Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [127]
The last thing I saw, as I twisted around on the back of our donkey for a final look, was the palace’s lone tower rising in the mist. Princess Stephanie’s purple banner flew lonely and distant against a foggy, gray sky.
We live now in a village called Applebridge. It’s far upriver, west of the capital, past where the flat valley has turned to hills, and almost as far as where the hills turn to mountains. Somewhere over those mountains is the realm of Lord Solek’s savage people. The River Thymar is swift and shallow here, and barges or ferries cannot navigate the wild waters. But there is an ancient stone bridge connecting the west bank to the east, and so local farmers from all around come to Applebridge as a market town. Besides apples, the area grows corn and some other fruits, which also brings custom to the alehouse Maggie and I bought with Mother Chilton’s money. The alehouse isn’t much to look at: a rough taproom, a kitchen, a storeroom where I sleep, and three tiny chambers above, one for Maggie and two to house travelers. Most of our money went to buy the cottage, which despite its plainness is sound and snug. With the rest of Mother Chilton’s coins, we bought a good stock of ale, which Maggie serves along with the meals she prepares. She is an excellent cook, a hardworking business partner, a saving manager.
When these nights of late summer are soft and warm and the tiny drops of moisture form on Maggie’s full breasts and on her forehead under the springy fair curls, I am amazed all over again that I live in this snug village where there is peace and enough to eat, and no life-shattering surprises. Everything, in fact, that I once wanted when I lived with Hartah.
“Peter,” Jee says in his high child’s voice, “Maggie says ye maun come to sup now.”
“Tell her I’m coming,” I say, and Jee runs off. I pick up the bucket with my one good hand. I have learned to live with one hand: to keep the cottage in repair, to pour ale. The village children call me “Peter One-Hand.” That is the name I use now, “Peter Forest,” chosen at random. It is as Peter One-Hand that I throw the slops to the pig we have recently bought and watch it root eagerly in its wooden pen for something more than what it knows is in the slops.
Something more than what it knows.
Only once have we had a visitor from my old life. One night long ago, as I closed and shuttered the taproom for the night, she appeared in the doorway. I had not heard, not seen her approach. In the gloom, lit only by rushlights in their holders against the wall, her face was in shadow. But I knew immediately who she was.
“Mother Chilton.”
“Hello, Roger.”
“How did you come here without—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She walked in unbidden, and just as she had done a year ago, took my face in her hand and looked into my eyes.
“You have given it up, then.”
I didn’t know how she knew. I had never understood her, no more than I’d understood the queen. But I was aware of what she meant. “Yes,” I said, “I have given it up. I no longer cross over.”
“Not even to find your mother?”
I pictured her again, my mother in her lavender gown with lavender ribbons in her hair, felt again the remembered tenderness of her arms around me. But all I said was, “No. It would do no good.”
Mother Chilton nodded, as if satisfied. “You’re right, Roger. You could not rouse her even if you found her. But know this—she is at peace now, even as are the country of the Dead and The Queendom.”
“And Soulvine Moor?”
She looked away, shadows from the rushlights changing the planes of her face, like stones shifting shape under water. “The Moor will never be at peace while they seek what no one can have. There is no living forever, Roger. But I have come here to set your mind at ease about one thing, at least.”
Despite myself, and even after all that had happened, hope surged through me. Cecilia . . .
“No, not she,” Mother Chilton said. “That cannot be undone, as you well know. But now that you’ve seen what happens at Soulvine Moor, I want to tell you this: What happened to Cecilia did not happen