How to Break an Evil Curse

by Laura Morrison

  “Well, prove it. What part of the castle are you assigned to?”

  “The princess’s rooms.”

  He raised his eyebrows and gave a low whistle. “Well now...You must be quite a maid to be assigned down there!”

  “I am very good at cleaning,” she agreed.

  He looked at her with new interest. “How’s this for a plan: you bring me something from the princess’s rooms. Something that belongs to her. Something that is obviously hers and couldn’t have come from anywhere else. You do that, and you can be part of our operation.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said with relief. He was going to let her go! She had been so afraid that, somehow, she would be found out. The last thing she wanted this guy to learn was that she was the Princess—these people were probably the types who would kidnap her and hold her for ransom.

  “Great. I’ll see you back here tomorrow night. Cover up the trapdoor again with some dirt and leaves on your way out.”

  She nodded, said, “Thank you so much!” and scampered back the way she had come, taking advantage of the guy’s lantern light while she had it.

  “Decent improvising,” Dexter said as he trailed along behind her. “You may have the makings of a good smuggler, Princess.”

  She pushed up the trapdoor and took a deep breath of the night air, then hopped out and shut it quietly behind her. “Pfft. You don’t mean you actually think I’m coming back here tomorrow night?”

  “You mean you aren’t?” She tried not to feel guilty at the disappointment in his voice.

  “Of course not, Dexter. I just said all that stuff because I had to say something and that was the easiest story.” She covered up the trapdoor as she spoke, then began to stroll back toward the ornamental garden.

  He didn’t respond. She knew he was mad. He had gotten his hopes up about seeing the city.

  “I’m really sorry, Dexter. Going out into the city seemed a lot more possible when I thought that trapdoor just went to some alley and I could hop out and go exploring. But there are people on the other side. Criminal people.”

  “Aww, come on! Just think about it. Try to imagine how bored I am. I’ve been stuck down in that dungeon for more than three quarters of a century. You were going stir crazy by the time you were eight years old, and you didn’t even have a basis for comparison!”

  “I’ll think about it,” she sighed.

  Warren, Corrine, Emily, and Bernard stood on the dock staring at the city before them.

  “Okay, you know where I live—used to live until I got doctor-napped by pirates, that is—so you can crash at my place if you want,” Jane said from the lifeboat they’d rowed to shore, accompanied by McManlyman’s first mate, Biggby, who had gone along to make sure Jane didn’t escape. “My mom and dad will be happy to help you out, too. They live in the baking district at 67 Rye Road. Charles and Myrtle.” She composed her face then because she was afraid that she would cry if she wasn’t careful. “If you do track them down, please tell them my…situation. Tell them when I get away from the pirates, I will find them.”

  Biggby gave her a dark look. This talk of escape didn’t sit well with him.

  “We’ll be sure to tell them, sweetheart,” Emily said.

  “We will rescue you,” Warren said valiantly from where he stood propped between his sister and father (the medicine was still wearing off). “Please, know that we will not abandon you.” He gave Biggby a stare that he fancied a hero ought to give a villain.

  Jane smiled bravely up at them and said, “Thank you very much. But if a rescue doesn’t work out, know that I don’t blame you for my situation. I blame Captain Maximus McManlyman. And his crew.” She shot a glare at Biggby. “One way or another, he will pay, and I will be free.”

  Warren nodded. “Thank you for everything. Really.”

  “No problem. If you do end up coming to rescue me, check with my parents first. Just to make sure I haven’t rescued myself already.”

  “Will do. Best of luck!” Bernard said. He was feeling the need to wrap things up and disappear with his son into the city before too much time had elapsed.

  A flurry of more goodbyes and thanks ensued, and then without further ado Jane started back to the ship. Almost as soon as she started rowing, they heard Biggby and Jane starting to fight. “No way are you escaping from a ship full of pirates, little lady.”

  “Whatever, dude. Tell me that again once I’ve escaped. Oh wait, you won’t be able to because I’ll be gone.”

  Biggby growled, but his response was lost in the sound of the waves and the flurry of activity on the docks. It was past sunset, and the family was surprised to see how busy the docks were even at night.

  “Let’s go,” Emily said, eyeing squintily some unsavory-looking fellows who were in turn eyeing her daughter. “I think we should stay at Jane’s place tonight, and then we can visit her parents in the morning. That will give us some time this evening to talk things over and figure out a plan.”

  Warren couldn’t tell at this point whether his legs felt funny because of the medicine he had been given, or because this was his first time in his life walking on solid ground, or because the city streets were slick with muck. He was also finding that now he was on land, it was hard to retain the degree of fear he felt he should have; he was, after all, running from a wizard who wanted to kill him dead. But he was also just so darn interested in watching everything going on around him that he kept forgetting why they were in the city in the first place.

  “This is so cool!” he said as he gaped at a half dozen dock workers trying to load a huge crate onto the back of a wagon. “Look! It is pretty neat to see real people doing real stuff.”

  His parents smiled fondly at him. Of the two of their kids, Warren had definitely retained more of a sense of wonder at the world as he aged.

  Corrine sighed and said, “Warren, they’re putting a box on a wagon. Focus, man. You’re running from a crazy wizard.”

  Warren rolled his eyes at her as she forged on ahead, leading the family through the docks, proud of herself for remembering so well the route to Jane’s house/office.

  With only two wrong turns, they were there.

  Bernard took out the key Jane had given him and unlocked the door. The main room was just like he remembered it: table, bed for patients, asparagus hanging from the ceiling.

  There was a door in the back that led, they discovered, to Jane’s living area. There was a small bed with a brightly colored quilt in the far corner, a chest at the end of the bed, a vanity with a brush and comb and a few little bottles of whatnot on it, a table with a bowl of shriveled fruit, and a little wood burning stove. A small window by the bed was covered with a striped green-and-brown curtain.

  Warren laid down to rest, while Corrine went back to the front room to track down some medicine that Jane had told her to give him. Bernard and Emily sat down at the table to make some plans for the next day, periodically swatting at the fruit flies swarming around the bowl of rotting fruit. After a few minutes of that, Emily picked up the bowl, brought it to the front door, and tossed the bowl’s contents into the street8; as she was walking back, absently running her hands over the surface of the fruit bowl, she felt something bumpy on the underside of it. She flipped it over and saw a key, apparently stuck on with poster putty. The key was small and plain, with an orange star painted onto the top part.

  “What’s that?” Corrine asked, looking up from a cupboard she was rummaging through.

  “Oh, just a key. Whatever it is, it’s none of our business.”

  Corrine shrugged and went back to her search.

  * * *

  7The population of Fritillary had an average lifespan that was exactly what you would expect of a people that preferred to explain away health issues by saying it was the fault of magic instead of the fault of the pound of mostly-fat bacon they'd eaten fo
r breakfast every morning for their whole life.

  8 There was, after all, no trash collection service in Fritillary, nor was there plumbing, so if folks had to get rid of old food, they tossed it into the street, which worked out great for the hardy-stomached street urchins.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, Warren, Corrine, Emily, and Bernard found their way to the doorstep of 67 Rye Road (the door of which was painted orange just like Jane’s). Jane’s parents lived in a much nicer part of town than their daughter; most houses on Rye Road had a little window box with a few flowers poking out, and not a single shutter was hanging loose, nor were there any broken windows in sight. The president of this particular neighborhood’s homeowner’s association must have been quite a despot, but the results sure were pleasant.

  Corrine knocked, and a few seconds later a tall woman with a strong resemblance to Jane answered. “Hi!” Corrine said brightly to the woman, who was eyeing them all suspiciously, checking for clipboards or boxes of candy. All she saw in their hands, though, was a bit of luggage and a banjo.

  “Listen,” the woman said tersely, “We are not interested in whatever you’re selling. Sorry.” She made to slam the door, but Corrine halted the door’s progress with her foot. The woman gave her a glare and called sharply over her shoulder, “Charles!”

  “Your daughter, Jane, sent us,” Corrine explained with a wince as the lady pushed the door against her foot.

  The lady stared for a few seconds and then said in a rush, “You’ve talked to Jane? When did you last see her?” She stopped pushing the door against Corrine’s foot.

  “Just last evening,” Corrine said.

  The lady’s eyes filled with relief, and she turned to tell someone, presumably her husband who must have been walking to the door in response to her earlier call, “These people talked to Jane last evening!”

  A brown-haired man with glasses joined her and looked at them, saying eagerly, “Really? Oh, what a relief! Where were you? Where did you see her?”

  “We—well, it’s a bit of a long story,” Corrine said.

  “Of course. Listen, why don’t you come in?” the woman said, much friendlier. “I’m sorry if I was rude just now,” she added as she held the door open for them to pass through into a small foyer cluttered with an overcrowded coat rack, an umbrella stand, and a pile of boots. “You see, we’ve been worried sick about Jane. She always comes over Saturday for dinner, but that was two days ago and she never came, and we went by her place and she wasn’t there. And, of course, the guards are of no use to us,” she grumbled. Guards in the city had an unofficial policy of not going out of their way to help troublemakers and revolutionary types, and Jane’s parents made no secret of their work in the areas of women’s rights and general revolutionary stuff.

  Jane’s mom led them into a sitting room with a big red couch and a few mismatched chairs all gathered around a coffee table. There were four paintings of landscapes on the wall over the couch (one of each season) that all appeared to be done by an amateurish artist who might have some skill down the road if given proper lessons. Probably a project of Jane’s from when she had been a kid. Emily immediately warmed to these people, since she was a fan of any parent who proudly displayed their kid’s artwork front and center.

  Everyone sat down, and Warren and Co. launched into the story of how Jane had helped them out and consequently become a captive of Captain Maximus McManlyman. They assured Jane’s horrified parents that, even though their daughter was on a pirate ship, she was, in their opinion, quite safe since the pirates were so desperate for a good doctor. They further explained their intention to rescue her once they had sorted out their own troubles, if, that is, Jane hadn’t already rescued herself by that time.

  Charles and Myrtle had plenty of questions, and they needed quite a bit of time to process the information they’d been given by these strangers who had come calling to drop this bomb on them before they’d even had their morning cups of coffee. So, let’s give them some processing time; we will go see what Julianna has been getting up to since last we saw her:

  As Julianna scooted down her tunnel and back into her dungeon, she had begun to think about all that had taken place that night with the smugglers and the rumblings of an unhappy populace. At first, she’d been miffed that her first experience out hadn’t gone as planned—she hadn’t appreciated overhearing that troubling stuff from the guards, and it had been very scary lying to that smuggler. But, the more she thought about it, the more she realized she had nothing to complain about. She had wanted to see the real world, after all, and that was precisely what she’d seen. Reality was angry commoners, and reality was also some of those angry commoners going to extreme measures like smuggling and selling things on the black market and whatever else those criminals were up to. It was definitely uncomfortable for her to have bumped up against reality to that degree so soon after emerging from her protective little cocoon, but so what? That reality had been happening long before she had known about it and would keep on going now that she had experienced it.

  The only difference was that now she had something new to think about.

  Well, maybe not the only difference. Maybe she could actually do something to help, she thought suddenly and with a jolt of excitement. By the time Julianna had reached the bottom of the tunnel with a still silent and surly Dexter, her mind was running through a half dozen scenarios where she could figure out a way to make the people her father ruled more happy and less inclined to revolt. Maybe she could finally do something to make a positive change in the world! “Dexter,” she whispered as she began to push the stone back into place at the bottom of her tunnel.

  “What?”

  “We are going back out tomorrow night. Out into the city. And the night after and the night after, and I am going to figure out how to make this country happy again,” she said gleefully.

  He stared at her, slack jawed. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Where did this come from? An hour ago, you were convinced you were never going to set foot outside the castle walls.”

  “I changed my mind. Obviously. I’m going to figure out what the populace wants, and I’m going to tell my father how to get things done.”

  “That is such an oversimplification of the issues that I don’t even know how to begin to argue with you.”

  “Good. I don’t need your cranky old pessimism bringing me down anyway.”

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s not pessimism; it’s logic.”

  “Just be happy that we’re going out into the city. That’s what you wanted anyway, right?”

  “Yeah…but not if you’re going to be running off on some crazy, idealistic mission armed with only a bag full of stuff you scrounged together and my rusty 83-year-old knowledge of the city.”

  “Yeah? Well you don’t have a choice,” she said irritably. “You’re coming.”

  He glared at her, sighed, and decided he was done with this fight. He floated off to find Curtis. If anyone could talk Julianna down, it was him.

  But when Curtis found Julianna on her bed staring up at her ceiling with a faraway look in her eyes, she looked over at him and said before he could get a word in, “You’re not convincing me of anything, so don’t try.”

  He cleared his throat and said carefully, “Julianna, Dexter has told me that you have, after only one night out in the real world, decided you want to try to help your father sort out some kind of trouble with the populace? You want to go out and gather information? Do I have that right?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a tad overoptimistic about your abilities? Your father must have all sorts of spies who can bring him more information than you could ever hope to obtain.”

  Her face darkened. He made an unfortunately good point.

  “Perhaps,” Curtis said, seeing hi
s remark had hit home, “he just doesn’t care to fix things. Don’t go endangering yourself on a pointless mission. If you leave the castle walls night after night, you are eventually going to get into trouble, and what if, when that trouble happens, you can’t get to safety by sunrise?”

  “Curtis, this is my Purpose,” she said, the capital P very obvious. “I am doing this.”

  “How,” he said with more than a little sarcasm, “is a sheltered princess with a few hours of experience outside the safety of her home going to carry out such a huge undertaking?”

  Choosing to ignore his tone of voice, she answered calmly, “I think there’s no way I can really plan, because, as you say, I don’t know what’s out there or where things will lead. So, I’m just going to—oh, I don’t know—just jump right in and iron out the details as I go.”

  He started at her, appalled. “Iron it out as you go?”

  She shrugged.

  The other two ghosts had floated in a few minutes earlier to listen. They all looked at each other darkly. They knew there was nothing they could do to stop her.

  Nothing, of course, but make her feel really, really guilty.

  “Julianna,” Montague said, “Please don’t do this. For our sakes. And for your family. We will worry sick for you. Something will happen, and when it does, there won’t even be anyone around to tell your family what has happened to you!”

  “And,” Curtis added, “On that day that you don’t come back, do you realize what it will do to me? I was the one who told you where that tunnel was. And I don’t have the luxury of eventually dying and not having to feel the guilt anymore. I’ll be stuck floating around down here for eternity, always knowing that I got you killed.”

  “Geez,” she muttered. “I’m not going to die. I’m not five years old. I’m nineteen. I can take care of myself.”

  Dexter snorted. “There are plenty five-year-olds out there in the city who have ten times more ability to get around alone on the streets than you do, Princess.”