"You couldn't hurt me." He smiled faintly. The poison had reached him, I could tell. His face was green, and his eyes rolled back in his head. "We're going to be married.
I paused in the act of threading my needle. "What?
"We're going to be married. I know it.
"Because of the prophesy? I revived myself. You won nothing—
Groping, Florian found my hand and squeezed it as best he could. "Nay, not the prophesy. We will marry because I love you.
I stared, and he smiled again at my amazed face. Still holding my hand, his head cradled in my lap, he let his eyes drift shut and passed to another world.
TWENTY
Alone with Florian's body, I stitched his wounds more carefully than ever I had finished a handkerchief, and washed them clean with water from my own two hands. These tasks I did not complete consciously, but with the automatic reflexes of a woman in deep shock. With time the prince looked so presentable, stretched on the alpine flowers, that it might have been possible to imagine him only dozing, were it not for the poisonous green of his cheeks.
In this way I maintained my composure until the first men, led by King Renaldo, burst into the clearing. Then I broke down completely as the king, sobbing, buried his face in Florian's chest. The soldiers turned away, granting him some small privacy, the tears that ran down their faces scarcely less effusive.
"He died to save my life, I whispered. The great hulk of the dragon, stretched behind us, told the rest of the story.
"Would that he never died, wept the king. "But if he must, he should die so nobly.
The Drachensbett soldiers did not return to Chateau de Montagne until dusk, the keen wail of their grieving preceding them, and they bore the prince on a pine bower. The king, beside them, appeared more dead than alive.
Standing at the castle gates, Sophia observed this procession, and I was stunned to see a tear working its way down her expressionless face. "We shall escort you tomorrow to your home. She paused, struggling for words, and, bowing to the king, spoke no more.
The prince was laid in state in the great entrance hall, his soldiers standing guard through the night until he would be carried to his final resting place. Unable to watch, incapable of aiding these men with their work, I fled. Alone in my chambers, I locked my door, for added precaution wedging my sturdiest chair beneath the knob, and with a furious lunge stepped through the wall.
***
The wizard room was as I had left it. Dust gathered on the floor, the mice marking it already with their own obscure tracery. On the lectern, the book rested, tightly closed.
In fury I slammed it, pounded it, to no avail. "How can I save him?" I roared to the room. "How can I save him if you will not give me the spell? He was poisoned—I can save him yet! Help me!
My screams faded in the stillness. I panted in frustration, glaring at the skull-shaped locks. The mirror caught my eye, and swiftly I wiped it clear. "The prince has been poisoned, I hissed at my reflection.
"You know that already," my reflection replied.
Yet again her nonchalance took me by surprise. Now that I had her attention, as it were, I did not want it squandered. My thoughts worked at one another like a hundred quarreling blackbirds. Abandoning for the moment my efforts with Florian, I returned to my reflection, at last able to speak these words: "My father is dead."
My reflection nodded.
My father lay near the peak of Ancienne. The dragon—a dragon that men for generations unknown had spoken of—truly existed, atop that mountain...
I raced back to the mirror, the realization coming to me at last: "A dragon killed my father.
No reaction. Furiously I smashed my fist to the pane. Why would it not agree?
Although, I realized, if the dragon had killed my father, how did he come to perish in the cave? I tried once more. "A dragon gravely wounded my father.
"Of course," my reflection replied in her irritating manner.
Another lightning-bolt revelation: "That same dragon killed my mother and uncle.
"Yes," my reflection drawled, examining her nails.
"Which means—I spoke to myself now, rather than the mirror—"that Drachensbett had no role in their deaths. If Drachensbett had no role—if the king was not guilty, if Florian was not ... Oh, my feelings were in such a horrible muddle!
"I must save the prince!" I cried out.
"Why?" asked my reflection coldly.
I blinked. In the turmoil, this question had not crossed my mind. "Because he saved my life.
"You saved it yourself," said my reflection in the same cold voice.
'Twas true. I had. I paced. I was so very tired. "He should not be dead because he is a good man, I said at last.
"So, too, are many corpses," my reflection replied with a voice of ice.
I pondered. "He is clever, and witty, and chivalrous. And handsome, too.
"Why do you say such things?" my reflection prodded.
I waited. I would not be baited so. I would not grovel.
"You know the truth, she added, more softly.
"What do I know? I pleaded, groveling at once. What did I know about the prince? "I know that ... My voice broke. "I know that once, in a different time, I liked him even though I should not. I know that ... that I may love him.
"Then you know what to do," my reflection whispered. "You know how the story always ends.
"I do not!"—and, suddenly, I realized I did. With a cry of triumph, I hurled myself toward the stairs. Yet I could not resist racing back to the mirror. "It is nice to see, I told my reflection, "that you are finally making yourself useful." With that, I returned on winged feet to my chambers.
***
I had not realized how late it was—or rather, how early. Drunk with exhaustion, streaked with cobwebs and dust, I more resembled beggar woman than princess when at last I stumbled into the great hall.
Outside the entranceway, dawn tinged the mountaintops. Within, six strong men lifted the prince's body, now encased in a coffin of glass, to their shoulders. The king, gaunt and aged, stepped forward. Drachensbett soldiers fell into formation behind him, then courtiers, all facing the rising sun that would light their cheerless journey home.
"Wait! I called from my vantage point on the stairs. My voice, ringing out at that moment, could not have been more jarring, and the pallbearers paused less from courtesy than shock. Sophia, monitoring this ceremony, eyed my soiled form.
"Please," I continued, hurrying down the steps, "might I see him one last time? The desperation in my voice must have carried some weight, for with great reluctance the men lowered the coffin to the ground.
I knelt, touching the lid. "Remove this, please. I beg you." Reluctantly, glancing sidelong at King Renaldo, two soldiers did so.
Even now, Florian looked striking, however deep the wounds cut into his lifeless flesh. I touched his cheek, traced my hand along it—feeling the beard there, the beard he had teased me, so long ago, for lacking. My tears fell on his cheeks, and I studied him, his dark brows and long lashes, to remember him always, should my efforts not succeed. I had not even thought of this during the hours I had prepared his body. Perhaps if I had attempted it yesterday, I would not have succeeded, for the power of magic stems not from its application but from the truth behind it.
I brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. The moment hung in the air—if not now, never, but if I failed...
"Your Highness, murmured the king behind me, and I felt his desperation to depart.
I leaned forward and kissed Prince Florian as he so many times had kissed me in my dreams. I kissed the man I loved, whom I would love forever and ever with all my heart, for he was my own true love.
Embracing him, I wept for the failure I had been, for the companionship we shared and that I through my harsh words had broken. I wept because the prince in his own way had forced me to mature into a true princess yet would never know this. And my tears mingled with my own sweet kiss, and at once I felt his
lips move against mine as he kissed me in return, and his arms closed around me, and the hall erupted in cheers and sobs as the men and women there witnessed their greatest hope returned to life.
And so it was that Prince Florian of Drachensbett and Princess Benevolence of Montagne were joined in holy matrimony, and my perilous adventures came at last to an end.
***
Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational woman to set her straight.
Thus will I take this moment to describe our life together, though I need first attend to several details overlooked in the passion of my narration. As I ultimately deduced, both my parents and uncle were victims of a vicious dragon to which the Drachensbett army had no relation whatsoever. This explained as well the inexplicable sheep snatchings, the disappearance of several wandering shepherds, and the death of the dragon's last victim, a young man who had arrived in Montagne only the day before with the goal of scaling Ancienne. His death was tragic, to be sure, but perhaps not so tragic for a mountain explorer, and in later years his grave became a pilgrimage site for men of equal ambition and madness.
In due time, and to prove to King Renaldo the wisdom of the specter that had appeared at his bedside, I led an expedition to the highest reaches of Ancienne, inventing my own "dream" as justification. Renaldo accepted this fantastical explanation with the fervor of a recent convert, and if Sophia did not, she held her tongue with her usual inscrutability. Together they assembled a crew of soldiers and explorers, and Hildebert as well, for she hailed from mountain stock and insisted on participating that she might protect me from bears.
Beginning from the glade in which the dragon had perished (and which was already the material of legend), we soon intercepted the Drachensbett trail and followed it to the mountain's ridgeline. Turning toward the peak itself, after only two hours' labor we discovered the cavern. With torchlight we examined the words Walter had scratched. His final greeting—FAREWELL, SWEET BEN—had double meaning, recognizing so tenderly his daughter while acknowledging as well the heir to Montagne's throne. As for his other phrase ... shame reddened my cheeks as I at last read it properly.
Not I PURSUED DRACHENSBETT, but I PURSUED DRAGON HERE.
Sure enough, not two hundred paces away soldiers discovered the dragon's own den, devoid of riches but full of bones and rock and the armor of Xavier the Elder. "Doubtless he gave the beast indigestion," murmured Xavier the younger, fingering his father's helmet, and one could tell that the man's death would forever be a source of pride to their clan.
Florian for his part transported several well-preserved dragon droppings to the main hall of Fortress Drachensbett, where he displayed them in a neat glass case. His battle with the dragon had raised his standing considerably among his soldiers, and by now flaunting the source of his nickname, he silenced the mockery completely. Such is the finesse of a natural leader.
As to the dragon's actual death, I can explain it only partially. Having recalled from a childhood story the imperative of fire for dragons' existence, I deduced (in a lathering panic, lest one forget) that water might thus work as toxin to the beast. In a spasm of spell work I cannot fully construe and hope never to be forced to replicate, I at once created my own frozen Doppelschläferin, remembering in my haze the spell book's warning on frostbite. The dragon gulped down my double, and the melting ice promptly snuffed its fire and killed it dead. The creature, granted, was half dead already, and if anyone challenge my solution by claiming this, I invite him to attempt the same against any healthy young dragon of his choosing.
Perhaps the oddest event in this series of misadventures came about one afternoon as Sophia, Renaldo, Florian, and I dined al fresco with the nobility and personages who had gathered for our impending nuptials. Renaldo spent the meal so distracted that I could not but worry over the insult that Montagne must have inadvertently proffered.
He rose to speak. As conversation died, he turned to the queen and asked in a voice of heartbreaking modesty for her hand in marriage.
Had the king announced he was about to whelp wolf pups, I would not have been more shocked. Now, however, I recalled his frequent praise of Sophia; perhaps his efforts to conquer Montagne had been due less to passion for its land than for its leader, however ham-fistedly he chose to display this.
The queen's reply gave me a second shock in as many minutes: "We most gladly consent."
Once it dawned on me that the union might mean the loss of their excellent counsel, my enthusiasm lessened to the point that I debated banning it, as was my right as head of state. My rational side prevailed, however, and the situation was resolved admirably. For several years following their marriage, the couple resided in Chateau de Montagne, pursuing their devotions. King Renaldo (forever known by this title, though Florian held the throne) laid out in Montagne's rich soil a harmonious garden, spectacular in all seasons. In the garden's very center rose a small villa, designed by Queen Sophia for them both. The laborers toiling day and night could not but admit, when the project ultimately concluded, that it was indeed the loveliest structure any of them had ever seen, and to this day it remains the "jewel of Montagne.
***
It is worth reiterating that the prophesies ultimately proved true, as prophesies with proper time and insight forever do. The prince did awaken me—not with a kiss, but with blunt words that opened my eyes, however painfully, to my many shortcomings. In attempting to spite him, I perversely transformed myself into a woman too worthy for rejection. Florian delighted ever after in pointing out this fact, particularly at moments when my pride threatened to overwhelm my great good sense, when he would lift my hand to his lips and, kissing it, murmur smugly, "I won.
Indeed, this became such a jest between us that on more than one occasion requiring utmost solemnity, his act of lifting my hand to initiate some formal procession would reduce me to uncontrollable giggles—shockingly indecorous but nonetheless amusing to the dignitaries and crowds observing my temporary collapse.
The second prophesy came true as well, though I am inclined to think of this less as prophesy than edict, for King Renaldo accepted the words of that dream specter far more readily than ever he had those of day-lit diplomats, and he never again attempted possession of our little kingdom. Florian was crowned King of Drachensbett and Prince Consort of Montagne, where he lived with greatest delight in Chateau de Montagne to the end of his days, though he traveled regularly to Drachensbett to attend to matters of state and the fruit harvest.
We have an expression in our country: "The proof lies at the bottom of the pot. I admit that I never ruled with the authority or passion of Queen Sophia, but now, at the bottom of my own pot, my country yet stands intact, its people as healthy and content as people ever have a right to be. And so I dedicate this work to her memory as well as that of my parents, for however we might criticize those who rear us, the fact that we survive at all into adulthood, however late that passage comes, is testament enough to their ability and perseverance.
With humble regards,
HER ROYAL MAJESTY BENEVOLENCE OF MONTAGNE,
QUEEN OF DRACHENSBETT, AND DEFENDER OF
ANCIENNE AND ITS MANY SECRETS
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