“Yes . . .”
“Told you he wasn’t a real hero,” Eidor said, but he too sat up on his bed, his face full of interest.
“You may be right,” Crete admitted but cast Franz an admiring gaze. “We heroes, we’re trained in sword fighting, bow-and-arrow slinging, jumping on and off of running horses, scaling tall buildings . . . you know, hero things. But we never learn to actually read.”
“We just look at the pictures,” Eidor added. He slid off his bed and stomped across the room. “They’re good pictures, and we can put together most of the story what with everything the ghost girl told us too. But there are bits she never mentioned that I can’t make heads or tails of. Like this!”
He swiped the book right out of Franz’s hands and flipped the pages back to passages before the story of the princess falling under the curse. He found the illustration he was looking for and turned it around for Franz to see.
It was another image of the princess, looking more beautiful than ever, for she was depicted in the middle of the Black Swamp, and the ugly surroundings served only to enhance her natural loveliness. She stood with her arms crossed, her expression cross, and one foot planted in the deep, dark muck of a bog pool.
Across from her, on the opposite page, another figure emerged from the trees—the best-looking man Franz had ever seen, so idealized in his perfections that he hardly seemed real. Not even the two heroes who had dragged him around Briardale earlier could compare with this fellow, though his shoulders were less broad and his face more angular.
“Who’s this bloke, then?” Eidor said, stabbing a stubby finger at the image. “We can figure that the girl is the princess we’ve been brought here to rescue, and Lady Mara is recognizable enough. The ghost girl mentioned the three fairies and all that. But I haven’t got the first idea how this chap figures into anything!”
“What’s it say, Franz?” Crete asked eagerly.
Franz read out loud:
The princess was lonely in her solitary life, hidden away at Briardale. With only her three fairies—disguised as her aunties—and a housemaid for company, she longed for a friend with whom she might share adventures. But her aunties were so fearful of Lady Mara, they did not allow the princess out beyond Briardale’s protective walls.
One day, however, the princess slipped out from under the fairies’ watchful eyes and took a walk into the Black Swamp. She figured she would rather have an adventure on her own than no adventure at all! But she had gone scarcely a mile out of sight of the castle when she came to a bog. Stepping unwarily, she planted her foot in sucking mud and became perilously trapped.
“Botheration,” she said, folding her arms. “And these were my favorite shoes!”
She had no notion of the danger in which she stood. Her three aunties, solicitous of her care and keeping, had protected her from any possible harm, not even allowing her to take a tumble or two when, as an infant, she first learned how to walk. So the princess knew nothing of danger or of fear. She stood there, the bog muck sucking her down, and simply cried out:
“All right then, will someone please come along and rescue me now? I don’t have time to stand here all day!”
Things might have gone very ill for the princess had not someone happened to be passing nearby. She heard movement and turned in time to see a strange young man of just about her own age step through the thickest patch of trees across the bog. He was a glorious sight to behold, the most beautiful of all his kind.
He stepped over the marsh as nimbly as though he had lived in this place all his life . . . though the princess knew this to be impossible. Only the lowly Swamp Elves lived in the Black Swamp, and they were an ugly race, nothing like this handsome youth—
Eidor made gagging sounds. “All right, skip over his perfections, please. Get to the good parts!”
Franz obligingly turned a page or two, passing over images of the princess and the handsome stranger apparently bonding in friendship over various adventures in the Black Swamp. Then he came to a much more interesting illustration depicting the princess, still beautiful but in a state of extreme wrath, with her hands upraised as though she would like to claw someone’s eyes out. And who should kneel before her on the ground, his hands clasped and tears in his eyes? None other than the handsome stranger.
“See, this is the picture that’s always made me wonder,” said Crete, pointing at the man in the image. “I mean, what could possibly have happened to make him all crumpled up and pitiful like this? I mean, at first I thought he was a hero like me or Eidor or even like those two lugs upstairs. But this doesn’t look too heroic to me!”
Franz scanned the image for the scrawling handwriting in the margins. “And so it seemed that the two would be fast friends for life,” he read, “and that one day perhaps something truer and more profound might blossom in their youthful hearts. But fickle fate did play an evil hand when—”
A rattling at the door interrupted him. He and the two lunatic heroes looked up and saw a face peering at them through the bars of the door window: an ugly face with bug-eyes set in dark hollows.
“Hullo, Mutey,” said Crete with a friendly wave. “Guess what! Franz here can read that book you gave us all those years ago. Isn’t that great?”
Mutey’s solemn gaze fixed upon Franz and on the book. He would be an unnerving fellow to look at under the best conditions, and in the context of a lunatic asylum’s dungeon, he was positively ghastly. But when he looked at Franz with that dumb appeal—as though he were trying, desperately trying, to communicate something of vast importance with his bulbous eyes—Franz almost felt that he’d rather come face-to-face with the Slavering Swamp Beast.
He looked away quickly, shuddering.
A creak of bars, and the little cell window opened. Eidor stepped across the room and retrieved the tray of food Mutey passed through. “Thanks, mate,” he said.
The dungeon keeper shrugged and shut the window. They heard his footsteps retreat along the dark passage.
Franz, the memory of that ugly gaze still burned his mind, focused his attention on the illustration even as Eidor brought the tray of foul-smelling prison porridge over to share. Something about the picture caught Franz’s attention, something that made his brow pucker and his mouth frown. Something in the face of that handsome man struck him as somehow . . . familiar? What was it about those shining, tear-filled eyes—
“There you are, Franz dear!”
Franz screamed and flung up his hands, accidentally knocking the tray of porridge right out of Eidor’s grasp, which made Eidor scream too, and then Crete. Globs of gray porridge flew straight through the glowing green form that had materialized suddenly in the middle of the room, smiling right at Franz.
Chapter 8
NO LIGHT SHONE IN Briardale’s high tower that night. But anyone standing down below, straining his ears, might have heard a distant whir-whir-whirring as of a wheel spinning, accented by the clunk-clunk-clunk of the treadle moved by tiny feet.
The fairies were hard at work, determined not to let down their princess even if it took five hundred years to save her.
A lonely figure in a deep hood passed between the statues in the courtyard, afraid to meet their solemn stone gazes. Instead, this figure darted at great speed to the tower door, one hand reaching out to the latch, the other clutching something secret within the folds of his cloak.
Lady Mara’s apprentice wondered—would he count as a True Hero? He had not moved a mountain, saved a kingdom, or slain a dragon. But he had slain a Slavering Swamp Beast deep in the Black Swamp and stolen its cub (which was even now being brought up by Lady Mara for use as the most vicious watchdog ever seen). Slavering Swamp Beasts were known to eat dragons for luncheon, so surely a man who dared face one could be considered a true enough hero to satisfy a curse!
He had to hope.
In his hidden hand he clutched three slender wands. He need only throw them through the barrier, for Lady Mara’s curse had stipulated that “no
one” would be able to cross the barrier, not “nothing.” And if the fairies regained their wands, they could bring down the barrier and let him through to try his kiss . . .
“I thought as much.”
The apprentice stilled, his hand just touching the latch on the tower door. An ominous figure materialized out of the shadows. Lady Mara loomed tall.
“Liar,” she hissed, her mouth twisting in an ugly smile. “You told me that your friendship with the princess was all a ruse, just as we planned. You told me you were still my loyal servant . . . and I believed you! When you invited me into Briardale, allowing me to complete the spindle curse even as planned, I thought you were indeed true to me!”
The apprentice drew back his hand slowly. Then, spinning quickly, he darted out his fingers, his mouth opening to form a paralysis enchantment such as he’d used on the three fairies earlier that day.
But Lady Mara intercepted him with a word of her own and a powerful blast of enchantment. He froze mid-gesture, his cloak settling about him, his hood tossed back from his pale face.
“You see that my powers are recovered,” Lady Mara said. “And I don’t need them at full capacity to deal with my own apprentice!” She approached, extending one finger to press its nail into his cheek so hard that a dot of blood appeared. “I never believed you would be such a fool as to fall in love with the girl,” she sneered. “What would she say, do you think, if she knew what you really are?”
She spoke another word, and a shimmer of magic surrounded the apprentice like a veil. It wavered with silvery light then darkened to black, rotting away slowly. When it vanished, the beautiful man was gone . . .
And in his place, frozen in the same position, stood a Swamp Elf—a creature of pasty skin and bulbous eyes, with teeth as pointed as a goblin’s.
“No fit companion for the king’s daughter, are you?” said Lady Mara cruelly. “A pretty girl like her would laugh in your face if you dared speak to her.” She bent her head, her eyes level with his. “I gave you the beauty spell so that you could get close to her, win her trust, and ultimately gain me access to Briardale. I would have let you keep the beauty forever had you only remained true to me! But now I take it back . . . and more!”
With that, she snapped her fingers, uttering yet another dark phrase. Black tendrils curled out from her nails and plunged into the Swamp Elf’s open mouth, down his throat. He gasped, gagged, but could not otherwise move. The tendrils retreated, drawing back into Lady Mara’s hand.
“I have taken your voice,” she said. “Until someone calls you by your real name, you will remain dumb, powerless, unable to work enchantments. You are no longer my apprentice, no longer my servant . . . you are my slave! And when the Magic Cycle is complete, you will join your lovely princess in death.”
She snapped her fingers, releasing him from the paralysis. He collapsed to his knees, tears streaming, his mouth open in a silent howl of dismay. Lady Mara reached under his cloak and snatched the three wands from his grasp.
“I’ll take these,” she said, “and hide them where no one will ever find them!”
Few things in the world could be more pathetic than a ghost who was afraid—just a tiny bit afraid—of the dark.
Roselee considered this truth with a grimace as she hovered outside the doorway leading down into Briardale’s dungeons. Oh, how she hated venturing down there! The passages were twisty, and it was all just so . . . dark!
But Franz was down there. Franz and . . . other things.
No. No, she could not let herself think about that! Besides, it wasn’t as if anything could actually hurt her, immaterial specter that she was. Alicia would be disappointed with her nonsense if she suspected, and Roselee had disappointed Alicia enough to last a lifetime. A dozen lifetimes, really!
So, making herself flare as brightly green as she possibly could, Roselee held her breath and darted through the shut door into the absolute blackness of the descending stairwell beyond.
That first plunge was the worst. The shudders of terror sweeping through her ghostly being, the whispers of panic, the awful creepiness of it all. But after that initial horror it wasn’t so bad, much like plunging into a pond on a cold morning. Sure, that first dagger of icy water through the skin is bad, but then the blood starts pumping and everything starts to feel fine.
Roselee didn’t have blood to pump anymore. But her ectoplasm flared with renewed courage, and she spiraled her way down the stair to a place where it branched into three distinct corridors. Which corridor housed the heroes? She didn’t visit them often, for what was the point when they could no longer see or hear her?
The rules of the various interlacing enchantments were complex, but Viola’s original counterspell stated that the princess could be kissed awake after a hundred years. Thus, at the tail end of every century a new hero could be Chosen. But if he failed to kiss the princess before the century was up, his window of opportunity passed. His kisses would never work, and he couldn’t even perceive the guiding ghost spirit anymore. It was terribly frustrating.
Roselee wavered before the mouths of those three corridors. She didn’t want to waste time wandering . . . and she really didn’t want to accidentally end up at the den of the Slavering Swamp Beast! It would have been brought in for the night by this time, and would even now sit brooding and slavering in its den somewhere down here, its wicked red eyes keen for any glimpse of intruders, ghostly or otherwise.
Roselee shivered and wrapped her translucent arms around her immaterial body. Then she tilted her head, listening. Was that Franz’s voice she heard?
“I’m coming, Franz!” she trilled cheerily and darted down the corridor, all thoughts of the Slavering Swamp Beast forgotten. She scarcely even noticed the dungeon keeper when she passed him.
Franz’s voice trailed off, no longer speaking in that steady rhythm. Where was he? Her eye caught a gleam of orange light through a window in one of the dungeon cell doors. He must be in there!
With a sigh of relief, she darted through the heavy door into the lamp-lit room. She saw Franz seated beside one of her former Chosens with a heavy book open in his lap.
“There you are, Franz dear!” she cried and popped into full visibility.
His reaction was not quite what she had hoped. Rather than a happy exclamation of recognition, he let out a yell and flung up his hands and the book. The other two heroes yelled as well, and one of them dashed right through Roselee—an unpleasant sensation that gave her the shivers—as he dove for cover under the bed. Glops of something gray flew through the air, and all was singularly unwelcoming.
Roselee folded her arms. “Really, I might have expected better of you,” she said, scowling at Franz, who crouched on the bed with his knees drawn up as though preparing to leap for freedom. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“You!” Franz exclaimed. “It’s . . . it’s really you?”
“Really who?” the grouchy growl of Eidor demanded from his place huddled on the floor with the meal tray over his head for protection. Across from him, Crete’s feet poked out from under the bed.
“They can’t see me,” Roselee said, indicating the two heroes. “Only you can.”
Franz blinked. “I . . . I was hoping maybe I’d just imagined you after all,” he whispered.
She deflated, sinking down until her feet went partway into the ground. “Oh, Franz,” she said, “that’s cruel. Why would you hope that? And here I go trusting you, picking you out of all others, believing in you . . .”
“Is it the ghost girl?” Eidor asked, peering out from under the tray. “Is she back?”
“Roselee?” came Crete’s voice from under the bed. He shuffled, lifting the bed partway off the ground as he turned about and scrambled free. “Is it really her?”
“See?” Roselee with a sniff. “They believe in me.”
Franz nodded slowly, glancing at his two companions. “Yes. It’s her. She’s . . . she’s floating in the middle of the room. Right in front of me.�
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Eidor shuddered. “Never did like ghosts,” he muttered. “Especially when I can’t see them!” He touched his forehead respectfully then, offering a little bow. “No offense meant, miss.”
He couldn’t see her, but Roselee gave him a gracious smile anyway. “Some folks still know the meaning of the word courtesy.” Then she shook away her disappointment and faced Franz, her pale, stoop-shouldered, frightened Chosen One. The Chosen One with the true heart.
He would have to do.
“Have you figured out how to burst free yet? Like a proper Hero?”
“I’ve told you,” Franz said, relaxing a little as he readjusted to her otherworldly presence, “I’m not a proper Hero. I can’t burst free of anything.”
“She wants you to burst free?” Crete asked, standing and dusting off the front of his trousers. “Tell her we’ve tried that. Both of us. We’re experts at it, you know. But this room, it suppresses all of our usual abilities. Some sort of enchantment on it, which is why Mara keeps us here.”
“That’s why Crete can’t shrink,” Eidor added. “And I can’t seem to remember how to turn invisible.”
Franz stared at them open-mouthed, his eyes roving slowly from Crete to Eidor to Roselee and back around again. “So . . .” he said slowly, addressing himself to Roselee. “So this one . . . he really does come from a microscopic kingdom on the head of a pin?”
“Him?” Roselee glanced at Crete. “He’s a homunculus, isn’t he? They all come from Homunculi, the Smallest Kingdom. Didn’t you know that?”
“And him?” said Franz with a nod at Eidor. “He really can . . . turn invisible?”
“Of course I can, you dolt!” Eidor snarled.
“He’s a dwarf,” Roselee said. “All dwarves can turn invisible. Why else do you think you’ve never seen one before? They never let themselves be seen by humans.”
“And you brought them both here to . . . to try to kiss the princess?”
Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 19
