Well, practically innocent.
“Mr. Thrombold P. Teabody,” croaked the judge, and peered over the edge of his documents, seeking out a face in the crowded courtroom, “has stated and produced evidence of this”—and now his old eyes moved to the dock, meeting Franz’s stricken gaze—“this young man’s violent behavior, culminating in the vicious flinging of a knife at Mr. Teabody’s face.”
Franz bit the inside of his cheek. It had been a penknife! A penknife used for sharpening quill pens, such as any clerk working for Mr. Teabody used on a daily basis. And he hadn’t flung it at Mr. Teabody. He’d flung it at . . . at . . .
“And I’ve got the scars to prove it!” the thunderous voice of Mr. Teabody declared. With a scrape of chair legs, the spindly banker rose from his seat, pointing at a nearly invisible pink line along his left temple. Really, the penknife had barely grazed him!
Mr. Teabody wasn’t the forgiving sort. And, by virtue of a large purse, he owned half the town, including every single member of the medical board and, most likely, the judge himself.
Franz sank into his seat, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He was doomed.
“The lad’s a menace to society!” Mr. Teabody said. “He ought to be locked up in prison, away from all those innocents his violence will inevitably harm!”
The watching crowd murmured in approval. They might not actually agree with Mr. Teabody, but the drama of the whole thing enthralled them. And after all this drama, one couldn’t help but desire an exciting ending! Prison would be acceptable.
But somehow Franz knew that his fate would be worse than mere imprisonment.
The old judge’s head bobbed on the end of his skinny neck, giving the impression that it might at any moment break off like the head of a dried flower. “Yes, thank you for the reminder, Mr. Teabody,” he said.
He then addressed himself to the medical board which sat in place of a jury, for this wasn’t a criminal trial, but a medical inquest: “Esteemed members of the board, you know the details. Franz Happernickle, clerk, was seen on numerous occasions by coworkers and by Mr. Teabody himself to rave and gesticulate wildly at thin air, rendering all who saw him uneasy, for these fits of mania grew ever more violent. The violence culminated in the events of last week, during which young Master Happernickle did take up a knife . . .”
A penknife! Franz screamed inside his head.
“ . . . and fling it with brutal force at the head of his employer.”
No! At her! At the . . . the . . .
. . . at the ghost . . . .
Franz hung his head in shame. Even in the privacy of his own mind he sounded like a lunatic.
“You have examined the lad,” pursued the judge, though each word wheezed from his lungs as though it might be his last, “both in the context of this court and in private consultations. It is now up to you to reach a verdict.” He dropped the paper and folded his shaking hands. Was that a smile twisting the corner of his withered old mouth? “Esteemed doctors of Yoleston, how do you find the accused?”
The board head stood on cue, his bearded face solemn under the light of the electric bulbs shining starkly down from the ceiling above. “By unanimous agreement, my fellow board members and I do officially declare Franz Happernickle to be insane.”
The crowd murmured again, delighted at the news. One or two dewy-eyed spinsters might have cast young Franz a sympathetic glance—for he was a nice-looking young man despite the extreme redness of his hair and the freckles abundant across his nose—but these were by far the minority. Franz had no family and, apparently, no friends in all of Yoleston to care as his doom was pronounced.
He buried his face in his shackled hands. It wasn’t as though he’d expected any better, but still . . . perhaps a small piece of him had hoped that he’d wake up and discover the events of the last week to be nothing more than a nightmare!
A nightmare prominently featuring a hideous, green, glowing face . . .
The judge pounded his gavel three times, like a foreboding echo. Once the crowd had hushed, he turned his mummified visage upon Franz, who looked out from between his fingers as if through the bars of a prison window. “In light of this pronouncement made by our venerated team of medical experts,” said the judge, “you, Franz Happernickle, will be sent immediately to Briardale Asylum for the Mentally Infirm until such time as you might prove yourself once more a fit member of society.”
The gavel sounded one last time.
“Take him away.”
Chapter 2
WHEN THE THREE AUNTIES stepped into the room, they cried out in dismay. For the past eighteen years they had worked so hard to keep the princess hidden, to protect her against the curse hanging like a precarious sword over her life! Curses might sometimes be avoided, after all, if one takes proper precautions.
But the princess had never been a cautious sort.
“Oh my! Oh me! What can we do?” cried the youngest of the three, clasping her hands as she knelt beside the prone body of the princess.
“Wait a hundred years, I imagine,” said the middle auntie. “Thanks to that counterspell of yours, she won’t be wakened any sooner. And then only if we can find a True Hero in time.”
“A True Hero,” sighed the third auntie, who was the oldest of the three and the most beautiful. She shook her head ruefully, rubbing her temple with one long finger. “Oh, Viola! What possessed you to concoct such a counterspell?”
The youngest fairy—for indeed, the three aunties weren’t aunties at all, but fairies—wiped away a tear. “It seemed the right choice at the time. And how hard can it be? Heroes aren’t so rare as all that.”
“True Heroes are,” said the second fairy irritably. “A True Hero has to have performed one of the Three Great Deeds: save a kingdom, slay a dragon, or move a mountain.”
“Well,” said the youngest fairy, trying to smile through her tears, “at least we have a hundred years to find one—”
She didn’t have the chance to finish her thought, for before the words left her mouth, the sound of a heralding trumpet rang out in the courtyard below, signaling the arrival of the king and his retinue, come to celebrate the princess’s birthday.
“Batwings!” the oldest fairy snapped, moving to the window to gaze down at the horses and courtiers pouring through the gates. “And here I told him it looked as though we would avoid the curse rather neatly. He’s going to be so disappointed.”
“It could have been worse,” said the middle fairy. “If not for Viola here, the princess would be dead. As it is—”
“As it is, she will die even so!”
All three fairies flinched at the sound of this fourth, unexpected voice in their midst. It was a voice of poison, a voice of evil.
A voice they knew all too well.
They whirled around and saw a shadow drop away like a cloak, revealing, not an old, deaf woman, but a tall, powerful Lady of Darkness.
“Mara!” the oldest fairy exclaimed.
No one ever returned from Briardale.
This thought whirled around inside Franz’s mind like an out of control spinning top. He thought it over and over again as they bound him into a straightjacket, propelled him out of the holding house into the street, and guided him toward the somber coach waiting under the streetlamp in the foggy gloom of early morning.
No one returned from Briardale. People went away, locked up far from polite society, and . . . vanished. Forever. And it didn’t much matter if they were really lunatics or not. How many greedy guardians had taken care of inconvenient wards by having them declared insane and shipped away to Briardale? How many husbands or wives had managed to rid themselves of undesirable spouses by a word in the right ear and a one-way ticket to that foreboding edifice deep in the Black Swamp?
But . . . one never expected to find oneself straight-jacketed and climbing into that dreaded coach.
Franz couldn’t look at the crowd gathered along the lamp-lit streets that morning to watch the unfortunate lun
atic as he was sent away. He knew that if he dared meet any of those gazes, he would see the same thought reflected in each pair of eyes: Poor boy. A death sentence would be better.
The coach’s windows were shuttered fast. The seats inside were cushioned but still managed to be hard as stone. Once the door closed behind Franz, he heard the clink of a lock. All was dark as night inside, without even a faint crack of light to alleviate the gloom.
When the coach jolted forward, Franz fell heavily on his side, unable to support himself because of the restricting straightjacket. He wanted to scream but clamped his jaw tight. He wouldn’t give all those onlookers the satisfaction of hearing a lunatic’s yells. The coach bumped over the cobbled street, and Franz almost tumbled from the seat onto the floor, only just managing to brace his feet against the opposite seat and keep himself in place.
Was this the end of everything for him? His existence hadn’t been particularly pleasant up until now, but at least it wasn’t utterly, beyond all reason horrible. Sure, life as a poor coalman’s son wasn’t all ease and smiles, but he’d learned how to read and write, and managed to clean himself up enough to acquire a clerk’s position with Mr. Teabody. He’d earned a full three shillings a day, enough to keep a very small room at the boarding house, sleep on a clean-ish straw mattress, and eat two square-ish meals a day.
All of those luxuries seemed long ago now . . .
Time passed. The coach left behind the cobbled streets and turned onto the main road outside of town, then passed to a smaller, dirt road. The rattling and rumbling became unbearable, and Franz half wondered if he’d arrive at Briardale with his limbs broken to pieces.
What would life in a lunatic asylum be like? Would he be forced to share a cell with other madmen? Visions flashed through his mind, horror stories told of Briardale and its inhabitants. Somehow he knew, he just knew, they would eat him alive.
“Dear me, you’re still angry, aren’t you?”
Franz’s heart stopped. He stared in horror as, on the seat opposite—just where he’d braced his feet to keep himself from falling—something green and misty materialized, swirling and shapeless at first, but resolving at last into the face and form of . . .
“You!” Franz snarled.
Sitting cross-legged before him, her chin on her hands and her eyes blinking with deceptive innocence, was the ghoulish green girl who was the source of all his woe.
She smiled at him, displaying a full set of glowing teeth. “At least you’re acknowledging me again.” She closed one eye as though to study him more intently through the other, then screwed up her face. “They surely haven’t been kind to you through this whole business, have they? Calling you insane! The nerve! But then, that’s what you get for throwing things at people.”
Never before in his life had Franz wished this much to throttle anyone, but there were important reasons why he couldn’t. First, she was a girl, and he would never hit a girl even if she were as annoying as this translucent green creature.
The second reason was that he was helplessly strapped, so, even if she’d been some sort of brute, the only harmful thing he could do was glare.
So Franz slouched down in his seat, satisfying his fury by sending her a glare that bore the weight of a thousand hurling penknives. “During our last conversation, I believe I made it quite clear to you that I never wanted to see your ugly face again.”
She “tut-tutted” at him, shaking her head. “Sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t abandon you now that we’re actually on our way there. While this isn’t perhaps the best way to get you there, we should arrive well before nightfall. And that leaves a whole night and a day for you to do what you need to do and save us all. I think that’s plenty of time, don’t you?”
Franz blinked at her, his glare melting into an expression of confusion. “Save you? What in the . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping he could squeeze the image of her out of his head for all time. But when he looked again she was still there, smiling at him. “Why are you haunting me?” he asked, his voice weak and trembling.
“I’m not haunting you!” she answered with a terrifying little laugh. “I’ve chosen you. You see, Franz Happernickle, you are our last hope—”
She didn’t get to finish, for the coach lurched to a sudden stop. Franz tumbled from his seat onto the floor and lay stunned, his vision clouded. Vaguely he saw the green form of the girl rise from her place on the seat and—though this could be a trick of the eye caused by the bump to his head—stick her head out through the coach roof. The rest of her body, from her shoulders down, remained visible, but she slowly turned in place, as though taking in everything to be seen outside.
Franz felt sick. The sight of her headless body gave him a better appreciation of her frightening face.
She pulled back in, and her smile was gone. “They’re making the exchange,” she said. “Now take care you don’t let on that you can see me, because if you do, they’ll know—”
She broke off with a little “Oh!” and vanished from sight just as the lock jangled and the coach door opened. Franz, still lying at an awkward heap on the floor, looked warily through the opening.
Instead of the pale, solemn-faced guards who had loaded him in at Yoleston he saw . . . a most remarkable face! Indeed, he was awe-stricken, for he had never before seen anyone so terrifyingly impressive! A tall man, youthful yet commanding, with flowing golden hair, a square jaw, and glinting grey eyes . . . the sort of man one reads about in legends but never meets in real life.
This mighty specimen reached in, caught Franz by the collar, dragged him from the coach as though he weighed no more than a small sack of beans, and set him on his feet. As Franz caught his balance, he looked up and saw . . . another one! Another amazingly powerful, broad-shouldered man speaking to the two Yoleston guards.
This second man gave Franz a quick once-over, his finely formed lip curling with distaste. “This is the lunatic?” he asked in a voice of sonorous power.
“Yes sir,” said the guard captain. “Franz Happernickle.”
“And what exactly is his ailment?” asked the first man, still holding Franz’s collar.
“He sees ghosts, sir,” replied the guard. “They make him violent.”
“Ghosts, eh?” said the second man, and turned to study Franz closely. “How many ghosts do you see, lad?”
“Don’t you dare answer that!”
The voice in his ear startled Franz so that he let out a little yelp and would have jumped three paces had he not been held so firmly. He glanced sideways and saw the green girl floating at his shoulder. She shook her head and put a finger to her lips. “Don’t answer them, not a word! They can’t know about me or we’re done for!”
“Ghost steal your tongue?” said his captor, giving Franz a shake. “Speak!”
Franz gaped up at him then shrugged. He didn’t really care what the ghost girl told him, but neither did he want to admit his own lunacy in the face of this heroic figure. He felt small, foolish, and more hopeless than ever.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the second man, who might have been the twin of the first except that his hair was raven black instead of sun gold. He extended his hand to the guard, who gave him a stack of papers to sign. Franz watched as the exchange was made . . . and as the green ghost girl, entirely unseen by everyone else, floated up to look over the raven-haired man’s shoulder.
Suddenly she put out a finger and poked him in the eye. He didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash.
The papers signed, the Yoleston guard captain indicated Franz with a wave of his hand. “He’s all yours!” he said with a nervous laugh.
The golden-haired man tightened his grip on Franz’s collar and pushed him into motion. Only then did Franz notice the cart waiting some little ways up the dirt road. A pair of black horses stood in the harness, and somehow Franz suspected that their eyes were red and flaming behind their blinders. They just had that look about them.
Beyond the cart, the road wound aw
ay from all civilization—away from the villages and farm fields through which Franz had already traveled, albeit in darkness—into a deep, shadow-filled forest.
The road to the Black Swamp. The road to Briardale.
“Get in there, boy,” said the heroic man, and shoved Franz into the back of the cart, which was basically a large cage that might be used to haul a wild animal. The second heroic man tossed a canvas over the cage, again blocking the world outside from view. Franz didn’t mind—it wasn’t as if he wanted a better look at the Black Swamp. Not to mention, there were probably hordes of mosquitoes in it that wanted to feast on him.
As the two men climbed into the driver’s box, one said to the other, “Do you think he is the one?”
“Can’t be. Doesn’t look the part.”
“But he sees ghosts,” said the first. “And they’re running out of time. Isn’t tomorrow the last day? She’s got to bring someone, or they might as well give up now.”
“But . . . him?” said the second. “He can’t possibly be a hero. Not a True Hero. Can’t picture him saving kingdoms!”
With that, they urged the horses into motion. Franz, having nothing to brace himself against, fell over on his side and rolled around on the cage floor until finally managing to push himself into one corner and, using all the strength in his legs, press himself hard against the cage bars. This would be a long journey.
“They’re a couple of traitors.”
Franz didn’t even gasp when the ghost girl appeared in the corner opposite him, sitting cross-legged in the air just above the cage floor. She folded her arms, and her ghoulish face scowled. “A couple of stinky, no-account traitors!” she repeated. “I thought they were Heroes, you understand, True Heroes. Both had slain dragons, and everyone knows that’s one of the Three Great Deeds. But they failed me. Failed all of us.”
“What—what are you talking about?” Franz whispered, afraid the two men might hear him through the canvas.
Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 14