The king looked down on her for several moments, which seemed to stretch on, until finally he took a step closer to her. He took her arm gently in one of his large bejeweled hands and leaned toward her, closer and closer until his mouth was almost against her ear. “Now, we can’t have that sort of talk, my dear.” His smooth voice was deadly as a knife wrapped in satin. Posy’s heart began to pound as his grip tightened on her arm and his voice hissed just above a whisper. “People will begin to think that your injury did you a lasting harm. We follow the Plot here, my daughter, and if you stray from it, you will greatly regret it. You are my daughter, Princess Evanthe. I am your father, King Melanthius, ruler of the Kingdom and every creature within it. Your mother is Queen Valanor. You would do well to remember everything I tell you ... sweeting.” The king’s voice brightened abruptly as he spoke the last word and released her arm from his painful grip. Posy took one stumbling step backward. He reached a hand up to brush back a strand of her hair in a fatherly gesture, making a tsking noise. “Such a shame, your memory loss! You must meet with Falak as soon as possible to relearn the ways of the Kingdom, my dear. It seems you have forgotten a great deal indeed.” He turned on his heeled shoes and walked away from her down the corridor without another word.
Posy released a long shaky sigh and realized she had not been breathing. Had the king just threatened her? It all happened so quickly—his manner changed so swiftly—she almost could have believed it never happened at all. The king—indeed, the entire Kingdom—saw her as the princess Evanthe. Whether or not they actually believed her to be the princess did not seem to matter. The thought made her shudder.
She wondered how she could have let the farce go on so long. This was her second day in the book. If she had known it would come to this, she would never have done it. Then she remembered the king’s voice, his breath on her face and his steely hand on her arm, and knew it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Coldness seeped into her fingers and toes as she realized she was trapped. This was becoming more of a nightmare than the pleasant dream she had believed it to be.
* * *
When Posy had spoken to Falak before, the owl admitted she didn’t belong in this book—she was certain she hadn’t imagined it. She had to speak with him now, she told herself urgently, before things got even more frightening. She lifted her skirts around her ankles and started down the hall. A guard stood outside a pair of massive polished wood doors, and she slowed to a stop in front of him.
“Excuse me,” she said carefully, not knowing where to begin.
“Princess Evanthe.” The guard swept a low bow and then straightened. Posy noticed he was not looking into her face, just as Olena had done.
“I wish to speak with Falak. If you could show me where to go, please?” When the guard hesitated, she added, “King Mela ... my father wished me to speak with him.”
He gave a short nod and said, “Oh, yes, Princess. If you would follow me.”
The guard led her down so many hallways and up so many twisting stairwells that Posy was completely lost by the time they came to a stop. Before them stood a low arched doorway, wooden and riddled with knots. Posy attempted to catch her breath as the guard rapped lightly on the door. A noise came from within, and the man lifted the latch and entered, with Posy close behind him.
Though it was mid morning, the room was unsettlingly dark. A cursory glance about the large room revealed to Posy that all the tall windows were covered with thick drapes the color of a midnight sky. The only light in the room came from a fire roaring in the stone hearth on the far side of the room. The ceiling curved into a dome far above their heads. There were bookshelves that appeared to be carved from the trunks of great trees, branches thrusting out from the sides of them and curling into the room like searching fingers. Posy spotted Falak on one of these branches, his enormous round eyes flickering with firelight. He was so still that Posy realized she had been looking at him several moments without seeing him.
“Princess Evanthe to see you, Chief Adviser,” stated the guard, who was already bowing and backing out of the doorway to leave.
“Very good,” said Falak evenly. “Won’t you join me, Princess?” He spread his expanse of wings and glided from the branch to a chair near the fireside. Posy walked across the room and seated herself in the chair opposite.
“The king sent you?” Falak said. Posy was relieved to hear him refer to the king this way instead of saying “your father.”
“Yes, he did,” she answered, “though I wanted to come and talk to you anyway.”
“Oh? And why was that?” the owl tilted his head almost imperceptibly to one side.
“Because ... well, you told me yesterday we needed to speak—that you would speak to me—”
“When the time was right. When I had gathered more information. That time has not yet come. I can tell you part, but not whole. You will have to be patient, Princess.”
Posy searched his face and asked slowly, “Why do you call me Princess when you know I’m not?”
“Because whether you are Princess Evanthe or not, you are now a princess, and a princess is what we need to follow the Plot and save our book.”
“What?” Posy said incredulously. “But why?”
Falak blinked. “I will tell you what I can.”
Posy nodded expectantly.
“Our princess, the princess Evanthe has disappeared,” the owl began, and his huge eyes leapt with reflected firelight. "She has always been here for the Plot. She has never strayed until now. But when the day of–when a certain day came, she was nowhere to be found, and we discovered that she had run away.” His voice was low and sharp. “We do not know what caused her to leave. We do not know why she has betrayed us in this way. We only know that the Plot, and the Kingdom, cannot go on without her. The Kingdom has indeed been in uproar ever since we discovered her missing not four days ago. Though you are from another land, I am sure you can understand how a Plot cannot continue without one of its characters, yes? Our very lives have hung in the balance. King Melanthius and Queen Valanor have been beside themselves with worry for their daughter and with distress about what will happen to the Kingdom if she does not return soon.”
“So if everyone knows she is gone,” Posy said slowly, “why am I being treated as the princess? How did I even get here?”
“Ah, yes.” Falak ruffled his feathers and stuck his downy chest out a bit. “That is due to me. Well, to be honest, I was aided by a good bit of luck as well.”
“You brought me here?” Posy’s voice rose in astonishment. “But how? How in the world did you do such a thing? How did you even know I existed?”
Falak shifted his clawed feet on the arm of the chair and cleared his throat, “I dabble–I am not proficient at all, you see–but I dabble in magic. I suppose you could say that I barely even do that. I merely study it, as a curiosity, of course. But I had learned, through my years of study of certain magical laws within our Kingdom and the Plot, laws that apply not only to us characters, but to those outside of our realm as well. We call them the Infinite Laws, for they apply no matter what story you may come from.”
“Even to me, and the story—I mean, world, that I come from?”
Falak nodded slightly. “You see, it is too complicated to explain to someone who has not studied it as I have–and that is why His Majesty left it to me–but in short, there comes sometimes what is called a Requirement. Now, Requirements can occur in both this world and yours or others. When they occur in either realm, there are usually two ways events can unravel: either the Requirement tends to disseminate and resolve of its own accord, or, if it is not resolved, it creates havoc and trauma. Our king is not the type who will stand idly by on the hope that something will take care of itself, and neither,” the creature’s eyes glinted fire-orange, “am I.”
Posy watched the owl closely as he spoke. She wondered just how much the king relied on his chief advisor, and how many decisions Falak himself had made for the Kingdom.
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“The Requirement I speak of is, of course, the princess’ disappearance and the continuance of the Plot,” continued Falak. “We had a great need, you see. And here is the crux. In my studies I had learned that it is thought—though never, until now, proved—that if a Requirement occurred in two separate realms, and they were aligned—rather like an eclipse—then they might meld and solve each other. I hope—yes, I do believe—” His smooth voice became pitched with excitement. “—that this is what happened when you were brought here. You are the answer to our Requirement. And we, possibly, are the answer to yours, whatever it may be.”
Posy stared rather open-mouthed at Falak for several moments. She shook her head in disbelief and said, “But you’re wrong. I don’t have a ... Requirement.”
“Indeed?” Falak seemed unperturbed by her answer, and Posy knew he wasn’t fooled. She had of course had a need—there was no use pretending to herself she hadn’t. But was this the answer? It seemed ludicrous.
“Yes,” Falak said sharply. “I see in your face that you know it is true. It is as I thought. For the first time in the history of the Plot—or perhaps anywhere—a Requirement eclipse took place. You see, Princess, you are here for good reason—for a purpose.”
Posy did not know how to respond to this. It was outrageous, yes, but not more so than everything else that had happened to her in the past couple of days. She was beginning to miss her parents, however little they may care that she was gone, and she was quickly tiring of this.
“Well, I have stood in as the princess,” she said slowly. “Now what? As the king so kindly reminded me, I don’t know the first thing about the Plot, and most likely I’ll mess it up, and you won’t want me in it anyway.”
Falak eyed her without expression for several moments and said, “That cannot be helped. You will, of course, make minor slip-ups in the Plot, but they will be of no consequence, so long as we get to your purpose. Once a reader comes, it will be only three days you need remain here, then you will be free to go.”
“It only takes three days for my part to be over?” asked Posy suspiciously.
“Yes.”
“What happens to me, then? Am I even a major character at all?”
Falak straightened up on the arm of the chair and gave her a stern look. “Characters are all equal, for without one of them, how could the true Plot continue?”
Posy rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe you’re supposed to say that or something, but Falak, we all know there are major and minor roles in books, right? So, am I a major one or a minor one? Being the princess, I thought I would be one of the main characters, especially since the whole kingdom has gone crazy since she ran away.”
“Your role,” Falak said stiffly, “is pivotal to the Plot. Without it, the Plot would not survive.”
“So, major,” Posy said, then smiled when Falak drew his owlish brows together in silence. “What do I need to know about my character, then, since apparently I’m stuck here until I go through with this? Is there any type of script I need to look at?”
“No, no, nothing as conventional as that. Follow me.” The owl swooped across the hazy room to one of the tall shelves carved straight into a tree trunk. He indicated with his wing a bottle, one of seemingly hundreds that lined the shelves in the chamber. “This will give you explicit directions for everything you need to do or say. Just take it and open it after you leave my chamber. The rest will happen of its own accord.”
Posy reached her hand up to grasp the crystal bottle. “It’s a pity I’m not a good actress. My part as princess will never be believable, you know. I hope your readers don’t mind a bad performance!” She laughed.
“Our readers,” Falak said, his voice almost mournful sounding, “are very few, unfortunately. Dark fairy tales are no longer as popular as they once were. And you do not need to worry about acting—fortunately for all of us, readers take care of that part themselves. As long as you deliver your lines and place yourself where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there, the reader’s imagination fills in all the blanks. As long as the words to the Plot remain the same, and clear, all will be well.”
“Yes, of course, I hadn’t thought of that,” Posy said. “But”—she looked at Falak—“you said ‘dark fairy tale.’ What do you mean ... ‘dark’?”
“Oh, a story that is real, I suppose,” he answered carefully. “A story with tenacity, and strength. It has light that is bright, but shadows that are deep.”
Posy wasn’t sure that answered her question at all. “So, this one doesn’t end happily?” she asked with growing apprehension.
“That depends on who you are speaking of. For some, yes; for others, no. It is the Plot, and we follow it, or we would not exist.”
Why did he keep saying that? His eyes glowed as he studied Posy for a moment before adding, “There are things I wish to tell you, Princess, but as I said before, I cannot—not until I know more. I will come to you when it is time. Now go.” He flew up, up, so far into the domed ceiling that when Posy tilted her head back to gaze at him, he looked like a phantom gliding against the blackness of the sky.
CHAPTER THREE
Imposter Princess
Opening the crystal bottle was like an enchantment. When Posy unstoppered the lid, it gave a slight pop, and then blue, misty light spilled gently over the bottle’s mouth, falling around her legs, moving up around her skirts and flowing into her hair and eyes. Her skin tingled as the mist’s delicate fingers ran along her spine and across her scalp. She shivered as pleasant warmth filled her from head to toe. It was when the sensation faded that Posy began to hear the voice, very softly telling her what to do. Walk down the hallway, dear. Yes, that’s the way. Now head down that staircase and make a right, then a right again. Come on, now, don’t dally, Princess.
She supposed when the time came, when a reader opened the book, and it was time to play her part, the voice would give her words to say, too. At least this way she wouldn’t have to memorize anything—that was a huge relief. The mist led her to her own chamber. Once she arrived, it stopped speaking to her, though she did listen for a while to make sure it was gone. “Well, what do I do now?” she said to the empty room.
The mist immediately appeared, swirling above her head. It made a tsking noise at her and said lightly, We have no reader at present, silly princess, so you need do nothing unless you wish to.
Posy moved across the room to one of the high windows, carved like a gash into the side of the stone wall. She gazed out across two more towers, lower and smaller than her own, a courtyard, and beyond that, what looked like stables. Fields stretched beyond the sprawl of the castle, and beyond them Posy saw a dense line of forest, far down a sloping hill.
Her thoughts must have been waiting for such an opportunity of silence and solitude, for they seemed to descend on her now. Words spoken, things that had happened, seemed to come together in her mind.
First off—the princess had run away. Falak had told Posy that her part in the Plot was pivotal. Everyone knew Posy wasn’t the princess, but they wouldn’t admit it—wouldn’t even look her in the eye. Why, why after so long, had the princess Evanthe run away from the Plot? Why else, Posy asked herself, than to escape what it held for her?
Posy felt her body suddenly grow cold. She shivered and moved away from the window toward the hearth where a fire had been lit. Sitting in a high-backed chair, she stared into the bright flames. She just had to know the answer, she decided.
She sensed it was horrible, the thing the princess had run from. She saw it in Falak’s cool gaze, in the king’s threats, and even in the darting glance of her maid and the guards in the hall. For it was Posy who now played the part, it was she who would face whatever was to come. Falak said the story would end happily for some. But for others …?
“Is mine a dark ending?” Posy murmured to the mist that hung shimmering around the bedpost. Her heart was pounding to hear the answer. But all she heard was silence.
*
* *
The day wore on and, despite her worries, Posy grew bored. She paced the marble floors of her room, her lavender dress swishing around her, and she gazed upon the bright tapestry murals hanging on the stone walls of her bedroom until she had committed them to memory. Olena brought Posy's lunch on a gold-embellished tray. Posy thought, as she watched Olena place the food on the table by her fireside, perhaps it will all taste like nothing. What can food taste like in a book? But when she took her first bite she was overwhelmed with bursts of sensation and incredible flavors. “Oh, no,” she said aloud, smiling at Olena, “I will be ruined for normal food after this.” Olena’s eyes grew round, and she nodded awkwardly before curtseying and rushing toward the door to make her escape.
Posy sighed. “Olena, before you go, could you tell me something?”
The girl turned, her blond curls trembling on either side of her pale face.
“When do you think my father and mother will want to see me? I mean the king and queen. You see, my head injury made me forget so many things.” Posy put her hand delicately to her temple, grimacing a bit for effect. It had been a head injury, hadn’t it? Or had it been a fever? She couldn’t recall, but it didn’t seem to matter to Olena.
Relief spread across the maid’s face at the normalcy of the question, and she smiled. “Well, Princess, it is customary for characters to wait until a reader comes to begin their roles at all, but it is never much opposed if members of the royal family, such as yourself, choose to roam the castle or the grounds to find amusement in the meantime. The king himself likes to organize hunts, and throw an occasional ball, between readers.”
“And what do you do while waiting for a reader, Olena?” Posy asked curiously.
“Oh, my lady, I have much to do. We have to keep the castle scrubbed and shining in the event that a reader opens the book. The Plot has to be ready to spring into action at every possible moment. You never know if the reader will open the book at the beginning or in the middle ... they’re so unpredictable!”
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