The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  But the time disparity worked against me with Pa sending so little food. If I didn’t get enough to eat regularly, I’d be useless in the herbary. Pa’s food was my only hope—well, Sylvania’s only hope, and Didina’s. I had to keep up my strength and keep my wits about me, if I had any chance of waking the sleepers. But I also had to make the food last. . . .

  Unless I took the plunge and ate the food of the Underworld.

  Not yet, I thought. I felt the burden of Thonos’s illness on my shoulders, but I couldn’t think about that now. I forced myself out of my chair. The mouthful of cheese and bread hadn’t been enough, though, and my legs shivered. Mihas caught me before I could fall, and he and Thela moved me back to my chair.

  “It’ll be all right,” Mihas said. “Your father will come for you.” He put another chunk of bread into my hand.

  There was a tap at my door. Thela opened it to reveal the hulking zmeu form of Lord Dragos, while Mihas and I froze. “Is everything all right in here?” Dragos asked.

  I glanced at the bread I held. “Yes. Everything is fine.”

  We were silent while Dragos looked at the food from the World Above half scattered across my floor and desk. For someone who didn’t speak the language, Thela proved perceptive: She scooped up my dirty clothes from the day before and escaped down the hall.

  Dragos drew in a great breath and let it out in a slow stream redolent of ash and almonds. “I brought you something, Reveka,” he said, and pulled a large crate in from the hall. He carried it over and pried the lid from the crate easily with his claws. Mihas scurried around him to stow the food back in the basket, though I noticed that he tucked a plum and a thyme pie into a pigeonhole of my desk. He left with the basket, and Dragos let him.

  “Books,” I said in surprise. I stumbled to my feet and went to look. There were easily three dozen, all with wooden covers.

  “Codices, really,” Dragos said. “Handwritten texts, mostly in Greek or Latin. They are for you.”

  “For—all for me?” I stammered, surprised and not a little bit touched. I picked up one of the books and flipped it open: Consolatio philosophiae, “the consolation of philosophy.” Another, in a language that didn’t seem to be exactly Latin: Le livre de la cité des dames. I looked, but didn’t see anything that might be an herbal or a book of medicine.

  “Thank you,” I said sincerely, for all that I regretted no book of herbs. I was too amazed to know how to show him my appreciation. I had never owned a real book before. “I look forward to reading these.” Someday.

  “Good,” Dragos said. “I thought I would take you to collect herbs in some other areas of Thonos today. Places you might not be able to get to easily on your own.” He flexed his wings a little.

  “Yes, please,” I said, feeling grim reality resettle on my shoulders. On one shoulder were the sleepers. On the other, all of Thonos. I couldn’t know which problem to address first, but I also didn’t know the plants of this world. If I could discover their properties, perhaps the priority would assert itself.

  And perhaps there was something to the observation I’d made about the problems seeming mirrored. Maybe I’d solve both problems with one cure. I could dream, couldn’t I?

  “I’ll leave you to dress,” Dragos said, and departed.

  When the door closed, I crammed the hunk of bread into my mouth and cast about me for something to wear. I knew I couldn’t get into a fancy princess dress without Thela’s help, so I laid out my old chemise, skirt, and apron—and devoured the thyme pie. I got dressed between bites of plum and sucked the pit free of the last threads of flesh as I bound my hair up in a scarf.

  I spat out the pit and opened the door. Dragos was waiting. Mihas was nowhere in sight.

  “You’re going to wear that?” Dragos asked.

  “Thela has disappeared, and I can’t get dressed in those alone.” I pointed at the shimmering gowns hanging across the room. “Does it matter?”

  “You’re to be a queen,” Dragos said. “Do you think it matters?”

  I weighed this in my mind for a bit. A queen was a queen regardless of clothing. But it was easier to command the respect one deserved if one looked—and acted—the part.

  “I suppose it does,” I said. “But there is no way that I can get into gowns such as those by myself. There are all these lacings and knots.”

  “We can wait for Thela. Though perhaps I will tell her to make herself a little more available in the mornings.”

  “Well, don’t do that,” I said. “She’s probably got things to do—”

  Thela came around the corner then and motioned me inside, where she divested me of my peasant clothes and shimmied me into a bodice, which she laced so tightly, I could only gasp at the end.

  I mulled over the conversation with Dragos while Thela helped me into an underrobe, gown, and stockings.

  Something didn’t make sense. If I had to prove to the servants that I was a lady—well, no, a queen—I needed to dress like a queen. But I couldn’t dress like a queen without help.

  At some point, it began to seem as if the whole of royalty was simply a charade for the servants.

  I supposed, technically, it was exactly that. I can barely walk by myself, the impractical gowns said. But I can command people and send them on my errands.

  I might enjoy sending people on my errands. But I enjoyed not falling down when I walked, too.

  When I was dressed, Thela stepped back and assessed her work. She smiled. Her eyes were as old as the mountains, but her face was as smooth as my own. I wished I could speak to her, discover her story.

  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, I reminded myself, and went to find Dragos.

  Chapter 30

  Thanks to Dragos’s wings, we went from border to border of Thonos that day, landing here and there to look for likely herbs, while Dragos simultaneously educated me about his land.

  Most of Thonos was as dark as the castle, but a few places—particularly near entrances to the World Above—were lighted areas like the Queen’s Forest. In the Blessed Fields, where I plucked asphodel, a pale golden ball hung in the sky like a sun, shining on the souls of heroic men and women, the youngest of whom had fought the Romans. When we visited other places, there were more kinds of false suns and, occasionally, glorious moons and fields of stars.

  Wherever there was light, I saw eidolon souls. Nearly everyone looked as normal as my servants Zuste and Thela—opaque, solid, real; aware of their surroundings and us, but not overly curious about anything. Some waved, but we were not, I could see, a normal, World Above king and queen to these people, to be touched and adored. I said as much to Dragos while we flew in darkness toward a starlit marsh. “It makes sense,” I said, eyes closed and concentrating on something other than the fact that I couldn’t see anything. “It’s not as though they pay taxes and, in return, we distribute bread. Or do we? Do eidolons eat?”

  “They can eat, but they don’t need food to sustain them. But it is untrue that they do not receive anything from us. We protect them. And though there is no taxation, they would fight in my army if I asked them to.”

  “Who would you fight?” I asked, shivering. I had not truly thought that there was no war in the Underworld, but I had hoped.

  “When the Golden Horde came through in the World Above, their gods tried to sweep through the Underworld as well. Or so I’m told. Right now, I do not worry overmuch about the Underworld lords linked with the Turks expanding into Thonos.” He sounded unhappy. “That may change, of course, but the lords of the Turks’ Underworld are djinn, and they are remote from the religious concerns of the Turks at present. Or any of their concerns.”

  I tried to imagine an army of souls, tried to imagine a group of djinn ruling beneath the lands of the Sultan, but decided not to work too hard at it. I was more curious about the other direction.

  “What of Corvinus?” I asked. “What is the Underworld region like where he rules?”

  “That would be Hekat’s land,
” he said. “She has all the German and Hungarian regions under her sway, having killed off most of their gods long ago.”

  I shivered. Killing gods was a strange and terrible thought, and one I didn’t want to know more about. “She’s not like Corvinus, is she? Trying to expand into Sylvania—or Thonos, I mean?”

  “She is very much like Corvinus,” Dragos said. “She’s the one who sends the crows that spy for him.”

  Surprised, I tried to twist my head around to see Dragos’s face, but it made my neck crick—and I couldn’t see anything anyway. I faced forward again, feeling cold and scared, and suddenly glad to be in the overwarm embrace of Dragos. It was all I had in this moment that was familiar—the oddly comforting sound of his bellows breath telling me I wasn’t alone in the dark. Strange, the things you can decide are normal once you get used to them, once other things seem stranger and more horrible.

  “Is she going to invade Thonos?” I asked, past the lump of scaredness in my throat.

  “No. Not now, anyway.” This reassurance didn’t still my trembling, and Dragos went on. “She has made more trouble than she can handle by killing gods, and now everyone is on their guard against her. No one will deal with her, negotiate with her, even grant her an audience. So she moves in the World Above, trying to gain power there, and interferes with mortal lives and mortal kingdoms.”

  I thought about the crows sitting on the castle roofs, controlled by a sinister intelligence. I wondered how far Hekat’s fingers extended, how deep her magics went. Could she be the cause of the blight on Thonos, in spite of Dragos’s certainty that she moved only in the World Above?

  I thought again about mirrors, reflections, and shadows. I’d exchanged one threat of warfare for another. In fact—

  “If her puppet or whatever Corvinus is gains control in the World Above, does that give Hekat leverage for an invasion of Thonos?”

  I thought perhaps Dragos would remind me I was a political novice at this point, and tell me to keep my theories to myself. Or maybe he would try to protect me from the truth with a well-timed lie.

  But his words were as bare as a winter tree. “Yes. Hekat would be in a fair position to take over Thonos if Corvinus took Sylvania.”

  The promised marsh came into view, and even a starlit night seemed gloriously bright after the journey through darkness. Dragos landed and set me on my feet. I stumbled, trying to regain my sense of balance after the flight, and immediately found a patch of sweet reeds.

  “Anything I can dig for you?” Dragos asked.

  I pointed out a cluster of marsh marigolds and then white and yellow water lilies, floating on the water. I assumed they were white and yellow, anyway; those were the usual shades, though most color was leached by the faintness of the light.

  “If you can reach those lilies, I’ll take them,” I said. My voice came out stronger here. When I spoke in dark places, it seemed the sound was flat, trapped, as though there wasn’t enough air. Light seemed to allow my voice to travel farther.

  Dragos decided he couldn’t reach the lilies from shore, so he took wing and collected them from above. He hovered over the water, snatching lily plants from their pool.

  Across the black, starlit water, eidolon souls gathered to watch Dragos’s acrobatics. The dim light and the distance made it hard to observe their expressions, but I imagined they were impressed by their King.

  One eidolon, a woman wearing a kerchief almost exactly as Thela wore hers, particularly caught my eye. At first, I couldn’t figure out why I watched her. She was thin—not in the way of someone who hungers, but in the way of scraped parchment—and it seemed I could see reeds and bushes through her.

  Dragos turned and tumbled in midair, dexterous for someone so large, and went back to collect another handful of lilies. The thin soul raised a hand toward her King, and the dark well of her mouth opened. Her body language bespoke an appeal, a plea—though I couldn’t hear her voice over the sweep of Dragos’s wings and the trickle of water flowing in the marsh.

  And then the woman thinned out entirely. She disappeared. She was gone, as completely and as surely as if she had put an invisibility cap on her head.

  I looked at the other souls and saw no further signs of thinness. The eidolons didn’t seem to notice her disappearance, either, though I stood and stared at the spot where she had been, willing the woman to return, until Dragos landed beside me.

  I hadn’t even had a chance to call out to her, or to warn Dragos, or anything. She was just gone.

  “Did you see her?” I asked Dragos.

  “The soul that disappeared on the other side of the marsh? Yes, I saw her.” His voice was neither gentle nor harsh, but sad. “Let’s go.”

  “There was a woman,” I said. “She visited me in the four-seasons forest, the Queen’s Forest; she said she was the nymph of the river Alethe. She told me about these . . . disappearances.”

  Dragos lifted me into the air. “I don’t believe I’ve met this nymph Alethe.”

  I frowned, concentrating on that instead of my memory of the disappearing soul. “Oh? Well, she says you’ve been King for only a short time, so perhaps you’ve not had the chance yet.”

  “A short time,” he said with a laugh. “I suppose someday it will seem like a short time.”

  “Fourteen years,” I said. “As long as I’ve been alive. Actually, longer.”

  “Yes, well, I wouldn’t have chosen a child bride, all things being equal.”

  I felt a little affronted by that, but I couldn’t really argue with his sentiment. “I’m sure it would be easier if I weren’t so young, but I doubt I would know my own mind any better.” I didn’t try to keep the asperity out of my voice.

  Dragos replied, “I wouldn’t even dream of doubting that.” He spoke so lightly, and it was so easy to fill in Frumos as the speaker, and not Dragos, that I felt a pang.

  And just like that, I was crying. The memory of the disappearing soul twined with the memory of Didina’s still form lying beside her mother, and Adina’s sorrow-lined face. I bit my knuckles, trying to keep from wailing out loud like a little child. But a sob escaped me.

  Dragos’s arms tightened around me gently—so very warm—and for a moment, I was comforted. Not because he could do anything, but because he was warm enough, and human enough, and he cared enough.

  We landed again shortly, in a silver glade lit by moonlight almost as bright as the sun—sufficiently bright to cast shadows, in any case.

  “Where are we now?” I asked, squeezing my voice out through my tears.

  “This is a way station, a place of passage between Thonos and the World Above,” Dragos said. “Or that tree is, anyway.” He pointed to an oak trunk with a hollow space in the center of it.

  “Why bring me here?” I asked.

  “For a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Go on through. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I ducked into the passage and had little difficulty finding my way as the tunnel wound upward. I stepped out of the passage through another hollow oak tree, into gray light and warm air.

  “I can see,” I said, astonished.

  Dragos grunted but sounded far away.

  “Dragos?” I called, turning around to see if he followed. There was no hulking zmeu behind me. There was only a thin man with a clever mouth staring back at me.

  Frumos.

  I gasped. “You—you said you couldn’t turn back into your human form.”

  “I said that I had no control over it. But in the surface world, I am human; in the other world, I am zmeu.”

  “Oh,” I said, gaping like Mihas at his stupidest.

  We stood together at the edge of a plum orchard—Castle Sylvian’s plum orchard, the very place where Pa had ordered me to stay away from the curse. Dawn was lightening the World Above, enough that I could see colors around me: the deep green of the leaves, and even their vein patterns. I faced the outline of Castle Sylvian in the distance, a dark hulk against a blue-gray sky, with only a few li
ghts flickering in the windows.

  My eyes welled with tears again, though I managed to blink them back. I didn’t look at Dragos until I had them under control, but when I faced him, I found that he was watching me.

  His bright human eyes were just as penetrating in their way as when he was a dragon. I noted how his left eyebrow quirked a little more than his right, the faint freckles on his cheeks, and his blade of a nose. He was so very human. His zmeu form was so smooth, so symmetrical, so perfect and perfectly terrifying that it seemed unreal. I could not imagine Dragos’s zmeu mother, hatching him out of his egg. But the mother of this man, if such a creature existed, would have had the same lively eyes, the same freckles. . . . His father was probably just as lean and had just such an Adam’s apple that bobbed in his throat when he talked.

  “Reveka?” he asked in his lighter, less thunderous voice. “This was a mistake. I apologize.”

  “Mistake?”

  “To bring you here, in sight of your home, which you cannot visit.”

  “My home,” I said, and my voice faltered. I hadn’t really considered Sylvania my home, but it was—had become so. “I was raised in a convent in Transylvania, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” Frumos—no, Dragos—said. “But you can tell me about it.”

  So I did. I told him about my mother, and the convent, and Pa; and the Abbess and Sister Anica, and the lying.

  “But you aren’t a liar?”

  “I became one, for a time,” I said. “But I don’t really think I started out as one, no matter what the Abbess said.”

  “You must have come to some accord with your father on the subject, since you went to rather extraordinary lengths to save him.”

  I frowned. “Did Pa and I ever come to an accord about lying? I don’t think so. He forced me to promise to never lie to him. That’s not an accord. But—you don’t save people just because you get along with them. You save people because—well, it beats not saving them. And I saved more than just Pa, by coming to Thonos.”