transformed from day to night and summer to winter, the man himself remained steadfast in his seat, the same cunning smile on his face, the same knowing gaze in his eyes.
As they made their way deep into the castle, Ama abandoned herself to the twittering girls, nodding agreement and laughing when it seemed called for, giving them the little information she could about who she was—all information that Emory had given her.
Her name? Ama.
Where she came from? Emory had rescued her from a dragon in a gray land.
Before that? She did not know.
Her people? She knew not if she had people, save Emory himself.
Her pet? A lynx called Sorrow.
Ama could not track how long they walked or make sense of the deep route they took into the stone heart of the castle. Time was lost to her, and distance. With each turn they took, each step they paced, Ama felt her own heart constrict, as if the iron and the stone of the castle seized and squeezed it tight.
At last they stopped in front of a chamber door. One of the girls pushed it open, then stood aside and curtsied so that Ama could enter first. With Sorrow still tucked into her shirt, Ama passed across the threshold and into the large stone room.