You might think it would be easier to find a damsel in distress and actually save her life. Maybe so, but my mind doesn’t work that way.
We’d been walking for several days since Axgaard, dragging the reluctant horse behind us. We were near Zibria when we saw the carriage.
Remember what I said about horses, and how no one in their right mind would ride one across the messy landscape of Mocklore? That goes double for carriages. Triple, quadruple—if I could think of a word that meant more times than quadruple, I’d use it. Away from the cities or the Great Mocklore Road, no one would even consider travelling in a horse-drawn carriage.
Nevertheless, there it was. A carriage bumped its way along the lower Zibrian moorland, occasionally lodging a spindly wheel in an oversized rabbit-hole. As carriages go, it was as impractical as humanly possible. It was round and pumpkin-shaped, which means the occupants would have to curl up inside like hunchbacked slugs. It was also gilded, which made it prey for any passing thug or profit-scoundrel—at least, it would if the constant jolting of the journey hadn’t scraped off half the gilt work. The profit-scoundrels were probably following behind at a safe distance, picking the golden flakes off the trees and rocks. The wheels of the carriage were high and thin. They kept getting snagged on branches, tall blades of grass and the aforementioned rabbit holes. The two horses pulling the damn thing were covered from head to toe in silver bells, cockle-shells and other atrocities of beadwork. The contraption lurched from side to side despite the desperate flailings of a queasy coachman. By the looks of it, a gust of wind from the wrong direction would collapse coach, horses and all into a pile of very attractive rubble.
Inside the carriage, there was a princess. There would have to be, really.
Mocklore Survival Guide #4: Princesses.
Technically, there aren’t any in Mocklore any more, given that a princess should be the daughter of a king, a queen or an emperor. Kings and queens were abolished sometime in the last century, and Emperor Timregis (this was in the days before he was horribly assassinated) had been on the throne nearly fifty years without producing an heir. However, because people like having princes and princesses around (for the sake of fairy tales if nothing else), the rules of etiquette were rewritten so that the children of Lordlings were given the honorary status of prince/esses.
The summer I turned seventeen and went to Seek Fortune, there were exactly two princesses in Mocklore, both daughters of the Jarl of Axgaard. One of them was crowned Jarl herself a few years later, and the other took herself off to join the Sparkling Nuns. I knew instantly that this was not one of the Axgaard girls. No braids, no rosy cheeks, no battle-axes cunningly disguised as jewellery. This was a foreign princess, a different kettle of fish altogether.
Mocklore Survival Guide #5: Foreign Princesses.
Foreign princesses visiting the Mocklore Empire follow a certain pattern. They wear floaty dresses, pointy hats and wistful expressions. Occasionally a few of them come here looking for husbands (preferably princes or heroes) but they tend to get scared off by the various magical explosions, mysterious events and dangerous creatures that most native Mocklorns take for granted. Occasionally, they get eaten by dragons. But that only happened twice.
This girl was the foreign princess to end all foreign princesses. Her hat had not one, but two pointy bits. Instead of going straight up, the pointy bits curled around in an elaborate headdress from which tiny silver beads dangled prettily. A mesh of jeweled netting held the rest of the princess’s blonde hair in place. Her gown was velvet, attached to a fluffy cape that trailed out of both windows of the carriage. Both the gown and the cape were pink. Why anyone would deliberately create pink velvet is beyond me. But there you are. There she was. A painted doll crying out to be rescued from something.
I couldn’t hold myself back.
–§–§–§–§–§–
In order to put my latest devilishly cunning plan into action, Luc and I had to go fishing. Luckily, it’s something we’re both rather good at. Within two hours we had a hoard of a dozen large trout and several handfuls of tiddlers.
“It’s a waste of good fish,” Luc warned me.
I grinned at him, stuffing my bodice with tiddlers. “You’re saying that because you didn’t think of it first.”
We left the stream and made our way across the uneven ground. There was no road, of course, so the stupid carriage had only rattled along about half a mile during the time we had taken to gather our fish. “Up, I think,” I said to Luc. He smiled back at me, liking this part. We’re both champion tree-climbers from way back—truth be told, he’s a smidge better at it than I am, even taking skirts into account.
We swarmed up separate trees, jumping from branch to branch until we were right over the carriage, which was stuck in yet another rabbit hole. I pulled a trout out of Luc’s sack, aimed carefully and struck the coachman in the left ear. He jumped wildly and stared at the fish as it flopped on the ground. Luc threw two fish in quick succession, one hitting the coach and the other slapping the coachman on the back of his head. The coachman looked up in alarm, but the foliage was thick enough to hide us from sight. I let a handful of tiddlers dribble through my fingers. They plopped against the coach and pattered around the poor idiot’s feet.
With a strangled yelp, the coachman threw himself at the carriage door and scrambled inside. “Your highness!” we heard. “It’s a rain of fish! We must shelter, I’ve heard terrible stories!”
I grinned. Good to see traditions surviving, such as the grand old tavern tradition that all servants of foreign aristocrats must be told horror stories about Mocklore’s environmental hazards until they are quivering wrecks.
A princessly voice reached us from within the carriage. “Do something about it!” she commanded.
Luc leaned out of his branch and lobbed a large trout so perfectly that it bounced inside the window of the carriage. I could have kissed him. The princess and the coachman both screamed in unison.
I left Luc in charge of fish-hurling, and scampered down from the branches. Time to make my entrance. I threw myself at the carriage, beating on the door. “Please, please help me! Give me shelter from the rain of fish!”
“Don’t let it in!” cried the princess, miserable cow.
I looked pitiful, clawing gently at the door, trying to get the coachman’s sympathy.
“It’s only a girl, your highness,” he said.
Luc lobbed a medium-sized trout at the carriage, which bounced off and slapped me in the bosom. I’m not sure how deliberate it was, but I screamed loudly enough to be convincing, and the coachman swung the door open to drag me inside.
The curvy insides of the carriage were well padded but desperately uncomfortable, particularly with three of us packed in. Not that I was busy gawping at the décor. I had a job to do. It involved hysterical sobbing, plus dialogue. “Oh, thank you, kind sir, my lady. The storm came up so suddenly, and I was afeared! I’ve heard of people drowning in fish season.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” the coachman agreed. Bless those precious tavern stories.
The princess wrinkled her nose and was about to say something, but Luc had the great timing to smack more trout down on the roof of the carriage, along with a couple of rocks to shake us up.
“Ohhh!!” screamed the princess, grabbing at the coachman.
“Oh-ohhhh!!” screamed the coachman, grabbing my knee.
I managed not to grab anyone, but I bounced a few times to make the carriage rattle, and joined in the screaming. “What will we do?” I wailed. “This could go on for days and the carriage will break under the weight of all the fish!”
Since the princess and the coachman both had their eyes tightly shut, I grabbed the last handful of tiddlers from my bodice and threw them at the pointy headdress. Some of them stuck there. The rest tumbled down into her highness’s royal lap.
“Ooooooh,” she squealed.
Then, bless him, I heard Luc’s hero voice. He was getting a
wfully good at dramatic timing. “Don’t worry!” he bellowed from outside. “I’ll save you!”
And he did.
What we pretended later was that he had thrown a giant fishhook at the carriage, secured it, and pulled the weight of the carriage, occupants and horses at great speed for several miles across the countryside. It made a great story, and Luc looked suitably modest while he told it.
The truth, of course, was that he hitched our horse up to their horses and let them do the work until we were in a suitably different-looking bit of Zibrian countryside. The coachman and the princess were both so shaken that they had no problem believing our version, particularly as they didn’t know Luc and I were in league together.
We ate rabbit for supper—barbecued over the campfire, half-charred and delicious. I managed to drip a few hints to Princess Desirée (can you believe someone seriously gave that name to a princess? Why not just call her ‘Marry-me-quick’) about how Luco the Magnificent was a Baron in disguise, and half these lands belonged to him. Her eyes sparkled.
Luc got wind of what I was doing and dragged me away from the others under the pretext of showing me ‘the way to that village you mentioned, young lady.’
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bounty?” he hissed.
I acted innocent. Big hobgoblin eyes are good for that. “I’m helping.”
“How are you helping?”
“Well, now she thinks you’re a Baron, she’s definitely interested. And once we show her the castle—”
“I don’t have a castle!”
“What I thought was, I’d go ahead and tip a few peasants some coin to say these lands belong to Baron Luco, and clear the way for you to the castle.”
“What castle, Bounty?”
“When we were kids, the Void twins told me about the old witch city of Shadowe, and how their Uncle Imago turned it into a giant castle. It’s not far from here.”
“I can only think of one reason why someone would want a giant castle, and it doesn’t sound good,” said Luc suspiciously.
“Technically he’s not a giant, apart from being forty feet tall—but that’s not important. What I thought was, I could talk him into lying low for a bit. We only need a teeny bit of giant castle to impress the princess over there, and we can always promise old Uncle Imago a cut of the dowry if she…”
“If she what?” Luc demanded. “If she marries me? Is that the plan here, Bounty? Because I thought we were Seeking our Fortune as an alternative to settling down and getting married!”
“Marriage to a foreign princess is a Fortune,” I argued. “You’ll be made for life.”
I’ve never seen Luc so angry and so cold at the same time. “Some simpering little rich wife to keep me in velvet shoes and roast peacock? Is that what you think I want? Or do you want me married off so you can strut away and start your brand new life with a clear conscience?”
That last guess was uncomfortably accurate, apart from the strutting bit. “Luc, you’re overreacting. I wanted to give you a good start in life before I start my adventures. It’s not like we were planning to hang out together forever!”
He stared at me with ice in his eyes. Hurt, wounded ice. He turned on his heel and went back to the campfire.
I sat down suddenly. My legs didn’t feel like standing upright. Had he thought we were a life partnership? That didn’t make sense. He knew me. He knew I was fickle, and shallow, and heartless… and despite all that, I had a horrible feeling that he might be in love with me.
Ouch.
–§–§–§–§–§–
I didn’t go back to the campfire for a long time. When I did, the princess was fast asleep, curled up in her ornate carriage like a particularly bendy kitten. The coachman sprawled out on the grass, snoring noisily. Luc was still awake.
“I don’t want to talk,” he muttered.
I hesitated. “I don’t suppose you want to go on with the giant castle plan, either?”
“No.”
“So what do we do?”
He looked at me, finally, and the ice was still there. “I think you should follow your other plan, Bounty. The one about us going our separate ways.”
“But you’re not—” I swallowed what I was going to say, but Luc caught it anyway.
“Not ready? Not set for life? I can take care of myself, Bounty. It is possible. I don’t need to marry a princess and I don’t need you.”
I had been going about this wrong. Protecting him, making all these plans on his behalf—he would never really grow up and stand on his own two legs until I was gone. The best thing I could do for him was leave. I should have done it from the start. It was going to hurt more, this way.
Luc was there suddenly, standing close to me. He took the bag off me and let it fall to the grass. “Not right now,” he said softly. “You might break your leg in the dark.”
“I can see in the dark,” I whispered back. “And it’s a full moon.” The sky was black around us, no moon in sight. “I mean, it will be. When it pops up. Which could be any minute now.”
Luc hesitated, and his fingertips touched mine. “I thought,” he muttered. “If we’re splitting up for good, if that’s it, then—”
If I was leaving, then I could do the thing that I’d been wondering about for half my life. It wasn’t like I had to worry about making things more complicated, not if I wasn’t going to see him again for months, or years.
So, yes. I shoved my mouth in his general direction, and kissed him square on the mouth. Neither of us had much practice at this, but we figured it out pretty fast.
To my surprise—or maybe not—Luc slid his arms around my waist, pressed his hand into my hair, and sneakily turned the kiss into something more sweet and gentle than I had intended. “I love you, Bounty,” he mumbled into my mouth.
“Still want me to leave?” I had to check.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“Good.” I slipped my fingers into his belt, started untucking his white shirt. “Those are the only circumstances under which I would do this.”
“I know,” he said, and pulled me down on to the grass.
I had been keeping tabs on him via the village girls (no particular reason, I’m nosy, that’s all), and I knew for a fact that this was his first time, but his fingers and his mouth felt pretty expert to me. We kissed and we touched and we rolled a little way away from the dying campfire, for the sake of modesty.
His skin was silver in the darkness and I suppose mine must have been too. When the moment came, of total naked togetherness, he held me tight and wouldn’t let me go.
Finally, he slept. When he woke up, I wouldn’t be there. It was the beginning of a pattern that would last a lifetime, and I was okay with that.
–§–§–§–§–§–
There was a Memorable Moon that night. Our moon-cycles in Mocklore are as unpredictable as rainfall—the moon can wax and wane over a day and half if she feels so inclined, or she can stretch it over weeks and weeks and weeks. One year we had the same crescent moon for four months. You don’t want to know what that sort of thing does to the tides—but it explains our lack of seaside towns, and why the fishing trade is considered the most dangerous of professions.
Once in a while, the erratic cycles catch up with the moon and she gives everyone a treat for putting up with her frivolous behavior. She swells into extra-fat fullness and hangs in the sky like a huge, beautiful teardrop. She becomes so wonderful, so powerful that people fall in and out of love without even noticing. Children are conceived, nightflowers bloom and the barriers between this world and the next open up a little wider than usual. We call it a Memorable Moon. It changes lives.
That night, lying on the grass in the middle of nowhere, I watched the moon rise and I knew what kind of moon it was. I watched it while I found my clothes and tugged on my boots. I kept watching it as I walked out of the castle and into the castle, heading toward my next adventure, leaving Luc behind.
I
f I’d thought to watch where I was going instead of staring at the damned moon all night, things might have turned out differently. But, no. My eyes were full of moon and my head was full of thoughts, so I didn’t even realise when my feet first crossed from one world to the next.
The first thing I noticed was the voices. Whispering, teasing voices. I thought it was the trees or the wind or the wind in the trees. It’s a logical assumption. You hear a hollow howling, a gentle whispering, a chitter-chattering of nothing in particular and you think—wind, trees. Even if your blood is of the fey, you think that. But then you catch words in the wind, questions in the trees and you realise it’s something else altogether.
Invisible fingers tugged at the tiny hairs on my skin. They scampered across the back of my neck, traced the line of my spine, rattled in my ears. Tiny voices pricked and poked at me. Whoareyouwhodoyouthinkyouarewhyareyouhere?
I retraced my steps and flung myself around in circles. I walked quickly and I ran and I rolled around in the dirt, but nothing would shake them off. I pinched and I slapped, but the scampering fingers and the grabbing little voices hung on for dear life.Whoareyouwhodoyouthinkyouarewhyareyouhere?
Louder and louder they questioned me, tugged at me, grazed their teeth across my skin. Whoareyouwhodoyouthinkyouarewhyareyouhere?
Eventually, I broke. I screamed out my true name—I whispered it, yelled it, chattered it, sang it, shrieked it over and over, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy them. I could see faces now, bursting out of tree trunks and the night sky and the ground at my feet.Whoareyouwhodoyouthinkyouarewhyareyouhere?
Their voices pressed against me, rough and demanding, with such intensity that I thought I would fly apart into a million tumbling pieces. I stared pleadingly at the moon that had got me into this mess, but she was having none of helping the likes of me. My insides went very calm as I realised the answer, the one that would satisfy all three questions at the same time. I knew where I was, and I knew what they wanted.
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 91