The Thirteenth Princess

by Diane Zahler

  Miles and miles we trudged, or so it felt. I was confused: we were walking and walking, so it couldn’t be an illusion, could it? But it couldn’t be real, either, for I knew perfectly well that our hallway was not ten miles long. It made my brain ache to think about it.

  Then, finally, we stood outside my sisters’ door. I reached out to hammer on the door, fearful of what was taking place within, but Babette stopped my hand. We listened for a moment; there was no sound from inside. Then Milek put his face close to the door, spoke Aurelia’s name, and began to talk.

  I could not tell you exactly what he said. It was a song and a poem and a story, a tapestry of a tale, woven with strands of fear and magic and love. He spoke for Aurelia’s ears, though we did not know whether she could hear on the other side of the door. He told of our adventure beneath the lake, again as if it were a dream he’d had. He described the dance, reminding Aurelia of her beauty and of his love for her, and then he told of the cock’s crow and the terrifying disintegration of the castle. He recounted the disappearance of the princes, and I thought I heard a muffled gasp from within the chamber. He told of our terror over the snakes and the water rats, of the terrible wind, and then he described the wave that had taken and nearly killed us. When he was done, there was silence for a long, long time.

  Finally, Milek spoke once more. “Aurelia,” he called gently, but loudly enough to be heard within. “Aurelia, I nearly lost my life for love of you. Would you have been sad if I were gone?”

  The answer came immediately. I could hear the strength in Aurelia’s voice through the thick door as she cried out, “Oh, my dearest, if you had died, I would have died as well!”

  The chamber door flew open with a crash, and from within came a cry of wrath and despair that nearly shattered my heart. I ran inside, and Milek and Breckin and Babette followed suit. There were my sisters, sitting up in their beds, their faces flushed and their eyes alert for the first time in months. And there, at the end of the passage between the rows of beds, stood Nurse, the young Nurse who had shown herself in the window, not the old woman whom I thought I had known. She was in a terrible fury, and her wrath was horrible to see.

  Nurse stood waiting for us, and I stumbled to a halt when I saw her. If I could have run backward out the door and away, I think I would have. But as I turned, I saw Milek bending to the bed where Aurelia now sat up. Her arms went around him, her lovely face turned up to his, and I realized that there was no turning back.

  Then Nurse saw Babette, bringing up the rear, and her face changed and rearranged itself once more. A crafty look came into her eyes, and her voice when she spoke was nearly a purr.

  “Well, Babette,” she said. “It has been a long time indeed. I did not think we would meet again.”

  “Do I know you?” Babette asked politely.

  “Perhaps not,” Nurse said. “But I know you. Was it not you who gave a gift to the princess Aurelia at her christening?”

  Babette smiled gently. “How could that be?” she said. “Witches and all magic were banned from the kingdom when the dear child was born.”

  “Because I made it so!” Nurse cried out. “Because I did not want the queen protected! Because I wanted…” She stopped.

  “So it was you,” Babette said musingly. “How did you do it?”

  Nurse frowned. “I convinced the king it would be safer. He knew the old stories—the dangers of the angry witch, the jealous witch at the christening. He knew his daughter would be beautiful and beloved—a perfect target. What father would run that risk?”

  “But I came anyway,” Babette pointed out.

  Nurse snorted. “I did not know until it was too late. I saw you enter, but you were just an old woman. And you were by the cradle before I realized the illusion—and it was too late.”

  “I protected her,” Babette said. She sounded proud and rather pleased with herself.

  “What did you use?” Nurse asked.

  “The Protection of Love,” Babette told her. “Do you know that charm? The more she is loved, the stronger the shield. And when she is loved by someone with his whole heart, and he would give his life for her, no spell can hold her.”

  Nurse glared at her. I could feel her gaze burning past me, and I felt a sudden pain in my arm. I looked down at my sleeve. It was smoldering. I turned to see Babette’s apron burst into flames, and without thinking I grabbed a quilt off the nearest bed and threw it around her. Smoke rose up, but the fire was out. I could feel Babette trembling through the quilt. The room was silent.

  Then Nurse spun around, and everywhere her gaze landed, there fire broke out. In a moment the bedclothes on every bed were ablaze, and my sisters screamed and tried to flee as their hair and nightdresses caught fire.

  “Use the blankets!” Milek shouted. “Wrap the blankets around yourselves! Drop down and crawl!”

  Those of us unscathed beat the flames out on the others, and the horrid smell of burned hair rose up. The room began to fill with smoke. Then I heard Babette’s voice speaking words I did not know. There was a crash of thunder—indoors?—and suddenly rain began beating down on us from a dark cloud that hovered near the ceiling. The flames were out in a moment, and the room silent but for the coughing and crying of my sisters. I pushed between the beds to one of the windows and flung it open, gasping for breath as cold, clean air blew in.

  When I turned, I saw that Nurse was herself again, the wrinkled old woman whom we had loved all our lives. The bedchamber was destroyed, a mess of charred bedding and water. The beds ran with rainwater; my sisters’ hair dripped down their backs, and their nightclothes clung to them. Asenka, who was closest to me as I stood by the window, reached out her hand to me, and I grasped it tightly. I could feel her shaking. Suddenly I was very angry, and my anger made me reckless.

  “Why have you done this, Nurse?” I shouted. “Look at us! You have nearly killed my sisters. Why would you do such a thing?”

  “I?” Nurse said sweetly, her voice calm and measured, as it was when she soothed my sisters to sleep when they had the toothache. “I see only one witch in this room. I would not harm my darlings, would I, Alima?” She turned to Alima, and taking a handkerchief from her apron pocket, where she always kept one, she dabbed the water from Alima’s face. Alima turned to me, her expression blank with confusion.

  “It’s only Nurse,” she said. “She wouldn’t hurt us. You know she wouldn’t! What reason could she have?”

  “I think I know,” Babette said. “I believe, after all these years, I have figured it out.”

  Nurse bustled up the corridor between the rows of beds toward Babette. She looked fierce, but fierce as Nurse looked when one of my sisters would not go to bed on time, not fierce as the witch who had set fire to the room had looked. “I think you should leave, madam,” she said to Babette. “I think you are not wanted here. We must clean up this terrible mess you have made and get these girls to bed. They’ve been ill.” She reached Aurelia’s bed. Aurelia now stood beside it, wet as a newborn kitten, and she clutched Milek’s arm tightly.

  Nurse frowned mightily. “Young man,” she scolded him, “you are not allowed in the princesses’ bedchamber. Kindly remove yourself, and be certain that I will speak to the butler about this. And you too,” she said to Breckin, who stood near the door, his red hair dripping.

  Nobody moved. Nurse began to swell up the way she did when she was annoyed, and we all shrank back, not knowing whether she would turn into the other Nurse again, setting fire to all that moved. She did not. She stayed our Nurse, sputtering and scolding, and I could see my sisters looking more and more unsure of themselves as she ordered them hither and thither—“Dry your hair, princesses! Come, let me find you clean nightclothes! My dears, come away from the window, you’ll catch your death!” Only Aurelia stood firm, her hand in Milek’s.

  “Sisters,” she said, “we must go.” Her voice was commanding, and even I felt I should obey. The other eleven collected themselves and scooted over sodden mattres
ses, squelched over soaked carpets, to join Aurelia at the door. Nurse was now back at the window, and I watched her brow wrinkle in a frown. She was not used to being disobeyed; for more than two score years she had ruled the bedchamber.

  “Girls—,” she said, but Aurelia interrupted her.

  “We have nothing more to say to you,” she informed Nurse coolly. “We will be sure Father hears of this. He will deal with you.”

  “Hears of what?” My father’s voice came, unexpected, and several of my sisters gave little shrieks as they saw him at the door. He surveyed the wreckage of the bedchamber, and his gray eyebrows rose on his forehead. “What on earth—,” he managed. We stood stock-still, all of us, unsure of which way to move. It was fascinating to see his face as he registered all that the chamber contained. He saw his daughters standing, flushed and dripping, and years dropped from him as he realized that they were awake and alive and, more, that they were well. He saw the fire damage and the water damage, and a wave of confusion and dismay passed over him. He saw Milek and Breckin—men in his daughters’ bedchamber!—and fury took hold of him. Before he could gather his wits together to speak, though, Babette came forward.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, and sank in a deep curtsy.

  “Who are you, woman?” he said rudely. “What do you here, in my daughters’ chamber?”

  “Perhaps you will remember me from the christening of your firstborn, Aurelia,” Babette said to him. Father looked at her, and looked again. I could see him try to recall; then all at once he remembered.

  “You are the witch,” he proclaimed. “I had you banished—I had all of you banished! You were nearly killed when you appeared that day.”

  “But your wife intervened for me,” Babette reminded him. “Because she and I were old friends; because I loved her. Do you remember?”

  “I remember,” Father said in a low voice. “I spared you for Amara’s sake. But she is not here now.”

  “There was another witch at that christening,” Babette told him. “The spell I cast was for protection only. The other cast a spell as well, though we did not know.”

  “Another witch?” Father said, confused. “There was no one there! Just Amara and the baby, and myself, and the priest, and Nurse. And you, of course.”

  “Yes,” said Babette.

  There was a long silence, and then, as one, we turned to look at Nurse. Caught off guard, she was staring at Father. The longing in her eyes was palpable, and I drew a deep breath. It seemed strange, inappropriate in such an old woman, to see such adoration. Then, for a moment, Nurse’s features wavered, and we could see again the young, beautiful woman, the witch, beneath the illusion. Father gasped and staggered back, his hand to his mouth.

  “Taika,” he whispered.

  “Ah,” said Nurse. “You do remember.” She seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then her age fell away from her, starting with her hair, which became dark and shining, then her face, which unwrinkled as if an iron were passing over it. Her complexion brightened, her cheeks grew pink, her eyes sparkled. Her furrowed neck, her heavy breasts and thick waist smoothed and slimmed, and then the change was done. She stood before us, a dark-haired, gleaming beauty. There was nothing of our aged Nurse left in her.

  “He loved you once,” Babette said softly. Nurse—Taika—turned on her fiercely.

  “He loves me still!” she cried.

  “No,” Father said. “No. That was long ago. That was lifetimes ago.”

  “I have never stopped,” Taika told him, eyes flashing. “I have remained faithful all these years.”

  “I was a boy!” Father protested. “I loved you as a boy loves, Taika. Then I met my wife, and it was she I loved as a man.”

  “No,” Taika said. Her voice was low and throaty.

  “Yes,” Father insisted. “If you had come to me, I would have told you.”

  “But I was with you all along,” Taika said in silky tones. “As your wife bore only daughters, naught but girl after girl, I was there to comfort you. As she weakened and wizened and all but disappeared, who was it but I who held your hand and patted your brow and consoled you? When she died, who raised your children? And who made sure they would stay with you and not desert you for another man?” With a start I remembered the silent dinners with the princes who had come to call, my sisters’ inability to speak or even look at the men who courted them.

  Father gave a cry then, and I felt terrible sorrow for him. What had this woman done, out of her twisted love?

  “You prevented me from having sons?”

  Taika said nothing, but she smiled.

  “But…,” I protested. “Babette, you said—”

  “I know,” Babette told me. “I said there were few of us who could have that effect. Taika is one who could. She should not have. It could not end well.”

  I looked at Father, and he looked back at me. For the first time—for the only time—he truly looked at me, and I felt that he saw me. Me, Zita, the last-born of his children, his own true daughter; not Zita, the creature who had killed his beloved wife. Now the one who really had killed her was exposed. The witch had caused my mother to have only daughters so that Father would cast his queen aside. I watched this knowledge dawn on Father’s face and saw that he knew he too was at fault for wanting a son so desperately. Between them, Taika and he had driven my mother to her death. In Father’s haunted eyes, I saw at last that he knew I was not to blame, and that he blamed himself.

  “Zita,” he said hoarsely. “Daughter, forgive me.”

  I moved to his side, my tears spilling over, and for the first time he put his arms around me. His embrace was a place of such strength and safety that I felt I might never be afraid again. But too soon he released me.

  And then he turned to Nurse, to Taika.

  “How could you?” he asked, his voice a mixture of bewilderment and anger.

  “How could I not?” she said. “I loved you, don’t you understand? I waited, and I waited. Even after she died, you did not see me. I had thought her death would end it.”

  “End the love I had for her?” he said. “Then you are a fool.”

  “Oh, I am that,” she agreed. “For then you saw only your daughters. The little love you had left, you gave to them. There was nothing for me—nothing! I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it! And then you threatened to dismiss me. ‘They do not need a nurse,’ you said! I could not go. How could I leave you? So I had them dance, and they sickened, and you needed me more and more. And then I thought maybe, if they were not there anymore, you might—”

  Aurelia cried, “Nurse!” with a voice full of pain.

  But Taika was not Nurse, not anymore. She never really had been. This was too much for Aurelia and my other sisters, who had loved Nurse, and they covered their faces against her, weeping. But she turned away from them and looked only at our father, hoping against all hope.

  I turned to look, too, and I saw the fury that we all dreaded spilling over him in a wild rush. At last fear crossed Taika’s face. As Father advanced on her, she backed down the space between the rows of beds, and her arms came up as if to ward off a blow. But Father did not hit her. He wouldn’t. I knew he would never hit a woman, though she was a sorceress. Instead, in a low voice that trembled with anger and horror, he said, “Witch, what have you done?”

  Taika sank almost to her knees, her power weakened by her love for Father. But before she came entirely down, she remembered herself and reared up again, her own anger mounting.

  “You will not have me, after all?” she cried, and her voice rose to a shriek. “I am not good enough for you? Then no one shall ever have you!” She moved her arms in a wild pattern and spoke strange words, and Babette let out a cry. I heard the same terrible crash that had so frightened us in the castle below the lake, and when I looked upward I saw cracks appear in the ceiling and felt a light rain of plaster on my hair. My sisters screamed. The walls seemed to shake. From belowstairs I heard shouts of terror from the serva
nts.

  “Come!” Milek called at the door of the bedchamber. “Hurry!”

  Breckin ran to me and grabbed my hand, but I turned to my father, thinking to beg him to escape with us. I could see no fear in his face as he watched Taika work her magic, only a calm resolve, and I heard him say, very clearly, “My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.” They were the words from the poem I had read, about the lover who longed to join his beloved in death. He was speaking to my mother, and I feared that there was no hope for him. Then he turned to us and said, “Go, daughters. Now! I cannot hold her off for long.” He started toward the witch and grasped her hands, trying to stop whatever destruction she was trying to wreak as she wove her spells in the air.

  My sisters protested, sobbing and calling out to him, but his mouth, no longer twisted, was set in a firm line, and his resolve too was firm. Again he said only, “Go!” And so we went, rushing from the room, leaving my father and Taika facing each other as he gripped her arms and she struggled to escape, speaking dreadful words in an unknown language. Down the hallway—once again its usual length—we raced, and down the stairs, now their usual height. At each door we gathered together servants and Father’s councillors, all terrified, all fleeing from some horror we could not name. At the entrance to the land bridge we stood—Breckin, Milek, my sisters, and I—making sure everyone—serving girls and footmen, Cook and Chiara and the weaselly Burle—got across safely before we stepped on. The servants watched in horror as the lake beneath us began to heave, and we struggled to stay upright.

  The bridge swayed and cracked, and I looked around wildly for Babette. Then I saw her, staggering down the marble staircase. She was so pale, I feared she would faint.

  “Where is Father?” Aurelia cried.

  “You cannot help him, my dear,” Babette told her. “Come, we must get across the bridge. Hurry!”

  We began to cross, but the lake heaved again, and the bridge was submerged. We had to retreat back into the palace. “The boats!” I cried. “To the boats!” We ran down into the lower level to a small door that opened directly onto the water. Tied up there were the little rowboats that my sisters took out on occasion to paddle around the lake. We scrambled into them as the walls and towers shivered above us. I climbed into the last boat, and Milek, who had handed me in, climbed in after me.