The Golden Princess and the Moon

by Anna Mendell

  The king sighed. “Then I am afraid there is nothing I can do. I cannot bend the law for your sake alone. I will, however, decree that you shall be able to buy back the boy when you have the fifteen silver pieces. This is a favor, for the master is in no way obliged to sell the boy back to you, but I pity your case.”

  The woman’s face was full of despair, and Rosa realized that there was no way for her to earn back the fifteen silver pieces. Rosa whirled back to face her parents, a silent entreaty ringing forth from her sealed lips. Both her parents were silent, and the queen’s face was ashen, her eyes hollow like burnt out coals.

  The young boy’s voice rang out for the first time in the throne room. “It is your fault that we are so poor! My mother was a spinner. She could no longer work once you outlawed spinning and burnt all the spinning wheels in the kingdom!”

  The king grew white, and Rosa froze in her chair.

  “Throw him in prison,” the king whispered. “Throw him in prison,” the king roared. “Let the vile boy rot for his insolence. He dare presume to judge the king!”

  The guards dragged the boy away amid the mother’s wails and screams, and the king ended the audience in fury.

  Rosa sat in her chair stunned and unmoving. Her father had outlawed spinning because of her curse, and for that people were going hungry, and the young boy would die in prison.

  “It is all my fault,” Rosa whispered.

  Queen Eleanor whirled on the princess and asked, “What did you say?”

  Rosa did not respond, and the queen grabbed Rosa’s hand and dragged her from the throne room.

  THE QUEEN TOOK ROSA to her private chambers. Ringing one of her servants for a small glass of wine, she then gave orders that they were not to be disturbed and thrust the glass before Rosa, ordering her to drink.

  She paced up and down the room and muttered more to herself than to her daughter, “I knew that this latest fancy of yours would not bode well. You are not strong enough to endure the everyday hardships of the world.” She turned back to Rosa. “Promise me that you will no longer attend the king’s audiences.”

  Rosa felt like she was seeing her mother for the first time. She saw a nervous woman who hardly ever smiled or looked her in the eye. Even now the queen could not meet her gaze, but was instead looking nervously out the window.

  “Mother,” Rosa whispered. “Surely we cannot allow our kingdom to be a place that separates a mother from her child. These are the people that we are meant to protect. You must understand this! After all, you are a mother too.”

  “Why?” The queen’s voice rang brittle, and she sharply thrust up her chin. “Many mothers endure separation from their children. Why should that mother be any different?”

  Rosa rose and, taking her mother’s hands, kissed them both. “Why must others suffer because we do? Our suffering should make us quick to pity the suffering of others. How could father burn all the spinning wheels for my sake? I am not happy that so many must starve so that I can live. And do you really think that such a measure will do any good? I do not think that faerie powers are so easily cheated.”

  Rosa’s words finally forced the queen to look into her daughter’s eyes. “You know?” she whispered.

  Rosa nodded.

  The queen crumpled in her chair. “You were not to know. We wished to spare you that much. Who told you, surely not your uncle?”

  “The faerie showed me a vision of my christening. I saw it all, how happy you were when I was born and how you held me in your arms. And then the Dark Lady came… and everything changed.”

  “And then I knew I had to give you up,” the queen sobbed. “You were no longer my child, but death’s. You had been stolen from me.”

  “But that is not true.” Rosa fell on her knees beside mother. “I’ll fall asleep. Why, a hundred years could be different in faerie time! We could still meet again if we have hope.”

  “I don’t believe you will sleep. The Dark Lady’s power is too great. And even if it is true, you are still lost to me.”

  Rosa gazed at her mother sadly. The queen had lost all power to hope ever since the faerie had failed to save her daughter on that sorrowful christening day.

  “Mother, I am right here,” Rosa said softly. “Why don’t you look at me?”

  The queen stared long into her daughter’s face, now wet with tears. “My precious child,” the queen whispered, and Rosa felt her tender touch on her cheek. “We at least did not want you to know sorrow or to understand our loss. Not a cloud was to cover your sunny, little face during your short life. But it is all over…”

  “No,” Rosa said firmly. “I am still here and I am glad that I know. But my heart does hurt to see how sad you and others are because of me. Please speak to father and change his mind about the boy. Do you really want another mother to suffer the same way you do?”

  The queen’s face grew hard again, and a battle seemed to wage within her. The princess placed her hand over the queen’s heart, and her eyes never left her hers, but held them in her unwavering gaze. And somehow, Rosa could sense her own calm acceptance passing over to her mother, giving her the strength to accept her own fate, at least for the time being.

  The queen sighed. “You are right, Rosa. I do not want another mother to shed the same tears I do. I will speak to your father and see that the boy goes free.”

  THAT evening, the queen spoke with the king her husband, and, on the morrow, the boy was released from prison and given work in the castle stables. Then a wonderful thing happened in the audience chamber. Whenever the king’s temper would blaze, a soothing word or a gentle glance from the queen would calm him. Whenever the queen made an entreaty on behalf of the people, the king would grant her request. Queen Eleanor, emboldened by her success, continued to mediate between the king and his people, and the kingdom tasted the sweetness of mercy.

  Rosa was amazed by the change in her mother, and saw that her father was as glad of the change as she. When at supper together, the princess smiled whenever she saw the king look in sudden joy at his queen, but she often missed the look of sorrow they shared when she turned away and their gaze fell upon her.

  The king repealed his law against spinners as a special favor to the princess. Soon Rosa forgot the words of warning spoken by the faerie queen as they passed the year in happiness and peace. And if Rosa did not completely forget, she at least put aside the memory, glad in the discovery that the queen, her mother, was her father’s heart.

  MERCILESSLY shaken awake, Erik groggily sat up on his bed to see that it was still dark. He groaned when he remembered that he and Cynric were meant to set off hunting before the dawn, but he slid out of bed, put on his gear, and followed the hunter down to the courtyard. The cool, autumn air fully wakened him, and they went through the castle gate into the forest, two dark figures against the lightening sky.

  The morning hunt was successful, and Erik and Cynric were cooking their game over the fire, when they heard a large rustling behind them in the trees.

  “Get behind the undergrowth and lie still. This sounds like a large beast,” the hunter whispered.

  Erik quickly ducked behind the bushes and waited in tense silence for the approaching beast. A black bear emerged from the mist and gloom, a shadow materializing into solid form. Strength and power emanated from the beast, coiled in its sinews and flesh. The bear loomed over the abandoned campfire, dismissive of the flames. It reared majestically, and Erik held his breath as the bear’s length and breadth seemed to blot out the sun and the sky. The great beast then lowered himself and crouched in a watchful stillness, an intelligent awareness discernible in its frame and its alert eyes.

  Erik felt his muscles tense and his senses heighten. He knows that we are here, he thought. The stillness of the moment seemed to bleed across all tangible boundaries, and the prince held his breath in the fullness of its silence. Then the bear moved again and disappeared into the enclosing wilderness of the trees and woven shadows.

  Erik f
ound he could breathe again.

  Cynric bounded to the spot near the campfire where the bear’s presence somehow still lingered, almost as if its shadow had stayed behind and draped the forest in a thickening shroud. He gazed into the veiled shadows of the forest with the keen appraisal of the hunter.

  “You aren’t going after it?” Erik whispered. It was probably safe to talk aloud now, but the prince felt that the air was thick with oppressive silence. He did not wish to go after the mighty animal. Not only would they be no match for its strength, but striking at the bear somehow felt like striking at the forest itself.

  Cynric did not answer, but his eyes were still fixed on the spot where the bear had disappeared.

  “You can’t go alone,” Erik said. “I’ll go with you, even if that means slowing you down.” He felt behind him for his quiver of arrows.

  This seemed to break the spell Cynric was under, and he turned to the prince with a short laugh. “None doubt your courage, young prince, but to go after the bear alone would be suicide.”

  Erik sighed with relief.

  The hunter again stared into the distance. “But have you ever seen such a magnificent beast?”

  Erik shook his head and followed the hunter’s gaze. “He seems to belong to the wood,” he said.

  “He is king of the wood,” Cynric whispered.

  Erik was startled, and then he realized that that was what he had felt all along, that the bear ruled over the entire wood.

  “Let’s go back,” Cynric said. The two shifted their bagged game over their shoulders and returned to the castle in silence.

  BEFORE the break of dawn the next day, the hunt for the bear began. The king led the hunt, and Erik was the only boy belonging to the hunting party since he and Cynric had had the honor of first sighting the bear. Cynric had described the great bear’s magnificence to the king in the hall the night before, and the king’s blood had boiled for the hunt, and so Erik found himself hanging towards the back of the company.

  They went to the spot where the two of them had first sighted the bear and found its heavy paw prints indelibly marked in the brown earth. From there they tracked through the gloom of the forest and the cool dew, until they came to a wide stream. There they paused in the stillness and peered across the stream into the swirling mists. A dark shape on the other side, barely discernible in the early-morning haze, formed in a thickening of shadows. The still shape waited for them, silently watching, as the mists parted and revealed the great bear. Its eyes rested on the king.

  The king and the bear observed each other from across the stream, the king rooted by the bear’s inscrutable gaze. As Erik watched the two stare each other down, he desperately wished they would call off the hunt and that the mighty king and the great bear would return to their separate realms—the king back to his castle, the bear to his lair. The prince understood that to continue meant death, the death of the great bear or the death of his father.

  The bear loosed the king’s gaze and then dissolved back into the wood.

  “Next time,” the king promised darkly, and Erik understood that his father would not endure a force that could not be subjugated within his kingdom.

  THEY set off again at dawn the next day, and in the dim shadows of the forest they lay in wait for the bear near the stream. Erik crouched in silence behind a boulder for what seemed a painfully endless amount of time. Then he heard a sound and felt the hunter beside him tense. The black bear emerged from the mist and the trees, lumbered over to the stream, and dipped its paw into the running water. An aura of wild kingliness wrapped around the bear like the mist, and Erik felt a fervent desire to warn the beast, somehow to make a noise, to slide in the rubble, but an inner battle waged within him, because to do so would be to act against his father and be disloyal to the hunt.

  He hesitated.

  One of the hunters saw his chance and loosed an arrow into the mighty beast’s flank. The bear roared in fury and surged tall and immense on its hind feet. Arrows flew, and then the king stepped in with his hunting spear and faced the mighty bear maddened by pain and rage. The bear rushed forward to attack his foe, and the king plunged his spear with a powerful thrust into its side. It made a final mad sweep with its claws, but the king leapt out of its reach. With a great heave and a groan, the bear broke away to retreat into the wood, but the king took aim with his bow and loosed an arrow that struck the beast between his shoulder blades. The bear dragged itself a few more paces and then sank heavily onto the ground.

  In a daze, Erik watched the hunters skin the bear and divide its carcass. He had not raised his arm against the beast, but he felt that his hesitation had been a blow struck against it.

  The king severed the bear’s head, holding it aloft on his spear, and the hunting party processed back to the castle gates in triumph. All hailed the might and strength of their king, who subjugated the wild beasts of the forest.

  THAT night there was a great feast, and all partook in the king’s kill. The king and queen were draped in robes of fur, and the royal bard sang songs of the hunt which pitted the mighty king against the powerful bear. Wine spilled over, and there was toasting and cheering long into the cold night. Erik felt hazy to the tip of his toes, and not a few of the warriors, glutted on meat and drink, were pounding their cups and fists on the table, so that the ringing echoed in Erik’s ears. The king surveyed the feast with satisfaction.

  The queen rose, magnificent and tall, her furs slipping off to reveal a scarlet robe. She was like a white lily kindled to a flame, and the king’s eyes burned when he looked on her. She motioned to one of the servers, and he brought to her a large silver goblet worked with intricate carving. This she took and held outstretched with both arms to the king and said, “Drink, my king. It is the blood of the beast you have slain. Take his power as you took his life, and the life of the forest that flowed in his veins will flow in yours.”

  The hall fell silent, and the king’s eyes glowed with the challenge in the queen’s eyes. His gaze never left hers as he took the goblet and slowly drained it of its contents, the bear’s blood dribbling from his mouth and seeping into his beard. The entire hall rose and lifted their cups to the king.

  “To the king of the wood,” someone cried. “To the king of the wood!” the entire hall resounded, and everyone drank.

  Erik also rose and drank to his father, but the wine tasted dry and stuck in his throat. He felt dizzy and left the hall, stumbling up the stairs and into his room, where he collapsed on his bed. His sleep was restless, and by morning he had a fever. He lay in bed for three days, sweating, his body racked by tremors. Nightmares painfully encroached on his consciousness and wrapped their piercing tendrils around him and choked him in his sleep, so that he never rested. If anyone visited his bedside, he never knew.

  In the midst of his bewildered imaginings, he saw a woman bend over him. Her features were indistinct and dream-like, but her eyes were as light as the summer’s day, and he felt himself drifting in the sea of their blueness. A vision of stars danced over her head like a crown, flashing brightly and spinning dizzyingly. Erik did not know if he made a sound or held out his hand beseechingly, but he felt the coolness of touch and water like tear-drops on his face as he floated in a white light.

  That evening, his fever broke, and he fell into a healing slumber.

  “THE young recover remarkably fast,” the Captain of the Guard observed dryly when he discovered Erik outside in the training yard.

  “You would be just as keen to leave if you had been cramped in the same room for days. I need to feel the wind on my face, and I will throw my bowl out the window if I am fed any more broth.”

  Kenelm grunted, “Very well. But I don’t expect you training for a few days yet. I don’t want you injured due to weakness.”

  Erik smiled to himself. That meant he could visit Ninny Nanny more often. When he stole away into the wood, he found Mnemosyne waiting for him at her usual spot near the blasted trunk of a tree. Ever since
Ninny Ninny’s sticks had been stolen, he would wait in the wood for Mnemosyne, and the cat would find him sooner or later; though sometimes the prince would grow tired of waiting and return home, grumbling over the unreliability of cats.

  He grinned. “You knew I was coming today, didn’t you?”

  The cat stared at him with her unblinking, yellow eyes. She slinked away, and the prince followed her winding path to Ninny Nanny’s cottage. There he knocked on the old woman’s door, but received no answer. Strange sounds were coming from behind the cottage, so he made his way around and found Ninny Nanny bent over a wide patch of thorny brambles. A kerchief was tied around her head, and she was holding a large shovel.

  “What are you doing, Ninny Nanny?” Erik asked.

  “I’m a’ clearing up this space before the ground grows hard,” the old woman huffed.

  Erik reached her side with long strides and firmly grasped the shovel’s handle. “You shouldn’t be doing such hard work at your age,” he said, taking the shovel from her hands. “Here, let me help. How much do you want cleared?”

  “All of it,” the old woman wheezed. “I want to plant my garden in the springtime.”

  “All right, go inside and rest. I’ll finish for you.”

  “You’re a sweet boy, princeling. Here, take my gloves. You don’t want to prick yourself.”

  Erik surveyed the tangled thicket, the thick, coiled ropes of wood digging into the earth and bristling with small but countless thorns. He gave a deep sigh, but then started the back-breaking task of cutting through the brambles and pulling up their clinging roots. Burning stings grazed his cheeks and arms from the prickly thorn bushes. His body was still weak from the fever, and sweat poured over his tired, straining muscles

  When he paused from his labor to take a breath, he saw that he had barely made any noticeable progress. Shaking his head, he gritted his teeth and started again. Little by little he cleared away the thicket, though he paused from time to time, and Ninny Nanny brought him a cup of cool water or wiped the sweat from his brow. The old woman gathered the thorn bushes he uprooted into large bundles. “To burn ‘em,” she explained.