The Word: The Bandit King’s Daughter

The Word: Written exclusively for METRO.

Image credit: Courtesy Kelly Barnhill

Recommended by the Editor

The Word: Turntable

The Word: Get in if You Want to Live

By: Kelly Barnhill |   November   |  From the print edition

Editor's note: Each issue, METRO asks a talented writer to submit a piece for "The Word." The November submission comes from Kelly Barnhill, the author of The Mostly True Story of Jack and several other books. Read more on her website, kellybarnhill.wordpress.com.

There was a girl named Aine who lived with her mother and father until her mother died, and then it was just with her father. When he was around. Which wasn’t very often. 

In the moment before her mother died, the dying woman grabbed Aine’s hand and gasped. 

“The wrong boy,” she whispered. “The wrong boy will save your life, and you will save his. And the wolf -”

But what a wolf had to do with boys (right, wrong or otherwise) Aine’s mother didn’t say. She closed her eyes and said no more. And soon her shallow breathing stopped, and her mother was gone.

Now, Aine was a practical girl, an industrious girl, and not prone to sentimentality or grief. She loved her mother, and missed her terribly, but crying couldn’t get the washing done or the bread made or soup cooked, and it certainly couldn’t bring her mother back from the place where the dead go after their bodies are buried at the feet of the trees. Besides, Aine’s father wept enough for the two of them. 

Eventually, the shopkeeper who employed her father came to the house and said that her father need not return. Shortly after that, their landlord told them to pack up their things and find a new place to live. Aine was at a loss. She went into her father’s room and woke him up.

“Father,” she said. “The shopkeeper says that you needn’t return to work and the landlord says that we must move, and there are no more coins in the jar, so I cannot buy flour, so I cannot bake bread. And there is no soup on the stove because we ran out of meat.” Potatoes too, Aine thought. And lentils. And salt. And any other bit of food that might have been sliced into the pot. 

Her father sat up. “You’re saying we have nothing, then?”

“No father,” she said. “I would never say we have nothing. We have our hands and our heads and strong backs. That’s always something. Mother always said that sharp wits are more valuable than a castle full of gold.” The girl swallowed and closed her eyes.  “And she was always right.”

Her father, a huge man with green eyes and red hair, tipped back his head and howled with laughter. He stood, grabbed his daughter by the waist and swung her around as though she weighed no more than a measure of wheat. He sat her on his shoulder like a bird.

“Indeed, my daughter, my treasure, my hope,” he sang. “The world is large and nimble and rich! And this village is too tiny for people as clever as us. Pack our things, my angel, and let us be off!” He set her lightly on the ground, grabbed his hood and his boots and set off into the night. “I’m off to gather supplies, my flower!” he called from outside. “Assemble our possessions. We leave before moonrise!”

Aine packed what was left of their things. She didn’t know how he would purchase the things they needed with no money, but her father astonished her by coming home with a full purse hanging from his belt and a full leather sack slung over his shoulder. 

“Father-” she began.

“No questions,” he said. His eyes were bright and wild, his cheeks flushed. His gaze darted this way and that, as though they were, already, beset by enemies. “Come! To our horses!”

“We have no horses!” Aine protested.

“We do now,” her father said, and he grabbed her arm and their bags and pulled what was left of their life in that house into the darkness outside.