Kore's Field Read online

  The woman finished her prayers and turned to leave. Though the temple was empty apart from us two, I moved closer to the wall as if to give her more room to pass by. I watched her make her way slowly toward the bright threshold, struck by her countenance. Her carriage was stooped under the weight of her many years, but her face was as alert and sharp as a curious young girl’s. She didn’t shrink from the pictures above the altar, neither did the heavy silence disturb her in the least. She seemed perfectly at ease in the temple, so long abandoned. I was seized with the sudden urge to follow her and ask her blessing. Or better yet, ask her to plead to the gods on my behalf, since clearly they had forgotten me. But I stayed rooted to the cold, smooth floor, paralyzed by my own cowardice.

  The woman reached the pool of light at the threshold, then looked over her shoulder at me. She didn’t speak a word, but her dark eyes pierced me so deeply I felt sure she had guessed my thoughts.

  • • •

  Upon my return from the temple the seamstresses were waiting to take my measurements for my bridal gown; they had such little time to work on it that they whipped their twine around my waist, hips, and chest with lightning speed. They happily assured me—beneath perspiring brows—that I would look stunning, even with the time constraints. I managed to thank them and even smiled, mostly to keep from vomiting.

  The rest of the afternoon and evening passed with bizarre normalcy. I bathed and whiled away the time in my room, grudgingly sketching out my plans for the bridal chamber and listing which plants I required. Once the sun had set I found myself anxiously glancing at the door every few moments. I feared the prince would send for me and insist we share dinner in the great hall; mercifully, one of the maids arrived with a tray for my dinner and news that the prince was otherwise occupied.

  I woke the next morning in my unfamiliar bed and experienced a brief shock from the sunlight flooding the room. When I sufficiently recovered I dressed in one of the few gowns remaining in my aunt’s wardrobe, restored to my new chamber the previous day. Unfortunately, it was ill-fitting and smelled musty. The housekeeping woman, arriving to update me on the bridal gown progress, wrinkled her nose when she saw it.

  “It isn’t the loveliest frock in the world, is it, Princess?” she said, as kindly as she could. “Not to worry, the prince brought bolts upon bolts of silk and wool from Itomius. You’ll have your pick of colors. As soon as the seamstresses finish your gown for tomorrow they’ll start on a whole new wardrobe for you. You’ll have a trunk full of clothes before you know it.”

  There was a knock at the door and one of the maids answered it. A servant entered with my breakfast on a tray. An egg cooked in its shell alongside a buttered artichoke, with blackberry tea to drink. She placed it on the table and, with a little bow, departed. I had not yet adjusted to the coming and goings of my room; in the tower my door almost never opened, and any visit was clandestine and hurried. I sat at the table and peeled off one of the artichoke leaves. The housekeeper watched me eat for a moment, then ventured quietly, “Are you planning to prepare the chamber today, Princess? I know it’s a very private matter…”

  I sipped the cold, tart tea before answering. Tiny bits of fruit floated in the dark purple liquid. Choosing the plants for the wedding chamber was traditionally an experience shared between mothers and daughters. Even poor young women whose choice was limited to wildflowers in the cornfields always performed the task with their mothers. Or at least an aunt, cousin, or close female friend. For a princess to do such a thing alone was almost tragic, though solitude was preferable to the company of my one living female relative. I shuddered at the thought of strolling through the royal gardens with my aunt, her swift and critical gaze condemning my every move.

  “I shall go alone,” I told her, determined to sound resolved. “It shouldn’t take very long, anyway. I have a good idea of what I need.” I gestured to my sketch, which had been scribbled over and crossed out so many times it was hardly recognizable.

  But the housekeeper must have noticed the slight slump to my shoulders as I studied my ragged piece of paper. Too wise to comment on my poorly disguised misery, she sank into a curtsey. “Of course, Princess Alyce. But if you are willing, may I suggest you bring a couple of maids with you? Trina loves the fresh air and Bethine has been terribly idle today. A morning spent in the gardens carrying your bridal plants might remind her how to properly sweep out a fireplace.”

  I nodded. “That’s a fine idea. Call for them at once.”

  • • •

  It may sound strange to you, Reader, for a queen to spend hours walking the castle gardens and filling baskets with plants, but I assure you there was nothing strange about it. You must understand: to place plants and flowers indoors means more to royal Myrillans than simply stuffing a fistful of stems into an empty pot. That is the peasant way. I was descended from Kore herself. Her divine skill flowed in my veins—diluted by generations upon generations of time, but present nevertheless. When she wed the God of Souls she was said to have plaited honeysuckle vines around their nuptial bed and whispered scores of roses out of the walls. Trumpet flowers sprouted from the mortar and sang out with the first light of dawn. When her husband rose in the morning they say his bare feet touched not cold stone, but fresh grass. Her great-great-great-granddaughter, Queen Roselyne, known as the First Rose of Myrilla, purportedly sewed a veil of white rose petals for her wedding, and hung curtains of blue lilies and sage around her marriage bed.

  My own wedding chamber was sure to be a disappointment. The few flowers I managed to find in the gardens were dull and nearly wilted. The seamstresses had already scourged the royal grounds for any decent looking blooms they might sew onto my wedding gown, and hadn’t left much in their wake. Every garden gate revealed more evidence of neglect. Weeds, rot, slugs, and plants destroyed by insects assaulted me from every side. I seethed with each stem I cut with my little gardening knife, tossing ashen roses and faded morning flower vines into the baskets. The fire flowers had long died and the pale pink Lady’s Lips wouldn’t bloom for weeks. Every lily had already been cut, though their haunting, sweet fragrance remained. I filled the baskets as well as I could—ignoring Bethine’s steady stream of murmured complaints—and led the maids back toward the castle.

  We had just passed the autumn garden when I noticed a familiar door covered in peeling black paint. The door I was so certain would lead me to my freedom. I hadn’t noticed it earlier; it looked so different in the daylight. I stopped suddenly, much to the maids’ surprise, and stared at it a long moment.

  I felt the maids’ growing discomfort behind me. “Princess Alyce?” said Trina, shifting the basket in her arms. “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer her question. With a trembling hand I touched the key—still in the keyhole—and pushed open the door. It squeaked on its hinges, startling me. It had opened silently the previous morning. I stepped inside and when I heard the maids following I raised my hand for them to stop.

  “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  I let the door close behind me and surveyed the garden. It was as wild and unkempt as I remembered. Overgrown vines covered the walls and invaded the stone walkway. Rotten fruit littered the spotty grass, filling the air with a sickly-sweet scent, and the few flowers that had survived were being choked by weeds before my eyes. I didn’t dare pick any of them; I hated this garden with every part of me. I spotted the little hidden door in the back wall and my rage grew. When I last walked this path I had been so sure of my escape. But it had betrayed me. It hadn’t led me to freedom at all, only despair and a lifetime of loneliness, bound to a monster.

  I slipped through the little door and found myself at the edge of the field once more. Grief charged at me with such force that I sank to my knees. Dry dirt stained my gown but I didn’t care. I rested my forehead in my hand and wept for the first time since the foreign prince had invaded. Hot tears swelled in my eyes, running down my cheeks and dripping from my chin. A
parade of images flashed through my mind: my uncle’s delightful smile as he discovered me in the throne room, the old man and his milky eyes, the awful prince studying me with that smirk, and the hand of the God of Souls reaching down to tear the wheat from the earth.

  You can imagine my surprise, then, as I opened my eyes and noticed a small clump of wheat swaying in the breeze. It wasn’t the plump, brilliant golden wheat of a healthy harvest; it was pale and scrawny and looked like it might blow away at any moment. But it was the only wheat growing in sight. I watched it struggle against the wind, then grasped it in my fist and cut it free. Wheat was Kore’s crop, the most holy in Myrilla. We hadn’t enjoyed a proper harvest in years; many people believed the fields were barren, including myself. But perhaps if I placed wheat in my wedding chamber—even wheat as feeble and pitiful as this—then Kore might bless the land once more.

  I wasn’t so foolish to think she might bless me as well.

  • • •

  It was late in the evening when I finished arranging the plants in the prince’s chamber. It was hardly a beautiful spectacle, but I couldn’t help my limited resources. I folded my arms and scanned the room, looking for any remaining bits to be trimmed. Finding none, I started to tuck my knife into my pocket, then stopped. I looked over my shoulder at the great marriage bed, with its heavy bedclothes folded neatly, awaiting our arrival the next night. Gripped by foreboding, my heart leapt to my throat and before I could stop myself I rushed to the bed and lifted the corner of the blanket on the left side. The knife sweated in my hand as I shoved it beneath the mattress, where it was swallowed by the thick, downy layers.

  My blood was still pounding when I returned to my room and readied myself for bed. The maids were gone for the evening; I had dismissed them when they brought the last of the baskets into the prince’s chamber, much to their relief. I had just cleaned my teeth and pulled on my dressing gown when I heard a knock at the door. I opened it, expecting to see the housekeeper or another servant, but it was the prince.

  I stared at him, mute with surprise. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since the throne room, when he stood sneering at me in his bloodstained armor. For a wild moment I thought he might have found the knife, but he merely peered into the room.

  “May I come in?”

  I stood aside and let him pass. He studied the furnishings, the fire, the view, all in that curious way he looked at everything, as though waiting for it to displease him. He rested his hands on the windowsill, looking down into the courtyard, then turned to me. “I heard you were in our chamber earlier, arranging flowers.”

  “I was, yes,” I said, narrowing my eyes at his ignorance.

  “Apparently I’m not allowed to sleep there tonight. It’s one of your peculiar Myrillan traditions, or so I’m told.”

  “What a terrible inconvenience,” I said, unable to stop the bitterness creeping into my voice.

  He gave me a sharp look. We glared at each other for a moment, two strangers connected by nothing more than hostility and a dethroned king’s foolishness. The tense silence stretched, and then the prince poked at the fire with his boot. “I’ll leave you now,” he said wearily. “I only came by to tell you that I’ve chosen your new name.”

  “New name?” I said, frowning.

  “Tomorrow when we wed you’ll become queen. You must have a new name.” For a moment he looked almost apologetic. “It’s a mere formality. I chose one that’s quite close to Alyce, so the scribes won’t be confused.”

  New anger surged through me. What an absurd tradition, formality or not. Rooted in Itomius, of course. No Myrillan-born man would ever force his wife to change her name. “Well, what is it?” I demanded tartly. “What name did you choose that’s more suitable than my own?”

  He gazed into the fire, his face glowing orange and gold in its light. “You’ll be called Alcestis. Queen Alcestis.”

  Chapter 4

  The next morning the prince was crowned King of Myrilla. The speed of the arrangements shocked me. One moment Trina was rousing me from sleep and in the next I was standing in the throne room watching the prince take my uncle’s crown and place it on his own head. Hardly anyone attended—or was even invited to attend. The great room looked sparse and bare as the prince took his seat on the throne. His friends and chosen courtiers stood in the places of honor while my maids and I huddled a short distance away, awkward and out of place. The prince looked so noble and grave as he promised to honor Kore and seek the gods’ favor for the people of Myrilla that I wondered for a moment if I had gotten it wrong. Perhaps we were the barbarians, and not he.

  No sooner had the coronation ended than the final preparations for the wedding feast began. We were ushered from the throne room and paraded past scores of onlooking Myrillans toward the temple, where the prince had erected a great bower for the occasion. It stood at the top of the hill, with all the kingdom’s fields and orchards spread out before it like a richly patterned carpet. The bower’s roof was constructed of branches from the birch tree with garlands of rosemary and laurel entwined among the silvery twigs. Rosemary’s perfume is sacred to Kore while laurel is the royal symbol of Itomius. It was supposed to represent the unity of our two kingdoms, and I heard many comment afterwards on the bower’s great beauty. I thought it looked hideous.

  A short distance away at the opposite ends of the bower stood two pavilions: one white and the other red. The white pavilion contained my household and a few servants hurrying about fetching whatever I needed for the ceremony. My aunt and uncle—invited to the wedding, but not the coronation—added new heights of tension to my already tight nerves. We were to wait there until the wedding began, and then process to the temple. I tried very hard not to think of the red pavilion. Waiting inside its walls of crimson linen was the bloodthirsty warlord who killed my people, the thief who stole my kingdom, and the master who would make me his slave.

  My maids implored me to eat as they dressed me, or at least partake of some wine. But I shook my head to all their offers and reached for my flowers. They were terribly heavy, a waterfall of roses and lilies that tumbled over my arms and toward the ground. Like all brides in my kingdom, I dressed in green. The pale, fresh green of new shoots growing out of the earth, the green of leaves uncurling toward the sunlight. My train dragged over the grass, weighted with hundreds of white and yellow flowers sewn into the silk. The only crown I wore was a band of wheat, tightly plaited and interwoven with tiny pink roses and ivy. I was not a proper queen, after all. My queenship was merely a symptom of my marriage.

  When the maids plucked the last stray petal from my hem I stepped around the screen. The servants froze in their tracks and bowed to me as if I were already queen. My aunt searched me with her eyes, seeking out any flaw while my uncle, furiously pacing the length of the pavilion, scarcely glanced at me.

  “He’s planning something,” he muttered. “That little upstart is plotting something terrible for my kingdom and I won’t have it. He’ll probably burn all the fields and convert them into grazing land for his horrid beasts.”

  I knew better than to comment. I simply shifted the flowers in my arms and listened to the muffled voices on the other side of the pavilion’s walls. A servant dressed in Itomian garb poked his head into the pavilion and beckoned to my uncle.

  “His Majesty would like to begin the ceremony now,” said the servant, his face reddening in embarrassment as he addressed Myrilla’s former sovereign. “As the princess’s closest relatives you and your wife are to enter the temple just before the bride.”

  He held the curtain aside to let them pass. My uncle stormed out first, still muttering about the injustice of it all and what a cheeky tyrant the prince was turning out to be. My aunt followed him like a silent shadow, never once looking back at me. I think that even then she had already erased me from her mind. I was a traitor now, though she seemed to have forgotten what little choice I had in the matter.

  The servants trickled through the curtain after my aunt
and uncle, while I remained in the pavilion. My attendants—chosen by the prince—were already in the temple, in accordance with the Myrillan custom. I had to wait on my own just as Kore had wandered the fields on her own when the God of Souls came and stole her away as his wife. It was a tradition shared by all Myrillan brides, but I wonder if any felt the parallel as acutely as I did on my wedding day. My eyes traveled over the pavilion’s silk walls, searching wildly for a gap that I could slip through and make my escape.

  At that moment, the musicians began plucking their lyres, signaling me to emerge from the pavilion and join the prince. I clutched my flowers and gripped the front flap with white fingers. It took every measure of strength I possessed to pull the silk curtain aside and step into the sunlight. Once I did, however, I nearly dropped the bouquet in surprise.

  Thousands of people spread out before me, lining the path to the temple like an ocean split in two. Every living Myrillan must have been present, and all their eyes were fastened on me. My heart pounded in my ears and I attempted to swallow my terror. The temple looked so far away; the thought of walking toward a miserable future bound to a pagan prince rooted my feet firmly to the ground. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead; I lifted my free hand to wipe it away, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore. The people continued to watch me, waiting with blurry faces. Tears gathered in my eyes and I blinked them back, determined not to look weak in front of the entire kingdom, especially the prince. I felt like I was trapped in some terrible dream, but it was all too real. I could not do it. I could not willfully marry the man who’d stolen my throne—

  “Alyce?”

  I gave a start, alarmed to see the prince standing to my right with his hand outstretched. Bulky Itomian armor covered his body and a dark crimson cape poured from his shoulders. My uncle’s crown sat on his golden head, I noticed with chagrin, as natural as if it had always been there. “You’re quite pale,” he murmured in his thick accent, so only I could hear. “Is something the matter?”