“I have come for your help, crone,” Mynda replied.
The word-witch nodded. “A crone, yes. A helper? No. Know this, traveler: for magic, or for sage advice, all who come here must pay the price.” She intoned the words with ritual solemnity. “An ancient formula, and I am bound to follow it to the letter. The magic of language comes dear indeed, and in exchange for it, you must give up something precious to you … Princess.”
Mynda’s eyes went wide. “You know who I am?”
“How not?” replied the crone. “Nothing is hidden from the gaze of a cunning woman. The way you sit sidesaddle, with perfect carriage, bespeaks years of training in horsemanship. Your bearing, erect and regal—the bent back of a peasant could never straighten so.” She placed a finger to her chin, pondering. “Also, there’s that diamond-studded tiara you’re wearing. The subtle clues pile up.” She beckoned with a crooked finger. Mynda dismounted and followed the old woman through a decaying oaken door into the tiny shack.
The word-witch led Mynda through the vestibule and down a long hallway into an antechamber, where she reached into a narrow barrel to withdraw a blood-red fruit. “Apple?” Mynda shook her head, and the witch grimaced. “Ah, well. Worth a try.” They turned left through the conservatory, where an ornate harp plucked and strummed at itself and a sad-eyed monkey flitted hither and thither, its wings cramped behind the bars of a gilded birdcage, and stepped into the parlor. The word-witch rested her old bones on an elaborately upholstered divan. “What would you have of me, Highness?”
“The Ps, madam,” Mynda said, her mouth a thin hard line. “I would have you round up every P in Lexico. Gather them together, and do with them I care not what. But rid us of them!”
The word-witch nodded slowly. “A difficult letter, the P,” she said. “One must mind them, as well as the Qs. An understandable concern. But this is no small task that you ask of me. For magic, or for sage advice, all who come here must pay the price. An ancient formula, and I am bound to every letter. The price for this will, I think, be quite high.”
From her birth onwards, for seventeen full years, Mynda had been spoken to with only the greatest kindness and courtesy. As with everything else in Lexico, the words had shaped her. And she was, in truth, a touch spoiled by them; she had grown into a haughty young woman with a will like a rod of castle-forged steel. But the words had shaped her in other ways, too; she was made in the image of the compassion and courtesy she had always been shown. And as she thought upon the plight of her subjects—of their pain, of their panic, of their peanut allergies, of their every peril and peccadillo, her heart swelled with pity. She would do what was necessary. “I will pay.”
The witch smiled, slowly and toothlessly. “A kidney, I think.”
Mynda stared. “A kidney?”
The witch nodded. “As I said, I get few visitors out here, and one gets ever so hungry over the years. One grows tired of forest roots and lentils. A bit of protein in my diet would do me good.”
Mynda’s lovely countenance screwed up in revulsion. Still, her duty to her subjects was plain. She nodded.
The witch offered another toothless grin. She rose from the couch and beckoned with her crooked finger, leading Mynda down another long corridor, through the kitchens and dining room, past the scullery, through the Room Of Unspeakable Objects In Jars, and into a small workshop which held a single loom. The strings of the device appeared to be composed of paper, or perhaps parchment. Viewed straight on, they looked like threads, but when Mynda tilted her head it seemed to her that the paper extended, somehow, in a direction that was neither up nor down nor left nor right, a direction that made her brain squirm. She quickly gave up thinking about it. Seeing her discomfort, the word-witch cackled. “They call them warps for a reason, Highness.”
The word-witch sat on a stool before the device and took in her hand a shuttle which was, to all outwards appearances, a pen. “This will take a little while, Highness,” she said and then went to work. Her hands were aged and liver-spotted, her fingers gnarled. Yet they flittered and flew with the speed and precision of hummingbirds, with a motion that was half-weaving and half-writing. As they did, it seemed to Mynda that she could feel a change; it was all around her, a subtle shift, like the smell of incipient thunder. And it was only a little while, not a lot of while, before the word-witch stood up from her stool. “It is done, Highness,” she said. “When the sun rises in the morning, the change will be achieved.” She extended her hand. “The payment, please.”
Mynda was, in truth, quite fond of her kidneys, and had only recently had them redecorated. Still, a bargain was a bargain. With the greatest of reluctance, she chose the one of which she was less fond—the left—and placed it in the words-witch’s waiting palm, where it squirmed and writhed a bit. And then, without another word, Mynda turned and strode with hasty steps down the many corridors and out the door into the night, where her steed waited to carry her back to the palace.
* * *
The sun shone in through the window of Mynda’s bedchamber. Slowly she o*ened her eyes and blinked. Was it all a dream?
She rose from her featherbed and shuffled across the stone floor to her looking-glass. Her oval face stared back at her, eyes a bit reddened by her long night, but without any other a**arent change.
She wet her li*s, then o*ened her mouth to s*eak. “*ersimmon,” she intoned. She blinked in sur*rise. “*achyderm.” A slow smile cre*t across her face. “*eter *i*er *icked a *eck of *ickled *e**ers.” She beamed. “It worked!”
Mynda couldn’t wait to tell her father the good news. Oh, he’ll be cross at first, the old fuddy-duddy, but surely when he sees the *ositive changes I’ve wrought, he’ll come around. Why, he’ll be *leased as *unch! She flung o*en the door which led to the flower garden that se*arated her chambers from the *alace itself.
She took one look at the garden, and her hands flew to her mouth. Her smile was re*laced by an ex*ression of outrage, and she hurled herself forwards through what was left of the garden and *ast the *ortcullis into the *alace’s receiving room. “Father!” she exclaimed. “Father, my flowers have been …”
She skidded to a sto*. The whole chamber was in an u*roar. Her father sat u*on the throne with his head in his hands; ministers raced in and out relaying bits of news. In a corner sat her younger brother Caldwyn, infamous already at court for his vanity. He had what a**eared to be a *iece of ornamental statuary growing from the crown of his head, yet his ex*ression was one of de*ression and bewilderment rather than of *ain.
Worst of all was the sight in the middle of the chamber. At the center of the vortex stood the distinguished figure of Lady *riscilla, her father’s ever-ca*able Lord Chancellor. She wore the chain of office about her neck and was unchanged in every res*ect save one: her head was missing. There was no blood or gore; there was sim*ly a body, a neck, and nothing above it.
“It is exactly as I feared, Majesty.” Lady *riscilla s*oke, her tone measured and her voice clearly audible, even as it seemed to be issuing forth from nowhere. “Re*orts are flooding in from the outer *rovinces as we s*eak, and the situation is identical throughout Lexico. Two in every ten citizens have sim*ly vanished overnight, and everyone who’s left seems to have a s*eech im*ediment.”
She’s remarkably calm, Mynda thought. Father always said she was good at kee*ing her head.
The old king, by contrast, was a quivering wreck. “But, how? Why?”
“As best we can tell, Majesty, the removal of a letter of our al*habet has wrought changes u*on the reality which that al*habet codifies. Wherever the letter has gone missing, reality has shifted accordingly. Hence: the immediate loss of two tenths of the kingdom’s *o*ulation, including an eighth of the *easants, who do all the actual work.”
Her father saw Mynda for the first time and rounded on her, his eyes flashing rare anger. “Oh, my child, my child!” he exclaimed. “What have you done?”
Mynda’s head whirled. She knew not what to say. “My … my flower
s,” she babbled.
The headless chancellor turned towards her. “The flowers of your garden, Highness? I *resume the daffodils and violets are unaltered?”
Mynda nodded numbly. “Yes. But the *etunias and the *eonies. They’re …”
“Missing their buds. Reduced to stems.” It seemed to Mynda that Lady *riscilla might have nodded, but under the circumstances it was hard to be sure. “Wherever the missing letter a**eared at the beginning of a word, the to* of the object in question has gone missing. In those cases and all others, the object in question has been shortened in *ro*ortion to the amount by which its name has been shortened. I sym*athize with the loss of your flowers, Highness, but believe me,” Lady *riscilla gestured to the em*ty s*ace at the to* of her neck, “others have it worse.”
“Indeed,” said a man-at-arms guarding the door. He, and every other male in the chamber, shared embarrassed glances with one another, then turned their combined glares on Mynda.
“But,” Mynda stammered. “But I never.”
“Lady *riscilla!” shouted the Mistress of Laws, scam*ering in through the far door. “We have confirmation! Crime is ram*ant throughout the ca*ital! The *olice force has been decimated!”
“To decimate something, Lady Hawley, is to reduce it by a tenth.”
“Se*timated, then!”
“The harvest!” interjected the Minister of Agri-culture. “A full fifth of the cro*s have disa**eared from the fields! More, in some cases! A full third of all the *eas! And with fewer *eons to harvest what remains, the kingdom will surely starve come winter!”
Mynda felt sick, and her disquiet was in no way assuaged by the sight of her miserable brother with the statue—an artistic nude, she noted, and actually quite well-crafted—sticking out of his head. “Caldwyn,” she moaned. “What have I done to you?”
Caldwyn, redolent of shame and reeking as always of mass-market body s*ray, looked u* at her with the dazed ex*ression for which he was, unfortunately, well known. “I…I was just combing my hair. Like I do every morning. And when I tried to *art it,” he gestured at the statue, “this thing suddenly a**eared.”
“This is the worst sym*tom of all, highness,” Lady *riscilla said. “Some realities have been abbreviated by the elimination of the letter. Others have been altered. For when words transform into other words …”
The Minister of Agriculture broke in. “Our fruit orchards are in even worse sha*e than our fields,” he grumbled. “The fruit is gone from the branches. Instead, half of the trees are full of ale, and the other half are full of ears. As a result, half the workers are too horrified to work, and the other half are too drunk.”
The Marshall, res*lendent in his ceremonial armor, stood u* to s*eak. “We have received word that the narrow mountain *ass connecting our kingdom to Slibola has,” he swallowed, “has been transformed, somehow, into a gigantic,” he reddened, “into a gigantic *air of buttocks.”
The Castellan s*oke. “I’ve just been to the city center,” he said. “The *ublic *ark is now a huge wooden boat.”
The King’s *hysician interjected. “Our doctors cannot administer *ills to their *atients. The medicine itself makes them ill.”
Lady *riscilla turned to Mynda. “Were flowers your concern, Highness? Come have a look at the state of your father’s library.” The headless chancellor strode across the chamber to the westernmost door and flung it o*en. Mynda crowded in behind her, and gas*ed in sur*ise. The shelves holding volumes of *oetry had shrunk by a sixth; all the other books were gone. In the s*ace where each tome had been, there was now a single rose.
The Chancellor was—had been—a formidably tall woman. She turned to face Mynda, who ex*erienced the unique sensation of being glowered down at by nothing whatsoever.
“It occurs to me, Highness,” the Chancellor ruminated, her tone acidic, “that had you been ‘with child’ at the time this occurred, you would now be regnant … which is to say, a ruling queen. Was that your intention? Was this an attem*t at a cou*?”
Mynda’s eyes went wide with horror. “I…NO!” she exclaimed. “I would NEVER do that to Father! I just, I just wanted to hel* the goodfolk of Lexico…”
“And indeed you have. They are in hell.”
Mynda’s mind raced. She glanced at the library full of roses, at the madness in the audience chamber, at the artwork in the center of her brother’s hairstyle. And she thought about what the word-witch had said to her.
An ancient formula...
Slowly, an idea began to congeal in her mind.
“I can … I can make this right.” She nodded to herself. Yes. It could work. But I’ll need the right su**lies. “I’ll need … I’ll need some goods from the *alace kitchens. And a wand. From one of our word-wizards.”
“A wand?” the king exclaimed. “You are a royal! You are untrained in the ways of sorcery.”
“I won’t need to be,” Mynda re*lied. She thought, then nodded. Yes. It could work. “Trust me, everyone,” she said. “I have a *lan.”
* * *
A tri* to the royal stables *roved demoralizing, as Mynda discovered her *ony to be u*right, healthy, and headless. There was no question of attem*ting to ride him into the forest. Fortunately, the *alace’s ornamental fish *ond was suddenly full of automobiles, so it was sim*ly a matter of towing them out, finding one whose engine still ran—a corroded but functional Buick—and hitting the road.
When Mynda’s vehicle arrived in the clearing beside the word-witch’s shack, the air was abuzz with ca*tured letters. They swarmed everywhere, their sad little tails dangling behind them, busy with yardwork and gardening, or *icking at windblown garbage with trash-s*ikes. The witch’s home had gone neglected for decades, *erha*s centuries, and it seemed she was forcing her new em*loyees to make u* for lost time.
The crone herself was reclining on a lawn chair, sucking a tall cool glass of infant’s blood through a straw, and regarded Mynda’s oncoming Buick with an arched eyebrow. Mynda *ulled the car to a sto* then emerged. “Madam,” she said, “I have come once again to bargain, and to liberate these consonants from their confinement.”
The word-witch re*lied with a smirk and a dismissive wave. “I think not, my dialytic damsel. I am well-fed at this stage, and you cannot in any case com*ensate me again and ho*e to survive. Besides which, I have come to enjoy observing the efforts of my new labor force.” She turned her gaze to the garden gate, where a row of *losive consonants were sweating in the hot sun, whitewashing a *icket fence, beside which stood a single *ink *lastic flamingo.
“Come now, madam. Remember the creed that governs you. Here is a customer before you. Let us strike a deal.”
Another lackluster wave. “Go home. I have mastered the magic of words, and I find yours tedious.”
“Very well,” said Mynda. “I came to buy, but if you will not bargain with me, I shall liberate these letters by force.” She reached into the car through the *assenger-side window and withdrew a thin wand of *olished ivory, which she *roceeded to *oint at the crone.
The old woman burst out laughing. “You fool of a girl! You cannot be serious! I have dueled the mightiest masters of linguistic magic! Satyrs, demons, and lawyers have fallen before me by the score. You cannot ho*e to best me!”
Mynda’s blue eyes were icy cold as she *ointed the wand. “En garde, madam,” she warned.
The word-witch rolled her eyes. “Oh, very well,” she sighed. “We’ll have this over with in a jiffy.” She nodded to a gaggle of letters who were busy *atching a hole in the roof. “You there! Go inside and get the cauldron on the boil! I’ll want sage, cloves, and onions from the *antry. In truth, I’ve develo*ed a taste for this one, and I antici*ate a royal feast tonight.” The letters *araded reluctantly down off of the roof, then inside in a single-file line.
The word-witch *icked u* a small fallen willow branch from the shade of a nearby tree. She glanced at it and shrugged, muttered “Good enough,” and then *ointed it ha*hazardly in Mynda’s direction. “Are you
sure you want this, girl?”
Mynda gazed down the length of the wand at her. “I renew my offer to buy.”
The crone merely shook her head and stretched out her arm towards Mynda. She reached inside her mind, down and down, dee* inside, to the dark fathoms of vocabulary, where dictionaries dare not go and where lexicogra*hers fear to tread. And there she found the *erfect word, yes, a word uns*oken for millennia, eldritch and chthonic and ri*e with malice. She rolled it in her mouth, savoring it like wine; then she inhaled carefully so as not to suck any of it into her lungs, and sent it rumbling forth, like frozen breath on an icy morning. It resounded with sorcerous *ower, withering the leaves on the trees that bordered the clearing, blackening the very air itself.
When the echoes faded, both women still stood, facing one another. The word-witch stared quizzically at Mynda, who grinned and lowered her wand.
“Still alive? Impossible,” the word-witch muttered. Then, hearing the word emerge unaltered from her lips, and seeing the letters suddenly swarming out of the shack and in from all parts of the yard, her eyes went wide. “What … what have you done?” The Ps surrounded Mynda, popping and prancing with newfound freedom, capering and cavorting in a widening celebratory circle.
Mynda smiled at her. “Why, I offered to buy. And you responded with a …”
“A spell!” the word-witch replied. “A fatal spell! A word of sure and certain power …” And then, the realization hit her. “A s— “ She ground to a halt.
“Not a spell, under the circumstances. Rather: a sell,” said the princess. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.” The Buick was filling up with a plentitude of Ps; already they occupied every square inch of the backseat, as if a hippopotamus had eaten a hundred gallons of alphabet soup and then had an unfortunate accident on the upholstery.
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