Princess in Disguise

by E. D. Baker

  They rode past one small farm after another before the fields gave way to groves of linder trees. As the day grew warmer, Annie began to yawn and her eyelids started to droop. They had been awake since early the day before, and the lack of sleep was finally catching up with her. After a while she dozed, waking suddenly when she swayed and Liam caught her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just really tired.” Annie turned her head to glance at Liam and caught him yawning. “Maybe we should stop and rest for a bit.”

  “I’m fine,” said Liam. “We need to keep going. You can take a nap if you want.”

  “If you’re sure …,” Annie murmured, and was asleep before Otis had gone much farther.

  Less than an hour later, Annie woke to find herself leaning perilously to the side on a horse that was standing at the edge of the road, nibbling the leaves off a linder tree. “Hey!” she cried, startled, and realized that Liam was leaning, too. His arms were still around her, but now he was about to fall off and take her with him.

  “Wake up!” Annie shouted, jabbing Liam with her elbow.

  “Huh! What?” he said, and nearly knocked them both off when he struggled to sit upright again.

  “That does it,” Annie said, swinging down from Otis’s back. “We’re not going any farther until we’ve rested.”

  Liam yawned again as he slid down, landing beside Annie. “We’re doing this for you,” he said, taking the end of Annie’s rope. “I could keep going all day.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Annie said, peering among the trees. “We need to get away from the road. Back in there looks good enough.”

  It took them a few minutes to get out of sight because Otis kept stopping to strip the leaves off twigs. When they finally reached a spot where they couldn’t see the road and doubted that anyone riding by could see them, they tied Otis to a sturdy branch with enough rope that he could nibble the tall grass. Annie lay down in the shade, while Liam sat with his back propped against a tree trunk a few feet away. “I’ll keep watch while you rest,” he said.

  Annie was too tired to argue. She doubted he’d be able to stay awake. Then she was asleep and no longer cared.

  The sun was directly overhead when Annie woke. She could hear Otis cropping the grass that grew between the trees, and Liam was still leaning against the trunk. She wasn’t surprised to see that he was sound asleep. However, she did think there was something odd about the tree. Its branches looked different and …

  The high, thin voices of tiny fairies brought Annie fully awake. She closed her eyes until they were no more than slits, and lay there without moving. Peering between her nearly closed lids, she saw that in the short time that she had been asleep, the branches had grown down, creating what looked like a birdcage around her and Liam. Four tiny fairies were perched on the top of the cage, talking.

  “I tell you, it’s them,” said a fairy in a mossy cap. When the fairy turned her head, Annie could see that she was odd looking, with a long nose and the feet of a duck. “You saw how Daisy’s sleep-long spell bounced off her.” The fairies glanced down at another fairy, curled up at the base of the cage, snoring softly. “The princess is the only one we know who can resist our magic.”

  “At least we can cast spells on things around her. We hadn’t thought of that!” added a male fairy wearing a bluebell cap. At first Annie thought the fairy might have the same rash as the royal ladies at home, but his spots were multicolored and didn’t move.

  Suddenly Annie recognized the fairies. They had all tried to cast spells on her once. The spells had backfired, doing to them what they had planned to do to her.

  The fairy dressed all in bark kicked her foot against the cage. “That can’t be the princess. It’s a boy. Look at his clothes!”

  “It’s a girl wearing boy’s clothes,” said the fairy with duck feet. “Don’t you recognize the princess’s face? And this other one is definitely the prince. I never got a good look at him before, but he fits the description like a seed in a thistle.”

  “Are we ready?” said the fourth fairy. She was the prettiest of them all, with softly curling hair and large, dark eyes. Her dress was made of fern leaves; Annie remembered that she was named Fern. “She said to call her as soon as we had the cage made. She’s going to be mad that it took us this long.”

  “It would have been faster if her spy eyes had worked better,” said the fairy in the bluebell cap. “A couple of little rocks and they disappeared for good. If it had been me, I would have thrown the rocks right back at him!”

  “Enough chatter!” said the fairy with the moss cap. “Voracia! We’re ready for you!”

  Annie tried not to react when she heard the fairy’s name. It was the same fairy who had cursed her sister, Gwendolyn, at her christening. Annie had dealt with the evil fairy only once when she was trying to find a way to break the spell without waiting one hundred years. She hadn’t liked her then and had hoped she’d never see her again.

  When Voracia didn’t appear right away, the tiny fairies became impatient. “What’s keeping her? She was the one who said we had to hurry,” said the bark-clad fairy. “If she doesn’t come soon, I’m going to try out some of my spells on them. I’ve thought of a few good ones. We can turn the grass into prickers and fill them full of fleas!”

  “You know, we can still cast spells on the prince,” said the boy fairy. “I have a few I’d like to try.”

  Annie held her breath. Moving as quietly as she could, she pushed her hand through the tall grass until the tips of her fingers touched Liam’s side. She couldn’t believe that the fairies thought she was still asleep after they had talked for so long, but she’d take advantage of it as long as she could.

  Annie kept her fingers pressed against Liam as the fairy flew between the bars. Aiming his wand at Liam, he made a flicking gesture and silver sparks shot out of the tip. Because Annie was touching Liam, the sparks bounced off him and shot back at the fairy, hitting with enough force to shove him backward. The fairy shook his head as hair began to sprout all over his face and hands. “Noooo!” wailed the fairy, putting his hands to his cheeks.

  Liam stirred, the spell broken through Annie’s touch. “What was that?” he murmured, sitting up and rubbing his forehead. When he saw Annie looking at him, he gave her a halfhearted grin and said in a groggy voice, “Uh … I wasn’t asleep. Just resting my eyes.”

  “How did that happen?” cried the fairy, who was now covered with hair the same colors as his spots. “It was supposed to be him, not me!”

  “What’s going on here?” demanded a harsh voice. “All you were supposed to do was trap them until I showed up. Serves you right, Hairy Fairy! Ha! That’s what I’m going to call you from now on!”

  The little fairy ducked his head and flew to his friends while hiding his face in his hands.

  Annie sat up, certain that there was no use in pretending to be asleep any longer. She turned to face Voracia. The evil fairy was dressed in black with a tattered red, black, and yellow snakeskin wound through her silver hair. A large black spider brooch was pinned to her chest; Annie blinked when it waved one of its legs at her.

  “Mrowr!” wailed a scrawny gray cat shut in a cage that was much too small for it. When Voracia kicked the cage, the cat flattened its ears and crouched as low as it could go.

  “So we meet again,” Voracia said, displaying the gaps in her teeth when she smiled at Annie. “First of all, I want to thank you for giving me a good reason to arrange this meeting. Not that I needed a reason, but my peers will understand better and not persecute me for giving you what you deserve. I must say, I’ve been looking forward to this. It’s because of you that my two helpers ran off. Pinch ’Em and Poke ’Em were the best helpers I ever had, even if they were lazy, good-for-nothing … Ah, well. No time to reminisce. You came to see me and they took advantage of your little visit and ran off, leaving me in the lurch. Now I have to make do with occasional help like these flea brains. Speaking of flea
brains, I brought you a small gift.”

  Bending down, she opened the door to the cage and hauled the cat out by the scruff of its neck. The cat screeched and tried to claw her, but she shook it until its teeth rattled, then shoved it between the bars of the cage holding Annie and Liam.

  “Doesn’t look like much, does it? I’ll take care of that.” With a few muttered words and a wave of her hand, the fairy cast a spell on the cat. It began to grow; although it stayed the same shape and color, it wasn’t long before the ordinary cat was as big as a small horse.

  The cat was not happy. It thrashed its tail and cried, but what would have been a cat-size Mrowr! was now a roar that shook the cage so that the tiny fairies fell off. Liam backed away when the cat looked at him, but then it stalked to the wall of the cage and pressed its face between the bars as if it still might fit through.

  The cat became angrier when it realized that it was trapped and began to circle the perimeter of the cage, pushing against the bars with its side.

  “What are you doing, you stupid animal? Eat them!” screamed Voracia.

  When the cat continued to be more interested in getting out than in eating Annie or Liam, Voracia shook her head and told the tiny fairies, “I hardly ever let the thing out to eat. You’d think it would be hungry enough by now! I know. Maybe if they looked more like familiar food. I can’t do anything with the girl, but the boy should be easy enough.”

  She was raising her hand to cast another spell when the little fairies began to protest. “No!” cried Fern. “It won’t work!”

  “Don’t do it!” shouted the fairy wearing the mossy cap.

  “Oh, let her,” grumbled the fairy in the bluebell cap. “She laughed at me! Call me Hairy Fairy, will you?”

  Once again Voracia raised her hand and gestured, only this time she pointed at Liam. Annie grabbed hold of his hand before the evil fairy let the sparks fly. Instead of hitting Liam, the sparks bounced off and flew back at Voracia, just as if she had pointed at Annie. Everyone watched, horrified, as the evil fairy began to shrink, her lank hair became shorter, thick, and brown, and her ears moved to the top of her head and became rounded. When she was as big as a rabbit, a long, thin tail sprouted from her lower back and she fell to the ground, twitching. She continued to shrink and a moment later she was a mouse, just like Annie often saw scurrying across the floor of the castle.

  This was a food that the cat could understand. It threw itself against the cage wall, but Voracia’s spell that had made it large was already coming undone. In less than a minute it was its normal size again and fit between the bars easily. The Voracia-mouse saw this and took off into the tall grass, although she was not nearly as fast as a real mouse.

  “Did you see that!” squealed the fairy wearing the mossy cap. “She turned Voracia into a mouse!”

  “Actually, she turned herself into one,” Annie said, but the fairies weren’t listening to her. They were all looking at her with horror, and when she sighed and got to her feet, they backed away a few feet only to hover as if they weren’t sure if they should leave or not.

  The sides of the cage had grown closer to Liam than to Annie. By the time she had taken three steps, however, the branches began to droop. As soon as she laid her hand on one, the entire structure fell apart. When Annie looked for the tiny fairies, they had gone.

  “Feeling more rested?” Annie asked Liam as he untied Otis’s rope from the branch. “Because I don’t care how tired we are after this, we’re not going to stop again until we cross over the bridge to Floradale.”

  Chapter 7

  Annie and liam passed only a few people on the road, none of whom seemed interested in two boys riding an old chestnut gelding. It was late afternoon by the time they crossed over the bridge into Floradale. The last time they had visited the Moonflower Glade, they had learned of a shortcut when they were leaving. They took it now, traveling south on the main road until they reached a cutoff that led them toward a heavily forested hillside. The sun was setting when they entered the forest. On the other side of the hill, the road turned into a path scarcely wide enough for Otis. After that, it wasn’t long before they reached the glade.

  Although the trees continued on the left side of the road for as far as Annie could see, they ended abruptly on the right, giving way to pale blue and iridescent white spheres that floated above their heads, tethered to the ground by long, spindly stalks. The moonflowers bumped together, making a gentle tapping sound. Under them lay a soft carpet of a dense grass that felt spongy under Annie’s feet when she dismounted from Otis. The unusual plants appeared to fill a large meadow, and because they grew so high off the ground, Annie could easily see under them from one side to the other. She hadn’t noticed it when they’d seen the flowers in the daylight, but a pale glow came off them, the glow brightening as night fell.

  “I don’t think anyone is here,” Annie told Liam. “At least, I don’t see anyone. Do you?”

  “No,” he replied, turning to look around. “There’s no one here but us. This is incredible. It’s pitch-black in the forest, but here it’s as bright as if we’re in the great hall when all the candles are lit.”

  “I think they look like full moons on a clear night. They are moonflowers, after all. What do you think about spending the night here? I don’t really want to go through the forest now. It seems awfully dark compared to this.”

  “I was about to say the same thing,” said Liam. “I don’t think Otis would mind, either.”

  The horse was nibbling the grass that grew along the edge of the path, moving from patch to patch as if he were starving.

  “We should probably tie him to something, but I think he’d break a moonflower stem, and I don’t want to tie him in the forest,” Annie said.

  “I can handle that,” Liam told her. Taking the extra rope from his knapsack, he hobbled Otis’s two back legs so he couldn’t go far if he did wander off. “I don’t think he’ll want to leave anyway. There’s enough grass here to last him for months.”

  Annie and Liam shared a small supper of bread and cheese. While Annie put away the rest of the food, Liam spread a blanket on the ground. “I’ve been thinking,” he said as he straightened the blanket. “I’m worried about my father. He didn’t come to the wedding like he said he would, and King Dormander’s army is south of your parents’ castle. That was the direction my father would have come from if he’d been on his way.”

  “You think he might have run into the army? I can’t imagine that they would do anything to him,” said Annie.

  Liam shrugged. “We don’t even know why they’re in Treecrest or anything about their king. There’s no guessing what a complete stranger would do. I just want to make sure my father is all right, that’s all.”

  “Then after we talk to Moonbeam, and we know she’s going to go help my family, we’ll head straight to Dorinocco to see your father,” said Annie.

  “Good,” Liam replied. “I can live with that. Here, you lie down on the blanket. I don’t think the moonflower stalks are strong enough for me to lean against, so I’ll prop myself up on our knapsacks.”

  “I don’t think you need to keep watch tonight,” said Annie. “This place has its own kind of magic. I can hear a very faint melody, and the tapping of the moonflowers is part of it. People are safe when they’re here; I’m sure of it.”

  “Really?” said Liam. “Because I can sit up and—”

  “There’s no need,” Annie told him. “What you need to do more than anything is get some rest. Tomorrow we have to look for someone who can tell us where to find Moonbeam.”

  Liam was reluctant to lie down, but when he did, he was the first one to fall asleep. Annie lay on her back, gazing up at the moonflowers, thinking how glad she was to have Liam in her life. She could handle just about anything when he was by her side. As soon as they found Moonbeam, they’d go check on Liam’s father, then deal with King Dormander. After that, they could finally get married and … Annie fell asleep, listening t
o the magic of the moonflowers.

  It was only a few hours before dawn when Annie woke. The sound had changed, but she couldn’t identify what had happened until she looked up and saw that the moonflowers had opened to catch a gently falling rain. Because the edges of the petals overlapped, the flowers caught most of the rain. As far as Annie could tell, very little moisture actually reached the ground. She fell back to sleep a few minutes later, lulled by the rain’s patter.

  “Where should we ask about Moonbeam first?” Annie asked Liam the next morning. They had already eaten a breakfast of apples, and Otis was ready to go.

  “I thought we’d cross over the rainbow bridge and head for Gruntly Village,” said Liam.

  Annie was surprised. “You want to ask the ogres?”

  “They’re the only people we know of who live around here,” Liam said, shrugging. “If we see anyone else, we’ll ask them.”

  “Then I hope we find someone soon,” said Annie. “I know we’ve met some nice ogres, but most of them are awful. I’d really rather talk to someone else if we can and avoid the ogre village altogether.”

  “We’ll see who we can find,” Liam said as he undid the hobbles on the horse’s legs. “But first we have to get Otis through the cave behind the waterfall. He’s been calm enough up until now. Let’s hope he stays that way.”

  Annie and Liam walked side by side with Liam leading Otis. The horse seemed interested in where they were going, aiming his ears forward and flicking them at every little sound. When they left the Moonflower Glade and entered the forest, he began walking a little faster, as if eager to see what lay ahead. They were among the trees a very short time before the path took them to a sheer rock wall. The path continued on into a cave that led back into the hill. After the first few feet, the cave was cool and dark.

  “Hold on a minute,” Liam said at the entrance. Digging into his pocket, he took out some crumpled moonflower petals. “I found these on the ground and wanted to see if they still glowed. You carry these and I’ll walk with Otis.” Handing the petals to Annie, he let her go first and turned to rub the horse’s neck.