Fair Peril

by Nancy Springer

  Ssssilence! The white snake convulsed under the impact of her shouting, his perfectly coiled symmetry destroyed. His anterior half rippled down over the edge of the plinth and swayed tautly in air with his tumid corpse-colored head thrust toward her, his black tongue flickering nearly in her face.

  Buffy knew that he meant to bite her if she went on. And this time he would make the punissshment stick. She knew it.

  But she could not stop. To stop would have been to be a lost soul, a toy, a squatting frog like Adamus, not Buffy, not Madeleine. She roared, “I DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME! NOBODY BETTER DAMN MAKE EMILY CRY!”

  Sssorrow, the snake promised, pulling back like a fist to strike.

  Like angel bells from on high, a blonde young voice called, “Mom!”

  Bullheaded as Buffy was feeling, the white snake probably could not have made her flinch away. But that voice jerked her around like a golden chain. “EMILY!” Where was she, where was Emily? Stumbling back, frantically looking, Buffy did not even notice that the white snake jabbed at her and missed.

  “Mom! Mommy!”

  The voice came from the sky. The wise-eyed stag flew in on eagle wings. And riding on his back, gowned in samite and hanging on to his antlers like they were a steering wheel, was—

  “Emily! EMILY!” Tears flooded Buffy’s face so that she could barely see to avoid the rocks as she ran toward her daughter.

  Fourteen

  Prisoner.

  Walking between lavender trees, Adamus realized that his present circumstances—garments of velvet and gold, magical food to eat, mystical woods for the wandering—he realized that the luxury of his non-life would not have seemed like durance vile to most people, and the realization did not comfort him. Most people would have traded places with him, and most people were fools. They did not understand: waiting, tortured by hope, was prison. Excruciating boredom was prison. Prison was his inability to go, to do, to act.

  He talked to the trees. “Emily,” he whispered. Thinking of her—Where is she?—tightened invisible chains around his chest, making him moan. He wanted to go forth, find her, save her, be her love, her hero, but he could do nothing. The storyteller had not yet changed the story. To be a fairy-tale prince was to wait, like a doll swinging from a vendor’s stall, until someone or something reached out and snatched you.

  And even then, what followed might not be pleasant. Adamus felt quite sure the Queen was not done with him. Ye gods and little fishes, he had come before her in smallclothes, and then he had given her Buffy’s message, which had sent her shooting off in a fury, galloping away in her chariot of air. Probably, having dealt with Buffy, she was just now contemplating his condign punishment.

  Buffy, I’m sorry. I warned you.

  The storyteller had not yet changed the story, and probably now she never would.

  Emily’s mother.

  “Emily …”

  Chains tightened again, threatened to make him sob. With shackles on him no one could see, Prince Adamus d’Aurca walked deep into the mystical woods. No one could see the chains, but they hurt like real steel. He still had his pride; he wanted to be far from anybody, alone with his misery.

  Aimlessly walking, he found a pretty forest glade full of statuary—a long, straight, shady glade—and he wandered down it, his footfalls soft and silent in wildflowers as thick as a carpet. Great beeches towered on each side, their silver trunks softly gleaming, their leaves rustling overhead, translucent, golden, though not with autumn. To either side stood white marble ruins, columns and cornices in pale arcades beneath the beeches, and the shafts of the columns were sometimes fluted pillars but more often white presences, caryatids and telamones, stone youths and maidens half naked beneath carved draperies. Beautiful youths, lovely maidens. Adamus walked on with slow steps and looked at them with some curiosity. He had thought he knew all of Fair Peril, but this was not a place he had ever been before.

  Buffy shrieked, “Emily!” She could not seem to stop her unseemly noise, Emily, Emily, Emily! and the tears brightening everything to a wavering watery glory. Oh God oh joy oh God—but could this be the real Emily, this warm princess, hugging her? Hugging her with utter abandonment of adolescent dignity? Looking back at her with a starry light in those midnight-blue eyes?

  Emily scanned her. “Mom,” she said, “what are you doing in that outfit?”

  It was the real Emily, all right. Buffy laughed with teary relief and hugged her again. “Sweetie, I’ve been going crazy. Are you okay? Has anybody been bothering you? Have you been eating?”

  “Mom, I’m fine.” But Emily said it with none of the usual teenage scorn.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! I’m okay-fine-copacetic. Mom, meet Stott.” Emily placed her hand lightly on the bearded neck of the stag standing next to her, near the pool’s edge; the three of them stood well down the rocky slope from the pedestal. “He’s a dear.”

  “I can see that.”

  Emily rolled her lovely eyes. “No, I mean, he really is a sweetheart. He came flying down and got me off that pedestal. Then the white snake …” Emily turned toward the serpent in question, who was lying atop the pedestal in sulky disarray and did not acknowledge. “The white snake gave me something to eat, and now I can understand what the birds are saying. They’ve been telling me how you—telling me how you’ve been looking for me and everything.” Emily’s indigo gaze was steady, but her voice wavered. “I never really understood before.”

  “Understood?”

  “That—you really do love me.”

  Buffy wanted to shout, OF COURSE I DO! But she couldn’t say a word. Her heart had gone hot and full, like her eyes. All she could do was reach out. Emily’s hand embraced hers.

  “The birds told me.”

  “Good.” Buffy finally found her voice, though it was a husky whisper. “The birds are right. Can we get you home now?”

  But Emily wasn’t listening. She turned toward the white snake again. Evidently it had spoken to her; her expression had gone flat and fierce. “Why doesn’t somebody ask me what I want for a change!” she yelled.

  “Don’t shout.” The golden-winged, golden-antlered stag spoke up suddenly. “Noise exacerbates it.”

  Startled, Buffy asked him, “Are you an ensorcelled something-or-other?”

  “No, just a talking coat rack.”

  With her voice reined in but passionate, Emily was saying to the white snake, “This being a princess sucks. It’s like I’m a toy, a gilded Barbie doll, a trophy for somebody’s shelf. I get moved here, I get moved there, I don’t have a life. You’ve got me, Start’s got me, Adamus wants me, Mom wants me back. When is somebody going to ask me what I want?”

  It was so simple, so eminently feminist, yet so sublimely unthought-of that Buffy stood with her mouth sagging open in an uncouth way. Emily—Emily didn’t want to be a princess?

  Emily didn’t necessarily want to fling herself into a princely embrace?

  Maybe Emily was not a child after all?

  Maybe Emily didn’t need to be rescued?

  “You’re just a stuffed puppet or something in the real world,” Emily was saying to the white snake. “All Mom and I have to do is go back where we came from.”

  At which point Buffy would be a woman in nothing but her underwear standing in a fountain in a public mall, but who cared. She asked Emily humbly, “Is that what you want to do?”

  “Yes.” But Emily looked at her with troubled dark eyes. “No. I mean, not yet. First we have to help Adamus.”

  At the end of the forest glade, the Queen awaited him.

  At first, wretched and wandering and unwary, he had thought it was just another white marble statue, an imposing one, a seated goddess, and he would look at her when he got there. Then—her stony stillness did not change, but he felt her eyes on him and he knew.

  His face showed his shock. He could not help it. And he should have known, curse everything, he should have known—he had thought it was his wayward
feet bringing him here, when all the time it was her voiceless bidding.

  There was nothing he could do but walk up to her and kneel before her and bow his head.

  “So. Adamus, my frog,” the Queen greeted him, and her voice was not unpleasant—but that meant only danger. “My little princeling who wants to be mortal, you have come to face the music.”

  He dared to look up at her, to look her in the face, because he no longer cared what happened to him. “Your most puissant Majesty,” he said, his voice low but steady, “I crave your pardon.”

  “What, for coming before me half naked?” She smiled. Then Adamus began to feel truly afraid, for it was almost a wistful smile, it rendered that hard face almost tender, and thereby signaled extreme danger. “Seeing you in your smalls was not so hard for me to bear, Adamus. You may recall, we established some time ago that I would like to see you in less than smallclothes, and in my bedchamber. And that I would like to do more than just look at you.”

  Terror turned him wooden. He could not speak.

  “Surely you did not think my desires had changed in the passing of a mere thousand years, Adamus? I am the Queen. I do not change. And I want you for my very own.”

  He could not speak, but he shook his head. No.

  “No?” The word issued from her white mouth soft and light, like snow.

  He shook his head again.

  “I will command you one more time, Adamus: come to me.”

  “No.” Adamus suddenly found his voice. “No. Do what you will to me, my Queen, but no. You cannot make me love you.”

  Silence. All around, the statues watched and listened in rigid silence.

  The Queen no longer smiled. She spoke in a voice hushed and cold, like snow. “There are few things anyone can deny me, Adamus.”

  Few, but he knew his body to be one of them. In that one way she could not own him. His back straightened, his head lifted a fraction of an inch, because perhaps he had a soul after all.

  “And,” she went on, “there is nothing that anyone can deny me without consequence.”

  “Turn me to a frog again if you must,” he said. “I care not.” Sometimes he almost missed the watery beauty and peril of being a frog.

  “No.” The Queen’s chilly golden gaze looked not at him any longer but past him—not a good sign. “No, that would be too easy. Adamus.” Her stare swerved back to him again and held him as if her two white hands had cupped his face. “We have established that I want you. And we have established that you deny me.”

  Once again he could not move or speak. He merely stared back at her. But she knew the answer.

  “Well, then,” she said, “you cannot deny me my vicarious pleasure.”

  “Help Adamus?” Buffy did not understand. Was Addie in trouble? He hadn’t been rendered ranine again, had he?

  But there was no time to talk, because the white snake was becoming, as Stott had pointed out, exacerbated. Rearing up, standing almost on its pointed tail, straight as a white broom handle atop the dais, it glared down in a way that made Buffy realize how cold a belly dancer’s costume was and wonder briefly, unreasoningly, whether the serpent could fly at Emily like a white spear through the air. There seemed to be no such thing as a safe distance. That chalky snake-face and those flat golden eyes made her think of the Queen.

  “Um, see ya, your Hissiness,” Emily sang, taking a step back. “Stott,” she asked her stag between her teeth as she presented a gleaming smile to the white snake, “can you carry Mom too?”

  “No,” Buffy answered for him. She knew she was big enough to break him in half. “Go, you two. I’ll meet you on the other side.” She plunged into the pool.

  Mother, may I go in to swim?

  Yes, my darling daughter.

  Hang your clothes on yonder limb

  But don’t go near the water.

  That was the way the annoying old rhyme went. Crazily, Buffy found it singsonging through her head, though she had not thought of it since she had put the picture books away.

  Who was the mother and who was the daughter here? Something had changed. Instead of being liquid light, this time the water seemed made of limpid darkness. Spangles of pewtery silver and coppery gold starred the bottom. It was like swimming through an inverted nighttime sky. Yet when her head broke the surface, Buffy found the Forest Multifarious still awash in lilac daylight.

  Sculling like a turtle, she swam to the edge. This time she had help with the pertinacious hedgehog. Stott prodded it aside with his antlers as Buffy clambered out of the pool, then turned to look back at the dimpling water. Maybe it was something about the slant of light. Always before, she had noticed golden circles, shining fish, she had looked into clear water, but this time—though the pool was no less clear—it cloaked itself in surface. It was a dark, rippling mirror. She could see only reflections. Rocks. Stott. Herself.

  No. Adamus, shadowy, looking back at her.

  What was it LeeVon had called these pools?

  She turned around to ask somebody what was going on, and saw the stag nuzzling Emily flush on the lips.

  All logical thoughts were shocked out of Buffy. She knew she should not have been so taken aback, she knew Emily was a big girl now, she knew this was a place where everything was itself and something else—nevertheless, she stood speechless and gawking as Stott concluded his farewell. The stag lowered his head away from Emily’s, bowed to one foreknee, then straightened and flew away. In her lavender samite gown, Emily looked after him until he disappeared over the treetops.

  Buffy stood dripping and staring at her daughter. Yes, Emily, you may go in to swim. Yes, you may go near the water.

  Yes—though the thought staggered her—you may even dive in. Though preferably not while your mother is watching.

  “Well,” she said softly, “you have grown up.”

  Emily turned and smiled. Then for some reason Emily hugged her again.

  “You’re getting yourself all soggy.”

  Emily nodded. “At first I thought it would be fun,” she said.

  “Getting yourself soggy?”

  “Going with Adamus. Being a Cinderella or whatever. A princess.” Emily turned and started to lead the way toward the food court. “But then—that stupid pedestal—and the Queen is a real pain.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah. I had to go to the stag party just to get away from her.”

  “Stag party?”

  “Lighten up, Mom, it wasn’t like that. Stott and his friends are nice.” Emily added over her shoulder, “But I don’t want to stay with them, either.”

  “Either?”

  “The birds have been telling me about cages. I don’t want to belong to somebody like that. I don’t want to belong to Adamus or Daddy or you or Stott or anybody. I want to belong to myself, that’s all, at least for starters. Be somebody. Do something.” Emily looked back at Buffy, who was lagging behind her. “What, I haven’t a clue. I haven’t had enough time to think about it.” Emily frowned. “You’re limping.”

  “I stubbed my toe.” Walking through a jungle was not the best option for bare feet.

  “You need shoes. And something to wear that covers more of you.”

  “True.” It was so undeniably true that Buffy took no offense. “How do we go about—”

  “This is a mall, Mom. We go to a store.”

  The familiar scorn, the familiar Emily, made Buffy smile. “I don’t have my wallet.”

  “I’ve got my charge card.”

  “Of course. What was I thinking?” As if anything, even alternate realities and Prince Charming himself, could ever separate Emily from her VISA Gold Card.

  “Come on.” Emily took Buffy by the hand.

  It felt so right, to be mothered by this daughter. Tamely Buffy allowed herself to be led, but she said, “You know they’ll call the cops. I’m going to be standing there in my underwear.”

  “As far as I can figure …” Emily looked around, gauging their position, then w
rinkled her lovely nose. “We’re in Sears.” She sighed and shrugged, acknowledging that Sears, however uncool, would do. “We’ll grab you a muumuu or something quick. One of those ugly chenille things. Cover you up. Then we can get you some shoes and get back here.”

  Of such seemingly inconsequential decisions, such innocent detours, are very bad days made.

  The Frog King wore a golden cape. Perhaps it had been wings once, but it was not wings any longer; such a gross being did not deserve wings. It was the shoulder trappings of royalty, nothing more. The Frog King wore a golden cape, and the Frog King wore a golden crown. Erect, with his meaty thighs bulging, the Frog King stood six feet tall or more. From his lowly position, kneeling on the ground, Adamus looked up at the Frog King as he had once looked up at someone in a cape, someone in a crown, someone far taller and bulkier than he was, long, long ago.

  The Frog King looked down on him and laughed. There was nothing human about the Frog King’s massive verdigris face with its immense smirking mouth—yet Adamus knew that laugh. He remembered that laugh; even after a thousand years, one does not forget one’s childhood. That laugh had often preceded a thrashing.

  Adamus whispered, “Father.”