But all around the cottage grounds, separating it from the forest, was a meadow left to grow as it would, where he was allowed to graze when he was a donkey.
He already knew that his “boundary” was the edge of the wood; that was where he was turned back any time he tried to pass on his own. But the meadow was wide and irregularly shaped. He hadn’t seen most of it yet, and there were probably places where he could be alone for as long as Hob didn’t actually come looking for him.
For lack of anything better, he wandered out through the kitchen-gardens, over the stile, and into the bottom meadow. He thought there was a pond out there.
Sure enough, he found, when he’d waded through mist and grass for a bit, that there was a pond fed by a lively little stream, rimmed with willow and birch. Someone—Hob, perhaps—had tied a little boat up to the bank. It was far too small to take someone of Alexander’s size and weight, or The Fairy Godmother
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he might have gone for a row, just because the boat was there. But if he sat down on the bank, he couldn’t see the cottage from here; maybe he was no good at pretending that he wasn’t held in this bizarre captivity, but at least, he wouldn’t have it thrust in his nose.
Blackbirds sang a few experimental notes in the reeds, and off in the woods, he heard a cuckoo. It was peaceful here, and somehow soothing to the aches in his soul. He sank down on the bank and watched the sun come up, the clear, thin light streaking across the hazy blue of the sky, as the birds began their morning carol.
He let his mind empty of everything. He had never done that before. But then, he’d never been at a place in his life where he could. In Kohlstania, he’d been Prince Alexander, one day to be Commander in Chief of the Army, currently standing duty under the present Commander, and second in line for the throne. In the Academy, he’d been Cadet Alexander, Squad Leader and Prefect, responsible for the behavior of all of the Cadets subordinate to himself. He’d always had things to remember, duties to perform.
Here he was no one and nothing. His rank mattered not at all, his titles were meaningless, his value only so much as paid for the food he ate. And for today at least, he had no responsibilities at all.
There was a curious freedom in that. Perhaps that was all that freedom really was, in the end, the knowledge that you had nothing and were nothing, and thus, had nothing to lose or gain. “Free as a bird” was synonymous with “tied to nothing” after all.
So he sat and watched the new day unfold as he had 314
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never quite watched a dawn before. And for an hour, at least, he stopped being “Prince,” stopped even being
“Alexander,” and just was.
The sun swiftly burned off the mist, the sun dried the dew off the grass, and he lay back on the soft grass and stared up at the sky. He thought about going up to the cottage for breakfast, but since he hadn’t been working like a dog, he wasn’t particularly hungry. I’ll just lie here a little, he decided.
After everyone else has gotten food, I’ll slip up there and get what’s left. If I get hungry. If…
And somehow, he slipped into a drowse without ever noticing that he had done so.
He dreamed—or thought he dreamed—and in his dream, he opened his eyes at a little sound, and looked into a pair of extraordinary eyes. They were an intense violet color, and belonged to a creature that was about the size of Hob, but nothing like him. This was a girl, a very young child, wraith-thin but bright with health, clothed, so far as he could tell, in nothing but water-weeds. There were water-lilies in her streaming wet hair, and she gazed down at him with all the solemnity of a judge.
“Why are you so unhappy, son of Adam?” she asked, in a voice that reminded him of the sound of a brook flowing over stones.
“Because—I want to be free,” he replied without thinking. “I want to go home, before people forget I ever existed.”
“Ah,” the child said, looking wise. “Are you sure that is what you want?”
“Of course I’m sure!” he replied. “I’d do anything to figure out how to get out of here!”
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“Oh, that is a dangerous thing to pledge, anything, son of Adam,” said the child. “You are lucky I am a small Fae, and have so little power. I could do you a mischief with that pledge, if I were minded.” She gurgled a laugh. “But it is a lovely day, and I am a lazy Fae, as well as small. And—” She tilted her head to the side, considering. “It is in my mind that you are the thing, maybe, that our King called for, on a day not unlike this one, on a spring morning, when a girl old in pain but young in power came to be weighed and judged and gifted.
So I will give you what you ask, the thing that will help you, though it may not seem that way at first to you.” She stood up, and held out her hands, which seemed to fill with light.
And then she spilled the light over him. It floated down on him in incandescent motes that filled him with warmth as they touched him.
“Mortal, here’s the key to free you,” she half-sung, and half-chanted. “See yourself as others see you!”
Then she suddenly lifted up on one toe, spun in place, and vanished with a tinkling laugh and a glow that blinded him.
There was nothing standing above him, and no sign there ever had been anything but dream.
He blinked, and raised a hand to rub his eyes. “Maybe I am sickening for something,” he muttered to himself. What kind of a daft dream had that been?
His stomach growled, and he sat up; and maybe some of the leaden lethargy had lifted. He was hungry, anyway.
Breakfast first. Then—see what would happen, on a day when nothing was happening as he had come to expect.
He got to his feet and brushed himself off, and really saw the clothing he was wearing.
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Each day that he had spent as himself, he had awakened in it, and despite all the heavy labor he did while working in it, the clothing looked exactly as it had the moment he had been transformed into a donkey. The first day, after he had washed, Lily had taken it from him and given him coarse, common laborer’s clothing; he’d taken back his own and put it on damp when she’d washed it. After that first day, he had refused to surrender it. But now, as he brushed grass and bits of leaf and twig from the tight military-style breeches and tunic, he paused in dismay.
Not because it was filthy, because it wasn’t—it was no dirtier than it had been when he’d been so unceremoniously transfigured. But—he realized at that moment how utterly ridiculous it was.
It was completely unsuitable for doing the sort of work he’d been put to; too tight, too ornamented, too ostentatious, too impractical, too hot. There was a reason why that woman swanned about in her peasant garb; this was a farm, and she was working just as hard as the rest of them. He’d seen her; milking the cows, tending the garden, and presumably, doing things in the cottage as well. You couldn’t do any of those jobs trussed up in a Court Gown, teetering on high-heeled slippers.
And apparently the rule of “if you don’t work, you don’t eat” applied to her as well.
He wasn’t proving anything by clinging to this ridiculous suit of clothing except that he was stubborn. And, possibly, stupid as well.
Yes; well, look what she turned you into, after all, commented that voice in the back of his mind. Making the outside match the inside?
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He would have had a hard time denying it at that moment, so he didn’t even bother to try.
Instead, he made his way slowly up to the cottage, with another request besides food on his mind.
To his intense relief, there was no sign of the Unicorns or that woman, but the Brownie Lily was already at work in her garden. She straightened as he came up the path and gave him a measuring look.
“Robin says he thinks your sickening for something,” she said abruptly. “Well?”
“Not that I know
of, Mistress Lily,” he said. “But I would like something to eat—and—” he hesitated, then blundered on “—if you still have the shirt and breeches you gave me to work in, I would like to get rid of these. For now, anyway.”
Her expression didn’t change, except that her eyes narrowed a little. In speculation? Perhaps.
He wondered what she saw when she looked at him, then got a kind of flash of what it might be. Sullen, rude, restless, stubborn. Foolish, insisting on working in his stupid quasi-uniform, as if anyone around here, where magic flowed and your dress could change in a wink, would be impressed! Pigheaded, too. And very, very young. Of course, he’d seem young to one of the Fair Folk; however not? He had no idea how old Lily was, but she’d mentioned serving several of this Godmother’s predecessors, so he must seem like an infant to her.
He flushed. And added, belatedly. “If you please?”
“If I—ah, right. Come along with you, then,” she said, and got to her feet.
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She led him to the kitchen door, left him there, and came out with the clothing and a basket. “Here,” she said, thrusting both at him. “You can’t go far, but—well, breaking your fast by the pond is—and a book—ah, here!”
Startled, he took the clothing and basket, remembered at the last minute to thank her, and decided to leave while she was still treating him nicely. What had gotten into these people? First Master Hob, thinking he was ill and giving him no work for the day, and now Mistress Lily!
Feeling unwontedly modest, he got out of sight around a shed and changed into the commoner’s clothing. And knew in an instant that he had been a fool to refuse it before this. It wasn’t coarse; on the contrary, the loose shirt was of linen as fine as anything he owned. For the first time he felt comfortable, not hot and sweaty, with a collar and waistband that were both too tight.
That left the boots—
He looked at them, looked at his bare feet, and wriggled his toes in the grass, experimentally. Riding boots, especially cavalry boots, were not made for walking. He hadn’t gone barefoot since he was a child….
He left the boots on top of the clothing on the kitchen step, and took the basket back down to the pond.
There was a book on top of the napkin that covered the food. He picked it up, curiously.
The Five Hundred Kingdoms: A History of Godmothers, said the faintly luminous letters on the cover. He hesitated a moment, then chose a piece of fruit and began to read while he ate.
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* * *
“Hmm,” Elena said, when Lily had finished explaining why the pile of clothing was beside the kitchen door and the Prince was nowhere in sight. “You don’t suppose—” “He did say ‘if you please,’” Lily pointed out. “And
‘Thank you.’ It’s possible he’s finally turned the corner.”
“And it’s possible that pigs will fly, but I’m not running out to buy any manure-proof umbrellas just yet,” Rose replied dourly, before Elena could say anything.
“His brother is just about to earn his freedom,” Elena felt moved to counter. “And I’d have given that lower odds than this.”
“Hmph. I’d have said it would take magic to get that one to see what faults brought him here,” said Rose, and gathered up the quasi-military uniform to clean and put in storage. From now on, Elena’s spell would transform Alexander’s current gear, rather than his original clothing.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Lily said to Rose’s retreating back.
“I don’t know that it would matter,” Elena replied, picking up a bread roll dripping with melted butter, and biting into it thoughtfully. “Once the blinders are off, it’s rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to.”
Lily’s glance was startled. “You don’t suppose—” Then she stopped.
“I don’t suppose anything,” Elena told her. “But I do know this much. Some of the other Fae have been very interested in him. There have been a great many of them flitting about on the edges of the forest, far more than usual, and I don’t think it’s entirely because of the presence of all the Unicorns 320
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here. Some of them have even come to me directly to ask about him.”
“Welladay.” Lily’s eyes widened a little, as Elena helped herself to another roll. “The Wild Fae don’t talk much to us; we’ve not much in common with them. Like a fish trying to talk to a bird, I suppose, or a rock to a star. I hadn’t noticed them about, but then, I wouldn’t. But interfering—”
“Just tell me this—what would one of them do if—just speculating, mind you—he happened to wish aloud to know how to get himself out of here?” Elena raised an eyebrow at Lily, who clapped her hand to her mouth.
“By Huon’s horn! That would appeal to the mischiefs!”
Lily exclaimed. “Because—the only way for him to get out of here without even bending your magic is—”
“To change his ways,” they said together, and Elena smiled.
“And it has to be sincere and permanent, just like what his brother’s going through,” she added. “So—maybe. The Wild Fae don’t, won’t bind if they can help it. But they’ll change, oh, yes, or else, they’ll midwife change along. We’ll see. I’m not entirely agreeing with Rose, either, but it doesn’t take much to backslide.”
“And The Tradition?” Lily asked cautiously. Elena shook her head. The truth was, that since that odd day in her room, when she had confronted the faceless force that was The Tradition with her own will, although she had still felt its power circling around her to the extent that she felt like one of the Great Sorceresses, with enough magic at her command to move the world, she had not felt that terrible pressure of it on her, forcing her to walk a path she was not at all willing to take.
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“This doesn’t feel like The Tradition,” she said only. “This is—new.”
Lily blinked. Then said, “Well—good.”
“It will be, if he can hold to this course,” Elena replied.
“If.”
“‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers,’” quoted Lily briskly. “And my garden is not getting weeded by me sitting here.”
“Nor those harvest-potions getting brewed by themselves,” Elena agreed, finishing the last of her breakfast.
“Still—” She took a long thought. “Let’s make a point of rewarding virtue, shall we?”
She and Lily exchanged a smile that might have been called “conspiratorial.”
“Good idea,” said Lily. “A very good idea. ‘Catching more flies with honey,’ eh?”
“There’s truth in old saws,” Elena agreed.
And maybe in a Wild Fae’s help as well.
Whatever had happened to the Prince—whether it was a bit of helpful interference from one of the Fair Folk, getting sense beat into him, as Hob opined, a bout of brain-fever the way Robin suggested, Rose’s suggestion that he’d managed to wear out his stupidity, or just simply that he realized that there was a reason why he’d wound up as a donkey—that day marked the turning-point.
He still got angry, insulted people, and showed his temper. But it was in short bursts, usually after a long and exhausting task, and he had even begun apologizing for it afterwards. And as the season moved into harvest-time, Elena made good on her determination to “reward virtue”
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other day, and told Hob to find a real donkey—“or really, whatever you think we need”—to purchase when the Horse Fair came to the village.
Hob left in the morning with a purse full of silver, and returned that evening, well before sunset, just as Alexander came up to the cottage for his supper.
The sound of hooves on the road made him look up, and brought Elena to the
door. The look on his face when he saw Hob arrive riding one donkey and leading two mules was worth every silver penny that Hob had spent.
Nevertheless, he hastened to help the Brownie to unharness and put the three new animals in the stable—and put one of them into the very stall that he had been occupying since he had been brought to the cottage.
He was still enough of a Prince not to go to the subordinate for answers, though; when the work was done, as she had expected, he came straight out and looked about to see if she was anywhere in sight. Since she had been waiting for him to do just that, he didn’t have far to look.
And he walked straight over to her, his demeanor a mixture of emotions and attitude that was so comical in its way that she had to fight to keep a straight face. For all that he was being scrupulously polite to her, he still deeply resented what she was doing to him. For all that he recognized what an idiot he had been, he resented that she was punishing him for it. And he was sullenly, burningly angry that he was still, in effect, her prisoner. She was, in a way, the Enemy—and now he had to come to the Enemy to find out what was in store for him now.
She watched him try to find a way to ask what her intentions were without asking the question directly. He didn’t 324
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want to hope too much—yet hope was hard to keep down.
Finally, he settled, and asked, harshly (probably more harshly than he intended), “Am I sharing my stable with animals, now?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, “since I expect you’ll be using the room in the loft, now.” She watched varied emotions chasing themselves across his face—no real surprise that there was some bitter disappointment there, since this might have meant, and he surely hoped it had meant, that his term of correction was over. “Unless, of course,” she added, so he understood why she was not letting him go quite yet, “you backslide.”
“I—” She watched the temper rise; watched him struggle to control it. And expected the outburst of anger and insults.
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