Fair Peril

by Nancy Springer

  The Frog King bowed his hulking bulk. “I give this Princess to be married to this Prince,” he said in a bullfrog’s throaty roar. “And I crave vengeance for the insolence of an interloper in our midst.”

  “Later,” said the Queen. “Let the nuptials proceed.”

  Batracheios stepped back. Adamus rose and took the bridegroom’s place.

  Buffy wobbled on her feet with a sort of cowardly relief. Sometimes you take what breaks you can get. Adamus would be kind to Emily; of that much she felt sure. Far better that Emily should be given to Adamus than to that horrible Frog King. Besides, Adamus was so beautiful—if he married Emily, that would mean Buffy would get to see him. It would keep him around. It would be a kind of vicarious way of having him for herself.

  Fine. Good. Buffy felt shaky and stone-bone-weary; maybe she could just sit down and watch her daughter’s wedding? Emily had walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, in a sense. Emily was to be married to a prince with kind and beautiful eyes. It was the fairy-tale ending; why fight it?

  Courtiers, deer, frog, hedgehogs looked on. So did the statues. Many statues of young and beautiful youths and maidens stood watching with blind stone eyes. Adamus and Emily, just as young and beautiful, seemed only marginally more alive.

  With the look of a trapped wild thing, Adamus faced Emily and reached for her hands. As automatically as if he had pressed a switch, she lifted them and placed them in his.

  Why fight it?

  Buffy found herself choking back a sob.

  Why fight it? Because coiling inside her, coiling and stirring and swelling and hissing like stormwind and stinging her heart with thunderbolt rage was a wild black emotion of which she did not yet know the name. As wild and black and bleak as the wintery anguish in Prince Adamus’s eyes.

  Adamus. He had looked at her, then turned away. Betrayer, that look had said.

  She had failed him.

  He gave up. He gave up on me.

  Addie. Her Addie.

  “Let the nuptials proceed,” the Queen was saying. “Adamus and Emily, repeat after me—”

  “No,” Buffy whispered. She knew the name of the black snake inside her now. It was despair. Or desperation.

  It was knowing it was all her own goddamn fault.

  Her. Being a jerk.

  Her problem.

  Her brain farting.

  “NO!” she shouted, and she strode forward.

  In his modest third-floor apartment, LeeVon stood quite seriously holding both of the blond young man’s hands and looking into his beautiful eyes.

  It was a nice apartment for a librarian. Lots of built-in bookshelves, good lighting, a window nook, a pleasant bird-chirpy yard to look down into. Friendly junk lying around: a working model of a roller coaster, a 3-D puzzle of the City of Oz, a ceramic bust of Kipling. Escher posters on the walls. Newspapers piled on the kitchen table, magazines in the bathroom, books everywhere else. LeeVon felt quite happy to be back in his own apartment, almost as happy as he was to be back in human form. But both of those happinesses put together did not equal the happiness he felt about the blond young man, whose ponytail was undone at this moment so that his hair hung in a most appealingly tousled fashion around his bare shoulders.

  “Richard,” LeeVon said, for that was the young man’s name, “you have to understand, what I said—I meant it.”

  “I know,” Richard said almost in a whisper. LeeVon loved the youthful tremor in his voice. He loved the delight and alarm in his gray eyes. He loved his thick, tawny eyelashes. He loved everything about him.

  He said, “I’ve imprinted on you just like a goose. Which I resemble in other ways, actually. I’m silly about you.”

  “I think I could learn to like that.”

  “You’re free, you know,” LeeVon said, knowing with a pang of joy that he himself was no longer free. That was the secret, to be willing to risk. Give away freedom for a chance at—this. “Free to go, free to come back whenever.” But LeeVon did not let go of his hands.

  Richard shrugged his bare shoulders, an act LeeVon watched with appreciation. Richard said, “What if I just hang around?”

  “Even better.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to marry you.”

  Richard smiled. “They’re not about to let us do that.”

  “Stupid laws. What’s the big problem with a marriage of equals? Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I just did.”

  “No, I mean, who said it before?”

  “How should I know? I’m just a librarian. Children’s. Romance is not in my department. Velvet’s not my usual scene.” LeeVon found himself anxious to correct any possible misconceptions. “I’m more into leather.”

  “Leather is the coolest, man.”

  LeeVon felt warmth swelling in his chest and a loopy smile growing on his face. He moved closer. But then he winced. “Ow.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Sudden headache.” He flinched as it intensified. “Buffy’s shouting somewhere.”

  “Buffy? Who’s Buffy?”

  “A friend. One of those people who makes you wonder why you need enemies.” Having been turned into a frog was a consideration that kept LeeVon from worrying much about what was going on with Buffy at this point. He was home again, and she had her own story to pursue and he, blessedly, had his. “We happen to share a collective unconscious. Ow.” LeeVon was forced to let go of Richard’s hands and rub his own head. “Ow, she’s loud. Damn. I wish she’d get over it, whatever it is, and shut up.”

  “NO!” Buffy strode forward. “NO, IT’S NOT FREAKING RIGHT!” She shoved her large self between Adamus and Emily, neither of whom resisted her. Emily turned bland eyes toward her; Adamus, tormented ones. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY DAUGHTER?” Buffy demanded of the Queen.

  “Silence, you insolent fool.” The Queen spoke with the perilous patience of a middle-school teacher. “Don’t you see her? Right beside you?”

  “Murphy, you jerk, shut up!” Fay shrilled at the same time.

  “Buffy,” Adamus whispered, “help. Change the story.”

  Buffy listened only to Addie, turning to him. “What’s going on? What’s happened to Emily?”

  “She’s trapped in happily-ever-after, just like I am.”

  There wasn’t a whole lot of time to think, to sort it out. Fay had relinquished her bouquet of calla lilies in favor of her fearsome handbag and was advancing; the Queen of Fair Peril was growing exacerbated, her face stretching taller and narrower and more like a white snake every moment; Buffy looked to Stott to see if he might help, but the stag stood ornamental and useless, like Emily.

  The hedgehogs were rattling their quills.

  The sky was darkening. A rising wind rustled the beech leaves.

  The Frog King’s mouth opened as wide as the maw of hell, and he started to laugh.

  Buffy roared, “ONCE UPON A TIME!”

  Everything stopped. The ormolu ogress stood with her golden weapon upraised; the white snake coiled rigid where the face of the Queen had been; Adamus stood like a gallant statue, as if he had stopped breathing. Silence hung like mist in a spiderweb. The Realm of Fair Peril stopped because Buffy had spoken words of consummate power. In the Perilous Realm, the greatest power is that of the storyteller. For only in story is there life.

  And death. The storyteller’s is the greatest power, and the greatest peril: the storyteller faces the terrors of the mind. Anne Sexton had killed herself.

  “Once upon a time,” Buffy said more quietly, “there was a real world. And in this real world ordinary people lived.”

  She fingered the dirt clinging to her bodice as she spoke.

  “One of these ordinary people was a middle-aged woman named—named Madeleine,” she said. “Maddie. And hoo boy, was Maddie mad. Pissed off. Ticked. Bummed, peeved, sore, miffed, nose out of joint, disgruntled. She was mad because she was getting f
at and wrinkly and old. She was mad because somebody was supposed to love her and nobody did. Her mother was supposed to love her, but she got Alzheimer’s. Her husband was supposed to love her, but he got himself a gold-plated, midlife replacement wife instead. Her daughter was supposed to love her, but her daughter preferred Daddy. So-Maddie found somebody to love her. Somebody young and cute who adored her and would do anything for her. Kind of a private friend, a secret playmate. Maddie had an animus, and Maddie called him Addie.”

  For the first time, Emily’s velvet-blue eyes focused on Buffy. Emily started listening.

  “Addie,” Buffy said. “Adam, swimming in the dark pool of her mind like a frog in a well.” Everything in that well was itself and something else. “Swimming in the black, starry water of her dreams like a soulmate in her womb. Addie, her animus, her man. Everything she would have liked to be if she had been born a boy instead of a girl. Just like a hundred thousand thousand dreamers before her, Maddie made him golden and beautiful and ardent and a prince.”

  The Queen—or the white snake, for the Queen was herself and that serpent as well—the white one listened rigidly, her golden eyes cold on Buffy, gelid. How far, Buffy wondered, could she interlope; how much ownership of Adamus could she claim before the Queen of Fair Peril struck like a white whip, a white snake, a lightning bolt smiting her down?

  Too bad for the Queen. Understanding the Queen all too well, Buffy said, “Addie was the mirror, mirror she kept in thrall to tell her she was beautiful. Gold-framed trophy on the wall. Mirror, mirror with no soul of its own.” She paused. The Queen stood like white crystalline poison, Lot’s wife on drugs, but too bad for her and too bad for Buffy; the story was coming alive, the storytelling was as irreversible as parturition, had to go on. Screw the Queen. Buffy shifted her attention to Emily.

  Emily, gazing back at her, all dressed in white, gloved, corseted, far too tame; Buffy remembered the real-world Emily. Buffy said, “So everything was hunky-dory for a brief while. But then there was the daughter. There’s always a daughter, isn’t there, when there’s a pissed-off, getting-older woman looking for a reassuring mirror? The daughter was, of course, a rosebud just opening, dewy-new and beautiful and rebellious and thoughtlessly cruel, a mirror to tell her mother she was ugly. And Maddie hated her as much as she hated herself, but loved her more.” More than she loved herself; far more than she hated her. And, thank the love and the hatred, Emily was beginning to respond. Blue vexation flared in her eyes. Her rosebud mouth opened just a little, as if she wanted to rebut or interrupt, though she did not.

  “The daughter’s name was Emily,” Buffy went on. “And Emily also swam in Maddie’s dreams, for just like a hundred thousand thousand dreaming mothers before her, Maddie had made a rosebud of a girl into a golden princess. So how was Addie to help falling in love with her, when Maddie loved her so much? Of course the Princess had to meet the Prince. Of course Mother Maddie had to be the wicked witch who tried to keep them apart. Of course they had to hate her, and of course they had to kiss. Of course they had to run away together and leave her all alone.

  “Then all the mirrors turned their faces to the walls, and Maddie lived in a dark, dark house. She might as well have been buried in a grave.”

  Adamus regarded her steadily with a troubled, waiting gaze.

  “Buried alive,” Buffy said, keeping it very quiet, very level. “It’s enough to drive a person crazy. So she cried out. She called out for someone to help her, save her, love her. She screamed for her prince to come. And someone came, but it was a stranger dressed all in white. He had kind eyes. He took her away to his white mansion with many rooms and spoke to her gently and offered her pills to stop her crying. His big house was a genteel place where everyone said please and thank you, but there were locks on the doors and bars on the windows and Maddie could not get out.

  “She stood at the window and looked at the sky, where starlings were flying. I am a prisoner, she cried to the starlings. I am a prisoner, she cried to her prince, come set me free. And from far away far far dark inside her, Addie cried out in answer, I am a prisoner more truly than you are. La Belle Dame Sans Merci has me in thrall. Cold old queen, you own me.

  “Maddie did not want to listen. She looked at the sky, where sparrows were flying. I am a prisoner, she cried to the sparrows. I am a prisoner, she cried to her daughter. Emily, come back, comfort me. But from far away far far dark inside her, Emily cried out in answer, I am a princess now. I am more of a prisoner than you are. Here I starve on my pedestal. Cold old queen, you own me.

  “Maddie looked at the sky, where frogs were flying. There is no one to help me, she cried. Story of my life. A white snake flew past her window on golden wings. We are all prisoners, it said to her. We are the stories we tell, it said to her. Change the story.

  “So she bent her mind upon the bars and broke through them and went forth to look for her daughter.”

  “Mother,” Emily whispered.

  Buffy looked at her daughter. Emily looked back with liquid eyes, deep eyes like midnight pools mirroring the stars. Buffy reached out and hugged her.

  “Mom, Mom, Mommy!” Emily returned the hug, then stiffened. “Ew, Mom.” She pulled away. “You’re all dirt.”

  It felt so good Buffy could have bawled. She forbore to hug Emily anymore, but cried, “You’re back!”

  There was an irritable siffilation of white scutes as the most crucial personage in the audience stirred. “Ssssilence,” the snake-queen hissed.

  “No.” Buffy turned to face her, trying not to show her fear. “The story is not over; it is still going on. I am Maddie. I am here to set my daughter free.”

  “What about me?” Adamus whispered, his exquisite face taut.

  “Of course you, Addie. Especially you. If you are sure you want to be mortal and real.”

  “I am certain.”

  The snake-queen reared up like a cobra, speaking so vehemently that her black forked tongue rattled her starched lace collar. “These are my subjects! My chattels! My playthings, my froggies, my pets! How dare you encroach? You shall not take them from me!”

  “How could I, your puissant Majesty?” Buffy said quietly. “But I have come to set them free from me.”

  “Sssstoryteller—”

  “Maddie journeyed far, far dark inward,” Buffy said to Adamus, to Emily. “And she found her animus and her princess daughter, and she spoke with them. And she said, I do not own you anymore. Live your own stories now. Love each other if you want to, but only if you want to. Cleave to each other if you want to, or go your own ways if you want to. Be free of my dreams for you. Be free of my dreams for us. I will dream for myself now. I will tell new stories. I will no longer attempt to use you. I will not constrain you to love me. I will learn to live on my own, I will be as free as a wild goose on the wind, and I will always love you.”

  There was a crash of stone and a crackle of glass; cornices fell down, and the tinted dome overhead spider-webbed and burst apart; the rainbow shards flew like doves. Caryatids and telamones cried out like the donkeys of God, flung off their burdens, and began to dance. Beech leaves turned to butterflies. Stott bugled. Adamus threw back his head and shouted a wordless yawp of joy.

  The white queen shrieked and coiled to strike.

  “ONCE UPON A TIME,” Buffy bellowed. “THERE WAS A REAL WORLD.”

  Adamus grabbed Buffy’s hand and Emily’s hand just in time as, with a thunder roar like the sky pouring in and a starry blackness and a whirling vertigo, quiddity imploded upon them.

  Sixteen

  It was not one of those slip-in-slip-out-again transitions to which Buffy was becoming accustomed. This moment between realities was noisy, violent, and felt quite final. Fair Peril had tried to swallow her, but was spitting her out instead.

  Then quiddity steadied, and there was a profound prismatic silence.

  Buffy opened her eyes. She and Emily and Adamus were standing in the ornamental-plasterwork store, under the pallid and i
ncurious gazes of gargoyles and horses and Venuses and cocky Davids and paunchy eunuchs and steatopygic cherubs perched on sconces, and entirely too many plaster-framed Art Nouveau mirrors.

  “Ew!” Emily complained. “I hate this place. Everything’s icky white in here.” She headed out toward the mall mezzanine.

  Looking around him wide-eyed, Adamus followed. Heads turned; shoppers stared at him. Even if he had not been wearing an amethyst velvet tunic with gold embroidery, white silk tights, and dove-colored doeskin boots, people would have been staring at him, because he was too eerily beautiful to be real, as if he were a living, moving publicity still with all his pixels Scitexed. “What is he, some soap opera dude?” Buffy heard somebody ask somebody else.

  “Prithee, Princess Emily,” Adamus whispered. He sounded frightened.

  Emily turned to him. She wore a rumpled white shirt from the Gap, jeans, sandals. Just a normal teenager, which was to say, supremely beautiful—to her mother. With no such delusions concerning herself, Buffy was flapping along in bare feet and her hideous caftan.

  “I’m not a princess,” Emily told Adamus gently.

  “I—I know that, but—” He looked around as if something might be stalking up behind him, a harpy, a doomster, a snake. His hand reached out to her yet faltered in midair, a lost thing.

  “But he’s still a prince,” Buffy said in a low voice, stopping beside Emily. “He’s having trouble with the transition.” Perhaps never in his millennium of existence, Buffy realized, had Adamus made a full transition. As a frog, he had talked, he had still been Prince Adamus. In her experience his princely garb had never changed, whichever world he walked in. Always he had felt the unseen chains of the cold old Queen around him. Now they were gone.

  Freedom can be terrifying.

  His shadowed gaze turned to her, so intense that the golden rings of his irises seemed to pulse. “Milady, please. Help me.”

  “How, Addie?”

  He seemed not able to say, but stood with his lips parted, his breathing ragged. Buffy saw his shoulders trembling.