The Prince and the Hedgewitch

Once there was a land where stories had power. More than fireside amusements or cautionary tales, the events recounted in stories were not just fact, but fate. In this realm, the serpent was always slain, the dwarves always knew where to find gold, and the third son of a king, beyond all doubt or desire, would always have an adventure and inherit the throne.

* * *

Prince Alaric blinked stinging sweat from his eyes, drowning in the reek of hot oil and steel and skin. “I know to be kind to old women in the forest,” he muttered. “I know where to strike a dragon with my lance. I even know, though it matters naught to anyone else, how to tell when a butterfly will emerge from its chrysalis. With all I know, you’d think the arguments against beginning my quest on a cloudless August day would have been within my grasp.”

Gyrfalcon’s hooves rang against cobblestones that shimmered with heat. It was surely uncomfortable for the stallion as well, to bear from the imperial city 180 pounds of man and what felt like twice that in armour and equipment. Not that either of them had any choice.

Father or no, a royal command was a royal command: unalterable—and unavoidable—as the story itself.

At last, the city gates. Alaric waved to the cheering crowd one last time and they were through. His smile slipped away and he rolled his jaw, releasing the tension. Then he directed Gyrfalcon east, into the woods.

They were still some distance from the village of Cobham when the road curved, revealing a low stone wall speckled with flowering moss. Beyond the wall lay a yard. Wandering geese cropped the lawn, a surly white goat tied beyond reach of the rambling, meticulously weeded garden. At the rear, a riotous growth of red and purple roses clambered over a well-thatched cottage. The most promising sight of all, however, was the sun-browned girl, long dark hair tied back from her face, drawing water from the well.

Alaric guided Gyrfalcon into the yard, grunting a little as he dismounted. “We may be in luck, my friend,” he whispered, tousling the horse’s mane. “Let us see just how strongly this story seeks its ending.” He turned and bowed with a flourish. “My lady!”

The girl lifted a hand to her eyes, studying them as he would study a particularly unusual breed of lizard. A wry smile touched her lips. “Your timing is excellent, Your Highness. My well is the coolest and deepest in the kingdom, and it’s plain you’re both in need of refreshment.”

At least she’d refrained from curtseying. He hated it when they curtseyed. Alaric removed his gauntlets, stuffing them in a saddlebag. “I suppose it was too much to hope the news hadn’t spread,” he said, striding towards her. “But I accept your kind offer all the same, my lady, and beg you accept my assistance.”

The girl snorted and tipped the dripping bucket, filling a pail she’d set on the rim of the well. “I’m no lady, and I can manage quite well on my own.”

Alaric reached for the handle. “I insist.”

She drew the pail away. “That’s not necessary.”

“But if you’ll only permit—”

“It’s fine!”

“If you would just—”

“Really!”

“—allow me!”

“Let go, you royal oaf!”

She stomped on his armoured foot. Distracted by the clang, Alaric noticed they were scuffling for possession of a now-empty pail. Suddenly, the girl released its handle, sending him staggering backwards, and began to laugh.

No twittering bird-like giggle for this maid. Skirts dripping, hands braced against the well, she laughed with full, unashamed, indelicate abandon. And despite his embarrassment, her laughter drew a rough, long-unused laugh from him.

“My name is Nora, Your Highness,” the girl said when she’d recovered. “Come inside, and tell me what brings you to my door.”

She let him carry the pail.

* * *

Alaric sat cautiously at Nora’s table, afraid the chair might not take his weight. It creaked, but seemed sound enough. A mongrel with a splinted leg looked up, thumped its tail, and resumed napping beside a banked fire hung about with cut greens. The mingled scents of drying herbs and unwashed dog was pleasant somehow, almost homey.

“Hungry?” Nora asked, wringing a few stray droplets from her hair.

“Thank you, but no. Just water.”

The corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth, she filled a cup and handed it to him. Then she turned to the long workbench behind him. In contrast to the one in his own study, it held no preserved creatures or bits of wire and clockwork. The surface was bare and well-scrubbed, shelves above the bench crowded with baskets, jars, and battered books. Nora selected a small woolen pouch from one basket and began to fill it, rapidly and with confidence, from the contents of the jars.

Unobserved, Alaric glanced about for signs of the requisite maiden aunts; there were, unfortunately, none. “Do you live here alone?” he asked, just in case. “Have you no fear of beasts and bandits so far from town?”

Nora laughed again, adding a birch leaf to the pouch. “What beast would threaten the hedgewitch, or bandit steal from her? Who else would tend their wounds and treat their ills?” Tugging the pouch’s drawstring tight, she sat down across from him. Her gaze, unlike those of the court ladies who blushed and batted their eyelashes, was forthright. “And why, pray tell, is King Torrence’s third son seeking adventure in Cobham? Aren’t all the best marauding griffons and enchanted castles and dark knights to the West?”

Tired and empty eyes stared back at him from the depths of his cup. “I hoped it would not come to that.”

She didn’t respond, but watched him as though listening to words he’d left unspoken. Words he’d never spoken to anyone, because no one would understand. And yet, somehow he felt that she would.

“I’m the third son of a king.” Alaric rolled his cup between his palms. “It matters to no one that Rasmus is better with a sword, or that Eberhardt—”

“The eldest.”

“—has a firmer grasp of diplomacy and statecraft. It matters to no one that I spent every available moment reading the tales, studying the histories, searching for some pattern in the workings of the world that would hint at another way. I am destined to have an adventure and inherit the kingdom. As I cannot escape my fate, I thought perhaps,” he raised his hands, “if I met a peasant maid in a nearby village—”

“You’d stumble on a hidden princess and have the whole thing settled by suppertime?” Her voice was grave, but her eyes twinkled. “As plans go, it has a certain charming simplicity.”

Alaric rubbed the back of his neck, ears burning. “You don’t, by chance, know of any princesses in Cobham?”

Nora’s gaze slid past him, as if searching her shelves. “No,” she replied at last. “I don’t suppose I do.”

He was on his feet now, pacing like the lion the royal menagerie. The dog whined, pulling its tail from his path; he stopped and rested one clinking forearm on the mantle above the hearth. “My mother died bringing me into the world,” he whispered to the flames, “and they say she smiled as she did, overcome with joy at producing the fabled third son at last. When my father looks at me, he sees naught but the fulfillment of that dream. It doesn’t matter that I do not want it; it matters only what I am.” Turning from the fire, he dropped back into his chair, exhausted and ashamed. “So it is written, so it must be.”

“Listen to me, Alaric.” Reaching across the table, Nora grasped his hands. At her touch, sparks of lightening blazed up his arms, setting his heart to pounding.

Did hedgewitches deal in love spells?

For an instant, the girl looked startled. Then, speaking as gently as to a child, she said, “Go home. Go home, give up this fated quest, make your own choices. Change the story.”

So many nights hunched over weighty tomes, dust in his nostrils, eyes straining in the candlelight, every word a stone on a mountain of certainty. “The story cannot be changed,” he said. “It is not possible.”

“Why not?”

He’d been wrong about her. She didn’t understand at all. Alaric drew his tingling hands from her grip. “I have to go.”

Nora closed her eyes, then nodded, smiling of rue and regret. She accompanied him to the gate and held Gyrfalcon’s reigns as he remounted, pushing off the wall.

“You won’t reconsider?”

Eyes on the road, Alaric shook his head.

“Then take this.” She pressed the little pouch into his gauntleted hand. “A charm for protection. And for luck.”

Alaric turned his mount westward. He didn’t know if she watched him, for he didn’t look back. But he clutched her token long after daylight faded into darkness.

* * *

In a land where stories have power, everyone wants to be the star.

* * *

At first light, the village maidens descended, chattering like geese, swooning like fools, desperate for news of Prince Alaric and his quest.

“I swear,” Nora muttered as she opened the door, “I do not know how word travels so quickly. It’s a magic far stronger than mine.”

“Was he handsome, Nora?” Sally demanded, batting her lashes in a manner she probably believed fetching.

“Sweaty, mostly.” The hedgewitch leaned over the fire. “He’d ridden down from the palace in the heat of the day.”

“He’s sure to be handsome,” Ellen gushed as though Nora had not said a word. “The third son of King Torrence here, in our village! If only I were a princess. Can you imagine anything more romantic?”

Nora stirred the tonic steadily, for it wouldn’t do to let it boil. This was the last of the season’s coltsfoot, and she’d need plenty of cough tincture for the coming fall. Something about rain made girls want to wander in it, as if it increased their chances of being rescued.

“A royal wedding.” Ellen clasped her hands to her chest. “Wouldn’t it be simply divine?”

“Divine retribution, you mean.” Nora removed the pot from the fire, pushing a steam-dampened tendril of hair off her forehead.

“Oh, Nora.” Alice giggled. “You’re such an ogre. It’s a wonder your love spells even work.”

“I don’t deal in love spells, Alice Miller, as you well know. People get into enough trouble of that sort without any help from me.”

“But tell us, you must,” Sally implored. “We want to know everything.”

So Nora told them. She told them of the tussle over the water pail (“What a gentleman he is!”) and of his ridiculous, over-gilded armour (“How strong and mighty!”). She told them of the charming way his mouth quirked when he forgot himself and smiled (“To kiss such a mouth!”) and how his hands were calloused like hers, and stained with ink.

She told them nothing of the hopelessness in his eyes. Of the desperation evinced by his constant motion, as though he beat himself against the bars of a cage too small to hold him. Of the resignation with which he took up the reigns, mute evidence of a weight that couldn’t be lifted, a despair she could not heal.

They wouldn’t have heard her, anyway.

When the telling was through, the girls sighed as one, eyes cast rapturously upward, and Nora’s heart softened in spite of herself. Who could be content with the life of a peasant maid when peasants became princesses every day?

Who indeed.

“To be a princess,” Ellen whispered. “How glorious it must be.”

“To be cinched and corseted?” Nora placed dried rosemary into her mortar and began to pound, the sharp crisp scent clutching her throat. “To be displayed on demand, and confined to gossip and embroidery the rest of your days? To know that your worth is defined, not by your skills or accomplishments, but how you look in a ball gown?”

They blinked at her, blinded by visions of dancing in such a dress. It wasn’t their fault. They were the same age as she, and yet too young to know that life continues past the story’s end. They had never wondered whether stories were strong enough to sustain those happily-ever-afters once the clock struck midnight.

They went away at last, silence thick and oppressive as a storm filling the spaces they’d left behind. Nora watched them go, stroking the dog’s velvety ears, and knew herself the worst of them all: both hypocrite and fool.

In no tale ever told does the third son of a king marry the hedgewitch.

* * *

In a land where stories have power, Nora heard them all.

As she dug potatoes and treated catarrh, Prince Alaric met a fairy in disguise who gave him an enchanted shield after sharing his meal. With the shield’s aid, he slew a bridge troll and freed its captive princess. The village girls cried into their pillows, for surely Alaric would marry and return to inherit the kingdom, bringing his story, and their hopes, to an end.

Snows fell. Nora cured chilblains and called stray milch-cows home, and a new tale found its way to Cobham. To the astonishment of bards and maidens alike, Alaric had returned the troll’s captive to her father’s castle. He received as reward a golden apple, which he used to cure a princess whose wicked stepmother had spelled her to sleep. Then he left her in the disenchanted forest, perplexed and surrounded by seven disgruntled dwarves.

With spring lambs and planting came word that Alaric had sailed to a kingdom beyond the Western Sea, where he’d reunited a royal mermaid with the prince she’d saved from drowning. The princess of the neighboring kingdom was less than pleased and rumor hinted she’d run off with the cinder-girl.

King Torrance, aging and bemused, proclaimed himself overcome with joy at his son’s great deeds and declared he would gladly abdicate in favour of Alaric, if the boy would just choose himself a princess and come back home.

Nora cast spells to repel brownies and brewed charms for fertility. She reset bones and drew thorns from paws. She midwifed human and beast alike. And day by day her longing grew, winding tightly ‘round her heart, piercing her with a regret sharper than any knife.

She’d had everything she’d ever wanted, until she realized what she’d given up.

* * *

In a land where no one knew him, he traded well-worn arms and faithful steed to an astonished merchant, taking in exchange a graying nag, a set of plain clothes, and a satchel of books. As he rode east towards Cobham, no one paid him any heed. If farmers and woodsmen thought it strange to see a poor scholar with a broken nose and a dozen scars, they did not speak of it.

On a still-warm day in late September, he directed his plodding mare past the village to the low stone wall, still covered with moss. Butterflies flickered over the rose bushes, which still perfumed the air. The goat was still staked away from the garden, chewing and glaring as he dismounted. Little, it seemed, had changed.

Except for him.

He closed his eyes, standing in memory on the arch of a wooden bridge, shield arm aching, the erstwhile prisoner of a vanquished troll beaming up at him.

“Good sir!” the princess had trilled, hands fluttering like birds as she straightened her brocade gown, smoothed her golden hair. “’Twas surely destiny you found me! My father shall see us wed by sundown!”

He’d been about to agree when the charm he wore for protection—unnoticed during the battle—flared suddenly hot against his chest. He clutched it as a whiff of herbs and dog struck him like a blow. But why now, at this moment, when all peril had passed?

Unless.

Was it possible that the danger the hedgewitch sought to ward him against was nothing more than himself? Was it possible that, to change the story, he need only believe it could be done?

He smiled now, for his story had begun to change before he’d even left her door… and yet the tale remained unfinished. He filled the pail she’d left by the well; as his palm began to sweat, he gripped the handle tighter. No book studied, no experiment made, no battle fought or won had prepared him for this. He rapped on the cottage door.

Nora opened it, taking in the pail before lifting her gaze to his face. Her eyes went wide. “Alaric.”

He shook his head, tapping his earlobe in warning. “You’re much mistaken, miss. I’m simply Aric.” He extended the pail.

Her eyes crinkled as she stepped aside to let him pass. “Come in then, stranger,” she offered, her voice as wry and rich as he’d remembered it in so many dreams. “A weary traveler can always find succor here.”

Aric put the pail down, waiting while she closed the door and drew the shutters tight. “There’s been no news of you for over a year,” she said conversationally. “You father believes you dead.”

He winced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know.”

“Why?”

Aric passed his fingers over the grain of the table, smooth from repeated scrubbing. “Eberhardt is more fit to rule than I could ever be. But he would never have had the chance. The third son of a king always inherits the kingdom.”

“So the stories say.”

He reached out, took her hand. Her skin was cool, but a spark surged up his arm to jolt his heart once more. “I’ve found a way to change the stories, Nora… just as you told me I could.”

“I’m pleased for your sake.” Nora tugged her hand free and turned away, busying herself at a lamp.

Aric watched as she fumbled with the match. “I knew the moment I’d defeated the troll that you were right, but it took several more adventures—and princesses—before I truly understood. I know not why,” he added, moving closer. “It was so simple. All I had to do was stop thinking about what I didn’t want, so I could understand what it is that I do.”

There was a long pause before Nora asked, “And what is that?”

Aric took the final step. He set gentle hands upon her trembling shoulders, turning her to face him. “I don’t want adventures, or kingdoms, or princesses,” he said. “Since first we met, I’ve wanted naught but you.”

She made no sound, but tears spilled over her cheeks. As he brushed them away, Nora smiled like sunrise, warming the very depths of his soul. “Me?” She clutched his wrists, her work-roughened nails digging into his skin. “Just as I am?”

“Just as you are, for always.” He grinned. “A hedgewitch can always use a water boy, can she not?”

Nora began to laugh, a sweet glorious laugh of unrestrained freedom. She didn’t stop until he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her.

* * *

In a land where stories have power, against all odds and likelihood, the third son of a king found the strength to change one. And thus the prince became a scholar and a teacher, marrying the hedgewitch and settling in a village overlooked by the palace that should have been his prize.

The hedgewitch treated and brewed and delivered and cast. And one night, under the dark light of a new moon, she crept from their blankets, took the clay pot containing the amulet—which proclaimed the royal birth of Noralessa Francesca Betina of Rue—off of her shelf, and sank it into the coolest, deepest well in the kingdom.

Then she went back to bed and dreamed sweet dreams of happily ever after.