A Tale of Two Castles

A Tale of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine





Chapter One

Mother wiped her eyes on her sleeve and held me tight. I wept onto her shoulder. She released me while I went on weeping. A tear slipped into the strait through a crack in the wooden dock. Salt water to salt water, a drop of me in the brine that would separate me from home.

Father’s eyes were red. He pulled me into a hug, too. Albin stood to the side a few feet and blew his nose with a honk. He could blow his nose a dozen ways. A honk was the saddest.

The master of the cog called from the gangplank, “The tide won’t wait.”

I shouldered my satchel.

Mother began, “Lodie—”

“Elodie,” I said, brushing away tears. “My whole name.”

“Elodie,” she said, “don’t correct your elders. Keep your thoughts private. You are mistaken as often—”

“—as anyone,” I said.

“Elodie . . . ,” Father said, sounding nasal, “stay clear of the crafty dragons and the shape-shifting ogres.” He took an uneven breath. “Don’t befriend them! They won’t bother you if you—”

“—don’t bother them,” I said, glancing at Albin, who shrugged. He was the only one of us who’d ever been in the company of an ogre or a dragon. Soon I would be near both. At least one of each lived in the town of Two Castles. The castle that wasn’t the king’s belonged to an ogre.

“Don’t finish your elders’ sentences, Lodie,” Mother said.

“Elodie.” I wondered if Father’s adage was true. Maybe ogres and dragons bothered you especially if you didn’t bother them. I would be glad to meet either one—if I had a quick means of escape.

Albin said, “Remember, Elodie: If you have to speak to a dragon, call it IT, never him or her or he or she.”

I nodded. Only a dragon knows ITs gender.

Mother bent so her face was level with mine. “Worse than ogres or dragons . . . beware the whited sepulcher.”

The whited sepulcher was Mother’s great worry. I wanted to soothe her, but her instruction seemed impossible to follow. A sepulcher is a tomb. A whited sepulcher is someone who seems good but is, in truth, evil. How would I know?

“The geese”—Mother straightened, and her voice caught— “will look for you tomorrow.”

The geese! My tears flowed again. I hated the geese, but I would miss them.

Mother flicked a gull’s feather off my shoulder. “You’re but a baby!”

I went to Albin and hugged him, too. He whispered into my hair, “Be what you must be.”

The master of the cog roared, “We’re off!”

I ran, leaped over a coil of rope, caught my foot, and went sprawling. Lambs and calves! Behind me, Mother cried out. I scrambled up, dusty but unharmed. I laughed through my tears and raced up the plank. A seaman drew it in.

The sail, decorated with the faded image of a winged fish, bellied in the breeze. We skimmed away from the dock. If fate was kind, in ten years I would see my parents and Albin again. If fate was cruel, never.

As they shrank, Mother losing her tallness, Father his girth, Albin his long beard, I waved. They waved back and didn’t stop. The last I could make out of them, they were still waving.

The island of Lahnt diminished, too. For the first time it seemed precious, with its wooded slopes and snowy peaks, the highest wreathed in clouds. I wished I could pick out Dair Mountain, where our Potluck Farm perched.

Farewell to my homeland. Farewell to my childhood.

Mother and Father’s instructions were to apprentice myself to a weaver, but I would not. Mansioner. I mouthed the word into the wind, the word that held my future. Mansioner. Actor. Mansioner of myth and fable. Mother and Father would understand once I found a master or mistress to serve and could join the guild someday.

Leaning into the ship’s bulwarks, I felt the purse, hidden under my apron, which held my little knife, a lock of hair from one of Albin’s mansioning wigs, a pretty pink stone, a perfect shell from the beach this morning, and a single copper, which Father judged enough to feed me until I became apprenticed. Unless the winds blew against us, we would reach Two Castles, capital of the kingdom of Lepai, in two or three days, in time for Guild Week, when masters took on new apprentices. I might see the king or the ogre, if one of them came through town, but I was unlikely to enter either castle.

I had no desire to see King Grenville III, who liked war and taxes so much that his subjects called him Greedy Grenny. Lepai was a small kingdom, but bigger by half than when he’d mounted the throne—and so were our taxes bigger by half, or so Mother said. The king was believed to have his combative eye on Tair, Lahnt’s neighbor across the wide side of the strait.

Queen Sofie had died a decade ago, but I did hope to see the king’s daughter, Princess Renn, who was rumored to be somehow peculiar. A mansioner is interested in peculiarity.

And a mansioner observes. I turned away from home. To my left, three rowers toiled on a single oar. The one in the center called, “Pu-u-u-ll,” with each stroke. I heard his mate across the deck call the same. Father had told me the oars were for steering and the sail for speed. The deck between me and the far bulwark teemed with seamen, passengers, a donkey, and two cows.

A seaman climbed the mast. The cog master pushed his way between an elderly goodman and his goodwife and elbowed the cows until they let him pass. He disappeared down the stairs to the hold, where the cargo was stored. I would remember his swagger, the way he rolled his shoulders, and how widely he stepped.