The Wizard, the Farmer, and the Very Petty Princess

by Daniel Fox

  Chapter 16

  Off in the Castle Wolf Anisim was pacing, pacing. Reports skittered across the table with every pass he made like drifts of snow. No good news, no hope to be found in all of that ink.

  "More raids," he said, consulting only himself, "more robberies, and the mystery goes on and on. What are you up to magician? And do I really want to find out?"

  There was really no question though, he didn't have a choice. He had to find out what evil the magician was cooking up, that's what a king did. He wondered what the farmer was up to at that moment. Was he back to growing his vegetables? Did he have Willuna hoeing dirt? He could just picture the look on her face. He cracked a smile, the first in days.

  He sighed and turned to a tapestry hanging on the wall. It was a battle scene, a depiction of his father leading a charge against an unidentified foe (though the leader of the opposition bore a striking resemblance to King Torquil). Anisim had always had the feeling that his father had preferred the war years, back when the enemy was the enemy and that was that. In peace times there just wasn't anything for a warrior to hit. So the late king had taken all of that warrior energy and zeal and focused it on his son who could never quite please his father.

  "I admit it, old man," Anisim said, squinting at the threads that made up his father's face, "I am lost, confused, bumbling around in the dark. You win again. Everything you said you saw in me is true. Something's coming and I don't know what, or where it's going to hit."

  A knock at the door.

  "Enter."

  A guard came in, delivered a letter.

  "Ah good," said the young king, "I was worried I was running out of bad news."

  Anisim dismissed the guard. He was going to toss the letter on top of the rest of the ill tidings but then noticed the seal. There was no official seal, but someone had swirled the rough outline of a round vegetable into the red wax. And in just the right light, that round vegetable could very well be taken for a turnip.

  Anisim snapped the letter back up and cracked open the seal. He flipped open the letter and found Willuna's handwriting within. After a great long and extremely flowery greeting she got to the meat of it - the farmer had figured out how the magician was moving around so quickly, how he kept slipping out of the grasp of justice in all of the kingdoms, how he was making just a great big nuisance of himself.

  "Good work farmer," Anisim said, then threw open his door to call to his guard. "Assemble everyone! Everyone!"

  This was how King Anisim learned how the magician was moving around so quickly and making a great big nuisance of himself. I would have thought that was quite obvious, really.

  ***

  Breathe! thought Idwal.

  Live!

  He'd motioned the Old Woman up out of the water, and caught up with the princess and carried her limp form out of the river. Now the princess lay on the bank, less life in her than a landed trout.

  The crowd was close around, a murmuring half-circle of long faces. There wasn't any hope in them, and they didn't have any help to offer.

  But Idwal had seen this before, this very same thing. A girl on a riverbank, waiting for someone to give her permission to continue on with her life. But there was no King Anisim this time with his magic kiss, the princess would have to make do with a frightened farmer who was feeling completely helpless.

  Idwal picked up her hand and gave it a brisk rubbing. Nothing. He poked her in the ribs. Gave her long hair a tug. If nothing else he figured he could annoy her back up on to her feet. But the princess did nothing, not a gasp or a flutter. A frightening blue was starting to creep in around her lips.

  There was nothing else for it. Idwal leaned over and joined his lips with hers. A new round of muttering broke out of the crowd; the boy was gathering a growing list of dailiances with strange women - first the Old Woman, now a dead girl. Someone should really take him aside for a good long talk.

  Idwal stayed like that, mouth pressed down to the princesses, blushing for a number of reasons. His eyes looked around, there was still no reaction from the princess. What could he have expected? Magic kisses obviously lay within the domain of kings… he was overstepping his bounds again.

  Idwal sighed. Right into the princess' mouth.

  And she coughed up a lung's worth of water in his face.

  The crowd shifted back, uneasy. "Zombie!" shouted a boy, pointing. "He's made a zombie!"

  Idwal didn't need to look back, he could feel his fellow villagers slipping even further away from him. First the strange woman, then the turnip, then this new strange woman, and now he was making seemingly dead girls cough. He was no longer plain, and far from ordinary.

  And as he helped the princess sit up Idwal found that he no longer truly cared.

  ***

  Wolf soldiers stomped down grey halls, barging into every room. Everywhere they charged the sound of shattering glass soon followed. Soon there wasn't a single mirror left in all of Castle Wolf.

  And then they went further, the knights mounting and galloping from the castle, taking the news of Idwal's discovery to every human home in every human kingdom. In another day or two they could rest safe, the magician would be trapped on the far side of wherever the mirrors led.

  People began to breathe a little easier, to feel a little safer. They thought the worst of it was over.

  The people were wrong.

  Chapter 17

  The inn in the village, the Pale Pony, had never been livelier. And all because of the alive-again girl with the long lovely hair. Willuna sat, looking lovelier than she ever had before in the light of the healthy wood fire, and not knowing a bit of it. Not caring either. There was food to eat. Fantastic food. Wonderful food. The finest she'd ever eaten.

  She shovelled stew and chomped bread. Tasted wine and let it dance around her mouth. The farmer sat across from her, collecting as many sideways glances as she was, and caring just about as much.

  "I think maybe the magician paid the Miser to prosecute the Old Woman. I thought it was to distract me so he could get at you… you're sure you didn't see him at all?"

  "Nmmm…" Willuna shovelled more food into her mouth.

  "Then what…" The farmer took a sip of his ale and wiped at his lips. "It's all connected somehow, I'm sure of it. I just can't put it together."

  "Are you done with that?" Without waiting for an answer Willuna lunged across the table and snatched the last bit of bread from the farmer's plate and used it to wipe out her bowl. As she nommed and chewed she realized the farmer was staring at her with a grin. "Never been so hungry," she said and downed the last of the wine. The farmer continued to stare at her. "What?"

  "You saved her," said the farmer.

  Willuna stopped chewing. She dipped her head. She suddenly found it hard to look him in the eyes. His gaze felt heavy, but exceedingly pleasant. The way he was looking at her, he'd never done it quite that way before. Willuna then understood what she was seeing… admiration. "Well," she said, and for the very first time in her life she felt shy, "one of my subjects was in peril."

  "And a queen could do no less."

  They looked at each other across the table.

  "You know," said the farmer, "I think you're going to fit in that throne just fine." He leaned in. "I feel an overwhelming urge to bow to you right now. But since you're supposed to be in disguise, I hope you'll just take my word on it when I say that I'm very glad that you're my queen."

  She didn't feel very queenish at the moment. She felt warm. Like a schoolgirl who had just passed an important test. Like a girl at her very first dance. Like a woman…

  She reached out a hand and flagged down Gretal. She held out her bowl. "May I have another please?"

  "You liked it?" Gretal fixed Willuna with her usual disapproving glare.

  "I've never tasted better. What is it?"

  "Turnip stew."

  Willuna burst out laughing.

  ***

  The night was unusual in that it was quiet. Very, v
ery quiet. Willuna passed it in the inn while the farmer went off to see what the days away had made of his home. The nearly complete lack of sound reminded Willuna of being under the river. Back home at the castle there would have always been the little noises - the distant footfalls of sentries making their rounds, servants working up the last of their daily duties. Here in this village with no name there was nothing - no drunkards wandering the streets, even the local dogs seemed to have agreed to keep it down.

  This quiet, more than anything else, made her understand that this was the furthest she had ever been from home, despite the fact that the castle lay only a good day's walk away. She didn't think she'd be able to sleep, despite the fact that being drowned really did take it out of a body. As it turned out she slept like a log.

  She awoke to the good sounds of villagers greeting each other, a cock calling out the daybreak, and proper warm sunlight bursting into her room. She leapt from the bed.

  She dressed happy-quick. She went down and ate and then gathered up an extra breakfast, sending smile after smile Gretal's scowling way. For just this little breath of time in this silly little village she felt like she could throw off her tiaras, her curtsies and her bows, and just be a girl. She knew it couldn't last, that there was a crown waiting for her, but that just made this moment all the sweeter.

  She bounced back upstairs, carrying the morning sun in her as only a healthy and happy young woman can do, and rapped at the Old Woman's door. In she went. "I've brought you breakfast," she said, setting the tray on the small table beside the bed. "Turnip pancakes, if you can believe it. I know these people want to be plain, but really, there's more than one dullish vegetable in the world." She skipped over to the window and flung open the shutters. "Aren't they silly? Silly but kind." She turned to the Old Woman who was propping herself up in the bed. "And how are you?"

  "Breathing," said the Old Woman with a smile, "thanks to you. Would you get the door dearie?" The Old Woman drowned her pancakes with syrup. "Lock it too, if you please. Don't want any old body interrupting our girl talk. That's a lamb." She dug in, chewing with a gusto that belied her rickety frame. Her appetite seemed more appropriate for a woman half her age and carrying twice the meat on her bones. "I have to say that when I first laid eyes on you I saw nothing but a spoiled brat."

  "Yes… well," said Willuna, seating herself on the chair near the bed. She sounded just like the farmer. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and stared down at her hands, embarrassed.

  "But you," said the Old Woman, pointing at the princess with a dripping knife, "you surprised me. There! Admitted! You were willing to sacrifice yourself for me and sacrifice is a very serious thing. I should know, I gave and I gave… It's a bit of a pity really. You could have made a decent queen."

  "Why, thank you," said Willuna, beaming. This really was turning out to be a grand old day. But then her mind skipped a bit, and her smile froze on her face. "Wait," she said, "how did you know who I am?"

  And then there was a bad bit of silence. The question hung between them thick as the syrup on the Old Woman's pancakes.

  "Oops," said the Old Woman finally, setting aside the breakfast tray. "Is my face red?"

  ***

  If you asked Gretal if this story was about her, she'd tell you that nothing good ever came from being in a story. Certainly there were all those tales with happy endings, but they were all trickery and lies. Because that one little happy ending wasn't really the ending, it was just a pause in time where you decided to stop because you didn't want to carry on with the tale and hear the rest. And that happy ending held another lie in its heart because it made you forget all of the betrayal and the pain and the terror that came before. No, she'd stay clear of our story if she could, thank you very much. She'd already been in one, and it was already the stuff of legend.

  No adventures for Gretal, no sally-forths. She had her village and she had her schedule and she had her man. Well, she was sure of two out of those three anyway. And if the third leg of her security was coming loose, she would just concentrate all that much more on the first two.

  So, her schedule. She woke at the same time she did every day. She was downstairs making breakfast for her guests at the same time she always did, and if they weren't down in time that was their too bad. But the strange girl Idwal had brought home was actually down before Gretal, waiting with a smile that Gretal really wanted to take a whack at with her wooden spoon. The girl was wearing the same dress as yesterday, which of course made her all that much odder. Granted, Gretal looked exactly the same every day, but that was because her closet contained multiple copies of the one grey dress. She wore the same look out of choice, not poor personal hygiene.

  Breakfast had been doled out. Pots and plates scrubbed and cleaned. Now it was time for laundry - linens, to be specific. She went room to room, collecting bedspreads and towels in a big wicker basket.

  She cleaned out the Beige Room, the Grey Room, the Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do Honeymoon Suite, then stopped at the next door. It was closed, the room that old witch was staying in, and there were voices murmuring through. She had never bothered listening in on a guest's conversation before, but never before had a guest been responsible for peeling away her fiancée.

  So she listened. And she learned.

  Everything she feared was true.

  The Old Woman talked. She was indeed a witch. A very powerful witch. When she wasn't been sought out for her beauty, she was being wooed by those who wanted a touch of her power.

  She had mentored a young wizard, many years ago. His parting gift was to foul her magic mirror, trapping her in the disguise of an old crone that she wore to this day.

  From then on… revenge! Hunting, probing, tracking and scouring, sniffing down any little trace of the ungrateful worm who had stolen her beauty. This aged body failing her more and more every day, she had begun to court champions. Knights who lived to service the weak and undeserving. Warriors who lived only for their next great challenge. All had failed to draw out the wizard.

  If the mighty failed, what about the meek?

  "Idwal," whispered Gretal.

  It had worked. Oh so well. The witch's latest buffoon, a nothing from nowhere, had foiled the magician. The witch laughed, her cackle crackling through the door - she would have loved to see the wizard's face when he found he was being bested by a turnip farmer! And now the world was set against the wizard.

  "But," Gretal heard the strange girl say, "if someone kills your wizard how will you get your beauty back?"

  "You know," said the Old Woman, "when he came to me, that boy with his eyes shining bright at the thought of all he could do, he thought the same as you. He thought that life could never be just one thing. That fire didn't just eat up, but it also spit out logs whole and ready to be burned again. Do you know what wisdom is? It's the knowledge that you can become just one thing. That rivers only flow one way. I've lived years now with one thought. It's not just what I think, it's what I eat morning, noon, night, and for a midnight snack. The beautiful woman in me is gone, and I don't care. All I want is revenge. All I need is revenge. There are no more layers to this here onion dearie."

  "What does this have to do with me?"

  "Nothing," said the Old Woman. "I thought you were going to end up like your dear old dad."

  In the hallway, Gretal gasped. She clapped a hand over her mouth. The king-killer was in her inn. Her safe, secure, plainest-of-the-plain inn.

  "You killed my father?" she heard the strange girl say. Except of course the strange girl was no longer just strange. In the space of a sentence she'd been stepped from annoying right on up to royal. A great big step indeed.

  "Killed him?" the Old Woman cackled. There was far too much glee in her voice. "That would be far too easy. Oh no, oh no indeed. He's alive in there my girl, peering out of his stone eyes, smelling the rain through his chiselled nose. For now and always. You think the magician could have come up with something so pitiless? So absolu
tely vile? I don't, not by a good old country mile."

  Gretal was a statue herself, standing outside that door. Looking right at its faded wood grain, but seeing absolutely nothing. Despite her very best efforts, another story had found her. And it was just as bad as the first.

  "So!" the witch went on, "now what to do about our plucky farmer friend? I set up a great big adventure here to drive him back out of this nothing little bend in the road. He was supposed to play the hero and save me, and in doing so get himself a right old shunning so he could never hide in this hole they call a village ever again. He'd be out in the world, aggravating that worm Bodolomous with his every breath. But you went and ruined that, didn't you? I guess I'll need a new adventure for our knight in corduroy armour. Hmmm… if only I had a damsel in distress."

  "He's home," Gretal heard the princess whisper, "where he wants to be. He'll never come after me."

  "You blind little fool," said the Old Woman, and in her heart Gretal knew the witch was right.

  "I won't let you hurt him," said the princess.

  "I don't want to hurt him. I want him to do his job for me."

  "You're going to get him killed. I'll warn him."

  "I can command lightning. I can order spiders to dance. I've got the feel of a child's strangling throat in my fingertips and words of plagues resting in my skull." The Old Woman laughed. "Not a word, dear girl, not a whisper. Or I'll not only acquaint your young man with living nightmares, but I'll send his whole silly village with him."

  Idwal came up the steps, great big springs in his heels. Here was a look that sent Gretal's already-sinking heart spinning right down into the deeps. There was an eagerness there, and Gretal knew it wasn't for her.

  "Idwal," she said, holding up a hand.