The Woodcutter (19 page)

The Purple Dancing Lady gulped down the wine, “Just singing to myself. Evidently, I do that. I sing without thinking.”

The Duke leaned forward, “And what about what you said at the church door?”

The Purple Dancing Lady spat the last of the nettles surreptitiously into her napkin. The Duke raised an eyebrow. She explained, apologetically, “After all this time in the castle, they now scratch my gentle throat.”

“Do you remember what you sang?” asked the Duke.

“I take thee for my husband?” she offered half-heartedly.

He shook his head.

And Maid Maleen stepped onto the stage and her eyes locked upon the Duke. She opened her mouth and, like a nightingale, her voice rang out, “I sang, ‘Church door, break not, I am not the true bride.’”

The Duke rose from his seat, fixed upon Maid Maleen, “And then I said, ‘The woman who wears this necklace is indeed my true bride.’”

He turned to the Purple Dancing Lady and demanded, “Where is the necklace?”

She sputtered and sprang from her seat in outrage, but Maid Maleen reached into her bodice and lifted the golden chain. The crowd began to murmur.

Maid Maleen held the necklace high overhead, “Here it is, my husband.”

The Duke stood and pointed, declaring to the Hall, “She that stands before you on that stage is the woman I married. She that holds the necklace is indeed my true bride.”

The Duke lifted back the Purple Dancing Lady’s veil, revealing her disfigured face.

The whole room gasped in horror.

The King squinted at Maid Maleen and then looked back at the Woodcutter in bewilderment, “How did my daughter get all the way up there? She was just here having dinner with her husband. My goodness.”

The Purple Dancing Lady screamed at the King, “I am your daughter! She drugged me and stole my things and, against all the laws that are good, she took my place at my own wedding! She should be burned at the stake!”

But Maid Maleen’s hands still held the necklace that the Duke had given her such a long time ago.

The Duke leapt over the table and pushed past the servants in the middle of the room. He jumped up onto the stage and took her face in his hands, “You, my love, are my only true bride.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and sealed their love in true love’s first kiss.

And with the union of that first kiss, the Woodcutter felt the wild magic trapped in the Duchy of Ordinary rush its way home to join with the magic in the Eleventh Kingdom. It swooped in like a crashing wave.

The Dancing Lady shrieked.

The Queen and the Gentleman stood, knocking back their chairs. The Queen screamed, “To me!”

The room erupted into chaos. Servants threw off their robes to reveal weapons and leather armor. The King’s men rushed forth to stop their attack upon the head table.

The Woodcutter loosed his father’s ax from his belt.

“Your Highness!” the Woodcutter cried to the Duke and Maid Maleen as he gathered up the royal family.

The Duke grabbed Maid Maleen’s hand and they began running over the tables to reach the King. The Woodcutter met them halfway, swinging his father’s ax and parting the attackers. The Duke pressed himself against the Woodcutter’s back. “What is the plan?” he shouted.

The Woodcutter replied, “Take your bride and the King to safety.”

Suddenly, the Queen laughed a laugh that stopped the fighting and caused the hair on everyone’s neck to stand up.

She spat at Maid Maleen, “You may be the true bride, but your line shall be all but barren! You shall have one daughter and, on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and, when she does, she shall fall down and die!”

The Queen waved her hands over the room and shouted three words.

A plume of smoke rose from the ground.

When the smoke cleared, the Queen, her Gentleman, and the fighting army had disappeared.

The silence of the room was filled with sobbing women and vacant chaos.

“Oh my,” said the King, wringing his hands. “Oh my, oh my, oh my. This is not how wedding feasts are supposed to be.”

The Woodcutter spoke to Maid Maleen and the Duke, “Do not fear the Queen’s curse.”

The Duke clasped Maid Maleen close to his heart. Stricken, he looked at the Woodcutter, “I have not had to deal with curses before.”

The Woodcutter declared to the room in a booming voice, “The curse will die with the Queen’s death, but if in the coming days the Queen does survive and this couple does give birth to a child and she is indeed a daughter, I shall send twelve faerie godmothers to ensure her safety. Do not fear the Queen.”

The King looked over at the Woodcutter with such sadness in his eyes, looking at where the Purple Dancing Lady had disappeared, “So the girl was not my daughter…”

Maid Maleen parted from the Duke and went to the King, placing her hand upon his arm, “Courage. We shall find her yet.”

The King patted her hand and then stopped, his fingers upon her ring. He looked down upon it and then searchingly into the face of Maid Maleen. “Where did you get this, child?” he asked.

“I do not know, for I have always had it,” she replied.

The King’s eyes filled and his arms opened wide, “My child… Oh, my child… It is truly you!”

Maid Maleen look around, bewildered, “You are mistaken. My father is a baker who lives on the border of the Kingdom of Ordinary.”

“No child, you are mine, stolen away from me and replaced by a changeling.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said as she backed away.

“Look at your arm. You have a mark just as mine.”

The King pulled back his sleeve and revealed a purple birthmark in the shape of a bird.

Maid Maleen looked at the Woodcutter fearfully. He nodded for her to do as the King asked.

She pushed back her sleeve, and there lay the sister birthmark.

The King turned to her, brushing away the tears, “I believe there is a wedding feast waiting for the Duke and my daughter, his true bride.”

Chapter 54

The Woodcutter left the castle with a whistle on his lips.

Rapunzel and Prince Martin. The Duke and Maid Maleen. Jack, who slept soundly in the Woods. The Princess Snow White, who was in the care of the fae.

Four of the Twelve Kingdoms were safe from the Queen and the Gentleman. He would find the missing half-blood girl. He would visit two other Kingdoms to ensure their alliance.

And the Queen and the Gentleman would fail.

The sun shone across the empty meadow, nothing but bales of hay and farmland between him and the Wood.

The attack came without warning.

An arrow lodged itself in his shoulder, knocking him to the ground. He lifted his head and saw the Gentleman and the Queen emerge from behind one of the stacks. From another bale, four soldiers climbed out, and from another, yet another four. Slowly, they stalked towards the Woodcutter, crossbows trained upon his heart.

The Queen laughed, “Gentle, my loves. We don’t want him dead.”

The Woodcutter struggled to his feet, hand feebly upon his father’s ax. The world faded in and out as he tried to hide his sap and replace it with the illusion of mortal blood.

Through the fog, he thought he heard a cry come from the direction of the road. He thought he heard a voice shout, “Woodcutter!”

He saw the Queen and Gentleman as they looked over their shoulders. There seemed to be a caravan of brightly clad players rushing fast across the field. There was a man dressed in green and a slender man dressed in turquoise. He watched as the two parties met, swords crashing and limbs flying. The man in green, a man he could now remember was the Lead Player, mouthed silent words to the Woodcutter. He seemed to wave his hands as if shooing the Woodcutter away.

The Woodcutter stared at the Lead Player’s lips, trying to figure out why they waggled. The slender man in turquoise, the Turquoise Acrobat, flipped over the head of the man he was combating to reach the Woodcutter’s side. He pushed the Woodcutter and shouted, “Run! Run, you old fool!”

So the Woodcutter ran.

He ran as fast as he could to the tree line of his Wood.

He heard the Gentleman cry out, “Get him! Kill him!”

His lungs burned and his muscles ached.

Still he ran.

If he could just make it to the tree line.

He felt an arrow pass overhead.

And then one grazed his arm.

His eyes clouded in pain.

He fell, his hands touching the earth.

But still he ran.

Ran like a hind being pursued by the hunt.

Arrow still in his shoulder, he doubled his speed.

Chapter 55

The Woods gathered him like a mother’s arms.

The trees bent their boughs to block the way of those that might follow.

The Woodcutter did not slacken his pace. He ran deep into the heart of the forest, where few human feet ever trod.

Deep where the Wood would make sure any traveler was made aware that he was unwelcome.

It was in this solitude that the Woodcutter collapsed, collapsed beneath the pain of the arrow notched within his shoulder.

He collapsed and knew no more.

Chapter 56

The trees wrapped around him as the wound oozed. They held him, cradled him, shifted the paths of the Wood so any enemy would be led astray.

He could feel the humans test his border, test the protection of the trees.

The wound pulsed and he knew he could not survive.

He reached to the arrow and yanked it out.

A rush of warm liquid spilled down his body as he trembled. He took off his jacket and tried to stop the flow of sap.

The world shifted as stars filled his eyes.

His lips whispered to any that might listen, “Help.”

Chapter 57

He woke.

The moon hung full above him.

He struggled to his feet and fell.

Chapter 58

A strong wind blew from the north, pushing the clouds across the sky.

His eyes opened slowly and tried to focus as the world continued to shift, as the trees continued to protect him by moving their very roots.

He turned his head to the other side and rested his sight upon the unmoving path.

Iron shod feet were upon it.

Iron shoes, shoes that could not be affected by the shifting of the forest. They were shoes that had been rubbed from the miles of traveling until there was barely a sole left.

Long brown skirts hung over the iron shoes, worn by a girl who seemed not a day over twenty, yet not a day under one hundred. The girl gasped as she saw his fouled form.

She dropped her walking staff and knelt down.

Her face was careworn and her dark hair was streaked with gray.

She cradled his hand in hers, “Gentle sir, I did not expect to find anyone in these woods.”

As she pulled away his jacket to examine the wound, the whole world went dark.

Chapter 59

He woke, covered by his own jacket and reclining upon his pack. His wound ached, but not like before.

The girl crouched by a fire, feeding the flames dry sticks. Her hands were stained with dirt.

She heard him stir and turned. Her chestnut eyes were lined with worry and concern. The Woodcutter stiffly pushed himself to a sitting position. She came to his side and helped him adjust until he was comfortable.

He moistened his cracked lips and his voice croaked, “You have saved my life and I do not even know your name.”

She smiled as she tucked his coat smartly around him, “It has been so long since I was called anything, I am afraid I no longer remember.”

“It is the same with me,” he said. “Those that know me call me Woodcutter.”

She held out her hand, “You may call me Iron Shoes.”

Her dirty hand, covered in his sap, stuck to his.

She rubbed her hand upon her skirt, “I am afraid that your blood must be magic, for it does not wash off my skin and it turns my hands brown instead of red. I hope you are not an evil faerie.”

“No, Iron Shoes,” he said as he regarded her. He could feel nothing menacing in her ways. “I am not evil and I am not fae. I am one with the trees of this forest. My blood is the same sap that is theirs. That which flows through them flows through me.”