The Prince Problem

by Vivian Vande Velde

  “Fine,” Amelia said. She could make a conclusive judgment once she actually talked with the prisoner. “Take me to him.” She wanted to do this quickly, before her father could come out and tell her to stay away and leave this matter to the adults.

  The guard hesitated, weighing the unusual request against the fact that it was the princess asking it. In the end he said, “Yes, my lady.”

  She hadn’t been sure which shed the guard had been talking about, but as they walked, she realized it was the one she had been near last night when she’d gone out to the river’s edge, precisely because she’d wanted to be alone. When, exactly, had he arrived, this person—never mind the young, ragged, and inept part—who was described as giving the appearance of being not right in the head? While she’d been there? Silently watching her? Because—if he had been by the river at the same time she was, she hadn’t noticed him.

  Of course, she hadn’t seen that girl, either, not until she spoke—the one talking about wishes, and with what had looked, under the moonlight, like silver hair. Surely the guards hadn’t taken hold of her, had they, mistaking her for a boy, a nothing-much-to-him boy? Amelia hadn’t recognized her but had assumed she must belong to the castle, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been there. And yet at least one person who didn’t belong had been there.

  Amelia remembered that she’d been unable to determine if the mysterious girl was very young or just short. Could I have been mistaken about her gender? she wondered. But, no, the child had definitely been a girl.

  By then, they had reached the shed. A second guard was there—Kilby, apparently—sitting on the ground with his back against the door. As soon as he saw her, he jumped to his feet and bowed. She asked both of them, “Are you sure this is a boy you’ve captured and not a girl?”

  Looking confused—there seemed to be a lot of that between the two of them—they assured her that it was definitely a boy, probably twelve or thirteen years old, skinny and ragged.

  Amelia nodded. “Well, then, open the door.”

  One guard raised the bar that held the door from flapping in the wind, while the other stood ready just in case their prisoner planned to use the opportunity to try to escape.

  The door opened …

  … and there was no one there, neither boy nor girl.

  Just a bony and rather raggedy rabbit, who blinked in the sunlight, then bolted out the door.

  One of the guards stood by her, while the other entered the shed, poking at the coarse-cloth bags scattered on the floor, looking behind pots that were obviously much too small to hide anyone.

  “You were supposed to be watching!” the one who had accompanied her shouted to the other. “How did you let him escape?”

  “I didn’t!” Kilby protested. “I been here the whole time. Nobody come out that door.”

  “So you saying you see him here?” the first guard demanded.

  “Well, he must of got out another way, then.” Kilby picked up a hoe and ran the handle along the bottom of the walls. “There must be a hole,” he said.

  But all three of them could see there wasn’t.

  The first guard started berating his partner, accusing him of having fallen asleep or of wandering off.

  Amelia decided it was time for her to wander off. When her father arrived, her presence here could do nothing but complicate things. It wasn’t as though Prince Sheridan was likely to jump out from behind the rosebushes at her. Intruder or not, she felt perfectly safe in the gardens.

  She followed the winding paths, occasionally stopping to sniff at the fragrant blooms, hoping to quiet her churning mind.

  She made it all the way back to the castle without seeing, hearing, or sensing anyone. But as she put her hand on the latch of the door that opened onto the ballroom, the same she had left by last night, she heard the crunch of a footstep behind her. Before she could turn, someone had one arm around her waist and the other around her neck, with his hand over her mouth so that she couldn’t scream—his dirty, foul-smelling hand.

  No, it was a dirty, foul-smelling cloth that someone was holding over her face. Henbane: She recognized the thick, musty-sweet scent from her lessons with the botanist. He’d warned her to avoid the plant if she could, or use it very carefully only if she must. “A little will render your patient unconscious,” he had said. “Just a little more will render him dead.”

  Assuming whoever had hold of her wanted to capture her and not kill her, did he know exactly what he was doing?

  Amelia stopped struggling, to encourage her captor not to linger with that cloth at her nose and mouth. Her senses swirled dizzyingly, and the last thing she was aware of was her legs collapsing under her.

  Telmund ran out of the shed as fast as his bunny legs would take him, past the two guards who had captured him in his human form, past a surprised-looking princess—he could tell by her dress and bearing that she was a princess, even though he didn’t recognize her.

  He didn’t have time to worry about the humans. He was more preoccupied with the way his bunny legs worked. As much as he had planned to run straight past the people, his legs had minds of their own. The front ones made him zig and zag, and the back ones periodically and unexpectedly propelled him to leap into the air, where he often both zigged and zagged, finding himself in an entirely unexpected place when he landed.

  He supposed it was his bunny brain at work, tactics to avoid ending up as breakfast for some bigger and faster animal. Not that he expected there to be too many of those in the formal gardens of a royal family. As far as the humans went, even if they had plans for him that involved stewing, roasting, or pickling, he’d long ago lost sight of them, and he heard no sounds of pursuit.

  Stop, Telmund ordered his legs. There’s no immediate danger. The back pair gave one more half-hearted sproing into the air.

  Was this the witch’s idea of a joke? Turning him into a rabbit after giving him brief moments back in his own body? Telmund didn’t find it funny. He tried not to let himself get too encouraged at the thought that it showed he could turn back.

  Telmund realized that once his legs had stopped moving, his mouth had started. Without even knowing that he’d done it, he grabbed a blossom off a phlox plant and was eating it. Whatever he would have thought of it as a boy, his rabbit self was delighted.

  Was it better to be a rat or a rabbit? A rabbit was bigger, so that meant not as many animals could swallow him in a single mouthful. That was good. And his eyesight as a rabbit was keener than it had been as a rat. On the other hand, how would he ever get anyone to know who he was? Even Wilmar would be hard to convince, since he would be on the lookout for a gray rat.

  But meanwhile, was that an iris?

  Telmund hopped across the path and chewed on the crunchy stem, which he somehow knew tasted just as delectable as the flower would.

  Was his rabbit mouth any better suited than his rat mouth had been to human speech?

  “Hello,” Telmund said. “I’m Prince Telmund.” Even given that his mouth was full of iris at the time, the sound that came from him couldn’t be described as anything besides a very soft grunt.

  Not having any idea where he was, the only way he could think to get home was to follow the river upstream. It would be slower traveling on land as a rabbit than it had been floating downstream as a rat. And he knew that not all the terrain the river had flowed through would be as hospitable as a royal garden.

  Which way was the river?

  He gave a couple more hops but found himself distracted by a patch of peonies. Why hadn’t the cook at his father’s castle ever served these things?

  Telmund was so busy munching, he startled himself when his right hind leg thumped. Now why did it do that? he wondered. But even as he wondered, he was filled with dread. Run! his rabbit brain warned him. Danger! Danger! Run!

  Which way?

  Telmund stood on his hind legs to look over the peonies but found himself sniffing the air as much as he was looking.

&nbs
p; Good thing. Because from behind him came the smell of …

  His human brain failed him, but his rabbit brain supplied the picture of a cat.

  Telmund leaped into the air and twisted to look behind.

  Yes, definitely a cat. Big and orange. And crouched low to the ground, looking directly at him. Its legs flexed, about to spring.

  Telmund took off, zigzagging and leaping.

  The cat pursued.

  It was bigger and faster than him, but Telmund’s bunny antics made it hard for the cat to follow. Still, Telmund could hear the cat’s paws striking the ground, alarmingly close, slapping at the plants and leaves underfoot. He was certain he felt the cat’s breath on his backside, though surely that wasn’t possible, not through his bunny fur. But he could smell the cat’s breath, rank with dead meat. And that gave him a burst of speed.

  There was a log serving as the border of one of the flower beds. Telmund raced toward that, seeing an indentation in the ground beneath the log. Not nearly big enough, Telmund’s human brain calculated. Yes, it is! his bunny brain assured him.

  Into the cavity Telmund ran.

  The good news was that he fit. The bad news was that it was a dead end. Whatever had created the hole, it didn’t go all the way under the log and exit to the other side. Telmund pivoted, ready to race out again.

  But the cat was there, licking its lips.

  The cat lay down in front of the hole. It reached a paw toward Telmund, claws extended.

  Telmund pressed his back to the space where ground and log met, and ducked his head.

  The claws touched his whiskers, but not enough to catch hold of him.

  The cat hissed and scratched at the dirt.

  Check the other side, Telmund mentally urged the cat. See if you can get me that way.

  But the cat stayed where it was.

  As though it had a mind of its own, Telmund’s back leg thumped in alarm.

  The cat continued to scratch away at the dirt.

  Eventually, it would make the hole big enough to reach in.

  Telmund tried to turn around again, to face the other way, so he could use his front paws to dig his way out under the log. But as soon as he started to move, he momentarily put himself closer to the cat.

  The cat’s claws raked through the fur on his front leg, not reaching through to the skin but proving that Telmund couldn’t turn without getting seriously injured.

  There was no way out of this predicament. He couldn’t stop from crying out “Help!” No word came, but his rabbit throat gave voice to a piercing scream. His rabbit brain told him this was the sound a rabbit would make if mortally wounded.

  And then, beyond all reasonable expectation, help came.

  A pair of hands reached down and picked up the cat. “You,” a girl’s voice said, “must go away. I declare this a place of sanctuary.”

  The cat hissed and jumped from the girl’s arms, but it didn’t take up its place in front of the log. Instead it slinked away, as though that had been its intention all along.

  The girl knelt down in front of the hole.

  No, Telmund saw not a girl: a fairy. He knew fairies because his next-older brother, Frederic, was married to one. Besides, she had silver hair, and her wings were showing over her shoulders as she leaned forward to look at Telmund.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” she answered.

  Telmund’s nose twitched in surprise. “You can understand me?” He was so surprised that he didn’t struggle against her as she placed her hands on either side of him and gently pulled him out.

  “Of course. Fairies speak all the languages of animals. It’s our job to protect animals.”

  Telmund wasn’t sure if it was smart of him to admit it, but he said, “I’m not really a rabbit.”

  “Close enough,” the fairy said. She stood, still cradling him in her arms. “Just as you were close enough to being a rat that I moved you off the path last night, so Princess Amelia didn’t accidentally step on you after you crawled out of the river.” She began walking.

  “Are you going to bring me back to my own kingdom?” Telmund asked, his heart lifting with hope.

  The fairy considered. “I don’t see how that would help you as a rabbit. And you-as-an-animal is all I’m concerned with.”

  “I’m not always a rabbit,” Telmund protested.

  She nodded. “I can see the spell you’re under. Every time you fall asleep, you’ll wake up as something else. Every other time, it’s your natural form.”

  “Oh,” said Telmund. He was familiar with a lot of once-upon-a-time stories, but none of them had a spell like that. “So all I have to do is fall asleep, turn back to myself, and make it back home on my own.”

  “That might be one thing you could do,” the fairy said.

  “So where are you taking me?” Telmund asked.

  “Here.” They had come up behind a two-horse wagon loaded with sheaves of straw. There was a tarp on top, evidently to protect the straw in case of bad weather. One man was already sitting down at the reins, while a second man was just climbing on. The fairy approached from behind and didn’t make a sound, so the men were unaware of her. She didn’t need to lift the tarp, since it didn’t reach all the way down in the back. From the top, the sheaves appeared to be piled randomly on the bed of the wagon. But from his rabbit’s-eye view in back, Telmund could tell that the mound was carefully stacked, with the sheaves crisscrossing in a way to form a hollow. The fairy set Telmund into this hollow.

  “Where is this wagon going?” Telmund asked her.

  “Not a clue,” she answered in a whisper. “But hopefully out of my territory, so you’ll be someone else’s problem.”

  The wagon jostled as the horses started walking.

  The fairy gave a cheery wave, then turned and walked away.

  Telmund considered jumping off and running after her, to try and explain to her that he was the brother of the human ambassador to the fairy court. She really should be nicer to him. But he suspected she wouldn’t be impressed. And even though Telmund’s mind told him the pair of horses weren’t going all that fast, it felt pretty fast by rabbit standards.

  Where were the men taking their wagonload of straw? Telmund knew that chances were equally good they’d bring him closer to—or farther from—his own Kingdom of Rosenmark.

  In a story, being rescued by a fairy only to be abandoned on a wagon filled with straw, destination unknown, would be the start of an adventure. In a story, everything would eventually work out well—at least for a younger son. In a story, the hero always knew what to do next.

  So should he jump or stay?

  As a human, Telmund wouldn’t have found the distance from the wagon bed to the ground to be high. Even for someone rabbit-sized, it shouldn’t seem that daunting. But Telmund found out something he hadn’t known until that very moment: Rabbits are afraid of heights.

  Especially moving heights.

  He couldn’t bring himself to jump … He couldn’t bring himself to jump … Then the wagon turned the corner of the castle, and he could no longer see the fairy girl.

  They were on a cobblestone road. The wagon bounced and tipped and rattled alarmingly. Telmund hopped farther in, away from the edge. The sheaves of straw were stacked this way and that, but loosely, leaving what could almost be called a path leading deeper in.

  Telmund sniffed in the direction of the front of the wagon. Something was in here besides the straw. His bunny brain sent him the picture of a human. Was he smelling the two men? He suspected they wouldn’t smell as nice as this. He hopped farther in.

  There, lying on the lowest layer of straw, with other sheaves stacked around and over to form a little straw cave, was the girl he’d glimpsed as he ran from the shed. A princess, he recalled thinking. The fairy had referred to a Princess Amelia almost stepping on him.

  Was she dead?

  Telmund hopped right up to her and saw that she was breathing.

 
So what was Princess Amelia doing, sleeping in a wagon full of straw? Surely she was not inclined to nap in strange places. Telmund suddenly noted that her wrists and ankles were bound by rope, and there was a gag over her mouth.

  He moved in closer, his bunny nose sniffing. The scent he was tracking was strongest near her face. As a boy, he wouldn’t have been able to say what he was smelling. His rabbit sense warned: Not good! Stay away! Don’t nibble! Danger! His shared boy/rabbit brain told him the princess had been dosed with something. That meant this sleep was unnatural, and no doubt it wouldn’t do him any good to try to rouse her.

  The wagon creaked to a stop, and Telmund heard voices. Castle guards, he realized. They questioned the men, who were telling a story about having delivered pastries and prepared meats in fancy serving dishes for the royal festivities.

  Lies, Telmund’s nose told him. No food had been here.

  The edge of the tarp was pulled back, admitting a little more light, but not much, into the heart of this straw cave. A couple sheaves shook as the guards poked at them, but the examination was hardly thorough. Telmund heard the guards wish the men a good day, and the wagon started to move again.

  Telmund ran to the back edge. “No!” he cried. “They’re making off with your princess! Stop them!” It came out Grunt! Snuffle! Grunt!

  The wagon was still moving quite slowly. He might have been able to talk his bunny legs into jumping down onto the road.

  But there was no way to tell anyone what he knew. And he couldn’t leave the princess on her own—even if it had taken a not-very-friendly fairy’s intervention to keep her from stepping on him. That wasn’t the way heroes acted in stories, and it wasn’t the way he would act.

  But how could a rabbit help her? He didn’t even have hands, much less a blade to cut through the ropes that held her.