Page 11 of To Ride the Wind

Sure enough, the girl froze, her eyes somehow growing even larger and her face even redder.

Gwen softened her voice. “I won’t hurt you.” She added a stern note of warning. “But the palace isn’t a safe place for you. You mustn’t approach anyone else, and you mustn’t let the queen see you. Can you do that?”

The girl nodded, her lips pressed together, and her eyes fixed on Gwen.

“What’s your name?” Gwen asked gently.

The girl shook her head this time, still not speaking, and Gwen sighed. Given the warning she had just delivered, could she blame the girl for not wanting to identify herself?

“Very well,” she said. “Don’t worry about a name. I’m Princess Gwen.”

“Gwen,” the girl said, as if testing it out and liking how it sounded.

Gwen smiled at her. “It must have taken a lot of courage for you to come here. Surely you didn’t come to find me?”

“Mother always told me stories about the mountain princess who lives in the palace and is more beautiful than any other. The one who will someday save us.”

Gwen laughed uncomfortably. “Well, some of that is true, at least. I am a princess, and I do live in the palace.”

“I thought…I thought surely a princess would have the power to help us,” the girl whispered. “Mother doesn’t know I’m here, but I had to come. Can’t you help us?”

She stared at Gwen pleadingly as Gwen tried to make sense of her words. First the girl had spoken of being saved, and now she was asking for help. But for whom? Did she mean her family specifically?

“I…I would like to help you,” she said cautiously. “I would like to help any of my people who are in trouble. But what exactly is the problem?”

“We’ve barely made it through the winter.” The girl’s voice trembled. “Spring will be here soon, but it will still be a long time before any crops can be harvested. And now the taxes are to be raised again? If the queen truly means to go through with it, we’ll all of us starve!” She finished on a crescendo, only to look up and down the corridor nervously, her expression sheepish.

From her reaction, Gwen guessed she was dramatizing the situation, in the way that was common for children her age. From the look of her, she wasn’t on the edge of starvation. But at the same time, it seemed equally clear that the people faced genuine hardship. The girl wouldn’t have mustered the courage to sneak into the palace in search of the princess if that wasn’t the case.

“Will you really starve?” Gwen asked, testing her.

As she asked, the small amount of food she had consumed roiled in her belly. It might have been the end of winter, but there was no shortage of provisions for those who lived in the palace. To her shame, she couldn’t have even said when the new season’s harvest would arrive. Autumn, winter, or spring, their tables were laden just the same.

“Maybe not,” the girl admitted. “But soon we won’t be able to afford mother’s medicine.”

“Your mother is ill?”

The girl nodded. “It’s a chronic condition, and the medicine comes from the far lands.”

It took Gwen a moment to realize she must mean her mother needed the medicine brought back by the queen’s traders. It wasn’t hard to guess that her mother charged the people high prices for anything that came from the valleys.

“I see.” Gwen stared at the girl for a moment before reaching a sudden decision. “Come with me.”

She led the girl down the corridor and into her room, moving quickly. It was best for the girl to be gone from the palace as soon as possible.

Rummaging through her cabinet, Gwen found the small leather pouch she had hidden at the back. For a few seconds, she hesitated, feeling the meager weight of it in her hand. The coins inside were few given how many years she had been collecting them—hoarding them against her dream of one day leaving the mountains. She had saved the first coin the year Easton disappeared, but her stash had only grown slowly.

But it was a hollow dream. In the depths of her heart, Gwen had always known that. She was never going to escape. Never. So there was no point in the coins gathering dust in her cabinet.

She held the pouch out to the girl, a swift movement, as if she feared her hand might disobey her and snatch them back. The girl squeaked, staring at the pouch hungrily before reaching out tentatively to accept it.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” she breathed. “You are as generous as my mother’s stories always claimed.”

Gwen smiled, but it was a tired expression. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. I’ll see what I can do about the taxes but…”

Even as she was speaking the words, she knew the dispiriting truth. There was nothing she could do. She hadn’t even known her mother was planning to raise them—or that she had apparently done so several times before by the sound of it. She wasn’t included in those sorts of decisions. She was powerless.

The girl curtsied deeply and thanked her again before moving to the door. Her hand was on the knob when Gwen called for her to stop, an idea striking her.

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