The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “What does he advise?”

  My father took the edge of my dress between his fingers and sighed.

  “I thought you were her at first,” he said.

  “I know. I saw it in your face.”

  “You look so like her. You could have been sisters. Only, her sister was fair-haired.”

  “My mother had a sister?” I had never heard this before.

  “No, my first wife. She had a sister who lived in the woods, many years ago.”

  My father’s eyes glistened as though drowning in a lake of memories.

  “Father—”

  “Sweet girl,” he said, returning his fingers to my cheek. “You needn’t be so formal, though I’m old enough to be. Call me by my name. And what shall I call you?”

  I opened my mouth but no words came.

  “Ah,” he sighed, pressing his head to my shoulder. “My saviour, that is what I shall call you. Now, my sweet. I shall withdraw and allow you your rest, for there is so much to plan in such a short time. The years go by so fast.”

  “No, wait,” I said, taking his hand as he rose. “What are we to plan? What is happening in a short time?”

  “Why,” he laughed. “Our wedding!”

  “Our— what?”

  “My child, you shall save our kingdom. When my wife died, I saw no beauty in anything. I loved her with all my heart, and when she left me, she took my heart to the grave with her. I have a daughter, of course. She will marry and do fine, I’m sure. But I need a son. An heir. Which you will provide. I never thought it would come to be, for I could never love anyone who was less beautiful than my sweetest Rose. Yet here you are. You look so like her, I thought you had stepped out of the painting. Even your voice holds the same, soft refrain. It is a sign. We must wed on the next full moon.”

  With that, my father went to the door. I heard the lock turn as soon as it closed.

  3

  The orange stung my throat as it came back up.

  I vomited into my chamber pot, and could not stop retching even once my stomach were empty.

  Marry my father? Bear him a son?

  If you have known shock, you know how it smarts like a brick across your face.

  I retched again.

  It was just before dawn when the door opened. I had not slept a wink, sprawled on the floor, the pan just within reach of my need.

  “Oh, your highness,” Francesca said, coming to lift me.

  I slumped in her arms, all fire extinguished.

  “It can’t be legal,” I muttered.

  “What can’t?”

  “It can’t be legal to wed your own father.”

  She stopped struggling and placed me down gently, pressing the back of her hand to my brow.

  “It shouldn’t be,” she said. “For the common folk, it isn’t. But your father is the king. He makes the laws of these lands. Whatever he wishes, must be so.”

  “You know about this?” I stared up at her, but she refused to meet my eyes. “Francesca, you have been my maid these past four years. What has happened?”

  “Honestly, I could not say.”

  “This dress.” I sat up, staring at the shower of crumpled buttercups against the floor. “Who sent it?”

  “An admirer.”

  “That isn’t true. Tell me, Francesca. You’ve never lied to me before.”

  “Please, your highness. I’m sworn to silence.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or,” she began to weep, “they’ll cut out my tongue.”

  I reached for her and drew her close.

  “Then hold my hand and don’t tell. Let me whisper my suspicion, and if I’m right, squeeze hard.”

  As I spoke Tovenaar’s name, she held my hand so tightly my knuckles ground together.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “He made me give you the dress. He said if I didn’t, he’d drown my baby brother.”

  I kissed the crown of her head and told her she was safe with me, though I wasn’t sure any of us were safe anymore.

  “Is it enchanted?” I asked. “Does my father not recognise me when I wear it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what he did. He’s a sorcerer, your highness. Who knows what wicked ways he keeps.”

  “What am I to do? The moon’s half-waxed already. I have a week, two at most. I cannot marry my father. For, if I do, it would be treason to refuse my duties.”

  Francesca dried her eyes on her sleeves and straightened.

  “I will help you,” she said. “Even if it costs me my tongue. Tovenaar is a fiend. Since your mother died, he’s taken over this castle. He rules through fear, threatening in ways your mother would never have allowed. She was such a good woman, the queen. If she were alive now she would have put him to the rack. But your father is too weak in his old age. His mind wanders even without magic. Some days he comes down those stairs raving about a cave of gold at the rainbow’s end. In the stable yard he takes all the red fletching out of the arrows and puts it in his hat. We find it all over the castle. Forgive me saying, he’s old but healthy. If he lives long but loses his reason, Tovenaar will twist the whole kingdom to his will.”

  “You are a loyal servant, Francesca. I promise you, you shall not lose your tongue for it. If you ever fear for your family, take them and run to the woods. It might be hard at first, but I will come and find you once the danger’s over.”

  “You would do that for me?”

  “If you will help me now, I will knight your brother when all is safe.”

  She held her hand to cover her smile, tears raw on her cheeks.

  “Then wait here,” she said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  That moment felt like the longest of my life. Francesca had forsaken me once, was she about to do it again? Had she run to Tovenaar to tell him of my unwillingness? What would he, or could he, do to me if I did not consent?

  When she returned alone, I went to her and took her hands in mine.

  “Come,” she said. “Quiet as a mouse.”

  “There are guards on the door.”

  “Not anymore. Freddy and Jon are my cousins. They don’t much care for the king’s advisor either. We have an hour, but must be back before dawn.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Old Meg.”

  I had never heard the name, but followed without question, for I had no alternative. Instead of taking the main hall, we slipped to the side and through a serving door, down a set of winding steps and over to an alcove. Francesca felt the bricks and pressed one deep into the mortar. Another door slid aside and down we went again.

  “Where are we?” I asked, my voice echoing in the dark.

  “Places only the common folk know. Whilst you lot dance in the light, we slink through the shadows. Forgive me,” she said, glancing back.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” I replied.

  I was glad beyond words to discover a hidden part of the castle, out of sight of courtiers and guards. When we reached the very foot of the stairs, she pushed open a rough wooden door. The chill air caught my throat and I coughed into my hand to silence myself. Thick brambles grew against the side of the walls, and the grass was so laced with dew it soaked my slippers.

  “Come,” my maid said, holding my hand tighter and urging me across the small space to the trees. “It’s just a little way.”

  Half running, we found our path through the dark until we reached a caravan nestled in a clearing. Despite the early hour, a candle glowed in the window. Francesca told me to wait whilst she crept forward and knocked at the door. Words were exchanged, so faint I could not hear, then my maid turned and beckoned with her hand.

  The wooden belly of the van rocked as I took the step. It was like entering an egg. Cramped and cosy. An elderly woman sat on her bed, a table between us.

  “Sit,” she said, a voice as cracked as clay.

  Whilst Francesca stood watch outside, I swept aside my skirt and lowered myself onto the stool.

  “
Thank you for meeting with me,” I said, as she took my hand in hers and turned it to the candle. “Francesca said you might be able to—”

  “It’s not the dress,” the woman said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We cunning folk talk to one another. It’s not the dress that turns the king blind. Two moons ago, Tovenaar bought a Potion of Forgetting from Anabel Jen in the White Forest. She didn’t know who he was at first, then she drew her cards and saw the plan.”

  “The cards? It’s fated then?” My heart sank.

  “Fate has many stories to tell, none of them simple like us folk.”

  “What can I do to save my father?”

  “Your father isn’t here. The question you should ask is, what can you do to save yourself?”

  She traced one long nail across the line of my palm and I shivered.

  “I only have until the next full moon.”

  “Time stands still if we ask it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you asked the bride price yet?”

  “What’s the bride price?”

  “You’ve never been married before, have you?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Three times. Outlived ‘em all.”

  “Then tell me – the bride price?”

  “Well, if a lad wants to marry a lass, he has to show his worth. Doesn’t matter if that boy be a pig farmer or a prince.”

  “Or the king of all the land?”

  “Quite. The goddess will have her due for parting with a daughter.”

  “What must he pay?”

  “Anything you ask.”

  “Anything?”

  “Many weddings are cheap. If a girl loves her intended, what would she ask from him but his love? Why bribe a man you want to marry?”

  “But if she doesn’t want to marry him…”

  “Exactly. Name your price, and make it high.”

  “But my father has more gold than he can count.”

  “Then make it impossible.”

  The old woman folded my hand and smiled.

  4

  Francesca could not stay by my side every hour without raising suspicion, but when she brought my food and combed out my hair, we fell to whispering.

  “How about a harp made of glass?” she suggested.

  “Not impossible enough,” I replied. “There are artisans by the eastern coast who can forge swans of glass, with necks as delicate as butterfly wings.”

  “A singing cow?”

  “Perhaps, but there’s all manner of strange creatures in the woods. For enough gold, I’m sure someone would find one.”

  “What is truly impossible?” she asked, lacing up my dress.

  “What about something made of something you couldn’t possibly make it from?”

  Francesca bent to brush down my skirt with her hands.

  “That’s it,” she said, straightening. “A dress made of cobwebs—”

  “Clouds,” I said at the same time.

  We looked at one another and laughed.

  “A dress made of sunshine and clouds,” she finished.

  “No one can sew the clouds together.”

  “Or spin sunlight.”

  “Here,” I said, going to my desk to write a note. “Can you get this to my father without anyone knowing?”

  “I can put it in his evening meal. He eats partridge with plum sauce in his room. I’ll stuff it inside the bird’s beak.”

  “You are truly the best,” I said, kissing my maid’s cheek.

  *

  That evening, my father visited my room. Tovenaar and his guards waited outside, but even he couldn’t deny the king a visit to his betrothed.

  “My dearest, sweetest girl,” my father said, coming to sit beside me on the bed once again.

  “My love,” I forced myself to say.

  “I received your note and kept it secret – how exciting. I haven’t felt this alive in years.”

  The way his eyes rested on my breasts caused nausea to return.

  “When last we met, you spoke of a wedding, but you forget I gave no reply.”

  My father’s eyes lifted and narrowed, giving a glimpse of the formidable king he had once been. “Are you refusing me?”

  “No, my dearest,” I said, placing my hands over his and swallowing back my revulsion. “Only, I believe I am owed the bride price?”

  He let out a laugh. “You are certainly as beautiful and strong-willed as my loveliest Rose, but you are a commoner. Surely to marry the king is bride price enough?”

  “You forget, your first wife was a commoner too.”

  My father frowned. “Why, so I had. We’d lived here at the castle so long, it had quite slipped my mind. She was more royal than the rest of those fops put together.”

  I wasn’t sure to be the biggest fop of them all was quite the compliment my mother deserved, but I smiled back sweetly.

  “So, may I name my worth? After all, what is a woman without worth, worth?”

  “You have a point, I suppose. Go ahead, what will this union cost me?”

  “A dress spun of sunlight and clouds.”

  “A dress— wait, what?”

  “You heard me true. I wish to be the most beautiful woman at the ball. I want a dress no other can match. Sunlight and clouds, that is my price.”

  “Then you will marry me and bear me a child?”

  “If the dress is beautiful enough.”

  My father kissed my hand and left the room scratching his head.

  “He’ll never manage it,” Francesca said when she brought me my evening meal. “What a clever plan.”

  Though it did not prove as clever as we had thought.

  Two days passed, and I woke to find a box at the end of my bed. It was wrapped in blue paper that shimmered like the sky in the ocean’s wide eye. My fingers trembled as I took the bow, reluctant to open it.

  “You do it,” I told Francesca, pushing it across the sheets.

  “Your highness—”

  “Please.”

  The ribbon came away in her hands. She lifted the lid to reveal folds of the strangest material.

  “Hold it up,” I said.

  Nothing I had ever seen before could prepare me for that dress. I had thought my father might cheat. If the finest tailors in the kingdom threaded the purest gold cloth, perhaps it would look like sunlight. Perhaps swan down would look like clouds. Yet this was no trick. The fabric fell so fine, I could see Francesca’s fingers through it. A colour I couldn’t even describe. Not gold, but glimmering like gold. Not yellow, but bright as yellow. Not orange, but rich as orange. That dress embodied sunrise, and all about the hem, a swirl of cloud which separated and reformed to the touch.

  “It’s glorious,” Francesca said, replacing it in the box when she saw my face. “I mean, it’s very different.”

  “It’s a nightmare. What am I to do?”

  “Ask for something else?”

  Her reply seemed too simple, yet I had told my father that this would be my bride price only if it were beautiful enough.

  When my father came calling that evening, I sat on my bed with my arms folded.

  “You’re wearing that old thing?” he asked, seeing the buttercups about my feet. “I had rather hoped you would be dressed in sunlight.”

  “I can’t wear that,” I said.

  “Why ever not?”

  “It’s gaudy.”

  “Gaudy?”

  “It’s see-through and gaudy. Sunlight should be delicate.”

  My father looked lost for words. He turned to look at Francesca, who stood by my dressing table, her eyes lowered.

  “What do you think?” he asked her.

  “It’s— um.”

  “Speak up child. Would you wear that dress?”

  “I’m not sure it’s the fashion.”

  “The fashion? How can it be the fashion? Nobody else has a dress like it in all the kingdom.” Francesca shrank beneath his stare, but
eventually he sighed and turned back to me. “Very well, what more am I to pay?”

  “Moonlight. I wish for a dress woven of night and threaded with falling stars,” I replied.

  “You ask a lot.”

  “Do you not love me enough?”

  My father’s eyes softened and he reached for my hand, taking it to his lips.

  “The dress shall be yours.”

  No sooner had the door closed when I looked to Francesca in panic.

  “He’s going to bring it, isn’t he? He made a dress from sunlight, he’ll make one from stars.”

  “It seems so.”

  “But how? How could he possibly—”

  The door opened and Tovenaar’s crippled form blocked the way.

  “Why, you little—”

  “How dare you speak to the Royal Princess in that tone,” I said, finding my courage and rising from the bed. “You just remember, if you have your way, I’ll be queen too. My father will do as he’s bid.”

  “Aye, but not by you,” the serpent said, slithering into my room and closing the door behind him. “Your father’s mind wanders. One day he forgets he has a daughter, the next he’ll forget he has a wife. Maybe, a month after that, he’ll forget how to ride his horse. But, by then, an heir will be seeded in your belly. A child to inherit the kingdom.”

  “And a mother with the power to rule it.”

  “Forgetfulness. It runs in the blood.”

  “You think I’d let you close enough to poison my mind?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be kept in chains in the dungeon once they discover the slashed girth on your father’s saddle. The court might look away whilst a king marries his daughter, and they’ll understand why you did it, but they won’t forgive. No matter the crimes of a king, treason outranks them all. It’s the order of things, you see. Allow one voice of dissent, however sonorous and sweet, and before long your lands will have fallen.”

  “You would frame me for my father’s murder and steal a child?”

  “Far better to be the power behind the throne than seat oneself upon it. Nobody notices the shadows come and go whilst they’re staring at the sun.”

  “You disgust me.”

  “And does that change my life in any way?” A smile twitches across his lip, caught beneath that snaggletooth. “You think the cards I’ve dealt look bad, but you have no idea how much worse they will get if you don’t stop stalling. You will accept the dress he gives you gladly, and bend your knee at the altar.”