The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  11

  There was no time to change. I picked up my sack of clothes, threw my donkey skin about my shoulders, and raced through the town streets. I made for the only safe place I knew – the cave beneath the mountain.

  When I arrived, it was as though no one had ever lived there. The hearth was cold and full of ash, the bedding was all gone, and only a couple of candle stubs remained. I lit one and huddled in a corner, my heart racing, afraid I had been followed.

  As midnight turned to morning, I wished for Ruth’s arms about me. Someone to whisper kind words and tell me that it would be all right. But what would I say if she did arrive? What would she think if she saw me dressed like this and knew my deception?

  I wrapped the donkey skin tighter about myself and tried to think what to do.

  If Tovenaar was here, he wasn’t with my father. Could I race him back through the woods and reclaim my father’s ear before the sly stoat chewed it off? It was risky. Alone in the woods at night, and who knew what sort of powers the magician possessed to make me disappear.

  But what, then?

  Turn up to the kitchen tomorrow as though nothing had happened? Resume my place amongst the cooks until the queen chose to find me, or Tovenaar recognised me beneath my grubby clothes?

  No, too much could go wrong.

  How I wished Ruth were there to give me advice. I would have told her everything. I would have cried in her arms and risked her disgust if only for a chance she might assist me. She knew so much more of the world than I did. She knew how people thought and behaved, she had saved me once, perhaps she would again.

  When daylight prized its fingers beneath the wooden plank, I moved it aside and looked at the silent street. It was one of those strange times. Had I slept so long everyone else had gone to their work, or had I risen so early no one else had?

  Struggling out of my dress, I stuffed it in my sack and pulled on my britches. It felt a relief. Those clothes were familiar to me now. I felt stronger in men’s shoes, more confident wearing a cap. Leaving my skin and belongings, I took the empty pail and went to the local pump to fetch water. Within moments, the gossip reached my ears.

  “A princess, they reckon. Just ran right out of there.”

  “Ran away from the queen?”

  “That’s what my boy Eddie reckons, and he works up at the castle.”

  “Dress like sunrise, they say. Imagine that.”

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult to spot.”

  “Why did she run away?”

  “Nobody knows. Cowardice, I expect. Thought she’d upstage our queen dressed like that, but didn’t know who she were dealing with.”

  I frowned at this and my frown soon deepened.

  “Our Marvyn down the road said he saw a woman in a pretty dress running past his window last night. Says she was wearing a donkey hide over the top.”

  “A donkey hide?”

  They all started laughing, and I took a step back, my pail only half full.

  “Aye, well. Old Marv never did ‘ave the sharpest eyesight. A princess dressed in sunlight, wearing a donkey hide. Imagine that.”

  “Hold on just a minute. Didn’t there used to be someone round here wearing a donkey hide?”

  I pulled my cap down over my brow and turned to leave.

  Back in the safety of the cave, I curled up in the corner to think.

  Cowardice, I expect.

  Cowardice.

  The word stuck in my throat like stale porridge. How could anybody say that of me? I had left home, left my father, journeyed through the Western Woods, met a witch, climbed a mountain, learned the life of a cook and stood face-to-face with the Queen of the Eastern Kingdom all in the space of a year. What had they ever done that was brave? Stood at the pump passing judgement on all who walked by.

  If you have ever had to show tremendous courage, you’ll know how hurt turns to rage to have that courage questioned.

  For the first time since leaving home, I was truly, completely and incandescently furious.

  That was my home that had been taken from me, my father’s love twisted into unnatural longing, my family’s wealth sacrificed, my own self thrown into servitude – all because I had been born a woman.

  Somebody had to pay.

  Tovenaar was now in the Eastern Kingdom. I wondered what business he had here. Was he looking for me, or did he have designs on this queen’s castle as he had my father’s? It was time to stop hiding. Twice I had fled from this queen’s gaze. I would not run a third time. Perhaps the castle was a dangerous place, or perhaps it was the safest place there was. Tovenaar could not lay hands on me with so many watching, not without everyone hearing my story – his story. Once the queen learnt of his treachery, it would be him in chains, not me.

  As dusk approached, I stripped and washed myself in the water I had been able to salvage. I gathered white ash from the hearth and powdered my wig until it was the colour of clouds, then took the dress made of night from my sack. Stars twinkled within it, a dusting of galaxies sparkled like a sash of diamonds. As I put it on, the moon lit my path. It gave me strength as I started towards the castle.

  As I passed beneath one of the houses, a man leaned out to stare down.

  “Good evening, Marvyn,” I said, giving him a little wave.

  12

  Up the steps I went. Through the entrance hall, guests drawing back in wonder. Over to the great double doors which swung back to admit me. Onto the balcony, the music soothing my nerves.

  Tonight, the queen was dressed in purple, her face veiled in gold.

  The dancers swirled and stilled as I moved between them.

  All eyes turned towards me, all lips parted in silent astonishment.

  Tovenaar’s rat-like eyes glowered at me from the base of the dais. For a moment, my feet tried to turn, but I resisted.

  Years enwrapped in moments passed. The queen did not move from her throne and I began to think she never would.

  As before, one foot in front of the next, she met me on my level.

  Her graceful hand lifted and I believed she intended us to dance, just as before. Then a sharp flick of her wrist and the music died.

  “Leave us,” she commanded.

  The musicians and all of the guests placed down their instruments and their glasses. Within moment there was only she and me – and Tovenaar.

  She turned her head towards him, and grudgingly he retreated through a door at the back.

  This was not how I had seen things in my head. How could I play out my injustice on an empty stage, with even the villain retreating to the wings?

  In the silence, I felt my legs would give.

  Then the queen held up her hand once more, inviting me to do the same.

  Without music, we resumed our interrupted dance. Slower, this time. My eyes fixed on the golden haze which hid her expression.

  “Speak,” she told me.

  “I come from a kingdom to the west of the woods,” I began, my words racing to be heard. “My father is old and alone. Our wicked advisor twisted his ear and persuaded him to forsake me. I was to be forced to marry my father in his madness.”

  The queen stopped and turned to face me.

  “What would you ask of me?”

  “Please, your highness. You have the power to stop this. The advisor of which I speak is here in your palace. Please,” I said again, bending my knee in full courtesy, my eyes to the ground. “Help me—”

  “Rise,” she spoke, her voice sharp enough to slice. “A queen does not kneel.”

  I looked up in confusion. “I am only a princess.”

  In the silence, I understood what had not been said.

  My father was dead.

  The queen held down her hand and I took it to save myself from falling.

  When we were once again face-to-face, she did not remove her hand from mine. I looked down and noticed the ring.

  “Where—?”

  On the same finger I wore her silver signet, she wore my
jasper and gold.

  I reached out my hand to lift her vail.

  “Ruth.”

  “My name is no more Ruth than yours is Robin,” she replied.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She held up her hand, forcing me to mirror her, dancing once again in our private, marble world. The knowledge that my father had passed weighed my feet until I stumbled. I had delayed too long coming to the queen and yet she had lain with me all along. It was not only this woman’s name that had changed. Her very demeanour, even her voice, came from another place. Ruth had been supple and quick to laugh. The queen was stiff and unsmiling.

  “You understand perfectly,” she said. “What it is to be born into a world, with every privilege bestowed but your own freedom. Is it so strange that I should seek my pleasures amongst the streets?”

  “The streets hold no pleasure.”

  “I found pleasure in you.”

  I faltered again as she turned, trembling as I lifted my hand to hers.

  “When you thought me a boy.”

  “All those nights. You think I did not find your dresses, or notice your breasts were bound?”

  “You knew?”

  “I knew you held a secret between your legs.” She smiled at this and I drew back. “All of this was for you.” She swept her fingers across the grandeur of the room. “I found you work in my kitchens. I invited you to dance. Yet you ran from me. Why?”

  I wanted to run again. She saw it in me and reached forward, sliding the pins from my wig and throwing it to the floor in a puff of ashy discard. As she ran her hand through my short hair, my eyes closed and I leaned into her touch.

  “When I found you, I thought you were a stray,” she continued. “I waited for you to rob me, but instead you paid with this ring. All you had left to feed yourself.”

  “You were kind to me.”

  “And I will be kind again.”

  “It is too late. My father is dead, our wealth has been taken, and Tovenaar rules in my place.”

  “Tovenaar rules no one.” I opened my eyes to look into hers. “Have you really been so afraid of him all this time?”

  “He is a mighty sorcerer.”

  She looked at me sadly. “Only in your own imaginings. You have allowed shadows to play across the sun.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Tell me how he came to your father’s employ.”

  “He was our astrologer. A soothsayer.”

  “Whatever made you think he was more?”

  “He gave my father a Potion of Forgetting.”

  “Which he bought from Anabel Jen in the White Forest.”

  “When I asked for dresses sown from the sky, he helped my father find them.”

  “Made by the Woman in the Woods.”

  “He ruled our castle.”

  “Through fear, which could only exist after your mother’s kindness had left it. That man owes every act of power to women.”

  I thought upon it then. Why would a great sorcerer need another to cast his spells? And what mighty wizard drank wakeless juice and fell to snoring? Could it be that Tovenaar had always been as he ever was, a simple fortune teller?

  “It is only a woman’s doubt that lets such demons in,” the queen said, softly touching my cheek. “And a woman’s certainty can drive them out.”

  13

  “Can you pay?” the Woman in the Woods asked.

  “I can pay,” the queen replied.

  Four servants came forward, struggling beneath the weight of the chest.

  The lid was opened and the brightness of coin was blinding, rubies and diamonds punctuating Midas’s purse.

  The Woman in the Woods nodded.

  14

  The queen afforded me a horse and two guards for my journey back through the woods. The trail seemed lighter than before, but perhaps that was the lightness of my heart. I no longer struggled beneath the weight of my sack, for my horse carried the load and my donkey skin had been left behind at the palace. A gift the queen had asked to remember me by, after our night together.

  The guests had returned and we had danced as long as was required. I had been announced by my true title, the Queen of the Western Kingdom. People had bowed and averted their eyes, uncertain whether to look upon this moon-draped monarch of a foreign land, desperate to stare until their eyes filled with stars.

  Many a disappointed face looked on as the two queens retired. Princes who had hoped for a moment alone to speak with the East, and those who had seen a second chance in the West. But the ball had been mine.

  “I need no king,” the queen had said. “I will never be owned.”

  For my part, I was less certain, for it felt as though she already owned me. That girl who had walked barefoot in the mud, wielding a knife like a knight’s sword. Who stood before me in her chamber, bare-breasted and bright in the candlelight.

  As the forest path wound on, the sun began to fade. Shadows drew closer as its rays became tangled in the trees above, their branches forming a wooden web. Fear began to play. I returned to my country as queen, yet I had lost my king. My father. The man who had looked upon me and loved me since before I knew his name. He would not be there to greet me at the gate. Tovenaar had stolen him from me.

  If you have ever felt grief and joy in the same breath, you will know how they struggle for dominance until you feel as though your heart will split, spilling all that you are.

  We arrived at the cottage not long after dark. It was as I remembered it the first time. The low wall and the garden full of strange flowers. The mossy roof with a wisp of smoke escaping through its thatch. There was something strange about it, as though I had reached home long before the castle walls. I felt as though I knew the Woman in the Woods, beyond stranger meeting stranger and showing simple kindness.

  As I dismounted, the old man appeared at the door, a lamp held high, reflecting against the blood-red bead at his neck.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” he said, lowering his lamp to see better. “And you have brought friends?”

  “My guards,” I replied, suddenly ashamed to bring steel to his door.

  “Well, there are those who need protecting in the woods,” he smiled. “You are all welcome here. We have room by the fire.”

  “We will stay beside the door until morning,” the first guard said.

  “As you please.”

  The old man beckoned to me and I followed him inside.

  The Woman in the Woods sat just as before, at a small table cluttered by candle stubs and strange cards. She did not look up as I approached, bowing my head in deference. I understood now what she meant. I held a kingdom within my sights, but she held the earth in hers. Though the woman was decades older than myself, I had the strange feeling she might outlive us all. That, in returning to the earth someday, my body might help strengthen hers.

  “You found your way to the other side, then?” she asked, gesturing for me to sit.

  “I did.”

  “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  I held out my hand, expecting her to hold it to the light as she had on our first meeting; to tell me the fate which lay at the end of my journey. Instead, she shook her head and sipped from a steaming cup which smelt of rosemary.

  “Will I be a good queen?” I asked.

  “What is a good queen?”

  “One who is loved by her people, who strives to do right, who brings more smiles than tears.”

  “People are many. Some will love and others hate. Some may think little on you at all, whilst you live in a castle and they the fields. You may strive all you like to do right, but good intentions turn to dust, and great-ness rises from ash. If smiles be sunshine and tears rain, then the earth needs both in measure.”

  “You are saying I will be a queen of no consequence?”

  “You will be a woman, beautifully dressed and uncertain in herself each day of her life. Whether a woman, or a life, is inco
nsequential, is yours to decide.”

  I stared at the old woman, suddenly unsure of the bond I felt we held.

  Wheels on the road outside broke my contemplation.

  “Who passes by?” the old man said, rising from his chair and heading for the door.

  My face fell as a familiar, hunched figure appeared. The fire licked against the walls as though he brought the north wind with him. I rose so fast, I knocked the table and the woman’s tea fell to the floor.

  “You!” I cried, as Tovenaar stepped inside.

  “Oh, Princess. Leaving without me?”

  His snaggletooth caught on his lip as he spoke, chapped skin peeling like birchbark. I tried hard to remember the words of that night, when the Queen of the East told me he was only a man, a simple conjuror. Yet it was hard, so hard, to shake the fear I felt of him.

  “I am no princess. I am your queen.”

  My words came weak from my tongue, and he raised his brow as though I should prove it.

  “A queen needs an advisor,” he replied.

  “I would drink poison before I ever took advice from you.”

  “Ah, but, my queen. If you wish to reign you will need my help.”

  “And why is that?”

  “The armies of the East are far greater than your own. You will need my magic to turn them back.”

  “The armies of the East would never march on me.”

  “You seem so sure, yet you told the queen all that I am, and here I stand.”

  The thought struck me cold. Why was Tovenaar not in chains?

  And why had my guards not stopped him at the door?

  I looked to the Woman in the Woods and her consort. They had removed themselves to the far side of the room, watching silently. I met her eyes, but found there no semblance of support.

  As the Queen of the East entered the hut, her shadow loomed large across mine. I stared at my betrayer as she drew back her hood. Beautiful Ruth, who was never what she seemed. The woman who would take from me everything.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why claim my lands when you have so much of your own?”

  The queen did not reply. She looked from me to Tovenaar and then to the witch, a slight smile touching her lips.