Page 103 of The Midnight Princess
“Where’s my phone?” I say. “Did you pack it?”
He lifts his head. “It’s in a vault. His Majesty is taking you on a retreat.”
No, no, no. “This is a bad time to be off the grid.”Chol.I left Alma hanging in the middle of a crisis. I want to drive back over the mountains, drag her off to Max’s cottage, and spend the day convincing her to take us seriously. I want to do more than talk.
Karl’s brows snap together. “It isn’t a request. This is a command from your king.”
I release a frustrated breath. “This is my first time camping with Dad. Is he bringing the marshmallows?”
We drive hours into the most remote part of Vorburg, eventually bumping along a narrow, rutted mountain track. Thecars are streaked with dirt and old snow when we pull up to an ancient timber-clad cottage, not big enough to be a full-sized house. The siding is weathered gray, and the roofline is capped with a small onion dome that sways out of alignment. Thick icicles hang from the eaves. I don’t want to like it. I don’t want to like anything about my father.
The grounds are set in a forest clearing, covered in snow and overgrown grass, brittle and brown. Beyond the house, a measure of land is smooth—a frozen pond with a layer of snow. Around the back I see a large, dormant garden, much like the oneOmatends.
“This is Góra Ulek.”Mountain of Ulek. “This is our heart,” my father says, climbing out of his vehicle. He claps his hands together in large, fur-lined gloves.
For once, his florid language does justice to the feelings I have looking over the snug house, eyes following the bent wood arches framing the doors and windows. He pushes through the gate, but I halt, crouching in front of the carving of a bear topping a post, stroking a hand over the butter-soft carving.
I no longer wish for Max’s cottage.
To anyone else, the building might appear dilapidated, but I touch the joinery on the beams with an experienced hand, running deft fingers along carved panels of wood. It’s strong.
“Ten days to turn you into a prince of Vorburg,” my father says, as Karl brings in the bags. King Otto’s are deposited on the ground floor—a dining room converted into a bedroom—and mine are taken up a narrow stairway.
The courtiers are dismissed. Karl whispers that they will be stationed along the road and in outbuildings, where they can secure the perimeter but leave us to ourselves.
Left alone in the silent house, I expect my father to deliver lessons in comportment, similar to the ones Alma shaped me with. Instead, Father has me chop wood and carry it in forthe stove. We prepare a simple dinner and make coffee the Vorburgian way—dark and bitter—and sit in wool socks before the fire. I stare into my mug, thinking of Alma, wondering what she would think of my father’s methods. Uncivilized.
I go to bed, hugging a hot water bottle, and dream that my hand is caught in a blade. I don’t feel pain, but when the hand is long gone, the sensation of having it returns. In my dream, I lean across the table to touch someone out of reach. I keep having to remind myself that what’s gone is gone, but I wake up to an aching loss.
Our days at Góra Ulek follow a pattern. We work in the morning, knocking the heavy snow and ice from the roof, clearing the balcony with its ancient slat design. We read books of poetry and philosophy when the sun goes down, our pages lit by the glow of a candle. Occasionally, my father places a finger to keep the page and makes some remark.
“The occupation was like that.”
“Pruss caught the spirit of Vorburg. When his heroine burns her house down in the middle of winter rather than turn it over to the enemy—”
“Star-drenched midnights. Vorburgian poets are lucky they had such skies.”
But midnights make me think of a Sondish princess and how much I want her in my arms. Alma is with me at every moment.
On the fourth day, he has me chop a hole in the pond with a short-handled ax. We fish for our dinner. On the fifth day, he has me make the hole bigger and walks me to a primitive sauna—hardly more than a shack in the woods—where we strip naked to the waist wrapped in long white towels and hit the hot rocks with dripping branches, grunting in our misery.
“It’s time for ice,” he says. I’ve seen this tradition. I knew it was coming. Vorburgians are hardy and proud of it, bundling their babies and leaving them to nap in frigid temperatures—even inthe cities where indoor heating isn’t a luxury. My father casts off the towel and runs in all his royal glory, white flanks rivaling the snow, and jumps into the water with a splash.
He comes up, sputtering a bellowing, hailing me at a distance. “If a fat old man can do it…” he shouts, waving me on. I drop the towel and run. The first rush of cold air is a relief, then a torment. My feet sting as I sprint across the ground and arctic wind whips over my skin. All those weeks Alma spent turning me into a crown prince, and now I’m ready. My steps grow heavy in the thick snow, but I don’t slow my pace. The water is floating with chunks of ice. This is insane. I can’t do this.
I jump. The shock slaps me across the back, waking up every nerve and baptizing me in the embrace of Mother Vorburg. The sky is clear and blue, and my eyes are dazzled by the light.
On the sixth day, Father leans from his chair. “Come here, boy.” I lean from mine, and he grips me around the back of the neck—the thick nape where a bear carries a cub—and brings my nose almost touching his. “I’m the bastard. I admit it.” He exhales heavily, half-drunk. “I don’t expect your love.”
The tang of heavy liquor colors the air between us and his words fur around the edges. “Give it to Vorburg,” he says, pounding his heart with a closed fist. The fist turns, stills between us. “Vorburg.” He pounds the fist against my heart.
On the eighth day, I cut my hair with a pocketknife. It’s ragged, and Karl nearly passes out when he returns to the dacha with the three vehicles, responding to the flag Father raised in the garden.
“Sir,” he says, taking the bags from my grip and stowing them in the car.
“I know, Karl. Have a barber waiting for me when we get back to Djolny.”
“Sir.” He looks like he’s going to cry with joy.
