Her sobs had subsided somewhat, but she still struggled to regain her composure. Her husband, standing next to her, rubbed her back, ignoring our appearance.
After yet another awkward moment, I busied myself making cups of tea. The necessary equipment had already been laid out, so it was an easy job. But for some reason, when I placed the cup and saucer in front of the woman, she looked up at me and burst into fresh tears. I rapidly backed away, casting apologetic looks at Thomas.
The looks he cast back seemed equally apologetic which gave me hope I hadn’t done something terribly wrong. Arthur, Rapunzel, and Simon had all sat down on the far side of the table, so I joined them, and we all pretended extreme interest in the view of the sunset from the windows or the grain of the table.
The woman finally regained control, and Thomas sighed and sat down.
“Drink your tea, Cora.” He patted one of her hands.
“Oh, Liesa.” A final shudder shook her. “I’m so sorry! We never meant…” She looked about to dissolve again, so Thomas resumed patting her hand.
“Calm yourself, my dear.” He looked over at us. “We’re that relieved to see you, Anneliese. We haven’t known what to think and have been fearing all sorts of dire things these past weeks. Cora here was convinced we’d never see you again.”
Cora had taken several sips of tea as he spoke and seemed to have recovered somewhat. “And it was all my fault. And yet here you are.” She gestured toward her cup. “Making me tea like you always used to do.”
Arthur sent me a pained look, and I grimaced.
“I’m awfully sorry to have misled you, but I’m not Anneliese.”
“Not Anneliese?” Both Thomas and Cora stared at me until Cora gasped and shook her head.
“Of course you’re not! Now I feel even more of a fool. I suppose you must be Penny. It’s very nice to meet you.” An unhappy look crept over her face, and she reached out for her husband’s hand. “But that means Liesa may still be in trouble.”
I started at the sound of my own name. So, Anneliese had abandoned the princess claim, at least. In fact, she seemed to have been at least partially honest with this couple. And, for once, they seemed to feel they had wronged her rather than the other way around.
Arthur cleared his throat. “My apologies, we haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Arthur, and this is Rapunzel and Simon. We’re friends of Penny’s and have been helping her search for her sister. Do you think you could tell us the whole story of your connection with Anneliese?”
Thomas and Cora exchanged a look, and he sighed. “It was a bit over two months ago now. I’d injured my foot, and Cora was struggling to care for the animals and the farm on her own as well as looking after me. Liesa turned up on our doorstep, asking if she could spend the night in our barn, and Cora invited her in.”
He cast a fond look at his wife. “She has a big heart, does Cora.”
She rolled her eyes and swatted at him. “A young girl traveling alone. I could hardly let her sleep with the animals.”
“Well, she soon saw the situation,” said Thomas. “And she turned out to be a real boon to us. Said she wouldn’t think of abandoning Cora in such a situation, and that she would happily take food and board in exchange for a few weeks’ work.” He shook his head. “She told us she was the daughter of wealthy merchants, so we were right surprised to find her so knowledgeable about animals.”
I smiled wryly. “Our parents aren’t exactly your typical merchants.”
He nodded. “That’s what she told us when I asked. Gave us the whole story about this fairy fellow and their magical change in fortunes. I wish now I’d never asked.” He fell silent, staring grimly down at the table.
Cora reached across and placed her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine.” She took a deep breath and looked across at me. “Your sister was so lovely, and such a help. We spent so many hours working alongside one another and talking as women do. I confided in her…I told her about our troubles.” She looked away for a moment and then back. “I told her about our troubles having children. We’ve been married for several years now with no sign of a baby.”
She was clearly trying to keep her face steady despite the tremble that had returned to her lips. I felt instantly guilty for pushing them to confide such a personal thing to a group of total strangers.
“When my foot healed,” said Thomas, taking back over the story, “she said she wasn’t going to leave us without doing something to help. She said she knew a fairy who liked big families.”
“Oh no.” I was starting to see where this was going. “Please don’t tell me she called Mortimer on your behalf.”
Thomas nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid that’s it. We assured her we didn’t wish to trouble a fairy with our problems, but she told us this Mortimer deserved to be troubled for all the troubles he’d caused others. She said here was one gift he couldn’t possibly misinterpret or mess up.”
I raised my eyebrows. That seemed optimistic even for Anneliese.
“I’m going to guess that didn’t work out for her,” said Arthur.
“The fairy did appear,” said Thomas, “just like she said. Only he looked mighty unhappy about it. He gave her a whole lecture on interrupting his work without good reason and then whisked her away somewhere.”
“We blinked, and they were both gone,” said Cora. “And we haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
“Poor Cora here has been wracked with guilt. We both have. After all her kindness helping us out, and then she only called him for our sake…”
Hot, boiling anger erupted inside me. Mortimer had never taken his responsibility to my family seriously, but this time he had gone too far.
I leaped to my feet, my chair crashing to the floor behind me.
“MORTIMER,” I screamed, far too angry to say the ridiculous words I was supposed to use to call him. “MORTIMER, YOU COME HERE. RIGHT! NOW!”
Rapunzel yipped, and Simon crowed with excitement when the crack sounded, and the odd figure materialized on the far side of the kitchen. His long gray robes looked out of place in the cheerful ordinariness of the room, the sparkle of his wings even more so.
His gaze focused straight in on me. “There’s no need to shout, you know. I was in the middle of a very delicate experiment, and now—”
“I don’t care about your experiments.”
“Well, I do.” He glowered at me. “My wings grew a full two inches after I sent that tiger to the Fairy Realm. Happy tiger. Happy villagers. A good deed that no one had even asked for. It should have been worth a full month’s quota of wishes, which means I should have gotten weeks of peace out of the whole thing. And it hasn’t even been two weeks.” He frowned. “Or has it?”
His eyes grew distant, as if calculating the days, and I strode around the table toward him. A small part of me was grateful to hear he had fixed my twin’s mistake with the tiger. But my anger was far stronger.
I roughly grabbed his upper arm, breathing a silent sigh of relief when nothing extraordinary happened. I’d never touched a fairy before.
“What have you done with my twin?”
He blinked and glowered at me. “Only what she asked for. I put her somewhere safe. In a tower, I think it was. My, you’re a demanding lot.”
I put my hands on my hips. “That was me. You put me in a tower. Thanks for that, by the way.”
He stared at me. “Oh, right. You’re the younger one. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep you all straight. There are so many of you.”
I arched an eyebrow. “And whose fault is that?”
For the first time, he actually looked a little uncomfortable. I pushed on.
“What did you do with Anneliese? She called for you when she was here in this house.”
He looked around blankly at the kitchen and its various inhabitants, and then comprehension filled his eyes. “Oh—that sister. Now I remember.” He still looked uncomfortable and further dread filled me. What in th
e kingdoms had Mortimer done to Anneliese if it was enough to make even him feel guilty?
“I put her somewhere where she couldn’t bother me for a while. I put her on the Isle of Lhyte.”
Silence gripped the room for a moment.
“I haven’t heard of that one,” said Arthur at last. “And I had a fairly extensive education. Including geography.”
“Well, no, you wouldn’t have,” said Mortimer. “It’s in the Fairy Realm.”
I fell back a step, my eyes widening. “You sent my sister to the Fairy Realm?” Humans never went to the Fairy Realm. Or, at least, almost never. And it usually didn’t end well for the few that did.
“Well, it’s not a true part of the Fairy Realm. It’s right on the fringe. There’s plenty of fruit trees and the like, but nothing that will let her get into any trouble.”
I thought of my sister. “Are you sure?”
He eyed me. “It’s where we send our young hot heads who need to cool off for a while. If generations of young fairies haven’t been able to find trouble, your sister won’t be able to, either.”
I shook my head. Unless a ‘young fairy hothead’ had been sent to the island at the same time. Somehow, I didn’t trust Mortimer to have checked.
“So, you just left her there. And forgot about her. Clearly.”
He coughed. “I wouldn’t say forgot exactly.”
“Oh, really?” I narrowed my eyes. “What would you call it then?”
“Well, ah…How about I go and fetch her right now?”
“Yes,” I said. “You do that.”
And he was gone.
We all let out a collective breath and looked around at each other. No one seemed to know what to say. The anger that had been churning in my belly swirled and changed. This was finally it. I was going to see my twin again after months and months. No wonder I was feeling excited.
But the knot in my stomach didn’t feel exactly like excitement. Now that I knew Anneliese was healthy and well—boredom being her most likely trouble—I found myself less anxious to see her than I had anticipated. My eyes strayed over to Arthur. How many times had he laughed at stories about Anneliese? How often had he expressed a desire to meet her?
Simon bounced on his seat beside the prince, still abuzz from meeting a fairy. He was already devoted to my sister. Rapunzel sat next to him, seemingly in shock after her first exposure to Mortimer. She had giggled at Anneliese’s reported antics, too. Only the other day she had commented on how much fun she sounded.
Was I ready for Anneliese to join our group? Was I ready to go back to being the practical, uninteresting one? The one people forgot was there. Somehow, to my surprise, as the days passed I had gotten used to being the leader, the one the others looked to.
Arthur was watching me, a slight crease in his brow, and I looked away quickly, embarrassed. Could he read my thoughts on my face? How petty and selfish I must seem. I had never wished my sister away before. But, somehow, when I looked at Arthur and thought of them talking and laughing together, my roiling stomach only grew worse.
The minutes stretched out, the fraught silence lengthening. Shouldn’t he be back by now? How long did it take to fetch someone from the Fairy Realm?
Cora stood up, shaking slightly, and took her empty tea cup over to the bench. I followed her with my eyes, until another crack made we whip my head back around.
Mortimer had returned, his figure dominating the kitchen. But he had returned alone.
He licked his lips and looked around at us all.
“Where is she?” I started forward, that small, background desire not to see my twin instantly gone.
“I don’t know,” said Mortimer. “She wasn’t there.”
Chapter 15
“What?” I staggered backward into a handy chair.
Cora dropped the tea cup, the sound of shattering porcelain startling me a second time. Arthur leaped to his feet, his hand on his sword, but didn’t seem to know what to do next.
“What do you mean she’s not there? How can she not be there?”
I looked up at Mortimer, but he wasn’t paying me any attention. Instead he was smacking his lips together, an expression on his face as if he had just tasted something unexpected. Had he stopped for a snack while he was looking for my sister?
I was about to once again demand answers when he froze, one hand in the air as if to forestall questions. Slowly he moved forward, his head moving strangely, almost as if he was following a scent. He smacked his lips again.
“Now that’s odd,” he said quietly, moving past me.
I stood back up. “What’s odd?”
He ignored me, continuing to move slowly through the kitchen until he stopped in front of Rapunzel. She looked up at him, frozen in either surprise or fear. He looked down at her.
“You. It’s you.”
Arthur and I both strode forward to flank her seat.
“What’s her?” I asked, wondering if Mortimer ever meant to answer any of my questions. “What is going on?”
He blinked several times and then looked between Arthur and me, as if he had only just remembered we were there. “The Isle of Lhyte was empty. Completely empty. No one there. But the air tasted funny.”
Arthur shot me a confused look, but I shook my head helplessly, as lost as he was.
“The air?”
“Yes.” Mortimer sounded impatient. “And then I returned here and—lo and behold—I tasted it again.” He pointed at Rapunzel. “It’s coming from her hair.”
“My…my hair?” Rapunzel clutched at her braid.
I looked at him skeptically. “Rapunzel’s hair tastes funny?”
“What? No! I haven’t tasted her hair.” He looked revolted. “The air tastes funny. And it’s coming from her hair.” He eyed me. “Or, rather, the taste in the air is coming from the enchantment on her hair.” He shrugged. “There’s something very wrong with the fairy who cast that enchantment. And whoever it was, they’re the same one who took your sister.”
I swallowed. “So, someone took her? Are you sure?”
He glared at me. “Of course I’m sure! No one but a fairy could have removed Anneliese from that island.”
“Maybe they didn’t take her? Maybe they just returned her to Astoria?” But my voice sounded weak, and I knew why. If Anneliese had been taken from the island by Gothel, it didn’t seem likely she’d done it merely to free her.
“Are…are you saying there’s something wrong with my hair?” Rapunzel had pooled her long braid in her lap and was holding it protectively. “It won’t…hurt me, will it?”
“What’s that?” Mortimer, who had been staring at the top of her head, started. “Hurt you? No, of course not. There’s nothing wrong with your hair. Quite a practical enchantment really. It’s just that a fairy that unhealthy leaves a sort of scent when they attempt magic. The enchantments themselves—assuming they can pull them off—are fine. Given how much the smell lingers in the air, she must have put a lot of effort into the enchantment on your hair. Must have wanted it long and healthy for some reason.”
I didn’t have time to think about Rapunzel’s hair, we needed to know what had happened to my sister.
“But where has she taken her? Can’t you use this smell to track her down?”
Mortimer looked down his nose at me. “It doesn’t work that way. Or, at least, not exactly.”
I growled at him, but he merely looked haughty and moved away.
“Perhaps she put her in my tower,” suggested Rapunzel hesitantly.
Mortimer turned back toward her. “Your tower? How are you connected with this fairy, young lady?”
Slowly, with encouragement from Arthur and me, Rapunzel told him her story. His expression, at first merely curious, turned slowly thunderous.
“Stole you away as a baby? Locked you in a tower?” He began to pace the room. “Such behavior is not permitted by the Fairy Council. In fact, it is entirely against everything they claim to stand for. Why…they cont
inually pester me merely because I am more interested in my experiments than in you tiresome humans! And yet they have allowed this Gothel to behave in such an outrageous way? It is not to be borne. I must speak to them immediately.”
“No! Wait!” I cried, but I was too late. He had gone.
Arthur slammed his hand into the back of one of the chairs. “Of all the infuriating…”
“Is he gone for good this time?” asked Thomas.
I shrugged. “Who knows? But I wouldn’t be holding my breath for him to come back anytime soon if I were you.”
My thoughts whirling, I moved to help Cora clean up the smashed cup. She looked pale, and her hands trembled.
“This is all my fault,” she whispered.
“Nonsense.” I spoke briskly. “If my family and I blamed ourselves for every outrageous thing Mortimer has ever done, we’d have drowned in guilt long ago. Mortimer is responsible for his own actions.”
“So, what do we do now?” asked Rapunzel.
I turned to face her. She looked scared. My gaze traveled up to lock onto Arthur, but I couldn’t quite read his expression.
“We have to go back, don’t we?” he said quietly.
Reluctantly, I nodded. “I think so. Or, at least, I do. I don’t expect you all to come with me. Especially you, Rapunzel.”
The princess went white and then red. “I suppose you mean the tower. You’re going back to my tower to look for Gothel and find out what happened to Anneliese.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to abandon Rapunzel but, surely, she would be safe enough here with Thomas and Cora. My sister had stayed with them for weeks and only gotten into trouble when she called Mortimer. I could come back once I had Anneliese, and we could both help Rapunzel find her family.
But the princess stood up, her expression of fear changing to one of determination.
“I’m coming with you. If I want to find out who I am, that’s exactly where I should go. I’ll make that stupid fairy tell me everything.”
I wanted to cheer for her. Except I was too nervous that I was leading her straight back into her prison. Simon, at least, I thought I could leave with the farmers. They liked children, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what had caused the problem in the first place?
An Inconvenient Princess Page 12
