The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler Read Free Book Online

him that even the water rats thatsometimes swam along the edges of the lake spooked me, though I knew they weren’t real rats.
    Breckin came from the kingdom of Blaire to the west, where King Tobin ruled. He’d been raised on a farm deep in the country with a brother and sister, and when his father died, his mother had turned to bees.
    â€œBees?” I asked. “What does she do with bees?”
    â€œShe keeps them and harvests their honey, of course,” Breckin said.
    I was astonished. We did not keep bees, and it had never occurred to me to wonder where our honey came from. Cook bought it at market, and it arrived in green-tinted glass jars to keep the sun from spoiling it. I had thought—well, I had not thought at all. Perhaps I had assumed that honey was distilled from a plant or was mined from the hills. All I knew was that it sweetened cakes wonderfully.
    â€œBees,” I repeated, amazed. Breckin laughed at my ignorance, but it was a kind laugh.
    I learned that his sister was wed, and that she and her husband helped with the honey business. His brother was a soldier, guarding the Western Reaches, and Breckin missed him very much. I found it all fascinating—the lives of ordinary folk.
    â€œWas it very different, where you lived?”
    He laughed. “Well, of course it was. It was a farmbeside a tiny village, not a palace built over a lake. We’d no royalty there—the only king was our banty rooster.” He was quiet for a minute, and then said, “There was another difference, too. A difference in the air, or something. Your kingdom has such a strange feel to it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, a strange feel?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s hard to explain. When you come over the border from Blaire at Mickle Crossing, there’s a difference. It’s like…oh, I don’t know, exactly. Like a sort of silence. A lack of something.”
    â€œAh,” I said, nodding. “That’s the lack of magic.”
    He stared at me. “You have no magic at all here?”
    â€œFather forbade it, when Aurelia was born. He didn’t want a curse on any of his children. He sent all the witches and wizards out of the kingdom, big and small. We don’t even have a soothsayer.” I regretted this very much, for I thought it would be interesting to know the future.
    â€œAh! That’s why it’s so damp and all,” Breckin said.
    Of course it was. I’d never thought of it before, but surely any decent witch or wizard could dry up damp. I shook my head. “How stupid!” I said. “Think of all the things gone moldy that didn’t have to!”
    â€œIt must have been very odd, living with no magic,” Breckin mused.
    â€œWhy, did you have a lot of it where you grew up?”
    He smiled, remembering. “We had a neighbor who was a healing witch. It’s a great thing to live near one of those. We were never ill. Nobody in our village ever died of sickness, hardly. Or even of accidents, unless they were really terrible ones. She could heal bone breaks and cuts. When my brother and I were little, whenever we’d fall down—or hit each other—and we’d be bleeding and crying, Mother would send us over to Elba’s house to get fixed.”
    I stopped walking. “How did she fix you?”
    â€œShe’d give us a cup of chocolate, and then wash the cut or scrape. Then she’d put something on it—it smelled vile and stung. But a few minutes later—nothing! As if the cut had never happened. No scar at all.”
    I thought about this. I’d gotten my share of cuts and burns working around the knives and fires of the kitchen. My hands were marked all over from accidents, and I always felt vaguely ashamed of them on Sundays with my sisters, comparing my red, scarred skin to their porcelain hands.
    â€œI wonder if she can fix scars after they’ve set,” I mused, and we walked on.
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