by D. L. Boyles
“Good afternoon, Prince Philip. Have a nice nap?”
It was a woman. And her voice was as familiar as the smell of her. He said nothing in response to her query, a rhetorical question if there ever was one, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the bright light of the afternoon sun.
Still squinting, he looked around him. He was aboard a small fishing vessel and they were clearly on a river, not at sea. From where they were, the eastern shore was relatively close, but the trees of the west were much farther away. “Where am I? And who are you?”
“Awh, we’re on the river,” a gruff man told him. “Surely you can see that. Or are ya still not seeing so well?” The man turned and motioned for someone and suddenly, the squat face of an older gentleman wearing spectacles was only inches from his own. “Is ‘e okay, Doc?”
Doc continued staring at him, then with gentle but firm hands tipped Philip’s head backwards and gazed more closely into his eyes. “He looks well enough, gentleman,” he remarked, in a distinguished accented voice.
“Well enough?” he asked. His head throbbed, his chest hurt, and his mouth was dry and gritty, but he did not want to ask for water. Not until he knew a little more about where he was— and why.
“Well enough for the mission at hand.” It was the woman’s voice again. Philip turned to look at her. Glossy black hair was twined with white ribbon in a unique twisting braid that flowed from the crown of her head to the tip of her hair, which draped over one shoulder and fell to her waist. He’d known women with long hair, but he imagined that when it was free of all of its confines, it was longer than any he’d seen before. While her hair was dark as a raven’s feather, her skin was pale and her lips a rosy red, especially where someone had split it very recently. Though he should have been enraged that she had him bound and stuffed in a box, he could not help the little jolt of fury at seeing her lovely face marred.
Groaning, he leaned back into his box and wished he could pull the lid shut and stay there for an eternity. He recognized her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had known that when he opened his eyes, he would find her. To be honest, however, as she was flying into his lap from a tree, he had thought her nothing more than a dream brought on by too much drink, excess ghonja, and not enough sleep. Now, she was real and standing before him with a triumphant smile plastered on her face.
“I’ve been captured by a beautiful woman,” he moaned, “and I worry it will not be the least bit enjoyable.”
“Don’t feel so bad,” one of the men clucked in a humorous tone, “Snow has often bested men, even of finer quality than you.”
Philip winced at that, the comment only cementing the agony he felt at being captured. Though, in the recesses of his heart, he harbored a bit of excitement at the prospect. Did she know who he was? She addressed him as ‘Prince Philip,’ but he was not wearing the clothes of a prince. He was wearing the clothes of a hunter. And they both knew she was well-acquainted with at least one.
“If you can promise not to do anything foolish, you can leave this box,” she told him. “And should you prove that you’re capable of keeping to your promises, I will get you some food and water.”
“What do you mean by foolish?’”
She sighed. “Very well then,” and began to close the lid of his prison once more.
“Wait!” He sat up and the lid slammed into his head, but he ducked a little and allowed the weight of it to settle on his shoulder. “Please. Wait. I’ll do whatever you ask. Just…well, just don’t close me back in this box.”
The sly smirk on her face was even more thrilling than if she had openly smiled. It held a hint of mischief that intrigued him. Reaching out, she tossed the lid open fully and pulled on his arm to help him up. She was surprisingly strong, hefting his weight up and out of the box easier than he would have expected.
Standing on deck, he could see that the fishing boat was not so large, and he could only see five men roaming about. A trio of hammocks were strung up beneath a small wind shade where two men lazily watched him, a mountain ox snoozing nearby.
“Do you plan on ransoming me for a larger ship?” He said it in a teasing manner, but he was the only one who found it humorous.
“Come.”
He followed her to the edge of the boat and sat down near the roped railings. The sun was bright but he didn’t mind it so much. A man hurried over and plopped a basket beside her then continued on with whatever task he was about.
“Your name is Snow?”
She shrugged. “That is what they call me,” she told him, nodding in the direction of the men. “So, it will suffice.”
“But it’s not your real name?”
“It’s the only name I’ve had for a very long time.”
She was elusive and cryptic. Something he’d grown used to during their encounters. He smiled at her, wondering once more if she realized who he was. If she didn’t, it would make this all the more exciting. “And why do they call you that?”
“A lot of reasons, I suppose. One of them being that they found me—or I found them— on a cold, snowy mountain.”
He glanced behind him as she pulled out a jar of water from the basket. She twisted off the lid and handed it to him without a word. He accepted it, taking time to observe each of the men. “They are dwarfs,” he said, feeling foolish for not having noticed before.
“And you are a faerie,” one of the men spat as he walked by, scowling at Philip.
“I meant nothing by it,” he said, attempting to smooth over his careless words. “It’s just that I’ve never seen dwarfs outside of the Candes Mountains.” Had he seen the Candes Mountains and dwarfs often? At all? His memory could not surface a single meeting, yet he also knew he had. Strange.
One of the men, with fists clenched at his sides, turned and began stomping in his direction, but Snow raised a hand, shaking her head at him. With a huff, the man spun on his heel and stomped back to stand beside the helmsman.
“They’ve come to help me.”
“To help you kidnap me. Not for a ransom,” he added, flashing her one of his most charming smiles. For a moment he thought it was working, but she shook her head with a huff.
“I need their help as much as I need yours.”
“You need my help? You could have just asked, you know? I’m sure we could have come to an understanding of some sort.” That wasn’t true and they both knew it.
“You’ve not heard what I need your help with yet, Prince Philip.”
He nodded in agreement then took another swallow of water. “And what is it that a beautiful woman needs from me?” He wriggled his eyebrows at her suggestively and, to his surprise, she punched him in the chest. “Okay,” he groaned, “so you’ve not kidnapped me for my masculine allure.”
“Hardly.” She looked genuinely offended.
“My apologies.” He tried to fight the urge but caved and rubbed his bound hands over the spot where she’d hit him. “For a woman, you can certainly throw a punch.” And was likely the reason for the split in her luscious red lip. “What would such a skilled creature need my help with, then?”
One of the men shouted something in a language Philip was not familiar with. “I will tell you soon enough. For now, I’m afraid you will need to return to the box.”
“Return to the box? But you said if I promised not to do anything foolish…” She seemed not to hear him as she stood up and three of the dwarfs came over and hauled him to his feet beside her. “Listen, Snow, I may have said a few wild things, but that’s no reason to put me back in there,” he told her, nodding his head towards his previous prison.
Snow reached out and he thought she might remove the bindings at his wrist, but instead, she tightened them, a magical grip clenching down on him like a vise. Then, she pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and twirled it into a gag that she slipped easily around his mouth. “It’s nothing to do with what you have already said, Prince Philip, it’s to do with what you might try to say. And I just c
annot risk you giving us away.”
He tried to ask what that smell was; curse it all, he should have been more aware of what was happening around him. His vision began to blur as he was all but carried towards the confines of his frightening prison.
“Sorry, Prince, but I just can’t be too cautious.”
She looked anything but apologetic as she shoved him down into that box, the smell and taste of lavender shade joining the darkness that swallowed him up even before the lid was closed.
Chapter Ten
Stars and Crowns
“You seemed very chummy with the prince.” Torpid yawned as he stretched out in his hammock.
“I see no reason why we cannot be civil. He’s a prince and I’m a—”
“—A thief and a kidnapper?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Go to sleep, Torpid.”
“He’s not wrong, you know?”
“Not you, too, Bear. Seriously? I offered him water and a bit of freedom for a moment.” He raised an eyebrow at her and gave her a doubtful grin. Even the mountain ox, who was chomping noisily on some grain she’d secured for him, gave her a look that echoed Bear’s. “Fine. I might have been a bit chummy,” she relented.
Bear rolled his eyes, arms crossed his chest, and he stomped out from beneath their makeshift canopy to stare far ahead at what appeared to be endless black water.
“There is something in the way he looks at you that I don’t like,” Torpid said, his eyes closed.
Snow didn’t respond. There was something in the way he looked at her that she didn’t like either. It was as if he knew her. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it? He may know of her just as the rest of the world did, but he didn’t truly know her. No one knew her anymore. Not even the dwarfs and they were like her family.
Yet, she couldn’t deny that she was drawn to him. When he’d only been The Hunter, she had found it difficult to lash out against him. As she’d been spying on him as a prince, walking along the stream with Audora and traveling with his comrades, something about him called to her. She’d felt a rage of jealousy when she witnessed him kiss Audora on the cheek and for several long moments after, she couldn’t even bear to look in his direction. Then, that strange feeling she had when she threw herself at him from the tree, touching him. Even now, knowing he was nearby in that box, Snow wanted to go to him, to assure herself that he was well. There was no way to explain any of her strange feelings, so she shoved it deep down somewhere in the back of her mind and did her best to ignore it. It was difficult, but she managed. At least for a little while, as their little entourage drifted quietly in the night.
When Torpid was snoring too loudly for her to have any hopes of getting sleep, she crept over to the box they built just for the prince and quietly lifted the lid. She knew the men saw her do it, but they trusted her to make her own decisions. She craned her neck and saw Bear scowling at her with a curious Sunny beside him. Turning away, she ignored them. Prince Philip’s handsome face was peaceful with sleep. Giving him a slight nudge, she tried to wake him, but he didn’t move.
Climbing up into the box, she shoved his feet to the side and settled her back against the lid, staring up at the sky. There were no clouds tonight and everything sparkled beneath the moon and its twinkling stars.
The stars always made Snow feel connected to her family. She couldn’t be with them or speak of them, but she could look at the stars and feel them with her. Out here in the dark, in the quiet of the night, she was free to remember what no one else could.
∞∞∞
The next time he opened his eyes, Philip was surprised to see the stars shining overhead. He was even more surprised to find that Snow was leaning back against the open lid of the box she’d previously stuffed him into, gazing up at those stars, her legs dangling over the side. He didn’t move or speak; he just stared at her. She still wore her hair the same way and had on brown tight-fitting pants, but she’d changed her shirt. Over a billowy white tunic, she wore a red leather corset with blue ruffles at the top and along the waist. Her black boots rose up to just beneath her knees and he could tell that she had a dagger sheathed inside each of them. The look suited her.
“I know you’re awake,” she said quietly, not once looking away from the sky.
“I was enjoying the view,” he told her boldly. He expected some sort of retaliation, but she simply snorted and continued her perusal of the stars.
“Do you see that star there?” she asked, pointing.
Philip turned slightly and followed her finger in the direction of the easterly star. “The Wand Star?”
She looked at him then, a little surprise in her gaze. “Yes. I used to look up at it when I was a child and imagine that my father was still with me. My mother, too. We used to watch the stars together, but that was the only one I could remember. All of the other constellations and stars and the moons, they all have names I cannot remember, but I remembered that one. My mother told me it was special.”
He sat up, maneuvering awkwardly to his knees, then wiggled around so that he sat beside her. His wrists were still bound together, but he pointed up at the sky anyway. “There,” he said, “follow those three stars down then two to the right. That is Merida’s bow.”
Snow followed his hands as he pointed out the stars, smiling as she saw the picture in her mind, traced out by the stars. “And over there,” he said, twisting around a little, “if I could see it better, we would find the godmother and the apple tree constellations.”
“I’d forgotten about those.” She turned, gazing over the lid that served as her backrest. “The sails are in the way, but maybe another night I will look for them.”
When she turned her gaze upon him, Philip wished he could remember more constellations so that he could sit there all night and earn her approval. His heart lurched in his chest. This was foolish. “If you were not my captor, I might be inclined to show you more,” he told her, intending it to lighten the mood, but it was a miscalculation. She frowned at him—the exact opposite of what he’d hoped.
“While I would enjoy reacquainting myself with the constellations, I need your help with something much more important. It is a lot to ask of you, considering that I’ve kidnapped you, but I desperately need your help.”
If she continued looking at him the way she was, he would help her pull the constellations from the sky and secure them inside of the box she’d stuffed him in. “Like I said, you could have just asked rather than ambushing me from a tree. Which was impressive, by the way.”
“You were too drunk to respond.”
Philip grunted at that, ashamed that it’d been true. But…if she’d only known why…she would punch him again and lock him in that box to stay. Well…she actually did know why, just not…not really why.
“Tell me true, then, what is so important that you’ve kidnapped the prince of Endari, heir to the Summer Court, and have just smuggled him into Malesia?” Her eyes grew wide then narrowed at him. “I figured out where I am, Snow. What I don’t know is why.” Now that he knew her name, he wanted to use it every opportunity he got.
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you. Nor do I trust you enough with such a tale. What I can tell you is that I need the Crown of Roses.”
“The crown…” He eyed her, a sad understanding weighing him down. He most definitely knew about the Crown of Roses; it was sacred to the Autumn Court. “You’re nothing more than a thief.”
“It is not what you think, but if I must become a thief to achieve my goals, then that is what I will be. There is a prophecy about the crown and a sleeping princess…”
The attraction he’d felt towards her died right then and there. A thief. One who would steal from a sleeping princess, no less. “I’ll not help you. And you cannot convince me to do so.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Prince Philip, but I believe that I can convince you very easily.”
“And how would you do that?”
“There are rumors that you plan
to marry Princess Audora of Wessix.”
“What does she have to do with any of this?”
A look of disappointment flashed across her face.
“Her eighteenth birthday was this week.”
“And?” he asked.
“And, do you know nothing of curses, Prince Philip? Since you are so close to Prince Malecinth, you must surely know that the man who will become your brother-in-law has also cursed the woman you claim to love.”
“I know of the curse,” he told her, feeling resigned. “But it is said that true love’s kiss will break the curse and she will wake. If she’s fallen asleep then we should be heading to Wessix, not Malesia.” It was not exactly a lie. He knew that his kiss would not wake her, but if allowing Snow to believe it would meant that she would free him, he would not clarify for her.
“Your kiss may wake her, Prince Philip, but it will not end the curse. For that, we need the Crown of Roses.”
That made no sense. Prince Malecinth had cursed her and the maid, Merriweather, a light fairie, had given her a gift—one that said true love’s kiss would wake her from the curse. He was about to tell her that when she stood up abruptly and stomped away.
“Where are you going?” he called, angry that she’d left before explaining herself. Before he could go after her, two of the dwarfs plopped down, one on either side of him. “What do you want?” he asked.
“To protect Snow.”
“Then, you need to tell her that this plan of hers makes no sense. She’ll get herself—and all of you—killed if she tries to steal the Crown of Roses from Malesia. Prince Malecinth will not be as easily tricked as I was.” He grumbled at his predicament and hung his head. “What a fool…I am such a fool.” In more ways than one.
“You said it, Prince, not me,” the gruffer of the two dwarfs concurred. He shoved his thick, meaty finger in Philip’s chest. “You are a fool and if you won’t help Snow, we’ve little use for you. And just so we’re clear, Snow’s the only reason you’re still breathing, faerie.”
