Babes plucked from their nests, stolen from their mothers. Creatures compared to metal, able to be formed and reformed in the image of their master. Distasteful, all of it, enough to raise the hackles on Ama’s back, had she hackles to raise. She aimed to keep her expression neutral—grateful, even—as Pawlin was taking time from his day in order to help Ama craft her Sorrow into a creature who could be allowed to remain at the castle.
If Sorrow were to be allowed to stay, there were certain things that she would need to be trained away from doing, and Ama knew it. The lynx must not bite, or claw, or growl—most especially, she must not menace Emory. She must be tamed. She must be controllable. She must learn to submit to the powers greater than she, if Ama were to protect her.
And so Ama listened to Pawlin’s instructions. She stood in the winter’s garden where she first had met Pawlin, with Sorrow on her leash, at Ama’s side. The kitten—who had grown so nicely, eating meat and drinking cream each day since coming to the castle—amused herself rolling on the garden path, batting at a large, crisp brown leaf that she’d caught as it blew across the ground.
Isolda, perched as she was on Pawlin’s glove, watched the lynx disapprovingly, her downturned beak practically a sneer.
“You’ll need your cat to come when called, and leave when told,” Pawlin said. “You’ll need a command to get her to drop something she may have picked up in her teeth. That day at the wall, Ama, when your cat did not respond to your voice—that was a bad sign, I think. Yes, a bad sign, indeed.”
Ama ignored this pessimism. “She will need a command to strike, as well, will she not?”
“Oh, I do not think you’ll have cause to set your beast upon anyone,” Pawlin said with a dismissive laugh. “You shall never need to hunt for a meal nor protect yourself from an attacker. You shall live all your days in the castle, surrounded by your maids, protected by the guard. And you shall be wed to King Emory, who has already saved you from a dragon, from a worse threat than any here on the castle grounds. You can train her to kill rats, I am sure, if you are afraid of vermin.”
There was nothing for Ama to fear, she told herself, in her life at the castle.
“The most important thing for your beast to learn, if she is to remain your companion, is to stand down. Cats can be jealous creatures. With a smaller pet, this is mere inconvenience. But your Sorrow will grow larger and stronger, and we must teach her that you are not hers alone. We must teach her not to interfere, not to . . . misinterpret.” Here, Pawlin paused. He reached up with his ungloved hand and stroked Isolda, long, slow strokes, from the top of her head to the orange-tipped feathers of her tail. “The king wants very much for you to be content here, lady. And after your lynx ran out, when he saw how distraught you were over the thought that she may be lost to you . . . well, the king sees now how important your pet is to you. What a kind and gentle king, to be so concerned with your preferences!”
“Yes,” Ama agreed quickly, though her voice lifted slightly, as if she were asking a question.
“And I expressed to the king, as well, how a companion animal can help to . . . ground a person, as it were. Much as, later, a child will do for you. Now,” said Pawlin, transferring Isolda from his arm to a standing perch nearby, “shall we begin?”
It was a terrible afternoon. Again, and again, Pawlin stepped between Ama and Sorrow, raising his arms and walking toward Ama, this time baring his teeth, that time stomping his feet, another time at a quick pace, and then on tiptoes, like a thief. Each time Sorrow made a move to protect her—a growl, a raised hackle, a pace forward to intercede—Ama was to admonish her with the word Pawlin had given her: Away.
It went against all of Ama’s impulses, and Sorrow’s. The cat looked disturbed and confused, pacing in short bursts, her eyes trained on Ama, a low, constant sound—not quite a growl, but most surely an expression of her unhappiness—escaping from between her turned-back lips.
It made Ama feel ill, that she was training her Sorrow not to protect her. Not to come to her aid.
But it was for the lynx’s own protection, Ama told herself, doing her best to ignore her sense of unease, the quickening in her stomach when Pawlin moved toward her aggressively, the twist in her gut when, each time, she told Sorrow, “Away!”
Eventually, though, the cat did learn. The first time that Sorrow did not lunge at Pawlin when he menaced Ama, he fished a piece of dry meat from his pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it midair in her teeth, her jaws snapping shut.
“Smart girl,” Pawlin praised. “Now, again.”
The meat was the tipping point, and from the moment Sorrow received it, her training progressed quickly. By the time the sun, cold and shiny like a coin, hung in its midday place, Sorrow had learned to ignore her intuition almost entirely.
Pawlin’s pleasure at her progress was palpable; he grinned and stroked the cat, who had come to accept his hand, along with the meat, and praised her lavishly—“You smart girl, you clever girl!”
But with his growing pleasure came Ama’s dimming heart.
She had her pet. Her wish had been granted. But, as Pawlin lunged at her one final time, now grabbing both her wrists in his hands, and Sorrow sat, prettily, doing nothing, waiting for her reward, it was not what Ama had managed to retain that struck her but, rather, what she had lost.
From her watching perch, Isolda preened her feathers, drawing her beak down the length of her wing. As she moved, the bells that hung from her jesses jangled softly.
Tillie’s aunt had cautioned Ama to be a cat rather than a rabbit. Her wrists, freed now from Pawlin’s twin grip, still felt the sting of his hands on her, as if he had left an invisible mark.
But Ama was not a cat. She was not a rabbit, either.
Ama, severed as she was from everything, even Sorrow, did not know what she was. She knew only that a pressure was building in her chest, a burbling, desperate pain, and whether it would erupt from her or drown her from within . . . well, Ama did not know that, either.
The Queen Mother’s Heart
Winter’s first snow came that night. Ama stood before an open window, staring out into darkness, her room’s fire breathing hot at her back.
She was alone, save for Sorrow, who rested by the fire, her amber eyes watching the flickering flame, her heavy head resting on her paws. Ama herself had thrown open the glass and the shutters as well, and she placed her hands on the icy iron railing, leaning into the silent velvet of night.
It was dark as dreams. Had there ever been a moon? It did not seem possible, so black was the sky this night. In the darkness, Ama could see nothing of the snow flurries, not the whiteness, not the ice-kissed shimmers. But she felt the temperature dropping, degree by degree, as the heaviness of night and darkness and snow swirled and thickened. Though she could not see the snow, she felt it there. She felt it falling, moving, like ghosts or shadows. Like premonitions, whispers from her future.
Behind her was warmth and light; ahead of her was frost and stillness and damp, heavy darkness.
Ama felt a tingling at the base of her tongue, like a taste remembered. The fine hairs at the nape of her neck rose up like Sorrow’s hackles, and she felt, with powerful certainty, that there was something there, behind her—she knew there was, she felt it as sure as a hand upon her shoulder . . . but when she turned to see, she found only the licking flames of the fire and the curled-close shape of Sorrow in front of it.