Once Upon a Marigold (3 page)

Ed shouldn't have been surprised that Chris had discovered artichokes were edible. The boy had always had a sense of adventure—and not until recently had it begun to concern Ed. Oh, it was fine as long as it only extended to the odd plants that only occasionally made them sick when they ate them. And Ed didn't mind Chris's strange inventions, some of which, unlike the ones from his childhood, actually worked. Like the elevator that brought water up the bluff to the cave from the river. Or the boomerang arrows that came back to him if he missed his target.

But lately Christian's explorations kept him gone longer than usual, his inventions were noisier and more complicated than ever, and his culinary concoctions had approached the seriously bizarre. (Even Bub and Cate had rejected the rutabaga parfaits.) And he was restless in a way that Ed unhappily suspected was normal for a young person bearing down hard on manhood. Which forced him to think about Christian's nonexistent social life.

The boy needed some friends besides an old troll and a bunch of animals. Oh, once in a while he had a conversation with Hayes Centaur or Claypool Sasquatch, the gamekeepers, or with a leprechaun or picnicker or elf, or one of Mab's cohorts passing through the forest, but that didn't amount to a hill of figs.

Ed wondered if it wasn't time to start trying again to find Christian's family. He knew it would be the right thing to do, even though Christian had made it clear he wasn't interested. But more and more he had to wonder if he'd postponed it too long. And if he couldn't locate Chris's family, maybe it was time to think about releasing him to find his own way in the world. Ed had to admit that the very thought of doing that gave him a lacerating pain right in the center of his heart.

He sighed and considered whether he should add a postscript to his letters. After he got through detailing all of Mab's failings, of course. He could kill one bird with two stones by also asking if the recipient of the letter knew anything about a little boy who had gone missing in the forest about twelve years before. Walter and Carrie, the carrier pigeons Chris had trained to deliver Ed's correspondence more efficiently than passing pilgrims, crusaders, gnomes, and gryphons could, wouldn't be happy about longer letters. But the etiquette book had stressed the importance of doing what you knew was right, even when it was inconvenient—even when you didn't want to do it at all.

C
HRIS'S FAVORITE
invention, for quite a while, had been a bigger, better telescope with which he could keep a closer eye on King Swithbert's court across the river.

He'd watched the four princesses—the beautiful blond triplets and the smaller, darker younger one—grow up. He'd been an unseen guest at the masked balls, and the summer picnics on the terrace, and the triplets' triple wedding. He'd watched old King Swithbert get even older, and Queen Olympia get that cross little line between her eyebrows and that dissatisfied pout to her mouth. And while he watched them, he felt that now-familiar odd stirring, that sensation of something coming—something
bigger,
something
other.
And increasingly, the sense that he no longer fit so well where he was.

"I
THINK
I'
LL
go outside for a while," Christian said one evening, after he'd tidied up the kitchen. "Before the sun sets. I love these long twilights."

"Okay by me," Ed said, turning to his relentless correspondence. The annual LEFT Conference was coming up soon, and once again he was vigorously trying to drum up support for getting Mab to let go of some of the tooth fairy business. Everybody knew she was past her prime by a good hundred years but still hanging on like grim death to a business she hadn't managed well for as long as anyone could remember. Why, he bet she didn't collect a quarter of the teeth on the first night they were placed under the pillow. Some, he knew, she didn't get to until the third or fourth night. And then she was inconsistent in what she paid for them—sometimes a lot, sometimes a pittance. She said she used the little teeth to make crowns for her fairies, but that was a can of baloney if Ed had ever heard any. What she did was toss them into storerooms, where they gradually lost their pearly luster and crumbled into chalky dust by the bushel. Anybody with an ounce of sense knew that teeth, like people, had to be kept in use to maintain their zip.

If Ed had his way, he'd build a palace from them. Imagine the radiance of it, all those little burnished white bricks softly glowing. He'd keep his palace polished with toothpaste so it always gleamed, and he'd stud it with the colored crystals that made up his cave and were so common in this part of the forest that they could sometimes be found lying on the ground like ordinary rocks.

He went to the mouth of the cave and looked out at the dwindling colors of the summer day. He was a lucky troll, and he knew it. None of his brothers had found as splendid a cave as he had, or had it as good as he did, or was on as promising a track toward the ODD Medal. He would soon be at the LEFT Conference listening to them complain about their lots. Ed sighed and went back to his letter writing.

C
HRISTIAN SAT
on a rock by the top of a waterfall that ricocheted, in sparkling segments, off the boulders and into the river below. Directly opposite, far across the river, was the castle he never tired of watching. He'd seen how the beautiful golden-haired triplets had spent most of their time together in an extravaganza of pastel femininity while their little sister spent most of her time in solitary pursuits: reading, cultivating pots of flowering plants, playing with her three small dogs. It took him years to realize it, but he finally saw that, shortly after he'd come to live with Ed, people had quit touching the dark-haired sister—they even seemed to go out of their way to avoid it. Old King Swithbert was the only one who ever did touch her, patting her absentmindedly in passing, holding her arm for support as he took his slow constitutional back and forth across the terrace. If Christian had ever seen anybody in need of six hugs a day—or even one—that dark-haired princess was the one.

He extended the telescope and focused it on the terrace. The princess sat alone in a plain wooden chair, reading. He tried to focus on the title, but she kept tilting the book to catch the failing light, so he couldn't see the cover. Her thick shining curls were caught untidily back in a silver cord, but she wore no jewelry. Her second-best everyday crown—he knew them all by now—hung on the back of the chair where she could grab it and clap it on her head if her mother, who seemed excessively concerned with her own and everyone else's wardrobes, appeared. He'd seen her do it dozens of times, and it always made him smile, the way she slung that emerald-studded thing around as if it were Ed's old woolen cap.

Littered around her chair were dog toys, a cup and saucer, several books, a shawl, and a watering can. That homey mess made her seem like a regular person, and not a princess at all.

The most royal he'd ever seen her was three years back, at her sisters' outdoor wedding. In her full regal regalia, she'd looked pretty spectacular to him—sparkling with diamonds, aflutter with lace and ribbons, squirming and scratching at her unaccustomed finery. He knew what that was like. He'd never forgotten that hot, irritating blue velvet suit. He was much more comfortable in the mismatched forest-found clothing that he wore now.

Struck by a sudden thought, he rushed back to the cave, grabbed a piece of Ed's stationery, scrawled a few words on it, and woke Walter up from his perch. Walter squawked grouchily.

"Hey," Ed said, "what's that all about? Walter needs his rest. He's got a lot of mail to deliver tomorrow." The metal cylinders that attached to the pigeons' legs were big enough for only a small slip of paper with three lines of writing, so Walter and Carrie had to make many trips to deliver all of Ed's missives, even if he wrote his tiniest.

"He's not going far," Christian said. "Just one trip across the river." And he rushed out again.

Well, Ed had been wondering when something like this would happen. He knew who Christian was watching through that telescope. He'd tried to be a good parent, emphasizing that honest toil was the route to success, insisting on regular brushing and flossing, teaching every single manner in the etiquette book, even though Christian would never need most of them—"Good day, Your Grace" was the way to greet a duke; the oyster fork was the one with the three little tines; never be late to the opera. Yet somehow he'd never gotten around to any discussion about girls. Women. The opposite sex. For pete's sake, how could he discuss them when he didn't even know what to call them? Besides, his own love life wasn't anything to blow your horn home about. He admired the same red-haired troll maiden every year at the LEFT Conference and still, after all these decades, had never gotten up the nerve to speak to her.

Ed sighed. Now he'd have to stand by while the boy got his heart broken, and he wasn't looking forward to that. A princess, even a plain, unpopular one, wasn't going to give Christian the time of day, you could bet your bottom doubloon on that.

C
HRISTIAN ROLLED
his message into the metal cylinder and attached it to Walter's leg. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of this before. It's what carrier pigeons were meant for—and if the technology existed, he was a fool not to use it. How much harder communication had been before p-mail.

He told Walter where to go, released him out over the waterfall, and scurried to hide behind a bush, where he watched through the telescope.

It seemed to take Walter forever to cross the river, but finally he fluttered to a halt on the arm of the girl's chair. Absently, without looking up from her book, she tried to push him away with her elbow. Walter squawked and stayed where he was. She tried again, and again he squawked. This time she looked up. He stuck out his leg. She hesitated, looked quickly around, and then unhooked the cylinder, read the message, and hurried inside. Walter flew along beside her; he'd been trained not to leave until the cylinder had been reattached to his leg, preferably with a return message in it. Walter could make a terrible nuisance of himself. It was Ed's way of getting prompt answers.

Oh, man, Christian thought. Ed's going to kill me if we never get Walter back. What was I thinking? She could have a dragoon of castle guards over here in the morning to hunt me down.

As it so often does, an impulsive, daring act suddenly—and too late—seemed seriously flawed in its conception and in its inability to be retracted.

But the princess returned in a few minutes, Walter in her arms. She took him to the terrace wall and flung him out into the darkening sky. As he flew away, she leaned forward, squinting, trying to follow his flight. Even after Walter had landed in the bushes on his side of the river, Christian could still make her out, leaning over the wall, her pale yellow gown glowing faintly in the dusk.

Christian hustled Walter back into the cave, snapped the cylinder off his leg, and popped him onto the perch next to Carrie. Walter gave Christian a baleful look, fretfully settled his feathers, and tucked his head beneath his wing. All the while Ed bent over his letters, giving furtive glances from under his shaggy eyebrows as Christian opened the cylinder, extracted the message, and read it.

He looked up at Ed. "She's reading Greek myths. I asked her what she was reading and she told me. Greek myths. We have those, too! I've read them a bunch of times. And she signed her name. At last I know her name."

"Well, what is it?" Ed asked with resignation. For some reason he was remembering King Louis the Stammerer, who had died on horseback while chasing a girl who'd run into her house, splitting his head open on the lintel of the door. Ed always wondered if that was because he hadn't been able to say "W-w-w-whoa" in time. What had happened to King Louis supplied plenty of evidence about how dangerous getting interested in a girl could be.

"Marigold. Isn't that a pretty name? Marigold." His eyes on Marigold's tiny letter, Christian left the room in search of the book of Greek myths.

Now why'd she have to go and answer him? Ed wondered. Is she just going to play games with him before she breaks his heart, the way a cat will toy with a mouse? That's about what he'd expect a princess to be: heartless and scheming.

Christian sat up late rereading the myths, and with every one that he finished, he framed a new letter to Marigold in his mind. He wanted to ask her—well, to tell the truth, he wanted to ask her everything.

When he finally blew out his candle and lay down on the furs with Bub and Cate, he couldn't sleep. He'd never felt the way he felt tonight—all tingly and fizzy, as if he'd had a spell cast upon him. He hoped he wasn't coming down with something.

Walter and Carrie were busy all the next few days carrying Ed's lengthy missives here and there. They were too exhausted by the end of each day to make even the short trip across the river. Christian was be side himself, wanting to send another message to Marigold and not being able to do so.

All he could do was watch her. She seemed the same as ever, tending her flowers on the terrace, reading, playing with her dogs, walking with her father, acting as if being royalty was nothing special.
She
wasn't all tingly and fizzy, though she did seem more interested than usual in the birds that flew over the terrace.

One morning Chris got up extra early, while Ed was still conked out on his bed of furs, snoring loudly enough to make the purple crystals on the ceiling of his bedroom shiver and chime faintly. Walter was awake on his perch, busily preening himself. So much mail delivery gave him little time for personal grooming, and he was vain enough that that bothered him.

Christian had already written his message and put it into a cylinder. All he had to do now was get it onto Walter's leg.

"Hey, Walter. Good morning. Nice morning for a short warm-up flight, isn't it?"

Walter gave him a suspicious, beady-eyed look.

"Just across the river. To ... to Marigold." Merely saying her name made him feel happy. And, even though he knew he should think of her as
Princess
Marigold, he wanted to call her just plain Marigold.