by Alex Flinn
“Here.” I take it out. I’m glad this getup they put me in has pockets and that I thought to put the iPod in one of them. I wish I had something classical, maybe Gregorian chant. The closest I have is classic rock, some Beatles songs my sister likes. I find “Yesterday.” “You put in these earbuds.”
“In my ears?”
“Sure. That way, you can listen to music without anyone else hearing it.”
The king looks like he still doesn’t get it, but he sticks the earbuds in. “Now what?”
“You push that. Here. I’ll do it for you.” I lean over and push it for him. Obviously, these people are button-challenged.
“Can he hear us?” Talia whispers. When I say no, she turns to the queen. “Mother, please make him stop being so cruel. This is not my fault.”
The queen shakes her head. “Oh, Talia.”
“Then you are against me, too? I hate this! I wish I could simply run away.” She turns to me. “How did you get here? To Euphrasia?”
“I already told you, I came through the hedge.”
“No. Before that. How did you get to Europe from…Florida?”
King Louis takes out the earbuds. He sighs. “How I long for yesterday.”
Which is a line from the Beatles song.
“You mean to say, young man,” he continues, “that in your century, they have found a way to preserve this man’s singing and put it into a minuscule box, all so that one can listen to music without the bother of having it performed, without having to dress and gather and dance, that in your time—which, by unfortunate accident, is now my time as well—each man can live entirely in his own world?”
I nod. “Cool, isn’t it?”
The king hands me back the iPod. The lord across from me looks like he might want to have a listen, but he doesn’t dare ask. “I should have been dead three hundred years ago,” the king continues. “I should have…” He glares at Talia again. “…and I would have, had you merely kept away from spindles as you were told.”
“By all the saints!” Talia cries.
“Talia,” her mother cautions. “Do not swear.”
“I will swear, Mother. I am done being obedient. Obedience has done me no good. Father may be peevish to me, but I will not stand to see him being so to our guest. We are very much in Jack’s debt. Had he not kissed me—”
“He what?!” the king roars.
Uh-oh. Did he not know that?
“K-kissed me. That is how I happened to awaken. Surely you must—”
“You!” The king points a trembling finger toward me. “You, a commoner, dared to take advantage of my daughter’s sleeping state to…”
“I didn’t know she was a princess, Your Highness…Majesty…sir!” I push my chair aside. “I’m sorry. I should get going.” I take a few steps backward and stumble into a servant holding a tray of mushrooms. I’d better get out of here before they come up with the idea of—oh, I don’t know—stoning me to death.
“No! You will go nowhere. You have defiled my daughter.”
“I didn’t! It was a kiss. A little one.”
“Yes, you are right, Father,” Talia says. “He defiled me.”
“What?” I yell. “I didn’t…I barely touched you!” I want to scream at her, but I try to keep in control. Hurling insults would probably get me in more trouble than I’m in already. “Tell the truth, you…brat!” Oops. That slipped out.
She glares at me, then continues. “It is true. I am quite sullied. There is nothing for me to do but marry this young man and go to Florida with him immediately.”
“Marry you? Ma—”
“Impossible!” the king declares.
“Why not?” Talia says. “All the princes I might have married are long dead. You do not wish me in your presence.”
The king nods at the guards behind me, and I feel hands on my arms. “This young man is an offender of the most contemptible kind, a rogue who would take advantage of a young lady’s—a princess’s—sleeping state to…desecrate her. Death is too good for such an offender.”
There it is. Death.
“But I didn’t…I wouldn’t touch her if you paid me!”
“He must be brought to the royal dungeon to await a suitable punishment.”
I plead with Talia, even though I can barely look at her, I’m so mad. “Can you say something to him? Please.”
She shrugs. “I do not know what to say.”
“How about, ‘he didn’t sully me’? That would be a good start.”
“He will not listen to me. He thinks me a fool.” She begins to pout.
“You are a fool!” the king roars. “To think that we hoped and prayed and protected you, only to have you stupidly ruin the kingdom! I wish we had remained childless!” To the guards, he says, “Take him away!”
And the next thing I know, three guys who look like they could work for the WWE are dragging me down a very long, dark flight of stairs.
To the dungeon.
Chapter 3:
Jack
My mom will be happy. I’m seeing something not many people get to see in Europe. An actual dungeon.
It’s not like I’d have pictured a dungeon. Maybe that’s because it’s so dark I can’t see my own froufrou tights, much less any beds of nails or cat-o’-nine-tails, or that thing where they stretch people. It just seems like a cold, damp, dark room, like my grandmother’s basement in New York.
And it’s quiet. I never really thought about quiet before, but at home, there’s always the stop-start of the air-conditioner, the buzz of the computer fan. But there’s nothing except silence here, and I have nothing to do but think about it. The walls are thick around me, and the ceiling is thick above me, like being dead. There is no one here but me.
And the rats.
The more I get tuned in to the silence, the more I realize there are noises after all. Little ones. Little ones like feet. Scurrying feet.
I bet the rats are really hungry after sleeping for three hundred years.
Don’t think about this!
The guards didn’t take away my iPod, so I turn it on. It starts in at the same song the king was listening to.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Hoo-boy, did I. And I did something wrong. I kissed some stupid, spoiled brat princess who couldn’t even trouble herself to tell her father I didn’t “defile” her. And now I’m stuck here, rotting, maybe forever.
And why did I do it? Because she was hot-looking. You’d think I’d have learned from Amber.
I switch to another song. Rap. Loud. One of those songs about what some guy’s going to do to some other guy’s girlfriend. Good stuff.
Maybe they’ll let me out tomorrow.
Maybe they’ll decapitate me.
No. There are rules about how you have to treat prisoners. I read about that in school. Geneva Convention.
Except I’m not sure the Geneva Convention’s been invented yet here.
Also, that’s just for prisoners of war.
I am a prisoner of love.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. But I can’t, so I just close my eyes and try not to hear the rats in the darkness. It sounds like a big one’s creeping up.
I feel red-hot liquid on my arm.
“Ouch!”
Are they torturing me? Boiling me in oil?
“Be quiet!” a voice whispers. It’s Talia.
“But that hurt.”
“It is but a candle. The wax dripped. Do not be such a baby.”
“I’m in a dungeon!”
Suddenly, she’s all, “Oh, you poor, poor dear…yes, I do apologize for that. Father is in a peevish mood.”
“You don’t say. How’d you get down here?”
“Everyone is asleep, except the guard. He let me pass.”
“But are you allowed down here?”
“I am a princess. I am allowed wherever I wish to go.”
“You’d better go,” I say. “I know how it is. You come i
n here, and then in a few minutes your lady-in-waiting or whatever notices you missing. You lie about what happened…and all of a sudden I don’t have a head.”
“Do you wish to escape?”
“That would be a yes.”
“Then you must speak to me. If not, I shall be forced to—”
“Don’t…”
“I will. I shall be forced to scream, and everyone will come running. I will tell them this knave has abused me grievously. The kiss will be nothing in comparison. I will be pitied, and perhaps it may affect my marriage prospects, but they were slight in any case. You, however, shall be stoned at sunrise…but only if you do not let me stay and talk to you.”
A chill runs through me when she says “stoned at sunrise.” Do they actually do that? In any case, she’s clearly not going to stop them.
“You know, you’re not as sweet as I thought you were,” I say.
“I am sweet.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I am. Sweet and compliant. Or I was, my first sixteen years, the most docile, malleable creature one might ever imagine. I would have made someone a fine wife. But then everything changed. Or rather, nothing did. I am grown up, and I am still being treated like a child, or an animal. Do you know what it is to be treated as chattel?”
I don’t even know what a chattel is. “Sorry. I was too caught up in the whole being-locked-in-a-dungeon thing.”
“To be treated like you have no choice in what you do in life?”
“My dad wants me to take over his business when I grow up. He’s a developer, like he builds communities where all the houses look alike. I hate it, but he won’t take no for an answer. I guess it’s irrelevant, though, if I’m going to die here.”
“You wish to leave, then?” When I don’t answer, she says, “Well?”
“That was a question? Of course I wish to leave.”
“Then I shall help you leave, but upon one condition.”
I think I know what the condition is.
“You must take me with you.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it.
And we have a winner.
I know I should keep my mouth shut, but I say, “Yeah, about that. I know I’m supposed to be your true love and marry you and all, but I’m only seventeen. It might be perfectly normal to get married at seventeen in your time—your old time. But no one gets married that young now.”
She laughs. “Marry? I do not wish to marry you!” She laughs so hard I’m worried stuff will start flying out of her nose.
She doesn’t need to laugh that much. “You don’t?”
“Hardly. Let us not forget that you were the one who kissed me.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s because I’m not a prince.”
She sighs. “It does not signify. I do not wish to marry you, and you do not wish to marry me, but I do wish you to take me with you when you go.”
“Look, Princess…Your Majesty…”
“Talia will do.”
“Talia will not do. Don’t get me wrong. You’re beautiful, and there’re a lot of guys who’d love to take you wherever they’re going.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Those others are all dead. Every suitable consort is dead and has been for nearly three hundred years.”
“But your father will never let you go away with me, especially if we’re not married.”
“No, of course he will not.”
“Okay, so we understand each other.” I try to shake off her hand, which is difficult with her grasping mine. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you. Good luck with the princess thing. Now, if you can just get your father to let me out of here—”
“No!” She’s still holding my hand. “I am not asking to marry you, nor am I going to ask my father’s permission to let you go or to leave with you. I wish to sneak out, under cover of darkness, and leave Euphrasia. I wish to go with you, not as man and wife, but merely as friends, travel companions, the sort of happy-go-lucky chums about whom rollicking old ballads of the road are written.” She grips my hand even harder. “You owe it to me.”
“I owe you? How do you figure?”
“You woke me up. You ruined everything. Had you not come along with your intrusive lips, someone else would have woken me, someone who loved me and could have saved me and Euphrasia. A prince. Or perhaps we would have slept forever.”
“And that would be a good thing?”
“It seems preferable to waking and having everyone know that I am the ruin of my kingdom, to having my father despise me. Jack, you desire to escape. I wish to run away. I thought we might help each other. And if you don’t…” Her voice trails off.
“And if I don’t?”
“Well, then, I shall run away on my own, venturing out into the cold, cruel world full of buses and telephones and other matters of which I know nothing. I have no map and no money, save a large quantity of priceless jewels.”
Did she say jewels?
“Without you,” she continues, “I might be robbed or…worse.”
“And me…?”
I feel her shoulders go up. “I suppose you shall rot here…although once Father finds out I am missing, he may have you riding the three-legged mare.”
“What?”
“The gallows. He shall order you hanged.”
She had to say the H word.
And that is how I end up running off with Princess Talia.
Chapter 4:
Talia
Helping Jack escape is simple work. At first, I think to trick the guard by saying I saw a mouse and asking him to come nab it, so Jack can escape, or perhaps bribe him with one of the many necklaces in my jewel case. But when I see who the guard is, I know what to do.
One advantage of being forever in my parents’ custody is that I have been privy to many secrets of the castle, secrets discussed in my presence, simply because I was always there. From this, I know such tidbits as which upstairs maid is joining giblets with which footman, which coachman was arrested for beating his wife with too thick a stick, and which groom stands accused of bilking an ale draper.
I also know that the guard at the dungeon door is a drunkard.
I suspect that the bag upon which Jack kept so close a hold earlier may contain ale.
“What is in your bag?” I ask when he finally agrees to accept my help.
“N-nothing.”
“This is no time to be secretive. You are imprisoned, and I suspect that you have the item, more precious than jewels, that may buy your freedom. Give me the ale.”
He tells me where to find the bag, and I find what is needed—six bottles full. When the guard grasps what the contents are, he fairly weeps with joy, and I know it will be short work. I need only wait until he has consumed the beverage, and then, when drunkenness causes his jowls to droop onto his ample chest, I steal the key to secure Jack’s freedom.
“Took you long enough!” Jack says when we issue forth from the castle door.
“Shhh!” I whisper. “And hurry.”
“Easy for you to say,” he whispers back. “You’re not carrying anything.”
It is true. I took the trouble to secure Jack’s other possessions and those, along with my clothing and jewel case, present a heavy burden. But I am certainly not going to carry anything. He is the man, and I am the princess. “Go as slowly as you wish, but I am told that ale-induced sleep is not of long duration. If the guard wakes—”
“Okay, okay.” Jack trudges faster. When he has gone a short way, he says, “What’s in here, anyway?”
“Only the items necessary for our journey.”
“Which are?”
“Gowns…and my jewels. I have no currency, so I brought the contents of my jewelry box.” He mutters something I cannot understand, something about credit cards.
“Excuse me? Would you prefer to return to the castle…to the dungeon?”
“No. That’s okay.”
Now that I have made my escape and aided Jack in ma
king his, I must make him fall in love with me—even though he detests me. I lied when I said I did not wish to marry him. A necessary lie. Marriage to Jack is my destiny, just as it was my destiny to prick my finger upon a spindle. I had hoped that my destiny would make me happy. However, Jack is not being very cooperative. Hence, the lie.
I would think it should be short work to make Jack love me. After all, I am quite beautiful. But the fact is, I have never made anyone fall in love with me before.
Still, I must marry Jack. For if I do so, it will show that it was all predestined—my spindle-pricking, the kiss, and our inevitable happily-ever-after. Once Jack falls under my spell and we marry, Father will have to acknowledge that what happened was not my fault. Perhaps then he will love me again.
But, on the other hand, if Jack does not fall in love with me, then—well—Father must be right. None of this was destiny. It was my fault.
Oh, I prefer not to think about that!
“Do you wish me to help you to carry some of that?” I ask, to convince him that I am nice, even though I think it entirely unreasonable to expect a princess to carry anything.
But he says, “That would be great.”
“All right. I just thought that since you were so big and strong, you would be able to handle it all.” I place my hand upon his shoulder.
“Well, you thought wrong. Here. Carry the jewelry box. It’s heavy.”
He shoves it into my hands and continues walking.
Chapter 5:
Jack
I trip for about the fifteenth time on the overgrown trees and bushes (and, once, a pig). “God, this is the darkest place I’ve ever been.”
“It is nighttime,” Talia points out unhelpfully.
“Yeah, but where I come from, we have lights at night.”
“We do, too. They are called stars. They are quite romantic.”
Like I’d want to get romantic with her. When I stopped to change out of that monkey suit they gave me, she spent the whole time whining about how it was improper for me to disrobe in her presence, even though I went in the bushes to change. And I’m back to carrying the jewelry box, because when she was carrying it, she slowed to a crawl. “No. Not stars, better than stars. Lights in the houses and outside on the streets.”
