"Not for now."
She withdrew, and I noticed she left the door a careful handbreadth ajar, the way she always did so she could eavesdrop. Most of the time I didn't mind because I had nothing to hide from Ursa and a great deal to gain from her insight once my guests departed.
She had a sharp mind that was rivaled only by her sharp tongue. Thankfully, the first was in charge of the second, urging her to swallow her more spicy retorts and preventing unnecessary spats with other members of the palace staff.
Lou eyed the tea table, then the journals he'd brought back under his arm, and hesitated.
"I shouldn't open them near the food," he said. "These are old and frail, and one drop of liquid can have disastrous effects." He glanced about, and his eyes landed on the couch and the coffee table in front of it. "Might we?"
"Of course." We sat on the cushy velvet sofa with the bundle between us.
He opened the first volume reverently. "Would you mind if I read it to you, Your Highness?"
"Not at all. And please, call me Idrilia. You and I are colleagues."
He nodded but given how red his cheeks had become and the sweat beading on his forehead, he would never dare call me by my first name.
He started reading, and his diction was the kind honed by hundreds of hours of lectures. His voice was pleasant, his inflection perfect, and he used professional narration tricks that probably kept his students riveted.
It was all folklore. Page after page of the professor's neat handwriting, tales he'd gathered up and down the frontier across the years, and Lou read them as if he was reading an adventure story that didn't have a good ending. His tone was a littlemournful, and I wondered whether it was on account of him missing his father or because of these tales having led to the downfall of a talented botanist.
The stories were lovely, but they were variations on a theme. It was basically the same story dressed in different circumstances. The actors changed, sometimes they mentioned the Silver Princess growing near where the strange thing happened, and sometimes it wasn't mentioned at all.
They were told by mountain people who might have experienced altitude hallucinations, describing things that weren't possible.
They talked about places in the high mountains where the world went thin, like a membrane between this existence and another. Some thought that they were seeing the afterworld and hoped to see dead loved ones walk through and tell them that they were all right, and provide proof that death wasn't the end and that the soul was eternal.
Seeing shimmering light and silhouettes of people through the thin membrane reinforced their belief that they were seeing the gates of Dolis, not the fabled continent but the entry to the spirit realm. Some reported hearing music, others reported hearing voices of people speaking gibberish.
No one ever described getting close to one of those thin places between worlds. They were always glimpsed from a distance because they were inaccessible on foot.
That was the main reason I didn't give credence to these stories. If anything about them were real, someone would have managed to get closer and try to reach through the membrane to the other world.
I told Lou my observation.
"You are absolutely correct." He sighed. "That was what people with any sense used to tell him, but he still clung to the stories as if they were real." He sighed again. "You know howit starts. One person thinks they saw something, makes up a fascinating tale about it, and others copy it because people love mysteries and it makes a good tale. Before long, those stories spread all over, and no one knows who initiated them."
I tilted my head. "So, you think that no one has actually seen those thin places?"
He shrugged. "I don't want to accuse anyone of violating the Precepts of Truth, but people get lonely on those mountains with only goats to keep them company, and between the loneliness and the altitude they start seeing things. And when their minds try to make sense of those things, they shape them into something familiar, a story they have heard before."
It sounded perfectly logical, but a small kernel of doubt took root in my mind.
What if there was something to those tales?
"Someone needs to mount an expedition to those mountains, a long one that will span many weeks, to look for those so-called thin places."
He arched a brow. "By someone, do you mean you?"
"No, not me. After I lost two men to an avalanche while retrieving the Princess, I vowed not to take people up those treacherous mountains again."
What I had actually vowed was not to cross the border to Elucia and not to endanger the people with me. These tales, though, had been collected on our side of the frontier as much as the other, which meant the flower and its thin places had to occur on Tarinian soil too. I could go looking without ever crossing the border, provided I listened to my guides when they told me to turn back.
It was a loophole, but I didn't think I would make use of it. My mother would have a coronary if I left for another expedition before the Catonian ball.
Lou smiled. "I have a feeling that one of these days you will either break that vow or find a way around it, Your Highness."
"It's possible," I didn't deny it. "But not before the annual ball in Catonia."
