The Wide-Awake Princess (2 page)

Normally, Annie wasn’t impressed by a handsome man, because nearly all whom she’d met had been made that way by magic. Liam was different, however. Although his glance was respectful and nothing more, it was distracting to have him there, and she had to force herself to think about the reason she had gone to the tower.

While the guards shoved doors open and peered around corners, Annie wandered through the rooms, paying more attention to what she heard than what she saw. She was walking along the corridor when she heard a faint sound like pieces of metal clanging together a long way off. Although magic couldn’t touch her, she could sense its presence. The strength and type of magic determined how it sounded; the stronger the magic, the louder it was, and the good kind didn’t sound anything like the bad.

Annie followed the sound, trying to pinpoint where the magic was strongest. There, behind the door with the cracked frame. Annie knew that the door opened onto a room that was too small to be of much use—but big enough to fit a spinning wheel.

When Horace started toward her, Annie shook her head. “Stay back. I’ll let you know if I need you.”

“What is it?” asked Liam as he came up behind her.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she replied. She could hear the older guard murmuring to him, but their voices were drowned out when she placed her hands on the cracked wood and the clanging metal sound grew louder in her
head. Annie shoved the door open and discovered an old woman sitting before a spinning wheel inside the tiny room, her fingers moving with expert skill as she spun a long silver thread.

“Welcome, my dear,” the old woman croaked, turning just enough that Annie could see her wrinkled cheek and the glint of an eye beneath the concealing cape and hood. “Come in and see what I’m making just for you. See how the thread shines? Go ahead and touch it. Feel how soft it is.”

“You have got to be joking!” said Annie. “I’m not touching that thing!”

The old woman turned toward her, letting her hood fall away. Her wrinkled face was contorted in an angry scowl as she pointed one of her gnarled fingers at Annie and said, “You’re not Princess Gwendolyn! You’re not even beautiful. Why, I have rats in my poison pit that are prettier than you!”

“I’m not Gwendolyn,” said Annie. “And you’re an evil old hag.”

“You little whelp! Talk to me that way, will you? Just for that, I’m going to turn you into a beetle and squash you where you stand!” Reaching into the depths of her cloak, she pulled out a slender stick and aimed it at Annie.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Annie warned. She stuck her fingers in her ears to block the sound of clanging that she knew was about to get louder.

Eyes flashing, the old woman muttered something
under her breath. The air around the tip of the stick glowed and crackled. A bolt of light shot out of the stick, hit an invisible wall in front of Annie, and hurtled back the way it had come, knocking the old woman off the stool.

“No!” screamed the old woman as her hands scrabbled at her chest. “This isn’t supposed to happen! What did you—” Her voice turned into a moan as her body shrank and her skin hardened into the carapace of a beetle. Her hair seemed to get sucked into her head as her face grew pinched and narrow.

Annie thought it was revolting, but she couldn’t make herself look away until the two guards edged past her and into the room.

“What happened here?” asked Liam as a normal-looking beetle scuttled across the floor.

“She turned herself into a beetle,” said Annie. “Be careful where you step,” she told Horace, who was walking around the spinning wheel. There was a loud crunch and he stopped to look down.

“I guess I found her,” Horace said, inspecting the bottom of his shoe.

Annie swallowed and looked away. She thought she should probably feel sorry for what had happened, but she hadn’t hurt the woman herself. That bug had been a human just a minute ago and had planned the same fate for her.

Liam grabbed the spinning wheel and began to lug it
toward the door. It was bigger than the opening, however, so he turned to Horace, who was busy scraping the goop off his shoe.

Horace grunted, and together the two guards hauled the spinning wheel into a bigger room. “We should probably keep searching the tower,” said Annie, following them. “That woman’s magic sounded like a witch’s, not a fairy’s, although I don’t know why a witch would come when a fairy cast the curse. Maybe the fairy is still coming.”

Liam looked from Annie to Horace, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Our princess can tell when magic is around,” Horace said, sounding proud. “There’s not many that can do that.”

“It is an unusual skill,” said Liam, “and most useful.”

Annie noticed the look in his eyes, more interested now and not just respectful.

“You go with the other men, Your Highness,” said Horace. “Liam and me are going to break this up and burn it.” He jabbed his thumb in the direction of a fireplace in the back of the room.

Annie joined another pair of guards and stayed with them while they finished inspecting the tower and the rooms below it. She knew she should go see her sister, who was probably still unwrapping presents, but she wanted to avoid having to listen to her go on and on about Prince Digby, the man Gwendolyn would probably marry.

Her parents both said that Gwendolyn and Digby were suited for each other. The magic of his own fairy godmothers had made him as handsome as Gwendolyn was beautiful. But Annie was convinced that by concentrating on his appearance, the fairies had forgotten a few very important qualities: Digby had as much intelligence as a block of stone and an equal amount of compassion for others. Annie didn’t like him, and he didn’t like Annie.

Digby did like beautiful people, and while Annie was many things, she knew that she was hardly beautiful. Her bottom lip was a little too full and her brown eyes weren’t striking like Gwendolyn’s violet ones. Although Gwendolyn’s silken locks were a glorious buttercup yellow, Annie’s tangled curls would have been a muddy brown if she hadn’t spent so much time outside, where the sun bleached them yellow white like a goat girl’s.

Annie knew that there was another even more important reason why her parents wanted Gwendolyn to marry Digby. He was from the wealthy and militarily strong kingdom of Shimshee, to the east. The marriage would create an alliance between the two kingdoms, benefiting Treecrest, which had been made poor by years without spinning wheels. Of course, King Halbert was already planning to bring spinning wheels back into the kingdom after Gwendolyn’s birthday, whereupon they could once again make the yarn and hence the cloth from the fiber of
the linder tree, the most valuable natural resource located within the kingdom’s boundaries. Even so, it would be years before Treecrest could call itself wealthy again.

Thinking about Digby put her in a sour mood, so when the guards spread out into the rest of the castle, Annie decided that she needed to be by herself.
At least Digby isn’t here,
she thought, relieved that she wouldn’t be running into him in the hallways. For many years, guests had been discouraged from coming for fear of one smuggling a spinning wheel in with their luggage. Unlike most princes, who expected a formal invitation, Digby had come to visit the first time uninvited and unwelcome. After they got to know him, her parents thought he was harmless, and then he visited all too often. Annie had been delighted when Digby’s father had summoned him home shortly before Gwennie’s birthday.

Even without guests, so many people lived in the castle that it was always full. Knowing that the garden was usually empty in the morning, however, Annie was taking a shortcut through the Great Hall when the singing began. She groaned, having forgotten the minstrels for the few hours she’d been upstairs.

Minstrels of every description had been flocking to the castle for the last week, planning to sing at Gwendolyn’s birthday celebration. They had been allowed in provided they carried nothing but their instruments, which they immediately began practicing every day.
There were so many of them now that it was hard to find a quiet place in the public areas of the castle. All the minstrels had written their own songs praising “the most beautiful princess in the world.” Annie thought that any sane person would consider them pests and want to hide in a trunk until they went away, but Gwendolyn would probably bask in their songs and wonder why there weren’t more of them.

Blocking out the voices wasn’t easy. “Your beauty is like a summer’s day, remembered in the winter,” began one song. She smiled and nodded as she passed the minstrel leaning against the wall, trying to avoid meeting his eyes. If they made eye contact, politeness would dictate that she stop and listen, and being polite was the last thing she felt like doing just then.

Another minstrel was seated in front of the servants who were hanging the last of the flower garlands. “You smile at everyone you see, when all your smiles should be for me,” the minstrel sang. Annie grimaced, and had almost made it to the door when a poet who had arrived the day before stepped in front of her. “Would Your Highness like to hear my latest poem?” he asked, moving to block her as she tried to walk around him. “I’d love to hear what you think of it.”

“No, thank you,” said Annie. “I have urgent business I must attend to.” Although lying made her uncomfortable, she thought that listening to fools was worse.

“This won’t take but a minute,” the young man said.
Raising his hand in the air, he struck a pose and began, “I saw you first just yesterday, sweet Gwendolyn, divine …”

“I really do have to go,” Annie said, edging past him.

The poet scowled, brightening when he saw that a group of people had come up behind her. “And thought your face perfection...,” he continued as Annie slipped through the door.

The garden had been created in what had once been an otherwise empty area between the keep, the curtain wall, and two outbuildings. In a space where pounded earth and stone had been all there was to see, flowers now grew in abundance regardless of the time of year. A gift from the fairies of Floradale, Queen Karolina’s home kingdom, the flowers in the garden never faded. If cut, the stems regrew overnight and bloomed again by morning.

In coming to the garden, Annie had hoped to find a quiet place to think, but there was no quiet in the garden that day. Gardeners carrying woven baskets snipped flowers for bouquets, talking among themselves as they moved from plant to plant. Three young men had been given the special chore of stripping the rosebushes of their blossoms; roses were Gwendolyn’s favorite flower.

Unable to stay in the garden, Annie climbed the nearest set of narrow stairs to the battlements. With the castle grounds on one side of her and the outside world on the other, there was always plenty to see. The Crystal River flowed along the western side of the castle, making a natural barrier against attack. A moat dotted with
water lilies bordered the castle on the other three sides, thereby surrounding it with water. There were two drawbridges, but only one opened to a road that led into the town of Shelterhome. The other drawbridge set down on a road that led across open fields to the woods, and it was in that direction that Annie was looking when the cart came into sight.

Because most carts were driven directly to the town of Shelterhome, seeing one headed for the castle was enough to make Annie pause. The cart itself didn’t look like much; it was a typical farm cart with two horses pulling it and a man perched on the seat. The only thing on the back of the cart was a large trunk, its metal hasps shining in the sunlight. Annie watched with interest as the cart approached the drawbridge and waited for the guards to let it pass. She could hear the wheels rumbling across the wooden planks. In less than a minute they were clattering over stone.

Annie turned around to watch it enter the courtyard, where it trundled toward a row of carts that had come from town. The driver added his cart to the end of the row, then pulled his hat low over his eyes and seemed to fall asleep. Now that it was closer she could see that the cart wasn’t exactly like the ones in front of it; the back of the seat was curved instead of straight, and there were curious markings on the side, as if someone had tried to paint over an emblem using too-thin paint.

One by one, the contents of the carts were
inspected before servants hauled the goods into the castle. Because of Gwendolyn’s birthday, there were more carts than usual, and many of their burdens were gifts for the princess. Even so, each was inspected, including the gifts that had been wrapped. Containers big enough to hold a spinning wheel were given special attention.

Growing bored, Annie moved on until she was able to look out over the Crystal River. She loved Treecrest and wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of her life there, but thinking about Gwendolyn’s marriage made her wonder about her own future. Normally, princesses were expected to marry handsome princes who would ride up on fiery stallions and carry the loves of their lives off to their own magnificent castles, where they would, of course, live happily ever after. Those were normal princesses, however, made perfect through a fairy godmother’s magic, not ordinary girls with ordinary talents. Girls who hadn’t been given magic gifts were considered less than desirable. No prince had ever shown the slightest interest in marrying Annie.

For the last three centuries, the few princesses in their family who had never married remained at home, living with their parents, and later with whatever sibling inherited the throne. Everyone knew that Gwendolyn would marry soon after her sixteenth birthday. As the older daughter in a family without sons, whomever she married would join her on the throne someday. If
Gwendolyn married Digby, Annie was convinced that he would hate the idea of having her live with them.

The shriek of a hawk made Annie look toward the woods, where the strange cart she’d seen arrive was trundling back to the forest, moving faster now that it was free of its load. Reaching the edge of the woods, the driver jumped down and another man emerged from among the trees to take his place. Annie thought this was very odd, and even odder still when three men climbed down from the trees and clapped him on the back as if he’d done something special.