The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  “Yes,” I hollered back, frantically shaking out my blanket and hoping the cap would roll out. Then I shook out my clothes, lifted my pallet, and—

  “Reveka, are you ill?”

  Who could have stolen my cap? Who would have? Who even knew about it? When I found out who’d stolen it, I’d wipe his mother’s grave with my dirty socks!

  Marjit. Marjit was the only one who had known.

  “I’m a little ill,” I said, climbing down from the loft. I did feel like I was going to erp everywhere.

  “You’re shivering,” Brother Cosmin pointed out. And I was. Vibrating with anger, actually.

  “Yes—I’m going to the baths,” I said, and was out the door. Let him assume I was going to the soaking pool to warm up.

  I pelted toward the baths but was brought up short when I noticed the man sitting in the shadows by the Little Well. A man wearing a black military cloak over red velvet. Today, he did not wear the cloak pinned jauntily back over one shoulder; rather, the hood draped low over his face.

  Frumos. There was no mistaking the clasp on his cloak. There was also no mistaking the fact that Lord Dragos had worn one identical to it last night, a clasp made of animal bones. When I’d first seen Frumos in the woods, I’d thought they were boars’ tusks, but now I’d seen a zmeu and knew that they were a zmeu’s face spikes.

  Perhaps this really was Prince Frumos, hero, slayer of zmei. How else did you get a zmeu-spike cloak clasp?

  Frumos stirred, lifting a small, wet bucket to his mouth, and drank. In that moment, I remembered the taste of the water, and my mouth filled with saliva. I wanted to drink from the well again; I wanted it more than anything I’d ever wanted—even my urgency over my invisibility cap had faded into the background of my thoughts. I lurched forward, hands reaching for the bucket.

  My feet scraped on the stones, and Frumos spun to face me. We stared at each other for a long moment, until he said, “Reveka,” in a tone of recognition, and relaxed.

  “Prince Frumos,” I said, and dipped a curtsy.

  “How goes the life of the herbalist’s apprentice?”

  I stared at him. There was no explaining my life. None at all. So I just said, “It goes.” I stared at the bucket in his hands. My mouth watered. “May I have a drink?”

  He looked at the bucket, then back to me. “This well is . . .”

  “Contaminated,” I said. “I know. Marjit the Bath-woman says it’s the work of a fairy. But I drank from it once before, and it had no ill effect on me.”

  He considered me. “No, there’d be no ill effect on you. You’re young. And innocent. Well-intentioned and fair.”

  I confess that I blushed at this. I was unused to compliments. But I was a bit angry as well. I was hardly an innocent: I was too familiar with lying for that. So I laughed and made a joke of it. “Oh, certainly. I’m a lovely helpless maiden, ripe for kidnapping by any zmeu who wanders by.” I stared at the bucket, practically licking my lips thinking about the stony-sweet taste of the water.

  I only looked at his face when he didn’t respond right away. He wore a deep frown. “Go ahead and drink,” he said roughly when I met his eyes. He held out the bucket, and I put it to my lips. The water was as cold and as glorious as I remembered, but the tang of stone was even stronger.

  I drained the bucket and put it down, then wondered if we had drunk from the same spot. If we did, it would be like we kissed, I thought, and knew it was a stupid thought even as I had it.

  “You haven’t asked me why I am here,” he said.

  “I assumed you came to break the curse. That’s why young men come to this castle, isn’t it?” I asked, thinking of Mihas.

  He blinked. “The curse?”

  “The curse on the princesses, the one that causes them to wear through their slippers every night. That curse?”

  “Oh, that curse. I cannot break that curse,” he said.

  “But you’re Prince Frumos,” I said. The one who fights the zmeu.

  “It’s not my real name.”

  I tried to hide my sudden and acute disappointment with a laugh. “I suspected as much. No one is named ‘Prince Handsome’ anyway. And when we met, you said, ‘Call me Frumos,’ but you didn’t say that Frumos is your name.”

  “True,” he said, nodding, still watching me carefully. His regard grew difficult to bear. I felt like he could see through my clothes and skin, into my liver. He said, “You have still not asked me why I’m here.”

  I said bitterly, “I’m the herbalist’s apprentice. Matters of state aren’t any of my business.”

  “You’re assuming I’m here on a matter of state?”

  “When one prince visits another prince, is it not always a matter of state? Unless . . . you aren’t a prince, as well as not being named Frumos.”

  “I’m a prince,” he said. “Or I was, once. Anyway, let us call this a shadow visit. Your prince doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Well, how could he?” I said. “He and the Princess Consort have gone to the hunting lodge of one of their vassals.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m here on another matter entirely. I had a . . . an unexpected visitor to my lands last night, who I tracked to this castle. I wanted to know who he was, and why he was visiting.” He watched me with sharp, dark eyes.

  I stared right back, just the way you’re not supposed to stare at royalty. Neither of us said anything.

  He was nowhere near as handsome as Pa and had nothing at all on beautiful, stupid Mihas, but there was something striking about him nonetheless, in the leanness of his face and the sharpness of his features. He didn’t look like much of a soldier, being a bit skinny for it, but he carried the air of a general. He looked like a strategist, or a thinker, and he had that same something about him that Pa had: He looked like he could command men. And maybe women, too.

  “It’s time I went.” He nodded to the bucket. “I would not drink from that well a third time, were I you.”

  I felt my mouth set in an obstinate line. “And why not?”

  “There’s no fairy in that well. It is something else entirely. And I would very much like you to continue living your proper life, Reveka, well-intentioned and fair.”

  As confusing as I found him, I was rather delighted to be called fair. I’d never confess to anyone that my head swam because of a simple compliment, but I had to admit it to myself.

  I thought he would leave then. It seemed like the fitting thing: You received a compliment from a mysterious and handsome prince, and that was the end. But he stayed still, stayed watching me.

  “We’ve reached stalemate, I see,” he said at last.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He pursed his lips. “Maybe not stalemate,” he murmured. “Maybe it’s check.”

  I frowned.

  He heaved a sigh. “I will be honest,” he said, as though it pained him a great deal. I sympathized with that. “I won’t leave if you are looking at me.”

  That startled me. I blinked.

  “Yes, like that. Only . . . blink longer.”

  “I can’t blink longer. My eyes would actually be closed if I blinked longer.”

  “Fine, then close your eyes.” His exasperation was amusing, to him as well as me. We smiled at each other.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, still smiling, but I closed my eyes nonetheless.

  And when I opened them, he was gone.

  Chapter 21

  I cursed, then cursed again.

  There was only one way that someone could disappear like that, and that was if he had my invisibility cap!

  But how could Frumos have stolen it? How could he have even known it existed? Marjit was the only one who knew!

  I stormed down into the baths to find Marjit alone, scrubbing wall tiles in the soaking pool.

  “I know you’re working for Frumos!” I shouted. My voice magnified in the tiled room.

  Marjit screamed, turned, and winged her scrub brush at me. The hard wooden handle thunked i
nto me at my hairline, above my right eye.

  “Ow!” I cried, and fell to my knees clutching my head.

  “Oh!” Marjit exclaimed, clambering through the soaking pool toward me. “Child, I thought you were a vanguard for the Turks! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.” She knelt and peeled my fingers away from my forehead, examining the spot where she’d conked me. “Didn’t break the skin, but you’ll have quite a goose egg.”

  “Marjit!” I was still angry, but now I sounded whiny as I rebuked her through my tears. “How could you tell Frumos? How could you let him steal my cap?”

  “Who’s Frumos?” Marjit asked, soaking a towel in the cold plunge and wringing it out. She folded the towel and placed it on my sore head.

  “Frumos!” I cried. “You know, Frumos.” Frustrated, I remembered I didn’t know his real name.

  “No, Reveka, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “Now lie back. You’ve had quite a blow.”

  “Marjit, someone stole my cap, and the only other person who knew it existed was you!” I struggled against her, refusing to let her push me backward.

  She stopped trying to get me to lie down and gave me an impatient look. “Really, Reveka. If I wanted an invisibility cap, I could have just repeated the spell on the fern fronds you didn’t use.”

  If my head hadn’t hurt so much, I would have smacked it.

  I groaned. “Oh, I’m so stupid,” I muttered.

  Marjit shook her head. “You’re plenty clever. Just, sometimes, a little too clever.”

  “Marjit, if I apologized for what I thought about you, would you help me make a second cap?”

  “Does that mean the cap worked?” Marjit asked, astonished.

  I nodded miserably.

  “Would a second cap make up for throwing a scrub brush at your head?”

  I nodded again.

  “Yes, we can work on it tonight.”

  “Today! It has to be today!”

  Marjit frowned. “I don’t know how the spell will work, in the day.” She considered. “Maybe if . . .” She shook her head.

  “We can try, right? I don’t have a choice.”

  Reluctantly, she agreed. I brought her ferns and a bucket of Little Well water, and we did the ritual in the baths. At least we were underground, I thought. No natural light could penetrate here. That was like the Underworld. That had to help.

  But the baths were used often, and once the ritual was over and only the netting remained, Marjit sent me away. I sneaked back to my loft.

  The first cap had given me enough practice that the netting of the second went markedly faster. It also helped that I used a large, looping stitch, since I hadn’t enough fern fronds to do a tight cap like the first one. It probably wouldn’t wear as well, or last as long. If it worked at all.

  Stupid thief, ruining everything.

  Brother Cosmin solicitously made me a posset for my illness and left me alone through the day. The clink of flasks and pots, the roar of his fire as he brewed extracts, the steady pounding of his mortar and pestle, all soothed me and set the rhythm of my netting.

  I jumped when the door banged open and Pa’s voice asked, “Have you seen Mihas? He hasn’t been around all day.”

  “No, I haven’t seen your apprentice,” Brother Cosmin answered.

  “Wait—where’s Reveka? Did she go off with him?”

  “Go off with him?” Brother Cosmin repeated, sounding surprised.

  Pa’s voice was grim. “He’s got something of a crush on her.”

  I buried my face in my hands. Why did Pa know this?

  “Why would you think that means she’d go off with him?” Brother Cosmin asked.

  A good question, Brother Cosmin! Why would Pa think that I’d be interested in a cowherd’s stupid crush and take up a dalliance with the boy—to the point of neglecting my work and letting Mihas neglect his? Now, granted, I was neglecting my work, and Mihas was one of the reasons, but this was life or death, not a crush.

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Brother Cosmin said. “She’s about as interested in Mihas as she is in my donkey. Which is to say she might stoop to giving him mashed juniper berries for his colic, but that’s about all the notice she pays either of them.”

  I never realized Brother Cosmin understood me so well. Though I had to say I liked his donkey better than I liked Mihas, even though Old Magar tended to bite.

  “She spends most of her time dreaming about her nunnery, in fact,” Brother Cosmin added. “I don’t know if she’s ever noticed any man about the castle.”

  Well, I argued in my head, I notice men. I just wasn’t particularly impressed by any of them. Except for—

  No. I wasn’t going to think about him. And he wasn’t “about the castle,” no matter where his shadow diplomacy had brought him today.

  “Let me know if you see her,” Pa said.

  Brother Cosmin said mildly, “Well, she’s upstairs in the loft, dealing with a slight ague and probably listening to every ridiculous word you’re speaking.”

  There was a silence from below, which I interpreted as mortified. I stuffed my half-finished cap under my apron, pinned the netting needle to my sleeve, and waited.

  Pa’s head poked up over the edge of the loft.

  “Sorry,” he said grumpily.

  I shrugged.

  “Do you need anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “Hope you feel better soon,” he said, and disappeared.

  I flopped back on my pallet and wondered why it was we had fathers, anyway.

  It was on toward sunset when I finished the cap. I tested the cap’s invisibility on Brother Cosmin, and it passed. I hurried to the eastern tower to hide—and wait.

  That night, on the slow journey behind the princesses, I decided not to ride in Lacrimora’s boat. But as we approached the shore, she yawned and stretched hugely, casting her arms wide behind her. She said nothing as she made contact with my stomach. I was hard-pressed not to squeak in surprise as she grabbed the fabric of my chemise and tugged me toward her boat.

  She knew. She knew.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t speak to her. I wordlessly stowed away in Iosif’s boat. Iosif rowed even more slowly than the night before, glaring at Lacrimora the whole time, which I would have found funny if I hadn’t been wondering what Lacrimora was planning.

  Long before we reached the other shore, I could make out the silhouette of Lord Dragos.

  “Two nights in a row he’s been waiting,” Lacrimora murmured.

  “You’ve been late both nights,” Iosif said.

  I expected Lord Dragos to speak, to make some sardonic comment as he had the night before about the iron shoes, to pluck one of the princesses from her boat and carry her. But he just waited while the princesses disembarked, then offered his arm to Nadia on the march to the pavilion.

  Tonight, there was an empty chair pulled up to the heaping table of food, and instead of sitting down at the head of the table, Lord Dragos went to stand behind the chair. The princesses wore puzzled expressions as they watched him pile a golden plate high with grapes and cakes and place it before the empty seat. The grapes on the plate glowed red like blisters filled with blood.

  The princesses sat. Mihas was there, attending Princess Viorica. Everyone watched Dragos; no one paid any attention to the banquet.

  “Before we begin our evening . . .” Dragos said, and his long, flexible fingers groped the air over the empty chair for a long moment, then made a plucking motion. Pa appeared, gagged and tied to the chair. In Lord Dragos’s fist was my first fern cap, which he flung disdainfully onto the table.

  I cried out then, but so did half the princesses, and the sound of my voice was masked. The liveried men appeared unmoved, except for Mihas, whose jaw dropped open—predictably.

  “That’s Konstantin, the gardener!” Princess Stefania said.

  “Little Reveka’s father!” Rada added.

  Lord Dragos scrutinized the princes
ses. “And the lover of one of you, I surmise,” he said.

  “Hardly,” Tereza sniffed. “He’s the gardener. Oh, I’ll grant you, he’s quite swift at digging a ditch, but that sort of thing doesn’t really catch my eye.”

  “He’s quite well-looking, I thought,” Lord Dragos said. “You could do worse.” He gestured at himself.

  “I claim him,” Lacrimora croaked into the silence that followed.

  “I didn’t ask if you claimed him,” Lord Dragos said. “Those rules don’t apply to him. This gardener entered my dominion by some back way. He has a cap of invisibility. He swam my lake, and I found him inside my pavilion. He did not come following you, so your protection cannot apply.

  “Further, he has intruded on this land once before. Last night, he watched you all dance. You, sir,” he said to Pa, “are a trespasser.”

  I almost cried out that this was untrue! I was the one who had visited the night before! The only thing that stopped me was the memory of Prince Frumos at the well, saying that he had tracked a visitor from his lands to Castle Sylvian last night. My mouth froze in an O of horror.

  The pieces clicked into place: the clasp, the names, the strange comments. Prince Frumos, the fabled champion of young maidens, the storied enemy of the zmeu, actually a zmeu himself? It was a horrible joke.

  Just the sort of joke that a demon might enjoy, I thought.

  “Kill him if you want,” Tereza said. “You’re right—none of us has anything to do with his being here. Only wait until we’ve returned to the surface for the night. I’m afraid you won’t get very good dancing from the weaker-stomached girls if you drink his blood in front of us.”

  “He’s worthy of your service!” Lacrimora interrupted. She sat limply in her chair, the color drained from her face. She shook her head slightly, over and over. I don’t know that she was even aware of the motion.

  I glanced at Pa, who stared at Lacrimora. Also shaking his head. Equally despairing.

  It hit me like a thunderbolt. A very, very, very big, awful, stupid thunderbolt, the kind that makes a person extremely angry.

  When had my father fallen in love with Lacrimora?