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.

Once Upon a Tome: The Little Mermaid

You know the drill.  Zero editing here.

CHAPTER ONE

            “So, Princess Aria of the kingdom Under-Sea, it has been ruled that you will be banished from your native country for the remainder of your days.”

            “Banished?”  I managed to sob.

            The Queen—my mother!—only bowed her head.  Father—His Majesty King Triton IV—showed no sign of sorrow or fear.  It was as I expected; the charges had been presented, and the Queen had ruled in a way best for her people.  Yet, though I had anticipated this outcome, even this sentence, I cried out as the guards swam up to shackle me.

            “Papa!  Mama!”  I screamed.  Neither looked my direction; neither even blinked their recognition as their eldest daughter, the one-time Heir Apparent, was dragged away, caught in the shame of a net.

            And people think it’s easy, being a princess.

My memories of those first few days on land are hazy at best.  The only things I can clearly recall are the terror and shame of my arrival, the pain in my new, burning legs, and a desperate desire to escape my rescuers so that I might search the Under-Sky for the man who had torn me from my people.  I would be avenged.  And then I would re-claim my kingdom and the love of my people.

I must sound power-hungry, perhaps even dangerous, to you.  I assure you, I am neither.  But I’d spent eighteen years as a princess—and not just any princess, but the princess most likely to become Queen of the sea.  All of the merfolk were my responsibility; I had been taught that from the moment I hatched.  Now, ripped from them, I felt that I had left my heart behind in Under-Sea, the last protection I could give them.

No.  Not the last.  I refused that it would be the last.  Somehow, I was going to find the real villain, and return him to the Under-Sea, to King Triton, for justice.  Somehow.

Merfolk are magical creatures.  We can breathe water or air equally well, although some would call that the gift of our anatomy.  We can also produce sound under water, though, and humans, at least, believe that this is a gift of magic.  We feel that it is natural, like humans whistling on their way down the beach.  There are a few other things that set us apart from the non-magic folk of the world; I will tell you of them when the time is right.

            The point I was trying to reach, though, was this:  Merfolk have the ability to speak or even sing beneath water.  But to use those same muscles and  movements of the body and mouth above water  would produce something utterly unlike human speech.  So in my quest for the real perpetrator of my purported crimes, I would have to communicate through other means.  There was a gesture-based  language often used among Merfolk—our audible communication is pervasive, and sometimes we prefer discression—in which I was fully fluent.  Perhaps if I could teach it to a human friend, she might help me find my way.

Which brings me to another point of trouble.  Humans.  I knew there was some long-standing hatred between my people and theirs, but even taking the stories I’d heard with a large drink of salt, I was still frightened by humanity.  Where would I find such a friend?

As I have mentioned, I was surrounded—carried, in fact—by human rescuers.  They have come across my naked body as I lay in the sand, boiling under their sun.  How long I had laid there I did not know, but my flesh ached, its pallor exposed too long to the harsh light.

I would later learn that I burned with what the humans called a fever.  Among my people, it was known as the sun-sickness.  Regardless of the ailment’s name, it left me dizzy and confused.  I was barely aware of the strong arms that carried me, the rhythm of footfalls jostling my body at every moment.  All I knew was pain, and sorrow at some tragedy I could not quite remember.

I recall at last the sound of voices, a dimming of the light, and finally a coolness wrapped around my skin, applied to my forehead.  Water was brought to my lips and I truly drank for the first time, spilling the liquid in eagerness and incoordination.  Finally, the strength left in me failed.  I collapsed, sinking into the softness beneath me.  I did not awake for a very long time.

“Princess Aria?”  A hesitant voice sounded quietly in my ears.  I flipped, then turned right-side up.  A young-looking citizen floated at an angle, his head bowed in respect.

“Yes?”  I asked simply.

“You left the Swim.”

“Yes,” I replied again, wary this time.

“I wondered if I might accompany you home.  For—for your safety.”

I restrained a derisive laugh.  This poorly muscled merchild would offer me little protection.  Then again, Mother often advised that I make personal connections among the people, regardless of class or physical features. The boy could certainly not hurt me.

“Very well,” I said graciously.  “I thank you for your consideration.  I accept your offer.”

“My lady?”  A soft voice made strange sounds that, at first, I could not comprehend.  I struggled out of the darkness, fighting to reach the voice, desperate to right whatever wrong hovered just beyond my subconscious awareness.  The voice came again.  This time, I realized that it was female.

“She’s waking.”  It said simply.  A slight rustling—how many noises there were here!—came in answer.

I began to perceive the bright light streaming through my thin eyelids.  I groaned softly and turned my head away.  My skin brushed against something rough, and I gasped in pain, my eyes finally opening in shock.

“My lady!”  Exclaimed the woman who had spoken before as she rushed to my side.

I could not make sense of my surroundings.  My eyes and mouth felt dry, and I neither tasted nor saw the waters of my home.  My breathing was too warm, burning in my lungs, and my skin felt stretched and brittle.  I looked around wildly, eyes finally resting on my own body.  I was dressed in an unfamiliar covering, but the hair tumbling onto it was familiar.  And there—what was that thing?  Like a hand, but a raw, red color, unlike the glossy white of my own skin.  I flexed my fingers and the thing moved.  It was my hand!  I gasped again, panic rising.

A gentle but firm hand pushed me back against the bed.  I looked up, straight into the eyes of the woman tending me.  I tried to speak, but the sound came out in a massive croak.

“Hush, my lady,” said the voice.  She meant to be comforting, but her alien sounds only heightened my sense of fear.  Dizziness was replaced with the sharpness of terror.

Finally, I remembered where I was.  Though my memories blurred together, I understood that I was in the Under-Sky, on land.  Banished from the country of my youth, I was trapped among the barbarian animals who walked like kings in the open air.

The moment this realization formed in my mind, my vision began to swim again.  I closed my eyes to block out the images and fell back, deep, into blackness.

“Where will you go, Aria?”  My youngest sister wailed.  I did not trust my voice, afraid of the choking sounds of sorrow.  Instead, I gestured to her.

“I will find the real criminal,” I said with my hands.  She screwed up her eyes against this reality, as though failing to see the truth would change it.  I flitted to her side, reaching out to gather her into my arms.  In an instant, my bodyguards yanked back on my leash, and I was dragged back from Cresenda, arms still reaching toward her in a hopeless gesture.  My sister wailed.

The next time I woke, it was because of the sounds.  A crunching from below me.  A scraping from behind.  Chatter filtered in from all directions, and a bell sounded in the distance.  There was a rattle just beside my ear, and I rolled away from it, striking my head against the wall and making yet another irritating sound.  My skin ached, pressed as it was against the sheets.

I opened my eyes, staring at the stone wall against which I had hit my head.  I raised a hand to the injured spot and was filled with a sick sensation; my flesh was still the color of coral.  Resting my fingers against the damaged spot on my head, trying to assesjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjs the severity of my injury, I turned onto my back once more.

Shifting my head to the side, I could see the startled maid who had woken me.  She stammered, forming no intelligible words, until the woman I had seen before rushed into my room and stood by my sickbed.

            “My lady, you are awake,” she said.  I nodded, not wanting to try—and fail—to speak.  The movement scraped my face, and I froze where I was in pain.

“The Prince would like to speak with you when you are ready.  You are the center of a great mystery here.”

Now that I was properly awake, I knew what my mission in the Under-Sky entailed.  I would not waste time in the hands of a human prince.  Nor would I be able to tell him the truth—I was honor-bound to keep my people’s secrets.  I shook my head.

“My lady, you must still be fevered.  Rest, and your mind will return to you.”  I shook my head again, but closed my eyes.  I wanted the woman to leave me in peace, and guessed that feigning sleep was the only way to achieve that goal.  I pressed my face toward my pillow, filtering out the light, and fell into a natural, exhausted sleep.

I fear I was ungrateful to my rescuers when first we met.  I was so tired from my transformation, so afraid of the quest ahead of me, that I expressed little thanks and less kindness.  Thinking on those first days, I see the extraordinary effort that they put into bringing me back from the gates of Death.  I wish I had been kinder, more gracious, to them.  I am sorry that I was not.

As soon as my mind returned from its fevered confusion, I began to consider how to achieve my goals.  The man who had  betrayed me, betrayed us, would be difficult to recognize.  Indeed, I had no idea of how altered his appearance might be—it was not only possible, but likely, that his features would be entirely foreign to me.

Yet I had to start out.  Papa had always taught me that to complete a task, one had to first begin it.  So I would have to start my search, and soon.  Immediately, if possible.

Immediacy was not granted to me.

“Papa, what will I do if I am judged guilty?”

“Aria, my beloved child.  You will find a way to prove that ruling wrong.”

I wobbled.  I swayed.  I tipped forward and back again, trying to find my balance.  Finally, I collapsed into the waiting arms of my maid.

“That was much better, my lady,” she said.

I could only nod in thanks.

Two days had  passed since my fever broke; the first was spent in restorative sleep.  The second I continued in bed, listening to my nurse’s explanations and questions.  She held many of both.

Speech in this foreign land was impossible.  I had tried, driving myself nearly to sobs in frustration.  Despite the fact that I could understand the humans’ language—through some gift of magic that I could not understand, I supposed—I simply could not speak it.  Further, they barely understood my gestures, because the people in the palace did not use such a language.  In short, communication was hopeless.

I wanted to get away.  Despite my lavish surroundings (I assumed they were lavish, for I had been told that this was a palace, although it was different than my childhood home), I sought desperately for an escape.  But until I could travel more than a few yards under my own power, leaving was no option.

The difficulty came from my feet.  And from my legs, I suppose, but it was my feet which tangled and tripped beneath me.  Too cultured to curse at them, I glowered instead, letting my eyes express my emotion.

Once Upon A Tome: Jack and the Beanstalk

Unedited, as ever--a scrap of Jack and the Beanstock:

PART ONE

                I don’t think there is such a thing as a single, solitary story.  Certainly not in the case of this particular tale.  Because if you want to know about the business with the Beanstalk, well, then we have to go far, far back.  Back through time, long before Jack was born.  And we have to travel to a different kingdom as well, a kingdom which doesn’t even exist anymore.   We have to discuss people from all walks of life who are already dead and buried.  We must think about objects at their fashioning, not just at their time of usefulness.  We must discuss those who fashioned them.  And we must travel backward up family trees, up and up until we find out where peculiarities and family secrets began. All this just so when I jump into the bit about the Beanstalk, I won’t be pestered with questions about how everybody and everything got to where it was.

                So settle down.  Get comfortable.  Wiggle into your chair until it feels just right, and we can have the tale of Jack, and the Beanstalk, and all the other things that transpired to get to that place.  Well, perhaps not all of the things, for that would require telling the tale from the beginning of time.  But I know a good starting-place, at least, and so it is there that we shall begin.

CHAPTER 1

                The story starts, as much as a story can start in any one place, in a kingdom known as Bennan.  It was situated between the kingdom of Castello and the sea, or between the earth and sky, if you prefer to think that way.  Relations between Bennan and Castello were fine, for the time, and all other nearby kingdoms were too small to be dangerous.  Well, except one, and there was nothing at all small about it.

                The kingdom of the Giants drifted around the world on clouds, high, high above the kingdoms of men.  Though the kingdom itself was held together by some kind of magic, the Giants had no such power, and it was by magic that humankind had kept the Giants at bay for time out of mind.  But then a ruler rose in Bennan, the greatest of their kings.  King Mercca, High King of Bennan, saw the Giants as no ancestor of his had; he viewed them as something beyond beasts.  As equals.  And because he was able to see the Giants this way, he managed to parlay with them, to achieve peace of a new kind.

                In other words, Mercca cut a deal with the Giants.

                The Giants would stay on their floating lands, far above the realms of men, leaving the King’s people—indeed, all of humanity, for that is the deal Mercca made—in peace.  In exchange, humans would stop using magic to attack the Giants.

                Ah, I have left out an important detail.  King Mercca had a young advisor, a powerful magician named Absolom.  This magician had grown, in his enchanted gardens, magical beans.  The beans would grow into great Beanstalks that reached all the way to the Giants’ lands.  By traveling up these Beanstalks, the human magicians could bring trouble down on the Giants with magic.

                So the king of the Giants, who placed a man’s word of honor above all else, made an oath of peace with the King of Bennan.  And it seemed for a time that Mercca would bring Bennan generations of peace.

                Unfortunately, there were other forces growing besides Mercca’s peace-making.

                But, for a while, peace did reign supreme in the land, and the story turns to Absolom.

                The young magician, who was really quite prodigious, grew in power as he grew in years.  His master and teacher finally retired, leaving all magical questions and decisions on Absolom’s shoulders.  This was a responsibility the young man was ready for, and he advised King Mercca—now getting rather old—very well.

                Absolom married a lovely girl, a low-ranking noblewoman with whom he had fallen desperately in love.  Their marriage was a happy one, for the girl loved him too, and by and by, she bore him a son.  The two rejoiced in the growth of their family, and all was well with them for some time.

                Absolom’s son was named Aelric, and you will see yet the trouble he caused.

                But at this point in the story, the young boy was just that, a young boy, and there was no way of knowing the problems he would bring or the evil he would do.

                Perhaps it is unfair to speak so ill of Aelric.  He made some terrible choices, but they were made due to jealousy and fear, and who has not been touched by those evils?  Aelric was never strong of character, and so when corruption came to him, he crumpled beneath it.  But that is not mine to judge.

                Regardless of questions of morality and judgment, the story continues.  When Aelric was still toddling, King Mercca’s wife, the Queen, bore a son herself.  The kingdom rejoiced at the arrival of the new heir, and everyone in and out of the castle seemed to be happy.

                The young princeling was a beautiful child, full of wonder and potential.  His parents named him Arlo, Crown Prince of Bennan.  Joy radiated from the whole family.

                And then a sad thing happened.  The Queen, with all her sweetness and wisdom, died from complications from Arlo’s birth.

                From rejoicing, the kingdom turned suddenly to mourning.  Black drapes hung in every window, black clothes from the bodies of the people.  The king himself observed a mourning period of two years, and in those years he aged tragically, until he seemed a man of many years past his actual age.

                When the king finally declared his mourning period over, he seemed a very old man indeed.

                Around the same time, Aelric, the magician’s son, turned four.  He, too, was a beautiful child, with fair, soft skin and raven-black hair.  His eyes were a stunning green, and even at the age of four, they were brightly intelligent.  His lips were red enough to startle, and when passersby saw him, they sighed with pleasure for the sweetness of his face.  He seemed for all the world to have everything good coming to him.

                It was then that Absolom’s wife, Aelric’s mother, discovered that she was again with child.  But she and her husband were young, and had hoped for more children, and besides, it would surely be good for Aelric to have younger brothers and sisters to look after.  It never occurred to Absolom or his wife that Aelric might be too jealous a child to love his siblings for what they were.

                That was the most obvious trouble with Aelric.  Every child has such problems innate in them; I myself spent my childhood paralyzed by nightmares.  But I am not in this part of the story; forgive me.  It is of Aelric that I am speaking.  The boy, attractive enough, was also very selfish.  He took other children’s toys, he screamed when the attention turned from him to another, and when his parents tried to talk to each other and leave him out, he would burst into tears.

                The castle’s nursemaid, an elderly woman who knew seemingly everything about raising a child, told Aelric’s parents not to worry.

                “He will outgrow it,” she told them when they described their concerns to her.  “It stems from his fears; he is afraid of losing what he has.  Most of all, he fears the loss of your love.  You need to comfort him, tell him that nothing will change the way you feel.”

                “Of course it won’t,” Aelric’s mother said.  “He is our son.”

                “Ah, yes.  I know that.  You know that.  But to Aelric, the world is large and overwhelming, and he is afraid.  So you must comfort him.”

                So Absolom and his wife gave their son even more attention, told him many more times a day how much they loved him.  And it seemed to work.  Until, inevitably, their attention was diverted to something else.  Two somethings, in fact.

                For the child Absolom’s wife carried turned out to be not one, but two.

                Twins, born on the Winter Solstice.  Absolom understood the significance of their birth, though his wife did not grasp it, not being a person of magic.

                Twins are inherently magical.  Even in a family with no magic present, twins will almost certainly have power.  (This, by the way, is why the family lines with magic don’t just die out; they are replaced.)  In a family which already has magic in its blood, twins are not only certain to have power, but it is going to be strong, particularly if they work in concert with each other.  And then, when born on a solstice, one is almost guaranteed a great deal of magic.  If Absolom’s second and third sons had been born as one instead of two, the one would have had great power.  As it was, with two born at once, born on the night’s day of greatest power over the world, their power was all but unparalleled.  And if they worked in concert, there was almost nothing beyond their grasp.

                Perhaps in exchange for this great gift to the world, Death struck at almost the same moment the twins were born.  Maybe you have guessed it, for I have already eluded to the fact that birth was a deadly thing in those days—even more than it is now.

                Absolom’s wife took her leave of her husband, her young boy, and her younger twin sons.  She died, without even seeing her babies.

                Absolom’s heart broke.  But he made a choice much wiser and braver than some in this story made in the face of a broken heart.  He mourned the loss of his beloved wife, but let his love for her draw him closer to her greatest gifts to him: his sons.  The three small boys became his whole world as he tried to be both Mother and Father to them.

                Of course, with two new demanding babies to look after on his own, Aelric’s father let a few things fall by the wayside.  He loved Aelric as much as ever, but Aelric did not see that.  He saw only that these two new brothers had come, and suddenly he, Aelric, was not the center—or rather, not the only center—of his father’s life anymore.  Worse still, the boys had taken Aelric’s mother from him, and though Absolom did not blame his younger sons, Aelric could not forgive his brothers.

                Jealousy, hot and raging, grew up in Aelric’s already terrified heart.  His fears seemed suddenly to have been realized, and Aelric embraced that fear, letting it take hold of his whole self.  This was, in my opinion, his greatest mistake.  Dread filled him, and his life became drudgery.  Misery was his constant companion, his only and terrible ally, welcomed into his life at a terrible cost.  For as Aelric’s heart hardened from fear and pain, he began to hate everything around him.

                Now, for a while, we will leave the heart of Aelric, the magician’s son, alone.  We will turn our focus instead to the magician himself.

                Absolom loved his three boys fiercely.  As I have said, he made them the center of his whole life.  But after a year of mourning had passed, on his younger sons’ birthday, Absolom returned to his work for the King.

                King Mercca was very old now, older still with grief, and could not stand to be alone with his sad thoughts.  He had given Absolom a year to mourn his wife’s passing, understanding the depth of the man’s grief.  Absolom, however, spent the year not dwelling in despair, but doing what he thought his wife would have wished for him.  Part of this, of course, was raising his boys.  But when they were in bed, Absolom would sit in his chair and think about magic.

                So when he returned to work, the magician was full of ideas for the king.  And when the king said that what he needed was to improve the state of the treasury before his death, Absolom went to work.  He studied alchemy for a time, and, finding it useless, he returned to magic.

                Magic cannot simply generate gold.  There are many things it can do, but creating objects from thin air is not one of them.  Gold is also a particularly difficult thing to summon, and Absolom knew perfectly well that there was a limit to the number of things he could simply turn to gold before his magic gave out.  What he needed was some way to grow the metal, to give it just enough life to be generated on its own.

                Which is when he thought of a magic chicken.  A chicken, laying golden eggs, seemed a likely solution to his predicament.  He went out to the royal coops to select a bird for the task.  He had just about chosen one when he was bitten on the ankle by an angry goose.

                Absolom turned quickly, spying the culprit of the attack immediately.  Where most people would have run from an angry goose, Absolom instead picked her up, stroking her feathers and muttering a charm.  The hen (for that is what you call a female goose) quieted instantly, even snuggling into Absolom’s arms.

                “There, now,” he said, as though he were soothing one of his boys’ nightmares.  “You’re alright.  But it occurs to me that you would lay much larger eggs than one of these chickens.  I’ll cast the spell on you, instead.”

                So Absolom brought the goose inside, to his magical study, and set her gently on his worktable.  She was fast asleep by this time, the charm having calmed her that much, and Absolom sneaked out of the study for just a moment, to find his three sons and bring them in to watch while he worked his magic.

                “You must pay careful attention to everything I do, boys,” Absolom said when he had gotten his sons situated.  The twins both looked up at him with wide, brown eyes, fingers dangling from their open mouths identically.  To Aelric Absolom said nothing, for he knew that Aelric knew what was expected of him.

                Aelric, unfortunately, took this as the sign he had been waiting for.  Clearly, he thought, it was important for his brothers to learn the ways of magic—but his father had left him out of the instruction!  And so, ignoring the fact that his father had taught him a great deal of magic before this time, Aelric let his heart fill with the notion that his brothers, and not he, would inherit their father’s position.  And the jealousy took even tighter hold of Aelric’s heart.

                The twins, sitting on either side of their father, knew nothing of their brother’s fears.  They only knew that they were with their father and brother and, most important, each other.  The little boys were each other’s dearest friends, as might be expected.  They had already begun to work small magics together, but even more important to them, they played together, ate together, slept side by side.  It never entered their young minds that things might be different.

                Absolom was also unaware of Aelric’s unhappy emotions, distracted as he was by the difficulty of the magic at hand.  He had planned the spell for months, mapped out exactly how he would do it.  But this meant little; it could go terribly wrong, it could fail to work at all.  Absolom had only hope.  But even if he failed, he wanted his sons to see it and learn from it.  That was why he brought them into his workshop; success or failure, the boys must learn the ways of magic.

                If someone had asked Absolom at that time what he thought of Aelric’s state of mind, he might have confessed some concern.  Aelric clung to the fear and envy that had been with him for years, and though he had made some progress before the twins were born, he seemed much worse now.  The nursemaid told Absolom that this was normal, that older siblings often envied younger ones at first.  But still, in the back of his mind, the aging magician worried.

                If he had been asked instead what would become of his position when he left it, I am not sure how Absolom might have replied.  Certainly he expected to pass it on, but whether to his older son or to the younger as a pair, he never said.  Perhaps Aelric’s fears were founded in some fact, no matter how terrible his choices based on those fears.  Perhaps Absolom had not thought of an answer to this question, for the boys were too young to take his place, he was too young to retire, and besides, he taught all three boys his craft equally.  Regardless of Absolom’s mind on the matter, Aelric’s feelings were stone—both in their determination and in their softness.  He was determined to take his father’s place, no matter what he had to do to gain it.

                And here Aelric made another mistake.  For if having cruel feelings is terrible, one can make allowances for it; a person cannot always choose the way they feel about something.  But Aelric chose to act on those ungenerous and unrighteous emotions, turning his thoughts to deeds and, thereby, sealing his place in the judgments of history.

                He would do anything to defend his place against his brothers.

                Aelric completely missed the magic lesson, which was a shame, because it was one of the greatest achievements of his father’s life.  With a few herbs made into a potion, a few gestures, a few words of power, Absolom changed the goose’s very nature.  In one moment she was an ordinary goose.  In the next, her body began to grow eggs of a most unusual variety—eggs made entirely of gold.

                It was not until two days later that Absolom knew it had worked.  The goose did not lay the first day.  Finally, in the early hours of the second morning, she laid a pair of eggs, each a bright, shining gold.  She looked down and squawked in surprise; her eggs had never looked that way before, had they?  But she was sure that she had laid them, so she settled down to keep them warm.

                I am assuming some emotions on the part of the goose.  To my knowledge, she has never told anyone how she felt that day, being, after all, a goose.

                Whatever her goosey feelings, Absolom pulled the warm eggs from under her a short while later, exclaimed in excitement, and ran to see the king and tell the ruler of the triumph.

                King Mercca was pleased with Absolom, although the king did not share the magician’s wild enthusiasm.  Absolom chalked this up to the king’s level of understanding; the king could simply not understand the work that had gone into the final product, the hours on days on weeks on months of tormented, feverish work on the project.  So Absolom accepted the king’s praise and then went home, exhausted.

                Perhaps Absolom should have taken this as a warning sign.  But, to be honest, Absolom did not have any particular gift for recognizing warning signs.  Clearly he had missed them (of a different sort) in his son.  And if there is one thing that people are more easily blinded about than their children, it is their own well-being.  I think so, anyway.

                So the magician slept, and never worried that the huge magical working he had performed might have been too much for him.

                For a time, the king was thrilled.  Slowly but surely, his treasury was being refilled, and it seemed the same trend would continue forever.  But then, one night, Mercca woke with a terrible thought: what if something happened to the goose?  She was only a bird, after all.  Absolom should never have trusted such a great gift to something that could think on its own.  What if the goose died, or stopped laying because of age, or ran away?  It would never do.  King Mercca summoned his chief magician immediately, calling the man to his bedchamber in the middle of the night.

                “I see the trouble, Sire,” Absolom said, nodding wisely—if tiredly.  His eyes were rimmed in a vivid pink, and he was peaked.  Still, he pushed on with his work, making allowance for the king’s eccentricities out of fondness for the old man.  “What would you have me do?”  The magician inquired of his ruler.

                “I need something else, something—more.”  The king’s nearly frantic tone mellowed for a moment as he surveyed his old friend.  “You’ve done an incredible thing, Absolom.  Performed a miracle.  I just need another one.  Something to ensure the financial safety of my kingdom before I die.  Do you understand?”

                “My Lord, I do,” Absolom said.  And he did.  Absolom’s legacy was his sons.  But Mercca, he had to put his kingdom before even his child; the throne was all.  Arlo was required to be an afterthought.  So Absolom understood the king’s worries and fears, and he sought to soothe them.

                “I will find a way to do this, my lord,”  Absolom said.  “Your kingdom will be safe, and your reign will be remembered with gratitude and reverence.”  The king, finally satisfied, nodded gratefully.  He dismissed Absolom and rested against his pillows, at ease once more.

                Absolom was anything but at ease.  He had before him a challenge greater, even, than the one he had just met.  Somehow, he had to find a way to create an endless supply of wealth.  But how?

                The old—and rapidly aging—magician set to work.  He buried himself in books and scrolls, studying until his eyes would no longer focus every day, twice a day.  He left Aelric to look after the twins much of the time, though the older boy was barely old enough to care for himself, and dedicated all of his time to appeasing his ruler and oldest friend.  This was the period of his life Absolom would come to regret most—but I am getting ahead of myself.  At this point, he did not realize the foolishness of his choice.  Absolom simply worked.

                And aged.  He was sick all of the time, constantly under the weather.  And yet he pushed his fragile body on, exploring magics he had never dreamed he could perform.

                It took two years, but Absolom managed it.  He enchanted a simple burlap sack so that, conceivably to the end of time, it would always be full of riches.

                The magician presented his gift to the king in the same place it had been commissioned.  He burst into the king’s bedchamber as Mercca was first waking one winter morning.

                “Sire,” he said, hefting the bag—filled to the brim with jewels—and smiling through his exhaustion.  “I have done it.”

                The two old men danced wildly, like madmen, like boys, whooping and hollering (and pausing to cough) until the king’s guard burst into the room to see what all the commotion was about.

                Absolom went home shortly thereafter.  Aelric was eight years old, and had been all but raising brothers he hated for two years.  When the boys’ father entered their rooms, Aelric looked up with a sort of dead pain in his eyes.  But then, his father’s condition shocked him out of thinking about his own misery for maybe the only time in his life.

                Absolom was trembling from head to foot.  His face alternated between flushing hot red to freezing into white.  He stumbled as he walked as though he were drunk, and his voice was almost too weak to hear.  Aelric brought his father a chair, watched the old man collapse onto it, thought better of it, carried his father to his bed.  When did Father become so light?  Aelric wondered.  He remembered his father’s good days—not well, perhaps, but well enough to know that something was terribly wrong.

                The twins watched the whole scene with a solemn terror in their faces.  Finally, when their father was sleeping a little too quietly, they approached their older brother.  Unable to form the questions that plagued them into words, they only stared at Aelric through matching dark eyes until the older boy could no longer stand it.  Aelric rushed from the family’s collection of rooms, slamming the door behind him as he raced off into the castle.

                Two horrible things happened at this point in the story, though the order of them is lost to time.  So I’ll tell it as I like, beginning with the bit that foreshadows trouble in later years, and ending with the part that foreshadows trouble in the very near future.  Both bends in the path to trouble were littered with alarming markers that Absolom should have noticed.  I am sorry to say that he did not.  Not until it was too late.

                Sometime during his father’s recovery—if, indeed, it can be called that—Aelric struck up a letter-based conversation with Crown prince Ivo of Castello, the kingdom to Bennan’s direct West.  A friendship, almost a brotherhood, grew up out of these letters.  Aelric loved Ivo as he had never loved the twins.

                You must be confused.  From your perspective, this probably seems a good thing.  At last, Aelric had found someone whose conversation he could enjoy and connect with.  At last, there was a softening in his heart.  All technically true.  But you do not yet know the character of the Crown prince of Castello.

                Young prince Ivo was not someone to spend a great deal of time discussing—his name has even been used, before my time, as a curse.  Unlike Aelric, whose cruelty can at least be understood to some extend, Ivo’s nastiness had no apparent root.  He was always a little wrong.  Intelligent, yes, although he lacked his friend Aelric’s true brilliance.  Ivo was the sort of boy who stabbed knives into the castle cat just to see how long it took to die.  The kind of child who pinched and punched babies because he wanted them to cry.  He was a boy who would as soon claw his peers’ eyes out as look at them.  He was a brute of the nastiest degree.

                Five years Ivo’s junior, Aelric idolized the prince.  Aelric was bright, very bright, but not good or practiced at relieving his feelings of rage.  He needed Ivo’s decisive force.  And Ivo, through his letters to Aelric, recognized the mind that could carry his nasty thoughts into real, executable plans.  They were drawn to the evil in one another, and they brought out each other’s worst selves.