Affretz did not recognize the hand that caught at his boot, but knew at once it could have nothing to do with the flower. He grabbed it, more because it was dragging him into the hole than any other reason.
A dirty but familiar face gazed up at him, and then Deedee seemed to go limp. Affretz caught her elbow with both hands as she started to fall backward, and hauled her up. He had expected her to be lighter somehow. Archels’s muscles would have had her out in a trice, but his brother was still busy tearing up the hungry flower.
“Ack!” Alain stumbled from the blossom and moved forward like someone walking through deep snow. Archels ripped the rest of the flower out of the ground and threw it as far as he could. As the flower passed the waiting trees, branches reached down to tear it to shreds.
“Now, brothers,” said Archels, dusting off his hands, “Let’s go see about that ogre.”
Alain sat down. “If it’s an ogre who planted that plant, I want no part of him. You’d need gardeners, not princes, to fight him. Let’s go find that castle with the thorns around it, the way we planned.”
Archels, meanwhile, had walked over to the hole in the ground. “Are you down there, fiend?”
Affretz could not get Deedee to stand up. She seemed to be asleep, but no matter how he shook her, she would not open her eyes.
“Let’s go,” said Alain, standing up again. “Where are the horses?”
Affretz let go of Deedee to point, but had to catch her again before she fell. “What?” Alain demanded. “You just left them somewhere for the fiend to find?”
“Well, the dragon said….”
“The dragon!” Alain tried to draw his sword, but it was stuck in its sheath by juices from the flower.
“You explain it to him,” said Archels. “I’ll go get the wagon.”
He strode off into the grim forest, leaving Affretz to get Alain caught up on the day’s events. Deedee slept through the story, and when Archels returned, he was still walking.
“They aren’t hurt,” he said, leading the horses forward, “But they aren’t much good for riding. The noises in this forest have scared them half to death.”
“We can lead them out of here,” Alain declared. Affretz picked up Deedee, whom he had set on the ground while he talked.
“What are you going to do with her?” demanded Archels.
Affretz stopped. “Put her in the wagon, of course. Two of us can lead the horses and one of us can pull the wagon.”
“I don’t mind pulling the wagon,” said Archels, “But I won’t take it all the way with her in it. She’s a servant of the ogre!”
“She is not!” said Affretz.
“If it hadn’t been for her,” Archels went on, rubbing a couple of places on his arm where the amber grease had pulled skin loose, “We’d be at that castle right now, cutting through the thorns. Instead, she led us this way, where we ran afoul of fiends.”
“She didn’t lead us,” Affretz replied. “We all went this way together. She’s just a damsel under a curse.”
“Damsel?” Alain exclaimed. “What would a real damsel be doing walking alone in a forest like this? Look at her! Would a real damsel look like that? She’s a fiend, or a fiend’s helper!”
Mud and leave and dirt were all over Dimity’s hands and feet and clothes. Affretz brushed some of this away. “That’s just because the ogre took her prisoner, and kept her underground. She’s under a curse. Can’t you tell by the way she’s sleeping?”
He stood her up ad shook her. “Sknxxxx,” snored Deedee.
“She might sleep for a hundred years, if that’s part of the curse,” said Archels. “You can’t carry her that long.”
“I could,” said Affretz, lifting her to one shoulder. “I can’t help being ugly, but I can help being lazy!”
“Anyway, one of us should have his hands free, if we’re going to be leading the horses and the wagon. In case there are fiends to fight. Maybe we SHOULD put her in the wagon.”
The princes were all three a bit sore, and a bit tired, so the argument went on for some time. They had expected to have problems during their adventure, but getting trapped by fiends shaped like trees and flowers was not something that was supposed to happen to the bravest and strongest princes in the world. Fiends were supposed to come out in the open shouting, where a prince could use a sword on them. So far, only Affretz had had any real fight, and HIS fiend had gotten away.
The brothers finally marched away along the path, all of them fairly annoyed with each other. Archels led two horses and the wagon while Alain led the other two horses. Affretz carried Deedee, and found this a serious chore on the rough and uneven path. Every third step, the limping prince tripped, nearly dropping her.
The damsel noticed none of this. “Skronx,” she snored.
After an hour of silent marching, the princes reach the main path again, and set off west agan. Taking turns to sleep couldn’t be managed now, so when night started to fall, they stopped to make camp. A fire was built to frighten away night fiends. Affretz, since he was the last one who’d had any sleep, stayed awake on watch.
There was nothing much for him to see but a few moths with fangs, who flew toward the fire until chases away with his sword. To keep himself awake, he spent his time trying to get Deedee to open her eyes. Shaking was no use, and he couldn’t shout, lest this wake his brothers. He did try splashing some water on her, but when that didn’t do anything, he used it to wash the dirt from her face and hands.
She was still snoring “Honk-snoop” when the Alain and Archels woke In the morning.
“You must be right, brother,” said Archels, who was feeling better now. “It must be a curse. I’ll carry her a ways now, if you like.”
“No, thank you,” said Affretz, picking her up again. “You can lead the horses.”
They found no fiends as they continued to march westward. The princes were thinking of pausing for lunch when they stepped out from among the trees dripping with dead moss, and saw there was a world beyond the trees after all.
“I thought the shadow of these trees would go on forever,” sighed Archels.
“Look!” Alain pointed his sword at a great shadow before them. The three princes studied the dark, silent castle surrounded by huge bushes that bristled with thorns.
Prince Alain shook his head. “I don’t mind danger,” he said, “But I don’t feel like fighting any more plants right now. Let’s go to that village down there, and rest. We ca come back later.”
The sun was starting to set behind the village when they saw the second castle beyond it. “Even better,” said Archels. “We can leave Deedee at a inn in the village, get fresh horses, and ride to the castle. The people there can likely tell us anything we need to know about those thornbushes.”
“Leave her!” said Affretz. “But….”
“Sssssh,” said Alain. “Let me do the talking here. And maybe you’d better stay in the back, so they won’t see your face.”
The first building they found on the edge of the village was an inn called The Castle and Thorn. Bright lights had been lit, showing that it was enjoying a great deal of business. The princes smelled the food cooking.
The owner was standing by the door, waiting to welcome guests, and started forward. He smiled on the first two men he saw, but frowned a bit on seeing a third and much uglier man carrying a woman. “Here, now!” he said, as Archels started to tie up the horses outside the front door. “Don’t you be bringing that in here! We’re not looking for any trouble!”
Alain stepped forward. “Sir, all we need….”
“I don’t have any!” The innkeeper came forward and started to untie the first horse. “You’d best be going to….”
Affretz had started to set Deedee down against the hitching rail. The innkeeper reached out to push her away, but seeing her face, jumped back.
“She’s…That’s…Is she d…d….”
“She pronounced it differently,” said Archels.
“D-dead?” stammered the innkeeper.
“No,” said Affretz. “Deedee.”
The innkeeper went whiter than the wall of his inn. “D.D.!” he cried. “Doubly Dead?”
The princes started to reply, but the innkeeper, turning, shouted—no, screamed for his wife. “Allabeth! Come quickly! The princess has been killed twice!”
“No!”
Archels took two steps away from the innkeeper and the dirty damsel who was getting them into trouble again. “Don’t be running away!” shrieked the innkeeper. “Someone has to be explaining to the King and Queen!”
Not just the innkeeper’s wife but everyone at the inn came outside. At the sight of Deedee hanging limp against the hitching rail, men threw their hats on the ground and women tore at their hair. A little girl sat down in the roadway to cry. Affretz heard a dog howl.
Naturally, all this noise brought people from other buildings along the road. The three princes soon found themselves in the middle of a crowd too big for even Archels to push his way through.
“You stupid people!” he shouted. “Listen to me!”
“Listen to HER!” Alain bellowed. “She’s snoring!”
Shouting did not seem to make anything clearer. People were coming up to touch Deedee, as if to see whether she was real. Affretz, afraid they’d knock her over, picked her up. This seemed to call for even more shouting and less listening.
“Make way! Make way!”
“I want to see!”
“The princess is dead twice!”
“Dead twice! Dead twice! How can anyone be dead twice?”
“Well, she was royal.”
“Who will tell the King? Who will tell the Queen?”
“Who did it?”
“Who are those three men?”
“Are they princes?”
“The ugly one’s a fiend!”
“The fiend killed her and the two princes caught him!”
“Aye, and made him carry her, the way we do with dogs that kill chickens!”
“They killed her like a chicken!”
“They all killed her! She’s three times dead!”
“They’re all fiends!”
“Aw, the nice-looking one can’t be a fiend!”
The crowd was moving, bustling all together, away from the inn and down the rod, pushing and pulling each other and dragging not only the three princes and the double-dead Deedee but the horses and wagon as well. Alain could see they were all moving toward tht other castle, and reached out to push Archels’s hand down when Archels reached for his sword. That would not help matters at all.
The castle guards, seeing the huge, screaming crowd, closed one side of the front gates, and moved to stand in front of the open half. They called a challenge but no one heard it.
“The princess!” people screamed. “The princess is dead! She was killed five times! Dimity is dead!”
The captain of the guard arrived with twice as many guards. The king was with him.
“Dead!” someone shouted. “Your Majesty, she’s dead! Seven fiends killed her nine times!”
The king held up a hand and the crowd subsided a little, though quite a lot of people went on shouting, having come late to the mob.
“Who is dead, good people?” His Majesty demanded.
“The princess!” replied a chorus of voices, ragged with grief, anger, and excitement. “The princess! Princess Dimity is dead!”
The King stepped back as if someone had hit him. Then he stepped forward, both hands raised. “Have you proof of this, good people?”
The crowd started to pull to the sides of the road, going quiet as they raised their hands to point at a small group at their center. The King stepped forward and everyone fell silent, except for one angry shout.
“Can’t a person get a little sleep around here?”
Affretz nearly dropped Deedee, but instead set her on her feet and hugged her. She was not pleased about this.
“YOU got to seep for HOURS,” she snapped. “And no one woke YOU up!”
Then she jammed her hands over her ears as the crowd roared.
Blogsy Babbles 