Breakfast the next morning was silent. We were a quiet family to begin with, but this stole our tongues completely. My sisters had said everything yesterday.
We stayed late around the breakfast table. We didn’t know when the courier was coming, but no one wanted to be somewhere else when he arrived. Mama had just sighed and gathered the breakfast dishes—Grace stood up to help—when there was a knock at the door. A bowl slipped out of Mama’s hands and clattered back onto the table.
Papa went to the door and opened it. Cold wind gusted inside. The courier was a few inches shorter than Papa, with light hair and eyes. His uniform was the same as all royal officials: dark blue with green braid trim. He didn’t have any bands across his sleeves, though, or any other signs of office. His service to the kingdom was just as mysterious as my final destination.
Joy and I got to our feet as Papa stepped aside and gestured for him to come in.
“Thank you,” the courier said. He did not cross the threshold. “I’m here for Anora.”
“Yes.” Papa’s voice was dull.
Joy hugged me first, tears running down her cheeks again. Grace came around the table to hug me next. Mama dropped the bowls in the washbasin and wiped her hands on a towel before meeting me halfway. She kissed the top of my head.
“I love you, Mama,” I whispered, trying to cement this embrace into my memory.
She gave me a little extra squeeze and let me go.
I was already wearing my boots, so I put on my coat. One last look at my sisters and mother, then to Papa at the door. He hugged me and kissed my head as Mama had, and murmured, “We’ll see you next year, my beautiful girl. Be safe.”
I stepped back. Papa let his arms fall to his sides and nodded, one single resigned nod. I turned to pick up my small trunk, but the courier stepped inside to collect it for me.
“This way, please.”
I followed him outside, pulling the door shut behind me. No point in letting more cold air in. A carriage waited in front of our house, the horses’ livery the same dark blue with green trim as the courier. I could feel the neighbors watching as I climbed inside. I kept my eyes firmly away from Hanne’s parents’ house. The courier secured the trunk and then climbed in after me, closed the door, and signaled to the driver to be off.
The courier offered me furs and rugs that were piled on the seat. I thanked him absently as I watched out the window. I’d never ridden through town in a carriage before. The familiar streets vanished quickly behind us. All the places I’d known my whole life—gone.
I shivered and remembered the furs. I settled them over me and went back to staring out the window. The courier sat quietly beside me. How many girls had he transported like this? Had they all, like me, watched their homes and lives fall away in silence? Had some of them cried? Demanded to know where they were going and why? I had dozens of questions I wanted to ask, but leaving my family had leadened my tongue. I didn’t think he’d tell me, anyway.
***
After eight days of traveling south and east—I was fairly certain I hadn’t lost count, though I could have been wrong about the direction—the carriage stopped. The courier opened the door, and we climbed out. It wasn’t another waypoint, nor was it an inn. My eyes widened, and my mouth fell open as I stared out. Gray water stretched to the very limits of the sky. I’d never seen this much water all in one place. Farm ponds and streams now seemed insignificant. I seemed insignificant. And the sound—the rushing, pounding rhythm. It was music that no human could play, but I thought I could listen to it happily forever. Off to the right a little, I could see land: an island, because the endless water stretched out to either side. I was so dumbfounded by the view that I entirely missed the small cottage that stood a little way from where the horses had stopped, and the dock, with a boat moored beside it, that stretched into the choppy water.
Voices drew my attention. A man, bundled in fur and oilcloth, had come out of the cottage.
“This the one, then?” he asked with a glance at me. His accent was slow and lilting. He didn’t seem to mind that he was talking to a servant of the Steward. “Let’s be off before the tide goes.”
I tried to watch the island as we approached, but I couldn’t for long. The rising and falling of the boat was so foreign to me that I soon had to close my eyes and rest my head on my arms and concentrate extra hard on keeping my stomach in the right place. I didn’t look up again until I heard the boatman jumping out onto another dock and making the boat secure. Nothing much could be seen from here—just beach and rocks and a path that led further onto the island.
I fell to my knees on the dock as soon as the assisting hands let go. The dock seemed to be rocking too. This eventually stopped, and I stood up. The courier was waiting patiently for me to follow him.
We crossed the rocky beach and began to climb the path, which cut steeply upward before leveling out at the top. A small village clustered around the path: small but sturdy cottages, each with what looked like a large garden behind it, or perhaps a small field. Smoke rose from chimneys, and I saw someone chopping firewood, but otherwise no one was out. The man with the axe never looked up at us.
Beyond the village, the land rose again to a high stone wall that ran in either direction as far as I could see. It looked grim and forbidding beneath the gray sky. The path led right up to a gate in the wall, and the courier opened it.
I was not expecting a garden. Our passage left a trail of footprints behind us in the light dusting of snow. A scattering of evergreen shrubs showed the pattern of paths that branched out from ours, but most of the beds were empty, or what was in them had been cut back in preparation for spring and couldn’t be identified. It was eerie—too quiet, too still.
The path wound through the garden. There were enough hedges and low ornamental trees to block the view of anything beyond the garden until we were nearly on top of the house itself. Not house—castle. It stood atop another slope, pale gray and solemn, with what seemed like scores of windows glaring down at us.
I froze in my tracks at the first sight of it. “Am I to meet the Steward?” I asked softly. Somehow, until this moment, being chosen by the Steward for some mysterious honor had not equated in my mind to castles, much less a foreboding mass of sprawling gray stone.
“No,” the courier said, pausing for a moment while I stared at the edifice. “The Steward does not come here.”
I opened my mouth to ask why I was here, if that was the case, but he’d already continued up the path. I hurried to catch up. I didn’t particularly want to go into the looming building, but staying out in the cold wasn’t an option, and I didn’t want to go in alone.
The main door, like the garden gate, was unlocked and unmanned. Did the occupants have no fear of intrusion? Or did they leave it open so we could come in, just to bolt the door behind us? I shivered.
The entrance hall had a high ceiling and grand decorations, but little light came through the windows, so everything was dim and shadowy. Without a word, the courier led me up the enormous staircase and down a hall. Our boots scuffed the floor loudly in the echoing silence. The last door in the hall was standing wide, and he indicated that I should go in. It was a bedroom, old fashioned but very comfortable. The bed was as large as the one I shared with my sisters, covered in soft wool and white linen. There was a tall wardrobe beside the bed made of a cream-colored wood. A small sitting area beside a gently burning fireplace boasted an upholstered chair in white and pink and gold, and there was another cabinet in the corner of the same pale wood. The floor was tiled in pink and cream, and a rug lay on the floor beside the bed and another beneath the chair by the hearth. Pink had always been more Grace’s color than mine, but it was still a nice room.
When I looked back at the courier, he bowed. “Dinner is in an hour, miss. The dining room is off the entrance hall. You may wish to change first.” He gestured to the wardrobe.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a little lost.
The courier left, closing the door behind him.
Copyright 2025 by Eliza Prokopovits