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When Elvira was seventeen, her father was at the height of his diplomatic career in the United States of Atlanta. She had just enough polish and just enough privilege to make and keep friends easily among her schoolmates, made interestingly exotic rather than difficult by her European origins, and life glittered.
Times grew tougher as the twenties ended; her father and her homesick mother returned to Eylstadt, giving her their blessings to make her way in the career she'd chosen - journalism. She was determined, already bruised by her career but not yet bloody. But it didn't get easier. Five years later, she admitted a temporary defeat and took the money they wired her for the steamer.
She had, of course, never been presented to the Archduke. It was a custom still followed more often than not, even in the period of mourning for the Archduchess. There was a brief ceremony in the public receiving rooms. Then, His Excellency summoned her to a private interview some weeks later. She knew very little about her country's ruler, only that he was old and a widower, and that his young daughter had been away in the countryside taking fresh air for her health after her mother's death. Her first impression was mostly that his uniform had been so fiercely starched and pressed it had been difficult for him to turn his head. She wondered uneasily if a less formal setting would encourage this powerful old man to leer.
Instead he focused on her face, and asked her if she would accept a position tutoring the young archduchess.
"To me, the world grows smaller and smaller as planes and trains race faster across it," he said, "but I want all of its size to unfold before her. I need someone who's seen both sides of the Atlantic to teach Ortfiné about the world as it is now."
"I must still travel," said Elvira Friedmann boldly.
"Not this first year," he said, "and maybe not next year either - but perhaps in the future, as she grows."
And so the girl entered adolescence under Elvira's care.
She was never a nanny, and only the most casual of visitors to the palace at Landsbruck thought of Elvira as a governess. Ortfiné herself seemed to suddenly grow several months in maturity when she realized that she had been afforded her first advisor - someone whose instructions could be ignored, but likely at greater cost to Ortfiné than to anyone else.
When Finé was fifteen, Elvira returned to Atlanta, and their relationship continued in letters.
When Finé was sixteen, Elvira delayed her return, but not because the two parts of her life struggled against each other. Rather, she wanted to get better at telling the stories of the great cities and the world's powers so that when the war came - because she could see it would - she could tell the story of Eylstadt. And have people to tell it to.
When Izetta took her place at Finé's side, Elvira realized that she had already known about the witch. When she took up the role of tutor, Ortfiné was brought back the countryside. Everyone spoke with relief about the colour in the young princess's cheeks and the way her grief had tempered into seriousness. Ortfiné's absence had done her good. The princess talked of beautiful sights and wonderful friends, sometimes a little obliquely, as of treasures she wanted to keep for herself, but the hints were there.
Elvira had an excellent memory. Later, she put the hints together.
Izetta had always been part of Finé's story, just as the story of the White Witch was the story of Eylstadt.
It did not surprise Elvira that the stories should take a similar shape.
*
It was not easy to command the Royal Guards. Knowing this was not pride, as Bianca saw it, but simply pragmatism - for there were many hopeful girls and young woman who asked her what the qualifications were and how long she trained. She did not coat the terms in sugar - there was no sugar to be had cheaply in Eylstadt. She explained the long nights and the long days and the strict training and the need for diplomatic polish as well as decisive action.
But one thing was easy, and that was her purpose. She had protected the Archduke, and now she protected the Archduchess. At first she had been wary of the witch, whose appearance in the modern world was so sudden and unexpected to her, and whose ancestor had perhaps been a prince's downfall.
But her fears faded. Her pride could admit that Izetta was more devoted even than she was. Paradoxically, it became clear that to protect Izetta was to protect Finé.
A knot untied, a blissfully simple matter again.
Simple, but not easy.
*
So it was that those who loved Finé accepted Izetta for their princess's sake long before she was sure of herself.
Never, thought Izetta, could she truly belong to the world of the palace - the fine carpets and gleaming lamps, the oil portraits stretching back before her own ancestor's legend, the layers of manners on everything.
And yet it was almost all right, because she belonged to Ortfiné, and everyone seemed to understand that.
Strange, perhaps, that that truth lay so easily underneath all of their assumptions, all of their conversations. After all, Izetta knew her own history. The White Witch had not been extraordinary because of her powers. She had been extraordinary because of what she chose to do with them. For how thoroughly she had chained her fate to the fate of her prince.
Gifts of such enormity were a threat, because of their devastation when taken away.
*
They accepted their witch; they trusted her, and they included her in most of their meetings. Izetta did her best to follow along and understand.
Today the topic was infrastructure. Five years ago, a hydroelectric dam had been proposed at the high alpine lake of Bergsee. At that time, Eylstadt mainly bought its electricity from Westria. Westria was very happy with this arrangement, and through diplomatic channels, had hinted at taking offence and stifling other areas of trade if Eylstadt chose to pursue energy independence.
Then, of course, there was Eylstadt's pristine image to preserve. The farmers downstream were worried about the change to the river's pace. The village to the west was worried about the construction equipment that would need to drive along their ill-equipped road. The village to the south - if you could call it that when it was empty half the year - was the place where the richer merchants and faded nobility of Eylstadt had their summer homes, and they insisted that work should be done in the winter, and that all buildings should be constructed in the most picturesque style and that it must still be possible to both fish and row on the lake.
Sieghard said, "We will have to guard against sabotage."
Ortfiné looked at him seriously. Izetta was so often taken aback at these kinds of pronouncements, but Finé was far more rarely surprised. "On the dam, as it is constructed, you mean? Wouldn't it be easier to damage the transmission lines, later?"
"Yes, but that would be easier for us to recover from," Sieghard said. "If they can stop us before they start, the effect on morale will be greater, and also the likely casualties."
Ortfiné pursed her lips. "Do we have the people to spare?"
It was for Izetta that she clarified, "For counter-spying operations, not for the dam."
But the clarification wasn't necessary - it hadn't even occurred to Izetta that Ortfiné might make a cold calculation about how many murders a project could absorb in order to fulfil a greater need. Was she naïve?
But if so, perhaps it was another way to be what Finé needed - someone who trusted that Finé would act to preserve life whenever possible, at the same time that Sieghard needed her to face difficult things.
*
Conducting a war meant planning for electricity shortages, and who might buy Eylstadt's famous cheeses, and how to quickly destroy (and then perhaps rebuild) the main road leading from Eylstadt to the Romulan Federation. All of this made sense to Izetta, though some things that Ortfiné discussed with her council would not have occurred nearly so easily to Izetta as these things occurred to them.
But there were other things that baffled Izetta entirely. "We will hold a cultural festival," said Ortfiné, and no one around the table shook their heads or suggested the money could be better spent elsewhere. "Performances of The Snowbird at the Peak to be broadcast on the radio. A great collection of art to be displayed in the Great Hall and for all citizens to be admitted once."
"Not in the Great Hall," objected Sieghard, and the Royal Guard backed him up.
"But why?" said Izetta, timidly, late after the meeting, when they were taking cups of linden tea together. Clara, making clear what an honour it was, had recently granted to Izetta the privilege of brushing the archduchess's hair before sleep.
"Think of what Herr Marek said," said Finé, speaking a name that was generally uttered with scorn and distrust around the advisors' table. "That Eylstadt must acknowledge reality; the reality of the Germanian Empire's strength; the reality that borders are not forever, and even the land itself changes shape. Myth and history cannot stand up to the present. That Eylstadt has stood independently for ten score years does not mean it can stand independently now." She turned at the end of a stroke of the brush, looking earnestly into Izetta's eyes. "But you see, Izetta, a story is what makes people fight. Not for the concept of independence but the hope that they will bring up their children in the same way they were brought up. The hope that they know what it means to belong to Eylstadt and can share that knowledge. And what does it mean? It means our history, our legends, our music, our cheese, our art. A cultural festival is how people thump their fists on their chests and say "This is who I am." She shivered. "Without doing it the Germanian way, and saying, "and these are who we are not, and so we will crush those others."
Herr Marek was the head of the Farmers' Council. He was a distinctly Eylstadt problem, but would perhaps like not to be one. There was always a shadow on Finé's face when she spoke of him, because the long shadow of the Germanian Empire reached from behind his shoulder, and she never seemed to be sure how many views he represented. "I stand because my people stand behind me," said Finé, and Izetta knew how much it troubled her when some of them said: is it worth it to know that our young people will fight and die? Is it worth it that our trade chokes and our allies will not send us petrol or medicine and our diplomats return from their courts? For what - a national flower and a few titles and some legends?
"And why should Germania get what it wants?" said Herr Steiner, when the topics turned this way, and it mostly seemed to help.
*
Everyone - well, everyone around the advisors' table; everyone who cheered when she flew above the troops; everyone who cheered when she landed at the place, almost everyone - thought it was so wondrous that Izetta could soar to the clouds. On a weapon she wielded for them, or sometings on something as humble as a broken spar that some other more unfortunate soul might have clung to after a shipwreck. And yes, it was wondrous - Izetta would have betrayed her own nature as a witch far more than she did by following the White Witch's example, if she ever took such a thing for granted - but the heights that Ortfiné swooped to, before safely landing, were far more dazzling to Izetta.
One moment, Ortfiné was courteous and canny, looking at the map of the world as though she saw and understood everything that happened on it, speaking to diplomats and other powers of the world as someone who could spin that globe as well as anyone. The next, she was an excited young woman exulting over the taste and aroma of a cherry pie. And both of these people - the archduchess and the girl - were the same. Finé's mind and heart could leap far greater distances than Izetta could ever cross with her powers, all in an instant. To Izetta, that was the greater wonder than all of her own feats of flying.
And the times when she cried - that was when Izetta truly understood what it was to fall.
*
"It's strange," Ortfiné mused, "that a witch's power comes from the earth, and yet you use it to leave the earth. You use it to fly."
"I suppose," Izetta said, shrugging. She hadn't thought about it that way.
"For planes - once they reach a certain height, maintaining that height is not very much more difficult than it is to maintain a height further down. Sometimes easier - it all depends on the weather and where the winds are. But what about for you? Does your connection to the earth fade if you soar far above the clouds?"
"I haven't tried," Izetta said, feeling a little silly for such lacking answers. "It's colder and harder to breathe, and - I haven't had a reason. But even flying a long way, we tend to fly close above the trees, and yes, I suppose, it's easier to feel the earth. It's like..." She didn't think about it. She put the brush down, and reached out to Finé. She skated her hand along Finé's arm, from wrist to shoulder. Not touching a single ruffle or stray strand of hair - not making contact with lace or skin.
But also, not not touching her.
Both of them felt it - this thing that was not a touch, that offered nothing physical to feel.
She had been going to continue, to say, "Like a -" but now she didn't know what word she'd meant to say. The only word that came to mind was caress.
Finé lifted her chin, inviting Izetta to continue her gesture across Finé's throat, jaw, cheek. Unconsciously?
Izetta probably shouldn't have done that. Finé's eyes on hers were wide. Izetta couldn't look away. Izetta dropped her hand slowly, and Finé looked at it, and the awareness, flame-bright still, locked them both together.
Finé's eyes flicked to the doorway where Bianca stood. "We should continue this conversation another time," she said, in a shockingly ordinary voice.
"Of course," Izetta said, and didn't flee, the way she hadn't touched her archduchess.
*
Another time, they were discussing the royalty of different nations, and Finé mentioned the young Britannian prince, Harry.
"Were you going to marry him?" Izetta asked, "before the war broke out?"
If Finé had thoughts about why Izetta was asking, she didn't show them on her face. "He offered," she said. "We got along well and the King approved of my family history. But I would have had to leave Eylstadt and go to England, and so I declined."
Izetta wanted to ask, Did you mind?
Finé was continuing, "I offered again - myself - just before the Germanians took me captive. Just before we met again, Izetta, in that Germanian plane. You see, I thought it might secure an alliance. I couldn't bear to marry someone if it meant giving up Eylstadt, but that felt to me like being as true to Eylstadt as I could in that moment. If you see."
Izetta squeezed her hand, and then, as often happened, nearly missed the next few words from Finé in the brief backlash of - I love that I can do this - is this too much?
"I don't know if he regrets that he couldn't take up that offer," Finé said. Her gaze was far away. "I think he does, and that frightens me. It frightens me that he and his family might still want the allegiance - but think that it would cost them too much."
She could have made it work. That life would have suited her. Izetta tried to imagine Finé at the English court, and found it far too easy, having Redford's manor as a template. Finé had moved with ease through those distinguished guests.
She said she felt frightened - for Eylstadt. But what else did she feel?
*
War, the soldiers told Izetta, was largely a matter of waiting, even though that wasn't what you remembered later (assuming you had the luxury of remembering it). And that was true even for a witch, in the months that followed the sinking of the Drachenfels and the diplomatic mission to Britannia.
Some skirmishes were proposed - and then discarded because Steiner claimed they were too risky without troops in support, and those troops could not be spared.
The best engineers of Eylstadt - some famous far beyond the borders - developed weapons for Izetta to test. But after each test, they must be refined, and broken parts mended, and somehow everything seemed to take longer than it should.
Meanwhile, requests and suggestions came to the palace for Izetta to use her powers in a variety of different ways. The most impractical, perhaps, was a request from an elderly baroness for Izetta to move a large number of heavy roof tiles to the top of her dilapidated castle, because a broken staircase made it difficult to lift the stone otherwise. Izetta would not have minded if it could have relieved a period of waiting to be useful, but still she was just as glad that the ley lines were bare in that region, and she had no option to accept.
The tractor - for reasons kept somewhat obscure from Izetta - was different.
It would be the first machine of its kind in Eylstadt, and it had been shipped all the way from Britannia to the Eokan coast, and the farmer who was the brother of Herr Marek, the head of the Farmers' Council, wanted her to bring it to him.
"It doesn't matter that you can't bring it in a straight line," said Sieghard, studying the ley line map, "because you can follow the roads, and we can say that we want the people of Eylstadt to see their witch helping them."
"You're considering this?" Steiner was surprised.
"There are disadvantages," Sieghard admitted. "When Izetta isn't active, I prefer the Germanians not to know where she is. This pins down her location. But just now, there are advantages to that too..." He and Steiner exchanged a significant look, and he did not elaborate.
Even with its advanced, rubber tires, and its Hughes-Rictor patent engine, the tractor would have been difficult to move along Eylstadt's roads, and now that fuel was rationed, it would have been an expensive prospect even on better roads. It had come as far as it could come by sea. Herr Peter, who'd bought it, was willing to pay well for the privilege, and the Eokan officials at the port where it had been waiting were extremely unhappy about the space it was taking up in their warehouses. As a goodwill gesture it achieved many aims.
And it made Herr Marek happy, which seemed to be a mixed blessing.
Izetta had been kept out of sight the day he had come to the palace for a formal dinner, except that he had stayed longer than anticipated and she had just landed from a mission when the Royal Guard swung open the doors for him to leave. All the glances that passed around the courtyard felt like ricochets; this established son of Eylstadt appraising her, the guards tense, Izetta taking him in. He seemed so ordinary for a man about whom Steiner spoke so scornfully and Sieghard spoke with such caution.
"So this is our witch," he said. "Why don't they call you the Red Witch, girl?"
"My name is Izetta," said Izetta, stumbling.
"Hm," said Herr Marek. "Are the Germanians supposed to be frightened of an Izetta?"
Izetta lifted her chin. "Are they frightened of a Karl, a Thomas, a Jakob? Yet these are the men I fight beside."
"Yes," he said, in a tone different to his words, "there is much to praise in the courage of ordinary men and women. But it cannot win a war alone. Not when an empire stands at the passes."
"We will use what we have," Izetta said. She didn't know what to make of him. She didn't like him, but she had expected someone oilier. Someone more obviously craven.
A week later, the request came to move the tractor.
"Have you considered," Steiner asked Sieghard, "that Herr Marek knows of a plan for a Germanian attack, and is trying to get Izetta out of the way?"
"Yes," said Sieghard, briefly. "I have." And he told Herr Marek's brother that they could bring him his tractor in August, and then at the start of July he sent a message of good news, saying that things had changed, and she would bring it the following week.
They swooped on the warehouse as if they were raiding it, and were gone from Eokas as though the wind was chasing them.
Even on a completely peaceful domestic mission, Izetta did not lie to herself that her grandmother would have approved. This was still interference, leaving the cover of wood and meadow dwelling-places to flaunt her power, a way of existing that would have unpredictable results. Also, she felt anxious about using her powers while not forced to by life and death threats. But it was still a relief to be useful without being in combat - to spend her moments without being moments away from ending a life. How could it not?
Riding her tractor high above the roads, moving across the land with a heavy shadow, waving to people who almost all waved back, was surreal and yet comforting.
She thought of Finé. Every time since caressing the air above Finé's arm, she had blushed on mounting her rifle for a mission, feeling uncomfortably exposed by the simplicity of the structure beneath her, unable to forget the idea of stroking the earth and also the framing of Finé's intent face. Then the mission took over, and mostly she banished those thoughts. But riding the tractor lulled her into them again.
And trully, waving to the people of Eylstadt, receiving their calls and cheers, she felt she understood Finé better, too. This cheering wasn't for her, really, but for something the people of Eylstadt owned within themselves. Their legends. As Finé was their royalty.
Finé wasn't so untouchable, really.
Izetta should be brave enough to touch her.
Each day of travel was the same: riding the tractor, perched on top of its chassis, flying steadily according to the map, on a route chosen to follow thick ley lines and also to cross roads and towns. In the evening, she would descend carefully at a house or inn planned out ahead of time, landing the tractor as lightly as possible, where designated members of the Royal Guard would meet her and guard her in her sleep. Then away again.
The last night was an inn, and she had her own room. The ley lines roiled thickly here, and she wasn't as tired as usual, but the Royal Guard had ridden hard to get here, and were not entirely gallant company. She retired out of kindness to them and lay in the dark, wondering what was happening at the border, and what was happening at the palace.
Yes, when she returned, she would say the things that she and Finé had been saying to each other with their eyes. Maybe things would be different after the war - maybe Finé would marry the Britannian prince (but she didn't want to, did she?) or maybe she needed to make another alliance to secure Eylstadt (but wasn't her cousin Leonora due any day? The succession wasn't truly so fragile...).
She would reach out and clasp Finé's hand as they talked, and Finé's fingers would lace with hers, and maybe Izetta would kiss her... and then, so gently, she would unlace her fingers, and stroke her hand up Finé's arm again, and this time she would let her hand alight on Finé's shoulder, like a bird perching there, and she would stroke Finé's soft cheek, and kiss her again...
Here her hopes began to lose detail. Her grandmother had taught her about how people fit their bodies together, but it had been dry - and wry- and practical, and mostly in the context of the advice that might be sought of her in future - from lovers who came seeking the help of a witch. Would Finé like it if Izetta stroked her hands down from Finé's collarbones, across her breasts? Were her breasts more sensitive than Izetta's, or less, or just in different places? Would she want to guide Izetta's hands herself? Would she rather touch Izetta's breasts?
In her dreams, Finé said see, here, I'll show you, and slipped under Izetta's skin, so that they shared the same body with Finé looking out from Izetta's eyes, and when Izetta put her hand between her legs to coax and tug at the pleasure there, it was also Finé she was caressing and Finé who gasped in delight.
When Izetta woke up, the bright sun on her face turned the backs of her eyelids red, as red as the blood rushing to her blushing face, as red as her hair.
But, back at the palace, it was different. It was almost harder because Finé didn't think of herself as an untouchable archduchess, too grand and pure for blushes and sticky thighs and moans. It was almost as if everyone around her had to work harder to make that story real, to help her see her own consequence, to make up for her humility. And also there was still a war, and Izetta would have to fight at any moment, and she didn't want to reach out with both hands for Finé's heart and then hurt her by dying even more than she would already hurt.
Or so she told herself, for a while, until she turned her thoughts away entirely from the shape of Finé's body under the clothes that caressed it.
Strange, what it was easy to be brave about, and what was beyond her.
*
The cultural festival went well. When Izetta returned to the capital, her most recent mission was on the front page of the newspaper, but the cultural festival was on the second page. Musicians had come from Scandi and the Volstok Federation and Malay to play the most famous sonatas of the Eylstadt composer Braun, and the art displays had been held in a smaller hall at the south gate of Landsbruck, but people didn't seem to mind queueing to get in, and there were even merchants selling food and drink up and down the line.
Much of the palace vaults had been emptied in order to supply treasures, but, too, the wider nobility of Eylstadt had yielded up beloved portraits, tapestries, sculptures, even carpets to add to the display of Eylstadt history and finery.
Other legends than the White Witch were on display.
"And what is your favourite, Herr Marek?" Izetta heard Finé ask him.
"I've always liked the story of the Goat-Thief," he answered jocularly.
"But that has a witch in it!" Finé exclaimed. She was teasing him! Izetta marvelled at it.
"It's not the same," he argued. "The witch is just a convenient excuse for what happens. I'm a farmer, your excellency. I believe in seeds. The seed of the story is a misbehaving lout and a spirited animal. Anything on top of that is embellishment."
The story of the goat-thief was the story of a low-born robber who made a bad mistake one day when he stole a witch's goat, and she cursed him never to succeed in stealing anything else.
A practical man, he took the curse seriously and never tried to defy it - but the goat had a will of its own, and took up its own career in crime. From then on, all the schemes were the goat's doing, and it dragged its supposed-master, really-servant up and down the length of the country, dancing across the borders, in a variety of capers and scrapes.
The first painting that they had hung on the wall at the entrance to the hall depicted the Goat, biting the neck of a bulging sack, while a barefoot, beleagered man ran after him - perhaps Herr Marek meant what he said, and perhaps he'd chosen a legend at random because that was the last one he'd seen.
It didn't matter. Izetta was content to agree with him that it was a fine story. Even if she wasn't sure they agreed on anything else.
*
She'd broken Finé's heart anyway.
Broken, and reforged, she hoped. Finé had faced surrender, and ordered Izetta to give up, and Izetta had refused, and they'd both been so terribly hurt.
But if Finé couldn't stop her, at least Finé knew that it wasn't at her own command that Izetta would make her sacrifice. And if Izetta had chosen to defy her, at least Finé had forgiven her for that.
The battle built towards a terrible intensity, without any moments to snatch at that allowed for memory or comfort or hope. There was only the whipping air and the relentless sun and Sophie, and the tanks and trains and other heavy things that Sophie picked up and lashed her with like fists from the earth itself. There was only dodging and straining, darting and diving. There was no room for herself. There was certainly no room for regret.
There was only space for thought at the very last moment, as Izetta rose and rose into a wider and wider glowing sphere. She had never imagined being so far from the world, even theoretically, even as she pulled the world's very soul upwards with her. Sophie was racing to follow her, but she wouldn't catch up. There, in the painfully thin air, Izetta's mind at least could take a breath. This was all there would be.
She'd left the land behind, truly, for the very first time, and it felt lonely. For the first time, she couldn't feel the surface moving below her. This was no caress.
It wasn't her mind that decided, but at the last moment, she sent the magic upwards without her, hoping selfishly that Sophie could do nothing by following. She saved one last spark for herself and let the air go; if these were her last moments she wanted them to belong to the world, not this lonely place beyond it.
Finé cried over her when they found her. Happy tears, of course, but also grief and shock and shame. "You have nothing left," she said, once. Only once.
And it was true in certain ways that mattered. She couldn't feel the power of the ley lines, even the places where the power had once flowed. She couldn't walk - she couldn't even move her legs with magic, to pretend. But she was alive. And she could feel Finé's touch on her shoulder, Finé's tears on her cheek. She could put her hands to the trunk of a tree and feel the world that way.
And she planned to put her hands to the trunk of the same trees every season from now on until her hands knew them better than her eyes, the same way she would run her hands along Finé's skin, across cheek and collarbone and hip, never to get tired of it.
Finé didn't understand, at first, where Izetta wanted to build the cottage. She was worried about the remote location and Izetta's future care. She was touched, of course, that Izetta wanted to commemorate the place they'd first met, but it wasn't just that. She did understand eventually, when Izetta found the right words to explain it to her.
"Before we met, I couldn't stay anywhere," Izetta said. "We were always on the road; moving because we were distrusted, distrusted because we were always moving. You and your delight when you saw me - that was when I first hoped that I could claim a place for my own."
"All of Eylstadt is your home," Finé promised her.
"Yes. But this, and you, are what I want. Can I have both of them?"
It turned out that she could.