The Princess Imposter

by Vivian Vande Velde

  With her hands on her hips, Gabriella mentally counted to ten. This was a strategy her diplomacy teacher had suggested for dealing with difficult foreign representatives or unruly peasants. In the past, Gabriella had never before gotten beyond seven. With Parf, she got to fifty-three and only stopped then because Parf broke her concentration by asking, “Turned to stone, have you?”

  “Parf!” Benlos called.

  “What?” Parf snapped. “She’s exasperating! She don’t even—”

  He was calling her exasperating?

  “No—Parf,” Benlos interrupted in a this-is-important tone that caused Parf to look beyond Gabriella, and Gabriella to turn around.

  Benlos stood, still holding the gosling he’d been stroking. Parf had been examining its mother, who had a foot fungus.

  How strange, Gabriella thought, noting that the gosling was fading and becoming see-through. A moment later she realized that both the gosling and Benlos were see-through. Which must mean—

  “No!” Parf shouted, getting up and shoving her out of his way.

  Too late.

  Benlos dissolved into a purple cloud.

  The Council must have come to a decision.

  Parf growled at Gabriella in frustration. “You were in the way!” he shouted. “I could’ve gotten to him iffen you hadn’t been blocking me.”

  “I would have been sitting right next to him,” Gabriella shot back, not shouting—not exactly, “if you hadn’t been acting so pigheaded and unreasonable.”

  “Yeah?” Parf shouted. By then he had to shout, as the goose mother caught on that her goose baby was no longer there. She honked in crying out for her lost one to come back, and again in sorrow, and finally in fury. Gabriella couldn’t speak goose, but the frantic mother’s mood was clear. She flapped her wings, raining a flurry of feathers, and ran back and forth between where Benlos had been and where Parf was.

  “Yeah?” Parf shouted again. “Well, he called for me, not you!”

  Gabriella had to think. She couldn’t make sense of this. “What does that have to do with anything? This isn’t a competition.”

  Parf’s jaw was set. He glared at her, but then turned his attention to trying to calm the distraught goose.

  “It isn’t,” Gabriella protested. “You’re the one who told your mother I should go to the Council hearing.”

  “Yeah? So what? I didn’t mean for you to take over and become the favorite.”

  “The favorite!” Gabriella exclaimed. “Your parents have twelve children. They very obviously love you all. I’m just a changeling.”

  “Hmph.”

  Clearly his hurt feelings would not be soothed by logic.

  But she couldn’t help trying. “Besides,” she said, “you were the one who found the tooth under the table.”

  “Like you wouldn’t’ve—in another heartbeat or so? After setting everything up, talking the Council into listening, scaring Uncle Ardfogy?” He shook his head. “I knew you were trouble to begin with.”

  “Ha!” Gabriella said.

  Parf raised an eyebrow.

  “No, go on, please. Explain.”

  “See, that’s it exactly; with your fancy la-dee-da way of talking, you’re more like my father than I am.”

  “Don’t talk to me about talking,” Gabriella told Parf. “You don’t talk like either of your parents—or any of your brothers or sisters.”

  “Oh yeah?” Parf took a step toward Gabriella, so that they were standing just about nose to nose. Well … in truth his nose was more aligned to her chin than any other part of her face, but he was standing close. “And what do you, in all your clever human princessness, think you know about that?”

  Gabriella did not back away. “I think you talk the way you talk because that’s what you choose. I think it’s your way of standing out and saying, ‘Nobody can tell me what to do.’ I think you want to aggravate people—that’s why you change everybody’s names so that they all sound rude.”

  “Yeah?” Parf countered. “And I think you talk the way you talk because you think you’re better than everyone else.”

  “I talk the way I talk to communicate with less of a chance of misunderstanding.” She thought about this for a moment. “Except in your case. You always misunderstand. Intentionally. You revel in misunderstanding. I may be a princess, but you’re the King of Misunderstanding!”

  Parf finally took a step back. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But the big thing I just don’t understand—what I really try to understand but can’t—is what is it about my father and humans? I don’t see why he’s so caught up in their stories that he keeps trying to pass himself off as human, so that he can spend time among them. Nobody else’s father does that. They’re satisfied with the old fairy folklore. They don’t need to learn more.”

  Gabriella tried to picture Benlos passing himself off as human. Maybe, if it was a dark night, and if he didn’t sit or stand too close to anyone. And if he wore a loose cloak to hide his wings. A loose cloak with a hood to hide his silver-white hair. A loose cloak with a hood that hung low over his face to hide his purple eyes.

  “Magic,” she said, working it out. “That’s what he uses dragons’ teeth for—to disguise himself as human so he can come among us and listen to our stories.”

  “A bit slow, ain’t you?” Parf sneered. “To just be catching on now?”

  “And that’s why you don’t like humans in general, and me in particular.”

  Parf shrugged. “Well, you’ve kind of grown on me,” he mumbled, turning to grab the goose so that he could finish wrapping its foot. “At first I couldn’t stand how you wouldn’t fight back. I thought, How far is she going to let me push her? But then I caught on that you could’ve, anytime you wanted to—you just chose not to.”

  Gabriella was used to diplomats and courtiers with their empty praise. But Parf’s words made her blush. “And I’ve grown used to you,” she admitted. “I admire how skilled and kind you are with the animals.”

  The goose began honking again, and struggling to get free of Parf’s firm hold.

  At which point Gabriella became aware of a honking echo. A cloud appeared by the log on which Benlos had been sitting, and then Benlos himself appeared, still holding the gosling.

  He let it go as soon as he was solid enough.

  Both the mother and the little one honked at each other and touched beaks; then they waddled out of the clearing, still honking. Gabriella couldn’t tell if they were saying I missed you or Let’s get away from those three before one of us disappears again.

  “That didn’t take long,” Parf said.

  Nodding toward the noisy baby goose, Benlos said, “Oh, the Council was quite eager to have me out of there.”

  “So what’s the bad news?” Parf asked.

  “No bad news at all. Well, not for us. They determined your uncle had lied, and so they removed him from the Council.”

  “That’s the least they could do,” Parf grumbled.

  “It was the least they did,” Benlos said. “Ardforgel and Sylvimit will be coming here later to offer a formal apology.”

  Parf gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “And he has to pay a penalty.”

  Since Parf was pretending to be too uninterested to ask, Gabriella did. “To the Council?”

  Benlos grinned. “To us. One dragon’s tooth for each of us: me, Mumsy, each of the little ones—even Miss-mot, though hers will be held in a trust until she’s a bit older—one for our changeling, and another for our daughter, whose place our changeling has taken.”

  Parf grunted again, although he was hard-pressed not to look pleased. “Fifteen dragons’ teeth,” he said. “That will be out-and-out painful for Ardfogy to give up.”

  Benlos held up a little pouch. Obviously, his locket could not accommodate that many teeth. “It was,” he said. “And it will hurt him again every Midsummer Day and Midwinter Night when he must pay the fee again.”

  Even Parf could no longer keep his face
sour. “Wow,” he said. “Just. Wow.”

  Benlos opened the pouch and handed Parf a tooth. He made to hand one to Gabriella, too, but she shook her head. “Humans can’t make magic,” she said, “even with a dragon’s tooth. So you should keep it.”

  “Council said it was yours,” Benlos insisted. “Don’t you have a wish? I could make it for you.”

  “Well, yes,” Gabriella said. “I wish I was back home.”

  And, in another instant, she was.

  The idea that these two countries could go to war because of her caused Phleg to do something she had never done before: She said, “I’m sorry.”

  And then, in another first, taking herself totally by surprise, she started to cry.

  “See what you’ve done!” exclaimed Gabriella’s mother, addressing King Leopold. “You horrid, horrid man!”

  Queen Wilhelmina turned on her. “Please don’t talk to my husband that way!” she snapped.

  Now these two queens, who had been nothing but kind to her, were arguing—because of her. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, her words little more than a raspy croak.

  But King Humphrey heard her. “You have nothing to be sorry for!” he bellowed.

  “How about spitting milk on two royal personages?” King Leopold demanded.

  “She didn’t mean to,” said everyone else—some with more exasperation than others—Fred, his mother, Gabriella’s mother, Gabriella’s father, and Gabriella’s servant, Ellen.

  “But that was only the final straw,” Leopold said. “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  “Camel, my foot,” Fred’s mother snorted. “You’re not a camel; you’re a horse’s rear end!” She turned to Gabriella’s mother and explained, “I can say things like that; he’s my husband.”

  While his father sputtered, Fred made his way to Phleg’s side, despite the fact that he was not supposed to put any weight on his injured leg. He put his arms around her and patted her back, saying, “There, there, everything will be all right,” in much the same way Phleg would have comforted a sick or hurt animal.

  It was a nice feeling.

  “What have you done to my daughter?” an angry voice demanded.

  But it wasn’t King Humphrey asking.

  Phleg would have recognized this voice anywhere—even somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be. It was her own true father. She lifted her wet and snotty face away from Fred’s chest, just as King Humphrey, sounding pretty angry himself, demanded, “Who are these intruders? And how have they gotten into our private garden?”

  And it indeed was more than just her father crowding into the grassy clearing among the hedges. It was her entire family: Parf and Mumsy and all the little ones. Even the changeling herself, Princess Gabriella.

  Oops, that couldn’t be good.

  Nor was it good that Mumsy must have come here directly from tending animals, for under each arm she held a badger. The two animals had bite marks and scratches, evidence that Mumsy was treating wounds they had inflicted on each other in a badger dispute. Phleg’s family were strict in their demand for peace among all living creatures who sought fairy help, so Phleg had no doubt that the two badgers had been behaving themselves admirably while Mumsy took care of their hurts. In normal circumstances, that peace would have continued until they made their separate ways back into the wild woods. In normal circumstances, they would not have found themselves suddenly transported via fairy magic into an entirely different environment, one filled with a variety of two-legged creatures they had never before met. Some of the two-legged creatures—fairy children and human alike—began squealing at the suddenness of their arrival.

  The badgers squirmed their way out of Mumsy’s grip and dropped to the ground. The two came together in a single snarling, hissing, biting, clawing ball of fur that tumbled back and forth among all those fairy and human and table legs.

  If Phleg had thought there had been squealing before, that was nothing compared to the squealing that started once the badgers were loose. Her younger brothers and sisters were not used to brawling badgers, and neither—apparently—were the humans.

  Fred placed himself in front of her, a gesture of protectiveness that Phleg appreciated, though considering how erratically the battling badgers were rolling about, that may not have been the most effective defense. She peeked beyond him to see what was happening.

  The two queens clung to each other, screaming.

  “Do something!” King Humphrey howled at Ellen, clearly deeming that badger removal was not among a king’s duties.

  But neither, just as clearly, did Ellen feel that was the function of a lady’s maid.

  King Leopold took a hurried step backward as the growling ball of badger veered suddenly in the direction of his ankles. He would have toppled over a stool, had Humphrey not caught and steadied him.

  “Guards!” Humphrey bellowed. “Help!”

  The only people who responded to that call for help were Princess Gabriella—the real Princess Gabriella—and Daisy, the oldest of Phleg’s younger sisters, who had been training to tend the animals. But neither had ever separated feuding badgers before. Although the two of them kept running after the badger ball, Phleg suspected that they were both earnestly hoping they would not catch up.

  Meanwhile, Mumsy was hollering, “Quiet! Calm down, everyone! And that includes you, Sharp-Claw—and you, Scourge-of-the-Forest! Quiet! Quiet! QUIET!”

  Unsurprisingly, her shrieking did not calm badger, fairy, or human.

  Phleg saw Parf looking at her. Once she met his gaze, he said, in his irritatingly smirky tone that carried over every din, “It hasn’t been three days. You lose the bet.”

  Her father, who had been looking appreciative of the chaos, smacked her brother on the back of the head. “No, she does not. She didn’t come back home; we came here. Hello, Renphlegena.”

  “Hello, Daddy,” Phleg said.

  Fred, still standing in front of her to block the badgers, slowly turned to face her.

  The wrestling badgers wrestled their way against one of the legs of the table that held the breakfast.

  Phleg saw the table wobble, but before it fell she grabbed hold of the pitcher of honeyed milk. The table with all its food and dishes crashed to the ground, which finally—finally—startled the badgers into a moment of stillness, a brief breather in their fur-flying fury.

  Phleg emptied the pitcher of milk on top of them.

  Sputtering, the badgers broke off from each other, then ran off into opposite directions.

  “There,” Phleg said, handing the pitcher to Ellen. “That’s settled.”

  “Isn’t she remarkable!” Fred announced to everyone.

  “Yes,” Phleg said. “But I also am not who you think I am.” It was time—it was past time—for honesty. She glanced over the crowd until she found the person she was looking for. “Princess Gabriella?”

  The princess stepped into the center of the clearing, being careful not to tread on any of the broken crockery or spilled food, as she wasn’t wearing shoes.

  “I am so sorry,” Phleg told her. “I never stopped to think how changing places with you would affect anyone besides me.”

  Gabriella didn’t scream at her. Or slap her. Or pull her hair. All of which would have been things Phleg might have been tempted to do. Gabriella stood quietly, looking distracted.

  “Say something,” Phleg told her.

  “… Six,” Gabriella said, “… seven … ” She took a deep breath. Then inclined her head. “It has been a learning experience. Learning experiences are always of value.”

  Which Phleg guessed might be a princessly way of saying she forgave Phleg.

  Meanwhile, the princess’s parents finally looked at Gabriella—the true Gabriella. Beyond the uncombed hair and the (Phleg could tell the difference now) unprincessly clothing, something of their real daughter shone through.

  The queen gasped, then held her arms wide. Gabriella ran to her.

  The king cleared his t
hroat. Looking at Phleg, he asked, “Then who, might I ask … ”

  “Phleg,” Phleg said.

  “Renphlegena,” Mumsy and Daddy said simultaneously. Mumsy smiled at him and he went to stand by her side. “Everything’s settled, then?” she asked him.

  “More than settled,” Daddy assured her.

  “I don’t understand,” King Humphrey said.

  “Make that two of us,” King Leopold agreed.

  “What’s there to understand?” Fred said. “My love, who I thought was Princess Gabriella, is instead a fairy princess named Ren … Ren … ”

  “Phleg,” Phleg repeated.

  “Renphleg,” Fred said.

  Which was rather endearing, so Phleg didn’t correct him.

  “And she ain’t no princess,” Parf was obviously tickled to tell everyone.

  Daddy said, “But she is the daughter of some very important fairies. Who are getting more important all the time.”

  Leopold was not impressed. “A fairy commoner who has been impersonating the princess whom my son was betrothed to marry.” He glanced at the real princess disapprovingly, taking in her hair, face smudges, not-fit-for-a-princess dress, and bare feet. “Not that I’m convinced this one is any better. I do not believe she is acceptable at all!”

  Humphrey said, “And I’m not convinced we want to be allied with you.”

  “Oh, come, Father,” Gabriella said. “Obviously a lot has happened. We all need to sit down and quietly discuss this.”

  While the princess’s parents, as well as Phleg’s, as well as Queen Wilhelmina, all nodded, Leopold went, “Humph!”

  His wife smacked him on the arm. When he looked at her, startled, she pretended to be vigorously brushing crumbs off his sleeve. She smiled innocently.

  Fred walked away from Phleg—she had always known he would—and approached Gabriella. He took the princess’s hands and looked into her eyes. “I know we were betrothed when we were children,” he said, “and I came here fully intending to honor that agreement between our parents, judging that love would come once we knew each other. But in the last three days I have fallen in love with Renphleg.”