Once Upon a Quest Read online

  There were the long, low tables with the piles of furs and rushes. There, the dais covered in treasure upon which a huge white bear, wearing only a golden crown, reclined.

  And there, my brother, standing with a scribe’s desk looped around his shoulders, a quill in hand. His clothing was stained with wine and torn, his hair dull with grit and sweat, the bags beneath his eyes aging him, stealing away his youth.

  I made my way between the tables. A few bears lounged there, playing dice or moving large wooden game pieces around checkered boards. They looked at me with interest, the first anyone had paid to me since I landed in the meadow, but none made a move to stop me.

  “Lina,” Cortland said, fear replacing the exhaustion in his eyes.

  The Bear King sat up, his silver eyes watching me.

  “I have come to return your purse,” I said, finding my voice. I had not made it this far to falter now. “My brother is worth more than silver, more than all the silver in the world and I’m here to bring him home.”

  “Oh Lina, no,” Cortland said. He started to say more, to move toward me, but the Bear King brushed him aside with a glancing blow of a mighty paw and my brother stumbled to his knees.

  “Your brother made the bargain. The bargain was struck. Keep the purse or leave it, it makes no difference to me, girl.”

  “I am not leaving without my brother,” I said. I threw the purse down at the Bear King’s feet and tried to go to Cortland.

  A brown bear yanked me off my feet, its paws wrapping around my body and its jaws closing on my braid. I froze in fear as its rotten meat breath washed over me.

  “The bargain is made,” the Bear King said. “Throw her out.”

  The bear dragged me from the hall. I screamed for Cortland but my cries did no good. I was thrown out.

  “Run, girl,” the bear that threw me out said. “Otherwise I’ll eat you for my dinner.”

  I ran, stumbling away from the hall and out the castle gates until my feet were on grass instead of stone. Then I collapsed to my knees.

  I lay on my side in the grass a long time, watching the grey sky go from bright steel to wet stone in color. The lines of busy humans ceased coming and going from the castle. I climbed to my feet, straightened my violin case on my back, and made my way as stealthily as I could back into the castle. Somewhere under a staircase my brother slept, and I would find him and steal him away. I would not fail, no matter what the Bear King said.

  A rotten bargain was no bargain at all, not to my mind.

  I avoided the main hall doors and went in a smaller door, too small to admit a bear. There I found a long hallway and a woman mopping it. I asked her where the red-headed scribe slept and she pointed toward where the hall bent.

  Following the turn I came to a great staircase cut into the wall and beneath it were straw pallets upon which many human slept. I recognized Cortland by his hair and crept over to him, careful not to disturb the poor sleepers.

  “Cort,” I whispered, shaking him.

  His eyes opened and he caught my hand in his own.

  “Lina, you should not have come here.”

  “I saw how mistreated you were in a dream,” I said, trying to make the words not sound as odd as they were. I figured he worked in a castle full of talking bears, so a true dreaming would not seem too strange to him.

  “This is the bargain I made,” he whispered.

  “No, not like this. This is cruelty, not service.” I shook my head.

  “Come,” he whispered.

  He rose and I followed him as we climbed the stairs. We climbed for a long time, passing six landings and six doors, each with at least a hundred stairs between them. My thighs burned with the effort and I couldn’t keep my breathing quiet as I gasped for air. At the seventh landing he stopped. This door had a branching oak tree carved into it. It was barred with a heavy bar.

  “This door will take you back to the Tanglewood. Go, Lina,” Cortland said. He started to lift the bar but it was too heavy for him alone.

  “Only if you go with me,” I said.

  “The Bear King will come after me, he will take us all if I disobey him. I cannot, Lina, please. This is my fate, don’t make it yours.” His eyes were so old, his voice so tired. I felt almost as though I were talking to papa again and not my twin. Papa had carried a weighted look like this the last few years, his face always in shadow no matter how bright the moment.

  “I will not go,” I said.

  “Then go, hide in the meadow if you must stay,” he said, his voice turning cruel. “But don’t show your face again here. When you are ready to see reason, I will help you open this door.”

  “Cortland,” I said, reaching for him. He pushed me away and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time until he had disappeared.

  I stood alone on the landing, catching my breath. The stairs continued up and up, winding higher. I could not unbar the door on my own and I did not want to walk back past the sleepers and the bears. The meadow held nothing for me. So I started to climb. I passed another seven doors and when I thought my legs would give out and my heart would soon follow, I reached the final landing and the open sky.

  The top of the spire was open, with only a low ledge surrounding it. I sat down in the silver light from the strange sky and pulled out my violin. My hands hurt, but not as much as my heart. I needed space and time to think, to find a way through, a way to convince Cortland to flee with me.

  So I tuned my violin, and laid the bow on the strings. I played my heartbreak, my sorrow, I played a song of love, the love of a sister, a daughter, a friend. I ran my bow across the strings until my fingers were numb.

  Then I let the music die, my heart still heavy, my mind no closer to finding a way.

  Gold and crimson streaked the sky and I heard the call of the bird from the Tanglewood. I felt like that had been years past instead of merely a night or two. The bright bird landed on the ledge and as I watched it transformed into a beautiful woman. She had royal purple hair, golden skin, and robes of ruby red.

  “Your kindness freed me,” she said as she slid off the ledge and came to sit in front of me. “But your music called me. Why the heartbreak, child?”

  I told her everything. It spilled out of me in flood that I could no more stop than I could halt the tides of the sea. When I was done I felt like a towel must feel after it has been soaked and wrung out again.

  “Lift your bow,” the bird-woman said. “I will teach you a song so beautiful it will crack even the heart of the Bear King. You will play it for him, but do not finish it. He will beg you to finish, he will offer you whatever you wish, and with that you may free your brother, I promise.”

  My fingers shook on my bow. “Thank you,” I whispered. “But…”

  “Shh, my dear,” the bird-woman said with a laugh. “Kindness should be rewarded, as should love and sacrifice for family. What kind of world would this be if it weren’t?”

  I thought of Moira then, her basket of bread in the Beer Hall, and of my wish to be as sweet as she instead of prickly and stubborn. I thought of mama, too, her boney fingers moving bread from her nearly empty plate to Callie’s so that my littlest sister would not cry herself to sleep with hunger pains. And I thought of Cortland, facing down death at the hands of a bear and turning the circumstance to saving his family instead.

  So I raised my bow and learned the notes that the bird-woman sang. Her voice was fire and thunder in my blood, the sound of a child’s laugh, a brooks burble, a rose-bud opening. Her song was the song of joy and of storms, of love that lasts long after the skin is wrinkled and the back bent with age.

  I thanked her after I heard her song, knowing in my heart I could play it again, for it was music we all must be born knowing and then perhaps forget except in those quiet moments between dreams.

  Then I walked back down the hundreds of stairs and went to play my song for the Bear King.

  He did not throw me out, his curiosity too strong to resist me. Cortland would
not meet my eye, instead he stood sideways to me, holding the huge goblet for the king.

  The bears fell silent as I began to play. I played all the beauty and strength of the world but stopped even as the song reached its climax.

  Silence crashed into the space. The Bear King roared.

  “More,” he demanded. “The song is not done.”

  “What will you give me to finish the song?” I asked, standing strong in the face of his fetid rage as I had promised the bird-woman I would.

  Cortland was staring at me now, his mouth open in awe. I admit, it felt good, the petty joy of a sister who has finally shown her brother she’s better than he. I pushed aside the pettiness, hoping that we’d have the rest of our lives for me to rub in this moment later.

  “Give me my brother,” I said.

  “He made a bargain, he stays,” the Bear King said with a growl.

  “Good night,” I said, preparing to put my violin away.

  “I will give you whatever you can carry from my dais,” the Bear King said, speaking quickly.

  I looked at the mound of treasure. I looked at my brother. I smiled slowly and looked back at the king.

  “Do you give your word? Anything on your dais that I can carry away?” I said, raising my bow to the strings again.

  “I give my oath,” the Bear King growled.

  I finished the song, pulling out the last notes until no one, not even my brother, not even the bears, had a dry eye among them. Then I laid my violin in its case, put my case on my back, and walked up to the dais.

  I took the goblet from Cortland’s hands and set it down. Then I bent and heaved my brother over my shoulders, my tired legs buckling under his weight. I had the thought I should be glad we’d starved all year or I might never have managed him otherwise.

  The Bear King roared for me to halt but I made my way toward the side door I guessed led to the stairway and the spire.

  “You said what she could carry,” a bear cried out as the Bear King roared for me to stop again. A chorus of agreement greeted that and the king quieted. He had been made a fool in his own Hall and I knew that wouldn’t keep him down for long.

  I pushed through the door and headed to the steps.

  “You are insane,” muttered my brother.

  “Hush,” I gasped. “You are heavy.”

  I climbed. My legs burned but I dared not set Cortland down. I could hear shouting behind me. The bears might be changing their minds or the king might be reconsidering his oath, so I spared no rests for myself.

  Stair after stair, landing after landing, my world narrowed down to lifting one foot. Then the next foot. Then the first again.

  “Lina, stop, the oak door,” Cortland said.

  I stopped. I was too tired to know where I was, I had lost count of the landings. I set him down and sagged against the wall.

  “You have to help me get the door open,” he said, looking down the stairs behind us. “I don’t know how long we have until he thinks up some loophole in his oath.”

  Together, heaving and pushing with all our remaining strength, my twin and I got the bar from its iron holds on the door. The door yawned open as we pulled it, daylight, greenlight of the Tanglewood spilling through. We stumbled out into the wood and turned to look behind.

  “How do we close it?” I asked.

  “It can only be barred from the other side,” Cortland said.

  “Pull it shut,” I said. “And hold it there.” I had a wild idea, born of flying with the North Wind, of sharing wine with an herb wife, of learning songs from a bird-woman. I drew my violin from its case and began to play again.

  Crimson and gold flashed in the trees above and the bird-woman landed, shifting to her human form.

  “Please,” I said, “I have nothing to give you, but we need your help one last time to seal this door.”

  “Give me your violin,” she said. “Then I will do as you ask.”

  “Lina.” Cortland’s voice held worry and sorrow in it.

  My violin was the only piece of my old life, of my old dreams of university. But I had dreamt of playing for kings and queens, and had I not already? A dream was nothing without life to see it through.

  I handed over my instrument. The bird-woman set the bow to the strings and played a song that even now lingers in my heart, a song of binding and all things that are forever intertwined, a song of healing, too, of knitting together things that are broken, both material and not.

  The door sealed shut, the oak’s bark growing in around it until nothing remained of the door but a scar in the wood.

  I fell into Cortland’s arms as we embraced and kissed each other’s cheeks, finally free.

  “Thank you,” I said to the bird-woman. “I am sorry I have so little to give for all your help.”

  She held out my violin. “Take this, child, bring song to the world. That is the true price I ask.”

  I took my instrument, trying not to clutch at it or seem ungrateful. The woman laughed and then became a bright bird once again, flying off into the dark branches.

  I put my violin back in its case, slung it on my back, and then took my brother’s outstretched hand.

  “Come,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story is based on the Norwegian fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon. In that story, a woman marries a bear and then has to save her husband from trolls. I kept some elements such as the quest involving meeting the North Wind to take the main character to the castle, but I chose to explore a brother and sister relationship and the meaning of family instead.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Annie Bellet is the USA Today bestselling author of The Twenty-Sided Sorceress, Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division, and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh.

  Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

  Join her newsletter, and visit her website, anniebellet.com.

  A Bell in the Night

  Evelyn Snow

  Sweat beaded my forehead and plastered my hair to the sides of my face. A broken bra strap dangled on my arm, and I was pretty sure my breath could be distilled for insecticide. Spending the last twelve hours inside a tin can of a food truck had dumped my mood into a downward spiral that ended just short of taking up murder as a hobby.

  A wedge of light spilled over gravel and sparse grass as the door to the food truck where I’d been working all day opened. A man’s bald head popped around the edge. Two of the street lamps near our location had gone out but enough light splashed from nearby poles that it wasn’t pitch black. He craned his head one way and another until he spied me.

  My boss, Mr. Andari. “You are still here, Stevie?”

  Clearly.

  He extended a hand and tapped his watch. “I have to leave early. I can’t wait for you again.”

  “No worries. My ride should be here soon.”

  Call me an optimist, but the last time I’d talked to Jack he’d said he’d pick me up. That had been three days ago. The odds on whether he’d remember tonight were even money.

  I leaned against the cool strength of a massive tree trunk. Eleven at night. The temperature still spiked over 80 humid degrees and turned the city park around me into a circle of hell. Most of the carts were closed for the night since the crowds had migrated to the river where a bandstand had been setup for concerts.

  A wave of exhaustion rippled through me. I needed to be home and getting a head start on the reading list for a summer class. Step one in my grand plan to rehabilitate my GPA. My advisor at Acadia State kept trying to get me to tell her what was going on inside my head. Sometimes I wondered if she sensed my obsession with
Jack, so she could offer practical coping strategies, woman-to-woman. Ugh.

  A truth I barely admitted to myself, let alone anyone else, was that Jack and I weren’t friends. Not really. Not because we didn’t like each other or didn’t hang out, but because there were things between us we didn’t talk about and couldn’t explain if we’d tried. Not exactly a recipe for bonding or trust.

  “It’s dangerous for a young woman to be alone in the night.”

  I startled, looking for the source of the voice, finding nothing.

  And then I’m peering into the darkness, seeing only trees and shuttered food carts and trash stuffed into overflowing bins and staring and thinking and my brain as sluggish as an antique soft serve machine …

  And then, yes, I realized the difference: No light streamed from the open food cart door because the door was closed; the door was closed and the windows were dark. From one breath to the next, everything had changed, and I hadn’t noticed. My pulse kicked up a notch. My old fear rose in my gut and threatened to close my throat; shivers of fear danced over my shoulders.

  This is what happens when monsters prowl and a bell rings in the night. This is what happens when your mind wanders off and leaves you alone in the dark …

  Stop. Think.

  I took two deep breaths and then one more. When my pulse slowed, I peered into the night once more, ticking off what I detected: food cart door closed, windows dark, Mr. Andari’s silver Hyundai gone.

  I could feel the cool reassuring rectangle of my phone in my shorts pocket. Pull it out. Call someone. My hands would not move.

  “You should take more care with your safety.” The same voice again. This time I noticed how it was smooth and velvety and not in a good way. Like something left out in the sun too long and gone soft with rot.

  I found my voice. “Nobody’s bothering me but you.”

  “If I wanted to bother you, I could have done so easily before now.” A tall, too narrow silhouette emerged from the shadows.