He seemed almost stunned by my joy and rose slowly. He tipped his head to the side as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. Without further comment, he turned and left the room.
I realized after the king left that I hadn’t asked about Boojohni. I was ashamed of myself and waited eagerly for the king to return, like he’d said he would so I could draw him pictures and thereby demand answers. But he didn’t return. Not the next day or the next.
My fingers grew black from practicing the characters he’d written out for me, copying them carefully. I found the letters in Lark and the letters in Tiras, but didn’t know what they were called. They were simply shapes. Lines. Symbols that were completely meaningless. But I had a plan. When Tiras came back, I would have him write out the words for every object in my room on separate pieces of paper, naming each one. Chair. Table. Floor. Bed. Candle. I would put each paper in its proper place, and I would learn the words and decipher the sounds of each letter, every combination.
But Tiras didn’t come back.
I tried to convince the maids to write the words they knew. I also showed them the picture of Boojohni, but they all shrugged and shook their heads. They didn’t know much, and I didn’t trust the one who seemed to dislike me more each day. The others called her Greta, and I got the feeling she didn’t know how to read or write any better than I did, though she wouldn’t admit it. She just stomped around and pushed me away when I tried to communicate. Then there was Kjell.
Four days after Tiras had shown me how to write my name, Kjell returned to drag me from my room in the middle of the night, just like before. I went with him willingly, eagerly, though his promise to help me had been a lie. I didn’t do it for him. I didn’t do it for the king, who’d lied to me too. I did it for the words he’d said he would teach me.
Kjell didn’t take me into the bowels of the castle this time. We went to another tower, a tower directly opposite mine, and I marveled that the king had been so close all this time. I wondered if he’d seen me standing on my balcony, waiting for him to return. But when Kjell shoved me inside the chamber and slammed the door, locking it behind me, I found myself completely alone.
The king’s bedcovers were tangled, his clothes discarded on the floor, but he was gone, and though I pounded on the door, Kjell did not return to explain what I was doing there and what was expected of me. Stepping out onto the balcony, I discovered the night was incredibly bright, the moon almost full, just like it had been the night I’d found the eagle in the forest. But there were no birds to save in Jeru City. Or kings, for that matter. I was lonelier than I’d ever been, and that was a feat in itself. I pulled my dressing gown around my body and returned to the richly appointed chamber.
There were books on the shelves and several lay open on a table not so different from the one in my room. My father kept the books at the keep locked in his study. I had never seen one up close. I turned the pages, studied the words, and tried to make sense of them, tracing the shape of each letter with my finger, the way I’d traced my name. I’d determined that the S at the end of Tiras looked and hissed like a snake. I studied the page and found all the words with an s in them. I’d also compared the R shape in our names and determined its sound. Of course the T made a tapping sound at the beginning of Tiras’s name. T-T-T-T. I liked to focus on the sound, making it stutter in my mind like a woodpecker. I was going to take one of the books. When the king came back and found me in his room, I was going to fill my arms with books and refuse to give them back.
I kept the candles lit and pored over the pages until my eyes would no longer focus and my head began to droop. I curled up in a corner of the king’s bed, trying not to notice how the covers smelled of fresh air and cedar. Then I slept, heavy and hard, dreaming of the shrieking of birdmen and the words that danced on the pages of the king’s books. The letters shifted and reformed, whispering their names in my mother’s voice. I heard a cry, piercing, louder than that of the Volgar, and a desperate fluttering, like a dozen flags whipping in the wind. It was so close, so present, that I opened my eyes blearily, reluctant to abandon sleep so soon.
Dawn was breaking and grey light had just begun to spill through the open balcony doors and sneak across the king’s chamber. The doors had been open when Kjell had pushed me into the room the night before, and it hadn’t felt necessary or even right to close them, as if the king himself would use the balcony to reemerge from the night. But morning had returned without the king, and I blinked wearily, caught in that drowsy place where sleep and wakefulness become a strange blend of both.
The eagle from the woods, no sign of the arrow buried in his chest, perched on the balcony rail. I watched him through glazed eyes, my lids at half-mast, unalarmed and completely unconvinced that I wasn’t still sleeping. He was aware of me, of that I was sure. He cocked his head and shrieked, as if warning me away.
The door of the king’s chambers burst open, and Kjell erupted into the room, making me bolt upright, sleep abandoned, the eagle forgotten.
“Where is he?” Kjell growled, as if I’d spun the king into gold while he slept. I shook my head helplessly and extended my arms, indicating the empty chamber. He turned in place, his hands on his hips, frustration oozing from every pore. The word hopeless flitted in the air around him, and this time I didn’t just hear the word, I saw it, recognizing the S—a pair of curling snakes that hissed with sound before disintegrating with his movement.
He grabbed for my arm, and I wriggled away, darting to the table where the king’s books were spread. I grasped the first one I touched, scooping it up and clutching it to my chest.