Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8

by Samantha M. Derr

  As she was flipping through another etiquette book—she was going to be able to curtsey and make niceties like a real noble, after all the studying she was doing—Meg found a longer passage, scrunched into the blank space left around an illustration of a dancing couple. "Out of all the dances in all these books, this one surely must be the most dreadful," it began. "Certainly, it is danced at the most dreadful sort of ball, for the most dreadful sort of reason. I cannot imagine why they insist that I learn it. When shall I ever have opportunity to dance with suitors at a courting ball, when I shan't live long enough to be married?"

  Meg stared at the page. Betty had never written about her curse before, not once. Meg had almost managed to forget about it, too lost in the lively words to remember that they were from the cold body on the bed in front of her. Seeing her mention it now, and so cavalierly, was a strange little shock—like going down a stairway and missing the last step. She'd thought it might have been out of fear, that it was too frightening for Betty to talk about, but this didn't sound quite like someone who was afraid.

  She read on, following the shape of the sentences as they danced around the drawn figures. "At least I shall never have to dance it, which comes as a relief. According to tradition, as well as the third chapter of this book, a princess should begin attending courting balls no later than her sixteenth birthday, yet I passed eighteen months ago. I have heard nothing from the king and queen, and of course I cannot ask about it, even if I had wanted to—but I do hear the servants talking, even when they think they are being discreet. Everyone knows, they say, that there's no point in introducing suitors to a doomed princess. Who would even take me, with only a few years left? Really, I am just grateful to be spared the dance."

  Despite the last part, Meg could sense the despair behind the words. Not even going through the motions of finding a suitor for a princess, even a cursed one? That was a bit of a slap in the face. Meg didn't want to get married, had left home to get away from all the pressuring, but if it had been her, she would have marched right up to the king and demanded that they at least pretend she was worth the trouble.

  But for that matter, Betty had said she couldn't ask about it, even if she'd wanted. Why on earth not? She was—had been—a princess, for heaven's sake. She might not be able to stand up to her dressmakers, but wouldn't her parents listen to her? Her own mother and father!

  The king and queen...

  "Oh," Meg said blankly, as realization dawned on her. Betty didn't—even in her own private writings, she didn't call them Mother and Father, or anything else but their titles. She wrote sometimes of the great things they had done, but nowhere in her little asides, where she rambled on about the dog she'd met or how many toes she'd stubbed or how she'd hidden from her embroidery lesson yet again... it was as though they weren't even a part of her life.

  Or the other way around. Meg's fingers clenched around the book.

  She was their daughter!

  "You would—you would like my parents," she said finally, after a moment of silence. "They may be far too obsessed with my marriage prospects, but… we do love each other, and they're not so frustrating when they're not trying to set me up with the pig boy. They would like you too, I'll bet. My mother would tell you that you're too skinny, and my father would cook all sorts of things for you to fatten you up. They'd let you play with the dogs, and cluck over what a poor little dear you are, and then probably feed you even more." She tried to smile, but it was suddenly difficult. "My... my granny would have loved you too. She'd've been happy to have someone who hadn't heard all of her stories before."

  Now that was silly. It wasn't as though she could take the princess back home with her! But she liked the thought of sitting with Betty on the floor of their little house, covered in a pair of overenthusiastic dogs, while her parents insisted on plying them with food and, hopefully, were too distracted to harangue her over their continued lack of grandchildren. Or at least with Betty there, she might not mind it as much as she normally did.

  She thought Betty might not mind being there, either.

  Ugh! Being stuck up here really was getting to her. Meg shook her head, hard, trying to clear out all the ridiculous notions that had crept in when she wasn't paying attention. Maybe the sheer dullness of the books was actually driving her mad? Truly, this much etiquette couldn't be good for a person.

  She did not go back to the etiquette book. The next time she settled in to read, she reached instead for the book on plants, that very first one she'd noticed, with the flower on the cover. Hopefully that would help get her mind off of... things.

  "I have a confession," read the note on the back of the front page. "It seems that despite the best efforts of this book, which insists on making everything so frightfully uninteresting, I still retain a fondness for flowers. The beauty of their colors and the sweetness of their scents (neither of which are reproduced in this volume, of course) make me feel as though there is nothing at all wrong with the world, at least for a little while."

  "Hmm," Meg said to that, peering around the tower room. "I think some flowers would brighten this place right up, don't you? Give me something else to clean, at least. What kind of flowers would you like? Roses would suit your fancy dress, but I suppose you would have had enough of thorns, after all those years trapped behind them. How about something nice and cheery—buttercups, maybe? Or daisies?"

  She looked over at Betty, at the long dark curls of her hair tumbling over the edge of her pillow. "You know," she murmured, "when we village girls want to get dressed up, we gather up a heap of flowers and weave them into crowns. Nothing so delicate and precious as the ones you'd wear, of course, but I think they look nice anyway. Maybe when you wake up, you can come work in a kitchen with me, and I'll make you a daisy crown to go with your pretty face."

  She'd meant it as a joke, but the laugh somehow caught itself in her throat and wouldn't come out. It was strangely, alarmingly easy to imagine just that: a life of working side-by-side and laughing along with Betty, who wouldn't have to worry about curses or being a good queen or reading dreadfully boring books. She could be happy—she would be happier, Meg thought, if instead of ballgowns and tiaras, she'd had a kitchen-stained apron and daisies in her hair.

  "I really must be going mad," Meg said, mostly to herself—when, she wondered, had she started really speaking to Betty, and not just to herself? "To think you might like to be a kitchen girl! With me! Perhaps we'd also live in a nice little cottage together, and have a little dog to play in the garden, and I'd do the cooking and you'd do the mending, and we'd both live happily ever after!"

  She slammed the book shut, suddenly cross and not entirely sure why. Maybe it had something to do with how, as ridiculous as the idea was, it also sounded... nice. In an impossible, never-going-to-happen way, of course. Not with the princess!

  But it was so hard to remember that she was a princess, and that Prince Nathaniel had won her hand with his adventure—won her, like a prize at a festival. Grow the biggest pumpkin, marry the princess! No wonder it had all seemed so much like a storybook tale. It was too ridiculous to be anything else.

  With all her thoughts and secrets written down for Meg to read, it was so hard not to think of the poor thing as just another girl, as Betty. It was hard not to... become fond of her. To want to be her friend, and ease the sadness that she had tried to hide, because it wasn't her fault that she'd been cursed—that the curse had become a legend, and the legend had grown up around her like a wall of thorns, until it was all that anyone cared to know about her.

  They'd forgotten her name!

  Meg wanted to throw the book out the window. She wanted to pound at the tower walls until they crumbled, so she could march down to Prince Nathaniel and shout right into his handsome face that he was a fool who didn't deserve the girl he was supposed to have rescued. She wanted—well, it didn't matter what she wanted, unless it was to be sent back home in disgrace, because it wasn't as though she were going to be getti
ng out of this damned tower anytime soon.

  Strange, how that thought had stopped bothering her so much, ever since she'd started reading Betty's books.

  "What have you done to me?" she groaned, face in her hands. She couldn't bring herself to look back up at the silent, lifeless figure on the bed.

  It was hard, after that, for her to go back to reading. How could she smile at any of Betty's jokes, knowing that she'd ended up here, gathering dust, with no company but a maid too foolish to stop herself from... from caring for her? Better to be so bored that her eyes crossed, than going down that path.

  But even more than the boredom, she began to find that she missed Betty. She would throw herself into her cleaning only to wonder what Betty would say, seeing her aggressively clean things that, frankly, had been cleaner before she started. She tried to get back to sewing, but couldn't help imagining the way Betty would laugh at the shrinking hemline of the dress, and her growing army of finger puppets. Dinner made her imagine the way Betty's nose would wrinkle at the taste of the cold porridge. At night, she would lay in bed and think of how much warmer the cold tower would seem, if Betty were in here with her.

  It came to a point where Meg was on her knees in the little room, scrubbing ineffectually at the already-polished stones, staring resolutely at the floor and determinedly not at the bed behind her. The curtain was still drawn up; as much as the sight of her laying there, so cold and beautiful and corpse-like, had come to pain Meg's heart... it still seemed too cruel to leave Betty in the dark. So she had decided to be sensible, and simply concentrate on her work, and never look behind her.

  Meg had never been very good at being sensible.

  It was a sunny morning, bright even through the thick window glass, lighting up the entire bed as Meg glanced over. The beams of light were dancing over Betty's face, bringing out the color in her cheeks, making her all warm and soft and almost glowing. For once, she truly looked as though she were only sleeping, as if she might wake up at any moment. As if she would sit up, and the mischievous little mouth would turn up in a real smile, and she would look at Meg and say—

  "Oh, drat it!" Meg muttered, and she tossed her scrubbing brush at the floor. It skidded across the damp stones that she'd just washed, and—just to make her day worse—bowled right into the stacks of books that she'd spent the last few days studiously ignoring. Of course.

  Grumbling to herself, she stomped her way over and began to gather them back up again into an untidy pile, only to be interrupted halfway through by the sound of the knocker on the door. She froze in surprise, hardly noticing as the book she was holding slipped out of her fingers and knocked the whole pile down again.

  What on earth could that be about? Breakfast had been delivered hours ago, and it wasn't anywhere near time for dinner yet. Had… had Abbie finally decided to let her go? Or one of the other girls come up to keep her company? Jenny's letter hadn't been optimistic about either of those things happening anytime soon, but what else could it be?

  The knocker sounded again, startling her out of her thoughts. Meg rushed out and flung the door open, half-expecting to see Abbie or one of the other girls—

  But it was just the usual boy, although he wasn't holding a tray this time. He had a furtive look on his face, biscuit crumbs all around his mouth, and… another piece of paper, covered in Jenny's loopy writing.

  "What are you—" she started, but he thrust the paper into her hands before she could finish. She stared down at it blankly, then back up to him.

  "They said t'get you this as soon as possible," he mumbled, staring at his feet. "Gave me extra biscuits for coming up before dinner. Dunno why."

  Meg waited, but he didn't seem inclined to say anything more. In fact, he seemed even more eager to be gone than he normally was, and he bounded off right in the middle of her thank-you. Even biscuits couldn't make that boy any more polite.

  She unfolded the paper once back in the room, expecting another letter like the last one. Not much more than we miss you, we'll come visit when we can, but appreciated all the same. Instead…

  Meg read it over again in disbelief. Then she read it a third time, certain it couldn't be true—but it still said exactly the same thing as before.

  "Oh, that—that witch!" she burst out. "That's a new low, even for her! Can you believe this?!"

  She hadn't meant to start talking to Betty again, but she was too furious to stop herself. "Abbie's ordered a lock to be put on the door to the tower," she fumed. "She wants to lock me in! When I didn't even try to sneak out, not once!" She might have thought about it, but she'd kept convincing herself that Abbie couldn't keep her up here much longer, and if she just waited it out one more day…

  "She was never going to let me out," Meg said bitterly. "This wasn't just a punishment, it was a sentence."

  The letter went on—Jenny and the other maids had come to an agreement, and to Meg's shock, they all urged her to try to leave while she still could. "Don't you worry about Abbie," Jenny had written. "We might just be kitchen maids, but we can talk, too, and she isn't the only one with connections. We'll make sure everyone knows what you did—what you really did, for me and Arthur—and what she's trying to do to you. You won't have to go home if you don't want to."

  Meg was shaking, partly from horror, and partly in fury at Abbie. This was far beyond the pale. Meg could take punishment, could even be stubborn enough to stay by herself in a tower—although, she admitted, she probably would have given up long ago if she hadn't found Betty. But what Abbie had planned was too much.

  "I…" She looked over at Betty, sleeping innocently away. She shouldn't feel guilty for thinking about leaving her—did it even count, if she never knew Meg was here in the first place? But it was still difficult to say the words out loud, let alone think them. "I think… I think I should go. If she's really not ever going to let me leave, if she's going to make sure I can't…"

  How much time did she have, before the lock was put on and the decision was made for her? Would Abbie still be watching the door? Was Jenny right, that she and the other maids could stop Abbie from ruining her reputation and making sure she never worked in a household again?

  Without thinking about it, still in too much shock, she began to gather her things up. Her clothes, the extra dress, her little finger puppets, still a few short of a full set… More than anything, she wished there were some way she could take Betty with her. But of course she couldn't just walk out of here with a body, and anyway, it wasn't the body that she… that she cared about. That wasn't where the real Betty was.

  Meg paused, eyeing the mound of knocked-over books. Maybe there was a way she could take Betty with her.

  She hurried over and began to dig through the pile, wondering how many she could carry, whether or not she should take the books she'd already read. Which ones had she not gotten to yet? She moved aside Genealogy and Political Strategy, reaching for the flower-embossed book—

  —and stopped, as she noticed the scrap of paper sticking out of it.

  At first, she thought that she must have somehow dropped the note from Jenny. But a glance back at the heap of things she'd been mindlessly packing confirmed that the letter was where she'd left it, laying on her clothes with a couple of the sad-looking puppets to weigh it down.

  This paper was actually in the book, the corner peeking out from just below the back cover. It was probably just a loose page, knocked free when she'd sent the books tumbling. She would have noticed if it had been something interesting! Still, she found herself picking it up again and flipping to the back, just to see...

  It wasn't a loose page. The paper was different, a thick parchment that had been folded over itself and tucked into the back of the book. It was sandwiched between the back cover and the final page, half of which was sticking to the cover. It must have been stuck completely before the fall, and that was why she'd missed it.

  With a strange feeling building in the pit of her stomach, Meg fished it out and carefully
unfolded it. There was Betty's handwriting, as she'd expected. Her words covered the entire paper, as if it were a letter rather than a simple note, although who it might be addressed to, Meg couldn't imagine. Surely if she'd written to someone, it wouldn't have ended up stuck in the back of a royal schoolbook.

  "After all this," she murmured, "you're still leaving me surprises, eh?"

  The small, oft-ignored voice of reason in her head told her not to read it. She had no idea how long she had left to make her escape in, and hadn't all this reading caused enough trouble already? But as usual, Meg paid no attention, and set her eyes on the first line.

  "My twenty-first birthday is tomorrow—"

  Oh! Meg nearly dropped the paper. This wasn't a letter, it was about the Spell! Even though Betty had never so much as mentioned the curse before, except for that one aside in the etiquette book. Perhaps it was a... a diary page, or simply Betty scrawling out her thoughts when they'd become too much to keep in her head, the poor dear. Once again she nearly thought better of reading, but she was continuing on before the thought had even taken hold.

  "My twenty-first birthday is tomorrow. Everyone expects that I am frightened—I am frightened. At least, I feel I should be. I feel I should be filled with dread, facing this curse that has hung like a dark cloud over my entire life.

  "But it hasn't, and that is the pickle, isn't it? Today has felt just the same as yesterday. Nothing has really changed, save for now there are more people whispering behind their hands, and staring at me with pity in their eyes. I find that I can't bring myself to believe that it will really happen, that a simple prick of my finger will cause my world to come to an end. It all sounds like something out of a book, and not one I'd care to read.

  "I should want this night to last forever, and tomorrow never to come. But instead I feel—I feel impatient. If this is going to happen at last, after twenty-one years of waiting, I should like to have it over and done with instead of worrying about it. I won't be able to sleep at all tonight, I just know it.