Blogsy Babbles

     All mirrors are magic, of course.  Some are more magic than others, that’s all, so we call them magic mirrors.  This distinguishes them from the mirrors we look at so often that we forget about their magic.

     Several mirrors were made which would show any scene requested, or answer questions about things far away.  The most famous of these is undoubtedly that owned by Snow White’s great enemy, the Wicked Queen.  What is not widely known is that that villainous woman’s sister owned a similar mirror.

     The Princess LaDoro, as she was known, was very, very beauitful.  So as soon as she could, she moved very, very far away from her sister.  She knew what kind of person was her sister, and understood it was not healthy to be so beautiful.

     In a distant land, then, LaDoro settled in a high castle.  People flocked to see the beautiful noblewoman who had come to live among them: a tall woman with black hair, brilliant round eyes, and a form and figure as near to perfect as any human being had a right to expect.  She was widely believed to be the fairest woman in all the land.  LaDoro herself knew this to be true, as she could go to her bedroom, throw back the curtain that hung in front of the mirror, and inquire, “Mirror, Mirror, close at hand: Who’s the fairest in the land?”

     The mirror would always reply, “In all this land, as I can see, lives none more beautiful than thee.”

     LaDoro was thus able to live happily for several years, which was rather surprising.  For she was, deep down, very nearly as wicked as her older sister, and knew a great deal of unpleasant magic.  This combination will eventually get anyone into trouble.

     What happened was that Princess LaDoro grew ambitious.  “Mirror, Mirror, tell me true about my neighbor countries too,” she asked one day.  She learned that she was the most beautiful in her land and all the lands that touched it as well.  On the following day, it turned out that she was also the most beautiful person in all the countries that touched the countries that touched her country.  Eventually, though, the mirror had to confess.

     “In a land four lands from me lives a woman lovelier than thee.”

     “What?” she shrieked.  “Show her to me!  At once!”

     The mirror showed her, at once, a woman named Rose O’Pink, who had red hair and bright eyes and a figure that was, though not all that much like LaDoro’s, as nearly perfect in its own way as the princess’s was in its fashion.  What’s more, this woman had a smile that glowed, as she was obviously dressing for her wedding.

     Princess LaDoro  had to admit that Rose O’Pink was very beautiful indeed.  “In fact,” she said, “If you happen to be one of those people who like red hair, I can see where someone might say she is the better looking of the two of us.  It hardly matters, though.  Once she’s burdened with a husband and a dozen or so children, her beauty will fade.”

     “Nay, princess, she is one of those who with the years more lovely grows,” the mirror said.

     This used up the princess’s fairly small store of good nature.  “Then I will call upon evil spirits to descend and tear away her beauty!  They will pull her hair out by the….”

     “You cannot” said the mirror, “For her parents’ house has sayings that….”

     “Silence!” ordered the princess.  “Just show me, without more poetry and…oh, weasels!”

     It was the custom in Rose O’Pink’s part of the world to paste quotations from the Holy Book over the doors and windows of every house.  The people who lived there were then free from danger from any but the very worst of evil spirits.

     “But she is to be married,” growled the princess.  “She won’t be part of her parents’ household then.”

     Knowing how easily glass can be broken, the mirror aid nothing, but showed the princess a picture of the wedding guests, bringing pieces of paper with the sayings on them, and pasting these to the walls of the house in which Rose O’Pink and her new husband were to live.

     LaDoro just stood there, rubbing her perfect chin.  “I could do it,” she murmured.  “I know I could.  If, at the very second her parents give her away, but she is not yet wed….  But no.  I shall simply attend the wedding, and congratulate her on her great beauty.”

     With that, she donned her finest gown and, speaking a spell, stepped into the mirror.  Seconds later, she rose from a pillow of pink smoke at the little village wedding.  She chose pink smoke as this would neither smudge nor clash with her dress.

     The crowd at the wedding guessed at once who she was.  A woman with so much beauty and so much magic could hardly be a secret even four lands away.  Her arrival worried them, since magical beauties did not have good reputations.

     “Welcome!” called the groom, moving so as to keep the wedding cake between himself and the uninvited guest.  “What can we do for you, My Lady?”

     LaDoro ignored him, and strolled over to face Rose O’Pink.  The soft brown eyes of the most beautiful woman for miles in every direction met the cold black ones of the second most beautiful woman.

     The princess spoke with gentle words.  “I spend long hours at my magic mirror,” she told the bride, “Seeking out the most beautiful people in the world and doing what I can to make their lives easier.  Allow me to add my blessing on this occasion.”

     Rose O’Pink could really see no way to stop her.  “Please do, My Lady.”

     LaDoro raised her hands to the sky.  The wedding guests stepped back, seeing the clouds gather above the bride.  But the princess simply called out, “Sun, shine warmly on this little house and those who live in it.  Blow softly, wind: let there be no hurricanes, but ever a gentle breeze to soothe their spirits.  Rain, mind your business, and see that they have water when they need it.  But keep your floods to yourself.”

     This was so obviously a matter of good will that the guests cheered.  They enjoyed a perfectly splendid wedding, with food and drink for all.  Princess LaDoro had never tasted rhubarb wine before.  She didn’t really taste it this time, because all the while she ate and drank, she was smiling at Rose O’Pink, and hating every hair in the fair bride’s eyelashes.

     After the wedding, she went home.  The people in her own land thought she was the same as she was before the trip.  She was certainly just as beautiful, and grew more so with each passing day.  They knew she still had magic, and came every day to ask for favors.  As long as they remembered to tell the princess she was not only beautiful but that it was impossible to believe anyone anywhere in the world could be more lovely, LaDoro would do little magical things for them, and send them on her way.

     What they did not know was that whenever the princess was alone, she would go to her magic mirror, and ask to be shown a particular cottage in a village four lands away.  LaDoro did this so often, in fact, that she hardly ever remembered to look at herself.

     She looked at the rosy-cheeked children as the family grew, studied the friends of the family as they visited.  Everyone who came into view was warmed not only by the gentle sunshine but by the no less gentle warmth of Rose’s smile, soothed not just by the gentle breeze but by the gentle manner of the lady of the house.  Rose’s eyes were bright as they looked around at the tidy, happy home.

     The princess’s eyes were cold.  As she watched, though, a cold beautiful smile would creep up her perfect cheeks.  For the same sun that warmed the roses in the cheeks of the children was drying out the paste which held the holy sayings to the house.  The gentle breeze that ruffled the hair of Rose and her husband was tugging at the edges of the bits of paper, loosening them just a little each day.

     Rose O’Pink and her husband might have noticed these things: this was the one possibility LaDoro feared.  But if they noticed, they never put more paste on the guardian mottos.  In a house full of children, it is possible to look at something every day and not see it, or, seeing it, not think about it.

     The children grew taller, and Rose’s face grew more dazzling.  The princess’s eyes grew keener, watching those bits of paper above the doors and windows.  One day, LaDoro’s servants heard her cry out.  They did not come to her to ask what had happened; she had given orders that they were never to enter the room where she kept her magic mirror.

     “Ah!” was what the princess had cried.  “Ah!  Ah!”

     The motto over one window had come loose entirely, and dropped to the ground.  The gentle breezes LaDoro had blessed the house with blew it out onto the street, where a passing cart crushed it into the mud.

     “Ah!” the princess cried again, rubbing her palms together.

     She did not leave the mirror all that day, fearing that someone might perhaps notice the fallen motto.  But night fell too, and the window remained unprotected.  As the moon rose, she hurried to cabinets around the room and assembled her mightiest charms and tokens.  A little black cauldron went on the floor.  Behind it she set up a tall yellow pole with a little dish at the top.  LaDoro cast some curious red sticks into this dish, and set them alight.

     The light from this little fire touched the magic mirror and bounced down into the center of the black cauldron.  In this there was nothing but a little blood from a snake, dirt from a grave, and twisted slips of paper on which she had written quite different sayings from those which had been pasted on the home of Rose O’Pink.

     So little paper was there that the fire the reflected light started should have burned out at once.  Yet the flame grew and grew until, but for the power of Princess LaDoro, they might have consumed the whole castle.

     LaDoro whispered certain words.  From the cauldron rose a ball of unlight, so dark that the great fire was dimmed, and the princess felt as if the eyes were being sucked from her head.  The magic mirror reflected this unlight, making the darkness even deeper.  From the darkness was born a deep grey egg, which rose to the ceiling and then cracked open in a shower of ash and cinder.  Then an evil spirit, burning with a fire that gave no light, stood before her.  Each of its fingers had a hand, and each of its eyes held a face.

     LaDro was quite exhausted by now: these things had taken most of her power to accomplish.  But she was strong enough to rise and point to the mirror, where the little house now appeared.

     “Go,” she ordered.  “Take this house as your own.  But first find the woman who lives there.  Rip away her beauty.  Take away her joy.  Blast her comfort.  But do not kill her.  Let her live long years yet, as many as my hatred will bestow, in which every second stretches to an eternity of pain, of horror, and of ugliness.”

     The demon’s voice was like the sharpest thunder.  “I can attack no such house.  They have the sayings pasted over the doors and windows.”

     “But see!”  LaDoro pointed again.  “There is no paper over the window at the left side of the house.  The motto fell this morning and was lost in the mud.  Go now, and do my bidding.”

     The demon looked onto LaDoro’s eyes and she knew, with what was almost a stab of pain, that her beauty meant nothing to him.  “If it is as you say,” the evil spirit thundered again, “I shall do as you command.  But if I cannot enter, you know the law.  I will not be denied, and will return here to do to you what you have ordered for this woman.”

     LaDoro used her remaining strength to stand as tall as she could, and flung a hand toward the mirror.  “Go!”

     The evil spirit went.  LaDoro sank into a chair, her eyes upon the scene in the mirror.

     The village four lands away was struck by the worst storm it had felt since that golden day when the magical princess turned up unexpectedly at Rose O’Pink’s wedding.  Years had passed since the thunder had been so loud or the rain so harsh.  The evil spirit flew around and around the village, glorying in the fear brought on by the storm.  Then he spotted the little cottage.

     He swept across the cottage and its garden, his wind tearing down bits of the garden wall and bending trees to the ground.  To the little window on the left side of the house he came and, as he had been told, no paper waited above it.  The evil spirit laughed, reaching out to tear the window away.  Then he howled.

     Inside the house, the family heard no more than the howl of a mighty wind, hut outside, in the storm, a pair of rats tipped over from sheer terror and wiggled their toes in the air.  The evil spirit howled again.  The rain stopped and the thunder was silenced as he fell back into the muddy garden, shaking his smoking fingers.

     Rain, breeze, and sun had done their work so long on the little college so long at LaDoro’s command that the ink had seeped through the cheap paper of the blessings posted by the wedding guests.  Though paper and paste were gone, and the ink had washed away at last, the sun had bleached the boards until the blessings were printed on the house itself, and the demon could by no means enter.

     Screaming with pain, the demon flew from the village, taking the storm along, back through the mirror to the princess who had done him this damage.  And the howling that echoed through her high, cold, beautiful castle that night frightened more than rats.

     The magic mirror is still there, free to anyone who will enter the castle and take it.  But no one in that land ventures near the castle.  The echoes of howling inside have not subsided even to this day.

     In the damp northern land of Tarrefol, a young man named Lyall worked as a shepherd.  Every day, he took his village’s sheep to the hills north of town where they could feed on the green grass.

     His job was to see that at least as many sheep came home at night as went out in the morning, and that all of them were fed.  He kept the lambs and the older sheep from being pushed away from the tenderest grass by the sheep in their prime.  It was his duty to nudge sheep back from pits or high rocks.  And he had to have an eye out for people or wolves who might try to steal a sheep.  His was a job which called for a deal of sitting and watching, which Lyall varied from time to time by standing and watching.

     One morning, he found that a mighty rain had washed dirt and grass down from the hills.  Lyall and the sheep had to go much farther north to find enough space for the whole flock to eat.  Even there he found new gullies that had washed dirt down toward the village, and rocks which had been exposed for the first time in ages.

      But there was grass enough left for a sheep’s content.  Lyall mostly stood and watched here, for the sheep always managed to find a way into trouble in a new place.  Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he heard a terrible ruckus.  He hurried over to where a ram was thrashing about, and found it had both hind legs stuck right into the ground.  The earth had been washed so thin at this point that the ram, just by walking over it, had broken through into a cave underneath.

     The ram didn’t help much bucking and bawling as Lyall tried to haul it up without himself falling into the hole.  He heard other sounds besides those made by the ram but had no time to worry about them.  It did, though, sound a little like people shouting.

     Once the ram was freed, Lyall gave it a shove in the direction he felt it should go.  Then he knelt and peered into the hole in the ground, to make sure one of the lambs hadn’t fallen in first.  The sounds he heard might well come from a small sheep crying out, and making echoes underground.

     His eyes went wide and his breath came fast.  In the shadows below were great grey chests covered with moss, but standing open and filled to the brimming with bright gold.  Around these in the dirt sat gold cups and gold plates, golden bells, golden armlets, gold necklaces, gold chains, and the golden crowns of a dozen kings.  Lyall might well have climbed down for a closer look, had that been all he saw.

     But a shepherd needs to have eyes that see plenty, and what else Lyall was seeing was more eyes.  Squinting, he could just make out the faces going with those eyes, little wizened faces.  Lyall understood at once what had happened.  The ram had broken through the roof of a cave that belonged to the little people of the hills.  Sunlight now poured in through the gap, and the little people could work no magic.

     “Well, you have a problem there and no mistake,” he called down.  “But not to worry, good people.  You’ve stolen none of my sheep, and I’ll be stealing none of your gold.”

     Lyall made more than a promise.  Moving around the hill, he took up twigs and sticks which had blown down in the storm.  These he wove into a broad framework, a little bigger than the hole the ram had made in the hill.  He smeared this framework with mud and carried it back to the hole.

     “There you be,” he said, setting it down, “You can be sleeping again now.  Night is the time for your waking.”

     “True enough,” said a rough voice.

     Lyall turned to find a small man dressed in grey and green, and wearing a red mustache as long as the man was tall.  The little fellow was studying the patch in the hill.  Paying no attention to Lyall at all, at all, he walked three times around the framework, murmuring “Soooo.  Soooo.”

     After the third turn, he stopped and looked up at Lyall.  “It’s never so neat a job as we could do ourselves, understood, but it will no doubt hold until nightfall.  Now I suppose you’ll be wanting some gold.”

     The little man moved the patch a bit with one foot so Lyall could see the treasure again.  “It’s the rule that you can ask us for any of it, or all of it,” he said.  “I’d suggest you leave us a little, though, if you value our good will.”

     Lyall shrugged.  “What would I do with so much gold?  How could I be carrying it, and where would I be putting it?  And how would I be explaining where it came from?  I can’t deny that a bit of gold now and then would be handy, but there’s a power of trouble in taking so much.”

     “Take a little, then,” the man told him.  “For you’ve done us a service and we’re in your debt.  And if there’s any one thing we like less than a mortal stealing our gold, it’s for a mortal man to be putting us in debt to him.”

     “Well, if you must be giving me something for a neighborly act,” Lyall replied, “I would not have you breaking your rules.  But does it have to be gold?”

     The little man stood back, hands on his hips.  “No gold?  Soooo.  Soooo.  What’s it to be, then?”

     “Teach me to whistle,” said Lyal.

     Now the little man took three steps backward.  “Lad,” he said, “The world has changed for the worse since we started living in our castle down below.  In my day, every lad in Tarrefol could whistle.”

     “And so I can whistle,” Lyall retorted.  “I can whistle to call a dog, and I can whistle a tune and recognize it when I hear myself whistling it.  But my dad and my grand-dad could whistle to break the heart.  They could whistle the birds down out of their very nests or whistle a song to make you think the sun shone in the dark dead of winter.  And I’ve never been such a whistler myself.  Can you teach me such a thing?”

     I can give you that power,” said the little man, with a shrug.  “But you’ll need to be coming back at night, since I can work no….”

     “All I want given me is lessons,” Lyall informed him.  “Don’t give me the power.  Show me how it’s done, so I’ll know what I’m doing when I’m doing it.”

     The little man grinned, which made the tips of his mustache bounce up.  “You drive a hard bargain, my lad.  Is it watching sheep all day a young man like you should be doing?”

     Lyall shrugged.  “Why not?”

     The little man said no more on that subject, but sat right down over the patch in the hill, and taught Lyall to whistle.  By the end of that day each sheep bore on its back forty birds that had come down to listen.

     “It’s a passable whistler you are, lad,” said the little man, as the sun slanted down.

     “That’s fine,” said Lyall.  “That’s mighty fine.  Now I’ll have to be getting the sheep back.”  He whistled a little tune and the birds whistled it back to him.  “Ah, it’s a diner thing than gold you’ve passed along to me.”

     “It is that,” the little man said to himself, watching Lyall herd the sheep down toward the village.  “And because you had the wit to ask for music instead of gold, you shall have both.”

     For days after that, Lyall herded the sheep as he’d always done, knowing nothing of the little man’s promise.  To be sure, he had more visitors than before.  People coming along the road, who had thought to pass the herd of sheep, would pause in their passing to listen to what sounded like the rose of all birds. More than one walked carefully between the sheep to ask Lyall to show them how to whistle that well.  Knowing himself to be no more than a shepherd, Lyall never considered the possibility that there were more important things he might be doing.  He’d give a few whistling lessons to anyone who asked, keeping his eyes on the sheep all the while.

     And when one of his students tried to pay him, not a coin would he take, be it copper of silver or gold.  “A pity it would be if there were one soul in Tarrefol who could not whistle,” he’d say.

      And never did he see the little man with the red mustache, hiding among the rocks, murmuring, “Soooo.  Soooo.”

     The people took to calling him Lyall Whistle-Lips, and many’s the time he was called to a dance at the village or at the manor house, to whistle a tune now and again while the fiddler’s fingers rested.  Not a penny would he take for that, either.  “I walk into more dances than any shepherd in the land of Tarrefol,” Lyall said.  “I dance when I will and eat my fill.  What more could I possibly honestly ask?”

     And he never noticed a little man outside the door, stroking a red mustache and saying “Soooo.  Soooo.”

     This made Lyall very popular, but it did not exactly make him a respected citizen.  Any man who would turn down money honestly offered was little better than a fool, particularly when, with all that skill, he went on herding sheep.  It was thought that, at the very least, he could buy a few sheep and go into business for himself.  And of course he was no one’s choice for a son-in-law, and no woman really wanted a husband with so little money and less ambition, a man who seemed to want no more than to watch sheep and whistle his days away.

     The only person who took Lyall Whistle-Lips seriously was the King of Tarrefol himself.

     The King had difficulties with his only child, a daughter named Fianna.  Princess Fianna was a beautiful and dutiful daughter to the King, but on one matter they disagreed.  Fianna knew she was to be Queen, come the sad day when her father died.  When that day came, she planned to be an unmarried Queen.  The Kings from all the countries around Tarrefol would come in solemn procession then, offering gifts of jewels, rich clothes, and golden chains as they asked for her hand.  She liked this idea.

     Anything else her father asked of her, she was willing to perform, from hosting feasts to judging cattle.  She wanted to be a real Queen, so she studied history, floriography, onomastics, and other sciences so she would understand the many things it was necessary for a Queen to be knowing.  But she would marry no one.

     The King worried about all of this and finally took himself to a quiet part of the garden.  For centuries, whenever a King of Tarrefol had an especially sticky problem, it was the custom to resort to a magic well tucked away there.  If the monarch dropped in a gold piece, one of the little people from the hills would appear, to answer questions.  For rather more gold, the little people might actually help out with a magical favor or two.  The King didn’t know if he was quite as desperate as all that yet.

     So the King dropped his gold coin int the well and soon a little man all in grey and green, twirling a long red mustache, stood before him.  The King told him all about Princess Fianna, and asked his advice.

     “You need no advice,” the little man said, “For you have no problem.  The next man the princess kisses will be her husband.”

     The King was so happy to get a straight answer (the little people had been known to talk in riddles) that he kicked his heels and went running back to the castle.  Knowing how stubborn Fianna could be, though, he told no one at all what the little man had said.  Well, no one but his Prime Minister, who, besides being his most trusted advisor, was the sister of his dear, departed wife.  She told no one about what the King had said.  Except for her husband, who told no one but the Captain of the Guard, who swore to keep it a secret.  And yet somehow the story got out.

     And Fianna never so much as puckered her lips for weeks after this, lest someone should sneak up and kiss her.  Even when a page boy slipped her a glass of straight lemon juice at breakfast one morning, not so much as a pucker did she make.  The King was frantic.  So when he heard of a personable young shepherd called Lyall Whistle-Lips, he wondered if this lad might have the answer to his troubles.

     He sent for Lyall, who found someone to take care of the sheep that day, and explained the problem.  “Now what I want you to do, Lyall, my lad,” the King said, “Is teach the princess to whistle, as you have taught the others.  When the time is right, and her lips are puckered up tight, you’re to dive right in and kiss her.”

     When Lyall looked surprised, the King leaned in to whisper, “You see, my daughter doesn’t understand these kings, but I do, more then half of them being cousins of mine.  And if, when I die, my Fianna has no husband, they’ll likely come with armies, not gifts, and any chains they set on her will be far from golden.”

     Lyall scratched his head.  “And you’re thinking I might frighten such men away?”

     The King looked the shepherd up and down.  “Well, they’ll not be seeing you; they’ll know only that there IS a husband, and hold off.  Still, if you don’t like the idea of marrying a Queen, you’ll at least be getting her to pucker her lips, and some man with more determination may make the attempt.”

     Lyall shrugged.  “I will do as you ask, Your Highness.  I can’t say as I believe kings can be quite so foolish as you tell me but, to be sure, you know your family better than I do.”

     The King clapped his hands and called for the Prime Minister to take the shepherd to Princess Fianna’s Tower.  “And leave them alone there,” he went on.  “Lyall Whistle-Lips has some very important things to teach her.”

     Princess Fianna’s eyes flashed when she heard what her new tutor was there to teach, for she knew at once why her father would want her to work on this craft.  But the shepherd lad was pleasant enough, and hardly to blame for her father’s plotting, so she reached out a hand to his and said, “Good morning, sir.”

     Lyall said nothing.  Princess Fianna was by far the most beautiful woman he had ever met, though he had been to dances in a dozen villages and half a dozen manor houses.  Her eyes were brighter than the sun at sunrise, and the sheen of her hair stood out brighter than the dew on the grass of a spring meadow.

     “I understand you’re the finest whistler in all of Tarrefol,” the Princess went on,  “And that His Highness my father wishes me to learn the art.  I’m sure I don’t mind that.  But you will please oblige me by turning your back to me during the lesson, and standing in that corner of the room.”

     By this Lyall understood that the Princess knew about the sort of trick the King expected him to play.  Since he had not cared much for the idea of kissing someone who did not want to be kissed, he agreed.  “Still and all,” he said, “It will be a power of difficulty teaching anyone to whistle that way.”

     “Nevertheless, that’s the way you’ll be doing it,” Fianna told him.

     Lyall nodded.  To be sure, it would not have worked the King’s way.  If the little people spoke truth, his kissing the Princess would have made little difference.  It was the man she kissed that mattered, not the man who kissed her.  And if by some chance, the Princess did decide to kiss him, it would hardly matter which way he turned.

     To the Princess herself, he said “When we finish, you should be whistling like this.”  And he whistled a bit of “Wolf in the Sheepfold”, a popular tune in the dances around Tarrefol.

     Fianna enjoyed the song very much indeed, but didn’t like to be saying so with that bright face still pointed at her.  “That was pretty, to be sure,” she told Lyall, “But I can’t see why I should be after learning any such thing.  If I need any whistling done, I can be sending for you.”

     “Why, if that is the case, then I can be off now and not be the cause of wasting any more of your time,” said Lyall, taking a step toward the door.  “Strange it is to be meeting someone in Tarrefol who cannot whistle, but I suppose there is so much other music in a castle that you have no need to whistle.”

     Fianna frowned.  “And do you all whistle, then, down in the villages?”

     “That we do,” said Lyall Whistle-Lips.  “Everyone in Tarrefol can whistle.”

     “I’ll not be the only one who can’t then!” said Fianna.  “But I wonder why it should be that all the people whistle.  There was nothing about this in my history books.”

     “Well, now,” said Lyall.

     Taking the princess’s hand, he walked over to a window.  From here they could see two or three villages among the hills, and several flocks of sheep with their own shepherds.  And he whistled her a little tune of the cottages they could see, of hungry winters and the freedom of the thaw.  Hot summer days came into the tune, and autumn days at market.  He whistled her the clouds rolling across the sky as you sat watching sheep, and the rolling of your collar when the clouds turned out to be rain clouds.

     Fianna looked at him wide-eyed, and then out at the villages below.  And when he’d whistled up all the days’ life outside the castle, she reached up to take his face between her hands, and she kissed him.

     Lyall, startled, stepped back a bit.  But then, with a laugh, he stepped back to where he’d been and kissed her in return.

     “Oh!” Fianna cried, remembering what all this was about.  She looked behind her, but saw no one else in the room.

     She turned back to face Lyall Whistle-Lips.  “Don’t tell!” she whispered.

     “I will not,” said Lyall, without hesitation.  “I am not bound by what is said by the little people in the hills, nor such a fool as to wish to marry someone who does not wish to be married.”

     “Oh, I’m not worrying about that,” she told him.  “It suddenly seems to me that a man at hand might be better than any five kings in the bush.”  She tossed her head to throw her hair back a bit.  “But I’ve not learned to whistle yet.”

     Teacher and student puckered their lips again, never noticing at all a pair of eyes or a long red mustache, or a voice that murmured “Soooo.  Soooo.”

     “I’ve broken my soul!” wailed Egbert, looking left and right for a door in the wall.  “I know it.  I’ve broken my soul and I shall never be happy again!”

     The egg had not, as a matter of fact, broken.  On the other side of the wall was the garden of the King.  And just behind the wall where Egbert had been boiling his soul sat the youngest and largest of the King’s daughters.  She was not considered the most beautiful of princesses, but could be quite friendly when she wasn’t hungry.  Having finished everything she had brought in her hamper for a little mid-morning picnic, she was looking around to make sure she hadn’t missed any of the food when a boiled egg plopped out of the sky onto her lap.

     “How lovely!” she thought.  “Daddy must have had one of the wizards put a spell on the birds here so they’d lay boiled eggs.  Very useful.”  She cracked the egg against the hamper handle, and peeled it.  It was quite nicely cooked.

     She heard someone shout “Oh!”

     Looking up, she saw a shirtless man climb over the wall, carrying a salt shake.  “Oh, alas!” she told him.  “If I had known you were coming, I might have waited,  A little salt would have been just the thing.”

     “My…my soul!”

     The princess raised her eyebrows.  “I beg your pardon?”

     Egbert dropped into the garden, landing on his knees.  “You have eaten my soul!  I shall never be a whole man again!”

     The princess looked him up and down.  “Do you know?  That’s quite the prettiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

     “The reverend was right.”  Egbert could hardly believe his bad luck.  “My soul was high, and low, and all over.  And now it is in you.”

     The princess clapped her hands.  “And your soul is important to you?  You say you won’t feel whole without it?”

     “It’s priceless,” said Egbert, his mind on all his money, not to mention the rhubarb plants.  “I could never buy such a soul again.  Now I can never be happy.”

     “I think you’d better come with me,” said the princess.  Taking Egbert by one hand, she led him into the castle. Egbert paid no attention to where he was going; he hardly cared what happened to him now.

     The princess walked right into the throne room where her father and mother were sitting.  “This man is in love with me,” she told them.  “He says I have captured his soul and he shall never be whole again without me.”

     The King looked the shirtless man over.  “Is this true?”

     “Oh, my soul, my soul.  I have no hope of ever getting it now.”  Egbert noticed, all at once, that the man before him was wearing a crown, and sitting on a throne.  Realizing where he must be, and remembering the respect that a good citizen needed to show the monarch, he pulled himself up straight.

     “But at least, Your Majesty,” he told the King, “It is better that she should have my soul than Stanley.  Or a goose.”

     The princess applauded, but the King frowned.  “This man talks like a fool!”

     The queen reached over and patted his hand.  “All men in love do, dear.  I suppose we had best let them marry.  Since it’s a matter of souls.”

     “Well, it wouldn’t be the first fool I’ve added to the family through marriage,” the King muttered, quietly, so the Queen wouldn’t hear this.  He looked to his youngest and largest daughter.  “Are you sure this is what you want?  I could find you a nice, clean Baron, or Earl.”

     “Oh, they could never say such pretty things!”  She turned and, taking both of Egbert’s hands, held them to her throat.  “Would you like that?  To stay here with me?”

     Egbert brightened at once, at least facially.  “That would be wonderful!  I could always be near my soul, the only soul I ever had!”  This was such a pretty thing to say that the Queen ordered a minstrel to write a song around it to be sung at the wedding.

     Ah, wasn’t there just a wedding when Egbert and the princess were married, with even more food and drink than had been at the other!  The princess and Egbert were very happy in a little castle of their own.  If the princess sometimes suspected that her husband was nothing but a fool, her mother and her married sisters were always ready to assure her that all husbands were like that.

     And to be sure, Egbert made the most loving husband.  For, all other considerations aside, the princess had eaten his soul, for which he had paid every penny he had, plus those rhubarb plants.  So he took very good care of her, all his days.