Shadow Castle

by MARIAN COCKRELL

  Prince Wuddle ran toward the servants’ hall, with Robin tearing along behind him, and dashed through the door.

  Robin burst in right after him, but lost sight of him in the confusion. All the castle servants, with brooms and mops, or any weapons they could find, and many of the guests, were fighting furiously with dozens of goblins.

  He couldn’t see Prince Wuddle anywhere in the crowd, but he noticed a startling thing.

  The Swamp Fairies were fighting on the side of the goblins!

  11

  THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED

  Then Robin whirled about as he heard a woman scream, and was just in time to see Prince Wuddle dragging a girl through the window, out into the castle grounds. For an instant, beautiful imploring eyes were turned toward Robin, then the green arms of the Swamp Prince encircled her, and she disappeared into the night.

  Robin ran to the window and leaped through it onto the ground. He saw two struggling forms going through the moonlight, and ran after them.

  Prince Wuddle was running as fast as he could, dragging the girl, who was doing her best to pull him the other way. Robin could go much faster, of course, and soon caught up with them.

  He leaped at Prince Wuddle, dragging him to the ground, and causing him to loose his hold on his captive.

  The Swamp Fairy wriggled and squirmed, and they rolled and tumbled on the ground. Wuddle got his hands on a large stone and brought it down with all his force on Robin’s head.

  The shock was so great that Robin’s senses reeled, but he tightened his arms about Wuddle’s waist and held on for dear life. Wuddle raised the stone to hit him again, but the girl stepped up and caught his arm, and snatched the stone from him.

  Robin was weak and dizzy from the blow and was afraid that, if he let go to try to get a better hold on him, Wuddle would get away entirely. The girl was still holding Wuddle’s arm, and he shook her back and forth as he struggled to get free.

  Then, with a mighty heave, Robin sat up suddenly, and his fist crashed into Wuddle’s jaw. The Swamp Prince lay panting weakly, and Robin stood up with an effort. Wuddle struggled to his feet, and Robin hit him again, knocking him senseless.

  He took him by the collar and dragged him toward the castle.

  “Come on,” he said to the girl.

  “Oh, Robin!” she said, and put her arm around his waist to help him walk, as he feebly dragged the heavy Wuddle along.

  They came thus into the great hall, in which only the women guests were left. All the men were fighting goblins in the back of the castle.

  The women rushed over to him, and Robin said wearily,

  “Go and get someone to take charge of this, please.” He dumped Wuddle on the floor and sat on him.

  Flumpdoria hurried out, and soon came back with two of Mika’s brothers, who picked Prince Wuddle up and carried him away to lock him up in the dungeon below the castle.

  “The fighting’s almost over,” Flumpdoria said. “They’ve captured a great many, and locked them up in the dungeon. Some of the cowardly things ran away, and I think we’ll soon subdue the ones who are left. You wait here until I come back.”

  Robin felt no desire to move. His head was throbbing painfully and he felt very sick. He sat there thinking that things might have turned out very differently if Wuddle had succeeded in opening the whole castle to the hordes of goblins who were waiting for a chance to get in.

  In a few minutes Flumpdoria was back again. She had been to the medicine chest and brought some soothing fairy ointment for goblin scratches, and something else that she rubbed on Robin’s forehead, and his headache disappeared in a few minutes.

  Feeling well again, Robin hurried out to help the others with the captives. He passed groups of fairies dragging goblins and Swamp Fairies toward the dungeons.

  In the servants’ hall they were chasing six goblins and a Swamp Fairy around and around. At last they caught two of the goblins, and the others managed to slip away through the window.

  Those injured in the fight were lying all about on the floor, and Robin called to Flumpdoria to come and bring the healing ointment.

  Some of them were badly hurt, and there was no one who hadn’t at least a scratch or two, and, as goblin scratches are poison, they had to be attended to at once.

  Robin searched for the girl who had helped him in his fight with Wuddle. He had been so busy fighting that he had hardly looked at her.

  He found her at last, with her head on the shoulder of the Queen of the Blue Elves, crying. When Robin appeared, she looked up. There could be no doubt about it.

  She was the Princess Bluebell, the real Princess Bluebell.

  “Darling,” her mother was saying soothingly, “you must stop crying and tell us what happened.”

  The Princess dried her eyes. Robin could not take his eyes from her. She was dressed in the ugly clothes of the little purple maid, and her face was streaked with tears, but there was no doubt that here was the real Princess. A gentle light shone in her blue eyes, and one could tell that she would never be cruel to anything. The face of the other princess, so like hers, seemed now like a mask. Though the features were exactly the same, no one could believe that he had been deceived by the other princess.

  People crowded around her to hear what she had to say,

  “About halfway between here and my own country,” the Princess said, “my coach was suddenly surrounded by goblins. Before we knew what had happened, a powerful spell was laid upon us.

  “I looked out of the window, and there I saw—myself! And then I looked into my little mirror and saw that I had been changed into a most ugly purple creature. I was terribly frightened.

  “This girl who looked like me touched my footmen and all my escort with a wand, and they were turned into a line of stones along the road. And the goblins changed, and became like my servants who had come with me.

  “It was a very powerful spell, for none of us could move or do anything except what we were told. The goblin princess made me change clothes with her, and told me I couldn’t talk or write or read, and I couldn’t. They got into the coach, and on the horses, and left all of us but me lying on the ground changed into stones.

  “The goblin princess took me with her, and said I was to be her maid. All this time I have had to serve her, and everyone hated me, and I couldn’t speak. Oooooh!” The Princess began to cry again.

  “If Robin hadn’t found her out,” Mika said, “Wuddle would have filled the castle with goblins before we knew there was anything wrong at all.”

  The Princess shuddered. “It was a plan to overthrow all the fairy kingdoms,” she said. “She is the daughter of the goblin king. She and Prince Wuddle met every night, planning how to do it.”

  “I saw them once,” Robin said.

  “She was always telling me how the goblins were going to rule over all Fairyland. Prince Wuddle had been trying to get me to marry him, but I would have nothing to do with him. So he agreed to get his people to help the goblins if she’d give me to him as his wife.”

  “I see,” Flumpdoria said. “The Swamp Fairies are half goblin anyway, and they’ve never been very friendly.”

  “But how did you know, Robin?” the guests were saying. “You had never seen the Princess Bluebell before.”

  “She made me feel creepy,” Robin said. “I didn’t like to touch her. And then I saw her slipping out in the night, and everyone in the castle was nervous and uneasy, and I was almost sure it was because goblins were about. The servants didn’t trust the little maid, but it was the Princess who made me feel queer.

  “So I asked Flumpdoria for some goblin dust. If she had been the real princess she wouldn’t even have noticed the grain of dust I put into her hand, so no harm would have been done.”

  “I hope you’ve been careful with that dust,” Flumpdoria said. “It takes years to make a single grain, and it’s our best protection against them.”

  Robin gave her back the ring. “I used only one grain,” he said.
<
br />   “The goblin dust broke the spell,” Bluebell said. “We were all in the servants’ hall, and suddenly I heard those awful screams, and all the goblins who had been changed to look like my servants turned into goblins again, and everyone started fighting. I looked down at myself and I wasn’t purple any more. Then you all ran in from the ballroom, and before I knew it, Wuddle had dragged me through the window.”

  The guests all started talking at once, exclaiming over their narrow escape. They were trying to decide what to do with the captives when the great magician Glauz suddenly appeared, looking rather sleepy.

  “What’s been going on?” he asked. “You’ve disturbed my trance, with so much magic crackling in the air.”

  They told him what had happened and Glauz said he would dispose of the captured goblins and Swamp Fairies. He waved his wand, and said, “Look at the door handles.”

  They all went over to the doors and looked and saw that all the handles were now goblin or Swamp Fairy heads. “The rest of them’s inside the door,” Glauz said, and yawned and disappeared.

  Later on when Glauz woke from the trance the battle had interrupted, he told them that the goblins would stay imprisoned in the doors of the castle so long as it should stand, and would not be so anxious to get into mischief when they were finally released.

  They never did find out how Prince Wuddle had discovered a spell to let the goblins in through the windows.

  As they had captured the King of the Swamp Fairies, and Prince Wuddle and a great many others, they didn’t have much to fear from the Swamp Fairies for some time, for all their leaders were gone.

  12

  ROBIN AND BLUEBELL

  While everyone was talking about the fight, Gloria and the Queen of the Blue Elves took Princess Bluebell upstairs. They wanted her to rest, but she wouldn’t think of it.

  “I feel so happy at being myself again,” she said, “that I want to dance all night. I hope I can find a decent gown that the goblin princess hasn’t worn. I couldn’t bear to wear anything she’s had on.”

  They looked over the Princess’s clothes, and found many gowns the goblin princess hadn’t worn.

  “She used all my prettiest ones,” Bluebell sighed. Downstairs the guests were saying that perhaps they’d better go home, as the Princess would want to rest after her terrible experience.

  “Rest nothing!” Flumpdoria said. “Look.”

  There was the Princess Bluebell coming across the floor, looking ten times as beautiful as the goblin princess had looked, even with the same face.

  They decided to start the ball all over again and asked the Princess with whom she wanted to dance. She said she’d like to have Robin for her partner, because he had been so nice to her even when she was purple and ugly.

  Robin was very pleased and embarrassed at this, as he took her hand for the Royal Circle.

  All evening Robin and Bluebell hardly took their eyes away from each other, and they didn’t seem to want to dance with anyone else.

  “I suppose you see what’s happening,” Flumpdoria said to Mika.

  “Hmmmph. What?” said Mika.

  “They’re falling in love, that’s what,” Flumpdoria said. “So you can start worrying about something else.”

  Before the ball was over, it was proved that Flumpdoria was right, for Robin asked the Princess to marry him, and she agreed.

  It was love at first sight with Robin, but probably the Princess Bluebell had been in love with him all the time she had been at the castle, although she wouldn’t say so, of course.

  She said that anyway she knew Robin hadn’t fallen in love with her for her beauty alone, because he had seen it for so long in the face of the goblin princess.

  Robin said that the goblin princess hadn’t looked a thing in the world like his Bluebell, and no one could convince him that she had.

  He was very impatient, and said what was the use of letting all these people go home, when they’d have to come back so soon for the wedding. King Klux said he didn’t care how soon it was. The King and Queen of the Blue Elves said it was very sudden, and what about a trousseau, and Bluebell was awfully young, and so forth.

  But Robin and Bluebell persuaded them, and the wedding was set for a week from that night.

  The fairy goldsmiths and cobblers and dressmakers started working like mad, setting jewels and making slippers, and the most beautiful clothes from moonbeams and mist, dewdrops, cobwebs fine spun, rainbows, and many other rare and lovely materials. There was must bustling about in the castle, and all the guests stayed and rejoiced for the whole week, getting dreadfully in the way at times, but everyone was so happy they didn’t mind at all.

  Gloria was very busy, so Mika went to Kengaria to tell King Ferdinand and Queen Katrina and Meira, and bring them back for the wedding. He took a special magic chariot, and in no time at all he was in Kengaria.

  Queen Katrina jumped nervously as he appeared in the dining hall while they were having dinner. Meira ran and threw her arms around him.

  “Oh, Daddy darling! I’m so glad to see you!”

  “We’re very glad indeed to see you, Mika,” King Ferdinand said. “But I do wish you wouldn’t appear so suddenly. It frets the Queen.”

  “I’m all right now,” Queen Katrina said. “You did give me a turn, though.”

  “I have some news for you,” Mika said. “Robin is going to be married.”

  “Robin! Married!” Then there were excited questions, and Mika told them the whole story of the Princess Bluebell, and the things that had been happening at the castle.

  Queen Katrina said it sounded like indecent haste to her, but that young people nowadays never would let themselves be crossed, and that Mika was as bad as Robin.

  “Consider, my dear,” said King Ferdinand. “Mika is several hundred years older than you are yourself.”

  Queen Katrina looked at Mika, who of course seemed to be a very young man, for fairies age very slowly.

  “Impossible!” she said, and as far as she was concerned, that was that.

  “I must order a new gown this minute,” Meira said. “I do hope I shall like Bluebell.”

  “You’ll love her,” Mika said. “But the fairies will be terribly hurt if you don’t wear the one they’re making for you.”

  “Oh, of course!” Meira said. “It will be much nicer than anything I can get here.”

  The Queen sniffed. “You won’t get me into any of those magic garments,” she said. “Likely to disappear at the stroke of twelve, or something!”

  Mika laughed, and said to wear anything she wanted to.

  “I wonder if they’re making me a new robe or anything,” King Ferdinand said wistfully. The King had a nice taste in clothes, and considered the fairies’ workmanship finer than anything he could get in his own country.

  “Of course,” said Mika. “Wait till you see it.” He was very fond of his father-in-law, and if the fairies hadn’t thought of making him a robe for the wedding, Mika was going to see that he got one, if he had to make it himself.

  After two days they were ready, and Mika put them all into the magic chariot and took them to the enchanted valley.

  Bluebell and Robin had a beautiful wedding, and the guests overflowed the castle, and camped in lovely silk tents all over the valley. Every fairy from every kingdom was invited. Of course they couldn’t all come, but it was the largest wedding ever seen up to that time.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much difficulty about their marrying each other,” Gloria said, thinking of how she and Mika had been married, and how furious King Klux had been.

  “Of course not,” said Flumpdoria. “Robin has to be one thing or the other, officially anyway. He can’t just go along being half fairy and half mortal.”

  “But he is,” Gloria protested.

  “If he marries a fairy, he has to be a fairy. It’s the law,” Flumpdoria explained. “If he had married a mortal, he’d be a mortal, to all intents and purposes.”

  And that w
as all she would say about it.

  Mika and Gloria asked Robin and Bluebell to live in the castle with them after they were married, and they decided that would be nice, so they did.

  “And lived happy ever after?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes,” said Michael. “They were very happy indeed.”

  “And did the Princess Meira live there, too, or did she go back to Kengaria?”

  “That’s another story,” said Michael, and he sat so silent for so long that the air began to be purple again.

  The shadows darkened again as soon as he stopped talking, and there was no sound, except for the very faintest whispering and rustling.

  Flumpdoria began to sniff at Lucy’s lunch basket, so she opened it, and they each had two sandwiches apiece while Michael began to tell her about the Princess Meira.

  13

  MEIRA

  Which one is Meira’s shadow?” Lucy asked softly.

  “It isn’t there,” Michael said after a moment. “You see, Meira is not in Fairyland.”

  “She isn’t?“

  No (Michael told her). After Robin and Bluebell were married they lived in the castle with Mika and Gloria, and Meira was there too, but she was very restless. She loved the fairies, but she never could feel like one of them. And she liked mortals, but she just couldn’t feel like one of them either.

  After a time she decided to go back to Kengaria and visit her grandmother and grandfather, who were very glad indeed to have her.

  Meira had a wonderful time, going to balls and being courted by many youths who admired the beautiful princess. There were two young men who were particularly persistent in their efforts to get her to marry them—Prince Johann, Crown Prince of a neighboring kingdom, and young Count Frederik of Frippen, a noble of Kengaria. Meira enjoyed having the two young men argue about her, and had no intention of choosing between them at all.