The Porcelain Dove Read online

  So easily the Maid found the object of her virgin quest. The stealing of it was not so easily achieved, for the smoke-gray stallion was so wild that even his master the North Wind approached him with respect and a magic bridle. Furthermore, Boreas always cared for the Horse with his own hands, nor would he accept any help in unsaddling or rubbing down or putting away tack. A thousand times the Maid despaired of accomplishing even her first task.

  "He's as bad as maître Grisloup," she complained to the Crow. "One brush out of place, one straw too few or too many in the bedding, one blanket left hanging unfolded, and 'tis the back of his hand or the tip of his lash and 'Polish those bits 'till they shine, lad!' I'll never catch him napping, not the North Wind."

  The Crow bobbed his head thoughtfully. "Then we'll have to catch him waking. How fast is he without the Horse?"

  "As fast as he is with, only he can't keep it up long. He's out of training, you know. I've seen him blown and sweating just running across the stable-yard."

  "There are kingdoms smaller than the North Wind's stable-yard," said the Crow. "Yet I can run farther and faster if I must. And the Horse. How fast is he?"

  "Not so fast as lightning, nor yet so fast as thought. Much faster than a bird in flight or any animal upon four legs." The Maid shrugged. "As fast as the wind, in fact."

  The Crow tousled its wings in an irritated way. "I cannot run so fast as that, yet, perhaps if he is over-blown . . . "

  "What are you going to do?" asked the Maid.

  "'Tis the merest spark of a thought; a breath would extinguish it. Only, should you see a chance, jump on the Horse and hold on for your life." And then it flew away, leaving the Maid puzzled and fretful as before.

  The next scene was the stables, with the Maid opening the door to Boreas and the Horse returned from a storm, the pair of them so blown out they could scarcely raise a breeze between them. Boreas fairly tumbled off the Horse's back, and was leading him into his stall when a playful whickering was heard off-stage. The storm-gray steed stiffened and tasted the air with flaring nostrils.

  "Quiet, lad," said Boreas, and tugged impatiently at the magic bridle.

  The whickering again, and then the Horse upped so suddenly with his great head that the North Wind lost his grip on the magic bridle. Before he could grab it again, the Maid was on the Horse's back and clinging to his mane like a burr as he reared and wheeled and thundered out of the stable with Boreas cursing and puffing at his heels.

  A trim black mare stood at the palace gate, her tail invitingly raised. As soon as she caught sight of the Horse of the North Wind with the Maid on his back, she tossed it flirtatiously, picked up her heels and made for the Southlands, running before the Horse faster than an eagle flies, faster than a hare or a rat or any animal on four legs, though not quite as fast as the wind. Stride by stride, the Horse of the North Wind gained on her, his lungs heaving like an air-pump, sweat and foam streaming from his sides and mouth. When they reached the border of the North Wind's country, the mare's tail was flicking in the Maid's face and her breath was laboring; she was slowing, stumbling, halting to stand, her trembling legs splayed, as the Horse, rampant, reared to mount her.

  Poor Horse, to be led so far and then to have his prize snatched so rudely from under his very nose! For the mare disappeared, and suddenly a gigantic Crow was flying up between his forelegs. He came down stiff-legged, jolting the Maid half off his back, whinnied wildly, and stood trembling. If he hadn't been so tired, he'd have bolted again. As it was, after a moment he put down his head and began to pull at the short grass.

  A thousand leagues away, Boreas sat cursing and rubbing at a cramp in his leg. As weary as his Horse was, he was wearier still. Yet before he went home to his bath and his bed, there was something he wanted to know. He stood up and called out in a voice of tempest: "Thou, Thief! I clothed thee, I fed thee, I paid thee good gold. Why then hast thou robbed me?"

  The Maid stood in her stirrups and replied: "Fury drives me, duty calls me. I have what I need and will fret you no more."

  This answer did nothing to appease the North Wind, who raged and roared until I feared for the Maid; but he was too leg-weary to follow her.

  Slowly, to spare the Horse, the Maid rode over land and sea to the island where Alcendre had his dwelling. Before she reached the tower, she drew rein, dismounted, and went to the Horse's mighty head. As the Crow watched from the crupper, she breathed her own breath into the Horse's nostrils and whispered long into the Horse's ears. Then she removed the magic bridle from between the Horse's teeth and hid it in her pack.

  "Clever girl," said the Crow approvingly. "I'll be away, then." He spread his wings and crouched ready for flight. "You have the black feather? You've only to blow upon it to call me."

  "I know, Pompey," said the Maid. And after a small pause, awkwardly: "I am grateful for your help."

  The Crow laughed raucously, hopped into the air, and flapped heavily into the trees.

  I started and looked sharply at Jean, who was gazing at the stage like a man enthralled.

  "Did you hear that?" I hissed. "She called the Crow 'Pompey.' "

  "Chut," said Jean. "Alcendre enters."

  A glade before a tall white tower. The Maid sat the Horse with Alcendre at her stirrup, caressing the Horse's flank with one bony hand. It seemed to me he'd aged a hundred years in the space of one act; perhaps 'twas only the monkish robe with which he'd replaced his scarlet suit. He'd changed wigs, too, from black to white, and gummed a wispy beard to his chin. In short, Alcendre was the image of the beggar-wizard down to his clawlike hands and his burning amber eyes.

  I remember that I noted this metamorphosis with as little wonder as I'd noted the transformation of a painted scene and two ill-carpentered trees into a real forest. "How skillful," I thought. "How clever." Then I thought nothing more at all. 'Twas as though I'd shrunk to two eyes and a memory, with no room under my cap for judgment or feeling.

  The beggar-wizard gave his apprentice a sour look. "Well, girl. Hast got the Horse, I see. Did any man help thee?"

  "Only the North Wind himself, Master, and that entirely by chance. May I have the Dove now?"

  "One task achieved achieveth naught, as thou know'st full well. Thy second task is to bring to me the Wizard of Norroway's black Cloak."

  The Maid bowed, and he hobbled into his tower without further word. When he'd disappeared within, the Maid slid down from the Horse and glared at the closed door, her eyes a little narrowed and her jaws clenched in a look of fury restrained. Gently the Horse nudged her shoulder.

  "I pitied him, Horse," she said, stroking his cheek. "I never blamed him for hating my father, not when I learned what cause he had to hate the name of Maindur. How foolish I was to think he'd except me from his hatred."

  The next scene was a ship bound for Norroway, with the North Wind blowing vengefully and the Maid seasick, and the crew casting dark looks at her and her Crow. They muttered about witch-boys and they muttered about Jonahs, and the harder the North Wind blew, the louder they muttered. They'd just settled upon throwing both Maid and Crow overboard as a sacrifice to the elements when the North Wind, howling his rage, seized the mainmast and snapped it like a bone.

  This was the shipwreck I'd seen the players rehearsing, with the stage tossing and rocking between moments of terrible stillness when it lay in the trough of a wave whose crest hung above it like a rocky gorge before tumbling down upon the deck and shattering into foam. Maid and Crow forgotten, the crew sprang to their stations. Yet Boreas did not go unappeased. The wind swept the Crow up and away; the water claimed the Maid.

  Gasping and flailing, she fought the waves and seized upon the top of the mainmast, which chanced to be floating nearby. Miraculously, it bore her up through the storm. More miraculously still, it carried her safely to shore where she washed up at the feet of an ancient man in a rusty black cloak: the Wizard of Norroway.

  Stiffly he knelt down beside her, his cloak billowing out behind him in the wind
, and bent to raise her in his arms. With some difficulty he sat her up, thumped her on the back, and held her as she began to retch up seawater. When she was done, he wiped her mouth with a corner of his cloak.

  "Easy now," said the Wizard gently. "Easy, lass. Lie you still a moment, and when you're feeling better, we'll go up to my house and I'll get you something to eat. Though you're a strong sorcerer, you're mortal yet."

  Thanks to the Maid's weakness and the Wizard's age, they were a tedious while scrambling up the cliff, and perforce stopped often to rest. During one of these halts, the Wizard said, "Fortune was with you, lass. I was expecting an omen, or else I'd not have been here."

  The Maid had only strength to shiver and nod and haul herself a little higher up the cliff. But when at last they stood panting at the top, she asked, "Did you get it?"

  "Get what, lass?"

  "The omen."

  "The omen?" The Wizard opened his arms and his rusty, black cloak and folded the Maid within them to nestle by his side. "Yes," he said. "I did."

  By this time in my life, I'd met two sorcerers and heard tell of another, and the Wizard of Norroway was like none of them—although in time, I thought Pompey might grow to be as kind and wise. Observing the Wizard tend and teach the Maid, I seemed to see the shadow of the youth he'd been: lean-faced and sharp-eyed as an eagle, fearless as a lion, solitary as a bear. He was old now, a thousand years or more, he said. His magic kept him alive, but he'd not bothered to keep himself young, so that his shoulders stooped like folded wings, his hands were gnarled and spotted, and his plaited hair trailed down his back in seven bleached rope-ends.

  "Magic is a strange thing, lass," he told her once. "You can learn all its rules and doctrines, read grammaryes until you're blind, question imps and fairies and kobolds and dwarfs for twice a thousand years, and still magic will surprise you. Any country witch-wife can cast a spell. And not the wisest, oldest, strongest wizard that ever lived can control precisely where 'twill land or how 'twill work itself out."

  Young and headstrong, the Maid smiled, sure that her spells would cast true. Old and wise, he smiled back at her. I've often taken comfort in the knowledge that he was right and she was wrong. He was a kind teacher, the Wizard of Norroway. 'Twas no wonder that the Maid grew to love him and to feel the burden of her quest as a grim weight upon her heart.

  One day she went to the Wizard's rock above the cold North Sea and blew upon the Crow's black feather. I knew she feared him lost in the storm; as she blew she wept. Yet within a pair of moments he flew to her call, incongruous over the ocean as a whale in a mountain stream.

  "Well, mademoiselle," he croaked as he flopped to earth beside her. "You've waited long to summon me. What news of the cloak?"

  Having called the Crow, the Maid seemed loath to speak to him, at least about the Wizard of Norroway's black cloak. First she wanted to know where the Crow had been, and why he'd sent her no word.

  "Here and there," said the Crow to her first question, "and I came as soon as you called me. Now. What about the cloak?"

  The Maid fidgeted her fingers, a child's trick her mother had often taken her to task for. "There's nothing to tell, Pompey. I can't take it."

  "Take heart, mademoiselle. We'll think of something will turn the trick, just as we did with Boreas. And this wizard is mortal, which should make the task easier. Why, you might simply slip it from his shoulders as he sleeps."

  "Well, yes; I'd thought of that. But I can't do it." She sounded young for her years, a child protesting the horse is too high, she'll fall off, she knows it.

  And 'twas the child the Crow answered, his harsh voice soft as down. "He's been kind to you and you don't want to rob him. I'm glad you feel so, mademoiselle—it does your heart credit. Yet here is a quest to be achieved and you the one fated to achieve it, by blood, by nature, and by training. Do you refuse to take the Wizard's cloak, the Dove will never come to Beauxprés and the wounds of the past must fester on unhealed."

  "Then the Dove will not come to Beauxprés. Is that so great a tragedy, Pompey? I am sorry for my mother's sufferings, bien sûr—she is only silly and vain, and those are not mortal sins. But my mother has never been so kind to me as this Wizard of Norroway, so heedful of my thoughts and opinions. When he looks at me, he sees me. Not his own desires and fears: me. He knows my soul more truly than any, save you. I cannot betray him. I will not."

  Though that sounded like the end of the matter, it wasn't. They argued it back and forth as I'd often heard them argue before, over the application of a spell or the use of learning Latin. Linotte was impassioned, Pompey reasonable and sympathetic and unyielding as stone. Faintly I understood 'twas my fate they were arguing—my fate against the Wizard of Norroway's. If I wasn't to go on as I was, trapped in the beggar-wizard's curse upon the blood of Maindur, Linotte must betray her new master's trust and her own love for him. Or she must betray her father, her mother, her brothers, Jean, me.

  "Let them suffer," she cried at last. "Let them die. They'll die in the end anyway. And what about the suffering they've caused, like Jorre, with their willful self-love? My mother cannot see past her laudanum and her tambour frame. And my father—my father sees only his birds."

  "'Tis not for you to condemn them to death," said Pompey.

  "'Tis not for you to condemn the Wizard of Norroway," said Linotte, and stood up from her rock. "Whatever I do, I'll have innocent blood on my hands: either Berthe and Jean or the Wizard must die. Yet Berthe and Jean chose to stay by my parents, knowing what they were and how they were cursed. Leaving the Wizard his cloak seems to me the lesser evil."

  Something in this speech had surprised Pompey—what, I could tell no more than I could tell how I knew he was surprised. A crow has no brows to raise, after all, no lips to "O." Perhaps 'twas some lifting of his neck feathers made me think he was startled and, I thought, a little relieved.

  "You must trust me, child," he said gently. "Take the Wizard's cloak. If your weird permitted you to ask him for it, I'm sure he'd give it freely."

  This speech enraged Linotte past all sense. "Trust thee?" she screamed. "Trickster, shape-changer, savage, why should I trust thee?" Like a child in a rage, she plucked the black feather out of her bosom and flung it off the cliff. "I'll never call thee again, carrion-eater, bird of ill-omen. I need not thy help to be what my blood and destiny make me. I am the youngest child of the house of Jorre Maindur. Murder should come easily to me." And on that word, she spun away inland, running as though she sought to outrun fate.

  The feather lifted and flirted out over the fjord before an updraft sidled it back to earth at the Crow's feet. He examined it birdlike, one eye then the other, pecked it up like a grain of corn, and tucked it under his wing. A most unbirdlike sigh, a hop, a beat of his wings, and he was gone. And we were in the Wizard of Norroway's stone hut, waiting with him for Linotte.

  He knew she was coming, no doubt of that, and seemed oddly undismayed, though a little abstracted, if the way he was fiddling with his cloak-pin were anything to judge by. I hadn't really noticed the pin before—a flimsy-looking thing, brown and twiggy. After a space, he rose and walked to the hearth, where he stooped over the fire, presenting his back to the Maid as she stormed in, red-cheeked and breathless. The hut was not large. Two steps took her near enough to rip the cloak from the Wizard's shoulders and fling it across the room.

  I can't say I was astonished when the Wizard turned from the fire and sat placidly at the table, no more put out by the loss of his cloak than he'd be by the loss of his sandal. Linotte gawked at him, then erupted into a spate of tears that flooded over her cheeks and chin like a mountain stream at thaw. The Wizard let her weep for a while, and then he said, "Hush, child. These tears do not become the Sorcerer Maid who overcame the Wizard of Norroway and took his magic cloak from him. You'd better take the brooch as well."

  Linotte lifted her swollen eyes to him. "No," she said thickly, and blew her nose on her sleeve. "No. I won't take it. He asked for the c
loak. That's all I have to give him."

  "It won't do him any good without the brooch. You must give him both."

  "No. He won't know the difference. And even if he does, he can't send me back to get it. Keep the brooch, Master. Live another thousand years."

  The Wizard of Norroway smiled at her, then slipped up the pin of the brooch of rushes and removed it from the shoulder of his long robe of white fur. He raised the hand of the Sorcerer Maid from her lap, laid the brooch in her palm, and closed her fingers over it. When his hand left hers, he withered away into dust.

  Grim-eyed, the Maid marked her cheeks and brow with the Wizard's dust, rose, gathered up the cloak, shook it out, and pinned the brooch at its neck. Without a backward glance, she stepped out the Wizard of Norroway's front door straight into the beggar-wizard's tower.

  "So, apprentice," said the beggar-wizard. "Hast brought me the Cloak of the Wizard of Norroway, as I asked thee?"

  "As you see, Master."

  "Thou wert long enough about it. Yet 'tis no matter. Thou art here now, and twice welcome for thy absence."

  This was a new tune, and no mistake. The Maid eyed the old man narrowly, as did I. He'd thrown a kind of glamour over himself so that his four hundred years sat more lightly upon him than they had, and fixed his lips into a rictus that did duty as a smile. He wore Le Destin's scarlet velvet suit—upon which now flourished a costly fungus of gold embroidery—and a long, black, curling wig. On one beringed hand, as stiff and out of place there as the smile on his lips, perched a gleaming white bird.