Page 47 of The Winter Princess
I think of the tablecloth. It’s a simple thing to slice out an amusing part of my story and share it, scooping the other pieces to one side.
“We set off from Pavieau warm enough, but as the train traveled north, we encountered a storm. My mother had to add more layers, finally wrapping me in her best tablecloth, bright white with tiny blue flowers stitched onto a border. When we arrived, the snow was falling so hard that we couldn’t see from one end of the platform to the other. If I’d wandered off, they wouldn’t have found me until the spring thaw.”
I finish the anecdote with a laugh, remembering my father shivering at the stationmaster’s window in his best suit and my mother’s pink nose. I glance up.
Freja’s fingers stop tracing the stem of her glass. Her mouth pinches on one side. “You didn’t have a winter coat?”
Damn. I feel the sensation of being shoved off a ledge, air leaving my lungs, twisting as I fall. I gave her a funny story. She was supposed to laugh at the blizzard and the blue flowers. She wasn’t supposed to see anything else.
My mouth opens to keep her from seeing the kid who came to school with a few words of Sondish and strange-smelling food, who learned quickly to stand between his parents and the laundry kiosk, to read the fundamentals of a rental agreement and argue with landlords about deposits.Stultes es.
Konrad rescues me, bringing out bowls of deceptively simple soup. I make room for the bread and spend more time arranging the salt and pepper near Freja’s setting than is necessary, the act moving us further and further from her question.
Vapor rises from her bowl, and Freja’s eyes light before closing. She inhales the aroma. “Now I get why we drove so far.” She blows on her spoon and takes a swallow. I can’t look away.
I smile into my bowl, stirring the contents. Giana is a Pavian witch, managing to turn even the simplest fare into something that tastes like it pays Sondish taxes but winters on the Mediterranean coast. I dig into the bowl, tearing off hunks of bread to dip in the hearty stew, our conversation kept well clear of anything deeper than the weather. When we finish, Giana comes to clear the table setting, kissing me on both cheeks for good measure. I pass over a plate and check my watch.
“We’ll have to head back soon,” I tell her in Pavian.
Giana’s eyes shift to Freja, and she says in halting Sondish, “Not before Her Royal Highness has had my coffee and torte.”
I nod and settle back to find myself the object of Freja’s interested gaze.
“What?” I say, wiping the edges of my mouth with a cloth.
She tilts her head in the direction of the kitchens. “It’s interesting watching you obey someone so meekly. Do you have a chance to speak Pavian very often?”
“Not as much as I’d like, now that my parents are gone. It’s a beautiful language, though,” I concede, “so is Sondish, in its way.”
She begins singing the second verse of her national anthem, her voice low:
Even our fair princesses will drag
Every Vorburgian corpse
To the Borderlands—
Picking the flesh from their Swords and
Raking the blood from our Soil
Her tongue does its poor best to soften the stabby-sounding threats, but it’s impossible to turn the language into something it’s not.
I grimace. “I think we’ve located the source of the low birthrate. How did your ancestors manage to populate the Sondish peninsula in the first place?” I lightly pound the table with a fist, my accent reminiscent of a Viking raider. “Carry my shield.” Grunt.
Her eyes narrow, and she props her chin on her hand, bright hair sliding off her shoulder. “What if I sayI love you?” she whispers and my breath is gone. “Don’t go. Stay with me forever.” The burrs of the language now make me want to lean forward, listening to the throaty stops and breaks. Not lyrical. Not beautiful. It’s intense and undomesticated, wild and wind-scoured.
“My ancestors managed just fine,” she laughs.
I breathe again, swallowing past a hard knot in my throat. The Sondish people will never go extinct.
“For all the bloodthirsty things you can say in Sondish, it’s easy to tell someone you love them,” she declares. “I’m sure you’ve done it.”
I’ve never told a Sondish girl I loved her. I’ve never wanted to.
Giana brings coffee, lemon torte, and an unwelcome observation about how I’ll get fat if I work in a studio all day.
I dig into the torte with the edge of my fork. “We’ve covered Sondmark. How well do you speak Pavian?”
