Messenger in the Mist Read online

  Star supposed each kingdom’s methods had their own advantages, drawbacks and dangers. Both societies were caged and imprisoned within their own walls, threatened by all sides in a state of eternal siege. She wondered if there was such a place where the mist did not flow, where people were free to roam the countryside with no qualms and visit their brethren without fear of death. Adventurers called journeymen were sent out for centuries to search out places for new colonies. But none came back.

  Star reached the swinging sign with a painted frothy mug and stenciled letters that read Overflow Tavern. The building nestled between a smithy and a local herbalist, with two narrow alleyways in between. At this hour, both shops were closed, their tattered front hangings dangling like branches of a willow tree.

  She dismounted, leading Windracer to the stable hand on duty. “Make sure that she eats only the finest grains.” Star flashed a piece of gold that made his eyes light up.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  As she dropped the coin in his palm, Star caught him eyeing her parcel of letters, staring as if he looked upon a legend.

  “Have you seen one?” the boy asked before Star could turn away.

  “Seen what?” Star replied, although she knew just what he referred to.

  “A flying monster.” His eyes slanted under heavy lids, a mask of skepticism adopted from the older boys.

  Star laughed lightly, trying to ease the mood. “No, I have not.”

  “I heard they carried someone away just the other day. A guard bet he could stand out there for twenty minutes without getting spooked.”

  “That’s not very smart, now is it?” Star gauged the reliability of his tale. Although the story seemed farfetched, something kept her listening. His voice had a certain ring of truth. “What happened?”

  “They heard him yell, just once, and then he was gone, sword and all.”

  Star considered his tale, turning it around in her head. She would have to inquire further when she got to the castle. That is, if she had any letters for the royalty.

  “What do you suppose the flying monsters do with the people they capture?”

  Star adjusted her letter bag against her side. The stable hand’s question made her uncomfortable and she needed time to think of an answer. Should she make up a fairytale to put his fears at ease or should she be honest about the harsh way of the world?

  She decided the truth might keep him from doing something stupid like the guard. “What do you think an eagle does with a mouse?” She raised her brow. Although no one knew for certain what became of the stolen villagers because no bodies were ever found, she had a hunch.

  The boy bit his lower lip and took a step back. “That’s what I figured. My mom’s been telling me they just take them away to another land. I knew she made that stuff up.”

  Star ruffled the hair on his head. “No one knows for certain. Just make sure you don’t go to close to those walls, okay?” She spoke in a motherly tone that surprised even her. Was she that old? Some of her friends in Evenspark had already settled down and started their new families. Star was married to her career.

  “Don’t you worry ’bout that.” The boy tossed his new coin up in the air and caught it. “I heard the mist is rising, and it will only be a matter of time before those archers would have to start shootin’.” He looked more excited than worried.

  “Mist rising?” Star knew the guardians of Ravencliff kept precise measurements and the fogginess hadn’t moved in years.

  Just then, the tavern door opened and a group of merrymakers stumbled out, singing so loud Star thought their lungs would burst. Their revelry silenced the boy, as if it reminded him of his humble place in the world. He pulled gently on Windracer’s reins. “I’ll make sure she has the best care.”

  Star let the conversation dissipate. The stable hand had a job to attend to, and she didn’t want to get him in trouble. “Thank you. I appreciate it.” With a wave to the stable hand, she pushed open the tavern doors.

  As expected, heads turned and eyes widened as if the music hit a lull at the same time as every conversation. Despite her attempt at entering inconspicuously, Star shone like a pearl among stones. Most of her countrymen from Evenspark were paler than the black-haired, tawny people of Ravencliff, and Star was one of the brightest and most ethereal, a trait her mother claimed came from her side of the family. Not only was she exotic looking, she wore the glimmering translucent silk of the messenger’s embroidered coat, marking her importance.

  After the initial shock of her entrance, the people returned to their business and Star was able to seek the owner without being bothered. Everyone knew not to get in the way of a messenger. Not only were there fierce repercussions, but the carriers were trained in all manner of combat arts. Like her colleagues, Star’s reactions were fast, her movements fluid and unpredictable. Despite her small stature, everyone knew to leave her be.

  A broad woman with straggly chestnut hair and layers of aprons looked up quickly from a round of bubbling mugs and extended her calloused hand. “Hilda Plin. I’m the new innkeeper.”

  “Star Nightengale, messenger for the Interkingdom Carriers.” Star ceremoniously presented the letter from the guard. She waited patiently as Hilda read it over, trying to ignore the chorus of whispers behind her. They’d let her be, but their tongues kept moving.

  “Says here you’re to lodge with us.” Hilda clicked her teeth together in thought. Star could tell the old barmaid favored the arrangements. The royal family paid large sums for hired services. “You can stay in the honored guest room. Top of the stairs, first door on the right.” Hilda pocketed the paper and looked around, taking in the stares that people shot over their shoulders. “You’ve had a long journey. Go on up. I’ll bring you something to eat.” She handed Star a rough metal key.

  Star was relieved she didn’t have to sit amongst all the ogling patrons. Hilda must have understood when a woman needed her privacy. Star decided she liked the tavern’s new chief-barmaid. With a courteous bow, she accepted the key and ascended the crowded steps, pushing past the waves of dark faces.

  Once she secured the door to her room, she opened her coat and the bunnyfly tumbled out with a small chirp. Star took a blanket off her bed and gently placed the animal in the folds of cotton fabric. She filled a cup of water from the washbasin and positioned it in front of the bunnyfly along with the last crumbs of bread.

  As Star watched the animal nibble the stale morsels, she wondered again how such a sequestered, prized pet wandered into such danger. People couldn’t even get past the walls, and yet a senseless bunnyfly sneaked out, undetected. She sat by it on the floor, petting its furry head until the animal fell asleep. There was only one way it could escape. The fortress must have a crack in the facade so deep it penetrated through to the inner district, or a secret tunnel. Star stored the possibility away. She would think on it later. Now she had letters to sort.

  There was a woodstove by the window, along with a pile of kindling and matches. Star started a fire, the coaxed flames breathing warmth to her small room. With great anticipation, she opened her pack bag, spreading the letters out onto the floor. She knew she should rest, but the lure of the unknown was too strong to ignore. Star needed to know where her morning roving would take her. Quickly, she organized the rolls of stamped papers into piles. The streets of Ravencliff sprang up in her memory, each letter becoming a stop along the way.

  There were several letters for the inhabitants of the inner district, a place where they had an excess of money to spare on such frivolities as correspondence. Most of the letters were for the royal guardsmen of the castle. They had family members in both kingdoms, their orders taking them to posts without thought of their own personal agendas. Star always felt for those away from their homes. She would deliver their letters first.

  As the pile slimmed down, Star became more and more disgruntled. She possessed no letters addressed to the royal family, thus no way to visit the p
rince. Disappointed, she gave in to rest. The journey caught up to her, leaving her limbs sore and weary. The fire in the woodstove rose to full flames, leaving a heady, warm ambiance inviting sleepy dreams.

  Hilda’s boisterous knock woke Star just as she nodded off in front of the orange light. “Dinner.”

  Star rushed to the door, her mind still muddled by the haziness of sleep. She opened the door to see a large platter of meats and roasted potatoes, apple cider and gingerbread. Hilda had cooked a feast.

  “Hilda,” Star said, her voice husky with wonderment, “this is wonderful. Thank you!” Somehow, the opulence of the food made Star forget how long it had taken to arrive.

  But Hilda paid her no heed. In fact, she almost tipped the tray and dropped the food right onto Star. In a swift move, Hilda fell back a step, stumbling into the narrow hallway.

  Star reacted quickly, sliding her arms underneath the tray. Hilda stared wide-eyed into her room. If Star hadn’t reacted quickly, she would have been wearing her dinner instead of eating it. The innkeeper seemed like a hard woman to impress, but here she was, gaping like a schoolgirl watching soldiers march in a parade.

  “What’s the matter?” Star wondered if she’d somehow damaged the interior of her lodgings. “Hilda, are you all right?”

  “Why, I never…” Hilda mumbled. “That’s Nina’s pet.”

  It took long moments for Star to realize Hilda stared at the bunnyfly. The animal looked up from the makeshift bed with large and vacant eyes, a piece of crumb bread stuck in its whiskers. It cooed softly, a polite noise sounding like a question.

  Star’s memory referenced the entire catalog of names she had delivered letters to in Ravencliff, but could think of no one named Nina. The pairing was odd because someone wealthy enough to have a bunnyfly would obviously have enough money for regular correspondence. “I’m sorry, I do not know of a Nina.”

  Hilda’s eyes never left the bunnyfly. “Nina’s just what we call her here at the tavern. That animal belongs to Bellanina, the king’s daughter.”

  “Oh.” Star’s thoughts raced faster than Windracer could ever carry her. Suddenly the bunnyfly didn’t seem as ridiculous. “I found it on the moors. What should I do?”

  “The poor thing’s been missin’ for three days now. The king ordered every soldier on duty to keep their eyes peeled. The promised reward is great. Why, you should deliver it to the castle first thing in the morning.”

  “The castle.” Star tried not to smile as her heart basked in the thought. “Of course.”

  Chapter 3

  Breach

  The castle was the centerpiece of Ravencliff, like a dark cherry on a cream-frosted cake. Chipped from the onyx stone of the mountain, the walls were polished slates of ebony sprinkled with crevices of grainy gold, where black ravens pieced together their nests with hay. The marble hall towered above the other dwellings of the city. Framed by a stone fence high enough to shadow the sun in midday, it was a fortress within a fortress, the pinnacle of the city.

  It was easy enough for Star to gain access. Instead of presenting the royal seal on a letter, Star reached into her shirt and displayed the glittering bunnyfly. The guards stopped chattering in mid-sentence and parted before her like sheep before a wolf, the whites of their eyes growing with newfound curiosity. The path cleared and Star encouraged Windracer on.

  A guard broke the silence as Star rode past. “Where did you find it?”

  “Where no one is allowed to go,” Star answered over her shoulder. She was feeling a bit mischievous, holding her key to the castle in both hands.

  “Where’s that? The king’s brewery?” another guard quipped, igniting a series of rowdy laughter.

  “No.” Star strode in an elegant ceremonial canter, her translucent cloak glimmering in her wake.

  “Then where was the silly thing?”

  Star pulled back on the reins, halting Windracer in mid-step. She turned in her saddle to face the speaker of the question. Although his tone was haughty, he was a young lad, barely graduated from the academy. Uneven stubble grew in patches on his face. “The moors.”

  Silence followed as if her words turned them to stone. No one laughed any longer. Star nudged Windracer back into motion and continued along the way, passing them like she strode among statues. There were no further questions. As she left the brigade, she heard one of them mumble, “Poor Arwen, rest in peace.” Star no longer wondered about the truth of the stable hand’s story.

  Star approached the marble hall and dismounted, leaving Windracer to rest in the shade of a Blackwood. The castle perched on the bald spot of a foothill, several feet from ground level. Here the mist was but a shady afterthought, and the sun warmed the earth and gilded the royal gardens. Star had entered the inner sanctuary, a palace reserved for Ravencliff’s elite.

  She walked through rows of columns. The royal emblem of Ravencliff decorated the sandstone: a single bird flying free from a high perch on a sharp crag. Secretly, Star scoffed at the symbol. The rulers had improperly attributed such an image of freedom to a fortress where the inhabitants remained locked away. Perhaps it was a distant hope, a future they strived for to no avail.

  The doors to the marble hall were propped open, allowing Star to enter the main antechamber. Lined with dramatic tapestries, velvet curtains and cushioned chairs, the hall was a regal testament to Ravencliff’s exquisite grandeur. Dignitaries formed circles of gregarious speech, council ambassadors strolled with servants in tow and members of the extended royal family lounged, creating a sea of voices where laughter and whispers rode the waves in tides.

  Star picked her way through the mingling crowd. She had the privilege of stepping into the inner sanctuary many times before to deliver correspondence and knew exactly whom to speak to regarding the matter of the bunnyfly. A desk raised on a pedestal stood at the far end of the great hall, where the chief of acquisitions sat, smug as a judge, in a leather studded chair.

  Star frowned impatiently when she saw the line. The trail of people stretched halfway across the grand room, weaving in between the columns like a snake. She had not come at the best time. Scratching the bunnyfly’s head, Star took her place at the end of the line behind a scrawny man carrying a long box in the shape of a fiddle.

  The man looked back at her with a cursory glance under unruly curls of chestnut locks. When he recognized her garb, he turned full around. “So, a messenger, heh?”

  Star sighed. This question also followed her in both kingdoms and she was tired of answering. “That’s right.”

  “Delivering something important to the king?”

  Although his tone was playful, Star was not amused. “You could say that, yes.” In her arms, she hid the bunnyfly in a blanket borrowed from the inn. She didn’t need to draw more attention to herself.

  “I sent a letter out a fortnight hence, you see, and I still haven’t gotten a reply.”

  Star stifled the urge to roll her eyes. It was going to turn into one of those conversations. “Sir, messengers don’t keep track of who sends what to whom. We merely deliver the letters that fall into our safekeeping. I can assure you letters are seldom lost or misplaced. If you haven’t heard back, then the recipient hasn’t written a reply.”

  Again she had succeeded in dissatisfying another customer. The man glowered, shifting the weight of his fiddle box to the other shoulder. “I’m just a musician searching for a decent job, you know. I’ve applied to the minstrels at Evenspark several times and haven’t heard back.”

  Star knew getting into the grid was difficult, especially if one was born in the outskirts. Both cities had population surges and little housing available. He had a better chance of finding a pot of gold under a gutter.

  “Perhaps you can find a job here. That’s why you’re in line, right?”

  “Certainly. The prices of living in the inner district of either kingdom are so high nowadays, and more and more go missing from the outskirts. They just don’t h
ave the proper defenses.”

  These issues stood at the forefront of Star’s thoughts. Every penny she saved from her messenger’s stipend brought her closer to buying her parents a new home in Evenspark’s inner district. It would take several more years, but at least she would sleep soundly at night knowing they were finally safe.

  The line moved quicker than Star expected, and the man’s turn came before she could respond further.

  “Godspeed, my friend,” Star said. “I pray you do get a reply from Evenspark.”

  “With one three-year-old and a baby on the way, let’s hope so.”

  * * * *

  It didn’t take long for Star to convince the chief of acquisitions to allow entry into the inner sanctuary. Dressed in their formal clothes of office, no one wanted to carry a sloppy bunnyfly, glitter and fur shedding on everything it touched. Soon, a snobby-nosed attendant, who obviously had better things to do, escorted her down a narrow hallway.

  “Right this way.” The attendant sprinted ahead, leading Star through a series of rooms and great mahogany doorways. Her tired feet left cushioned imprints in a thick, floral rug lining the walkway in elegant luxury. They exited the castle and entered the inner gardens, a labyrinth of hedges surrounding an atrium at the center. Made entirely of glass, the room was a humid greenhouse, its roof covering brightly feathered birds and large palmed ferns in a verdant array. A fountain in the center gurgled lazily, the waters rippling with streams of golden fish.

  “This is her favorite place to study.” He gestured with his hand, encouraging Star to enter. She stepped by him as he stood by the door, impatiently waiting for her to present the animal. With one uneasy look at the attendant, Star entered the atrium. Rounding the fountain, she could hear voices above the splashing water.

  “And what is the capitol of Ravencliff?” A woman questioned with an authoritative air.

  A young girl responded, “This castle, of course!”

  “And who rules this castle?”