A True Princess (12 page)

“He has been such a help to us,” I said.

The nisse looked rather pleased, an unfamiliar expression on his sour face; and he bowed his head to me, very slightly.

“Just doing my job, Your Highness,” he said modestly. “Though rather better than most, I’ll wager.”

“Is it true, then?” Kai asked. “Are you really a princess?”

“I suppose I am,” I replied. “I’ve not had much time to get used to it, though.”

“How can all that have happened when it seems that no time has passed? I have been lost in a dream,” Kai said, bewildered. Then he gazed at the children who stood around us. “But these children—how long have they been in the dream?”

“Look at their clothes,” I said to him, pointing out what I had noticed when I first saw the captives serving at the Midsummer’s Eve feast. “Some of them are dressed in garments from years and years ago. How many of them are decades, even centuries old?”

Their sweet faces looked up at us. None of them appeared even as old as ten, yet some must have been hundreds of years old. “We must get them out of the forest, and find their families,” I said. “Nisse, will you guide us?”

The nisse frowned. “Do you think I’ve nothing better to do?”

I was learning how to handle the nisse, so I replied, as sweetly as I imagined Karina might, “I know you have important work to see to, but we have great need of you.”

The nisse rolled his eyes, but I imagined I could see some pleasure in his grizzled face. “I suppose I could take the time,” he said offhandedly.

We gathered the children together and set out in a line. As we walked, I proceeded to fill Kai in on the astonishing things that had happened. I told of my bargain with the Elf-King, of how we had found employment at the palace, of the test of the hopeful brides, of the deepening love between Karina and the prince. I recounted how we had snuck into the locked chamber, how I had found the cloak clasp and passed the test. He was shocked when I explained the discovery that I was the princess of Dalir. When I described facing down Odin and trading the cloak clasp for the prisoners, he whistled and shook his head.

“Well, I suppose I know my worth now,” he said wryly. “A cloak clasp for my life!”

I laughed. “It was a very special jewel,” I pointed out. “And I am very glad that its value was greater than yours—to Odin, at any rate.”

“Only to Odin?” he teased me. “Did you not value the clasp?”

I blushed. “Well, I traded it for you, did I not?”

“Does this mean that I am yours now?” Kai asked in a new tone, one that was gentle and warm.

“Oh,” I said softly, not sure if he was still teasing. “Do you want to be?”

Kai reached out his free hand and took mine. “I can think of worse fates,” he replied, and if I hadn’t just then tripped over a root and almost dropped the baby I carried, I believe he might have stopped walking and kissed me.

Chapter 12
A True Princess Wins the Day

K
ai and I trudged along the endless path that I had taken before with Karina, only now we had dozens of hungry, tired, frightened, confused children to tend as well. “Where are we going?” they asked, and “When will we get there?” The nisse was annoyed almost to desperation by their complaints, and disappeared often to smoke his pipe. He would return in a state of near calm that lasted only until the next “My feet hurt!” or “I’m starving!” Kai and I tried to carry the littlest ones and encourage the rest, but I was stumbling with exhaustion, and even Kai and Ove were plodding along quite grimly when the trees at last began to thin.

“We’re almost there,” I whispered to Kai. I held a child in one arm, but he took my free hand again and squeezed it. Hand in hand thus, we reached the edge of the trees. I had no idea how long I had been gone, for as the nisse had said, time was a strangely flexible thing in the realm of the Elf-King. I’d hoped it was only days, not weeks or months—or years—and that the encampment, with my parents, Karina, and the knights, would still be waiting for us. But never did I expect what I saw in the meadow outside the gloom of Bitra Forest.

I blinked, squinting in the sudden sunshine, and tried to make sense of it. Many more tents were spread across the field, some ornate and decorated as the royal tents were, some makeshift affairs that looked as if a strong wind would carry them away. There were cookfires everywhere, children playing between the tents, people moving to and fro carrying buckets of water, sacks of foodstuffs, items too varied to be named. An entire town was there, it seemed—all of Gilsa, moved from its stone houses to tents in a field. Openmouthed, I stopped and stared, and when I turned to Kai I could see the same shock on his face that I felt.

Then a woman, gray haired but with a lively face and manner, spotted us. Her arms held a pile of clothes that fell unnoticed into the dirt. Her hands flew to her rosy cheeks and the blood drained from them, and for a moment I thought she too would collapse onto the ground. Instead she cried out wordlessly, and then she wailed, “My Peder! My baby, Peder! Oh look, it is my baby, come back to me!”

A boy of four or five years darted out of the woods and ran to the woman. He leaped into her arms with such force that she tumbled backward, landing with a
thump
atop her laundry. Other family members hurried over to the pair, and there was a great uproar and a tangle of arms and legs, hugs and kisses.

Mothers and fathers, grandparents, and other kinfolk of those stolen scores of years before came from the tents and held open their arms. Their lost children rushed forward and into their waiting embraces, somehow knowing just where they belonged. Though the changelings had stayed children, their families had aged, so there were young married folk welcoming their three-year-old great-aunts and aged crones hugging their infant brothers. The scene was chaos, tumult, and delight, and I thrilled to see the joyful reunions of families who thought they would never again see their loved ones. All the children found their families, until only Kai, the nisse, and I stood at the forest’s edge.

The crowd parted suddenly, and there were the king and queen, Tycho and Karina moving toward us. Karina burst into tears and ran ahead, throwing herself into Kai’s arms. They hugged, and then she hugged me, and then she hugged Kai again, weeping all the while. Finally I had to say to her, “You must stop crying! Else your nose will turn all red and drip, and the prince will not like you anymore.” That made her laugh, and she tried to dry her eyes with her sleeve. Then she noticed the nisse.

“Why, it’s you!” she said to him. “Have you helped us again, you dear creature?”

I would never have thought a nisse could blush, but blush he did. He ducked his head and scuffed his foot on the ground as I related his deeds, and Karina put her arms around him. He stood stock-still, his weathered face as red as his cap, and mumbled, “Lady, you are unseemly! Let me go!”

“In a minute,” Karina said. She bent and kissed his cheek and then released him. The nisse raised his hand to his cheek, his mouth a round O of surprise. Then he spun on his heel and rushed back into the forest, disappearing before I could call him back; and I laughed until tears came to my eyes at the expression on his face, a combination of bliss and utter embarrassment.

The king and queen and prince stood patiently waiting as finally we turned our backs on Bitra Forest for good. My mother’s embrace was like balm to me, and Tycho’s hug came with a whisper: “Karina has said yes!” that made me squeeze him with joy. But when my father put his arms around me, I yielded to a sudden exhaustion so deep that I feared I might faint again. The king lifted me in his arms and said, “Daughter, you have done well. Now you must rest.”

After that all was hazy to me. I know we went straight to the palace and I was put in the softest, most luxurious bed imaginable. There were no lumps, no bumps, no pea hidden beneath the mattress to disturb my slumber. I slept a deep and dreamless sleep and woke refreshed to find Karina at the dressing table near my bed, experimenting with her hair. Ove was curled on an embroidered pillow in a corner, and he wagged his tail when he noticed that my eyes were open.

“Good morning,” I said groggily.

“Good afternoon!” Karina replied, turning and smiling at me. “I have a tray here with some food for you; you must be half starved. You’ve slept a very long time!”

“I may never get up,” I said lazily, stretching with pleasure. I reached for the tray of cheeses and bread, breaking off pieces to toss to Ove, who could not jump up high enough to reach my lofty mattress.

“Oh, but you must get up!” Karina said. “The whole town is having a party tonight, and it is all for you. You are like a hero in a legend, Lilia! They are composing songs in your honor!”

“Oh my,” I said wonderingly. “Songs? Really?” I was quite pleased, to tell the truth. Then I recalled something that had happened just before I was overcome by exhaustion. “Karina,” I said, “did Tycho tell me—did he say that you had consented to his proposal? Have you agreed to marry my brother?”

“I have,” she admitted shyly. “While you were gone, we came to an understanding. He spoke with the king and queen, and they have accepted me, though I am not of royal blood. They say that if you and I are as sisters, and if their son loves me, then I am their daughter already.”

“Then tonight we must celebrate your engagement as well!” I cried, and I climbed out of bed. “What shall we wear? How shall we do our hair?” I went to the closet, and there I found dresses in every color and fabric, in sizes to fit both Karina and myself.

“Is this magic?” I asked in astonishment. “Where did these come from?”

“Your mother had them made while we waited for you to come out of the forest,” Karina told me.

“What?” I said, confused. “How long was I gone?”

“A fortnight and a day,” Karina answered. “You didn’t know?”

“I had no idea,” I confessed. “It could have been a day, or a week, or a year. There is no way to tell in that cursed forest. That explains how so many had gathered by the time we returned, though.”

“The people came from Gilsa gradually,” Karina explained. “As the story spread that you had gone to get the changelings, their families began to make their way to us. It was wondrous, to see them come. Old and young they came, so full of hope and love for their lost children—and you brought their babies back, Lilia! Oh, I am so proud of you!” She embraced me, and I hugged her in return.

“But tell me,” I said, remembering something else. “The falcons—did you know they saved me? Where did they come from?” I told her how the falcons had swooped down and taken the elves’ arrows from them, and her eyes grew very wide at the thought of the danger I’d been in.

“That was Sir Erlend’s doing,” she said. “I don’t know what made him think of it; but that first day after you disappeared into the wood, he went up to the mews, and he let the falcons out. Everyone thought they were gone for good, but then the birds came back, each carrying a quiver of elvish arrows. Your mother almost collapsed. Her fear for you was great, but we had no way to find out what had happened or where you were. And now we know that Sir Erlend’s idea worked!”

“Indeed, I must thank him,” I said. “I believe his cleverness saved my life.”

Then we chose our dresses. I wore lavender satin, and Karina decided on blue silk. She interlaced strands of her blond hair with pearls, leaving the rest to fall in golden curls down her back. Her bright blue eyes matched the sapphire of her dress.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wear a braid?” I teased her, and she slapped at me, hitting only air as I dodged away.

“As long as I don’t have to fear setting my hair ablaze in the cookfire, I will never again wear a braid,” she said decisively.

“Nor I,” I agreed, sitting before the looking glass. Karina fixed my hair, weaving it through with amethysts, and then we admired our reflections. “You look beautiful,” I told Karina, and she said, “No,
you
look beautiful, Your Highness!”

“You are Your Highness as well, you know,” I pointed out.

“Not yet,” she said decisively. “I will be plain Karina until Midwinter, when we wed.”

But she was not plain Karina, for my father made Kai a knight and Karina a lady that afternoon before we went down to the town. She was Lady Karina then, and Kai was Sir Kai, though I teased him mercilessly for it.

“You look every inch the lord, Sir Kai,” I told him afterward, taking in his well-groomed curls, his velvet doublet and scrubbed hands.

“Nothing in my life has prepared me for this!” he admitted, laughing. “I sometimes think I will wake up to find myself on the hillside in Hagi, tending my sheep.”

“Do you miss the farm?” I asked him.

“I miss Papa,” he said a little sadly. “But you know that I always dreaded the thought of spending my life among the sheep, though I never said so to him. I didn’t think there was any other path open to me.”

“Well,” I said, “we must bring your father here for the wedding, then.”

“But what of Ylva?” he asked.

“The wedding will be at the winter solstice, and she will have had the baby not long before,” I pointed out. “She will not come.”

Kai smiled. “It would make Karina tremendously happy to have Papa there,” he told me. “She said that she would not invite him, for she did not want you ever to have to face Ylva again, but I know it saddened her.”

“Jorgen should walk her down the aisle,” I agreed.

“Oh, imagine Papa walking down the aisle in a royal chapel, in his farm clothes and his great beard!”

“And smoking his pipe,” I added mischievously. “I think we can find him a new suit of clothes for the occasion, though.”

We laughed, and then together with the king and queen, and Tycho and Karina, with Ove frolicking behind, we set out on foot down the hill to Gilsa.

In the great town square an enormous bonfire had been lit, and the townspeople crowded around it. There were many toasts to Prince Tycho and Karina, and Karina was thrilled to see that all the town seemed happy about the engagement. Families came to me with their thanks, and I kissed the children I had rescued, glad to see them with their loved ones. I listened to the minstrels singing about my adventures. Most of their songs were very bad indeed, though there was one verse I rather liked:

The crowd learned it quickly and sang it loudly, shouting the last line, and I laughed. Of course it was ridiculous, for the Elf-King had no sword or shield, and I did indeed flinch many times. But I liked it nonetheless, and I hummed its tune as I danced with the people of Gilsa. Even the king and queen danced among their subjects.

Kai found me warming my hands by the bonfire as the evening began to draw to a close.

“I have been watching you tonight, you know,” he told me.

“Watching me?” I looked at him quizzically.

“Yes, watching you undergo this . . . transformation. Becoming a princess. But I think it is not really such an alteration.”

“No?” I asked, fascinated.

Kai smiled and said, “Oh, your clothes are different, and your hair—I do miss that braid! But the rest of it—your manners, your bearing, all that—it just seems to me like a . . . a sharpening.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am saying this badly, I know. I mean that all the elements were already there. You were a bad servant to Ylva because you were a princess. You were always a true princess, even when you were a shepherdess. I can see that now.” He stopped talking, a little flustered, and I mulled over his words.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said finally, “but it’s a wonderful excuse for my shortcomings as a serving maid. I doubt that it would convince Ylva, though!”

We laughed, and then I asked seriously, “Does that mean you think I will not change much, being a princess?”

Kai looked thoughtful. “You do not seem quite the sleepless maiden you once were. I’m glad of that—I don’t have to worry about you dozing off in the middle of a conversation anymore. And you are already more sure of yourself, less uncertain. And yet—” He broke off.