I squinted at my reflection in the pail. My face hadn’t changed that much, I decided. I had the same straight nose, large dark eyes, blue, though you couldn’t tell the colour in the rippling water. My hair was an unmitigated disaster and the rest of me was windswept and sunburned. Beneath that was a deeper change. There was something missing. I had definitely been beautiful before, my features striking and my skin glowing pale as the moon, my whole being giving off an air of dark power. Now I just looked soft and weak. I didn’t like it and my new face frowned back at me.
I leaned a little closer to my reflection, trying to see the shape of my new ears, and jostled the bucket, shattering my image. Just as well: the idea of Belis coming to find me and seeing me staring mournfully at my reflection was too humiliating to bear.
I lugged the bucket back to the hut. By the time I got there, it was less than half full, but Belis took it without comment. She had somehow managed to trap a rabbit in the short time I had been gone and was already halfway done skinning it. The fire was roaring away in the centre of the hut, filling the room witha smoky warmth that made me cough.
I sat down and took my boots off before Belis could ask me to do anything else. My feet were sore and blistered. I pulled one of them into my lap and began to try and rub a little feeling back into it. As I massaged my poor soles then moved my way up to the aching muscles of my calves, Belis finished skinning the rabbit and divided it into quarters. She set up three sharpened stakes above the fire and then pulled a leather cauldron from her pack and hung it from the tripod. Finally, she poured water from my bucket into the cauldron and added the rabbit, along with a handful of small root vegetables, also from her bag.
“Do you just carry all that around with you?” I asked, incredulous at the contents of this unassuming-looking pack.
“The cauldron, yes, it folds up small so I always keep that in there when I go riding. The vegetables, no. I picked them when we were wandering through the forest and climbing up here. They’re easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for.”
I frowned. “I didn’t notice you digging for turnips.”
“That’s because you were too busy gasping for breath or retching,” said Belis, her eyes still on the stew.
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I shuffled a little closer to the fire. My stomach was yowling at me. I rarely felt hungry, though I ate when I wanted to. I could eat fae and human food as I pleased; neither was necessary for me to sustain myself but I generally enjoyed it. This body, however, clearly wanted more and the smell of the rabbit stew was beginning to fill the hut. Saliva was filling my mouth by the time Belis judged the stew was done.
She only had the one spoon so we took it in turns to fish out bits of rabbit and ladle the watery mixture into our mouths. It was unseasoned and slightly undercooked, and I would have turned my nose up at it a few hours ago, but my stomach was completely empty and I ate everything, even the turnip peelings.
I sat back and leaned against the wall of the hut, wrapping my new cloak around me. Belis wiped her knife on her trousers then offered the hilt to me.
“You should cut your leggings shorter; you can’t walk two hundred miles hitching them out of your boots every few steps. And you can use the scraps to tie back your hair. You can’t go around looking like you just fought your way through a hedgerow, it will attract too much attention. Tidy yourself up.”
I puffed up, insulted.
“That’s rich coming from a great ginger giantess,” I said. “Many have called me the most beautiful of creatures, lovelier than the night sky. If you hadn’t—”
“Yes, yes,” she snarled, brandishing the blade at me. “If I hadn’t messed up you wouldn’t be here, you’d be off combing your hair with the fae. Just shut up and take the knife.”
I took her knife with a scowl and began sawing at my leggings. The material was tougher than it looked and I almost stabbed myself a few times, but I managed to take about six inches off each leg. I looked mournfully at the offcuts.
“The finest cloth on the island,” I said, struggling to rip them into strips. “Made by the hands of Lady Creiddylad herself and her attendants.”
“Much good it’ll do you now,” Belis grumbled. I ignored her, fingering the fine cloth.
“How do you know so much about this anyway?” I asked, waving at the fire and the stew and the rabbit skin. “Do all princesses learn this stuff? I’d have thought it would mostly be weaving and learning to be polite to old men with bad breath.”
“My father thought his daughters should know their land,” Belis said, staring at the fire. “He said that a person couldn’t rule a country if they didn’t know how to live off it.”
“Sounds surprisingly sensible,” I said, “for a human.”
She nodded. “The land of the Iceni is very different from here but some things are the same. It is a wide, flat land, not so steep like this place.” She gestured to the view beyond the hut door.
“You can see for miles and miles on a clear day, watch approaching rainclouds cross the horizon and have enough time to hurry home before the storm hits. I was born in the open. My mother was visiting one of our vassals, a horse farmer, when shewas expecting me. On the way home her waters broke and she gave birth to me out under the blue sky. When my father rushed out with a cart full of midwives, he found her leaning against an oak tree, cradling me in her arms, having cut the cord with her eating knife.”
Belis rubbed her chin, leaving a smear of rabbit grease. For a long while she said nothing. I waited, unsure whether she would start again and unwilling to press her. Humans were very prone to complaining about their troubles and I decided I wasn’t in the mood to listen to it after the terrible day I had endured. She looked as if she were about to speak so I yawned widely, stretching my arms out above my head.
“Better get some rest,” I said gruffly, pulling back and shuffling on the floor to try and find a comfy bit of ground. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us tomorrow. I should be able to walk a little faster with a full stomach.”
It was cold comfort even to my ears, but Belis nodded and began tidying up the remnants of our dinner. Before long she was stretched out on the other side of the fire, tucked under her own cloak. As I drifted off to sleep the last thing I saw was her face, still staring into the fire.
Chapter 4
Belis showed no inclination to talk the next morning as we packed up our possessions and set off. We walked in silence for much of that day, and the ones after. The Chalk was wide and empty and we saw no more than one or two shepherds a day. They kept their distance, whistling to their piebald sheepdogs to keep their flocks away from us. I watched the dogs streaking lightning-fast across the turf and missed my own hounds. They had been with me all my life and their absence felt as deep a wound as my own mortality.
The second day of walking was by far the most painful. My blisters had burst, my muscles had seized up and it took me an hour to walk the first mile. Belis was twitching with impatience by the time I finally settled into a steady pace. I was just as frustrated. My body was betraying me, not obeying the orders I gave it to leap, run, jump. When we crossed the Bournbrook river valley I almost wept with fury at how long it took me to climb back up the hill.
It got better slowly, inch by inch. My feet hardened and my legs, though still sore and clumsy, gained a little new strength so that I was less of a total embarrassment. I was still significantly slower than Belis, but I no longer had to pause for breath every time the angle of the land steepened beneath me and I had taken my pack back from her for small stints, carrying my share of the weight.
