“You know, I think,” she says, “our land it is plagued by the Monsters. And my father, he seeks the Hero to kill them. The men of our land, them we cannot trust—for many of them are with sympathy for the Monsters, yes! Many of them even have the blood in their families, though they will not say. And those that do not, they are villains, lowly men of the soil unworthy. Do you see?”
He doesn’t, quite, but he nods to keep her going.
“My father the King, may his name be exalted although I am quite mad at him and wish never to step in his shadow again, he hates the Monsters so much, he wishes them all dead.” Another nod; this is par for the course. “My father the King seeks a man to lead us in battle, to slay them in the dawn time. And I would be wed to that man, no matter where his feet have took him!”
She shakes her head. Her ash-colored hair, loose from all her exertions, falls in snaky, dusty ringlets down her modest front. “This cannot be. I will not wed nobody like that. But it is true, my family’s throne will never be free if the Monsters are not put down.
“So I think: I will kill them myself! Then I make my own choice.” She looks up into his face to see if she is shocking him. He thinks of the Elector and her Heir, and nods sagely, his face a mask of politic sympathy. “Thus I take my little brother’s sword, and I climb out my window but I do not have to go through the cactus which is good because I only bring the one dress, and I have a good horse and know to saddle so I make away before anyone know it first. And thus I come here, to their lair! But they—”
“Wait.” The Hero holds up one hand. He almost laid it on her shoulder, but you don’t do that, not yet. “This house—with the sausage, and the very decent jam—this is the Monsters’ lair?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The ones who made the jam?”
She nods, unperturbed by the dream-logic of the thing.
Ha! Well, that explains the remoteness and inaccessibility of the ‘palace’. It’s a hideout, not a royal seat. These people want his protection, probably from the King; no wonder they were evasive about monsters. So did their Envoy deceive the Elector? Or—
She interrupts his thoughts, leaning forward to say earnestly, “Do not be deceive by their looks being like us.” Her eyes get very wide. “These Monsters are the terrible. They are—how do you say it?” She utters a word that sounds like asfdasfddfs.
At his side, Reynard mutters something softly. He can’t quite catch it—and since Reynard has not declared himself yet to the Princess, the Hero knows from experience that it is not his place to ask the fox to speak.
Her next words make it clear that he was right.
“Animals!” she whispers. “They are not human, not at all. They wear human face, but their hearts are monster, and too their shape, when they will!”
Reynard bristles, growling.
The Princess goes on heedlessly, “For years they live amongst us, pretending to be like. Because my grandfather’s father’s father, he conquered this land and made them leave or promise never to do their asfdasfddfs tricks again. Ha!” She spits delicately, for emphasis, it seems. “My toe.” Curse words never translate well in any language. “But they are true to their nature. Untrue to us. At night, when they wish it, they make the shapes of animals, and then,” she breathes, like a child telling ghost stories, “then they run in our villages and eat our young and ravage our maidens and steal our coinage.”
Well, isn’t that what Monsters always do? He nods gravely, and she continues, encouraged, “They say they own this country before we come here to make them civilized like us. We must defeat them or give up our land. And that may never be. That is what my father says. I wonder sometimes because my nursie she was asfdasfddfs. And I love her very much, she no monster. But she had live with us a long time, and civilized. These, they are bad!”
Reynard’s growls grow perilously close to speech. The Hero places a cautioning hand on his head, then slices a little of what’s left of the sausage. But before he can offer it to the fox, to his surprise the Princess says softly, “Oh! May I feed it to him?”
May she? It’s an interesting moment. The Hero hands the Princess the meat, and she holds it out to the fox, very slowly and gently. This, he thinks, is a girl who has not had pets of her own.
Reynard sniffs it for form’s sake, as if he did not know what it was, or who was offering. For a second, the Hero thinks he will snap her fingers, but instead, he snaps the sausage, tosses it showily in the air, catches it in his mouth and swallows it whole. The Princess laughs. She has a nice laugh. The Hero lets out a little of the tension of the night. Peace offering accepted, although he’s unsure why. He can’t wait to hear Reynard’s take on everything. Did he really not realize they were in a house of Shifters, himself?
“I like this little one,” she says, bending to pet him.
Reynard nips her fingers. She squeaks, then bats him playfully on the ear. He leans in to her. She scratches him behind his neck, which he adores—but seldom lets the Hero do.
“This one,” she croons, “he understand. He is very sweet.” Reynard leans into her, cuddling. What is he up to? Gaining her trust, the Hero supposes. Playing some foxish game of strategy.
The Princess sighs, looks up at the Hero again.“So we are understanding, now?” She puts the fox aside, clambers to her feet. She leans unsteadily against a pickle barrel. “Your sword you give me, and the Monster I kill.”
The girl has sand, the Hero has to give her that. Here she stands in a storeroom, defenseless and covered in jam, and she is sticking to her plan. But he can’t give her his sword, of course.
“All of them?” he asks.
“Mmm, no. That is not possible, even to you, I think.” She taps the barrel, thinking. “I kill just one; then I am Hero. I go home. My father cannot choose for me then.”
She’s let her foot peep out again from underneath the bedraggled hem of her gown. A ruby ring sparkles on one toe. “Your sword?”
The Hero hesitates. He’s a man of action, even of strategy—battle strategy. He is clever about movements, and terrain, and how other people who think that way are likely to jump. It’s not his job to figure out who the enemy is. That’s Reynard’s job. But Reynard is licking the Princess’s fingers, seemingly unconcerned with her genocidal plots.
“I make friends with asfdasfddfs when I am Queen, I think,” she says. “That will be best for all, and no more killing nonsense. We go, now?”
The Hero has learned one piece of diplomatic strategy from Reynard: the stall. Best to leave the Princess snug in the storeroom whilst he and Reynard discuss their course of action.
“But if I release you, it would be to warn the Monsters of what we plan.” (Oh, dear; now he’s picking up her diction. He does that, when he travels.)
“Yes,” she replies; “that is right. Good thinking, Hero. You tie me up again—but loosely—and I will be so helpless and hungry they will pity me. And then—BAMM! Ha.”
The Hero smiles. She’s brave, and has a good sense of fun.
So back to the filthy floor she goes, and he ties her up again, but loosely.
He stands up, taking the light with him. Her voice at his feet is suddenly small. “I wonder if... if your fox might like to stay with me? Just a little while? Until light comes again?”
Of course he feels sorry for the girl; but if she wants to be a hero, she needs to learn to wait in the dark, alone. He wants to get Reynard back up to the room, so they can discuss and strategize. He wants Reynard’s take on the shifting situation. Ha. He puns when he’s tired. But it’s Reynard’s choice.
“Thank you,” says the Princess softly. He lowers the light a tidge, just enough to see the red fox curled at her feet.