Garden Princess (16 page)

He could tell from her voice that she understood his fear: that he’d been away too long. He was trying not to think how sick his mother had been when he’d left home. It would be a miracle if she were still alive. “I’ll find her,” he said, feeling little of the confidence he tried to put in his voice. He shivered.

“You
are
cold!” said the princess. “Don’t you want your jacket back?”

“I’m only tired.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “I don’t know what my brain was doing when I was a dandelion, but it couldn’t have been sleeping. We should try to rest.”

She pushed herself back into the wagon and lay down. He did, too, as if it were something he did every day — lying in the back of a wagon with a princess. He crossed his arms behind his head and looked up at the stars.

But he wasn’t really tired. His mind was too busy thinking. The princess wanted him to come home with her. “Father can help you find your mother,” she had told him. “And in the meantime, you can stay with me — I mean,
us.
” Just as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world — a thief being the guest of a princess. Except she didn’t know he was a thief. All she knew was that Hortensia had turned him into a magpie; she didn’t know why.

He lay there, thinking and listening. In the front of the wagon, the gardener and the girl with the diamonds were murmuring to each other.
Lovebirds,
his mother would have called them.
They only have eyes for each other.

Edward looked at the princess. She was lying on her side, her head resting on one arm, her other arm bent in front of her. Her eyes were closed. He turned toward her. He watched her for a while and listened to the soft voices of the lovebirds. At last he reached out and pushed his hand under hers.

Her eyes opened. She didn’t speak, but her fingers curled around his, and he remembered what it had been like, coming out of the dream that his magpie life had been. He remembered her holding his hand and looking down at him.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“What?”

“When you were a flower. The gardener told me you were dead. He dug you out of the ground, roots and all.”

The princess smiled. “That wouldn’t kill me. Garth could have transplanted me, and I would have been just fine. Not that he would have. There isn’t a gardener in the world that likes dandelions.”

“I like them,” said Edward. To be sure, he had never given them a thought until yesterday. But he knew he would never again look at a dandelion without thinking of the princess.

She laughed. “They’re weeds!”

“If I had a garden, it would be only dandelions. Nothing else.”

He loved to hear her laugh. “You don’t know anything about gardens!” she said.

“Only magic ones,” he agreed. “You’ll have to tell me about the other kind. Why do you like them so much?”

He knew she loved gardens; it was the reason she had come to Hortensia’s party. But he also knew that Hortensia loved gardens, and it confused him that the princess should love them as well. She was as different from Hortensia as a person could be.

Her brow furrowed as she considered his question. “Besides the fact that gardens are beautiful to look at, you mean? I suppose it’s all the work that goes into making them: planning and planting, weeding and pruning. I like all of those things. But I also love to learn about new methods for planting and new types of plants. I want to travel all over the world and talk to other gardeners. I want to collect plants and bring them back home to see if I can grow them myself.”

“I wish I could go —” Edward started to say, then stopped himself. Because what he wished was that he could go with her. Because he would give anything to go on just as he was now, talking to her and being close to her. But how could that ever happen?

You’ll be a thief forever,
Hortensia had told him, and she was probably right about that. Even if he felt no temptation to steal now, it could only be a matter of time before he slipped back into his old ways.

He recalled something his mother had once said to him:
You’re a handsome boy, Neddy. You can smile at a girl — you can look at her, say a few words — and steal her heart. You need to be careful not to hurt a girl that way.
Even with love, it seemed he could be a thief. And wasn’t that what he was doing now? Stealing love — telling the princess things that made her smile and want to hold his hand . . .

Except that I would never hurt her, he thought.

But maybe he would. He had hurt his mother. He hadn’t meant to, but it had happened anyway because of what he was. . . .

Steal from me, and you’ll be a thief forever.

He might love the princess, but how could he expect her to love someone like him?

“Go where, Edward?” she murmured drowsily, her eyes drooping.

“Nowhere,” he said too quickly.

But she didn’t notice. She was falling asleep. He felt her grip on his hand loosen. At the front of the wagon, the lovebirds had grown quiet. The girl with the diamonds was leaning against the gardener. His arm was around her, and their heads bobbed in rhythm with the horse’s steady pace as if they, too, were asleep.

He lay there watching the princess, pretending that he could see her dreams and that they were the same as his own — the two of them on a road together, the two of them learning about gardens, planting gardens full of dandelions and other flowers. And all the while, he would know that she could see him for who he wanted to be — not for who he had been.

He held this dream in his mind for a long time, until at last he let it go. He slipped his hand out from under hers. The princess sighed without waking and moved her hand under her cheek.

Then, as quiet as only a thief could be, Edward tucked the bundle of jewels under his arm, crept to the edge of the wagon, and slipped silently to the ground. He watched the wagon roll away, waiting for it to disappear before he began walking in the other direction.

“We’re home!” said Garth.

Adela opened her eyes and saw that it was still dark. She wasn’t walking through a sunlit garden with Edward; she had only been dreaming. She sat up and saw that the wagon was stopped at the palace gates, waiting while the guards opened them.

“Wait! Where’s Edward?” said Adela as the horse began to move forward.

“Whoa!” Garth pulled on the reins.

Marguerite turned around. “I thought he was back there with you.”

“He was. But I fell asleep. He must have fallen out!”

“Edward!” bellowed Garth.

“Edward?” called Adela.

They waited, but there was no response.

Garth called to the guard, “Did you see anyone climb out of the wagon as we came up?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you suppose he’s hurt?” Adela pictured Edward lying unconscious somewhere on the road behind them.

“We’d have heard him if he fell. I’m sure he must have climbed out,” said Garth.

“But he wouldn’t have left without telling us!” Then Adela noticed something. “Oh, no! The jewels are gone!”

Maybe the bundle had fallen out of the wagon
with
Edward. Or maybe Edward had seen the bundle fall and had climbed out to retrieve it. Maybe it had fallen open, the jewels spilled all over the road. By the time he had gathered them up, the wagon was out of sight. But even that seemed unlikely. The wagon couldn’t have been going that fast. Edward could have caught up. He could have called out to them.

“He’s stolen the jewels,” said Garth. “Your magpie friend is a thief, Miss Adela.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” She reached into her pocket and felt the diamond earrings and the necklace with the blue stone. Edward had seemed so upset about having taken them from her. She couldn’t imagine him stealing anything. He couldn’t be a thief!

When they reached the palace, the steward sent a servant to summon the king and queen. Adela’s father and stepmother appeared soon after, looking bleary-eyed and surprised to see the partygoers.

“Darling!” said Cecile, throwing her arms around Marguerite. “I thought you had decided to stay at Lady Hortensia’s! She wrote and told us how pleased she was to have you. ‘Like having a beautiful daisy added to her garden,’ she said. What ever made you — ?” But Cecile had finally noticed Adela. She drew back with a shocked expression. “My dear girl! What has happened to you? You’re covered with scratches! And your hair! Your clothes!”

“I had a bit of a fight with a rose tree,” said Adela.

Cecile clucked her tongue. “Really, Adela, only you would think to go to a garden party and actually try to garden. I’m sure Lady Hortensia must have been terribly displeased. Though I must say, I don’t think much of her for sending you home at such a late hour, and in such a state!”

“She didn’t send us home,” said Marguerite. “Oh, Cecile, you are
not
going to believe what we have to tell you!”

At first, Adela let Marguerite explain what had happened to them, but she mangled the story badly, relating everything out of sequence and leaving out important details. Edward, for example, had no important part in her version of events. He was only “that magpie boy who stole all the jewelry.” So Adela had to tell the story all over again from beginning to end; when she finished, her father actually gave a derisive snort. “You must be joking, Adela!”

And Cecile added, “I can’t say it’s very funny, waking us up at this hour with such nonsense.”

The king and queen might never have believed them, but for the fact that within days, strange reports began to arrive from around the kingdom. It seemed that Hortensia’s other guests were returning home. Their family members, having forgotten about them for so many years, were now shocked to find their loved ones restored to memory. Stranger still, their loved ones were often impossibly young! There were too many such stories to ignore. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Adela’s father complained. “I have a report here of a man who says he’s thirty-seven years old. He claims his older sister has come home, and she’s only nineteen years old.”

At last Adela suggested that the king seek the advice of Dr. Sophus. She had already told her tutor about her adventure with Hortensia, and she knew her father thought highly of his opinions. (“I know the man is brilliant,” the king would say, “because I can never understand what he’s talking about.”) Dr. Sophus pointed out to the king that the historical record was replete with examples of enchantments that involved curious temporal paradoxes similar to the ones being reported. Adela’s father was — if not fully convinced — at least impressed.

“After Her Royal Highness informed me of her adventure at Flower Mountain, I did a bit of poking around in the library,” said Dr. Sophus. “I found several accounts of a beautiful witch who seems to have been active around the time your ancestor King Adalbert IV issued his famous anti-magic legislation. This witch — or Hortensia, as I believe she must later have come to be called — was very powerful from the start. She seems to have chased all other practicing magicians out of her territory. My guess is that after that, she rather successfully went into hiding and continued to practice her craft. We owe a great debt to Her Royal Highness for having the wits and courage to rid the kingdom of her.”

From here, Dr. Sophus went on to convince the king, through gentle urging, that he ought to bestow the King Ival Medal for bravery upon his daughter.

“And Garth and Edward,” Adela added. “I would still be a dandelion and Hortensia would still be enchanting people if not for them.”

She had been thinking about Edward for days. Her mind had busied itself with various explanations for what could have happened to him. Maybe he and the jewelry really had fallen out of the wagon. Before Edward had been able to call out, a thief had attacked him, knocked him out, and stolen the jewels. By the time Edward had come to his senses, the wagon had disappeared. Now he was afraid to come forward because the jewels were missing. There was also a variation on this scenario that Adela didn’t like to entertain: that the thief had slit Edward’s throat.

“Edward?” Her father wore a blank expression.

“I believe Her Highness is referring to the young man who, until recently, was an enchanted magpie,” said Dr. Sophus.

“Ah! That fellow! Come, now, Adela, you can’t expect me to award a medal to a thief.”

Adela protested, “He couldn’t have stolen the jewelry! He wouldn’t have!” But she wasn’t going to tell her father her reasons for believing in Edward’s innocence. Because he had told her he liked dandelions? Because he had held her hand? Because she had felt as if she could see inside him? The reasons would sound foolish if she put them into words.

“Well,” said the king, “even so, I don’t see how I can award him a medal. He’s not here, is he?”

No, Adela thought, he isn’t.