When it hit my face, the water did two things. It stung my face like a thousand icy needles and it sucked out the air from my lungs. My eyes flew wide open and I tried to scream, but no sound came. How could it? If the cold water hadn’t already robbed me of my voice, then the sight that greeted me would’ve done the same thing anyway.
Arranged in a semi-circle around me and looking down on me, were seven of the most unlikely faces I had ever seen. Don’t get me wrong. None of them were hideous or ugly or monstrous, or any of those adjectives one who has lived around these parts would attach to anything even vaguely related to the Wood. And that was precisely the unlikelihood of them: they were all just boys.
I suppose if they had been beasts it would have been easy for me to start begging for my life or weeping or saying whatever needed to be said to gain time and not be eaten. But because these were normal faces that I opened my eyes to, in a place where I was not expecting anything normal at all, I have to admit I was at a loss for words. So, instead of some eloquent plea for mercy, or some regal demand to be released, I sputtered out the shallowest thing I possibly could.
“I’m a princess.”
After I said that, I felt my ears burning with shame. Of all the things I could have said, I had to blurt out the one thing my father would’ve disapproved of. But then, one of the boys suddenly looked out the window and I could’ve sworn that I saw his ears twitch. I looked and saw die Sonne rising up behind the Sudeten mountains. Were they afraid of the sun, I thought. Could I have stumbled onto a coven of vampires?
Stories from the Court came rushing back to mind. Stories of monsters that stole babies from their mother’s breasts and drained them of blood, leaving only hollowed out husks. These beasts fled before dawn, the stories said, for they could not abide the burning touch of the light.
As these thoughts were running riot through my head, the boy who looked out the window uttered something unintelligible, to which all the others responded with grunts and nods of assent before suddenly scattering to the four corners of the shack we were in. Amid the ruckus of these boys picking up various things from amongst the clutter, I noticed the plump one – the one who had given me such a fright before – standing in front of me, looking like he was having trouble breathing. Since he was obviously trying to say something of some importance – and since he was just a boy after all – I looked at him intently, hoping that I could at least divine his intent before he exploded.
“Ganzenland comes,” he finally said, with an explosive wheeze. He spoke words in the Vulgate which I, of course, had to learn when I was but a toddler. But even for common speech, his accent was so different from the one my nannies had that I could barely understand him. Seeing my confusion, he gestured impatiently out the window and made a tooting noise, like –
Horns!
Suddenly I heard them and realized that the Queen’s men were almost upon us. I scrambled to my feet just as the last of the other boys disappeared through a doorway in the back of the shack. In front of me, the plump boy quivered like he was itching to be off but could not leave until I was ready to move.
So, I dove in through the back door, much to his delight, and found myself in a dark earthen tunnel. Behind me, I heard him grunt and heave as he pulled on a rope that I had not seen as I passed. When the rope finally came free, a blast of musty air hit me from behind and I knew that he had caused that part of the cave to collapse. With any sort of luck, if the Queen’s men did find the shack and the back door, they would see nothing but dirt.
For what seemed the longest time, I ran forward blindly. My shoulders rubbed against the walls of the tunnel and all sorts of clammy soft things squished between toes. As I ran, I found my mind wandering back to the day I tried to catch up with my father’s horse as he rode off to the war. He had forgotten his gloves and I was deathly afraid that without them he wouldn’t be able to fight as well as he should. And as I ran, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.