The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  My Castle Sylvian has a lot in common with the real-world Hunyad Castle (Castelul Huniazilor in Romanian) in Hunedoara, Transylvania. Both castles were built on Roman ruins, and each houses a deep well that was dug by Turkish prisoners. The well at Hunyad Castle doesn’t have a warning about the Underworld, however, but rather a message that is rumored to say “You have water, but no soul“ (but actually says something like “He who wrote this inscription is Hasan, who lives as slave of the Christians”).

  During the Middle Ages in Europe, medicine and herbalism were pretty much the same thing. After the fall of Rome, writings on medicine and herbs were preserved in monasteries, which became centers of official medical knowledge (Brother Cosmin, Sister Anica, and Reveka all studied in monasteries). However, the fall of Rome probably had little impact on folk medicine, as people also grew herb gardens and made observations about plants in the countryside (the way the herb-wife Adina worked).

  A few notes on invisibility and herbs: Some medieval herbalists really did believe that fern seeds were invisible, and that the seeds also conferred invisibility. Fern seeds, of course, don’t exist: ferns reproduce through spores, and have a strange life-cycle compared to other plants. If you’ve ever hung around any ferns (I spent a lot of time staring at them from underneath during ambushes when I used to play paintball), you know that they get funny, warty things on the undersides of their leaves. Few people would guess that those warts, or the fine-grained black dust they release, are the equivalent of seeds. Can’t blame the medieval herbalists for being confused!

  Even the great herbalist Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) had some magical ideas about ferns. She wrote in her Physica that ferns cured hearing loss by just being placed on the ear (but never in the ear—she’s quite specific about it), and that demons would avoid a person who carried ferns with them. Hildegard is a fascinating historical figure, and besides being a master herbalist and a healer, she wrote music, plays, and poems. She founded and ran two abbeys, went on preaching tours, and corresponded with Popes and kings. Though she is widely referred to as Saint Hildegard (as Reveka thinks of her), she was never officially canonized. Hildegard was an amazing woman, and extremely worthy of Reveka’s reverence.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my readers and critiquers. First, the Feral Writers: Julie Winningham, David Klecha, and honorary Feral Julie DeJong. Excelsior! group: Sarah Zettel, Lawrence Kapture, Jonathan Jarrard, Elizabeth Bartmess, Christine Pellar-Kosbar, Karen Everson, and Diane Rivis. The Hastings Point Workshoppers of 2009: Elizabeth Shack, Emily Kasja Herrstrom, Amy O. Lau, Stephen Buchheit, and Victoria Witt. And also Leah Bobet, Marissa K. Lingen, Jason Larke, Sunny Smith, and Kate Riley, and for more than just the reads. Thanks also to Sarah Prineas, Sherwood Smith, Jim C. Hines, Rachel Neumeier, and Stephanie Burgis for kindnesses rendered.

  Thank you to my family—Kayla Fuller, Raluca Cook, Iulia Forro, Anne and Rick Fuller, and Bev Cook in particular for specific help on the book and giving me writing space and time, but thank you all for your support. Thank you to my awesome coworkers at MLibrary at the University of Michigan: not only for the collections, the articles on Romanian folklore, and the OED, but for all the help and encouragement.

  Thank you extremely very much no-more-than-that to my editor, Anne Hoppe, and my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, and everyone on their teams who helped this book along.

  And thank you to Dann Fuller, who told me to go to Romania when I dithered and who made me write even when I didn’t want to.

  About the Author

  Merrie Haskell, though she was born in Michigan, grew up in North Carolina. She wrote her first story at the age of seven, and she walked dogs after school in order to buy her first typewriter. Merrie returned north to attend the Residential College of the University of Michigan, where she earned a BA in biological anthropology. Her fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov's, and Strange Horizons magazines and in Unplugged: The Year's Best Online Fiction 2008. She now lives in Saline, Michigan, with her husband and stepdaughter. Merrie works in a library with more than 7 million books, and she finds this to be just about the right number.

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  Credits

  Jacket art © 2011 by Jason Chan

  Jacket design by Joel Tippie

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Merrie Fuller

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Haskell, Merrie.

  The princess curse / by Merrie Haskell. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Thirteen-year-old Reveka, an herbalist’s apprentice in the Middle Ages, attempts to break the mysterious curse on the princesses of Sylvania and instead discovers a door to the Underworld.

  ISBN 978-0-06-200813-8 (trade bdg.)

  [1. Fairy tales. 2. Blessing and cursing—Fiction. 3. Princesses—Fiction.

  4. Herbs—Fiction. 5. Magic—Fiction.] I. Twelve dancing princesses. English. II. Title.

  PZ8.H2563Pr 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010040424

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062093417

  About the Publisher

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Romanian Words That Appear in this Story

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

&nbs
p; Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher