by Daniel Fox
"Yes?"
Now was the time for her to warn him, to keep him from planting his foot in the trap that was waiting to spring on the other side of the door. But that would put her on the page, printed like all the others, bound by covers, her pain forgotten when all the others had won their victories.
"Nothing," she said, and stepped away.
***
In came the farmer. The farmer with his trusting tanned face. With his shy smile that widened when his eyes met hers. He was so trusting, this boy from the village that had no name.
"Good morning," he said to them both, taking off his hat. He turned to the Old Woman. "Did you sleep well?"
"Like a princess without a pea."
"Ah," said the farmer, "I'll take that as a yes?" And then he was looking at her. Opening his mouth to ask about her night.
"You should knock," Willuna said, her voice giving out halfway through.
"I'm sorry?" said the farmer, still smiling, not knowing what he was sharing a room with. "I didn't quite catch-"
"I said," said Willuna, drawing herself up, making herself royal, making herself a queen, "that you should knock before entering a lady's room. You've forgotten your place."
The farmer's smile dimmed. It hurt Willuna's heart, watching that. It was like the sun being blocked out by a blizzard… wavering…
"Now that we are out of danger," Willuna continued, "you will address me as 'your Majesty.'"
…and the smile was gone.
"You're royalty?" The Old Woman clapped a surprised hand to her mouth. "I had no idea."
"That is all," said Willuna, and did the hardest thing she had ever done. She turned her back on the farmer and stuck her nose in the air. "You may go."
There was quiet. It was diseased, that silence. Every breath of it hurt Willuna more.
"Have I, um…" the farmer swallowed. "Have I done something wrong?"
"I said that was all." Willuna spun around, shouting. "Get out!"
"Now hold on girl," said the Old Woman.
"Get out get out get out!"
The farmer stood there, looking dazed. Willuna would have to turn the dagger one more time. "Don't you have some turnips to tend?"
She couldn't have slapped him any harder. The farmer gave the Old Woman a sick little nod, and then turned and made his way out of the room, closing the door behind himself. Willuna sank into the chair. "His face," she said, "did you see his face?"
"Oh I did indeed," said the Old Woman. "I simply had no idea he loved you that much."
Willuna looked up. "What?"
The Old Woman smiled. "I'm a bit jealous. I don't think I've ever managed to be so cruel. My hat's off to you, young miss. If ever this royalty thing doesn't work out, look me up. There's a job in wicked-witching for you." The Old Woman scooted herself off the bed and began to dress. "Still, he'll come. There's no amount of cruelty that would stop him. The magician is as good as mine."
Chapter 18
Willuna shuffled through the village. It seemed to her that she didn't have the energy to lift her feet and never would again.
The Old Woman spindled on ahead like an insect crossing water. She turned back, eyes sharp in the loose weathered folds of her face. "Quick-step hup! Double-time girlie, double and double again! Do you want me to go after the farmer myself? Then let's see some snap in your step!"
"What do you want from me?" said Willuna. "How can I call your magician out? We smashed all the mirrors. Ground them to dust."
"Ha!" said the Old Woman, and barrelled on toward the well that sat near the center of the village. "Nothing's ever as simple as it seems."
***
Idwal was at work. He tugged weeds. Fixed a fence. Hoed rows and watered growths. He'd been away too long, yes. Away from home. Away from where he belonged. Ridiculous, him getting mixed up in the business of royals. Foolish, foolish farmer.
Every other bit of work done, he turned to that great big hole in the middle of his neat ordered field. Its edges were still rough and uneven from where he had dragged that mutant turnip up out of the ground.
Well, he couldn't very well expect it to fill itself in. He grabbed up his hoe and sent dirt cascading down. It filled up quickly, and in almost no time at all it was like the turnip had never been there. Now it was just a matter of figuring out what would take its place. Lettuce? Tomatoes? For some reason he didn't feel any great desire to plant something that did the majority of its growing underground, out of sight.
A slim shadow fell across the soil. Gretal was there, watching him turn the earth. "Come to help?" he said.
She took a moment, studying his face. Idwal stood up from his hoeing. "Once upon a time," said Gretal, "a happy little brother and a happy little sister were left in the woods. They found kindness in a smiling crone who gave them shelter in her house made of sweets. But it was all a trick, for the crone was a wicked thing who filed her teeth on the bones of children. They, the children… we, we fooled her and shoved her into her own oven. How she howled. How she screamed."
"Brave little boy. Brave little girl."
Gretal turned and looked back down the road toward the heart of the village. "There's always another house of candy." She turned back to Idwal. "I've done something awful."
"You?" said Idwal. "But you never do anything, anything at all. That's why we get along so well. Once we're married-"
"Stop," said Gretal. "Listen."
"What is it?"
"There's always another crone."
***
The Old Woman turned the crank, and from down in the heart of the earth up came a bucket brimming with water. She grabbed the bucket and tipped it over, emptying the water back down the well. It made no sound, the bottom was too far away.
"Come worm," she said to Willuna, "on to your hook."
Willuna peered over the side of the well. She saw nothing but darkness. She looked up at the crone, pleading.
"It's you or the village." The Old Woman gave the bucket a wiggle.
Willuna climbed in. Much to her surprise she didn't plummet down all at once. The Old Woman had strength in her that outmatched the looks of her broomstick arms.
She descended, one slow crank of the well's handle at a time. She wondered if this was Anisim's life as a king, one bucket after another.
She slid out of reach of the sun.
***
There was no plain left in Idwal, no more average. The beige and grey had been blasted out of him by Gretal's recounting of what she had heard. Idwal was a tornado crashing through the village's marketplace, disapproving looks just got blown aside.
"The girl, you've seen her? This high, yes? Little upturned nose, likes to stick it in the air."
Nothing and more nothing. Nobody had seen Willuna. The tornado blew itself out. But then Idwal heard a familiar voice:
"Rocks!" the voice called out. "We've got rocks!"
Idwal turned the last corner in the marketplace and found a long low stall filled with seven dwarves. A wide variety of rocks sat along their counter-space.
"Oy," said Cosimo the dwarf, "it's you."
"Yes, I'm afraid so," said Idwal. "I need your help. Please. The young woman I was with, have you seen her?"
The dwarves scratched heads, stroked beards. "Can't say as we have," said Dietwald. "Care to purchase a rock? They're fresh."
"What would I do with it?"
"Why, the same thing as everyone else. What an odd question."
"What's wrong with this girl?" asked Cosimo, speaking for the bunch. "You're looking rather frantic."
"I've let her get away. I let myself be tricked. I've done everything wrong, everything. If I'd had even the smallest smidgen of sophistication, just the tiniest little bit, I could have seen that there was something wrong. Instead I acted like just what I am, a hick, a nobody… and now I've left her to face some terrible danger all alone."
"Poor fellow," said Dietweld. "We have just the rock for you!"
The other dwarves sh
oved Dietwald to the back of the stall.
"Don't give up boy," said Egon, "don't you ever give up."
"What could I possibly do?" Idwal threw his hands up into the air. "I know turnips, not swords and sorcery. What could I possibly do that others couldn't do better? There's no hope."
"No hope?" said Gerhard. "No hope you say? There's always hope. Look!"
The dwarves whisked away the rocks, twirled away the cloth over the counter-top, revealing Snow-Drop in her shining glass casket.
"You see?" cried Udo. "This beloved girl was poisoned not once but three times and yet her heavenly bosom still rises and falls!"
"For yourself!" said Friedemann.
"For all of us!" bellowed Egon.
"Fight!" cried Cosimo.
"Yes!" Idwal pumped his fist in the air, carried by the courage in the voices of the dwarves. Still in his heroic pose, he eyed Snow-Drop in her casket. "Sooo… you're using her as a counter-top?"
Gerhard shrugged. "We needed the table-space."
***
The well held autumn airs in its depths. Willuna shivered as she dropped below the summer sun's reach. She looked back up at the coin of light far above, saw a bite in the circle that was the silhouette of the Old Woman's head. And then the silhouette was gone, darting away out of sight.
The bucket plummeted, then jerked to a stop just above the black water, its sides bruising Willuna's legs. Willuna looked up. The silhouette was back. She thought of calling out that the Old Woman could have killed her, but that seemed ridiculously obvious, and she wasn't really sure that the Old Woman would particularly care. The witch had said she was going to use Willuna as bait for Idwal, who in turn was bait for the magician, but Willuna couldn't see how a princess and a farmer stuck down in a well were going to do the witch's plan much good.
"There once was a girl," she muttered, "who went down a well; she had grand plans but they all went to-"
"Princesssssss…" The wizard's voice, a mocking tone. The whisper echoed around the stone walls of the well.
"Show yourself magician," said Willuna, doing her very best to sound commanding and not at all scared, "I would have words with you."
"Words?" said the voice that seemed to be coming from all sides at once. "It's far too late for words."
"Be wise, be reasonable. There are no more mirrors. You're done." Willuna looked up at that silhouette far overhead. "He's here!" she called up to the witch. "I think. Somewhere. Anyway, come and get him." The silhouetted head tilted this way, then that. And then it was joined by a second head. And a third.
And then they tilted over the edge of the well and began to clamber down, easy as spiders. Willuna's eyes went wide. Jesters!
"Wisely, reasonably," said the wizard's voice, "did you really think it was the mirrors?"
The voice no longer echoed. It now came from only one place, below her. Willuna peered over the bucket, down into the water just below. A fourth jester was there to match the reflections from the three above. But this was no silhouette, it was clear and defined as its arms shot up out of the water and grabbed hold of her shoulders, pulling her down into the water.
And then the well was empty, not a single ripple marring the water's surface.
***
Willuna felt twisted and turned, like a rag being squeezed dry in gentle hands. She was travelling, speeding, and then she just like that she was on a stone floor. She was dizzy, she felt as if her brain was spinning like a carousel inside her skull. She closed her eyes. Felt the cold and damp of the stones beneath her.
Stick-figure hands grabbed her around the arms and hefted her to her feet. She was hauled along lifeless corridors, around spider-webbed corners, and finally dumped in a room that sounded like it went on for ever.
Willuna opened her eyes. And found herself face-to-face with a soldier in rough armour. Rougher still was the soldier himself, what with its being made up of bits and pieces of various dead people. His jawbone had once belonged to the face of a very large man, his cheekbones had once been the possession of someone very skinny. One eye was brown, the other blue with the whites turned to black. A beetle investigated the flat hole of one nostril, and a garden snake played along the ladder of his exposed spine. Also, he smelled really really bad.
Willuna screamed and lunged to her feet. She spun and went to run, but there was another undead soldier right behind her, blocking the way. He was in an even more awful state that the first. More soldiers stepped up around them, blocking her in, tightening her little circle of space. She felt sick at the thought of those dripping hands touching her, running through her hair.
There was no space left. Willuna squeezed shut her eyes and screamed again.
But nothing touched her. She opened one squinting eye and peeked out. Some of the soldiers were stepping aside, making a lane. And from this lane walked Bodolomous, looking disgustingly happy with himself. "Why," he said, sneering, "there's a princess in my castle. Wonders never cease."
Chapter 19
Idwal made good time, as people in this tale invariably do. He approached the Castle Wolf, his eyes roaming over the business of ramparts and moat. The pennants above snapped like a driver's whip.
A great deal of language clattered down on his head from above as he approached the moat. The language was saucy, to say the least, and very much not the kind of thing we shall reprint here. Idwal shaded his eyes and looked up.
Up and over to his right, on those walking-parts of the walls where sentries were always doing their rounds, was King Anisim. He was the source of the sailor-like vocabulary. He had a canvas set up on a three-legged easel, and he looked out of place with a painter's pallet balanced on his arm. Apparently the painting hadn't been much to the king's liking since Anisim was stabbing it vigorously with the end of his paintbrush. A guard rushed up to the king and whispered in his ear.
The king turned and looked down over the wall's edge. "Farmer?" he said.
"I've made a terrible mistake."
***
Idwal was escorted in, and up. Through halls, up stairs. It was a stark contrast to the Castle Owl; here there wasn't much decoration, and what few tapestries did hang from the wall all seemed to have war and beheadings and rather severe forms of justice as their subjects.
And then the king was there, smiling, gripping his arm in welcome. His smile dropped as Idwal recounted all that had happened regarding Willuna since they had last been in each other's company.
Anisim poured wine for them both. "Silly, wilfull, stubborn…" The king clenched a fist. "Help me think up other words!"
"Um… cheeky?"
Anisim snorted. "Yes," he said, "that too." He passed a goblet to Idwal.
"To cheeky girls?" said the farmer.
"And the poor men they drag along with them."
And then the king was all business. He summoned a guard, told her to get his knights assembled and mounted in the courtyard as soon as possible.
As soon as possible was a surprisingly short time. Anisim led Idwal down to the courtyard. He stood on the rampart steps and, looking very kingly, addressed his mounted knights below, informing them of the subject of their hunt. "If you find her," he said, "be polite, be reasonable, and when that fails send word for me. Off with you, go hunt our beloved prey."
Idwal felt his chest loosen a little, felt he might be able to breathe again. He realized how tense he'd been since the princess had gone missing. But here was Anisim, being all kingly and giving kingly orders. Idwal wished he could give orders like that. But then again he didn't really have anyone to give orders to; he suspected rutabagas would probably do their best to ignore him. At any rate, Anisim was handling things now, and everything was sure to be alright.
It was right about then that the castle's moat exploded outward with an undead army and Idwal's world turned itself upside-down.
***
"How could you?"
"How couldn't I?"
"This is vile, repulsive…"
"Thank you, thank you."
"And horribly smelly."
The magician stopped in his tracks. "Well, yes," he nodded in concession, "there is that."
All around them the skeletons and cadavers were clinking and clanking, jostling themselves as they made their way to, and through, the dozens of great mirrors that lined the cavernous room.
The wizard was scurrying to and fro, making sure his soldiers were making it through, pulling aside the ones that lost a leg here and there and were gumming up the process.
Willuna chased him, her temper burning out her fear. "You wanted the notice of royalty?" she said. "Well now you have yourself a queen. A good queen, a fair and merciful queen, a queen who will not order you to drink poison."
"That's quite decent of you."
"Or tell you to set yourself on fire."
"Ouch."
"Or cut off your own head and present it to me."
"Well that doesn't even make sense."
"Sense?" shouted Willuna, "you're worried about making sense? You've robbed graves, shanghaied loved-ones, to make your rotten army. How does that make sense?"
"I don't have to feed them," said the wizard, looking entirely pleased with himself, "so that's a coin or two saved. Very economical."
"You'll hurt people. Get them killed. Stop this madness," Willuna said, "stop it now!"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because," said the wizard with a wicked smile, "I'm winning."
***
Idwal was in a battle. A real honest-and-true fight. He had actual enemies, enemies that were coming toward him, and if they got close enough they would hurt him, cut him open, leave him for the birds, and move on to their next victim. He had no training to fall back on, no soldier's instincts. The clash and clang of swords meeting swords rolled over him like breakers on a shore. He couldn't have felt more like floundering if he had been at sea.
