Roses

Roses"How hard can it be?" Lily asked, staring at the well and bucket.Scout snorted and tossed the bucket into the well. It landed far below with a thunking splash. "All right, then, milady, fetch some water from the well."Lily huffed and grabbed the rope—and immediately regretted everything that had led her to this point as the rough rope rubbed at her good hand and positively shredded the bandaged one.  Acutely aware of Scout’s heavy, judging gaze, however, she gritted her teeth and kept pulling at the surprisingly heavy bucket of water."Careful, now, pull too hard and you’ll jostle the bucket, and it’ll come up half empty, meaning you’ll have to do it all over again.""I don’t think we’re in any danger of me pulling anything too hard," Lily retorted, making Scout snort a laugh, which pleased her for no good reason she could find.She didn’t cheer when the bucket came into view, but only because she could feel Scout’s judgment waiting quietly to strike. Three days with this woman and Lily had never felt so small and incompetent in her life.Lily stared at the bucket, confused for a moment, before she realized she was overcomplicating the matter. Holding fast to the rope with her good hand, she reached out with the bad one to grab the bucket’s handle and pull it out onto the ledge of the well. "There! I told you, not so hard!"Scout grinned, full of absolute evil. "Great. Now do it twenty more times and we’ll have enough for washing up and doing laundry.""You are the worst," Lily muttered.Cackling, Scout walked off. "I’m going to get some wood chopped to take into town tomorrow. Let me know when the water is ready, milady.""I’ll show you milady," Lily muttered to no one in particular as she hefted the bucket off the ledge and hauled it to dump into the nearby wash basin. Laundry first, then she could have a proper bath.What a strange place her world had become, when her biggest priorities were such mundane chores. Normally at this time of day she would be attending a luncheon with ambassadors or giving a speech in the royal gardens or in the city pavilion.She should be working to find the ruins the guard had mentioned, but she still couldn’t do more than hobble around the house and some of the yard. Earlier that morning she’d stepped on a pebble, not even a sharp one, and had wanted to die from the agony that shot up her leg.So water for laundry and baths it was. Lily hauled up bucket after bucket, ignoring when her wounded hand began to bleed, at least until she noticed she’d gotten blood on the rope, which couldn’t be a good thing.Dumping the latest bucket of water into the tub, which was now three fourths full, thankfully meaning her job was done for now, Lily went into the cabin to rebandage her hand. Not that she knew how to do that, either, but she was really sick of having to ask for help for every last little thing. How hard could it possibly be to wrap strips of cloth? She’d done it all by herself with her feet, hadn’t she?Pointedly ignoring the condition of her feet and how the bandages had kept coming loose, she fetched the supplies from the cabinet where she’d seen Scout store them, and then filled the washing bowl with water from the matching chipped pitcher. She cleaned her hands thoroughly, especially the bad one, then applied the ointment that Scout always did. It stung at first, but then was refreshingly cool, with a pleasant herby smell that reminded her of her nursemaid.Unfortunately, all of that was the easy part, and she made an absolute mess of the hard part.The door opened, and Lily wanted to stamp her foot in frustration. Couldn’t she do one thing, without Scout coming in to find her making a complete hash of it? Must she always look like a complete twit?"You could have asked for help," Scout said when she saw what Lily was doing. Trying to do, anyway.Lily huffed as Scout took over, discarding the ruined bandages and deftly wrapping fresh ones around her fingers and hand like it was the easiest thing in the world. "So you can imply I’m stupid and useless again? No, thanks. The tub is filled."Scout frowned, gently running her thumb over Lily’s palm before letting her hand go. "I don’t think you’re stupid and useless.""Yes, you do." Lily withdrew, smoothing out her borrowed apron, too big on her—like everything else—and tucked back strands of damp, sweaty hair. "If you lead me to the soap, I’m sure I can manage to scrub dirt out of clothes—""Not with that hand, you won’t, unless you want blood everywhere and your wounds to worsen. You want to keep helping, go stack up all the wood I just chopped. Half with the rest next to the house, the remaining in the cart.""Fine," Lily said, not quite stomping off to do as told, because as per usual there was nothing she could argue with. Everything Scout said was perfectly reasonable. She’d make a great Captain of th—Lily let out a pained noise, wrapping her arms around herself, tears escaping before she could stop them. Josiah. Alice. Clarissa. Penelope. What had happened to poor Leigh, sick in bed while everything fell apart?"What’s wrong?"Lily spun around, swearing at herself even as she did. "What? Nothing. I’m fine.""You’re crying," Scout said dryly, folding her arms over her chest. "Try again.""What do you care?" Lily asked. "You think I’m stupid and helpless. You call me ’milady’ like you’re not allowed to use my name. I’ve been here three days and you’re probably hoping I won’t be here for three more. I’m fine." She strode off to the wood pile.She hadn’t even known ’woodcutter’ was an entire profession all its own. She’d just… made a lot of silly assumptions that were so obviously wrong in retrospect. Another thing that made her a twit, no doubt.There was a lot of wood in need of moving. How had Scout chopped so much in the short time Lily had been pulling water from the well? Or had it taken her a lot longer on the water than she’d realized? Probably the latter.If only the counselors were here now; they’d be having the time of their lives seeing how easy it was to make Lily feel so wretched about herself. Who knew the secret was a single beautiful, frustrating, alarmingly competent woman living alone in the middle of the woods?Her mouth flattened. Beautiful? Where had that thought come from? Scout wasn’t a chore to look at, but beautiful? Not with that attitude.Huffing, Lily shoved all her stupid thoughts aside and focused only on moving. Picking up a piece of wood, moving it to the pile. She moved quickly to carrying five or six at a time, ignoring the pain in her feet and hands, biting back the urge to let out several unladylike swears every time a stray sliver stabbed or scraped her hand.By the time she had half the wood stacked against the house, she was sore, sweaty, and ready to go to bed and stay there until all her problems miraculously solved themselves. Instead, she got some water from the barrel at the corner of the cabin and trudged back to work.She’d just picked up the next batch of wood to start filling the stupid cart when she heard voices. Horses. Children laughing.People. There were people coming this way. Lily froze, the wood tumbling from her arms. She couldn’t be seen. What if they recognized her? What if they told someone she was here?Succumbing to panic, Lily bolted into the woods and ducked behind a large tree, huddling down into a ball, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, head buried against her drawn up knees. She had to save her people. She was all alone, her friends and anyone else she trusted dead. What was she supposed to do?Hide and cry in the forest that had already nearly killed her once, apparently.Some queen she was turning out to be.One of the travelers, or whoever they were, called out, and a moment later she heard Scout respond, though Lily couldn’t make out what either of them were saying. Eventually they fell silent, but that didn’t mean they’d moved on. For all she knew, Scout was inviting them in or something, though she had a hard time imagining Scout being that friendly, given how much she hated Lily’s presence.She sat there for what felt like ages, almost drifting off when the sound of soft laughter washed over her. Lily jerked upright, then climbed stiffly to her feet. "Who’s there?" Her gaze stilled on a patch of rustling shrubs, and a moment later the most beautiful fox she’d ever seen appeared. Also the largest—she hadn’t thought foxes could get that big. Rather than leaning orange like most foxes, this one was more a deep, red-heavy russet, the belly and tip of its tail more a soft gold than white. It’s eyes were the most stunning green she’d ever seen, like emeralds in sunlight. "What in the gods…"The fox yipped at her, leaned down on its front paws, tail wagging in what seemed a playful manner. Then it sprang up, yipped again, and turned, and she swore it moved its head as if to say follow me. When she didn’t move, it stopped and did it again."Well, why not," Lily muttered, and forged ahead, following the fox deeper into the forest, shivering as she heard snatches of soft laughter every now and then.After what seemed like ages of walking, the fox came to a halt in a small patch of space that could barely be called a clearing, sitting down in the middle as if thoroughly pleased with itself. It moved its head again, beckoning her close, which she was fairly certain was the last thing she should do with a wild animal. But she’d already followed it deep into a dangerous forest, so what did it matter? She was clearly committed to this foolhardy endeavor.She dutifully approached the bossy little fox, which moved out of her way and did that playful crouching thing again before dancing back several steps. Lily barely noticed, distracted by what the fox had been sitting on.Stone—purposeful stone, like an old road or something. There was a mostly clear patch, and she could see hints of where the rest of the road had been lost to the forest. Just left of the center of the patch, one of the stones was carved with something.A rose.Lily’s heart jumped into her throat. There was no way.  That was impossible.Rosenfall. There were countless legends, each one more fantastical than the last, about the heart of the mysterious forest with so many names: Laughing Forest, Dark Forest, Broken Forest. Only Huntresses and Huntsman, nigh legendary themselves, dared to traverse the woods that consumed most of the continent.And at its center was the kingdom of Rosenfall. The royal capital was located at the base of the Jagged Mountains, but legend held that the original royal castle had once been in the very middle of the kingdom, the beating heart of the forest itself, until some unnamed tragedy had forced the queen and the other survivors to flee and build their home anew in a safer place.But once upon a time, all roads carved with intermittent roses had led to that legendary place.Find the ruins.Was this what the guard had been talking about? What Josiah had intended as a meeting place? The ruins of Rosenfall?She looked up to ask the fox, because why not talk to the fox at this point, only to find it was gone. "Great, how am I supposed to get back?" Lily sighed and pushed to her aching feet. Maybe she shouldn’t bother with going back. She was hardly dressed, or prepared in any way, for hiking through the woods, but if the road really led to ruins, then there were people there waiting for her.Lily refused to believe anything else."Aubrey! Aubrey!"She froze. Scout? Scout had come looking for her? Why?After another moment of hesitation, as the shouting of her name came a few more times, Lily replied as loudly as she could, "I’m here! I’m here!""Stay there!" Scout bellowed.Minutes later came the sound of someone running through the forest, rustling branches and shrubs and detritus—and then Scout burst into view. "What in the hells are you doing all the way out here!" Surging in close, she grabbed Lily’s arms and shook her so hard her teeth rattled."Unhand me!"Scout let her go with one more good shake. "Why are you out here? If you needed to hide, fine, but that doesn’t require getting yourself lost all over again. Why are you so stubbornly determined to venture off alone?""Because there’s no one to come with me!" Lily bellowed, startling some nearby birds. "Because they’re all dead! Fucking dead! Because the only person I know right now thinks I’m a stupid twit she can’t wait to be rid of! Leave me alone and stop acting like you care when we both know you don’t."Turning sharply away, shoulders so tense they ached, Lily kept her eyes on the forest floor, looking for any sign of the forgotten road. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her feet that she’d been able to ignore until now.A hand curled around her arm, and Lily barely bit back some choice crude words as Scout forced her to turn around. "Stop touching me unbidden," she said with all the frost of a furious queen."You’re right, I’m sorry," Scout said, which was so unexpected that Lily remained where she was. "I’m also sorry for being so hard on you, Your Highness."Ice filled Lily’s veins. "What— Why would you call me that?"Scout sighed and ran a hand through her short hair, making it stick up in a way that softened her somehow, made her look approachable and, though Lily would never say so aloud, adorable. "Those people you were hiding from were citizens—milliners, though that scarcely—anyway, they talked about the strife and upheaval in the city, how many nobles are missing, rumored dead, or have new and greater authority because of the so-called Regent. They say there are also rumors that the crown princess is still alive, and the Regent is desperately trying to find her."Lily pinched her eyes shut, but tears trailed down her cheeks anyway. Her father. Her friends. Her people. When she trusted herself to speak, she opened her eyes and lifted her chin. "I am not a princess. I am a queen.""Of course, Your Majesty," Scout said with a faint smile. "My apologies.""How did you know the missing princess was me?""The pieces weren’t hard to put together once I had them all. None of that explains why you’re in the middle of the forest trying to get yourself killed. You can’t reclaim your throne if you can’t walk properly.""What does it matter to you, woodcutter?"Scout dragged her hands down her face in a display of frustration that frankly seemed unwarranted. "If I absolutely did not care, I would have left you to die. Instead I followed that stupid fox—""A fox! You saw a fox?""Why do you ask it like that?"Lily clapped her hands together. "Because that’s how I got all the way out here! I was hiding at the tree line, and it came out of the bushes and indicated I should follow it. Dark red and gold, right? Bigger than usual."Scout huffed. "Its name is Reynard, and he’s the single most irritating creature in the world." She folded her arms across her unfairly ample chest. "What did he lead you to? Or was he simply leading you away?""To something," Lily said softly. "I— When I was running away, before the last of my— my guards fell protecting me, one of them said that I was to get to the ruins, that Sergeant Josiah had a plan. I had no idea what that meant…until now.""You can’t mean the old castle.""You know it?" Lily asked."I know of it, but that’s all. Hard to live in the Laughing Forest and not hear about the castle or find occasional hints of it.""Like a road carved with roses?" She moved back to the bit of road the fox had shown her, wincing with every step, and dropped to her knees to trace the rose she’d found earlier. "Like this?"Scout crouched down opposite her, balancing with careless grace on the balls of her feet. "Yeah, I’ve seen these all over the forest. Used to be several roads to the castle, supposedly, stretching out across the entire continent. There were bandits back then, so legend has it, who would rob all the wealthy who traveled to or from the castle.""Probably bandits now.""None that last terribly long," Scout replied. "The forest doesn’t tolerate it." She stood up and brushed off her hands. "For now, it’s time to go home. There’s chores to finish, your feet need proper rest now you’ve undone all the healing achieved so far, and no good comes of being out here after dark.""I have to get to the ruins!""You need to be able to stand without falling over, Your Majesty," Scout said shortly. "You’re a queen? Act like it. Now, it’s time to go." Before Lily could even draw breath to reply, Scout bent, scooped her up, and strode off."Put me down this instant!" Lily said, face going hot. "I do not need to be carried about like some— some—""Damsel?""Child," Lily retorted scathingly."Then you shouldn’t have run off into the woods like one."Lily huffed, folding her arms across her chest, absolutely refusing to make this any easier for Scout. "You are the single most irritating person I have ever met."To her astonishment, Scout laughed—really laughed, loud and long and bright, completely transforming her face, making her so unfairly beautiful and distracting that Lily couldn’t stand it. Still chuckling, she said, "You’ll have to try harder than that to insult me, princess.""Queen."Scout grinned. "Princess. Better than you have cast far worse insults upon me. By comparison, irritating is nearly a compliment.""Add impossible to the list," Lily muttered, making Scout chuckle again.