Once Upon a Tome: The Princess and the Pea

Aaaand no editing.

Chapter One

            It’s still amusing to me, even after years have passed, that a simple garden pea was the thing that almost tore us apart when—like fate!—it was a similar bit of vegetable that brought us together.  Certainly this fact fails to amuse my mother-in-law, who is cordial to me, but only just.

            Not that I wish to speak ill of the Queen, mind you.  She has done great things for her people, balanced by a few terrible things and a great many dreary ones.  So if cordial was what she had to give me, certainly it was better than her wrath—I knew that all too well.

            But, forgive me, I am getting ahead of myself.

            My life’s story has been told and retold so many times—and so often to or by children, who like to add color where there was none or where their memories fail—that it has escalated into a foolish love story between a deserving princess and a marvelous prince with an overbearing mother.

            Allow me yet another interjection here, for I am afraid I have said the wrong thing again.  Some of the aspects of the story as you have probably heard it are true.  By the end of the tale, there will, for instance, be a deserving princess.  The prince involved was always marvelous, perhaps even stupendous.  And his mother, as I was saying, does have a few minor faults in her character.  Which of us does not?

            But now that you have been braced for a story not quite like you expect, I shall return to the beginning, for I believe in always attending to things in their proper order, as you shall soon see.

            I was small, then; it was the spring of my seventh birthday—in very fact, it was the day of the aforementioned anniversary.  There was a little more than the usual to-do; I was, after all, to be turning seven.

            Perhaps I should explain this as well.  In the country where I live, if a child has the heart of magic born within them, it will show itself on her seventh birthday.  Or his.

            There was scarcely a small drop of magical blood in my veins.  The family into which I was born had never held any great status in the kingdom, but since my Pappy worked for the palace, and no one else was using them that day anyway, he and Mum and Uncle Bertie filched the decorations left from the Prince’s seventh birthday to use for my celebration.

            I recall waking that day with a sort of buzzing in my bones.  At first, I hoped it was a sign of magic—but soon I remembered, and had to admit to myself, that it was the same sort of feeling I got when I was called on to spell a difficult word in school.  Anxiety, plain and simple.

            The rest of the day was the same as that first moment—full of high hopes that took tall tumbles.  Nothing nothing nothing out of the ordinary happened.

            Well, actually, that is very untrue.  The sweetest thing in my life began that day, though I did not know it.  All I knew, all I could think all day, was what a shame it was that I wasn’t the first Mage in the family in nine generations.

            Being my birthday, I was excused from my regular chores, but I had a pet project that I tended to myself—I would let no one else touch it!—and which became, that particular evening, my fortress: a place to hide from my own terrible ordinariness.

            I was the one who had saved out the peas from the last year.  It was I alone who tended the ground just behind the family garden, who set stakes and strings for the pea plants to scale like children climb trees.  My family freely acknowledged that this bit of earth was mine, and stood by as my independent streak refused to let them help me carry the water pail every day, heavy though it was in my little arms.  For a girl of very little fortune, having something of my own was unusual, special, perhaps even magical in its own right.  So it seems natural to me that, after tending to my plants’ thirst that magic-less evening, I collapsed onto the earth between the plants, hiding my head and keeping my sobs as quiet as I could.

            I was just in the heart of a good, miserable cry when I heard a soft voice.

            “Miss?”  I just shook my head, which lay nearly in my own lap.  There was a moment of stillness, and then there was a snapping noise that meant a pea pod had just been broken off of my pea plants—my precious peas!  I gathered my anger for a moment, listening to the intruder chew and swallow and take another bite.

            “How dare you—”  Here, my screeching reached an abrupt stop.  For before me stood a young boy—almost ten at that time—whom I had often seen at a distance, but had never spoken with.  And with good reason.  I was still gawking at the crown Prince when he opened his mouth again, this time to speak.

            “Well, you certainly can’t be watering these peas with only your tears; they are far too sweet.  Or if you are, we shall have to hire you to weep over all of the vegetables.”  I hiccupped, a sort of miniature laugh after crying so hard.  I scrambled to my feet and dropped the best curtsy I knew how to (which, I can assure you, was not a very nice one,) and looked at the Prince’s shoes, just as Pappy always said I must do if I met with royalty.

            “Th-thank you, Your Majesty.”  I muttered.  “You may eat from my garden whenever you like.”

            “Oh, please, none of that “Majesty” business,” he said, stepping slightly closer.  “Especially because I am a ‘Highness.’”  I glanced at his smiling face for a moment, my cheeks flushing—I knew that!  I had just forgotten in the bumbling moment.  Then I realized I was staring into his eyes (an enchanting blend of blue and green, if such things interest you,) blushed into what must now have been a deep scarlet, and looked back at the Prince’s shoes.

            “I’m sorry, your Highness,” I whispered, wondering vaguely which offense I was sorriest for.

            “Please, Miss; surely you know my name?”  I nodded at his shoes, noticing that, despite obviously frequent polishing, there were bits of mud caked to the edges where the maids had missed, or perhaps where the Prince had made a mess of his shoes on purpose.  I hoped, suddenly, that it was the latter—not because I wished extra work on the maids, of course, but because I liked the idea of a man who ruled a land knowing what that land felt like beneath his feet.

            He had asked a question.  What was it?  His name!  Of course I knew his name.

            “Yes, Highness,” I replied, unaware that my voice was slowly relaxing into a more natural volume.

            “Well, please, call me that, then!”  I glanced quickly at his face, then back to his shoes.

            “Your Highness would rather I addressed you as Oscar Callum Ivor Jasper Arthur III?”  I asked, thinking that it was a dreadfully long name to repeat many times in what would surely be a short and singular conversation.

            The Prince laughed.

            “Just Oscar, if you don’t mind.  The others are just too cumbersome to make use of.”  He sat down, right in the dirt, in knickers that must have cost forty kliks.  He looked up at me expectantly, so finally I crouched beside him (sitting in my dress would get the bum dirty, and as it was my birthday, I was wearing my Sunday dress.  I would have a hard enough time washing out the dirt I’d smudged on it while crying.  I didn’t want to inflict more damage.) I dared yet another glance into his face before I began to stare at my own hands instead.

            “Oh, we’ll have to stop that habit too, I’m afraid, Miss,” Prince Oscar said.  And he slipped a finger under my chin, gently forcing my face up so that my eyes met his.

            You might be thinking at this point that this is a terribly romantic scene.  And, in truth, it may have been the first of such moments.  But at the time we were mere children; if he took any of my breath away it was because of the kingliness that was already evident in his face, his manner.  If there was a beauty from which he could not tear his eyes, it was more likely the delicate pea plants waving in the wind than my face.  But never fear.  The romantic moments will come later, I can assure you.

            For this moment, Prince Oscar simply pulled a somewhat grubby handkerchief from his pocket.  He emptied a handful of stones from it and chose the cleanest corner to wipe the lingering tears from my face.

            “There, now, Miss.  What were you crying for, anyway?”  I think if Prince Oscar had asked me that question with pity or superiority, I would have refused to answer, even if he was the Prince.  But he asked it with almost no emotion at all, more like a statement of fact with the lifted sound of a question tagged onto the end.  He finished wiping my face and released my chin; I dropped it again.

            “Nothing to concern one such as you, Your—Prince Oscar.”

            “One such as I?  Are we so different?”  I couldn’t help it this time; I looked into his eyes with as much derision as I could muster.  We were frozen in that moment for the briefest of pauses before he began to chuckle.  “Perhaps our situations are different, it is true,” he conceded.  “But I have never before met a girl who would lie in the mud.”  I made a sound of protest and he raised his hand to stop me, an automatically royal gesture.  “I meant that as a compliment, Miss.  Miss…?”  He looked at me quizzically.

            “Oh.”  Here I blushed.  “Sweetpea.  But everyone just calls me Sweetie.”

            “Sweetpea?”  Again, his tone was remarkably uninsulting—most people laughed aloud when they heard my name.  Prince Oscar just pondered for a moment, then nodded.  “Hence the pea plot?”  He asked, gesturing lazily at my tiny garden.  I nodded.

            “Well, Sweetie—if I may?”  He paused.  It took me a moment to realize that he was concerned about addressing me disrespectfully.  When I understood, I nodded again.  “Sweetie, only one mystery remains.”

            “And what is that, Prince Oscar?”

            “Just Oscar, please.”

            “I don’t think so, Prince Oscar.  It wouldn’t be right.”  He sighed.

            “Very well, it’s better than most.  The issue at hand is this: why were you crying?”

            “Oh.”  I dug my toe into the dirt, noticing for the first time that I was barefoot—and in front of the crown Prince!  What would Mum say?—and ran my fingers through my hair, a nervous habit of mine.  “I turned seven today.”

            “Oh.  I see.”  He nodded mournfully, understandingly.  I wondered how he could; with his mother’s immense powers and his father’s mediocre ones, no one in the kingdom had been surprised to learn of the Prince’s magic.

            “Do you?”  I asked, surprising myself.  I was usually much more shy with strangers.  I suppose Prince Oscar was just so un-strange—or perhaps so very strange—that the usual rules didn’t apply.  Still, I thought I might have just talked back to royalty, and I tapped my fingers in a rhythm against my leg while Prince Oscar looked directly into my eyes.  One, Two, Three.  It was like he was staring into my very soul.  One, Two, Three.  One, Two, Three.

            “Perhaps not exactly, no.  But even crown Princes have their hopes dashed at times.”  Here he winked saucily (well, as saucily as a ten-year-old can,) as though he were sharing some delicious secret.  “But meeting you has restored my hopes, Sweetie.  I will see you again.”  He bowed slightly, turned on his heel, and walked away so quickly that it was to his back that I called,

            “Farewell, Prince Oscar!”  Flustered by the whole encounter, I ran the short distance to my home and told no one, even old Grandmama, about it.

            Though he had promised to see me again, I did not expect another meeting with Prince Oscar.  Certainly I expected no such meeting to occur in the immediate future.  Yet, two days after my seventh birthday, I looked up from my chores (weeding, as it happened,) to see him approaching.  He leaned against the short garden fence, watching me with those eyes—were they blue, or were they green?  I could never decide—until I spoke.

            “Prince Oscar?”  I hadn’t meant it to come out as a question, but his presence made me nervous.

            “Lady Sweetpea.”  I blushed furiously.

            “I’m not a lady,” I said, and giggled.

            “Well,” he said, pausing awkwardly.  “I guess that’s alright.  All the ladies treat me differently, anyway.”  All of his regality, his courtly manner, was gone.  Yet there remained in his face a sense of who he was and what his life would be.  I found the expression enchanting.  Still, the difference from the previous day was marked, and I wondered about it.

            “Are you alright, Prince Oscar?”  I asked.  He shifted his weight back and forth between his feet, watching them instead of me.

            “I’m hiding,” he finally admitted.

            “Hiding?  From what?”

            “My lessons.”  I laughed again, and his face fell.

            “Oh, no, Prince Oscar, I’m not laughing at you—it’s just, I hide from my lessons all the time.”  I leaned toward him, whispered conspiratorially.  “Especially mathematics.”

            “They teach you mathematics?  Why?”  It was my turn for hurt feelings.  Why shouldn’t they teach me mathematics?  I took too long in answering, and the Prince looked inquiringly into my face.  When he saw my hurt expression, his face filled with sorrow.  “What’s wrong, Sweetie?”

            “Don’t call me that.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because you think I’m worthless just because I am a servant.”

            “No, I don’t!”

            “You do.  You do, you do, you do!”

            “No I don’t, I swear it!  I think you’re beautiful!”

            A pause.  I felt the corners of my mouth lift, and I wiped away tears that I realized for the first time had dotted my face.

            “You do?”

            “Yes,” he said, embarrassed.

            “Even though I’m a servant?”

            “Yes.”

            “Even though I’m covered in dirt?”

            “Especially because you’re covered in dirt.”

            “And you don’t think I’m too stupid to learn mathematics?”

            “That’s what you thought?”  His back straightened infinitesimally, since he already stood straight as a post, and he smiled down at me.  I nodded up at him, feeling intensely shy.  “Sweetpea,” he said gently, his royal mannerisms returned, “I was only surprised because I can’t understand why I have to learn mathematics; it’s terrible that they force them on you.”

            “I have to know how to divide seeds and land and things,” I replied quietly.  We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment.  “You really think I’m pretty?”

            “Absolutely,” said the Prince.  Filled with a sudden courage, I skipped toward him, leaned up, and tried to kiss his cheek.  I say “tried” because he leaned forward, and my kiss landed on his ear.  I was too humiliated to try again.  We both blushed as we leaned back, stepping away from each other.

            “Prince Oscar!”  A voice rang down from the castle.  The Prince and I froze, then giggled at the same moment.

            “I had better run,” he said.

            “Good luck!”  I cried.  The Prince turned toward me and smiled.  He gave a quick bow, and then dashed off toward the castle.  I grinned to myself as I returned to my weeding.

            The Prince had called me beautiful.