Mell rolled her feet as she walked down the stony path toward the pond, adjusting the basket in her arms. It was heavy, and the clothes at the top were piled precariously, ready to slip off if she jostled them. The laundry workers were stronger than her, used to this kind of task. If she crouched to pick up a fallen shirt, Mell wasn’t quite sure she would be able to stand up again.
She couldn’t leave a fallen shirt.
It was springtime, and the meadow was wilder here on the slope outside the castle walls. The white clover was blooming, and small blue flowers dotted the ends of the grasses. Those were her favorite. They came small and shy and common, and no one ever stooped to pluck them into a bouquet. No one noticed them, so for a few weeks they opened free under the sky.
Mell named her daughter after them.
That morning, Mell had moved systematically from room to room, scooping the ash out of the fireplaces and the tile hearths, wiping the grey smears from the edges of the brickwork. She kept Grass Flower bundled on her back so she wouldn't lose track of her. She was a finicky infant, prone to crying, and her face was pressed between Mell's shoulder blades, directly below her ears. Maybe that was why she hadn't heard the footsteps.
"Do you like living in a Glaevor fortress?"
Mell startled, but she schooled her expression as she turned. A boy stood there, Elkarin like her, barely young enough to be working in the castle—only, she had never seen him before.
"Or would you rather leave," he continued, like he was asking which broom was her favorite.
"Don't talk like that," Mell whispered, but her consonants were too harsh to hide the words.
The boy picked up her ash bucket, replacing it with the empty one he had carried in. "You want your baby to grow up here?"
"I want her mother not to be executed for insurrection."
The boy straightened. He was smiling. "You don't think it's possible. I can sympathize. But there's someone you ought to meet—by the rain barrels, in an hour or so." Then he had turned and walked away with the ash bucket, humming. Like he knew something she didn't.
Now Mell had a secret too, but she didn't feel like singing. It sat heavy in her stomach like the weight of the basket, threatening to tip her over.
The pond was empty—this time of year the laundry was done in the mid-morning, after the night chill and before the day heat. It was afternoon now. Everyone had finished and gone back inside.
The bank was muddy, and as Mell stepped down into the water her feet sent up clouds of dirt. Soon she couldn’t see where she was placing her feet. There could be a turtle, a snake, the hand of a drowned man reaching up to grab her skirts and pull her down after him. She waded out anyway, walked into the water up to her waist and let her clothes billow out, like she was perched in the sky, borne up by a storm. Then she walked along the edge, up toward the creek that fed the pond.
That morning Mell had started a war with herself, and the weapons were words. She stood up in the assembly of her soul and said, “I’m not going. I’m not going because it’s dangerous. I have to think of Grass Flower.”
“Yes—think of her!” another piece of Mell said, standing in the back of the crowd and shouting, “Do you want her to stay here, forever under the thumb of the Glaevor? Do you want her to grow up like you did?”
“Of course not,” said Mell, “But I’ll be killed if I’m caught, and I never knew my mother. Grass Flower will be different. She will know me.”
“She would know you,” a third piece said, close and quiet, “If you went—if you failed—she would know always that you had tried.”
So after the fireplaces and the ovens, after an hour had passed, Mell had made her way down to the kitchen and grabbed a cup. “I’m thirsty,” she said, even though nobody was paying attention. Then she stepped outside.
There was a well in the courtyard, a good one, with water as sweet as a cucumber. Mell stood there on the threshold for a moment, staring at it. Then she stepped to the side, around the corner, where the rain barrels were stored.
“You came,” the boy said, like he’d been expecting her.
Mell looked around. It was just the two of them here, standing in the lee of the wall. “This isn’t right,” she said, “You’re supposed to introduce me to somebody. Where’s this rebel who’s going to rescue my baby?”
Bending down, the boy pulled a large basket out from behind one of the barrels. Then he turned to face her, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “She’s standing here with me.”
The creek was surrounded by trees. As Mell walked up its center, the hanging branches brushed along her arms or caught on the ends of her hair—like a wedding party, like a gauntlet, each member reaching out to touch. The basket was heavy still, and the spring water was colder here in the shade, and the ground sloped slowly up. There was an unfarmed and unkept spot here because it was hilly. It wasn’t big enough to get lost in—it was just a start.
Mell walked until her feet were numb with cold, until her fingers had found the end of their strength and circled back around to feeling fine again. She walked until she reached the stony bank on the left hand side.
“The bank will be hard to climb over,” the boy had explained, reaching down behind the rain barrel to pull out a belt and sheathed saber, “But there’s a few places where it slopes down. Don’t use the first few—they’re too muddy. You’ll leave a footprint.”
“I can’t do this,” Mell insisted, “I can’t just walk out of the castle. They don’t do laundry at this time of day!”
“Nobody will be looking at you,” the boy insisted, fastening the belt around his waist, “Not if you don’t let them.”
“I don’t,” Mell started, then swallowed. “How do I do that then?”
The boy smiled, palm resting easy on the sword hilt, like he was planning out a garden on his own land. “It’s simple. Whatever happens, don’t turn around.”
Mell clambered up the stony bank and up the hill behind it. The woods were harder to walk through—there was no path here, and the underbrush bit at her stockings. Some places were too thick for the basket, so she had to turn back, make a little circle, and come up again in a clearer place. But worst of all, where the creekbed had been silent, the forest floor was loud. Last year’s leaves rustled and crunched with her every step, and there was no babble of water to drown out the noise. She could only hope that no one would come this way.
Grass Flower started crying. It was a shocking sound—mostly because it meant she had been quiet all this time. Quickly, Mell set down the basket, pulled off the shirts she had draped over the top, and reached in for her baby. Once she had pulled her out and grabbed the blanket spread under her, she saw what had been laid underneath. There were more things in the basket—a smaller cross-body satchel, a waterskin, some kind of bread wrapped in a handkerchief. It would all be easier to carry over a longer distance. She could burn the basket when she came to an empty campsite, one with a place set aside for fire. For now, she put on the satchel, tied Grass Flower to her back again, and carried the empty basket in her hand. It was easier to walk with less weight on her arms.
Earlier in the afternoon, Mell had walked directly across the cobblestones of the castle courtyard toward the gate, chin purposefully level with the ground. All around her, friends and acquaintances and strangers hurried about their business, heads bent toward their task. When they turned, their eyes passed over her, unbothered by her movements. She wasn’t important enough to be an interruption.
When she came up to the wall, to the portcullis and the standing guards, she gripped her basket tighter, turned her face down into the clothes covering the top. Her breath was unsteady. Her fingers were cramping. Surely the man on the left was staring at her.
“Hey,” the guard said. He took a step forward, reached his hand to grab her, and then the air shattered.
Mell almost spun around. The instinct was only stifled by the paralysis engulfing her. One time the pot rack had fallen off the wall in the kitchen, and the metal pans had clanged down on the tile floor with a shock. She had felt it thrumming under her ribs, rooting her to the spot. This was that moment magnified a thousand times. The world split with the noise, and Mell stumbled, but the guard turned. He turned and shouted. She couldn’t make out the words, but he wasn’t shouting at her. When their pulses had stilled again, her friends in the kitchen had gathered around the fallen utensils, picking out the dented pieces, examining the hole that had been ripped in the wall. She could hear the rustling now, the voices and the footsteps as every warrior in the fortress ran to assess the tear ripped in reality.
While their backs were turned, Mell stepped out through the crack.
She stopped when she came to the top of the hill, unable to take another step. It was like the air had turned solid to block her. Here at the curve of the crest, the trees were thinner, and Mell could see out between the branches, out at the world from a height. There at the line between earth and sky were blue diamonds strung together.
“Do you see?” Mell said, turning her shoulders so Grass Flower could look, stretching out her arm to point, “Do you see them—those are the mountains. Those are the mountains of Elkar.”
Grass Flower whimpered, uncomprehending. Mell could just see the edge of her face, her eyes the same color as the distant peaks.
“That’s it,” Mell said, breathless, “That’s where we’re going.”