The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  “A Thrice-Mothered Needle,” she said. “Bathed in a mother’s tears, a mother’s blood, and a mother’s milk. The eye is big enough for a fern stem to pass through.” She handed it to me. “Get to work.”

  The sky was graying, and I was only half finished with the simple cap I’d planned. A rooster called in the distance, waking the crows along the rooftops, who cawed morning insults to one another. At least, I always thought caws sounded like insults. Perhaps caws are actually love poems to other crows.

  “When are they going to leave?” I said, stabbing almost blindly with my needle, my eyes crossed from the night of netting by the tiny light of a dark lantern.

  “I imagine when Corvinus gives up on our country,” Marjit said. “That is the lumpiest hat I’ve ever seen.”

  I smoothed the cap. I was still clumsy at netting, and I hadn’t known how to handle the fern fronds at first without snapping them.

  “No harm in the extra time to finish?” I asked. “It’s daylight.”

  “If you’re done before next moonset, there’s no more harm than there is in old Marjit.” She patted her chest.

  I smiled, but my liver wasn’t in it. I rolled up the cap in my apron and tucked it under my arm. “Good night, Marjit.”

  “Hmph. The least you could’ve done was cut me some fresh bath herbs. Sleep well, Apprentice.”

  I slept hard through the early hours, and I woke bleary-eyed at midmorning when Brother Cosmin stumbled into the herbary and called for me. He was only half awake himself.

  I poked my head over the edge of the loft. “Would you like a tisane, Brother Cosmin?” I asked solicitously. He agreed, and I slid down the ladder and set about warming a nice tisane for each of us. I made mine with pearl barley for wakefulness. In his, I mixed a strong dose of valerian for sleep, and covered the bitterness with three kinds of mint.

  He drank, and I wondered if it was too much. He was older than he seemed. Perhaps his heart couldn’t take it. I promised myself that if he woke hale and strong, I would never slip secret sedatives to old men again.

  As soon as he nodded to sleep over his mortar and pestle, I whipped out the cap and started netting, keeping my apron at the ready to throw over the top of my work if I heard the door squeak.

  An hour passed, then two. The ferns dried out and started to break, and I had to soak the whole mess in water again.

  When I had knotted the last stitches, I held the cap doubtfully for a moment before placing it on my head. It was a misshapen mess, worse than the socks I’d made, but I blamed the material as much as my lack of skill. Nonetheless, it fitted my head, and stayed on, and didn’t disintegrate, for all that it appeared fragile and strange.

  I looked at my hands. They were as my hands always were, though perhaps a bit more blue than normal. In fact, the whole world appeared a little bluer.

  “Did it work?”

  Brother Cosmin snorted awake at the sound of my voice. “Hello? Reveka? Now, where did that shirking girl go off to this time?” He looked all around him.

  And he didn’t see me.

  He didn’t see me.

  Chapter 17

  That night, I huddled in a corner of the princesses’ tower, well out of everyone’s way, invisibility cap perched atop my head, and watched.

  The princesses took their evening meal in their room, in light of their injuries. They passed the time with moaning, while shoving sheepskins and moleskins and battings into their shoes to ease their pain. I thought it was too bad for them that they would try to poison me if they found me, since I knew a really excellent recipe for meadowsweet tea that would help their feet.

  “I’d curse him if I knew how,” Princess Maricara said, after dismissing the servants.

  “You say that every day,” another princess said. “I wish you’d just figure it out and stop carping about it.”

  “Sisters,” a third princess intervened, “peace! We have important issues to discuss. We need to bring Iosif back. Bring him back and give him to the Hungarian emissary. Then the shoes can come off, and—”

  “And just how do you propose we do that?” Maricara snapped.

  The rest of the princesses shook their heads. “There’s no way,” Otilia said. “Even I can see that.”

  “There’s one way,” Tereza said. “And that’s if one of us accepts the proposal.”

  Stone silence greeted this suggestion, until Ruxandra, one of the tavern maid’s daughters, said, “Fine. You accept it.”

  This led to an outbreak of squabbling that Lacrimora shushed. “No. Absolutely not. No one is accepting anything.”

  “I . . . I could—” Otilia began.

  “No,” Lacrimora said. “We have come too far in this together to accept losing one of us now. And—Otilia, you love another! Even if there are those among us who don’t care for your immortal soul, surely they can see how wrong it would be.”

  “On the contrary, we are princesses,” Tereza said with overweening dignity. “Princesses do not marry for love, like peasants or minor nobility. They marry for wealth and peace, for the good of their countries. Honestly, what could be for the better good of our country?”

  “I think we’re back to you accepting the proposal,” Princess Viorica said.

  “I think we’re back to reminding each other about what losing your immortal soul actually means!” Lacrimora said. “We may only be sisters by half, but we do owe this consideration to one another.”

  Tereza bowed her head. “Yes. Of course, Lacrimora is right.”

  “Besides, Iosif is a pawn in Hungary’s game. They don’t actually care if they get him back,” Lacrimora said.

  There were a few grumbles, but everyone agreed.

  Lacrimora, gazing out the window at the sky, said, “It’s time.”

  Viorica and a few of the others went around the room, peering under beds and poking behind curtains. I held my breath when Princess Suzana stopped, one hand raised, and put a finger to her lips. She jerked her head at one of the beds. Everyone nodded. But there was no call to action, no swarming on the hidden person, like there had been the night they’d caught Didina, even though it was clear they had found someone else in the room.

  Maricara and Suzana limped over to step on opposite corners of the hearth. With a grinding of stone on stone, the floor opened to reveal stairs leading down.

  Maricara led the way, a tiny dark lantern in hand.

  The others followed her. Just as I was about to tag along at the end of the procession, Mihas slid from beneath a bed and sneaked down after them—far too close on Lacrimora’s heels, I thought, for someone who didn’t have an invisibility cap! I goggled at him, unable to determine why he was here and what he thought he was doing—but I didn’t have a chance to goggle long. The stone floor started to close up again. I dashed down the steps after the procession, and the stones drew together behind me with a tired rumble.

  I was standing in darkness only faintly broken by Maricara’s narrow lantern beam ahead.

  In front of me, Mihas trod on the back of Lacrimora’s trailing gown. She cried out.

  “What’s wrong?” Otilia asked.

  “Um, nothing,” Lacrimora said. “I put my hand on something slimy.” Indeed, the wall to my right held a faint sheen reflecting the light from the dark lantern ahead—water, and also slime. She motioned Otilia ahead, and the procession continued.

  Idiot cowherd, I called Mihas under my breath. He was going to get himself killed. Or whatever it was that happened down here.

  The descent seemed to take forever, with the princesses hobbling on pained feet. Most of them were only capable of walking down one step at a time, like a small child who is first learning how to use stairs. I took care to hang back, well away from Mihas, and Mihas seemed to have gotten the sense to stay well away from Lacrimora’s hem, at least.

  Eventually, the stairs gave way to . . . snow.

  I hesitated on the last stone step, my foot poised in midair. The snow glowed slightly, even where
it covered winter-sleeping trees ahead. The door in the floor I’d expected, and the stairs leading down, and the dark passageway . . . but I’d never anticipated a whole world beneath the surface of our world, a world with trees and . . . snow. “Saint Hildegard’s garden,” I swore in amazement.

  My hand flew to my mouth, covering it too late. None of the princesses glanced back, but Mihas looked over his shoulder. His glance passed right through me, though, and while he hesitated a long moment, he followed Lacrimora.

  I dropped my foot to the ground. The snow crunched lightly, and the chill spread slowly. Snow in July. It was impossible, wasn’t it?

  I trotted after the princesses, catching up with Mihas as he entered a copse of trees whose trunks were tarnished silver. Icicles like faceted glass dripped from laden branches. Wonderingly, I reached out to touch a branch: Were these living trees?

  The small branch broke as soon as I touched it, and it plopped into the snow. The brittle snap of the twig rang out in the silent wood like a harquebus shot. Mihas jumped behind a tree trunk, while I froze in place. A few princesses peered back toward me, saw nothing, and went on; only Otilia stopped dead on the path. My stomach seized with apprehension. But she didn’t look around.

  Lacrimora nudged her sister in the back. “Move along. They’re waiting.”

  Otilia moved on, and Lacrimora followed. Mihas eventually broke from the cover of his tree and went after them.

  The silver twig shone dully in the snow. I scooped it up and tucked it into my herb pouch, resolving not to touch anything else. I hurried after the group.

  The forest lightened with each step. At first I thought the snow was glowing brighter, or perhaps my eyes were adjusting, but truly the sky was lightening, and we were walking into dawn.

  The snow grew patchy here, giving way to piles of autumn leaves of bright pinks and purples and golds such as I had never seen, not among summer flowers or even royal silks.

  And the sun—a sun, anyway, narrow and dark as though we were viewing the normal sun through the blue veil of the Virgin in a stained glass window—rose, sending slender shafts of light through the trees. The trees changed from tarnished silver to greening copper. My fingers itched to touch and investigate these plants. I dared not touch any more branches but did spy bits of deadfall. I collected a verdigris twig from the ground, rolling it between my fingers. I sniffed it, and it smelled like metal. I put that twig in my pouch, too.

  The sun rose quickly—so quickly that it seemed like a dream. With every footstep, the strange sun gained a degree in height, and only when I stopped to collect the twig did I realize that the sunrise was in direct correlation to our progress through the forest. When I stopped walking, the sun stopped rising. I paused many times, trying to make sense of this phenomenon, until I lagged far behind the princesses and had to sprint to catch up. They had no care for any of this. They were well used to it, I guessed. Did Mihas notice? I couldn’t tell. He didn’t seem as intrigued by the forest as I was.

  The sun became of secondary concern to me as autumn forest became summer forest. The darkened sun was at noon height now, and the tree trunks were spotty brass. Leaves of dull emeralds hung silently on still trees. It felt most strange, to be in a forest without animals, without wind, without water. The dark light was oppressive, casting strange, deep shadows everywhere.

  The forest path wandered through a field of shimmering white ferns, like the ones my cap was made of. The princesses’ long skirts slithered against these plants, spilling diamond seeds to the ground. Here, the path was a glittering scar of brown earth worn into the forest floor. I longed to kneel and bury my fingers in the soil to assess its qualities for growing herbs, maybe even to dab a bit of the dirt on the tip of my tongue like Sister Anica had taught me. But it wasn’t even proper soil. It looked like crushed garnets, and it made me uneasy.

  The whole forest, in fact, made me uneasy: something about the unreal shine to everything, while fascinating at first, felt unnatural in the end.

  I did stoop to pick up a fallen brass twig, however, which I also tucked into my pouch.

  Then summer forest gave way to spring. The sun was setting here—or was it rising? We had walked backward through the seasons, so perhaps we were also walking backward through the course of a day. I couldn’t say. Long rays of dull red light shot through bronze trees. Ruby and emerald buds dotted the branches, and the forest floor was speckled with patches of young grass and amethyst starflowers. The effect was pleasing, until I looked more closely: The buds bore blight at their centers, and the grass was pale and withering. I collected a bronze twig here.

  We came out of the trees onto the banks of an enormous lake, where starless night reigned once again. The blazing light of ten thousand candles danced across dark water, shining from a golden pavilion standing on a hill. Sweet music drifted to us, and twelve little boats waited on the shore, each with a lantern hanging from a tall hook at the stern. Beside each boat stood an oarsman wearing red livery—each oarsman more handsome than the last. Each man held out a hand to a princess, who took the hand and turned to wait for her sisters.

  “My lords,” Lacrimora said, the last to arrive, “we have a follower.” She turned and swept her arm out wide, to point straight at Mihas, half hidden behind a bronze tree and frozen in fear.

  Like dogs on a hunt, the oarsmen raised their heads toward Mihas and attacked as one.

  Chapter 18

  Mihas stood no chance. The oarsmen brought him down, bound him swiftly, and threw him into one of the boats.

  “The gardener’s boy?” Princess Nadia asked, standing idly by.

  Lacrimora shrugged. “Might be,” she said, and bent to fiddle with the bandages in her iron shoe.

  I was so horrified by this whole scene, stiff and staring, that I missed jumping into Otilia’s boat with her. Her red-liveried rower had already pushed away from the bank by the time I regained my senses.

  Lacrimora, on the other hand, still wasn’t ready. I scuttled up behind her and stepped into the boat nearly simultaneously with her. The boat rocked and swayed wildly with my inept boarding. Lacrimora cried out and sat down heavily on the middle seat. I cringed in the bow.

  “Careful,” her oarsman said in a strong Saxon accent. “We almost capsized.”

  “It’s these wretched shoes,” she said.

  “No one else had any problem with them.”

  She scowled. “Thanks for pointing that out, Iosif.”

  Iosif. Iosif, the missing Saxon!

  Iosif pulled away from shore with a grunt. “Oof. The boat is very heavy today!”

  “It’s the shoes,” Lacrimora said, sharply this time.

  “I don’t think they were this heavy last night.”

  “It’s the shoes,” she growled.

  Iosif shook his head. “It’ll be a wonder if you can lift your feet to dance, then.”

  “I’ll dance as beautifully as ever, fear not.” She said it so icily, I thought for sure Iosif would shut up then, but he didn’t.

  “Oof!” He rowed with his full strength, only barely outpacing the boat that contained a princess, an oarsman, and Mihas. “Your shoes don’t explain why we’re falling behind!”

  “No, only you can explain that, lazybones,” Lacrimora said.

  Iosif sighed. I felt sorry for him.

  The two overloaded boats struggled to the far shore. Ours pulled in just ahead of Mihas’s. The other princesses and their oarsmen had long since arrived and now were wending their way up to the pavilion. An immense dark figure waited on the shore. The silhouette of the waiting figure resolved into a bestial, hoofed creature with tall, spiked wings. I froze with one hand clapped over my mouth so I would not cry out in wonder and terror.

  The boat slid into a slip, and the dark figure leaned down. Its narrow, tusked face came much too close to me as it plucked Lacrimora from the boat as easily as if she were a child, holding her gently in its talons; its hot breath skated across my face, leaving behind the scent o
f bitter almonds and smoke. I could not control the shudder that ran through me.

  A zmeu. A dragon, a demon, a hoarder of treasures, a kidnapper of young maidens.

  “Lord Dragos,” Lacrimora gasped. I’d never seen her discomposed before. I understood her terror perfectly. I was petrified. My stomach was clenched hard in a knot of fear at the very center of me.

  “You’re still wearing the iron shoes,” the zmeu observed in a low, rumbling voice. “Your father’s wisdom surpasses itself.” It—he, really—was dressed in a split black cloak that did nothing to hide goatish legs clad in short trousers. He wore a king’s ransom in golden bracelets on his wrists. His cloak was fastened with a clasp altogether too reminiscent of his own curved, vicious teeth. I bit my fingers to keep myself silent. If he discovered me—if he found me! All my childish nightmares of Muma Pădurii paled into insignificance next to the scents and sounds of a live zmeu.

  “My father’s wisdom is to plug the hole in his bleeding pocketbook,” Lacrimora was saying. Though perched in Lord Dragos’s red arms, she had regained her composure and was cooler than rain. I envied her courage. “Iron shoes are proving infinitely more durable than our previous calfskin and satin.”

  Lord Dragos snorted a fine, ashy smoke from his nostrils. “Are your iron shoes as durable as my hooves?” he asked. He stamped a hoofed foot on the stones beneath his feet, drawing sparks, and the sound raced, sharp and hollow, out over the lake. An echo shot back from behind the pavilion, as though there were a stone wall beyond it. I squinted and became aware of two kinds of darkness, one being empty, the other being rather solid. A mountain?

  Lacrimora smiled and said nothing. It was not a friendly smile, but Lacrimora’s smiles never were.

  “Who is our new guest?” the dragon asked.

  For one panicked moment, I thought he meant me, and I nearly screamed. But for the fist that I now had practically stuffed into my mouth, I probably would have. But the zmeu was looking at Nadia’s boat, the one containing Mihas. A small cadre of red-liveried men trotted down from the pavilion and dragged him away as soon as his boat reached the shore.