Princess Ahira

by K. M. Shea

  “What on earth is it?” I yelled back.

  “The doorbell, it means some one is at the door!” he yelled.

  “A door-bell?” I exclaimed as I exited the kitchen, walking to the front door as I marveled at his oddities. “I wonder what crackpot came up with that idea,” I said as I halted at the giant doors.

  “Hello?” I asked, pushing one of the great doors a crack open, allowing myself to slip outside.

  I blinked in the bright sunlight and blinked again when I found myself addressing a human. A wizard as a matter of fact. A typical, cliché looking wizard.

  He had long, gray hair and an equally long and gray beard with bushy eyebrows. He was wearing the traditional blue robes with a tall, pointy wizard hat. The only odd part about him was the strange bag he clutched between his hands.

  For some reason he was cowering until he saw me. “Ah! You must be Azmaveth’s new princess! It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Wizard Marlin, and boy do I have an offer for you!” he said opening his sack and pulling out some thing. It was like a little wooden box with inscriptions on it. He also pulled out a broom, and a towel.

  “Now you may think this is an ordinary broom!” he started. “But wait! It isn’t! It sweeps by itself, giving you more free time to do other important things!” he said as he set the broom on the ground to demonstrate.

  Sure enough, the broom started sweeping the entrance. But it was doing a horrible job of it. It wasn’t sweeping so much as it was making lines in the dirt.

  “And that’s not all!” Wizard Marlin said, interrupting my observations. “In addition I’ll give you this towel! This is no normal towel either! It can soak up water!”

  “Any other towel can do that,” I blankly said.

  “Well…This one can soak up more water than a normal towel!” Wizard Marlin quickly corrected himself, stuttering for a moment. “But that’s only the beginning! I’ll also throw in this box for free!” he shouted as if I was standing across the road instead of two feet away from him.

  I didn’t want the wretched broom or the raggy towel, but by this point I was wondering what sort of sorry excuse he was going to come up with about the funny, little box. “What does it do?” I asked.

  “I-I don’t know…” he said drooping for a moment. “But all this only for the affordable price of ten payments of five gold coins! Yes, amazing! All of these products at least have the value of thirty gold coins, but you can buy them now for only ten cheap payments of five gold coins!” he told me.

  “Go away,” I ordered, turning to go back inside.

  Wizard Marlin grabbed me by the shoulder, forcing me to turn around. I peevishly glared at him. “What?”

  “Buy it now, while it’s on sale! That’s correct, normally all these wonderful products are sold for twenty payments of ten gold coins! You’re saving a lot of money by buying these amazing goods now!”

  “AZMAVETH!” I shouted. “There’s some strange wizard out here and he’s trying to sell me worthless stuff!”

  Marlin whimpered as the doors banged open when Azmaveth appeared. Azmaveth’s giant eyes were whirling as I scuttled out of the way. “Three,” Azmaveth said as Wizard Marlin started to sweat. “Two,” Azmaveth counted as Marlin took off running down the road, leaving his stupid broom behind. “One,” Azmaveth finished.

  Azmaveth ground his teeth together and huge orange flames burst from his mouth, jumping hungrily at Marlin who had all but vanished from sight.

  Azmaveth coolly blew a smoke ring and I clapped.

  “Who was that guy?” I asked as we turned to go back in.

  “Grubby Marlin. He’s a well known traveling sales wizard. He tries to hoax human ruled kingdoms and sells useless products to princesses over here. Usually he gets away with it too,” Azmaveth added as the giant oak doors closed by themselves.

  “Really? He was trying to get me to buy a towel.” I said as we paused in the dinning room. “For roughly the price of a pair of good horses.”

  “Yes,” Azmaveth agreed. “He charges a lavish price for cheaply made items. But unfortunately most princesses buy the stuff,” he said sounding disgusted.

  “Perhaps princess purchase the items out of spite?” I suggested.

  Azmaveth chuckled as we parted ways. I left to make a welcome mat for our front door, and Azmaveth returned to the library to read some more about my ‘species’.

  Chapter 3A Pox on Princes

  I finished the rug on the verge of the evening hours and convinced Azmaveth to enchant it so when saleswizards came to our door it would bite them.

  After finishing the rug I cooked a simple meal—chicken soup—and served it to Azmaveth.

  I heaved a sigh as I sipped my soup. Azmaveth glanced over at me and excitedly grabbed his book and opened it to the glossary.

  I rolled my eyes as I heard him mutter. “Sigh—this could mean possibly two things: A) Your princess is tired and needs more sleep, or B) She is feeling depressed. Either way one must proceed with caution because a tired or depressed princess can quickly become crabby and irritable.”

  “I can hear you,” I said, my voice sounded hot and bothered to my own ears.

  “Hmmm…my guess is that you’re tired because you became irritable instantly,” He concluded.

  “It’s not that,” I sighed again. I rattled my dishes as I picked them up and dragged myself to the kitchen.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I heard Azmaveth ask himself as I threw my dishes in the sink and clomped off to my room. I flung myself on my bed and gazed up at my skylights in the ceiling.

  “Oh bother,” I said as I felt tears gather in the corner of my eyes. As much as I didn’t want to admit it I missed everyone: Caspian, Father, my sisters, (excluding Jezbell) and even Mother! I sighed again and turned over on my side.

  “I wonder if Caspian will come save me,” I thought out loud as I pictured my older brother. I held no doubt in my mind that he would somehow track me down, and when he did I would be waiting for him. He would probably take a long time before finding the free time to come rescue me though. He was the crown prince after all.

  But that suited me fine. An extended vacation with Azmaveth wasn’t unpleasant. I could certainly think of worse ways to pass the time. This was the farthest I had ever been from Ardeo. On top of that I had never before left the castle without one of my siblings or parents. Even if I missed my family this was a new and exciting adventure.

  “It’s settled then,” I decided, stubbornly holding back my tears. “Even if a prince does come, I’ll hold out for Caspian,” I said while trying to ignore the nasty voice in my mind that wondered if Mother would ever allow him to search for me.

  I woke up the next morning and changed into a different dress. (I was very careful to brush my hair before leaving my room this time.) I hustled to the kitchen where I prepared bowls of oatmeal before bringing it to the table were Azmaveth was waiting, grumbling to himself.

  “Morning Azmaveth!” I cheerily greeted him, determined to be happy no matter how wrong it was to be cheerful in the morning.

  “Morning. But no, no, that won’t work,” he muttered to himself as he started eating. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the merry morning dragon I thought he was.

  Once we finished I carried the shrunken bowls back into the kitchen and washed them out. After twiddling my thumbs for a few moments I decided to search for Azmaveth. I found him some minutes later, holed up in his lab.

  “Azmaveth, I want to clean your room today,” I told him on a whim.

  Azmaveth paused. “I’m not sure you want to tackle that now…,” he slowly and carefully suggested.

  “Come on, it can’t be that bad!” I said.

  “Perhaps, depending on your definition of bad,” Azmaveth said.

  “I’m going to do it,” I decided before leaving to gather my cleaning supplies. I ambled down the tunnels and found Azmaveth waiting by the entrance for his room.

  “This won’t be easy,” he warned me as he
pushed open the doors.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “You just might die,” he added.

  “Please, you’re just exaggerating” I scoffed. “No job is…,” I stopped talking when I got a good look inside. The easiest way to describe his room is to say that a herd of pigs would have cleared out of it, too disgusted by the mess, months ago.

  His bed was a pile of straw with silk thrown over it, but the silk was torn and ripped. The straw was also starting to grow moldy and was spread across the floor like a ripped scarecrow.

  Random royal purple scales littered the ground. I assumed he had shed them off, which quite frankly disgusted me. It was almost like leaving your toenail clippings or wads of shed hair in the middle of your room.

  Huge stacks of books were preciously balanced in strategic places. Some of them tumbled over under my glare.

  A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling, but a badly burnt length of cloth hung down from it. If I had to venture a guess I would say one day Azmaveth was too lazy to get up and blow the candles out, and instead threw the cloth at it in a sorry hope that it would smother the flames. Instead it seemed to have caught on fire.

  To finish it up, Azmaveth had beautiful glass covered skylights like my room, but his were blackened and unclear. Probably hazed over with smoke.

  My mouth dropped as I stared at the mess. A couple of flies buzzed around my ear as Azmaveth had the decency to blush and glance away. I rolled up the sleeves on my dress and shook my head. “This will take me a while,” I said, getting to work.

  I started by pulling the burnt cloth off the chandelier.

  “That kept the light from turning on!” Azmaveth protested as I unsympathetically tisked. I threw away the cloth and Azmaveth whined. “I could still use that!”

  “It’s ratty and torn,” I told him as I lugged a ladder under the skylights and started chipping off the smog.

  “Now the light will wake me up in the morning!” he complained as I managed to make a small patch of daylight visible. It turned out his skylights were actually beautiful stain glass windows.

  Azmaveth glared at me as I threw out several bottles filled with rotting potions. “I might need those!” he claimed.

  I pinned him down with one gaze. “Fine, fine. I’ll let you feel useful and do your work,” he meekly said as he sat down.

  “Icky,” I said as I picked up part his ‘sheet’ between my fingers, holding it as far away as possible. “This smells like something died in it,” I said, covering my nose. That was saying a lot. I thought the kitchen smelled horrible yesterday. Azmaveth’s room smelled bad enough to make me gag.

  “That’s my sheet! I don’t want it cleaned, or thrown away!” he groaned as I torched it in a fire, creating a cloud of smelly green smoke.

  “Ugh, now it’s worse!” I said as I picked up a bottle of flower scented mist. (I had found it my room the night before. Mostly likely the last princess who served Azmaveth’s father owned it.) I ran around the room, spraying it as Azmaveth made a face.

  “Great! Now I’m going to smell like a girl,” he grumbled.

  “Out, out, OUT!” I bellowed, growing sick of his whining.

  “It’s my room,” he complained.

  I started spraying the perfume directly on him. “OUT!” I roared in a reasonable dragon-like impression. Azmaveth quickly uncurled himself and made a hasty retreat.

  I sighed with relief and turned back to the mess to pick up a dirty, smelly cloth. I threw it on the throw out pile and Azmaveth poked his head in the doorway one last time. “That’s my lucky sneezing handkerchief I’ll have you know.”

  “LEAVE!” I yelled, throwing a shrunken bowl of half eaten, moldy oatmeal at him. It hit him square in the forehead and he finally got the point and fled to the library. I turned back to survey the mess with a grim expression when the doorbell rang. “NOW WHAT?” I exploded throwing my dirty apron on the ground.

  I stomped out to the main chamber and saw Azmaveth poke his head out of the library, note my angry face, and disappear back within.

  I continued down the west tunnel and threw the door open, wondering how come my welcome rug hadn’t eaten the visitor yet. To my surprise a human stood before me. Only this time I wasn’t surprised because he was a human, he surprised me because he was quite clearly a prince. He had the obligatory blonde hair with light green eyes. He was also wearing the necessary gold crown and a royal blue cape. To finish it off, his had a black horse that was patiently standing a few feet away from the door.

  I didn’t say anything—I was still shocked that a prince had managed to stumble on me so quickly, didn’t this sort of thing usually take weeks?—but the prince brightened when I stepped outside, causing my stomach to sink.

  “You must be a princess!” he beamed. Congratulations, he’s a genius, he figured out my true identity. Because really, who else would be hanging out in a dragon’s den?

  “Yes,” I crisply responded. “What do you want?”

  “Well if you’re a princess then I’m here to save you!” he brightly said as he fiddled with a sword that was strapped to his side. I highly doubted he knew how to use it.

  “Really?” I drawled.

  “Indeed! Who are you, might I ask?”

  I sighed, this was dreadfully too close to the ballads for my taste. “Ahira, Princess Ahira,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said drooping for a moment. “Well…you’re not Cinders, but you’ll do! Any princess will do.”

  “Cinders?” I inquired.

  “I was originally supposed to marry her, but she was kidnapped about two days ago. I came to save her! But I sort of got lost in the forest…,” he said trailing off as he blushed.

  “That’s nice. Good luck finding her,” I said stepping back.

  “Wait! You’re supposed to come with me!” he protested.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a princess, and I’m a prince!” he said, as if that piece of so called logic justified it. This is what those ballads are doing to young minds: rotting them to the core.

  “So?”

  “Well, well,” he stuttered.

  “Ahira! Who’s there?” Azmaveth yelled from within the safety of his library, hoping I hadn’t killed our visitor.

  “A traveling saleswizard!” I yelled, if I knew anything it would be that Azmaveth would most likely delight in torturing me over this poor prince—he’d research princes in books and reference it for days to come. I wouldn’t put it past him to ask me about human mating rituals or something. So really, it was in my own self interest to send the prince on his way. Besides, if he really did try to fight Azmaveth for me he would probably impale himself on his own sword.

  “Okay! If you need any help, just call,” Azmaveth answered as I sighed in relief.

  “That must be the evil dragon who’s keeping you captive!” the prince said as he suspiciously gazed into the darkness behind me. I closed the door and walked down the dirt path that lead to our cave, stopping when I could see the main road.

  “Follow that road and it will take you by the dens of several dragons. Just ask them who’s taken Princess Cinders as a maid and they’ll tell you,” I carefully explained once he stood by my side.

  “Don’t you want to come with me?” he asked.

  “No,” I said turning around to go back to Azmaveth’s cave.

  “Why not?” he asked sounding flabbergasted.

  “I just don’t,” I said as I reached the door. Arms locked around my waist and I was suddenly swooped up into the air and thrown over the Prince’s shoulder.

  “Put me down!” I yelled pounding my fists on his back. In spite of his pansy, wimpy looks he was surprisingly strong.

  “No!” he said as he walked over to his horse. “I don’t feel like looking for Cinders anymore. She was ugly and scary,” he said shuddering as a memory flitted through my mind of the creepy princess with black hair that was kidnapped in the same raid as I.

  I no longer blamed him fo
r not wanting to search for her.

  “How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

  “I started out the night she was kidnapped. My country is the Alfing Region, the area directly next to mountains so it wasn’t that far away,” he said with a shrug as I beat my fists on his head. “Ouch! That hurts, stop doing that!”

  “Put me down!” I demanded.

  “No!” he insisted.

  “Yes,” a deep rumble replied for me. I looked up to find myself face to face with Azmaveth, well not exactly face to face because he is so huge. The prince turned around and Azmaveth was whirled out of my view.

  “Oh,” the prince said, promptly dropping me. I picked myself off the ground and dusted my dress off before I walked towards the dragon.

  His eyes were whirling and his fang like teeth that were usually hidden behind his lips were now bared. His dark purple scales seemed to take on a black hue, and he looked quite dangerous. Not at all like the usual scholary, if not somewhat dopey, Azmaveth.

  “Azmaveth,” I said standing in front of the prince. “Thank you, you’ve done quite enough.”

  “You want to go with him?” Azmaveth asked incredulously.

  “No, NO, no!” I assured him as I stopped at his side. “But you can just release him into the wild, right? No need to maim or kill him. You promise to leave right away prince, don’t you?” I asked, turning around to find the prince gone and already galloping down our driveway with his horse.

  “A pox on you too,” I said rubbing my hands together before turning to go back inside.

  “Why didn’t you leave with him? You easily could of,” Azmaveth said, calm once again as we entered his den.

  I snorted. “Please, give me more credit than that. He was quite obviously an idiot,” I said as I walked off toward his bedroom.

  “Oh, yes, by the way. Three of my friends are coming over tomorrow afternoon,” Azmaveth causally said.

  “WHAT?” I cried.

  “Sorry?” Azmaveth cried back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me so instead of wasting my time cleaning your room I could have cleaned the rest of the cave?” I groaned.

  “I was going to!” he said. “But then you got all bossy on me and decided that you were going to clean my room and that nothing would stop you,” he declared.