Don't think that! she told herself sharply, thinking of bears — wolves — not-so-princely thieves. This wasn't a bad thing. The rain would wash away her scent. The hounds and the Huntsman would not be able to find her. She just needed to find someplace to get out of the rain. And pray that The Tradition didn't want to make a Fair Corpse out of her —
She couldn't help it. She started to cry. It shouldn't be this hard; didn't everyone in the family study what The Tradition was going to do? Shouldn't they have been able to stop this? She stumbled against an old oak tree, put out her hand to steady herself and found it was hollow. Like a frightened rabbit, she crawled inside.
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. Why did her mother die? She had been so good; she'd never done anything to deserve to die!
But of course, the part of her mind that was always calculating, always thinking, the part she could never make just stop, saidand if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. You just turned sixteen. You know what that means in The Tradition.
Oh, she knew. Sixteen was bad enough for ordinary girls. For the noble, the wealthy, The Tradition ruthlessly decreed what sort of birthday you would have — if you were pretty, it was the celebration of a lifetime. If you were plain, everyone, literally everyone, would forget it was even your birthday, and you would spend the day miserable and alone. Traditional Paths went from there, decreeing, unless you fought it, just what the rest of your life would be like based on that birthday. For a Princess, it was worse. For the only child who was also a Princess, worse still. Curses or blessings, which might be curses in disguise, descended. Parents died or fell deathly ill. You were taken by a dragon. Evil Knights demanded your hand. Evil Sorcerers kidnapped you to marry you — or worse.
It wasn't fair. And it didn't help that she knew exactly what to blame.
She cried and shivered and hiccupped and cried more, sneezed and shivered and cried. She wanted her father, but her father was back at the border with his army, having delivered his new Queen ceremoniously to the palace. She wanted her mother, but her mother was in the Royal Cenotaph, and Queen Sable was —
Was an Evil Stepmother, was what she was. She had nothing in her wardrobe but black! Oh, she said it was out of respect for the late Queen Celeste, but this was Eltaria, and someone who wore nothing but black was either a poet or an Evil Sorceress, and Rosa hadn't heard Sable declaiming any sonnets or seen her scribbling in velvet-covered journals.
And besides, not three hours after the King had left again, Rosa had gone spying on the new Queen, and had seen her actually talking to some disembodied green head in a mirror! So that pretty much clinched the Sorceress part! And who else but an Evil Sorceress would have been talking to a disembodied green head?
That had been enough for her, she'd avoided her stepmother completely after that, and lived in dread of what was coming. She avoided needles, the spindles of spinning wheels, anything sharp and pointed. She kept away from balconies and only ate what she'd seen everyone else eat. She'd locked her door at night, set traps to trip up anyone coming through the window or down the chimney and had so many charms against demons and the like hung up in the canopy of her bed that they rattled softly against one another in the darkness. She'd done everything she could think of —
But she truly had not thought that a servant, no matter how sinister, would dare to raise his hand against her.
She was so cold...so cold she ached with it and jumped every time lightning struck near, which was horribly often. And every time she thought she couldn't cry anymore, a fresh shock sent her off again.
Why had her father done this? She didn't know; at times it was as if he was two different people. There was the wonderful Father who sometimes turned up without warning to teach her how to make her nightmares stop, who gave her rare, enchanted toys, like the tiny kitten that never became a cat and would go curl up on a shelf when you told it "time for bed." Then there was the King, who was always away at war, and who treated her with the grave formality of a complete stranger.
Of course he did,said that voice in her head.If you were the beloved Princess, The Tradition would make your life, your fate, even more horrible.
Where was Godmother Lily then? She'd come to the funeral, but why hadn't she healed Rosa's mother? Why hadn't she kept her father from marrying that witch?
She could remember her old nurse saying something, though. It doesn't always take a spell to turn a man's head and wits.
Just as Rosa thought that, she felt movement at her back.
And what had been, she thought, the solid wood behind her abruptly vanished.
She squeaked, frightened, confused — had lightning knocked a hole in the tree? Had it been so rotten it was now falling to pieces?
But then she felt hands!
They were grabbing her, seizing her, hauling at her clothing, her hair, her arms!
She screamed, kicked, tried to squirm away, scrabbled frantically at the edge of the hollow to pull herself out and run — no matter that it was running into the storm. That didn't matter a bit when there were dozens of hands trying to grab her! But these hands were strong, rough, and grabbed her with grips of iron, bruising her arms, pulling her hair. She screamed again, tried to writhe, and suddenly her head was enveloped in harsh, fetid, mildew smelling cloth.
She screamed again, fought, hit, kicked, but was pulled backward and down. She continued to fight, trying to grab for things blindly, caught what felt like roots and had her hands torn away from them. Then there was a tremendous blow to the back of her head, and she saw stars and for a little while, lost consciousness.
When the stars and the dazzle cleared away, she felt herself being half dragged, half carried, and when she tried to wiggle free, knew immediately she had been trussed up like game. There were ropes around her upper arms and chest, more ropes tying her ankles and wrists together; two or three people had hold of her shoulders, but her heels were dragging along a dirt surface, and every so often one of them lost his grip and let her fall. She couldn't smell anything through the mildew of the bag, but it was cold and dank, like a cave.
A long time later, or so it seemed, as she collected a whole new set of bumps and bruises, she was summarily dropped on a stone floor, and the cloth was pulled off her head.