Archive of Our Own

Words upend the world, my dears.

Shall I tell you how? Then to begin it, think of the young prince of a large kingdom offering marriage to a princess of a little one. The word the princess said to him was yes, and her father said yes, and the prince's father said yes and from all those yeses exchanged came everything that followed--the first of all being the change in the princess herself, for she was no longer just a princess but a bride-to-be as well.

Now imagine that bride-to-be on the road running from the cozy nest of her own home to the grand sprawling city of her future husband, a winding country road where she and her guards and her servants and more than a dozen carts and carriages have paused for three of the drivers to haul one of the wagons out of a mud-sink. As they heaved at the wheels she looked up and down the baggage line, which seemed to her short as a bobbed sheeptail, and fretted. How was she to greet her husband with pride when this was her dowry train, with thick-legged brown horses and carts that get stuck in mud--carts with nothing in them but new linens and old plate (a little tarnished at the edges, alas) and only one case of jewelry, and those jewels her mother's and as well-worn as they were well-loved?

So she went a little ways away into the pines and called upon the witch-spirit her own mother had set to guard her long ago, which none but herself could see or hear, and begged from her an early wedding gift, some great treasure she could bring to make her husband and her husband's father and everyone who might speak of her as their future queen look well upon her instead of laughing. The witch-spirit, being an agreeable and indulgent sort but caught up rather short at the suddenness of the request, cast her eyes up and down the path--at the men and women, and the carts, and the horses, and the baggage--until they landed on my own self.

A donkey, my dears, nothing more than an old grey jenny that even then had gone well white beyond my muzzle and all through my coat, worn-down at the shoulders and knees and with no more thought in my head than to walk forward until I reached a warm field in the sunshine that had plenty of greens to chew. But I'd one last good trip in me, they thought, and so I'd been eased into harness to haul a few trunks of the bride's embroidery on that long and slogging trip. Then the witch-spirit touched my nose and spoke a phrase which no mortal could have said, and before the hour had passed every carter and maid was abuzz around me, for mixed in with my ordure was a profusion of gold coins, gleaming as if new-minted. Which all made no nevermind to me, you understand, it all being the same amount of use in my eyes, but for the bride-to-be and her servants it meant that my harness must come off and in I must go went to a prime place in the train, and have a tent of green velvet pitched over me when we stopped at at night with two maids to brush my coat and clean my hooves and rub my old joints, and a boy following behind me every step of the way to pick the gold up out of my leavings. And when the bride-to-be did present herself and myself her husband-to-be did laugh, but in way that was kind and joyful, for as I learned there's nothing any prince or king ever needs so much as money.

So at that did a plain little donkey become the prize of the stable of a great kingdom and what beast or man the unlucky driver found to pull the cart I had been unharnessed from--well, that I never learned.

And imagine if you will that bride-to-be, now a queen, well-beloved by her husband the king and her daughter and each one of her subjects--but a queen in her last days, blazing up with fever, coughing out the last of her breath as the sunlight dimmed. When her husband left the room at last, all light gone out of it and of him, he said she had made him vow to marry no one more beautiful than herself. What did she say, do you think? Did she put her mind to what she was asking him to promise when her head turned and rolled on her overheated pillow, desperate for a cool spot to bring her a second’s comfort? Did she weigh her words and how he would follow them when she pushed them off her bone-dry tongue, through her cracked lips? Did she say anything at all?

For whether she did or she didn't, the result is this: that queen's daughter, a gentle and good-hearted young miss, ordered to the altar as her father's next bride.

And this bit you know--her denials crafted as carefully-worded requests for one impossible dress, and another, and another, all three of which he ordered made and given to her with no thought of or how many seamstresses went half-blind stitching them and how many gemsmiths strained their hands faceting the jewels to trim them. And when she, all in desperation, asked for my skin, and her father said "Let it be done"--well, next I knew I was being spread out head to tail on the pale soft carpet of the young miss's bedroom, and for the second time in my own life myself and all about me had been changed, and this time much less pleasant for me than the last.

You will mark it, please, that I was mightily put out, and if I had still had teeth to bite and legs to kick then I should have gnashed most fearsomely and laid about until I knocked down walls on heads. But not a tooth or a hoof would I have laid on the young miss, for it was clear it had been none of her idea, and besides she was a sweet girl who never had passed by in the stables without a sliver of apple to feed me and a scratch for my ears. As they laid me out before her the girl was already beginning to cry, the wounded-sounding sort of crying that is half of fear and half of regret.

Save your tears unless you've need of the salt, I said to her. They'll do not a whit to help you, and as for me, what's been witch-touched doesn't die so easy as that, does it?

Well, she kept on weeping, but after a bit she pulled herself up and went out into the little garden and outside her room there called for her witch-spirit, the same that guarded her mother and that her mother had set to watch over her, who had guided her to ask for those heavenly dresses and my skin. And the spirit, far from being upset at the apparent spoiling of her plans, was pleased as a cat in the new cream at the outcome, and said that the young miss should at once flee for some distant land with myself as her disguise until she found some place that would keep her safe. And she plucked an ash sapling straight up from the garden's soil and gave it to the young miss, as a staff to steady her steps and to call up her belongings whenever she chose.

Now, I was not much inclined to do as told by the one who had such a hand at putting me into the situation—but jacks and jennies are meant to work and better I thought it to be of use than to be turned into a rug to be trod on or a wall hanging to catch the dust. So into a cedar trunk went all the miss's lotions and scent-bottles and her mother's mother's jewels and her dresses that looked like all the many glories of the skies, and at a tap of the ash staff underground the whole thing went. The miss wrapped me around her from head to foot and pulled my face down until it nearly covered all of hers and took the sapling staff in her hand, and out into the cool and gloomy night she went.

What a poor creature she was that night, my tender young miss! She who had never run anywhere except when it pleased her to do so fleeing for her freedom, galloping along when she had the breath for it and loping when she hadn't, uphill, downhill, over brook, over stream, onto footpaths when they were empty and off into the wild hedges and prickle-weeds at the first sound of footfall or hoofbeat, for though the witch-spirit promised that no pursuers should find her the miss had a little dose of sense too. One might trust in spirits much as one liked, but best to round out that trust with the sheltering embrace of the trees and the speed of her feet. All night and into the morning she ran, and when we circled round a town and heard the noontide bell in the distance her weary self was still stumbling on. But when the mid-afternoon sun slanted in her legs her were slanting too; they finally folded up and dropped her to the ground limp as an old sack, that well of desperate energy having gone dry at last, and the poor miss sat in the mossy dirt and had herself as long and bitter a fit of tears as any unlucky girl ever turned out on her own into the wide world, though even at that she kept her head enough to wrap me well 'round herself to muffle the sound of it.

When she'd cried herself out she sat a long while with her head and my head in her narrow cold hands and her feet splayed out in front of her, white silk slippers already well-grimed and torn at several places in the seams.

"Jenny," she said at last, her mouth turned inwards to the dark burrow under my skin. "Oh, jenny, what's to do?"

Rise up and walk on, young miss, or else sit where you are until the dirt comes up and the leaves come down to cover you.

"How long do I run?"

Until you find safety, wherever that may be.

She sat quiet for a bit. "Dear jenny," she said after a long while, "no one spoke against him for me." And she told me that not one of the gentlemen or ladies of the court had shown any abhorrence of the idea, or had not dared to show it, and one or two had even been sent to urge her to it.

He is a king, miss, was all I could say to her.

She had no answer or question to follow that, but drew in on herself more, and laid herself over in the mosses as if she meant to sleep. And to that I said no more and only settled in and wrapped myself 'round her as best I could, for there's one way a human's most like a donkey instead of a sheep: when it comes down to the quick of it, no one can boss them but their own self.

The sun went across our heads, and onward. My miss stayed where she was and only made a little movement now and then to shift her weight. Then as the sun began to sink a little sound carried through the trees from the north, where we had crossed a road. All in one move, before I had the chance to know it was happening, the miss had pushed herself up and to her feet, and began creeping back that way.

The sound had been a little group of men and women with a couple of wagons full of furs setting up their camp for the night. One of them let out a yelp when the miss came through the edge of the trees, but they all soon settled and asked who she was and what she wanted. My miss opened her mouth and I heard the click of her tongue moving against her teeth, and then she pressed her lips together and shook her head, and tried to smile.

The travelers being the kind sort and, I suppose, and seeing or guessing that she needed a meal, let her swallow down a bowl of scrapings from the stew-pot, and when the miss was done she nodded and bowed her thanks to them very prettily and ran on.

That was how she and I went, moving at a run or a walk, spending the nights in drifts of new-fallen leaves and tucked into haystacks, though she never quite slept truly and I would feel her start awake at any loud sound. She herself was silent for every step of it, her mouth buttoned up at both sides for fear that the high polish on her voice might show her true self through my skin and put any searchers closer on her trail. And why should she need to speak when a sad word and an outstretched hand's understood by anyone? Most of those she begged from would give her a drink and the heel of a bread-loaf or a slice cut from meat that had not yet turned and sent her on her way; the kinder ones would let her sit and eat at the doorstep or by the hearth, to give her a chance to rest her feet from the road and her head from the sun or the rain. But after a half-hour or so they would prod her along no matter how beseeching a manner she turned on them, for by now between my skin and the dirt of the road she was becoming a fright to see, and what innkeep or householder would keep such a strange draggle-tail in their service and lose their good reputation?

So on we went, and step by step the land around us changed, the woods fading into wold, the wold broken up by hills, the thick-leaved ash and oak and beech fading away into tall, bare-trunked pines and short scrubby fruit trees and clutches of thick brush scattered throughout a landscape that was half fields and half rocky hills and outcrops. And slowly, even more slowly, the words changed too. The sounds that would have come from her own tongue began to gum up in people's mouth, sticky as taffy--words of another country that she knew in snatches from lessons and tutors. Then those words altered too, sounds dropping in or out until she understood barely one in ten, and then sharpened into unrecognizability, the consonants becoming hard and the vowels folding together. One morning she took an overcooked slice of flatbread and a cupful of water from a servant girl at the rear of a house and not one sound the girl said had any meaning for she or me, and that day for the first time I felt the tightness in her shoulders begin to loosen, and at night her rest almost became real sleep--for a land where she recognized none of their words would surely recognize nothing of her, you see?

And then one evening, the first grey curtains of night dropping down over the sky, my miss was picking her way along a narrow foot-trail that weaved its way in and out of patches of greenery when charging through the brush and straight for us came a fat goose with a spotted tail, dappled grey over white, making its bid for freedom and honking fit to bring the dead up from the ground. When it neared my miss's feet it made a warning snap at her bare ankle and then circled round, hissing.

Grab it round the head and under the stomach, I told her, and she, blessed to not know enough to be afraid of the nasty thing, by very chance managed to do just that, so when half a moment later when harried-looking woman shoved her way through the brush there for her to see was the young miss with the naughty bird caught up safe as you please in the crook of her arm.

The woman, an older sort in a well-worn shirt and trousers and boots, looked startled and then pleased. She called a gabble of words in that sharp language and began to turn back the way she had come, and when my miss hesitated she beckoned insistently.

The goose in my miss's arm wriggled and began to honk again, and after a moment my miss followed the woman out of the brush. Up a wide sloping road was a fenced yard of packed dirt with a neatly-built barn and a scattering of outbuildings, and beyond the yard more lines of fences ran over the hills like seam-lines on a quilt. There was a tall house, too, of brown and white stone with a red-tiled roof and lights in the windows. Everything looked neat and trim, or a least as neat as one can ever make a farm look.

The miss trailed the woman up to the outer fence and set down the goose, which went with many squawks back to its fellows in the farmyard, its spotted tail up in indignation like a pile of stormclouds. The older woman cast her eyes head to toe over the miss, her hands and feet especially, and said a question, to which my miss touched her mouth and shook her head. The woman looked considering, then pointed at my miss and mimed sweeping, and scrubbing, and hauling, and said the word again with a hook in her tone and a lift in her eyebrows--a word that had to be 'yes?'.

My young miss pulled me tighter around her shoulders. "Shall I?" she whispered.

Do only as you please, miss.

She shifted on her feet--her bare feet, those white slippers long ago worn away to threads and patches and left clinging to brambles--and said the word back: yes.

So the woman led her through the gate and the farmyard and into the house, into a crowded kitchen, where she was shown to a corner and given one mug of water and another of milk and a bowl of clear soup that smelled to my nose of lemon. The kitchen was full of people crammed in around tables, and the waves of conversation which had quieted as she stepped over the threshhold rose up again around her at a higher pitch as she ate, but she kept her head down over her bowl and cups. Once everything she'd been given was drunk and eaten up the woman led her to a room off the kitchen with just enough space for a straw tick on a wobbly frame, and a washstand of pale wood with a pitcher and basin, and a chair that looked to my eyes like a dozen broken broomhandles patched together. But it was a room with four walls and a door that locked, and the minute the door shut behind her my poor tired miss fell onto the mattress, and slept that night in blanket and under a roof for the first time in many and many a week.

When the sun came up, she was put to work.

The place she'd fetched up, you see, was the farm meant serve the great residence over the hills to the west where the king and queen were like to spend their summers. Three women, who by their darkish hair and long frames and rounded faces could only be sisters, had charge of the farm and all its runnings. The eldest toiled in the kitchen and its gardens and thought of nothing beyond them, while the youngest kept the rest of the house and from her cool looks and manner expected my miss not only to run off at the first chance but to take the geese and the goats and the silver along with her. But the yards and the barns and the fields and the groves were under the charge of the middle sister, who had fetched back my miss and the goose, and it was she who showed my miss to her tasks and taught her, briskly but kindly, the words for what she was meant to do.

In the kitchen she was allowed touch nothing of the food or the plates, but only scrub whatever she was put to, whether it was pots or pans or plates or the tile of the floor itself. All the girls who cleaned the rest of the house or milked the goats and the men who tended the field and hauled in their bounty found a fine new sport in standing or sitting around her and saying--well, what they said neither she nor I knew for certain but both of us could guess the measure of it, for while the miss had been given a cast-off dress somewhat cleaner than her old torn and stained gown the grime of her work and the odd novelty of my own skin besides made her a strange bedraggled figure, and her quietness an easy target. But while the sisters allowed this teasing to go--not only that day, but every day after--they never let any of them stand too long about it before shooing them off to attend to some task, and when one of the young men reached out as if he meant to tug my skin off of my miss the eldest sister gave him a clip on the ear that made him yowl, and after that they kept themselves to words alone.

Outside matters went a little more easily, for while the work was harder there was too much to be done to leave time for teasing or being teased, for she had to keep the yards and the goats’ pens and the rabbit’ hutches and the chickens’ coops clean, and haul the slops to the pigs and piglets and scrub out their trough to keep the wood from going foul, and at last to herd the geese down the hills and along a footpath to a river-fed pond, where they could swim about and nibble at grass and cresses and make themselves nuisances well out of the way of those that mattered.

In this last she was lucky, for the minding of the geese was the easiest task of all. A gracious plenty of the feathered nuisances had I seen in my days in my own farmyards, and every one of their tricks too, and I could tell her which of them needed a strong hand to keep with the flock, and which would scare easily and refuse to move at all, and which had the look of liking to nip and be contrary in all ways. That ash staff she had carried did well enough as a herding stick to tap this or that wandering goose back in with its companions, and within a day or two my young miss could march them up and down that winding path to the pond and back again with barely an errant flutter, and at evening they would waddle into their pen neatly and quietly as sleepy children into their beds, and the youngest sister could only say tch! and leave her to it. Once she he slept out all that road-weariness my miss became the first in the household to tumble out of bed in the morning, stoking up the kitchen fires and haul in the first buckets. As the last of fall slipped away she continued to work with no complaint, and by this she made herself much appreciated by those that matter. The weather that set everyone else to shivering and shirking their time by the fire was only a little chill to her, who was used to the biting winds and ankle-deep snows of what had been her home.

Here there was no snow. Here all indeed was quite different, from the way the girls wore their hair to the songs the workers sang amongst themselves to keep their spirits up when they day had been too long. Even the cup of milk my miss drank each morning was strange to her--my nose could catch how much sweeter and riper the scent was, for their milk came not from soft-eyed cattle but from that herd of rambunctious goats, who baa'd and bleated as the milkmaids worked at their buckets with their ringing chatter. It was this chatter and every part of it that set my dear miss most apart, as the middle sister had little time to teach her more than what was necessary, and all the words that flew around the miss's ears were nothing but noise and buzz for a long while. In this I did what I could, for while the miss hauled and scrubbed and swept through her days my own long ears had nothing to do but hear the back-and-forth chatter of the kitchen and the yard, and to store up what sounds I could pick out and when they were said. On the first evening when my miss ended the day with enough life left in her to sit for a spell instead of toppling straight into her bed, she draped me over the back of the room's one chair and perched herself on the rustling straw of her mattress.

"Tell me, dear jenny, what you've heard," she said, and so I did while she tended to her hands, her poor narrow hands which had come up red and raw as fresh cuts of meat. She had struck the ground of her little room with her ash staff--in this the witch-spirit was good as her word--and brought out a vial of sour-scented lotion from the chest to dress them. Only the worst of it, and only enough to soothe the pain, you know, for she had seen the work-worn hands of the other girls and even the sisters themselves, and knew it'd do her no good to rub away the callouses that would keep them from hurting under the heat and chill of the dishwater and the twisted rope handles of the buckets. As she rubbed I spilled out what my ears had caught for her--only little words at first, like door and gate and jar--and so on the night after that, every night, the two of us trading sounds back and forth until we could puzzle them out. And soon enough she'd learned enough pick out what was called back and forth in the kitchen or the yard or the field, and even what they called her during their jibes while she sat at her scrubbing--a mocking nickname that in the miss's own tongue would have been 'Fair Jennet'.

But though she might piece together sounds into words and words into sentences, with no one to speak to she had no surety that they were well-formed, and what need had anyone in the house to speak to Fair Jennet other than to give her an order? Mind you, sometimes the eldest sister hurrying by with a pan, or the middle sister about her business in the yards, and even once or twice the youngest sister (in a very offhanded manner, mind you), would pause for a moment and ask her Are you well? And in a small voice, half-muffled under my skin, she would say Yes, very well. That was all.

On every holy day--which here they kept on the first day of the week, and not the last--she had her time to herself after the morning rush of chores, and what she pleased to do was to set me aside and bathe herself and put on a clean chemise, and bring out of her trunk her three grand dresses. But--will you believe it if I say it?--not once did she don them, but instead laid them out all around her, drawing out the sleeves and spreading the skirts until it seemed she had put the whole splendor of the sky into her little room. And then she would sit herself down on her spindly chair, and look at them, and not I nor anyone else in the world can tell you what she was thinking.

Midway through one of these days she rose up and in sudden fury stomped on the train of the sun-bright dress, gold-embroidered hem with her small foot, then took it up and threw it to floor in the farthest corner of the room. It lay there all day, glittering like a treasure hoard, until she brusquely gathered it up and stuffed it back in the trunk.

It was safety, at least, and while the miss cried into her bedding some nights, or woke gasping and upset from nightmares on others, for just as many she slept calm and deep as a child in the cradle. On the nights when she was restless, I tried as best I could to soothe her out of despair--now, I would tell her, didn't I go from a worn old harness to the finest stable-box in the land with only a few words? If nothing else, the longer she stayed her the likelier the search for her would become less and less, and once that's ended, why, she may put off her drudge's disguise and live--not as a princess, perhaps, but as whatever she chooses.

And then one grey morning after ones of these bad nights down the path with her goose-flock went my miss, her mood already dark, her feet already damp—for was early spring and the rains were mizzling in and out—and her charges made so lively by the wet that it would have taken more than her nimble hand on her staff to keep them marching in line. Halfway to the pond Spotted Tail took an eager hop into a puddle for a paddle; a goodly number of her compatriots followed her in and plunked their rears down to frolic about with her, and looked disinclined to go anywhere unless the puddle grew large enough to wash them down to the sea.

So busy was my young miss with trying to coax the troublesome ones of out of the puddle while keeping the others at hand, and so occupied was I with keeping both eyes about to make sure that none wandered away, that neither of us heard the sounds until--

--snap your fingers, if you will, for that was how quick it all happened, both she and I hearing that ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump just beyond the brush, and the sound was was hoofbeats at a gallop and just as she knew it and I knew it a shape came leaping over the greenery, a horse-and-rider shape touching down neatly onto the path and leaping onwards at a run, head and legs and tail all a dark blur that sent the miss stumbling back out of the way and the flock scattering out of the puddle and up and down and off in every direction, squawking with fear and indignation, and the miss after a moment to catch herself began squawking too, yelling at the disappearing hooves the few words she's learned are the sort to be yelled--stop! idiot!--and then in one last piercing bite of a scream that rising above the honking of the geese what she knows not as a word but a clutter of shrieked sounds one of the milkmaids had hurled at another a few mornings ago over an overturned bucket.

Breathing hard with anger, she stomped her feet in the mud once or twice and then began to gather the rattled geese back into their group, nudging them together with little motions of her staff and calling with chirps to coax back the ones that had fled along the path.

At a honk from Spotted Tail she turned, and stopped, for here came the rider on foot, the horse walking placidly behind her through the wet grass of the field. They were coming back to where the young miss stood with a little cluster of geese going before them, for the lady--it was a lady, in a split skirt and trousers the same color as the mud under her feet, and a ragged horse-groom's coat and worn boots--the lady had her crop in one hand and the reins in the other and with those and the looming weight of the horse was hurrying the birds back to their flock. The horse, a thick-chested dun mare, came to a neat stop behind her as the rest of the stray birds waddled to their sisters. I am sorry, the lady was saying, sorry, sorry!--my young miss had learned apologetics quickly--but all the rest was a muddle to the miss's ears and mine.

"You," my miss said, loud, and stopped, digging the fingers of her free hand into the damp nap of my skin as she fumbled for the words. "That--" She made a low sweep with the herding stick along the path the lady had trampled through. "Too fast. Don't."

The lady nodded, which sent water dripping off her nose; she had no hat or hood to keep the drizzle off her olive skin. Her damp hair trailed like black ink over her shoulders and across her face. She began to speak once more, then paused, her dark eyes on the miss's face, and said it slowly and clearly. Sorry again, and something about the horse and the rain.

My miss bit her lip and shook her head.

The lady looked thoughtful. She spoke again, and this time the words were an even-sounding flow that half-echoed the patter of the rain.

Another shake of the head from my miss. At her feet the geese were still bustling anxiously, and Spotted Tail dared a snap at the mare's leg; the mare shifted its weight and wuffled into the grass.

Now the lady rolled her lip against her teeth, her expression determined. When she spoke again the words were slow and halting, but clear, and I saw my miss's hand tighten on the staff, for there were words that rang familiar to her and me--not her mother-tongue but her mother's tongue, a of a language that had been spoken to her alongside her country's tongue since she was in the cradle, until her mother died.

The lady must have caught some sign of that, for she continued on. "Most regretful," she said. "With rain, er...becomes frolicsome," and the words came out with the stresses all mangled. "Not she," she added, patting the mare on the shoulder. "I."

"You shouldn't run--" my miss started, then corrected herself. "You shouldn't ride so fast in the rain, or leap over into a footpath."

The lady had focused hard on my miss while she said this, and after the sentence was done she was quiet for a few moments; I could the shift of her mouth and the flick of her eyes as she sorted through the words to understand them, before she nodded. "Regrets," she said again, and looked very abashed. "Broken? Eh--" She shook her head. "Wounded?" she tried, with pained twist to her face that could have been meant to convey the meaning or her own frustration at the word not quite being what she wanted.

"No," the miss said, and I felt the jolt of her shoulders under my skin, a sudden stifled laugh at the lady's face "Though--" She spread a hand over the geese. "They will be restless all day."

Down the lady's eyes went to the fretting geese, then up again at the miss, and down and up from head to toe. "You--" She began twice more, finally managed, "You labor--" then stopped, looking exasperated.

"I work," the miss said, and then 'work' in the lady's sharp language--"at the farm. The farm for the great house." She pointed her staff back up the slope.

"You are...from elsewhere?"

"Yes," my miss said. "From far away," and then, when the lady looked uncertain, said it again as best she knew how in the new tongue.

"Ah," said the lady, with a little nod, and looked pleased at understanding. The look began to fade a little as the silence grew, with only the rain and the plat of the geese's feet in the mud to break it. There seemed to be nothing else for either of them to say.

Then the lady pulled off one of her cracked leather gloves and extended her bare hand, palm down. "Reparation," she said, her voice dropping down in the wrong spot on the word. She glanced at the miss's staff, her face now in a widening grin, and it became clear: she meant the miss to rap her knuckles as punishment.

My young miss's back stiffened at this; I could tell to her it seemed very like the mocking of the milkmaids and farmhands. But the lady kept her grin and her hand stayed where it was, so my miss raised up her staff and gave the lady's hand a light tap, just enough to make it dip in the air and scatter the raindrops that had started to gather.

The lady shook her head a little, still smiling. "Could have been harder," she said. "Not fear, I." She gave the mare a gentle tug to stand her into place, and put that same bare hand into my young miss's own to hold steady as she swung up. "The word you called," she said as she settled back into the saddle. "The last. You--" She paused to sort through whatever ways of saying it she had in her head. "You ken it not?"

My miss put her chin out. "No."

The lady leaned down to put her face close and whispered, and what she whispered brought up the blood so hot in my miss's face I felt the burn of her ears under mine. "Now you do," said the lady, with a laugh at the blush, and that laugh carried back as we both watched her pivot the mare and ride away over the crest of the hill.

My miss stood there until the fluttering of the geese called her back to her task, and though it mizzled and drizzled all the rest of the day while she kept watch over the flock she made no complaint of it to me, and more than once she curled and uncurled her hand within the dry shelter of my skin.

Next day the weather was better, and as my miss and the geese went down the path I could feel by her carriage and step that her mood was light, since as if to atone for the previous day the feathered beasts were being as mild as watered milk.

Then she went round the path's bend and her feet stilled, for there was the dun mare standing placid and polite and the lady beside her in the same ragged coat--and with a hat this time, a floppy-brimmed thing that looked as though she'd let her mare trod on it more than once. She smiled at the geese, and smiled wider at my miss.

"I wait until you pass," said she, the words crisp with precision, even as she kept coming down wrong on the vowels. "Then I can't upset you or them."

Well, what was my miss to do but lead the flock on past the two of the them, with an eye towards the mare in case it should decide to shy and startle her charges? (It did not, and in fact watched them with a mild and calm gaze, even when Spotted Tail made loud honk to chide another goose that had jostled her.) And what was she to do when the lady swung off her saddle and began to lead the mare down the path alongside her?

Without speaking the little parade made its way to the pond, where the geese scattered to investigate the grasses or paddle about as it pleased them and the mare went to dip her muzzle into the water for a long while.

"She slakes her thirst," the lady said, and then, with a fair stab at casualness said something much shorter in her own tongue.

My miss repeated it, and then in her mother's language, said, "She drinks."

"Drinks," the lady repeated once, and then again, rolling the word around in her mouth until she had the sound nearly right.

So you see, it started very easily, without one or the other suggesting it, almost as if it were a game they had fallen into. Between them they traded a whole clutch of words for the things they had around them and could point to--pond, rock, horse, sky, tree--until around noontide when the lady, a little awkward in both words and manner, said that she must go. So they taught each other their words for 'farewell', and the lady rode off across the hills just as she'd done the day before.

"What means it, jenny?" my miss asked me that evening. "That she should spend her morning trading words with a stranger?"

I cannot say, miss.

"Surely she'll not be there again," she said to herself and me.

Well, now, of course she was, and was all through the spring and the summer—not every day, for certain, but many of them, until it became more usual to see her than to not. So my miss's learning of the lady's language, which she and I had hobbled through together, now grew by great strides, while the miss dusted off and brought out the words of a tongue she had once known as well as breathing. To my ears the lady's grasp of that was half-handed; she had a gathering of simple words and another of high-flown phrases, but what she said she had to cobble together between the two, with very little of the how or why of it. So hand in hand they picked their way through the thorny fields each other's words, both of them learning my skirts and your shoe, that tree and this river. That cloud looks like a goose. I have have taken off a glove. My hat is on the mare.

See in your mind: the lady with her tongue stuck out to show my young miss the way of saying their tricky double-t, a rolling and a flick against the upper teeth; the lady with her mouth opened in a long O and my miss pressing her dainty thumb and and forefinger on either side of it, pushing it into the right shape to say eu and au. They both fell apart laughing after that, the lady with a smudge of dirt brushing the corner of her lips.

One day the lady brought with her a little bundle of white linen, and when she untied it there was a picnic feast in miniature: slivers of flat breads with smears of butter and sauces; leaves of a dozen different green-leaved herbs that smelled so sharp and delicious that I would have bitten into them myself; whitecakes sticky with honey; and all to teach my young miss the words that meant this or that sort of taste, for how better to remember their dozens of words for each particular sensation of tartness and bitterness, zest and piquancy, the melting sweetness that flowed smoothly, the sugary sweetness that clung to the lips, than to have them on your own tongue while you learned the words? And soon, sooner than either of them would have expected, they could talk almost normally between them, cobbling together what they needed for sentences from what each other knew.

Will it surprise you, to know how much this made my dear miss's mood lighter? She was glad, of course, to be able to speak her new words properly, and to know what was being said to her and about her. But think how lovely it it is, too, to say a thing not in answer to your parents or your teacher or your master or you mistress, but simply because you want to say it. And how much lovelier to say it not to the wind or a flock of geese or the tattered ears of an old donkey, but a person who greets you with a smile and wants to listen to you speaking--to you, yourself, and whatever you choose to say?

Only once, early on, did the lady press a little into the questions she must have had, when she gently tapped where my hide lay over the curve of the miss's shoulder.

"Whyfore?" she said.

"Hiding," the miss said before she thought. Then, "Ehm--I hide for--cover for--" She pointed to the sun. "I--enflame?" She drew her hand along her covered arm, wriggling her fingers like heat rising up.

"Burn," said the lady, eyes on hers, another of those light smiles on her mouth. "I burn."

And at that my miss pinked up a little, and smiled too.

As the warm months slipped away to their end there came a short stretch of days that the lady did not meet her on the path in the morning at all, and my miss, though it put it touch of gloom on her, did not trouble herself over it greatly until the afternoon when she returned and found the yard and the house all abustle and all three sisters in a flurry. When a break came in the gabble she gingered up her nerve and quietly managed to ask the cause of it all.

The king and the queen, they of them explained to her, a little slowly but not so slow as they once would needed to, meant to host a grand carousal for the end of the season at their summer house, which meant that all at the farm must be busy as the wind over the next days to supply all that will be needed: the goose and goat and rabbit and lamb; the greens from the fields and gardens and fruit from the trees; the eggs from the hens in their nests and the honey from the bees in their hives.

And the purpose of all the gaiety? Why, for the princess, they say, their very dear princess who has spent the spring and summer gadding about on horseback, whose mother and father long to see her wed, and so for the last three nights of summer they shall open the gates of their house for the festivities, and any prince or princess from the countries nearby, and any lord or lady without a match, and any young man or woman with a title to hang onto or a gnat's spit of quality blood will be there to make their try for her heart.

In honor of the day they let Fair Jennet over the threshold of the kitchen's inner door and into the house--with a word from the youngest sister to mind her dirty hands and feet--down the hall, into the parlor, and there she is in a gilt edged frame on the wall just, they tell her, it's tacked up in tintype and ink in nearly every house in the country: their dear beloved princess, with her hair loose and and the figure of her horse behind her, for there's nothing she loves so much as riding, you see, and though she's a wild and willful thing she's kind and clever, too, and don't they one and all wish to see her blissfully married and in love?

My miss thanked them softly, and moved dazedly about her work for all the rest of the day, and could you blame her for it, the poor thing? Though she was not a foolish girl her world for nearly all her life, bless her, had been very small. Why should she have thought to wonder why an ordinary groomswoman could speak three tongues, and had time to dally half the morning with a farmyard drudge, and spoil that drudge with a rich feast on a fine linen napkin? Why should my young miss, who’d had a half-dozen stylish riding habits and a troop of guards to go alongside her for every ride she’d taken through her old country's green meadows on her own sweet white palfrey—why should she ever think that a princess might choose to ride alone in the rain with a ragged old coat and no hat because it pleased her and not from dreadful necessity?

We only saw the lady once in that rush of days that followed, on a morning when my miss left geese a-swim in their pond and crept a little ways back along the path and stood for a while in the stillness, as if she were waiting.

When the hoofbeats came they were loud that time, for there were a dozen riders and more bearing over the hills and toward the path. My miss folded herself away in the brush as they drew within sight, a group of ladies and gentlemen on a handsome group of long-necked horses--and there came our lady, too, our now-known princess, her skirt and trousers and jacket all of some fine bright blue velveteen, but but still in those same worn boots and astride that same steady mare.

Halfway across the path she reined up, the rest of the riders flowing around her and over the brush in a thundering wave. The mare's hooves tore up the dirt as she turned and turned in tight circles, the lady's hands guiding her 'round. She had no hat again; her hair had half-fallen out of its loops and her eyes were unshaded as they looked up and down the path. My miss pushed herself a little lower in the brush as the lady's feet pushed against her stirrups, as if she meant to stand for a higher view, or dismount--and then a shout came back over the brush, and she turned and let up on the reins and the mare went charging on, carrying her over and away.

My miss crept out a looked for a while at the place where the lady had reined up, and not after her. Even if she had stood on tiptoe there would be nothing to see.

"And she's to be married," my miss said, and then said nothing else to me for the rest of the day, and though she worked herself fit to drop she lay awake that night for hours, for I heard her turning over and over again against the straw, and knew what she was thinking: a married princess would have no more time for dallying by a goose-pond.

When the first day of the celebrations, for though much had been hauled up to the kitchens of the great house there was still more to be done. The kitchen was so busy that my miss had not even her corner to herself, and spent hours shying and backing away from people hurrying to and fro until finally the eldest sister gently shooed her back into her own room, and told her to shut the door and keep out of the way.

All the rest of the day she stayed there, and for hardly a moment of it was she still--sometimes pacing, sometimes turning, sometimes sitting with her hands twisting into one other, her bare feet digging against the seams of the tiles. More than once she reached up to rub my ears and opened her mouth as if to speak, but never a word made it past her lips as she fretted fidgeted the last few hours away.

As dusk began to creep in through her room's little high window the noise in the kitchen grew less and less, then faded entirely, for half the hands here had been called into extra service up at the house itself (as even a farmhand or a milkmaid can be spruces up and told to fetch and carry, you know), and the other half would have gone up over the hills watch from a distance. The whole house felt still and quiet as ice.

At once, with once last twist of her hands, my miss rose up. She went out and fetched water to bathe in and scrubbed herself to tips of her ears and the curves of her heels, and rubbed lotion into her hands to blunt the edges of their roughness. Out of the ground came her trunk and out of the trunk came the first dress, the dress all the shades of the daytime sky, and this time she drew it on over her chemise and petticoats, the bodice and train and sleeves and skirt all settling perfectly into place. A necklace of sapphires she had, too, and bracelets of opals for both her wrists. Her hair she first wrapped all up in braids as her mother used to dress it, then unpicked them and pinned it up in plain loops as the ladies here did, then shook it out again and stared down into the water-mirror of her basin. As she ran her fingers through it I could see her pleasure in it, the delight of letting it lie free after months of it being tucked up and under--and that was how she went out at last, with my skin wrapped like a cloak around her and her hair all tumbled loose about her shoulders, wild with curls from all the fussing she had done and shining like burnished copper.

Out the kitchen and west, then, up and down little hills and through the neat rows of trees. We heard the gathering before we saw it, strange to my ears but familiar as a nursery rhyme to hers, for though the music was different the low thrumming hum of people at a party is always the same. As we came over the last little rise through a grove of fruit trees it all spread out before us, the grand house in a lovely green bowl between the hills, the stone of it gleaming white and stretching too long to see in one look, and the lights and the people spreading out onto a terrace nearly as wide and rounded with stonecrop so bright it seemed to glow even in the dimness.

She stood at the top of the hill looking down, her fingers clutched at my skin and holding tight.

"Dear jenny," she said. "Do I dare?"

As I say, miss, I whispered. Go on, or stand here until the and the dew settles on you.

So she swept me off and set me over one of the low limbs of a tree, my head turned toward the house and the glittering lights below, and down the hill she went with the sinking sun at her back setting the copper glints in her hair alight, a piece of the sky cut free and coming down to the earth in flames.

They noticed her slow at first, being all occupied with their drinking and their dancing and their conviviality. But then one caught sight of her, and then another, with nudges and whispers beginning to pass, and by the time all realized she was there she had been well-enfolded within them. Very soon I could see--yes, even from my perch up on the hill--I could see her as she must have been not so long ago, she who'd been at balls and dances since she was old enough to toddle about in her best dress and make herself charming. She moved through the press of the crowd as through she were walking at ease through an empty field, with a glass of their pale wine cupped easily in her little hand and a look on her face--not quite a smile, but a settling of her lips and her eyes and her forehead and every other part of it into something familiar, almost forgotten and then found again.

It was this look, I think, that finally coaxed of the first of the young men to inch closer to her as the musicians were beginning a new song, and soon enough she was dancing with him, and then with another man, and then with a fair-haired woman--and whether she had learned the dances in her old life or simply took to them as easily as breathing I can't say, but she danced them well and more than once ended a movement with an extra flutter of the hand and kick of the foot for the joy of it.

And then coming out of a final turn she spun into our own lady, dressed warm violet and with her hair neat for once. My miss made an apologetic curtsey, to which the lady returned a nod, and then with a look of mixed politeness and curiosity and extended her hand to the miss in an invitation.

I saw my miss hesitate, just for a moment. Then she spoke a few words and took it.

They danced a movement that was full of skips and leaps, after which the miss was swept off and around the floor by gentleman after lady after gentleman in a group of whirling circle dances. But our lady caught her up again for a dance of mingling and weaving lines, and then for a paired dance, and as the movements of it sent them spinning slowly about the floor the other dancers seemed to flow out of their way, as though without intent or thought they meant to keep themselves for disturbing them.

When the moon was just past its zenith there came a sudden crack in the distance, loud enough to carry over the thrum of the music and chatter, followed by a whirling hiss. Green and gold lights began to bloom in the sky, and as faces turned one by one to the heavens in surprise and delight my miss slipped back through the crowd, and back further still, and then away into the shadows and up and over the hill, catching me up and swinging me around her shoulders as she ran.

Is it well, miss? I asked her.

"It is," she said, and if I had been able I would have startled up and off her back, for it was the tongue of her old country she said it in, in which she'd said not a word of to another person since the first days of her flight--the one the lady had never heard her speak, with its rough edges and rounded vowels that a voice might hide itself in.

Into the kitchen and her own room she went quick as lightning, and then out of her dress and her lovely things much more slowly, with one last look in at the water in her basin to see herself. Then she rolled into her bed, and no matter how you press me now I couldn't say whether that heaven-like dress or her happy face looked more lovely.

And what did my sleepy-eyed miss and I hear in the kitchen the next morning? Of course it was the bee-buzz of the kitchen girls and housemaids about last night's grand affair and the unknown lady of the heavens who danced thrice with the princess then slipped away with no sign of where she'd gone. My miss kept her head bowed over the tiles she scrubbed, and tucked her smile away where it couldn't be seen.

The second night she wore the dress that was all of moonlight and silver, and pearls scattered throughout her hair, and this time when she descended from the hills the crowds of revellers parted to admit her and then swept in about her in a rush. Not a moment did she stand still that night, for she'd hardly finish the steps of one dance before everyone pressed around her like her geese, begging to speak with her, to dance with her next, to introduce her to this person or that. But they all stood aside when the came came forward, and that night they danced thrice again before my made signs of an excuse and slipped away into the crowd, to wait until the brilliance of the fireworks could cover her exit.

On the third night she brought out that dress of gold that shone like the sun, and a delicate band to set over her hair, and a ring with rubies as dark as heart's blood. Fine she looked in all, but beautiful in herself, too, her pretty face deepened with a touch of a sorrowful look--for that this would be the last night, and afterward she'd have only the memories of it to keep inside herself during the coming winter.

Now, if I must tell the truth, that dress was so longer quite so perfect as the others, as where she'd struck at it all those days ago the embroidery at the hem had lost a few threads. But you would have had to know it to see it, and none would have had time to see it on that night. When she stepped out onto the terrace all the fine men and women rather than pressing in instead kept a little ways back from her, and within a moment the lady, in a gown of deep rich burgundy with ribbons in her hair, had stepped out to take the miss's hand and spin her out onto the floor. When the first dance ended the lady swept her right away into another, and one after that, and after that. No one made a motion to step in when each dance ended, and though other pairs danced around them I hardly know how they could see well enough to place their feet with those two glowing so bright, a golden flame leaping around an ember heart.

When the musicians at last had to pause for longer than a moment to rest their arms and their breath the lady led my miss to a little space tucked at the edge of the terrace, away from the crush of people. There they were in silhouette, so though their faces were lost to me by their movements I knew that they were talking back and forth--and then the lady spoke for a long while, and my miss stood very still and shook her head, one. I could see her begin to move away and then stop, for the lady had a hand caught lightly around her wrist. When my miss stepped back again her arm stretched between them, held straight.

Then the lady let go, and my miss stepped back and ran, though it was far too early for fireworks to cover her escape, and yet it mattered not--the crowds had seen nothing of their conference, and the lady had turned her bowed head away to the west, so my miss fled unseen with my skin muffling the brilliant glory of her gown.

Halfway back she slowed, then stopped, and sank to the ground, her skirts spread out around her in pools of rippling gold.

And now, dear miss? I said.

"Now they will find someone else for her to marry," she said. "That is all."

And then she sat there a long while, saying nothing, before she rose and went the rest of the way to her bed.

The next morning she she was slow in everything--slow to rise, slow to stoke up the fires, slow to set about her scrubbing, so that she was still about it long into mid-morning when a rider from the great house stopped to water his horse and himself. As the kitchen maids all pressed him for news and gossip he made a grand look around the room, all high with the thought of his knowledge, and began to speak.

And my miss scrubbed she went still and tense in her corner, for she'd more than enough of the tongue now to know what he was saying: that the princess was abed in the great house, feverish-pale and full sick with love for the disappeared lady of the heavens. No food or drink would she take, and though the queen and king and doctors sat hour by hour at her beside she was like to die without some sign that the lady loved her in return, and all in the house were in despair for none truly knew who the lady was or where she had gone to.

Well, all the rest of that day my miss moved about as if her mind had gone to another world, and drifted about her work so much that one sister or another had to call her to it nearly every hour. That night when the house grew quiet she brought a few things out from her trunk, and went over the kitchen threshold into the house--did the youngest sister turn uneasily in her sleep at that moment, I wonder?--and into the room that was used for keeping the accounts. She wrote for a while on a fine sheet of cream-white paper--a little slowly at first, her hand not having held a pen for nearly a year--and when she was finished, crept out of the house and over the hills to the residence.

She dared not go up to the house itself, fearing to be caught by whatever guards there might be around such a place, or even onto the empty terrace where for the past three nights she had danced so happily. So she pinned the note to the foremost of the fruit trees, where the morning light would catch it and it could not help but be seen, and around the pin she slipped the ring of blood-red rubies that had graced her hand last night.

This time as she walked back she did weep, and I kept myself quiet and let her, for these tears were not the sort that any could soothe away.

The next morning the sun rose in a clear sky, and though summer's season was only one day past one could already feel a touch of a chill in the breeze that tossed the branches. My miss did her washing as quickly as she could to get her hands out the water, and wrapped myself tight around her as she led the geese along the path.

And who do you think we met as we went along the path? Our lady, looking bright and healthy as any young woman on an early morning at the end of summer--indeed, flushed in the cheeks and down along her throat, though her breath was steady and the dun mare'd been settled into spot long enough to eat a leafy bush nearly bare-limbed.

"I have a thing of yours," said she and held out her hand, and of course in her palm sat the young miss's ring.

Well, my miss stood a bit at that before speaking; I could feel the trembling of her, though she did her best to keep it from her voice when she spoke at last. "Did you it know from the note?"

"I knew you on the first night," the lady said. "When you put your hand in mine to dance. When I heard you speak. Did you think I wouldn't know the feel of your hand or the sound of your voice, even disguised?"

"And yet you said nothing."

"Should I have?" The lady’s flush went a little higher at this. "Should I have pulled it apart there and then, the mask you so clearly wanted to keep?"

My miss was thinking; she would have been remembering, as I was, the lingering rider in the house yestermorn, his gaze sweeping around the kitchen, over her. "So you played a ruse in turn, to bait me?"

"There was a little truth in it. Besides, I wanted to know--" The lady laughed, and the sound of it was small in the morning quiet. "Well. You might have only come for the food, or for the dancing." Her fingers curled in over the ring. "If you had done nothing, then I would have known that whatever reason you cover yourself with that skin was more important--or that you had been there for some reason that was nothing to do with me. But--you cared at least enough to send a sign. Though it is curious," she went on, drawing the bit of cream-colored paper out from her coat with her empty hand, "that it professes affection yet says I should marry elsewhere."

"Is it wrong?" my miss said. "There are better choices for you than a girl with three fine dresses and no name but what the maids and farmhands call her in jest."

The lady looked at her for a long while, then swung her leg over the mare's back and dropped to the ground. A few of the geese went to peck at her boots and the hem of her skirt.

"There was a rumor here, some while back," she said, "of a princess from a country far to the north who was much beloved of her father." Her eyes on my miss's face were dark as pitch. "She disappeared in the night, I heard, and none knew where she had fled or for what reason she did not seek out some other court."

"Perhaps," said my miss, "she preferred to be no one. There are those who would betray even a king’s daughter, for a high enough prize."

"In that, she did not think wrongly." The lady's face was calm. "But what is that to me?"

"You must marry a prince or princess," my miss said. "Not a farm drudge."

"I want,” the lady began, and then paused and swallowed before she spoke again. “I want to marry the one who shouted at me because she was angry I scattered her geese. And who likes whitecakes so much that she will eat them all if you give her the chance, and who calls me cloth-headed when I can't remember to say my vowels the way they should be said in her language." She held out the ring. "Be a princess, if you wish, and I will shield you from whatever you might fear and let no one take you from me. Or if not, be Fair Jennet, and I will tell all that a kitchen drudge will be my wife. I would marry whoever you wish to be, in heaven's cloth or donkey's skin."

"And if none of them would marry you?" my miss said.

The lady's mouth made a little movement at that, which turned with a slow twist into what was almost a smile. "Then I will give you back your ring, and be sorry for it."

It would have been a very fine moment for a story, I must say, with my miss and the lady balanced on a moment and waiting for it to break, the morning sun on them both--but it was rather spoiled by the bustle of the geese around their feet making little snaps and cackles, and Spotted Tail honking when her sister beat her to a choice tuft of grass.

Then my young miss set her staff aside and put out one hand, fingers spread, and raised the other to pull my head back from hers until it dangled along her shoulders. I can't tell you, and very sorry I am about it, exactly how the two of them looked. But my ears were still free to hear her say yes.

Well, there was a great of to-do, of course, but in the end it all came around right, for while my miss's hands and feet were rough her speech and manner showed her to be either well-bred or well-learned, so much so that the king and the queen and all the lady's kin could only count it as a minor fault that her background was as murky as mud. And while many did say that she must be the lost princess from the north, just as many argued that she must be some princess from an unknown land across the seas, or a foundling raised by witch-spirits, or even some creature of the upper realms who had truly come down from the skies, so the thread of truth was entirely lost in the fanciful tangle around it.

She married not in those glorious dresses of the sun and moon and sky, but in a new dress of deep green that looked only like itself. The sky-colored dress she gave to the three sisters of the farm as repayment for their care of her. The sun-like gown she kept as a memento; it stayed in the back of her wardrobe, and though every now and then she looked at it for a while she never wore it again, or kicked or tore at it either. As for the dress of moonlight--well, for her own wedding present she made one request of her witch-spirit, who took away the moon-dress and came back with two hundred or so bones carved from finest ivory and fastened together with pins of some metal that shone brighter than gold or silver, and hooves of cut iron. My miss laid my skin over the bones, her witch-spirit clapped her hands three times, and there I was myself again, with legs to kick and teeth to bite though of course I wished to do neither. I have the best stable box now of the palace now, with oats every night and a thick-grassed yard all to myself where I can let the sun warm my new bones and no bother from the younger and friskier of my kin, and nothing else do I need, for no other jenny in the world can say she's been the prize of two royal stables.

And that was all, except for this:

Some years after they were married word was brought to my miss of a person who wished to speak with her, and when she assented and went to the palace's grand receiving room there before her was the king who had been her father.

"Do you know him?" my miss's lady asked, standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder.

My miss looked at him for a moment, then turned away. "No," she said at last. "I do not know him."

The king made many a protest, but neither the lady nor her royal father or mother would give them any heed. So he had to depart, and not long after came news that his mind had quite gone and his councillors had put him away to be cared for. He died some time ago, and the throne of that country passed to another branch of the family, who care for it as well and as best they can.

All this last I saw not with my own eyes, of course, but heard straight from the mouth of my young miss, now not quite so young nor a miss but a wife and a mother, for before long her witch-spirit had blessed her and her beloved with children to scamper about and keep them cheerful. Many new fine dresses she has now, and her hands and feet now rubbed smooth again--except for a faint callous across the fingers, as she still builds the fires in her apartments up herself every morning and tends them herself, since none of the maids can do it as quick or neat as she can or in just the way that she likes. But for all her silk dresses and smooth hands she still comes to scratch behind my ears every day, and on nights when sleep keeps itself away from her--though they are rarer every year now--she will come and lie down with her head against mine, as we once slept years ago.

Hmm? You’ve a question?

Will they be happy for the rest of their lives?

For that you must go and ask your mothers, my dears, and if they have no answer then you will know this to be truth: there are some things that cannot be known at all, whether by a Jennet or a jenny.

Good night, my dears. Good night.