At first, she seemed taken aback, but then she smiled at him. It was the first real smile he’d seen from her, and it was dazzling. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about how often lately he seemed to be unsure of his feelings around her.
“Here,” she said, and reached into her pack, “take this.”
She tossed him a few things, and he snagged them from the air in surprise. There were two whittled things, one that had many teeth and one that had a flatbit at the end. The other items included a small pouch, half full of some sort of liquid, and a bag with some sort of white powder in it.
“You’re lucky I have extras. The one with the teeth is a comb. You know what a comb is, right?”
He nodded as if such a thing were obvious, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember how the groomers in the Fortress had styled his hair. He’d never paid much attention to it. He supposed he’d go off on his own at some point and figure it out, or perhaps try to watch her use it and learn by imitation.
“The flat piece is for your teeth. You squeeze some of the cream from the pouch onto it, then shake out some of the powder. It’ll feel strange at first, but you’ll get used to it. And then scrape your teeth with the wood piece. There’s a small pointy bit at the other end you can use to get in-between your teeth. Careful not to go too hard though, or you might start bleeding and then I’ll have to hold you down while Tomaz sews you back together, and really the whole thing will be no fun for anyone.”
She smiled at him again.
“Just because your chest is black from that Talisman, doesn’t mean your teeth need to be.”
“Right,” the Prince. “At least I can do something about my teeth, though. The Talisman… it’s right that it’s black. There’s nothing good about it. It’s a curse, that’s all it is.” He touched the deeply etched lines on his upper chest through his shirt. They had never felt more like bonds then they did now, holding him to a life he could no longer have and making him a target for the Empire.
“Nothing is inherently cursed, princeling,” Leah said. The Prince was struck again by how strangely talkative she was and realized that she had seemed generally happier as time went by, as if this solitude suited her, and the more time she spent traveling through the forest the more energy she absorbed from the silence.
“This is,” he replied, trying to smile but failing halfway through.
“Then choose to do something about it,” she said, slightly exasperated, but still trying to be reasonable. She looked out into the forest, picking her words carefully as she continued. “Look, I don’t understand how the Talisman works. I don’t understand what it feels like to use it. But if you’re convinced there’s no good use that you can be put to, just stop using it. Just remember this, it’s something my father told me when he was teaching me how to fight: a sword isn’t bad because it’s pointy, and a shield isn’t good because it’s blunt. Both can be used for offense, and both can be used for defense. What matters is always, always the person who wields it. You were born into this, I know, and you’ve been made a weapon of the Empire, one that they’ve decided is no longer of any use to them, but now you’re your own weapon. You have a choice now. You have power, you have a sword, a sword unlike anything anyone else has. What matters is what you use it for.”
She looked back at him, and the Prince found himself drawn in by her eyes. Green like the sun through the forest canopy.
“What matters is who you are,” she said.
The Prince, thinking this over and trying to find a flaw in her logic, trying to see how she was deceiving him like the Children and the Empress always said the Exiled did, didn’t respond, and that was the last they spoke for the rest of the day. But as he went to sleep that night, wrapped in his deerskin, warm and well-fed on the meat and roots the Exiles had gathered, next to a cunningly built fire that was both strong and somehow nearly smokeless, the Prince could only admit that what she said made sense.
And as he admitted this to himself, he felt guilt and shame begin to boil up to the surface of his mind. If any of the other Children could see him now, here, taking the charity of the Exiled and agreeing with them… this was a slippery slope. Soon he would be planning the destruction of the lives of everyone in the Empire. He’d be trying to wreak havoc on the lives of the Commons, who were only protected by the grace of the Empress.
But then he remembered what Leah and Tomaz had said about anger being his best, most loyal friend. So he reached out to it and found it waiting, like a well-trained dog. He embraced it and turned it against his Mother and his siblings. His head began to fill with all of the terrible things that they had done to him, all of the injuries he had suffered at their hands, both before and after his kidnapping.
And in his anger, the guilt and shame of not doing what they wanted or thought was right burned up and disappeared. And he found that he was tired, and what he wanted to do was to go to sleep. And so he did.
And the next day, when he woke, he did not reach out through the Talisman to feel the forest around him. He made a silent promise to himself that he would not use the Raven again, though a part of him, a very small part in the back of his mind, told him that Leah had spoken sense about this as well. But for now, in his anger, he decided to forego using it altogether.
Days passed, and it was as though a shadow that had lain on his heart had been lifted, and he was just a young man traveling through a forest. He began to speak more freely with the Exiles, sharing memories with them. At first, he was reluctant, because he thought that they might ask for important information about the Empire. And in the end, he knew they did want that. He knew that they would take any information he gave them and store it in the back of their minds for later use. And he knew too that if he finished the journey with them, that he would find their leaders and be made to talk.
But for now, here in this seemingly endless forest, he let those thoughts and worries go, and found he truly did enjoy the company of these two Exiles… these two people. His brightening mood, coupled with Leah’s newfound smiles, made for an infectious aura of good humor. Leah continued to needle him, teasing him about this or that, but for the first time she was doing it in good fun, and after a while he was able to score a point or two back against her, to uproarious applause from the always-ready-for-a-good-bad-joke Tomaz.
On one of these days, when they stopped in the early afternoon while the sun still shone through the trees and birds filled the air with music, the Prince pulled out his deerskin. He’d thought long and hard about it and had decided to make something simple.
He stretched the hide out, smelling the deep, leathery scent that reminded him intensely of Tomaz, and drew his dagger. First, he cut an oblong hole in the center. He pulled out Tomaz’s needle and thread and was about to sew the cut-out piece to the top of the hole in order to make a hood, when the big man came over and stopped him. He looked at what the Prince was doing, nodded once, and said, “do it this way.”
He demonstrated what he thought the Prince should do, first making a few stitches along the inside of the cut-out flap, and then using extra pieces of the deerskin to make the whole thing more flexible. Finally, the Prince got the idea, took the needle and thread, and sewed himself a hood.
He picked up the garment, shook it out, and threw it over his head. It fell, long in both the front and back, almost to his knees, and about halfway down his ribs on either side. The hood he’d attached was easy to pull up or down, and, most importantly, the thing was warm and wouldn’t fall off. It was simple, and inglorious, and the Prince loved it.
“A drape-over?”
He turned and saw Leah watching him. The Prince felt Tomaz’s hand encompass his shoulder.
“Certainly is,” said the big man.
The girl eyed it critically, and then nodded. The Prince felt a soaring feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Looks good, actually. I think the proportions would have been wrong for anything else. How’s it feel?”
