The Rat Prince (11 page)

After several more close shaves, we arrived unharmed at Lancastyr Manor. In the orange-and-purple glow of the sunset, we saw no carriage awaiting at the front of the grand house. My heart felt as though it might split asunder. We were too late. Somehow, we had missed them.

Nevertheless, I swerved and headed for the stables, hoping that perhaps the ladies had tarried in their preparations and the coach had not yet been sent for. If it were still there, we might prevent them from leaving somehow. I had a wild notion of commanding my followers to spook the horses by leaping up and swinging from their tails. It might even have worked.

In the event, we never had a chance to attempt it.

When we rounded the curve of the drive, we were greeted most unexpectedly by the sight of Lady Rose standing on the neat white gravel. She was not wearing the gold gown the mice had tailored for her; instead, she was arrayed in a luminous greeny-blue creation apparently woven from moonbeams and clouds. It hugged her tiny waist and shifted around her long limbs, the way spray floats across a waterfall. At the same time, the dress gave off a cool, clear scent. Her hair was spangled with diamonds of blinding brilliance. And my gift of the magnificent deep green emeralds blazed around her arched neck.

But all this finery was outshone by the light of her face.

I could not tear my gaze from her.

Then an unnatural female voice captured my attention. “Now, Rose de Lancastyr, you need a coach to take you to the ball, do you not?”

I turned my head to look. The timbre of the voice was a child's, but it had come from an uncanny woman who gave off a pulsing blue light.

As I watched, this creature rolled a large green melon along the drive. (Not a pumpkin, mind you. It was a melon.) Then she pointed at it and uttered some words I could not understand.

In eerie silence, the melon puffed and swirled. It changed in color and sprouted wheels. Before I could register what was taking place, the thing had become an enormous coach, golden and ornate. At my side as always, Swiss gave a shout of disbelief. Corncob and Beef One, Beef Two, and Beef Three scattered quickly, disappearing before I could find my voice to command them. Only the dauntless Truffle remained behind with Swiss and me.

The strange blue woman—evidently a sorceress—laughed. Then she patted the melon-coach with a fluttering hand. “Such a wonderful conveyance to take you to the ball, my dear—is it not?” she warbled to Rose. “You will need horses to pull it, of course.”

Rose did not appear to share the blue lady's amusement. She was staring at the vehicle in stark amazement. It bore the Lancastyr coat of arms.

While Swiss, Truffle, and I stood as still as could be, the terrifying bright gaze of the sorceress roved the yard until it lit upon a group of field mice, cowering behind a hay bale. She pointed at them and spoke a few unrecognizable words.

Without a sound to herald the transformation, the mice began to grow: Their legs and necks stretched, and their tiny nervous mouse-expressions faded. Their useful whip-like tails became swatches of long hair, good only for swishing at flies. In a winking, they lost all semblance of their former selves.

They were horses.

Beside me, Swiss stifled a sound. Truffle gripped him with her tail, in warning or support.

Then the changeable eyes of the sorceress began to move again, searching her surroundings as if she knew what she might find next.

Us.

“Flee!” I cried to my subjects. “Make haste and hide!”

We turned to run toward the kitchen garden, but it was too late. The sorceress had spotted us.

“A coachman and two footmen!” she said, giggling. “That's what you need, Rose de Lancastyr. Ah, how very entertaining you mortals are.”

I did not see the pointing finger of the blue lady, but I heard the terrible words. And then it happened.

My body left the ground. I floated up in the air toward Rose. And I began to change.

“Blackie! Not Blackie!” Rose shrieked.

My sleek fur; my streamlined, compact, surefooted shape; my keen vision, my powerful snout, my brilliantly accurate whiskers; my ears so sharp, my teeth so strong—lost, all lost, dropping away from me in a rush of bereavement and bewilderment.

I shot up and out, stretched and pulled and pushed until I stood tall, even taller than the two women before me.

Nearby, Swiss had undergone the same transformation. His rat-body was gone, replaced with that of a human.

We were dressed in lavishly embroidered silk tunics, the finest cashmere hose, and jeweled shoes. There was a belt of large precious sapphires slung about my hips, and both Swiss and I wore rings of gold and silver. The sorceress's idea of proper attire for Rose's footmen was magnificent beyond anything I'd ever beheld.

Swiss blinked at me with light, anguished human eyes. He had a pointed chin and a face made to grin, with a broad nose and mouth. Just like the real Swiss. The rat-Swiss.

“Your Highness!” he wailed.

I tried to smell him, to check that he was unharmed, but could not. This thing called a nose hardly worked at all.

I heard a sound of distress and whirled to see Truffle teetering on her new human legs. They were short and sturdy, more ratlike than mine, and her hair and eyebrows were gray with age. This was the cruelest change indeed: the sorceress had magicked a young female rat into an old human coachman.

“Your Highness, what is happening?” Truffle patted herself gingerly. Shock spread across her face as her new human fingers encountered a superior coachman's cloak. Then she appeared to realize there was something on her head. It was a tricorne hat. She took it off, held it at arm's length, and gazed at it in dumb disbelief.

Anger sparked in my heart. My subjects were being used as pawns in some heartless game of magic, and I hadn't the power to stop it.

Not yet.

But it was my responsibility to take care of Swiss and Truffle.

“Fear nothing, my brave companions,” I assured them in the human tongue. “I shall not leave you. I will get you out of this.”

“Prince Char,” the blue lady called, coming close.

I stiffened my new spine and sinews, instructing myself not to shy away from her.

“What have you done?” I demanded. “Who are you and why have…”

She leaned forward and lay her forehead against mine. “Prince Char, noblest of your kind, tonight you will guard Rose de Lancastyr. Say nothing and do nothing to dissuade her from attending this event, for it is there that she will meet, and make, her fate.”

But … Prince Geoffrey!

I made as if to protest, to pour out my fears in human speech so that Rose could be warned, but to no avail. The sorceress had cast a spell upon me with her words, and my mouth remained shut. So I tried to force my human legs to take me to Rose, in order to carry her into the house and keep her there if necessary, but I could not move.

“Rose de Lancastyr will attend the ball,” the blue lady declared, as if she knew my thoughts. “You shall not interfere. I, Ashiira, order it to be.”

There was magic in her speech.

Then she put her arms across my shoulders and chanted some more foreign words. Within her embrace, the panic and fury slowly seeped out of me and trickled away.

“You have the form of a man,” she whispered. “It is now time to fully become one.”

And I did.

I reached toward the twilit sky with arms so long, I thought I might touch it. I took a deep breath and inhaled this new world, then exhaled the old one.

Ahhh.

A powerful tide of cool elation surged through me. In this new shape, I could do much. And I
would
do it. I would save my people from Geoffrey. I would rid them of Wilhemina. I would …

“Do as I bid,” said Ashiira. “Protect Rose de Lancastyr.”

“You need not cast a spell to make me do that,” I replied. “It's what I've always intended. If you desire her safety, then why would you allow—”

She hushed me with a finger to my lips. “Trust me,” she said. “I am the spirit of the ring you gave to Rose. The Lancastyrs are your humans. They are my humans, too.”

So she was not a sorceress after all—she was the fabled goddess of the Lancastyrs! Why had this not occurred to me? This meant Lady Rose had used the ring, and I was the one responsible for tonight's madness. I'd intended Rose to employ the ring as a fallback if other means failed. Yet I had not meant her to do so alone, without guidance, without consulting the red book I'd been so careful to give her.

None of this had come to pass as I'd anticipated.

The goddess touched me again, and my frantic thoughts dispersed. “Your transformation is not a curse,” she whispered, “but a blessing.”

“A blessing? How so?”

“Blackie?” Rose's voice, tentative and afraid, came from behind me.

I turned around.

She gasped when she saw my face.

Alas, I must make an ugly human,
I thought.
I have frightened her.

“My name is not Blackie,” I said. “It is Char.” Then I looked at her, for the very first time, through the eyes of a man.

It was my turn to gasp. In that instant, I understood everything.

I was in love with Rose.

I always had been.

“A blessing,” Ashiira repeated, then laughed. The sound was like music, peals of delight.

 

C
INDERELLA

Char stood before me in his new form: tall, lean, almost willowy. His dark eyes were alight with their usual intelligence and sympathy, and a touch of humor lurked at the corners of his mouth.

He smiled. I could not look away from him.

My pet rat.

No, he had never been a pet—I realized that now—nor had he ever been mine. But whatever he was before, he'd become human tonight.

And what a human! I'd never seen a man so beautiful.

If I had ever thought about it, I might have expected a bespelled animal to behave like an empty puppet, without a mind or soul. However, this was clearly not the case with the young man standing before me.

Char.

“Rose de Lancastyr,” he said, reaching a slender hand toward mine. “At last the silence between us is broken.”

My heart heard much more than his words.

He brushed a kiss across my fingertips as he bowed low. When he looked up, my breath caught. And as his touch lingered, I felt my courage returning.

How did he do it? Char was always able to refresh my spirit, it seemed. Whichever form he took.

“We are together now,” he said. “Wherever you go tonight, I shall be watching. You will come to no harm.”

His manner was so intense, his deep voice so full of hidden meaning, I was confused. “Why, whatever could harm me at the ball?” I asked.

He seemed as if he were about to speak, then stopped and looked disturbed. He probably thought I was a fool for speaking so inconsequentially to him—he who had become a man because of my careless wish! Could I not have made my first words to him something memorable, now that we were able to talk to each other as humans?

“What are you thinking, my lady?” His brow narrowed with concern beneath his glossy black hair.

“Char, this situation must seem strange to you—it certainly does to me. However, perhaps you and I can discuss—”

“Well, now, children, that's enough of that!” Ashiira said, laughing. “We haven't much time, you know!”

With a few flicks of her wrist, she had Char and Frump-Bum on the back of the coach, the rat-coachman on the driver's perch, the mice-horses harnessed, and me inside, twisting my hands together and biting my lip so as not to scream in frustration.

“Be sure to accomplish everything you need to do before midnight,” the goddess ordered, “for at the stroke of twelve, the spell dissolves completely.” Then she slapped the hindquarters of the first horse and called out: “To Castle Wendyn!”

 

P
RINCE
C
HAR

As footmen, we stood on small platforms at the back of the carriage, holding on to wooden handles for support while the vehicle jostled along the cobblestone roads of Glassevale. I'd wondered if I might find it difficult to balance in my new shape, but the goddess had given us full human ability.

Truffle clearly remembered which way to go, driving us along at a spanking pace in spite of the fact that darkness had finally fallen. There were running lamps at all four corners of the coach, oil burning in glass to light our way. The people who earlier had chased us and shouted at us when we ran through the streets as rats now cheered the gleaming vehicle and the imposing servants who flanked it.

“This is your fault!” Swiss howled over the noise of the street. “Lady Rose didn't read the part in the book where her ancestor explains about the use of the ring and its power, and now look what's happened!”

“Very well, it's my fault for giving her the ring. Might we move beyond that now?”

“To what?” Swiss prompted. “Are you going to let her go to the castle and fall into the clutches of the mad prince? Why are we escorting her there, of all places? We should order Truffle to drive us far, far away.”

“Did you not notice?” I said bitterly. “Ashiira is in charge. Clearly, Rose's ring-wish was to go to the ball. Any attempt to stop her from getting there will be thwarted.”

For once, Swiss had nothing to say in reply. I listened to the
clack-clack
of the carriage and the snorting of the horses before coming to a decision.

“Wait here,” I told him. Then I turned on my perch and grasped hold of the gilt trim on the side of the coach with my new, versatile fingers and thumbs.

“Stop! You'll fall!” Swiss shouted, but I paid him no heed.

It was amazing. These large human hands allowed me to inch my way along the running board, then support my weight with one hand while jiggling open a door with the other. When the door swung wide, I inserted my feet through the opening and dropped inside.