The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “But you wouldn’t be able to leave the woods at all.”

  “I don’t need to. I have all that I’ve ever wanted right here.” I looked at Bern, who stood open-mouthed. “When I first saw your house in the woods, I told my sister what a fine thing it would be to call it home. After we argued and I told you to leave, I felt like a lantern whose light had gone out. When you came back, I swore I would never lose you again. I love you. I wish to live here with you. I don’t need fine clothes or castles to tell me that. If you would have me, I’d stay forever. Will you have me?”

  “For ever and ever,” Bern said, sweeping me into his arms.

  RED

  Our father had left us and our mother had left us, but I was unwilling to leave my sister.

  “Go,” she told me, breathless from the bear’s kiss. “Go see the Royal City. You know where we’ll be. You can visit whenever you please.”

  “No,” I told her.

  “If you don’t like it, you can come and live with us.”

  My lip was awobble until I looked at Franz and saw his whole body tremble.

  “You can go by yourself,” I told him.

  “I don’t want to. I want to be with you, wherever you are.”

  “Don’t be so silly,” Snow said, coming to embrace me. “You are my sister. You will always be my sister. We have loved one another since we were born, and we will until the day we die. But now it is time we part ways. Only for a little while. We have our lives to live and, truth be told, Bern and I would appreciate a little time alone.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Yes, I suppose I would be in your way.”

  She turned me towards the castle.

  “Think what fun you’ll have down there. All the stories you’ll bring back to us.”

  “And if you ever run out of money,” Bern said, “I have a cave you can rob.”

  Franz coughed and scratched the back of his head.

  “Don’t make this hard. Just go,” my sister whispered.

  I took a step forward, then another and another.

  Once I were beyond the trees, I turned and held out my hand to Franz.

  “Go on,” Bern said. “I won’t chase you.”

  Nervously, Franz came towards me.

  My sister told me later that, as he stepped out of the woods, she saw him grow into the man I had always seen. For my part, I watched his clothes change. His tattered black stockings turned white, his britches turned blue with gold trim, his tunic became a long-tailed coat with a cape to his knees, and his cap became a crown.

  He reached up to touch it and smiled.

  “I forgot to mention,” he said, taking my hand and kissing it. “I didn’t just live at the castle. I am the prince.”

  As we walked down the valley, I looked behind many times. I swear, the last time I turned, there were two bears looking back, each one waving a paw.

  Skin

  For Magic

  1

  A castle is a terrible place to live when you are trapped there. The walls might be marble, but marble is stone and stone is cold and unforgiving. I am merely an ornament here, like the sconces and the candleholders. I have no life of my own.

  My mother had been the true light of this place. She had been beautiful in her youth. Paintings of her hang in every room. Sometimes she wore red, sometimes white, her hair long and dark, her smile a delight. The knights and the servants gathered beneath her reflection in oil, united in memory.

  “Loveliness without equal,” they would say.

  “Song made flesh.”

  “If only she were living still, better for us all.”

  Even when she aged, she did so with grace. Her black hair turned white, touched by the frost of years. Yet she never lost her wits and she never sat still. She loved nothing more than to walk in the valley or ride out into the woods. When her bones eventually cried ‘enough,’ she lay down and closed her eyes, never to wake again.

  They say all the birds of the forest fell silent that day, and I know it is true, for I remember.

  We buried her according to her wishes: wrapped in a tattered cloak she’d had since childhood, a fascinator in her hair, made of feathers and black cord, high on a hill facing the forest.

  That was the day my troubles began. A quarter-score years have passed and they only get worse.

  My father lost his mind, you see. Some call it age, others grief. I call it insanity, for his madness is not that of a doddering fool, it’s sharp and callous. Fuelled by the words of Tovenaar, his weaselling advisor. The man is almost as old as my father, crouching about the castle with his hunched back and cane. One long tooth hooked over his lower lip, as crooked as his nose. Before my mother died, he had simply been my father’s astrologer. A talking point at parties between the jesters and the jugglers. After she died, you might have thought him my father’s brother, for he never left his side.

  The reason for this wasn’t hard to see. Tovenaar changed his advice to whatever my father most wished to hear. If my father spat out his porridge, Tovenaar called for sugar. If he spat it out again, he called for salt. The deafness of age caused my father to forget all the bad advice his servant gave, and only remember the good.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without him,” my father would say, over and over. “He’s the wisest of men.”

  Yet Tovenaar was not wise, and he was not kind. Under his instruction, all the staff worked twice as long for half the pay. Everyone grew tired. He called for a ball two times a month, once at the full moon and once at the new. Families who did not attend were fined, guests whose smiles faltered spent a night in the dungeon, and women who refused to lie down with him were called salope and sent home in disgrace. At least three had taken their own lives after that, unable to find husbands.

  Each ball, I was called to sit beside my father. I wasn’t allowed to dance or to sing. They may as well have sat a tattie-bogle beside him, stuffed with hay and wearing a hat. None would have noticed. The balls were beautiful theatre, and my role was that of silent audience.

  If you have ever been to a ball, you know the wonder which surrounds it. Weeks in the making. A chance for splendour and romance. Women weep over their dresses and men admire their reflection in their polished shoes. It is all people talk of for months to follow. Yet our balls had become mechanical. The musicians ran out of scores, repeating the same songs over and over, the steps always the same. After the third or fourth time, all of our guests knew one another. There was no mystery behind those masks. Conversation ran dry. Our castle became a musical box, the figures spinning round and round, glad when the lid was finally shut and they could all go home. Tovenaar had managed to snatch the joy from something so joyous.

  I had tried to confront him once, many years ago.

  “My father is the king,” I reminded him. “Yet you behave as though this were your castle.”

  “But, Princess,” he said with a sneer. “It is because of you he needs me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you had been born a boy, your father would not be as miserable. How can any king be happy without an heir to carry his name?”

  “My father has never told me he would rather I was a boy.”

  “Because he does not wish to hurt your feelings. Yet, here you come as though you know it all. It’s time somebody told you the truth.”

  I returned to my room red-faced. I cried into my pillow all that night, believing it had to be true. The law of the land meant that, on my father’s death, I would be queen. Yet, I could never ride a horse at tournament, joust to prove my prowess. I could never lead a hunt into the wildwoods, or travel as emissary to other kingdoms, or bring home a bride. Whomever I married would be my protector, I would never be seen to protect.

  To my father, I was a disappointment.

  And so, I resigned myself to my lot. I had warred words with Tovenaar and lost. It left me stinging so badly, I never wished to repeat it, for I was not sure I would survive. E
ach full moon and each new moon, I allowed my maids to dress me in a gown, and sat beside my father composing poems in my head until the night was over. The days in between, I kept myself out of sight, reading books in the library, pruning fruit trees in the glasshouse and embroidering pillow cases, even though I hated it and pricked my finger so often it was not kermes which stained the thread red.

  I missed riding out across the valley and practicing archery in the stable yard. Those had been my favourite pastimes as a child, but ever since Tovenaar had told me the truth, I did not wish to draw attention to myself. I worried that the more my father saw of me, and the more he heard my laughter, the more he would resent me.

  That was how deep the snake’s venom ran.

  2

  First, he cursed me with hope.

  I woke on my thirty-first birthday to a room full of colourful boxes. Some wrapped in silver, some wrapped in gold, some blue as the sea, some white as the clouds. My maids had snuck into my room in the night and placed my presents about me. When my mother were alive, she would have been the one to wake me. We’d open the presents together, eating the sweets and draping the jewels about our dressing gowns.

  Now, it was only Francesca who stayed. Stood at the end of my bed, clad in a simple blue dress, passing me each parcel with trembling hands as though she feared she might drop it.

  “It’ll take all morning,” I told her. “Why don’t you open some?”

  She never would.

  Combs of mother of pearl, silver earrings which fell to my breast like miniature waterfalls, cakes and jellies and even a pie with blackbirds baked inside. They flew free when Francesca cut the crust. We had to open a window to let them out, but not before one had pooed on the bed.

  “I haven’t the will for this,” I told her, lying back against my pillows.

  There were more than a hundred boxes and we’d only opened five.

  What did I need all of this for? Gifts bought without thought. What does a princess need: gold, silver, diamonds and rubies. How little they knew me. What did a princess want: pens, paper, spices and a cooking pot.

  I closed my eyes and dreamed of the day when I would be queen. If Tovenaar were still alive, I’d banish him to the Western Woods. I’d hire the best chefs in all the kingdom to teach me to cook. We’d have one ball a year, and it would dazzle. People wouldn’t have to come if they didn’t want to, but everyone would want to. I’d dance and sing and recite poems, and everyone else would do the same. We’d recline on cushions, not sit on stuffy thrones. We’d play parlour games, I didn’t care how silly.

  “You have to open this one, your highness,” Francesca said, placing a large box beside me. It was buttercup yellow with a bow like petals.

  “Who says?”

  Francesca looked away, then looked back. “He didn’t give his name. He just said you had to open it.”

  With a sigh, I pulled myself up and reached for the box.

  “There’s no card?”

  “I didn’t see one.”

  I tugged at the end of the ribbon and the pretty petals fell apart. Lifting the top off, I reached in and pulled out a dress. As it unfolded, a little piece of paper fluttered out. It smelled of cinnamon, and the inscription simply read: Meet me in the Garden Room.

  Placing the paper on my lap, I picked it up again. The words were still there.

  “What did he look like, the person who delivered this?”

  “I didn’t see his face,” Francesca said, chewing her upper lip.

  Swinging my feet over the bed, I stood and held the dress against myself. Thick folds of cream silk floated to my ankles, tiny buttercups sewn in gold about the hem. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say. It was such a beautiful dress, yet it wasn’t like any fashion of our time. The cut was simple, not showy. The material crisp rather than brash.

  “Help me put it on,” I said, and my maid came to remove my shift.

  The dress fitted as though my own tailor had sewn it. Francesca placed a string of pearls about my neck and pinned my hair with an amber clasp.

  “These would finish it nice,” she said, offering a pair of long, silk gloves.

  I pulled them on and retrieved the card from among my sheets.

  “The Garden Room, huh?”

  *

  After he cursed me with hope, he cursed me for real.

  All the way along the halls and down the stairs, my heart raced ahead of me. Who was my mystery admirer who wished to meet me alone? I had not recognised the handwriting on the paper, nor could I think of anyone who might be so bold as to ask such a thing.

  My excitement grew with every step until I reached the Garden Room. It was a small annex at the back of the castle, entirely made of glass, with a view of the South Lawn. It felt like stepping through a wall into a bubble. The room was always warm, for it caught the morning sun. There were comfortable chairs and tall potted plants like a jungle.

  “Hello?” I said, announcing myself.

  Looking around, I could see there was nobody there. Despite the sunlight, I felt winter’s chill. Had I taken too long getting dressed? Had my mystery admirer grown bored and left? I held my gloved hand to the back of my nose to quell the prickle of tears.

  That’s when I saw it.

  High up on the wall hung a portrait. I recognised her face instantly, for it was my mother’s. An old portrait. She must only have been a girl back then. Yet the dress she wore stopped my breath.

  It was exactly the same as mine!

  I stood for a very long time, as though carved of granite.

  “Is this some horrible joke?” I whispered, but my mother did not reply.

  I turned away, a lump as thick as a fist in my throat.

  My father stood on the other side of the glass, hand pressed to the pane, a faint breeze disturbing the tail of his nightcap.

  “Rose?” his lips uttered the words so soft they were silent.

  All I could do was shake my head, tears tracing to my chin.

  Who had done this? Who had played such a cruel trick on an elderly man?

  I walked to the door and tried the handle – it was locked.

  I tried again, rattling and banging my fist, but the door would not open. When I turned back, my father had vanished.

  “Help! Help me!” I cried, yet nobody came.

  Curled up beside an orange tree, I watched the sun creep like a snail from morning to noon. When I grew hungry, I plucked one of the oranges and ate it, refusing to look up at my mother. The pith was as bitter as the words on my tongue. How dare she leave us. How dare she go and die, throwing myself and my father to our fate.

  I was asleep when the key turned in the latch. The sound of boots brought me back. I glared up at the guards, demanding they take me to my room and arrest whoever had held me prisoner.

  If you are used to authority, however small an amount, you recognise when you have lost it. The way the guards stared straight ahead, avoiding my eyes. The way they stepped back, allowing Tovenaar to pass as though he were the king, and I a commoner.

  He held out his hand, but I rose without taking it.

  “This is treason,” I told him.

  “On the contrary, I’m carrying out the king’s orders. Come with me.”

  I looked to the guards but none would look back, so I followed him.

  We returned to my room, only it was no longer my room. The bed had been moved, my white sheets replaced with red and gold, the paintings replaced with antiques which I did not recognise.

  “What have you done?” I asked Tovenaar.

  “Redecorated. Do you like it? These were your mother’s.”

  “I do not like it. I want my old things back.”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.”

  “Call my father. I wish to speak with him.”

  “Of course. He is on his way here.” The way he said this brought no comfort. “Sit on the bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Sit on the bed,” he repeated, taking a step toward
s me.

  I stepped back until my knees hit the covers and I sat.

  “I will have you in chains before morning,” I said, eyes narrow as slits.

  “Do not move from there until your father arrives. Remember, he is the king. Let him speak and say not one word. I will be outside your door. If you speak, it will be you in chains.”

  The men turned and left the room.

  Once the door had closed, I remembered to breathe. I would tell my father all that had happened. He would arrest Tovenaar and the guards who had stood aside and refused to help his daughter. They would all be sorry for what they had done.

  A moment later, the door opened again.

  My father entered, dressed in his finest frock coat and britches, the same colour as my bedding. Swirls of gold thread, like vines, holding him together. How short the years had made him, as though his own weight pulled him to earth.

  “Please, do not get up,” he said, coming to sit beside me on the bed.

  He took my hand and I lifted his, kissing it and resting my forehead against his flesh, seeking warmth where only cool frailty remained. I could see the veins about his knuckles, their blue blood pumping through a heart that had once loved me. I opened my mouth to speak, then remembered Tovenaar’s words and closed it again, waiting for him to go first.

  “You are such a fair maiden,” he said, tracing one finger down my cheek. “I cannot believe, this late in life, that I should be granted a second chance. Do you know who I am?”

  “Of course,” I whispered, low so that I would not be overheard. “Do you know who you are?”

  He smiled and stroked my cheek again. “Never doubt it. I am the man who loves you.”

  Relief flooded my heart. For one moment, I had thought he had forgotten himself entirely. Over the past few years, the names of the servants had started to slip from his mind, I feared one day mine might also escape him.

  “What are we going to do about Tovenaar?” I asked.

  “We are going to do exactly as he advises.”